The Face in the Frost

7

7

On his way again, Prospero crossed ridge after ridge of uninteresting country: a cattle pond here, a clump of Scotch pines there-just enough variation for boredom. He was beginning to feel that this was a pointless, hopeless journey. The situation, the problem that faced him, was getting clearer in his mind, and the clearer it got, the more hopeless he felt. Without Roger, he was lost.

After half a day of walking, something happened that made him strangely hopeful He found a sign, a fairly new sign, that said FIVE DIALS: THIRTY MILES. So, there was a town with that name, after all. He walked the rest of the day, stopped to build a fire in a little circle of pines, and slept a full nine hours. The next morning, after coffee, bread, and cheese, he went on, feeling much better.

Five Dials, it turned out, was not a town at all, but a lonely inn wedged under a yellow limestone bank, a last friendly stop before you reached the Brown River and the treeless empty moors of the North Kingdom, A man by the name of Clockwarden had been here first, in the barn-shaped house that was still the center of the collection of different-sized, plugged-together buildings that made up the Five Dials Inn. Clockwarden may not have been his real name, since that was his job. On the cliff over the inn stood a crenelated clock tower, built some two hundred years before the time of this story; it was the hobby work of some local prince, and it had had, when new, four brightly painted wooden dials with keyhole-shaped windows cut in them. Through these, you could see moons and suns rising and setting-not that they ever told you anything about moonrise, sunrise, or the tides. The fifth dial was a sundial on the flat top of the tower; it was used to set the clock, which had only hour hands. After the prince who built the clock died, his successors let the thing run down and dismissed the warden. They tore off the bronze hands and made them into spearheads,– the lead weights were thrown off a castle wall in some forgotten siege.

Two days after his escape from Five Dials, Prospero stood on Clocktower Hill, looking up at warped, bleached, saucer-shaped faces that still had a few flaking Roman numerals. Inside, the works were full of birds' nests-empty at this time of year-and in some places, small skeletons were caught in cogs, because playing children or a strong wind had started the rope-and-stone pendulum and the big square-toothed wooden wheels. From the Clocktower Hill, you could see, to the north, a valley of little jigsaw-puzzle fields cut up by bunchy and badly trimmed hedgerows. Beyond the fields was a curving fence of tall feather-shaped trees that marked the course of the Brown Rivet; the border between the North and South kingdoms. The road that ran past the inn must meet a bridge at that point, It was near sunset, and Prospero watched for a while as a stone-blue point of cloud, rising out of a thick curded mass, cut the red sun in two. Suppertime at the inn. Two maple trees grew at the western edge of the low cliff and marked the place where the stone steps led down to the side yard of the inn, As Prospero passed between the trees, a little breeze started and a leaf scraped his cheek. He felt a sharp pain and blood wet his face. Reaching up carefully and staring hard at the dark moving leaves, he broke one off at the stem and held it up in the light, it was not hard-it was unpleasantly soft and furry feeling, like a caterpillar. Its edges and veins were gray, and it had turned a dark red. With a nervous look over his shoulder, Prospero hurried down the steps.

Inside the inn was a pleasant reeky disorder, with a gong like whanging of kettles, loud talk, and some shouting. This place seemed real enough. The tables had pipe-ash burns and interlaced bottle marks; the mantel was crowded with smudged mustard jars, dirty boot-shaped leather pitchers, and speckled china jam pots. Bent and tarnished spoons stood upright in some thick green stuff that dripped over the edges of dirty white porcelain bowls. Lifting his bag over the heads of ducking customers, Prospero squeezed through the tables and found the innkeeper. He wanted a glass of wine before supper, and he had heard-all the way back in Brakespeare-that the cellars of the border inns were very good, especially for port and sherry. "Go on down and help yourself," said the fat blue-aproned man. "Here's a glass. You won't need a candle; the place is all lit up. Don't drink too much, ha ha."

"I won't, ha ha," said Prospero to himself, and he started down the stairs.

In the cellar, rows of splintery tarred barrels ran off into the vaulted alleys,-here and there, lumpy starfish-shaped grease lamps gave off a smudge pot stink and precious little light. Prospero looked around and saw a man in a brown robe bent over a little low barrel. He was turning the spigot and drawing off a thick brown fluid that was probably sherry. Prospero stood watching him from a distance, and the man started to talk in a creaky old-geezer voice. It was not clear if he was talking to himself, but he gave no sign that he knew the other man was there.

"Ye-es, this is proper Snake Year sherry, it is. I've got the right barrel. Snake Year, ye say? Thaat's right, thaat's right. Seems they was a plague of adders several years ago. Well, they come down off of that Clock Hill lookin' for a cold dark place, and they filled this cellar up to the gunnels. Right up to the roof beams. Wrigglin' and squirmin' like anything. Well, old whatsisname come down here in a suit of armor he borrowed up the road, and he laid around with a broadsword till they was all dead. Well, then they aired out the cellar 'n' carted out the segments, or figments if ye please"-here he broke down into shaking silent laughter and hit his head several times against the barrel rim-"but it took 'em a long time to get this funny smell out. They finally did, most of it, but this here barrel, if ye pop out the bung, still smells bracky That's because a lady adder set down some eggs in here. She squirmed in the spigot and she squirmed out again. Now, they ain't many that likes this barrel, but I claim the taste is special."

All the while that this strange old man was talking. Prospero was walking toward him through the rows of kegs. Now, he stood directly behind the stooping hooded figure.

"Are you serious?" said Prospero. "About that?"

"I am," said the old man. "Here-try some!" He screeched these last words, straightened up suddenly, and shoved the slopping mug in Prospero's face. The wizards reaction was automatic, as if he had had a dead rat thrown in his lap. He jerked back, swung his arm, and batted the mug across the room. It bounced on kegs with a dull tunk-tunk, spewing brown wine everywhere, Prospero stood staring at the old man, who was Roger Bacon.

"Oh, good grief! Roger, if you ever do that again, I'll make you drink real snake wine, it's a very simple formula, you just..." Now, he was crying, with his arms around the red-bearded man.

"Roger, how did you know I'd be here? How did you know I'd come down here?"

"I was watching you from the top of that ridiculous tower. Did you think I was the gnomon, in the shape of Father Time?"

"I didn't see you."

"Well, I saw you miles off. I went to Briar Hill and saw your mark in the guest book, f didn't know where you'd go after that, but I went north for reasons of my own, and figured you'd come for the same reasons."

"Don't be mysterious," said Prospero. "What reasons? And, how did you happen to go to Briar Hill? And, what happened..."

"Better not to talk down here," said Roger, staring around at the barrels. "Let's get a back parlor with a nice thick door on it. We can take turns talking."

The two of them sat, later in the evening, at a scallop-edged wooden table on which four gray squares of bright moonlight lay. In the corner, a little fire of pine chunks burned behind a thick iron grate pierced with quatrefoils. On the table were two greasy tin plates, a couple of half-full mugs of cider, and a squashed-down tallow candle in a green copper dish. A brass cylinder marked "Salt" held thick peeling cigars-the innkeeper rolled them himself-and Prospero lit one from the candle. Roger was trying to fight a bulbous black pipe that looked like an avocado on a stick. Smoke, swirling in graceful slow strands, drifted toward the fieldstone chimney.

"All right," said Prospero. "You go first. What happened?"

"Well," said Roger, "I was sitting on the stump, smoking, just as I am now, and the first odd thing I noticed was the Hall of Records. It looked strange, as if the moon were shining on it and not on anything else. It should have been in shadow, with those oak trees and pines all around, and besides, it must have been overcast. But, I didn't think of that. I stared at the door, and then it opened, and you-or someone I thought was you-came out. You walked up to me and grabbed my arm, and your hand seemed to be made out of frozen sticks. 'Come on,' you said. 'We've got to get away from here.' So, I followed you off into the forest, and when we were deep inside, you shriveled with a sound like several voices holding the same dead note. All that was left was a log made of ashes-as if a piece of wood had burned all the way through while keeping its original shape. I didn't know what to do. At first, I thought that the wizard with the book had finally got you; I wept, raged, and beat on trees with my fists. When I was exhausted, I realized that I was lost. I had left my compass in my bag, which was back at the stump with my staff. So, I sat under a big ugly elm all night, and in the morning, I found my way back to the Hall. My bag and staff had been pulled into some brambles, and you, of course, were gone, I went in and read the passage in the Register. It wasn't hard to find, because you had propped the book open."

"What did you think when you read it?" Prospero was staring at him with a pained smile.

"I was surprised to see Melichus' name. It looks as though he was the foreigner who took the book from the monk at Glastonbury. If the Register is right, Melichus deserved his death."

"He's not dead."

Roger dropped the avocado pipe into the tin plate, making a sound that startled both of them. He looked at Prospero's long moonlit face as if he might be another ghost, or Melichus himself.

Prospero knew what Roger was thinking, and he started to laugh. "No, I'm not Melichus or a log traveling incognito. But, he is alive."

"I didn't really think you were he," said Roger, blushing a little. "But, how did he escape from that blazing forest?"

"He never was in it. Go on, though. Why did you go to Briar Hill if you thought Melichus was dead?'"

"I thought some assistant might have taken the book after the mob..."

"You're close," said Prospero.

"I can see you have your revelations," said Roger. "Anyway, I went to Briar Hill, but it took me about two days because I got on the wrong road. Did you know that I left my map-book on your kitchen table? Mrs. Durfey is probably using it to wrap sandwiches in. Where was I? Oh yes. I got to Briar Hill and found your mark at the Gorgon's Head. Nicholas Archer indeed. I could have done better. Why not say you were Bishop Lanfranc?"

"I left my miter in the closet," said Prospero. "Go on."

"Well, I paid my bill at the inn and went to the ruins of Melichus' cottage to see what I could see, and I spent several hours poking around among rot­ten timbers and broken glass. The floor had fallen through, and I could see there was a basement, so I went down-the steps are still there-and I found a door under some half-burned boards. Just a door, not hidden like the one in your root cellar, but for the same purpose, I doubt if the villagers have noticed it, because they probably haven't touched the place, except to paint curses on the walls. At any rate, the door opened into a tunnel. Not a vaulted and decorated one like yours, but a low muddy thing with roots sticking through the ceiling. You have to go all the way down bent over. After a little while, I saw light, but not daylight. Thin moonlight, wavery, like northern lights. Remember, this was no later than four in the afternoon. I came out into a little grove of trees by a pond. It was winter. Black ice with little animals frozen into it just below the surface. From their look, they had been trying to get out. Trees bent over to the ground by ice, and overhead, in a flat black sky, a featureless moon. I stood there by the edge of the pond for quite some time, and then, I heard a thin little crack at the far end. I saw a jagged pencil line start in the ice. It ran-and ran is the right word-across the pond, swerving a little, but headed for me, Before it got to the bank where I had been standing, I was halfway up the tunnel. I don't think anyone can reach that place without going through that passage."

"I'll be happy if I never find it," said Prospero, and he looked out the window at the rising moon, which, fortunately, had a face. "What did you do after that?"

"I decided to spend another night at the inn, and that is what convinced me that I ought to go north. At first, the people at the inn were a little scared of me. I gather you gave them some kind of fright. But, they decided that I was a monk, and that I had come to exorcize the cottage, so everything went well. That is, they talked to me in the common room that night. But, the talk was not comfortable. There were several travelers there from the north, and they were convinced that witches were at work in their towns. What worried me most was the kind of story they told. Not the usual things of wells being poisoned, toads found in beds, ghosts rapping at windows. They talked about signboards creaking in the wind, trees casting odd shadows, dark cellar-ways that used to scare only children. And, cloaks fluttering, and moths brushing faces in dark rooms. I tried to sleep that night, but I couldn't, so I packed up, left a few coins on the bed-not in the fireplace-and headed north. I was given a ride by a hay wagon, and got ahead of you that way, I guess. But, even then you must have stopped along the way."

"Yes," said Prospero. "I was detained. Let me tell you about it."

Without any of his usual storytellers flair, Prospero told Roger what had happened: the feverish night in the Hall of Records, the stone and the fire, and the marks on his door at the Gorgon's Head. He gave a short and very reticent description of what had happened in the Empty Forest, and an account of the Five Dials incident that was very vague, so vague that Roger had to keep asking him questions about his experience. After Prospero had finished, he went over to the fire and started poking it.

"So, Melichus has the book," said Roger. "And, he sent his apprentice out to face the mob while he got out the back way."

"Yes," said Prospero, with his back to Roger. "And now, we know why he wants to kill me."

"We do? If you do, tell me, for heaven's sake!"

Prospero looked very surprised when he turned around. "You mean to say that I never told you? I thought of it immediately when I saw Melichus' name in the Register. That's why I had to find out if he was alive."

"Tell me," said Roger, exasperated, "or do I have to put you to the Inquisitorial Question?"

"I'm sorry," said Prospero, smiling, "I didn't mean to be so suspenseful. It's the green-glass paperweight."

Roger stared. "I know sorcerers aren't supposed to be ignorant, but what is the green-glass paperweight?"

Prospero sat down. "It all started when Melichus and I were learning magic from Michael Scott. You knew that, didn't you?"

"Yes, yes. Don't be sarcastic."

"Well, before we could be initiated into the order, we had to spend several months living together in a lonely valley in the mountains up north. We lived in a cottage that is still there, as far as I know, though I haven't visited the place since we left all those years ago. I imagine there's a whole village up there now. The grass is good for sheep. At any rate, our final task was to make something together, some little magic object put together by our combined powers. It wasn't easy working with Melichus, and we quarreled several times before we finished, He always enjoyed doing things by himself, and as soon as we were through, he left with a 'Well, that's over!' look at me. I never saw him again."

"What did you make?"

"We made a little green-glass thing. I usually think of it as a paperweight, because that's what I'd use it for if I had it at home. I dream about it some­times. It is made of four transparent green globes. Three of them always show snow falling in some desolate and, to my mind, sinister little place. Neither of us knew where it was. A road crossing with high banks, bare trees, and a leaning stone marker at the place where the roads meet. It always looked, or rather felt, as though someone were about to come up one of the roads. But, no one ever did. The fourth globe could be used as a conventional seeing glass, though it showed only places that you knew about or had visited Melichus lost interest in it almost as soon as we had finished it."

"Why didn't you take it with you? Competition wouldn't hurt that insufferable mirror of yours."

"I couldn't take it, and neither could Melichus. The night before we were to put the final spell on it, we both dreamed the same dream. In it, we were told that the thing could not be taken from the house unless the two of us took it together, each actually touching it with his hand. And then, we could never let it go if we wanted to keep it. It would be like being chained together. Neither of us knows-unless he has found out somehow-what would happen if one of us tried to take it away."

"What would happen if one of you died?"

"The other would get the thing. He could take it away, if he felt like going all the way up into the mountains of the North Kingdom for what may be only a magician's toy. But,, I'm sure he doesn't think it's just a toy, and I don't either. I told you that I dream about it. And, sometimes when I'm traveling in the winter, I come to a place that looks a lot like the one in the glasses. I get the strangest feeling, and I wait a moment to see if something will happen. Nothing does, but the feeling is very odd."

"I still don't see," said Roger, "why he would want to kill you because of that thing."

Prospero looked nervously out the window, as if he expected to see Melichus coming up the moonlit road toward the inn.

"Think," he said, "of all the years-fifty now-that he has been learning to use that terrible book. Think of the things he must have done. It has meant giving up all the rest of his life, anything else that he might have been doing before he started to decipher those words. And, he's alone. I'm almost certain he has no human help now. He has those things he has sent to terrify me, but I doubt if they are much company. If anyone had a share in what he was doing, he would be afraid that the sharer would try to steal the book, or burn it, or use it against him. Well, I have a share in his power, through that little piece of glass, the magic object that I might be able to use against him. I might be able to wipe out all his work. The idea of it must make his thoughts murderous."

"Why didn't he kill you at the Hall, then?"

"I don't think he could, yet. The cloak, the moth, and those things in gray might have scared me to death, but I'm sure now that they couldn't have hurt me. Or, you. The painted stone and the fire are black magic, as you well know. Good old-fashioned black magic. But, I am still strong enough to undo spells. Some spells. The 'village' of Five Dials was beyond my powers."

"He may have given up on you for the time being," said Roger. "From what I heard at Briar Hill, he must be going on with his original plans. We can hope that he has lost track of you."

"I hope so. We've got to get to that cottage, though I can imagine what he has waiting for us there. He is getting terribly strong. Have you ever seen anything like this?"

Prospero reached carefully into his pocket and brought out the gray-veined maple leaf. It lay there for a few seconds in the candlelight, and then, it started to crawl like a worm, humping in the middle and then straightening out. Roger grabbed it and held it in the flame, where it twisted and blackened into a sticky tar lump. He walked across the room and threw the thing into the fire.

"I've seen those trees on the hill," he said. "And, I've seen more on the road. All the trees are beginning to turn, and it's only the first of September. It's cold, too, for this time of year. I think we had better get started tomorrow."

In his room, a tilting, hump-floored box in the second-story overhang, Prospero stood by the window while the warming pan was heating his sheets. His hand scraped against a crusty iron bracket that held an old prayer book, Something for those guests with night fears. The book, by now a foxed clump of loose leaves, was held together by a piece of cloth tied around the middle.

Prospero pulled loose the bowknot and turned over the pages. He knew all the prayers, and he knew that most of them were useless unless you knew the right place to put the stresses and what the notes of the chant should be. A real magician could shake the walls with some of them. With a quick push, Prospero unstuck the little window. Down below, the road ran past the front door of the inn. He chose the famous prayer that contains the phrase "negotium perambulans in tenebris," and he began to sing it in a loud voice, rising to held high notes at the middle and the end of each line. He got his answer. Out of the dark willow thicket opposite the inn a little cloud of dead leaves flew. They spun a dusty whirlwind in the middle of the road, until one shot up at Prospero's open window. His hand was on the latch, and the slamming of the black wooden frame was instantly followed by a splat. The leaf slid down the window, streaking it with the wet sticky gobs of an insect's innards.