"It can suffer," said Leemin. "It has a soul, and any creature with a soul can suffer." "A soul?" said Cray.

"Can't you sense it, deep within those walls? The soul, the seat of life. No, you are a mortal, and I perceive you cannot sense such things at all. But these others, they are demons ... "

"But not of Ice," said Gildrum. "We are not attuned to the creatures of this realm. But if you say this thing before us has a soul, I believe you."

"Even if it looks like a building," added Elrelet.

"My friends," said Cray, "once again we have found a way in which this dwelling is the strangest that any sorcerer ever had. And I thank Leemin for bringing it to my attention, and for reminding me that there are always new things to be learned, that no one can know everything. But now I think it's time to do what I came here to do." And cupping his hands around his mouth, he called Aliza's name.

This time she did not come to answer him, but Regneniel did, hurrying awkwardly on its multi-jointed legs. As it approached, the wall before Cray melted, and he was able to step into the palace. Once he was sealed inside, he realized that the air of the building was cooler than he had ever known it, as if some of the chill of Ice had at last penetrated these crystalline ramparts. Winter had come to Aliza's home.

"Greetings, Regneniel," he said. "Thank you for allowing me to enter, but why are you here at my call instead of your mistress? I trust she is not ill."

It dipped its snakelike neck in a kind of bow, its tiny arms fluttering with the motion like leaves in a mild breeze. "My lady's command is that when she is not available, I am to admit you."

"Not available? Where is she, then-out? In Ice or in the human realm?"

"No, Cray Ormoru. She is in her meditation cham-ber, never to be disturbed while the door is closed."

"Do you know how long she plans to remain there?"

"No. I am to guide you to the room where the tapestry hangs, to provide you with warmth, and to serve you wine if you so desire. Will you follow me?"

"Yes," replied Cray, and with a smile and a wave to the demons who had to be left behind outside, he moved with Regneniel into the depths of the palace.

The room with the tapestry was almost as he remembered it-the couch, the rug, the broad ebony table, the cabinet from which Regneniel took goblet and decanter to pour a generous measure of red Maretian wine for him. There was a hearth now, though, not far from the tapestry, its bright blaze sending waves of warmth through the room. And the cabinet had been moved farther from the couch to make room for a cubical crystalline bin, its lip at about the height of his knee. Through its transparent sides, he could see its contents, a mass of gray wool, fluffy with washing and carding. Atop that rested the crude spindle he had fashioned from Aliza's toy building materials. The spindle had been used by other hands than his own since he had left it in this very room. Unskilled hands. It was wound with a considerable amount of yarn, but the yarn was of varying thickness, here as fine as the thread that seamed his clothing, there almost too thick even for knitting needles. Someone had tried to imitate his spinning, had tried for a goodly length of time. He did not think that someone could be the Ice demon. "Is this your mistress's work?" he asked, pointing with one hand as he took the wine goblet from Regneniel's stubby grasp with the other.

"It is."

"Is there some purpose to it?"

"She has not told me of any."

Cray sipped from his goblet, then set it down on the table and took up the spindle. He pulled some wool from the bin and spun for a moment, a fine, even thread that his mother would have been proud of. It made the rest of the yarn look even worse by compari-son. He tossed the spindle back where it came from and seated himself on the couch.

"Does she enter this meditation chamber often?" he asked the Ice demon.

"She uses it regularly."

"What does she do there?"

"I assume she meditates there."

"About what?"

"I do not know."

"Come, Regneniel-you are her only confidant. Surely you know what occupies her mind."

"I would not presume to guess at a mortal's thoughts," said the demon.

Cray bent over his goblet, looked down into the wine, saw his face reflected in its still surface. "Has she spoken of me since I was last here?"

"She gave me the command to let you in."

"No more than that?"

"No more."

"Has she spoken of our journey to the other demon worlds?"

"No."

Cray lifted his eyes to Regneniel, who stood beside the cabinet like some grotesque marble sculpture.

"What do the two of you talk about in these long hours you spend together?"

"Her lessons."

"Just that? Just her lessons?"

"That is what we are here for, Cray Ormoru. That is why her grandfather gave me to her." Cray smiled at the demon. "You've been with her a long time. One could even say you've been a parent to her. At least, you have been here, while he has not.You have raised her, Regneniel. She must depend on you very much."

"I am her only demon slave."

"And you care for her."

"I am her slave."

"You said you cared for her. Or at least you said you would not leave her even if she set you free. What did you mean by that, Regneniel? Can an Ice demon truly care for a mortal?"

The demon hesitated. "I don't believe I can explain that to you, Cray Ormoru. It is simply the way I am."

"I am your friend, Regneniel," he said. "Believe me, I've known many demons in my life. Yes, Ice demons among them. I want to understand you. I tell you frankly that I think if I understand you, even a little, then I'll be better able to understand her. I care for her, too, Regneniel, please believe that. But I would never tell her anything that you told me in confidence, I swear it. You may ask Gildrum if I am not one who holds his word above all else. Let us be honest with each other, you and I. I know demons who have the same capacity for feeling that mortals have. They tell me that cannot be true of Ice demons, but perhaps they don't really know you. Perhaps you are more than they suspect. Tell me, Regneniel-do you love her?"

"I have heard of love," said the demon. "I had a master once who said he loved a woman, an ordinary mortal. He took her into his castle and would not allow her to leave. Her family came and demanded her back. He killed them all. A few years later he killed her. I did not understand his behavior."

Cray shook his head. "I wasn't thinking of anything so violent. To me, love does include desiring to be with the loved person, but it also means wanting the very best for her, and doing one's utmost to make her happy. Your old master seems to have been more concerned about his own happiness than about the woman's."

"Happiness," said the demon.

"Surely you know what happiness is, Regneniel."

"Happiness is the ability to move through the world of Ice at one's own whim."

"Ah-freedom," said Cray.

"They are the same."

"And yet you would be willing to sacrifice that freedom to stay here with Aliza, to serve her, even if she freed you."

The demon hesitated. "I would not be here ather whim."

"That might be love," said Cray. "Why are you so concerned that I love her?" asked the demon. "Why do you wish to see this mortal ...

attitude in me?"

Cray sipped at his wine, his fingers curled tight about the stem of the goblet. He looked at the bin, at the wool, at the spindle and its crudely spun yarn. He looked at the tapestry, at the autumn colors there, the leaves, the grass, the sky. At last he said, "Because if you can love her, then perhaps she, who was raised by you, is also capable of love. And that is a good thing in a mortal. Better still in a sorcerer. They have more need of love than ordinary mortals; they need it to leaven their power."

The demon was silent.

"Have I asked too much of you?" said Cray. "I apologize for my inquisitiveness, but as her friend, I would like to know that being locked up in this place for so much of her life has not completely stripped her of all feeling. She denies emotion, but perhaps the denial is only words. And perhaps though she calls you slave, you are truly more. Perhaps you are a friend, too."

"I am a slave, Cray Ormoru. You would be foolish to think of me as more than that. Now, my lady did not command me to engage in conversation with you, so if you should desire food, tell me and I will bring it. Otherwise, I have a few tasks to perform before my lady's supper."

Cray shrugged. "Do as you will, Regneniel. I am not hungry. But before you rush off to these very important tasks, tell me-must I stay in this room while I wait? I prefer not to."

"My lady did not instruct me to lock you in."

"Good. I like being a guest better than being a prisoner."

He watched the demon leave. He knew no more about the relationship between the creature of Ice and the mortal woman than he had when he arrived, and now he wondered about it more than ever. He re-flected that an Ice demon, with its cold pride and aloofness, might well be ashamed to admit affection for its mistress. He wondered if, questioned directly by Aliza herself once more, Regneniel would have been so evasive. A demon could not lie to its master, but some of them were very clever at manipulating the truth in such a way that it could be misinterpreted. Gildrum had practiced that art when it was a slave, Cray knew, and with considerable success.

He drained his goblet and rose, stretching. Behind the couch, the door that led farther into the palace was open. He walked through it and then through a number of small rooms, all of them just as he remem-bered, save that now the furnished ones had hearths with well-banked fires to warm them. In Aliza's study he stopped to leaf through a few of the books on her desk. They were filled with tiny, precise handwriting, and their contents did not make much sense to him.

She was long past the point at which her studies were accessible to one trained in other forms of sorcery.

In the dining hall, he took a piece of fruit from the tray on the table and munched at it as he walked on.

Choosing a door at the back of the hall, he wandered through several unfamiliar-and empty-rooms.

He moved in an arc, passing from chamber to chamber in a path that, he thought, would ultimately bring him back to the dining hall. He saw much of the palace, a dozen rooms and more of all sizes, and yet he saw very little, just blank walls and stairways that led to more emptiness. He came to a room whose outside walls were per-fect mirrors, which seemed to have no exit into any of the rooms that surrounded it. Even its floor and ceil-ing were mirrored on the outside, proof against his sight from rooms above and rooms below. Looking down at his own reflection in its ceiling, he found himself understanding the knight who had happened on Aliza's palace when she was a child. Here was a mystery, a thing of strange beauty, a sealed box that might contain anything. Almost, he was tempted to strike its walls with his fists, to test it for hollowness. Almost. But he knew it was hollow, just as he knew that he would not be able to hear that hollowness evoked by his soft human hands. He guessed, because he had not seen her elsewhere in the palace, that this was Aliza's meditation room, that the walls were mir-rored to keep out the light of the rest, to keep out the existence of the rest. It was not a very large room, not a great deal larger than the cradle room. Cray won-dered if it were furnished or bare, and if Aliza meditated in light or darkness.

He waited there for a time, hoping that one of the walls would melt away and reveal Aliza, or that Regneniel would call him with the news that the medi-tation room lay elsewhere and that she had emerged from it. Neither of those things happened before he became restless and decided to wander on.

He came to the cradle room at last. He had tried to keep track of his turns, his climbs, his descents, and he expected to arrive there eventually. He grinned to himself as the milky walls came into view. He was on the opposite side of the room from the main living space of the palace, opposite where he had entered it last time. The outside of the milky-walled staircase should have been visible to him, leading up to the entrance to the mortal realm.

There was no staircase.

There was, instead, an open doorway on the very spot where he thought the entry to the staircase should have been.

He peeked into the room. Directly across from him, down the narrow aisle flanked by memorabilia of Aliza's childhood, was the other door. Looking at it, studying the lay of the room, he was convinced that the other door was the one through which he had entered the cradle room before, unless Aliza had moved everything around into a mirror image of the way it had been. There was a crowded sitting room beyond that other doorway, he remembered, while behind him, behind this doorway in which he now stood, was a chamber without a stick of furniture to relieve its emptiness.

Cray found himself frowning. Did Aliza periodically rearrange her palace? She had never mentioned doing any such thing. Not had he seen any other evidence of interior change, except for the hearths.

He stepped into the room. There was the child's bed, the rocking horse, the table and chair, the bins full of toys and linens, just as before. There was one door, and there the other, no other entrances visible. In a few short strides, he crossed the room to stand in the opposite doorway. The milky-walled stairway lay before him.

All right, he told himself, she did rearrange her palace occasionally, at least the cradle room. She prob-ably had perfectly good reasons for it.

For a moment, he was tempted to climb those stairs, to ask Regneniel to open the mirrored door at the top for him, but then he decided he was not here to look at the sky, especially not at the gray and gloomy winter sky. Instead, he went to sit on the lip of one of the bins and rummage idly among its contents. To see a bit more of Aliza's vanished childhood.

She found him there sometime later. She found him building a toy castle on the floor, with woodenblocks piled to knee height.

He did not hear her soft footfalls, did not realize she was near until her velvet skirt brushed his arm. At that, he looked up and smiled at her. "I think I'm trying to prove myself as fine an architect as yourself.

What do you think of my creation, my lady?"

She knelt beside him, and he saw that she had tied her hair back with the ribbon he had made for her.

She pointed to one corner turret of his toy castle. "That will fall in a moment or two. You've placed it off-center."

He peered at the indicated section, then brushed it gently with the tip of one finger. It collapsed, bringing down much of the adjacent wall, which had pressed against it. He laughed softly. "I haven't much skill with dead wood, I'm afraid. Now, if these blocks were a few potted plants instead, I could grow you a fine castle, and its crenelations would bloom, too, if you wished."

"Is that how you played as a child?"

"No, my lady. That was how I played as an adult. I have a full-sized castle of two-score rooms grown from a grove of trees. Making one small enough to fit inside this room would be a simple enough task after that."

"A castle of wood? What a strange notion."

"No stranger than a castle of ice, I think."

"But my ice is as strong as stone. It is stone, save for its transparency."

"My ensorcelled wood is just as strong. No wind can break my trees, no fire char them, no ax or saw cut them as long as I live. And should I ever wish more room than my castle now contains, they will grow into whatever shapes I command; I need not wait upon their own random whim."

She sat back on her heels and crossed her arms over her breast. "So you think your castle of wood is supe-rior to this palace, do you?"

He smiled at her. "I think that my power over it is superior to your power over this place. Aside from that the two are very much alike."

"Alike? Wood and ice?"

"Surely. After all, both of them are alive."

"Alive?" Her expression was one of incredulity.

"Yes. My trees live and bloom and drop their leaves in the autumn and put forth new ones in the spring.

Did you think they could grow into new rooms without being alive?"

She shook her head, and then she rapped on the floor with one fist, and the sound was hard and sharp.

"Ice is not alive."

"Ah," he said. "You didn't know." "Know what?"

"That your palace is a living thing."

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?"