The Face in the Frost

up on tiptoe and put his lips to the keyhole in the side of the clock. He whispered so softly that no one in the room heard him.

'Melichus is a fool.'

Picking up the wooden crank, Prospero wound up the clock and set the pendulum swinging. The cows flapped their jaws inanely, the ducks stumbled uncertainly over the wooden platform, bishops waved their crosiers and clicked their heels, and-Prospero shoved the hands to twelve-the bewildered wooden man swung twelve times at the painted bell and missed, while the bell caught him twelve times on his shiny brass nose.

Prospero went back to his seat. 'I think,' he said, 'that I will sleep better tonight.'

The next morning, at the chilly hour of six, Prospero stood at the front door of the cottage, thanking his host, while Roger hitched tip the horses and brushed hay off the carriage. The farmer had a tin box in his hand, and he was tapping it as he talked.

'I didn't think of this till morning. We-my family-have been living in this house for several hundred years, and a long way back an old man spent the night here. He did all sorts of strange things, like cleaning out a poisoned well and making the fire burn different colors. We've got all this written down. Now, before he left, he gave us this key, and said that a man with the initial of P should have it. Lord knows we've had enough people here that filled that bill, even in my lifetime; Pruett, Pillion, even Pickthatch. But, I have a feeling you're the one who's supposed to get it. And, if you're going north to try to do something about what's happening...'

'I didn't say that,' said Prospero. 'Please don't spread rumors like that.'

'I won't,' said the farmer smiling. 'I wouldn't even if you had told me what you're doing. At any rate, here it is.'

Prospero opened the banged-up old tin box. Inside, wrapped in a blackened rag was a little brass key. The teeth were cut out in a cross pattern, and except for a green crust in the molded ridges of the handle, the key was shiny. There was an inscription on the barrel in squat uncial letters, but it was writ­ten in what looked like Welsh.

Prospero excitedly handed the key to Roger. 'Look! You know Welsh. What does it say?'

Roger looked at it, holding it up in the bluish morning air 'Yes, it's Welsh it says 'Gwydion of Caer Leon made me. Turn twice.' There. Does that help your?'

Prospero put the key in the buttoned inner pocket of his heavy cloak. 'No,' he said, 'not much.' He turned to the farmer. 'Tell me, did the old man have a Scottish accent?'

'I wouldn't know one if I heard it, sir. My ancestors wouldn't have, either. There's no record that any of them ever left this country hereabouts, much less the North Kingdom. They wouldn't know a Scottish accent if they heard it.'

'I see. Well, thank you very much, and if you wonder what I was doing out back, I was laying down a little spell that will make your dandelion wine the best in the country next year And, use those pentacles I drew for you. They'll keep out many things, though I doubt if they'll help with what we're all worried about.'

'Good luck to you,' shouted the farmer as they drove out onto the crunching gravel. Prospero leaned out of one shield-shaped door, his foot on the round black carnage step that reminded him of a musical note. He waved and shouted good-by until he could no longer see the humpy loaf of the farm­house, and then, he sat down next to Roger. For a long time, he did not say anything, because he was thinking of the key in his pocket.

9

9

Anyone foolish enough to stand on Barren Tor in the booming wind of a certain wintry day in late October would have seen a box carriage scooting past below, like a black beetle. The Tor, a treeless 300-foot-high hill shaped a little like a dog's tooth, was an isolated foothill of the unnamed range of peaks that bordered the Northern Highlands. Northerners did not name mountain ranges; they were afraid that doing so would wake the spirit of the mountains, the rock-buried elemental that had once split the Mitre, a strange double peak many miles to the south. Roger and Prospero, now many days' journey from the clockmaker's cottage, had passed the Mitre a week before: It was there that they heard rumors of the War Council on the Feasting Hill. The kings were gathering, getting ready for a march on the South; they had been told by their astrologers that the fear came from the South, and so, they had not destroyed the wooden bridges, as Roger thought they would; instead, they held both sides of the river with cavalry, and these men waited for the messengers from the Hill. The Southerners, no matter how well organized they were, had only fat plow horses to ride; they would be unable to prevent a march on Roundcourt, a city with beautiful walls of painted wood and a tiny, unreliable garrison. A quick surrender of the capital might save a lot of lives, but skirmishing and raiding could go on for a long time, and Prospero knew the temperament of certain southern rulers, who would-after the victorious northern kings had gone home-hold their own witch trials and take out their anger on 'disloyal'-that is, weak-kings like silly old. Gorm.

Meanwhile, the strange early winter threw thin rags and fingers of gray snow over the dirty fast-decaying leaves that clotted the suddenly dry beds of streams; on the empty plain Prospero and Roger had just passed through, the snow moved in eerie swirls, falling into spirals and long lines too regular to be natural. People were terrified of the open spaces at night; in their homes, they sat with blankets over their windows, so that they would not see the mask of frost. Windows broke in the night, and the wind that blew through them had a voice.

On this last leg of the journey, Prospero and Roger traveled all the time, taking turns driving and sleeping as they had for weeks before they got to the farmer's house. With a candle stuck in an ashtray Prospero sat up late, pipe in mouth, turning over pages, looking for what he knew was not there. They passed through shallow valleys where muddy pools of fog blew crazily about; long grasping fingers of it seeped through the floorboards of the carriage and thrust in at the windows. Roger raised his hand, once to wave it away, and for an instant, he felt something hard-the fog curled back and drifted outside again. In one shuttered hiding town, a signboard screeched in a way that made the horses rear and almost tip over the carriage; Prospero raised a curtain and looked out. He was not surprised to see that the board was washed clean of any design. And now, the moon began to rise into a starless sky. We who are used to the empty or rusty night skies of modern cities would not understand the fear that the people of Prospero's world felt when they saw this. They saw a haggard moon, with pinched brows and grieving mouth, rising into a blackness distant and calling. Like children lying on grass and looking into a cloud-vaulted daytime sky, they felt that they were going to fall upwards. Hollow ocean depths hung overhead, so that looking up was like standing on the edge of a cliff.

The road ran over steeper hills now; Prospero was always half surprised when an appalling height flattened out under the wheels of the carriage-from a distance, it looked as though you would have to cling to the gravel with your fingers and toes. At last, though, they were in the mountains. These were not Himalayan peaks, but some of them were tall enough to thrust broken and tilting horns through frozen mats of cloud. Others were long blue ridges covered with pines. On their bristly sides, you could see the zigzag lines of roads built by an ancient people no one in the north knew anything about. Whoever they were, they had dug long tunnels with decorated mouths, had built rope-lashed wooden bridges that never rotted, and had carved the mouths of rock springs into bug-eyed monsters that disturbed the dreams of travelers who came upon them at night. Prospero and Roger, looking out their wide windows at long frightening drop offs, saw a few of these vomiting horrors sticking out of dead leaf clusters or the wiry skeletons of bushes. But, they seemed silly alongside the other fear.

Now, Prospero had his glasses on, and he was running his finger along a line on a wrinkly map spread over both their laps.

'You see, Roger. Around the next big bend and up a road that goes through a long tunnel. There are three gates, one for wagons and two for men. There's bound to be some barrier, though, if the valley is inhabited, It's the perfect fortified place, too. The mountain is like a big tooth with a cavity...'

'Charming metaphor,' said Roger, feeling his jaw with his fingertips.

'Well, it is. Sheer walls and peaks that have been rounded by the wind. The bowl of grass inside must be about a mile across... watch out! Here's the bend.'

When the carriage had rounded an upended chunk of rock that looked like the prow of a sinking boat, the carved triple entrance was there. But, 'some barrier' proved to be a large understatement. Each of the three wide-