Knight Progenitor

  Chapter Three

  "The two things I don't understand are: why chase the people out of the towns and destroy the crops; and why the dragon."

  "That's three things, Peral, but there's only one answer. Terror. Scare them too badly to fight back."

  "It didn't work this time, Doctor."

  "No. This time it didn't."

  They rode in companionable silence for awhile, then Lib said, "At midnight tonight."

  "For one day."

  "What ARE you two talking about?"

  "At midnight I'll be the same age as Peral. It's my favorite day of the year."

  "I go through this every year, Doctor, but this year I don't really mind. If I was home, I'd be getting ready to vote the first time. I've already decided what to do with my life and I know who I am. I'll be eighteen and I'm ready for it."

  "You've grown up in an unusual society, Peral, with very unusual people in it."

  "Yes, Doctor. My grandmother taught me martial arts and I have one hundred fifty-seven godmothers and one godfather. And all of them carry weapons, but you. And I've decided to be one of the good guys, because I'm impossible."

  "No, but highly improbable. Calla?"

  "Actually, it was Tarna. We're two of five. Children of two worlds. Calla was the first. By the way, did you know you're listed as Calla's kids' grandfather on every official document on Cordahm?"

  "I'm WHAT?!"

  He'd tried to take the rings off. He couldn't. The time difference still puzzled him. And why Old English names...

  "Why east, Doctor?"

  "I SUPPOSE, because we've already been WEST!" The Doctor wasn't pleased with riding through the mud, on horseback, in the rain.

  "Doctor, you're spoiled. Your idea of roughing it is frying fish outside the TARDIS doors. This time you have to do it like everybody else. You have to put in the travel time between the chapters of the adventure. How do you think I feel? In an hour I'll be eighteen and trying to find somewhere dry to sleep."

  "Speaking of which, Dearheart seems to have an idea. I'm going to see if she can find us some shelter."

  "Lib, you think that horse talks to you."

  "Peral, you think your horse LISTENS to you."

  "Lib, I take it all back. Your horse seems to have found us somewhere dry. I'm not being dripped on. Wow, Doctor, I've never seen a forest canopy that thick."

  "I don't like this."

  "What do you mean?" Peral was already off his horse. Wealdan nickered, as if to tell him to remount.

  The forest erupted with sound and movement. Leoht reared in the air and the Doctor saw Peral go down under a pile of dark forms. He slid from his horse and raced toward Peral. He'd nearly reached him when he was hit from behind.

  He awoke with a horse lipping his ear. "Peral?! Lib?!" He heard Heort nicker and went looking for her. He found her about fifty meters away, standing over Lib.

  He knelt beside Lib, checked her pulse and respiration, and the lump on her head. Her eyes fluttered open and she said, "Peral's in real trouble. He's scared. I've never felt him that way before."

  "Where is he?"

  Lib reached for the psychic awareness that connected all her family. The Doctor helped her to her feet and she pointed east. "He's that direction, but much farther away than he should be. There shouldn't be anything on this planet that could get him that far away. Doctor, I don't know of anything that could scare him like that. I'm scared too."

  Peral's horse was gone. The Doctor located its tracks leading east, but there were no others. They followed Wealdan's tracks east.

  Peral had known he was in real trouble from the moment he saw the Doctor go down. He could feel Lib was all right. The Doctor must be too, or she'd have been more upset than she was. He knew they were coming, but they were days away. He'd been bundled into a rotary blade aircraft. He pulled his will and his fear together and fused them into courage. They had shown him what was going to happen to him.

  "Doctor, Peral's pulling away from me! Something's going to happen to him and he wants to spare me. Something inside him just changed. He's not afraid anymore. Doctor! He thinks he's going to die!"

  "NO! That WILL not happen. It's time we rode these horses. RIDE!"

  Legends grew around less. A golden haired hero on a mythical beast and a maid in green who bore a sword thundered through village after village. And rode east. Where strange things were happening, or so minstrels sang.

  Wealdan found him. And rescued him. There's nothing like a rampaging stallion to clear an area of foot traffic and his teeth made short work of the ropes. Peral found things and pulled himself together as best he could. Wealdan knelt for him to mount and carried him west toward the Doctor.

  Lib knew when things changed, when he was free, but something had happened to him. He'd learned terrible anger and he was hurt.

  For three days and three nights, the Doctor and Lib ran/walked/ran the horses. They should not have been able to do it. Not the horses and not Lib. The horses' endurance surprised the Doctor.

  They found him lying in the sun on a grassy bank next to a stream. Lib jumped down and ran for him, but Wealdan gently pushed her away. The Doctor reached Peral and said, "Go, Lib. Try to rest. He'll be all right, but the horse is right. He wouldn't want you here right now." He carried Peral into the stream. The shock of cold water woke him, but it would make him feel cleaner. He held his godson as he wept. It wouldn't be the last time Peral shed tears, but it was the last time he'd shed them for himself.

  "That's the strange thing. They couldn't get it off me. They had a fight over the pretty blue ring, then it wouldn't come off."

  "I can't get mine off either. You're fortunate they didn't just cut off your finger to get it."

  "They decided to wait until I was dead. They didn't expect to have to wait too long. Doctor, there's only one thing wrong with this being a hero business. The final exam is a bitch."

  "Yes, I know." Peral looked closely at the Doctor, he'd never heard him sound that way before. The Doctor smiled gently. "My final exam was a 'bitch' too."

  "All right. You're alive, you're sitting up, you're eating, you're talking. What happened?" She'd been awake just long enough to feel the hard knot inside him loosen. She knew the Doctor had, somehow, helped loosen it and she was grateful.

  "Somebody liked my pretty hair." He grinned at her. "I had quite a party for my eighteenth birthday. The important thing is, they used an aircraft from off-planet to deliver me to it."

  Lib wasn't sure why she was being sidetracked, but she could tell Peral wanted the subject closed. She would never ask what happened to him again.

  They found the town and the inn the day after they found Peral. Lib volunteered to stable the horses. She still wasn't in any mood to sit by the fire and chat. Anger, at whatever had been done to Peral, nearly choked her when she tried to talk. Peral and the Doctor saw the man grab her arm as she walked in the door. The Doctor started to stand, but Peral laid a restraining hand on his arm. "She's absolutely delighted. She needs a friendly brawl to get it out of her system." The man went flying across the room. The five men, who had been sitting with him, all decided to teach Lib a lesson. They just couldn't seem to find any she hadn't already learned.

  As people began to fly about the room, the Doctor and Peral picked up their mugs and strolled over, just to make sure things stayed friendly. A man reached for his sword, felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked behind him. And looked up. Into Peral's eyes. Peral smiled at him and said, "That's not necessary. She's not going to really hurt any of them. She's being very careful not to break anyone."

  The man's eyes rolled up and he fainted. The Doctor burst into laughter. Soon Peral joined in.

  "Give me your hands. I want to see something. The one with the RING on it."

  "Sorry, Doctor. Here." Lib attempted to remove a bit of the greasy roast fowl from her fingers before
she put her hand out. She just really couldn't find anywhere to wipe the grease.

  The Doctor did one of those, 'Now where did he get that froms', and produced a linen napkin. With which, he wiped the grease, she'd gotten on him, off his fingers. He gave her a rather disgusted look and said, "Here. Why didn't you ASK for one? Now, give me your hand."

  He had to wait a bit. Peral and Lib were holding their sides and needed both hands. The Doctor smiled. Peral had been right. He had been ready.

  They brought the rings together and they glowed. Not magic. Science.

  "Of COURSE, I knew what they were. I just didn't remember them. You're the ones that put them on me!"

  "You mean, when we put our hands together, we activated something you can't turn off?"

  "Of COURSE, I can turn them off. Just not while we're wearing them."

  "Which just happens to be while they're activated because they won't come off til they think it's safe."

  "Lib, machines don't think. In this case, they measure stress. They weren't built for a humanoid species at all. I distinctly remember something with a crown and fur giving them to me. A souvenir. I think."

  "You mean, you just attached all our lives together with a souvenir?"

  "Well, I'M not the one who fished them out of the wardrobe."

  "Doctor," Peral had been trying to put a few puzzle pieces in place. "There's more here than finding the jewels in the wardrobe. Why did you agree to change? I know I saw peasant garb that would have fit you. How did you miss it? I don't remember seeing the blue and green outfits or the white cloak, but they were in plain view when I went back in. We were being manipulated."

  "Yes, and the rings are a trap. Return to the TARDIS. Try the emergency override. See if it'll take you home. It might work if I stay here."

  "Why, Doctor? I don't understand. Now we'll know where you are, and you'll know where we are. Like the family bond Peral and I have."

  "It's not like that at all. You've been attached to ME! I'm the one who has to be careful."

  "I don't think I get that. You said the ruby was the master circuit."

  "It is. I will NOT allow its use. Go to the TARDIS. If the override doesn't operate, I want you to remain inside until I return."

  "Whoa, Doctor, you've lost me." Peral could see he was serious. "Let's back up a little. To like: you're the one that has to be careful, attached to you, that kind of thing. If you're not going to 'allow it' and you'll send us home with the TARDIS or confine us inside to prevent it, I think we should know what IT is."

  "If anything happens to me, if my energy or vitality get too low, the gems become a circuit for using yours. I could, literally, drain the life from you while unconscious."

  "I thought your burden was a bit light."

  The Doctor sat a bit straighter on the rough wooden stool, looked down his nose at Lib and said, "I BEG your pardon."

  "None of this is really difficult for you. You've even died before. You've proved you're willing to give your life for what's right. It's made you dauntless and a bit cocky. Welcome back to the mortal plane, Doctor. You now have to decide if the risks are worth OUR lives."

  The aircraft and Peral's captors were gone. They found an inn on the road where the people spoke of lights in the sky and terrible sounds. And the Doctor spent the entire evening trying to discourage the overzealous attention of a pair of serving wenches. And Peral and Lib snickered.

  "I'm going EAST and I don't know WHY!" He was pacing. The room was too small for it. "Rumors, murmurs, an AIRCRAFT, an old woman; and I'm going EAST! The evil I felt has GOT to leave some clue to its presence. It CAN'T just DISAPPEAR!"

  "Yes it can. It has. That will mean something when you put it all together, Doctor. For now we're going east, because we're going east." Lib cautiously put her feet back down on the floor. He'd stopped pacing, maybe her toes would be safe. "If rumors and murmurs are all you've got, then they're your best source of information. Some of this game is patience. We don't have much."

  They stayed at the inn for six days. The horses didn't want to leave. On the sixth day a minstrel stopped at the inn. The Doctor was delighted. Until he started singing about him.

  "You know, Doctor. He really wasn't too far off. This trip has been good for you. You look like the legendary hero he described. Tall and fair, eyes like the sea mist, and what was it? Oh, yes, mighty thews." Lib couldn't help it. She just had to rub it in a little. She kept tripping over the two serving girls who were STILL trying to make sure he had EVERYTHING he needed.

  "I think we should leave. I have a feeling our horses will be ready to leave their warm stalls."

  "East, Doctor?" Peral made a final check of the room.

  "No, south. That minstrel came from the south. He shouldn't have known about us. He kept looking at the amulet all afternoon. I don't think the reason was avarice. Someone in the south is talking about me. I would like to know who."