He was about to suggest that he call out himself, but Regneniel cut him short.

"She can't answer you. I sealed her into the cradle room before you started building your dome. I knewyour barrier would never stop his commands to her soul-they traveled directly through Ice, invisibly, and no demon could grapple with them to keep them from their goal."

"But how can you be sure that your seal was ade-quate?" said Cray.

"The palace obeys me," said Regneniel. "Its soul may be Aliza's, but its flesh is my own, my offspring.

The seal was more than adequate. And now it is gone."

"Then she is all right?"

"Yes. He would have killed her, you know. He did give the order. I knew he might, and I couldn't allow it, just in case losing her might cause you to change your mind about our bargain."

"I wouldn't have changed my mind," said Cray. "But ... I didn't want to think about what might be happening to her while he lived. The dome took so long, so very long." He was leaning against the transparent wall now, as if that pressure could help push it in, and he gripped Sepwin's arm tightly. "It's time to resolve this matter of the soul now, my friend. Regneniel?"

The wall dissolved abruptly, and Cray half fell, half stumbled through the gap, pulling Sepwin along behind him. They were halfway across the big, empty chamber when he realized that something was strange about it. Something had happened.

He halted, still clutching his friend's arm. He had expected the demons to be close behind him. But they weren't. Nor could he see them waiting at the opening Regneniel had made, for it was gone, and in its place was opaque crystal, as white and gleaming as marble. And all around, every visible exterior facet of the palace had also been replaced, in a matter of heartbeats, by the same opaque whiteness.

"Regneniel?" he shouted.

There was no answer.

He looked at Sepwin. "Something is wrong. These walls should be transparent." He strode back to the place where they had entered. "Regneniel?" He rapped on the panel with his knuckles, then pounded with both fists. "Regneniel! What trick is this? Open!"

Beside him, Sepwin touched the blank whiteness with both hands, sweeping his palms across it, feeling of its smoothness. "There's a spell on these walls, Cray, to keep people out."

"Of course there is, but I've never seen it make the walls turn white before."

"Well, it's Aliza's palace-she'll be able to make an exit for us."

Cray gave over his pounding. "Yes, of course. Let's go to her. She must be wondering why she's been locked into one small room." Then he ran, and Sepwin could scarcely keep up with him as they passed through room after strange and wonderful faceted room.

They saw Aliza in the dining hall, and Cray ran to her and seized her in his arms and whirled her once around, laughing. "I was so afraid for you, my dearest!"

She let him hold her as she said, "I was locked into the cradle room. I heard them calling, but I couldn't go to them, nothing would obey me!" "It was Regneniel's doing, just to protect you, but it's all right now. He'll never harm you again."

"Who?"

Cray set her down gently but kept her in the circle of his arms as he said, "Your grandfather. He's dead.

I killed him."

She leaned back to look into his face. Her eyes were very grave, very dark and cool. "Thank you," she said.

"And now Regneniel will show us where your soul is hidden, and you can have it back. If you wish."

"Regneniel?" said Aliza, and she glanced past Cray's shoulder, to the left and to the right. "Where is Regneniel?"

"Outside in Ice. Come, you'll have to let it in." He took her hand and led her back to the room where he and Sepwin had entered. But long before they reached it, the whiteness of the outer walls became apparent through intervening facets, above, below, and before them, and he could feel a change in her hand, a stiffness, a dragging backward as she took in the sight.

In front of the final wall, she said, "What is this?"

"You've never seen it this way before?" asked Cray.

"Never." She touched the gleaming surface gingerly, as if afraid it would be burning hot or bitter cold. It was neither, Cray knew, no more than any wall of the palace was.

"Regneniel, Gildrum, and Leemin are waiting outside," said Cray.

"Regneniel?"

"Yes."

"But it can always enter, whenever it wishes."

"Not now, apparently."

Aliza frowned, then she gestured sharply at the wall, and again. Then she cried, "Open!" She flung both arms wide. "I command you to open!" But the wall remained smooth and flawless.

Sepwin touched Cray's shoulder. "If it won't obey her will, it cannot be her spell."

"Is this Regneniel's work again?" Aliza asked.

"It must be," said Sepwin.

Cray said, "No. We had a bargain. This is Everand's work."

"But Everand is dead," said Sepwin. "He had a spell on his library that outlasted his death, so that no one would ever be able to use his secrets. I should have thought-Aliza is his secret, too."

"But we came in," said Sepwin. "There was no white spell then."

Cray looked upward. Above his head was another chamber very much like this one, its exterior walls as white as milk as well. And he knew that all around the palace the whiteness stretched unbroken, or else Regneniel would have entered long since. "Everand's commands to the soul traveled directly to it through Ice, Regneniel said. But the soul was in the cradle room, sealed away when the command sent by his death must have arrived. Therefore, the souldid not know that he was dead. But I saw him dead, Feldar.

I touched his lifeless body. When I passed through the wall, the soul knew what message I carried, what message I reeked of, and it acted. That I was inside by the time its barrier went up made no difference to it. That anyone was inside made no difference. It obeyed its master, as always."

Sepwin's eyes had become wider and wider as Cray spoke. "Does that mean we are trapped inside this palace?"

"It means," said Cray, looking at Aliza's face, "that we must give the soul back to its rightful master."

"But you said you needed Regneniel to show you where it was," she said.

"I know the room. Beyond that, I have great faith in my friend Feldar. Eh, my lord Seer?"

"Surely," said Feldar, "if we know the room." Cray took Aliza's hand again and headed for the cradle room.

There, the chamber seemed smaller and more clut-tered than ever, and the cloudy walls were an uncom-fortable reminder of the barrier that locked them inside. There, Aliza gently slipped her hand from his and stooped to pick up her old stuffed animal, which lay in a forlorn heap in the middle of the aisle.

"It was strange," she said, looking around at each of the walls in turn, "being unable to get out. It was as if I were a child again, and this was all there was to the palace, nothing but Ice beyond these walls."

"You weren't frightened," Cray said.

"I was ... bewildered. And even more so when I heard my name called. I didn't know what to think."

She hugged the toy to her. "I tried to call to you." She pointed to the rocking horse, where the web was, its maker barely visible upon the dark wood of the horse's leg. "But it wouldn't work."

"No. Not through the barrier, I'd guess. Regneniel seems to be a powerful creature indeed. Certainly much more powerful than Taranol ever realized."

"And now free, at least until another sorcerer con-jures it."

"Yes."

She looked into his eyes. "Will you do something for me, Cray? For the sake of our friendship?"

"If I can."

"Set Regneniel free forever as you did Gildrum." Cray cocked his head to one side and regarded her. "I thought you might want it for your own. Truly, this time."

"No, I don't want any slaves. I haven't changed my mind about that."

"Without a slave, how will you live? Where will you get food? Clothing?"

A trace of uncertainty showed in her cool dark eyes. "You'll help me, won't you? You'll teach me to look after myself? For the sake of our friendship?"

He smiled at her. "Yes. Of course. A true friend can always be depended upon."

While they had been speaking, Sepwin had prowled the room, poking into bins, looking under the child's bed, even rapping on the rocking horse. "It is here, I know it," he said at last. "I can feel it calling to me. But where?" He turned in a slow circle. "Aliza, which objects in this room have been here from the very beginning?"

"None of them. When I first set foot in this room, it was empty. Grandfather brought me all these things later that day."

Cray touched the stuffed animal. "What about this?"

"I had it before."

Sepwin laid his hands upon the toy, then shook his head. He set his fists on his hips and looked from one wall to the other, to the floor, to the ceiling. "Empty," he muttered.

"Could it be spread out somehow, through all the walls?" Cray asked.

"Hush," said Sepwin, and slowly he walked to the nearest wall, to the cloudy crystalline boss set at shoul-der level there, one of the dozen identical bosses placed at regular intervals around the room.

Sepwin closed both of his hands over it, covering its four copper-banded sides completely. Then he shook his head and moved on to the next one.

The seventh boss he tried, the one he had to climb over the child's chair, table, and bed to reach, made him sigh with satisfaction. "Here it is!" He pried at it, trying to wedge his fingernails between it and the wall proper, but there was no space, not even a hairline crack. Boss and wall seemed to be one piece.

Aliza and Cray pulled the furniture into the aisle to make room for themselves beside Sepwin.

"You're sure?" asked Aliza.

"Absolutely," replied Sepwin. "I can hear it crying out to you to take it back into yourself."

"I hear nothing."

"Of course not. You are not a Seer. But if you will place your hands as mine are and call to it, it will come to you."

Aliza took a deep breath. "Very well." She raised her hands to the crystal, and as Sepwin slid his ownaway, she set her flesh against the cloudy facets. "Soul of Aliza!" she said in a low, firm voice. "Aliza herself calls-oh!" Sparks suddenly shot out from beneath her fingers, and she recoiled from the crystal as if thrust back by a powerful blow. She would have fallen but for Cray. "It pushed me away!" she gasped.

"What, the soul?" said Sepwin.

"Is it still in the crystal?" Cray asked him.

With a touch of one finger Sepwin confirmed that.

"Then this is more of Everand's sorcery," Cray said. "A last little bit of selfishness to rob Aliza of what belongs to her."

"The copper," said Sepwin. "A last barrier."

"Well, we'll get rid of that now," said Cray, and he took the knife from his belt and pried and cut the copper wire from the cloudy surface of the crystal until it lay all shredded at his feet. Then he gathered it up and squeezed it into a ball in his fist and tossed it out the nearest door. "Try again," he said.

Aliza touched the crystal, and this time she had no chance to speak; it threw her back in a shower of sparks at that first contact. "No!" she said. "He is dead, and I will not be ruled by him any longer." And she touched the crystal again and again and again, and each time she was thrown back, each time she could not force her flesh to remain in contact with the fac-eted surface. At last she gave it over and clenched her hands tightly together, though that could not hide their tremor. "You told me he was weak,"

she whis-pered, "but he was strong. Strong."

Cray took her hands between his own. They were very cold. "Are you all right, Aliza? You tremble."

"The sparks. They are ... somewhat painful. But it ebbs. Yes, I'm all right." She slipped her fingers from his grasp. "But it seems that I'm to stay soulless after all, in spite of all your efforts."

"I can think of worse ways to spend the rest of my life than locked in here with you, my dearest Aliza,"

said Cray, "but I don't much care for the notion of starving along the way. We must find a way to give you back your soul."

Aliza gripped his arms suddenly. "You are a sorcerer of some skill, Cray Ormoru. Or so you've told me. Use that skill to breach these walls and set us free!"

Cray shook his head. "I have no power over Ice, Aliza. If you had been one to keep green things, I might manage something with their growth, but ... "

He shook his head again.

"Just a leaf, a slip, a seed," said Sepwin. "Surely one of us has some tiny seed caught in the hem of a garment, even a bit of dandelion fluff down in a boot, somewhere ... " He turned the hem of one sleeve and began to pick at the stitching, but Cray laid a hand on his arm to stop him.

"We have a seed," he said.

"A handy thing to carry around with you," said Aliza, "when you can do magic through it." "You misunderstand," said Cray. "I haven't carried it at all. The seed has been here in Ice for years.

You told me yourself that Regneniel set it here, and thispalace grew from it."

She frowned. "What? This room?"

"Not the room, Aliza. Do you remember when I told you that this palace was a living creature, and you insisted that crystals could grow without being alive? But the palace is alive. When Regneniel established it here, he gave it demon flesh from his own body, and he gave it a soulyour soul. Your soul is the seat of its life. Its seed!"

Aliza looked at him blankly. "But it is not a plant."