The Eyes of the Dragon(65)

When Flagg had still not returned on the eighth night (he and his soldiers were even then camped fifty miles from the castle and Flagg was in a foul mood; the only trace of the nobles they found had been frozen hoofprints that might have been days or weeks old), Thomas sent for Dennis. It was later that night, that eighth night, that Thomas arose from his couch and began to walk.

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So Dennis followed his lord and master the King down those long, drafty stone corridors, and if you have come along this far, I think you must know where Thomas the Light -Bringer finished up.

Late stormy night had passed into early stormy morning. No one was abroad in the corridors-at least, Dennis saw no one. If anyone had been abroad, he or she might well have fled in the other direction, perhaps screaming, believing he or she had seen two ghosts walking, the one leading in a long white nightshirt that could easily have been mistaken for a shroud, the other following in a plain jerkin, but with bare feet and a face pale enough to have been mistaken for the face of a corpse. Yes, I believe anyone who saw them would have fled, and told long prayers before sleeping... and even many prayers might not have kept the nightmares at bay.

Thomas stopped in the middle of a corridor that Dennis had seldom been down, and he opened a recessed door which Dennis had never really noticed at all. The boy King stepped into another corridor (no chambermaid passed them with an armload of sheets, as one had once passed Thomas and Flagg when Flagg had brought the prince this way some years before; all good chambermaids were long since in their beds), and partway down it, Thomas stopped so suddenly that Dennis almost ran into him.

Thomas looked around, as if to see if he had been followed, and his dreaming eyes passed directly over Dennis. Dennis's skin crawled, and it was all he could do to keep from crying out. The sconces in this almost forgotten hallway guttered and stank foully of das oil; the light was faint and gruesome. The young butler could feel his hair trying to clump up and push out in spikes as those empty eyes-eyes like dead lamps lit only by the moon-passed over him.

He was there, standing right there, but Thomas did not see him; to Thomas, his butler was dim.

Oh, I must run, part of Dennis's mind whispered distractedly-but inside his head, that distracted little whisper was like a scream. Oh, I must run, he has died, he has died in his sleep and I am following a walking corpse! But then he heard the voice of his Da', his own dear, dead Da', whispering: If the time ever comes to do yer first master a service, Dennis, you mustn't hesitate.

A voice deeper than either told him that the time for that service had come. And Dennis, a lowly servant boy who had changed a kingdom once by discovering a burning mouse, per-haps changed it again by holding his place, in spite of the terror which froze his bones and pushed his heart into his throat.

In a strange, deep voice that was nothing at all like his usual voice (but to Dennis that voice sounded weirdly familiar), Thomas said: "Fourth stone up from the one at the bottom with the chip in it. Press it. Quick!"

The habit of obedience was so ingrained in Dennis that he had actually begun to move forward before realizing that Thomas, in his dream, had commanded himself in the voice of another. Thomas pushed the stone before Dennis could move more than a single step. It slid in perhaps three inches. There was a click. Dennis's jaw dropped, as part of the wall swung inward. Thomas pushed it farther, and Dennis saw there was a huge secret door here. Secret doors made him think of secret panels, and secret panels made him think of burning mice. Again he felt an urge to run and fought it down.

Thomas went in. For a moment he was only a glimmering nightshirt in the dark, a nightshirt with no one inside it. Then the stone wall closed again. The illusion was perfect.

Dennis stood there, shifting from one cold bare foot to the other cold bare foot. What should he do now?

Again, it was his Da's voice he seemed to hear, impatient now, brooking no refusal. Follow, you paltry boy! Follow, and be quick! This is the moment! Follow!

But Da', the dark-

He seemed to feel a stinging slap, and Dennis thought hys-terically: Even when you're dead you got a strong right hand, Da'! All right, all right, I'm going!

He counted up four from the chipped stone and pushed. The door swung about four inches inward on darkness.

There was a tiny Glittering sound in the awesome silence of the corridor-a sound like mice made of stone. After a moment Dennis realized that sound was his own teeth, chattering to-gether.

Oh Da', I'm so scared, he mourned... and then followed King Thomas into the darkness.

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Fifty miles away, rolled into five blankets against the bitter cold and the roaring wind, Flagg cried out in his sleep at the precise moment Dennis followed the King into the secret passageway. On a knoll not far distant, wolves howled in unison with that cry. The soldier sleeping nearest Flagg on the left died instantly of a heart attack, dreaming that a great lion had come to gobble him up. The soldier sleeping on Flagg's right woke up in the morning to discover he was blind. Worlds sometimes shudder and turn inside their axes, and this was such a time. Flagg felt it, but did not grasp it. The salvation of all that is good is only this-at times of great import, evil beings sometimes fall strangely blind. When the King's magician awoke in the morn-ing, he knew that he had had a bad dream, probably from his own long-forgotten past, but he did not remember what it had been.

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The darkness inside the secret passage was utter and complete, the air still and dry. In it, coming from somewhere ahead, Dennis heard a terrible, desolate sound.