A/N: Thanks again to those of you sticking with the story. I hope I can keep you all reading until the end. :)

When it was time to take the Tranaedans home, Sheppard was shown the way back to his craft by Malaed. He found the Tranaedans already there waiting for him, the magistra deep in conversation with Ronon...well, as deep in conversation as anyone ever got with the Satedan, that was. Basically, she talked a lot, giggled and flirted, too, and Ronon grunted monosyllabic replies. But, if Sheppard wasn't mistaken, there was a different kind of glint in his friend's eyes as he looked at the woman, one that said he was interested, and the magister wasn't looking too happy about their discourse.

Deciding to intervene before things got nasty, he strode out toward the craft where they were standing, bumping Ronon slightly as he passed.

'Oh, sorry, Romaed! My steering's a little off since my accident.'

Ronon arched an eyebrow, looking a little confused. The stare Sheppard gave him in return was more intense and carried a far clearer message. Be careful.

'Well, it's been wonderful to see you both again,' Magister Callaedin said smoothly, giving the Tranaedans a sickly smile. 'And don't worry, Garzin, I'll soon have those permissions arranged for you. Your man will be able to start his work tomorrow.'

'Thank you,' the magister smiled with a respectful dip of his head. 'I'll inform Mercator Ashnael the permissions will be with him shortly. Alathael...shall we?'

He gestured toward the craft, and Sheppard took that as his cue to open the thing up and help her on board, but he magistra refused his offered hand and asked Ronon to help her mount the craft instead. A quick glance at the magister showed how he felt about that. The magistra was playing a dangerous game and using his friend as bait. Either she was trying to lure the Satedan because she knew he was an off-worlder too, or she had figured that putting Ronon in danger might force his hand. Whichever it was, he needed to figure out a way of stopping her.

Tranaedan mounted before him, then he climbed on board and slammed the door shut behind them all, closing out the leering smiles of his would-be new owners. He got the feeling that conversation with Magistra Callaedin wasn't the end of the matter, especially when she gave him a sly wink. Getting back to the Tranaedan house seemed more important than ever. He scooted into his seat and started the engines, raising the craft up and turning to face the gates even before they were open.

'Keen to be home, aren't we, Jadrael,' the magistra purred from behind him. 'Expecting trouble?'

He felt himself go a little dizzy, and knew she was trying to pick at his brain again. He blocked her just as he would a Wraith queen, thinking empty thoughts, or singing songs...well, it was a kind of singing, but even in his head, he could never hit all the right notes.

'Perhaps Jadrael is feeling the strain. He has been unwell,' Tranaedan pointed out in that creepily understanding manner he'd now developed toward him. Sheppard was beginning to think he preferred his mean side.

'And whose fault is that?' his wife snapped back at him. 'You were the one who beat him senseless as I recall.'

Sheppard sensed Ronon bristle behind him. He was like a guard dog – the merest mention of harm to his friends setting him off.

'And whose fault was it that I felt the necessity to do that?' the magister countered, giving her a purely evil glare.

When the gates were just wide enough to squeeze the ship through, Sheppard steered them through. He saw his owner give him an odd look from the corner of his eye, but he'd known what he was doing. The ship had never been in danger of getting a scratch.

'But off course your propensity for violence would be my fault,' he heard the magistra sneer from her seat behind him, continuing the argument he'd hoped was over. 'As if you need any excuse!'

'Not much, you're all the excuse I need.' Then he turned in his seat. 'I see the niceties have ended the moment we leave the Callaedins behind us.'

'Well can you blame me, after having to force on a smile for that length of time to keep those idiots happy?'

'What? I thought you liked the Callaedins?' he said, apparently shocked by the revelation.

Sheppard glanced back at Ronon, who rolled his eyes. Clearly, he was pissed at getting caught in the middle of a domestic, too. He just hoped Tranaedans' bad mood didn't get taken out on either of them.

When they reached the gates, Tranaedan handed over the paperwork necessary for exiting the city to the facilitators, while the bickering continued at a more muted volume. It reminded Sheppard of his own marriage failure, the last few months of his life with Nancy having been filled with equally petty disagreements. But the difference here was the magister was unwilling to let his wife go. At least he and Nancy had realised that was the only answer to their problems. The Tranaedans' feud was destined to go on until one of them died.

Puffing out a weary sigh, he looked out of the windshield at the facilitators, wondering what was taking them so long. The two men were huddled together, reading the paperwork and apparently double-checking it. There was something about their body language that told him there was a problem this time, and then one of them spoke into the communication unit beside the gates and he knew something was awry. They'd not done that on his previous trips out of the cities. The paperwork and clearance codes should have been enough. It was then the probable reason struck him. Magistra Callaedin had been pretty insistent that she wanted to keep him. This was part of a ploy. The Callaedins had asked the facilitators to stall them.

Even though he suspected interrupting his owners in mid-argument was tantamount to taking his life in his hands, Sheppard said, 'Magister...I think we have a problem.'

The magister stopped berating his wife and looked out of the windshield at the facilitators. 'Why haven't they opened those gates by now? The clearance was granted by Magister Callaedin himself.'

He pushed up out of his seat and stomped down to them, and from the way he angrily flailed his arms as he spoke to the men, Sheppard figured they were getting the brunt of his foul temper.

But no matter how much Tranaedan yelled and flapped, the two men didn't open the gates. Sensing an ambush, Sheppard looked back at Ronon, chewing nervously at his lip. Ronon's face betrayed the fact he, too, thought this was dangerous, something the magistra now picked up on.

'Jadrael, do you know something about this?' she demanded.

'What? You think I arranged this?' he huffed, watching the magister again as he grew progressively more furious.

'No...but I think you have an idea why this is happening. You were too quick to notice the problem.'

He pondered saying he didn't know anything, but, realising he didn't want to be hauled off to the Callaedins' household, or for Ronon to get hurt trying to stop it happening, he told her his suspicions.

'Magistra Callaedin approached me and expressed an interest in "owning" me,' he confessed. 'I got the feeling she wasn't going to take no for an answer.'

His owner's face clouded instantly, and he could see she was battling to maintain her decorum. 'That loathsome little...and all the times I have shown her favour because my husband insisted I should!' Then, taking a deep breath she said, 'Romaed, could you go outside and help my husband persuade those men to open the gates? I feel certain your presence will help to settle this dispute.'

Without a word, the Satedan did as she asked. Sheppard watched him join the magister and add his weight to the argument, squaring up to the two far smaller men. With both the magister and Ronon's considerable bulks now leaning on them, the two looked decidedly worried, but they still weren't giving ground. Sheppard suspected things might be about to turn physical, but then the magistra slipped into the passenger seat beside him and stared so intently at the two facilitators, she didn't seem to notice him watching her. The colonel saw a change in their stance; the two became gradually less confrontational, and as they did so, so did Tranaedan and Ronon. In only a few minutes, an agreement was apparently reached and the gates began to budge open. The magistra switched back to her previous seat without a word, though she did cast him a look that he took to mean he shouldn't mention what had just happened.

So had she just influenced the facilitators in the way the sensory had said the afflicted could? It was their job to open the gates if the codes were correct, so they would have known it was the right thing to do. But she wasn't one of the afflicted. She didn't look like them. So how had she learned to do that? He glanced back at her, seeing her expression was unchanged. Since he just wanted to get back to the relative safety of the Tranaedan household, he figured he should follow her silent but somehow perfectly clear instruction.

Once Ronon and Tranaedan were back on board Sheppard flew them out through the consecutively opening gates. And for the first fifteen minutes or so of their journey things went according to plan. His owners continued to argue, of course, but now, outside of the confines of Traginta, he didn't find it quite as irritating. Instead, he found himself mulling over the strange things the magistra seemed capable of. If the sensory was right that it was years of exposure to the iron in the soil and waters of the Soulless Sands that made him the way he was, what had given her the same levels of ability?

A thud against the left side of the craft shook him out of his thoughts. Tranaedan flicked on a scanner, and they saw two ships in pursuit, one beside them where he'd felt the collision, another just behind them and gaining fast.

'Bandits!' Tranaedan hissed. 'Get us out of here, Jadrael. This ship has to be better than theirs.'

Sheppard hoped he was right, veering the craft to the right as the ship beside them tried to ram them again. The contact was glancing this time, nothing serious.

'Everyone strap in!' Sheppard ordered, watching the craft behind them making up the distance fast. Though he tried to swerve, they made hard contact with the rear of the vessel, shaking them all in their seats and making the magistra squeal with fear.

That ship now came up on the right of them, making them the filling in the sandwich. Metal screeched on either side of them.

'Jadrael!' Tranaedan bellowed.

'I'm working on it,' Sheppard replied, immediately letting off the acceleration and letting the two other craft shoot ahead, bumping sides with each other before righting their course. When they slowed to wait, Sheppard forced the acceleration up hard, shooting forward so fast he passed them both. Then, as the others sped up again, he swerved violently, forcing them to veer to avoid hitting him too hard. He knew what lurked out in these lands now, so he'd taken a gamble on the fact they couldn't afford to have their craft disabled so far from the safety of a city, and it seemed he was right.

'We need to lose them,' Ronon rumbled.

'I know, but they've got some power in those ships,' Sheppard replied. 'This is gonna take more than speed to fix.'

He forced the engines hard, and they screamed their distress at the demands he made of them. They picked up speed, but the two other craft managed to keep pace. He wove the ship violently toward each vessel sending them veering, watching their positions on his scanner, forcing them away time and time again until he finally had them circling back and coming at him from either side. Then, he decelerated fast, the two ships so engrossed in their own battles with the Tranaedan craft that for a moment the pilots lost concentration. The man at the controls of the craft approaching from the right obviously realised his mistake and tried to change course, but it was too late. The two transports collided in front of the Tranaedan ship, the larger of the two clipping the rear wing of the other, and both of them spinning off out of control until they smashed to the ground.

They flew on, Ronon leaning forward and clapping Sheppard on the shoulder. 'Nice flying.'

Beside him, the magister loosened his grip on his seat, the colour returning to his blanched knuckles. 'Yes, Jadrael. Very good,' he agreed, swallowing hard. 'We owe you our thanks.'

He looked behind Tranaedan to his wife, who just smirked as if she'd known he would save them all along. She turned away from him, feigning a bored yawn.

Well that was fine; if she'd lost interest in him that was all well and good, so long as she kept her claws out of Ronon.

He promised himself that he'd have a talk with Ronon to warn him just how dangerous that woman was once they were back home and away from their owners.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, punctuated only by snide remarks cast between Tranaedan and his wife. It would have been funny if lives weren't at stake because of their differences. Sheppard half expected trouble when they reached the gates of Traginta Duo a little later, but thankfully that sense of foreboding proved to be false.

Once in the hangar, obviously feeling benevolent after their near miss, the magister told Sheppard to get some rest and clean the craft in the morning again, mumbling something about sleep being good for his recovery. Well, someone apparently really didn't want him dead. It made the magistra's threats a little less worrying at least. So, the two men ambled their way to the servant's staircase, Ronon slowing his pace to accommodate Sheppard's obvious delicate state, and as they journeyed up the stairs to their rooms, Sheppard gave Ronon all the warning he needed about Magistra Tranaedan and her uncanny ability to turn a man's head...and her psychotic husband's idea of retribution.

oooOOOooo

Before sunrise could disturb her slumbers, Sangaela woke Teyla from her deep but nightmarish sleep. She had dreamt of Ronon and John in pain, just out of her reach, never quite being able to get to them, but unable to shut out their screams. It was a relief to open her eyes and realise it hadn't been real, though the crippling headache that throbbed behind her eyes soon ended that relief.

'Teyla, something arrived last night for you. I let you sleep because you were so tired, but I think you might want to see this now.'

Teyla struggled to her feet, feeling pathetic when the old woman had to support her out into the breaking light. There, lying on the ground were several things; dozens of metal canisters, and a thick pair of gloves. She frowned, puzzled. 'Are you certain these things are for me?'

'This note came with them. We cannot read it, but perhaps it explains things.'

The young man who had spoken handed her a folded sheet of paper, and she instantly recognised Rodney's meticulously neat handwriting. Set out in those words was an instruction of how she could help, asking the afflicted she now resided with to communicate with any Atlantis personnel on the planet and guide them toward Traginta Duo and the places Ronon and John were being held captive. Also noted down was an explanation of what the canisters were intended for. Inside those reinforced steel canisters was a highly corrosive acid. She was to pour each canister into an area on the wall large enough for her to crawl through, one after the other allowing a small passage of time between each application. He and Curan Bathraen had calculated based on their assumed thickness of the wall, guessing that it was a similar construction to those around the Centum Civis, that there was more than enough acid to eat right through the stonework without destabilising the overall structure. That way, she would be able to walk to the dark circle surrounding the township, the area affected by the electromagnetic field, cross it a short way, and after asking the afflicted to also communicate her position to the Atlantis rescue teams, she could wait there to be picked up.

'One of my friends requests your help,' she announced to everyone gathered there. 'He wishes you to communicate the position of each member of my team to the rescue teams we hope are searching for us.'

The afflicted all looked at one another, then collectively at Sangaela, who constantly fixed her gaze on Teyla. After a short pause, the woman closed her eyes and concentrated, and Teyla knew she was reaching out with those incredible senses of hers. Was she doing what she'd asked of her?

'The time is not yet right,' the old woman told her on opening her eyes once again, and Teyla had to fight with the urge to scream in frustration. Would the time ever be right for these people to act?

Then she continued. 'But it will be soon. I sense the time for us to help is coming with the rising of the sun. Tomorrow, you and your friends will be free.'

Her heart singing with that news, Teyla folded up the papers, pushing them into her pocket, then pulled on the gloves, picking up a canister and heading across to the exterior wall. 'Then while I wait, I will put the rest of my friend's plan into action. By the morning, you will be free if you wish to be, too.

She unscrewed the lid and trickled the contents in an arched shape across the surface, stepping back to give it time to work. Almost immediately, the liquid and stone reacted against one another, fizzing loudly and bubbling up, liquefied stone dripping to the ground as the afflicted gathered there with her marvelled.

After a few minutes the reaction stopped the fizzing dying down to nothing. Teyla edged forward and gently touched the stone that had been eroded finding even more of it still crumbly. 'I need something to scrape this away. That way, the acid will reach deeper into the stone each time I apply it.' A couple of her audience shuffled away, returning in short order with various cooking implements, including some metal ladles. Teyla thanked them and used one of the large spoons to scrape away at the softened stone until she hit solid rock again. Then she repeated the process a few more times, watching the acid eat through the wall a fraction of an inch at a time.

She stood back and watched the last canister's contents go to work, smiling at Sangaela as she spoke. 'You will no longer be confined by these walls, Sangaela. In the morning, I will walk to freedom, and bring what help I can to ferry you to safety.'

The old woman nodded. 'I will round up five of our fittest to go travel with you and ensure your safety while you wait for rescue.'

That surprised Teyla. She looked around at the others, seeing many apparently keen to volunteer for the quest. 'But you told me there were monsters outside of these walls. What of the dangers your people might face out there? I do not wish any of you to put yourselves in danger for me.'

'And I also told you the time for you to help would come. This is that time, Teyla. And we will do all we can to help you in this. We want you to find your way home.'

Teyla placed her hands on the woman's shoulders and touched her forehead against the old woman's. 'Thank you, Sangaela. Thank all of you. And I promise once I am reunited with my people, I will ensure your plight here is addressed.'

'We know you will, Teyla...you and your friends will all play their part. Particularly the pilot.'

For just a moment, Teyla's excitement gave way to panic once again. In her eagerness to get the plan underway, she had momentarily forgotten John and Ronon's suffering. At least now she was working toward ending that.

Soon, they would be reunited and away from this world, where the city folk could do them no more harm. She just hoped the same could be said for the people of the Forbidden Zones. They truly deserved emancipation...perhaps even more than her team did.

Chapter 26