The hair on the back of Alberich’s neck stood up, and he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It traveled rapidly over his entire body, and at that moment, he knew his Gift hadn’t deserted him. In fact, it was about to come down upon him with a vengeance. He slid down out of his saddle as dizziness engulfed him, so that he wouldn’t have as far to fall when it hit him—which it was going to, in less than a heartbeat—

He clutched Kantor’s saddle, as his Companion turned his head to look at him. A flash of blue came between him and the rest of the world—

A woman, barefoot, bareheaded, running, but she couldn’t outrun the horseman behind her—

Another flash—

A man, looking up from his weeding, eyes wide, then unseeing, as the lance took him through the heart—

—like blue lightning—

Children, screaming, being herded into a pen by a dozen horsemen, while the rest set fire to the village—

“Sunlord save us—” he muttered in Karsite, automatically reverting to the language he knew best. The visions, thank the God, were silent, silent, and he could still hear, dimly, the sounds of the battlefield and the people around him.

“What?” Myste snapped behind him, in the same tongue. Thank the God she did—he wasn’t sure he could even understand Valdemaran at this moment, much less respond in it. The visions shook him like a terrier with a rat.

The visions caught him up again and threatened to pull him in so far he would not be able to tell the others what he Saw; he struggled against them, against a Gift that was running away with him. :Kantor!: he cried, and a steadying presence held him out of the chaos of a hundred, a thousand disasters playing out at once inside his head. He could still see them, but at least he could manage to get a few words out.

“The cavalry has flanked us on either side, but not to attack us,” he babbled in Karsite, thanking Vkandis yet again that Myste was there. Myste, who knew Karsite, who could tell the King, tell the Lord Marshal—“They’re clearing the countryside—burning the villages, killing the adults, rounding up the children—”

He knew why, but he didn’t have time to explain; the visions took him again, despite all of Kantor’s help. A man pinned to the door of his own house by a spear. A child being wrenched from its mother’s arms, and the woman tossed into the flames of her burning barn. The Tedrel cavalry, riding across the land like a wave of locusts, clearing it for its new masters, keeping only the young children, whom they would then take into their own ranks and turn into Tedrels—