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"Where, exactly, is the redoubt?"
"Ahead, beyond the rim of crags up there where the blown snow hangs like
roof-eaves. Dug into rock that has seen no sunlight in a hundred times my own
life's span. As for the entrance, ask Ameling."
The maimed plainswoman had said little all day, merely cautioning them about
weak ice, where glassy patches of luminous blue-green marked immense hollows
below from whose slick, cold embrace no one could escape if he broke through
their treacherous crusts. Now, she pointed to the valley wall, just below the
low-hanging afternoon sun. "We must climb. There's a trail, and spikes driven
into the wall.
We can be atop the ridge by nightfall."
"And then?" Achibol asked. "How far will we be from the hermit and his cave?"
"We'll be there."
"Then we'll camp below tonight, and climb in the morning."
"There's no dry place! Our blankets will become dank, and we'll freeze."
Achibol waved his talisman. "I've been monitoring the radiation," he said.
"The hidden fires which burned you emanate from a place on the cliff top. My
companions and I have to pass through them, but there's no reason to sleep
among the invisible flames. For that matter, there's no reason for you to make
the climb another dose will kill you."
"Do I care? My fate is in my hands, not yours, and I don't expect to return to
the valley floor again."
Knowing the constant suffering she endured, the pain and nausea that never
waned, the mage made no effort to change her mind. "Then we'll camp below for
our own sakes, and perhaps avoid your fate."
Ameling approved his callous decision. "Your mission is of great import to all
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men, even beyond the
Edge of the World."
"What do you know of our quest, Ameling?"
"What my heart tells me. You're much like the Immortal Fool, though neither
mad nor immortal yourself, I suspect."
"Tell me about him," Achibol urged.
"He's smaller than you, like a child, but with no hair atop his head though
he's not lost his eyebrows as
I have. His brows are as white as fresh snow and as bushy as the beard that
covers his chest. And . . . he has a magical box like yours, though his is
dead."
"Then he's Yasha!" Achibol's eyes went wide, and his talisman dangled
unnoticed, scant inches above the snow.
"He calls himself that," Ameling cried. "I knew you were the ones his
reinforcements!
Achibol's hand rose to clutch at his chest. "A seat, boy! Set your pack
beneath me, for I must rest."
Benadek hurried to comply, his face registering his concern. "Master? Are you
ill? What must I do?"
"Nothing, boy, nothing." Achibol's face was several shades lighter than usual,
an ugly ocherous color, and he shook as if in the grip of a terrible ague.
Sweat glistened on his wrinkled brow in spite of the damp wind off the ice
above. His breathing echoed with a high, metallic whine. "It's the shock of
hearing that my colleague still lives. I'll recover enough to go on, never
fear."
Benadek seemed not to hear, as if listening to sounds beyond the range of
ordinary human ears.
Kneeling on the slick ice before his master, he laid his hands on the old
man's. "You have many secrets, Master Achibol, Sorcerer, Scrivener, and
Charlatan. I, as your apprentice, have been privy to some. But before we go
one step further, there must be one less secret between us." Though his
features were as boyish as ever, Benadek's expression was as stern and old as
Achibol's at its most severe. The boy's dark irises thinned and his pupils
expanded in spite of glaring ice all about. They seemed ready to absorb every
nuance read from the oldster's eyes, locked now to his own. "What are you,
Master?" Benadek asked, unblinking. "You're less human than Dispucket. Are you
a machine like Circe?"
Achibol did not answer immediately. Slowly, blood suffused his face and his
yellowed skin darkened toward its normal shade. His breath came more easily,
without the eerie whine of moments before. He grinned, a prankish, sinister
expression that Benadek remembered all too well . . . It seemed so very long
ago that the mage had stood in an alley, grinning just like that, blocking his
escape and holding a shining gold coin in his outstretched hand.
He remembered, too, mischief in Achibol's eye as he drew a tiny vial from his
voluminous trunk.
"Androsterone Five," he had said. "Just the thing for a night on the town."
"I'll give you enlightenment," the mage had said on still another occasion,
"Dispucket awaits you . . .
Spread wide your arms and hug him . . ." Oh yes. Benadek remembered. That
chill wind from the depths of his own memory made him shudder spastically.
"You know what I am, boy. You discovered it in Circe's archives . . . but now
I'll show you." Never taking his eyes from his apprentice, Achibol lifted his
hand to his face and laid a gnarled finger just below his right eye. "See now
how I look at the world, apprentice," he rasped, and Benadek stared. Slowly,
as if drawn aside by some vision of infinite attractiveness, Achibol's eye
turned to the outside. Further and further it rotated, while his left one
remained fixed on Benadek's face. Red blood vessels appeared on the nasal
margin as the dark iris buried itself on the other side . . . and the eye
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rotated further.
The sorcerer's eye seemed about to reverse itself in the socket, to reveal the
tattered, twitching ends of muscles ripped free by the unnatural movement, but
. . . beyond the white surface, past the red-veined perimeter, Benadek saw a
sharply defined, metallic edge! As Achibol's human eye disappeared entirely
into the folds of his face, the reverse surface was revealed, a steely orb
which stopped with its tiny red-glowing pinhole aligned with the bridge of
Benadek's nose.
"You've seen the red glow of my eye before, haven't you? Though I've tried to
conceal it? Was it magic, did you think, that you failed to investigate
further? How long since you ceased believing in magic, boy?
And how long since you thrust this particular mystery aside, unanswered? What
have I failed to teach you that you discover only now, through one mechanical
system's momentary failure, that such systems exist?"
Achibol's eyes, flesh and metal, remained fixed on Benadek.
"You've accepted my immortality, haven't you? You even discovered the
techniques but didn't you wonder where the precipitators and filters were? Did
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