The Face in the Frost

11

11

On Christmas Eve, a screeching ice storm swept through the countryside around Brakespeare, and the next afternoon the trees of Prosperous forest jingled and flashed like chandeliers in the light of a small cold sun. In the back yard, the mayor, his chain of office hanging over one arm like a priest's maniple, was trying out his new pearl-and-ivory inlaid crossbow on some red-feathered popinjays that swayed on the tops of tall wooden poles. He was not having much luck, since in the course of the previous three-day party, he had found Prospero's stock of carnation brandy. In the living room, the innkeeper of the Running Hog and Emperors Elbow was mixing a slate-colored drink called Bishops Disgust in a beer bar­rel that had been full the day before. King Gorm, dressed in a white cassock with a powder-blue cummerbund, sat in a corner reading the Krankenhammer. Villagers hefting double-handled beer mugs occasionally stopped in front of him and bowed uncertainly. In a back room, the plant-raising monk looked like a cartoonists Laocoon, because he was trying to break up a fight between his Sensitive Anaconda and Prosperous Creeping Charlie. On the cupola of the observatory, the hippopotamus, painted a tasteful red and green, huffed out an asthmatic "We Three Kings."

Prospero and Roger were in the back yard with the mayor, and they were throwing snowballs at the thickly glazed satyr, whose ears sprouted huge ice trumpets. Roger had arrived in mid-November, driving the black box carriage,-he brought with him the plant monk, Prospero's bag and staff, and enough stories about what had happened to him up north to fill all the evenings before Christmas. Prospero's powers had returned. When he grew tired of throwing snowballs, he ran around the yard touching the forsythia bushes, which burst crackling from their ice shells, shot forth pasty yellow flowers, and quacked out the shawm music Josquin des Pres had composed for the coronation of Louis XII.

Finally, toward evening, everyone went home, even the mayor, who had stripped the gears on his crossbows windlass. Prospero stood at the snow-rounded front gate wishing the Lord Mayor a Merry Christmas, while Roger swept bro­ken bottles and things past the sleeping Gorm, who was staying the night whether he knew it or not. Suddenly, from an upstairs window, came a horrible retching sound. Only the mirror could make such noises at such a volume. Prospero looked quickly at the lighted bedroom window, and turned to the mayor.

"You'll have to excuse me, sir, but I think somethings wrong upstairs. It's the mirror."

The mayor stared at him sluggishly from brandied eyeballs. "Do mirrors drink?"

"Some do. Here, take this bottle, there's a little left. Good-by again and Merry Christmas."

Prospero rushed inside and, with an amused glance at the snoring Gorm, ran upstairs. The mirror's cranky voice could be heard all over the house.

"Akkkk! Hcchh-ptui-phoo! Well, how would you like it if people came traips­ing across your tongue all the time? In smelly carpet slippers?"

There in front of the mirror stood Roger, and beside him, stood somebody else. The small bearded man in the skullcap, who was brushing mirror mica off his sleeves. He tipped his cap to everyone, including the mirror, which bent a gold leaf of its frame at him in grouchy acknowledgment. "Am I too late, gentlemen? You both look pretty worn out."

"Not all that worn out, Mr. Millhorn," said Prospero. "This is Roger Bacon, and I've told him all about you. Let's go down to the kitchen. I want to make some coffee, but theres a cyanide bottle full of Holland gin on my laboratory shelf, unless someone got desperate and drank it."

"I want to go too," said the mirror. "I'll hold my breath if I don't get to go." "Oh, all right," said Prospero. "Help me carry this thing, Roger. The last time it held its breath we got two hours of 'Overhead the Moon Is Screaming' and bagpipes playing Gregorian chants."

The mirror, which had been made to feel quite important in the last three days-everyone had gone upstairs to look at it and ask it questions-hummed contentedly as the little procession made its way down to the kitchen. They set it on a chair drawn up to the big white table, and Prospero started to grind up some coffee beans. As he turned the ornate handle of the big walnut grinder, he talked with the other two men.

"Now, Mr. Millhorn. You will hear later what happened to me-the whole thing, before and after I met you-because I insist on your staying several days. Bed and breakfast, you know. But, I'm not sure what or who I defeated."

"Neither am I," said Millhorn, "but I'll tell you what happened. We fought for a solid hour. I've never met a magician that strong, and if he had known any­thing about the Kabbala, we might not be sitting here now. In any case, the local farmers must have thought it was a winter thunderstorm, the way we carried on. Funny thing, though, and you'll have to tell me more about that man. I knew you both were coming, of course. I've known for years through specular stones and certain dark hints in my books, and through dreams. But-"

"Get back to what you were saying," said Prospero, who had stopped turning the grinder. "What do you mean by 'funny thing'?"

"I was getting to that. Well, his mind had a way of coming... unfocused. That's the only way I can put it. I could feel the force of his spells bursting around me or rushing past me, and once or twice I came close to being destroyed. But, his concentration wavered and never built up into the kind of power I knew he could wield. It's a harrowing feeling to face someone you know can kill you if he puts his mind to it. But, he didn't put his mind to it. He kept going back to something else that had nothing to do with me. Finally, I hit him with a thing I'd never had the courage to use before. Its a long chant, and if you don't get it all out in one breath, it turns on you. A huge red pentacle appeared in the air with an Aleph in the middle of it, and when it burst, I was knocked down. When I got up, the light was gone. His light, that is, since I never saw any more of him than that yellow lantern glowing at the bottom of the stairs. I clumped out through the snow and found a book lying on the steps. It was open to the last page, and I don't mind telling you I couldn't read a blessed word. At the bottom, though, where the colophon usually is in old books, there was something you would have recognized. Four dolphins in the shape of a cross, the sign of the four elementals, the spirits who were chained centuries ago by wizards whose names are not even known anymore. As I stood looking at it, the book appeared to be... well... reading itself. The letters glowed, one after another, and the book gave off such a heat that I couldn't get near it. Then, all of a sudden, it crumpled into a black ball of ashes and sank into the snow. Something was over, and you'll have to tell me what."

He stopped, took a long drink of gin, and went on.

"I do, however, have an idea of what happened to the sorcerer. There is a stone marker, a leaning thing with letters up and down the sides. Its at the crossroads near my house, and it wasn't there before. If you stand next to it, you have the feeling that someone is looking at you.

Prospero looked sadly at him. "Yes, I think you're right. You see, the globes always showed..."

He was interrupted by a sound like a two-man saw biting into a tree full of nails. The mirror was asleep.