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

long. To attack them would be suicide.
    ‘The river!’ Jin cried suddenly, her red and black hair lashing about her face. ‘Make for the river. The shin-shin cannot swim.’
    ‘The river’s too strong!’ Tane replied automatically. Then the answer came to him: ‘But there is a boat!’
    ‘Take us there!’ Jin said.
    Tane sprang past her, leading them on a scrabbling diagonal slant down the hillside. The decline sharpened as they ran, and suddenly he heard a cry and felt something slam into him from behind.
Jin had tripped, unable to control her momentum, and the two of them rolled and bounced down the slope. Tane smacked into the bole of a tree with enough force to nearly break a bone, but somehow
Jin was entangled with him, and as she slithered past he was dragged down with her. They came to rest at the bottom of a wide, natural ditch; a stream in times gone by. Jin hardly paused to recover
herself; she was up on her feet in an instant, dragging Tane with her. She scooped up her rifle as it clattered down to rest nearby. The screeches of the shin-shin were terrifyingly close, almost
upon them.
    ‘In here!’ Tane hissed, pulling against her. There was a large hollow where the roots of a tree had encroached on the banks of the ditch, forming an overhang. Tane unstrapped his
rifle – which had miraculously stayed snagged on his shoulder during the fall – and scrambled underneath, wedging his body in tight. There was just enough space for Jin to do so as
well, pressing herself close to him. Mere moments later, they heard a soft thud as a shin-shin dropped out of the trees and landed foursquare in the ditch.
    Both of them held their breath. Tane could feel Jin’s pulse against his chest, smell the scent of her hair. Ordinarily, it might have aroused him – priests of Enyu had no stricture
of celibacy, as some orders did – but the situation they were in robbed him of any ardour. From where they hid at ground level, they could see only the tapered points of the shin-shin’s
stiltlegs, shifting as it cast about for its prey. It had lost sight of them as they tumbled, and now it sought them anew. A slight fall of dirt was the only herald of the second demon’s
arrival in the ditch; that one had followed their trail down the slope, and was equally puzzled by their disappearance.
    Tane began a silent mantra in his head. It was one he had not used since he was a child, a made-up nonsense rhyme that he pretended could make him invisible if he concentrated hard enough. Then
he had been hiding from something entirely different. After a few moments, he adapted it to include a short prayer to Enyu. Shelter us, Earth Goddess, hide us from their sight .
    The pointed ends of the shin-shins’ legs moved this way and that in the moonlight, expressing their uncertainty. They knew their prey should be here; yet they could not see it. Tane felt
the cold dread of their presence seeping into his skin. The narrow slot of vision between Jin’s body and the overhang of thick roots and soil might be filled at any moment with the glowing
eyes of the shin-shin; and if discovered, they were defenceless. He fancied he could sense their gaze sweeping over him, penetrating the earth to spot them huddled there.
    Time seemed to draw out. Tane could feel his muscles tautening in response to the tension. One of the shin-shin moved suddenly, making Jin start; but whatever it had seen, it was not them. It
returned to its companion, and they resumed their strange waiting. Tane gritted his teeth and concentrated on his mantra to calm himself. It did little good.
    Then, a new sound: this one heavy and clumsy. The shin-shin stanced in response. Tane knew that sound, but he could not place it in his memory. The footsteps of some animal, but which?
    The yawning roar of the bear decided the issue for him.
    The shin-shin were uncertain again, their reaction betrayed by the shifting of their feet. The bear roared once more, thumping on to its