"No." He touched the crystal boss with one hand, and it was cool to his skin. There was no repellent force in it for him. "But it is a seed. And it lies inside this crystal. A seed holds the pattern of the plant that will be, and I can bring forth that plant. A crystal holds a pattern, too. You showed me that. I thought someday to investigate that patterning further, per-haps with your help. Now I must do what I can. I have no power over the world of Ice, but perhaps over this tiny fragment of ice ... " He looked into the crystal, but there was nothing to see but a cloudy surface and the reflection of his own face, so he closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling under his hand. On the perception of pattern in that surface and beneath.

He willed himself to open the crystal, to lay back the surface and dive into the hard, glittering depths.

He found it to be a lattice, as surely as the cloth he wove on his mother's loom was a lattice, as surely as the trellis in her garden was a lattice, as surely as the stuff of his own body, of all life, was a latticework of interlocking strands. He probed at it, coaxed it, com-manded it. With all the will that had grown his castle of living wood, he required it to grow.

He felt the crystal splitting open under his hand, felt the first delicate shoots thrusting at his palm, brittle and prickly as the thinnest sugar candy. Slowly, he removed his hand.

It was a flower. A pale, crystalline flower. Its nar-row, ribbon-like petals pushed outward from the boss, lengthening as he watched, drawing their substance from that jewel until it was no more than a fragile husk, a dried-out seed coat. Delicately, the petals curled as they grew, like the tendrils of true plants or-Cray found himself thinking-like wood shavings. When the blossom was complete, it was like none other Cray had ever seen. It was more like a spray of curly plumes, more like a fountain of water frozen for eternity, than any sun-loving blossom.

But one attribute it did share with real flowers-it exuded a faint perfume that was sweet and compelling.

"You must breathe in your soul from the flower," Cray said to Aliza.

She nodded her understanding and bent close to it, but she had not even sniffed, had certainly not touched the blossom when a blue spark leaped the gap between the nearest petal and back, just as she had been thrown back by the crystal itself.

Aliza covered her nose with one hand. Tears were brimming in her eyes and she tried to blink them back and could not. She dashed them away with the back of her wrist, saying, "Perhaps that was the last of it,"

and she leaned close to the flower once more. This time sparks leaped from several petals to her nose, her cheeks, her lips, and she fell back against Cray as if a door had slammed in her face. As she wiped her face with one sleeve, she said, "It's remarkably painful. I remember once I fell and hit my nose on achair and it was just like this. Grandfather appears to have known a great deal about pain." She glanced over her shoul-der at Cray. "We don't seem to have achieved our objective, do we?"

"Nothing has changed," said Sepwin, "except the shape of the soul's container. Can't you break the spell, Cray?"

"I thought I had. But no, I'll have to do something more extreme. I'll have to breathe the soul in myself and break the spell inside my body."

Sepwin caught his arm. "Cray, no! Two souls in one body? They'll battle for possession. They'll burn you up with their war!"

"I'm young," said Cray. "And strong. And I see no other way. I know the spell could not survive inside me."

"If only we could ask Gildrum about it. He'd know if you're right."

"I'd think Regneniel would be a better choice. It took the soul; it could probably tell us how to put it back. But neither of them is here, so ... "

"No," said Aliza. "I wouldn't have you harmed on my account."

"My dear lady, I see no other way." He smiled at her. "Listen carefully, for I think I won't be able to give any instructions after I've taken in your soul. You must allow me a moment to crush the spell, and then, when I signal, you must press your open mouth to mine and breathe in my breath. Understood?"

She nodded. "What is the signal?"

"I'll make a fist with my right hand, open it, and close it again."

"Understood."

To Sepwin he said, "Don't let me fall and break my head on anything."

"I'll catch you."

"Very well." He leaned over the flower, and its sweet perfume enveloped him. He cupped the fragile crystalline petals between his hands, as if they were the open petals of a rose, he emptied his lungs with a great slow exhalation, and then he breathed in the fragrance, the blossom, the soul. Between his hands, the crystal flower collapsed into dust.

His head reeled as the soul entered him, and he staggered and threw both arms out to the wall, which seemed to be tilting crazily before him. A whirlwind possessed his body, spinning his muscles, his bones, his innards. He grappled with it, tried to tie it down with ropes that existed only in his mind, but the ropes turned about to tie him down instead. He thrust them aside. He realized nothing could hold the intruder.

He realized that his only choice lay in embracing it, not just with his body, but with his own soul. It was Aliza. In a burst of effort, his soul embraced hers.

Sensations rushed over him-giddy happiness, black despair, love, hate, anger, grief. They were a torrent he could not fight; he could only roll with them, tum-bling, drowning, breathing them in as a doomed swim-mer breathes water. Memories surged through him: a woman, a man, not strangers eventhough he had never seen them before, lifting him up, tossing him high in the air and catching him in strong, sure hands, laughing as he laughed, and the sunlight was bright upon them. Mother, father, center of the universe. And then the smell of burning things, the crackle of flames, and the dark night all around as cruel arms carried him away, away, into black, black grief and loneliness. Loneliness, like a weight on his face, smoth-ering him, pressing him into a dark box, where only the memories remained, and the feelings beat upon the walls, begging for escape.

And the box, which had formerly been crystal, was now Cray Ormoru.

Somehow, he raised his hand, though he could not see it for the whirlwind that roared behind his eyes.

Somehow, his right hand made a fist, opened it, closed it again.

When he came back to himself, he was on his knees, huddled against one wall of the cradle room, and Aliza lay limp in his arms. He stared down at her for a moment, the last wisps of dizziness ebbing from his brain, and then he looked up to find Sepwin hovering near. "What happened?" he whispered.

"She kissed you and fainted," Sepwin told him. He was chafing one of her hands "But it worked."

A distant crackling, not unlike the sound of flames, came to Cray's ears. At first he confused it with Aliza's memories, then he realized it was real. "That noise."

Sepwin glanced up. "I don't know."

It became louder, as if the flames were approaching them.

"The furniture," said Sepwin. "A few stray sparks from a hearth ... "

Louder.

"We'd better take a look," said Cray, and he set Aliza gently on the floor and climbed over her and over the furniture to the door by which they had entered the room. He looked into the next chamber, the sitting room.

The sound was louder than ever.

"I don't smell any smoke," said Sepwin.

"And I don't see any flames. But what's that?" Motion among the farthest facets they could see. Dark shapes moving.

And then a ball of flame flashed through the sitting room's opposite door. "You must get out!" Gildrum's voice. "The palace is collapsing!"

The dark shapes were furniture being pushed inexo-rably inward as Ice closed about the building.

"Where is Regneniel?" Cray shouted, backing into the cradle room. The crackling was so loud now that it sounded like wood being snapped beside his ear.

"Here!" said a small star shape, skidding into the room behind Gildrum. "I can't open a large enough fracture! There's too much debris piling up-it will crush you. Take the stairway!" "If it's open," said Cray, scooping Aliza up into his arms.

"It's open," said the Ice demon, and it darted up the cloudy-walled tunnel. "Come along!" Its voice echoed in the enclosed space. "You have to survive long enough to free me!"

With Aliza in his arms and Sepwin and Gildrum close behind him, Cray pounded up the stairs.

The panel at the top of the steps was open, but beyond it lay darkness. The light from the tunnel spilled into that darkness and was swallowed, illumi-nating neither wall nor floor nor ceiling, but only the glittering Ice demon floating two paces away.

"It's gone, collapsed," said Regneniel. "And the tunnel will go, too, in a moment."

"Come," said Gildrum, and the ball of flame en-gulfed the three humans and lifted them away from the tunnel mouth. In a few heartbeats they had de-scended to ground level, to the coarse quartz sand that had surrounded the palace and that sparkled in Gildrum's light like a field of diamonds.

Cray set Aliza down on the sand, and he and Sepwin knelt beside her. Far above them, the mouth of the tunnel was a blue-white oval, like some eerie, gibbous moon, and as they watched, its light faded, faded, and was gone.

"And so my child dies," said Regneniel.

Cray looked up at the demon. "I'm sorry about that. But we really had no choice."

"It doesn't matter. It was a strange hybrid, not a proper creature of Ice at all."

"You didn't ... care for it? Flesh of your flesh, after all."

"I created it at my master's whim. I did everything at my master's whim."

"Including telling Aliza that you would never leave her."

"It was a lie," said the Ice demon. "The lie that made you think I loved her. Love a human? No, I hate them all. All but you, Cray Ormoru, if you keep your word."

"I'll keep it, don't worry. And it doesn't matter that you don't love her. I'll love her enough to make up for that." Gently, very gently, he shook her. "Aliza. Aliza, you must wake up. Hear me, Aliza. Wake up."

At last she moaned and raised a hand, groping; Cray caught it in his own. "Oh, Mother," she whis-pered, "I had such a terrible dream." Her eyelids fluttered, and then her dark eyes opened, unfocused and searching. They took in Sepwin, the demons, and the dark vault of the sky. They found Cray's face and stared at it for a long moment. Then she said, "It wasn't a dream."

"No."

With a deep, quavering sigh, her tears began-not reflex tears this time but true weeping, great racking sobs that threatened to choke her till Cray helped her sit up. Then she leaned against him and wept and wept, and all the time she did not let go of his hand. And without realizing it, he started to rock with her, as a mother rocks her frightened child, back and forth, back and forth, his arms around her, sheltering, comforting. "It's all right," he whispered into her hair. "Everything is all right now."

After a time she quieted, but still she clung to him, as if he were a spar in a wildly tossing sea. "Don't leave me," she whispered. "I couldn't bear this without you. This ... this tempest you call a soul. It frightens me, Cray. It's a stranger that has broken into my home and keeps shouting words I can't understand. Don't leave me!"

He cupped her cheek with one hand and tilted her face up. By Gildrum's light, her skin was still pale, but her dark eyes no longer seemed cool and aloof. Instead, they seemed to draw him toward them, to tug at his own soul. Softly, he kissed her lips. "I won't leave you. I promise."

"You're all I have left," she whispered. "Everyone else who ever cared about me is gone. And the palace-it's destroyed, isn't it? All the memories in the cradle room, all my childhood, even my poor stuffed animal, all gone."

"'Yes," said Cray, "but you can always build another palace, one completely your own this time, with every pillar, every wall, just exactly as you wish it. And you can fill it up with new memories, with all the future that lies before you." He smiled down at her. "But there are other people who care about you, Aliza. My mother. Gildrum. Feldar. The lady He-laine. I'm merely the one who cares the most."

A fresh tear welled up in each of her dark eyes as she slipped her hands up behind his neck. "I trust you," she whispered, and she pulled his head down for another kiss.

Sepwin stood and walked a little way from them, beyond the range of Gildrum's glow, to be by himself and to look up at the stars. The unknown stars. He smiled at them and thought of the Mirror of Heart's Desire. They had not gotten around to remaking it yet. Perhaps now they never would.