"I trust you, Cray Ormoru. And if you enslave me instead, I will not keep your secret, not though every demon in our realm tries to stop me."

"Trust me," said Cray, "and I will trust you."

"Very well," said the demon. "Gather your army."

Chapter 12.

Everand sat silent in his workroom. There were slen-der bars of copper lying on the table beside him, waiting to be drawn into wire, but he did not touch them. Anger was too thick in him for such demanding work. He wanted to destroy, not to create, and he knew he would ruin anything he set his hand to this day. He got up at last and went to the window. Below him, the yard was deserted. That was something of a pity, he thought, for in his present mood he felt as though he could derive some benefit from sending a lightning bolt after someone. Anyone. Yes, he felt very much like burning someone to a crisp andleaving only a charred skeleton and a steaming spot on the barren earth. He wished he had Cray Ormoru for a target.

The sound of a footstep made him turn around. It was Yltra, with the supper tray. The scarred man set it down on the workbench.

"Is there anything else I can get you, my lord?" he asked.

Everand glared at him, tempted, then decided he didn't want the smell of burnt flesh in his workroom.

"No, nothing else." He came back to the table and looked at the tray. Venison stew-someone had been lucky at his hunting. Everand pulled the knife from his belt and skewered a piece, his sour mood faintly pierced by the expectation of the meal. The cooks always prepared venison well.

Almost, he was taken unawares. He saw the movement only from the corner of his eye. Yet that was enough to make him turn as Yltra struck, and so the thrust that was aimed at his back glanced off his arm, slicing fabric and laying open the skin. Then the man was upon him, bearing him to the hard floor with the full weight of his body. Everand's breath was knocked away by the fall, and for a moment his only thought was to struggle, to hold that knife at bay. Then, as air filled his lungs, fury filled his heart. Sparks fountained from his hands, and Yltra, whose arms he gripped, stiffened, his mouth agape in a silent scream, his eyes too wide. The smell of searing flesh filled the room.

Thrusting the dead man aside, Everand staggered to his feet, his anger unassuaged. Savagely, he kicked the body, and then he grasped it by both legs and dragged it to the window. There, he tipped it over the sill and pushed it out, leaning out himself to watch it tumble to the courtyard below.

"This fool tried to harm me!" he shouted. "Come out and get him, you monsters, and learn a lesson from his death!"

There was no one in the courtyard, and no one appeared at the sound of his voice.

"Come out, you scum!" he screamed.

No one.

He turned from the window and, heedless of the blood that welled from his arm, raced down the keep stairs to the yard, to the servants' quarters.

The doors were all open. No one was there. The cooking fire was still lit, and a large pot hung over it, with venison stew bubbling gently inside. A long-handled spoon protruded from the pot, but there was no one to lift it out and taste. No one.

Everand went out to the yard once more, scanned the walls, saw no movement, heard no sound but those he made himself. "Show yourselves to me, you monsters!" he shouted.

His voice echoed back at him, as if he were alone in the bottom of a canyon. And then he realized that though winter had been waning for some time, the air was very cold. His breath, which had been invisible only moments before, was now a frosty cloud, and his woolen garments seemed thin and drafty. He looked up at the late afternoon sky. It was clear, almost cloudless, and the sun shone brightly. But it seemed to give no warmth.

He hesitated only another moment, and then he returned to the keep for his cloak. * * *

"Go to her, Feldar," Cray said. "Leemin and Gildrum will take you. Tell her what we're doing here. Tell her I'll be with her as soon as it's over. And if he starts to hurt her ... tell her it won't last long."

"I hope you're right."

"He is weak, Feldar. And ignorant. For all the years he has spent studying those books, he still knows precious little of sorcery, or he would never have tried to kill me. He thinks he is proof against all attack behind those spell-encased walls. He doesn't dream that no sorcerer is ever entirely safe from a determined enemy."

Sepwin embraced Cray. "Good luck, my dear friend." And he was wafted away by the two demons.

With Elrelet at his elbow, Cray inspected the work of his spiders. He and they were in the forest that surrounded Everand's castle, some distance behind the trees that edged the barren area, hidden by their boles and shadows from any eyes that might look out from the ramparts. The servants had all run away as soon as Cray freed them from their pieces of the spell; now there were no human beings here but Cray and Everand. And soon they would both be isolated from the rest of the world by the gossamer netting that the spiders wove from tree to tree to tree, all around the castle.

As they wove, Cray laid his spell, encompassing silken threads and bare but living branches in a barrier proof against demons and sorcery unless he willed otherwise. And like the barriers that all sorcerers spun about their castles, it extended upward into the sky, an invisible dome through which there was no passage.

Elrelet, Gildrum, and Leemin had spread the word quickly-the nameless sorcerer was calling for help from Water, Air, and Ice, and all who felt the least sliver of gratitude could reckon this day's work as payment for the boon he had unselfishly given them.

Some stayed away, secure in their freedom and aloof. But many others gave over their pastimes and flocked to the rendezvous. Elrelet left Cray periodically, to see to their organization. A few Fire demons had come, just to watch, and Elrelet directed them to stay well back. Its fellow Air demons it asked to stand aside till they should be called. The Water demons, who came in a group led by Murnai, it sent for water. The Ice demons it bade stay ready.

The magical barrier was finished.

At Cray's signal, the Water demons floated past the barrier, a stream of gigantic bubbles, each one bloated to a dozen times its usual size by its cargo of water. Close behind them came the Ice demons, glittering like stars come down from the distant sky. The whole group swooped low upon the barren earth just outside the castle walls, and when the Water demons spewed out their liquid burden, the Ice demons breathed a bitter wind upon it, freezing it into great sheets. Like impossibly rigid draperies, the ice stood in a ring about Everand's residence, and spiders scurried to spin on both sides of that ring, to reinforce the wall of ice with sorcerous webwork stronger than steel. The demons returned again and again, building the draperies higher and higher, and gradually tilting them inward. But well before they had finished their icy dome, Cray, floating above the trees on the couch that was Elrelet's body, saw that Everand had climbed to the roof of his keep and raised his arms to the sky.

High above the castle, clouds were gathering. "Come to me! Come to me!" Everand shouted, and from beyond the horizon in every direction, clouds raced to obey his will. They were small, but they piled up quickly, darkening against the blue of the sky, blotting out the low sun with their bulk, dulling the gleam of the icy wall with their shade, till it looked less like ice than like some sleekly polished metal. The clouds were still arriving when he bade them give birth to lightning.

The first bolt cracked a section of the wall, but the demons simply poured more water on that place, to reinforce it. Further strokes did other damage-chipping at the upper edge of the ice, even blasting a hole through it just in front of the gate. But then the cold wind that had made Everand wrap himself in furs and woolens intensified, began to howl as it became a gale that shredded his thunderclouds and blew them in every direction. He made a violent gesture, intended to sweep them back together, but he could not overcome that wind. Air demons, he realized. He could see their pale, compact forms moving among the real clouds, circling, circling, but never moving very far from the sky above the castle. Very soon, the only clouds he could see were demons, a dome of demons keeping his own lightning-bearing servants away.

Ice, water, and Air demons.

"Who are you?" he shouted, scanning the wall of ice for some human architect, for he could see none in the sky. "Who are you? What do you want?"

There was no answer, and amid all the demon activ-ity around him, he could not make out any human form.

"Regneniel!" he said, for the third or fourth time since he had seen the icy wall abuilding. The demon had not answered his summons. "Leave off what you're doing and come to me this instant!" he screamed, and he raised the fist that bore the ring and shook it, as if that could compel its obedience.

The wall rose, and it gleamed again with the clear-ing of the sky. Only now the sun was hidden behind its translucent bulk, dimmed by the many-flawed ice into a smear of pale light sinking toward the horizon.

Below it, the forest was a gray blur.

"Regneniel!" Everand shouted.

And this time the demon appeared, a star of ice blinking into existence in midair, just above the keep.

"What took you so long?" screamed the sorcerer.

Regneniel alighted beside him and assumed its usual form. "My lord, it was not easy evading these other demons. They are everywhere."

"Who is this attacking?" demanded Everand.

"My lord," said the demon, bowing, "you don't need me to tell you that, I'm sure."

"Then it is Cray Ormoru?"

"Yes, my lord."

Everand's mouth tightened, and he struck one fist into the other palm. "I told you to kill him!" "He is too well guarded, my lord."

Everand shot one glance past his slave, to the wall of ice, then glared at the demon once more. "So I see. He seems to have a great many demons work-ing on his behalf for one who commands none. You told me he had no rings; how could you be so wrong, Regneniel?"

"He has none, my lord."

"Then where did all these demons come from?"

"My lord ... they came at his request."

"His request?"

"Yes, my lord."

Everand stared at his slave, his upraised hands work-ing stiffly, clenching and unclenching spasmodically.

The rage within him was a force that threatened to burst his brain, and yet beneath that rage a new sensa-tion was beginning to grow-fear. He clamped down on it with all his strength. "Regneniel," he said, and in his voice there was now just the slightest tremor. "Regneniel, he is the one. No sorcerer has this many demons. They serve him now in return for their freedom. Regneniel, you must kill him!"

The Ice demon sank to the stones at Everand's feet.

"My lord, you do not know how impossible that is."

"Then you must tell the other sorcerers. They will band together. They will kill him for me! Go, Regneniel. Tell Taranol first-he'll spread the word. Go quickly!"

"Forgive me, my lord, but I cannot."

"Cannot?" shouted Everand. "What's this you say?" He raised a hand high, as if to strike his slave, but then his eye was caught by the wall once more, and he only remained standing there, with one upraised arm and his face very pale.

"Forgive me, my lord," said the demon, "but I cannot even leave your castle now. The spell that lies beyond that wall of ice will permit neither human nor demon through it without Cray Ormoru's permission."

"Then go through Ice, of course!"

The demon shook its blind, beaked head in an eerily human fashion.

"A dozen creatures of Ice crowd about my portal, preventing me from passing through it. My lord, I am imprisoned here with you."

"I am not imprisoned!" cried Everand. "I am in my own home, safe behind my own walls. No one can pass through my barrier, not human or demon. I am safe!"

"You are imprisoned, my lord. Unless Cray Ormoru chooses to let you out." The wall stood above the castle ramparts now and arched well inward. Everand took a deep breath. "I may not be able to get out," he said, "but neither can Cray Ormoru get in."

"My lord," said Regneniel, "that is quite true."

Everand braced his hands against the low stone parapet of the keep roof and, at the top of his voice, shouted, "Cray Ormoru, hear me!" He waited a few heartbeats, and when there was no answer, he turned to Regneniel. "Go up there and tell them I want to speak to him. But don't pass beyond my barrier; I don't want them to take you from me."

"Yes, my lord," said the demon, and transforming to its star shape, it floated up almost to the rim of the ice wall. Shortly, a puff of cloud bearing a human being sailed into view and hovered in midair higher than the ice.

"You called me," shouted Cray, his voice thin with distance.

"I want to talk to you!" replied Everand. "Come closer so we needn't shout."

"My apologies for the inconvenience to your throat, but this is as close as I'll come. What do you want?"

"Why are you doing this?" asked Everand.

"I am protecting myself from an enemy."

"I am not your enemy."

"No? Well, you can prove that."

"How?"

"By giving Aliza back her soul."

Everand stared up at him till the muscles of his neck ached with the effort of holding his head at that angle.

"So that's it," he said at last. "You have not given over coming between my granddaughter and me."

"That's it," said Cray.

No longer could he keep the rage bottled up inside him. The icy wall, the loss of his human servants, the figure of Cray Ormoru floating contemptuously above his head-they all conspired to break him open.

He flung both hands up, and ten spheres of blue fire and a shower of sparks erupted from his fingertips and cas-caded upward like a topsy-turvy waterfall. Each sphere bore death in its heart, a crisping, charring death that would leave nothing but ash behind if it struck man or beast. The cascade reached the level of the dome and then, as if it had struck some barrier, though none was visible in that place, it rebounded and sprayed back toward Everand. None of it reached him.

"I see what you mean by my not being your en-emy," shouted Cray. Everand sent a second wave of blue fire toward him, but this one was no more successful than the first.

"Did you think that I would expose myself to your power, Everand?" shouted Cray. "I'm not such a fool!"

"There is another who is exposed to my power!" screamed Everand. "Shall I send her pain, Cray Ormoru? Shall I send her death? You know I can do it! Take your minions and your spells and go, or I will, I swear it!"

"Too late, Everand. Already you are completely sealed in by sorcery, if not quite by ice, and the barrier is proof against all your powers. As long as it stands, you can't harm her. Tell me where her soul is and surrender your demon to me, and I will dissolve the spell. Otherwise you will stay inside your walls forever, without food or water, and without any use from your demon slave."

"Is this true, Regneniel?" demanded Everand. "Is his barrier proof against my mastery of her soul?"

Regneniel hesitated, floating just beneath the icy dome that continued to grow while Cray and Everand spoke. Now there was just a circular gap left at the zenith, perhaps a dozen paces across, with a patch of sky showing beyond, and Cray.

"Is this true, Regneniel?" repeated Everand, his voice pitched higher than before, almost shrill.

"No, my lord," replied the demon. "It is not true. This barrier will not stop you if you wish to command the soul, for such commands go directly through Ice, not through the human realm at all."

"You see!" shouted Everand. "I can hurt her. And I will, if you don't stop immediately!"

The gap had been closing swiftly, but at a signal from Cray that closure came to a halt, leaving a space as wide as the span of a man's arms, a round frame for Cray's floating form. He looked down at Everand. "Very well. I have stopped."

"Now take it all away," Everand shouted, waving peremptorily. "Ice, spell, and all.And all those demons."

"And if I do ... ?"

"I'll leave her be. But if you don't ... she'll survive this day, perhaps, but she'll wish to die every moment of it!"

"I'll consider your offer," said Cray.