The Face in the Frost (15 page)

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 up 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 carriage 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.

CHAPTER NINE

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-lipped arches was blocked by a portcullis of thick square iron bars. Behind each grate, at a distance of about twenty feet, was another grate, and so on as far as they could see in the rising coal-faced tunnels. The two men could only sit there and wonder how the black iron frames had been fitted into place, and whether they were lowered and raised by counterweights or by hand winches.

“Well,” said Roger, as he got out of the carriage, “whoever they are, they’re protected.” He picked up a stone and threw it at the gate. It pinged and flew back at him.

“They certainly are,” said Prospero, “and what is more, since I threw the tarots away, I don’t believe I have the power to rip up cardboard. Destroying spells have never been much in my line anyway.”

“Or mine,” said Roger. He pounded his staff on the ground in frustration, threw it down, turned on his heel, and stomped off into some high bushes at the side of the road. By the way that he shoved the branches away from him, Prospero could tell that Roger was angry. He expected him to kick around in the bushes, swearing for a while, so he was surprised when Roger came back immediately with a smile on his face.

“Come here,” he said. “I want you to see something.”

Roger led Prospero back through the bushes—forsythia, of all things, like the ones in Prospero’s back yard—and down a steep sandy path to a little lookout point. Across a small grassy valley, which was already beginning to fill with the reddish-brown mist of sunset, there was a square tower on a tall spiny pinnacle of rock. The light was bad, and even with his telescope, Roger could not be sure, but it looked as though the tower was attached to the face of the mountain by a small arched bridge.

Roger was pointing excitedly. “Look, Prospero! There’s our way in. Do you suppose it’s a watchtower? If it is, there’ll be soldiers, but if they don’t have seventeen portcullises to hide behind, we may be able to get in.”

Prospero borrowed the telescope and squinted. “No, it certainly doesn’t look like a watchtower—at least, it wasn’t built for that purpose. It has four little pinnacles with knobby ornaments on them. Looks like a church tower, but where is the church that goes with it?”

“Whatever it is,” said Roger, “I’d suggest that we head for it. If it’s abandoned and it isn’t a way in, we can stay there the night. The carriage and horses will have to stay here, but there’s some grass by the roadside. If anyone tries to steal the rig, they will go home in a squash.”

“All fine and good,” said Prospero, “but we are here and the tower is there. It looks about three hundred feet down to the ground, and I doubt if that boat in your bag flies.”

“You might look over the edge of the cliff,” said Roger.

Prospero did, and he saw stairs, wide stone slabs, some broken, some worn into cups in the middle, running back and forth down the cliff face.

“You wait here,” said Roger. “I’ll unhitch the horses and get the bags.”

Soon they were picking their way down the steep railless stairway. Prospero’s acrophobia was as bad as ever, if not worse—he kept his eyes on the rock wall and rubbed it with his shoulder, though it would have taken a concerted effort or a high wind to throw him off. At some points, they found landings, wide stone platforms with parapets and stacks of boulders. These rocks, which were not too large to be lifted by strong men, had probably been put there to be dropped on the heads of pursuers. They had been there so long that they appeared to have melted into pointed humps, like piles of snowballs that were never used. When the wizards got to the bottom of the cliff, they looked across the grassy field. A light was burning high up in the tower.

As they started toward it, Prospero talked to Roger about the quietness and warmth of this mountain valley. The strange snows, the frightening sounds and sights of the plain below were not here. Twilight was drawing on, soft and deep blue, and stars could be seen overhead. It was warm for October, too—Prospero even imagined that he heard the slow finger-and-comb sound of crickets. The remark about this being, perhaps, the eye of the storm was too obvious and too frightening to be made by either of them. When they got close to the tower, they found that they were standing in the middle of jumbled stone blocks; carved and pie-faced angels stared out of bushes and ditches, and a red flaking iron cross stood upright in the middle of a wild rosebush. This was the church, destroyed by some landslide or earthquake. The tower rose straight above them on its freakish nail of rock, which was wrapped around by another stair, this one railed for a change.

“This is all very convenient,” said Prospero, looking up at the long lighted window. “I hope we are not going to be the guests of some ogre.”

“We shall see,” said Roger. And they started up.

At the top of the stairs, they saw an open arched door, and in front of it stood a blond-bearded monk. He was holding a metal basket of fire on a wooden stick, and when they reached the last few steep steps, he stuck the torch in the wall and helped them up.

“Greetings,” he said. “Welcome to the Green Oratory. I’m here by myself, and I’m probably the only monk for miles.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Roger. He tipped his hat and showed the bald spot on his red-fringed head. “What are you doing up
here?
”

“I grow plants,” said the monk. “And I do things with them. Come in and let me show you around.”