"No sane man is, boy," Zelin said, and his voice was cold. He stood up. "Never mind, Sakhi. Let him go."

She released his hair and Thyerri's head fell, nearly to the table, he was that tired. But she didn't seem to notice.

She just left him there, and walked with Zelin toward the back door.

"Sakhi?" he called to her, but she didn't stop. He stum- bled to his feet and followed her. "Please, Sakhi, wait."

She spun about, but Zelin kept walking. "Why? What do you want me to say? It's all right, Thyerri? It won't happen again, Thyerri? Well, it will happen. Again and again and again."

"Not . . . not if I don't ever dance again."

It was as if he twisted a knife in his own gut. It was defeat. But his dance had caused the fight. Had roused passions and anger. If he didn't dance, it wouldn't happen.

And he would die.

"Do you think it was just the dance? Wake up, Thyerri.

You're not in the Tower any longer. There's no way to stop it. Not out here."

She was frightening him. He was tired and sore and he couldn't think straight.

"Sakhi, what did I do?" His voice shamed him, quivering like a child's. He tried to steady it. "Why are you so angry?"

Her shoulders sagged. "I'm not angry. Thy. I'm fright- ened. For you. I had no idea you were so . . . so helpless."

"I'm not." The very idea was revolting. "I'm not a fighter, but"

"Helpless," she repeated firmly. "Vulnerable. I didn't know, Thyerri. I'd never seen you dance before. And . . .

your dance is dangerous, Thyerri."

"I know. I made them crazy. That's why"

"Not to others, Thyerri, to yourself. You're too open.

Everything that is Thyerri is laid out for them to know and to destroy. And they will, Thyerri. They'll try to de- stroy it, because they can't have it. And what they'll do . . .

it's worse than death, Thyerri."

"They? Sakhi, you're confusing me."

She bit her lip, looked away, her face growing red.

"What? Sakhi, tell me!"

Taking his hand, she led him back to the table. "Thyerri, I realize now, you aren't like the rest of us."

"But I am, Sakhi." He slumped back in his chair. Draw- ing his braid forward, he jerked the tie loose and finger- combed the strands free. Long hair was a dancer's pride, its whipping tail as much a part of the radical dance as the dancer's well-trained body. "I know, I never cut it, but I don't really figure I'll ever get another chance at the rings.

It's just . . ."

"A dream? That's the difference. Thy. I don't even dream of dancing the rings any moreexcept for the night- mares. I never want to dance that way again. None of us do. At least, not those who survive. This" She ran a hand through her own cropped hair. "is not castration, Thyerri, but freedom. For me, Rakshi's touch would be a curse, not a blessing." She reached out and freed his hand from his hair to hold it. "What happened last night, Thyerri, that was a bonus. For me, it is truly enough. But it's not the rings. It's not the maze. It's not . . . it's not reaching out to Rakshi and having him hold you in his hand."

He just stared at her, resisting the ache inside.

"Thyerri, it's still there for you. You could no more stop dancingwhether on the rings or down the streetthan you can stop breathing. That does something to certain people, people like that dunKarlon man"

"That? That what, Sakhi?"

"The way you move. The exaltation of life. The challenge you send to some people, just by being. It seems like some people just have to possess that. Or destroy it. I don't know how to explain it. But I've seen it happen. And that's why you must let Zeiin help you. I don't want to lose you."

He chewed his lip, wondering how all this revelation had come about, when all he'd really wanted was to fall asleep.

"I1 didn't say no, Sakhi."

"Does that mean. . . ?"

He shrugged. "I said I wasn't a fighter. I didn't say I wasn't willing to learn."

Her face lit, she squeezed his hand, and ran out the door in search of Zeiin.

He didn't remember her return.

Interlude

A glimmer in the web. A child, frightened. Mother fed it, felt herself drawn along the delicate strand of perception, and realized a moment's disorientation as she recognized a special child. A part longed to extend arms to hold it, to make it not frightened. But she'd done that before, a part of her reminded, and lost the child altogether.

Another glimmer, reaching to her without awareness.

Mother traced that glimmer to its source: the valley, near the progenitor. Very near.

Strange, that she should hear it, with her drastically cur- tailed awareness.

She opened her awareness further, expending more en- ergy than was necessarily wise, in her weakened state. But curiosity had always outweighed wisdom, at least, since she'd discovered curiosity, and a mystery existed only to be solved.

As Mother brushed the glimmer with a mental feather, she recognized the glimmer for the new node, that strange conglomerate that had first appeared in the pattern a human generation ago, and then flared into its majority . . . sometime.

Recently.

A node that tasted, vaguely, of the past.

Not too long agosome three hundred or so seasonal cycles, a part of her supplieda human from beyond the land's edge had invaded Sucks-pond-water's sphere of awareness and had taken control of Sucks-pond-water's source. Mother had never imagined such a thing was possi- ble, though she'd subsequently learned of other sources similarly human-confined, blasphemous as the notion was.

Initially, she'd been amused: the old miser chained, his growth contained, halted. And in the following years, as Mother's siblings' sources were similarly confined. Mother grew more than amused. Mother grew ecstatic, deliriously, orgasmically fulfilled as more earthly essence than she'd imagined could exist in all the world flooded to her source: essence to strengthen her web, for her to grow, for her offspring to grow and bud sources of their own.

Her consciousness had likewise expanded.

Following connections through source after source, Mother had learned the shape of the world web. She'd sensed others like herself, distant kin, but with a paltry sense of self, and even less curiosity for their world. It was a trail that inevitably brought her back to her own world- cave.

And from her humans, she learned what had occurred to Sucks-pond-water, and she'd learned to fear. She'd rapidly deduced it was only a matter of time before the valley humans came to her mountain to contain her source. Cap- ping her node, they called it.

Ugly sounds for an ugly deed.

Just as ugly was the destruction of her humans. The in- vaders brought new ways, ways that made outcasts of her chosen ones, her darling dancers, and drove many of them away, across the mountains and into the inadequate care of her torpid kin.

Mother had put all her energy then into strengthening her node, determined to match Sucks-pond-water's poten- tial. Only then could she break free of her progenitor. Only then could she keep the humans from capping her node.

The ley shimmered, disgust and dismay rippling in uncer- tain hues about her.

She'd failed. Her final buds had been mere suggestions, runners tracing through the mountain's stone, barely begin- ning to crystallize on their far ends when the creature that controlled the progenitor in the valley had come to Moth- er's mountain. Together with its ringmaster horde, those humans who controlled Mother's vacuous siblings, the crea- ture had forced Mother to capitulate, had forced the energ- ies flowing through her into directions of its choosing.

Temporarily.

Had reduced Mother's world awareness to the narrow confines of the immediate web, blinding her to the universe.

Temporarily.

Put a human fool in charge of her.

Temporarily.

For Mother had learned to plan. Mother had set a pat- tern in motion twenty human years ago that would see fruition.

Someday.

Mother had time. Humans thought in terms of seasonal cycles. Mother in terms of worldly cycles, and twenty years was nothing, less than nothing.

Except where it concerned those humans Mother had taken to her bosom. Those children Mother had nourished for their own sakes and her own purposes. For them, for their lives and the love she bore them. Mother might find herself moved to act, even past exhaustion's lethargy.

Exhaustion. That was the most boring aspect of her cur- rent situation.

For one accustomed to walking the surface, for one ac- customed to basking in the adulation of her humans, it was a lonely time. All of Mother's children had deserted her, following their paths to wherever fate and the ley had cho- sen, forgetting their Mother, uncaring that she grew thin, that her glow faded.

She had given all she had to protect her humans, to set them on the path of enlightened understanding of the cos- mos, and now she must rest, rejuvenate in the radiant pools beneath her mountain peak, Without one single chicken to ease the gurgle in her belly.

It had been three days since he'd been pulled from the Crypt and brought in secrecy to Rhomandi House. Three days, and he'd already been subpoenaed, resubpoenaed, and served with a contempt fine for failure to appear before the Rhomatum Council Conduct Committee.

Another, similar procedure was in progress for the syndicate.

Mikhyel set the contempt papers back on the tray, and reached for the glass of chilled fruit juice.

"Why wasn't I told?"

Another stroke of the brush through his hair, and Rau- lind answered: "You were sleeping."

Difficult to argue with facts. Toast. And butter. Then: "Where are my brothers?"

He'd long since grown accustomed to the fact that Rau- lind always seemed to know such things.

"Master Nikaenor has gone to the stables, sir. Master Deymorin has taken the lady Kiyrstin to the market. It appears she requires, ah, things to prepare for her part in today's inquiry."

"Her part?"

"It appears that she has been summoned to appear as well."

The image of Kiyrstine romGaretti standing before the council in his breeches and his shirt, with her red hair flying wildly about her head flashed through his mind, and sud- denly breakfast lost all appeal. Mikhyel pushed the tray aside and sat upright in the grooming chair, pulling his hair free of Raulind's fingers.

"Sir!" Raulind admonished.

"I'm sorry." He set a contrite hand to his valet's shoulder as he passed, a concession to an old friend's feelings that nearly gave Raulind a far more onerous task than re- working his braid.

When his stomach had ceased turning itself inside out, Raulind was beside him with a cool cloth and supporting hands. And when he was back on the grooming couch, with that cool cloth on his forehead, and a heated bathsheet draped over the rest of him, Raulind disappeared. Off to his own quarters, Mikhyel supposed, to brew the stomach- settling concoction the secret of which only Raulind knew.

He had explained everything to Raulind, in those rare few hours that he'd surfaced from the depths of exhausted sleep. Nikki's wedding, Anheliaa, and the Boreton Firestorm . . . he'd explained everything he could remem- ber. Raulind had accepted his story with typical serenity, up to and including his implausible mental link with his brothers, not because Raulind was a gullible fool, but be- cause Raulind had never, in all their years together, ques- tioned Mikhyel's veracity.

But then, Mikhyel would never consider lying to Raulind.

Raulind's matter-of-fact attitude, coupled with his steam- ing potion of stimulating herbs, helped Mikhyel settle his nerves and his stomach enough, at least, to sample the breakfast Raulind had personally supervised, and to hold it down while Raulind worked his hair loose, combed, and rebraided it.

And all the while, the summons lurked on the table be- side him. The Council would want answers. They'd want to know where he'd been and what had happened to the web, and how soon it would be fully functional.

And he had no answers for them. Neither did Lidye.

According to Deymorin, Lidye had not been able to probe the web, because Anheliaa was still in control.

Or so she'd told Deymorin three days ago.

"Has there been any change?" he asked.

Raulind, who had been able to follow his thoughts for years, even without brotherly links answered, "Your aunt has not yet roused from her coma. Your brother Deymorin was lamenting the fact this morning. He said he wished she would make up her mind and either wake up and tell them what was wrong with the web, or die."

He was almost tempted to ask how Raulind had come to have that particular piece of information, but he held his tongue. The servants' information web was too valuable to tamper with.

But Deymorin was right. Even comatose, Anheliaa would have located the force that was destroying her web. If she were, indeed, comatose.

Despite Deymorin's efforts to protect his sleep, night- mares of that malignancy seeping from the shadows to en- gulf his hand had haunted his subconscious mind. Ever since that moment three days ago, when Deymorin's anger had flared against the encroaching shadow and shriveled it into nothingness, Mikhyel had questioned his own perceptions.

Deymorin had gone on to the Tower that night, after leaving him in Raulind's hands. Deymorin had seen Anheli- aa's comatose body, and had shared that image with Mik- hyel by that means Mikhyel couldn't disbelieve.

And yet . . .

"I'm going to visit the Tower," Mikhyel announced, when the pin that held his hair had been secured.

"Do you think that wise, sir?" Raulind asked, as he was inclined to do when Mikhyel contemplated something stupid.

"At the moment, Raul, my brothers are nothing more than mist in my mind. I think, if it is ever to be safe, now is the time to see her for myself."