Chris Wooding: Weavers of Saramyr

The upper floor had a long balcony running around its inside wall, looking out over rockeries and miniature waterfalls, tiny bridges and sculpted trees. All the rooms, Kaiku's included, faced on to this balcony; and it was on to that balcony they emerged, Asara with her rifle held ready.

The night was hot, for it was early summer, and the rain that lashed the house ran off carven gutters to pour down in torrents to the garden below. Thin pillars stretched from the waist-high wooden barrier to the sloping roof. The air was full of drumming and rattling, the voice of a thousand drips and splatters; and yet to

Kaiku it seemed eerily silent, and she could hear the pounding of her heart loud in her ears.

Asara looked one way, then another, distrusting the empty balcony. Her hands gripped hard on the rifle. It was a long, slender piece of metal, its barrel decorated with sigils and a sight cleverly fashioned in the form of a breaking wave. Far too expensive and elegant for a handmaiden like Asara to own; she had stolen it from elsewhere in the house.

Kaiku jumped as Asara moved suddenly, levelling the barrel down at the garden. Something dark moved across the rockeries, inhumanly fast, racing on four spindly legs; it was too quick for Asara, and she withdrew without firing.

They edged along the balcony towards the stairs. Kaiku was almost paralysed with fright, but she forced herself to move. Too much had happened, too quickly. She felt overwhelmed and helpless; but Asara, at least, seemed to be in control. She followed her servant. There was nothing else she could do.

They reached the top of the stairs without incident. Below it was dark. No lanterns had been lit tonight, and there was no sign of movement. The sky howled again; Kaiku looked up instinctively. The clouds were being torn ragged up there, tossed about by the changing winds, swirling and curling, occasionally reaching out to each other as a bolt of purple lightning bridged a gap or lanced down to earth.

She was about to say something to Asara when she saw the shin-shin.

It was creeping out of the darkness at one end of the balcony, a demon of shadow that made Kaiku quail in terror. She could barely see it, only its outline, for it seemed part of the blackness that concealed it; but what she could see was enough. Its torso was like that of a human, but its forelegs and forearms were terribly elongated and tapered to a thin spike, so that it seemed like a man walking on four stilts. It was tall, much taller than she was, and it had to crush itself down to fit under the roof of the balcony. She could see no other detail except the eyes; they glittered in the darkness like lamps, twin points of burning brightness in the gloom.

Asara swore an impolite oath and pulled Kaiku after her, down the stairs. Kaiku needed no second prompting; all else had fled her mind at that moment, and the only remaining urge was to get away from the demon that stalked towards them. They heard the clatter as it gave chase, and then they were thundering down the stairs into the shadowy room below.

The entrance hall was wide and spacious, with elaborately carved wooden archways to the other ground-floor rooms. This house was built for the stifling heat of summer, so there were no interior doors, and attractively dyed screens stood about which could be moved to better allow the warm evening breezes through. The unnatural lightning of the moonstorm flickered through the ornamental shutters, stunning the room in brightness.

Kaiku almost fell down the final few steps, but Asara pushed her aside and aimed her rifle up the stairs at the archway leading on to the balcony. A moment later, the spindly silhouette of the shin-shin darted into view, eyes blazing in the dark oval of its face. Asara fired, and the report of the rifle cracked deafeningly through the house. The doorway was suddenly empty; the demon had been deterred, at least for a short time. Asara reprimed the bolt on her weapon and hurried Kaiku towards the door to the outside.

'Asara! More of them!' Kaiku cried, and there they were, two of the creatures, hiding in the shadowy archways of the entrance hall. Asara clutched her mistress's wrist and they froze. Kaiku's hand was on the door, but she dared not tear it open and run, for the creatures would cut her down before she had gone ten metres. The raw, choking fear that had attended her ever since her eyes had opened tonight began to claw its way up her throat. She was blank with panic, disorientated, caught in a waking nightmare.

Slowly the shin-shin came into the hall, ducking their torsos beneath the archways as they angled their long, tapered limbs with insectile grace. They were the more terrible because Kaiku's gaze refused to fix on them properly, allowing only hints of their form; only the glitter of their eyes was solid and visible. She was conscious of Asara reaching for something: a lantern, dormant and unlit on a window-ledge. The demons crept closer, keeping to the deepest darknesses.

'Be ready,' Asara whispered; and a moment later, she threw the lantern into the centre of the room. The shin-shin whirled at the sound, and in that instant Asara brought up her rifle and fired it into the slick of lantern oil on the floor.

The room was suddenly bright, a roaring sheet of flame, and the demons shrieked in their unearthly tongue and scattered clumsily away from the brilliance. But Kaiku was already through the door

and out into the storm, racing barefoot across the grass towards the trees that surrounded the house. Asara came close behind, leaving the fire to lick at the wooden walls and paper screens. They rushed through the rain, cringing at the great screeches coming from the sky. Not daring to look back, not knowing if Asara was following or not, Kaiku plunged into the forest.

The three moons were out tonight, clustered close above the slowly writhing clouds. Vast Aurus, the largest and eldest of the sisters; Iridima, smaller but brighter, her skin gullied with blue cracks; and the tiny green moon Neryn, the shyest of them all, who rarely showed her face. Legends told that when the three sisters were together, they fought and tore the sky, and that the screeching was Neryn's cries as her siblings teased her for her green skin. Kaiku's father taught a different tale, that the moonstorms were simply a result of the combined gravity of the moons playing havoc with the atmosphere. Whatever the reason, it was accepted wisdom that when the three moons were close moonstorms would follow. And on those nights, the Children of the Moons walked the earth.

Kaiku panted and whimpered as she ran through the trees. Thin branches whipped at her from all sides, covering her arms and face with wet lashes. Her sleeping-robe was soaked through, her chin-length hair plastered to her cheeks, her feet muddied and slimed. She fled blindly, as if she could outrun reality. Her mind still refused to grip the enormity of what had occurred in the previous few minutes. She felt like a child, helpless, alone and terrified.

Finally, the inevitable happened. Her bare foot found a rock that was more slippery than it looked, and she fell headlong, landing heavily against a root that was steadily emerging from washed-away layers of mud. Fresh tears came at the pain, and she lay in the dirt, filthy and sodden, and sobbed.

But there was no rest for her. She felt herself gripped from behind, and there was Asara, dragging her upright. She shrieked incoherently, but Asara was merciless.

'I know a safe place,' she said. 'Come with me. They are not far behind.'

Then they were running again, plunging headlong through the trees, stumbling and slipping as they went. The air seemed to pluck at them, trying to lift them up, charged with a strange energy by the storm. It played tricks on their senses, making everything seem a little more or less than real. Grandmother Chomi used to warn her