From: Clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk (Clive May)
Subject: Re: A story we can all create..
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 01 17:51:42 GMT



The Doctor stared hard at Gorthund and Kepla in disbelieving shock, before
turning his questing gaze upon the thirty or so birds and riders which had
settled to the sand some hundred yards distant.  Finally, he shot a desperate
look after the fast vanishing dot of Prak's airborne mount, dwindling into
the south.  Spinning back to Gorthund, he demanded: "We must get after him
before he gets too far away."

"The pursuit is already away," said Kepla, pointing with her odd weapon.
Four more birds were climbing up the sky in pursuit of the fleeing Prak.
"But I fear they'll not over take him before the edge of the world.  If they
can't bring him down before then, he'll be clean away.  We dare not anger the
Lord of the Vale by sending an armed squadron into his territory."

"You've got to admire old Prak," said Gorthund.  "The boy's got nerve.With a
full Wing of Temple Guards hot on his tail, with nothing at all nice in mind
for the rascal wen we catch up to him......and he stops off to snatch your
companion?" He shook his head wonderingly.

"He's just desperate," Kepla told her mate.  "After bungling the raid on the
Avis Temple to snatch a Priestess, he's surely willing to take any risk to
lay his hands on anyone to pass off as a Priestess for the Lord of the Vale.
The old monster might be nailed on his throne by some wondrous magic spell,
but he's still not someone to be crossed lightly."

Gorthund and Kepla exchanged significant glances.

"I'd give a pile of gold to be there when the Lord of the Vale finds the
Priestess Prak's snatched for him is nothing of the kind," Gorthund grinned
nastily.

Kepla paled.  "I wouldn't," she declared, with a shudder.

"Look!..." the Doctor started to exclaim; but was cut short by the solid slap
of a heavy calibre bullet against the side of the TARDIS.

"I think," said Gorthund, eyeing the nearing hoard, "we'd best adjourn aloft
to a place of safety.  We've not the strength to meet the Servii on the
ground." He turned to the grounded Wing of Temple Guards and rapped out swift
orders to take flight.  The men and women mounted upon their winged steeds;
and at another barked order, they leapt for the sky, blowing up a gale of
dust.

Gunfire crackled in the distance.  A hail of bullets hissed in the air around
the Doctor and Gorthund.  Dust spurted all about them.  More struck the
TARDIS.  The Doctor ran to the machine, yanking at the doors.  Belatedly, he
remembered that they were locked, and that the key was lost in the sand.
There was no way in without the key.

He glanced over the ground; but it was hopeless.  There simply was no time to
search.  The charging band of Servii were barely four hundred yards distant.
He couldn't stay here.

"Doctor!" cried Gorthund.  "Come on!  Hurry!  There's no time." The commander
of the airborne Temple Guard Squadron was hurrying towards him leading a
huge, red feathered bird.  The bird ran ponderously with wings held out.
Kepla sat astride a pretty brown spotted bird nearby, quieting Gorthund's
mount by stroking its head and speaking soothing words.

The Doctor glanced once at the on-coming hoard, then at the bird.  He was not
too certain that he liked the idea of risking himself on the creature; but he
was out of choices.

He ran to meet Gorthund, clambered onto the saddle strapped to the bird's
back, and wondered how it was controlled.  He needn't have worried.  The
moment Gorthund was mounted, all three birds leapt for the sky.  The Doctor
grunted under the sudden thrust, and barely stayed on.  He grabbed a handful
of feathers and clung on for dear life.

The birds climbed quickly to around two thousand feet, forming up into a Vee.
The Doctor's bird, of its own accord, attached itself as the end marker on
one line.

Down below, the Servii had enveloped the TARDIS.  Through the dust, the
Doctor saw his time machine hoisted bodily and thrown onto a giant scaly
back.  As they sailed overhead, out of range of the guns, they watched the
hoard milling around below, letting off the occasional wild shot.  Then the
Servii began to move away in a jostling mass, towards the south.

The Doctor was desperate to follow and reclaim his TARDIS; but he had no idea
how to make the bird obey him.  He was forced to sit astride the bird, and be
carried along wherever it decided to go.  The formation wheeled away into the
north, winging away over the sand.  With every mighty wing-beat, the Doctor
was being carried further and further from his only means of saving Jo, and
getting off this planet.

Gorthund' side-slipped his bird in to a station some hundred feet off to the
right and ten feet above the Doctor.  "Are you alright?" he called down.

"Getting the hang of it, old chap," the Doctor called back, still clutching
grimly to the birds neck feathers.  Despite everything, he was enjoying the
exhilaration of racing through the sky on the back of a giant bird.

He nodded in the direction of the retreating hoard, not daring to release a
hand to point.  "We must follow them.  They've got my TARDIS.  I must get it
back."

"No need, Doctor," Gorthund called back.  "We know where they'll take it.
The best thing is for us to get to Avis City as quick as possible and return
with a couple of Wings of the Elite Guard."

"How long will that take?"

Kepla settled her yellow spotted bird beside the Doctor, a hundred feet to
his left and ten feet below.  She pointed into the north and shouted "Look!
There!  That's where we are going!  Avis City!"

The Doctor looked, and caught his breath in wonder.  Creeping over the far
horizon, like a range of crystal mountains, was a gigantic city of towers,
shining in the desert sun.  It was a vast agglomeration of glass and steel
and stone; but the most breath taking aspect of the city was that it floated
two thousand feet in the air, with no visible means of support.  The
structure was rotating slowly, causing sunlight to flash and glitter - as
from a million faceted diamond.  As the troop of airborne cavalry swept
closer, the illusion of pristine elegance diminished.  It grew evident to the
Doctor's amazed gaze that the place was a ruin.  Many of the towers were
fractured stumps and others were twisted into ugly parodies of their former
artful elegance.  Some had fallen, bringing down others, creating great
mounds of tangled steel, stone and glass.  The improbable structure was
canting drunkenly on one side.  Every now and then, the city jerked and
staggered as it rotated.  Even in its ruin, the city of Avis was an awe
inspiring sight, hanging there in the blue.

"That's the biggest PNPG field I've ever seen in operation," the Doctor
shouted across to Gorthund.

"What?" frowned Gorthund.

"Permanent Negative Para Gravity field," the Doctor shouted back in
explanation.  "And somebody ought to do something about the phasing
alignment, and soon, or the whole things going to flip right over."

Gorthund Looked none the wiser.

"Don't you know what holds the city up?"

Gorthund shook his head.  "That knowledge was lost in the great disaster that
overcame the world when the stars were young."

As they drew rapidly closer, the Doctor saw that the air all about the tilted
city was thick with flocks of birds.  They were of all sizes, colours and
kinds.  Their raucous calling filled the air.  The squadron slanted in
through the wheeling flocks, heading for a narrow platform jutting out over
the gulf of empty air.

The troop did not land on the platform.  As each bird came along side, it
back winged and stalled in the air for a moment, enabling its rider to leap
from the back, over the gulf of air, to the platform.  Then the bird would
drop away to be replaced by the next in line.

The Doctor's bird came in at the tail end of the column.  The bird stalled;
the Doctor leapt.  At that exact moment, the mighty structure of the city
gave one of its unpredictable lurches.  The Doctor suddenly found himself
over two thousand feet of empty air.



Two red robed priests came forward and took the wildly struggling Jo from
Prak's grasp.  One of them brought a brilliant scarlet flower from under his
robe.  Holding the long trumpet under Jo's nose, he squeezed the bulbous
bottom of the flower; and a great puff of cloying scent rose in Jo's face.
She tried not to breathe the aromatic gas; but even so she felt herself
growing faint.  The world around her retreated into a dreamy haze.

The red robed priests led the now quiescent Jo to the south east corner of
the platform, where a large rectangular slab was marked out with a border of
tiny interlocking pictograms of fabulous animals.  A rusted iron ring was set
in the centre of the slab.  While one supported a woozy Jo, the other bent
and hauled on the ring.  On oiled pivots, the great slab turned back, as
though it were made of balsa wood.  Quickly, the pair of priests urged Jo
down the flight of worn steps into darkness.

For what seemed forever, Jo stumbled down the crumbling steps, through a
stinking darkness.  Foul water dripped from the sloping roof to splash on her
bare skin, and slide in chilly runnels down her arms and back.

They led her to a dank chamber, lit by a dim greenish glow, coming from a
huge green, crystal eye set in the ceiling.  Beneath the eye, was a stone
thrown.  The priests seated Jo's limp form in the chair.  A feathered cloak
was draped about her shoulders; and a tall head dress of feathers was fitted
over her head.  In the golden band which circled her head, there were a line
of little green gems.

The priests withdrew, swinging shut a set of rackety wooden bars.  One moved
to the wall nearby and pressed a carven stone.

The green eye in the ceiling began to pulsate, calling forth a similar
rhythmic pulsation from the gems in the head band of the crown.

Slumped half conscious in the chair, Jo began to dream a terrible dream.