The Eyes of the Dragon(80)

101

It was a long time before Peter could put his whirling thoughts in order. His mind kept circling back to one question: What had Dennis seen to change his mind so radically and completely? What, in the names of all the gods, could it have been?

Little by little he came to realize that it didn't matter-Dennis had seen something, and that was enough.

Peyna. Dennis had gone to Peyna, and Peyna had sensed... well, the old fox had sensed something. He thinks you may have some sort of Plan, but what he Noes Not. Old fox indeed. He had not forgotten Peter's request for the dollhouse, and the napkins. He hadn't known exactly what those things meant, but he had sensed something in the wind. Aye, well and truly.

Then what was Peter to do?

Part of him-a very large part-wanted to go ahead just as he had planned. He had worked his courage up to this desperate adventure; now it was hard to let it go for nothing but more waiting. And there were the dreams, urging him on, as well.

You would Noe the name of this Black Killer if I dared to rite It, but I do Not. Peter knew just the same, of course, and it was that more than anything else that convinced him Dennis really had stumbled onto something. Peter felt that Flagg might soon awake to this new development-and he wanted to be gone before that happened.

Was a day too long to wait?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Peter was torn in an agony of indecision. Ben... Thomas... Flagg... Peyna... Dennis... they whirled in his brain like figures seen in a dream. What should he do?

In the end, it was the appearance of the note itself-not what was in it-that persuaded him. For it to come this way, pinned to a napkin on the very night he meant to try his rope made of napkins... it meant he should wait. But only for a night. Ben would not be able to help.

Could Dennis help him, though? What could he do?

And suddenly, in a flash of light, an idea came to him.

Peter had been sitting on his bed, hunched over the note, his brows furrowed. Now he straightened up, his eyes alight.

His eyes fell on the note again.

If You have something on which You can rite, then throe down a Note and I will try to retreeve It late this Night.

Yes, of course, he had something to write on. Not the napkin itself, because it might be missed. Not Dennis's note, either, because it was written on both sides, from side to side and top to bottom.

But Valera's parchment was not.

Peter went back into his sitting room. He glanced at the door and saw that the spyhole was closed. Dimly he could hear the warders at cards below. He crossed to the window and waved twice, hoping that Dennis was really out there somewhere, and could see him. He would just have to hope so.

Peter went back to the bedroom, pulled up the loose stone, and after some reaching and fumbling, retrieved the locket and the parchment. He turned the parchment over to the blank side... but what was he to do for ink?

After a moment the answer came to him. The same thing Valera had done, of course.

Peter worked at his thin straw mattress, and after some tugging opened a seam. The stuffing was of straw, and before long, he had found a number of good long stalks that would serve as pens. Then he opened the locket. It was in the shape of a heart, and the point at the bottom was sharp. Peter closed his eyes for a moment and said a brief prayer. Then he opened them and drew the point of the locket across his wrist. Blood welled up at once-much more than had came from the pinprick earlier. He dipped the first straw in his blood and began to write.

Chapter 15

102

Standing in the cold darkness across the Plaza, Dennis saw Peter's shape come to the small window at the top of the Needle. He saw Peter raise his arms over his head and cross them twice. There would be a message, then. It doubled-no, trebled-his risk, but he was glad.

He settled in to wait, feeling numbness slowly creep over his feet and kill the feeling in them. The wait seemed very long. The Crier called ten... then eleven... finally twelve o' the clock. The clouds had hidden the moon, but the air seemed strangely light-another sign of a coming storm.

He was beginning to think that Peter must have forgotten him, or changed his mind, when that shape came to the window again. Dennis straightened up, wincing at a pain in his neck, which had been cocked upward for the last four hours. He thought he saw something arc out... and then Peter's shape left the high window. A moment later, the light up there was extin-guished.

Dennis looked left and right, saw no one, took all of his cour-age in his hands, and ran out into the Plaza. He knew perfectly well that there might be someone-a more alert Guard o' the Watch than last night's tuneless singer, for instance-whom he hadn't seen, but there was nothing to be done about that. He was also gruesomely aware of all the men and women who had been beheaded not far from here. What if their ghosts were still around, lurking-?

But thinking about such things did no good, and so he tried to put them from his mind. Of more immediate concern was just finding the thing that Peter had thrown. The area at the foot of the Needle below Peter's window was a featureless white snowfield.

Feeling horribly exposed, Dennis began to cast about like an inept hunting dog. He wasn't sure what he had seen glimmering in the air-it had been there only for a second-but it had looked solid. That made sense; Peter would not have thrown a piece of paper, which might have fluttered anywhere. But what, and where was it?

As the seconds ticked by, turning into minutes, Dennis began to feel more and more frantic. He dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl about, peering into footprints which had melted to the size of dragon prints earlier that day and which were now refreezing, hard and blue and shiny. Sweat coursed down his face. And he began to be deviled by a recurring idea -that a hand would fall on his shoulder, and when he turned he would see the grinning face of the King's magician inside his dark cowl.