From a Drood to a Kill - Simon R. Green Page 0,142

even feel whatever it was I was standing on. I waved my hands back and forth in front of me, and there wasn’t even the pressure of resisting air on my palms. I called out to Molly. My voice sounded flat, diminished. It didn’t carry and it didn’t echo. There was no reply. My hands clenched into fists. I was almost out of my mind with rage. I couldn’t have lost Molly again, so soon after finding her.

Light rose up around me, slowly and uncertainly. Details of a new world appeared, fading in and out of the gloom. I was standing somewhere in the midst of a desolate empty moor, bathed in a foul leprous moonlight. Just the look of it made me feel unclean, and I almost flinched as the light touched my bare face and hands. I looked quickly around me. The moor was a dim, deserted setting, nothing moving, not a sound anywhere. Nothing to suggest there was a single living thing present apart from me. A cold wind blew from no direction in particular, hardly disturbing the air, but enough to chill me to the bone in a moment. I hugged myself tightly, and stamped my feet hard on thick, glutinous mud. The moor stretched away in every direction. A whole world of mud and dirty water, bubbling bogs, and the occasional tuft of unhealthy-looking vegetation.

This was no real, material setting. I could tell. Someone had made this place, brought it into being through an act of will imposed upon the chimerical nature of the Shifting Lands. And then, that same someone had dropped me in it.

It all seemed solid enough. I could even smell the mire. A ripe stench of fermenting gases, oozing and bubbling up through the thick, viscous mud. And when I crouched down to study a stunted tuft of grasses close up, I could make out each individual blade of grass in the blue-white moonlight. At least this time, all the details had been filled in. A living world. Real enough to die in . . .

The ground beneath my feet collapsed without warning, the solid earth becoming saturated mud, a sucking bog, pulling me under. I yanked my feet free of the mud with an effort and lurched forward, forcing my way across the mire. But I just sank in deeper with every step. I struggled on, mud already lapping up around my thighs, but I couldn’t seem to find my way to solid ground. There didn’t seem to be any, anywhere. Or at least nothing strong enough to support my weight.

I was soon waist deep and sinking fast. The harsh, urgent noises I was making as I fought my way forward sounded clearly on the quiet. I didn’t like the sound of them. They sounded dangerously close to panic. With my next step I plunged down even further, almost falling forward onto my face. I fought fiercely to regain my balance, but I was quickly chest deep in the mud; and it took all the strength I had just to keep moving forward, pressing against the resisting mire with all its slow strength and tenacity. I didn’t dare stop; I couldn’t feel anything solid under my feet.

I was breathing hard now, my heart hammering in my chest. The stench of gasses bubbling up grew even worse, disturbed by my progress through the bog. It filled my head till I couldn’t seem to think straight. I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, and breathed through my fingers. That seemed to help. I made myself concentrate on my situation.

I was sure I’d read somewhere that you could actually swim through quicksand, if you took it slowly and carefully and kept your wits about you. I eased myself slowly forward, spreading my weight out across the surface of the mud, but it didn’t help. Within moments my whole body was submerged, and the mud was lapping up against my chin. My neck ached from holding my head up. I could hear myself making harsh animal noises as I struggled. My arms and legs thrashed helplessly, unable to gain any traction in the enveloping mud. I was still sinking, if only a little more slowly, and I’d stopped making any forward progress.

I didn’t want to armour up. I was pretty sure the weight of it would drag me under. And while my armoured mask would let me breathe under the mud, there was no telling how deep the mire was. I might