The Eyes of the Dragon(40)

Looking as if he wished he had never been born, the Home Guardsman stepped out the door and closed it behind him.

Peter spread his napkin over his knees but didn't eat. Any hunger he might have felt earlier was now gone. He plucked at the napkin and thought of his mother. He was glad-very glad indeed-that she wasn't alive to see this, to see what he had come to. All of his life he had been a lucky boy, a blessed boy, a boy to whom, it sometimes seemed, no bad luck ever came. Now it seemed that all the bad luck which should have been his over the years had only been stored up to be paid at once, and with sixteen years of interest.

But most of all they say you wanted to be King and it must be so.

In some deep way he understood. They wanted a good King they could love. But they also wanted to know they had been saved by only a hair's breadth from a bad one. They wanted blackness and secrets; they wanted their fearful tale of rotten royalty. God only knew why. They say you wanted to be King, they say it must be so.

Peyna believes it, Peter thought, and that guardsman believed it; they will all believe it. This is not a nightmare. I have been accused of my father's murder, and not all my good behavior and my obvious love for him will dismiss the charge. And part of them wants to believe I did it.

Peter carefully refolded his napkin and laid it over the top of the fresh bowl of stew. He could not eat.

44

There was a trial, and it was a great wonder, and there are histories of the event if you care to read them. But here's the root of the matter: Peter, son of Roland, was brought before the judge-General of Delain by a burning mouse; tried in a meeting of seven which was not a court; convicted by a Home Guardsman who delivered his verdict by spitting into a bowl of stew. That is the story, and sometimes stories tell more than histories, and more quickly, too.

45

When Ulrich Wicks, who drew the white stone and took Peyna's place on the bench, announced the verdict of the court, the spectators-many of whom had sworn for years that Peter would make the best King in Delain's long history-applauded savagely. They rose to their feet and surged forward, and if a line of Home Guards with their swords drawn had not held them back, they might well have overturned the sentence of lifelong imprisonment and exile at the top of the Needle and lynched the young prince instead. As he was led away, spittle flew in a rain, and Peter was well covered by it. Yet he walked with his head up.

A door to the left of the great courtroom led into a narrow hallway. The hallway stretched perhaps forty paces, and then the stairs began. They wound up and up, around and around, all the way to the top of the Needle, where the two rooms Peter would live in henceforth, until the day he died, awaited him. There were three hundred stairs in all. We will come to Peter at the top, in his rooms, and in good time; his story, as you will see, is not done. But we will not climb with him, because it was a climb of shame, leaving his rightful place as King at the bottom and marching, shoulders back and head erect, toward his place as prisoner of the Kingdom at the top-it would not be kind to follow him or any man on such a walk.

Let us instead think of Thomas for a while, and see what happened when he recovered his wits and discovered that he was King of Delain.

46

"No," Thomas whispered in a voice that was utterly horrified.

His eyes had grown huge in his pale face. His mouth trembled. Flagg had just told him that he was King of Delain, but Thomas did not look like a boy who has been told he is the King; he looked like a boy who has been told he is to be shot in the morning. "No," he said again. "I don't want to be King."

It was true. All his life he had been bitterly jealous of Peter, but one thing he had never been jealous of was Peter's coming ascension to the throne. That was a responsibility Thomas had never in his wildest dreams wished for. And now one nightmare was piled on top of another. It seemed it wasn't enough that he had awakened to the news that his brother had been imprisoned in the Needle for the murder of their father, the King. Now here was Flagg, with the appalling news that he was King in Peter's place.

"No, I don't want to be King, I won't be King. I... I refuse!

"I UTTERLY REFUSE!"

"You can't refuse, Thomas," Flagg said briskly. He had decided this was the best line to take with Thomas: friendly but brisk. Thomas needed Flagg more now than he had ever needed anyone in his whole life. Flagg knew this, but he also knew that he was uniquely at Thomas's mercy. He would be wild and skittish for a time, apt to do anything, and care would have to be taken to establish a firm hold over the boy here at the outset.

You need me, Tommy, but it would be a very bad mistake for me to tell you that. No, you must say it to me. There must be no question about who is in charge. Not now, not ever.

"Can't refuse?" Thomas whispered. He had jerked upright on his elbows at Flagg's awful news. Now he fell weakly back on his pillows again. "Can't? I feel weak again. I think the fever's coming back. Send for the doctor. I might need to be bled. I-"

"You're fine," Flagg said, standing up. "I've filled you full of good medicine, your fever's gone, and all you want is a little fresh air to finish the job. But if you need a doctor to tell you the same thing, Tommy" (Flagg let the smallest note of reproach creep into his voice), "then you need only to pull the bell."

Flagg pointed at the bell and smiled a little. It was not a terribly kind smile.

"I understand your urge to hide in your bed, but I wouldn't be your friend unless I told you that any refuge you sense in your bed or in trying to stay sick, is a false refuge."