The Eyes of the Dragon(42)

"Wait!" Thomas cried again, and in his pinched, pallid face,

Flagg saw all his ambitions about. to be fulfilled. "If you were protected when my father was King, because you were his advisor, wouldn't you be protected now that I am King, if you were my advisor?"

Flagg appeared to think deeply and gravely. "Yes... I suppose... if you made it very clear to Peyna... very clear indeed... that any move made against me would be looked upon with royal disfavor. Very great royal disfavor."

"Oh, I would!" Thomas said eagerly. "I would! So will you stay? Please? If you go, I really will kill myself! I don't know anything about being a King, and I really will!"

Flagg still stood with his head down, his face deep in shadow, apparently thinking solemnly. He was, in fact, smiling.

But when he raised his head, his face was grave.

"I have served the Kingdom of Delain almost all of my life," he said, "and I suppose that if you commanded me to stay... to stay and serve you to the best of my abilities..."

"I do so command you!" Thomas cried in a quivering, febrile voice.

Flagg sank to one knee. "My Lord!" he said.

Thomas, sobbing with relief, threw himself into Flagg's arms. Flagg caught him and held him.

"Don't cry, my little Lord King," he whispered. "All will be well. Yes, all will be very well for you and me and the Kingdom." His grin widened, showing very white, very strong teeth.

47

Thomas couldn't sleep a wink the night before he was to be crowned in the Plaza of the Needle, and in the earlymorning hours of that dread day he was seized by a terrible fit of vomiting and diarrhea brought on by nervousness-it was stage fright. Stage fright sounds both silly and comic, but there was nothing either silly or comic about this. Thomas was still only a little boy, and what he felt in the night, when we are all most alone, was an extremity of fear so great that it would not be wrong to call it mortal terror. He rang for a servant and bade him fetch Flagg. The servant, alarmed by Thomas's pallor and the smell of vomit in the room, ran all the way and hardly waited to be given entry before bursting in and telling Flagg that the young prince was very ill indeed, might even be dying.

Flagg, who had an idea of what the trouble was, told the servant to go and tell his master he would be with him shortly, and to fear nothing. He was there in twenty minutes.

"I can't go through with it," Thomas moaned. He had vom-ited in his bed, and the sheets stank of it. "I can't be King, I can't, please, you have to stop it from happening, how can I go through with it when I may vomit in front of Peyna and all of them, vomit or... or..."

"You'll be fine," Flagg said calmly. He had mixed a brew which would both soothe Thomas's stomach and temporarily cement his bowels shut. "Drink this."

Thomas drank it.

"I'm going to die," he said, putting the glass aside. "I won't have to kill myself. My heart will just burst from fear. My father said that sometimes rabbits die that way in snares, even if they aren't badly hurt. And that's what I am. A rabbit in a trap, dying of fear."

You're partly right, dear Tommy, Flagg thought. You're not dying

of fear as you think, but you are indeed a rabbit in a trap.

"You will change your mind about that, I think," Flagg said. He had been mixing a second potion. It was cloudy pink-a restful color.

"What's that?"

"Something to calm your nerves and let you sleep."

Thomas drank it. Flagg sat by his bedside. Soon Thomas was sleeping deeply-so deeply that if the servant had seen him at that moment, he might have believed his prediction had come true and Thomas was dead. Flagg took the boy's sleeping hand in his own and patted it with something like love. In his own way he did love Thomas, but Sasha would have known Flagg's love for what it was: the love of a master for his pet dog.

He is so much like his father, Flagg thought, and the old man never knew it. Oh, Tommy, we will have wonderful times, you and I, and before I am done the Kingdom will run with royal blood. I'll be gone, but I won't go far, at least not at first. I'll come back in disguise just long enough to see your flyblown head on a spike... and to open your brother's chest with my dagger, and rip his heart from his chest, and eat it raw, as his father ate the heart of his precious dragon.

Smiling, Flagg left the room.

48

The coronation went off with no trouble or com-plications at all. Thomas's servants (he had no butler, being too young, but this would be provided for soon) dressed him for the occasion in fine clothes of black velvet which were strewn with jewels (All mine, Thomas thought with wonder-and with dawning greed-These are all mine now) and high black boots of finest kid leather. When Flagg appeared promptly at eleven-thirty and said, "It is time, my Lord King," Thomas was far less nervous than he had expected. The sedative the magician had given him the night before was still working in him.

"Take my arm then," he said, "in case I stumble."

Flagg took Thomas's arm. In the years to come, it was a posture the inhabitants of the court city would become very familiar with-Flagg appearing to bear the boy King up as if he were an old man instead of a healthy youngster.

They walked out together into bright wintry sunshine.

A cheer so great it was like the sound of surf breaking against the long, desolate strands of the Eastern Barony greeted their coming. Thomas looked around, amazed at the sound, and his first thought was: Where is Peter? Surely this must be for Peter! Then he remembered that Peter was in the Needle and realized the cheering was for him. He felt a dawning pleasure... and I must tell you that the pleasure was not just in knowing the cheers were for him. He knew that Peter, locked in his lonely tower rooms, must hear the cheering, too.