The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [97]
Suddenly the creature reared up out of the river, wrapped its arms around the drone and plunged back into the waters, taking the machine with it. Paddling towards the left bank, Robert saw the surface roil and thrash. Stunned, he splashed ashore through reedy shallows then staggered along to the spot closest to where the drone went down. Lights flickered in the depths for a few moments, then there was nothing.
He stood in frowning thought – the drone had only been a transient creation of the meta-quantal environment so worrying over an unreal symbol was wasted effort. Then he shivered, realising that being drenched and cold might be unreal but the sensations were uncomfortably authentic. Quickly he stripped and wrung as much water out of his clothes as he could then dressed again, but still felt cold and wet. He began to walk, stopped a few paces on as understanding struck.
Those were kobolds on the other side, which could only have come from my mind, my memories! He looked back to where shards of the boat were caught in the reeds. And the water monster was a nixie, a water spirit – these surroundings are generating monsters based on primal images from my childhood. Who knows what else I’ll meet?
Robert peered into the gloomy forest and smiled.
Thank you, Great-Grandmother. I hope that some of those stories were about heroes, the kind who get to survive …
The riverside path came to a huge boulder and veered off through the trees. It grew narrow and weed-choked and started to slope gently downwards. The gloom brightened a little for a short distance before he encountered a drifting mist. The vaporous haze muffled his movements and footfalls yet he began to detect a far-off sound like a continuous, faint drumming. As he continued the noise got steadily louder until it sounded more like a heavy rumbling than drumming. Frustratingly, the mist thickened and after a few minutes he could not see more than ten feet in any direction.
The rumbling, however, was louder and seemed to come from all around, accompanied by a deep, rhythmic creaking. Robert was reluctant to venture into the tangled undergrowth to either side so he stuck to the path and cautiously resumed walking.
A dozen paces further on he came to a grassy cliff edge. Peering over it, he saw a long, rocky ledge a good thirty feet below, all overlooking mist-blurred trees and bushes, perhaps a river. He followed the path along the edge of the cliff, still hearing that grinding, creaking rumble, still unable to fix its direction. After a short while he noticed a glow in the mist up ahead, down in the bushy vale. As he drew closer the radiance resolved into a campfire burning between two heaps of boulders, flanked by three sleeping forms and one sitting sentry, wrapped in a cloak. All was quiet, he realised – the reverberant rumbling had faded away to nothing,
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement to the right, three tall figures loping along the rocky ledge, slender bipeds with dark scaled skin and cloth-wound breechclouts. Following them were five black, waist-high dogs with scarcely any necks – their jaws seemed to emerge from between their powerful shoulders and looked lethal. Robert instinctively ducked behind the cover of bushes to observe.
The three newcomers stealthily descended from the ledge, accompanied by their well-trained dogs, and vanished into the hazy tree shadows. From the attention they’d given the campfire, Robert knew what was about to happen and watched with a certain dread. Sure enough, dark figures emerged from the gloom behind the sentry, one to render him insensible, the other to pounce on the others and bind them while a snarling dog stood over each one. Robert realised that one of the bipeds was missing just as he heard the quietest