Chris Wooding - The ascendancy veil

She looked around. The floor of the pass was thick with fighting, but the desert warriors' core still held strong, due in no small part to the fact that most of the Aberrants had already left. At first the overwhelming tide of predators had taken a great toll on them, but Reki's generals had wisely kept up the defensive until their reprieve came. At some unseen signal, which Asara guessed had come from the Weavers at Adderach, the larger proportion of their attackers had broken away and headed northward up the pass. But they had left enough to keep the desert warriors busy for quite some while, and the battle continued on. Their situation was not quite so desperate now, but it was far from comfortable.

Reki was casting about for a sight of his wife, and relief showed on his face when their eyes met. She had become separated in the melee; now she slung her rifle across her back, drew a dagger and began to make her way to him, shying away from the swell of conflict as it loomed close to her.

The latchjaws had succumbed at last to their wounds, after taking down three of Reki's men, and his Blood Tanatsua bodyguards were regrouping around their Barak. They parted to allow Asara through. Reki regarded her for a moment, then unexpectedly he embraced her, driving the breath from her. He recoiled with a grunt, looking down at his hand.

Asara took it, concern on her face. There was a deep scratch along his palm, where the tip of the dagger she held had caught him. Blood welled up from within. 'Careful, my Barak,' she muttered. 'You will hurt yourself.' She turned the hand over, then looked up at him with a smile. 'I pray that is the worst of the wounds you sustain today.'

'These men will see to that,' he grinned. 'I even find myself eager to join in at times, but they will not hear of it.'

Asara brought out a bandage from a pocket in her travel clothes and expertly bound his hand. He flexed it; there was still perfect freedom of movement.

'Where did you learn to do that?'

'Don't,' Asara warned, her eyes hardening a little, and the moment of tenderness between them was gone.

Reki opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and looked away. Now was not the time. He would have answers from her, whatever it took; but that would come later.

A shout of alarm made him snap his head round in time to see five ghauregs powering their way through a group of soldiers, heading for him and his men.

'Get back!' he cried, pushing Asara behind him. His bodyguards arranged themselves to tackle the menace. One of the creatures was taken down by rifles before it reached them; the other four crashed bellowing into their midst.

Reki's bodyguards were the best warriors Blood Tanatsua had to offer, but even they could not easily kill a ghaureg. Reki stumbled and fell as his men were driven back into him. He scrambled to his feet, looking around for Asara but unable to see her in the press. Blades sang: one of the ghauregs lost the fingers of its hand, another one had its leg cut off at the knee and fell. Someone split its face with their sword. Suddenly Reki's bravado seemed ridiculous: he was no fighter, and had no wish to be anywhere near combat if he could help it. But he was no coward either, and he would not run.

The battle had suddenly grown around him. Everything pressed in closer. He cast about for the enemy, but he could not see over the jostle of his bodyguards. A man screamed somewhere. There was a volley of rifle shots. A gap opened in the crush, and he saw a ghaureg on its knees, being hacked to pieces by his soldiers.

Then the army flexed and flowed away from him, and there was space again. The battle was no longer so near. His bodyguards moved to surround him. The ghauregs were dead, and shortly afterward a runner told him that the Sisters had begun to overcome the nearby Weavers and were killing the Nexuses that plagued them. The battle was turning.

Reki listened with half an ear: he was searching, becoming increasingly frantic.

'Where is your Barakess?' he demanded of the people around him. 'Where is Asara?'

But they could not answer him, and he himself had not seen her since the ghauregs had attacked.

In the end, he did not find her. Not even after the battle was over, and the remainder of the army – almost half its size now – forged on to Adderach in the hope of saving their allies there. Grief-stricken, he stayed with a small retinue and walked the corpse-strewn pass, praying to Suran that she might still somehow be alive.

Perhaps he would have found her, if he had been given time. He would have hunted for her over every inch of Saramyr if there was but the faintest shred of hope. Maybe, when he found her, he would have found her with the child that was his.

But Asara knew that. It was the reason she had disappeared into the mountains, and it was the reason she had smeared her dagger in poison. She had taken the unguent from the master poisoner who had collaborated with the assassin Keroki in an attempt to kill her husband months ago. It would be almost two hours before it would be felt, and by the time it struck it would be too late to remove it and too sudden for even a Sister of the Red Order to do anything but watch.

Barak Reki tu Tanatsua spent the last of his life looking desperately for the woman he loved, not realising that she had already murdered him, as she had murdered his sister long ago.

Cailin, Kaiku and the Tkiurathi emerged from the end of a sloping shaft, and into the sub-levels of Adderach.

Kaiku looked down the corridor that lay before them. It had once been a mine tunnel – that much was evident by the glimpses of rough stone that could occasionally be found – but its surface was almost entirely covered in metal. The walls were thick with black pipes that dripped a noxious liquid; the floor was of iron or some alloy of that. Gas-torches burned with smoky flames, connected by cables that ran along the ceiling.

The Tkiurathi were eager to be on with their task, distrusting their surroundings. They took point, with Cailin and Kaiku just behind and Tsata with them. Kaiku caught his nervousness and laid a hand on his forearm when nobody was looking.

'Hthre,' she murmured to him, offering the Tkiurathi pledge of mutual support.

Surprised, he grinned at her. 'Hthre,' he replied. It did not matter that she had got it wrong, that hthre was supposed to be the response and not the offer. The sentiment was what counted, and he found it heartened him immensely in this dark and horrible place.

They hurried down the corridors, following Cailin's directions. Kaiku suspected that the Pre-Eminent did not know exactly where she was going: the witchstone's influence was overwhelming and made it hard to navigate. But that was a double-edged sword, for it also gave them a very definite target. They merely had to head for the epicentre of that influence, and there would be the witchstone.

But they saw no sign of their enemy at all. There were small rooms, like cells, some of them full of noisy devices and others standing empty and apparently without purpose. They looked into them as they passed by, but did not stop. They had other priorities.

They met up with another group of Tkiurathi and a half-dozen Sisters at a junction, swelling their numbers. Keeping in contact was harder now: it was like trying to shout over a hurricane. The brooding energy beneath them was confusing the Weave, sending it into disarray. Kaiku hoped it would hamper the Weavers as much as it would the Sisters, but somehow she doubted it.

The Sisters and the Tkiurathi were descending from above, spreading out through the tunnels of the old mine, an army of ants invading an enemy nest. But still the enemy would not meet them.

Cailin's force was the first to come out of the corridors. The claustrophobic tunnels opened into a massive room, bigger than any great hall ever built in Saramyr. It was circular in shape and flat-roofed, and as the invaders poured in from the tunnel they gradually faltered and stood there, aghast, at the sight.