Soldiers scrambled to get out of their way, trapped between the corpses and the ashten-erath.

"Hold your ground!" Tris shouted, rallying his men. He stretched out along the Plains of Spirit. Not bodies with souls forced back into dead flesh. Just puppets, to terrify.

Already, the soldiers nearest the gate had gathered their wits and were striking down the lurching corpses. The smell carried on the cold winter air, rotted meat and filthy river sludge. The corpses, sodden from their watery resting place, fell apart with the force of a sword strike, collapsing in stinking heaps as the soldiers held their positions. Through it all, the steady thump of the battering ram shook the battlements.

Tris felt the magic rising, and threw all of his power to shield his men. Images formed in his mind, dimmed by his shielding but not completely pushed from view. He saw his army, decimated. Bodies littered the plain, food for the scavengers and carrion birds that plucked their sightless eyes and ate from their corpses. In the sending, he saw the survivors ridden down and murdered, some by fire, others by the sword, the rest twisting from nooses. The sending grew stronger, and Tris saw Curane's forces and the Trevath army sweep across Margolan to take Shekerishet by force. He saw soldiers storm the castle and search its rooms for Kiara, saw torchlight glint from the knife as it rose above her, plunging into her swollen belly, killing her and the child she carried.

"Stand firm! Don't break ranks!" Tris heard Soterius and Tarq shouting around him. Tris clung to the pommel of his saddle, reeling from the assault on his mind as he struggled to absorb the brunt of the dark sending.

With a shout of anger, Tris marshaled all his power and sent a blast of magic back toward the source. Around him, he heard men crying out in terror and pain as the sending showed them their greatest fears come true. Although the other mages could not join him on the Plains of Spirit, Tris could sense their magic joining with his, a concentrated blast toward the void where the darkness was deepest.

The magic struck its target. Tris felt the blast of power burn as it reached the origin of the dark sending. Just as quickly, all magic disappeared, and then blinked back into place with a recoil as if he'd taken a sword-strike to the helm. Tris struggled for control against the staggering reaction headache. The magic rose and fell like a storm-tossed sea. The power inside his mind buckled and folded in on itself. He was falling, and the world opened its maw to swallow him whole. He landed with a thud on the ground. Bones snapped.

Tris struggled to his feet, rallying his power. Dimly, he could feel Fallon and the other mages around him. With all his remaining energy, Tris and the other mages sent a firestorm against Lochlanimar, hitting the wall to the right of the portcullis. The magic exploded on impact, breaking down the crenel-lations and collapsing part of the wall.

Let go. Let go now! He could feel the energy drain growing. A few seconds more and it would reach his life thread. Tris flung himself free of the magic and fell to his knees. Too damn close.

"I gave him a potion to ease the pain. It's wearing off."

It was Esme's voice, but it sounded as if she were a league away. Tris tried to open his eyes and thought better of it. His head felt as if he'd been kicked by an iron-shod war horse. No, worse than that. If I'd been kicked I'd be dead, and not feel the pain.

"Will he be all right?" Soterius sounded worried.

"The fall from the horse didn't help anything," Esme replied. "He broke a collarbone and a rib when he landed. The way the men and the horses were out there, he's lucky he wasn't trampled. None of the other mages are in better shape. Whatever the rest of us felt, they must have taken it double."

"Dark sending." Tris could barely make his lips move.

Soterius stepped closer and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Glad you're back with us. We were worried."

"How bad?"

"Not as bad as it could have been, considering. The battering ram's still in place, but that gate isn't coming down soon. My bet is they've reinforced it with rock behind the wood and the portcullis.

"We only lost about a hundred men. Most of our soldiers are volunteers who joined up after we unseated Jared. They're not career soldiers. They've never seen full battle. Still, they held their ground, even with the magic and the ashtenerath. The preparations helped. They knew what the ashtenerath were and how to fight them—and that it was a mercy to end their suffering. That's a lot more than my fighters knew the first time we met up with those damned things!"

"What did you see... when the sending came?"

Soterius's voice was not quite steady. "The men, dead, wounded, and captured. A field of corpses. Shekerishet in flames."

"Like a vision, or a real thing?"

"It was distant. As if I were seeing into a scrying bowl—hazy, not quite solid."

"Then we did our job."

"What does he mean by that?" Soterius demanded of Esme.

"I only know of dark sendings from what the healer-mages have told me. In a full sending, I'm told that it's impossible to tell what's sent from what's real. Tris and the other mages took the brunt of the sending. What we saw, however bad it was, is nothing compared to what it could have been, what they saw."

"Sweet Mother and Childe," Soterius whispered. "What I saw was bad enough to keep me from sleeping. Goddess help the mages, if they saw even worse."

"Regroup," Tris murmured. Even the candlelight was blinding.

Soterius looked spent and worn; Tris wondered how many hours had passed and how long he had been drugged. "We will. I'll give the troops credit—they didn't bolt for home. Once they get over the fright, I think this may work in our favor. No one wants another king like Jared. Curane's shown them exactly what kind of regent he would be. I think our soldiers will dig in their heels. This may not be the most seasoned army, but they've already lost a lot to Jared. This is personal. There isn't much distance between fear and anger. And from what I saw out there, our folks are covering that distance pretty quickly."

"If you want your king in one piece, I suggest you let him rest." Esme's voice was stern.

Soterius clasped Tris's forearm. "I've posted a vayash moru guard tonight—they can handle ashtenerath better than any of us and they weren't affected by the sending. I'll be back in the morning to check on you."

Tris wanted to reply, but the throbbing pain in his head coupled with exhaustion sent him back into darkness.

As soon as he was able, Tris met with the mages and the generals in his tent. It was cramped, and Coalan sat in the doorway to give the others as much space as he could. Tris's ribs and shoulder still ached, though he was healed enough to wield a sword. Soterius and the other generals looked to be in better shape than the mages. Tris guessed that the other mages had taken at least as much recoil as he had in the battle, perhaps more. But while Fallon and her sister mages looked drawn and worn, their eyes were resolute.

"Whatever we do next, I want to get rid of their damn trebuchets," Senne growled. Outside, a steady barrage continued. Large blocks of stone torn loose in the battle were favorite projectiles. Those were bad enough, requiring constant vigilance from the mages to keep them from landing where they could roll into the camp. For the last day, Curane's forces had sent a more gruesome payload. Corpses of men and animal carcasses rained down just beyond the outskirts of camp. By the smell, most were not freshly dead. Some of the bodies, those still frozen solid, burst apart like dry tinder on impact. The others... Tris tried not to imagine what the scouts had found splattered across the plain.