"Keep it," Cray said, his voice as low as hers. There was something about the night, about the silence and the darkness, that kept him from speaking in a nor-mal tone. "It's for you. It will never wither, never need water. It will always be as beautiful as it is this moment. Which is ... much less beautiful than you are." And when she did not raise her eyes from the flower, he leaned close to her and softly kissed her cheek.

She recoiled slightly from the touch of his lips, and she would have dropped his hand except that he held hers so firmly. She looked into his eyes. "Why did you do that?"

"To show my affection for you."

"Your mother and the demon Gildrum-they did that."

"They did considerably more. Because they love each other very much."

Aliza looked back down at the flower. "Love," she said. "The dependence of one person on another. I don't understand why an adult should wish to experi-ence it."

Cray sighed, then brought her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. "My poor Aliza," he whispered.

"What do you really know of love? Locked up all alone in Ice, without mother or father, with only the cold com-panionship of an Ice demon."

"Grandfather has told me of it. He said my parents loved each other, and they were very young and foolish."

"And you believed him. Of course. You believed a man whose heart is probably a black and withered husk. Ah, Aliza, I find myself hating him for what he has done to you."

He felt her hand stiffen in his grasp. "You take too much upon yourself, Cray Ormoru," she said. "My grandfather has done very well by me. I have no complaints."

"Oh, you do, Aliza. You do. But you don't know it." She raised her cool dark eyes to his. "What-that he hasn't taught me more about love? It doesn't matter. It's unimportant."

"It is important," said Cray. "Ask my mother. Ask Gildrum."

"And you?" she asked. "What of you? Do you love?"

He nodded. "I lovethem very much."

"Then, as an expert, tell me what you think love is like."

He smiled. "It's like friendship, only a thousand times stronger."

"A thousand times? That seems ... excessive."

"Not to the people who feel it."

"You feel this toward a demon?"

"Why not? Gildrum has been a father to me. Ah, but you don't know what that means, do you? Poor Aliza, what I'm talking about lies so far outside your own experience." Once more he kissed her hand.

"Forgive me, my lady. It's enough that you understand friendship for now."

"You think I do?"

He smiled again. "You're wearing the ribbon I wove for your hair."

"I thought it would ... please you."

"Then you do understand friendship, for why would you bother trying to please someone who was not your friend?"

"I try to please my grandfather," she said.

Cray laughed softly. "I hope I am nothing like him."

"No. You are nothing like him."

"And you will keep that flower, to remember how different from him I am?"

"I'll keep the flower."

"And whenever I grow another golden flower on this tree, I shall think of you."

She shook her head. "How can you compare a mortal with a flower? It is absurd."

"Not at all. Troubadours do it all the time. Ah, but you've never heard a troubadour, have you?"

Without waiting for her answer, he continued, "Well, it happens that I know where several of that breed are spending their time just now, and I'm sure that one of them, at least, must be singing in some great hall at this very moment. Will you come to the web chamber and listen with me?" She shrugged. "Would you go there and listen if I were not here?"

"I do so often."

"Then I will."

After a brief search, Cray located Lorien, greatest of the singers that he and his mother followed with their spiders. Of all of them, only Lorien was aware of the enchanted mites that lived among his belongings, for he and Delivev had met once. When, occasionally, he seemed to be smiling directly at a watcher in the web chamber, it was because he saw the spider whose web transmitted his image to Spinweb, and he was sending his regards to Delivev.

Lorien was singing in a small room this evening, singing for a group of ladies whose heads were bent over needlecraft, some sitting on cushions on the floor, some on low stools, the eldest of the lot on a sumptu-ous couch. Few of them ever looked up at him as he sang of love and pain, of heroic death for love's sake, and of pining death for its loss. Perhaps, Cray thought, they had heard it all before. He had.

Aliza sat on a corner of the velvet-draped bed that occupied the center of the room. She sat with her knees drawn up and encircled by her arms, and she watched Lorien steadily. After some dozen songs, she said, "It seems to be a very powerful force, this love that you consider so important."

"It can be," said Cray. He sat near her, but not so near that she might feel crowded. He would have taken her hand once more, but it was locked with the other one in front of her knees. "Some people, it seems, are willing to risk anything for love's sake. They are the ones that troubadours make songs about.

Listening to him, one might presume that there were no other forces at all, no duty, no loyalty, no blood ties. No selfish desire for power. When I was a child, I might have thought that all the truth of the human realm was encompassed by these songs if I had not also used these webs to watch real people act out their lives. Without moving from this room, I could see hate and treachery as well as love, and all those other forces that buffet mortals back and forth. I led a very simple life here in Spinweb, with no one but my mother and our plants and animals for company, but through these webs I saw all the complexities of life beyond these walls. That was valuable knowledge for a boy who left home to try to become a knight.

That would have been valuable knowledge for anyone."

"For any sorcerer?" murmured Aliza.

"Especially for sorcerers, for they almost always grow in some isolation."

"As I did."

"You are an extreme case. You would have prof-ited, I think, from these webs."

She glanced at him. "What? Spend my precious time watching other people live?"

"It's simpler than actually going out among them. It's less dangerous, certainly. And if you tire of watch-ing, you can always walk out of the room. That's far easier than terminating a conversation with a real mor-tal. Of course, here in the web chamber, you don't participate, but I don't think you really want to do that just now."

"What are you saying, Cray?"

"That you could stay here as long as you wish, and watch the webs as much as you wish. I know mymother would be glad to guest you."

She shook her head firmly. "You know I can't do that."

He laid a hand on her shoulder. "For your educa-tion," he said. "So that you will understand what love and duty and loyalty and all those other things mean."

"I understand duty. And I think I understand loy-alty, too. As for love, from what I've heard this night, I am not convinced that I should know more. It doesn't seem to be always the best of experiences."

"Love is a leavening," said Cray. "A little of it would not harm you. Don't think that these few songs have told you everything you need to know about it."

"I think these songs have told me only what I already suspected-that love is strange and inexplicable. I mean no insult to your mother and Gildrum, nor to you, but ... it seems something that should have been put away with toys and childhood. It has nothing to do with me. My childhood lies behind me."

"So you've told me. And yet you still visit the cradle room, the site of your childhood."

"I must pass through it now and then, to visit the other side of my palace."

Cray slid his fingers lightly down her arm, to her hand. "You do more than pass through it. I looked into those bins. I saw that their contents had been disturbed since my last visit. And the rocking horse had been moved. You go there to sift through the remnants of your childhood, don't you? What do you think about when you do that?"

"I think of how far I've come since then."

"And nothing more? Not even when you pick up that poor, ragged stuffed creature you loved so much?"

"I didn't love it. It was just a stuffed toy."

"I think you did. I think that while you were grow-ing up it was the only thing you loved. Unfortunately, a toy couldn't return that love."

She turned her face away from him. "You confuse me, Cray Ormoru. Sometimes I think we are speaking different languages."

"Perhaps we are. But perhaps someday you will understand mine."

"Or you mine."

"No. I can't pretend that I grew up as you have. I can't lose my knowledge. But you can gain it. Let me help you."

"You've helped me quite a bit already."

"It may seem quite a bit to you, but it seems just a grain of sand to me. There's a whole beach waiting for you. Look!" He waved a hand, and the image of Lorien singing among the ladies dissolved into a gray blur and resolved into a great hall, seen from one end, a blazing hearthfire at the opposite extremity and ta-bles and benches nearer, with men drinking at them. "This is the hall of a king, where intrigues flow likeale. See the dark-haired man in the green surcoat-the king's new wife used to be his mistress, and the king no longer quite trusts him, though he was once one of his closest advisers. I've been following these people's lives for years, and the complexity of their existence would defy any song maker. Yet they have taught me much about how to deal with jealousy, ambition, be-trayal, and revenge. Sorcerers meet such things, too, in their lives-would you be ignorant when the time comes for you to face them?"

"These things will not touch me behind my barriers."

"You're foolish to think so, Aliza. You have a long life ahead of you; how can you know now what will touch you a century hence?"

"Enough!" she said, and she loosed her locked hands and stood up, turning away from the web where men drank and laughed and whispered together, turning away from Cray, too, toward the window, where torchlight from the garden spilled into the room. She went to that window and sat down on the low sill, looking outward. "You are too stern a teacher, Cray Ormoru. I am not ready for such lessons yet."

"I don't mean to be stern. There is so much you have missed-I find myself thinking of you as a parched plant, needing all the water I can give just to bring you back to life." He went to her, to stand behind her and gaze down at the top of her dark head. "Forgive me. I don't mean to drown you."

She heaved a deep sigh. "I am drowning. Must I know all these things, or are you wrong in thinking they will benefit me?"

Hesitantly, he touched her hair, stroking it back from her temples. "If you could be sure of staying alone in Ice forever, of never meeting another crea-ture, either demon or mortal, then I would say stay as you are, don't listen to me. But who could promise such a life? There is your grandfather, and there is Regneniel. You are not alone even now."

"No," she said. "Not even now. But you would surround me with people. Yourself, your mother, all those demons. You would throw me in among them, throw me into the water and force me to swim whether I will or no, whether Ican or no. What kind of teaching is this?"

"The only kind I know. At least these people are all friendly to you. Better this than falling in among enemies."

She folded her hands over one knee. "My grandfa-ther thinks that I should not have any dealings with other mortals until my powers are mature. He doesn't trust you. He thinks you want to spy on me or steal power from me or make yourself proof against me."

"Your grandfather!" exclaimed Cray. He dropped his hands to his sides and curled them into fists. "He knows nothing of me or my motives. He is a fool, and he is trying to make you into a creature just like Regneniel, without feelings, without the slightest frag-ment of humanity in your spirit."

She looked up at him sidelong. "And you, Cray? What are you trying to make of me?"

He shook his head. "I am only trying to open your eyes to the greater universe that exists outside of pure sorcery."

"You would make me like yourself."

He hesitated a long moment, then lifted one hand to touch her hair again. "Does it seem such a bad wayto be?"

"I don't understand you."

"I hope one day you will."

"One day," she murmured. "Right now that day seems like it must be a lifetime away. Oh, if you could see though my eyes, Cray, you would understand how foreign you seem to me."

"Not completely foreign, I hope," he said, shifting his hand to the curve of her cheek. Her skin was cool under his fingers.

"No, not completely."

He bent to press his lips against her temple and then the corner of her jaw, and he would have tried to brush her lips except that she slid away from him, across the windowsill, and stood up, just out of reach.

"I'm very tired," she said, gazing at him with a faint frown creasing her brow. "This has been a very long day for me. Much longer than I expected."

"Ah," he said softly. "I had hoped that we could talk the night away again. Even if it is a long winter's night."

She shook her head. "I'm really very tired." She lifted one hand to the white sapphire that hung at her throat.

"Don't go," he said. "We have a lovely room prepared for you, and I guarantee the bed is comfortable.

Stay, and spend tomorrow with me. With us."

She cradled the sapphire in her hand and looked down at it, saying nothing.

"I have a couple of mortal friends who very much want to meet you. One of them is the keeper of the mirror, my best friend, Feldar Sepwin. I've told him a great deal about you, and he would be terribly disappointed if I brought you to Spinweb and not to his home as well."

Still, she said nothing.

"He and the lady Helaine live in a cave far from other mortals, quite alone. I could make sure that no one else would disturb us, not mortal or demon. Just the four of us; we could take the midday meal together.

Gildrum could transport us there, or, if you wish, your own Regneniel. It isn't far from here, as demons fly. You could still be home early in the day."

At last she raised her eyes to his. "I would like to see this mirror you've spoken of."