There was a pause, and Deymorin chanced a glance over his shoulder. Sironi's face had a startled look, then his eyes narrowed, trying, Deymorin thought, to see past him to Mikhyel. The next moment, a blow to the back of his weak leg buckled Deymorin's knee, and he stumbled through the door, into Mikhyel, who flattened himself against the tunnel wall and extended a steadying hand.

"All right, man," Deymorin gasped, using Mikhyel's hold to pull himself upright and resting his weight lightly on the traitorous leg. "All right," he repeated, as Nikki passed through, and guards followed. "But not the woman! Not here!"

Sironi smiled. "Of course not. We'll take very special care of her."

Forgetting his leg, Deymorin took a step toward the cap- tain, who fell back, his smile fading.

But Deymorin reached past him, hooked Kiyrstin by the waist and pulled her close for a declaration of proprietor- ship that left them both gasping for breath.

"See that you do," Deymorin said to Sironi as he re- leased her. "It's possible, of course, that you are right, that we are imposters. Then again, we might not be."

Something in his face must have convinced the captain, who blanched and inhaled sharply before assuring him, "She'll be taken to the women's cavern, obviously. Given private quarters, away from the whores"

"Thanks just the same," Kiyrstin said, eyeing the captain with open suspicion, "I'll take my chances with the local ladies."

"M'lady, I assure you," the captain began, but Deymorin laughed, which simply made the captain squirm more.

Deymorin kissed Kiyrstin again, casually, confidently, and said, "Try not to antagonize him, m'love."

"What do you mean, antagonize?"

"Don't bite him." He turned on his heel, and swaggered down the narrow tunnel in his brothers' wake, forcing him- self not to look back at her, exuding a confidence he by no means felt.

8 ~ 8.

More than ever, as Deymorin limped out of sight, Kiyr- stin envied the brothers their silent communication. She wished she could have five minutes alone with him, to help the pain in his leg, to reassure him, to tell him not to worry about heror his brothers.

And with that thought, she was afraid, truly afraid, for the first time since they'd left Armayel that morning, more frightened than she'd been since she met Deymorin. Dey- morin would kill himself trying to protect his brothers in such a place, Mikhyel from resentful offenders, Nikki from his own youthful stupidity.

But there was nothing she could do for him except keep herself prepared to recognize opportunity should it arise.

And to take care of herself, that most of all, so that next time, he'd have that much more confidence in her, that much less he felt he had to worry about.

And she had to trust Deymorin to realize that his 'life in exchange for his brothers' temporary comfort was no bargain.

Trust. It all came down to trusting one another.

Take care of yourself, JD. ...

A hand gripped her arm: Sironi. Kiyrstin let her gaze move directly from his hand to his face.

"Tell me. Captain Sironi," she asked, "have you any in- tention of using that hand again?"

His eyes widened, ever so slightly, and he released her arm. Abruptly. Then he jerked his head, motioning her down the tunnel, away from the Crypt, away from Deymorin.

fgt Q "gt As Deymorin's limp eased, Mikhyel tried not to begin.

It was Deymorin's pain, he kept repeating to himself, his limping would do nothing to ease the sensation. Besides, if Deymorin's leg truly was injured, Deymorin needed to know now, not after it was too late.

They'd discovered that unpleasant fact at Armayel, when the shoulder wound Nikki had acquired before the battle at Boreton festered. Unknown to them all, Mikhyel had grown weak fighting Nikki's pain, but until Nikki collapsed they'd none of them imagined how dangerously infected the wound had become.

It was an unpleasant and unkind gift he'd acquired, un- kind to himself, and to his brothers. Nikki might have died had the wound gone untreated much longer. Mikhyel didn't know which was worse, the pain and festering, or the anger and accusations, once Nikki was strong enough to argue: Deymorin accusing Nikki of selfishly willing the pain to Mikhyel's keeping, Nikki yelling that Mikhyel shouldn't take it if he didn't want it, and Mikhyel wishing they'd both shut up and go away and let him die in peace.

And in all the arguing, no one had pointed the finger at the true culprit: this insidious rapport that took no effort to create, and everything to stop, that kept Nikki from knowing how sick he was until almost too late, and kept Mikhyel's own mind so preoccupied, that his logic skewed wildly.

This time, it was Deymorin's body that invaded his, and the throb in his leg increased with each step. Beginning to wonder if perhaps the guard's heavy boot had done serous damage, he tried to catch a glimpse of Deymorin's leg past the heavy cloak And threw his weight onto what should have been a per- fectly sound leg, but wasn't. He stumbled. Deymorin's hands caught and steadied him. The pain shot through in full force, and his leg collapsed.

"Nikki?" He gasped, and reached for his younger brother. And Nikki was there, holding him on his feet, and Deymorin was cursing him for a fool, and the pain in his leg flowed out through the arm Deymorin retamed, so rap- idly he could almost see the flow, so rapidly, the relief left him light-headed.

{Damn you, Mikhyel dunMheric, say something next time!} Deymorin's thoughts flared and then the pain was gone, for the most part, and his head was clearer and the guards were urging them on.

Of the five men still with them, two wore City blue. From their obvious discomfort they, at least, resented the actions they were being forced to take against the Rhomandi brothers.

Factions. Someone, Sironi, Tarim, Lidye, possibly even Anheliaa herself, was trying very hard to create factions within Rhomatum. These men in City blue were being told to follow orders or . . . what? Power was shifting hands . . .

but to where?

Sironi shouldn't be here, shouldn't be taking them to the Crypt, certainly shouldn't be bypassing all established legal procedures. Rhomatumin law.

It had been a gamble, calling Sironi by name. Mikhyel had hoped it might prove their claimand in that, he might have achieved his goal.

But Sironi knew, now, that he'd been recognized. And that, Mikhyel thought, as the heavy door to the Crypt swung open, might not have been the smartest revelation of Mikhyel dunMheric's career.

The smell alone on the dank air rising out of the black depths beyond the oak and iron door was enough to de- stroy any remaining delusions regarding the nature of their home for the night.

A crypt indeed.

Mikhyel paused in the doorway, overwhelmed, wonder- ing what had become of the marvel of engineering that kept the tunnels so fresh.

He knew what lay below him, as he'd known the lay of the tunnels they'd walked. He'd seen maps of the tunnels, floor plans of the wards. Had read treatises on the humane care and feeding of the prisoners. He knew what he sent men into when he signed the sentencing papers.

But lines on a paper had little in common with reality.

The vast cavern swallowed the light from the tunnel. Or perhaps, he thought, in cold analysis, that distant flickering light in the tunnel was set precisely so the new inmate re- ceived the most chilling introduction to his new abode.

A gauntleted hand between his shoulder blades sent him stumbling into that darkness. He fought for balance, felt a foot slip over an edge and threw his weight backward, into arms that caught and held him.

Deymorin: the thought*sense*awareness that was inde- finably his brother came through even the adrenaline- induced panic that gripped him. He could see the edge then, a darkness against a deeper black. They'd come in at the head of a staircase. Stone-cut and foot-worn, open at least on one side, those stairs extended far past the reach of the doorway's dim light.

Gas lamps, jets protruding from the walls, made eerily flickering pools of light among the irregular contours of the cavern. Men gathered in those pools, passing the hours as men did in places such as this.

Lighting was carefully controlled within the cavern, ac- cording to those treatises. The intensity levels shifted at regular intervals to simulate the passage of time above ground. They were in evening now, late evening. Soon, even these pools, for the most part, would disappear.

Tables, littered (as was the floor around them) with rem- nants of meals, supported card games and dice. To his left, barely visible past curving limestone, the light-pool glinted with running water.

The latrine, his mental map recalled. The one spot in the cavern that would remain in full-light the entire night.

Complete facilities with circulating bathing pool, and other provisions for personal hygiene and comfort.

These men chose to live in the filth his senses insisted lay below him; they were not forced into it.

Where that limited light failed to reach, darkness more complete than any he'd ever known swirled and eddied.

Those private niches radiated sounds one didn't care to investigate further.

Criminals, the Council maintained and Mikhyel had al- ways agreed, should be discouraged from ever going to prison again. On the other hand, a man cast here who con- sidered himself innocent of wrongdoing might well feel sorely used.

It seemed that lately his life had been filled with new perspectives.

Without warning his sense of Deymorin vanished, that gauntleted hand struck a second time And he was falling.

(Lightning flashed.

(That which had been, was, or would be Mikhyel, 2nd son of Mheric, 16th Princeps of Rhomatum, hung suspended in the rarified air inside the spinning leythium-coated rings of Rhomatum. Their hum surrounded him, engulfed him, pene- trated to his very core, until, body and soul, he was one with the ley.

(Body. Soul. Only his mind was exempt: observing, calculating.

(Aware.

(A second flash, blinding bright, and he hovered in the cloudless sky above a city that pulsed with the energy of the node buried deep in the earth below Tower Hill, power that rose and coalesced at the bidding of the Rhomatum Ringsand the madwoman who commanded them: Anhel- iaa, descendant of Darius.

(Anheliaa: powerful, madwho had had the shaping of himself as she had shaped the web to her bidding.

(That power radiated outward, unseen to ordinary mortal eyes, but not to his ley-sensitized vision, a throbbing opales- cence that rippled to the limits of the Rhomatum power umbrella and beyond, confined, now, to eighteen treeless leylines with their pristine, fine-graveled highways: super- natural spider-threads linking Rhomatum Node to her eigh- teen satellite nodes.

(Eighteen buds to Rhomatum's mature bloom.

(A return swell: enhanced radiance from those satellite nodes coalescing within Rhomatum. The satellites lending power to the hub.

(A third blast that he realized now was not lightning at all, but iridescent flames that pressed Rhomatum's perime- ter, flames not from without, but from within, flames that billowed out of Rhomatum Tower, coalesced into a single raging finger, and reached Outside (Toward a point between leylines, toward areas that ap- peared night-black to ley-awareness, areas that the mind insisted the ley could not reach.

(Toward Boreton.

(But body and soul denied that reason. The flames reached and strained, striving for a point within the dark- ness where there lurked an absence of light darker than the darkest night.

(For Boreton. For the Mauritumin machine that lurked in the shadows.

(Anti-ley machine.

(Harnessed lightning.

(The iridescent pulse arced from Rhomatum a fourth time, and a fifth, in rapid succession, until the pulse became a steady stream flowing irresistibly toward that anti-ley source, destruction its objective.

(A stream whose origin was not Rhomatum, but the sat- ellites, which continued to send wave upon opalescent wave .down the leylines toward their parent node, who sent that fire blazing outward.

(Toward Boreton.

(All to destroy that tiny point of nonlight.

(And in the center of that target: his brothers. Another part of his being, not body, not mind, not soul, knew that without question, as his mind reasoned that the Tower- generated force bent upon destruction would take them with it.

(Unless he intervened, that unidentified portion cried, and his mind answered, How? then self-reasoned: The al- ternative? To live while those two died.

(Unacceptable.

(He dove into the pulsing stream (and the valley disappeared in a flash of utter darkness.) Screams filled the air. His. And Deymorin's curses.

"Damn you, get the light out of his eyes!"

Boreton. Boreton. Boreton . . .

And Deymorin's arms lifted him, held him against the residual tremors that always took hold of him following this newest nightmare. And {Quiet, Khyel ...} filled bis mind.

Invaded his mind.

Because of Boreton.

"Damn you, Anheliaa! Damn Garettil Damn you all to"

{Khyel, shut up.} Firm. Commanding.

Deymorin.

Whom he'd saved.

Deymorin.

Who hadn't let him die.

When he should have.

Damn you, Deymorin dunMheric.

He closed his mouth and the screams ended.

Slowly, his head cleared to madness surrounding him. To men with lamps. Men with torches. Far more men than the handful that had brought him here. Perhaps, he thought in a surge of groundless optimism, men from the Tower, to take them out of here. To take them home, to the Tower . . . and Anheliaa.

Before the men incarcerated in Sparingate Crypt recog- nized him. Somehow, even Anheliaa was preferable to that fate.

There were lights again, shining into his eyes, and some- one rolled his head this way and that, until, with a curse, he pushed himself up and out of Deymorin's arms, away from Deymorin's oppressive concern that was the real weight holding him down. He was feeling well enough except for a myriad of aches and bruises (his own for a change)and not hesitant about saying as much.

"You'll do, little brother." Deymorin laughed, with relief instead of humor, and the inner pressure eased, only to flare again into a black anger that was directed up the stairs at the lighted doorway. "No thanks to that murderous scut.

I want that man's name and identification number logged with our arrest entry, Oshram," Deymorin said to the shadow standing next to him. "Along with a willful attempt to cause life-threatening injury. If Khyel has suffered any significant damage, that guard's going to be held person- ally accountable."

"It'll be done, Deymio-lad," the shadow answered in a low voice, "but I doubt it will make" The voice broke off. Mikhyel could wish that statement completed.

Oshram. The Warden of Sparingate. Who was (Why was he not surprised?) on a familiar name basis with his disrep- utable older brother. A Rhomatumin warden who was afraid to speak his mind in front of these Shatumin guards.