Mikhyel said nothing. Talk of hair, talk of rings, talk of the dance . . . it was all irrelevant anyway. If Temorii wanted to dance, she had Mother.

"So she got the rings up." Funny how much easier it was to keep emotion from your voice when dealing with the Syndicate than when dealing with a hiller. "And the maze?

Will she transport you in? Or didn't you ever get that far in the plans?"

"Of course she will. Is that why you're so testy?"

"I'm not testy."

"Of course not. You always glower and spit and order Raulind out of the room."

He propped his elbow on the chair arm and rubbed his forehead. "Tern, will you just leave me alone? You've got your dance. You've got Mother. They've set the date . . - What more do you want?"

"I want you to be happy for me!"

She flung the comb on the dresser and squatted beside his chair to jerk his hand away from his face.

"Look at me, Khyel," she said, and when he turned his head, letting the hair fall like a veil between them: "Look at me, rijhili!"

He flung his head back, felt his mouth pull in a snarl he wasn't conscious of ordering. But Temorii didn't flinch, only raised her chin another notch.

"So, what's your problem?" she asked.

He raised a fist between them. Not meant for her. It was himself he wished he could strike, blows such as his father had once dealt, to knock sense into him. To make him think. To remind him only Rhomatum mattered. Always Rhomatum.

. . . and what of Mikhy el-child's happiness . . .

It didn't matter. Couldn't. But he couldn't get himself past the wanting. And Temorii never would. With Mheric gone, with Anheliaa, there was no one left to keep Mikhyel dunMheric's mind from wandering off into frivolous irresponsibility.

Hands surrounded his fist. Warm, strong . . . gentle.

"Khyel?"

And eyes, beautiful, worried . . . eyes that had stolen his soul and left him this witless, self-centered idiot.

"Why, Temorii?" he whispered, so that he wouldn't shout. "Why did Mother leave you?"

Confusion clouded her eyes, and she shook her head ever-so-slightly.

"I . . . she said last night, she believed she'd made a bad mistake."

"Mistake? Mother?"

"Her words, Khyel. Absolutely. I was . . . obsessed, she says. Out of touch with my self. Becoming . . . not human."

"So she forced you into the worst possible human hands."

Temorii shook her head. "No, Mikhyel dunMheric.

Mother left me in your hands. I chose to leave."

"Why?" Rings, he could have been with her . . . all this time, he could have had "Mother. The dance. Freedom. Mother has plans . . .

Mother always has plans, some more sound than others.

Some only she can begin to comprehend. But this one . . .

hoping to save my humanity, she wove me into the new pattern..."

"Pattern?"

She shook her head. "I can't explain. Not here. There's a cave below . . . I call it the world cave, where the patterns in the ley reveal the patterns of the surface world. You and your brothers caused a new pattern to form in the web."

"My brothers and 1. And you?"

Her head dipped. "I believe so. Mother is . . . vague on that point." She stroked his fist until his fingers relaxed, then raised his hand to brush the Rhomandi ring with her lips.

His stomach twisted in a sickening knot, but he didn't, couldn't pull his hand free.

"I'd . . . known you for monthsthrough the pattern.

And I followed the politics and gossip in Rhyys' court. I knew when Anheliaa leythiated Deymorin, and I knew when he came out, and when your Nikki attacked Anhel- iaa's rings."

"I almost died then."

Temorii nodded. "Anheliaa was in shock and dying. You were trying to pull her down, willing to die, to protect your brother."

Mikhyel said nothing. It was a time he barely remem- bered. He remembered Nikki challenging her, and Anhel- iaa trying to force Nikki to comply with her plan. In an amazing act of courage, Nikki had thrown Deymorin's cane into the middle of the Rhomatum rings.

After that came a time of nightmares, a reliving of every- thing evil that had been his life with Anheliaa. In shame and hatred, he'd wanted to bring them both down . . . And then, a flare of hope. Of light . . . on a scent of raspberries and cinnamon . . . and a hint of clove.

"That was you?" he whispered, and she nodded, her eyes damp.

"I couldn't let you die. Not that way."

So she let him live to destroy him with her indifference.

But he didn't say that. Knew that that had never been her choice.

Any more than his feelings for her now were his choice.

"And the day of competition, you and Mother saved me a second time."

"And you saved me, Khyel. That's what Mother was try- ing to explain last night."

He frowned. "How?"

"Your physical healing was over, but your heart, your soul, still wanted to die. Mother told Deymorin he could change that. Deymorin . . . distrusted. Himself, most of all.

He was frightened of what he would find. Frightened of what would drive you to death. Of the truth of the past.

But he faced that and more for love of you."

"You were there as well?" Embarrassment nearly over- whelmed him. He wasn't proud of what Deymorin had wit- nessed that day.

"Only as a guide. Only to make the pathways, and even that proved unnecessary. I was to observe, or so I thought."

She laced her fingers in his. "Until that day, my life had been Mother and the ley and the dance. What I was, be- yond a dancer, meant nothing to me. I think . . . I think that denial limited everything that I might become, Khy.

After Deymorin went searching for you . . . I wanted to be like you. I wanted to have it in me to inspire such love, to be capable of feeling so strongly. To find that entity, that pattern, for which I would die to protect and nurture.

Thanks to you, I began to find the key to my own soul."

The concept shocked him. She provided a view of himself that was less recognizable than the poster's unflattering portrait.

"After . . . after you woke up, I thought I'd found all Mother wanted. That I'd been included to find what it meant to be part of something larger than myself. I left to go back to you, who was the rest of me. But when I came to Khoratum . . . she didn't answer. I thought I'd understood incorrectly, and condemned myself to a life with nothing.

Without the dance. Without Mother. Without . . ."

You, he wished she'd say, but she did not, even if that had been her intent. And because she did not, that moment they'd shared, the thought that had haunted him ever since, had to be rejected. Temorii denied it, therefore, Mikhyel dunMheric must deny it as well.

He drew a deep breath.

Then rescued his hand and cupped her chin. "So?" He forced a smile. "When did you say this competition is to be?"

There were harder ways to appear an idle wastrel while your men skulked about the shadows than watching the dancers practice, particularly when one of those powerful, lithe bodies belonged to someone you . . . cherished a great deal.

Word of Mikhyel dunMheric's incompetence had indeed preceded him, and Mikhyel didn't know whether to curse Deymorin or bless him. The men assembled in Khoratum would meet with him behind closed doors, accept his pa- pers, listen to his explanations and plans, then ask where Deymorin was, and how was Mikhyel's ringdancer doing, and did he care to lay a wager on the outcome of the competition.

He'd even met officially with Rhyys. He'd tried to ex- plain his concerns for Khoratum, and especially the Khora- tum line and how he had the Southern Crescent Nodes ready to help repair it. And then he suggested what Rho- matum might be willing to do for the young mountain node in the coming years.

Rhyys had smoked his ocarshi and yawnedand asked how his ringdancer was doing and did he care to lay a wager.

That was when he decided on the idle wastrel tactic.

Ganfrion had been amused.

But his reputation had made Ganfrion's job easier, Gan- frion insisted. Ganfrion had been able to confirm his suspi- cions regarding the shutdown. Ganfrion had also discovered evidence that the Giephaetumin ringmaster, loniia, had dis- appeared following her refusal to cooperate with the plan.

Mikhyel hadn't enjoyed passing that information on to Nikki to tell Nethaalye. But Nethaalye had said, with typi- cal common sense, that loniia being dispossessed probably meant her brother was in charge, and from past experience she had no doubt that she could out-stubborn him, should that become necessary, so it was all to the best, wasn't it?

The only question remaining was exactly when.

So it was that Mikhyel dunMheric, the golden-tongued orator of Rhomatum, came to be sitting in the coaching box, along with some thirty or more other men and women, sponsors of the various dancers, while the nine contestants warmed up, preparatory to their only precompetition time on the dance rings.

The excitement that had vibrated Temorii's body an hour ago had, to all outward appearances, disappeared. The warmup routine he'd witnessed a hundred times was as perfect and preciseat least to his untrained eyesas ever.

Certainly, it had the opposing sponsors craning their necks and puckering their brows.

She was, without question, unique. Quiet. Disciplined.

Focused on her own movement, and, to all outward appear- ances, utterly oblivious to the others, all of whom made occasional flights of flashy tumbling moves across the warmup sand.

Sand. A long side strip of it, running between sections of the stadium seating, as the stadium floor itself was cov- ered with a thick layer. On the far side of the sand, across from the half-circle of seating, was the maze, and in the center of the maze, the building into which Mother would place Temorii on the morning of the competition.

Two days from now.

The arbiter called for the first practice to begin, and sud- denly, breathing became difficult. When Temorii's slender form climbed to the uppermost platform to receive the safety harness, the effort not to call a halt to the proceeding taxed his control to its limits.

The technology and upkeep of the dance rings was the province of one of the Syndicate's most self-contained and self-policing guilds. It was, the guild maintained, the job of the people to be amazed, not to understand. That their suspension was somehow linked to the ley was certain: for all there were physical connections between the rings, and the central support column, the dance rings would not oper- ate outside a power umbrella.

Or when the umbrella went down, as it had during that last competition. And Khoratum's power umbrella was still vastly unpredictable.

All of which became irrelevant the instant that outermost ring, tall as a fourth-story window, began a slow, majestic sway. The one truth was: dancers died on the Khoratum rings. And he didn't want Temorii to die. He most defi- nitely did not want Temorii to die.

Temorii, however, obviously did not share his concerns as she leaped from the launch tower in a tumbling dive through the stationary rings to seize a handle on the pon- derously swaying outer ring. If the rings were inclined to malfunction, that fierce attack should have settled the issue.

And for the next quarter hour, Mikhyel wouldn't swear to whether or not he breathed. As Temorii's lithe form twisted, tapped and flew between complex and ever-shifting patterns of flashing steel, objectivity eluded him. He found himself in one moment enthralled, disbelieving that any human, let alone one he knew so well, could possibly per- form such feats, and in the next controlling an embarrassingly physical response to the sheer beauty of her form and motion, and wondering when his mind had begun making such damnable associations.

Until he began to realize his reactions weren't arbitrary.

In one pass, a child skipped through the rings, making them spin at random, and Mikhyel laughed. In the next pass, a woman in love caressed the rings, riding one after another up to the top, dropping through to catch the next rising swing, and it was his body she embraced. Another pass, and a warrior challenged the rings and his own skill and power, or an elder calmly controlled the rings' actions, with quiet taps from the outside ring.

It was during one of those cerebral respites that Mikhyel became aware of those around him. Of their aweand their jealous contempt. One said the hair that floated, then whipped behind her was obviously a wig, and should be disallowed. One tried to criticize her technique, another challenged how could she tell when she'd never seen the move, and someone else said half the dance was weaving and unweaving the safety line, and if a dancer couldn't do that, he'd never win.

Horrified, Mikhyel looked to that diving platform, the launchpoint from which the safety line should run. And then to Temorii, riding the outside ring, ready to launch to another . . .

Her slender form utterly unfettered.

Fear consumed him. For all he'd heard her complain of the confining straps, for all she'd argued they simply made the dance more dangerous, he'd never quite convinced him- self she was right. He'd seen dancers saved when they mis- calculated a trajectory.

Temorii had said, flatly, they shouldn't have missed.

As if she never had.

Watching her now, perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps she sim- ply didn't know what missing meant. But there was a chance. There was always a chance. And as she flew from one ring to another, then paused to ride one to the top, he bit his lip on the urge to cry out to her to be careful. That he loved her too dearly to watch her die.

And as she flexed, ready to leap, she seemed to falter.

Her eyes flickered to the booth where Mikhyel sat with the coaches. She shook her head, ever-so-slightly, and launched off line.

Mikhyel cried out and surged to his feet, frozen in utter horror as she tumbled through the rings, reaching out, try- ing to orient her fall through rings sharp enough, spinning fast enough, now, to decapitate her, should she misjudge position.

The instant she struck the ground, Mikhyel was over the edge of the booth, dropping to the lower tier and running for the steps into the arena.

Others were there before him. He tried to thrust his way through, but the physician ordered everyone back, and the crowd carried Mikhyel back with them.

"Khy!" He heard Temorii scream, and called back, but he wasn't certain she heard. She screamed again, this time to someone else, to leave her alone, to get out of her way, and Mikhyel rammed his way through to the front just in time to see her disappear alone down a tunnel beneath the stadium seating.