He drained the wine at a draft. "I know where your white sapphire and its owner are."

"Where?"

"Ah ... well, that is not so easy to explain." Gildrum set his cup down on the rim of the pool. "You know, we demons do most of our traveling by way of the demon realm itself, and so we learn little of human geography. I may be an exception to that, thanks to your mother; still, this place where the young woman lives-I can't really tell you in what direction it lies, and how far, not in terms of a horseback journey. But it can be reached through the demon realm." "Very well," said Cray. "Will you take me there now?"

"I told your mother you would say that."

Sepwin sprang to his feet. "I'm ready."

Cray shook his head sharply. "No, Feldar, you're not coming along."

"But this is the quest that the lady Helaine predicted!"

Cray gripped his friend's arm. "Just so. And I will not expose you to its dangers. No, no arguments. This is my quest and my decision."

Sepwin looked to the lady Helaine beseechingly, but she said nothing. Then to Cray he said, "You'll come back here afterward? You'll tell me everything?"

"Of course." Cray smiled and let him go. "Shall we be on our way, Gildrum?"

"As you wish," said the demon and, turning to flame, it scooped Cray up.

Out in the bright sunshine, they soared into the sky, and somewhere above the treetops they crossed over from the human to the demon realm. Though Cray closed his eyes tightly against the intolerable glare of the world of Fire, he could see it still, red against his eyelids. Gildrum had been born in Fire, and like all demons, it could only traverse from the demon realm to the human one through portals in its native world.

When the redness dimmed, Cray opened his eyes, knowing he was within the smoky barrier between Fire and Air.

"Elrelet is to meet us at the boundary of Air and Ice," said Gildrum, "with a cooperative Ice demon, if such exists."

"Why do we need so many demons? Can't you just take me to her yourself through a portal in Fire?"

"I could, but the part of her home that lies in the human realm is too well guarded by sorcery for visi-tors to come even within shouting distance. The other part, however, lies embedded in Ice, and with a knowl-edgeable Ice demon for a guide, we can travel to its very walls."

"Embedded in Ice? I've never heard of such a thing."

"Nor had I, until now."

The smoke was beginning to thin, and in a moment they had emerged into the untrammeled blue of the world of Air, a place without ground, without land-marks visible to any human eye, even without sun, though it was suffused with light. Only the flow of wind past his exposed skin showed Cray how swiftly his demon steed traveled through this emptiness-the flow of wind and the rapid fading of the smoky limits of Fire behind them.

Like the other boundaries between the demon worlds, the one between Air and Ice seemed infinite in extent, up, down, right, left. At first, far off, it appeared as just the slightest cloudiness in the vast blue of Air, but soon it loomed ahead like an enormous wall, faintly white, like water with a few drops of milkstirred in. And within this whiteness were a few grayish streaks, like colossal strands of spiderweb-huge fractures in the body of Ice, flaws in that single gigantic crystal. Cray and Gildrum were still far from the immense flat surface when he began to shiver from the chill that drifted toward him from it.

Gildrum, noting the shiver, warmed Cray with its flame.

Against the enormous expanse of Ice, Elrelet became visible as the merest puff of cloud. It extruded an arm to wave at the travelers, and they joined it.

"You've had some luck, I hope," said Gildrum.

"I think so. At least, I have a tentative offer."

"How tentative?"

"Middling," said Elrelet. "Cray freed this one eleven years ago, and it still seems to have a little gratitude left. As much as any of them have. Sometimes I have the impression that Ice demons think they're doing Cray a favor by letting him free them."

"They're just proud," said Cray.

Elrelet made a rude noise. "I can think of a better word for it."

"And it can probably think of a lot of words for you," said Gildrum. "Now no more of this talk while we're so close to Ice. And come, take Cray. He'll be more comfortable for the journey with you."

Cray felt only the briefest gust of frigid air as Gildrum withdrew and Elrelet enveloped him in its pale, cloudy substance. For a moment, he saw as through a gray veil, all his body encased in cloud no thicker than a finger's width. And then the substance became transparent, as if Elrelet had vanished, though Cray knew from its warmth that the demon still clothed him.

The three of them moved closer to the boundary of Ice, close enough to touch it. A light dusting of snow covered it, white particles drifting away at random, filling the air with a fine, glittering mist. Cray waved his demon-gloved hand above the area nearest him, clearing it and setting the mist awhirl with eddies. His nose almost touching the surface, cushioned only by the layer of Elrelet that surrounded him, he peered into the depths of Ice. The light from Air seemed to penetrate far, revealing a solid, transparent world marred only by its fractures and an occasional cloudy patch caused by trapped air bubbles.

"Our guide," said Elrelet, and a puff of cloud mate-rialized beside Cray's eyes to become a stubby, point-ing finger.

Deep in the transparency before him, parallel to-no,within- oneof the fractures, Cray saw motion. A slim, whitish object pressed toward him, forcing the fracture open just enough to let it pass. It was a slender cone, not unlike one of the heavy icicles that depended from Spinweb's parapets in winter, and its surface was frosted with a thousand tiny scales, like pinhead snowflakes. Cray pushed himself to one side as the fracture opened to Air like a mouth and the creature emerged. As it floated free of Ice, and the fracture closed behind it, the demon's slender form expanded like a bird fluffing its feathers. Multiple icicles fanned outward from its cone shape like a spray of fronds, expanding, unfolding, growing branches, spines, spicules until the demon was a multiplex form like a hundred giant snowflakes clustered together, a star made of openwork lace. It rotated slowly, and Gildrum's nearby flamelight flashed from its delicate structure, casting scintillations in every direction. "Greetings, O Ice demon," said Cray. "I am Cray Ormoru. I believe we have met before."

"We have," said the demon, and it floated closer to Cray, circling him slowly. "I am Leemin. I understand you require my help."

"It was I who asked for it," said Elrelet. Though Elrelet was invisible to human eyes, demon senses perceived it easily. "Now I ask again: will you give us safe passage to the mortal's dwelling?"

"All of you?"

"Yes."

"Even that one?" One of its spicules elongated for a moment, like a spear feinting in Gildrum's direction.

"Yes," said Elrelet.

"I warn you that a thousand of my kind will come to push you all out if it dares to melt any of our Ice!"

"It shall not, I promise you. It will keep its flame small and cold. But we have need of its light for Cray Ormoru's eyes. Will you guide us?"

The Ice demon was silent for some time, floating around and around Cray. Finally, it said, "I suppose you think I should, mortal. I suppose you think I owe you favors."

"My gift was freely given," Cray replied. "You owe me nothing. Still, I do need your help."

"I have never understood mortals," said the Ice demon. "I have never understood why you set me free."

Cray smiled. "If I were a slave, I would want to be free. There is no more to it than that."

"No more than that," echoed the demon. "No, I do not understand at all. But I have benefited, even without understanding." It halted its circling and floated motionless between Cray and the surface of its home. "Few mortals have ever entered Ice. Fewer have emerged. It is not a place for mortals."

"Yet the young woman I seek is there."

"I know. Half in one realm and half in the other. A most peculiar situation."

"Will you take us to her?" asked Elrelet. "We mean no harm to Ice. If there were some other way, believe me, we would prefer not to travel through Ice at all."

"There are no entries to her dwelling in Ice, you know," said Leemin. "Not unless she wishes to open one."

"We hope she will," said Elrelet, "when she sees Cray Ormoru."

"Ah. That might be interesting to watch. To see if she does let him in. I've only ever seen one other mortal with her."

"Will you take us there, O Leemin?" It hesitated one more moment, and then its spicules began to fold in on each other. "Very well. But that Fire creature must remain small and cold!" A sleek cone once more, the demon nudged the surface of Ice with its point, reopening the fracture. "Stay close behind me," it said, and it slid into Ice. There, its base expanded, forcing the fracture open enough to accom-modate Cray.

Elrelet carried him in after the Ice demon, and Gildrum followed closely, as small as the flame of a torch, and cooler. As they moved forward, the tunnel gradually narrowed behind them, and within moments Cray could no longer see the clear blue of Air at its mouth; it had no mouth. Yet the radiance of Air still enveloped them, showing fractures like broad gray ribbons running into infinity and scattered cloudy areas like patches of haze, but above all showing the enor-mous transparency of the place. Cray began to feel like a fly in amber, and for one fleeting moment, before he could resolutely put it out of his head, he knew the fear that if his demon guide so chose, he would be that fly indeed, trapped frozen, crushed, stranded forever in the vast transparency of Ice. He shivered.

"Are you cold?" whispered Elrelet.

"No," said Cray. "Just ... overwhelmed."

Elrelet snorted, and Cray felt it like a puff of breath against his cheek. "I suppose it's pretty enough. But I'd sooner live in any of the other worlds. At least in them a creature can move without feeling closed in on all sides."

Ahead, the fracture split in two, and they took the fork that bent sharply. Sometime after that, they made another abrupt turn, and then another. By then, there was not a trace of Air's radiance left around them, and they moved instead in the broad pool of Gildrum's glow.

"Why so jagged a route?" asked Cray. "I see no barriers to our passage except Ice itself; why not open a path straight through to our destination?"

"Every flaw makes Ice less transparent," said Gildrum, "and since the demons value that transparency, they try to avoid creating new ones. I presume this path is the shortest that our guide could find."

"It is," Leemin said flatly.

A long while later, though Cray could not judge precisely how long because there was no sun, no moon, no stars to gauge by, they came to a halt.

"Are we there?" he asked. Looking all around, he saw no change in the substance about him, certainly nothing like a human habitation.

"We shall have to go back a bit," said Leemin. "This path will take us near the home of the Old One, and I see now that I was wrong to think it was not in residence. Stay still a moment."

"The Old One?" said Cray.

"The oldest of all the Ice demons. It has returned from the human realm since I was here last, and when it is at home, we younger demons never disturb it." As Leemin spoke, its cone shape altered, hollowing out and opening up until the cone had become the thin outer shell of a cylinder. The cylinder then slid so that Cray and his two demon friends passed through its center. When Leemin had completely exchanged rela-tive places with them, its nose slimmed back to a point and its hollowness closed up. A stubby coneonce more, it began to move back in the direction from which it had come; its companions had no choice but to follow.

After perhaps a dozen more turns-Cray had lost count of them by that time and certainly no longer knew one direction from another-the Ice demon halted again. "There," it said, and became a hollow cylinder once more so that they could look out along the frac-ture they traveled in.

At first, Cray saw nothing new, but as he stared into the distance, and as Gildrum's glow gradually dimmed till all around him Ice was dark and somber as a winter evening, he began to make out a faint luminosity far, far away. It had no shape to his eyes, no solidity; it was only a pale radiance, no brighter than the new moon in the old moon's arms.

"Surely we can go nearer than this," Gildrum said, flaring into torchlight.

"As near as you wish," Leemin replied, and closing into its cone shape, it moved on.

The fracture they traveled branched and branched again, and almost imperceptibly, the light that bathed them began to change, to cool in hue, as Gildrum's sunny incandescence was diluted by another, bluer radiance. The fracture branched once more, and as a new flaw carried them almost at a right angle to the last, Cray could see their goal to one side of Leemin, could see clearly now that the patch of luminosity that had appeared so faint before was actually a source of light as bright as day.

It hardly looked like any sort of dwelling. Though tall and broad as any sorcerer's castle, it was not made of stone or brick or wood, and it had no battlements, no turrets, no gates. Rather, it was a cluster of gigan-tic crystals, more like some natural excrescence of Ice than any planned structure, and the walls that bounded it were wide, smooth planes as beautifully transparent as the purest glass. Through those walls, Cray could see open interior spaces and walls behind walls until the depths of the whole were lost in a maze of facets. And from the entire edifice flowed a radiance that was neither sunlight nor moonlight nor flamelight, but something more akin to the blue-white of lightning.

"This is where she lives?" gasped Cray.

"Yes," said Leemin. "I have seen her enter often after she has walked about in Ice."

"She's a demon master, then," said Elrelet, "with at least one slave to open the way for her."

"She needs no slaves for that," said Leemin. "She does it herself."

Elrelet's sharply indrawn breath whistled past Cray's ear. "Is this possible?"

"I have seen it."

"How long has she been here?" asked Gildrum.

"When I first saw her, she was a child."

"And this huge ... building?"

"It appeared shortly before that. But it was much smaller then; it has grown considerably since."

Cray leaned against the side of the tunnel, staring into that marvelous structure. Amid its tangle of interiorfacets, he could see no furniture anywhere, no carpets, no hangings, no ornaments of any kind, just empty spaces. There was no trace of any human pattern, no sense of where a mortal might sleep or sit or eat a meal. He wondered what kind of person could live in such a place.

"Can we approach more closely?" he asked.

In answer, the Ice demon moved onward a short distance and then nudged open a fracture that pointed directly at the strange building. This path brought the travelers all the way to its walls, terminating abruptly against one of those broad, transparent planes. There, Leemin became hollow once more so that Cray could peer inside.

"I don't see anyone," Cray said.

"She rarely comes to these outer rooms," replied Leemin, "and neither your senses nor mine can pene-trate farther."

"On the contrary, I can see quite deeply into the place."

"No, you only think you can. The interior we view from here is mostly illusion; the inner surfaces that seem transparent walls are really mirrors. If you look carefully, you can see your own faint reflection in them."

"So I can. Well." Thoughtfully, Cray eyed the glassy surface before him. "Even if we can't see in, I imagine she can see out if she cares to, so we must attract her attention somehow. But there are no windows to shout through, and no gates to hammer at." He rapped on the wall experimentally, but his demon-gloved hand made only a small sound, as if there were no hollowness beyond.

"Perhaps this will help," said Gildrum, and from the depths of its flame it produced a silver bell no larger than a daffodil.

Cray took its tiny handle between two fingers. "This won't make much of a sound," he said.

"You'll be surprised."

Cray shook the bell sharply, and its peal was high and sweet and piercing-so piercing that he could almost feel his bones vibrating in sympathy. Even after he stilled his hand, the sound echoed on; in fact, it built with every passing moment, multiplying upon itself, acquiring harmonics, till it was a veritable cho-rus of bells. On every side, Cray heard them, loud and pervasive. He clutched the silver bell around its cup, held fast to its peasized tongue, but he could feel the metal vibrating anyway.

"What's happening?" he said, and though he spoke loudly, he could scarcely hear his own voice.

"Ice itself is ringing," said Gildrum. "She can't help but hear it."

"Fire demons!" cried Leemin. "You would burn down a whole forest for a few sticks of charcoal! You make this terrible noise just to attract some mortal's attention, and you don't care that you disturb countless demons! Countless!"

"The sound will die away soon," said Gildrum, and indeed, the echoes were already beginning to fade.

"Still, I do apologize. I didn't realize the bell would be quite so loud." "Didn't realize," muttered Leemin. "I warn you-don't ring it again! I won't be responsible for anything other demons may do in their anger!"

"There won't be any need to ring it again," said Gildrum, a tongue of its flame taking the bell from Cray's hands. "We've caught someone's attention inside."