Dennis also found an old pair of snowshoes in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The straps were far too large, but he had plenty of time to shorten them. The facings had begun to rot, and there was nothing Dennis could do about that, but he thought they would serve the purpose. He wouldn't need them for long.

He slept in the cellar, fearing surprise, but during the daylight hours of those four long days, Dennis spent most of his time in the parlor of the deserted farmstead, watching the traffic pa.s.s to and fro-what little there was began around three o' the clock and had mostly ceased by five, when early-winter shadows began to cover the land. The parlor was a sad, empty place. Once it had been a cheery spot in which the family had gathered to discuss the day just done. Now it belonged only to the mice* and to Dennis, of course.

Peyna, after hearing Dennis declare that he could read and write "pretty well for a fellow in service" and seeing him draw his Great Letters (this had been over breakfast on Tuesday-the last real meal Dennis had had since his own lunch on Monday, a meal he looked back on with understandable nostalgia), had provided him with several sheets of paper and a lead pencil. And during most of the hours he spent in the deserted house, Dennis labored earnestly over a note. He wrote, scratched out, rewrote, frowned horribly as he reread, scratched his head, resharpened his pencil with his knife, and wrote again. He was ashamed of his spelling, and terrified he would forget some crucial thing Peyna had told him to put in. There were several times, times when his poor frazzled brain could make no more progress, when he wished Peyna had stayed up an hour longer on the night Dennis had come and written his own d.a.m.ned note, or called it aloud to Arlen. Most times, however, he was glad of the job. He had worked hard his whole life, and idleness made him nervous and uneasy. He would rather have worked his st.u.r.dy young man's body than his not-so-st.u.r.dy young man's brains, but work was work, and he was glad to have it.

By Sat.u.r.day noon, he had a letter he was pretty well satisfied with (which was good, since he had worked his way down to the final two sheets of notepaper). He looked at it with some admiration. It covered both sides of the paper, and was by far the longest thing he had ever written. He folded it to the size of a medicine tablet, and then peeked out the sitting-room window, waiting impatiently for it to be dark enough to leave. Peter saw the gathering clouds from his own poor sitting room atop the Needle, Dennis from the sitting room of this deserted house; but both had been taught by their fathers-one a King and the other a butler to that King-to read the sky, and Dennis also thought there would be snow tomorrow.

By four, the long, blue shadow of the house had begun to creep out from the foundations, and Dennis no longer felt so eager to go. It was danger ahead* deadly danger. He was to go where Flagg was perhaps even now brooding long over his infernal magics, perhaps even now checking upon a certain sick butler. But how he felt did not really matter, and he knew it, the time had come to do his duty, and as every butler in his family line had done for centuries and centuries, Dennis would do his best.

He left the house in the bleak sunset hour, donned the snowshoes, and struck off across the field on a direct line toward the castle keep. The idea of wolves occurred to his uneasy mind, and he could only hope there would be none, and if there were, that they would leave him alone. He hadn't the slightest idea that Peter had decided to make his dangerous escape attempt the following night, but like Peyna-and Peter himself-he felt a need to hurry; it seemed to him that there were mackerel-scale clouds laid across his heart as well as the sky.

As he trudged through the snow-desolate fields, Dennis's thoughts turned to how he might enter the castle without being seen and challenged. He thought he knew how it could be done* if, that was, Flagg did not smell him.

He had no more than thought the magician's name when a wolf howled somewhere out in the still white wastes. In a dark room below the castle, Flagg's own sitting room, the magician sat bolt upright suddenly in his chair, where he had fallen asleep with a book of arcane lore open on his stomach.

"Who speaks the name of Flagg?" the magician whispered, and the two-headed parrot shrieked.

Standing in the center of along and desolate field of white, Dennis heard that voice, as dry and scabrous as a spider's scuttle, in his own head. He paused, his breath in-drawn and held. When he finally let it go, it plumed frosty from his mouth. He was cold all over, but hot drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.

From his feet he heard dry snapping noises- Pouck! Pouck! Pouck!-as several of the snowshoes' rotted cross-facings let go.

The wolf howled in the silence. It was a hungry, heartless sound.

"No one," Flagg muttered in the sitting room of his dark apartments. He was rarely sick-could remember being sick only three or four times in all of his long life-but he had caught a bad cold in the north, sleeping on the frozen ground, and although he was improving, he was still not well.

"No one. A dream. That's all."

He took the book from his lap, closed it, and set it on a side table-the surface of this table had been handsomely dressed in human skin-and settled back in his chair. Soon he slept again.

In the snowy fields west of the castle, Dennis slowly relaxed. A single drop of stinging sweat ran into his eye and he wiped it away absently. He had thought of Flagg* and somehow Flagg had heard him. But now the dark shadow of the magician's thought had pa.s.sed over him, as the shadow of a hawk may pa.s.s over a crouching rabbit. Dennis let out a long, shaky sigh. His legs felt weak. He would try-oh, with all his heart he would try-t think of the magician no more. But as the night came on and the moon with its ghostly fairy-ring rose in the sky, that was a thing easier resolved upon than done.

{insert image on page 239} At eight of the clock, Dennis left the fields and entered the King's Preserves. He knew them well enough. He had been a squireen for Brandon when his da ' b.u.t.tled the old King in the fields of the hunt, and Roland had come here often, even in his old age. Thomas came less often, but on the few occasions when the boy King did come, Dennis had, of course, been required to come with him. Soon he struck on a trail he knew, and just before midnight he reached the verge of this toy forest.

He stood behind a tree, looking out at the castle wall. It was half a mile away over open, snow-covered ground. The moon was still shining, and Dennis was all too aware of the sentries who walked the castle parapet. He would have to wait until Prince Ailon had driven his silvery chariot over the edge of the world before crossing that open s.p.a.ce. Even then he would be horribly exposed. He had known from the first that this would be the riskiest part of the whole adventure. Parting from Peyna and Arlen, with the good sun shining down, the risk had seemed acceptable. Now it seemed utterly mad.

Go back, a cowardly voice inside him begged, but Dennis knew he couldn't. His father had laid a charge on him, and if the G.o.ds meant him to die trying to fulfill it, then he would die.

Faint and yet clear, like a voice heard in a dream, came the call of the Crier, drifting out to him from the castle's central tower: "Twelve o'clock and all's well*"

Nothing's well, Dennis thought miserably. Not one single thing. He drew his thin coat more tightly around him and began the long job of waiting down the moon.

Eventually it left the sky, and Dennis knew he had to move. Time had grown short. He stood, said a brief prayer to his G.o.ds, and began to walk across the open s.p.a.ce as rapidly as he could, expecting a hail of Who goes there? from the castle walls at every moment. The hail did not come. The clouds had thickened across the night sky. All below the castle wall was one dark shadow. In less than ten minutes, Dennis had reached the edge of the moat. He sat on its low bank, the snow crunching under his bottom, and took the snowshoes off. He slid down onto the moat itself, which was frozen and covered with more snow.

Dennis's thundering heart slowed down. He was in the shadow of the bulking castle wall now, and would not be seen unless a sentry happened to look straight down, and most probably not even then.

Dennis was careful not to go all the way across the moat, not yet-because the ice close to the castle wall would be rotten and thin. He knew why this was so; the reason for the thin ice and the unpleasant smell here and the mossy wetness on the huge stones of the outer wall was his hope of entering the castle secretly. He moved carefully to the left, ears listening for the noise of running water.

At last he heard it, and looked up. There, at eye height, was a round black hole in the solid castle wall. Fluid ran from it in listless streams. It was a sewer outflow pipe.

"Now for it," Dennis muttered. He drew back five paces, ran, and leaped. As he did, he felt the ice, rotted by the constant outflow of warm waste from the pipe, give under his feet. Then he was clinging to the mossy lip of the pipe. It was slick, and he had to clutch hard to keep from falling. He pulled himself up, digging for purchase with his feet, and finally yanked himself inside. He paused for a moment, trying to get his breath back, then began to crawl along the pipe, which slanted steadily up-ward. He and several of his playmates had found these pipes when they were children, and had been quickly warned off by their parents, partly because they might become lost, mostly because of the sewer rats. Still, Dennis thought he knew where he would come out.

An hour later, in a deserted corridor of the castle's east wing, a sewer grating moved-was still-then moved again. It was shoved partway aside, and a few moments later a very dirty (and very smelly) butler named Dennis pulled himself out of a hole in the floor and lay panting on the cold cobbles. He, could have used a longer rest, but someone might come along, even at this unearthly hour. So he replaced the grating and looked around.

He did not recognize the hallway at once, but this in no way upset him. He started down it toward the T-intersection at the far end. At least, he reflected, there had been no rats in the warren of sewer pipes below the castle. That had been a great relief. He had been prepared for them, not just because of the gruesome tales his da ' had told him, but because there had been rats on a few occasions when he and his mates had ventured with fearful screeches of laughter down into the pipes as children-the rats had been part of the scary, dare-you adventure of it.

Probably there were just a few mice, and your memory's exaggerated them into rats, Dennis thought now. This was not the truth, but Dennis would never know it. His memory of the rats in the sewers was a true one. The pipes had been infested with great, disease-bearing rodents since time out of mind. It had only been for the last five years that they had ceased to teem in the sewers. They had been wiped out by Flagg. The magician had rid himself of both a piece of stone and his own dagger by means of a sewer grating similar to the one from which Dennis had emerged on this early Sunday morning. He had rid himself of them, of course, because there were a few flecks of the deadly green Dragon Sand on each. The fumes from those few grains had killed the rats, burning many of them alive even as they paddled through the sc.u.mmy water in the pipes, suffocating all the others before they could flee. Five years later, the rats had still not come back, although most of the poisonous fumes had dissipated. Most, but not all. If Dennis had entered one of the sewer pipes a bit closer to Flagg's apartments, he might well have died himself. Perhaps it was luck that saved him, or fate, or those G.o.ds he prayed to; I'll not take a stand on the matter. I tell tales, not tea leaves, and on the subject of Dennis's survival, I leave you to your own conclusions.

He reached the junction, peered around the corner, and saw a sleepy young Guard o' the Watch pa.s.sing farther up the way. Dennis pulled back. His heart was thumping hard again, but he was satisfied-he knew where he was. When he looked back, the guard was gone.

Dennis moved quickly, up this corridor, down that flight of stairs, across t'other gallery. He moved with speedy sure-footedness, for he had spent his whole life in the castle. He knew it well enough, certainly, to find his way from the east wing, where he had come out of the sewers, to the lower west wing, where the napkins were stored.

But because he dared not be seen-not by anyone-Dennis went by the most obscure corridors he knew, and at the sound of every footfall (either real or imagined, and I do think quite a few of them were imagined), he withdrew into the nearest cranny or niche. In the end, it took him over an hour.

He thought he had never been so hungry in his life.

Never mind your cussed belly now, Dennis-take care of your master first, your belly later.

He was standing far back in a shadowy doorway. Faintly, he heard the Crier call four o'clock. He was about to move forward when slow, echoing footfalls came down the hallway* a clank of steel-and-scabbard-a creak of leather leggings.

Dennis pushed himself farther back into the shadows, sweating.

A Guard o' the Watch paused just in front of the thinly shadowed doorway where Dennis hid. The fellow stood for a moment rooting in his nose with his little finger, and then leaned over to blow a stream of snot between his knuckles. Dennis could have reached out and touched him, and felt certain that any moment the guard would turn* his eyes would widen* he would draw his shortsword* and that would be the end of Dennis, son of Brandon.

Please, Dennis's frozen mind whispered. Please, oh, pleas He could smell the guard, could smell the old wine and burned meat on his breath, and the sour sweat coming out of his skin.

The guard started to move on* Dennis began to relax* then the guard stopped and began rooting in his nose again. Dennis could have screamed.

"I have a girrul name of Marchy-Marchy-Melda," the guard began to sing in a low-pitched, droning voice, rooting in his nose all the while. He produced a large green something, examined it thoughtfully, and flicked it onto the wall. Splat. "She's got a sister named Es-a- merelda* I would sail the seven seas* Just to kiss her dimply knees! Tootie-sing-tay, sing- tiy, and pa.s.s me a bucket- da wine."

Something exceedingly horrible was now happening to Dennis. His nose had begun to itch and tickle in a way which was unmistakable. Very soon he would sneeze.

Go! he screamed in his mind. Oh, why don't you go, you stupid fool?

But the guard seemed to have no intentions of going. He had apparently struck a rich lode up in the left nostril, and he meant to mine it.

"I have a girrul name of Darchy-Darchy-Darla* She's got a sister named Red Headed Carla* I would take a thousand sips* From her pretty pretty lips* Tootie-sing-tay, sing- tiy, and pa.s.s me a bucket- da wine."

I'll hit you over the HEAD with a bucket of wine, you fool! Dennis thought. Move ON!! The itch in his nose grew steadily worse, but he did not dare even touch it, for fear the guard would see the movement from the corner of his eye.

The guard frowned, bent over, blew his nose between his knuckles again, and finally moved on, still singing his droning song. He was barely out of sight before Dennis threw his arm over his own nose and mouth and sneezed into the crook of his elbow. He waited for the clash of metal as the guard drew his sword and whirled back, but the fellow was half asleep, and still half drunk from whatever party he had been at before his tour of duty commenced. Once, Dennis knew, such a slovenly creature would have been quickly discovered and sent to the farthest reaches of the Kingdom, but times had changed. There was a click of a latch, the screeeeee of hinges as a door was drawn open, and then it boomed closed, cutting off the guard's song just as he reached the chorus again. Dennis sagged back in his niche for a moment, eyes closed, cheeks and forehead on fire, his feet twin blocks of ice.

For a few minutes there I didn't think of my belly at all! he thought, and then had to slam both hands over his mouth to stifle a giggle.

He peeked out of his hiding place, saw no one about, and moved to a doorway down the corridor and on his right. He knew this doorway very well, although the empty rocker and needlework case outside it were new to him. The door led to the room where all of those napkins had been stored since the time of Kyla the Good. It had never been locked before, and was not now. Old napkins were apparently not considered worth locking up. He peered inside, hoping that his answer to Peyna's key question still held true.

Standing there in the road on that bright morning five days ago, Peyna had asked him this: Do you know when they take fresh stores of napkins to the Needle, Dennis?

This seemed like a simple question indeed to Dennis, but you may have noticed that all questions seem simple if you know the answers, and most horribly difficult if you don't. That Dennis knew the answer to this one was a testament to his honesty and honor, although those traits were so deeply ingrained in his character that he would have been surprised if someone had told him this. He had taken money-Anders Peyna's money, in fact from Ben Staad to make sure those napkins were delivered. Only a guilder, true, but money was money and pay was pay. He had felt honor-bound to make sure, from time to time, that the service was continuing.

He told Peyna about the big storeroom (Peyna was flabbergasted to hear of it) and how each Sat.u.r.day night around seven o'clock, a maid took twenty-one napkins, shook them, ironed them, folded them, and set them in a stack on a small wheeled cart. This cart stood just inside the room's doorway. Early on Sunday morning-at six o' the clock, less than two hours from right now-a servant boy would pull the cart to the Plaza of the Needle. He would rap at the bolted door at the base of the ugly stone tower, and one of the Lesser Warders would pull the cart inside and place the napkins on a table, where they would be doled out, meal by meal, through the week.

Peyna had been satisfied.

Dennis now hurried forward, feeling inside his shirt for the note he had written at the farmhouse. He had a bad moment or two when he couldn't find it, but then his fingers closed over it and he sighed with relief. It had only slipped a little to one side.

He lifted the Sunday breakfast napkin. Sunday lunch. For a moment he almost pa.s.sed over Sunday supper as well, and if he had done that, my tale would have had a very different ending, better or worse I cannot say, but surely different. In the end, however, Dennis decided three napkins deep was safe enough. He had found a pin in a crack between two boards in the farmhouse living room and had nipped it into one shoulder strap of the rough linsey camisole he wore as underwear (and if he had been thinking a little better, he would have nipped the note to his underwear with it in the bargain, and spared himself that bad moment, but as I may have told you, Dennis's brains were sometimes a little lacking). Now he retrieved the pin and carefully attached the note to an inner fold of the napkin.

"Let it find you, Peter," he murmured in the ghostly silence of that storeroom, piled high with napkins made in another age. "Let it find you, my King."

Dennis knew he must lie low now. The castle would be waking up soon; stableboys would be stumbling out to the barns, washerwomen would be moving to the laundries, cooks' apprentices would be stumbling puffy-eyed and sleepy to their fires (thinking of the kitchens made Dennis's belly rumble anew-by now even the hateful turnips would have tasted quite nice-but food, he reckoned, would have to wait).

He worked his way farther back into the big room. The stacks were so high, the ways so zigzagging and irregular, that it was like working his way into a maze. The napkins gave off a sweet, dry, cottony smell. He finally reached one of the far corners, and here he reckoned he would be safe. He overspilled a stack of the napkins, spread them out, and took another handful for a pillow.

It was by far the most luxurious mattress he had ever lain upon, and, hungry as he was, he needed sleep much more than food after his long walk and the frights of the night. He was asleep in no time at all, and he was troubled by no dreams. We will leave him now, with the first part of his job well and bravely accomplished. We will leave him turned upon his side, right hand curled under his right cheek, sleeping on a bed of royal napkins. And I would like to make a wish for you, Reader that your sleep this night be as sweet and as blameless as his was all that day.

On Sat.u.r.day night, as Dennis was standing in the horror of that wolf's howl and feeling the shade of Flagg's thought pa.s.s over him, Ben Staad and Naomi Reechul were encamped in a snowy hollow thirty miles north of Peyna's farm* or what had been Peyna's farm before Dennis showed up with his story of a King who walked and talked in his sleep.

They had made the sort of rough camp people make when they mean to spend only a few hours and then push on. Naomi had seen to her beloved huskies while Ben put up a small tent and built a roaring fire.

Shortly, Naomi joined him at the fire and cooked deer meat. They ate in silence, and then Naomi went to check the dogs again. All were sleeping except for Frisky, her favorite. Frisky looked at her with almost human eyes, and licked her hand.

"A good pull today, m'dear," Naomi said. "Sleep, now. Catch a moon rabbit."

Frisky obediently put her head down on her paws. Naomi smiled and went back to the fire. Ben sat before it, his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms around them. His face was somber and thoughtful.

"Snow's coming."

"I can read the clouds as well as you, Ben Staad. And the fairies have made a ring around Prince Ailon's head."

Ben glanced at the moon and nodded. Then he looked back at the fire. "I'm worried. I've had dreams of* well, dreams of one it's better not to name."

She lit a cigar. She offered the little package, which was wrapped in muslin to prevent drying, to Ben, who shook his head.

"I've had the same dreams, I think," she said. She tried to make her voice casual, but was betrayed by a slight tremor.

He stared around at her, eyes wide.

"Aye," she said, as if he had asked. "In them, he looks into some bright glowing thing and speaks Peter's name. I've never been one of your skittish little girls who screeches at the sight of a mouse or a spider in its web, but I wake from that dream wanting to scream aloud."

She looked both ashamed and defiant.

"How many nights have you had it?"

"Two."

"I've had it four a-running. Mine's just the same as yours. And you needn't look like I'm going to laugh at you or call you Little Nell Weeping at the Well. I also wake up wanting to scream.

"This bright thing* at the end of my dreams, he seems to blow it out. Is it a candle, do you think?"

"No. You know it's not."

She nodded.

Ben considered. "Something far more dangerous than a candle, I think* I'll take that cigar you offered, if I may."

She gave him one. He lit it from the fire. They sat a while in silence, watching the sparks rise toward the dark wind which trawled nets of powdery field snow through the sky. Like the light in the dream they'd shared, the sparks blew out. The night seemed very black. Ben could smell snow in that wind. A great deal of snow, he thought.

Naomi seemed to read his thought. "I think such a storm as the old folks tell about may be on the way. What do you think?"

"The same."

With a hesitation utterly unlike her usual forthright manner, Naomi asked: "What does the dream mean, Ben?"

He shook his head. "I can't tell. Danger to Peter, that much is clear. If it means anything else-anything I can ken-it's that we must hurry." He looked at her with an urgent directness that made her heart speed up. "Can we reach Peyna's farm tomorrow, do you think?"

"We should be able to. No one but the G.o.ds can say that a dog won't break a leg or that a killer bear who can't sleep his winter sleep won't come out of the woods and kill us all, but aye* we should be able to. I exchanged all the dogs I used on the run up, except for Frisky, and Frisky's almost tireless. If the snow comes early it'll slow us down, but I think it will hold off* and off* and for every hour it does, it'll be that much worse when it finally comes. Or so I think. But if it does hold off, and if we take turns jumping off the sledge and running alongside, I think we can make it. But what can we do except sit there, unless your friend the butler returns?"

"I don't know." Ben sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. What good, indeed? Whatever it was the dreams foretold, it would happen at the castle, not at the farm. Peyna had sent Dennis to the castle, but how did Dennis mean to get in? Ben didn't know, because Dennis hadn't told Peyna. And if Dennis did gain entry undetected, where would he hide? There were a thousand possible places. Except*

"Bent"

"What?" Jerked out of his thoughts, he turned to her.

"What did you think of just now?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, something. Your eyes gleamed."

"Did they? I must have been thinking of pies. It's time you and I turned in. We'll want to be off at first light."

But in the tent, Ben Staad lay awake long after Naomi had gone to sleep. There were a thousand places in the castle to hide, yes. But he could think of two rather special ones. He thought he might well find Dennis in one* or the other.

At last he fell asleep* and dreamed of Flagg.

Teter began that Sunday as he always did, with his exercises and a prayer.

He had awakened feeling fresh and ready. After a quick look at the sky to gauge the progress of the coming storm, he ate his breakfast.

And, of course, he used his napkin.

By Sunday noon, everyone in Delain had come out of his or her house at least once to look worriedly toward the north. Everyone agreed that the storm, when it came, would be one to tell stories about in later years. The clouds rolling in were a dull gray, the color of wolf pelts. Temperatures rose until the icicles hanging beneath the eaves of the alleys began to drip for the first time in weeks, but the old-timers told each other (and anyone else who would listen) that they were not fooled. The temperature would plummet quickly, and hours later-perhaps two, perhaps four-the snow would begin. And, they said, it might fall for days.

By three o'clock that afternoon, those farmers of the Inner Baronies fortunate enough to still have livestock to watch out for had gotten their animals into the barns. The cows went mooing their displeasure; the snow had melted enough for them to crop last fall's dry gra.s.ses for the first time in months. Yosef, older, grayer, but still lively enough at seventy-two, saw that all the King's horses were stabled. Presumably there was some-one else to take care of all the King's men. Wives took advantage of the mild temperatures to attempt to dry sheets which otherwise simply would have frozen on the lines, and then took them in as the daylight lowered toward an early, storm-colored dark. They were disappointed; their washing had not dried. There was too much moisture in the air.

Animals were skittish. People were nervous. Wise meadhouse keepers would not open their doors. They had observed the falling mercury in their barometric gla.s.ses, and long experience had taught them that low air pressure makes men quick to fight.

Delain battened down for the coming storm, and everyone waited.