Spherical Harmonic Read Online Free

answered in a language I almost understood. It resembled— what? Chays. Chay? Shay. Yes, Shay, an obscure tongue used on a few frontier worlds. The name came from tza, an ancient Iotic word that meant cleverness.
     
     
Clever or not, right now this Shay wanted to kill me. I searched my nodes for Shay words and came up with, "Understand not." Less than scintillating, but it would do.
     
     
He spoke again. "****."
     
     
"Understand not," I repeated.
     
     
"**** Manq?" he asked.
     
     
"Again?"
     
     
He spoke more slowly. "Manq, are you?"
     
     
"No." I had never heard the word before.
     
     
"Who, then?"
     
     
With him holding my arms, I couldn't point at the sky. So I indicated it with my chin. "Out there. Skolian." It was true, I realized. I was a citizen of the Skolian Imperial ate.
     
     
"**** Skolia," he said.
     
     
I felt like a computer trying to access data in the wrong format. "Understand not."
     
     
He shortened his sentences. "Lying, you. Here Skolians never come. Hunter, you are."
     
     
I had no idea what he meant. "Me no hunter."
     
     
He shook my arms. "Liar."
     
     
"Not lies!" My voice vibrated with his shaking.
     
     
His anger mixed with another emotion, one harder to define. Grief? "Kill you, I need not. Just tie you here." He gestured to our surroundings. "Opalite, she will finish."
     
     
Attuned to his mind, I understood what he meant— and wished I didn't. Opalite was this moon. If he left me bound here on the beach, I would die from starvation and exposure. I didn't see how someone his size could perceive me as a threat. Low gravity grew big people and he was no exception. If he found me strange, I had no argument with that, given this bizarre situation. But why the hatred? Despite the many gaps in my memories, I had no doubt I had never seen him before this day.
     
     
His rage was mutating into a new anger, this time at himself. He had no wish to feel sympathy for his intended victim. But he felt it. He didn't want to suffer remorse for an act he had yet to commit, but his guilt gnawed. He had no wish to desire a stranger, but his arousal refused to abate. What finally decided him— compassion, remorse, or lust— I had no idea. But he made a choice. Standing up, he hauled me to my feet and jerked his hand toward the forest.
     
     
"Walk," he said.
     
     
So I walked.
     
     
It was better than dying.
     
     
     

3
     
     
Hajune
     
     
     
     

Dizziness made my thoughts sluggish. I slowly became aware of my surroundings. I was sitting sideways against a wall, my legs curled under my body. This cavity resembled the one I had fallen into my first night, mossy and green. This time, however, a net of cord-like roots held my body from shoulder to midthigh, as if I had sat here until the forest grew over and around me. But this was no random growth; someone had set these cords with deliberate intent. My wrists were bound together by a looping root that buckled out from the wall. It held my hands by my shoulder, palms inward. I had heard that tying a prisoner's wrists in front of the body was ineffective, but for me, right now, it worked all too frighteningly well.
     
     
I bit my lip. I couldn't show vulnerability, not even to myself. Never give in to fear. But gods, I didn't want to die. I drew in a long breath, my chest rising with the effort. A circular opening in the opposite wall taunted me with a promise of freedom. It had no door, not even a gate. If I could only reach it. Beyond that opening, the forest brooded in bright, midday sunlight…
     
     
Midday…
     
     

Dawn showed beyond the entrance. I struggled to focus. Had I faded again? I couldn't stop shuddering. Saints only knew what the treeman had thought if I turned into a ghost in front of him. Maybe he believed this web of roots could hold a specter. If so, he was apparently right, unfortunately, in my case.
     
     
A fire smoldered in the center of the cavity, in a depression lined with rock and