The Eyes of the Dragon(15)

Chapter 3

17

Roland... Sasha... Peter... Thomas. Now there is only one more we must speak of, isn't there? Now there is only the shadowy fifth. The time has come to speak of Flagg, as dreadful as that may be.

Sometimes the people of Delain called him Flagg the Hooded; sometimes simply the dark man-for, in spite of his white corpse's face, he was a dark man indeed. They called him well preserved, but they used the term in a way that was uneasy rather than complimentary. He had come to Delain from Garlan in the time of Roland's grandfather. In those days he had appeared to be a thin and stern-faced man of about forty. Now, in the closing years of Roland's reign, he appeared to be a thin and stern-faced man of about fifty. Yet it had not been ten years, or even twenty, between then and now-it had been seventy-six years in all. Babies who had been sucking toothlessly at their mother's br**sts when Flagg first came to Delain had grown up, married, had children, grown old, and died toothlessly in their beds or their chimney corners. But in all that time, Flagg seemed to have aged only ten years. It was magic, they whispered, and of course it was good to have a magician at court, a real magician and not just a stage conjurer who knew how to palm coins or hide a sleeping dove up his sleeve. Yet in their hearts, they knew there was nothing good about Flagg. When the people of Delain saw him coming, with his eyes peeking redly out from his hood, they quickly found business on the far side of the street.

Did he really come from Garlan, with its far vistas and its purple dreaming mountains? I do not know. It was and is a magical land where carpets sometimes fly, and where holy men sometimes pipe ropes up from wicker baskets, climb them, and disappear at the tops, never to be seen again. A great many seekers of knowledge from more civilized lands like Delain and Andua have gone to Garlan. Most disappear as completely and as permanently as those strange mystics who climb the floating ropes. Those who do return don't always come back changed for the better. Yes, Flagg might well have come to Delain from Garlan, but if he did, it was not in the reign of Roland's grandfather but much, much earlier.

He had, in fact, come to Delain often. He came under a different name each time, but always with the same load of woe and misery and death. This time he was Flagg. The time before he had been known as Bill Hinch, and he had been the King's Lord High Executioner. Although that time was two hundred and fifty years past, his was a name mothers still used to frighten their children when they were bad. "If you don't shut up that squalling, I reckon Bill Hinch will come and take you away!" they said. Serving as Lord High Executioner under three of the bloodiest Kings in Delain's long history, Bill Hinch had made an end to hundreds-thousands, some said-of prisoners with his heavy axe.

The time before that, four hundred years before the time of Roland and his sons, he came as a singer named Browson, who became a close advisor to the King and a Queen. Browson disappeared like smoke after drumming up a great and bloody war between Delain and Andua.

The time before that...

Ah, but why go on? I'm not sure I could if I wanted to. When times are long enough, even the storytellers forget the tales. Flagg always showed up with a different face and a different bag of tricks, but two things about him were always the same. He always came hooded, a man who seemed almost to have no face, and he never came as a King himself, but always as the whisperer in the shadows, the man who poured poison into the porches of Kings' ears.

Who was he, really, this dark man?

I do not know.

Where did he wander between visits to Delain?

I do not know that, either.

Was he never suspected?

Yes, by a few-by historians and spinners of tales like me, mostly. They suspected that the man who now called himself Flagg had been in Delain before, and never to any good purpose. But they were afraid to speak. A man who could live among them for seventy-six years and appear to age only ten was obviously a magician; a man who had lived for ten times as long, perhaps longer than that... such a man might be the devil himself.

What did he want? That question I think I can answer.

He wanted what evil men always want: to have power and use that power to make mischief. Being a King did not interest him because the heads of Kings all too often found their way to spikes on castle walls when things went wrong. But the advisors to Kings... the spinners in the shadows... such people usually melted away like evening shadows at dawning as soon as the headsman's axe started to fall. Flagg was a sickness, a fever looking for a cool brow to heat up. He hooded his actions just as he hooded his face. And when the great trouble came-as it always did after a span of years-Flagg always disappeared like shadows at dawn.

Later, when the carnage was over and the fever had passed, when the rebuilding was complete and there was again something worth destroying, Flagg would appear once more.

18

This time, Flagg had found the Kingdom of Delain in exasperatingly healthy condition. Landry, Roland's grandfather, was a drunken old fool, easy to influence and twist, but a heart attack had taken him too soon. Flagg knew by then that Lita, Roland's mother, was the last person he wanted holding the scepter. She was ugly but good-hearted and strong-willed. Such a Queen was not a good growth medium for Flagg's brand of insanity.

If he had come earlier in Landry's reign, there would have been time to put Lita out of the way, as he expected to put Peter out of the way. But he'd had only six years, and that was not long enough.

Still, she had accepted him as an advisor, and that was something. She did not like him much but she accepted him-mostly because he could tell wonderful fortunes with cards. Lita loved hearing bits of gossip and scandal about those in her court and her Cabinet, and the gossip and scandal were doubly good because she got to hear not only what had happened but what would happen. It was hard to rid yourself of such an amusing diversion, even when you sensed that a person able to do such tricks might be dangerous. Flagg never told the Queen any of the darker news he sometimes saw in the cards. She wanted to know who had taken a lover or who had had words with his wife or her husband. She did not want to know about dark cabals and murderous plans. What she wanted from the cards was relatively innocent.