"I've cooked for myself for many years, and I'm not dead yet," said Sepwin.

"I cook every third day. The other two I work at the laundry and I scrub floors. But perhaps, since you are big and strong and have two good arms and two good legs, Yltra would prefer to give you some other tasks?"

Yltra said, "The master directed him to take over yours. But if we find that he's a poor cook, we'll give him something else. You'll watch him for a few days, boy, and let me know how he does here in the kitchen. That takes some skill; the rest any fool can do." To Sepwin he added, "I'll make you a pallet next to the boy's this evening. Now I must get back to my own work." He went out.

Demas gave the side of venison a quarter turn and then returned to stirring the pots, one after the other. "That's quite a lot of food you have there," said Sepwin. "How many do you feed?"

"Everyone in the castle. Eighteen, counting you."

"The master, too?"

The boy nodded. "So be certain you take care not to burn anything. His punishment is hard."

"How hard?"

The boy glanced at him over one shoulder. "Oh, he might shackle you to the wall without food or water for a few days. Or, if he's very displeased, he might kill you."

Sepwin's eyebrows rose. "Does he often kill his servants for trivial things?"

"Not very often," the boy replied, returning his attention to the pots. "Only once since I've been here."

"And what was that one's crime?"

"As I recall ... not taking the slops out early enough. He had given the man a chance or two already, I believe. They didn't tell you about my lord at the village?"

"They told me that he is very powerful, and that he holds all their lives in his hands."

"And so he does," said Demas. "But he has prom-ised that as long as we serve him faithfully here, he will spare the village."

"But he doesn't spare those inside the walls."

The boy shrugged. "He is a man of temper. You are mad to come here without compulsion. But if your madness means I can go home, I have no objection to it."

"Your mother said you'd been here almost three years. A long time in a young life."

"There are many who've been here longer. Truly, I didn't ever expect to leave. The village has run out of cripples for him. I was the last. And I suppose even so I'll be back eventually, when one of the others dies."

Very softly, Sepwin said, "Do you hate him?"

The boy turned to him with an expression of sur-prise on his face. "Hate? What good would my hate do? It wouldn't help me live and serve here. It wouldn't help me return when the time comes."

"Would you have to return?"

"I have no choice."

"You could run away. The world is wide. Your village is the smallest part of it."

"Leave my mother and family to face his anger?" "They could tell him that you died."

The boy lowered his eyes. "You are a fool, stranger, if you think a sorcerer can be lied to. He has every one of us in his power, and his arm is long. A man did run away once-ran away instead of hunting as my lord commanded. It was many years ago. Yltra told me-he was found sixteen days after, hanging by the neck in one of the towers. He hadn't been there before that day. My lord's arm is long." He licked his lips, which were dry and cracked from bending over the fire. "And now he has touched you with it.

You won't leave here unless he wills it, stranger. Perhaps they didn't tell you that in the village."

"He told me himself," said Sepwin. "But I have nowhere else to go, no other roof above my head. I will be content here, if the food is always as good as those pots smell now, and if your master, temperamental though he is, appreciates devoted service."

"The food is good unless you spoil it," said Demas. "My work has never given my lord cause for displeasure."

"Then I will endeavor to do as well."

He helped Demas with further preparations for the evening meal, though the boy did not really need his help, for he was marvelously dexterous in spite of his useless arm. Later, sitting down to that meal in the refectory, he met the rest of the household, ten men and five women beside Demas and Yltra. Each of them had some deformity that Sepwin would have called pitiful; Yltra's facial scar, ugly though it was, was the least of them. There were twisted spines and crippled legs, missing fingers and lost eyes, darkly mottled skin eruptions and harelips-all the sad disfig-urements that most villages hid from outsiders. In age the people ranged from the youth of Demas to the ancient decrepitude of a withered crone who scarcely looked strong enough to hold herself upright, let alone serve a master. She had a clubfoot.

They were kind to Sepwin, joking mildly among themselves that he did not belong with them, that he was too plain looking in spite of his eyes. They were glad, all of them, that the boy would have a chance to go home. But several of them sighed because it was not their chance, because they thought there would never be a chance for them. And Sepwin wondered what they had left behind in the village when they had come here-parents, spouses, children? But he thought it would be unseemly to ask.

Yltra served their master and did not come to the table till the others were all finished. Most of them, however, stayed to keep him company while he ate, and as Demas was one of these, Sepwin found himself there also. In the course of the conversation, he dis-covered that, like so many other duties in the castle, serving the sorcerer directly rotated among them.

"He enjoys viewing our deformities," said Yltra. "Be certain you never drop anything in his presence, though."

"I am not a clumsy person."

"He'll pay quite a lot of attention to you at first. He always does with a newcomer. And he hasn't had one since Demas came to us."

"I hope you will advise me on the proper behavior."

Yltra shrugged. "Bow frequently. Don't drop anything. And do as he says immediately. I don't know that there is anything else." "Don't speak unless spoken to," said Demas. "Unless you have something very important to tell him.

And when you give him bad news, apologize for it."

"I've never known that to help much," said Yltra.

"It depends on the news," said Demas. "I always apologize when there are no carrots with dinner. He likes carrots. I try to put them in everything I cook."

"Yes," said Yltra. "You must remember to do things exactly as you're shown-those are the ways he likes them done. With a master like him, that's always safest."

"I'll remember," said Sepwin.

During the next few days he learned the routine of the castle-which tasks belonged to whom, when they were to be done, and how. He learned that only four of the servants regularly went outside the walls, to hunt and to gather wild herbs, that almost everyone took a turn at working the kitchen garden, and that Everand was likely to make a surprise inspection of any part of the castle at any time and therefore noth-ing could be put off for another day when it was supposed to be done on that one. He learned that the master liked to be served hot, damp cloths before his meal, to swab his face and hands, but that he was not so fastidious about the rest of his person. And he learned that he was not to open certain doors unless the sorcerer himself had given permission.

"He'll know if you do," said Demas. "He always does."

For several days Sepwin accompanied the boy ev-erywhere, sharing his work, imitating his methods.

Together, they even served Everand a day's meals, Sepwin carrying the tray each time while Demas conveyed the dishes one by one to his master's table. Sepwin watched closely, noting the order in which the dishes were offered, how they were placed, where their lids were stacked, what further service the sor-cerer required, whether slicing or mixing or addition of condiments. A dozen days later, when he and the boy were called to serve again, they exchanged places, and Sepwin duplicated his instructor's actions so per-fectly that the boy chose the following morning to pack up his belongings and leave.

"You make a good servant," he told Sepwin. "The master should be pleased with you."

"I hope so," Sepwin said as he walked the boy to the gate. Everand had given his permission for the departure, and now Demas had only to open the gate and pass through. "Are you going to make the whole journey home alone?"

"I know the way."

The gate was barred. Demas shoved the bar aside by himself, but he needed Sepwin's help to pull the log barrier open enough to let him pass. "I haven't been outside since I came here," he said, gripping the rough surface of one of the logs with his good hand. "It was summer then." He swung the bag containing his few possessions over his shoulder and took one step out and then another. He turned to Sepwin.

"Farewell, madman. With any luck, I won't see you again for years." And he faced away once more and began to walk toward the forest with a swift, resolute stride.

Sepwin took a single step toward the boy's retreat-ing figure, or rather, he tried to take a step, but he was halted in the middle of that motion by the invisi-ble barrier of the spell. It was like a wall before him, hard and cold as winter-chilled metal. It was a far more effective gate than any logs could be. Sepwinpushed the visible barrier shut and rebarred it and could not help wondering why it was barred at all.

When he asked Yltra, the man said, "Why to keep out the wolves, of course."

"Wolves?" exclaimed Sepwin.

"Yes. My lord can't be bothered to kill them every time they try to sneak in."

"But won't his sorcerous barrier keep them out?"

Yltra shrugged. "He is concerned with demons and people, not with animals. A good stout gate is all that's needed for wolves."

"Do they try to get in often?"

"Oh, they smell the meat cooking and they want a share. We have a great many wolves hereabouts.

Didn't you see any on your journey from the village?"

"No. No, I didn't. I guess I was fortunate. But if there are so many, why did you let young Demas start home all alone? Aren't you afraid they might attack him?"

"Oh, they're just thieves. They won't attack a man. Not with easier game so plentiful in the woods.

Demas has a knife, and I'm sure he's cut himself a stout staff by this time. He'll be all right. Anyway, the master didn't give his permission for any of us to accompany the boy. So there's an end to it." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "But I don't think the master would let the boy come to harm. He'll surely need him again someday."

"But how will your master help him against wolves on the journey?"

"Oh, his arm is long. There's no need to worry aboutthat. "

Sepwin marveled at Yltra's image of his master the sorcerer. Here was a man feared by an entire village, a village that was willing to give him its own flesh and blood in return for a promise of safety, and yet the same man was scorned as a weakling by his fellow sorcerers. What was weakness to the strong seemed strength to the weak. Yltra did not wonder that the barrier that kept him inside the castle could not keep wolves out: he did not seethat as a signof weakness. Instead, he saw Everand's ability to kill at a distance by sorcery as a sign of strength. Sorcerers did not judge a person's strength, Sepwin knew, by his ability to kill; they considered that the most trivial power of all.

Sepwin himself, in the short time he had been in the castle, could not judge the level of Everand's power.

At night, when the servants' quarters were lit by beeswax candles, an eerie blue-white glow, like continuous silent lightning, showed in the upper windows of the keep. That was the master, Yltra told him, conjuring, but what he conjured, no one knew. By day his workshop bore some resemblance to Cray's. Sepwin had brought him two meals there and had seen the furnace and the bellows, the charcoal and the greenish copper ore, the bars of pure metal and the wire that had been drawn from them.

Everand's power was obviously bound up in copper, for he wore it all about his person, as necklets and bracelets and even a band about his forehead that left a greenish mark from his sweat. But what particular powers that copper gave him, beyond the power to encircle his castle with a sorcerous barrier, and to kill, no one could say. He did not practice his sorcery in front of his servants. They did not even know if he had ever commanded a demon. Only one, the old crone, said she had seen him summoning a storm once ... or perhaps he had merely been standing atop the wall when the storm arose of its ownaccord.

None of them wanted to see their master's sorcery. One and all, they feared it could as easily mean their deaths as not. The barrier was more than enough for them, and those who had to pass through its chill to hunt or gather herbs in the forest shuddered every time they did so.

The only way Sepwin could make any sort of esti-mate of Everand's power was by judging his wealth.

And he had very little of that.

Gildrum had often said that, in general, those of the sorcerous breed tended to surround themselves with comforts and with objects that pleased the eye. If they could not acquire such things directly through sorcery, they would barter for them or steal them. Precious metals, fine fabrics and needlework, sumptuous fur-nishings, tireless demon or unliving servants-these were the things one found in a sorcerer's castle. Everand had none of them. His clothing was as plain as a peasant's, his furniture no better than his servants', and the only pretty things in the keep were crystalline and obviously gifts from Aliza.

Sepwin had noticed this lack of wealth while prowl-ing the castle. Though he had been in residence only a short time, he had already visited every room in the place. Some, their doors open, he had merely wan-dered into, with a newcomer's excuse of being confused about the location of something in case he was noticed. Some, their doors otherwise closed to him, he entered in the company of someone else, having of-fered his help for some task. His help was almost never refused. And so he discovered that there were no forbidden places in the castle, no caches of mysteri-ous implements or substances, only the master's desire for privacy keeping them out of his workshop while he was busy and out of his bedchamber while he was sleeping.

A sorcerer with so few secrets, Sepwin thought, must be a feeble sorcerer indeed.

He had been searching for Aliza's soul. He had been certain he could find it. He, the keeper of the Mirror of Heart's Desire, he who read men's souls in the dark pool, he who had felt Aliza's lack in the crystal vase but had not known a name for it until the lady Helaine gave him one-he was precisely the right person to find it. He had known that once inside the sorcerous barrier, he would hear it calling to him, as the mirror web had called to him that day in the forest. He was attuned to souls-that was the Seer's whole existence.

But inside the barrier, he neither heard nor felt it. He opened himself to its voice, and he perceived the souls of all the other people around him, all the ser-vants, like a crowd of cackling geese. One by one, he determined the owner of each soul and shut it away from himself. He even perceived Everand's soul, though faintly because of the years of sorcery that muffled it. But once all of them were accounted for, there was nothing left but himself, no thin voice crying out, no faint vibration of being, nothing.

Then he thought that it must be hidden behind a barrier like the one that enveloped the castle, a barrier within a barrier, a place that would give back only the blankness of sorcery to his searching mind.

But he could not find such a place.

As he was scrubbing the flagstones of the ground floor of the keep, casting his mind in search of the soul for the dozenth time-or perhaps the two dozenth-he tried to decide what to do next. He could report to Cray, but he hated the thought of reporting such utter failure. Had they both been wrong? Was the soul not here at all but hidden in some better hidey-hole? It was not in the forest, he knew, not languishing in some hollow tree or under some stone; he would have felt it there while he was still outside. Yet whereelse could it be, he wondered, where Everand would still have control over it?

As he mused so, and as he scrubbed, the sorcerer himself strolled into the room. His head was down, he was not watching where he was going, and only at the last moment, when he was scarcely two paces from the bucket of soapy water, did he notice Sepwin. He veered sharply, but his foot slid on the wet floor and he lost his balance. He would have fallen, save that Sepwin bounded up and caught him under the arm.

"My lord, forgive me for being in your way!" exclaimed Sepwin. "Are you all right?"

Everand glared at him and thrust him away. "Who told you to wash this floor?"

Sepwin bowed. "My lord, Yltra said this was the usual day for washing it, and it was my turn."

Everand grunted deep in his throat. "Yltra says he is pleased with your work. He says you are a better worker than Demas ever was."

Sepwin bowed again.

"But next time you wash this floor, or any floor in the keep, see that you sing while you do it."

"My lord, I don't sing very well."

"I don't ask you to sing well. I only ask you to make a little noise so I know you're there!" He showed his teeth in something that was not quite a smile. "You react quickly. That's a good quality in a servant. If you hadn't caught my arm, you'd probably be dead this very moment. Think about that the next time you wash a floor." He walked away, carefully giving the wet part of the floor a wide berth.

Sepwin looked after him till he had entered the next room and closed the door between them. He was not thinking of his narrow brush with death, nor of the fact that none of the other servants ever sang while they worked, not even while they scrubbed floors. He was thinking instead of that split second in which he had caught Everand under the arm, that instant in which he had supported the man's whole weight.

Their faces had been at the same level, Everand's cheek to him, his pale stringy hair falling to his shoulder. In that moment, as his body jerked to Sepwin's sudden grip, his hair had swung back, revealing his ear.

Or, rather, revealing that he had no ear. Where once that fleshy shell must have been was now a thin, ridged scar curving three-quarters of the way around the earhole.

Sepwin had felt a sudden shock go through him at the sight-a shock not of revulsion but of perception.

His Seer's senses had been, at that moment, sharp-ened to their limit in his effort to perceive the slightest murmur from Aliza's soul; his hands had been wet, and though the water was not from the lady Helaine's pool, still it was water and it joined his flesh to Everand's through the sorcerer's sleeve. In that mo-ment Sepwin saw, not into the sorcerer himself, but to the surface of that scar, to the place where that ear had once been, and he knew that its removal repre-sented some event so important in the sorcerer's life that his whole existence turned upon it. And Aliza was involved. Even as he had asked Everand's forgiveness, his mind had been spinning with that awareness.

The rest of the day seemed to pass as if it were being paced out by an ox turning a millstone. Sepwin was busy the whole time, but each task seemed to require an eternity of effort. Even after supper, there were new candles to be dipped, and every servant took part in the procedure so that they would havelight for another score of evenings. The sun had been gone quite some time and the gibbous moon was high when he was left to sleep at last in the room that he shared with six others. They all settled down on their pallets, the straw rustling as they wrapped themselves in their blankets, and soon faint snores told Sepwin that the others were asleep. Silently then, he threw off his own cover and slipped from the chamber.

Moonlight flooded the yard, revealing its emptiness. He walked softly but without stealth, making no attempt to hide in the shadows. He seemed like a man too restless to sleep but mindful of his fellows'

need for quiet. He seemed like a man who just needed a little time alone with the night and the moon and the stars.

At equal intervals along the inside of the wall were stone staircases leading up to the battlements. The nearest to the servants' quarters was crumbled above the fourth step, but the next was whole enough to climb, with care, and Sepwin did so. At the top, the banquette-that broad walkway that circled the castle just inside the crenelations-was brightly lit by moon-light, the rough planking that covered its many gaps easy to see. Sepwin had been up there several times by day, and now he could stroll without paying much attention to where he placed his feet. He moved in a leisurely fashion, as befitted a man without a goal, gazing down at the yard or up into the sky, occasionally leaning for some moments into an embrasure to look out at the forest. He heard no footsteps but his own, and all around him the shadows were motionless. Even the keep was silent and dark, Everand having finished with his conjuring for one night.

The last embrasure he chose to halt at was quite a distance from the servants' quarters, well out of earshot of anyone who might be awake there. Far from any tower or bend in the wall, it was completely exposed to the moonlight, and standing beside it, so was he. But no one could creep up on him unnoticed there. He rested his forearms on the cold stone floor of the embrasure. In an ordinary castle, this might have been the post of a man-at-arms guarding the place, waiting for some enemy to emerge from the forest. In this sorcerous castle, no such sentries were necessary, for the barrier that enclosed it sealed out those enemies and their power. Sepwin stretched a hand out to the other end of the embrasure and felt the damp chill of that barrier-it was a solid thing to him, pressing back upon his questing fingers, an invisi-ble cage that sealed preternatural powers out and also, except for Everand's own, in.