It was Daren’s turn to shake his head. The land cried out to him in a way—and he couldn’t help it, any more than he could bring back those poor slaughtered innocents. He wanted to beg its pardon for not healing it—to beg theirs for not being there. It was foolish—but it was very real. He understood the Heralds of Valdemar far better than his brother did. He understood how it was to care for people, even if those people were not bound to you, personally, in any way. Faram would die for his people—but not those of Valdemar. He would feel badly about the slaughters here, but he would not feel them personally, the way Daren did.

And he also understood duty and pledges. “Right now all I care about is whether this land is safe to travel through—which you say it is—and whether or not Ancar has any mages likely to detect us here.”

“We’re working to prevent that, m‘lord,” Quenten replied dryly. “And—” he looked up, sharply.

“What is it?” Daren said, reining in his horse as Quenten’s mount stopped dead.

The mage raised one hand to his forehead, his eyes focusing elsewhere. He looked for all the world as if he was listening to something. “Quenten?” Daren persisted. “Quenten?”

The mage’s eyes refocused on him. “Ancar has a reserve force just ahead,” he said vaguely. “Several mages, and three companies of cavalry. And—Daren, m‘lord, they’re mostly from here, this barren zone.”

“Controlled, then. There’s no other way he could make farmers into cavalry that quickly” He caught the attention of his officers, who halted the march. “Quenten, how far ahead is ‘just ahead’?”

“Half a day’s march, maybe less. Not much less.” Quenten didn’t seem to notice Daren’ sigh of relief.

“What are they doing there?” he persisted. “We haven’t seen a sign of Ancar’s army. What are reserves doing out here?”

“I don‘t—they’re—I need my bowl.” Without warning, the mage scrambled off his mare’s back to dig into her packs. He emerged with a completely black bowl, shiny, made of black glass, or something very like it. He poured water from his own water skin into the bottom of it, sat right down in the dust of the road, and stared into it.