Alena bit her lower lip. She’d never considered that use of her ability. “Perhaps. It’ll take a few moments.”
“Fine. We’ll pretend to take a longer break.” He pointed to a stone with a flat top about ten paces in front of them. “There’s a good place to rest.”
When Alena reached the rock she sat on it, the stone hard but the seat itself welcome. They’d been walking throughout the day, and although Alena was in good condition, she could feel the effects of the elevation. If it came to a fight, she wouldn’t be as fast as she’d like.
Jace and Toren took up position on either side of her. They sipped from waterskins and spoke about the view. Alena lay back against the rock and closed her eyes, pretending she was resting.
She dropped into the soulwalk, unveiling the web of life around her. Picking out Toren and Jace was simple enough, but finding the ambush proved difficult.
There was only so much information a mind could understand, which limited the distance she could travel the web of interconnectedness. Typically she couldn’t sense a person’s spirit more than thirty paces away. But she’d been practicing, learning how to filter out the information to allow her understanding to expand. Every blade of grass connected to the web of life, but she hardly cared about them.
Alena breathed deeply and evenly. Picking out a human from the web wasn’t as simple as looking at two different paintings of vastly separate creatures. The differences between a blade of grass and a human, so far as soulwalking revealed, were subtle.
In time she found a human, and then another. The distance was difficult to judge. Soulwalking distance was different than physical distance. But the ambushers were a ways away, and at a higher elevation.
She sat up and opened her eyes, looking for places her sense of the humans might have come from. Up ahead she saw several outcroppings of rock that would serve as excellent cover. She described the one she thought hid the ambush, careful not to stare.
“How certain are you?” Jace asked.
“A little.”
Jace looked to Toren. “Thoughts?”
“The ambush we expect is better than the one we don’t. If we go around, they’ll likely try again, and with more caution.”
Jace nodded.
She could almost see him planning their next moves. In times like these, his leadership came to the fore. Alena smiled as he effortlessly assumed command of the trio. “I’ll stay close to Alena. They’ll attack with bow first, and with any luck I can deflect or dodge any that get close. Toren, we’ll rely on your stones to counter them.”
Toren signed his agreement, and Jace had now learned enough of the sign language to understand.
“Our destination is the outcropping below the path. Alena can take cover there while we attempt to fend off the ambush. Alena, did you get any sense of how many there were?”
She shook her head. “At least two, but there could be more. I barely sensed them.”
“Excellent.” The sarcasm dripped from his voice.
They stoppered their waterskins and continued. Toren reached into the pouch at his hip and withdrew a few stones. He clutched them in his hand, not setting them spinning yet. Once he did, those stones would be their best defense against a Falari attack.
The closer they came to the outcroppings, the more certain she was of her guess. Not because of her soulwalking, but because the boulders were an ideal place for an ambush. The rocks above them provided ample cover, and the path they walked had none for almost fifty paces.
Though she expected the attack, her heart still skipped a beat when a line of Falari archers rose like ghosts from their hiding spots, arrows trained on them.
Alena possessed no defense against archers, so she dove to the ground as arrows sliced the air overhead. Jace sidestepped two. He took a step forward, then froze when another set of archers appeared from the outcropping of rocks Jace had identified as their destination.
Like Jace, Toren stood his ground. Alena didn’t see him launch the stone, but she heard a cry from above. He’d at least injured one of the Falari attackers.
Alena swore. There were too many opponents for their small group to survive.
Her reaction was instinctive. She dropped from the physical world into a soulwalk.
Alena had no plan. But she couldn’t defend herself against the nearly dozen archers in any other way.
Soulwalking was where her true power lay.
Time altered, the space between her heartbeats extended.
She darted along the threads that connected her to one of the archers above.
In a moment she understood the archer. The third son of a well-respected family, she saw the ways in which he tried to prove himself. He wanted to become as well-regarded as his oldest sister.
Alena almost smiled. The parallels to Jace’s life were impossible not to see.
But no obvious path of compulsion appeared. The technique only worked if there was something to latch onto, some unspoken desire that she could form into an obsession. This young Falari was filled with nothing but righteous vengeance and patriotic duty to defend his home from invaders. He possessed no secret that aided her.
Alena didn’t allow the panic creeping into her mind a foothold. In this world, she still had time.
The next Falari she examined had a much richer backstory. She was a young woman, and she possessed a tight bond with one of the Falari in the outcropping in front of Alena’s party.
And it wasn’t a bond of friendship.
The Falari woman had been wronged by a woman in the other group. Alena saw flashes of a young man and a long friendship broken.
Alena couldn’t have asked for better material to work with.
Alena found the necessary memories and brought them to the front of the Falari archer’s mind, intertwined with other thoughts.
She betrayed me.
Is my friendship worth so little?
No one will know. It was in battle.
Alena pushed energy into the traitorous thoughts, making them all-consuming, then rode the
