"Her grandfather," said Cray.

"It's of a piece with locking her up in Ice, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes. Of course. The villain!" His lips made a firm line as he looked at Sepwin. "This is the quest," he said. "We must get Aliza's soul back."

Sepwin stood up. "Yes. This is the quest. The lady Helaine said you would know its end, and now I know, too. The soul lies there, and you and I shall find it."

"Wait, what's happening here?" said Aliza, spring-ing to her feet and pulling her hand from the Seer's grasp. "What are you planning?"

"We can manage it," said Sepwin. "Cray will provide the sorcery and I'll locate the soul itself. He's probably got the thing in a bottle in his bedroom."

"Good," said Cray.

"Just a moment," said Aliza.

Cray gripped her arm. "Trust us, Aliza. We'll find it for you."

"Findwhat ?I'm not missing anything. I don't care what your Seer may say. You seem to be planning some kind of assault on my grandfather's bedroom to retrieve this piece of nonsense that you think hassome value to me. But have you asked me once if I wanted it?"

"You need it," said Cray.

"I need nothing. Whatever it is, if it is something, I don't feel its lack. I won't have you disturbing my grandfather with this foolishness."

"You don't understand," said Cray. "But when you have your soul back again, you will."

"And what do you think this soul will do for me?"

"You'll be able to feel all those emotions the lady Helaine spoke of. Joy and love and the others. The emotions that the rest of us live with every moment of our lives. The emotions that give flavor to life."

"And fear, too. She did mention fear."

Cray nodded.

Aliza turned away from him. "My grandfather has told me of fear. How it makes one weak and foolish.

How it takes over the mind and twists it away from rational thought. If having a soul means knowing fear, I don't want one."

"You can learn to deal with fear, Aliza." He stepped up behind her and laid his hands on both her shoul-ders. "It need not be so incapacitating. It is unpleasant-I wouldn't lie to you about that. But it's a small sacrifice to make in return for the other emotions."

"To you, perhaps," she said. "You have no choice. But I do. I am content the way I am. And if my grandfather did take this soul, whatever it is, I'm sure he did so for my own good. To make me a better sorcerer."

"Perhaps he removed his own soul as well," sug-gested Sepwin, "and so, having no feelings himself, thinks that's best for everyone. The perfect sorcerer-fearless, loveless, joyless. Clearly he has no desire for great-grandchildren."

Gently, Cray turned Aliza to face him. "How well do you really know your grandfather? What do you know of his motives, his desires?"

"I know that I am his apprentice, and he could have selected another in my place, or none at all. After my parents died, he could have given me to some peasant family in the human realm and been free of me, but he chose not to. He is very powerful and wishes me to be so also. What more need I know?"

"Considerably more than that, if you are to judge him."

"I? Judge him?"

"He has made your life what it is. By judging him, you judge it. Gildrum can help us. Your grandfather is a demon master, and so demons will be able to tell us of him. And their tales will not be colored by any of his own lies."

"You think he has lied to me?" "I don't know. But it would be the least of his crimes against you."

The afternoon was waning by the time Gildrum joined them. Aliza had become restive after the midday meal, suggesting that she ought to be returning to her studies, but Cray distracted her with a stroll through the snow-laden forest. There, he called a few sleeping plants into leaf and even grew a chair for her from some woody vines at the edge of a frozen pond. Then he showed her how to build a snowman. They had scarcely finished it when the clear sky began to cloud over and the first soft flakes began to dust their hair. They dashed back to the cave and found Gildrum waiting for them.

In his human form, he was sitting with Sepwin and the lady Helaine at the rim of the pool. "Ah," he said, "now I won't have to tell the tale twice."

"What tale?" asked Cray.

"The tale of the fraudulent sorcerer. And a most enlightening one it is, my dears."

"Fraudulent?" said Cray.

"Yes, and perhaps the lady Aliza would like to sit down before she hears it?" He stood to make room for her by the pool. "It seems that this very powerful grandfather of hers is nothing of the kind. A sorcerer he is, but one of extremely limited and trivial skills. The other sorcerers who know of him scorn him, he has never commanded more than one demon slave, and his needs are served by a pack of mortals who live inside his castle."

"Mortals?" said Cray.

"Well, he hasn't any demons now, and apparently no power over animals or inanimate objects either.

He seems to be nearly a complete failure at sorcery."

"No," said Aliza, rising to her feet to look into Gildrum's face. "No. He has human servants, true enough, but they are in addition to his demon slaves."

Gildrum's expression was skeptical. "Why would he need mortal servants if, as you say, he has demons?"

"They amuse him. He has a special relationship with one particular village. He takes all the cripples, the deformed ones, the ugly ones. Their fellow villag-ers are glad to be rid of them, and they are glad to find a home and work. And he finds them amusing."

"This is what he's told you," said Cray.

"Yes."

Gildrum shook his head. "He has no demon since Regneniel left him. None."

"You lie," said Aliza.

"No," said Cray. "Helied. He lied about everything he was. Knowing that, can you believe anything he ever told you?"

"My lessons ... " Aliza faltered. "You could prove their truth. But as long as you never visited his home, you could never know about the rest. And he made sure you never visited. You believed him. Why not? Who was there to tell you otherwise?"

"But he visited me," said Aliza. "His demons brought him."

"Did you ever see them?"

"Regneniel."

"I mean any others."

She shook her head. "But he visited me after he gave me Regneniel. He had to have demons for that."

"You saw them?"

"No, he came to the mountains, and Regneniel fetched him from there. He said it wouldn't be good for his demons to learn to cross the sand barrier, that someday they might use that power against me, after he was dead."

"There are other ways of traveling besides with demons," said Sepwin. "There are horses, after all. And one's own two feet."

"But his castle is far away. It would take so much time to make the journey in the way of ordinary mortals."

"He wanted to maintain the illusion," said Cray. "He wanted you to keep thinking that he was the powerful sorcerer."

She looked at him, and her eyes were defiant. "You're so sure it was an illusion."

"I have no reason to doubt Gildrum's word."

"And I have no reason to accept it. Gildrum's word against my grandfather's."

"Why don't you ask Regneniel?" said Gildrum. "Regneniel will surely know."

Aliza clutched the white sapphire that hung at her throat. For a moment she held it, her eyes raised to Gildrum's, steady, challenging, and then she let it go.

"You are too sure of Regneniel's answer. I see no point in summoning it." She dropped her eyes at last.

"Very well. He lied."

"And now we must ask ourselves why," said Gildrum. Aliza took a deep breath and let it out as a heavy sigh. "I know the answer to that. Isn't it obvious?"

"I'm not sure it is," said Cray.

"I am his apprentice. The apprentice must respect the master. Yet how could I respect a sorcerer without power? He had to seem greater than myself, to give me something to strive for, something tomatch myself against. It was for my own good that he lied, to make me what he thought I could be. And I would say that he has been quite successful at it."

Cray folded his arms across his chest and regarded her thoughtfully. "You think that's a reasonable explanation?"

"Yes, I do."

"All those lies-for your own good."

She frowned at him. "What would you say?"

He rocked back on his heels. "I say that it's a peculiar sorcerer indeed who wants his apprentice to surpass him. I've known quite a few sorcerers in my time, and I've never heard of such a sentiment. Even my own mother, who taught me a good part of what I know, is proud that in her own range of sorcery, with spiders and snakes and twining things, she is more adept than I. And ... such selfless generosity seems somewhat at odds with the physical and emotional distance that has always been a mark of your relations with your grandfather. Quite simply, I can't believe he loves you so much. There must be profit in the situa-tion for him somewhere. There must be."

Gildrum said, "I wonder why, if he has no other demon slaves, he gave her Regneniel."

"To maintain the illusion," said Cray. "The master of a hundred demons can afford to give one away. It must be very important to him, this illusion which is supposed to keep Aliza working diligently for as long as she needs in order to become one of the greatest sorcerers who ever lived. She could become that, couldn't she, Gildrum, under Regneniel's tutelage?"

Gildrum shrugged. "Regneniel is a demon of some knowledge. But Aliza's most significant advantage is her intimate connection with the world she seeks to manipulate. Through that alone, she could be a very great sorcerer, in time."

"Why?" said Cray. "Why must she be great? If we can only answer that question, I think we will begin to understand this matter of the soul."

"Obviously you have some notion of an answer."

"Perhaps." He turned to Sepwin. "What can be done with a soul, Feldar? How can it be used?"

Sepwin spread his hands in perplexity. "I've never known a soul to be removed from its body before. I have no idea."

"O Seer, what do you say?"

The lady Helaine shrugged. "The soul is Aliza. Even though they have been separated, there is a connec-tion between them that cannot be severed."

"So her grandfather actually possesses a living part of her."

The Seer nodded.

"And this part of her that is her," continued Cray, "could it be used somehow to transfer power from herto the one who possesses it? Could he absorb her knowledge of Ice from her soul?"

"Nonsense," said Aliza. "Only one who was as much of Ice as I am could possess my knowledge. It is something that must be lived as well as learned."

"Well, if that is such nonsense, my lady Aliza, then I see only one other possible explanation. Your grandfather has your soul, which is still connected to you. What should happen if he destroys it?"

"He can destroy it, for all I care," said Aliza. "I don't want it back."

"What would happen?" Cray asked the Seer.

"She would die," said the lady Helaine.

Aliza frowned at the Seer, tight-lipped. "Then he's probably keeping it quite safe."

"Your soul is his hostage, Aliza," said Cray. "You are in his power."

"Of course I'm in his power. I'm his apprentice."

"And you will always be in his power. Always." He gripped both of her arms tightly. "He hasn't needed to tell you yet. You've been an obedient apprentice. You've done exactly as he's told you. But someday your skills will be mature. And then you'll serve him. He won't need any demon slaves. He'll have one of the greatest sorcerers who ever lived as his slave."

She peeled his hands away. "This is too wild a tale for me, Cray Ormoru. You don't know my grandfa-ther. You haven't the faintest notion of what he wants. And I have had enough of all this airy speculation. It's very late, and I wish to go home. If you and your demon friends will take me there, well and good. Otherwise I shall call Regneniel."

"You can't be angry with me," said Cray. "Anger is an emotion, and you have none."

"I am not angry. I am merely weary of your suppo-sitions, your inferences, and your unwarranted conclu-sions. You have judged a stranger. I don't think you are in a better position than I am to do so. I trust my grandfather. I have never known any reason that would prevent me from trusting him. If you must believe the worst of him, perhaps that reflects more of yourself than of him."

"But Aliza, he has your soul."

"And I say, if he has it, let him keep it. I see no value in such a thing. Now there's an end to the matter."

She bowed stiffly to Sepwin and the lady Helaine. "I thank you for the fine meal and your attentions to me. I hope you will accept this small gift as some repayment for your mirror." She gestured to the sand at her feet, and a patch of it began to swirl like a tiny dust devil, coalescing into a faceted crystalline bowl large enough to hold several pieces of fruit. When it was fully formed, she picked it up in both hands and gave it to the Seer. "And now," she said, "I must leave." She glanced questioningly at Cray.

"I suggest you call Regneniel so that it will know where this place is and be able to return whenever you wish."

She nodded and raised her hand to the jewel. "But first-I think it might be best if you did not mention the soul and our conversation about it to your grandfather. If you are correct, and he has it for his own good reasons, then you should not insult him with our speculations."