Mikhyel relaxed, and his smile was warm, easy. "And the puppy."

"Rings," Deymorin laughed weakly. "And the puppy."

But he wasn't feeling like laughing. He'd thought they were beyond this. Since their return to Rhomatum, Mikhyel had done all they could ask and more. But since Anhehaa's deathmore, since the funeral yesterday, he'd seemed to be coming apart again.

According to Mirym's indignant written account, Mikhyel had made no move to defend himself against Nikki's attack, apparently convinced, from the impressions that even now leaked through to Deymorin, that Nikki's anger was utterly justified, though Mirym claimed otherwise.

The arrogance, the self-confidence and conviction that had bolstered Mikhyel dunMheric's actions for years had been shattered at the time he most needed it. He required a keeper here, in his own home; how in the name of Darius was he going to survive seventeen potentially hostile node cities on his own in what was now a crisis, not an agenda?

They needed him to remember everything, Zandy, the potentiator, Anheliaa's actions . . . everything that had happened in the recent past. The web was counting on the keen-witted negotiator, the lawyer, the politician, not a feeble-minded "Keep your concerns to yourself, Rhomandi," Mikhyel muttered bitterly. "I'm here. I'll be here when the time comes. I wouldn't have agreed to the tour if I wasn't certain I could do it."

"I know that. Sorry. It seems Nikki's not the only one casting unwarranted thoughts about."

"Thoughts? Was that all? I could have sworn . . ." Mi- khyel rubbed a shaking hand across his forehead. "It's get- ting worse, Deymio. Sometimes, I can hear you more clearly than when you speak. Sometimes, it's as if words only..."

"Confuse the meaning?" Deymorin finished for him. "I know what you mean. I suppose we'll become accustomed to it."

"Or, please the nonexistent gods, the link will wither and fade away entirely."

"Not very likely, considering."

"No? My beard's coming back."

Stated as if the two facts were connected. And perhaps, to Mikhyel, they were joined in some strange way. And if Mikhyel truly ceased to believe in it, might the link vanish?

The possibility startled and disturbed Deymorin. The un- natural communication seemed in some ways the most nat- ural aspect of his existence now. To have it disappear would leave an emptiness inside him nothing could ever possibly fill.

Of course, he didn't have to contend with the ramifica- tions that unquestionably plagued Mikhyel.

"Do you really wish for that?" he asked finally, simulta- neously reaching for that internal reassurance, but he couldn't claim surprise when Mikhyel refused to answer in either form.

However, since the ability to change history did not lie within his newly-discovered talents, he took Mikhyel's other hand in his own, deliberately seeking Nikki's aching jaw, deliberately absorbing every bruise Nikki had given Mikhyel, blindly attempting what Mikhyel seemed to achieve without conscious thought.

His reward was a bodyful of annoying achesand a brother who gave a deep sigh and relaxed, possibly for the first time since they'd brought him here that morning. And up Deymorin's arm, along with that stream of physical sen- sation, came a hint of gratitude: acknowledgment (via that very means Mikhyel wished eliminated) of Deymorin's good intentions.

(No sense wasting a useful tool,} came Mikhyel's wry answer, before his wearied mind faded into silence.

Chapter Five.

{Hello, Mikhyel.} Anheliaa. Again.

"Go away." Mikhyel moaned and rolled over, ignoring the purple glow illuminating the armchair in the corner of his room.

{Oh, stop it. Rings, such a baby. Whimper, whimper, whimper. I never saw so many tears.} "Liar," he whispered, and discovered his voice hoarse and ragged. "You never made me cry. Never!"

A purple chuckle. {True enough. So, boy, when are you going to come see me?} "Never. You're a figment of my imagination. An ugly, noxious irritation of repulsive memories. Go away!"

{A figment?} Prick of sharp nails across his neck. {Are you so certain of that?} He refused to listen, refused to react as those enameled daggers traced his cheek.

{Rings, the damned brush is back.} A sharp tiny pain.

And another. {Pluck it out, boy. Get rid of it!) He squeezed his eyes shut, ignored the momentary sparks of pain, knowing imagination for an immensely pow- erful disseminator of lies, fully capable of supplying both voice and sensation. And for a moment, as the prickling pain ended abruptly, he believed he'd won.

But those sharp nails returned, trickled over his shoul- ders and down his chest, insinuating themselves into his nightshirt, raking patternsringsthat dripped, warm and damp, along his ribs.

He cursed at the memory, and wrapped his arms around a pillow, pressing it to his chest. But the sensation pursued him, as surely as if the pillow weren't there. And a massive weight depressed the mattress behind him, rolling him backward into a waiting, smothering embrace.

His mind screamed denial: memory held nothing of this.

Anheliaa had never invaded his bed, couldn't, were she still alive, have walked even that short distance between the armchair and his bed without help.

{Perhaps, child, that inability was all that prevented me.

Who knows?) {Go away!} he shouted within his head. {Go back to the sewers where you belong!} {Unkind, sweet Mikhyel. Besides} A smell of indigna- tion, a color of pique. {Besides, he doesn't want me either.

He wants you. For which, one can hardly blame him, can one, sweet, tender, tasty Mikhyel?} He? Who did she mean: he?

{You were my downfall, pretty Mikhyel. You and your brothers. I knew you were different. I did my best to keep you apart. But you're the one the ley wants, not the others.

Did you know that?) {Goaway!} Mikhyel buried his head in the pillow.

{Perhaps sending you through . . .} The voice in his head took on a taste of speculation. And all the while, the nails traced bleeding patterns . . . {Perhaps that intimate contact with the ley triggered some latent ability. You have the power, child. You lack the drive. You could be the greatest of all time. . . with my help. Let me in, child. Pretty Mikhyel.

Sweet, sweet, Mikhyel . . .} Mikhyel forced his eyes open to a faint purple glow ema- nating from his chest, forced himself to admit this was not just an overactive imagination. He pressed his elbow deep into the mattress, struggling to turn over.

Laughter, shrill and mocking filled his head; fingernails held him steady by the simple expedient of digging straight into his skin.

"Damn you!" he shouted aloud and struck backward, encountering nothing but purple mist.

And there was banging at his door. And voices, shouting.

He screamed back and fought the all-too-substantial hold.

The door burst open.

The mass behind him vanished.

He tumbled backward, slipping half out of bed, the blan- kets tangling about his legs. He was hanging headfirst when steel-banded fingers clasped his shoulders and hauled him upright.

8 8 d Mikhyel was covered in sweat and streaked with blood, but from the volume of his curses, and the strength with which he sought to free himself, he wasn't seriously injured.

In fact, Deymorin, with his head still ringing from the power (reeking of Mikhyel's anger and Mikhyel's denial) that had flooded his sleeping mind, found himself struggling just to contain his markedly smaller brother's flailing arms.

To avoid servant-generated gossip, he ordered every- one save Raulind from the room. Once they were alone, Deymorin lifted Mikhyel bodily into the air, while Raulind worked his thrashing legs free of the blankets. When words and mind proved equally unable to penetrate whatever madness surrounded Mikhyel, they simply man-handled him into the bathing room, and flung him into the pool, tattered, bloodstained nightshirt and all.

He burst free in a spray of water, striking blows at invisi- ble opponents, sputtering curses that rose into a single, furi- ous scream of denial. The words were incoherent, but his mind writhed in black hatred, emotions that nearly blinded Deymorin in their intensity.

Finally, Mikhyel's energy faded, his arms stilled and he sank into the water, limp as a child's rag doll. The current of the cycling water drew his hair in a black stream toward the outlet, seemingly determined to pull Mikhyel's entire body with it.

Deymorin was about to go in after him when the cords in Mikhyel's neck strained and dragged his head clear of the water. "Get out" he shouted, and with an angry sweep of his arm that staggered him, sent a spray of water over the bath's tile floor.

Deymorin stepped back, out of range, but no farther, and between one heartbeat and the next, the madness faded from Mikhyel's eyes. His body drooped, as if that sustaining anger had flowed out the drain, and he swayed to the side of the pool, catching himself on the tiled edge, and buried his face in his crossed arms, still cursing softly.

Scratches marked the bony arms cradling Mikhyel's dark head. Deep gouges that matched bloody marks on Mikhy- el's chest and throat.

Fresh wounds.

And a man had to wonder, whose future had been en- trusted to those bony arms, whether those wounds were self-inflicted, and if not, then who had put them there, and to where he, or she, or it, had disappeared.

"I'm leaving, Deymio," came a low, bitter murmur.

"Of course you are. Next month"

"Not soon enough. Tomorrow . . . the day after . . . as fast as I can make the arrangements."

"Why the sudden hurry?"

"You're driving me insane."

"I'm driving you insane? What have * done?"

"You. Nikki . . . Anheliaa. What's the difference?"

"More dreams, brother?" Deymorin asked, refusing to take offense.

Silence, then: "Leave us, Raulind." It was a cold order from the midst of Mikhyel's arms. Raulind hesitated, and, again from that arm pillow, softly, "Please."

With a look that reluctantly entrusted Mikhyel to Dey- morin's care, Raulind left. At the sound of the outer bed- room door closing, Mikhyel's eyes gleamed up at him through a veil of dripping black hair. "She is dead, Dey- morin. Tell me that much is true."

He said nothing.

"Tell me!"

Deymorin squatted on the edge beside Mikhyel. "Per- haps there's dead and - . . dead. This is Anheliaa we're speaking of."

Mikhyel sighed, heaved upward, and raised his hands to dig his palms into his eyes. He was shaking. Above the water line his flesh pebbled with chill or shock or both.

Deymorin rose to fetch a bathsheet from the cupboard, biinked his eyes against the warm, dry air that blasted him from the cabinet, and returned to stand at the top of the steps, cradling the towel against his chest to retain its heat.

"Come, brother. Out with you."

Mikhyel stepped from the pool, his tattered, soaked nightshirt trailing unnoticed off his shoulders, his grip on the handrail white-knuckled and imperative. Pride kept his chin high, though he avoided Deymorin's eyes, but nothing could conceal the mortification at his own behavior that echoed between them as Deymorin pulled the shirt from him and wrapped the towel around his shoulders.

Mikhyel stumbled twice on the way to the grooming couch. Rings knew he had reason enough.

Sounds from the main bedroom, a flip of sheeting, a scuff of slippered foot on carpeting, and a marked lack of gossip- ing female voices indicated Raulind had taken it upon him- self to repair the damage to Mikhyel's bed, this Second night running. Deymorin left Mikhyel's side to shut the connecting door. When he turned, Mikhyel was scrubbing at his arms with the towel as if he could rub the bloody scratches into nonexistence.

"Easy on, brother," Deymorin cautioned, and paused at the grooming table for the salve every man kept at hand to seal and protect razor cuts.

Mikhyel's head fell back onto the padded headrest. He seemed oblivious to the blood seeping from his nose.

Deymorin rolled a small towel and tucked it under Mikhy- el's neck, ran cold water over a second cloth and settled it gently across Mikhyel's high-bridged nose.

"Hold," he ordered, and placed Mikhyel's near hand over the cloth.

In the mirror, Mikhyel's image, eyes at half-mast above the white cloth, stared into the shadowed corners of the bath. Inside, however, he seethed. Like a tiny shock every time Deymorin's fingers brushed so much as a strand of Mikhyel's hair, there came angerbitterness against an all too celibate life, a life constructed around denial of life's most basic instincts.

And coloring it all, an intense hatred of Anheliaa.

"She was back, wasn't she?" Deymorin asked, as he spread Mikhyel's hair to hang in the warm outflow of a heating register.

Mikhyel's cold stare didn't waver.

Deymorin scooped a two-fingered glob of ointment from the jar, captured Mikhyel's arm and began applying it to the ragged scrapes, working his way up over one shoulder to the deeper wounds on Mikhyel's chest.

Mikhyel hissed; possibly it was the sting of the ointment on the deepest gouge. "Nightmare," he stated flatly, and his eyes closed.

"Did this to yourself, did you?"

Mikhyel shuddered. "I must have."

"With what?" Deymorin reached for his hand, held the close-trimmed nails to a close inspection.

"No one else here."

"Now."

"See someone leave?"

"Door's not the only way out."

Mikhyel's eyes slitted open, sought his in the mirror.

"What do you know that you aren't telling me, Deymio?"

Resentment, distrustthey'd had enough of that in this family.

"Remember the day you popped out of the sky and landed on Nikki's head?" he asked.

"Not when I can avoid it."