The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances Read Free Page B

had groused about the tedious chore of climbing trees to harvest the succulent shelf mushrooms high in the upper fronds. Now she wished she were back there with her friends, her family.
    Something told her Sam Roper never intended to let her go back.
    “Ah, I see you found a private place for us!” He was outside in the meadow.
    Suddenly, Thara realized she was trapped. This landed cargo box was not a fortress, but a cage. She heard Roper coming closer, saw his shadow block the light from the main hatch. If he caught her in here . . .
    She found the secondary hatch in the roof, hoping the hydraulics still worked. She activated it, and with a reluctant hiss and scrape, the hatch cracked open and tore the tenacious vines aside. She reached up, caught the opening, and scrambled up onto the top of the cargo box as Roper yelled at her. Thara caught only a glimpse of him before she dropped down the opposite side, out of the old craft, and ran deeper into the trees—the giant, powerful trees.
    The forests on Theroc were vast, dense . . . mysterious. In their five years there, the Caillié colonists had explored only a small fraction of the surrounding areas. The continents were covered with lofty “worldtrees,” a majestic, living network. As a young girl, Thara had always sensed something peculiar about the trees, something powerful, slumbering . . . not quite awake.
    The forest grew darker, thicker, but right now, the man hunting her was far more sinister than this wilderness. As she left the cargo box behind, he burst after her with renewed energy, thrashing his way through the underbrush.
    When she got far enough ahead of him, Thara climbed in among the upthrust roots of the trees, working her way through drooping fronds and dangling vines as thick as her arm. She knew she couldn’t outrun him in the long run; she had to get to a place where he would never find her.
    The thicket was impossibly dense, but somehow the branches moved aside, as if granting her permission to slip deeper into their embrace. Rustling vegetation masked the sound of her movements, and Thara worked her way into the labyrinth of roots and interlocked branches. Hidden behind a barricade of shadows, she crouched in the mulchy murk surrounded by root tendrils and a soft blanket of fallen leaves.
    Through a tiny slit of sunlight, she watched a shadow move through a shaft of sunlight outside. A human figure: Roper. She saw his disheveled brown hair, his shining eyes.
    The knife he held in his hand.
    She bit her lip, and she wished she could keep her heart from pounding. Thara had to stay absolutely silent, and the forest helped her.
    Roper stopped, looked around, and even stared directly at the thicket, but he didn’t see her. After a long pause, he trudged onward, calling her name in a singsong taunt.
    When he was finally gone from sight, Thara realized she had forgotten to breathed, and she sucked in a huge gasp. Tears poured down her face. Her entire body shuddered. She held onto the branches and roots around her and fought back the sobs, feeling safe at last.
    Just then one of the roots wrapped itself around her ankle.
    At first, she thought she was imagining it, but another branch seized her arm. The fronds moved like tentacles, curling around her waist, her neck; one curled across her mouth so she couldn’t scream.
    Thara fought against them, but the branches folded around her body like praying hands. One vine blocked her eyes. Thara couldn’t see anything, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream.
    The mysterious forest enfolded her, bound her in its impenetrable mesh. She shouted in wordless terror, but the wild cry came out only inside her mind—
    To be replaced by a flood of images, cascading thoughts so strange that she couldn’t comprehend them: Fragments from her own past, from the people of the Caillié , as well as ancient echoes of what had happened on this planet down through the ages.
    The trees! The explosion of visions was coming from