"Bro?" Shrill laughter filled the air and his head.

"Hardly. Those damn fool second-rate ringspinners. So set on protecting their little puddles of energy. If they'd helped me, I'd be alive now and Persitum would still be ours.

Fools, I tell you. All of them."

A rant was brewing. In that, this creature, whether real or impersonation, echoed Anhehaa's manner to perfection.

It was a familiar pattern. One, Mikhyel judged, it was time to break.

"Enough of this." He threw back the covers and sat up.

Anheliaa straightened, her eyes widening with interest.

"Yes, nephew? What would you suggest instead?"

"Who are you really? What do you want?"

"Anheliaa, darling, obviously."

"Anhehaa's dead."

"You are redundant, child. The point was made. Reality argues. What now?"

He frowned and sank back on the edge of the bed. "How are you getting in here?"

"Why" She biinked. "I don't know."

"Don't know? Or aren't admitting. You said before 'he'

didn't want you. Who is 'he'? Why should he want you?"

"He didn't. Neither did she! I feel like a damned shuttle- cock. Flipped here. Flipped there. I suppose, darling, I landed here because I could always count on you. And because he1wantwanted you."

She rose with a control and grace she'd never had in life.

And it was Anheliaa, but Anheliaa as he imagined she'd wished to be: strong, lithe, physically imposing, mesmeriz- ing in her confidence.

"I want you, darling. I want to be what you can be. Make you what you were meant to become." She sank down be- side him, embracing him.

He controlled his reflexive flinch. Bend to the one in power, the one with the knowledge you sought. He'd learned that lesson in a hard school. But there was a reason for the insistent pull he'd felt in the hypogeum, a reason for Anheliaa's appearances here.

And he had been chosen to uncover those reasons. If his sanity was the price, his sanity would be forfeit.

He reminded himself of that necessity as nails raked his throat and down past his nightshirt's collar, flicking the but- tons off one by one, those nails severing the threads as effectively as a honed blade.

Breath that smelled of fire-blossom tea puffed into his mouth. His eyelids drooped, shuttering him from her image; his head fell back, too heavy to hold upright.

(Damn you, let him go!} Deymorin's voice in his head along with Deymorin's vi- sion: himself in the arms of a creature that bore superficial resemblance to Anheliaa, past the decaying flesh. The crea- ture raised its face from Mikhyel'shisneck, snarled at himat Deymorinand bent again, to a sickening, noisy nuzzling.

But that repulsive creature couldn't be the source of the smooth, powerful arms supporting him, and that limp, twitching body surely could not belong to him. He was soaring in the air, drifting in an ocean of purple sensuality....

A purple halo shimmered around the entwined bodies of Deymorin's vision, and Mikhyel knew that shimmer, felt it enter his fingertips with the scent of fire-blossom tea, heavy with honeythe way Anheliaa preferred it.

And somewhere, some part of him saw Deymorin lunge, sensed the creature's snarl, the swipe of the creature's clawed hand. Deymorin swayed out of reach, grabbed the creature's wrist and jerked. The arm parted at the elbow, and the stench of decaying flesh filled Mikhyel'sDeymor- in'snostrils.

For Mikhyel there was only the scent of fire-blossom tea.

The glimmer deepened, widened. Mikhyel heard Dey- morin's denial, inside and out, knew Deymorin's intense desire to follow . . . to protect his brother.

As Mikhyel had wanted to protect Nikki.

And a bridge formed between them, a glimmering web of iridescence. A bridge reminiscent of the force that had drawn him inexorably to Nikki and to Boreton nearly two months ago.

Mikhyel deafened himself to both internal and external voices. He fought to destroy that bridge, to contain Dey- morin, to cast a net over him. Or a web. A web to confine Deymorin and his potent desire in a cocoon.

Like a spider's prey. He fought Deymorin's call, knowing that to listen was to draw Deymorin with him into whatever hell awaited him on the far side of the purple haze.

It was the hypogeumor at least, a cave.

Mikhyel pushed himself up, away from ground that shifted beneath his palms like the softest sand, and con- fronted a cavern that could contain the Rhomandi hypo- geum several times over.

Miles of shifting, billowing leythium crystal draperies camouflaged the true depths of the ceiling. Thick, viscous leythium formed a living sea in which islands rose and sub- sided even as he watched. A sea whose subtly mutating shores fluxed in and out of sight, extending at times to depths his rational mind refused to accept.

Rational. Mikhyel stifled the laughter that threatened.

Logicthe accepted rules of existence with which he'd grown uphad little bearing on his present situation.

In the center of the lake, something burned: multicolored flames without smoke, without scent, unless that flame was the source of the aroma of fire-blossom tea that filled the air. Free, this time, of the cloyingly sweet honey.

Radiating from this seemingly boundless cavern, seem- ingly infinite corridors led to points of throbbing, pulsating color. Eighteen in all, each glimmering in a spectrum that centered about a different color . . . blue-green here, spring green there, deep, blood red. . . .

Infinite. Boundless. The concepts were crazed, but those were the words his mind supplied. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, wondering for the briefest instant, if Anhe- liaa's ghost had, in fact, dragged him with it into death.

And then, on the floor near him, he saw the decomposing corpse of Deymorin's final imaging.

Its left arm was missing.

That final touch of the macabre lent a compelling reality to an inherently unreal event, an oddly common touch to an uncommon scene, and restored his faith in his own senses.

He staggered to his feet and stood swaying, feet wide apart. He examined his arms for burns, for anything remi- niscent of that other near-disastrous transportation to Bore- ton, but there was nothing. Rather, he felt energized. The all-consuming weariness, even the lingering aches from Nikki's attack were simplygone.

A color of satisfaction. A scent of lazy curiosity. Belong- inghe'd swear to itto that presence he'd felt in the hy- pogeum. He recognized it as surely as he recognized the individual signatures of his brothers.

"Who are you?" he shouted. "Where are you, and what do you wanft"

{Want, want, want} The word echoed in his head, carrying with it that sense of welcome, of open arms waiting to draw him to some liquified fate.

{No, no. No!} he heard, and that protest reeked of Deym- orin. So, he wasn't entirely alone.

{Here?) he sent out into that strange aether.

{No! Dammit.} And with that denial, came an image of his own room, empty.

Mikhyel smiled to himself. Deymorin had not been drawn after him; in that, at least, he'd won.

And still that sense of welcome surrounded him. He turned slowly, allowing Deymorin to keep his mental foot- hold, seeking that presence that was not, definitely not An- heliaa. In fact, all sense of Anheliaa had vanished; only the corpse remained as a reminder of how he'd come here.

The entire cavern pulsed with light and color of leythium.

Leythium lace draperies billowed in an unfelt breeze, as if the ley itself were breathing. Light rippled and pulsed down those corridors to the distant light sources, like blood pass- ing down arteries. All around him, a forest of glowing pil- lars oozed up from the floor to meet and merge with the lace draperies.

He reached a curious fingertip to the nearest leythium trunk. His finger sank into a substance that was neither liquid nor solid. He had no sense of texture, only of warmth and a rhythmic throb . . . like a heartbeat. He pressed deeper. His entire hand disappeared.

He closed his eyes, realized, in a half-awake way, that he'd sunk to his knees, and he leaned toward that welcom- ing warmth, feeling it creep up his arm to his elbow and higher. His other hand rose, without conscious thought.

{No! Khyel, stop.']

Nikki. This time it was Nikki calling him. Wanting him.

Needing...

{Dammit, Khyel, how often do we have to go through this? Get back here. Now! I want to go back to bed!} It was as if both brothers were there, pulling him away from that pillar, slapping his face as if he were hysterical.

He could hear them, feel them, though they were far, far, far away. . . .

But that warmth slid away from him, down his arm and off his fingertip, leaving no sensation at all, no sense of residual substance, only a memory.

{Well . . . damn!} For the first time, that inexplicable presence took firm mental form. Directly before him, the substance that seemed so firm beneath his feet liquified and began turning slowly, then expanded upward, twisting, contorting into a vaguely, humanlike form.

Arms . . . legs. Three of the latter, until that third ap- pendage gradually took the shape of a tail that swept around the forming body and tapered to a tip that twitched just a finger's breadth from Mikhyel's bare foot.

He was enraptured. A detached part of Mikhyel's mind reached that conclusion when he found himself unable to look away from that twitching flash of iridescent scales. His eyes followed that line upward, past slender curves of waist and shoulder, up a long, swanlike neck to a face that de- fied description.

Fangs, scalesor perhaps the crystalline webbing that fluttered so freely all around themfaceted eyes . . . utterly inhuman, utterly beautiful.

Mikhyel gazed into those huge eyes, his neck painfully bent as he strained to take in a creature half again as tall as Deymorin, until, as if in response to that observation, the creature diminuated, took on proportions and features more like his own, until they faced one another, eye to eye, man to . . . almost man.

The creature extended a graceful hand, palm upward. A sense of attraction. Interest . . . Hunger. This was the source of interest.

{Come...} "No . . ." Mikhyel whispered, having no breath for more, and he took a blind step backward. The ground gave be- neath his bare foot, but insubstantial brotherly hands stead- ied him, and brotherly anger shouted at the creature to leave Mikhyel alone.

Fangs appeared, shrank to blunt, manlike teeth in a purely human smile. {You have associations.) "I have brothers," Mikhyel stated aloud, knowing he could answer with that inner voice, but determinedly human in the face of this inhuman entity.

A creature of the ley. Tamshi, perhaps. A part of him burned with unanswered questions, but he resisted that cu- riosity and the vulnerability it exposed. This creature had drawn him here. This creature wanted him, not the other way around. He would dictate the terms of this encounter, not this creature of Rhomatum Node.

And with that decision, his fear vanished along with the shrinking uncertainty.

Humor filled the air, his mind, his body. Rich, internal, full-bodied laughter. Intrigue.

{Where have you been?) the creature's mind asked.

"Right overhead."

"And why . . ." The voice that reached his human ears from that long throat was a soft, sibilant hiss. Uncertain at first, gaining confidence with each syllable. "... have you not been brought to me before?"

One gliding step bridged the space between them and the creature reached a graceful hand to touch Mikhyel's face. Tasting him. Mikhyel, forcing himself to indifference, discovered, to his mild surprise, that he was fighting curios- ity, not fear.

"Why," the creature continued, "have you not danced with the rings?"

"Danced?" Mikhyel laughed, the image of his graceless self flitting among the whirling dance rings too insanely humorous to ignore.

"Silly child, not those rings." The fingers drifted to his forehead and the hum and flash of the ringchamber filled his head.

"I've no talent"

"What fool told you that?"

"I tried, but the rings wouldn't respond."

"I suppose not." The creature's chest rose in a heavy sigh. "Darius, you are not."

You have the power, child. You lack the drive. . . .

"Oh, yes, Anheliaa. Get rid of her, will you?" The crea- ture waved a disinterested hand in the direction of the corpse. "I can't expel her beyond the web, and she's such a pollutant."

"But . . ." Anheliaa's body should just disappear, as his mother had, as all those other bodies had through the years.

But the ley wasn't supposed to rise up into this amazing creature and converse with him.

Neither were corpses supposed to visit you in your room.

Was he truly going mad?

{Not at all, child. She's just been as stubborn in death as she was in life. She retained enough vitality within the web to pull these little tricks. Likely she's still here, if I cared to seek her out. But the body . . .} A sense of delicate revulsion permeated the thought. ** did think that youngest child of mine might take her . . . she seems to eat positively anything . . . and Anheliaa did control her wild tendencies at the last . . . but even she drew the line at Anheliaa. . . .} Body. Vitality. As if that which had accosted him in his room and Anheliaa were two different, however related, entities. And the "youngest child" who had rejected Anheliaa . . . whom Anheliaa had "controlled at last" . . .

did the creature mean Khoratum? Was there another crea- ture like this one beneath Khoratum?

Deymorin's "Mother" perhaps?

Laughter. {Mother. Is that how she calls herself? I've been away . . . too . . . long. . . .} The creature had wandered off, or dissolved and re- formed elsewhere, Mikhyel couldn't swear what exactly he'd seen. But weariness floated like a cloud about it, and it reclined in a graceful lizardlike swirl on a leythium ledge that rose to meet and surround its body.

{I'm tired, child. It's been . . . so very long since I've taken form.} It raised a hand to him, gesturing desire, but without that internal pressure to comply, and Mikhyel rewarded its tempered approach, moving to kneel beside the leythium couch. The creature's fingers wove through his hair, and through that touch came a sense of pure pleasure, simple delight in the feeling of the strands slipping through fingers that hadn't felt anything for a long, long time.

"Who are you?" Mikhyel whispered, giving in at last to those innermost drives. "What are you?"

jl am . . . what you would have me. Before that . . .} A sense of age that staggered human understanding.

Mikhyel closed his eyes as the unearthly cavern shifted about him, images of geological ages as reflected in the cavern superimposed over his own sense of the world above {We call it the surface world, child.) Teaching, as was the way with this creature, its nature driving it as surely as Mikhyel's own nature drove him to question, neverminding common sense dictated it was safer not to know.