The Eyes of the Dragon(43)

"It does it matter now that you were always best in lessons?

Thomas thought with a mean happiness that pricked him even as it warmed him. What does it matter now? You are locked in the Needle and I... I am to be King! What does it matter that you brought him a glass of wine every night and

But this last thought caused a strange, greasy sweat to rise on his forehead, and he put it away from him.

The cheers rose again and again as he and Flagg walked first to the Plaza of the Needle and then under the arch formed by the upraised ceremonial swords of the Home Guard, dressed again in their fine red ceremonial uniforms and their tall WolfJaw shakos. Thomas began to positively enjoy himself. He raised a hand in salute, and his subjects' cheers became a storm. Men threw their hats in the air. Women wept for joy. Cries of The King! The King! Behold the King! Thomas the Light-Bringer! Long live the King! rose in the air. Thomas, who was only a boy, thought they were for him. Flagg, who had perhaps never been a boy, knew better. The cheers were because the time of unease was past. They were cheering the fact that things could go on as they always had, that the shops could be reopened, that grim-eyed soldiers in tight leather hats would no longer stand watches around the castle in the night, that everyone could get drunk following this solemn ceremony and not worry about waking to the sounds of confused midnight revolt. No more than that, no less than that. Thomas could have been anyone, anyone at all. He was a figurehead.

But Flagg would see that Thomas never knew that.

Not, at any rate, until it was too late.

The ceremony itself was short. Anders Peyna, looking twenty years older than the week before, officiated. Thomas answered I will, I shall, and I swear in all the right places, as Flagg had coached him. At the end of the ceremonies, which were conducted in such solemn silence that even those at the farthest edges of the huge crowd could hear them clearly, the crown was placed on Thomas's head. Cheers rose again, louder than ever, and Thomas looked up-up and up the smooth, rounded stone side of the Needle, to the very top, where there was but one window. He couldn't see if Peter was looking down, but he hoped Peter was. He hoped Peter was looking down and biting his lips in frustration until the blood flowed down his chin, as Thomas had often bitten his own lips-bitten them until there was a fine white network of scars there.

Do you hear that, Peer? he shrilled in his mind. They're cheering for ME! They're cheering for ME! They're finally cheering for ME!

49

On his first night as King, Thomas the Light-Bringer awoke straight up and staring in bed, his face stark and horrified, his hands crammed against his mouth as if to stifle a scream. He had just had a terrible nightmare, one even worse than those in which he relived the awful afternoon in the Eastern Tower.

This dream had been a kind of reliving, too. He was in the secret passage again, spying on his father. It was the night his father had been so drunk and furious, striding around the room and shrilling defiance at the heads on the walls. But when his father came to the head of Niner, the things he said were not the same.

Why do you stare at me? his father shrieked in the dream. He's killed me and I suppose you couldn't stop that, but how could you see your brother imprisoned for it? Answer me, damn you! I did the best I could, and look at me! Look at me!

His father began to burn. His face turned the dull red of a well-banked fire. Smoke burst from his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He doubled over in agony and Thomas saw that his father's hair was on fire. That was when he woke up.

The wine! he thought now, in horror. Flagg brought him a glass of wine that night! Everyone knew that Peter brought him wine every night, so everyone thought Peter poisoned the wine! But Flagg brought him wine that night, too, and he never did before! And the poison came from Flagg! He said it was stolen from him years ago,

He would not allow himself to think of such things. He would not. Because if he did think of such things-

"He would kill me," Thomas whispered, horrified.

You could go to Peyna. Peyna doesn't like him.

Yes, he could do that. But then all his old dislike and jeal-ousy of Peter returned. If he told, Peter would be let out of the Needle and would take his place as King. Thomas would be no one again, just a bumbling prince who had been King for one day.

It had taken only one day for Thomas to discover he could like being King-he could like it very much, especially with Flagg to help him. Besides, he didn't really know anything, did he? He only had an idea. And his ideas had always been wrong.

He's killed me and I suppose you couldn't stop that, but how could you see your brother imprisoned for it?

Never mind, Thomas thought, it must be wrong, it has to be wrong, and even if it isn't, it serves him right. He turned over on his side, determined to go back to sleep. And after a long time, sleep came.

In the years ahead, that nightmare sometimes came again -his father accusing his hidden, spying son and then doubling over, smoking, his hair on fire. In those years, Thomas discov-ered two things: guilt and secrets, like murdered bones, never rest easy; but the knowledge of all three can be lived with.

Chapter 8

50

If you had asked him, Flagg would have said with smiling contempt that Thomas could keep a secret from no one except a person who was mentally enfeebled, and perhaps not even from such a one as that. Certainly he could not keep a secret, Flagg would have said, from the man who had engineered his rise to the throne. But men like Flagg are full of pride and confidence in themselves, and although they may see much, they are sometimes strangely blind. Flagg never guessed that Thomas had been behind Niner that night, and that he had seen Flagg give Roland the glass of poisoned wine.