The Eyes of the Dragon(31)

So Dennis went to Peter's rooms, which were utterly deserted. Nevertheless, he observed his regular routine, finishing by setting breakfast in the prince's study. He looked ruefully at the plates and glasses, the jams and jellies, reflecting that surely none of those things would be used that morning. Still, going about his ordered course had made him feel better for the first time since his father had turned him out of bed, for he now understood that, for better or worse, things were never going to be the same again. Times had changed.

He was preparing to leave when he heard a sound. It was so muffled he couldn't rightly tell where it was-only the general area from which it came. He looked toward Peter's bookcase, and his heart leaped in his chest.

Tendrils of smoke were drifting from between the loosely shelved books.

Dennis leaped across the room and began pulling books out by double handfuls. He saw that the smoke was issuing from cracks at one side of the bookcase's back. Also, that sound was clearer with the books gone. It was some sort of animal, squeaking in pained distress.

Dennis clawed and pawed at the bookcase, his fright spiraling toward panic. If there was one thing people were afraid of in that time and place, it was fire.

Soon enough his fingers happened on the secret spring. Flagg had foreseen this, too-after all, the secret panel wasn't really very secret-enough to amuse a boy, but not much more. The back of the bookcase slid to the right a bit, and a puff of gray smoke wafted out. The smell that escaped with the smoke was extremely unpleasant-a mixture of cooking meat, frying fur, and smoldering paper.

Not thinking, Dennis swept the panel all the way open. Of course, when he did that, more air got in. Things which had been only smoldering before now showed the first winks of flame.

This was the crucial point, the one place where Flagg had to be content not with what he was sure would happen but with his best guess of what would probably happen. All his efforts of the last seventy-five years now swung upon the fragile hinge of what a butler's son might or might not do in the next five seconds. But the Brandons had been butlers since time out of mind, and Flagg had decided he must depend on their long tradition of impeccable behavior. If Dennis had frozen in horror at the sight of those blossoming flames, or if he had turned and run for a pitcher of water, all of Flagg's carefully planted evidence might have burned in greenish tinted flames. The murder of Peter's father would never have been laid at Peter's door and he would have been crowned King at noon.

But Flagg's judgment was right. Instead of freezing or going for water, Dennis reached in and beat the flames out with his bare hands. It took less than five seconds, and Dennis was barely singed. The doleful squeaking went on, and the first thing he saw when he had waved the smoke aside was a mouse, lying on its side. It was in its death agonies. It was only a mouse, and Dennis had killed dozens of them in the line of duty without the slightest feeling of pity. Yet he felt sorry for this poor little bugger. Something terrible, something he could not even begin to understand, had happened to it and was still happening to it. Smoke rose from its fur in fine ribbons. When he touched it, he drew his hand back with a hiss-it was like touching the side of a tiny stove, such as the one in Sasha's dollhouse.

More smoke drifted lazily from an engraved wooden box with its lid slightly ajar. Dennis lifted the lid a little. He saw the tweezers, the packet. A number of brownish spots had flowered on the packet and it smoldered sluggishly, but had not burst into flame... nor did it now. The flames had come from Peter's letters, which were, of course, not enchanted at all. It was the mouse that had set these alight with its fearfully hot body. Now there was only the sullenly smoldering packet, and something warned Dennis not to touch it.

He was afraid. There were things here that he didn't under-stand, things he was not sure he wanted to understand. The one thing he knew for sure was that he badly needed to speak to his father. His father would know what to do.

Dennis took the ash bucket and a small shovel from beside the stove and went back to the secret panel. He used the shovel to pick up the smoking body of the mouse and drop it into the ash bucket. He wet the charred corners of the letters once more, just to be sure. Then he closed the panel, replaced the books, and left Peter's apartments. He took the ash bucket with him, and now he did not feel like Peter's loyal servant but like a thief-his booty was a poor mouse that died even before Dennis got back out the West Gate of the castle.

And before he had even reached his house on the far side of the castle keep, a horrible suspicion had dawned in his mind -he was the first in Delain to feel this suspicion, but he would not be the last.

He tried to push the thought out of his head, but it kept coming back. What sort of poison, Dennis wondered, had killed King Roland, anyway? Exactly what sort of poison had it been?

By the time he got back to the Brandon house, he was in a bad state indeed, and he would answer none of his mother's questions. Nor would he show her what was in the ash bucket. He told her only that he must see his father the moment he came in-it was dreadfully important. Then he went into his room and wondered exactly what sort of poison it had been. He only knew one thing about it, but that one thing was enough. It had been something hot.

35

Brandon arrived just before ten o'clock, short-tem-pered, exhausted, and in no mood for foolishness. He was dirty and sweaty, there was a thin cut across his forehead, and cobwebs flew from his hair in long strings. They had found no sign of the assassin at all. His only news was that preparations for Peter's coronation were going full speed ahead in the Plaza of the Needle, under the direction of Anders Peyna, Delain's Judge-General.