In eight years, hundreds of men and women had looked into the mirror. Nearly all of them reported seeingsomething. Why, Cray thought, should he be one of the few denied a vision? What quality did he lack that the mirror withheld its boon?

Eight years. It was long enough.

On his next visit to the cave, he waited until Sepwin and the lady Helaine were busy preparing a meal, and on the pretext of fetching flowers for the table, he slipped away from them.

The mirror chamber was large and high-ceilinged, and the black velvet curtain appeared to lie flush against its farther wall. Only when the drapery was drawn aside did the alcove that lay behind become visible, a shallow space where the Mirror of Heart's Desire hung between two empty brass sconces.

Cray took a pair of torches from the room's entrance and set them in the sconces, and their light made the mirror glitter as in his dreams.

In the curtain, at about the height of Cray's eyes, was a slit as wide as his hand and two fingers high.

That was the precise place from which supplicants always looked at the mirror, from which they saw-what? Cray let the curtain drop between himself and that glittering surface, and he looked, wondering.

For a moment, the torches dazzled his eyes. Then he focused on the mirror, and saw the image, clear and sharp as a reflection in a still pond. But it was not a reflection. No.

Mirror of Heart's Desire,he thought,what have you given me?

The still and silent likeness of a six-year-old child.

Chapter 3.

When he tore his eyes away from the mirror at last, he found Sepwin standing beside him, a silent question on his face. Cray nodded slowly. "I saw something." And then he shook his head. "But it seems a very peculiar heart's desire."

Sepwin frowned. "Perhaps if you could describe it to me ... ?"

"It was a child." He turned back to the slit, and the image had not changed. "A little girl, perhaps six years old, rather pretty, though her face is dirty. Dark hair, very large eyes. Plainly dressed. A peasant child, I'd guess."

"Keep looking," said Sepwin, touching the back of Cray's neck with the flat of one hand. "Fill your mind with her image."

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to feel her through you, to locate her."

"There's no need for that."

"Of course there is. You must go to her."

Cray turned to stare at his friend. "Go to her? Why?" "She's in the mirror; isn't that a good enough reason?"

"Feldar, don't talk nonsense. She's just a child, a baby."

"Even so. If you go to her, you will surely find out why the mirror shows her to you. Now look again so that I can help you."

Cray's lips made a firm line. "It's nonsense, Feldar."

"Humor me, my dear friend. Can it hurt you?" With a grunt, Cray turned back to the child.

After a time, Sepwin set his other hand on top of Cray's head. "Look at the background. Tell me what you see there."

Cray squinted. "I'd say it was a very cloudy sky, except that there's an object hung on it. So it must be just a poorly whitewashed wall."

"What sort of object?"

"A lozenge-shaped plaque."

"A coat of arms!" Sepwin cried eagerly. "She might be a servant in some great house!"

"I've never seen a coat of arms like this before. It seems to be of glass inlaid with copper ribbons. The field is quartered, and the quarters are all faintly blue in color, alternating darker and lighter, with no two quite the same. The bands repeat the lozenge shape concentrically five times."

"Some great houses have been known to set their arms in stained glass," said Sepwin, "but I don't rec-ognize this pattern."

"Nor do I."

"Can you see anything else? Is there a carpet under her feet? Any special decorations about her clothing?"

Cray shook his head. "There's just a plainly dressed child and a plaque. Nothing more."

"Look closely, Cray. Oh, if only I could see her myself!"

Cray studied the image for a long moment, and then he said, "There is one more thing, though I don't know how it could help you. She's holding some sort of stuffed animal half behind her back, but it's so gray and shapeless that I can't tell what kind it might be." He looked to Sepwin. "Well?"

Slowly, the Seer lowered his hands. "I can't feel her at all." He sighed heavily. "She might as well be nowhere."

Cray reached out to grasp his arm. "If one of your skill can't find her ... perhaps sheis nowhere. First the mirror was blank, and now ... perhaps it's playing a joke on me."

"No. The mirror tells only the truth." "But not enough of it."

Sepwin's shoulders slumped. "No. Not in this case."

Cray clapped him on the back. "No matter, Feldar," he said firmly. "What could I possibly say to a six-year-old child? And what could she say to me? No, it doesn't matter at all." And he turned his friend away from the Mirror of Heart's Desire.

That night, over dinner, Sepwin asked the lady He-laine to look into her dark pool for Cray, but she refused. "For all my age, Feldar, for all these white hairs, I cannot read Cray half as well as you can. If you could not find her, I shall not be able to. But I will tell you this-" She touched his wrist lightly. "I can read you very well, my dear, and I know that you will be involved in the quest for this child."

"Quest?" exclaimed Cray. "There isn't going to be any quest."

"Yes, there will be. But not until the time is right."

"And when will that be?" demanded Sepwin.

"You will know."

"I? Not Cray?"

"I said I could not readhim." She stroked his forearm with her delicate pale fingers. "You must be careful, Feldar. There will be danger."

He shot Cray a quick glance. "We've been through danger together before. I'm not worried."

"What will this danger be, lady?" asked Cray. "Where will it come from?"

The Seer shook her head sadly. "Do not ask too much of me, Cray Ormoru. I see and feel a few things, but most of the future is murky to me. It depends too much on decisions not yet made, on paths not yet followed. The past is so much clearer."

"And yet you say there will be a quest."

"I see one."

Cray folded his arms across his chest. "And what if I say there will be no quest, that I have no interest in finding a person I don't know and have no reason to know?"

She touched his arm in a soothing gesture. "Youmake your future, Cray. No matter what I say, you can wrench your life away from it. You can turn my truth to a lie."

"Very well," he said. "I'll remember that."

Sepwin looked at him long and hard but said noth-ing. They finished dinner in silence.

Cray spent the next few years expanding his powers over living, growing things. He learned to combinenot just gold but silver, copper, and other metals with the substance of plants, and to make those plants mature into whatever forms he wished, with or without metal. Eventually he was able to grow himself a castle.

It was a huge place, much larger than Spinweb. Instead of stone, its walls were thick tree trunks crowded so close together that no gaps were visible between them. Their branches began high above the ground, rising stout and square like crenelations, with leaves clustered only at their tops, shading the battlements from the summer sun. At the angles of the walls, the trees rose taller, forming turrets, and on their inner sides great staircases grew, with deep window slits at frequent intervals. The buildings of the courtyard were also made of trees, and inside them chairs, tables, and even beds grew from their wooden floors. Wherever cushions were needed, dense-leafed branches offered themselves, and where a hard, smooth surface free of bark was required, the trees obliged.

Though the castle was comfortable enough, Cray did not choose to live there. He visited often and kept an army of ensorcelled shrubs there as servants, com-manding them to uproot themselves and walk whenever he wished something cooked or cleaned. But usually he was only there to make changes, to cause an extra chair to grow, a wall hanging of twisting woods to take form, a partition to expand or wither away. The place was just a toy to him; it was too large and lonely to live in.

He often talked about it to Sepwin, talked about his most recent changes, and the ideas he had for more.

The castle had replaced the tree as the center of his life, and if Sepwin sighed when he said that, if Sepwin glanced sidelong at the velvet curtain every time they passed it, Cray pretended not to notice.

They didn't speak of the mirror these days, nor of the enigmatic image of the child.

Yet Cray thought of them sometimes, especially when he woke in the darkest part of the night and lay in his bed, listening to the stillness. At those times, he could not keep himself from thinking of them.

One afternoon, he found himself alone by the Seers' dark pool. In the kitchen, Sepwin was cleaning the breakfast dishes, and outside, the lady Helaine was watching for the arrival of her next supplicant; neither of them needed him. The cave was very quiet, as quiet as the darkest part of the night. For a time Cray trailed his fingers in the water, watching the ripples break up the reflection of his face. Here was an ordi-nary mirror, he thought, offering no enigmas, just uncluttered reality. Only for a Seer could it be more, not for him. He wiped his hand on his tunic and rose, stretching, thinking he would join Sepwin and dry a dish or two. But his path took him past the chamber of the mirror, and he could not help seeing the velvet curtain through its doorway. He paused then, alone, staring at that curtain. He paused, and at last he took up a pair of torches to hang beside the mirror, and he looked.

The image had changed.

The child had grown. She was taller, slimmer, less babyish, and her hair that had been a short, dark tangle now fell past her shoulders in two smooth braids. Her face was clean, and her dress was of finer stuff. Only the gray and shapeless toy clutched in her hand had not changed. Behind her, the lozenge was gone, leaving the wall featureless and cloudy white.

"Feldar!" he shouted.

Sepwin came at a run, wiping his hands on his apron. "Is something wrong?" Then he saw that Cray was at the curtain.

"She's different," Cray told him. "Older." "Well, shewould be, after five years."

Cray frowned at the image. "Who is she, Feldar? And where?"

"Ah," murmured Sepwin. "So it isn't nonsense anymore." But when he laid his hands on Cray's head, he found no more answers than before.

"This is so strange," Cray said. "I feel almost as though I'm looking at some ancient tapestry, seeing a scene that was real sometime, for someone, but not for me. Feldar, I don't understand why the mirror is showing me this person from nowhere!"

Sepwin studied his friend's profile for a time, and then he said, "I think you don't understand because you don't wish to." And he left Cray looking, still looking, into the mirror.

Every year after that, Cray went to the mirror at least once. In a series of still and silent portraits, he watched the child grow, watched her face and limbs lose their baby fat and become slender, even angular, watched her carry the same stuffed animal year after year. And all through that time Sepwin could not feel a hint of where she might be, nor could Cray guess, from any background in the vision. She seemed to live in a place filled with light, yet it was neither sunlight nor torchlight but some whiter radiance, almost blue-white. And when that cloudy wall was not behind her, then there was no background at all, just pale, fea-tureless haze.

"She must serve a sorcerer," Cray said one time. "Only a sorcerer's walls could hide her from you so completely."

Sepwin shook his head. "My bond with you is too strong for that. I would know at least where those walls lay. But I have been thinking ... " He hesi-tated. "Perhaps ... she is a demon."

Cray looked at him sharply.

"Demons are beyond me," Sepwin said. "A Seer can only deal with things of the human realm."

"But ... a child, a growing child?"

Sepwin shrugged. "Who can say what whim a sor-cerer might have, to give his demon a slightly older human form each year, as if it were growing up before his eyes. I've heard of stranger things."

"Well, if she is a demon, and with such an unusual form, then Gildrum might know of her."

But he did not, and when he asked among his fellow demons, he found none who had ever heard of such a creature.

When the girl was in her late teens, the stuffed animal finally vanished, and with it, at least in Cray's eyes, went the last vestiges of her childhood. Now she was tall and slim, with an almost regal carriage. Her eyes were large and dark, her skin as pale as milk, her hair a shining cascade all about her shoulders.

From a pretty child, she had metamorphosed into a beautiful young woman. Her clothing, too, had transformed with her, into the finest velvet. No one would mistake her for a servant these days; she would have to be the daughter of the house, perhaps of a very great house.

And now, upon her breast, dangling from a thin gold chain and rimmed by a silvery band, was a fac-eted pendant of purest white sapphire. "I've never seen a gem so large," Cray said to Sepwin. "It makes a handsome piece of jewelry. And possibly ... more than that."

"More?"

"A hoop of precious metal set with a gem is a ring, Feldar, even if it isn't worn on the hand." He turned an exultant smile on his friend. "A ring might com-mand a demon, and if it does, then Gildrum can find it.

And its wearer."

With the skilled eye of one who had cast hundreds of rings and set nearly as many stones upon them, he scrutinized the pendant. He estimated its weight, drew its shape, enumerated its facets, pinpointed its color. And by the time he was finished, Gildrum, who had been his mentor in ring-making, knew the stone and its setting as well as he did.

"Whether it does command a demon or not, I can't say," Gildrum told him. "But this gem was cut and polished and set in metal, and some demon will know what happened to it, even if it is only a piece of jewelry. Even if it lies inside a sorcerer's home, some demon will know that it was delivered there." And he turned to flame and soared into the sky for his search.

Gildrum was gone for days. Cray could have returned home for that time, returned to the studies that had been so much of his life. But all the restlessness, all the impatience, all the desire for accomplishment that he had ever felt seemed focused on that image in the mirror, and he could not tear himself away from it. He looked at it again and again, as if afraid that now he had some way to find her, the girl would vanish. He discovered that her image changed each afternoon, the old one dissolving into nothingness and a new one taking shape, a fresh instant in time. He watched her, day by day, as she moved about against those incom-prehensible backgrounds, in that unearthly radiance. Once, she held a large book in her hands, but squint as he might, he could not make out the title. And once, just once, she seemed to be gazing directly out at him, as if she could somehow see him spying on her. Every time he looked at her in that pose, he shivered; she was staring at him and yet she was not, she was a total stranger and yet she was not, the mirror had bound the two of them together and yet they had never met.

When Gildrum returned, Cray and Sepwin and the lady Helaine were sitting together by the pool, drink-ing white wine.

"I would have come sooner," the demon said, strid-ing toward them in his human form, "but I thought it best to stop at home and let your mother know I was back."

Cray scrambled to his feet. "What news?"

With a smile, Gildrum accepted a cup of wine from the lady Helaine and raised it to Cray. "Success."