"I think ... I would like to meet this demon," Cray said, "if you have no objection."

She raised an eyebrow inquiringly. "Do you want to become its friend?"

"I don't think that being on good terms with such a powerful creature would be a bad thing ... but no-I am merely curious to meet your only companion. Per-haps then I will understand you better."

"You could understand me as well-whatever that may mean-from meeting one of my crystalline ser-vants as from meeting my demon," she said.

Cray shrugged. "Still, if you don't mind ... "

She pursed her lips and looked down into her goblet. "You call it my companion, but it is not. It's more like a piece of furniture than anything you could carry on a conversation with. It tells me my lessons and it answers questions, but it's really quite boring. I've had a stuffed animal that was less boring, believe me."

"A small gray one, wasn't it?" said Cray. She looked up at him sharply. "How did you know?"

"I saw it in the mirror. I thought ... I might even see it here."

Her brow wrinkled slightly. "It's with my toys, of course. My childhood toys. I'm a bit old for stuffed animals, don't you think?"

He felt his stiff smile soften as he watched that small frown play across her face. All at once he realized that she was very young, not so much in years as in experi-ence. At her age he had already traveled far, he had known triumph and disappointment, he had even killed a man. But Aliza had been locked in Ice nearly all her life, and her dignity was affronted by the suggestion that she might still be carrying a stuffed animal about with her. Whatever she might wish to become, she was still really only a child. A child whose future was not a certainty, not at all.

He said, "I see nothing wrong with a stuffed animal as a pet. It would be clean and undemanding. You ought to have a pet of some sort, for your softer side. You are surrounded by so much that is hard, that needs to be compensated for. Your grandfather should have given you a pet."

"What-a cat, or a caged bird?"

"Something of the sort."

She shook her head. "I have no time to care for a pet."

"I had a pony," Cray said. "And, of course, my mother kept spiders and snakes and birds. They were all good companions for a growing child. But a stuffed animal is a better companion than none at all. And as I still keep my living pets in Spinweb, so I would not have been surprised or dismayed to see that you still had your kind." He hesitated just an instant before adding, "Was it your grandfather that told you such things were not suitable for an adult?"

Aliza sighed faintly and then nodded. "Often. As I grew older, I would hide it whenever he visited, but he always knew that I still carried it. The demon told him, of course. Eventually, though, I was able to give it up. It was a part of my childhood, after all, and onemust give up childhood sometime. He was pleased by that. He respected me more afterward."

"He would rather see you with an Ice demon, wouldn't he?"

"He would rather see me stand on my own two feet than lean on the imaginary support of a stuffed animal."

"He has forgotten, I suppose, that he must have had a stuffed animal of his own, once. And parents, too, probably till he was older than five."

"On the contrary," said Aliza. "He was apprenticed young, and he grew strong from it. And he wants the same strength for me."

Cray finished his wine at one swallow and held his goblet out to her. "If you fill this again, you'll have emptied the decanter and will have to call for another. Your demon could bring one, unless you insist on keeping it away from me." She poured another serving of wine for him, and it did very nearly empty the decanter. "Why should I keep it away from you?" she said.

"Because you're afraid that Iwill make a friend of it. You've seen three of my demon friends, one of them ice, and you think that perhaps somehow I could win its loyalty."

"Nonsense. I command it, and it must obey."

"But you suspect that some small part of its devo-tion might turn to me, and you don't want to chance that."

"What difference would that make? It would still be my slave."

"Then don't be afraid to let me meet it."

"You'll be disappointed," she said.

"I am no stranger to disappointment."

She leaned back against her end of the couch. "Very well. You shall have your wish." Her voice rose slightly in pitch. "Come, Regneniel!"

The creature that answered this summons arrived so silently that Cray was not aware of its presence until it was passing behind him on its way to Aliza's side. He saw it then, out of the corner of his eye. An awkward, spindly-looking thing, it walked on two thin legs, and the snaky neck that sprouted from its tiny body swayed with its steps like a fern in a summer breeze. A beaked head at the end of that neck and diminutive arms at equal intervals about the body completed its anatomy. It was very ugly, Cray decided, in spite of the singular beauty of its actual substance, which looked like gleam-ing milk glass.

"Well, here it is," Aliza said, gesturing toward the demon.

"Greetings ... Regneniel," said Cray.

The demon made no reply.

"It does speak?" Cray said to Aliza.

"Yes, but not frivolously. If you wish to hear its voice, ask it a question."

To the demon, Cray said, "Is your form one a previous master gave you, and if so, were you ever given others?"

The demon still made no reply.

"This is not a very successful conversation," Cray said.

Aliza turned to the demon. "Regneniel, answer his questions unless I bid you keep silent."

In a deep and resonant masculine voice, the demon said, "As you wish, my lady. O mortal, this is my true earthly form, that I was forced to take when I was first conjured. I also have two forms given me by a previ-ous master." Aliza said, "What, demon? Why have you never told me this?"

"You never asked, my lady."

"Well, I ask you now-show me these other two forms."

"As you wish," replied the demon.

"Wait!" exclaimed Cray, and his voice was so ur-gent that Aliza raised her hand and bade her demon pause.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Before it changes," said Cray, "let Regneniel tell us if either of these forms is too large to be contained by this room."

Aliza regarded him with a puzzled expression. "I thought you said that a demon's forms were made by the hands of its master. Surely such would not be so very large, and this is no small room."

"Small enough," Cray said. "I have seen demons take far larger forms. I once saw a demon that had the semblance of a full-grown tree. In attaining that size it would have burst through this ceiling, not to mention what its branches would have done to these walls, or its roots to this floor."

"My walls cannot be harmed by any tree," said Aliza. "Nor by any demon. They are impervious to spell or power."

"That may be so," said Cray, "but Regneniel made them. I could not guess what effect its force would have upon them."

"It obeys me. I would not allow it to harm them!"

"As I said, my lady, I could not guess what effect its force, its inadvertently applied force, would have upon them. Or upon the room's furniture and occupants. You may be quite safe as commander of the demon, but I ... I am as fragile as gossamer."

Aliza pursed her lips and turned to the demon. "Are these forms too large for this room?"

"No, my lady."

Cray asked, "How much larger than a human being is the larger of these two forms?"

The creature hesitated, as if calculating. "In vol-ume, approximately four times larger," it said.

Aliza glanced at Cray. "You see, you worried unnecessarily."

He shrugged his shoulders. "But you did not worry at all, my lady. Of the two attitudes, I believe that mine was the more realistic."

Her cool, dark eyes gazed at him for a long mo-ment, and then she said, "Yes, you are quite correct. I must not allow my ignorance to trip me up. You do have some value, Cray Ormoru." He smiled. "I like to think so."

She directed her attention to the demon once again.

"Stand over there." She pointed to the far side of the ebony table. When the creature had obeyed, she said, "Proceed with the demonstration of your larger form."

"As you wish." Immediately, its body began to alter in both size and contour. The torso grew swiftly, elon-gating to the height of a man and more, pulling the legs to one end and the snaky neck to the other.

The neck itself shortened and thickened, the head became rounder and opened a pair of pale, staring eyes. The three arms lengthened and sprouted dense rafts of white feathers, transforming into a tail and two broad wings. The demon was now a bird, though like no other bird Cray had ever seen. It flexed its wings, and the sudden draft generated by those powerful pinions whipped Cray's and Aliza's hair back from their faces and even caused the near-empty wine decanter to slide a short distance across the polished surface of the table.

"Who gave you this form?" asked Aliza.

"My first master," the demon replied. "Folroy of Midwood."

"What was it used for?"

"For travel in the human realm. My master would ride upon my back."

"Very well. Show us the other form."

The huge white bird folded its wings and, like a snow sculpture caught in the spring sun, only faster, so much faster, it lost its clearly defined shape and shrank, shrank, into a dirty, lumpy mound no bigger than a mastiff. And then it shrank further, darkening in color until at last it was the size of a mouse. It sprouted a tail and fine whiskers and blinked bright, beady eyes. Itwas a mouse. It sat up on its hind legs and tucked its paws under its chin. But when it spoke, it had the voice of the demon, the voice of the bird, deep and resonant and entirely at odds with the tiny fragile semblance it wore.

"This is my other form," it said. "Now you have seen them all."

"Who gave you this one?" asked Aliza.

"The same."

"And what was it used for?"

"Spying on other mortals."

Cray laughed softly. "Vermin do have their uses, surely. But tell me, Aliza-is this Folroy your grandfather?"

"No. Do you recognize the name?"

He shook his head. "But that means your grandfa-ther gave the demon no new forms." "It means he had no need of them," said Aliza. "His other demons probably had all the forms he required."

"But this demon is yours now. And surely you'll want more than a bird and a mouse. That's a slim selection if ever I saw one."

"I have no skill at sculpture," she said. She gazed at him speculatively. "Could you ... perhaps ... do the work for me?"

"Ah, my lady, I fear that's not possible. I can give you guidance, and I will, gladly, but the demon is yours and so the sculpture must be executed by your hands."

She dismissed that notion with a wave of her hand. "It's a matter of curiosity only. Should I need a bird or a mouse, I know I have them. Beyond that ... I can't even imagine needing either of those."

"To travel. To spy."

"Neither interests me. This is my whole world, this palace and Ice, and they are enough."

"And yet," said Cray, "your palace exists in the human realm as well. Have you no curiosity about it?"

"No. My interest in the human realm is limited to the few things Regneniel fetches from it. Wine, for example. Regneniel, fill this decanter up with Maretian wine." She held it out toward the mouse on the far side of the table.

Within a few heartbeats the demon had grown back into its angular earthly form. It wrapped one of its tiny arms about the decanter, and with this burden, larger than its own body, it marched off through a doorway directly opposite the one by which Cray and Aliza had entered the room. Cray watched it through the transparent walls until it merged with the blotches that lay in that direction.

"Must it go far for the wine?" Cray asked.

"Not far," she replied, "for a demon."

"Perhaps you should keep more wine in your palace." She smiled slightly, only the second smile Cray had seen on her lips, and he thought it sweetened her face considerably. She said, "I thought what I had would last a bit longer than it has."

He lifted his goblet to her and drank. "A good wine deserves to be consumed."

"I would never deny that." She sipped from her own goblet, which had scarcely emptied at all since its second filling.

Cray shifted his position on the couch and found that his shirt was sticking to his back. He pulled it away from the skin, then loosened the ties of his collar. "The warmth in this room seems so much at odds with its icy appearance. You have no hearth, and no Fire demons, yet there is no chill. If anything, the place is too warm."

"That is the wine," she said.

He smiled into his goblet. "Perhaps so. Still, I was comfortable before I drank any wine, and we areentirely surrounded by Ice."

"No, we are surrounded equally by Ice and the human realm, and in the human realm it is summer. That summer heats these rooms."

"And when the human realm has winter?"

"Then I do keep hearths, wherever I need them."

"It must be very cozy here in winter," Cray mur-mured. "To curl up on this couch before the fire, with the flames glimmering off the walls and the light so much ruddier, the firelight washing out this harsh white glow." He stifled a yawn behind his hand. "I don't see how you can sleep with all this light around you."

"I don't find this light harsh," said Aliza, "but if I wish I can extinguish it."

Cray stifled another yawn. "You can have day or night, whichever you please."