The Eyes of the Dragon(27)

Roland had been looking into the fire, almost hypnotized by the flicker-play of the flames. Now he roused himself and called, "Who comes?"

Thomas heard no response, but his father rose and went to the door as if he had. He opened it, and at first Thomas thought his father's habit of talking to the heads on the walls had taken a queer new turn-that his father was now inventing invisible human company to relieve his boredom.

"Strange to see you here at this hour," Roland said, apparently walking back toward the fire in the company of no one at all. "I thought you were always at your spells and conjurations after dark."

Thomas blinked, rubbed his eyes, and saw that someone was there after all. For a moment he couldn't rightly make out who... and then he wondered how he could possibly have thought his father was alone when Flagg was right there beside him. Flagg was carrying two glasses of wine on a silver tray.

"Wives' tale, m'Lord-magicians conjure early as well as late. But of course we have our darksome image to keep up."

Roland's sense of humor was always improved by beer-so much so that he would often laugh at things that weren't funny in the least. At this remark he threw back his head and bellowed as if it was the greatest joke he had ever heard. Flagg smiled thinly.

When Roland's fit of laughing had passed, he said: "What's this? Wine?"

"Your son is barely more than a boy, but his deference toward his father and his honor of his King have shamed me, a grown man," Flagg said. "I brought you a glass of wine, my King, to show you that I, too, love you."

He passed it to Roland, who looked absurdly touched.

Don't drink it, Father! Thomas thought suddenly-his mind was full of an alarm he couldn't understand. Roland's head came up suddenly and tilted, almost as if he had heard.

"He's a good boy, my Peter," Roland said.

"Indeed," Flagg replied. "Everyone in the Kingdom says so."

"Do they?" Roland asked, looking pleased. "Do they, indeed?"

"Yes-so they do. Shall we toast him?" Flagg raised his glass. No, Father! Thomas shouted in his mind again, but if his father had heard his first thought, he didn't hear this one. His face shone with love for Thomas's elder brother.

"To Peter, then!" Roland raised the glass of poisoned wine high.

"To Peter!" Flagg agreed, smiling. "To the King!"

Thomas cringed in the dark. Flagg's making two different toasts! I don't know what he means, but... Father!

This time it was Flagg who turned his darkly considering gaze toward the dragon's head for a moment, as if he had heard the thought. Thomas froze, and in a moment Flagg's gaze turned back to Roland.

They clinked glasses and drank. As his father quaffed the glass of wine, Thomas felt a splinter of ice push its way into his heart.

Flagg made a half-turn in his chair and threw his glass into the fire. "Peter!"

"Peter!" Roland echoed, and threw his own. It smashed against the sooty brickwork at the back of the fireplace and fell into the flames, which for a moment seemed to flare an ugly green.

Roland raised the back of his hand to his mouth for a moment, as if to stifle a belch. "Did you spice it?" he asked. "It tasted... almost mulled."

"No, my Lord," Flagg said gravely, but Thomas thought he sensed a smile behind the mask of the magician's gravity, and that splinter of ice slipped further into his heart. Suddenly he wanted no more of spying, not ever. He closed the peepholes and crept back to his room. He felt first hot, then cold, then hot again. By morning he had a fever. Before he was well again, his father was dead, his brother imprisoned in the room at the top of the Needle, and he was a boy King at the age of barely twelve-Thomas the Light-Bringer, he was dubbed at the cor-onation ceremonies. And who was his closest advisor?

You guess.

Chapter 5

30

When Flagg left Roland (the old man was feeling sprightlier than ever by then, a sure sign the Dragon Sand was at work in him), he went back to his dark basement rooms. He got out the tweezers and the packet containing the remaining few grains of sand and put them on his huge old desk. Then he turned his hourglass over and resumed reading.

Outside, the wind screamed and gobbled-old wives cringed in their beds and slept poorly and told their husbands that Rhian-non, the Dark Witch of the Coos, was riding her hateful broom this night, and wicked work was afoot. The husbands grunted, turned over, told their wives to go back to sleep and leave them alone. They were dull fellows for the most part; when an eye is wanted to see straws flying in the wind, give me an old wife any day.

Once a spider skittered halfway across Flagg's book, touched a spell so terrible not even the magician dared use it, and turned instantly to stone.

Flagg grinned.

When the hourglass was empty, he turned it over again. And again. And again. He turned it over eight times in all, and when the eighth hour's worth of sand was nearly gone, he set about finishing his work. He kept a large number of animals in a dim room down the hall from his study, and he went there first. The little creatures skittered and cringed when Flagg came near. He did not blame them.

In the far corner was a wicker cage containing half a dozen brown mice-such mice were everywhere in the castle, and that was important. Down here there were also huge rats, but it was not a rat Flagg wanted tonight. The Royal Rat upstairs had been poisoned; a simple mouse would be enough to make sure the crime came home to the Royal Ratling. If all went well, Peter would soon be as tightly locked up as these mice.