in the cold liquid that had been the floor. The walls of the large downstairs room, though blurry, were still there, and he felt for the door, not daring to look back to see if anything had followed him from that terrible blind chamber. Lifting the twisting, bucking bar from the black door, he plunged outside and ran through the street, where the cobblestones oozed like mud and slate roofs turned to dripping black slime. Stone walls ran in viscous rivulets, and the head of the little old man appeared gabbling fiercely. When Prospero got to the church, the bell tower rang five scraping, cracking, howling notes and toppled slowly at him. He raised his arms to shield himself, but the tower, still ringing, turned to mist as it fell and blew away in long sinuous swirls. The wizard dropped to the ground, covering his face with his hands.
When he looked up several minutes later, he was in a field of heavily trampled moonlit grass, through which a rutty gouged cow path wandered. Some distance away the road he had been following wound up a pine-covered ridge. Near him, Prospero found his bag and staff, unharmed, and he picked them up from the withered weeds as if he expected them to crumble in his grasp. Something was glittering in the gray tangle at his feet-the knife, which was quite real, and very ordinary-looking. No inscriptions on it, no deaths heads. Prospero broke it, buried it, and started walking toward the road.
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
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
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
'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.'
