Ashling

  I lay for some moments shivering, before I realized that I had lost contact with Matthew.

  I remembered the soldierguard captain with renewed shock, and sent out an attuned probe to find Matthew, wondering what on earth a soldierguard was doing with slavers.

  The probe would not connect.

  With burgeoning fear, I tried again and again, concentrating fiercely on Matthew's mental signature.

  It would not locate.

  On the verge of panicking, I swept the entire area surrounding the place where I had last had contact with the farseeker.

  Nothing.

  XXVI

  The giant, Lill, abandoned his post several hours short of daylight, after a sudden downpour. Drenched to the skin, I hurried into the warehouse to tell Brydda what had happened. The cloudburst had ended by the time we came out, and Gahltha emerged from his own hiding place to carry us to where Brydda's people were still waiting for me in an abandoned house. The rebel leader had given them instructions to scour the area where I had lost contact with Matthew, convinced the slaves must have been taken from the wagon and shifted indoors somewhere over tainted ground.

  I had ridden back and forward in the area, too, farseeking Matthew until the heavens opened up again as the season showed its claws. Torrential rain fell so heavily that it obscured the surrounding streets like a gauze curtain and the lightning flashing high above rendered me all but mindbound.

  There had been nothing but to return to the safe house and break the news about Matthew. Brydda had come with me, leaving his own people to continue searching.

  We were now huddled over a fire lit hastily by Kella, trying to figure out what might have happened to the farseeker ward. The noise of rain on the tin roof was thunderous and water ran in a gurgling torrent along the roof guttering.

  "Maybe you couldn't farseek Matthew because he is asleep," Kella offered timidly.

  I coughed and pulled the blanket closer about me. "I was inside his mind when he saw that soldierguard captain, Kella. Matthew recognized him just as I did. There would be no way he could just drop off to sleep after that Not in such a short time. I was out of touch for a couple of minutes at most."

  "I meant he might have been put to sleep," the healer persisted. "If he were drugged you would not have been able to farseek him."

  "I would not be able to communicate with him, but if I was close I would have felt his presence. Anyway, as far as the slavers knew, he was already drugged," I said. "They would not bother to do it again, surely."

  "Maybe you made a mistake about where they were when you lost touch."

  I shook my head.

  "All right. Then maybe more time passed than you reckoned. The Suggredoon is not far from where you lost them," Brydda pointed out. "If they put the slaves on a boat while you were out of contact you could not have reached him because of me water being tainted."

  I looked at him in surprise. Domick must have told him about the static from the Suggredoon and the sea. I wondered if he knew what was causing it.

  "A boat could not have come up to the river wharf because it would have been low tide and there is a barrier of exposed mudflats," Reuvan disagreed.

  I said nothing, numbed by so much catastrophe. Idris dead, Dragon comatose, and now Matthew had vanished. My throat ached with despair.

  "Then he must be somewhere near to where you lost him," Kella said despondently.

  I had ridden Gahltha up and down the streets in all directions for as far as a carriage could have traveled in the few minutes we had been out of contact, but there had not been the slightest twinge. He could not have got any further than that, even in a speeding carriage. I looked down at my hands clasped together in my lap feeling a strong urge to weep.

  Matthew's face floated before my eyes, the thin limping boy I had first met, and the young man he had become, alternating eerily.

  "It is as if he was just snuffed out of existence," I murmured, then was aghast at what I had said.

  Yet the slavers had killed Idris. Why not Matthew as well? I blinked away a horrid vision of the farseeker's body washed up on the tide.

  "What if the soldierguard captain recognized Matthew from the market? He would know straight away something was wrong. Maybe he suspected a trap and just... just..." I could not speak my worst fear.

  I found I was weeping after all.

  Brydda clasped me in his big arms. "If this soldierguard had known the lad, the last thing he would do was kill him outright. Salamander would want to question him, wouldn't he?"

  My eyes widened as an incredible thought occurred to me. "Brydda... what if the soldierguard was Salamander!"

  I broke off in a savage fit of coughing that scratched my throat and made Kella eye me sternly. She was distracted by Domick's arrival and as he divested himself of his sodden cloak, Brydda told him what had been happening.

  "As to how and why Matthew vanished in such a short time, I think you are right in guessing he is not far from where you lost contact with him. Salamander would not risk the wagon being stopped and searched by soldier-guards. He would have instructed his people to get them somewhere safe until he was ready to take them."

  "Unless the soldierguards were part of it. After all, there was that soldierguard captain," Reuvan said. He explained my notion to Domick that the soldierguard might be Salamander.

  Domick looked startled.

  "Whether he is or not means nothing," Brydda said. "Domick is right. Salamander does nothing in haste and he never exposes himself or trusts anyone. He would have the slaves taken somewhere, so he can watch and make sure it is not a trap. That's the way he works. Slave ships depart from Morganna, so Matthew and the others will have to be got out over the Suggredoon. That means they must travel by the ferry, or by a hired riverboat. Since we cannot find where they have been hidden, we will set a watch on the Suggredoon."

  "They might be taken inland first, and across the river at the Ford of Rangorn," Reuvan said thoughtfully. "It might be wise to watch all of the city gates."

  "Salamander will have to figure out the least dangerous way to get five drugged and bound men out of the city gates. That rules out the ferry since the slaves would have to walk on if they were to journey that way. Drugged slaves would be obvious at once."

  "Not necessarily," Domick said. "With some drugs the five slaves would simply obey instructions to walk onto a ferry or out of Sutrium, and be rounded up outside by their masters later."

  Reuvan and Brydda looked thoughtful.

  "I have never heard of such drugs," I said.

  "They are brought in from Sador," Brydda said. "They are another byproduct of the spice groves."

  "I have not had the chance to make a report about them to Rushton yet," Domick said. "They enable you to function normally in every way except that you are utterly docile and suggestible. It is much simpler to deal with obedient puppets than with unconscious bodies or men and women who have been drugged into a shambling idiocy. This soldierguard captain would certainly know of them well enough, since the Council have them using it on prisoners."

  "If that soldierguard stopped the wagon to give them such a drug, that would have prevented me locating Matthew, even if he was still in the wagon," I said, sitting up straight.

  "But it doesn't make sense that he would drug them," Kella objected. "You said the other four slaves were already drugged and Matthew was pretending. Why would the soldierguard bother doing it again?"

  "How would this soldierguard know they had been drugged?" Reuvan demanded. "You said there was no conversation between the man Salamander had hired and the carriage driver when the slaves were transferred from the warehouse to the wagon. And there would be no way of telling, with the slaves gagged and bound, who was drugged."

  "A drug would not stop me from sensing Matthew if I was near. I went all over that area. If he was being hidden somewhere there, drugged or not, I would have felt him."

  "If it were an ordinary drug and he were close by, that is
so, but if he were also on tainted ground, you might not have picked him up. And even if you had, your probe would not have recognized him because of the drug distorting his mind patterns. If Matthew were given such a drug, even if your probe touched his mind, it would read it as the mind of a stranger."

  I nodded slowly. "You know, I have been thinking about whether that soldierguard could be Salamander. It would be just like him to appear at different stages in his own plan as a minor player. What better way to keep his eye on things?"

  "It would expose him to risk though," Brydda said.

  Domick nodded. "It would, but perhaps he would see it as a necessary risk. And perhaps the reason the wagon was stopped was not so much for him to administer a drug, but in order for him to check on his purchases."

  "All right," Brydda said, sitting forward in his seat. "Now we are getting somewhere. If we assume the carriage driver was instructed to take them to a certain place, and then this soldierguard, who might or might not be Salamander, met him and administered a Sadorian drug, what then?"

  "They were moved indoors?" Kella suggested.

  Brydda shook his head slowly. "Salamander has done everything in a roundabout way. That is part of the secret of his success. The obvious thing would be to have the carriage brought to its destination, but maybe they were only part of the way there when it was stopped. Maybe the soldierguard took over from the carriage driver—paid him off or even killed him—then drove the slaves somewhere else himself."

  They all nodded.

  "But no matter where they are or how they got there, the slaves will have to be moved from the city to Morganna. I think we ought to concentrate on that and forget trying to find them in the city," Brydda said.

  I felt hope stir in me. "If Matthew is drugged, as soon as it wears off, I'll be able to farseek him."

  Domick sighed heavily. "I am sorry to be a doomcrow, but whoever has them might not let the drug wear off. And even if they give it a break, which they would be wise to do if they do not want to damage their slaves, then you would need to be farseeking at the right moment to reach Matthew. Even you cannot farseek indefinitely."

  "It will not hurt to try. How soon before a single dose of this Sadorian drug wears off?" Brydda asked him.

  "Several hours, more or less," the coercer said, after some thought. "It might have worn off already. The drugs react differently with each person. Weight and how much has been eaten and drunk would need to be taken into account for even an approximation. But the other thing we have to consider is that the soldierguard may have got a good look at Matthew—his dark skin would stand out in the daylight—and if he did not recognize him before, he might have done so now."

  Brydda thumped the table in excitement. "But don't you see that will work for us! If this soldierguard recognized him from the market, he would definitely let the drug wear off so that he can be questioned."

  For the first time Domick looked convinced. "You are right. They would be fools not to interrogate him." A darkness flickered in his eyes.

  "How frequently can you farseek in a day?" Brydda demanded, looking at me.

  "If I were fresh, every hour or so." I turned to Kella. "Can you drain the fatigue from me?"

  The healer stood up and put her hands on her hips. "Are you mad?"

  "I am not planning to scan the whole of Sutrium," I snapped. "I will be using an attuned probe and it will only take a few minutes to send it out. Either it will find Matthew or it won't. It may be our only chance to save him."

  Kella's ire faded. "I can only drain your fatigue the once. You have not eaten all night and it would be better if you slept a little. Later..."

  "Later may be too late," I interrupted her grimly.

  The healer sighed and held out her hand. I gave her mine and relaxed completely as her Talent hummed through my body. Gradually, the night's tensions drained from me into the healer, and with them the chilly stiffness from all the hours of waiting motionless on the roof and the queer light-headedness I had begun to feel.

  When I opened my eyes I felt as if I had just woken from a sound night's slumber. Kella's eyes were closed as she dissipated the fatigue poisons she had drained from me.

  I closed my own eyes again and concentrated on shaping a probe tuned to Matthew's mental signature. Sending it out I kept my fingers crossed, but before long it was obvious it had not located him.

  On impulse I sent out a searcher probe. Starting at the place where I had lost touch with Matthew, I let my mind fly out in ever-widening circles, dipping fleetingly into every mind I encountered just in case I happened upon a mind or group of minds that were oddly distorted. If that happened, Brydda could check if it were Matthew and the four slaves.

  I moved gracefully in a spiraling mental dance, because awkwardness wasted energy. I kept fanning out until I felt my little store of energy fading, then I withdrew into my own mind and opened my eyes.

  The others were all staring at me hopefully. I shook my head, not trusting the steadiness of my voice. Brydda began to pluck agitatedly and absently at the beard hairs beneath his jutting chin as I described the many tainted areas in Sutrium. When I spoke of the wall of static rising from the Suggredoon, he looked puzzled.

  "That is only your first try," Reuvan said. "It is quite likely this drug has not even had a chance to wear off yet. And we can search the areas you can't farseek in."

  "That is true," Domick said, getting to his feet and pulling on his coat. "I must go back to the Councilcourt," he added, in answer to our questioning glances.

  "But you've been there all night," Kella protested. "And you have eaten nothing."

  He glanced about and took up one of the loaves Matthew and Kella had baked together. "This will do. I have no time for more."

  The healer stared at the loaf as if she wanted to cry.

  "Is something happening at the Councilcourt?" Brydda asked. "Surely you do not always work such long hours."

  Domick shrugged on his sodden cloak. "The Council is shifting us about at random to see who moves easily and who resists. It is a thing they do occasionally. A security measure. In fact I have been thinking I might stay at an inn for the next few nights, just in case I am under investigation. That is what I came to tell you."

  He did not look at Kella when he spoke and her expression told me this was the first she had heard of it.

  Reuvan rose, saying he must leave too; Kella stood up swiftly, saying she would walk them both out. Her face was pale and set.

  XXVII

  "He is so cold," I said to Brydda, when we were alone.

  The rebel gave me a stern look. "Do not blame Domick for being good at what you and your people have asked him to do, Elspeth."

  I shook my head. "Does being good at spying mean he has to be so cold and remote? So hard?"

  "Of course it does," Brydda said sharply. "Spying requires a person to turn themselves inside out in their efforts to pretend to be what they are not. In a sense Domick has had to become the enemy, and that means he must work against the very things he believes in most passionately. He must do and witness things that are abhorrent to him, and yet pretend to approve. And he is in constant peril. Of course it has changed him. How could it not? If he had not hardened, what he does would have destroyed him."

  Shocked and chilled, I thought of Domick's knowledge of torture methods and his certainty that anyone exposed to them would talk; the rumor of his presence in the torture chamber. "Sometimes you have to endure a lesser wrong in the way of dealing with a greater evil," he had said.

  "Oh, Domick," I thought, "was that why you reacted so strongly whenever anyone spoke of torture?" He had said he was not a torturer. But of course he must have seen terrible things—torture and death and executions, experimentation with new drugs. He was spying in the Council-court, for Lud's sake. What sort of naive idiot had I been to think he would simply sweep floors and gather up the odd secret?

  I was suddenly stricken with a feeling of black despair, hopelessly muddl
ed by what was right and wrong. Nothing seemed clear cut; we did evil in the name of good, and good was done in the name of evil. Perhaps we were some sort of aberration that deserved to be wiped out.

  Brydda rose and threw a knot of wood on the fire. "I have received replies from almost all of the rebels as to whether or no they will attend your meeting."

  I nodded without enthusiasm. A meeting with the rebel leaders was just one more possible disaster in the making.

  Brydda gave me a level look. "You are going to meet with them still, I trust?"

  I nodded apathetically. "I'll go, but I just don't see that it will change anything."

  "Not if you go with that attitude," he said shortly. "It will be held in Rangorn. I will not tell the others the location until the day of the meeting. Less chance of a leaking mouth."

  I was startled out of my dejection. "But Rangorn is thick with soldierguards scouring the place for me!"

  "Exactly, which is why it will be the safest place to hold a meeting. By the time we get there they will have given up searching and left. No one would dream anyone would dare anything unloreful there after all of that." He smiled disarmingly. "There are plenty of good reasons for choosing Rangorn but, in truth, I have an urge to see the trees I climbed as a boy."

  Like me the big rebel had grown up in Rangorn, though oddly we had not met in those days. It was hard to imagine the burly rebel as a tree-climbing boy, but I saw that he was only half joking.

  "The meeting will take place in six days," he added.

  I gaped. "So soon?" I felt sick at the thought of being solely responsible for the decision the rebels made on the all-important alliance. With the way my luck had been running, they would be bound to vote no decisively.

  He nodded. "On the eve of the meeting, I will transport the rebel leaders to Rangorn. Until they arrive, none of them will know where they are going. I have only informed them that the meeting will be outside the city and probably in the upper highlands."