Jane S. Fancher - Dance of the Rings 3 - Ring of Destiny

Prelude

They made love for the first time on a gilt-edged dream

beneath a shadow of doom.

Fingertips extend. Iridescent motes ripple and flow, co-

alesce as skin touches skin, flare as fingers intertwine.

With separation, even death, an imminent probability,

they'd packed a lifetime of experience into one brief night.

Mouths explore, caressing, savoringremembering.

They'd come to know one another that night, to a depth

no poet had ever dared to imagine.

Two Minds brush with a feather's light touch . . .

Her thoughts had smelted of raspberries that night, rasp-

berries dusted with cinnamon and the faintest hint of clove.

. . . then merge into a unified awareness, as two Bodies

become one in the most ancient of mortal dances.

That scentnot truly scent at all, but rather some essen-

tial radiance that bypassed nose and tongue altogether and

plunged straight to his heartthat essence filled him now,

heart, mind, and soul. It was indisputable evidence that she

was truly, impossibly alive and in his arms, and not some

guilt-driven memory come to torment his dreams.

They made love for the second time on a moss-covered

hillside, while a new leythium node blossomed deep in the

earth beneath them.

They were little more than novicesshe a Khoratumin

ringdancer, he with a past as black as the hair on his head

but the love they shared transcended fumbling, uncertain

hands and shyly diverted eyes, and as they merged, one

into the other, experience ceased to have meaning. There

was only...

Need.

Desire.

Joy.

The glittering false dawn of ley-touched mountain air tin-

gled against their skin. Music born of the crystalline web,

steadily evolving in the caves below, filled their minds.

Life emerged in those caverns. The very essence of the

earth gained form under the impact of the unbridled energy

that bathed this instant in time and this tiny spot of earth. It

was energy focused, in part, by the lovers' simple presence.

And as the very ground beneath them surged and re-

ceded with slow undulationas if the mountain itself

breathedthey explored those indescribable places, both

mental and physical, where Self held no meaning.

Where existence was a deluge of . . .

Anticipation...

Sensation...

Consummation.

Release.

Mikhyel.

My name is Mikhyel.

Isolation.

She . . . is . . . Temorii.

And the mountain stopped breathing.

Chapter One

Night gave way reluctantly to morning. The glitter in the

misty air confused the transition, making ghosts of the rows

of field tents, corpses of the blanket-wrapped bodies lit-

tering the ground outside the tents.

Assuming, of course, those erstwhile soldiers weren't, in

fact, dead and that Ganfrion of No Family and No Node

wasn't the only man still living on this hell-blasted moun-

tainsidea mountainside with the unmitigated gall to ap-

pear, in dawn's light, as if it were a perfectly ordinary

mountain meadow bathed in a perfectly ordinary Khora-

mali summer morning.

But hellfire had filled that deceptively innocent sky last

night. Throughout the midnight hours, blasts of energy that

owed nothing to the honest blaze of gunpowder or the ex-

hilarating song of steel had blazed an unnatural iridescent

web from the northeast to southwest: that was to say, be-

tween the cities of Khoratum to Rhomatum, as any man

here knew. It had been a battle between node cities, more

specifically, a battle between Towers, a battle the likes of

which he had never heard, a battle in which these men had

had no part, but a battle that, in its aftermath, had rained

who-knew-what down on their heads all night, here in the

open as they'd slept . . . having been given license by their

commanding officer, Deymorin Rhomandi dunMheric, the

Rhomandi himself, to leave their underground haven.

License to leave when they damnwell should have been

ordered to stay in the limestone caverns nearly encircling

the campgrounds until the world was normal again. Why

else had they chosen this cave-riddled spot for their semi-

permanent base camp all those months ago?

Lightning, a part of him answered his own question. He'd

been here when they'd laid out this camp, begun its two

permanent structures, the field hospital and the granary.

They'd had no idea, not even the slightest suspicion, that

they'd need protection against anything other than the wild

storms that raged regularly in the Khoramali. They'd set

the lines of the camp relative to the caves with those

wicked storms in mind, protecting their supplies from deer

and lightning, not . . . leythium.

That's what they had had in mind, those men who had

located and surveyed this site, but he wouldn't hazard a

guess as to what the Rhomandi had suspected. Not

anymore.

Not after last night.

Ganfrion propped himself against a marker post that pro-

claimed this block of tents the Aerie of the Seventh Eagle

and scanned the rows, seeking any sign of movement, any

hint of the sort of stirring that ought to occur among sea-

soned troops as the sun's first rays gilded the snow-capped

tops of the mountains. Never mind most had lain awake

watching that web disintegrate into sparkling motes of en-

ergy, motes that had drifted down from the sky hovering

and darting and floating on a breeze like a billion fireflies

on Midsummer's Eve.

And this morning . . . the bodies lay still as death.

The cough that had plagued him since long before the

world ended threatened, and he slaved it off with a long

pull from the flask he carried. Stolen, that flask, or given

to him sometime last night before men turned to corpses.

He honestly couldn't recall how it had come into his posses-

sion. He only recalled wanting a drink, badly, and that flask

arriving in his hand in a moment of darkness between one

heartbeat and the nextmuch as he had arrived in this

camp last night. One moment, he'd been gasping his last

in the middle of the Khoratum Maze, his back braced

against a wooden door, the dancer he'd gone to rescue

huddled against his side; the next, he'd been .here on the

leyroad side of the camp, the dancer still at his side and

his back to the earthen fortification, his feet hanging in a

half-dug trencha day's ride from that maze under the best

of circumstances.

At least, he'd assumed it was the same night. The tower

battle had ceasedbefore or after that final moment in the

maze, he couldn't swear tobut the web in the sky had

only just begun to disintegrate. The moon was still full.

And it was just himself and the dancer, both as immobile

as they'd been in the maze. Time had passed; the leythium

motes had drenched them, and eventually he'd found the

strength to gather himself and the dancer up, to stumble

across that waist-high ditch and through the camp to the

caves, miraculously alive, and without a clue as to why that

was true or how he'd come to be here.

Later, after the stand-down had been ordered, with his

precious charge delivered into the proper hands, with every

right to a month's rest, with in 'fact his liege lord's direct

order to celebrate his unexpected aliveness in that man-

nerand still no answers to the mysteries surrounding that

facthe had refused to so much as lie down as long as the

glitter remained in the air. Having cheated Death once that

night, in a Khoratumin alleyway and against honest steel,

he wasn't about to lie down and passively surrender to this

new, insidiously attractive threat. Never mind he'd stood

outside the caves watching the spectacle, as mesmerized as

all the others by the sheer beauty of the moment. He'd

recovered. He'd given in once, but had resisted that subse-

quent effect, that feeling of somnolent well-being that ar-

rived with the glittering rain like a post-orgasmic lethargy.

No, he hadn't fallen asleep, and damned if he hadn't

cheated those unnamed gods of the Ley and the Lightning

yet one more chance at his oft-compromised soul.

Even now, for all he had a tent somewhere in this sea

of tents that seemed doubled and even tripled in size since

his last time here, he refused to seek out that haven, re-

fused to surrender to the very real exhaustion that made

his eyes flicker in and out of focus and his knees turn to

liquid. He refused to surrender because even now he had

to wonder whether the glitter was gone or simply overpow-

ered by the light of dawn. .

Another part of his fractured thinking wondered if per-

haps his personal battle was long since moot. Perhaps, con-

sidering the flask, still full after so many hours and so many

throat-quenching drafts, the gods had won. Perhaps he was

dead after all, and death, for that compromised soul, was

to walk alone, among bodies dreaming the peaceful dreams

of the righteous, bone-deep aches in every joint, sharp

pains everywhere else, wounds that never healed. Never

healing, never dying . . .

With only the flask for company.

He took another swig.

He could liveor not livewith that. He'd made his

decisions in life, and he'd die with the consequences.

The precisely aligned field tents rippled, faded, and

fluxed back into focus before they disappeared altogether.

Caught in mid-stride by this new twist of his singular real-

ity, Ganfrion froze, one foot in the air. But his abused-

possibly-dead body betrayed him. Balance went, knees

gave, and he staggered. His boot encountered an unex-

pected lump. The lump produced a curse, and a glancing

blow caught Ganfrion's already uncertain knees.

His mercenary blood surged, his vision cleared, and

strength returned to his limbs. Battle-honed instincts held

him upright, wavering but readyeager, evenfor a fight.

A good, honest fight would be a welcome relief after the

recent ambiguity of his life.

And proof he wasn't alone in his post-leythium-rain hell.

But the lump ignored him, rolled over and bun-owed

deeper into its cocoon of blankets, returning to its former

corpse-like condition.

Cheated of his fight, Ganfrion responded with the only

sensible alternative. He slid down to sit cross-legged next

to the lump and offered it a drink. The lump rolled over,

produced a heavy-lidded eye that took in the flask, blinked

slowly, and a reluctant grin joined the eye above the

blanket.

"A bit early, don't you think?"

"Can't be." Ganfrion took a carefully measured sip, then

extended the flask again. "Haven't been to bed yet."

The lump's eyes followed his moves, showing a healthy

suspicion, a keen analysis. A good border man, like all

those other lumps lying about. Grant the Rhomandi that

much: luck, good advice, or more sense than Ganfrion had

once attributed to him, he'd recruited a good lot for his

personal guard. Sixseven hundred, perhaps, encamped

here at what amounted to little more than a supply station

in the southwest shadow of Mount Khoratum. Large for a

personal guard, but the Rhomandi hadn't truly gathered

them for his personal protection.

"Maybe you haven't been to bed, but I have." The bor-

der lump made as if to return to sleep. "I'm in it."

"So?" Ganfrion nudged him with a toe. "Hell, man, first

call isn't until midday. The Rhomandi's own order. Break-

fast." He shook the flask suggestively. Eyes and grin above

the blanket edge developed into a stubbled face atop a

hairy chest, then a hand that accepted the flask. The man

sniffed and pulled back. "Whew. That Stuff'11 kill you."

Ganfrion snorted, reclaimed his prize, and gulped a

mouthful. "Where'd the Rhomandi pull you from, missy? A

Kirish'lani slave market?"

The lump growled and grabbed the flask, coughed as the

potent liquid hit his throat, and swallowed again. "Shit, just

my luck, the Rhomandi'll call a surprise muster." Which

expectation did not stop the lump from helping himself to

another hefty sample.

"He won't."

The man snorted and tossed the flask back. "And you,

of course, are in his direct counsel."

Ganfrion just lifted a suggestive brow and took a swig

that should have emptied the flask. It didn't. But he didn't

wonder at that phenomenon any longer. After what he'd

witnessed in the past few days, after what he'd experienced

in the last few hours, he refused to wonder at anything

ever again.

"Who are you?" the lump asked.

"Ganfrion," he answered, then recalled: "Captain Gan-

frion, newly anointed gorMikhyel." As if he could forget.

The flask made another round. "And as your superior, I

order you. It's your sworn duty. For Princeps and Node

and . . . hellsabove, drink to my promotion!"

The lump guffawed, but forced himself to obey the direct

order. The return pass was accompanied by one more of

those Looks. "Captain Ganfrion. Heard of you. .You're the

man the Barrister pulled out of Sparingate Prison and the

Rhomandi himself elevated to Captain. And gorMikhyel?

Hadn't heard that. The Barrister's sworn man? Should I

be worried?"

"Suit yourself," Ganfrion replied with a frown, and

under cover of his coat, twisted the ring itching and cutting

off circulation to his smallest finger. Damned spider-

fingered pen-scratcher. In one brief moment, Mikhyel dun-

Mheric had saddled him with a ring several sizes too small

and an associated oath that choked his whole gods-be-

damned philosophy of life.

"Heard tell the Rhomandi's brothers showed up in camp

last night. Guess you're proof of that, eh?"

He shrugged, tacitly avoiding the details of that arrival.

A handful of returns later: "What's he like?"

"Hm?" He grunted, forcing his eyes to focus.

"You're shat, man. Better stop."

He growled, and the man raised a warding hand. It was

lack of sleep, not too much drink that slurred his tongue

and made his eyes droop, but damned if he'd explain that

to the lump. "Wha's who like?"

"Th' Barrister. Met the kid brother oncenever can re-

member his name."

"Nik" His voice caught with the stitch in his side. "

aenor. Nikki."

"Yeah, that's the one. Odd name, to my way of thinking.

Kid visited the Rhomandi on the border back when Dey-

morin Rhomandi was still Deyrnio even f the likes of us.

Solid man, Deymio. Liked what I saw then, liked what I

heard after. City man who looks after somethin' other than

th' Cities. Knows th' value of a fighting man and a farmer,

he does. Proud, I was, when he included me in his special

muster. The kidhell, he was a kid. But what about this

middle brother? As hard as they say?"

What was Mikhyel dunMheric like? Certainly nothing

like his brothers. Deymorin Rhomandi, Princeps of Rhoma-

tum and the Rhomandi of House Rhomandi, at least

looked the part of a leader. Big man. Solid, as this lump

said. The sort that could inspire men to follow and trust

just by his presence. A trait that made men like Ganfrion

that much more suspicious of him. Still, there was enough

substance behind the appearance to warrant this lump's

assessment.

Physically and by nature, Rhomandi was a true descen-

dant of Darius, the very image of those who had emigrated

from Mauritum three hundred years ago. Nikaenor, youn-

gest of the three, was softer yet still unquestionably the

same breed.

Mikhyel dunMheric had been pulled from an entirely dif-

ferent mold. The first time he'd seen him, Ganfrion had

mistaken him for a hiller

No. That had been the second time. The first time, he'd

been in the High Court sentencing pit and dunMheric had

been on the uppermost judgment dais. Mikhyel had

seemed . . . taller then.

The second time they'd crossed paths had been in the

depths of Sparingate Crypt, prison for the worst and dumb-

est. He'd been there for attempting to assassinate the Rho-

mandi, never mind he'd been caught because he'd been

stopping his associate from that precise dastardly deed. The

fact was, after tailing Rhomandi long enough to evaluate

his worthiness to be dead, he'd gone back on his hire. He'd

decided that Rhomandi's loss to the world was not worth

the risk to his own well-being should he be caught. And in

that refusal to kill Deymorin Rhomandi he'd pissed off the

wrong person in the Tower. Since That Person, the broth-

ers' own charming aunt Anheliaa, was now dead, the details

of that incarceration were moot.

Besides, over the years he'd acquired ample points on

the shady side of the law to offset more than one mis-

taken ruling.

By the strictest rule of law, he'd belonged in the Crypt;

the Rhomandi brothers had not, not by any stretch of any

law. The Rhomandi brothers had pissed off more than their

aunt, and been tossed among the worst element of Rhoma-

tum society for, of all things, impersonating themselves.

Some idiosyncracies of the elite defied even his under-

standing.

The lump nudged his elbow; Ganfrion ignored him and

took another swallow, his mind wandering off, wondering

who it was that had wanted them deadbecause someone

had. Deymorin might have passed unnoticed, save for the

normal challenges a strong man faced in establishing crypt-

status: of all those in the Crypt, he'd likely been the only

one who'd ever seen Deymorin Rhomandi before. Nikki

was even less well-known.

Mikhyel, on the other hand, was known by each and

every scut in that high security level of the prison. Mikhyel,

Lord High Justice dunMheric, had sentenced every one of

them.

Only chance, in the form of the complete absence of the

beard that had been the Barrister's signature for years, had

prevented his instant exposure. And it wasn't that it had

simply been shaved. In all those long hours the brothers

spent in the Crypt, not so much as a shadow had appeared

around that deceptively sensual mouth.

Another impatient jab; he handed the flask to the lump.

The crypt-scut had called the unknown inmate pretty,

crypt-slang for powerless new meat. The crypt-scut had

been in error: Ganfrion doubted Mikhyel dunMheric had

ever been powerless. He could imagine Mikhyel dunMheric

determining the moment of his own birth from the dark

depth of his mother's womb, some twenty-seven years ago.

The flask tapped his elbow. He took if and another swig,

ignoring the expectant look on the lump's face.

Twenty-seven. Damned baby. Damned babe who'd been

calling the shots for the entire Syndicate of Nodes for ten

years.

As he'd called the shots in the Crypt that night. With

what he now recognized as typical arrogance, Mikhyel had

played to that scutly prejudice, seamlessly slipping into the

part of a gutter whore, and subsequently controlling, such

as they could be controlled, the majority of the scuts, buy-

ing him and his brothers one night of peace, time for them

to get free of the Crypt. But arrogance was all that had

connected the pale, thin, beardless young hillerman to the

man the underworld knew as Hell's Barrister.

A name, so rumor had it, given him by his own brother.

That sleek, dark hair and hiller-smooth jaw had thrown

them all, including Ganfrion, and he'd grown up in the

Khoramali, in a hiller village where his large, hairy body

had made him as out of place as dunMheric had been in

Rhomatum's Crypt.

That beardso indelibly part of the Barrister image

had just as mysteriously reappeared, much too soon after

Mikhyel escaped the Crypt. Ganfrion had assumed, on that

first meeting after his release from the Crypt, that the beard

was fake, applied to disguise an otherwise embarrassing

hiller connection to the first family of Rhomatum . . . would

still believe that if he .hadn't personally watched Mikhyel's

valet, Raulind, trim and shave it on a daily basis.

That beardwas just one more in a long line of the

mysteries that surrounded his employer.

What was Mikhyel dunMheric like?

"Lives up to his name," Ganfrion answered at last, then

cleared his throat and spat, aiming at a nearby rock.

"Which name?" the lump asked quickly. Too quickly for

him this morning.

The damp splotch traced a mostly red path down the

stone.

"Take your pick."

His employer was above all else a Rhomandi. Mikhyel

lived and breathed for the City named for his ancestor. He

was more the Rhomandi in that sense than his legally enti-

tled brother had yet proven to be. And he was a dun-

Mheric: definitely a man formed by his cursed father.

And Hell's Barrister? Mikhyel dunMheric was as fair . . .

"nd as ruthless . . . as any man ever birthed.

"I wouldn't cross him, if I were you." Ganfrion drew

hard on the flask and passed it again.

"And you gave the oath." The raised flask was a silent

toast to his perceived daring.

Gave? He wouldn't put the matter that way. He'd had

the damned ring thrown at him along with an order to get

himself out of hell alive. . . .Where was the honor in that?

Where the choice?

"Since you have the rail in this race, bein' so tight with

the Princeps and all, how 'bout explainin' what that was all

about last night?"

Explain. Explain what? That the Northern Crescent, fully

half of the Syndicate of Nodes, had staged a major coup?

That confidence in the Rhomandi Family had shattered at

last and that Garetti of Mauritum had been using the

Northern Towers to wrest controlhowever remotelyof

Rhomatum Tower out of Rhomandi hands?

That the fact that the Rhomandi had called the stand-

down for the troops following last night's atmospheric pyro-

technics indicated to him that the coup had failed?

That he himself had serious reservations about what the

Rhomandi brothers had done to halt that rebellion?

That he himself had serious reservations about the stand-

down here in camp with all the "personal guards" of the

Northern Crescent Families encamped just outside of Khor-

atum City, only two days' march away? Two days . . . and

he'd made the trek in a heartbeat. What was to stop them

from the same unexplained trip? What was to stop those

troops from landing, armed and ready in the middle of this

sleeping camp? Snugged up against a mountain's flank, they

had no fortifications hereunless you counted that over-

sized ditch, the caves and the mountain height, which per-

sonally, Ganfrion did not.

A hospital built to handle blisters and dysenteric recruits

and a granary to supply trainees' horses didn't qualify as a

fort, either, but it was what they had, those and wagonloads

of canvas tents. So here they were, come to fight a war that

wasn't a war, without an army, plumped down to sleep off

the sparkles in the sky in a fort with a half-finished wall

while the Ley bubbled and burbled its discontent under-

ground. The Rhomandi brothers had had a falling out with

the ringmaster in Khoratum, men popped up here and

there across a map no longer peaceful by means that didn't

make sense to a sober man, which he wasn't, nor meant to

be any time soon . . . Oh, all was not right with the world.

Not for the first time, Ganfrion regretted having been

singled out by some decidedly ill-humored fate to have

these insights into the Rhomandi brothers' business.

Actually, it wasn't what he knew, it was what he didn't

know. He knew the questions but too damned few answers.

He took a hasty, frustrated pull from his flask. Too hasty:

the swallow dissolved in a choking cough. The now-

constant ache in his side flared to blinding brilliance, and

he gripped his elbow tight, holding both cough and pain at

bay. The morning light dimmed; the sparkling motes re-

turned, and it seemed to his pain-hazed eyes as if they

swirled around him and gathered at his waistwhere, be-

neath his stolen coat, the equally pillaged shirt-turned-field-

bandage oozed a sluggish trail down his side.

Saturatedfrom a wound that by rights should have

drained him dry sometime around midnight last night. He

should be dead and lying unnoticed and unmourned in a

back alley of a mountain node city a good two days' jour-

ney away from this camp.

Dead. In Khoratum. Covering Mikhyel dunMheric's escape.

"Captain?"

Yet here he was, still full of liquid ... just like the

bottomless flask.

"Captain!"

The motes disappeared between one blink and the next.

The blanket-lump had gained a body and legs, was on its

knees now, gripping his shoulders, shaking him. Shouting

for help. Loudly.

From the pounding in his head, maybe the haze sur-

rounding,him was the alcohol after all.

"Shut up," Ganfrion snarled, and when the lump ap-

peared not to notice: "I said, shut the fuck up. I'm a hell

of a way from dead!"

But the damage was done. All around them, other lumps

developed arms and legs and loud voices asking questions

he didn't want to answer. He staggered to his feet, snatched

up the flask, and backed away from the lump's growing

suspicion. "That's it. We're finished. See if I ever offer you

breakfast in bed again!"

He escaped between tents, wishing he had his old

strength, his accustomed skill at vanishing into any conve-

nient shadow, of which there were plenty here. Instead, it

was all he could do to maintain an even pace until he was

on the edge of the camp, well away from the lump's camp-

fire, and even farther from the growing number of perma-

nent structures rising here, structures that included among

other things, the infirmary he should, without question, be

reporting to even now.

Get himself patched up before the glitter faded alto-

gether and his body '. . . and the flask . . . drained at last.

The shouts faded into the distanceor perhaps were just

overridden by the pounding in his ears. But a glance back-

ward confirmed that lack of pursuit.

He relented, then, to his body's silent protests, and

caught himself against a tree. One of many trees. He'd

stumbled his way into a small stand of timber they'd chosen

to keep on the inside of the ditch and earth barricade that

paralleled the leyroad and funneled honest folk past a

guarded gate. From here, had he been so inclined, he could

easily make his way up the rocky mountainside, and escape

the camp altogether.

Damned sloppy. They should have been all over him.

The lump's suspicions were more than enough to detain

him for further questioning. And that would mean lying to

men who deserved better, which he didn't want to door

facing the Rhomandi brothers, which he didn't want to

door landing in the infirmary . . . which might not be a

bad idea, excepting the morbid curiosity that had taken him

regarding his wounds: he was waiting for them to commit

to the task of killing him.

From the shouts, a man would think he'd disappeared

right before their eyes. And perhaps he had. Apparitio:ns

were inclined to do that. He'd seen dead men walking last

night. Perhaps it wasn't these men rising from their beds

who had died, but a man called Ganfrion. He'd survived a

fight that should have killed him, found a dancer that

should be dead, delivered that animated corpse to Mikhyel

dunMheric fifty damned miles as the hawks flew from

where they all were supposed to be. He had wounds that

refused to kill him, a flask that refused to empty, hunters

who couldn't find him. . . .

Death was the least improbable of all explanations.

Leythium fire surrounded him again, lit his skin with tin-

gling energy.

Iridescent rain, Leythium fireflies. Motes of pure energy.

Leythium was not humanity's friend, for all that the en-

ergy it produced, controlled by the node-based ringtowers,

provided humanity with the light and heat for the luxuries

of the cities, and power for the steam engines that drove

the manufactories. Everyone knew that that energy came

at a terrible price to those who controlled it, knew that

liquid leythium would eat the flesh right off a man's bones.

Hell, in the Cities, they buried their dead in it and fed

it the damned sewage for dessert.

And yet all of themRhomandi, soldier, and mercenary

alikehad stood in the fallout, gazing up into that lethal

wonder like a flock of turkeys staring up into the rain.

Drowning in their own stupidity.

An honest man had asked him what had happened. Had

asked him, gorMikhyel, who should have been in Mikhyel

dunMheric's confidence.

What can be done has been done whether I'm here or

in Rhomatum.

Mikhyel dunMheric's response when he'd urged his em-

ployer to get the hell out of Khoratum, where near-certain

imprisonment, if not death, awaited him.

What did you do, Khyel? he thought, and worried anew

about how plans had been made at such distance without

{he use of a ringtower and without his help, he who had

been Mikhyel's eyes and ears.

/ have my ways, Ganfrion . . . you're not my only

source....

"Damn you, Khyel," he whispered aloud. "Why didn't

you trust me?"

He clenched his fist until the ring turned his fingertip

to ice.

Fools. They were all of them fools.

Perhaps this was death. Perhaps he had died in that

Khoratumin alley. Perhaps Khyel had, as well. Perhaps

Mikhyel dunMheric's foolhardy dancer had died on the

Khoratumin dance rings and they'd all journeyed into

death together.

Certainly the celestial pyrotechnics that had greeted him

upon his arrival here, the wound that neither healed itself

nor destroyed himthe endless torment of a cursed soul

those would fulfill the lightning-blasted, hell-fired image of

the next world the True Believers of Maurii had brought

into the valley three hundred years ago.

Jane S. Fancher - Dance of the Rings 3 - Ring of Destiny

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