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2
When Roger Bacon woke up the next morning or, rather, the next noon, he felt something more than the usual muggy heat of August days in the South Kingdom. He felt tension in the air, a tension almost audible, the humming of a high-pitched string. He was inclined to blame this feeling on his own nervous nature, so he took a leisurely bath and started down the hall toward the staircase. Prospero's door was open, but he was not in bed. There was no sound downstairs. Roger tiptoed quietly down the steps, went to the living room, and took a square-headed iron mace down from its hook on the wall. But, when he stepped into the hallway, there was Prospero, standing at the front door, holding the linen curtain aside and peering out of the small square window. Without turning, Prospero spoke:
"Put that silly weapon away and go to the kitchen. There's some bread and marmalade, and I've made some coffee. And, we're surrounded." Roger dropped the mace, which just missed his toe as it fell. "Surrounded? By whom?"
"By whomever or whatever our friend with the book has decided to send against us. Look."
Roger pressed his face against the small square window. Across the road, under a tall thorn hedge, stood three gray figures.
Roger laughed. "Surrounded? By those three?"
"Oh, there are more. There are at least ten more in the forest to the east of us, and I think there are some waiting up the road, toward Brakespeare. Anyway, numbers don't mean anything. Those things are the agents and the work of a man who probably has more power than we have. He is learning how to use that book, and when he has enough strength-or thinks he has-they will close in."
Roger pounded the door in frustration. "Then, why are we having breakfast? Are we going to die gracefully at the table, like gentlemen? Why don't you try something? Between the two of us, we ought to be able to send them back to what's-his-name with their blasted gray robes on fire."
"And, what if we can't? Then, he'll know what he can do. Right now I don't think he's sure. He wouldn't have sent them if he didn't think that I am some kind of threat to him, although right now I would love to know just how I could disturb him." Prospero glanced out the window again and continued. "Even if we do drive them off, we still have him to deal with. I will bet you, Roger, that those things can't do anything until nightfall. So, there is certainly time for breakfast."
Roger kicked the iron mace into the corner and followed Prospero to the kitchen, where they ate a big breakfast of ham, scrambled eggs, bread, and quince marmalade. Prospero seemed amused by Roger's nervousness, and this made the latter more and more cranky.
"Now," said Prospero, pushing back his chair, "you are probably wondering what we are going to do. Come on." He got up and went to the cellar door.
"Are we going to hide?" said Roger. "Oh, good! It's been years since I hid in a nice smelly basement."
Prospero was laughing so hard that he had trouble getting down the stairs. He led Roger to a high rampart of cordwood, which he then began to dismantle.
"Oh, I see," said Roger as he helped him. "We're going to burn the house down. That ought to throw them off."
When all the wood was cleared away, the two wizards were standing before a black door with a porcelain goose-egg knob. A yellowed piece of cardboard, held to the door with a red thumbtack, said "Root Cellar."
"Well, I haven't been in this place for several months," said Prospero. "There's no telling what we'll find." He pushed the door open and a rank sweetish smell of decaying vegetables hit them. In the windowless earth-floored room were shelves into which blackened rutabagas were rotting, Mason jars filled with cloudy green dandelion wine, and bushel baskets of wildly sprouting potatoes. Here and there, the walls were blotched with white and green fungus, and in a corner, cheesy green-spotted toadstools were squatting. Prospero calmly began to take the jars off the shelves that lined the short wall opposite the door. Then, he started to lift the shelves from their curlicued iron brackets. Roger was watching him now with delight, for under the dirt and vegetable growth on the wall was the outline of a small arched door.
"Prospero! You never told me about this!"
"I always meant to, but it never seemed all that important. I began to build it quite a few years ago, but I ran into a little trouble. You'll see what I mean. The door, at any rate, is a success. It responds to one of the oldest door spells in the world."
He placed his hands on the door and whispered a few raspy words that sounded like Arabic-actually, they were corrupt Coptic. The door swung inward with a loud screech, and Prospero, ducking his head, stepped inside and motioned for Roger to follow him. A low-ceilinged dirt tunnel with basalt slabs for steps went spiraling down to a smooth stone floor. At the bottom of the stairs, Roger looked at the long vaulted tunnel before him.
"I knew it," he said. "Gothic arches and little carved monster heads. You would."
"Of course," said Prospero, picking up a small tin lantern that hung near the stairs. "Notice the fan vaulting and follow me."
They walked through a tunnel that sloped gently down and took one sharp right-angle turn. Suddenly, the tunnel opened into a natural cave, a domed, stalactite-dripping room with a dark cold stream flowing through it.
"Here," said Prospero, "is our problem. I ran into this and had to stop. There's no stone beyond this point, and the earth behind that wall is very mushy. But, the tunnel that the stream flows through rises four feet above the level of the water."
Roger was getting nervous again. "Are we going to crawl through the water? Do you know where the stream goes?"
Prospero smiled. "I have it on the authority of a talking fish that this stream runs underground for ten miles and then empties into a small lake in the realm of our old friend, King Gorm. You remember him. Well, I think he has a library like the one in Roundcourt, though not so complete. I've never seen it, but it ought to have a copy of the Register, and I want to look up the crest on that bookplate. It's a start, anyway, and there's a possibility that the owner of such an ugly device might have gotten the book back. And, I want to know more about that kindly old fisherman who suddenly volunteers to drown the book for the monk. If the lake isn't stocked with gray ghastlies, we may find something interesting." He looked at Roger, who was still scowling at him. "Oh yes-no, we're not going to crawl. Come upstairs."
Back in the living room, Prospero went to the mantelpiece and took down a small, very accurate-looking ship model. "This," he said, "is what we are going in: the British man-of-war Actaeon, which ran-will run-aground on a sand bar during the siege of Charleston in 1776. Do you know, by the way, that Lord Nelson was hit in the head with a cannon ball at the Battle of the Nile? You pick up the damnedest things from that mirror."