"Perhaps they have been together so long, just the two of them in that huge palace," said Gildrum, "that they've reached some middle ground between demon and mortal. Some sort of dependence upon each other. And perhaps only the demon is able to admit it, being forced to tell the truth to its master. She might not even realize how she feels toward it."

"Are you contradicting what you said before, Gildrum?" asked Cray.

"No, I think not. I think one may become attached to property. As she once was to the stuffed animal. I wonder if the Ice demon has perhaps replaced that toy in her life."

"I hadn't thought of that," said Cray. "It doesn't surprise me," said Elrelet. "I've given up being surprised by anything that mortals may think or do. But I don't much care for Gildrum's explana-tion of the demon. A dozen years it has watched over her, and while that may be a great deal of time in human terms, it's precious little in the demon's life.

I was with my last master three centuries, and if he had set me free voluntarily instead of dying, I would never have returned. And I am a friendly, cheerful creature of Air. I can't imagine an Ice demon caring enough for anyone, demon or mortal, to stay with them out of choice. My apologies to Leemin for such bluntness, but I don't think you will contradict the sentiment."

"I cannot," said Leemin. "Except for brief excur-sions like this, for curiosity's sake, I spend my time alone, in meditation."

"And yet youare here with us, at this moment," said Cray. "You don't spend all of your time alone."

"I like an entertainment now and then," admitted the demon. "But you must not think that I am doing this out of any supposed affection for you."

Cray smiled. "Of course not. I'm sure that you have not become contaminated by human attitudes. Still, that does not mean that other Ice demons are proof against them. Regneniel had other masters before Aliza. Who knows how it may have been affected by them? Perhaps we have been underestimating the capacity of some Ice demons for emotion. After all, not all mor-tals are alike. This Regneniel ... may be an unusual case. Who is to tell us otherwise? Leemin?"

"I had never met Regneniel before."

"Nor, I suspect, had many others of your kind."

"We keep to ourselves. That is our nature."

"And so you don't truly know each other."

"We never intrude upon each other."

"And so you could not really deny that some Ice demons might be quite different from yourself."

Leemin hesitated for a long moment. At last it said, "That is possible."

"I see no other explanation," said Cray. "Perhaps because this Ice demon raised Aliza, because it saw her grow and learn, perhaps, in its way, it thinks of her as its child. Even Ice demons care about their children. For a while, at least."

"I can't believe it," said Elrelet.

"I see no other explanation," Cray repeated.

Everand set the last of Aliza's notebooks down on her desk. He had gone through her year's accumula-tion of knowledge carefully, thoroughly, now and then asking for clarification from Aliza herself, now and then questioning the demon Regneniel about the qual-ity of its teaching. Satisfied that he knew where her education stood, he leaned back in his chair and looked at her long and hard. He sawthat she had changed this past year, as she always changed between his visits; she was taller and slimmer than he remem-bered, and the planes of her face were more angular. She had always been pretty, but now the prettiness had been refined into something more mature. She was a child no longer. Nor were her powers those of a child.

"Your studies progress well," he said to her.

"I think so, Grandfather." She sat on a corner of the broad desk, one foot touching the crystalline floor, one dangling. She had waited for his evaluation with patient silence, speaking only when spoken to, her eyes following his every movement, every turn of a page.

Elbows on the arms of the chair, he steepled his ring-laden fingers and gazed at her over their tips.

"Have there been any special difficulties that you wish to discuss with me?"

Her cool brown eyes met his serenely. "No, Grandfather."

"None?"

She shook her head.

"Distractions, then?"

"Nothing I couldn't deal with."

His fingers slid together, interlacing and dropping to his chest, "So you think you dealt properly with the human visitor."

Her stiffening was barely perceptible, but he had been watching for it. "What do you know of the human visitor, Grandfather?"

He slouched deeper into the chair and stretched out his long legs. "I know that he has been here three times, and this latest time he took you out of the Palace, and even out of Ice." He let his eyebrows rise at the expression of astonishment on her face. "Child, you are flesh of my flesh. How could I not know what happens to you? We have a bond, you and I, that mere distance cannot sever. Did you so doubt my power that you thought I wouldn't know about him?"

"You never mentioned this bond before, Grandfather."

He smiled a cold smile that did not touch his eyes. "I suppose I always assumed you knew. It seems so obvious to me. After all, you are what you are by my will. Oh, I don't know every tiny detail of your life, else I wouldn't have to come here and question you on your studies. But I know when the changes happen. I know when the outside intrudes upon you. And it has intruded, in the form of this mortal. What is his name?"

"Cray Ormoru."

"I don't know that name. He is a sorcerer, of course."

"Yes." "You find his company pleasant?"

"I find him interesting."

Everand nodded slowly. "And did he tell you why he came here?"

"He saw me in a magical mirror, and his curiosity drove him to seek me out."

"Did you believe that?"

"It is what he told me. Why should I not believe it?"

Everand rose from the chair and turned his back on his granddaughter. "Why should you believe it?" he said. "It doesn't sound like a very likely tale to me." He looked at her over his shoulder. "Much more likely is the possibility that he is spying on you, trying to learn the best way to circumvent your powers.

Or perhaps even to steal them. I've told you before of the jealousies of other sorcerers."

"He doesn't seem jealous of my powers at all, Grandfather."

"He hides it well, then. But think-how much curi-osity has he shown toward them?"

"Just a small amount. He'd rather talk to me than watch me practice sorcery."

Everand nodded sharply. "First he ingratiates himself with you, then he discovers how to render you helpless. Such a person would make a formidable enemy."

"I think you misjudge him, Grandfather. He's already taught me a good deal-"

"Taught you?What, are you his apprentice now instead of mine? Beware of the teachings of another sorcerer-he may as easily teach you false as true. And where will you be then, when you wave your hand and nothing that hesaid you learned happens?"

"Grandfather-"

"Listen to me, child," he said, pointing a bony finger at her. "Don't speak ofmy misjudging this Cray Ormoru. You are no judge of mortals. I know what I say, for I have had my dealings with them, and I know better than to trust any of them, sorcerous or no. Trust your grandfather and no other, and you will always take the proper path." He let his hand drop to his side. "But,if by some remote chance he did not come here to make himself proof against you or to do you damage, still he is not harmless to you. He is a distraction. He interferes with your studies. Yes, you have done well, I will not deny it, but you would have done better, I know, without his intrusion. Think about it, child."

"He was only with me a short time," she said.

"At your age every moment is precious! The young learn best. The older you are, the harder learning becomes. Would you waste the only youth you'll ever have in babble with a stranger?"

Aliza looked down at the books stacked on her desk. She reached out, and with one finger she touched the nearest, the smooth dark leather of the cover, the gilt number painted upon it. Each notebook bore such a number, and there were five or six such volumes for every year that she had lived in Ice. Stacked one on top of the other, they would make a pile taller than Aliza, taller than her grandfather, taller than theceil-ing of this room. Knowledge. "I would not wish to waste any of my time," she said softly.

"Then if he comes to these walls again, you must send him away. You must insist that he leave you alone to pursue your studies. There will be time for mortals later, if you still have any interest in them-later, when you are mature and certain in your pow-ers. He'll still be alive, surely, if he's one of the sorcerous breed, and you'll be able to find out what he really wanted of you then. That's perfectly reasonable, isn't it, child?"

She raised her cool eyes to his. "Perfectly reasonable."

"Good. Then I'll be on my way, and I'll see you next year, as always."

"You won't stay for supper?"

"No, I have too many tasks awaiting me at home. It's best that I get back to them."

Aliza escorted her grandfather to the other side of her palace, the side that lay in the human realm.

There, in the same exterior room where she and Cray had supped, she opened the same window through which Regneniel had carried him, the window that was her only tenuous link with the ordinary world of sun and wind and seasons. Beyond it, the sky was iron gray with oncoming snow, and the coarse quartz sand that surrounded her palace was hidden by an earlier fall of heavy white flakes. In the distance, the moun-tains, too, were white.

"A chilly day," said Everand, looking out over the barren landscape, "and snow before morning unless I miss my guess." He crossed his arms over his chest. He wore a robe of heavy velvet, but it was not proof against the breeze that entered at the window; his breath was smoke upon it. "Still, my demons will keep me warm enough once I've reached them."

"I'm quite willing to give permission for them to cross the sands, Grandfather," said Aliza. She wore a woolen mantle over her gown, for the palace was cold these days, with so little sunshine available to heat it. With the onslaught of deep winter, she had caused crystalline hearths to bloom in several of the innermost rooms, and Regneniel kept her well supplied with wood from the mountains and beyond, but still the palace was not as pleasantly warm as it was in summer. "Let them come here and take you from this window."

Everand shook his head sharply. "I'll have no de-mon of mine acquire the habit of crossing these sands.

That was well enough for Regneniel, for I always knew it would belong to you one day, but the others must be kept off. I will not live forever, child, and it is best that they have no slightest power upon this area when someone else has enslaved them."

"But the spell would be stronger than ever by then," said Aliza, "for I would be in the fullness of my powers."

"Once a demon has crossed a sorcerer's barrier, it always retains some capacity to do so again. A small capacity, it is true, but I would not have your barriers weakened in the slightest degree. No, Regneniel shall take me to the other side of the mountains, where one of my Fire demons waits to carry me in warm comfort. And next year, when I call to you from there, Regneniel shall fetch me just as it did this time. We shall leave it at that from now on."

"Whatever you wish, Grandfather. Regneniel!" * * *

On the other side of the mountains, a group of mortal men, eight in all, waited huddled about the campfire they had built for themselves. They talked quietly, speculating on the weather and the amount of light left to the day. All around them, the snow was hard-packed with their pacing and scattered with the bones of the small animals they had slain and cooked for their midday meal. Now they were hungry again and, having hunted in the immediate area with some success during the latter part of the afternoon, they had spitted a few more carcasses above the flames. They were just about to begin sharing these when one of the men pointed toward the nearest slope.

They stood stiff and silent as Everand approached them, trudging through the snow. In silence, they wrapped their master in a thick woolen cloak, set a stool by the fire for him, and served him their choicest meats. Only when his hunger had been satisfied did they take up his leavings and gnaw them to the bone.

Two men kicked out the fire and scattered the em-bers into the snow while the rest hoisted the poles of Everand's palanquin onto their shoulders. Within, sealed away from the elements by stout doors and closely shuttered windows, he relaxed amid heavy furs, his feet warmed by a charcoal brazier. As he pulled off his gloves and stripped the useless rings from his fingers, he felt the palanquin begin to move smoothly forward. There was only a little daylight left, but he had com-manded his servants to use it to put as much distance between themselves and the mountains as possible. They had a long journey ahead of them.

While Regneniel crossed over to the other side of the palace, its goal the kitchen, where it would prepare Aliza's supper, she herself walked only so far as the cradle room. There, in the heart of her dwelling, the heart of her personal world, she stood for a time amid the memories of her childhood, stood and gazed upon them with her cool dark eyes. At last she reached for the rocking horse, pulled it out from behind the old, short bed, and set it in the aisle that linked the two doors. It was a small rocking horse, and much battered by a child's activities. She sat down on it, sidesaddle rather than astride, for her legs were much too long for it now. She sat and she rocked slowly, back and forth, back and forth, and in her hands she held the old, bedraggled stuffed animal, that creature of no special identity, plucked from its resting place in the translucent bin of toy building materials. She held it and she rocked, and when the demon called her to her meal, she made no answer, nor any attempt to do more than rock, staring down all the while at the remnant of her childhood that lay between her hands.

She supped very late that night.

Chapter 8.

In the human realm, winter ruled the land, but even the coldest wind to rake Spinweb's battlements was a summer breeze compared with the chill of Ice. In Ice there were no seasons to mark the passage of time, and its inhabitants cared nothing for days or years or cen-turies save when mortal demon master forced them to care. Yet in one way, time was measured in Ice, though the measurement was a rough one. Through time, the shape of Aliza's palace changed.

Cray noticed the change when Leemin brought him back to her walls once more. Quite near the place where he always entered the building, a blister had formed-a new room, no larger yet than a wardrobe,budding off from the rest. It was a copy, in miniature, of so many other rooms he had seen, a carbuncle with facets the span of a man's arm. He pointed to it in wonder.

"This palace grows like some sort of living thing," he said to his three demon companions. "Like a tree thrusting out new twigs, only much more slowly."

"That might be because it is a living thing," said Leemin.

"What do you mean? It's just a building, isn't it? A magical one, yes, but only a building."

"You think like a mortal, for all you've spent so much time in the demon realm, Cray Ormoru. The lady told you herself, or so you said, that this palace grew from a seed planted in Ice by Regneniel. Where else would a demon find such a seed but within its own body? This palace is Regneniel's child."

"This building is a demon?"

"It is a creature of Ice. It feeds on the forces that permeate this world, as we all do, and with the power so derived, it transforms the substance around it, as we all do. How is it, therefore, different from us?"

"Do you mean to tell me that this ... this building canthink ?"

"Canyou think?" asked Leemin.

"Of course I can."

"So you say. As far as I know, you don't think at all, you only speak and move about. This child of Regneniel's does neither. Perhaps it chooses to do neither."

"Have you ever tried to speak to it?" asked Cray.

"I greeted it once. It did not answer."

"This is a building," said Elrelet, "nothing more. It's no more alive than the sword Arvad made out of its own substance."

"And no less alive," said Leemin.

"Perhaps this is why Regneniel would choose not to leave her if she freed it," said Gildrum. "Even Ice demons care about their children for a time, and even though this child is huge in size, it is very young in years."

"If itis alive," said Elrelet, "it is surely the ultimate creature in Ice-it goes nowhere and speaks to no one, and, except for Leemin's one small greeting, I'll wager no one speaks to it. It makes a perfect demon at that."

"A slave born to slavery," said Gildrum. "It has never tasted any other life. How completely pitiful."

"On the contrary," said Elrelet, "it doesn't know what it's missing and therefore cannot suffer from its lack of freedom. If it can know anything, and if it can suffer at all."