The battle was, as a result, curiously, grimly dull. No flag waving, no shouts except for exclamations of pain, no charges—the only sounds being those calls and the clash of weapons, the cries of horses, the scuffling of hundreds of feet and hooves—the men might as well have been those little counters he and Kero used to practice maneuvers with. Except for the blood, the wounded, the fallen. Those made it real, and made the fighting itself all the more unreal.

Daren concentrated on the mages, clustered near the officers’ command post, and visible because of the dull colors of their robes, which were bright compared with the brown and buff leathers of the fighters and officers. But the more he concentrated, the less he seemed to see. He started to get angry and frustrated—my people are dying down there—bat then he stopped himself, before he stormed off to harangue Quenten.

This is my problem, not his. I should be able to figure it out. Quenten said this earth-sense works like instinct, he thought, finally. So—maybe if I don’t concentrate....

I used to wonder what on earth good those meditation exercises Tarma insisted we both learn would do me. I thought if there was anything more useless—

I can almost hear her now. “Surprise, youngling. Nothing’s ever wasted. ”

He closed his eyes and dredged the exercise out of deepest memory. It wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it was going to be, for in moments he was relaxed. He centered himself in the earth beneath his feet, as Tarma had taught him, and when he felt as if he was truly an extension of it, opened his eyes—

And nearly choked. He’d never, ever seen anything like this before—and if it hadn’t been that he felt fine, and had shared the same rations as everyone else this morning, he’d have suspected sickness or drugs. Superimposed over the fighting, the battlefield was divided into fields of glowing, healthy green, and dull, dead, leprous white, with edges of scarlet and vermilion where they met. Outside the area of fighting, the landscape was the same as it had been all the way north—sickly greens, poisoned yellows.

Except for one spot, behind the lines, in the ranks of the mages and commanders—one spot of black, auraed by angry red.

“Get Quenten,” he told his aide. “We’ve got them.”

Eleven of the twelve mages materialized beside him so quickly he suspected they’d conjured themselves there. “Where is he?” Quenten said—then shook his head as Daren started to open his mouth to explain that he couldn’t tell him. “Never mind, I know, I’m being stupid. Hadli, would—”