The Eyes of the Dragon(16)

During the long, long reign of Lita, Flagg was chagrined to find his main accomplishment was to be not turned out. He was able to maintain a foothold but to do little more than that. Oh, there were a few bright spots-the encouragement of bad blood between two powerful squires in the Southern Barony and the discrediting of a doctor who had found a cure for some blood infections (Flagg wanted no cures in the Kingdom that were not magical-which is to say, given or withheld at his own whim) were examples of Flagg's work during that period. It was all pretty small change.

Under Roland-poor bowlegged, insecure Roland-things marched more quickly toward Flagg's goal. Because he did have a goal, you know, in his fuzzy, malevolent sort of way, and this time it was grand indeed. He planned nothing more nor less than the complete overthrow of the monarchy-a bloody revolt that would plunge Delain into a thousand years of darkness and anarchy.

Give or take a year or two, of course.

19

In Peter's cool gaze he saw the very possible derailment of all his plans and careful work. More and more Flagg came to believe that getting rid of Peter was a necessity. Flagg has overstayed in Delain this time and he knew it. The muttering had begun. The work so well begun under Roland-the steady rises in taxes, the midnight searches of small farmers' barns and silage sheds for unreported crops and foodstuffs, the arming of the Home Guards-must continue to its end under Thomas. He did not have time to wait through the reign of Peter as he had through that of his grandmother.

Peter might not even wait for the mutterings of the people to come to his ears; Peter's first command as King might well be that Flagg should be sent eastward out of the Kingdom and forbidden ever to come again, on pain of death. Flagg might murder an advisor before he could give the young King such advice, but the hell of it was, Peter would need no advisor. He would advise himself-and when Flagg saw the cool, unafraid way the boy, now fifteen and very tall, looked at him, he thought that Peter might already have given himself that advice.

The boy liked to read, and he liked history, and in the last two years, as his father grew steadily grayer and frailer, he had been asking a lot of questions of his father's other advisors, and of some of his teachers. Many of these questions-too many had to do either with Flagg or with roads which would lead to Flagg if followed far enough.

That the boy was asking such questions at fourteen and fifteen was bad. That he was getting comparatively honest answers from such timid, watchful men as the Kingdom's historians and Roland's advisors was much worse. It meant that, in the minds of these people, Peter was already almost King-and that they were glad. They welcomed him and rejoiced in him, because he would be an intellectual, like them. And they also welcomed him because, unlike them, he was a brave boy who might well grow into a lionhearted King whose tale would be the stuff of legends. In him, they saw again the coming of the White, that ancient, resilient, yet humble force that has redeemed humankind again and again and again.

He had to be put out of the way. Had to be.

Flagg told himself this each night when he retired in the blackness of his inner chambers, and it was his first thought when he awoke in that blackness the next morning.

He must be put out of the way, the boy must be put out of the way.

But it was harder than it seemed. Roland loved aid would have died for either of his sons, but he loved Peter with a particular fierceness. Smothering the boy in his cradle, making it look as if the Baby Death had taken him, would have once perhaps been possible, but Peter was now a healthy teen-ager. Any accident would be examined with all the raging scrutiny of Roland's grief, and Flagg had thought more than once that the final irony might be this: Suppose Peter really did die an accidental death, and he, Flagg, was somehow blamed for it? A small miscalculation while shinnying up a drainpipe... a slip while crawling around on a stable roof playing Dare You with his friend Staad... a tumble from his horse. And what would the result be? Might not Roland, wild in his grief and growing senile and confused in his mind, see willful murder in what was really an accident? And might his eye not turn on Flagg? Of course. His eye would turn to Flagg before it turned to anyone else. Roland's mother had mistrusted him, and he knew that, deep down, Roland mistrusted him as well. He had been able to hold that mistrust in check with mingled fear and fascination, but Flagg knew that if Roland ever had reason to think Flagg had caused, or even played a part in, the death of his son

Flagg could actually imagine situations where he might have to interfere in Peter's behalf to keep the boy safe. It was damnable. Damnable!

He must be put out of the way. Must be put out of the way! Must!

As the days and weeks and months passed, the drumbeat of this thought in Flagg's head grew ever more urgent. Every day Roland grew older and weaker; every day Peter grew older and wiser and thus a more dangerous opponent. What was to be done?

Flagg's thoughts turned and turned and turned on this. He grew morose and irritable. Servants, especially Peter's butler, Brandon, and Brandon's son, Dennis, gave him a wide berth, and spoke to each other in whispers of the terrible smells that sometimes came from his laboratory late at night. Dennis in particular, who would someday take,the place of his good old Da' as Peter's butler, was terrified of Flagg, and once asked his father if he might say a word about the magician. "To make him safe, is all I'm thinking," Dennis said.

"Not a word," Brandon said, and fixed Dennis, who was only a boy himself, with a forbidding look. "Not a word will you say. The man's dangerous."