Perhaps to disguise the fact that everything was not under control within the Tower.

By that light, he began to take painful note of the dam- age the City had taken. Boarded windows, fire-gutted buildings . . . that appeared to be the worst. Fire was not a common problem within Rhomatum. Heat came from the ley. There was no need for open flames. Ever. But the ley had deserted the city. The citizens must have tried to compensate....

Oh, his poor, foolish Rhomatumin, who hadn't, in all their lives, had the need to keep a fire stoked.

He felt a quiver, deep in his gut, and his throat tightened.

"Stop the coach," he said, and when Sironi began to argue: "I said, stop the damned coach"'

{Khye . . .} Deymorin started awake.

Mikhyel slammed the handle on the door, and had it half open before the vehicle rocked to a halt.

Deymorin followed him out. Sironi did. He whirled on them both.

"Follow me," he said to Sironi, "and you'd better be gone from Rhomatum in the morning."

He turned on his heel and headed toward one of those gutted buildings. Sironi began to follow. Mikhyel's hand clenched: echo of Deymorin's hand on Sironi's arm. And Deymorin's voice came, half-heard through the link, advis- ing Sironi just how foolish it would be to challenge what was obviously a rapidly shifting power structure.

Within his mind, Deymorin's deafening shout reassured him Sironi had seen reason, and then Deymorin pulled his mind back. Mikhyel acknowledged the message, and at the same time reached a mental hand to stop Deymorin's re- treat, extending to him that hold that would reassure him as to Mikhyel's well-being.

How long he walked that street, he couldn't say. What thoughts passed through his mind, what notes his subcon- scious took, were equally opaque to him. He only knew that, of all the changes in his life, this devastation of Rho- matum was the most unthinkable.

Eventually, he came aware of Deymorin's hand, warm on his shoulder, of concrete, cold beneath his buttocks, and a pile of charred wood and ashes that had once been home to a dozen families.

"Come back, Khyel. We can't rebuild it tonight."

He let Deymorin pull him to his feet and draw him back to the carriage. This time, he sat beside Deymorin, and under cover of the touch that seemed to make their silent communication so much easier, he began quizzing Dey- morin regarding Outside resources, everything from places to put those displaced by fire and damage, to lumber and nails.

For rebuilding.

If not tonight, then tomorrow.

"And then, we were brought here," Kiyrstin said, bringing the tale of the past months to a close. "Deymorin has been, well, frantic."

"He is concerned, no doubt, about leaving Master Khyel alone with the inmates," Raulind commented in his quiet voice, and Kiyrstin nodded.

"Evidently Mikhyel had already had at least one round with them. Deymorin has avoided specifics, for his own sake, I believe, as well as deference to Mikhyel's privacy."

"But you can supply the unsaid words." Statement, not a question. Raulind had judged herand accuratelyfrom the handful of details she'd given regarding her own past.

Kiyrstin nodded.

"And I can't say as I contest Deymorin's concern. The longer he's there alone, the more chance there is that some- thing irreparable will happen to him."

"Master Khyel can take care of himself, m'lady Kiyrstin,"

Raulind said. "He is quite amazingly strong."

"Certainly his mind is. If they can be talked to reason, he will."

"And his body. Don't be misled by what you see, m'lady.

He has as least twice now, by what you said, cheated death."

"Twice?" Taking Deymorin at his word, Kiyrstin had told Raulind everything, from her own past, to her meeting with Deymorin, to the Boreton Firestorm and the brothers'

strange new abilities.

Raulind rose to his feet and paced the room slowly, con- templatively. Finally, he turned to her. His thin face was drawn, the skin around his eyes puckered.

"By what you've said, my master has spoken quite freely with you these past weeks."

Kiyrstin nodded, for all it wasn't a question.

"I can believe that. You have that about you that draws a man toward trust, m'lady."

"Thank you, Raulind. I think I know when to keep a secret, if that's what you mean."

"I'm not certain I meant it as a compliment, m'lady."

An easy smile came to her. "Honest man."

"Yes, m'lady."

"You're saying that I've a talent that might be abused."

"And my master is in much need, at times, of understanding."

"Of being understood, you mean."

"That as well. But he needs, at times, to talk in order to understand the world as others see it. He hasn't a good . . .

template upon which to build his internal sanctuary."

"And you have provided that template over the years."

"As best I could."

"And you fear my influence."

"Fear. No, not at all. My master is his own man. He reveals his secrets knowing the dangers, and having bal- anced those dangers against the benefits. But in choosing my personal path, in choosing those whom I will trust, I must understand his reasoning and balance that against my own judgment."

Kiyrstin shook her head. "I begin to see where Mikhyel comes from."

"I take that as a compliment, m'lady."

"It was intended as such. How did you come to be with him?"

"He hasn't told you?"

"He said you were one of the Brothers who tended him at Barsitum, after his father died. He said he never under- stood why you left the Order to accompany him to Rhoma- tum. He said he didn't know how he would survive without you."

"He would, I have no doubt. I am nonetheless pleased to know my importance to him." A pause, then: "When I first met Master Khyel, he was hanging to life by sheer will alone."

"From the injuries his father inflicted?"

"Injuries. I suppose that's what one must call them."

Raulind nodded. "Has Master Khyel told you about Mheric?"

Mheric: as Mikhyel never referred to Mheric as his fa- ther, neither did Raulind. She wondered who had learned the trick from whom.

"Honestly, Raulind? Only the barest bones of the situa- tion. I know Mheric was not much of a father. I knew he took his frustration with life out on his son. I suspect a fair amount more, but I can't say that Mikhyel revealed it to me. At least, not intentionally."

A slight smile broke the solemnity of his thin face. "I understand. And I know now why he trusted you. On his thirteenth birthday, he refused to go riding with his father and the crowd of men his father had gathered to witness his second son's . . . emerging manhood. There was one man in particular, whose horse Mikhyel was ordered to share."

"Share?"

"Mikhyel was to ride ahead of him. In the same saddle.

It wasn't the first time."

"Sweet Maurii," Kiyrstin whispered.

"I see you understand my young master's dilemma. He refused. Mheric tried to force him, and lost control more thoroughly than usual. He left my mangled master in a closet while he went out and rode with his friends. Mheric did not come back from that ride. By the time they found my young master, he was very nearly dead. He should not have survived the drive to Barsitum. But he did survive, and in the course of the next few months the pools worked the greatest miracle I'd ever seen."

"The pool, and his own will to live," Kiyrstin said, and Raulind nodded.

"The two work together. What you tell me about this newest ability only confirms that which I suspected from the first time I held his head above the leythium. There are those for whom the Barsitumin pools will perform their magic, and those for whom they will not. when Mikhyel floated in them, they . . . came alive. I don't know how else to describe it."

"Don't try," Kiyrstin said. "I'll take your word for it."

Raulind nodded. "He told me things in those months, sometimes out of delirium, sometimes just because he needed to talk to someone. After he recovered, I could not stay in Barsitum. In his desperate innocence, he had granted me keys to his soul that no human being should hold for another. But having those keys, I could not, in good conscience, leave him to face that to which I knew he would return."

"But Mheric was dead."

"Mheric was. Anheliaa was still very much alive." Rau- lind paused, seeming to listen. A smile stretched his face.

"They're here."

~ d Q The door of Rhomandi House, a massive structure of beveled glass surrounding the web within circles of the Rhomandi crest, swung open. Even to Mikhyel's light-sensi- tive eyes, the foyer seemed dim: conservation within the Tower itself. He hadn't realized that was possible.

Deymorin went in first, and Deymorin's presence van- ished. His mind reveled in that giddy freedom for a mo- mentbefore his own foot crossed the threshold, and Deymorin's thoughts, and Nikki's, sent him reeling back out.

"Khyel?"

He gathered himself together, and made a second at- tempt on the doorway, prepared, this time, for the onslaught.

"Whew," Deymorin said, and within Mikhyel's mind, a ragged stone wall appeared. Deymorin's attempt, he finally realized, to set a barrier between them.

"Thanks," he murmured.

"Mikhyel! Thank the rings you're all right!" Nikki came bounding down the stairs. He grasped the hand Mikhyel extended and pulled him into a quick embrace, radiating relief, guilt, dismay, horror, and a myriad of other emo- tions, all of it roiling in the images of what Nikki thought had been happening to him in the prison.

"Rings," Mikhyel muttered, and pushed Nikki away. The mental assault continued. He struck out, blindly, and with a mental shout: {It's all right. Nothing happened. Calm down.} When his vision cleared, Nikki was standing well out of arm's reach, one hand raised to his mouth, exuding pain now and anger. Betrayal.

Mikhyel felt that throb in his own lip, and knew he'd struck Nikki in his attempts to stop that stream of impres- sions. And damn it, he had succeeded in that goal, and his little brother could just keep his sore lip!

But for all his rational mind tried to stop that flow of sensation from Nikki to himself, it couldn't prevail against habits of a lifetime. In the end, Mikhyel accepted that minor pain, and simultaneously sent reassurance to Nikki, along with explanations.

Nikki's hand dropped, the anger eased, and Mikhyel's lip hurt.

His awareness of his brothers increased with each passing moment. Proximity to the node, he supposed. The com- monest folk knew that the closer you came to a node the greater the effects of the ley.

The very air within the Tower seemed different from what he remembered. Alive, somehow. The reflective gleam of leylight off metal or polished wood sparked with hints of color, and Mikhyel wondered whether that effect was visible to everyone and he'd simply never noticed, or just another manifestation of whatever metamorphosis had occurred within himself and his brothers.

Or perhaps it was just his own exhaustion acting on eyes too accustomed to the dark.

"Where's Lidye?" he asked Nikki.

"In the Tower," Nikki answered. "She asked if we would wait for her in the salon. She hopes to make amends, Khyel."

"She couldn't wait until morning?" Deymorin asked.

"In the morning, I'll have a clear head, Deymorin," Mi- khyel answered for Nikki. "Much better to make explana- tions to the sleep-deprived."

"It's not like that, Mikhyel," Nikki protested. "She's not."

"I'll take your word for it."

Nevertheless, he accompanied his brothers to the Blue Salon, where he found himself ensconced in a wing chair, with a glass of red wine close at hand, while Deymorin left to get Kiyrstin, and Nikki went to the Tower to get Lidye.

He wet his lips with the wine, set it down again, finding the taste not at all to his liking tonight. As the opulence surrounding him was not. Opulence he'd grown up with.

Opulence that was, somehow, excessive. Opulence that could disappear in an instant as easily as that cross-ley apartment.

And if it did, Mikhyel dunMheric and all his dependents could simply move somewhere else. Where had those indi- viduals found refuge? Or had they all died in the inferno that gutted their home?

He closed his eyes, vaguely aware of his brothers' direc- tion, as he was vaguely conscious of their minds. Deymorin had gone to Mikhyel's private suite, where Kiyrstin had been waiting with Raulind. Likely trading secrets. Not that it mattered. Within the next weeks, his whole life would probably appear in The Gazette. Once secrets began to emerge, nothing would stop them. Wasn't that what Anhel- iaa had always stressed to him?

Still, he'd do his best to beat the odds. His life, his past, was his own. Not Deymorin's, not Raulind's, certainly not the average Rhomatumin citizen's.

As his brothers faded, a different pressure built in his mind. A darkness deeper than the Crypt after turndown oozed behind his eyelids. Exhaustion, he thought, coercing sleep on him, and he forced his eyes open, then wondered if it was exhaustion that made the room's shadows seep with that same black malignancy.

He rose to his feet and began to pace, striving to stay awake. There were no papers in the room. No magazines.

Plates of food. Wine. But nothing to occupy his mind, noth- ing to catch him up on the events of the past weeks.