He pulled off his half-buttoned shirt and tossed it at Jer- rik, who added it to the pile.

"Well?" Jerrik asked, expectantly.

"Is the bath hot?" he asked, and Jerrik eyed him as if he'd gone mad. Of course it was hot. He was in the Tower now, not at Armayel. The baths in the Tower were always hot, always circulating. As long as the web was up, and rings, when hadn't it been?

Four weeks ago, a part of him answered.

He headed for the bathing room.

"Nikki"

"I want a bath. I can't think when I smell like a trap- per's outhouse."

He grabbed Jerrik's stained sleeve as he passed. Jerrik followed, still protesting, and Jerrik slapped Nikki's hand away when, in wordless suggestion, he jerked Jerrik's shirt free of its belt.

Nikki shrugged and made a flying dive into the pool.

When he surfaced, Jerrik gave an impatient hiss, pulled the door closed and locked it. Leaving his clothes neatly on the wall hooks, he slid into the swirling water.

"Nikki, I"

Nikki dove for Jerrik's heels and pulled him under, end- ing the protest.

Jerrik kicked free and shoved upward. Nikki followed and ducked him again, desperately seeking his old friend, whose help he needed now, more than ever. But despera- tion faded in a reunion full of wild attempts at mutual drowning. Too large for simple soaking, too small for a proper swim, the pool was sufficiently deep and wide to momentarily drown all questions.

It was all too easy for Nikki to forget, while dodging a faceful of water here, slipping a body tackle there, that his brothers weren't likewise buoyantly occupied, but sitting in a place he'd only heard of yesterday morning, a place whose scent he sought, even now, to eliminate from his nostrils.

Easy, except after the first excited tackle, his healing shoulder began to ache. Easy, except that in the back of one's mind, one remembered the guards and made the re- union abnormally silent.

On that second, disturbing realization, Nikki took a wa- tery blast full in the face. He caught Jerrik's wrist on the rebound, forcing a silent truce.

Panting, they eyed each other across water rippling silver in-the leylight, a light he hadn't experienced for weeks. A light that was foreign-feeling, in a way it never had been on other returns from the Outside.

But he was clear-headed now as he hadn't been before, and plagued with the thought that someone had wanted to guarantee he slept very late and woke with addled wits. He needed to be certain, above all else, that Jerrik's hand hadn't put that drugged wine beside his bed.

Jerrik was his dearest friend. He'd left Darhaven and moved to Rhomatum four years ago just so he could be with Nikki all the time. They'd shared the same tutors, ogled the same women, dreamed the same dreams. . . .

Jerrik's brow tightened, his wrist turned in Nikki's hold to return the grasp. After a moment's silence, Jerrik tugged insistently, pulling Nikki back to the side of the pool, press- ing him to sit on the underwater ledge where the pressur- ized inflow pummeled his lower back.

Jerrik perched behind him on the tiled rim, and began applying foaming oil, scraper, and sponge to his shoulders in a ritual as old as their friendship.

Nikki sighed and let his head drop forward, pretending for a moment more that it was a year ago, and he and Jerrik were getting ready to go down to the market and compare opinions of bright-eyed and willing young ladies, whose willingness he'd never experienced, never so much as tasted.

"I see your lady wife's little love marks are all healed,"

Jerrik commented. "Planning on renewing them tonight?"

But it wasn't a year ago. He was married, now, tied for- ever to a flaxen-haired witch who ripped his shoulders with her enameled talons when they embraced.

"Rings," he muttered, "I'd rather be a eunuch."

Jerrik's laugh held real compassion, and he was silent after. The sponge slid up and over Nikki's back, then paused as Jerrik's other hand swiped Nikki's hair aside.

The pause grew overlong; the sponge slid free, over Nikki's shoulder, and into the bath, splashing soapy water into his eyes.

"What in the eighteen hells above Rhomatum have you been doing to yourself?"

The half-healed hole in his shoulder. His respite from reality was over.

"My brother used me for target practice," he said sarcas- tically and twitched away from the pool edge to scoop up the sponge bobbing toward the narrow outlet.

"Target practice," Jerrik repeated in a colorless voice.

"Wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility."

Nikki snapped the sponge in his friend's general direc- tion, a retaliation that missed wildly and sent the sponge skidding behind a warming rack.

"Possible," Jerrik repeated, retrieving the miscast missile.

"But somehow, I doubt it."

"What do you think? That I shot myself?"

"Also possible. C'mon, Nik, tell."

"Tell what?"

"Everything! How you got that hole in your shoulder, where Deymorin isyou did find him, didn't you? Why'd you come in in the middle of the night? Why the hell didn't you wake me up? Why are there guards at your door?

Dammit, Nik, I knew there'd be trouble the moment you decided to leave me behind. You never did learn which end of a pistol spits the bullet."

"What? Am I a child that I need you to attend me?"

"Tell me!"

And he decided, all in a moment, that if he couldn't trust Jerri, he might as well give up all hope of helping his broth- ers. Mikhyel had negotiated a single night. The price of the second might be far too high: Deymorin would get himself killed protecting Mikhyel from further "negotiations."

"All right." Nikki threw himself back down, sending water over the edge, and pointed toward his shoulders with a crooked thumb. "All right. Rings, where do I start?"

"Did you find Deymio?"

"Yes, but" That was hardly the beginning.

"Where is he?"

He glared around at Jerrik. "Do you want to know what happened?"

"Of course"

"Then shut up! Deymorin didn't leave. Neither did Mi- khyelat least, I don't think Mikhyel did. They were thrown out. By Anheliaa . . ."

Here in the Tower, in the silver light of the ley, the horror of that moment when he'd first seen Mikhyel lying seared and broken on the ground faded somehow and the full impact of Anheliaa's accomplishments penetrated. He twisted to catch Jerrik's wrist and stared up at him.

"It's amazing, Jerri. We were halfway between here and Darhaven, on the Boreton Turnout, and he just . . . ap- peared out of the sky on a bolt of lightning! Seconds before, he'd been in the Tower, then, boom, there he was, naked as the day he was born! And Deymio went all the way to Persitum Pass!"

Jerrik's eyes widened, suitably astounded.

"It's the ley, Jerri," Nikki said, his enthusiasm growing in proportion to Jerrik's widening eyes. "It can do wonder- ful things. Things we never dreamed'"

"Then it's true," Jerrik whispered, but his voice held nothing of awe, only horror.

"What's true?"

"She can make people disappear, just like they say.

Nikki, are they alive? Where are they? You said Mikhyel fell from the sky. Is he hurt?"

"Of course they're all right," Nikki snapped, embar- rassed. "You think I'd be here if they weren't?"

"Nikki, I don't know why you're here!"

"Mikhyel was hurt. Badly. But the Tamshi healed him, don't you see?"

"Tamshi?" Jerrik drew his legs slowly from the water, and even more slowly, stood up, pulling free of Nikki's light grasp.

"Oh, get back here, I haven't gone mad." Nikki went for Jerrik's ankle instead, gripped it in his excitement at the secrets he was finally able to share with an appreciative audience. "They're real, Jerry, just like we always believed.

She appeared first as a filthy, disgusting rag-hag, and she touched Khyel and his pain disappeared, and then Dancer"

"What dancer?"

"Not what dancer. Dancer, that's Mother's helper. They healed Khyel, Jerri, with an oil that gleamed with every color in the rainbow, even there in the shade of the trees.

He was burnedall over. He was dying, but they saved him."

And now he was in prison, with maybe worse things than death happening to him. Nikki's enthusiasm faded; he re- leased Jerrik's ankle and sank back down.

"Nikki, who shot you?" Jerrik asked, and he answered absently, his mind still with his brothers: "The Mauritumin spies."

"Mauritum. And Tamshirin." Jerrik eased toward the wall rack, took down a thick robe, and slipped it over his shoulders. "Nikki, you wait here. I'm going for help"

Snapping back to the Tower, Nikki leaped free of the water, made it to Jerrik before he reached the door. He spun his friend around, held him by the shoulders, and forced him to look him in the eyes.

"I told you, I'm not crazy! I'm not making up tales. Not this time. Anheliaa's been trying to get rid of Deytnorin.

She's even hired assassins. Mauritumin assassins. Mauritum knows we've no replacement for her in the Tower, so they're making a move on Rhomatum. Deymorin didn't just leave. Last fall, when he refused to accept her bride- choice, Anheliaa got mad at him and sent him away. He landed in a lake in Persitum Pass about a month ago. He landed on Kiyrstin's head, not mine. Mikhyel landed on me."

"Kiyrstin?"

"Garetti's wife."

"Garetti," Jerrik repeated flatly. "Deymorin landed in Persitum on High Priest romMaurii's wife."

"She tried to kill himGaretti, not Deymiothen ran away with Vandoshin romMaurii. He's the Mauritumin spy that shot me. Now Deymorin's in stupid-love with her, and if she weren't married to Garetti, she'd be my sister, which I really don't want her to be, but I'd rather her than lose Deymorin again."

"Nikki, you're making less and less sense."

"It doesn't matter. The important thing is, when I went looking for Deymorin, the rings had shown us he was at Darhaven, so I went there"

"You saw him. At Darhaven. In the Rhomatum rings."

Nikki nodded. "I told you, the ley does things we've never imagined! By the time I got there, Deymorin was on his way here. I ran afoul of romMaurii, and Deymorin talked with Khyel, who told him where I'd gone, so Dey- morin went back Outside to find me. But by that time, romMaurii was making his move on the Tower. He had this machine, you see, that tames lightning, and he was going to bring it into Rhomatum and destroy the rings, don't you see?"

"I damnwell do not. Tame lighting, Nikki? And you claim to be sane? Forgive me, old friend, if I don't take your word for it. I've heard your stories before, and this time, it's not funny."

Jerrik flipped the lock and jerked at the door.

Nikki, terrified that his own past stories had destroyed any credibility he might have had, just when he needed it most, grabbed Jerri's arm and pulled him back, to hold him against the wall.

"But you must believe me, Jerri, because Deymorin and Mikhyel are in the Crypt and we've got to get them out."

The pebble landed in the ring just outside the center of the meticulously constructed straw maze.

"Ha! Got you again, little brother!" Deymorin laughed and shook his head. "Out of practice, fry."

"Call me that one more time," Mikhyel said under his breath, "and the next shot goes down your throat."

Mikhyel edged slowly around the maze, discovering the wild strategies of brazen youth as alien to him now as the flex and release of muscle and bone required to toss the pebble cradled in his palm.

"Which one, childT' Deymorin asked, in a voice that grinned and goaded, but Mikhyel ignored him. He found his angle, crouched, and flipped the pebble flat-side down, then snapped it toward the maze. It struck Deymorin's peb- ble into the fourth ring on the far side, and deflected itself into the center.

He stood up, brushing his hands free of dust, and glanced across the maze at his brother.

"You were saying?"

Deymorin's mouth opened, shut, and he frowned at the maze, moved to Mikhyel's vantage, and grunted. "Luck."

Mikhyel tipped his head. "If you insist. Another?"

Deymorin grunted and began resetting the straws. The game was Dancer in the Maze, a game that had kept the two of them occupied for hours, some twenty years ago.

Deymorin had suggested it as a means to pass the time and to take their minds off whatever was happening in the Tower.

He'd heard nothing more from Nikki after that initial hazed awareness, but that slight touch had been sufficient to assure him Nikki was well and in his own room, and at his ease. A simple reality that did much to ease his own mind, at least for the time being, despite the fact that the strange veil had immediately closed between them, shutting Nikki off again.

True to Ganfrion's word, the inmates had left them aloneother than the occasional heckling comment when they began constructing the maze. Even those had stopped, now, and from the occasional argument over rules that echoed through the Crypt, others had been inspired to try their own hands at the ancient child's game.

"Here." Deymorin grabbed his hand and dropped his eighteen stones into his palm. "You go first this"