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Ring of Intrigue
Dance of the Rings Book 2
by
Jane S. Fancher
Dusk was closing rapidly as the small entourage ap-
proached the outer wall of Rhomatum. A strangely deep
duskthe leyroad lights, once bright beacons leading to
the city, glimmered feebly in the distance. Even Tower Hill,
an architectural mountain rising above foothills of concen-
tric rooftops, seemed subdued, fewer lights and dimmer
shining from those oldest, most elegant buildings of the city
of Rhomatum.
Only the highest point in the City gleamed with undimin-
ished silver leylight: the Rhomatum Ringchamber, upper-
most room within Rhomatum Tower itself. Home of the
Rhomatum Rings.
The source for all those other, failing, lights.
Lightning clouds roared in from the north. An hour be-
fore, just as the entourage had crossed the Oreno leyline,
the storm that had rumbled in the distance all afternoon
had suddenly broken pattern, gaining organization and di-
rection, forming a line of blinding ferocity, a constant bar-
rage of ground strikes that chased the open carriage and
its handful of outriders down the valley.
It was a race now to see whether they could reach Trisini
Gate before the solid mass of atmospheric fury overtook
them.
Deymorin had kept the team to their steady, running trot
as long as he dared. Bracing his feet against the forward
rail of the driver's box, he gave the anxious horses the
signal they eagerly awaited, tired as they were.
Fool, he called himself, and worse, as he guided galloping
horses grimly over and around the ruts and potholes of the
cattle trail; fool, for choosing this side track over the
smooth-graveled Trisini Leyroad.
In choosing the anonymity of off-ley roads, he'd made
their trip from Armayel overlong and dangerously slow. He
should have known that despite the clear morning skies,
the storms that had made the last month an unpredictable,
living hell for the valley would arrive before nightfall.
At least the storm would keep Anheliaa, or whoever was
in control of Rhomatum Tower these days far too busy
protecting the city to notice their arrival. So he trusted the
seasoned team's instincts, and hoped he didn't shed a car-
riage wheel or a brother in this final mad dash.
Kiyrstin, he'd never lose, so long as he had a coattail for
her to grasp.
To the front and sides, the outsiders kept pace, calling
out warning of ruts and mud holes. Nikki, a quiet and sane
presencein every sensebrought up the rear and cast
Deymorin silent reassurances regarding his passenger's
safety.
Huddled in the back seat with Kiyrstin, Mikhyel was a
black sink of nonemotion. Awake, holding his thoughts his
own, that was all a brother could ask, a brother whose mind
could afford no distractions.
The trail branched, one road toward the stockyards, the
other toward the leyroad and the gate. The horses surged
uphill, and the ground beneath the wheels rattled and
bounced, then settled onto the smooth surface of a leyroad.
A mental sigh of relief reached him: Nikki's thought, Mik-
hyel's, or both; or perhaps just his own.
But it was a short-lived relief. At the gate, chaos reigned,
delivery vehicles jammed the opening, the silk balloons that
normally rose above them, taking the strain off the axles,
lay limp over the cargo or deflated even as they watched;
further evidence, if they needed it, that the node's power
umbrella was rapidly failing.
Or perhaps, Deymorin thought, as he raised his eyes to
see stormciouds gathering above the city, that energy was
being redirected.
"The Tower, Deymorin! Has the storm reached the
Tower?" Mikhyel's voice pierced the near-deafening rum-
ble. He spoke aloud, as was not altogether necessary, ex-
cept from a biother who sought to hide his horror of the
lightning.
Deymorin looked beyond the immediate area to the sky
above the Tower.
"It's all right," he shouted back over his shoulder. "The
sky's clear beyond the old wall."
Words or mental image penetrated the thunder and dark-
ness, and Mikhyel's relief filtered back: a conscious leak in
the blackness.
A relief all well and good for the safety of the rings and
those individuals within the perimeter of the old wall, but
the immediate danger to themselves and all those milling
about them remained. The old wall, that marker of an ear-
lier limit of the city's power umbrella, was a mile and more
yet ahead.
But they didn't need to reach the umbrella. Not far from
Trisini Gate lay their salvation, if only they could get to it.
As the lightning bore down on them, Deymorin added
his voice to the general cacophony, ordering his men to
help clear the vehicles and get the horses and their handlers
inside the wall, and never mind the cargo.
"Can't, sir!" one shouted back. "Gatekeeper's de-
manding to see papers!"
Deymorin cursed, then yelled at Nikki to change places
with him. Handing the team off to his youngest brother, he
made a flying mount into the saddle and forced the big
horse through the mill to confront the gatekeeper
personally.
"Papers!" the man shouted at him, and held out a hand,
wide-eyed and automated as a mechanical doll.
"Don't be a fool!" Deymorin shouted back, and pointed
at the approaching wall of lightning. "These people are
going to fry, and you'll fry with them! Get them and the
stock through the gate and into the underground. Now!"
The man stared at him blankly, obviously terrified into
idiocy. Ignoring him, Deymorin began shouting orders at
anyone within earshot. He found a manone of the idiot's
assistantsfamiliar with the nearest entrance into Old Rho-
matum, and set him at the forwardmost team, with orders
to get the men and animals under cover.
"After hours, sir!" The man shouted. "Locked!"
"Then break the damned doors down!" Deymorin
answered.
"Yes, sir!"
In a few moments, the frightened horses, free of harness,
were forming a steady stream toward the underground city
and stables, the oldest legacy of Darius' followers, and
newly restored for the delight and amusement of tourists.
Tourists be damned, it got them out of the storm.
Deymorin spotted Nikki with .his unharnessed team in
hand, waved him into line, then searched the madness for
Kiyrstin and Mikhyel. Targeting on Kiyrstin's red hair, a
spot of color in the lightning glare, he pushed his way
through to them.
"We're all right, JD," Kiyrstin shouted, and Mikhyel's
determined calm seeped past the gut-jolting thunder.
"We'll get underground, wait for you there!"
Meaning /'// get your shattering brother to safety, and
don't you dare waste time worrying about us.
Deymorin grabbed a fistful of her hair long enough to
press his lips hard to hers.
As the rain began to fall, he let her go, then shouted,
"Love you!", and ran to help free another panicked team
from wind-whipped balloon silk.
9 9 rSbp
"I remind you, our identification is all in that carriage
outside. Do you care to go retrieve it?"
Mikhyel dunMheric's velvety voice carried a hint of con-
tempt that could cut through the most imperturbable indi-
vidual's confidence.
The keeper of Trisini Gate was not what one would call
imperturbable.
"Iit doesn't matter. The law says"
"I know full well what the law says. I wrote it. Shall I
quote it for you?"
Somewhere beneath the city of Rhomatum, Kiyrstine
romGaretti, estranged wife of Ringmaster Garetti rom-
Maurii of Mauritum, leaned against a stack of hay bales
and watched the Trisini gatekeeper squirm.
"Better yet," Mikhyel continued, and he held out his
hand. "I'll read it to you."
The gatekeeper stared at him.
"Naturally you have the paperwork you are by law re-
quired to hand out to every individual entering the city
without proper identification, do you not?" Mikhyel asked,
and Kiyrstin bit her lip to keep from smiling, then winced
as her teeth encountered the bruise left there by Deymor-
in's parting kiss.
His adrenaline rush, or her ownhard to recall, in retro-
spect, which was responsible. They were still learning each
other's limits.
As her exploring tongue found the misaligned tooth re-
sponsible for her bruised lip and marked it for future refer-
ence, the brown-eyed visage that lurked constantly at the
back of her mind crept forward. Kiyrstin made no effort to
push the image back. Mikhyel didn't need her at the mo-
ment. Mikhyel's keen mind was back on track, now they
were out of the storm, and she had total confidence in his
ability to win so minor a skirmish.
And as it had a tendency to do these days when relieved
of other distractions, Kiyrstin's mind, like a pubescent
schoolgirl's, turned to Deymorin Rhomandi dunMheric.
Deymorin presented an intriguing dichotomy. She'd
known the man only two monthsless than two months in
Rhomatum's odd calendarand yet it seemed, at times, as
if she'd known him all her life. At others, it seemed that
three lifetimes wouldn't be long enough.
Raised to be the head of the Rhomandi Family, premier
Family in the Rhomatum Web, Deymorin exuded a confi-
dence and power to command she'd witnessed in only a
handful of individuals in a lifetime among the rich and pow-
erful of Rhomatum's rival nation, Mauritum.
There could be no doubt, at times such as this, where
men seeking an anchor in time of crisis reacted with instinc-
tive trust to his deep-voiced confidence, that he was com-
fortable with that fate.
And yet he was a virtual stranger to his own people.
Years ago, for a complexity of reasons that no one outside
the family could ever understand in their entirety, Dey-
morin had abdicated his inherited responsibilities to Mikhyel
and retired to the Rhomandi country estates. Consequently,
while Deymorin was still in every legal sense the Rhomandi
of Rhomatum, Mikhyel's face was far better known to the
Rhomatumin populace.
Or should have been. Kiyrstin couldn't blame the con-
fused gatekeeper for questioning Mikhyel's identity claims.
She'd seen some of the popular renditions of Mikhyel dun-
Mheric, and cartoonists and serious portraitists alike had
clung to Mikhyel's elegant, feature-defining beard and mus-
tache as his distinguishing characteristic, a look, Deymorin
had told her, that had spawned a new fashion throughout
the City.
And now Mikhyel dunMheric was as smooth-faced as a
child, the hope that his facial hair would return fading with
each passing day. Four long Rhomatumin weeks had passed
since the battle at Boreton turnout, four weeks since Mik-
hyel had fallen from the sky, burned almost beyond recog-
nition and nearly dead.
He had survived, had healed miraculously unscarredon
the outsidebut his body hair was gone. Everything, he'd
revealed once in answer to her unabashed query, except
his eyebrows and lashes, and the silky black mane confined
now in a braid at his back.
Black-haired and gray-eyed, with his black clothing and
beard, and that indefinable attitude, he must have once
made an imposing figure, despite his average height. These
days he looked more like a harassed cleric. Handsome
enough, if a woman's taste ran toward light-boned and slen-
der, and with a look about his eyes that could, when he
was distracted, become sad and a bit haunted.
But his eyes were keen enough now, gleaming with en-
gaged intellect, and neither the loss of a beard nor this
strange venue could undermine the effect of a voice sea-
soned in the courts of Rhomatum.
The gatekeeper's worries had passed beyond the Rho-
mandi brothers to the chaos of men and animals and legali-
ties of forced entry into city property. Leaving Mikhyel to
persuade the harassed civil servant that the way to handle
the situation was not to incarcerate each and every one of
the individuals trapped in this underground museum, Kiyr-
stin edged toward the aisle down which she thought she'd
heard Deymorin's voice.
There were stalls, and she saw Nikki's blond head bob-
bing on the far side of a broad horse-back, but no Dey-
morin. The sound must have been an echo from somewhere
else in this strange underground maze.
She leaned crossed arms on a stony outcrop, and scanned
this newest revelation of Rhomatum. The decor was
unique, to say the least. Stable, those around her had called
it. Except that in addition to stalls and hay, there were
restaurants and gift shops lining the entrance corridor and
a sign beside the hay bales that read: Tours start here.
The light came from oil lamps rather than the ley crystal
bulbs she would expect to light the shadows within a node's
power umbrella. Oil lamps were a curious affectation within
a Node City's limits, but a welcome one, considering this
city's currently-constricted power.
She'd hate to be caught in the absolute black that must
exist here when those lamps were extinguished. A honeycomb
of stone, organic shapes that bore no resemblance to any
rooms she'd ever known, sounds that echoed endlessly . . . a
person could be lost very quickly in this maze with no hope
of logicking herself free.
"Well, we've a respite, at least," Mikhyel's velvet voice
said at her shoulder. The gatekeeper had left. "When the
storm has passed, he'll send a messenger to the Tower.
They'll have someone come down to identify us."
"What about the box in the carriage? The papers Anheliaa
sent? Deymorin's seal"
Mikhyel's black brows knit.
"I . . . very much fear it won't be there."
"You think someone will steal it?"
"No. I" He seemed uncharacteristically reluctant to
meet her eyes. "Rings, I can't believe I'm such a fool. I
had it. And then, the lightning, the jostling . . . I lost it
somewhere, Kiyrstin." He waved a hand toward the stony
ceiling. "Somewhere up there."
That hand was shaking. He was. Cold. Shock. Reaction
to the lightning and the storm. Perhaps just the chill of the
rain that had caught them at the last. And possibly a re-
lapse of the debilitating weakness that had plagued him off
and on since the incident at the Boreton turnout.
"Anything in the box that could be dangerous in the
wrong hands?" she asked.
"Not really. None of those papers Anheliaa sent are
much good if you can't match our signatures."
"And the seal?"
"Old. Outdated by about a hundred years. It might turn
the right person a handsome profit on the black market,
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