"Yes."

"Without regard to what may reign in the human realm outside your home."

"I told you, I pay very little attention to the human realm. Why should I be regimented by the sun?"

"Why, indeed?" said Cray. Not only did he feel warm, he felt heavy as well, and sluggish. "You sleep when you wish, you rise when you wish. An excellent existence." He yawned again, and this time he could not keep his mouth from stretching wide behind his hand. "I, however, am tied to the sun, and though I don't know how much time has passed since I rose this morning, I suspect it is a great deal." He tried to blink the film from his eyes, failed. "Forgive me."

"It's the wine," said Aliza. "I should have warned you not to drink so much."

"Good wine." Looking down into his goblet, he saw that it was empty. "I must remember where it comes from." He lowered the vessel to his lap, where it tipped over, but as it was already empty, nothing spilled from it. He closed his eyes for just a moment, and found that opening them was very difficult. He managed it, but not for long. The last thing he saw before they closed again was Regneniel the demon, come back with a full decanter of translucent red liquid. He wanted to say that he'd had enough, not to fill his goblet again, but his mouth was too tired to form the words.

Chapter 5.

Cray woke to total darkness; not a shred of light, not a candle flame, not a single star, showed anywhere about him. He lay on something well-padded and narrow, with an upright section close against his left elbow and an edge beyond his right. He sat up slowly, clutching at the taut fabric beneath him, feeling dizzy and disori-ented. He swung his legs cautiously over the edge of his bed, and his shins barked against some unyielding object before reaching the floor. He felt for the object with both hands, found it low and broad and smooth-topped. He squinted into the darkness, trying to see what he touched, trying. Then, so slowly that at first he did not realize what was happening, a faint light began to fill up the space around him. Faint, bluish, but becoming brighter with every passing heartbeat, it played an eerie sunrise to the world of his senses. The room came into focus for him, the ebony table under his hands, the gray bro-cade couch upon which he sat, the crystalline walls on every side, not transparent now but rather so many perfect mirrors, reflecting his image back at him from a hundred angles, except where his mother's tapestry covered one panel. He stood up and looked all around and found himself alone with all his images. And nowhere was there any doorway, only mirrors and stairways leading up or down to mirrored walls.

He stepped away from the couch, and on every side his reflection moved with him, a kaleidoscope of re-flections that made him dizzy just to watch.

"Aliza!" he shouted. The sound of his voice seemed to echo back at him from all those images.

He went to the place where he remembered a door, where he remembered the demon had passed. It was a mirror now. He raised a hand and knocked on it tentatively. The sound of his knock had no hollow-ness, as if the space behind the wall were filled solid.

"Aliza!" he shouted.

There was no answer.

He looked back toward the couch, toward the table. At her end, the decanter stood, filled to the brim with red Maretian wine; a goblet was beside it. Cray did not want any more wine. His throat was dry and fuzzy, and his tongue felt thick. He knocked on the mirror again, much harder this time, hard enough to break ordinary glass. But this was not ordinary glass; this was the substance of Ice itself, and he was locked inside it.

"Aliza!"

He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the room with a careful eye. There were things he could do to this room to free himself from it, but none of them would leave it in very good condition. None of them would ingratiate him with its lady. And perhaps, he thought, none of them would work. He had never tried escaping from another sorcerer's spell.

As he stood there weighing his options, all the walls around him abruptly became transparent once more, and a deep resonant voice as close as his elbow said, "Follow me, O mortal."

Startled, Cray twisted about to see Regneniel stand-ing where a mirror had been and now a doorway was again. Without waiting for him to say anything, the demon turned and walked off. Cray hurried after.

"Where are we going, Regneniel?" he asked, after they had passed through three empty rooms, each somewhat smaller than the last.

"To the bathing chamber," it replied, and almost as soon as it had uttered the words, it guided Cray up a steep flight of steps and into a room no larger than his own modest bedroom in Spinweb.

It was a bathing chamber such as any prince might envy, with fixtures for every purpose. Here was a shallow marble basin, delicately veined in gray and pink, suitable for washing the face and hands. Beside it was a deeper basin, still marble, just large enough for an entire human body. Farther along stood a bronze tub with lions' paws holding it up off the floor, a tub broad and deep enough to drown in. Beyondthat was a crystalline shower stall with a finely perforated bronze nozzle hanging at head height; the stall had only three walls, but Cray knew that Aliza could put up a fourth at will. And everywhere that water was needed were spigots of gold, some wrought in the shapes of wild beasts, some as plain and utilitarian as bulls' horns, every one with a handle set upon it to turn the flow of water on and off. Even the shower had its pair of spigots, joined by a bronze tube to the nozzle. From all of these spigots copper pipes ran, hugging the walls, connecting each to one of two large crystalline tanks set on high pedestals at the far end of the room. Beneath one tank, in a copper pan, the embers of a charcoal fire glowed. Cray tested the nearest spigot that drew from that tank and found the water quite hot. The other, of course, was cold.

He cupped his hands beneath its flow and drank deep.

When his thirst was quenched, Cray surveyed basins and tub and shower. "A broad choice of bathing styles," he observed. "But how do you dispose of the used water?"

"I freeze it and discard it in the human realm," answered Regneniel.

"And you bring fresh in the same manner? Frozen?"

"Correct."

Cray strolled the length of the room, to the rather plain wooden frame that crouched like a skeletal arm-chair over its milky crystalline container. "And the contents of the chamber pot," he said. "They, too, are frozen and discarded in the same way?"

"Yes."

Cray nodded. "Very well, Regneniel, I will use the various appurtenances of this room, and my thanks to your lady for them. But I would like to do so in privacy. That is, with the walls and floor and ceiling opaque. You can accomplish that, can't you?"

"As you wish, O mortal," said the demon, and the boundaries of the room became mirrors.

"And would you, after you've gone out, please close the room up with a door? I'll knock on it when I'm ready to come out."

"As you wish, O mortal."

"Go now," said Cray, waving a hand.

It backed out of the room, and the doorway by which they had entered became a mirror.

Cray used the lion-footed tub, reclining in it while he watched the level of water sink in both crystalline tanks and rise about him, up to the level of his chest, the base of his throat, his chin. The heat of it felt good, soaking away the last traces of sleep. At Spinweb, the tub was small and shallow, filled from their well with buckets carried by cloth servants rather than by pipes, filled with the cold clear water of the earth beneath the castle. But no fires were needed to heat it, not since Gildrum had come to live there; the demon had merely to plunge his arm into the water to make it as hot as anyone could wish.

Cray sat bolt upright at the thought of Gildrum. Were he and Elrelet and Leemin still waiting outside the walls? He was sure that two of them, at least, must be-they would never desert him. What did they think had happened to him? How long had he slept? He washed quickly with Aliza's sandalwood-scented soap, and he dried himself on a towel that hung behind the tub and threw on his clothes. He pounded on the mirrored door.

Regneniel opened it.

"My friends outside the palace," Cray said. "I must go to them and tell them I'm all right."

"I have already done so," came Aliza's voice. "I told them you would be staying another day, to come back tomorrow." She stepped into view from behind one of the mirrored walls. She wore pale lavender velvet now, and Cray judged that her change of cloth-ing meant that she, too, had slept. "They seemed reluctant to leave," she said. "Perhaps they didn't believe me. But they went at last, out of my sight at any rate."

Cray exhaled a deep breath. "Thank you. They were probably beginning to worry. I should have thought of them sooner."

"You must be hungry. I know I am. Come into the dining hall and have something to eat with me."

He bowed. "I thank you for your kind hospitality. And I apologize for imposing on you so very much last night. Or whenever it was that I fell asleep. The wine was stronger than I guessed, or perhaps my stomach was emptier."

"I've done the same. When you started on the third glass, I should have known what to expect. You slept very soundly." She turned and led him in a new direc-tion, away from the room that contained the tapestry, deeper into the heart of the palace. Regneniel fol-lowed along behind them.

Their route to the dining hall took them up a flight of steps and through a bedchamber that was obviously Aliza's own. The bed was of ordinary size, without curtains, the green plush coverlet thrown back, the pillows still marked by her head. Opposite it was a large open wardrobe where a number of gowns of various fabrics and colors hung; velvet seemed to be her preference, but Cray noticed a few of silk and at least one of linen. They were all very plain, without a touch of embroidery or lace. The room, too, was plain, almost stark, with only the bed and the wardrobe and a small gray rug as furnishings. The transpar-ent walls, as usual, were innocent of any decoration. He recognized those walls now, those same crystalline walls that surrounded him as he moved from room to room. They were the background he had seen in the Mirror of Heart's Desire, the background he had been unable to identify. He smiled to think that, once, he had not been able to imagine a sheet of glass as tall as a man; how could he ever have foreseen that someday he would walk through a palace made entirely of crys-tal?

The dining hall lay down a shallow ramp from the bedchamber, and though it was large enough to seat a duke and three dozen retainers in comfort, it was furnished, of course, only for one. The table itself was impressive in both size and construction-a double armspan wide and more than twenty paces long, it was made of a single oaken plank, the very heart of a great tree, thick and finely finished, supported by half a dozen trestles. Halfway down one side of the table was a single chair, also oaken, with wide, curving arms and cushioned seat. Before the chair was a place-setting, napkin and plate and tumbler of water, and beside that a tray of fruit, a bowl of hard cooked eggs, and a loaf of white bread, all waiting for one person to sit there and break fast.

"Regneniel," said Aliza, "fetch the chair from my study and then set a place for Cray Ormoru." As the demon hurried past them toward a doorway at the opposite end of the hall, she turned to Cray and said, "I think you'll be more comfortable in a chair you can move back and forth." "As long as it has a cushion," he replied. "I remem-ber that crystal chair as a bit too firm for any long-term comfort."

She smiled just a trifle. "Yes, it was, wasn't it?" He smiled back at her. "I presume you don't use crystal chairs very often."

"There is much fine furniture in the human realm. Why should I not avail myself of it?"

"Why not, indeed." Stepping close to the table, he ran one hand across its smoothly polished surface.

He wondered how many artisans had worked to achieve that soft, warm gloss, how many hours, how many weeks they had labored with sand and rouge and oil. "This is truly a beautiful piece," he said. "I have seen its like only in very great houses. Such things are costly, in mortal terms."

"I wouldn't know about that. My grandfather had Regneniel bring it when I asked him for a table to suit this room." At that moment the demon entered with the chair. "Put it opposite mine," she told the creature.

As Cray and Aliza seated themselves, the demon opened the doors of a large wooden cabinet that stood against the wall nearest Cray's place. Inside, neatly arranged on the many shelves, he could see all manner of elegant crockery and table utensils, from serving platters and carving knives to saltcellars and cream pitchers. The demon selected a napkin, plate, and tumbler from this collection and set them before Cray. The napkin was linen of a fine weave, almost too delicate to be used at table; the dish was hard-fired ceramic, painted and edged with enough gold to suit a king; the tumbler was thick and solid in the hand, and difficult to knock over with an errant elbow.

Cray held the tumbler up. "Your work?" he asked Aliza.

She nodded.

"I like a vessel that defies the clumsy," he said.

She smiled again, a little more broadly this time. "Are you often clumsy?"

"As seldom as possible. But still, I tried to keep agood hard grip on last night's goblet."

"It wouldn't have broken, you know."

"I suspected as much. But I was thinking more of the wine spilling, to tell the truth." He looked closely at his plate. The design was not only richly executed but showed considerable skill as well. "You seem to have quite a few of these. From your grandfather again?"

"Yes. Everything I have, that I don't make myself, comes from him."

"He is rich, then, as well as powerful."

Aliza took a pear from the tray of fruit, cut it in half with the bread knife, and bit into one half. "Power can provide riches, if one so desires," she said.

Regneniel had gone out and come back with a ca-rafe of water; it filled Cray's glass and set the carafe down. Then, at Aliza's sharp gesture, it left the room by the nearest door. She began to peel herself an egg. "Aren't you hungry?"

"Me? Why, yes, somewhat. I was just looking at my plate. It seems such a shame to put something on it and hide the decoration."

"Yes, I suppose it's pretty enough. Would you per-haps like the other half of this pear? It's a little too much for me."

He took it and found it tart enough to remind him of Maretian wine. That memory made his head spin a bit, with just the barest trace of a headache, and in trying to push those sensations away, he realized that he was very hungry indeed. He finished the pear and cut himself a slice of bread; it was warm, shot through with currants, and delicious.

"Your grandfather also provides your food?" Cray asked.

Aliza nodded. "Regneniel fetches it every few days."

"He seems to look after you reasonably well, at least so far as creature comforts are concerned."

She shrugged. "I am his apprentice, after all. When he made me that, he took on the responsibility of making sure I stayed alive and healthy as well as of teaching me sorcery." She nibbled delicately at a thin slice of bread. "Everything I have, everything I am, I owe to him. It is my only debt, and one I doubt I shall ever be able fully to repay."

"Do you think he expects any repayment?"

"I have never thought otherwise. He has expended a great deal of effort on my education. Of course, I have sent him little gifts over the years, gewgaws of crystal that I've made, some of them more useful than others. He must have quite a display of them by now, ranging all the way from my first pitiful efforts to some rather elegant pieces that I've done lately. But my grandfather is a rich and powerful sorcerer, and he needs no crystal bric-a-brac from me, I know. They don't represent any true sort of repayment. But someday, when I am as powerful as he, I will give him real value for all he has done for me.''

Cray picked over the seeds from his pear core, rolling them meditatively between his fingers. "And yet,"

he said softly, "whathas he done for you? He has assigned one of his army of demons, one which by your own admission he will not miss, to be your tutor. He sends a little food, a few pieces of furniture.

And once a year, a very small allocation of time, surely, he comes by to check on your progress. In terms of his own life, he has really given you very little." He looked at her across the table. "As far as I can see, he hasn't given you anything at all ofhimself. "

Her eyes were puzzled, her cool, dark eyes. "I don't understand what you mean. I am his apprentice; he is giving me his knowledge."

"At one remove," Cray said. "From what you've told me, you might as well be Regneniel's apprentice as your grandfather's. The knowledge comes by way of the demon. The master seems to have little at all to do with it."

"He sets my lessons."

"But does not administer them. Most sorcerers do. Most sorcerers have their apprentices living with them, under their eyes at all times. This apprenticeship at long distance is a very strange situation. Ithardly impinges on the master at all."

"His time is valuable," said Aliza. "I would not wish to impose upon it. And how could I live with him and still have direct access to Ice and to the transformed substance of Ice which I manipulate? His is an ordinary castle, a demon master's castle. Our goals conflict. Our powers would conflict. No, Imust be at a distance from him."

Cray took another pear, but he did not bite into it. He said, "Must you be at a distance emotionally as well as physically?"

Aliza said nothing, only looked at him uncertainly, as if she had not quite understood the question.

"Do you love your grandfather?" Cray asked.

Aliza pursed her lips, frowning. "Love," she said. She looked down at her plate, and with one forefinger she flicked at the breadcrumbs and bits of shell scat-tered upon it. "I suppose I may have loved him when I was a child. But now I respect him. That's a more appropriate attitude for an adult."

"You could love him as well, if he were worth loving."

"You think he's not."

"I think he doesn't love you," said Cray, "and therefore is not worthy of your love. And that's a shame, considering that he is all the family you have."

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I have no time to waste on love." She raised her eyes to his, and, as once before, he saw defiance in them, and much pride. "A sorcerer must be strong and indepen-dent. He must not lean on anyone or anything."

Slowly, he eased back in his chair. "You think love is a weakness?"

"I think that I would never be completely free of my grandfather if I did love him. And one must be free someday. You said as much yourself."

"Yes, I did. But I've never thought of love as being a set of chains."

"It ties people together, doesn't it?"

Cray smiled. "But they wish to be tied."

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I don't."

Elbows on the arms of his chair, Cray folded his hands together beneath his chin and studied her as she peeled another egg. "I suspect that if you had grown up loving and being loved," he said, "your attitude might be a bit different. Losing your parents so early has had a considerable effect on you."

"I don't remember them very well," she said. "It was a long time ago."

"They were sorcerers?"