The Eyes of the Dragon(18)

This was Dragon Sand, and there was no antidote, no cure. What fun.

On that wild, rainy night, Flagg determine to give a bit of Dragon Sand to Roland in a glass of wine. It had become Peter's custom to take his father a glass of wine each night, shortly before Roland turned in. Everyone in the palace knew it, and commented on what a loyal son Peter was. Roland enjoyed his son's company as much as the wine he brought, Flagg thought, but a certain maiden had caught Peter's eye and he rarely stayed longer than half an hour with his father these days.

If Flagg came one night after Peter had left, Flagg did not think the old man would turn down a second glass of wine.

A very special glass of wine.

A hot vintage, my Lord, Flagg thought, a grin dawning on his narrow face. A hot vintage indeed, and why not? The vineyard was right next door to hell, I think, and when this stuff starts working in your guts, you'll think hell is where you are.

Flagg threw back his head and began to laugh.

21

Once his plan was laid-a plan that would rid him of both Roland and Peter forever-Flagg wasted no time. He first used all his wizardry to make the King well again. He was delighted to find that his magic potions worked better than they had for a long, long time. It was another irony. He earnestly wanted to make Roland better, so the potions worked. But he wanted to make the King better so he could kill him and make sure everyone knew it was murder. It was really quite funny, when you stopped to think it over.

On a windy night less than a week after the King's hacking cough had ceased, Flagg unlocked his desk and took out the teak box. He murmured, "Well done," to the kleffa carrot, which squeaked mindlessly in reply, and then lifted the heavy lid and took out the smaller box inside. He used the key around his neck to open it, and took out the packet that contained the Dragon Sand. He had bewitched this packet, and it was immune to the Dragon Sand's terrible power. Or so he thought. Flagg took no chances, and removed the packet with a small pair of silver tweezers. He laid it beside one of the King's goblets on his desk. Sweat stood out on his forehead in great round drops, for this was ticklish work indeed. One little mistake and he would pay for it with his life.

Flagg went out into the corridor that led to the dungeons and began to pant. He was hyperventilating. When you breathe rapidly, you fill your whole body with oxygen, and you can hold your breath for a long time. During the critical stage of his preparations, Flagg did not mean to breathe at all. There would be no mistakes, big or little. He was having too much fun to die.

He took a final great gasp of clean air from the barred window just outside the door to his apartment and reentered his rooms. He went to the envelope, took his dagger from his belt, and delicately slit it open. There was a flat piece of obsidian, which the magician used as a paperweight, on his desk-in those days, obsidian was the hardest rock known. Using the tweezers again, he grasped the packet, turned it upside down, and poured out most of the green sand. He saved back a tiny bit-hardly more than a dozen grains, but this bit of extra was extremely important to his plans. Hard as the obsidian was, the rock immediately began to smoke.

Thirty seconds had passed now.

He picked up the obsidian, careful that not a single grain of Dragon Sand should touch his skin-if it did, it would work inward until it reached his heart and set it on fire. He tilted the stone over the goblet and poured it in.

Now, quickly, before the sand could began to eat into the glass, he poured in some of the King's favorite wine-the same sort of wine Peter would be taking his father about now. The sand dissolved immediately. For a moment the red wine glimmered a sinister green, and then it returned to its usual color.

Fifty seconds.

Flagg went back to his desk. He picked up the flat rock and took his dagger by its handle. Only a few grains of Dragon Sand had touched the blade when he slit through the paper, but already they were working their way in, and evil little streamers of smoke rose from the pocks in the Anduan steel. He carried both the stone and the dagger out into the hallway.

Seventy seconds, and his chest was beginning to cry for air.

Thirty feet down the hallway, which led to the dungeon if you followed it far enough (a trip no one in Delain wanted to make), there was a grating in the floor. Flagg could hear gurgling water, and if he had not been holding his breath, he would have smelled a foul stench. This was one of the castle's sewers. He dropped both the rock and the blade into it and grinned at the double splash in spite of his pounding chest. Then he hurried back to the window, leaned far out, and took breath after gasping breath.

When he had his wind back, he returned to his study. Now only the tweezers, the packet, and the glass of wine stood on the desk. There was not so much as a grain of sand on the tweezers, and the bit of sand left inside the bewitched packet could not harm him as long as he took reasonable care.

He felt he had done every well indeed so far. His work was by no means done, but it was well begun. He bent over the goblet and inhaled deeply. There was no danger now; when the sand was mixed with a liquid, its fumes became harmless and undetectable. Dragon Sand made deadly vapors only when it touched a solid, such as stone.

Such as flesh.

Flagg held the goblet up to the light, admiring its bloody glow.

"A final glass of wine, my King," he said, and laughed until the two-headed parrot screamed in fear. "Something to warm your guts."

He sat down, turned over his hourglass, and began to read from a huge book of spells. Flagg had been reading from this book-which was bound in human skin-for a thousand years and had gotten through only a quarter of it. To read too long of this book, written on the high, distant Plains of Leng by a madman named Alhazred, was to risk madness.