He looked to Aliza. "Have you had enough, my child? Or must the pain go on and on?"

Through clenched teeth Aliza said, "You took my soul, but you gave me will, Grandfather. Your mistake."

His cheeks grew red with his anger. "You are too like your mother. I killed her, and I can kill you! Think on that, ungrateful wretch!"

"Kill me, then," she gasped. "I have no fear of death."

He screamed incoherently, like an animal howling in anguish. He raised his two gloved fists. "Not death then!" he shouted. "Not death, but pain! Till you grovel before me and beg for release!"

Aliza closed her eyes. "You'll get nothing from me while the pain goes on," she whispered, swaying like a young tree in a strong breeze. Beads of sweat had broken out on her forehead and cheeks. "And nothing when the pain is gone. Nothing."

Cray gripped her arm and found it rigid, every mus-cle tensed. "Aliza," he said, "give in. Even slavery is better than this."

She shook her head sharply. "I would have given him a thousand gifts, freely, out of gratitude. I would have built him a castle. I would have brought him anything he wanted. But of my own free will. Not this way. Not forever. No!"

"It won't be forever," said Cray. "Nothing is forever."

"Not for another moment," replied Aliza. "He is wrong to demand slavery of me. I have as much right to freedom as he has, and I will not be coerced!"

Cray looked to Everand. "You must stop! She can't think clearly through the pain. Give her a chance to be rational!"

Everand glared at Cray, his mouth twisted, his brow creased with hate. "If I could have killed you, I would have done it long since. This is your doing. You have turned her away from me." He made a slashing mo-tion with one hand. "Very well-think!"

Cray felt the muscles of Aliza's arm relax and begin to quiver. He stepped between her and Everand, gripping both her elbows. "Listen to me," he said. "There's no need to suffer this any further. Do as he says for now. Surely you have years of study left before you're ready to serve him properly. When the time comes, you may not find it so odious."

She opened her eyes, and they were glazed and staring. "I thought he wanted the best for me, for my own sake," she murmured. "And now I find that it was all for him. For him." She closed her eyes again.

"You don't understand me any better than I do you, Cray Ormoru." "You once thought apprenticeship was very much like slavery."

"And you once said they were different because slavery lasted so much longer. I haven't forgotten that.

Have you?"

"He won't live forever, Aliza. No one does."

"Would you say that to a demon friend enslaved?"

"Of course."

She opened her eyes slowly and gazed over his shoulder at Everand. "But then, a demon has no choice.

The ring compels. My soul can only punish. I prefer punishment to slavery."

"Trust me," Cray whispered.

"I will not be his slave. Not for one heartbeat."

"You think to find her soul," said Everand. "You think to give it back to her and set her free of me.

Fool!"

Cray half turned to him. "Any feeling human being would try it, Everand. And only a monster would do this to his own flesh and blood."

Everand shook a fist at Cray. "If I am a monster, you and your kind made me into one. I was born a duke's son, but a sorcerer stole that from me and gave me nothing in return. Nothing! I became a sorcerer because I had the will to do it. No one helped me. They laughed instead. But they shall pay for that laughter. She will be my arm, and through her I shall be greater than any of them. She shall rule Ice, and every Ice demon shall do her bidding, rings or no rings. They shall all be her slaves! And through her, my slaves!"

"No," said Aliza. "I want no slaves." She tore the sapphire from her throat, the gold chain breaking against the nape of her neck, and threw it at her grandfather's feet. "There shall be no slaves. Not human, not de-mon. Never again shall I command a thinking creature to do my bidding. You are wrong to desire it."

Everand pointed at Cray. "This, too, is your doing."

"No," said Aliza. "It isyour doing. This day you have taught me everything I know of slavery. It is as ugly as you are, Grandfather. As ugly as your vengeful soul. I should thank you now for taking mine away, for I don't wish to understand your need for vengeance. Nor to share it."

"Don't think of vengeance, child," said Everand. "Think only of pain."

"Do your worst. You will not be pleased by the results."

"Aliza, listen to me," said Cray.

"Yes, Aliza, listen to him," said Everand. "He is sure his friend Feldar Sepwin will find the soul and free you. His friend Feldar Sepwin, who will never find the soul and also never leave my castle. Convince her, Cray Ormoru. Compensate for your evil influence upon my granddaughter. Convince her, and perhaps Iwill allow your friend to live."

"I have no friend in your castle," said Cray.

"Oh, no need to lie to me. Regneniel told me long ago. An inquisitive fellow, this Sepwin. I may chain him someplace damp and unpleasant, just to keep him from bothering me. Yes. I may even feed him occa-sionally, while the rats gnaw his toes. Convince her, Cray Ormoru."

"Everand ... "

"He hasn't her will, I'm sure. He is just an ordinary human. He will beg to be my slave. But I don't need him as a slave, unless a prisoner can be considered so. A tortured prisoner."

Cray looked into her eyes. "Aliza."

She would have stepped back from him then, but he held her tight between his hands. She seemed to have lost all her strength. The pain, he thought; it had drained her.

"Don't ask this of me, Cray," she said.

"He is my friend, Aliza."

"He should never have gone to the castle."

"He did it for you, Aliza."

"I told you not to search for the soul. I told you I didn't want it."

"He did it so this could never happen. He did it to spare you pain."

"Well, he failed dismally at that, didn't he?"

Cray looked at Everand over his shoulder. "I'll go away. I'll never see Aliza again, I promise you. But let Sepwin go."

Everand shook his head. "Only she can save him."

"Aliza," Cray whispered, "Feldar is a thinking crea-ture. Would you give him over to this terrible form of slavery? Aliza, I ask you for the sake of our friendship, to give in to your grandfather."

Her face was pale and bleak as she stared at him. "For the sake of our friendship?"

"And for your own sake as well. Why fight so hard and suffer such torment? Slavery need not be so ago-nizing. Ask Gildrum. He knows."

She bowed her head. "You would rather I be aslave than your friend Feldar, is that it?"

"I would rather see neither of you suffer."

She was silent for a time, and when she looked up again she looked past Cray, not at her grandfather but outward, to the vastness of Ice beyond her walls. "Very well, Grandfather," she said, and her voicesounded tired, beaten. "What are your terms?"

Loudly, he replied, "Send this Cray Ormoru and his minions away, never to return. Take up your studies as before you met him. Regneniel shall serve you as always. And Sepwin shall not be harmed."

Cray said, "He shall be freed."

"No, you won't find me that foolish, Cray Ormoru. Sepwin shall remain in my service, just to make cer-tain my granddaughter does not change her mind."

"I accept your terms," Aliza said tonelessly. "Now go away and leave me alone. All of you."

"I will see that this man and this Fire demon leave before I go," said Everand.

"Farewell, Cray," she said, still not looking at him. "You'll find a door open for you in the usual place."

"Aliza," he said, his grip softening on her arms. He tilted his head to intercept her gaze, but her eyes would not focus on him. "Aliza." He could not resist kissing her pale cheek, and to his lips the skin was cold as the breeze that drifted in from Ice. She did not push him away now. She did not move. He felt as though she had already excised him from her existence. "This is all my fault," he whispered to her. "Can you ever forgive me, Aliza?"

"We can't undo the past," she said. "We can only go on from here. I will remember you. Always."

He let her go then, and turned from her. "Come, Gildrum. We have a long journey home." Without glancing back, he left the small chamber and entered the one where a doorway waited. Gildrum followed, and together they joined Leemin and Elrelet to move out into Ice. There, Cray was silent. And not once as they pressed through the dark transparency of the demon world did he look back, not when they were still near enough to Aliza's palace for him to see it, not when it had fallen so far behind that even its glow had vanished. Sometime in that journey Leemin said, "He's gone through a portal now, out of Ice," and Cray only nodded and forged ahead.

He had entered Air before he spoke. They were gathered about him, floating without weight in the vast empty blue, the many-spiculed snowflake, the living flame, the cloud. Ice lay behind them, its snow-dusted surface glittering like a vast frozen lake on a midwinter morning.

"It doesn't end here, friends," he said to them. "On the contrary, it has barely begun."

The low rumble of thunder caught Sepwin's atten-tion. There had been rain several times since he had come to Everand's castle, rain that made the servants scurry for shelter and confine themselves to indoor tasks, rain that made a place by the kitchen hearth seem cozy, welcome. Yet when it rained, Sepwin always went to a door to watch the dark clouds blow and the lightning shiver. He went now, as the first droplets began to fall, threw aside his rag and bucket, and leaned against the doorjamb to watch the sky.

This time he saw what he had always looked for-the special cloud, not obvious among the others unless one expected it. A shape like a bear, compact and rotund, paws extended as if to bat at an enemy. Its outlines wavered in the rising wind, as if it had fur shaggy as a horse's mane, that could ripple and flutter. Sepwin stepped out into the rain, heedless of the drops that spattered upon him, his face uptilted. One of the bear's paws waved at him. He did not wait another heartbeat. Up to the banquette he ran, the storm wind ripping at his clothing. Even as he went, the sky darkened more than ever, till the wan light of the day was banished and the false night of the storm brooded over the castle. He had a hammer with him. He used upon the crenelated wall closest to the stairway, battering the stonework to knock some fragments loose. By touch alone, he gathered them up in the darkness.

He wore a sash about his waist, a double-layered, length of thick canvas, open at one end and sewn shut; at the other, like a long, narrow sack. On previous nights he had acquired bits and pieces from the other walls of the castle, a handful of stone shards and crumbled mortar from every span, and he had stuffed them into the sash. Now he added these final frag-ments and knotted the open end securely. The lumpy belt was tight about his middle, and a large chunk near the front prodded his ribs at every move.

He climbed into the nearest embrasure, bracing himself there against the torrential wind. The sky was pitch black. Behind and below him, even the kitchen fire had blown out; the only light in the immediate world of the castle was the blue-white glow from Everand's keep and an occa-sional flare of sheet lightning that showed the clouds crowding close above the ramparts. Sepwin knew that one cloud crowded closer than all the rest. Into the wailing wind he shouted, "Elrelet!" and he leaped into the darkness beyond the wall.

To any of Everand's other human servants, that leap would have seemed impossible. They knew they were sealed inside the castle by its encompassing spell, a wall more solid than stone and as transparent as air. They knew that they passed through that invisible wall only at Everand's pleasure.

And so it was with Sepwin. He did not pass through the spell at all. He took it with him. He leaped, still surrounded by Everand's magically reinforced castle walls, still completely surrounded by the fragments of stone inside the sash about his waist. He leaped, and a small piece of the spell broke away from the parent body with him, like a snowflake blown from a field of fallen snow by some high wind.

He leaped, and the descent through the stormy black-ness seemed to last an eternity.

He landed feet first on a bed of yielding softness-wool, smelling only slightly damp, as if it had only been out in the rain a few moments. He thrashed, sinking deeper into it, until it suddenly pulled apart beneath him and he tumbled another arm's length or two to the muddy ground.

"Are you all right?" someone asked him. The voice was close to his ear but still muffled by the howling wind. Cray's voice. In the dark, Sepwin could see no one, and then sheet lightning illuminated his world for an instant, illuminated the castle wall that loomed on one side, the forest in the distance on the other, and Cray standing before him, beckoning sharply. There was no wool anywhere.

"I'm not hurt," Sepwin said.

"Come then, let's get away from here."

Sepwin lost Cray to the darkness once more but crept in the direction he had indicated, his hands low, waving, in search of boulders. He found one, skirted it, and finally ran into a tree.

"Here, Feldar," came Cray's voice, and a faint light showed ahead, like a firefly. Sepwin moved toward it, toward Cray's voice, into the shelter of the trees. After a time the firefly brightened, and he knew it was Gildrum, guiding him to safety. The rain faded away behind him, and the sound of the wind softened with distance.

"At last," said Cray, as wan daylight began to filter through the leaves. "Feldar, you're limping." "One of the trees forgot to move aside," he said. He smiled hesitantly. "I'm out. I'm really out."

"What, you doubted me? Oh Feldar!"

"I thought Elrelet was going to catch me when I leaped."

Cray shook his head. "Elrelet decided that was im-possible because of the spell, so we borrowed a storehouse of wool for just a few moments."

"It surprised me, I have to admit that." Sepwin touched the sash at his waist with both hands, running his palms along it. "The spell ... It feels very strange, Cray. Much stronger than when I was in the castle itself. I feel ... as if I'm sealed up in a very small room. A very close room." His smile faded. "I feel as though I'm not a Seer anymore. All my perceptions seem to bounce back at me. This would be a terrible way to spend the rest of my life. You're sure ... ?"

"Quite sure," Cray said, and he took out his knife, an ordinary knife made by an ordinary blacksmith.

Holding it delicately with two fingers, he slipped it between Sepwin's sash and his jerkin. He did not touch either piece of clothing with his own flesh; he could not, for they were within the spell, and he was outside. "A small piece of a spell is weak, as a small piece of a great wall is weak. Both can be smashed by a strong man, even though the structures they came from would be proof against him. I have power over this woven sash, and as I tear it, so will the piece of the spell that lies inside it be torn." He wrenched the knife suddenly, and the sash was cut through. It fell away from Sepwin's body, dribbling crumbled stone and mortar.

Sepwin staggered, as if the spell had been holding him up, and Cray caught him, and they both laughed suddenly as they realized what that contact meant. Then they embraced, and Gildrum, as a living flame, surrounded and embraced them both with its cool brilliance.

"Now I suggest we seek some safer place to discuss our future plans," said the demon. "Everand will know who freed Feldar, and he will be angry."

"Spinweb?" said Sepwin.

"No," said Cray. "Regneniel surely knows where Spinweb lies. This is my quarrel; there's no need to involve my mother. We'll go to my castle."

Gildrum swept them away.

The storm had dissipated quickly, leaving the bare earth of the courtyard a sodden mire. Everand ignored the mud that sucked at his heels as he paced back and forth, unconsciously tracing the dimensions of his work-room within that larger space. He raged, with waving arms and reddened face and veins standing out upon his forehead, and his servants-the crippled, the deformed, the terribly scarred-cowered before him in the muck.

"How could you not notice when he left?" he shouted. "How could you not notice where he went?How he went? He broke my spell andyou sawnothing !"He kicked mud at them savagely, then kicked the nearest man in the shoulder and slammed the back of his fist into the nearest woman's face. She fell sideways, sobbing, and a frightened babble burst out among the others, mixed of pleas for mercy anddeni-als of guilt. "You serve me ill, every one of you!" Everand screamed. "I should kill the lot of you!"

And they drew together, clutching at each other and shaking their heads.

Everand raised his fists to the sky and called for his demon.

The human servants of the castle had never seen a demon before, and when Regneniel arrived, floating downward as a great snowflake, they fell silent, staring open-mouthed, staring still as it took on its two-legged birdlike form and bowed to their master.

"Carry me to my workroom, demon," said Everand, and Regneniel wound its long, flexible neck about his waist and launched itself and him upward, toward the highest window of the keep. Behind them, the human servants gaped.