"Then is that not all the more reason-?" Dennis began timidly.

"A dullard may mistake the rattle of a Biter-Snake for the sound of pebbles in a hollow gourd and put out his hand to touch it," Brandon said, "but our prince is no dullard, Dennis. Now fetch me another gla.s.s of bundle-gin, and say no more on't.

So Dennis did not speak of it to Peter, but his love of his young master and his fear of the King's hooded advisor both grew after that short exchange. Whenever he saw Flagg sweeping up one of the corridors of the castle in his long hooded robe he would draw aside, trembling, thinking: Biter-Snake! Biter-Snake! Watch for him, Peter! And listen for him!

Then, one night when Peter was sixteen, just as Flagg had begun to believe that there really might not be any way to put an end to the boy without unacceptable risk to himself, an answer came. That was a wild night. A terrible autumn storm raged and shrieked around the castle, and the streets of Delain were empty as people sought shelter from the sheets of chilly rain and the battering wind.

Roland had taken a cold in the damp. He took cold more and more easily these days, and Flagg's medicines, potent as they were, were losing their power to cure him. One of these colds perhaps even the one he was hacking and wheezing with now would eventually deepen into the Wet Lung Disease, and that would kill him. Magic medicines were not like doctors' medicines, and Flagg knew that one of the reasons the potions he gave the old King were now so slow to work, was that he, Flagg, no longer really wanted them to work. The only reason he was keeping Roland alive was that he feared Peter.

I wish you were dead, old man, Flagg thought with childish anger as he sat before a guttering candle, listening to the wind shriek without and his two-headed parrot mutter sleepily to itself within.

For a row of pins-a very short row at that-I'd kill you myself for all the trouble you and your stupid wife and your elder son have caused me. The joy of killing you would almost be worth the ruin of my plans. The joy of killing you. Suddenly he froze, sitting upright, staring off into the darkness of his underground rooms, where the shadows moved uneasily. His eyes glittered silver. An idea blazed in his mind like a torch.

The candle flared a brilliant green and then went out.

"Death!" one of the parrot's two heads shrieked in the darkness.

{insert c.o.c.katoo image on page55} "Murder!" shrieked the other.

And in that blackness, unseen by anyone, Flagg began to laugh.

Of all the weapons ever used to commit regicide -the murder of a King- none has been as frequently used as poison. And no one has greater knowledge of poisons than a magician.

Flagg, one of the greatest magicians who ever lived, knew all the poisons that we know-a.r.s.enic; strychnine; the curare, which steals inward, paralyzing all the muscles and the heart last; nicotine; belladonna; nightshade; toadstool. He knew the poison venoms of a hundred snakes and spiders; the clear distillation of the clanah lily which smells like honey but kills its victims in screaming torments; Deadly Clawfoot which grows in the deepest shadows of the Dismal Swamp. Flagg did not know just dozens of poisons but dozens of dozens, each worse than the last. They were all neatly ranked on the shelves of an inner room where no servant ever went. They were in beakers, in phials, in little envelopes. Each deadly item was neatly marked. This was Flagg's chapel of screams-in-waiting-agony's antechamber, foyer of fevers, dressing room for death. Flagg visited it often when he felt out of sorts and wanted to cheer himself up. In this devil's marketplace waited all those things that humans, who are made of flesh and are so weak, dread: hammering headaches, screaming stomach cramps, detonations of diarrhea, vomiting, collapsing blood vessels, paralysis of the heart, exploding eyeb.a.l.l.s, swelling, blackening tongues, madness.

But the worst poison of all Flagg kept separate from even these. In his study there was a desk. Every drawer of this desk was locked* but one was triple-locked. In it was a teak box, carved all over with magical symbols* runes and such. The lock on this box was unique. Its plate seemed to be a dull orange steel, but very close inspection showed it was really some sort of vegetable matter. It was, in fact, a kleffa carrot, and once a week Flagg watered this living lock with a tiny spray bottle. The kleffa carrot also seemed to have some dull species of intelligence. If anyone tried to jimmy the kleffa lock open, or even if the wrong someone tried to use the right key, the lock would scream. Inside this box was a smaller box, which opened with a key Flagg wore always around his neck.

Inside this second box was a packet. Inside the packet was a small quant.i.ty of green sand. Pretty, you would have said, but nothing spectacular. Nothing to write home to Mother about. Yet this green sand was one of the deadliest poisons in all the worlds, so deadly that even Flagg was afraid of it. It came from the desert of Grenh. This huge poisoned waste lay even beyond Garlan, and was a land unknown in Delain. Grenh could be approached only on a day when the wind was blowing the other way, because a single breath of the fumes which came from the desert of Grenh would cause death.

Not instant death. That was not the way the poison worked. For a day or two-perhaps even three-the person who breathed the poison fumes (or even worse, swallowed the grains of sand) would feel fine-perhaps better than ever before in his life. Then, suddenly, his lungs would grow red-hot, his skin would begin to smoke, and his body would shrivel like the body of a mummy. Then he would drop dead, often with his hair on fire. Someone who breathed or swallowed this deadly stuff would burn from the inside out.

This was Dragon Sand, and there was no antidote, no cure. What fun.

On that wild, rainy night, Flagg determine to give a bit of Dragon Sand to Roland in a gla.s.s of wine. It had become Peter's custom to take his father a gla.s.s of wine each night, shortly before Roland turned in. Everyone in the palace knew it, and commented on what a loyal son Peter was. Roland enjoyed his son's company as much as the wine he brought, Flagg thought, but a certain maiden had caught Peter's eye and he rarely stayed longer than half an hour with his father these days.

If Flagg came one night after Peter had left, Flagg did not think the old man would turn down a second gla.s.s of wine.

A very special gla.s.s of wine.

A hot vintage, my Lord, Flagg thought, a grin dawning on his narrow face. A hot vintage indeed, and why not? The vineyard was right next door to h.e.l.l, I think, and when this stuff starts working in your guts, you'll think h.e.l.l is where you are.

Flagg threw back his head and began to laugh.

Once his plan was laid-a plan that would rid him of both Roland and Peter forever-Flagg wasted no time. He first used all his wizardry to make the King well again. He was delighted to find that his magic potions worked better than they had for a long, long time. It was another irony. He earnestly wanted to make Roland better, so the potions worked. But he wanted to make the King better so he could kill him and make sure everyone knew it was murder. It was really quite funny, when you stopped to think it over.

On a windy night less than a week after the King's hacking cough had ceased, Flagg unlocked his desk and took out the teak box. He murmured, "Well done," to the kleffa carrot, which squeaked mindlessly in reply, and then lifted the heavy lid and took out the smaller box inside. He used the key around his neck to open it, and took out the packet that contained the Dragon Sand. He had bewitched this packet, and it was immune to the Dragon Sand's terrible power. Or so he thought. Flagg took no chances, and removed the packet with a small pair of silver tweezers. He laid it beside one of the King's goblets on his desk. Sweat stood out on his forehead in great round drops, for this was ticklish work indeed. One little mistake and he would pay for it with his life.

Flagg went out into the corridor that led to the dungeons and began to pant. He was hyperventilating. When you breathe rapidly, you fill your whole body with oxygen, and you can hold your breath for a long time. During the critical stage of his preparations, Flagg did not mean to breathe at all. There would be no mistakes, big or little. He was having too much fun to die.

He took a final great gasp of clean air from the barred window just outside the door to his apartment and reentered his rooms. He went to the envelope, took his dagger from his belt, an delicately slit it open. There was a flat piece of obsidian, which the magician used as a paperweight, on his desk-in those days, obsidian was the hardest rock known. Using the tweezers again, he grasped the packet, turned it upside down, and poured out most of the green sand. He saved back a tiny bit-hardly more than a dozen grains, but this bit of extra was extremely important to his plans. Hard as the obsidian was, the rock immediately began to smoke.

Thirty seconds had pa.s.sed now.

He picked up the obsidian, careful that not a single grain of Dragon Sand should touch his skin-if it did, it would work inward until it reached his heart and set it on fire. He tilted the stone over the goblet and poured it in.

Now, quickly, before the sand could began to eat into the gla.s.s, he poured in some of the King's favorite wine-the same sort of wine Peter would be taking his father about now. The sand dissolved immediately. For a moment the red wine glimmered a sinister green, and then it returned to its usual color.

Fifty seconds.

Flagg went back to his desk. He picked up the flat rock and took his dagger by its handle. Only a few grains of Dragon Sand had touched the blade when he slit through the paper, but already they were working their way in, and evil little streamers of smoke rose from the pocks in the Anduan steel. He carried both the stone and the dagger out into the hallway.

Seventy seconds, and his chest was beginning to cry for air.

Thirty feet down the hallway, which led to the dungeon if you followed it far enough (a trip no one in Delain wanted to make), there was a grating in the floor. Flagg could hear gurgling water, and if he had not been holding his breath, he would have smelled a foul stench. This was one of the castle's sewers. He dropped both the rock and the blade into it and grinned at the double splash in spite of his pounding chest. Then he hurried back to the window, leaned far out, and took breath after gasping breath.

When he had his wind back, he returned to his study. Now only the tweezers, the packet, and the gla.s.s of wine stood on the desk. There was not so much as a grain of sand on the tweezers, and the bit of sand left inside the bewitched packet could not harm him as long as he took reasonable care.

He felt he had done every well indeed so far. His work was by no means done, but it was well begun. He bent over the goblet and inhaled deeply. There was no danger now; when the sand was mixed with a liquid, its fumes became harmless and undetectable. Dragon Sand made deadly vapors only when it touched a solid, such as stone.

Such as flesh.

Flagg held the goblet up to the light, admiring its b.l.o.o.d.y glow.

"A final gla.s.s of wine, my King," he said, and laughed until the two-headed parrot screamed in fear. "Something to warm your guts."

He sat down, turned over his hourgla.s.s, and began to read from a huge book of spells. Flagg had been reading from this book-which was bound in human skin-for a thousand years and had gotten through only a quarter of it. To read too long of this book, written on the high, distant Plains of Leng by a madman named Alhazred, was to risk madness.

An hour* just an hour. When the top half of his hourgla.s.s was empty, he could be sure Peter would have come and gone. An hour, and he could take Roland this final gla.s.s of wine. For a moment, Flagg looked at the bone-white sand slipping smoothly through the waist of the hourgla.s.s, and then he bent calmly over his book.

Roland was pleased and touched that Flagg should have brought him a gla.s.s of wine that night before he went t bed. He drank it off in two large gulps, and declared that it had warmed him greatly.

Smiling inside his hood, Flagg said: "I thought it would, your Highness.

Whether it was fate or only luck that caused Thomas to see Flagg with his father that night is another question you must answer for yourself. I only know that he did see, and that it happened in large part because Flagg had been at pains over the years to make a special friend of this friendless, miserable boy.

I'll explain in a moment-but first I must correct a wrong idea you may have about magic.

In stories of wizardry, there are three kinds that are usually spoken of almost carelessly, as if any second-cla.s.s wizard could do them. These are turning lead into gold, changing one's shape, and making oneself invisible. The first thing you should know is that real magic is never easy, and if you think it is, just try making your least favorite aunt disappear the next time she comes to spend a week or two. Real magic is hard, and although it is easier to do evil magic than good, even bad magic is tolerably hard.

Turning lead into gold can be done, once you know the names to call on, and if you can find someone to show you exactly the right trick of splitting the loaves of lead. Shape changing and invisibility, however, are impossible* or so close to it that you might as well use the word.

From time to time Flagg-who was a great eavesdropper -had listened to fools tell tales about young princes who escaped the clutches of evil genies by uttering a simple magic word and popping out of sight, or beautiful young princesses (in the stories they were always beautiful, although Flagg's experience had been that most princesses were spoiled rotten and, as the end products of long, inbred family lines, ugly as sin and stupid in the bargain) who tricked great ogres into becoming flies, which they then quickly swatted. In most stories, the princesses were also good at swatting flies, although most of the princesses Flagg had seen wouldn't have been able to swat a fly dying on a cold windowsill in December. In stories it all sounded easy; in stories people changed their shapes or turned themselves into walking windowpanes all the time.

In truth, Flagg had never seen either trick done. He had once known a great Anduan magician who believed he had mastered the trick of changing his shape, but after six months of meditation and nearly a week of incantations in a series of agonizing body postures, he uttered the last awesome spell and succeeded only in making his nose nearly nine feet long and driving himself insane. And there had been fingernails growing out of his nose. Flagg remembered with a grim little smile. Great magician or not, the man had been a fool.

Invisibility was likewise impossible, at least as far as Flagg himself had been able to determine. Yet it was possible to make oneself* dim.

Yes, dim-that was really the best word for it, although others sometimes came to mind: ghostly, transparent, un.o.btrusive. Invisibility was out of his reach, but by first eating a pizzle and then reciting a number of spells, it was possible to become dim. When one was dim and a servant approached along a pa.s.sageway, one simply drew aside and stood still and let the servant pa.s.s. In most cases, the servant's eyes would drop to his own feet or suddenly find something interesting to look at on the ceiling. If one pa.s.sed through a room, conversation would falter, and people would look momentarily distressed, as if all were having gas pains at the same time. Torches and wall sconces grew smoky. Candles sometimes blew out. It was necessary to actually hide when one was dim only if one saw someone whom one knew well-for, whether one was dim or not, these people almost always saw. Dimness was useful, but it was not invisibility.

On the night Flagg took the poisoned wine to Roland, he first made himself dim. He did not expect to see anyone he knew. It was after nine o'clock now, the King was old and unwell, the days were short, and the castle went to bed early. When Thomas is King, Flagg thought, carrying the wine swiftly through the corridors, there will be parties every night. He already has his father's taste for drink, although he favors wine rather than beer or mead. It should be easy enough to introduce him to a few stronger drinks* After all, am I not his friend? Yes, when Peter is safely out of the way in the Needle and Thomas is King, there will be great parties every night* until the people in the alleys and the Baronies are choked enough to rise in b.l.o.o.d.y revolt. Then there will be one final party, the greatest of all* but I don't think Thomas will enjoy it. Like the wine I'm bringing his father tonight, that party will be extremely hot.

He did not expect to see anyone he knew, and he didn't. Only a few servants pa.s.sed him, and they drew away from the place where he stood almost absently, as if they felt a cold draft.

All the same, someone saw him. Thomas saw him through the eyes of Niner, the dragon his father had killed long ago. Thomas was able to do this because Flagg himself had taught him the trick.

The way his father had rejected the gift of the boat had hurt Thomas deeply, and after that he tended to keep clear of his father. All the same, Thomas loved Roland and badly wanted to make him happy the way Peter made him happy.

Even more than that, he wanted to make his father love him the way he loved Peter. In fact, Thomas would have been happy if their father had loved him even half as much.

The trouble was, Peter had all the good ideas first. Sometimes Peter tried to share his ideas with Thomas, but to Thomas the ideas either sounded silly (until they worked) or else he feared he wouldn't be able to do his share of the work, as when Peter had made their father a set of Bendoh men three years ago.

"I'll give Father something better than a bunch of stupid old game pieces," Thomas had said haughtily, but what he was really thinking was that if he couldn't make his father a simple wooden sailboat, he would never be able to help make something as difficult as the twenty-man Bendoh army. So Peter made the game pieces alone over a period of four months-the infantry men, the knights, the archers, the Fusilier, the General, the Monk- and of course Roland had loved them even though they were a bit clumsy. He had immediately put away the jade Bendoh set the great Ellender had carved for him forty years before and put the one Peter had made for him in its place. When Thomas saw this, he crept away to his apartments and went to bed, although it was the middle of the afternoon. He felt as if someone had reached into his chest and cut off a tiny piece of his heart and made him eat it. His heart tasted very bitter to him, and he hated Peter more than ever, although part of him still loved his hand-some older brother and always would.

And although the taste had been bitter, he had liked it.

Because it was his heart.

Now there was the business of the nightly gla.s.s of wine.

Peter had come to Thomas and said, "I was thinking it would be nice if we brought Dad a gla.s.s of wine every night, Tom. I asked the steward, and he said he couldn't just give us a bottle because he has to make an accounting to the Chief Vintner at the end of each six-month, but he said we could pool some of our money and buy a bottle of the Barony Fifth Vat, which is Father's favorite. And it's really not expensive. We'd have lots of our allowances left over. And-"

"I think that's the stupidest idea I ever heard!" Thomas burst out. "All the wine belongs to Father, all the wine in the Kingdom, and he can have as much of it as he wants! Why should we spend our money to give Father something he owns anyway? We'll enrich that fat little steward, that's all we'll do!"

Peter said patiently, "It will please him that we spent our money on him, even if it's something he owns anyway."

"How do you know that?"

Simply, maddeningly, Peter replied: "I just do."

Thomas looked at him, scowling. How could he tell Peter that the Chief Vintner had caught him in the wine cellar, stealing a bottle of wine, just the month before? The fat little pig had given him a shaking and threatened to tell his father if Thomas didn't give him a gold piece. Thomas had paid, tears of rage and shame standing in his eyes. If it had been Peter, you would have turned the other way and pretended not to see, you slug, he thought. If it had been Peter, you would have turned your back. Because Peter is going to be King someday soon, and I'll just be a prince forever. It also occurred to him that Peter never would have tried to steal wine in the first place, but the truth of this thought only made him angrier at his brother.

"I just thought-" Peter began.

" 'You just thought, you just thought,' " Thomas mimicked savagely. "Well, go think somewhere else! When Father finds out you paid the Chief Vintner for his own wine, he'll laugh at you and call you a fool!"

But Roland hadn't laughed at Peter, hadn't called him a fool, -he had called him a good son in a voice that was unsteady and almost weepy. Thomas knew, because he had crept after when Peter took their father the wine that first night. He watched throughand saw it all.

If you had asked Flagg straight out why he had shown Thomas that place and the secret pa.s.sageway which led to it, he would have been able to give you no very satisfactory answer.

That was because he didn't exactly know why he had done it. He had an instinct for mischief in his head, just as some people have a way with numbers or a clear sense of direction. The castle was very old, and there were many secret doors and pa.s.sages in it. Flagg knew most of them (no one, not even he, knew all of them), but this was the only one he had ever shown Thomas. His instinct for mischief told him that this one might cause trouble, and Flagg simply obeyed his instinct. Mischief, after all was Flagg's cake and pie.

Every now and then he would pop into Thomas's room and cry, "Tommy, you look glum! I've thought of something you might like to see! Want to go and have a look?" He almost always said you look glum, Tommy or you look a bit in the dumps, Tommy or you look like you just sat on a pinchbug, Tommy because he had a knack of showing up when Thomas was feeling particularly depressed or blue. Flagg knew that Thomas was afraid of him, and Thomas would find an excuse not to go with him unless he particularly needed a friend* and felt so low and unhappy he wouldn't be particular about which friend it was. Flagg knew this, but Thomas himself did not-his fear of Flagg ran deep. On the surface of his mind, he thought Flagg was a fine fellow, full of tricks and fun. Sometimes the fun was a bit mean, but that often suited Thomas's disposition.

Do you think it strange that Flagg would know something about Thomas that Thomas didn't know about himself? It really isn't strange at all. People's minds, particularly the minds of children, are like wells-deep wells full of sweet water. And sometimes, when a particular thought is too unpleasant to bear, the person who has that thought will lock it into a heavy box and throw it into that well. He listens for the splash* and then the box is gone. Except it is not, of course. Not really. Flagg, being very old and very wise, as well as very wicked, knew that even the deepest well has a bottom, and just because a thing is out of sight doesn't mean it is gone. It is still there, resting at the bottom. And he knew that the caskets those evil, frightening ideas are buried in may rot, and the nastiness inside may leak out after awhile and poison the water* and when the well of the mind is badly poisoned, we call the result insanity.

If the magician showed him scary things in the castle some-times, he did it because he knew that the more frightened of him Thomas was, the more power he would gain over Thomas* and he knew he could have that power, because he knew some-thing I've already told you-that Thomas was weak and often neglected by his father. Flagg wanted Thomas to be afraid of him, and he wanted to make sure that, as the years pa.s.sed, Thomas had to throw many of those locked boxes into the darkness inside him. If Thomas were to go insane at some point after he became King, well, what of that? It would make it easier for Flagg to rule; it would make his power all the greater.

How did Flagg know the right times to visit Thomas, and take him on these strange tours of the castle? Sometimes he saw what had happened to make Thomas sad or angry in his crystal. More often, he simply felt an urge to go to Thomas and heeded it-that instinct for mischief rarely led him wrong.

Once he took Thomas high into the eastern tower-they climbed stairs until Thomas was panting like a dog, but Flagg never seemed to lose his breath. At the top was a door so small that even Thomas had to crawl through it on his hand and knees. Beyond was a dark, rustling room with a single window. Flagg had led him to that window without a word, and when Thomas saw the view-the entire city of Delain, the Near Towns, and then the hills which stood between the Near Towns and the Eastern Barony marching off into a blue haze-he thought that the sight had been worth every stair his aching legs had climbed. His heart swelled with the beauty of it, and he turned to thank Flagg-but something about the white blur of the magician's face inside his hood had frozen the words on his lips.

{insert image on page 68} "Now watch this!" Flagg said, and held up his hand. A spurt of blue flame rose from his index finger, and the rustling sound in the room, which Thomas had first taken for the sound of the wind, turned to a rising whir of leathery wings. A moment later Thomas was screaming and beating the air above his head as he blundered blindly back toward the tiny door. The little round room at the top of the castle's eastern tower had the best view in Delain save for the cell at the top of the Needle, but now he understood why no one visited it. The room was infested with huge bats. Disturbed by the light Flagg had raised, they whirled and swooped. Later, after they were out and Flagg had quieted the boy-Thomas, who hated bats, had been in hysterics-the magician insisted it was just a joke meant to cheer him up. Thomas believed him* but for weeks after he awoke screaming with nightmares in which bats flapped around his head, got caught in his hair, and ripped at his face with their sharp claws and ratty teeth.

On another excursion, Flagg took him to the King's treasure room and showed him the mounds of gold coins, tall stacks of gold bars, and the deep bins marked EMERALDS, DIAMONDS, RUBIES, FIREDIMS and so on.

"Are they really full of jewels?" Thomas asked.

"Look and see," Flagg said. He opened one of the bins and pulled out a handful of uncut emeralds. They sparkled wildly in his hand.

"My fathers's name!" Thomas gasped.

"Oh, that's nothing! Look over here! Pirate treasure, Tommy!"

He showed Thomas a pile of booty from the encounter with the Anduan pirates some twelve years ago. The Delain Treasury was rich, the few treasure-room clerks old, and this particular heap hadn't been sorted yet. Thomas gasped at heavy swords with jeweled hilts, daggers with blades that had been crusted with serrated diamonds so they would cut deeper, heavy killb.a.l.l.s made of rhodochrosite.

"All this belongs to the Kingdom?" Thomas asked in an awed voice.

"It all belongs to your father," Flagg replied, although Thomas had actually been correct. "Someday it will all belong to Peter."

"And me," Thomas said with a ten-year-olds confidence.

"No," Flagg said, just the right tinge of regret in his voice, 'just to Peter. Because he's the oldest, and he'll be King."

"He'll share," Thomas said, but with the slightest tremor of doubt in his voice. "Pete always shares."

"Peter's a fine boy, and I'm sure you're right. He'll probably share. But no one can make a King share, you know. No one can make a King do anything he doesn't want to do." He looked at Thomas to gauge the effect of this remark, then looked back at the deep, shadowy treasure room. Somewhere, one of the aged clerks was droning out a count of ducats. "Such a lot of treasure, and all for one man, " Flagg remarked. "It's really something to think about, isn't it, Tommy?"

Thomas said nothing, but Flagg had been well pleased. He saw that Tommy was thinking about it, all right, and he judged than another of those poisoned caskets was tumbling down into the well of Thomas's mind- ker -splash! And that was indeed so. Later, when Peter proposed to Thomas that they share the expense of the nightly bottle of wine, Thomas had remembered the great treasure room-and he remembered that all the treasure in it would belong to his brother. Easy for you to talk so blithely of buying wine! Why not? Someday you'll have all the money in the world!

Then, about a year before he brought the poisoned wine to the King, on impulse, Flagg had shown Thomas this secret pa.s.sage* and on this one occasion his usually unerring instinct for mischief might have led him astray. Again, I leave it for you to decide.

Tommy, you look down in the dumps!" he cried. The hood of his cloak was pushed back on that day, and he looked almost normal.

Almost.

Tommy felt down in them. He had suffered through a long luncheon at which his father had praised Peter's scores in geometry and navigation to his advisors with the most lavish superlatives. Roland had never rightly understood either. He knew that a triangle had three sides and a square had four; he knew you could find your way out of the woods when you were lost by following Old Star in the sky; and that was where his knowledge ended. That was where Thomas's knowledge ended, too, so he felt that luncheon would never be done. Worse, the meat was just the way his father liked it-b.l.o.o.d.y and barely cooked. b.l.o.o.d.y meat made Thomas feel almost sick.

"My lunch didn't agree with me, that's all," he said to Flagg.

"Well, I know just the thing to cheer you up," Flagg said. "I'll show you a secret of the castle, Tommy my boy."

Thomas was playing with a b.u.g.g.e.rlug bug. He had it on his desk and had set his schoolbooks around it in a series of barriers. If the trundling beetle looked as if he might find a way out, Thomas would shift one of the books to keep him in.

"I'm pretty tired," Thomas said. This was not a lie. Hearing Peter praised so highly always made him feel tired.

"You'll like it," Flagg said in a tone that was mostly wheedling* but a little threatening, too.

Thomas looked at him apprehensively. "There aren't any* any bats, are there?"