-__Mother threw her arms in the air, and the ley fluttered around her. "I give up on you. Mother came home all alone. Weak. Dying. Mother left you to find your pattern, your happiness. . . . And now you come back, pattern in tow, yet no different than before. Still squawking Why, why, why? Well, why have you not danced the rings, yet?

Why have you not helped these silly fools fix my web? Why have you not mated a great deal with this hairy but sweet- tasting individual?"

{Mother!) (What's wrong? You like*love*lust*rut*identify*recognize*

want*need him don't you?) {I still hope to dance the rings.) (So dance them. Your pattern is set, child. You will dance*

love the rings. You might as well dance*love him, too. It's all part of the pattern.} Temorii set her hands on Mother's arm.

(Mother, of course I care for Khy. Deeply. More deeply than is wise.) "Bat's poop."

{No, Mother, it's not. What you're implying, that can't be. I can't lie with him. It's a . . . a human failing, Mother, but I am human. Too many have died. The dance is too dangerous for one whose interests are compromised.) (So the child grows too wise for its Mother. As belief goes, so goes reality.) {Mother, don't you see? I've changed. Loving means . . .

I can't dance with a child growing in my belly!) (And can you dance without one?) {You know I can.}'

(Has Rhyys, then, miraculously changed his color and given you the rings?) {Oh. That. No, but) (Then you've tricked him!) Mother quite obviously ap- proved of trickery.

(Possibly. Khy has arranged} (Ah. A champion, child. And a clever one; Mother re- members. And has he remembered? Does he do this out of guilt?) (No, Mother. He's a good man. A kind man. But he offers, I think, to remedy injustice.) fAh. Altruistic, then. And he'd do this for anyone. I'm sure.} Obviously, Temorii believed he couldn't hear them.

Mother knew differently. It was a cruel game she played on Temorii.

Mikhyel sent into that stream: {Excuse me ...} They both looked around at him.

"He hears us," Mother pointed out, as if amazed, and Temorii looked away, blushing.

"I'm afraid so. Tern. I'm sorry. I tried not to."

"Mymymymymymy. Talented child isn't he?" And once again. Mother was looking at him as if he were an object for purchase. (Pretty too, if a bit hairy. And skinny . . .) "Mother, behave!" Temorii hissed, and her eyes flashed brilliant green in this strange leylit air.

Mother laughed again, delight that shimmered through the ley and Mikhyel's own nerves.

{Aha, my Dancer returns. Come, child, and dance with me. Tell me what it is you want of Mother . . .} A veiling cloud descended about Mother and Temorii, a shimmer both visual and mental. Mother's doing, Mikhyel was certain, and a welcome respite. He truly did not relish the constant invasion of private thoughts and conversations.

Tempting to stay here long enough to learn to do . . .

whatever it was Mother had just done. If only to be able to deal with his brothers as normal men once again.

Normal. In that, of course, he deluded himself. He could never be normal again . . . if he ever had been. But he must have been. Those early years with Deymorin, when their mother was alive, and Mheric was still sane. When Outside had meant sunshine and swimming ponds, or snow forts and freezing toes, and Deymorin had been a warm body to thaw him out.

Early days thatperhapshad provided him the strength to remain sane in the following years. Early days that had set the pattern for how he and Deymorin re- sponded to each other as adults. Deymorin was older.

Deymorin had been Mikhyel's teacher, his protector. Shift- ing from that role was difficult under the best of circumstances.

Theirs were not and never had been the best of . circumstances.

Mother and Temorii had wandered completely out of ~-,sight. He sincerely hoped they remembered him.

{Oh, don't worry, darling child. Mother will never forget you...) {A decidedly mixed benediction, Mother.} Which brazen disrespect seemed to amuse heras she had preferred Temorii's impertinence. And he recalled that first meeting where fear had triggered one response that nearly killed him and insolence had induced laughter.

Strange, strange being, whatever she was.

Mother and Temorii. It seemed so obvious, now he saw - them together, explained so much about Temorii's con- trasting moods, her oddly mixed understanding of human nature. Ifhe scanned the eerily exotic cavernthis had raised her, and subsequently rejected her, if Mother had nourished her mind as well as her body, had fed her the way the creature beneath Rhomatum had offered to feed Mikhyel...

And then, to lose it all. What must it have been like for her? And why had it happened?

He settled on a rock formation beside a glowing pool, and the formation shifted, conforming to his body.

Had Mother rejected Temorii the moment Temorii saw the practice rings? Or when she'd gone to live in the Tower as a fully acknowledged competitor?

Or had it been later? Their exchanges would indicate Mother knew about the competition, and about Rhyys, and Temorii's life in the Tower. And that Mother had fully expected her to win.

Perhaps the devastation of the failed competition, per- haps the fact she had failed . . .

Except, Temorii failed because the rings had gone down.

And the rings had gone down because Vandoshin rom- Maurii had brought a dangerous machine into the Rhoma- tum Valley and Anheliaa used the Rhomatum Rings to blast it out of existence, depleting the Rhomatum Web in the process.

But the machine hadn't been on a node. Hadn't even been on a leyline. In order to complete the attack, Anheliaa had needed a node at or near the machine.

And that node had been himself and his brothers. He'd been in the Tower one instant, and falling from the sky into his brothers' arms the next. And with him, the lightning had arrived.

The lightning that had nearly destroyed the Khoratum line.

They had escaped, but he had been on the edge of death.

And Mother had saved him.

With the help of a human who had appeared out of a tunnel of light.

A human Mother had called Dancer.

Temorii. Whose dream had just been shattered.

And the disintegration of the Khoratum line had cut her off from Mother, had condemned her to a life on the Khor- atum streets.

Does he do this out of guilt?

He buried his face in his hands, pressing his palms into his eyes, trying to cut out the exotic beauty, the colors, and the past. But nothing could cut away from him his part in Temorii's betrayal.

"Khy?"

That voice had the power to touch every nerve in his body with exquisite anticipation. He lifted his head, biinked at the pain of light and fine puffs of drifting air.

She was there beside him, in all her delicate beauty and steely strength. All the joy, the fierce competitive nature, the defiance, and the need.

"Why don't you hate me?" he whispered, and dismay puckered her brow.

"I could never hate you, Khy, even if I wanted to. Why would I want to?"

"If not for me, you'd have it all. If not for me, the rings wouldn't have failed, the competition would have gone on, you'd be Khoratum's radical dancer. Even if the rings had gone down, if not for saving me, you'd have been in the court with the others when they came to lead the remaining contestants out. You'd have had your second chance with- out question. You'd never have had to cut your hair. Never have had to put up with the likes of that Giephaetum-scum, never been cold or hungry. You'd never have lost . . ." He swept his hand in a broad curve, taking in that amazing beauty that surrounded them.

"Oh, Khy." She embraced him and cradled his head against her solid middle. "My dear, dear friend. It's possi- ble, even probable, that all you say is true. And perhaps I did hate, a little, at first. When I was bitter and believed Rakshi had deserted me and you were nothing but a rijhili.

But not now. Done is done. Rhyys was right in one sense: ~"~Rakshi controlled events that day, not you, or I, or even Mother. I might have had the dance. I might have died.

Many things might have happened."

And through that touch, a warmth as perfect as child- Deymorin on a winter's day surrounded him. A warmth glowing with raspberries and cinnamonand a mysterious hint of clove. And on the edge of that scent, a thought, a thought so faint, he wasn't certain he was meant to hear: (But I wouldn't have you.]

Chapter Eleven.

Eighteen rings hung suspended in midair. One ring for each active satellite node, each ring's axis aligned on the leyline between its parent and Rhomatum. The axis of the outer- most, Cardinal ring was perfectly perpendicular, aligned to Rhomatum node itself.

The nineteenth ring, the Persitum Ring, lay inert on the pattern-tiled floor, as it had since the day Anheliaa died.

Kiyrstine romGaretti had never really trusted the ley- thium rings. In all her years with Garetti, she'd been into Mauritum Tower only a handful of times, and then only at Garetti's request. She preferred, overall, to simply have the light happen, and hot water to come out of the tap on command. Knowing that those amenities depended upon rings spinning without visible means of support and at the command of someone like Garettior Lidyewas rather like knowing what went into your breakfast sausage.

Some things were best left mysteries.

But Lidye wanted to run a test, and Lidye's test required all of them, so she claimed. And Mikhyel had told Nikki that the Northern Crescent was threatening a unified shut- down and that Mauritum might be instigating the trouble.

So, here she was, once again, in the middle of a place she'd really rather do without.

Thanks ever-so, Deymio-luvvie, she thought, and eased around the rings to settle on a padded bench set along one of the glass walls. Sunlight entered through those glass walls, and struck the slowly spinning rings to send bands of light flashing about the room and its occupants. Nikki, Lidye, Nethaalye, Mirym . . . and herself.

They settled on a variety of seats set randomly about the chamber. Staking out territory, Kiyrstin thought rather cynically.

"I have," Lidye began, "absolutely no idea if what we're going to try will make any difference whatsoever, but it's a fool who pitches Rakshi's rare gifts to the winds."

"Gifts?" Nethaalye asked, and Kiyrstin asked: "What gifts?"

"Unexpected assets." Lidye's voice took on the singsong quality of a tour guide, or a bored professor, or a religious convert spouting rhetoric. "Most of life is patterns, chance intersections of people and events which eventually come to an ending determined by the pattern they've made."

"Sweet Maurii," Kiyrstin muttered. "Get on with it!

What do you want us to do""'

"Patience, Garetti's wife."

She smiled tightly. "Call me that again, Shatum, and you can spin your own rings."

"Ladies . . . please!" Nikki's voice squeaked slightly, and he looked scared.

"Yes, my darling," Lidye cooed, and Kiyrstin controlled her reflexive gag. She wished she could trust Lidye. Cer- tainly the Shatumin woman's recent actions gave her no reason not to. But something about the woman made her teeth ache from clenching. She could not deny the meeting with the Southern Crescent representatives had gone well, but the moment that was over, Lidye had returned to her domineering ways.

Especially offensive was her patronizing manner with Nikki. But Nikki didn't complain, and overall, Nikki seemed very happy.

It was not, to Kiyrstin's way of thinking, Nikki's greatest selling point.

"As I was saying," Lidye continued. "Patterns. Events linked to the greater world have placed Nethaalye and my- self here. Kiyrstine romGaretti's presence is related to events beyond the web that placed the web in jeopardy and so brought us to this point of action. Mirym, coming from Khoratum, the complementary node of Kiyrstin's, is our accidental, radical factor. Our true gift from Rakshi."

She smiled at Mirym; Mirym did not return the gesture.

Lidye's smile vanished as though it had never been.

"Thanks to Mirym's presence, we have all the major sat- ellite nodes represented here today, as well as Rhomatum itself."

This time, she smiled at Nikki; his shy duck of the head could hardly be called a return smile.

"I'm from Mauritum," Kiyrstin dryly pointed out the ob- vious, "not Persitum."

"Are you quite certain of that?"

"Quite."

"Curious. However, to get to Mauritum, you imist go through Persitum. Perhaps that is your value."

"How nice it must be to have so mutable a theory."

"Not at all. You are not here because of talent. You are here to provide me a focus by which to stabilize the western quarter of the web."

"You sound very certain of yourself."

"I know what I'm doing."

"Do you? You just said you didn't know if it would work."

"It was merely a figure of speech. I am certain of what I know."

"We've got ten nodes threatening a unified shutdown.

Are we to assume that such an event has become common- place and you are now an expert?"

"When you've no idea what you're talking about, Kiyr- stine romGaretti, perhaps it is best not to speak."

"No idea what I'm talking about? * know Garetti. If Mauritum is part of this Northern conspiracy, Mauritum is spearheading it, not Khoratum. Garetti does not willingly play second to anyone. That's what * know. Suddenly you're so clever. Suddenly you've got ideas how to solve all our problems. To whom am I talking? Lidye? or Garetti?"

"Ah. A challenge. And at such a time, Kirystine of Maur- itum." Lidye's mouth twitched. "If I were inclined to take offense, we're in my Tower. It's possible I could make you very sorry."

"And you haven't come down from here since Nikki talked to his brothers last night. You rather well had the advantage. Besides, if you need these three to stabilize your web for Garetti's takeover, you'd hardly be likely to es- trange them by overplaying your hand now, now would you?"