The Eyes of the Dragon (19 page)

W
hen Ulrich Wicks, who drew the white stone and took Peyna's place on the bench, announced the verdict of the court, the spectators—many of whom had sworn for years that Peter would make the best King in Delain's long history—applauded savagely. They rose to their feet and surged forward, and if a line of Home Guards with their swords drawn had not held them back, they might well have overturned the sentence of lifelong imprisonment and exile at the top of the Needle and lynched the young prince instead. As he was led away, spittle flew in a rain, and Peter was well covered by it. Yet he walked with his head up.

A door to the left of the great courtroom led into a narrow hallway. The hallway stretched perhaps forty paces, and then the stairs began. They wound up and up, around and around, all the way to the top of the Needle, where the two rooms Peter would live in henceforth, until the day he died, awaited him. There were three hundred stairs in all. We will come to Peter at the top, in his rooms, and in good time; his story, as you will see, is not done. But we will not climb with him, because it was a climb of shame, leaving his rightful place as King at the bottom and marching, shoulders back and head erect, toward his place as prisoner of the Kingdom at the top—it would not be kind to follow him or any man on such a walk.

Let us instead think of Thomas for a while, and see what happened when he recovered his wits and discovered that he was King of Delain.

N
o,” Thomas whispered in a voice that was utterly horrified.

His eyes had grown huge in his pale face. His mouth trembled. Flagg had just told him that he was King of Delain, but Thomas did not look like a boy who has been told he is the King; he looked like a boy who has been told he is to be shot in the morning. “No,” he said again. “I don't want to be King.”

It was true. All his life he had been bitterly jealous of Peter, but one thing he had never been jealous of was Peter's coming ascension to the throne. That was a responsibility Thomas had never in his wildest dreams wished for. And now one nightmare was piled on top of another. It seemed it wasn't enough that he had awakened to the news that his brother had been imprisoned in the Needle for the murder of their father, the King. Now here was Flagg, with the appalling news that
he
was King in Peter's place.

“No, I don't want to be King, I
won't
be King. I . . . I refuse!
I UTTERLY REFUSE
!”

“You can't refuse, Thomas,” Flagg said briskly. He had decided this was the best line to take with Thomas: friendly but brisk. Thomas needed Flagg more now than he had ever needed anyone in his whole life. Flagg knew this, but he also knew that he was uniquely at Thomas's mercy. He would be wild and skittish for a time, apt to do anything, and care would have to be taken to establish a firm hold over the boy here at the outset.

“
Can't refuse?
” Thomas whispered. He had jerked upright on his elbows at Flagg's awful news. Now he fell weakly back on his pillows again. “
Can't?
I feel weak again. I think the fever's coming back. Send for the doctor. I might need to be bled. I—”

“You're fine,” Flagg said, standing up. “I've filled you full of good medicine, your fever's gone, and all you want is a little fresh air to finish the job. But if you need a doctor to tell you the same thing, Tommy” (Flagg let the smallest note of reproach creep into his voice), “then you need only to pull the bell.”

Flagg pointed at the bell and smiled a little. It was not a terribly kind smile.

“I understand your urge to hide in your bed, but I wouldn't be your friend unless I told you that any refuge you sense in your bed or in trying to stay sick, is a false refuge.”

“False?”

“I advise you to get up and begin working at getting your strength back. You're to be crowned with royal pomp and ceremony in three days' time. Being carried up the aisle in your bed to the platform where Peyna will stand with the crown and scepter would be a humiliating way to start a kingly reign, but if it comes to that, I assure you they will do it. Headless kingdoms are uneasy kingdoms. Peyna means to see you crowned as soon as possible.”

Thomas lay on his pillows, trying to absorb this information. He was rabbit-eyed with fear.

Flagg grabbed his red-lined cloak from the bedpost, swirled it over his shoulders, and hooked its gold chain at his neck. Next he took a silver-headed cane from the corner. He flourished it, crossed his waist with it, and made a large bow in Thomas's direction. The cloak . . . the hat . . . the cane . . . these things scared Thomas. Here had come a terrible time when he needed Flagg more than he had ever needed him before, and Flagg looked dressed for . . . for . . .

His panic of a few moments ago was only a minor scare in comparison with the frightful cold hands which seized Thomas's heart now.

“And now, dear Tommy, I wish you a healthy disposition all of your life, all the cheer your heart can stand, a long, prosperous reign . . . and goodbye!”

He started for the door and had actually begun to think the boy was so utterly paralyzed with panic that he, Flagg, would have to think of some stratagem for returning to the little fool's bedside on his own, when Thomas managed a single, strangled word: “Wait!”

Flagg turned back, an expression of polite concern on his face. “My Lord King?”

“Where . . . where are you going?”

“Why . . .” Flagg looked surprised, as if it hadn't occurred to him until now to think Thomas would even care. “Andua to start with. They are great sailors, you know, and there are many lands beyond the Sea of Tomorrow I've never seen. Sometimes a captain will take a magician on board for good luck, to conjure a wind if the ship is becalmed, or to tell the weather. If no one wants a magician—well, I am not as young as I was when I first came here, but I can still run a line and unfurl a sail.” Smiling, Flagg mimed the action, never dropping his cane.

Thomas was up on his elbows again. “No!” he nearly screamed. “No!”

“My Lord King—”

“
Don't call me that!
”

Flagg crossed to him, now allowing an expression of deeper concern to fill his face. “
Tommy
, then. Dear old Tommy. Whatever's wrong?”

“What's wrong?
What's wrong?
How can you be so
stupid?
My father's dead by poison, Peter's in the Needle for the crime, I must be King, you are planning to leave, and you want to know
what's wrong?
” Thomas uttered a wild, shrieky little laugh.

“But all these things must be, Tommy,” Flagg said gently.

“I can't be King,” Thomas said. He seized Flagg's arm, and his nails sank deeply into the magician's strange flesh. “Peter was meant to be King, Peter was always the smart one, I was stupid, I
am
stupid, I can't be King!”

“God makes Kings,” Flagg said.
God . . . and sometimes magicians
, he thought with an inward titter. “He has made you King, and mark me, Tommy, you
will
be King. Either you'll be King or there will be dirt shoveled over you.”

“Let it be dirt, then! I'll kill myself.”

“You'll do no such thing.”

“Better to kill myself than to be laughed at for a thousand years as the prince who died of fright.”

“You'll make a King, Tommy. Never fear. But I must go. These days are cold, but the nights are colder. And I want to be clear of the city before dusk falls.”

“No, stay!” Thomas clutched wildly at Flagg's cloak. “If I must be King, then stay and advise me, as you advised my father! Don't go! I don't know why you want to go, anyway! You've been here forever!”

Ah, finally,
Flagg thought.
This is good—in fact, this is RICH.

“It
is
hard for me to go,” Flagg said gravely. “Very hard. I love Delain. And I love
you
, Tommy.”

“Then stay!”

“You don't understand my situation. Anders Peyna is a powerful man—an
extremely
powerful man. And he doesn't like me. I should think it fair to say he probably hates me.”

“Why?”

“It's hard to say, Tommy. I suppose it has to do with the fact that he is a very powerful man, and powerful men usually resent other men who are as powerful as themselves. People like a King's closest advisor, perhaps.”

“As you were my father's closest advisor?”

“Yes.” He picked up Thomas's hand and squeezed it for a moment. Then he let go of it and sighed mournfully. “A King's advisors are much like the deer in a King's private park. Such deer are cosseted and petted and fed by hand. Both advisors and tame deer have pleasant lives, but I've all too often seen a tame park deer end up on the King's table when the King's Preserves wouldn't yield up a wild buck for that night's deer steaks or venison stew. When a ruling King dies, the old advisors have a way of disappearing.”

Thomas looked both angry and alarmed. “Has Peyna threatened you?”

“No . . . he has been very good,” Flagg said. “Very patient. I have read his eyes, however, and I know that his patience will not last forever. His eyes tell me that I might find the climate in Andua healthier.” He rose with another swirl of cape. “So . . . as little as I like to go . . .”

“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.

T
homas couldn't sleep a wink the night before he was to be crowned in the Plaza of the Needle, and in the early-morning 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 vomited 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 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.