Comes a time when every mother must release her young to the world. Fledgling birds must fly, salmon must swim to the sea, fawns must run the high meadows, butterflies must burst from their cocoons, tadpoles become frogs, aphids and bees Well . . . Mother wasn't a bug.

Ever.

Comes a time when every mother's energy wanes, when she must retreat to her own private haven to renew her essence, to restore the vitality she expends nurturing her young, helping them mature to that state of adult independence.

And sometimes, she gets just a little too much interfer- ence from her own progenitor. Just when she'd gotten her buds maturing nicelydespite that monstrosity overhead, just when she was beginning to seriously connive her own independence, that creature down in the valley had to go and argue with a misplaced lightning bolt.

Now, thanks to her progenitor's bad taste. Mother was wounded, her tap root to the original Source damaged, and her greedy siblings were stealing all Mother's vitality.

So it was that Mother came to be in her caves deep within the heart of Mount Khoratum, drifting lazily among the ragged-edge veils of crystalline-leythium lace, her toe- webs immersed in the nurturing ooze of liquid ley. Re- laxing. Renewing.

And bored.

So it was that when one of h*- surface-dwelling children thought of her with gratitude and longingand that inde- finably human needMother welcomed the diversion. She located the point of activity, a shimmering mote within the fainter glow of the universal pattern, and answered with an impulse of Motherly interest. She fed the need with reassurance of Mother's cognizance and a promise of Moth- erly aid . . . when she got around to it.

Ridiculous, she thought and yawned widely, drawing the motes of vaporized leythium into her lungs. One tiny little brush with the surface world, and she was exhausted.

Mother hadn't felt this lethargic in aeons. For the last few earthly heartbeats, she'd walked the surface world quite freely, mixing with all the various species, running as a deer one season, a wolf the next.

And with her humans, of course.

Her humans amused her most of all. They fed her with their love, their faith . . . and their chickens. Thanks to her darling children. Mother had grown in strength and power until she had been ready to claim her own independence, to free herself, to burst from her own cocoon.

To leave her obnoxious, over-bearing progenitor to the valley muck and slime he loved so well.

The soothingly-warm*briskly-chill leythium shimmered liquid rainbows in response to Mother's delicate shudder.

Sucks-pond-water had grown Old without ever enjoying Youth.

Mother rolled the concepts about her tongueconcepts she'd learned from her darling humansenjoying the flavor.

There he sat, an ancient source beneath an eroded moun- tain, progenitor to eighteen other sources (of which, Mother reluctantly admitted to herself, she was one), a lump in the valley floor, absorbing, relishing the essence of the humans sitting on his head.

Any humans.

Another shimmering shiver; Mother would melt first. She chose her humans with utmost care.

Never mind the human-built stone and wood now sitting over Mother's head like an ugly, too-heavy crown. Never mind the leythium rings spinning within the tallest of those buildings, directing (or so the unwelcome, unChosen hu- mans liked to believe) Mother's essence. That city, the abomination the unwanted humans called Khoratum, wouldn't be there forever; Mother would see to that.

Eventually.

Somehow.

Mother had been small when her humans first arrived within her sphere of awareness. Young, compared to Sucks- pond-water. Young even compared to her siblings.

And perhaps because she was (at the time) small, per- haps because her surface manifestation was (at the .time) confined to a bubbling spring atop a tiny barren hillock, the humans had climbed the mountain to reach her, ignor- ing the great leythium source in the valley.

The humans' lively thoughts had filled her sphere with energiescolors, tastes, and smellsshe'd never imagined, when it was just the birds and the wolves overhead. And fear.

Fear unlike the fear of prey whose cycle had ended. The humans' clever imaginations created Unnatural, Unreason- ing fears that disrupted the energies within the ley and disturbed Mother's existence, that sent uncontrollable rip- ples through the leythium lace and turned her chambers to unpleasant yellows and violent flashes of red.

And so it was that when the humans cried for fear of the storms that raged in the skies over their heads, Mother came to study the patterns in the leythium above her head, noting how those shifting veils reflected the fury of the surface storm as well as the humans' cries.

She'd played with those patterns in the ley, using her essence to create waves to counteract the human-generated ripples and to send the storm's fury to her periphery. Her humans' fears had eased, and the surface storm pattern modified as well, which had been a curious thing. She'd tried, then, to shift those leythium patterns deliberately, to shunt the fury off toward her siblings, who were too dull and stupid to object.

The subsequent gratitude and love of her humans had proven intoxicating.

That unexpected exhilaration, combined with her already roused curiosity, encouraged her to try other, more subtle tweaks of the storms using her essence. Such efforts were at first enormously tiring, but over time she'd grown in strength and skill until now she could swim the clouds and dance the lightning as deftly as she swam and danced the ley.

Other human requests had proven more difficult. They'd begged her to heal their sick, which was a much more curi- ous thing than sending storms away, because living crea- tures contained internal rhythms: conception, gestation, birth, growth, life, death, sickness, health . . . all things that occurred according to their own schedule, and it seemed quite silly to desire it to be otherwise. And in lives so fleet- ing, Mother had had to wonder what difference a handful of season-cycles could truly make.

Still she'd answered those calls . . . when she heard.

When she wasn't exhausted from dancing with the light- ning, that being, in those early times, far more exciting than anything her humans could offer. She'd learned to brush their wounds with the sweet nourishment of the ley, adding its essence to their own natural healing powers.

Miracles, her humans had called her effortseventu- allyas they eventually called her Mother, and Goddess.

They had very different words for her earliest attempts; there, were some things even Mother needed to learn. But she'd cleaned up after herself. . . .

Mother paused in her reflections long enough to lick her lips.

For some reason her fastidiousness had disturbed her hu- mans more than her mistakes. For a time, they feared her greatly and called her "evil" and "demon" and endeavored to cast "spells" to keep her away.

But still they called for help, and when she eventually inferred the advantageous procedure for healing, they began to call upon her to keep herself away.

Ah, her silly children. Her silly, fickle humans.

A glimmer in the web. Another child was thinking of its Mother. A very young child. Mother touched that receptive mind and nurtured it with the scent of Mother, the taste of joy, the warmth of optimism, before her interest waned and she returned in all senses to the world cave.

How she longed to walk the surface world, to watch her children perform their incomprehensible but amusing antics, to taste the wind, the rain . . . the chickens. To experience the real sweetness, the real crunch of real aphids on real drenal leaves rather than making do with the recre- ated sensations on her tongue.

Which she might also have created, for all she didn't quite remember making her tongue for the first time.

But then, Mother's sense of time had been severely dis- ruptedrecently, she believed, though who could say, considering?

Mother thought, perhaps, there were thoughts she should be thinking, concerns she should be concerning herself with, but Mother was tired. Thinking, concerning, remem- bering, those required more energy than dancing with the lightning.

So Mother floated. Mother drifted. Mother waited for the ley to surge through her once again. Waited for total restoration. Mother could feel the moment coming.

Soon. Very soon.

Unlike the old days.

Mother had been a bit slow back . . . then. She'd redirect a storm, then sink her toes into the ley to rejuvenate until she heard a call, and then she'd surface to heal some poor child with a chicken to spare.

She'd learned later that her moment's rest might have been, in human terms, days, weeks, years, or even human generations. But with practice, and as the leythium web grew, expanding its liquid and crystalline structure in all directions, sending tendrils out to gather the world's es- sence and channel it to her caverns deep in her mountain's belly, she'd visited the surface world with increasing frequency.

She grew quite fond of her humans. For all they were a bit silly, for all their goals were irrational and shortsighted, they were decidedly more amusing than her own slow- thinking offspring percolating within the surrounding ley- thium caverns, and infinitely more attentive than her progenitor.

She'd even brought some of her humans into her world cave, to teach them to dance the ley. The clumsy ones fell between the strands, and into the pools to become one with the ley. Some took fright when they witnessed the fate of the clumsy and ran, only to find their steps mired in liqui- fied leythium, their feet dissolving beneath them.

But one had reveled in the dance, flying with joy among the strands, even laughing at her when she dared to chal- lenge him with a sudden dissolution of the strand between his fingers.

Rakshi. Her first Dancer-child.

Rakshi returned to the surface to beget others who, like Rakshi himself, could dance the ley. And as the human generations turned, a precious few learned to draw on the ley, a precious few who could, like Mother, sink themselves into the leythium pool and draw its essence to them, rather than be consumed by it.

Those, her special children, she cherished beyond measure.

When she remembered them.

Mornings in Bharlori's back room were invariably noisy.

With little to do until mid-morning, it was a time of sharing the gossip gleaned from customers the previous night. Gos- sip similar to that in Rhyys' court, only rather more accu- rately recounted, here in Lower Khoratum, where the only ears to overhear were hiller peasants, whose influence was nil, and so whose opinions didn't matter.

But last night, Bharlori's had created its own fine topic.

And that topic felt terrible.

The young women gathered around Thyerri, arguing about the proper care for him. Some were for propping him upright in a nest of pillows, others insisted that he should be lying flat on the hard floor.

They decided on the pillows, then took turns bathing his brow, and feeding him sips of tea and bits of bread. All the while they exclaimed over his bravery, saying how Sak- hithe had explained everything, and those awful men would never have attacked him if he hadn't stepped in and res- cued her, and how if it had been Biertha (whom no one liked), she'd have only gotten what she deserved, but Sak- hithe never sought attention, so she didn't, and he was a fine fellow to have championed her.

Their chatter made Thyerri's head spin all over again, or perhaps it was the spirits they slipped into the tea. Thyerri's attention wandered; the fresh balm on his cuts stung, the fumes made his eyes tear, and he soon decided all he really wanted was to go back to sleep.

He drew his blankets high under his chin, closed his eyes, and tried to see himself hale and well, his cheek smooth, scarless. The balm grew warm, and the sting went away.

But the other aches were worse this morning, even past the drugged tea, and Thyerri grew frightened because he didn't know what that mind-hazing pain meant, and not knowing, couldn't think the pain better.

He'd never been in a fight, never been seriously injured or illor if he had. Mother had taken care of it. He had nothing against which to judge the sensations flooding his body. Nothing except the self-knowledge gained as a dancer-in-training. So he sought, in the quiet of his own mind, to assess his wounds.

As he considered the possibilities, the might-have-beens, had this kick been a finger's-breadth lower, or that cut a shade deeper, he began to shake. He remembered hands doubled into fists, booted toes, belts that carried knives . . . swords . . .

And he thought of the anger, the hatred . . . the desire to hurt . . . to . . .

He could be dead.

The blankets slipped from his nerveless fingers; a palsy consumed him, dislodging the carefully placed pillows at his back, and he curled on his side, shaking with fear and cold and horror.

After the Collapse of the web and with his chance at the Dance gone forever, he'd flirted with the notion of death frequently. But this was different. This death would have been meaningless, the result of a stranger's momentary, senseless anger that sent him over that brink prematurely.

And he knew thenas light feminine voices exclaimed in concern, and gentle hands soothed him, and warm bodies joined him under his blankets, pressing close, shifting him to take the weight off the sore spots, holding him against the shivers that made his joints hurt more than ever, that he truly was not ready to die.

He unwound his arms, clenched as they were to his mid- dle, and curled them around the inviting warmth before him, the humanity that was still so strange to him. He wasn't certain who it was he embraced, only that his need was not rejected.

Strange sensations, and familiar rippled through him.

Warmth. Security. He'd known that. Sympathy. Perhaps even understanding . . . that was new. Different.

He'd always known he was different. He was a dancer like no other dancer before him. But then, so were all true Rakshi dancers unique.

He'd wagered everything on that belief, and lost everything.

Thyerri had been raised not by human hand, but by the wind and the rain, the meadow grass and the mountains.

There were early memories, images from before grass and the meadows and the wind, but they faded with time, as life became the dance . . . and Mother, That which the hillers worshiped in secret, the leymother herself, had kept him alive when he would have died. And Mother had taught him to dance, had, such as she was able, loved him.

Or so he'd always believed.

Following the Collapse, he'd run through the hills calling for her, begging her to answer. But the hills had remained silent. Cold. He'd have transferred to her caverns deep in the mountain's heart, would have risked life itself in the doing, without the ley-touched oil to protect his fragile human skin, but the mountain was closed to him.

Mother had expressed concern in those final days that he had lost touch with his humanity, and losing his human- ity he had lost, or so he had extrapolated from her musings, his value to her.

He'd defied Mother once. in hopes of finding that hu- manity, had risked her love and her goodwill to become, at last, what he believed she desired.

And she'd rejected him.

He'd known beyond doubt, then, that he was lost.

The dance was gone. Mother was. There were others for Mother. Other children. There always had been.

There would be many still. Others who wouldn't disap- point her.

Aimless, faint with hunger, seduced even then by the dance rings, he'd returned to Khoratum. And there, in the chaos following the collapse, Sakhithe had found him and brought him to Bharlori and bullied the owner into ac- cepting the most inept of raw recruits.

He'd found humanity, found bravery and cowardice, selfishness and selflessness, love and hate . . . but he still didn't know where he fit within that web. For him, life was the Dance. Anything short of the Dance was merely survival.

A hand cradled his head, worked in among the hair still filthy with last night's mud, and pressed his cheek against a full, soft breast. He sighed and nestled there, safe, warm, entwined in a mood that was the antithesis of the anger and hatred that had permeated the alley behind Bharlori's last night.

It was a new sensation, but one to which his bruised and chilled body conformed easily. Naturally. Gratefully. Until the hand on his back began wandering lower.

Thyerri shifted, trying to avoid Mishthi's searching touch, seeking Sakhithe, who knew better. Sore, bruised, muzzy- headed with their potions, he still wanted none of what Mishthi so insistently suggested.

"Sakhi," he whispered, and his voice caught. He didn't know how to tell Mishthi to leave him alone, and her hands were deep into his clothing now.

"Mishthi, behave!" Sakhithe's voice whispered from somewhere above his head. 'You know he's a dancer."

"No, he isn't. Wasn't." But Mishthi's hands retreated, to brush along his chest. "He was a novice. But he's not any more. He failed. And now, he's ready to become a man, aren't you, pretty, brave, wonderful Thyerri?"

"Have pity," he mumbled and grasped Mishthi's wrist.

"I feel as if I've been tossed off a cliff, struck by lightning, and poisoned for good measure. There's nothing left, Mishthi!"

Instantly remorseful, she cooed and petted, apologized and promised, and he relaxed again into his warm, human- scented cocoon.

But it was just a matter of time before Mishthi, or Khani, or one of the others tried again. Only his own disinterest had kept them at bay this long. He would speak with Sak- hithe. Perhaps she could convince them their hopes were in vain. He was twenty-two years old and those feelings Mishthi sought to rouse had never affected him.