Daren had been around enough mages to know when to keep his mouth shut. He waited, patiently, in sunlight too thin to even warm him. The army waited, just as patiently, glad for a chance to sit by the roadside and rest. Daren watched his men sprawling ungracefully against their packs, and wished he hadn’t had to push them so hard. They’d had a lot of time to make up, once they’d gotten down out of the hills. He had been weary at the end of the day, and he was riding. He hated to think what the foot soldiers felt like.

“They’re waiting,” Quenten said, in a thin, disinterested voice, an eerie echo of his own thoughts “They are half of the claw that will capture Selenay and crush Valdemar. ”

“What?” Daren snapped, startled.

Quenten looked up, blinking, then picked up the bowl and spilled the water out in the dust. “Ancar has these reserves out here, pacing him, waiting for when he has Selenay’s forces worn down enough to trap,” the mage said in a more normal tone of voice. “Then he’ll have this lot sweep in from the side and above while he cuts his main force in from below.”

“I don’t think so,” Daren replied, in a kind of grim satisfaction at finally having something to fight.

“Well, that’s not all, m‘lord,” Quenten added as he got up, shook the dust from his robes and stowed his bowl carefully away. “It’s who these reserves are—or rather, where they’re from. Like I said, before, here. Tied into obedience by the blood of their own kin. Now, you have the earth-sense; you could tell me which mage is controlling them, because the earth hereabouts would tell you. It hates him, and it’s bound to him, and you’ll see him as it sees him.”

“And what will happen when you break him?” Daren asked, leaning forward in his saddle and clutching the pommel with one hand. “How do I do see these things, anyway? What do you need to teach me, and have we the time to spare?”

Quenten paused to remount, and turned to look back at Daren only when firmly in his seat. “You have the earth-sense,” Quenten repeated. “It’s a matter of instinct rather than learning. Break the controlling mage and you not only free the victims—but it’s altogether possible the earth hereabouts would rise up in revolt. And it would listen to you, follow some of your directions, if you made them simple enough.”

“It would?”

Quenten nodded. Daren thought about those heaps of pitiful bones and rags—looked around him at the dying land. And thought of Kero and Selenay’s army, and pledges. And just maybe a god somewhere had just gifted him with the chance to satisfy all of them.