"I'm going to follow this a little," Tarrin told them.

"Follow what?" Allia asked.

"The purging only goes in one direction," he told Allia, pointing the way they themselves had come. "Maybe whoever did it messed up, and we'll be able to get something where it ends."

"A reasonable idea," Sapphire nodded. "You follow that, little one, while we try to find clues in here."

"I will come with you, brother," Allia offered, and Tarrin nodded in agreement.

"Keep us posted," Keritanima said, tapping her amulet meaningfully.

"I'll Whisper if I find something," he answered, then he and Allia started down the hall.

Moving with good speed, for Tarrin could sense the purging as easily as he could smell Allia, the pair traced it along the meandering, confusing passages of the cellars of the Tower. Tarrin realized quickly that whoever had done it had gotten lost more than once, for the purging would go off in two directions at intersections, and one of those trails would end abruptly, as if the culprit had realized that he was going in the wrong direction. They went up another level, up a tiny, narrow, dank staircase that Tarrin hadn't known was there, and probably hadn't seen the passage of anyone other than the two of them and the culprit in hundreds of years. He realized that the culprit had become lost, and was meandering around looking for something he could identify. He could only follow behind that trail, which led him in a roundabout manner.

The trail did, after about a half an hour, come to an end, and much to his chagrin, it came to an end just down the passage from the staircase that led down to the baths, probabably the single-most heavily trafficked passageway in the entire Tower. The culprit had been very clever in making sure that his trail ended in the one place where it would be absolutely impossible for anyone to pick it up, for in a matter of hours any trail left behind would be destroyed by the passing of so many others. Tarrin knelt in the middle of the passage, making two curious Sorcerers, a dark-haired woman and a Sha'Kar, go around him and look at him curiously as they passed on their way to the baths. He put two thick fingers on the floor and realized that though the purging robbed him of the ability to identify the culprit, the purging itself may give him some information. He sank himself into the remnants of that spell. The ghostly vestiges of the spell may still be lingering in the rock, for here in the Tower, spells had a habit of leaving behind traces of themselves. It was because of the very rich magical atmoshphere… flows and spells could often linger long after the Sorcerer stopped concentrating on it. And if it were Wizardry or Priest magic, even Druidic magic, there may be some lingering trace of it he could identify.

From the feel of it, it was rather old, maybe two rides or so, but that was all he could really tell. The magical power of the Tower had infused whatever was left and drowned it in the ambient magical energy that thrived here, an environment just like Sha'Kari, where he had trouble sensing the more delicate things because of all the interference. The only thing he could sense was the age of the magic, but the texture of its remnants gave no hint as to the kind of magician that created it. It was one of the few times when he couldn't be sure about what kind of magic he was confronting. But even if he could tell which order did it, the magic itself told him some things. It told him that whoever did it had done it well before he intended to carry out his plan, and it showed that his target had had both the time to think things over, and more than enough time to get everything ready to keep himself hidden. His target had had two rides to make sure that every trace of his activities had been destroyed. The person also was either a magician or had a confidante that was one, for them to use magic to cover their tracks. They may be looking for a single person or a pair or trio, but someone in the guilty party was definitely a magic-user.

He realized, without much enthusiasm, that this was not going to be as easy as he thought. They were chasing someone that obviously knew what they were doing. Even a fool with a little magical assistance and two rides to prepare could do a good job in destroying the trail that led back to him.

Raising his awareness partially up into the Weave, he became immediately aware of the many conversations taking place among the Sha'Kar. He'd never noticed that before-at least not here-and he had to make a few adjustments just as the Sha'Kar did to speak to Jenna and Keritanima without disturbing other conversations, and also without letting anyone else currently bridging into the weave eavesdrop on what they were saying.

"Sisters," he called.

"Any luck?" Jenna's voice responded immediately.

"It peters out in front of the stairs leading to the baths," he said sourly. "I checked the spell itself, and it's about twenty days old. It was made by a Sorcerer."

"I've found some traces of that here too," Jenna told him, and Tarrin quickly adjusted what he was receiving to make it audible from his amulet so Allia could hear what was being said. "Whoever stole the blood was very careful. One of the crates, the one with your blood in it, was moved by Sorcery, and it's the only crate that seems to have been touched. The culprit knew exactly where the blood was."

"That's not a damning fact, Jenna," he said. "My blood would be easy to detect with magic. It's not exactly normal."

"Kerri mentioned that. She said she could make up a spell on the spot to find it."

"I know. So could either of us, for that matter."

"Sapphire tried to use a couple of spells herself, but that purging effect has destroyed everything they could find, even Druidic and Wizard spells can't get any information. That's a strong spell, brother. I don't think any Sorcerer would be capable of it, not as powerful as its effect is. I'm not even sure what spell it is."

"I can't tell either," he admitted. "I can only tell that it was made about twenty days ago."

"That's something, at least. We can always grill everyone in the Tower and find out where they were that day. But we do know now that it has to be a strong Sorcerer that did it."

"No, we just know that a magician had a hand in covering it up," Tarrin told her. "We're coming back, Jenna."

"We'll be waiting."

Tarrin mulled it over as they went back, following a more direct route. A magician had a hand in things, so that more or less excused all the females except Kimmie at least directly. None of them were magicians, and more to the point, none of them would probably trust a human magician with that kind of a secret. Mist certainly wouldn't, and as far as the collusion theory went, that left only Jesmind. If Jesmind did it, then she had help. He'd never get anything out of her, but if he could find whoever helped her-if it was really her-then he'd get the truth. So, if it was an individual, it was Kimmie, but if it was a group effort, it was Jesmind. At least right now. He knew things would change in his mind as he got more information, and he told himself several times, over and over, not to get his mind set in stone about who he thought did it. It could have been anyone, even one of the original Council taking steps to put him back the way they'd put him the first time. It simply came down to the fact that they had to get more information before they could start eliminating possible suspects.

Once they got back to the storeroom, they found that all the dust had been carefully pushed up against the walls, not removed, and Sapphire, Keritanima, and Jenna were carefully inspecting a single small wooden crate. He looked over them-an advanatage of height-and found that inside it, laying on a pillow and with shredded straw strewn around it, were six small vials of dark, reddish liquid. The array of the vials made it abundantly clear that there were two of them missing.