The Face in the Frost

by John Bellairs

  "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.

  8

  8

  Around two in the morning, Prospero woke up, and his feet were on the cold floor before he knew what had awakened him. Downstairs, someone was pounding on the big front door. They were heavy resonant blows, not made with a fist, but with something harder, like the butt end of a sword. Resisting the urge to throw open the window and shout insults, Prospero got up and looked through the glass. He had been about to light a candle, but he put it down now and opened the window slowly, so that he could hear what was being said. There were soldiers down there, mail-shirted pike men in rusty soup-plate helmets. They carried saw-toothed bills, blunt-ended broadswords, maces, and battle-axes. Even in the waning moonlight, Prospero could see that their equipment was dirty and corroded; some of the pike points were cockeyed, and only half of the men-there were fifty altogether that he could see-wore coats of arms of any kind. Those that did had the badly sewn-on emblems of some local ruler, a shield with three Greek crosses and a hatchet. Now, there was a scraping of bolts as the innkeeper opened up. The man who had been doing the pounding-Prospero could not see him because of the overhang-shouted.

  "All right, men! Come on in. A few drinks and then we've got work!"

  The pike men, some of them hawking and spitting loudly, clattered in after their leader. Outside Prospero's door, there was a small staircase that led down to a dark pantry full of brackish-smelling empty barrels. The wooden partition of the service window was slid back just a bit, and through it, Prospero saw the stamping grouchy soldiers sloshing beer from stoneware jugs into their tankards. The leader was dumping coins into the cupped hands of the sleepy-eyed innkeeper, who asked what was going on.

  "We're going over to the north to burn that town... Bow... what's its name?"

  "Bishops Bowes," said the innkeeper. "Why are you doing this?"

  "We've finally figured out what's going on. Town's full of evil people. Witches. I have an order here from Duke Harald to burn it to the ground. Here, look at it. Not that you have anything to say in this."

  He unrolled a long parchment that trailed lead and yellow wax seals on twisted strings of skin, The signature, a cross with a letter on each point, was so large that it covered a quarter of the page.

  "They deserve it, too," the leader went on. "You've seen the things. Half the people in Wellfont are afraid to go down into their own cellars. Shadows moving, screams from kettles when there isn't any fire. Well, a little fire'll teach em. A couple of my men are out getting wood for torches. Do you have any pitch?"

  "In the basement. I use it on the roof."

  "That's fine. We're going to use it on the roof too." He laughed, spitting flecks of brown beer on the muddy floor.

  Prospero did not wait any longer. He climbed the steep stairs quietly hands on the dark steps in front of him, and soon, he was shaking Roger awake.

  "Come on. They're going to burn the village. How far is Bishops Bowes?"

  Roger sat up. "Uh? Hah? Bishops Bowes? Five miles. There's a bridge; that's why it's called Bishops Bowes. 'Bowes' are the arches of a bridge. Wait till
I get dressed."

  In a few minutes, the two wizards were opening one of the several side doors of the inn. A cold beaded lamp on a curved hook hung over them, and a few late fall insects clung to the mottled glass. Each man could see how nervous the other looked.

  "Well," said Prospero, whispering, "have we got everything?"

  "I thing so. Let's hope those louts stay here for a while. We will have to walk fast."

  And, they did walk fast. For old men, Roger and Prospero could really travel on foot if they had to, and before long, the noisy inn with its clattering cans and torchlight was far behind. In a rising wind that thrashed the nearby bare bushes by the roadside, they hiked down the gravelly strip of yellow clay. There was the bridge, a long flattened arch of close-fitted unmortared stones. Bishop Hatto's arms were carved in relief on the keystone faces. Trickling moss hung over his moons and dogs' heads, and his miter was trimmed with stars of yellow stonecrop. At each end of this wide bridge sat a pair of stone wardens, giant Norse chessmen in high backed chairs, hunched gloomy kings with swords on their knees. The keepers of the Bishop's Bridge sat staring with deep-drilled empty pupils. Prospero hung his hat on one of them.

  "Well, here we are. Roger, you'd better go ahead and get the townspeople out of bed. You know the people around here and I don't. Don't scare them too much. I think I can keep these clots at a distance for a while."

  Roger walked out onto the bridge and looked over the side. Fast water hissed around the back marble pillars. Little clusters of bubbles moved downstream.

  "I hate to say this," said Roger, "but I think you'd better destroy this bridge. I've been thinking about some things on the way here. Harald is one of the few southern kings with a real following, and he is also one of the few who think looting and burning are manly sports. There'll be more soldiers before we get rid of Melichus, if we can. And, there are no stone bridges for three hundred miles either way. We can count on the Northerners on the border to burn the wooden bridges if it looks like war."