Cray felt himself relax, and only then did he realize how taut all his muscles had become as he had urged her to stay. He smiled at her. "I'm sure you'll find it most interesting."

He lay awake for a long time that night, knowing that she was just a few rooms away, knowing that her head rested upon a pillow he had formerly used himself, that her body was covered by a quilt he hadhelped his mother fashion. He lay awake, staring into the darkness, seeing her in his mind's eye, seeing her move gracefully in the halls of her palace and just as gracefully in the weightless corridors of Ice. He saw her as in a mirror of his imagination, but now she moved and breathed and, upon rare occasions, even smiled. He could almost hear the sound of her voice and feel the touch of her hand in his own, of her hair and her cheek beneath his caressing fingers.

Toward dawn, he slept at last.

In the morning, the four of them broke fast together-Cray, Aliza, Delivev, and Gildrum.

"I'm so glad you chose to stay, my dear," said Delivev, passing Aliza a bowl of fruit. "You can have that room anytime you like."

"You never have other visitors?" Aliza inquired.

"Oh, if Feldar happens to be staying there, we just move him down to the stable," said Cray. "He won't mind. He's slept in worse places than that."

Delivev chuckled softly. "Putting up an extra bed is a simple matter in this household. Cray just grows the frame from the plants in the garden, and I always have plenty of coverlets."

Gildrum was lounging in his chair beside Delivev's, lazily peeling a melon with a small knife. "Shall I take you to the lady Helaine's?" he inquired. "Or shall we call Elrelet?" He carved out a chunk of the melon and, spearing it with the point of the knife, offered it to Delivev, who accepted it with a smile.

"You could drop us there if you don't mind," said Cray. "And I'll call to you when we want to come back."

"When are they expecting you?"

"Anytime this morning. I spoke to Feldar just after I woke up. He's very eager to meet Aliza."

"I can imagine it," said Gildrum. "Well, we don't want to keep poor Feldar waiting, do we? Especially after you've so easily condemned him to sleep in the stable. For that he deserves some sort of reward."

They finished eating quickly.

When they rose from the table, Gildrum kissed Delivev soundly. "I won't be long, my dear," he said, and then his human form burst into heatless flame and bobbed in midair before the three true human beings. "You might be most comfortable if you put one arm about his waist, Aliza, and you put one arm across her shoulders, Cray. Otherwise, I fear you'll find yourselves bumping together somewhat unpleasantly. I'm not accustomed to carrying two mortals at once, and I don't bifurcate as neatly as Elrelet does."

Aliza hesitated only an instant before slipping her arm about Cray's waist.

Gildrum enveloped them, and Cray could no longer see Aliza though she was warm and solid in the circle of his arm. Before his eyes was a sheet of pale yellow, blotting out everything else. He felt himself lifted from the ground, and the next moment the pale yellow brightened, dazzling him, forcing him to closehis eyes against it and he knew they were in Fire. Their passage there was brief, though, a mere skip between two places not far separated in the human realm. The brightness vanished as they emerged from the demon world, and a few heartbeats later Gildrum deposited them on the snow-covered path that led to the lady Helaine's cave.

She and Feldar Sepwin were waiting for them there.

Sepwin stepped forward as Aliza disengaged herself from Cray's arm. He bowed stiffly. "Feldar Sepwin at your service, my lady. I have wanted to meet you for a very long time."

"Good morrow," she said. "I've been told that you were the keeper of the mirror in which Cray Ormoru first saw me."

"I am. And this is the lady Helaine, my teacher and a Seer of the first order."

Aliza nodded to her, but when she spoke, it was again to Sepwin. "I have some desire to see this mir-ror, Feldar Sepwin. Is it here?"

"It is indeed, my lady. If you'll follow me, you may see it to your heart's content."

With gentle pressure on his arm, the lady Helaine held Cray back several paces behind Sepwin and Aliza as they entered the cave. "Are you sure you want this?" she murmured.

He looked at her warily. "Have you seen something amiss about it?"

"No, nothing. But I feel that you ask too much of the mirror. You have no guarantee that it will show her your face."

"I don't know what it will show her. But she asked to see it. I never urged her to it."

"You spoke of the mirror to her."

"Yes, of course."

"Then you can blame no one but yourself for what happens here."

"Blame? Will there have to be blame?"

The lady Helaine halted as they were about to step into the chamber of the pool. Already, Sepwin and Aliza had almost crossed it on their way to the mirror beyond. "There is something about her that is very wrong," she said softly. "I can feel it in her nearness, can feel it without even touching her. There is an aura of danger about her. You are caught up in it, Cray. The quest is not over, I promise you that."

"I thought it wasn't. But I'm doing the best I can upon it."

"Do you know yet if you love her?"

Cray's eyes followed Aliza as she moved farther and farther into the depths of the cave. He found himself wanting to run after her. "What is love?" he said. "I tried to explain it to her. And to her demon. I think I failed both times. It came out sounding so flat. I love my mother, and I love Feldar and Gildrum.

What I feel toward Aliza is not the same. Not at all." He turned to the lady Helaine. "I don't know what Iwant her to see in the mirror. But what I want doesn't matter, does it? The mirror will give her whatit will, not what I will. And I want to be there when it does." He started walking toward the mirror room once more, then broke into a run to catch up with Sepwin and Aliza.

Sepwin was taking a torch from its bracket by the chamber's entrance, and he gestured for Cray to kin-dle another torch from it so that they could place the lights on either side of the mirror. Having done that, they stayed in the alcove behind the black velvet cur-tain, each on his side of the mirror, its surface glinting silver between them as Sepwin directed Aliza to look through the eyeholes. Cray saw her dark eyes there, saw the torches reflected in them like stars in the night sky. Then he looked at Sepwin and found that Sepwin was looking at him. Cray tried to smile, but his lips would not obey. He knew what Sepwin was thinking, knew that he and the lady Helaine had surely dis-cussed this moment between them. But it was out of his hands; he had no control over Aliza's desire to look, no control over what the mirror would show. He couldn't even guess if she would tell them, once she had seen.

"Just gaze steadily into the surface," Sepwin told her.

"The surface glitters," she said. "But I don't see any image."

"Sometimes it takes a moment or two."

And then Cray realized that something was happen-ing to the mirror itself, that ripples were forming about its center and moving outward from there, as if the mirror were a pool of water and a pebble had been dropped into it. The first ring of ripples reached the outermost edge of the mirror and bounced back toward the center, meeting a second ring that was freshly formed. Where they collided, they broke into multiple eddies, meeting and colliding with each other and with the new ripples that kept expanding from the center, The mirror began to shiver with the force of these collisions, to shiver and to shimmer and, very faintly, to rattle like distant chain mail. Cray had never seen anything like this before. He glanced at Sepwin's face and saw the look of puzzlement there.

It changed abruptly to one of shock.

The polished surface of the mirror was beginning to sift away from its wooden support in a glittering, pow-dery shower.

Chapter 9.

The Mirror of Heart's Desire was no more. On the wall, between the two torches, its wooden backing still hung, but all the surface of the mirror now lay on the floor, a mound of sparkling dust. Sepwin fell to his knees beside it. He reached out tentatively to touch it, to feel of it, and the metal powder clung to his fingers, glittering there like a spray of stars.

Aliza pulled the curtain aside, and the draft of that moving fabric blew some of the mirror dust back against the wall. "What's this?" she said.

"I don't know," said Sepwin. He buried both hands in the sparkling powder. "I've never seen anything like it before." He looked up at her. "What did you do, my lady?"

"What you told me, no more." "Then, what are you, my lady?"

Aliza frowned. "I don't know what you mean."

The lady Helaine had joined them in looking at the destroyed mirror, and now she set her pale hand on Sepwin's shoulder. "She doesn't know. I'm sure of that. But there is some terrible secret within her; I felt it the moment I saw her. Perhaps the mirror could not tolerate it."

"I never meant to damage your mirror," said Aliza.

Sepwin got to his feet, dusting his hands on his shirt. "Cray and I can make another; that is not a problem. But I would know why this happened. I would know what terrible secret could do this."

"I have no terrible secret," said Aliza.

"It is hidden even from yourself," said the lady Helaine.

"What nonsense!"

"The lady Helaine never speaks nonsense," said Sepwin. "She is one of the greatest living Seers, and when she says a thing is so, all mortals know she speaks the truth."

"Then what is this secret?"

"To tell that, I must read you by the pool," said the lady Helaine. "Do you wish it?"

"What do you mean-readme?"

The Seer smiled softly. "A human life is like a book to me. I can turn the pages and see what has been and, with somewhat greater difficulty, what will be. I can read the joys, and the crimes, of the people who come here. And though you are of the sorcerous breed, folk who are usually nearly closed to me, still you are a young and unformed apprentice, and you have spent most of your life in a place that, Cray tells me, is not completely formed itself. I make no promises, but from what I feel as I stand here beside you, I think you will not be totally opaque to me."

Aliza withdrew one pace, as if that extra space could be a barrier between them. "If you read my life, you'll read all about my powers. I don't know if I should allow that."

"I have no interest in your powers. But the decision must be yours."

Aliza looked to Cray. "If you were in my place, what would you do?"

"Let the Seer read me. Indeed, she has done so several times."

"My grandfather would forbid it. And yet ... she is not another sorcerer, is she?"

"Not at all," said Cray.

"But sorcerers might come to her and buy informa-tion from her, might they not?"

"Aliza, if some sorcerer wanted to learn of your powers, he could ask an Ice demon to tell him all aboutthem. You think they don't know what you do there in Ice? You think they don't watch and learn about you?"

She pursed her lips. "I have no experience of Seers. You trust her completely, do you?"

"Yes. She has always been my good friend."

Aliza clasped her hands behind her back. "Will she ... will I feel anything while she is reading me?"

"She'll hold your hand." He glanced at the Seer, who nodded.

"Very well," said Aliza. "I do wish to know this terrible secret. I can't imagine what it might be."

Aliza and the lady Helaine sat down on the rim of the dark pool while Cray and Sepwin knelt on the white sand a few paces away. The Seer took Aliza's left hand in her right and slipped her own left hand into the cool water. Then, rather than gazing at Aliza herself, she stared down into the darkness of the pool, as if there were something to see in those depths, though no other eyes could see it. She stared thus for a long time, unblinking, unmoving, like a statue of pale marble.

After a time, Cray glanced at Sepwin, but his friend just shrugged and shook his head.

At last, the Seer spoke, her lips barely moving, the words so soft that only in the silence of her cave could she have been heard; the slightest birdcall would have drowned her out.

"You are one alone. There has never been another like you. Half mortal and half Ice you are, and empty.

That is the terrible secret-that deep within you, where the seat of all emotion should be, where the heart, the soul, should he, you have only a void. You cannot know any emotion, not love or hate, not joy or sor-row. Not even fear. The Mirror of Heart's Desire died seeking that which does not exist in you."

She blinked slowly. "Yet it was there once, long ago; I see the traces of its removal. Why would you do such a thing to yourself?"

"I?" said Aliza. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Then someone else did it to you. Someone stole your soul."

"Who?" said Cray, rising to his feet. "Who, and why?"

"Sorcery," said the Seer. "Beyond that, I cannot say." She looked up at him. "She cannot love, Cray.

Not without her soul."

"She cannotfeel ,"said Cray.

"No."

"When was this terrible thing done?"

"That I cannot see precisely. Quite some time ago." She looked at Aliza. "Do you remember it happening?"

Aliza frowned, her eyes shifting from Cray to the Seer and back. "I don't know what you're talking about." The lady Helaine raised her free hand from the pool to Aliza's forehead; water droplets wet the young wom-an's hair and ran down her cheek like tears, but the grip of the Seer's other hand would not let her pull away from that cold contact. The lady Helaine closed her eyes. "There was a time when there was no sor-cery in you at all, not of your making or of anyone else's. There was a time when you played among the trees of the forest and also in a small wooden building barely larger than this chamber. You had a stuffed toy that never left your sight." She fell silent, and her wet hand made small stroking motions upon Aliza's dark hair. Behind her tightly closed lids, her eyes were moving, seeing. Suddenly she cried out in a high, plaintive voice, a voice filled with loss and sorrow: "Mother!"

Her eyes opened slowly, and now they had a look of pity in them. "Poor child," she said, dropping her hand away from Aliza's face. "You grieved for her so, and then someone stole that grief away. Some people would be grateful to have their grief taken from them, but in this case the price was high indeed.

So very high." To Cray she said, "The soul was taken soon after her parents died. I suspect that's why she remem-bers so little about them. All the love she felt for them, and the sorrow at their death, just vanished as far as she was concerned. Like a dream. She has grown up accustomed to being without any emotions."

"Who would have done such a thing?" said Cray. "Grief fades of its own accord; she needed no such drastic surgery."

"I can think of another reason for it," said Sepwin.

"Yes?"

"To guarantee a quiet life. To guarantee a total lack of distraction while she devoted herself to study."