The rings, had, after all, matched them.

The book forgotten, he reached to touch her faintly flushed cheek. The color deepened under his stroking thumb. She gave easily to the suggestive pressure of his fingers, swaying toward him.

Their lips brushed, a feathery-light touch that he pressed deeper, drawing her tight as that heat, strange and new and wonderful, flared within him.

8 d d "Heels down, eyes up!" Deymorin shouted from ring- center. "Man, woman, noble or common, your ass follows your"

Thump!

"nose." He cursed softly and walked toward the are- na's far end, grabbing the free-flying reins of the free- flyingand rather startledhorse, tugging the gelding to a halt and pulling him to heel. "Are you all right, Shepherdess?"

Green eyes glared at him from under the shock of red hair, the glue she used to plaster the locks in place these days no proof against the wind and dust of horse. Kiyrstin ignored the hand he stretched down to her, pulled her knees up and sat there, brushing her sleeves and shaking her hair free of arena sand.

Their sessions in the newly reinstated training arenas on the outskirts of Rhomatum had become a daily ritual. In part, to improve Kiyrstin's horsemanship, in part, just to find time to be together.

The lessons had been his idea; he wasn't altogether cer- tain Kiyrstin approved of his choice.

The horse attached to the reins bumped his back, an impatient nose demanding attention, worried he'd done something wrong. He reassured the beast with an absent- minded scratch.

"All right?" Kiyrstin answered at long last. "I'm fine.

Wonderful." She rolled to her knees and, with a fair com- mand of street language, hauled herself to her feet. This time, her glare included the horse. "Evil beast."

"Eyes"

"Up," she completed for him. "Right. Deymorin, I'm never going to learn. Why don't you admit it, and we can go take a nice warm"

"Nonsense. You're doing splendidly. Up you go." And denying her time to protest, he tossed her back into the saddle.

"Rags"

"Just a little line work, Kiyrsti. To loosen you and the horse back up. All right?" Somehow, her assent lacked con- viction, but knowing he was right, he snapped the long lines into the bit and started the gelding moving, just a slow walk, at first.

"Have those investors settled on a date for the trip to Armayel yet?" she asked.

"Try dropping the reins, Kiyrsti."

"What?"

"Trust me," he answered, with a laugh, and: "Not yet.

Sometime before I leave. Want to go along? See the fry?"

"Why Alizant endures that nickname"

He set the horse to a trot.

"Damn you. Rags"

"Canter" he called out. "Arms out to the sides straight, Kiyrsti. Tighten the arms, not the rest. That's my girl." Her back was loosening up. Her shapely rump settling deep and solid into the seat at last. He shook his mind free of that distracting image and called: "Now, shed the stirrups."

"Go to your seventeen hells."

"Eighteen. You're in Rhomatum. Drop 'em, missus."

This time, her curses covered several languages, but she slid her feet free. When silence greeted his command to close her eyes, he was certain he'd be sleeping in the barn.

And then, a soft "Oh, my . . ." reached his ears, and he grinned at no one in particular, thinking perhaps his bed was available again.

Her body relaxed and settled the way the gods had in- tended when they first advised man to top a horse, and Deymorin felt his grin widen. All Nikki's beloved poets couldn't begin to find the words to express the way that felt the first time. Just watching, a man could feel that ac- tion beneath him, the sensual, almost sexual thrill of being part of so much power and grace.

"So, Shepherdess," he began after a handful of rounds, "what do you think"

She swayed, wildly.

"Kiyrstin!" he shouted, and: "Whoa!" to the horse, as he dropped the lines and ran toward it. The creature stopped obediently, then shied away from him, startled. Kiyrstin slid inward bonelessly, but he was there to intercept her limp weight before she hit the ground. And still, they nearly went down, his bad leg choosing (with its normal exquisite sense of timing) to protest the effort.

Grooms appeared to intercept the horse, and cradling Kiyrstin in his arms, Deymorin limped out of the arena as rapidly as his leg would bear. He carried her down the wide corridor between stalls to the tack room and a bench cov- ered with carefully sorted strips of leather: a stableboy's afternoon project. With a silent apology, he swept the bench clear with his booted foot and laid Kiyrstin flat, dis- posing her limbs in what comfort the narrow bench allowed.

She was pale, but her breathing was strong and regular.

Deymorin could see no obvious reason for the sudden col- lapse, no visible injury, but the memory of her first fall plagued his thoughts. For all it had appeared from his van- tage to be a simple bounce off into the sand, even the simplest blow, at the wrong angle, had been known to cause irreparable damage to the strongest man.

"Kiyrstin?" A quick-thinking lad provided him a bucket of water and one of the sponges they used for sluicing down the horses after a good workout. He squeezed the sponge and set it to her brow, wiping a drip from her mouth with his thumb.

"Come, girl, talk to me."

"And say what?" she muttered, and damp sprayed on a gust of escaping breath. "Told you so?" She struggled to sit up, swept dripping hair back from her face, then paused, sniffed her fingers, and jerked her head back. "Sweet Maurii."

"Maurii smells like horse, does he?" Deymorin teased, relieved.

"She," Kiyrstin answered, and wrinkled her nose. "And Maurii doesn't have anything to do with horses. Maurii is a very well-behaved goddess."

"I thought Maurii was a god."

"Only to men." She brushed his anxious hands aside and stood up. "Don't fuss so, Rhomandi. I told you1 want my bath."

"So, this was all a ploy, was it?" he murmured, cupping her face in both hands, examining her eyes for any abnormality.

Her mouth twitched. "Maybe."

He stilled the twitch with his own mouth, her lips opened beneath him and those urges that had flared in the arena returned, in full force.

"Rings, Shepherdess," he whispered, and pressed her back to the wall, striving to control his ridiculously adoles- cent obsessions.

Kiyrstin laughed against his chest, punched his ribs and rocked a hip forward, an abrupt move from which he in- stinctively flinched. She ducked away, laughing. He chased her, making an equally noisy show of losing her, but know- ing exactly where she was headed.

It was a spot in the loft, private amongst the bales of hay and straw, but far from secret, and the lads in the stable knew well the amusement value could never offset the consequences of spying on whoever happened to be using it.

Kiyrstin was waiting there for him, stretched out in loose straw, hands laced behind her neck, legs crossed comfort- ably at the ankles. He stood above her, leaning against stacked bales. She eyed him up and down, and tsked disap- provingly. "Have you always been like this?"

He opened his mouth, closed it again, not knowing how to answer. "INo, as a matter of fact."

She grinned. "Good!"

And reached for him as he dropped to his knees beside her.

d 8 8 Anheliaa's heavy chest rose and fell in rhythm with the Cardinal ring, outermost of the nineteen concentric rings of Rhomatum. Anheliaa was still alive, if what she experi- enced could possibly be termed living. Although perhaps having the world pending, waiting for her fate before mak- ing a move was, indeed, the ultimate experiencefor Anheliaa.

Mikhyel set the stack of letters he'd brought to the Tower with him onto the small writing desk beside Anhel- iaa's bed, and sank into the chair next to her.

He'd taken to answering his mail here in the ring- chamber. Anheliaa's mind had gone completely opaque to him, after that first visit, and he'd discovered that, as long as his brothers were quiet, so to speak, he could escape their thoughts here as well.

And somehow, the sheer macabre nature of the place attracted him. He waited for her to die, as they all did, and yet, he had to admit that he daily hoped to enter the Tower to discover her small, deep-set eyes open and ready to chal- lenge his independent actions.

To return here was to face the dichotomy that was his life, a dichotomy without resolution until this key element was gone forever.

A flash of green and turquoise at his elbow: a toshi lizard, one of several flitting about the ringchamber. He reached for the pot of ushin paste, dipped a finger and held steady while the tiny creature eased down his sleeve and began licking the sweet jelly from his fingertip. Male or female, it was impossible to tell without much closer inspection than this little creature was likely to grant him.

Perhaps it was bothsome toshi were like that.

Three others soon joined their cousin, and two more, smaller, eyed him from a safe distance. The toshi lizards thrived within the Rhomatum ringchamber. They were ac- customed to him, as they weren't to Nikki or Deymorin, and accepted him as a feature of their limited world.

He couldn't recall the first time he'd been brought to the Tower to attend Anheliaa. Even before Mheric's death, Mikhyel (raised to be more biddable than Deymorin) had been trained to massage the aches from Anheliaa's shoul- ders, bathe her brow, and brush her hair.

He supposed a normal person with normal sensibilities would shudder at the memories conjured as he sat beside her, waiting, without shame, for her to die. Memories of a child's hands buried in the fleshy folds of Anheliaa's neck and shoulders. Memories of numb fingers seeking the key pressure points they'd learned to recognize on a well- muscled servant. A servant whose slender young body those childish fingers had still barely spanned.

Mikhyel rubbed his fingers, kneaded joints suddenly ach- ing. He recalled wondering once, as he grew older, whether his abnormally long fingers were the result of stretching his child's hands around his great-aunt's body.

Not that it mattered now. Once she was gone, he'd never have to come to her Tower. Never again would he be roused from his bed in the middle of the night to ease her mind and her body. Never again would he be forced to listen to the bitter complaints when his best efforts failed to relieve her pain, never again suffer her dry lips against his skin when she was pleased.

A hand touched his, as it rested on the arm of his chair.

He jumped, discovered, to his disgust, that he was shaking, inside as well as out. He turned his hand to lace fingers with Mirym, and thanked her silently as they were inclined to communicate, with Brolucci standing watch.

As the days passed, he'd found Mirym a warm, comfort- ing presence. Whatever complex motives and associations might have ruled her actions before the Boreton incident, her actions since had been unwaveringly supportive of the web in general and of himself in particular.

Which was, overall, a good thing, as he'd also grown increasingly aware of her modestly rated Talent. Five days before, a message had arrived from Barsitum begging for more leyflow. A mining accident had flooded the healing node with over a hundred injured. Mirym had cradled An- heliaa's head in her lap, and the rings' steady pattern had shifted, and Barsitum had gotten its increased leyflow.

Lidye had refused to try, had declared any attempt on her part to shift Anheliaa's chosen course would simply cause her unnecessary pain and might erupt in storms such as the one that had chased them into the city.

Difficult to blame Lidye, assuming Anheliaa could affect her the way she claimed, but Mirym had suffered no such fears. Mirym had faced Anheliaa's wrath and won, not through battles of wills, but via some more subtle manipula- tion he had yet to comprehend.

As he'd grown suspicious these past days of Anheliaa's ability to sway his thinking in the past, so had he examined his comfortable acceptance of this young woman. In part, his visits here had been to watch her, to challenge that calm demeanor, to await some slip. But there'd been nothing, only an increased curiosity on his part, a desire to under- stand her better.

He wondered if he ever would.

{Don't hold your breath, raven-hair.} Mirym's character- istic humor colored the thought.

Mikhyel laughed, acknowledgment of his discovery, and raised her hand to his lips. On a sudden impulse, he drew her closer still, cupped his hand behind her neck, leaned forward...

Came a flux in that sense that held his brothers: infinitely subtle and soft, but undeniable. He paused, his lips so close to Mirym's he could feel her breath. He closed his eyes, and in the star-shot darkness there, he saw Lidye's blonde beauty shimmering before him, and just beyond, Kiyrstin's laughing eyes.

"Rings," he breathed aloud, knowing, then, the source of his uncharacteristic impulse. Mirym's silent laughter seeped up his hand. He held her close, hiding her face in his neck while he gained control.

Damn Nikki and damn his unpredictable, youthful urges.

Chapter Nine.

"If you ask me, this is all part of the Mauritumin invasion fantas" The speaker broke off abruptly and glared at Thyerri, who paused in the open doorway of the smallish room, balancing the large platter with both hands.

"Rings, Tobinsi," a second man said. "It's just Bharlori's boy." The second man, a regular patron whose name was Morshani dunSharn, waved imperiously to Thyerri. "Well?

Bring it in, bring it in!"

Thyerri rushed across the room and set down the platter in the perfect center of the long, low table. Acutely aware of the five men's impatience to continue their interrupted conversation, he gathered the empty plates, then darted past the guards and back downstairs to the kitchen, a part- ing command to return with more wine ringing in his ears.

Bharlori's had expanded. The second-floor rooms, cheap by-the-night lets in the early days of Khoratum, had been transformed into private dining halls, each of a different character and price range. Many of the well-to-do from Greater Khoratum, like dunSharn, had become nightly reg- ulars: the new Khoratumin bringing their other-node guests down to Lesser Khoratum for private conferences and deal-making.

Many, like dunSharn, spoke freely regardless of who was present in the room. Others, like Tobinsi, were patently suspicious. Thyerri had enjoyed, during his days as an ap- prentice dancer in Rhyys' court, a lively interest in the po- litical maneuverings of the nodes, and at times like this, he found leaving such a gathering very difficult.

The talk was increasingly of dissatisfaction with Rhoma- tum and Rhomatumin policies. Giephaetum and Orenum had claimed for years that the Syndicate gave special con- sideration to those nodes on the lucrative Kirish'lan trade routes, ignoring the needs of the hard-working, but less populous, timber and mining nodes of the north. Those rumors of separate dealings with the nodes of the Southern Crescent, always a topic of speculation, had taken on ever more ominous tones since the marriage of Nikaenor Rho- mandi to a Shatumin woman of that Southern Crescent.

"Do you mean to imply that Persitum intends to drop from the web, Marighi dePers?"

That same angry voice penetrated the walls as Thyerri approached the room laden with wine. Thyerri paused, just out of sight of the guards, wondering if he should wait to enter, curious himself to hear the answer to that question.

"That decision is up to Ringmaster Paris romPersii."

That voice would belong to Marighi dePers, who was, Thy- erri knew from his title, an official representative of Persi- tum Node.

"*?owPersii?" The first man laughed. "Have they rein- stated the Order already in Persitum?"

"We never stopped believing, Tobinsi. The fact that Da- rius ruled priests out of the Towers in the Rhomatum Web could not end the belief. Three hundred years they've kept it quiet, but the trainingand the faithcontinued within the ranks of the ringmasters."

One of the guards glanced toward Thyerri's shadow, then, and Thyerri walked boldly forward, as if he'd just arrived, and knocked on the doorframe this time to an- nounce his arrival.

"Come!" dunSharn's voice called, and the local man smiled at Thyerri and waved him in.

"And if Anheliaa fights?" dunSharn asked, as Thyerri moved silently about the room, filling depleted glasses. "If she tries to force Persitum to stay in the web?"