Jinq gave a grudging shake of the head.
"Divide the men-archers and swordsmen. Aldir, you'll command the archers, and I expect you'll answer directly to the marshal. Ilyan, you'll lead the swordsmen. The rest of you go as your talents dictate. If you've any skill with a bow, follow Aldir. Archers will be most helpful against this enemy." He looked at Aldir again. "The Mettai will be performing what they call a finding spell. It'll enable us to identify their Weavers. Listen for the marshal's command and concentrate your volleys where he tells you. The Weavers are the key to all of this. If they can be defeated, the rest of the Qirsi army won't have a chance."
Aldir and the other riders nodded to him and Enly started away, intending to walk among his men.
"What kind o' spells will they be doin', Captain?" Jinq asked, stopping him. "Th' Mettai, I mean. Aside from this findin' spell."
Enly turned to face him. He'd evaded Jinq's question the first time; he didn't feel right doing so again. "They'll be using fire on the shelters." He hesitated, but only for a moment. "And they'll be conjuring wolves."
"Wolves?" Jinq repeated, the blood draining from his face.
"Apparently the Mettai who marched with our people during the early years of the Blood Wars did this, to great effect."
The young rider nodded, but he looked even more unsettled than he had before. Enly left him, knowing there was nothing he could say that would ease his mind.
It didn't take the soldiers of the three armies long to rearrange themselves, and soon they were ready to march again. The Mettai villagers now walked at the van beside Jenoe, Hendrid, and their captains. They were followed by nearly fifteen hundred bowmen. The balance of the army, some twenty-five hundred swordsmen, brought up the rear. For all his doubts about this war, Enly couldn't deny that his father and the other lord governors had put together an impressive force. The Fal'Borna might have been prepared for an attack, but he found it hard to believe that they were ready for an army of this size.
They hadn't gone far when they topped a gentle rise and looked down upon the sept, which sat on a large, wedge-shaped piece of land at the confluence of two small streams. As the scouts had said, the paddock at the far end of the settlement was crowded with horses-greys, blacks, sorrels, bays, and whites. Enly couldn't remember seeing so many horses in one place.
But while the paddock was full, the sept looked to have been deserted. Except for a few narrow plumes of pale smoke rising from shelters, Enly saw nothing to indicate that there were any people in the settlement. In fact, several of the shelters appeared to have been destroyed. Some of them were blackened, as if by fire, while others simply looked like they had been crushed.
"What do you make of it?" Jenoe asked, his voice low.
Enly turned to answer, but then realized that the marshal had been speaking to Tirnya. She was eyeing the sept through narrowed eyes, her brow creased.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say they'd already been attacked," she said. Enly shook his head. "Not attacked. Struck by the plague."
Tirnya looked at him quickly, then faced her father again. "Of course. He's right. This is what the plague does. It robs them of control over their magic before it kills them. They destroyed their village themselves."
"So are all of them dead?" asked Marshal Crish.
"No," Gries said. "There are fires burning in the shelters that remain. Some survived. I think the eldest was right. They know we're coming and they're prepared to fight us."
"Then we'll hold to our plan," Jenoe told them. "Eldest, you and your people can begin at any time."
Fayonne shook her head. "Not from this distance. We need to be closer for our magic to work."
A look of annoyance crossed the marshal's face. "Very well." He raised a hand and indicated that the army was to resume its advance. A moment later they were marching again.
When they had covered perhaps half the remaining distance to the sept, many of the horses, including Enly's, began to act strangely. Nallaj swished his tail and began to fight against Enly's efforts to steer him toward the sept. Several of the others, Tirnya's sorrel among them, actually reared.
"They're using language of beasts!" Gries called out. "We need to leave the horses here!"
The marshals and captains riding up front dismounted, and word began to spread back through the ranks that other captains and lead riders should do the same.
"Will your magic work now?" Jenoe asked.
Fayonne offered a noncommittal shrug. "I'd like to be closer."
The marshal, it seemed, had reached the limits of his patience. "Yes, Eldest, and I'd like to be on my horse still. But this is war, and we can't always have things just as we'd like. Can your magic be effective from this distance?"
"Not very," the woman said in a flat voice.
Jenoe cast a look at Tirnya that seemed to say, What's the use of having these people with us? But he held his tongue, and they started forward once more, all of them now on foot.
They hadn't gone far when thin tendrils of white mist began to emerge from the ground around the shelters, spidery and ghostlike. The mist coalesced slowly into a dense fog that would soon obscure the Fal'Borna shelters. "Will the finding spell work through this mist?" Gries asked.
"The spell will work, but naturally it will be harder to see the results."
"Then what good is it?" Jenoe asked, his voice rising.
"I told you all of this would happen, Marshal," Fayonne said. "I predicted that they would go for your horses first. I predicted that they would call forth a mist."
"Yes, and you also made it sound as if your magic could overcome these things. Now it seems that it can't. We don't know for certain, of course, because you haven't shown us any magic yet!"
The eldest smiled thinly. "Very well. Blades!" she called to her people. "Start with the finding spell. Use the wording Mander taught you."
The Mettai pulled their knives from their belts and stooped to grab handfuls of dirt. Then they sliced open the backs of their hands. Even knowing that these people wielded blood magic, Enly couldn't help but wince at the sight. He wanted to ask them if it hurt, but like the others from Stelpana, he kept silent and watched. The sorcerers deftly gathered the blood from their wounds on the flat sides of their blades, turned over their bleeding hands to reveal the earth they had gathered, and tipped the blades so that the blood mingled with the soil. Enly heard them begin to mumble to themselves. They all seemed to begin with the words "Blood to earth, life to power," but after that he had difficulty making out what they said. Too many people were speaking at once.
When they finished, though, they all heaved the bloody mixture they held in their hands toward the sept. He never would have believed that they could throw the dark mud so far, and as soon as the stuff left their hands, it appeared to transform itself into fine golden sand, which should have billowed like smoke in the wind and fallen uselessly to the grass. But it didn't.
It seemed to be propelled by some unseen force, which, Enly realized, it had been: magic. It soared through the air, shimmering faintly as it went, and spread over the settlement before seeming to sprinkle down on the shelters like a light rain. At first nothing happened. Soon, though, a few of the shelters that hadn't yet vanished within the Qirsi mist began to glow faintly.
No one from the army said a word. The marshals and most of the captains standing up front stared open-mouthed at the sept. Thinking this, Enly realized that his own mouth was open.
"That was remarkable, Eldest," Jenoe finally said.
"It was a difficult spell," she said, as if answering a question no one had asked. "Twelve parts, which is a lot for any Mettai. We needed to make it so in order to reveal not only magic, but Weaver magic. And also to make it reach the settlement from here."