Lady Carliss and the Waters of Moorue Read Online Free PDF Page A

normally colored lizard would surely bulge out much farther from the plank than this bowed piece of wood.
    Two more steps, and still there was no movement. She was not closeenough to see whether the bulge on the wood was indeed unnatural. She pulled back her sword to strike just as two yellow eyes opened wide. The lizard shrieked, and Carliss sliced at the wood where it sat. The lizard had flattened its body to less than a third of its normal thickness but now swelled to its normal shape in an instant. With unbelievable speed the creature leapt for Carliss, and she instantly threw herself backward out of the shade of the door and into the sunlit yard. Her arm flew up to stop the creature from landing on her face, and she readied herself for the same ugly fate that had befallen Dalton.
    The lizard landed on her chest, shrieked, then launched itself back toward the shade of the barn. Carliss dropped her sword, drew her long knife, and waited for another attack. Her heart was pounding hard, and the rush within her muscles almost hurt. Amazed that the lizard had fled from her, she searched the shaded outside wall of the barn and finally spotted the same subtle movement along the base that she had seen on the barn door. It was traveling rapidly away from her toward the forested area behind the barn.
    Carliss quickly sheathed her knife, drew an arrow from her quiver, and ran into the barn to retrieve her bow. She was already setting the nock of the arrow into the bowstring as she turned to exit the barn. She took three paces and then froze. Her mind and eyes had already adapted to hunting this unusual creature, and now she easily spotted another subtle bulge in the wood just above the barn door. She pulled back the bow just as Salina appeared in the doorway.
    “Carliss, what’s going on!”
    Another lizard swelled and shrieked.
    “Watch out, Salina!” Carliss released her arrow. The creature whipped its tail and bolted from its vantage point. The arrow sank deep into the wood where it had just been.
    Salina screamed and ducked as the second lizard raced down the door post, following the first out of the barn. Carliss quickly drew another arrow and ran out of the barn after the creature. As before, she spotted the movement along the base of the barn, toward the trees. The lizard moved in punctuated bursts of speed, pausing every ten paces orso. Each time it paused, it took on the color and texture of its background.
    Salina yelled and drew her sword. She followed Carliss as she ran down the length of the barn.
    Carliss reached the end of the barn just as the lizard scurried up the height of the barn to the roof and then leapt fifteen feet to the nearest tree branch.
    No!
Carliss thought, realizing that the animal would be virtually undetectable in an endless sea of potential natural camouflage.
    Carliss stood perfectly still, watching the branch of the tree jostle as the lizard ran down its length to the trunk. Slowly she lifted her bow and fitted another arrow, then drew back the string, and waited.
    “What is it?” Salina asked again, arriving near Carliss’s right arm.
    Carliss ignored her. She focused on the last subtle movement she saw and then pinpointed that spot for a target. She let the bowstring escape from her fingers, and the arrow flew straight to its unseen target.
    Thud!
The arrow hit the tree trunk. For an instant, Carliss thought she had missed again, but then the shriek of the dying lizard pierced the air.

    Carliss ran to the base of the tree. Just above her head, the three-foot lizard flailed on the shank of Carliss’s arrow, shrieking in protest. It was a hideous sound that hurt Carliss’s ears, but it only lasted a moment. Soon the lifeless form of a blue and orange lizard hung skewered to the tree.
    Salina joined her, eyes wide in amazement.
    “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not from here, that’s for sure,” Carliss jabbed the lizard with her knife to make sure it was dead. Satisfied, she