"As always, Princess, I will do my best," Faegan answered respectfully.
"First of all," she began, "that night at the docks. I know the slaves were being branded, but why? What did the two branding irons say?"
Pursing his lips, Faegan laced his gnarled fingers and tried to think of where to begin. "Wigg and I think we have part of the puzzle pieced together. But certainly not all of it," he said.
"Please go on," the princess said.
"One of the branding irons-the one that was used most often-said Talis. That is the Old Eutracian word for 'unendowed.' The other one read R'talis, or 'endowed.' The men in the blue robes sitting at the table were no doubt consuls of the Redoubt; some of those who were turned by Nicholas and swore allegiance to him. They are now unquestionably under the leadership of Krassus. We also believe that the person with Krassus that night was his partial adept-the one he bragged about the day he infiltrated the palace and attacked Wigg. When I described her to Abbey, she agreed that the woman sounded like the one who helped Krassus ransack her cottage."
"What were the consuls at the table doing?" Shailiha asked.
"Testing the blood of the slaves," Faegan answered. "If he or she was unendowed, as most of them would be, they were branded accordingly. If they were endowed, they were branded with the other iron."
"But the consuls were doing more than that," Shailiha remembered. "There were strange tools on the tables before them. I couldn't make out what they were."
"Tools like this?" Faegan asked. Unlacing his fingers, he reached under the table, and brought out two odd-looking objects.
The first was a wooden frame holding an hourglass and a small vial. The vial contained what looked to be the vibrant red water of the Caves of the Paragon. The hourglass held what seemed to be no more than a dozen tiny black spheres.
The second device was a three-legged wooden tripod, about half a meter in height, with a magnifying lens at its top. Embedded into the lens were dark, wire crosshairs. The two upper quadrants created by the wires were marked off on each side by degrees, from the vertical axis outward.
Stymied, all the princess could do was look and wonder. She turned to Celeste, but the look on Celeste's face made it plain that she was as lost as Shailiha.
Wigg pointed to the frame holding the hourglass and the vial. "This is called a blood criterion. Its purpose is to assay the quality of endowed blood. The lower the assay number, the higher the quality of the blood that is being examined. The plans for this device were found in the Tome of the Paragon during Faegan's first reading of it. The Ones Who Came Before, through their dictates in the Tome, ordered us to construct it and assay your blood immediately following your births. Just like the azure glow surrounding your deliveries, your blood ratings were further proof to the Directorate that you and Tristan were indeed the Chosen Ones."
At the mention of Tristan, Shailiha's face darkened again. "How does it work?' she asked.
"It's really quite simple," Wigg explained. "First, the criterion is placed upon a piece of parchment. Then a drop of the subject's blood is placed on the parchment a specific distance from the criterion. The hourglass is turned over at the exact moment a single drop of cave water is released from the vial and lands on the parchment. As you have already been taught, endowed blood and water from the Caves immediately attract, but to varying degrees, depending upon the quality of the blood. The stronger the blood, the faster the two seek each other out and join to form a signature. The number of spheres that drop in the time it takes for the two fluids to meet equates to the number of the blood quality."
"Ingenious," Celeste said.
Shailiha reached out and drew the tripod device toward her. Standing, she closed one eye and looked down through the lens.
"Although simpler in design, this tool is as valuable as the criterion," Wigg went on. "The plans for it were also found in the Tome. Called a signature scope, it is used to determine whether the blood signature on the parchment beneath it leans to the left or the right, and to what degree. A high blood quality rating, coupled with a severe degree of lean one way or the other, results in a person of very great potential power, indeed."
Reaching out, Shailiha took up one of the parchments on the table that held a blood signature. Sliding it beneath the tripod, she squared it up as best she knew how, then looked down again. Sure enough, she could see a slight tendency to the right. She raised her face back up to Wigg.
"And you have said that both my signature and Tristan's lean to the right," she mused.
"Correct," the lead wizard answered.
"And Wulfgar's blood signature leans as far to the left as you have ever seen."
"Regrettably, also correct. And his blood assay is one and one-half-equal to yours and second only to your brother's, which has a blood-quality rating of one. Wulfgar's blood, given these particular traits, is most probably the most dangerous in the world."
"Is there a copy of his signature registered here?" she suddenly asked.
Nodding, Wigg caused the appropriate drawer to slide open. But this time, instead of only the parchment floating over to the table, the entire drawer did. As it landed, Shailiha could see that it contained not only a copy of a blood signature, but a lock of sandy-colored hair bound together with a red ribbon.
She picked up the lock of hair. "This came from Wulfgar, didn't it?" she asked.
Wigg nodded. "It was taken from him the morning of the day your mother gave him up," he replied softly. "It was one of her most prized possessions, and she felt it rightly belonged here, alongside his blood signature."
"Wulfgar is the reason why the R'talis are being taken, isn't it?" she asked. "They are searching for him."
"Yes," Wigg said, "we believe so. In truth, they may already have found him."
"But why also take the unendowed?" Celeste asked, looking over at her father. "Or the endowed women, for that matter? If Wulfgar is the only one they seek, then what they're doing doesn't make any sense."
"That is still unknown," Faegan said. "But considering all of the effort it takes, they must have a reason."
"Why Farpoint?" Shailiha mused quietly.
"What?" Wigg asked.
"Why Farpoint?" Shailiha repeated. "Why would Krassus concentrate his search there, and not elsewhere?"
"We don't know that he has," Wigg answered. "But your question is a good one. For the moment, we can only suspect that Nicholas told him to search there, just before he died."
"And where did the demonslavers come from?" Celeste asked. "From what everyone tells me, their like has never been seen in Eutracia before now."
"Another unknown," Faegan answered. "But from what the princess and I saw that night in Farpoint, I think it safe to assume that though they appear to be a product of magic, they have no command of it. Much like the Minions, they represent only a blunt instrument-one that is most useful when wielded by others. They may be what remained of the consuls, mutated by Krassus. Or they may have sprung from another source entirely-conjured, perhaps. Be that as it may, it is abundantly clear that they serve only him." He paused and sighed. "Unfortunately, only time will answer your questions. And as I said, time is not on our side."
Something suddenly occurred to Shailiha. "Can Abbey locate Wulfgar?" she asked quickly. "If he has already been captured, perhaps he and Tristan are together."
Wigg raised an eyebrow. "Well done," he answered. He turned to Abbey. "Can you view Wulfgar from the blood dried on this certificate, or from the lock of his hair? I'm afraid it's all we have of him." He passed them over to her.
Abbey looked intently at them. "Perhaps," she answered. "How old are these samples?"
"Thirty-five years," Wigg answered.
Abbey sighed. "I won't know until I try. Blood tends to lose its vibrancy far more quickly than hair, so the latter will afford the better chance of success."