The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil by Chris Wooding

ignored her question, scanning the scene. The priests were usually indoors by nightfall. He watched the temple for some time more, hoping for a light to be lit or extinguished, a face to
appear at one of the windows, anything that would indicate signs of life within. But there was nothing.
    ‘Perhaps I’m being foolish,’ he said, about to stand up and come out of hiding.
    Jin grabbed his arm with a surprisingly strong grip. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You are not.’
    He looked back at her, and saw something in her expression that gave her away. ‘You know what it is,’ he said. ‘You know what’s wrong here.’
    ‘I suspect,’ she replied. ‘Wait.’
    Tane settled himself back into his hiding place and returned his attention to the temple. He knew each of its cream-coloured planes, each beam of black ash that supported each wall, each simple
square window. He knew the way the upper storey was set back from the lower one, to fit snugly with the slope of the hill. This temple had been his home for a long time now, and yet it never felt
as if he belonged here, no matter how much he tried. No place had ever truly been home for him, however much he tried to adapt himself.
    ‘There,’ Jin said, but Tane had already seen it. Coming over the roof from the blind side of the temple, like some huge four-legged spider: shin-shin . It moved stealthily,
picking its way along, its dark torso hanging between the cradle of its stiltlike legs, shining eyes like lanterns. As Tane watched with increasing dread, he saw another one come scuttling from the
trees, crossing the clearing in moments to press itself against one of the outer walls, all but invisible. And a third now, following the first one over the roof, its gaze sweeping the treeline
where they crouched.
    ‘Enyu’s grace . . .’ he breathed.
    ‘We must go,’ said Jin urgently, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘We cannot help them.’
    But Tane seemed not to hear, for he saw at that moment one of the priests appear at an upper window, listening with a frown to the silence from the forest, unaware of the dark, spindly shapes
that crouched on the roof just above him.
    ‘You cannot fight!’ Jin hissed. ‘You have no weapon to use against them!’
    ‘I won’t let my priests die in their beds!’ he spat. Shaking her off, he stood up and fired his rifle into the air. The report was deafening in the silence. The glowing eyes of
the shin-shin fixed on him in unison.
    ‘Demons in the temple!’ he cried. ‘Demons in the temple!’ And with that he primed and fired again. This time the priest disappeared from the window, and he heard the
man’s shouts as he ran into the heart of the building.
    ‘Idiot!’ Jin snarled. ‘You will kill us both. Run!’ She pulled him away, and he stumbled to his feet and followed her, for the sensation of the shin-shin’s eyes
boring into him had drained his courage.
    One of the demons hurled itself from the roof of the temple and came racing towards them. Another broke from the treeline and angled itself in their direction. Two more shadows darted across the
clearing, slipping into the open windows of the temple with insidious ease, and from within the first of the screams began.
    Tane and Jin ran through the trees, dodging flailing branches and vaulting roots that lunged into their path. Things whipped at them in the night, too fast to see. Behind they could hear the
screeches of the shin-shin sawing through the hot darkness as they called to each other. Tane’s head was awhirl, half his mind on what was happening back at the temple, half on escape. To run
was flying in the face of his instincts – he wanted to help the priests, that was his way, that was his atonement for the crimes of his past. But he knew enough of the shin-shin to
recognise the truth in Jin’s words. He had no effective measure against them. Like most demons, they despised the touch of iron; but even the iron in a rifle ball would not stop them for