Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (26 page)

Not knowing where else to go, she headed off toward her waterfall, a place where she had gone often as a chune to escape her lessons or Lady Lenith.

So far, her guards were not in sight. Laughing and pleased that they had not yet found her—although they had only to set a scanner on her craft to locate it—Israi gunned the skimmer even faster, darting in and out recklessly through the trees with such speed and abandon the slightest mistake would have crashed her to pulp.

She did not care. She was alive, and this at least was fun.

Several minutes later, she reached the clearing where as a chune she’d watched the waterfall go thundering down the mountain in a great cascade of water, throwing up rainbows of mist above a deep pool basined in natural stone. It was a magnificent place. Always it had had the power to awe her and make her appreciate the beauty of nature. She had not come here in several years now, feeling that the special places of chunenhal should be left alone. But today she wanted to feel young again. She needed renewal, desperately.

The clearing was still here; she had not forgotten the way to it. Sunlight slanted down through the trees, casting the place in a golden haze. But the waterfall did not seem as noisy as in years past.

Slowing the skimmer, Israi flew into the clearing slowly, wanting to feel that uplift in her soul at the beauty before her.

Instead, she found the waterfall diminished to a trickle, less than two-thirds its normal size. The lush plant life that had always grown on the rocky cliff beneath the fall, sending out long streamers of magenta blooms in summer, now lay dead and yellow. The vines dangled lifelessly, leafless and ugly. Below, the pool looked dark and stagnant. Large blooms of algae floated on its surface.

Appalled, Israi let her hand slip from the controls. The skimmer automatically went on hover and parked itself, humming there while she stared, aghast, at the place she had loved so much.

It seemed to be a symbol of her entire adult life. Every year, things grew worse and uglier. She remembered her chunenhal as a golden time, when courtiers laughed and gossiped, resplendent with jewels and showing not a care in the world. There had been food aplenty. The slaves were quiet and obedient. The palace seemed happy, full of life and music.

Was it her? Had she poisoned the land and ruined the aristocrats? Was her entire reign to be doomed by problems and trouble?

Israi stared at the dying waterfall and knew she could no longer deny what she saw daily on the vidcasts. The whole planet was in peril. The drought was strangling the life from everyone. Even the protected imperial lands were not exempt from the climate problems. She stared around her. The narpines, so tall and straight, looked yellow, with drooping needles and many dead branches. She knew the yellow was a sign of combined pollution and drought damage.

But how had it reached this far? How had it come here, to her own property? Why had her servants not stopped it somehow?

She had wanted only a few moments of peace and beauty. She had wanted to come here and find a haven, unchanged from what she had always known.

Instead . . .

Israi flicked out her tongue and buried her face in her hands.

The sound of stealthy rustling from nearby startled her. She looked up and saw a strange figure crouching near a cluster of wilted faizein lilies on the opposite side of the pool.

At first Israi thought he was one of her guards, but almost immediately she realized she was mistaken. She sat in her skimmer, too startled to move, and wondered why her guards had failed to catch up with her. Instantly fear stabbed through her heart. She’d been the target of an assassination attempt before, when she was a vi-adult. She’d never forgotten that terrifying experience. Now she was alone and unprotected.

When she remained motionless, the stranger slowly rose erect from his crouch. He was skinny and dressed in rags. Although he had the build of a Viis, he was not. His head was deformed, rounded on top and flat of face. His dark eyes held a piercing intelligence and expression remarkable even at a distance. Israi stared back, and for a moment the shape and color of his dark eyes tugged at her memory, as though to remind her of someone she had once known.

But she would have remembered meeting any creature as deformed and hideous as this. He was a monster, somehow neither Viis nor abiru nor beast, but some terrible combination of all three, far worse than any Reject.

Israi drew in a sharp breath. Her servants should have been here to shield her imperial eyes from such ugliness. Her guards should have been here to protect her. Her lands should have been free from such a trespasser.

Anger filled Israi. She might be alone, but she was far from vulnerable.

The creature was still staring at her with its mouth open, as though enraptured. “You are beautiful,” he said in a clear, youthful voice. He spoke flawless Viis, with the inflections and accent of the aristocracy.

Israi grabbed the side-arm from its clip beneath the controls of the skimmer and accelerated her little craft across the pool, heading straight for the creature.

He stood there, frozen and stupid, as she came zooming right at him, but when she aimed the side-arm at him he shouted something she did not understand and broke into a run. By then Israi was right on top of him. She leaned out of the skimmer and fired, but the craft veered under her shifting weight, and she missed.

Smoke curled up from a blasted bush. The creature screamed again, and dodged away from her, diving headlong into a thicket that her skimmer could not penetrate.

She flew around it, firing again and again into the thicket until the charge on her weapon registered empty.

Exasperated, Israi tossed the useless side-arm away and circled the thicket once more. Nothing emerged from it. Nothing moved. Perhaps she had killed him. She did not think so.

Wheeling her skimmer about, she flew straight up to the level of the tall treetops, then hovered there, watching the thicket with narrowed, intent eyes. The skimmer’s hand-link was flashing an urgent red.

Israi took it from its clip and switched it on. “Where are you?” she demanded in a whisper. “We are in need of you immediately.”

“Majesty!” the static-filled voice responded, sounding both relieved and alarmed. “Our scanner shows shots have been fired.”

“Of course shots have been fired. We are hunting,” she said in exasperation. “Better game than the hunt-master has shown us thus far.”

“Hunting, majesty?” the guard asked in puzzlement. “But without the huntmaster or weapons?”

“We need our long-range equipment,” she said in hushed excitement. “Scopes and sniffers . . . everything. Bring this to us at once and summon the huntmaster.”

“Perhaps the Imperial Mother should return to the lodge and allow us to outfit her properly,” the guard suggested.

Her tongue flicked out, and she nearly threw the hand-link from the skimmer. “Fool!” she said louder than she meant to. “How can we keep this creature pinned if we fly away from it?”

“Majesty, you must wait for us to arrive,” the guard said in alarm.

“We have waited too long already,” she said impatiently. Below her, a bush in the thicket trembled ever so slightly. Israi drew in her breath with a hiss. So the monster was not dead. Her instincts were right.

“Please, majesty. Give us your location—”

“Have you no scanner?” she said furiously. “If you know we have been shooting, then you should be able to find us.”

“Majesty, it’s malfunctioning,” the guard said, sounding acutely embarrassed. “If you will keep the channel open on the hand-link we can follow the signal.”

Fuming, she tossed the hand-link to the floor and put both hands on the controls of her skimmer. Her heart quickened in anticipation. Now she waited, feeling her anticipation grow as the bush trembled again. She glimpsed coarse-woven cloth, a gleam of sunlight on pale skin.

Israi flicked out her tongue and tensed.

The moment the creature emerged from the thicket, Israi sent her skimmer plummeting straight at him.

The skimmer made next to no noise, but he heard it just the same and turned around in time to gasp and duck. Pulling up on the controls so that the skimmer’s small engines whined in protest, Israi wheeled it around to block her quarry from darting back into the thicket.

He ran into the forest, slim and awkward, yet swifter than she’d have thought. Israi laughed and pursued him. She could have outdistanced him easily, but she kept behind him, dogging back and forth each time he looked over his shoulder at her. She wanted to play with him now, to exhaust him. He could not run forever.

Already his mouth was open, and he was breathing hard. His dark eyes widened as he glanced back again, and he veered toward the boundary line.

As though she cared where property lines lay. Israi flew past him and wheeled around to block his path.

The creature panted and stumbled, turning back. Israi passed him again, and once more blocked his path.

He twisted around and darted for a narrow gully strewn with rocks that cut into the hillside. Any normal individual would have broken his ankle immediately, but the creature scrambled over the rocks like a mud spider, crouching low and using all four limbs.

Looking ahead of him, Israi could see where the gully deepened gradually into a ravine choked with vines and undergrowth. Once he got inside that thicket there would be no flushing him out.

She cursed her lack of a weapon, and she cursed her incompetent guards, who still had not reached her. But Israi loved a chase, and she had no intentions of letting the creature get away.

When he was halfway down the gully, he paused atop a jutting finger of rock, gathering himself to jump. That’s when Israi butted him from behind with her skimmer, knocking him off. He went sprawling in a tangle of thin arms and legs, his voice shrill with fright. It echoed along the forested slopes, carried away by the wind, and the creature himself rolled and tumbled down onto the rocks below, where he lay motionless.

Israi lowered the skimmer and hovered it as close to him as she could get without scraping her craft on the steep sides of the gully. He wasn’t moving. A smear of blood stained the stone beneath his misshapen head.

Israi smiled to herself and reached automatically for the clip that should have held her weapon.

Empty.

She’d forgotten.

Furious, she hovered a few minutes longer, then lost patience. He looked dead. Perhaps this time he was.

Opening a tiny, streamlined bin, she withdrew a beacon. The device was slender and cylindrical. When she pressed a button on its side, both ends snapped open and barbed points locked into place. The directional signal it would broadcast could be located by the stupidest slave in the huntmaster’s kennel. Israi hurled the beacon at her fallen quarry. It thunked into the ground next to his leg, its barbed end sinking deep, and quivered a moment. Then a green light began flashing steadily on its side.

Israi smiled to herself. She would return as soon as she collected the huntmaster. She would personally watch while they cut off this creature’s vile head. It would be mounted and put in the trophy room. She, Israi Kaa, had slain a monster with no weapon. Even her illustrious father had not performed such a feat.

By the time she’d flown back to the waterfall, her wandering guards were approaching. A second skimmer followed with additional guards. Israi squinted past them to see if the huntmaster was coming, but she did not see him.

Her frustration flared immediately. “What were our orders?” she said as the skimmers pulled alongside her craft. “Did we not request the huntmaster’s presence? Where is the weapon we asked for?”

“Is the Imperial Mother well?”

“Of course we are well, no thanks to you,” she said. “We have killed it, or at least injured it. The beacon is flashing back that way.” She pointed. “We want it brought in and beheaded for a trophy.”

Lieutenant Moht blinked at her with his rill both red and extended. “What is it, majesty?”

“A monster, deformed and—and horrible.” She turned her skimmer around, ready to lead them to it, but Lieutenant Moht positioned his skimmer quickly in front of hers.

“Forgive me,” he said with a respectful bow, “but the Imperial Mother’s presence is requested immediately back at the lodge.”

“By whom?” she demanded in affront. “Who dares to interrupt us? Who dares to
summon
us?”

“A message on the uplink has come in from Lord Temondahl—”

“Oh, him.” She flicked out her tongue indifferently. “You may return to the lodge, Moht, and relay our compliments to the chancellor. Tell him we are busy and cannot be disturbed.”

Moht’s rill turned even redder. “Forgive me if I seem to disobey the Imperial Mother. My orders are to escort your majesty back at once.”

Israi flicked out her tongue, so angry she wanted to hurl something at the officer. Would they never leave her in peace? Everything was always urgent, always in need of being addressed immediately. Her chancellors and ministers plagued her constantly. How dare Temondahl think he could summon her to the communications chamber like some flunky.

“Your orders are from the chancellor?” she asked with false sweetness.

Moht’s tongue flickered out from his mouth nervously. “Yes, majesty.”

“And do the chancellor’s orders supersede the Imperial Mother’s?”

“Never, majesty.”

Israi lifted her head high with satisfaction. “Then Lord Temondahl can wait. We have a trophy to collect.”

“But, majesty,” Moht said in desperation. “It has to do with the war.”

That got her attention as nothing else had. The war. Of course. She had forgotten it in the excitement of the chase. The war was far away, an abstraction. Here and now was a monster who had somehow broken the security field that should have been protecting her property. What was wrong with the security markers? The problem had to be dealt with immediately, or they might find more of the creatures wandering about as they pleased.

Sighing, she reached down and pulled the hand-link out from where she’d thrown it, “If this message is indeed urgent, then we shall connect with—”