the man’s belt and suffered no ill-effects until, in trying to tug it free, his head and shoulders leaned forward. Then he collapsed with a shriek. She thought he might roll free, but in an instant the mind-bending attack had paralyzed him and he was as helpless as the others. Still she knew how to defeat the assault.
“We can get away.” She grappled with the living, but mindless farmer, trying to lift him into the zarneeka cart. “The attack’s a sphere that’s held right here. If we can get outside it—”
Yohan pulled her away from the farmer and the cart. “No time,” he snarled. “Is he still attacking?”
“He?” She listened with her mind’s ears and heard the strident drone still battering futilely against her defenses.
“He. She. What difference does it make? Is it continuing?”
“Yes. The same as before. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. It still seems to be coming from everywhere at once.”
“Then it doesn’t matter where we go.” Yohan kept a firm left-side grip on her wrist, to keep them together and remain within the protective sphere of the mind-bending defenses she maintained. He scanned the streets and shadows beyond the apothecary. They were empty now, except for those Urikites unfortunate enough to get caught in the attack. She guessed that even the scroungers had fled once they saw the boy collapse. She thought their chances for escape were good and tried to pull back to the cart.
“Forget them. Stay close. You’re what’s important,” he snarled. “He’s out there,” the dwarf said more softly, making a slow study of the nearest rooftops. “I can feel him.”
She believed him; sometimes an individual with a wild mind-bending talent could do things, discern enemies, that a trained mind could not. They moved carefully among the stricken Urikites until they crossed an unseen boundary and the drone, but not Yohan’s wariness, diminished.
“Hide us,” he commanded as they sneaked around one corner, then another.
But hiding in Urik was not like hiding in Quraite. There was no guardian to invoke or familiar lands in which to lose themselves. She could use the Unseen Way to trick another mind into not seeing what was right before his or her eyes. But mind-bending was all illusion and completely dependent on her ability to find the one or many who were attacking them. She tried again to trace the attack to its source, now that they were beyond its range—and encountered a defensive barrier as strong as Telhami’s and darker than she’d imagined that anything could be.
Nothing she knew would pierce the mind-bender’s defense or insert an illusion behind it. She wasn’t even certain how far away the mind-bender was. Though if he—now that Yohan had planted the notion in her head, it seemed to Akashia that the attack had had a distinctly masculine aura—was not physically nearby, then he was that much more skilled, that much stronger.
And the mind-bender’s presence didn’t lessen as they walked through the market, trying not to attract attention.
“We’re being followed.” She said, with real fear in her heart and voice. “Watched.”
They were deep in the elven market now, alongside the towering yellow walls in an area where nomadic elves hoisted their tents for the days or weeks they spent inside Urik. When the Moonracers—the only nomad tribe Akashia knew by name or sight—visited Quraite, they were courteous guests, welcomed with feasting, singing, and dancing. Here in the market, though the clothes and colors were familiar, the faces were unfriendly, even cruel.
If someone was following or watching them, Akashia assumed they’d get no help here where suspicion was rampant and no one seemed interested in offering a helping hand. But, once again, she was wrong about the mysterious city and its residents. Yohan approached a sullen elf who had beads and metal braided into his long, straw-colored hair and a brace of curved obsidian knives stuck through the striped cloth that served as his belt.
“The door?” Yohan asked while making intricate movements with his hands.
Her eyes widened, and so did the elf’s, revealing a glimmer of cooperation. She thought that they’d found help, hoped and prayed that they’d found it. But he cocked his head, like a jozhal sniffing the wind; he was kenning her with the Unseen Way and sensed both her defenses and the attack that caused her to raise them.
“Sundown,” he said with a semblance of regret. “Come back at sundown and it will be opened. Live that long, my friend, and return.”