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 him-outdoor noises, the normal creakings of the house, the ticking of the clocks-had seemed distant and muted. That was how things seemed now: His face prickled, he felt hot, and it was hard for him to move. Though he had important news for Roger, he did not feel like saying anything.
Roger brushed past him and stopped in the middle of the room. "Well, shut the door." His voice was sharp and almost contemptuous.
Prospero struggled to push and lift the door back into place, and when he had finished, his forehead throbbed and the tipsy orange rectangle seemed blurred. He went to a nearby window and stood looking at the running ice-gray pane. Roger fit a two-socketed candelabrum and set it on a pillar of books in the center of the room The streaming rain and the reflected candlelight made strange disturbing dancing shapes in the window. Gray figures waving their arms. Without turning, Prospero spoke in a throaty feverish voice. "Roger, I have found something here."
"Have you?" Roger laughed, but it was the wrong kind of laugh and it ended, on a barking sound.
Prospero stared harder at the glimmering square that was crawling before his eyes.
"You aren't Roger, are you?"
"No," said the figure behind him. "I am not, though I wear his cloak and carry his staff. A staff, which supposedly can only be wielded by the great sorcerer himself. Let us see."