"If Elezar cannot answer, then it must be a puzzle indeed," Patodad said. "I have advised him once before on matters of great weight. If this is of like proportion, then a mere fistful of iron will not suffice for payment."

"Nevertheless, the answers the prince must know."

Palodad grunted. For a long moment he stared un-blinkingly at Astron. Then he put away his gla.s.s and turned to hobble slowly back onto the spar. "Come," he called over his shoulder. "Come and tell me what exactly perplexes the great Elezar so. I will elect to be flattered by his attention, even though it has been slow in coming. It certainly is about time he again has decided to ask for my aid."

Palodad suddenly jerked to a halt and smiled. "Yes, it is about time," he repeated with a rasp. "About time. It could be for nothing less." He tilted his head back and opened his mouth into a great circle. His laugh filled the air and echoed from the wall. For a dozen cycles of the nearest lattice, the demon clutched his arms to his sides, rocking back and forth, oblivious to everything around him.

Then, as abruptly as he began, Palodad stopped and resumed his shuffle toward the bucket. "I had instructed you to follow," he called back as he entered the basket. "Or did your prince send just an imp still afraid of its broodmother?"

Astron looked again into the interior of the sphere, at the bound and jerking sprites. He heard again the howls27.of pain and maledictions. The scene troubled him greatly, far more than any mystery in the realm of men. A reluctance coursed through his stembrain, putting stiffness into his limbs when he commanded them to move.

"I will remain untouched," he muttered to himself. "I need only stay until I have information for the prince," With a pace no swifter than Palodad's he moved toward the waiting bucket.

CHAPTER THREE.

Lore of the Listmaker

ASTRON lost track of the number of pulley baskets he rode before he finally reached Palodad's destination, deep in the interior of the sphere. As the last bucket whisked from view, he found himself in an open-top box of stone as solid as the steps that had led to the entrance of the old demon's lair.

To his immediate left, in front of one of the four confining walls, a continuous belt moved on rollers and creaked off through a dark recess into the sphere beyond.

Directly in front stood a collection of gla.s.s jars, densely packed with swarms of swirling mites. Behind them were stacks of what looked like shallow baking sheets, some piled in precarious columns and others only two or three deep littering the floor. Through an archway in the distance, Astron saw a small devil brushing a sticky glue onto the surface of one of the sheets and adding it to another stack. A cloyingly sweet odor drifted from the glue and hung heavy in the air.

On the right, the wall was covered with tiny glow-sprites, each one crammed between the limbs of his28.neighbors, but somehow arrayed in precise lines. The small demons winked on and off with random bursts of light across the spectrum. All the colors of the rainbow stirred in motley patterns, each imp no larger than a thumbnail, but with thousands of neighbors producing a pulsating and almost hypnotic glitter.

"It is here that questions are composed," Palodad said behind Astron. "Here I affix the mites to the matrix and send the instructions to my minions who await beyond."

"But to what purpose?" Astron turned and shook his head, unable to contain himself any longer. "Why the million steps? How can so many submit to such an existence?"

"These are the questions of your prince?" Palodad asked.

"No, no, not these. His is much more profound." Astron regretted the words as soon as they had left his lips. They revealed that Elezar's messenger was not totally unimpressed by what he saw and hinted therefore that Palodad's power might be the greater. The prince would not be pleased.

"But nevertheless I am a cataloguer," Astron added quickly. "It is my nature to ask so that I can observe and record."

"A cataloguer. Indeed." Palodad paused and squinted. "No doubt the lack of wings and protruding fangs gives you greater satisfaction with your amus.e.m.e.nt."

Astron turned away his eyes. Things were not starting well at all. "I am, in fact, a splendorous djinn," he said softly. "At least my clutch brethren were. But I was hatched without wings and grew in stature no greater than you see me now."

He hesitated a moment and looked back at Palodad. "But no matter that I cannot weave great cataclysms or burst a.s.sunder condensed rock with the wave of my hand. I am a cataloguer and a good one. I filed my fangs myself so that the effect would be complete. With hood and cape I have pa.s.sed among men, raising not a modic.u.m of suspicion. And yes, I even managed the domination of a strong-willed one or two."29."No doubt," Palodad said. "Even the smallest imp declares he has a few wizards under his spell."

"What I say is true. I have no need to speak otherwise."

"It does not matter." Palodad waved the words aside. "I have little use for the boasts of others in any case. The workings of my domain tell me far more of what has happened and what yet will come to pa.s.s." He paused and stared at Astron. "Perhaps, as a cataloguer, you might appreciate that more than the others. Tell me your name. We will see what I know of the followers of Ele-zar the prince."

"It is Astron-Astron the one who walks."

"Ah, Astron. It will be easy enough," Palodad said, turning to pick up one of the metal sheets from the floor. "Not thousands of syllables that record all of your exploits like some who have come."

He placed the sheet on the belt and pulled a lever to stop it moving. Then he turned the lid on one of the jars at his feet, releasing a cloud of mites. Moving with a quickness that surprised Astron, the old demon began plucking the tiny imps from the air one by one and affixing them to the sticky surface of the sheet. With the metal ball in his other hand he smashed them flat so that they would stay. In what seemed like an instant he had immobilized several precise rows of mites, some with their heads aligned along the lines and others perpendicular to it.

Palodad surveyed his handiwork for a moment and then kicked the empty jar aside, waving the unused mites away. He hobbled back into the stacks behind them and returned a moment after with several more sheets, these already filled with imprisoned imps. He formed a chain of the trays on the belt. With one final grunt, he pulled the lever to start them moving toward the slit in the wall.

"Pay attention to the glowsprites," Palodad said. "It will take awhile for the framing instructions to be obeyed. After that the images will unfold quickly enough."

Astron looked at the random dance of lights on the far30.wall. For a moment nothing happened; then suddenly the pattern changed. The glowsprites began pulsing in unison, creating bands of color that seemed to move across the wall. Kaleidoscopic shapes formed and dissolved; scenes of other parts of Palodad's lair exploded into sharp focus and then faded away. Faces of great djinns snapped into view, one after another, faster than Astron could follow. Then the flickering stopped. A single image remained for him to view.

Astron stared at what he saw. A slight demon somehow familiar seemed to frown back from the plane of the sprites. About the figure was a clutter of trays and jars. In the apparent distance stood a gnarled old devil that looked exactly like Palodad. He saw the second demon scratch absently at a pockmarked cheek with a hand clutching a metal sphere and he whirled to see Palodad do the same.

Astron spun back to look at the vision, took a step forward and extended his arm. The image on the wall copied his motions. He touched his forehead and bared his filed-down fangs in a grotesque grin, watching in fascination as the face staring at him responded in kind.

"How is this possible?" Astron asked. "For all of de-monkind, none of us cast a reflection."

"Truly not." Palodad smiled. "Light is altered when it is scattered from our bodies. It subsequently can be adsorbed but not reflected again." He waved his arm at the wall. "What you observe here is merely what I have instructed my sprites to do. They watch how you move and then each glows in the required hue and intensity to form an image that mimics exactly. They form a precise copy so that you see yourself as you appear to others."

Astron looked back to the wall. He straightened to full height and squared his shoulders, staring intently at what he had never seen before. His head was oval and symmetrically formed, with the small k.n.o.bs where the horns of his brothers would be. No tufts of hair grew from the delicate swirl of his ears, and on the supple pale flesh only a hint of scaling was visible in the glow of the sprite light. The eyes were deeply set and the nose and31.lips a trifle large, but as he had said, without close scrutiny he could pa.s.s for a native in the realm of men. It was for these features that he had found favor with Ele-zar, he knew. The prince himself was unlike most de-monkind and, rather than minimize the difference, he flaunted it.

"Evidently in the grand scheme of things," Palodad said, "there was need to collect more than just superfi-cials about you, cataloguer. That is why the image is so sharp and clear. Look to your left. There is more that can be displayed than physical form."

Astron watched a second pulsing of color next to his reflection. It quickly distilled into the image of a brood-lair, with pieces of broken sh.e.l.l littered among the coa.r.s.e gra.s.ses. Four tiny djinns, tufts of down still clinging to rapidly flapping wings, danced above the lair, while one smaller demon cowered in the straw. With a shock, Astron realized what he was witnessing. No sound accompanied the animation, but he remembered the shrieks an era ago as his brothers had swooped down upon him, claws gleaming sharp. Even worse, he recalled, was the laughter as they turned aside at the last instant, barely avoiding contact. The two more precocious of his brothers already had felt the first intuitive grasp of weaving and formed bolts of crackling pain that they sprayed upon Astron's back as they sped by.

Astron clinched his long, slender fingers as the memory of impotency flooded through him. Four brothers, all splendorous djinns, and he with no more power than a lowly sprite, able to convert the air he breathed into food and water and nothing more.

But before Astron could dwell further on the memory, the image formed by the glowsprites shimmered and shifted. He saw himself half grown, eyes wide with membranes pulled back as he examined the object he delicately cradled in his hands. The devil who stood next to him in the image had his arms folded across his chest and a face showing uncompromising pride. Astron remembered that he had not cared.

Acknowledging the magnitude of the feat that brought32.condensed matter of such quality through the flame had not been in his thoughts at all. Slowly he had leafed through the delicate sheets that were st.i.tched along one side, studying intently the rows and rows of markings and occasional drawings of other objects equally strange. Some he had recognized-coins, belt buckles, forks; a random sampling of things retrieved by other demons on their journeys through the flame. And for some of these he suddenly had understood their use and meaning from the context in which they were drawn.

Astron nodded his head as he watched. He remembered the electric thrill that had arched down his spine. Who among all of demonkind would have guessed that the cylindrical fingercap guarded a human's fingertip against p.r.i.c.ks from the tiny sword and trailing thread that bound together two pieces of cloth.

There was more merit than mere ma.s.s in an object fetched from beyond the flame, he had realized. There was knowledge as well, knowledge that might be of use to a prince who wished to astound his peers. And with knowledge came stature and regard, even for a djinn without wings or the ability to weave.

"All the artifacts that I possess," he remembered he had said, looking up quickly at the devil at his side. "The web of the spider, the pollen of a flower, everything in exchange for this."

As the trade was made, the image dissolved. When it refocused, Astron recognized a scene of only months ago as measured in the realm of men. He stood in his hood and cloak beside a cottage hearth; only the last embers remained of the evening fire. At a table across the room, a human serving girl stared in Astron's direction, her eyes wide and unblinking, totally under his command.

"What are your instructions, master, while I wait for you to return," she had said.

Astron remembered his hesitation. He knew full well what would happen to her when she was found after his departure. Men professed to feel compa.s.sion, but they dealt with demon possession with a zeal that was hard to33.understand. And she was not a wizard, boldly reaching into the flame to test her will against Astron or his kin. Only by accident had she looked too long into the hypnotic dance of the fire and allowed Astron to pa.s.s through the barrier between the realms.

Elezar would be satisfied enough with what has been learned, Astron had decided. The purpose of the little orb attached to the side of the door had been perfectly explained. None of the other princes would guess that it was to be rotated before being pulled.

"Return to the way you were," Astron had said. "I release you from my control. The prince cannot care about one mind more or less. Besides us, who in the two realms would know?"

The scene began to fade. Astron turned away to face Palodad. "How did you find out?" he asked. "I have told no one of what I did. Indeed, why even bother to record my affairs, rather than the lives of the princes that rule?"

"I have the relevant information on them as well," Palodad said. "Do not prejudge your role in the scheme of things. I am, after all, the one who reckons."

The old demon squinted his good eye at Astron, "The more interesting question is not how, but why. Why did you release the human female when you had no need? Even without wings, one would not expect such behavior from the clutch brother of a splendorous djinn."