The Face in the Frost

Prospero and Roger entered a dark echoing silo that seemed to be full of humming, crackling fireflies. The tower had only one room, and the walls, ringed by galleries at intervals, rose a hundred feet to the conical roof. In the great dark void above the wizards' heads hung tiny galaxies, solar systems, and nebulae. Checkered, spotted, and marbled planets moved around flaring orange suns the size of Ping pong balls. Multi-ringed Saturns were surrounded by clouds of pinhead moons, and three-tailed comets roared through spinning clusters of stars with a noise like toy locomotives. Gorm was a magician, but an introspective one, a model-railroad hobbyist. Now, he stood staring delightedly up at the clicking, clanging, flashing pinball machine he had been working on for forty years.

'We've been having some trouble with Sector 8,' he said, waving a wooden pointer. 'A couple of planets are doing a horn-pipe, and before long-apocalypse! I think we must blame the terrible black planet Yuggoth, which rolls aimlessly in the stupefying darkness. Ooop! Watch out!'

All three hit the floor as a five-pronged comet, looking like a Chinese kite, came whooshing down at them. It dusted the floor with its tails and roared up again into the sparkling indoor night, Prospero picked himself up. 'Gorm, I know you want us to stay for a supernova or something, but we're in a hurry. Do you have the key to the Hall of Records?'

Gorm looked vague. 'Key... 'there was a door to which I had no key'... very fine, Persian decadent writers. Made handsome rugs too, some of them. Oh, yes The curator has one, but visiting hours are from two to two-thirty Monday through Wednesday, and he is not likely to be around. No, I shouldn't think so. But, I have a key. Keep it on a chain around my neck. If he is there, show it to him and tell him I sent you. Are you sure you can't stay? One of these galaxies is going to go off in a little bit.'

'Thanks,' said Prospero, 'but we've got to get going. As it is, it'll be midnight when we get there. I wish I could tell you what's going on, but I'm not sure of anything myself.'

King Gorm looked at Prospero with a sad smile. 'You know, the trouble with you is that you don't have any purpose in your life. Always running in and out.'

He reached inside the heavy pearled neckband of his gown and pulled out a long chain, at the end of which hung a snaggle-toothed brass key. He took the key off the chain and handed it to Prospero. 'I hope you'll excuse the mess inside the Hall,' said Gorm. 'I never can get the curator to straighten things up. The last time I was there I found him correcting books to prove that my universe here was the best one ever made. I hit him with a copy of Ptolemy, and he's been testy ever since.'

A staticky mechanical voice from high up in the tower burst in: '... cool and cloudy this evening with snow in spiral nebulae. Total solar eclipse in galaxies 3, 5, and 6, followed by meteor showers. Observers are advised to take cover. Supernova, will obliterate Galaxy 12 later tonight, this being no great loss since it never did work right anyway... (click)... Thank you.'

Prospero and Roger edged toward the door, shouting thanks at King Gorm, who was still squinting up at the ceiling. And then, they were gone. Out on the plain, a few minutes later, they stopped and looked back at the castle. The tower roof flipped suddenly up like the lid on a beer stein, and a fizzing skyrocket shot up. When it burst, little green stars spelled out 'So Much for Galaxy 12,' and pinwheels on parachutes floated down to earth, whistling Anacreon in Heaven.

Prospero shook his head. 'Well, at least, he's happy. Come on, it's getting late.'

They were back on the South Road, which ran straight for several miles and then dropped into a narrow cleft between two low, crumbling, prehistoric forts made of flat unmortared stones. Occasional lightning flashes lit the spreading western thunder head, showing fantastic cloud-cliffs and tumbling gorges. Dull rumbles in the distance. It was midnight by Rogers watch when they saw a low black shadow in the pines and junipers at the side of the road. A powdery dirt path ridged with tree roots led to the one-story stone building.

The Hall of Records looked like an abandoned cottage: Mossy hatchet-shaped slates scalloped the roof, and one broken windowpane was patched with a waxed vellum sheet from a psalter. The peeling orange door sank into a ground-level sill, and the jawless skull of a groundhog chewed the dirty white lintel. Prospero pulled out the key-it glowed a little in the faint moon-light-and he pushed aside the tin cup that covered the rusty lock. Crrrrrunk! and the key went all the way around, but he had to kick the door several times before it scraped in, following a curving groove in the wooden floor.

As Prospero stepped in, his cheek was touched by the rough cold muzzle of a stuffed alligator that hung from the ceiling. He stepped back and turned to Roger.

'You'd better stay outside and watch for the curator-or anyone else who might visit us. This shouldn't take too long, though God knows I've never been inside this place before.'

'All right. You've got the copy of the bookplate, and you know the book you want. Good luck.' Roger turned and walked down the path to a broad gray stump. He sat down and lit his red clay pipe.

Inside the one-room building irregular piles of books were scattered about in the ashy darkness. Tiny matchbox-sized books stood in tottering spires on broad elephant folios, and three big square ledgers lay chained a slanted reading desk against the far wall. Prospero was interested in these ledgers. He lit a candle stub and stuck it on the dirty window sill over the desk. When he had brushed a thin coat of dust off the pebbled leather cover of one volume, he saw the words: Register of All Wizards and Warlocks of the South Kingdom and of the North from the Beginning of the World to the Present Time. He turned the thick damp-smelling pages of the book, looking for the crest that was on the crumpled sheet in front of him-and there it was. The evil device was carefully drawn in black ink, and below it was an unusually long entry in a thick-lined runic script. But, Prospero was looking at the name. He was staring at it because it was a name he knew: MELICHUS.

'He has a new crest,' whispered Prospero in the dusty darkness.

He took out his gold-rimmed glasses, put them on, and hunched over the ledger. The greater part of the entry was not very helpful; in fact, Prospero knew more about Melichus' past than the author did. But, at the bottom of the page, there was a note in a scribbly secretarial hand, probably that of Gorm's curator. The ink was fairly fresh and had blotted on the opposite page.

'I have discovered by divers means that the above M. was in England some LXX yrs. ago, living among fishermen to learn sea-spells. After his return to the S.K., he took up his abode in the village of Briar Hill where he lived a secluded life. About that time, the townsfolk began to be visited by the apparitions of their dead relatives and friends. Faces were seen at windows, and shapes were seen in the streets during storms. All suspected M., and he admitted as much to their faces, but their threats were of no avail, till the wife of one D.L. was frightened at noontime by some horrid form, so that she jumped before a cart and horses & was killed. L. gathered a group of men who went one night to the house of M., armed with clubs and scythes. As they were battering on the door, M. escaped by a cellars window, but was seen & a chase ensued. The townsmen followed M. to a small forest some III mi. from the town, where L. wounded him with a bowshot. The wizard entered the forest & was lost in the darkness, but L., who was still angered beyond reason, persuaded his fellows to ring the for­est about and guard all the ways of egress. Maddened by him, they set a blaze which well nigh consumed the whole wood, so that the next morning they found within the burnt body of M., which they buried in the forest clearing where he fell. The forest has grown back, but no as before, and I myself would not go within it night or day. The townsmen call it the Empty Forest, since animals & birds do not live there. Obiit Melichus Magister A 697 A.U.C.'

Prospero stood over the glimmering yellow page gripping the book with both hands. A bit of plaster dropped from the ceiling onto the paper, startling him, and he jumped back, looking around wildly. The room was quiet, but overhead he heard hollow tumbling sounds. The thunder head must be moving in fast now, he thought, A leafy branch swished across a window and an acorn rolled all the way down the roof. Now, he could hear the wind hissing in the pines.

Usually, Prospero enjoyed storms, but this one, like the storm of the day before, oppressed him in a strange way. He found it was all he could do to go across the room to the doorway, where he stood looking out into the windy tossing night. Big splatting drops were starting to fall, and from where he stood by the sagging orange door, he could see Roger hurrying up the path, pulling up his hood to keep off the rain, which now began to sweep by in long gray sheets.

As Prospero stood there waiting for Roger, he began to feel more and more strange. The feeling reminded him of a time when he had been sitting by the fire one night on the verge of a very bad cold. Everything around