The Eyes of the Dragon(93)

"Not so easy as that, my young bird!" howled Flagg. "Let's see how you fly with your rope cut, shall we?"

Flagg yanked the third bolt and charged into Peter's room with his axe held high over his head. After one quick look out the window, his grin resurfaced. He decided not to cut the rope, after all.

Chapter 18

130

Down and down Peter went. His arm muscles trembled with exhaustion. His mouth was dry; he couldn't remember ever wanting a drink as badly as he did right now. It seemed that he had been on this rope for a very, very long time, and a queer certainty had stolen into his heart-he would never get the drink of water he wanted. He was meant to die after all, and that wasn't even the worst of it. He was going to die thirsty. Right now that seemed the worst of it.

He still did not dare look down, but he felt a queer compulsion-every bit as strong as his brother's compulsion to go into their father's sitting room-to look up. He obeyed it-and some two hundred feet above, he saw Flagg's white, murderous face grinning down at him.

"Hello, my little bird," Flagg called down cheerfully. "I've an axe, but I really don't think I'll need to use it after all. I've put it aside, see?" And the magician held out his bare hands.

All the strength was trying to run out of Peter's arms and hands just the sight of Flagg's hateful face had done that. He concentrated on holding on. He couldn't feel the thin rope at all anymore-he knew he still had it because he could see it coming out of his fists, but that was all. His breath rasped in and out of his throat in hot gasps.

Now he looked down... and saw the white, upturned circles of three faces. Those circles were very, very small-he was not twenty feet above the frozen cobbles, or even forty feet; he was still a hundred feet up, as high as the fourth floor of one of our buildings.

He tried to move and found he could not-if he moved, he would fall. So he hung there against the side of the building. Cold, gritty snow blew in his face, and from the prison above, Flagg began to laugh.

131

Why doesn't he move?" Naomi cried, digging one mittened hand into Ben's shoulder. Her eyes were fixed on Peter's twisting form. The way it hung there, slowly turning, made it look dreadfully like the body of a man who had been hanged. "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't-"

Above them, Flagg's chilly laughter abruptly stopped.

"Who goes there?" he called. His voice was like thunder, like doom. "Answer me, if you want to keep your heads! Who goes there?"

Frisky whined and shrank against Naomi's side.

"Oh gods, now you've done it," Dennis said. "What do we do, Ben?"

"Wait," Ben said grimly. "And if the magician comes down, fight. We wait for what happens next. We-"

But that was all the waiting any of them had to do, for in the next few seconds, much-not all, but a great deal-was resolved.

132

Flagg had seen the thinness of Peter's rope, its whiteness-and in a trice he understood everything, from beginning to end-the napkins and the dollhouse as well. Peter's means of escape had been under his nose the whole time, and he had very nearly missed it. But... he saw something else as well. Little pops of fiber where the strands were giving way, some fifteen feet down the taut length of rope.

Flagg could have turned the iron bar he was resting his hand on and sent Peter plummeting that way, with the anchor trailing after to perhaps bash his head in when he struck bottom. He could have swung the battle-axe and parted the fragile rope.

But he preferred to let matters take their course, and a moment after he had challenged the voices, matters did take their course.

The rope's breaking strain was reached. It parted with a twang like a lute string that has been wound too far on its peg.

"Goodbye, birdie," Flagg cried happily, leaning far out to watch Peter's fall. He was laughing. "Goodb-"

Then his voice ceased and his eyes widened as they had when he looked into the crystal and saw the tiny figure descending the side of the Needle. He opened his mouth and screamed with rage. That awful cry woke up more people in Delain than the fall of the Tower.

133

Peter heard that twanging sound, felt the rope part. Cold wind rushed up past his face. He tried to steel himself for the crash, knowing it would come in less than a second. The pain if he didn't die instantly would be the worst.

And that was when Peter struck the thick, deep drift of royal napkins which Frisky had hauled out of the castle and across the Plaza in a stolen cart-the royal napkins which Ben, Dennis, and Naomi had worked so feverishly to pile up. The size of that pile-it looked like a whitewashed haystack-was never really known, because Ben, Dennis, and Naomi all had different estimates on the subject. Perhaps Peter's own idea was the best, since he was the one who fell squarely into the middle of it, he believed that messy, lovely, lifesaving pile of napkins must have been at least twenty feet high, and for all I know, he may have been right.

134

He fell squarely into the middle, as I have said, making a crater. Then he fell over on his back and lay still. Far above, Ben heard Flagg howl with rage and he thought: You don't need to do that, everything's going to be just fine for you, magician. He has died anyway, in spite of all we could do.

Then Peter sat up. He looked dazed but very much alive. In spite of Flagg, in spite of the fact that there might be Guards of the Watch racing toward them at that moment, Ben Staad whooped. It was a sound of pure triumph. He grabbed Naomi and kissed her.