The Eyes of the Dragon(34)

Brandon got out of the chair and onto his knees. "First we'll pray. Get here beside me, son."

Dennis did.

Chapter 6

37

Peter was tried, found guilty of regicide, and ordered imprisoned for life in the cold two rooms at the top of the Needle. All of this was done in only three days. It will not take long to tell you how neatly the jaws of Flagg's cruel trap closed around the boy.

Peyna did not order the preparations for the coronation stopped at once-in fact, he thought that Dennis must be mistaken, that there must be a reasonable explanation for all of this. Just the same, the condition of the mouse, so like the condition of the King, was impossible to ignore, and the Brandon family had a long and valued reputation for honesty and levelheadedness in the Kingdom. That was important, but there was something else of far greater importance: when Peter was crowned, there must not be a single stain on his reputation.

Peyna heard Dennis out and then summoned Peter. Dennis really might have died of fright at the sight of his master, but he was mercifully allowed to go into another room with his father. Peyna gravely explained to Peter that a charge had been leveled against him... a charge that Peter himself might have played a part in the murder of Roland. Anders Peyna was not a man to mince words, no matter how much those words might hurt.

Peter was stunned... flabbergasted. You must remember that he was still trying to cope with the idea that his beloved father was dead, killed by a cruel poison that had burned him alive from the inside out. You must remember that he had been leading the search all night, had had no sleep, and was physically exhausted. Most of all, you must remember that, although he had a man's height and breadth of shoulder, he was only sixteen. This stunning news on top of all else caused him to do a very natural thing, but it was a thing he should have avoided at all costs under Peyna's cold and assessing eyes: he burst into tears.

If Peter had hotly denied the charge, or if he had expressed his shock and exhaustion and grief by laughing wildly at such an absurd idea, the whole thing might have ended right there. I'm sure that possibility never entered Flagg's mind, but one of Flagg's few weaknesses was a tendency to judge others according to what was in his own black and murky heart. Flagg regarded everyone with suspicion, and believed everyone had hidden reasons for the things they did.

His mind was very complex, like a hall of mirrors with everything reflected twice at different sizes.

The track of Peyna's thoughts was not convoluted but very straightforward. He found it very difficult-almost impossible to believe that Peter could have poisoned his father. If he had raged or laughed out loud, things probably would have ended without even a trip to investigate the supposed box with his name carved on it, or the packet and tweezers it supposedly held. Tears, however, looked very bad. Tears looked like an expression of guilt coming from a boy old enough to commit murder but not old enough to hide what he had done.

Peyna decided he must investigate further. He hated to do this, because it meant taking guards, and that meant some word, some whisper, of these momentary suspicions would leak out, to taint the first weeks of Peter's reign.

Then he reflected that perhaps even this could be avoided. He would take half a dozen Home Guards, no more. He could leave four stationed outside the door. After this ridiculous business had blown over, all of them could be shipped off to the remotest part of the Kingdom. Brandon and his son would also have to be sent away, Peyna thought, and that was a pity, but tongues had a way of wagging, especially when liquor loosened them, and the old man's liking for bundle-gin was well known.

So Peyna ordered work on the coronation platform tempo-rarily suspended. He felt confident that work could begin again in less than half an hour, with the laborers sweating and cursing and hurrying to make up for lost time.

Alas-

38

The box, the packet, and the tweezers were there, as you know. Peter had sworn on his mother's name he had no such engraved box; his heated denial now looked very foolish. Peyna picked up the charred packet carefully with the tweezers, peered in, and saw three flecks of green sand. They were so small they could barely be seen, but Peyna, mindful of what had be-fallen both great King and humble mouse, put the packet back in the box and closed the lid. He ordered two of the four Home Guards still in the hall to step in, realizing reluctantly that the matter was steadily growing more serious.

The box was put carefully on Peter's desk, little wisps of smoke escaping from it. One of the guards was sent after the man who knew more about poisons than anyone else in the Kingdom. That man, of course, was Flagg.

39

I had nothing to do with this, Anders," Peter said. He had recovered himself, but his face was still pale and wretched, his eyes a deeper blue than the old judge-General had ever seen them.

"The box is yours, then?"

"Yes."

"Why did you deny that you had such a box?"

"I forgot. I haven't seen this box in probably eleven years or more. My mother gave it to me."

"What happened to it?"

He's not calling me "m'Lord" or "your Highness" anymore, Peter thought with a chill. He's not calling me by any term of respect at all. Can all of this really be happening, I wonder? Father poisoned? Thomas terribly ill? Peyna standing here and doing everything but accusing me of murder? And my box-where in the name of the gods did it come from, and who put it in the secret compartment behind the books?