The Face in the Frost

2

2

When Roger Bacon woke up the next morning or, rather, the next noon, he felt something more than the usual muggy heat of August days in the South Kingdom. He felt tension in the air, a tension almost audible, the humming of a high-pitched string. He was inclined to blame this feeling on his own nervous nature, so he took a leisurely bath and started down the hall toward the staircase. Prospero's door was open, but he was not in bed. There was no sound down­stairs. Roger tiptoed quietly down the steps, went to the living room, and took a square-headed iron mace down from its hook on the wall. But, when he stepped into the hallway, there was Prospero, standing at the front door, holding the linen curtain aside and peering out of the small square window. Without turning, Prospero spoke:

"Put that silly weapon away and go to the kitchen. There's some bread and marmalade, and I've made some coffee. And, we're surrounded." Roger dropped the mace, which just missed his toe as it fell. "Surrounded? By whom?"

"By whomever or whatever our friend with the book has decided to send against us. Look."

Roger pressed his face against the small square window. Across the road, under a tall thorn hedge, stood three gray figures.

Roger laughed. "Surrounded? By those three?"

"Oh, there are more. There are at least ten more in the forest to the east of us, and I think there are some waiting up the road, toward Brakespeare. Anyway, numbers don't mean anything. Those things are the agents and the work of a man who probably has more power than we have. He is learning how to use that book, and when he has enough strength-or thinks he has-they will close in."

Roger pounded the door in frustration. "Then, why are we having breakfast? Are we going to die gracefully at the table, like gentlemen? Why don't you try something? Between the two of us, we ought to be able to send them back to what's-his-name with their blasted gray robes on fire."

"And, what if we can't? Then, he'll know what he can do. Right now I don't think he's sure. He wouldn't have sent them if he didn't think that I am some kind of threat to him, although right now I would love to know just how I could disturb him." Prospero glanced out the window again and continued. "Even if we do drive them off, we still have him to deal with. I will bet you, Roger, that those things can't do anything until nightfall. So, there is certainly time for breakfast."

Roger kicked the iron mace into the corner and followed Prospero to the kitchen, where they ate a big breakfast of ham, scrambled eggs, bread, and quince marmalade. Prospero seemed amused by Roger's nervousness, and this made the latter more and more cranky.

"Now," said Prospero, pushing back his chair, "you are probably wondering what we are going to do. Come on." He got up and went to the cellar door.

"Are we going to hide?" said Roger. "Oh, good! It's been years since I hid in a nice smelly basement."

Prospero was laughing so hard that he had trouble getting down the stairs. He led Roger to a high rampart of cordwood, which he then began to dismantle.

"Oh, I see," said Roger as he helped him. "We're going to burn the house down. That ought to throw them off."

When all the wood was cleared away, the two wizards were standing before a black door with a porcelain goose-egg knob. A yellowed piece of cardboard, held to the door with a red thumbtack, said "Root Cellar."

"Well, I haven't been in this place for several months," said Prospero. "There's no telling what we'll find." He pushed the door open and a rank sweetish smell of decaying vegetables hit them. In the windowless earth-floored room were shelves into which blackened rutabagas were rotting, Mason jars filled with cloudy green dandelion wine, and bushel baskets of wildly sprouting potatoes. Here and there, the walls were blotched with white and green fungus, and in a corner, cheesy green-spotted toadstools were squat­ting. Prospero calmly began to take the jars off the shelves that lined the short wall opposite the door. Then, he started to lift the shelves from their curlicued iron brackets. Roger was watching him now with delight, for under the dirt and vegetable growth on the wall was the outline of a small arched door.

"Prospero! You never told me about this!"

"I always meant to, but it never seemed all that important. I began to build it quite a few years ago, but I ran into a little trouble. You'll see what I mean. The door, at any rate, is a success. It responds to one of the oldest door spells in the world."

He placed his hands on the door and whispered a few raspy words that sounded like Arabic-actually, they were corrupt Coptic. The door swung inward with a loud screech, and Prospero, ducking his head, stepped inside and motioned for Roger to follow him. A low-ceilinged dirt tunnel with basalt slabs for steps went spiraling down to a smooth stone floor. At the bottom of the stairs, Roger looked at the long vaulted tunnel before him.

"I knew it," he said. "Gothic arches and little carved monster heads. You would."

"Of course," said Prospero, picking up a small tin lantern that hung near the stairs. "Notice the fan vaulting and follow me."

They walked through a tunnel that sloped gently down and took one sharp right-angle turn. Suddenly, the tunnel opened into a natural cave, a domed, stalactite-dripping room with a dark cold stream flowing through it.

"Here," said Prospero, "is our problem. I ran into this and had to stop. There's no stone beyond this point, and the earth behind that wall is very mushy. But, the tunnel that the stream flows through rises four feet above the level of the water."

Roger was getting nervous again. "Are we going to crawl through the water? Do you know where the stream goes?"

Prospero smiled. "I have it on the authority of a talking fish that this stream runs underground for ten miles and then empties into a small lake in the realm of our old friend, King Gorm. You remember him. Well, I think he has a library like the one in Roundcourt, though not so complete. I've never seen it, but it ought to have a copy of the Register, and I want to look up the crest on that bookplate. It's a start, anyway, and there's a possibility that the owner of such an ugly device might have gotten the book back. And, I want to know more about that kindly old fisherman who suddenly volunteers to drown the book for the monk. If the lake isn't stocked with gray ghastlies, we may find something interesting." He looked at Roger, who was still scowling at him. "Oh yes-no, we're not going to crawl. Come upstairs."

Back in the living room, Prospero went to the mantelpiece and took down a small, very accurate-looking ship model. "This," he said, "is what we are going in: the British man-of-war Actaeon, which ran-will run-aground on a sand bar during the siege of Charleston in 1776. Do you know, by the way, that Lord Nelson was hit in the head with a cannon ball at the Battle of the Nile? You pick up the damnedest things from that mirror."

Roger looked pained. " I think," he said, "that I'll go get a glass of hard cider."

Upstairs, later, Roger was in Prospero's room helping him pack into a green plush carpetbag such essentials as tarot cards, extra tobacco, and pocket magic books. The magic mirror, after plaguing the two men with questions, was finally beginning to understand what was going on.

"You mean," it said with a scarcely suppressed giggle, "that you're going to make yourselves ... smaller?"

"Yes," said Prospero, blushing. "What of it?"

The mirror broke into hysterical cackles and began to chant in a falsetto voice:

"I'll wager," said Prospero, "that I have the only mirror that wallows in the trash of future centuries."

Roger was nervously opening and shutting the casement window. "I'm worried." he said. "What do you suppose hell do when he finds we've gone? Will he destroy your house or go down the road and attack the village?"

"I think he will try to find us. He hasn't reached his full strength yet by any means-that is, if the book is as evil as I think it is-and I don't think he'll waste his powers destroying a village or a house out of anger. It has occurred to me that he may not be able to injure my house anyway The hearthstone was laid by Michael Scott, my teacher, and it has many powerful spells on it. He built a good deal of the house, too, and there are still things about it I don't under­stand. Why, there's a cupboard that-oh, the devil! Some other time. I guess I've got everything. Good-by, mirror. I trust you can entertain yourself while we're gone."

"I should hope so. I think I'll scare the wits out of the cleaning lady when she comes. I have a very nice scream."

A little later, downstairs, Prospero wrote a note in black crayon and left it on the kitchen table under a bust of the Emperor Pupienus.

Dear Mrs. Durfey,

Will be gone for an indefinite period. Pay no attention to the mirror if it acts up, and in any case, you know where the harp case is. You can slip it over him when he's not looking. Don't forget to water the trailing arbutus and the creeping Charlie. Change the water in the large onyx water clock; the other one takes care of itself. Help yourself to the cheese and anything else. The Cheshire gets dry and crusty if you don't eat it. With luck, I should be back for the big Christmas party. Say hello to His Lordship the Mayor for me,

Prospero

P.S. Unexplained noises are best left unexplained.

He looked around the house sadly. "I do hate to leave. Oh, well. Are the windows closed,, Roger? Grab your bag and let's get going."

Soon, the secret door had closed behind the two wizards and they had placed the boat in the black water, where it rocked gently, moored by a pair of wispy cords. The ship was close to the low bank, and a rope ladder hung down from the muddy edge to the port side rail. Roger Bacon and Prospero stood looking doubtfully at the tiny craft.

"Well," said Roger, " I don't suppose we can put it off."

"No," said Prospero, "I don't suppose we can."

He thumbed a small book, which looked like a pocket dictionary, until he found the page he wanted.

"All together now:

Roger and Prospero shrank and shrank, until they looked like two odd chess pieces standing by the brown sloping sides of the boat. They made faces at each other, laughed a little, and then climbed aboard.

Inside the low, echoing wet-dirt tunnel, the noise of the rushing water was weirdly magnified and distorted into a hollow tinny roar. A shout or a hand­clap came whanging back at you immediately from a low curving roof. Prospero and Roger, sliding farther and farther into this claustrophobic gloom, stood on the high ornamented poop of their absurd ship and watched the shrinking half moon of light cast by the lantern they had left on the floor of the cave. Two tiny alcohol-burning stern lamps cast a flickering moth-light on the wizards, who now turned to the task of keeping up their spirits until the Actaeon sailed out into the sunny lake.

The ship itself was entertaining, because it was so incredibly detailed: There were gleaming rows of brass cannon, nickel-plated swinging lanterns that worked, and, in the captain's cabin, rows of books, real books, mostly on nautical subjects. Even the purple liquid in the little flattened decanter turned out to be wine. Though they were, if anything, too small for the ship, the wizards still thought of it as tiny, and were endlessly fascinated by the discovery of new details-a cupboard that opened on scrolled brass hinges, a box within the cupboard that held delicate jade-and-ivory chessmen. The wheel of course, worked, and Prospero had roped it down, so that the ship would follow the straight flow of the current. Though all the lamps, lanterns, and candles on board were lit, the sides of the cave could not be seen, and periodic flashes of magic lightning were needed to assure them that the little bobbing toy was still in the middle of the stream.

As the Actaeon sailed on into the noisy darkness, Prospero and Roger heard faintly disquieting sounds: the plip! that might be a clot of earth falling from the ceiling into the water, the splop! that probably was a small water animal sliding off some unseen shore into the stream. And, there was another sound, one which was harder to single out from the others and define: It was only a little different from the normal rushing-water sound, yet it was there-a hissing and foaming that was getting more and more distinct. At first, Prospero thought "Rapids!" and shivered. But, it was the sound of water flowing through something, not over it. He got up from the powder keg on which he had been sitting and motioned to Roger, who was up on the quarterdeck, trying to compute the speed of the ship. Together, they went to the forecastle and stood peering into the blackness ahead. The little swinging lamps that hung near them were not much help, so Prospero and Roger struck their staffs together-a bright red light, dripping like a fireworks flare, hung around them for a few minutes, and by that garish light, they saw a mesh of some kind strung across their path. It was held by a rigid black square frame that was awkwardly jammed into the tunnels rough walls at a point where the opening was lower and narrower than usual.

Prospero and Roger struggled with the capstan, but the anchor was either decorative or stuck. The ship drifted on, yawing a little in the current, until it bumped-more gently than Prospero had hoped-against the strange wall. Prospero set off another flare and suddenly realized what the obstruction was: It was a window screen. His window screen. He saw the place where he had scratched with a nail "Bedroom SE Corner," and he remembered the theft, the broken cellar window of three years before. Roger stared at him with understanding and fear.

The ship bumped against the screen, and the water shed through a thousand tiny openings. As Prosperos eyes got used to the dark, he saw that there was a little ledge nearby on one side of the tunnel. And behind it was the deep blackness of a cave. Now, from the cave came a scrabbling, grunting clumping sound, and out of the ragged opening crawled a hairy, angular shape. Two red eyes glowed in the darkness. Prospero could have lit the tunnel for a better look, but the magic was not endless, and anyway, he knew what the thing was. So did Roger, who gripped his own staff tightly.

And now, a sneering gritty voice:

"Well, well. I hear this noise, so I says to myself-fresh fish! But, it ain't, it's a couple of little men in a toy boat!"

Prospero leaned over the side and shouted: "We are wizards, troll! And, if you don't let us through, this thing we'll turn you into a rock at the bottom of this stinking, filthy, sloppy stream!"

The troll snickered, a nasal snortling sound. "If you're wizards, you can blast your own hole in my screen, can't you? But, you ain't done it because you can't. So, I think I'll have some nice stewed wizard, or wizard dumplings, or"-here he held up the tiny white bones of some animal and rattled them-"wizard gizzard!"

"Troll," said Prospero quietly, with both hands on the rail, "I am going to turn you into lead. A few centuries from now someone will find you and use you for a lawn ornament!"

"Oh, shut up, you mouthy little bug!" said the troll. "I'm going to watch you a few minutes, and then-" He twisted his hands as if he was wringing out a cloth.

Prospero closed his eyes and tried to think. He had been reading about trolls the night Roger came, but now he could think of nothing that would help him. He couldn't even grapple physically with the troll, since the spell that made the two men smaller lasted till sunset, which was at 8 P.M. that day. His watch said five. Picking up his staff and throwing it down in anger, he turned to Roger, but Roger was gone.

"All right," said the troll, lowering his webby feet into the water, "you two ain't no fun no more. You'll probably taste like water rats, but ..."

A hatch clattered behind Prospero and Roger reappeared, carrying a length of rope from which a four-pronged grappling hook hung. Standing a little back from the rail, Roger whirled the grapnel whistling around his head, and then he let it go. The hook raked the screen but fell into the water, and Roger quickly started to reel it in.

The troll was still sitting on the muddy bank, his feet in the sloshing water.

"This is more like it," he said. He clapped his hands, and when he pulled them apart they went thock like suction cups. "Climb to the top and fall over, and then I can rescue you!"

Roger threw the grapnel again, and this time the pronged iron went chunk! into the screen-two spurs were wedged tight. Now, Roger whipped the rope around the mainmast and started to pull. Prospero suddenly saw what was going on, and in a second, he was pulling too. A large ragged piece of the screen ripped out, crumbling as it fell and spattering the deck with red flakes of rust. The troll stood up and started to stoop forward, but Prospero gathered all his strength and blacked out the tunnel. For several minutes, the place was absolutely dark-it was filled with thick, palpable, gross darkness, and while the murk lasted, the little boat slipped through the hole. One scuttering wire scraped the bottom of the hull from one end to the other, and for a sickening instant, the boat slowed. But then, it bobbed through, wallowed sideways in the current for a bit, and straightened out to steer its course down the middle of the fast-flowing stream. The troll still held his eyes and screeched, for he thought he had been struck blind. Roger and Prospero were far downstream when the lights went on again.