Read Online The Wanderers of the Water-Realm by Alan Lawton - Free Book Online Page A

threatens, then don’t hesitate to cut yonder cable with your cleaver and save yourself. We will rejoin you further down river, if we are alive and able to do so.”
Darryl and the young wisewoman strode down the length of the jetty picking their way through the debris littering the riverside wharf before entering the city proper.
“He’s close, very close!” Myra said and pointed towards the remains of a large single storey structure that might once have been a warehouse. “My inner-eye tells me that our friend is to be found on the far side of that building!”
The pair advanced towards the structure, but Darryl had now taken the lead with his sword held at the ready, whilst Myra brought up the rear with the loaded fowling piece held in the crook of her arm. The twins had advanced only a short distance when the boatmaster halted and pointed towards a huge doorway that was set in the gable of a nearby building.
“Sister,” he said. “Yonder door space must be a good fifteen feet in height. Just look at the width, you could lead a pair of horses through it.” He pointed to a number of doorways leading into other nearby buildings and the air whistled through his teeth.
“Can you imagine the size of the people who built this city? Compared to us, they must have been veritable giants.”
“Then let us hope that they are as dead as the rest of their city.” The young witch replied. “Now let’s get a move on,” she added impatiently, “for I sense that our friend is extremely close now, but I also feel that he is afraid and I know that we must link up with him as quickly as possible.”
Myra pointed toward a door space that was set in the side of a nearby building.
“Come.” She said. “Through that door and keep your sword handy.”
The pair entered the building and began picking their way across the breadth of an enormous room, occupied by row upon row of stone work-benches; at least they appeared to have been made of stone, for they felt as cold as granite when touched by the hands of the travellers and yet the material had a grained appearance reminding them of English oak. Indeed, the entire building seemed to have been constructed from the same strange material.
“A factory,” the boatmaster thought as he threaded his way through the wreckage of the fallen roof. “This place could have been nothing else. But who or what toiled here?”
Myra suddenly halted, gave a sharp cry and clasped her hand to her forehead.
“Oh the terror,” she gasped. “Quickly, our friend is in the greatest danger.”
She leapt into the lead and ran towards a door-opening that was situated in the far wall of the room, clearing the aperture with a single bound, and Darryl in close pursuit. The pair were brought to a sudden halt by the sight that met their eyes.
The twins had entered a small annex to the main building, a room that had probably served as a factory office, for every wall was occupied, from floor to high ceiling, by rank upon rank of deep stone shelves that had undoubtedly been used for the storage of rolls of parchment and works ledgers.
Midway up the far wall, an old man could be seen precariously clinging to the edge of the shelving with his hands and feet, and he was desperately attempting to evade the clutches of two bizarre and terrifying creatures that were attempting to reach him from the floor below. It was the grotesque appearance of the old man’s attackers that brought the couple to a sudden halt.
The two creatures were definitely humanoid in appearance, each having a head and two arms. But there the resemblance ended. For the heads that turned to view the old man’s would-be rescuers were both triangular in shape. Huge jawbones occupied the horizontal base-lines and supported the sharply canting cheekbones reaching upwards to the peaks of their sharply pointed skulls. The beings had no necks and their triangular heads swivelled grotesquely above massive muscled shoulders. The creature’s torsos