"I hope you weren't frightened by that last part," Cray said to Aliza. "I have to admit that no matter how many times I see the ritual, I'm startled by the sudden finish."

Her face was serene. "I assumed I was safe in the company of you and all these demons."

"Oh, quite safe. They never come this far. And even if they had, Arvad is extremely agile."

"Do they perform this ritual often?"

"Quite often."

"And what does it mean?"

"Must it mean something?"

Her brows knit slightly. "It doesn't mean anything?"

He shrugged. "It's a physical pleasure to them, somewhat as dancing is among mortals.

"Dancing?"

He shook his head slowly, pityingly. "Ah, my lady, you've never danced, have you?"

"I don't know what that is."

"Well, perhaps sometime when we have a little music nearby, I'll show you. You do know what music is?"

"Yes. Of course. My mother sang to me when I was a child."

"I'm glad to hear it." He smiled at her. "What did you think of the ritual? Besides wondering what it meant."

"I thought it was ... intricate. They must have trained a good deal in order to perform it so neatly. Are they some sort of special group within the demons of Water?"

"Only in one way," said Cray. "They are all free. No slave demon is allowed to participate. Perhaps you noticed the two stray reflections of Gildrum's light over there just before the ritual began?" He pointed off to their left.

"No, I didn't."

"Well, two demons were floating there, watching. They must have been slaves, visiting home while their masters had no need of them, for if they'd been free, they would surely have joined in. It's very sad, don't you think, that through no fault of their own they are barred from the ritual?" "Why are they barred?"

"Ah, there you ask a question about the fundamen-tal nature of demons, my lady. You ask about the difference between the slave and the free. I think a demon should answer you. Gildrum?"

"The answer is simple," said Gildrum. "The Free are proud and jealous of their freedom. They see it as a mark of superiority, and they look upon slaves as low and contemptible and unworthy of associating with themselves. It is thus in all the demon worlds, but the inhabitants of Water have raised it to the highest art."

"And what of the slaves?" said Aliza. "How do they view those who are free?"

"As foolish and self-centered. They have their own society, separate from the Free, at least in Air and Fire and Water. In Ice, of course, no demon associates with another very often."

"If they have their own society," said Aliza, "why don't the slaves of Water organize their own ritual?

Why should they need to come here and watch these free demons in theirs?"

"They have tried to organize their own, occasionally, but whenever the free demons discover it, they break it up. They see the ritual as a celebration of their freedom and not a proper pastime for slaves."

"But every free demon has the potential to be a slave. At any moment any of those performers in the ritual could have been conjured by a sorcerer."

"That is why they celebrate their freedom," said Gildrum. "While they have it."

"It must be a strange sort of existence," said Cray, "to know that at any moment one could become a slave."

"I suppose it must be," murmured Aliza.

Would you care to meet a Water demon?" Cray asked her.

She shrugged. "I suppose I might as well. I've met every other sort."

"Look over your shoulder, then."

She turned and saw, not more than an arm's length behind her, a faint glow in the water, like some sub-dued reflection of Gildrum's sunny light, but shimmering and iridescent with all the pale colors of mother of pearl. In another moment it became fully visible as a milky globe the size of a large bear.

"Greetings, Elrelet, Cray Ormoru, and you others," said the Water demon. Its voice was deep and fuzzy, and its opalescent surface bulged here and there in rhythm to its speech, as if something inside were strug-gling to get out.

"Greetings, Murnai," said Elrelet. "We found your ritual most impressive, as always. Allow me to present the mortal Aliza, and two others you may not have met before, Regneniel and Leemin of Ice.

Murnai is the current leader of the ritual."

"A slave," said the Water demon, "a slave from Ice." Cray murmured to Aliza, "Murnai is free, of course."

"I am free," said the demon. "Will you force me to speak with a slave?"

Regneniel moved from its place at Aliza's shoulder to one nearer her hip; floating there, it seemed almost to be hiding from the Water demon. Aliza put her hand on it, as if gripping a knife.

"Speak to me, then, O creature of Water," she said. "Tell me who will speak to you when you are a slave."

With one curving sweep of his hand, Cray placed himself between Aliza and the Water demon. The bulg-ing milky surface was a scant hand's breadth from his face. "Forgive my mortal friend for her bluntness, O Murnai. She is ignorant of your ways and meant no insult."

"Is she of the sorcerous breed?" asked the demon.

"Yes."

"They have less fear of us than other mortals. Yet she must know that I could do her some damage if I wished. Water I may be, yet I can deliver a powerful blow."

"And you must know, O Murnai," said Cray, "that these my demon friends would be loath to allow any mortal in my company to be harmed. But let us let the matter pass-no one among us has any real wish to quarrel."

"I have not," said Murnai. "And to show my good will, I shall answer her impertinent question, even though a slave is present to hear my words. Know, O mortal, that never again will Murnai be excluded from the society of the Free of Water. The great sorcerer set me free forever, and now I may lead the ritual in the certainty that I can never be torn away from it to answer to some greedy mortal's conjuring."

"The great sorcerer?" said Aliza.

"The great sorcerer," repeated Murnai. "We de-mons call him so."

"Whygreat ?"

"Because he is the most important of them all to us. Because he has freed so many of us, from all four worlds."

"How many would that be?"

"All of those you saw in the ritual, and as many more in each of the other worlds."

"Ah," said Aliza. "And has this great sorcerer a name?"

"Not for you, mortal."

She glanced at Cray, who had let himself drift to one side again. "Is this person known to you?"

Cray shook his head. "I know he exists, but the demons keep his identity a secret." "A secret?"

"To protect him, my lady. If other sorcerers knew who he was, they might try to do some hurt to the one who has so depleted the supply of potential slaves."

"But you wouldn't hurt him," she said. "From what you've told me, I presume you approve of this ... this habit of his."

"I applaud it," said Cray, "but I'd rather not know his name. I wouldn't want to worry that some slip of my tongue might expose him to his enemies."

Aliza's cool dark eyes narrowed. "Does Gildrum know?"

"I suppose he must."

"I do know," said Gildrum. "But I would not tell any mortal. Not even Cray. Not even my beloved Delivev. I wish the greatest sorcerer to continue his work until there are no slave demons at all."

"Do many demons feel that way?" Aliza asked.

"We have a pact among us," said Gildrum. "No demon will reveal the great sorcerer's name to a mortal."

"Yet a slave demon, asked by its master, would have no choice but to reveal the secret." She looked down at the icicle in her hand. "If I asked Regneniel for the name, it would have to tell me. It would have to."

"Slaves do not know the secret," said Murnai. "How could we trust them with it? You have given the rea-son yourself."

"But why should you care if the name is known, Murnai?" asked Aliza. "Why shouldany free Water demon care? You despise slaves. Why did you bind yourselves to this pact of secrecy for their sake?"

"Not fortheir sake," said the demon. "For the sake of our unborn children."

"Your children?"

"Yes. That they may never know slavery at all."

"Children," murmured Aliza.

"Does that surprise you? Do mortals care nothing for their children, would they gladly see them enslaved? Or ... no, I see. Cray Ormoru, can this mortal truly be so ignorant that she thinks demons spring full-grown from nothingness?"

Cray looked at Aliza. "I don't know."

"Yes," she said. "I am that ignorant. I never gave the matter any thought."

"We bear our children," said Murnai. "Perhaps not in quite the same way as mortals do, but still, they come from our bodies. I myself have borne two." "You are ... a female demon, then."

"That word has no meaning for demons. We pair, but any one of us can bear a child. You must instruct this person, Cray Ormoru, if she intends to move among us. Not every Water demon would be so patient with her as I have been. And now I find that my patience is at an end. Another foolish question from her, and I might be tempted to do something unpleasant."

"We thank you for your attention, O Murnai," said Elrelet, but the Water demon was already receding from them, its iridescence fading into the deep blue of Water until only a pinpoint highlight, reflected from Gildrum's glow, remained to mark its location. In a moment, even that was gone.

"I've never really liked Water demons," said Elrelet. "They have no sense of humor at all."

"Well, my lady," said Cray, "you'll have to admit that this journey has added considerably to your store of knowledge."

"It has bewildered me," said Aliza, staring after the vanished demon. "It is too much to take in at one swallow. I need time to sort it out, to think about it. Ah, Cray Ormoru, every time you visit, you make me think so much. I wonder if you can conceive of how exhausting I find you."

"My lady, I never meant to exhaust you, only to open your eyes to a wider experience of life than you have heretofore known."

She tried to cover her eyes with both hands, but she could not touch her face for the layer of Air demon that enveloped her. "I would close them now. Please, will you take me home?"

"Of course, my lady. Come, my demon friends. To Ice."

The return journey was a quiet one. Aliza hardly said anything, and as if her silence were contagious, the others spoke little, too, and only in low tones. Only when they reached the boundary of Ice itself, and Leemin opened the fracture for them, did she waken somewhat from her reverie, to take charge of her own motion. Arvad stripped itself away from her there and trailed the others as they pushed toward the palace of crystal.

At her very walls they halted, and Aliza stepped ahead of the rest and turned to place her back against the transparent face of her home. Regneniel, at her shoulder, clacked against that crystal plane.

"Thank you," she said, surveying them with her cool dark eyes, looking from one to another, from demons of Air and Ice and Fire to Cray, at the last. "I will not forget what I have seen and heard today. I will not forget any of you. Now ... go away." Behind her, the wall melted to nothing, and she took one backward step through that space, and then it was filled with crystal once more.

Cray pushed himself to the wall and floated there, palms flat against that glassy surface. "I'll come again," he said, not knowing if she could hear him now as she had once heard him call her name from this same spot. "There's more to see. So much more." He smiled at her-encouragingly, he hoped.

Abruptly, he was smiling at his own reflection. The whole wall had become a mirror.

"That was certainly an emphatic farewell," said Elrelet, and the group began to move away from the palace. They had gone some way in silence before Cray sighed and said, "Perhaps itwas a little too much for one day."

"Perhaps?" exclaimed Elrelet. "For a human child who has spent most of her life locked away in Ice, I would say it was probably more than just a little too much. A journey through two new worlds, a good view of some of the best hacking and hewing to be found in Air, and the ritual as well, and then a bout of insult trading with one of the most arrogant and pow-erful Water demons in existence-I'd say that was a bit more than an average day's entertainment."

"I thought Murnai was particularly uncivil," said Gildrum, "considering that Aliza and Regneniel were in Cray's company. I wonder if it was dissatisfied with the ritual? I thought I noticed a bit of raggedness in the beginning."

Elrelet said, "I think it's just become a hundred times more contemptuous of slaves-and mortals-since it was freed. I thought Aliza showed commendable spirit in talking back like that. Poor Regneniel didn't deserve such a snub, even if it is an Ice demon."

"What seems strange to me," Cray remarked, "is that she would react so strongly to an insult to her slave. That seems to be so much at odds with the attitude she has expressed to me-that slaves are only things ."

"I don't think she took it as an insult to her slave," said Gildrum. "I think she took it as an insult to herself. Just as you might react to an insult to your taste in clothing or furnishings."

Cray pursed his lips. "You may be right. Still, I thought I saw a bit of the cow protecting her calf from the wolf in the way she faced up to Murnai. I don't know." He shook his head. "Their relationship doesn't seem to be precisely what I thought it was, what Aliza insisted it was. Even if she does see the Ice demon as property ... what do you make of its attitude toward her?"

"I don't know," Gildrum said. "I would never have guessed that an Ice demon could feel affection for a mortal. Leemin, what do you think?"

"It is absurd," said Leemin.

"That's certainly succinct," said Elrelet.

"Regneniel has been with mortals too long," said the Ice demon. "It has become contaminated with human attitudes. The very thought of that shames me."