“No, no—only FarSight and ForeSight!” Joyeaus hastened to say. “Mindspeech works perfectly well, and Fetching as well, at least as far as we can tell. We’ve never depended on ForeSight, it’s too rare a Gift and too erratic anyway.”

I can vouch for that, Alberich thought grimly.

“And we’ve never depended entirely on FarSight either,” Selenay put in, her high, young voice carrying over the muttering (and, yes, there was rising panic in those voices) of those around her. “We’d be fools to depend on any single source of intelligence, gentlemen! You may depend upon it, there are other ways of finding things out at a distance. In eluding—” she added, with a touch of irony, “—common spies.”

“Animal Mindspeech,” replied someone. Alberich couldn’t tell who, precisely, for the background chatter distorted the sound. The voice was female, though, and very confident. “The Chronicles say that the Hawkbrothers of the Pelagiris Forest use Animal Mindspeech with their birds as spies. Surely we can do the same? Or listen through the ears of a horse or hound?”

The muttering subsided, and what there was of it sounded less panicky. Sendar turned to Joyeaus. “Deal with it, Joyeaus. Find the Heralds with Animal Mindspeech; see what you can do. Ask Myste what’s in the Chronicles. Perhaps the Heralds of our generation have not needed to worry about their Gifts being blocked, but there’s no reason to think it hasn’t happened in the past somewhere, and if anyone will know where, when, and what was done about it, it will be Myste.”

“Sire.” Joyeaus bowed and edged her way out of the crowd.

No wonder the voice had sounded familiar, and he felt that familiar apprehension whenever he thought of the half-blind Herald-Chronicler-in-training. Well, at least he’d given her enough skill to get herself out of trouble if she had to, and he could count on her strong instinct for self-preservation to keep her out of the fighting itself.

Unless, of course, there was no other choice. But if that happened, everyone in a white uniform with a mount that was even vaguely pale in color was going to be in danger. The Tedrels knew better than to let a single Herald escape alive.

It has to be Sunpriests that are helping them, though. No mage worth the name would serve Karse or the Tedrels. No mage worth the name will serve where the Mercenary Guild won’t. Even one of the blood-path mages wouldn’t serve the Tedrels, in part because the Tedrels themselves would know better than to trust one of that sort. You didn’t want a blood-path mage around; when sacrifices ran short, they tended to grab whoever was closest…