But he didn't understand it.

Sometimes he wondered if he ever would.

Their path rose slowly but steadily from the stables toward the prison, a pathway dry and sweet-smelling. Mod- ern engineers, marveling at the drainage and ventilation of the Old City, had searched in vain for the plans, refusing to believe happenstance and luck had created it.

The earliest settlements had been tents set up in the cav- erns to the northeast of the node, their location chosen more for the natural benefits above ground than proximity to the node itself. From here, the tunnels had once stretched clear to the heart of what had become Tower Hill and far into the Khoramali foothills, and the gardens and sheep pastures that had, indeed, kept generations alive.

Over the years, as surface life became increasingly re- mote, those underground tents had become houses, and ultimately apartments and even businesses, built farther and farther away from the community caves, as refugees continued to pour out of the Mauritum Web.

Tunnels had grown between all the areas into a huge maze of which only the segment that lay beneath the Khor- atum expansion had been extensively explored.

Officially. He'd never asked how far Nikki had gotten on his solo expeditions.

They passed through one guarded doorway, and past a door that appeared to be a lift platform.

Another guarded doorway, and then two lamps flickering ahead indicated the path they followed branched. One angled up, the other down.

One, Mikhyel knew from those maps, would lead to the prison offices, and those wards for minor offenses Deymorin's Pit, the Womb, which was the female equiva- lent of the Pit, and other, smaller holding areas.

The other, the downward path, led to the Crypt.

As they approached the branch, the guards closed in at last, demanding silence.

And herded them toward the downward slope.

His name was Thyerri. He'd had another name once, as he'd had another life . . . once.

"Boy? Boy! I want your skinny Khoratumin ass over here, and I want it now"

Once, a handful of weeks and a lifetime ago, he'd been a dancer, in every sense of the word. Now. . .

Thyerri balanced the final mug atop three of its compan- ions, swept the double-stacked tray off the counter and over his head, then slid his way past crowded tables and hands determined to impede his progress. One particularly eager set of fingers nearly succeeded in toppling his tray, but he sidestepped smoothly and in two toe-tipped strides made the corner booth, where he distributed mugs and plates with the economy of movement one mastered in the first day on the job, else one didn't have a secondnot in Bharlori's Tavern.

"Well, what have we here?" A fifth uniformed man had joined a booth already overcrowded with large bodies, pad- ded clothing, and steel weapons. "Boy, you said, dunMarn?

How can you tell with these slick-chinned hillers?"

The man called dunMarn laughed. "The prettiest are al- ways men, captain, as you'll discover soon enough. After the first handful of mistakes."

"Everything else looks too damned young to fuck," an- other man grumbled.

"Oh, I don't know . . ." the newest addition to the booth drawled, and his bored gaze traveled the room, like a con- sumer studying the merchandise. His uniform had a leather band emblazoned with an insignia of some sort. Captain, so the other had called him, and new to Khoratum, from their talk.

Not that it mattered to Thyerri. New faces, new accents: one ceased after a time to try and place themassuming one had ever cared in the first place. To Thyerri, they were all foreigners, invaders of Khoratum. Lowlanders. Valley- folk. Rijhili.

And Thyerri hated them, all of them, with the singular bitterness of the dispossessed. In that former life, he'd been nearly oblivious to them. They'd been nothing but names and political concepts, invaders of the mountain, destroyers of the village. Curiosities at best, with their complex politi- cal intrigues.

Most of all, they had been the source of the dance rings.

In this life, that invasion, the associated destruction was all too personal. In this life, a life without the Dance, the faces changed, the accents changed, but the bold hands re- mained the same.

"Ah, sirs," Thyerri said, forcing his voice to the pleasant tone one had to use with customers, "you insult my lady friends." He swayed out of range of the captain, who seemed determined to challenge his companion's judgment regarding Thyerri's anatomy, and pointed with his chin to a voluptuous woman weaving among the tables. "Khani, there, is worth a dozen of my humble self, don't you agree?"

Not to mention she'd be more than willing to take the lot on between one order and the next, for the right price.

Khani was Khorandi, born and reared, and she was accus- tomed to rijhili looks and touches . . . and fond of rijhili coin. As if sensing their eyes on her, Khani tossed her mane of artificially curled hair back over a bare shoulder and winked at Thyerri, before turning back to her customer.

"Your tastes are too flamboyant, boy," the captain drawled. "A man of breeding might choose, instead, a se- cretive air, and charms somewhat less openly offered."

This time the captain had judged accurately: Sakhithe, whose lithe movements his avaricious gaze followed, was indeed a womanas much as any ex-dancer was man or woman.

Like Thyerri, Sakhithe wore the loose trousers and tunic of the hill-folk. But while Thyerri's elbows gained a few more threads toward freedom each night, and his tunic sported blotches of inexplicable tenacity, Sakhithe's gar- ments had delicate embroidery at hem and throat, and seemed utterly impervious to stain.

Spare-fleshed, light-boned and black-haired, Sakhithe was like enough to be Thyerri's sister. Alike enough to make him wonder if the man, whose jaded gaze had shifted back to Thyerri, was deliberately goading him.

The captain missed his mark in one sense: the physical similarity was only that. Thyerri was not, at least to his knowledge, directly related to Sakhithe. But Thyerri owed his presence here in Bharlori's to Sakhithe's timely inter- vention in his life, and he wasn't about to encourage this coarse lowlander's interest in her.

"Exquisite, sir, I agree," he replied, and assumed a for- lorn expression. "However, as her five large brothers would take extreme exception to my suit, I keep my distance."

"And advise others to do likewise, eh, boy?" But the captain's eyes drifted back to Sakhithe, a predatory gaze that sent a warning shiver down Thyerri's spine.

Sakhithe's shorn hair and formless clothing, her very movements, should have cued the man she wasn't for hire.

But this rijhili captain might not recognize the trademarks of an ex-radical dancer of Khoratum. And even if he did recognize the signs, this foreigner might not realize how disinterested a radical learned to be, here in the newest satellite node of Rhomatum.

And not likely to care if he did realize.

With some bitterness, Thyerri noted that dunMarn, who had been so quick to correct the captain's first incorrect assumption regarding hillers did not as eagerly correct this new error.

Another hail, this time from the room's far side.

"Your order, sir?" Thyerri asked, and when the captain seemed not to hear him, "Sir, your order? I've other ta"

A slit-eyed warning sent him an involuntary step back- ward. "Ale, scut, if it's drinkable. And one of those, what- ever it is." Pointing to a plate of merifin tubers and chicken.

"The rest looks like hog slop."

"Boy!"

Armed with empty mugs and another round ordered, Thyerri hurried over to the impatient table, added their order to his memory, and acknowledged a third party's ar- rival before escaping to the kitchen, where Cook was wag- ing war with her temporary help.

He gave Cook the numbers, dodged a flying soup bone, and ducked back out to draw the ales himself. Zeiin, the elderly bartender, was occupied at the counter's far end, scrubbing mugs as fast as his hands would fly.

Business was, according to Bharlori, out of handthough one didn't hear the harried owner complain overmuch. Up- hill, in Greater Khoratum, most of the kitchens were down, their modern, ley-powered heating elements sitting dark and dead ever since the collapse of the Rhomatum Web.

Khoratum Tower being new and sometimes less than re- liable, those buildings had hearths for emergency heating and therefore they had the means to cook their own meals.

It was even possible the highly paid rijhili chefs retained in those valley-style dwellings might even recall what to do with an open fire.

But you couldn't tell that from Bharlori's vantage in Lesser Khoratum. Bharlori's wood fires needed no web to boil water and bake bread. Neither did Lhuiini's Bar, Bharlori's competition here on the outermost fringes of Khoratum. Consequently, for four weeks, ever since the collapse, those occupants of the modern uphill mansions had descended upon the tavern. From dawn to dusk and late into the night, a steady stream of customersrich own- ers, maids, and stableboyshad inundated Bharlori's for everything from a multicourse feast to a bowl of soup.

A stream for which Thyerri, ex-apprentice radical dancer of Khoratum, was exceedingly thankful.

"Oh, Thyerri! Bless the Mother, may I take these?

You're wonderful."

A whirlwind of skirts, Khani, he thought, swept past, tak- ing his mugs with her.

He opened his mouth to protest, but she was gone. He sighed, and jumped up on the counter to lean across after clean mugs. A hand grabbed his shirt tail and pulled him back.

"Guess who's out there?" Mishthi whispered in his ear, and before he could answer: "Rhyys! I'm sure of it this time. Please, Thyerri, is it?"

Mishthi served Rhyys at least twice a week. . . .

Except it never was. Rhyys dunTarec, Ringmaster of Khoratum, would die of starvation before openly acknowl- edging a use for Lesser Khoratum.

Thyerri, feigning the excitement Mishthi craved, strained up on the points of his toes to see the customer (who bore little if any resemblance to the Khoratum Ringmaster) and dropped down again. "Sorry, Mishthi. I don't think so."

"Oh, well." She sighed, picked up her tray and hurried back to her customers.

Rhyys dunTarec.

Thyerri opened the tap on another mug.

The surname, dunTarec, was fabricated, as was the family name Thyerri couldn't at the moment recall. Valley names, valley associations. To hear Rhyys talk, to see his clothing, one would think him as foreign to Khoratum as a foreigner who seriously considered soliciting a Khoratum radical dancer.

Never mind Rhyys had been born in one of the thatch- roofed huts visible from Bharlori's front porch.

Leaving the tap open, Thyerri exchanged mugs without spilling a drop.

Bharlori's Tavern lay in the outermost edges of the Khor- atum umbrella, where even at its best, the power fluctuated.

The wood-and-stone buildings here were old, the last ves- tiges of the flourishing village of Khorandi, displaced fifteen years ago when Anheliaa of Rhomatum announced the plan to add Khoratum at last to her Syndicate of Node Cities.

Even before the capping, rijhili from all over the Rhoma- tum Web had swarmed up the mountain to consume the small village of Khorandi. Not to live there, not to savor the beauty of the surrounding mountains, but to build Khorandi into something foreign and ugly.

Tiny Khorandi had had no say in the matter. The more fortunate, such as Bharlori, had kept their business by vir- tue of their unfavorable location to the Khoratum Node.

Those farther uphill, those residences and businesses solidly within the new power umbrella, had had no defense at all against the rijhili developers.

Those who actually invested in the new node lived else- where, sending lesser family members to handle their inter- ests here. Petty people. Sniping people. People resentful of their exile into the barbarous climate of the Khoramali Mountains. People who cozied up to Rhyys in hopes of escaping the cold winds, giving Rhyys a false legitimacy, a respect he hadn't earned, save for being Anheliaa's choice to master the Khoratum Rings.

Thyerri dived across the counter after more mugs, as those he'd filled again disappeared.

Thyerri didn't careparticularlyabout Khorandi. The village had welcomed the rijhili invaders, seeing in them false hopes of personal prosperity. Thyerri did care about the trees that had died with the capping of Khoratum, and he cared about the rapacious squandering of the ley that was the essence of the earth itself for purposes so foolish as cooking Rhyys dunTarec's stew.

But without the invaders, without the capping, without the rings spinning in the Tower uphill, the dance rings would never have come to the Khoramali. Thyerri had never known whether to bless or to curse Rakshi for that gift.

Rakshi, the hillers' god of chancethe spirit that goaded the true radical dancer to the edge of sanity . . . from the moment Thyerri had seen the dance rings spinning and held his breath as the first dancer flew among them, he'd known the spirit of Rakshi had touched his heart. He'd dreamed of those spinning silver rings flashing in the sunlight, felt the brush of the ring-swept air against his cheek, the tug of his hair as a ring flew past.

Rakshi's call, and only that, he knew now, had brought him out of his beloved mountains and into the foreigner's new city. And because of that call, he was alone now, con- demned to a life that was not even a shadow of his for- mer existence.

Fifteen years ago. Thyerri had been seven . . . or perhaps six, when the first invaders came to the mountain village.

It was possible he'd been born in Khorandi; he didn't re- member. It was possible he'd had a human mother. He didn't remember that either.

He'd had a grandmother in the earliest memories of that former life. And after that . . . after that, Thyerri had lived in the hills. That was all he remembered; that was all he allowed himself to remember.

"Boy!"

A glancing blow to the side of his head brought Thyerri to a sense of ale slopping over his hand and growing a puddle on the floor. Horrified, he shut the tap.

"Out of your supper, hill-boy." Bhariori filled the last mug and shoved him toward the cramped and smoky room.

"We've customers crowding the door, dreamer. Ale. Food.

Silver and out the door. You know the rules."

Music caressed his ears as he hoisted the tray overhead.

and pushed through the swinging half-door. Pipes and lute, those were a given, evenings at Bharlori's, but Kharmier and Trahdio had brought friends tonight. A drummer, whose beat a dancer's feet matched without benefit of thought, a guitarist and flautist. It was a mix these valley- born invaders likely found odd, but a mix this "hill-boy"

relished with every breath he drew.

Hill-boy. The hill-folk had a different name for them- selves; as they had another, less flattering term, for the invaders; and a worse one still for such as Bharlori and Rhyys, who were hill-folk before they styled themselves and their lives after the valley-men.

But Thyerri had learned words couldn't hurt, had learned that not all invaders were rijhili, and that Bharlori was not Rhyys. Bharlori had given him this job and a safe, warm place to sleep, and good food and honest pay for honest work.

Which, when all was said and done, was a better bargain than any Rhyys had ever offered.

Sparingate Crypt; the maximum security ward reserved for the most dangerous of criminals. Deymorin halted at the first security gate, outraged; Mikhyel cast him a rueful glance and moved through the doorway.

"You can't be serious!" Deymorin protested both the order and Mikhyel's acceptance.

"We have our orders," said the leader. Sironi, Mikhyel's thoughts had named him. And gorTarim, honor-bonded captain of Tarim's personal bodyguard.

"And we have our gods-be-damned rights! We've not even been charged! What about a trial? What about notifi- cation of our kin? This cursed farce has gone sour. I want a messenger sent to the Tower. Immediately!"

"At this hour?" the Shatumin captain responded. "I'm afraid that's not possible. We have our orders."

As if at a signal, his two guards again heaved him toward the door. Deymorin slammed palms to the iron-reinforced frame and heaved back.

"Where's Oshram? I demand to see Warden Oshram."

Their answer was a third synchronous shove, but he had his leverage now, and their efforts were in vain.

"Whose orders. Captain Sironi?" Mikhyel asked, past Deymorin's set feet and braced elbows.