"She's hardly more than a child, Gildrum. Power is still a game to her, the novelty pulling her attention away from all else. But someday she'll be Rezhyk's age. You knew him. You were with him in the years when he cut himself off from every human influence, the years when his search for power became a mania. Was he sane, Gildrum?" "I think not."

"Was he happy?"

"Hardly."

"And you were fire, Gildrum. Aliza's demon is ice."

"Her only demon?"

"So she implied."

"A poor choice for one who desires power."

"A cold choice for one's only companion," said Cray. "Of course I mustn't forget her grandfather, who comes by once a year to say hello. Once a year! What wonderful company he must be! How much he must care for her! Oh, Gildrum, she is so terribly alone; what can she know of friendship, of warmth, of cheer?"

"Of love," said Gildrum.

"Least of all of love."

Gildrum sighed a very human sigh. "Cray, she is a child of the sorcerous breed. Sorcerers are not known for their warmth."

"My mother is warm."

"As I've said before, your mother is an unusual lady."

"I am warm."

"Of course. You are Delivev's son."

Cray's hands curled into fists. "There must be something I can do to help her. She can't be lost so young."

"And so beautiful," Gildrum added softly. "Seeing her, I began to understand why you had to come on the quest. It's a shame that such beauty should remain alone and unappreciated. Certainly it can't be much appreciated by an Ice demon."

"Human beauty is meaningless to us," said Leemin. "And if you weren't so human yourself, Fire demon, it would be equally meaningless to you."

"It's a cold beauty, Gildrum," said Cray. "I think she would have pleased me more if she had been plain and smiling." He dropped his arms to his sides. "I would like to make her smile."

"How?" asked Gildrum.

"I don't know. But the mirror gave her to me, and I don't intend to let her go this easily." * * *

"I can't say that I really liked her, Feldar," Cray said, yawning. He had arrived tired, wanting only to lie down on the Seer's guest bed and sleep, but Sepwin had insisted upon the promised full report. "She wasn't a very likable person."

"It was an awkward situation," Sepwin said. "You shouldn't have told her about the mirror. I mean, you were a stranger pouring out some wild tale about her being your true love. What was she supposed to do, throw herself at you?"

"I didn't mention anything about true love."

"Heart's desire, then-is there any difference? You should have said that you were just passing through Ice when you saw her palace, and you just had to take a closer look. You might have gotten a little hospitality then."

Cray leaned back in his chair and let his legs sprawl. "I told the truth because I didn't want to have to worry about being consistent. Once you start lying, you're hedged all around by those lies."

"You could have told her the truth later on. Now she'll be wary of you. Women don't like importunate suitors."

"I don't see myself as an importunate suitor, Feldar. I told her I just wanted to be her friend."

Sepwin snorted. "You thinkthat's why she threw you out?"

"I think she threw me out because it was easier than trying to traffic further with another human being."

"Especially one saying things she didn't want to hear."

Cray closed his eyes wearily. "I suppose I may have been a little harsh. I suppose I may even have insulted her. But I had to say what I did, Feldar. I had to try to shake some sense into her."

Sepwin leaned forward. "What will you do now?"

Cray yawned again. "Go to sleep."

"You know what I mean!"

Cray grinned around another yawn. "And in the morning I'll go home. Don't push so hard, Feldar. One would think this were your heart's desire rather than mine."

Sepwin slumped back in his chair with a sigh. "I wish you would let me help you."

"You've already helped me enough, Feldar. Let me do the rest myself. Whatever it might be."

"If you need me ... "

"I know; you'll always be ready. That's what friends are for. If only I could convince Aliza of that."

* * * The next morning Gildrum, who had gone back to Spinweb after dropping him at the Seer's cave, came to fetch Cray home. Over breakfast, Cray told his mother all that had transpired in the crystal palace.

She listened without comment, her eyes on the fruit that she pared for both of them. Only when he was quite finished did she look up at his face.

"I had hoped," she said, "that when you fell in love it would be with someone as kindhearted and loving as yourself. I really hadn't expected it to be one of the sorcerous race."

He shook his head. "I haven't fallen in love, Mother. It wasn't love that I felt when I looked at her, either in the mirror or face-to-face."

"What was it, then?"

Elbows on the table, Cray interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on them. "There was a certain ...

fascination, I'll admit that. For her looks, and then because of her very coolness. But it wasn't until I tried to touch her, Mother, not until that instant, that I understood that my feeling toward her was ... pity. She is so lost, Mother; I think I must have known it early on, looking at her in the mirror. She held to that stuffed animal for so long. It was all she had. And now she seems to have nothing but that all-consuming desire for power." His fingers tightened on each other. "He has done this to her, the grandfather. He has doomed her to the coldest, most unfeeling life of all."

Delivev's gaze was compassionate. "And it pains you to think of her so."

"Yes."

She smiled softly. "Don't you think that this could be a kind of love, my son?"

He let his clasped hands fall to the table, and he stared down at them. "If it is, then it is the same love I would feel toward a fox caught in a trap or a fawn that has lost its mother." He raised his eyes to her face. "Don't you see, Mother, the mirror has shown her to me because I can help her. That is my heart's desire-not Aliza herself but her freedom from this trap that her grandfather has set."

Delivev touched his hands with one of her own. "From what you tell me, though, she doesn't even know she's in a trap. Like so many sorcerers, she has welcomed this ... doom."

"Then I must open her eyes," said Cray. "Will you help me?"

"Of course," said his mother, "but how?"

He caught her hand between his. "Weave for me."

Normally, Delivev preferred to create her tapestries in the ordinary fashion, weaving the threads with her own delicate fingers to a sketchy pattern laid out on a large square of canvas beneath her loom. She liked the feel of wool in her hands, liked the firm resistance of the treadles under her feet, liked to watch the smooth and steady increments of design growing before her. She rarely rushed a work to completion, for the activ-ity itself was what pleased her most, not the finished product. As with her other crafts, she moved at her own leisurely pace, and even so she produced a great many beautiful things each year, more than enough to barter for every other luxury she could desire. For this tapestry, however, she used sorcery. Cray wanted it quickly, and he also wanted it to be a dupli-cate of the tapestry that hung in his bedchamber, a sunny scene of the forest margin, with deer drinking at a brook. With such a detailed pattern to follow, Delivev could sit back and direct the new tapestry to weave itself while she worked on some other project. At her gesture, the white warp thread began to reel off its spool and string the loom. At another gesture, a dozen bobbins wound themselves with varicolored yarn from as many skeins and skittered to take their places be-neath the warp, each ready to add its share of weft. As the weaving commenced, Delivev took up a fresh piece of linen marked for embroidery, a cloth destined for a king's table, or perhaps just for her own, depending on her mood. Occasionally, as she worked her silken design, she looked up to examine the progress of the tapestry, to ascertain that it was going well and had no need of her interference.

The tapestry was finished long before the cloth.

Cray helped her pull it from the loom as the two raw ends were knotting themselves. "Beautiful," he said, smiling at the glossy greens, the sun-drenched ochers and golds, the silver-limned sparkle of the brook.

"Perfectly beautiful."

Delivev began to roll it from the upper end. "As perfectly beautiful as the original."

"It's my favorite," said Cray. "It will always be beautiful to me, no matter how many copies you make."

"I hope she likes it. It doesn't strike me as the sort of thing an inhabitant of Ice would want, though. I wonder if you wouldn't please her more with something familiar, an Ice demon perhaps. They're very pretty in their starlike form."

"And she can see one anytime she likes. I prefer the idea of contrast." He helped her tie the bundle se-curely with three broad ribbons. "Is Gildrum ready?"

"Gildrum and Elrelet both. They're in the kitchen. I'll call them." But she hesitated a moment and, look-ing into her son's face, raised one hand to his cheek. "Good luck," she said, and she kissed him softly at the corner of his mouth. "Very good luck."

Leemin was waiting for them once more at the boundary of Air and Ice. "You are a most persistent creature, Cray Ormoru," it said. "You admit that the woman told you to go away, and yet you wish to return."

"She didn't really want me to go away," Cray said. Elrelet had already enveloped him, and the tapestry floated an arm's length away from him, under Gildrum's care. "I was making her uncomfortable, and she had no other way to deal with that discomfort."

"And now you go to make her uncomfortable again."

"I hope not. You told Elrelet you were willing to guide us again."

"Yes," said Leemin. "I am a trifle curious to know if she will let you in once more."

"As I am. Lead on then." The fracture opened for them as before, and they entered. And this time the journey was shorter, for the Old One was gone and they could take the route that passed its residence. Soon they saw the light from Aliza's home spilling into Ice all about them, and then they reached her walls.

"Shall we ring the bell again?" asked Elrelet.

"I didn't bring it along," said Gildrum, "in defer-ence to our guide."

"Then how shall we attract her attention?" won-dered the Air demon.

"I was thinking that Leemin could form me a ham-mer of its own substance," said Cray, "and that I could pound on this wall hard enough with that to be heard inside."

"Very well," said Leemin, and immediately an icicle erupted from its cylindrical body almost at Cray's feet and grew quickly into a long-handled sledgehammer as transparent as the finest glass. It broke free of the demon's flesh and floated to Cray's hands.

"I didn't expect anything so formidable," he said, "but it will do." Bracing himself with widespread legs and taking a short grip on the handle, he tapped experimentally at the wall before him. The sound of the blow was an unimpressive clack, as if he had tossed a pebble at one of Spinweb's stone ramparts. There was none of the hollowness he had expected. He tapped again, a little harder, then much harder, and the results were only marginally louder. Then he waited. But the room beyond the wall remained empty.

Elrelet said, "The sound doesn't seem to carry very far. We would have been much better off with the bell."

"No bells!" cried Leemin.

"Yes, yes, we know," said the Air demon. "Still, here we are, stymied. Gildrum, don't you think you could find a bell that could be heard inside this build-ing without driving our icy friend into a frenzy?"

"I don't know," said Gildrum. "I hesitate to try another one. Perhaps ... we should just leave the tapestry here with a letter saying you'll be back later and asking her to provide you some way to signal your arrival. A special door knocker or some such. Leemin could open this fracture a bit wider and we could spread the tapestry out against the wall so that it would be pinned there when we withdrew. She'd be certain to see it next time she came to this chamber."

"Whenever that might be," said Cray. He shook his head. "No, I'd rather give it to her personally.

Now."

"But how?"

"Well, I can only think of one other thing to try." He took a deep breath, and in his battle voice, he shouted her name: "Aliza!"It was a high-pitched, piercing cry, almost musical in quality, its timbre quite unlike his ordinary speaking voice. He had learned to use the battle voice during his training for knighthood, the training he had given up for sorcery; it was the voice that a commander needed to be heard by his warriors above the din of steel on steel, of screaming men and screaming horses. Not every man could manage it. Now, after so many years of the sorcerous arts, most of Cray's old knights' skills had faded, but he still had the voice. He used it a second time. "Aliza!"

Leemin broke the long silence that followed. "She might have heard that. I never knew a human voicecould be so ... penetrating."

"If she did hear," said Elrelet, "she isn't making any sign. I say bash away with the hammer again; batter a hole in this wall and go on inside. I'll help you."

"I don't think it's possible," said Gildrum. "She may be only an apprentice, but the spell on this wall seems strong enough to keep out any demon. And any demon hammer."

"Then let's go back to the human realm and fetch something made of steel."

Cray laid his demon-gloved hands flat against the glassy wall. The chamber beyond seemed terribly empty, and quite unfamiliar in its barrenness, even though he knew he had walked about within it. The chairs that Aliza had summoned for the two of them were gone, the floor where they had sprung up clear and seamless, the far wall faintly reflecting Cray's own face.

"Her demon, at least, ought to know someone is out here calling her name," Cray muttered.

"Perhaps she's away from home," offered Leemin.

"I don't think she's away very often. Travel would interfere with her studies." He made fists of his hands and pounded on the transparency of the wall, but softly, in frustration rather than any attempt to make a noise. "Aliza," he whispered. "Hear me."

After a long moment, he sighed heavily. "You know, I thought ... she might be watching for me. Just in case I came back."

"But she threw you out," said Leemin.

"Even so. I was a novelty; I thought that when she had a chance to reflect, after I had gone, that she would realize my novelty hadn't worn off yet. Or so I flattered myself." He turned and caught at the bundle that was the tapestry, tugged at the ribbon fastenings. "Now Gildrum's plan seems best to me."

He stripped the bindings away and began to unroll the bulky load. "Help me spread this out, Gildrum?"

The demon assumed his human guise and grasped the side opposite Cray. Between them, they plastered the tapestry against Aliza's wall. But as Leemin was expanding the fracture to accommodate its corners, Gildrum reached out to tug at Cray's arm.

"There she is," he said. He was looking through the gap between the straight edge of the tapestry and Leemin's curve.