The next day he took tea with his father and brother. Going took all of his courage, but Thomas did have courage, and he sometimes found it-usually when his back was to the wall. His father gave him a kiss and asked him if anything was wrong. Thomas muttered that he hadn't been feeling well, but now he felt fine. His father nodded, gave him a rough hug, then went back to his usual behavior-which consisted mostly of ignoring Thomas in favor of Peter. For once, Thomas welcomed this -he didn't want his father looking at him any more than necessary, at least for a while. That night, lying awake for a long time in bed and listening to the wind moan outside, he came to the conclusion that he had had a very close shave* but that he had somehow gotten away with it.

But never again, he thought. In the weeks after, the nightmares came less and less frequently. Finally they stopped altogether.

Still, the castle's head groom, Yosef, was right about one thing: boys are sometimes better at pledging vows than they are at keeping them, and Thomas's desire to spy on his father at last grew stronger than both his fears and his good intentions. And that is how it happened that on the night Flagg came to Roland with the poisoned wine, Thomas was watching.

When Thomas got there and slid aside the two little panels, his father and his brother were just finishing their nightly gla.s.s of wine together. Peter was now almost seventeen, tall and handsome. The two of them sat by the fire, drinking and talking like old friends, and Thomas felt the old hate fill his heart with acid. After some little time, Peter arose and took courteous leave of his father.

"You leave earlier and earlier these nights, " Roland remarked.

Peter made some demurral.

Roland smiled. It was a sweet, sad smile, mostly toothless. "I hear," said he, "that she is lovely."

Peter looked fl.u.s.tered, which was uncommon with him. He stammered, which was even less common.

"Go," Roland interrupted. "Go. Be gentle with her, and be kind* but be hot, if there is ardor in you. Later years are cold years, Peter. Be hot while your years are green, and fuel is plentiful, and the fire may burn high.

Peter smiled. "You speak as if you are very old, Father, but you still look strong and hale to me."

Roland embraced Peter. "I love you," he said.

Peter smiled with no awkwardness or embarra.s.sment. "I love you, too, Dad," he said, and in his lonely darkness (spying is always lonely work, and the spyer almost always does it in the dark), Thomas pulled a horrible face.

Peter left, and for an hour or more not much happened. Roland sat morosely by the fire, drinking gla.s.s after gla.s.s of beer. He did not roar or bellow or talk to the heads on the walls; there was no destruction of furniture. Thomas had almost made up his mind to leave, when there was a double rap at the door.

Roland had been looking into the fire, almost hypnotized by the flicker-play of the flames. Now he roused himself and called, "Who comes?"

Thomas heard no response, but his father rose and went to the door as if he had. He opened it, and at first Thomas thought his father's habit of talking to the heads on the walls had taken a queer new turn-that his father was now inventing invisible human company to relieve his boredom.

"Strange to see you here at this hour," Roland said, apparently walking back toward the fire in the company of no one at all. "I thought you were always at your spells and conjurations after dark."

Thomas blinked, rubbed his eyes, and saw that someone was there after all. For a moment he couldn't rightly make out who* and then he wondered how he could possibly have thought his father was alone when Flagg was right there beside him. Flagg was carrying two gla.s.ses of wine on a silver tray.

"Wives' tale, m'Lord -magicians conjure early as well as late. But of course we have our darksome image to keep up."

Roland's sense of humor was always improved by beer-so much so that he would often laugh at things that weren't funny in the least. At this remark he threw back his head and bellowed as if it was the greatest joke he had ever heard. Flagg smiled thinly.

When Roland's fit of laughing had pa.s.sed, he said: "What's this? Wine?"

"Your son is barely more than a boy, but his deference toward his father and his honor of his King have shamed me, a grown man," Flagg said. "I brought you a gla.s.s of wine, my King, to show you that I, too, love you."

He pa.s.sed it to Roland, who looked absurdly touched.

Don't drink it, Father! Thomas thought suddenly-his mind was full of an alarm he couldn't understand. Roland's head came up suddenly and tilted, almost as if he had heard.

"He's a good boy, my Peter," Roland said.

"Indeed," Flagg replied. "Everyone in the Kingdom says so."

"Do they?" Roland asked, looking pleased. "Do they, indeed?"

"Yes-so they do. Shall we toast him?" Flagg raised his gla.s.s. No, Father! Thomas shouted in his mind again, but if his father had heard his first thought, he didn't hear this one. His face shone with love for Thomas's elder brother.

"To Peter, then!" Roland raised the gla.s.s of poisoned wine high.

"To Peter!" Flagg agreed, smiling. "To the King!"

Thomas cringed in the dark. Flagg's making two different toasts! I don't know what he means, but* Father!

This time it was Flagg who turned his darkly considering gaze toward the dragon's head for a moment, as if he had heard the thought. Thomas froze, and in a moment Flagg's gaze turned back to Roland.

They clinked gla.s.ses and drank. As his father quaffed the gla.s.s of wine, Thomas felt a splinter of ice push its way into his heart.

Flagg made a half-turn in his chair and threw his gla.s.s into the fire. "Peter!"

"Peter!" Roland echoed, and threw his own. It smashed against the sooty brickwork at the back of the fireplace and fell into the flames, which for a moment seemed to flare an ugly green.

Roland raised the back of his hand to his mouth for a moment, as if to stifle a belch. "Did you spice it?" he asked. "It tasted* almost mulled."

"No, my Lord," Flagg said gravely, but Thomas thought he sensed a smile behind the mask of the magician's gravity, and that splinter of ice slipped further into his heart. Suddenly he wanted no more of spying, not ever. He closed the peepholes and crept back to his room. He felt first hot, then cold, then hot again. By morning he had a fever. Before he was well again, his father was dead, his brother imprisoned in the room at the top of the Needle, and he was a boy King at the age of barely twelve-Thomas the Light-Bringer, he was dubbed at the coronation ceremonies. And who was his closest advisor?

You guess.

When Flagg left Roland (the old man was feeling sprightlier than ever by then, a sure sign the Dragon Sand was at work in him), he went back to his dark bas.e.m.e.nt rooms. He got out the tweezers and the packet containing the remaining few grains of sand and put them on his huge old desk. Then he turned his hourgla.s.s over and resumed reading.

Outside, the wind screamed and gobbled-old wives cringed in their beds and slept poorly and told their husbands that Rhian -non, the Dark Witch of the Coos, was riding her hateful broom this night, and wicked work was afoot. The husbands grunted, turned over, told their wives to go back to sleep and leave them alone. They were dull fellows for the most part; when an eye is wanted to see straws flying in the wind, give me an old wife any day.

Once a spider skittered halfway across Flagg's book, touched a spell so terrible not even the magician dared use it, and turned instantly to stone.

Flagg grinned.

When the hourgla.s.s was empty, he turned it over again. And again. And again. He turned it over eight times in all, and when the eighth hour's worth of sand was nearly gone, he set about finishing his work. He kept a large number of animals in a dim room down the hall from his study, and he went there first. The little creatures skittered and cringed when Flagg came near. He did not blame them.

In the far corner was a wicker cage containing half a dozen brown mice-such mice were everywhere in the castle, and that was important. Down here there were also huge rats, but it was not a rat Flagg wanted tonight. The Royal Rat upstairs had been poisoned; a simple mouse would be enough to make sure the crime came home to the Royal Ratling. If all went well, Peter would soon be as tightly locked up as these mice.

Flagg reached into the cage and removed one. It trembled wildly in his cupped hand. He could feel the rapid thrumming of its heart, and he new that if he simply held it, it would soon die of fright.

Flagg pointed the little finger of his left hand at the mouse. The fingernail glowed faintly blue for a moment.

"Sleep," the magician commanded, and the mouse fell on its side and went to sleep on his open palm.

Flagg took it back into his study and laid it on his desk, where the obsidian paperweight had rested earlier. Now he went into his larder and drew a little mead from an oaken barrel into a saucer. He sweetened it with honey. He put it on his desk, then went out into the corridor and breathed deeply at the window again.

Holding his breath, he came back in and used the tweezers to pour all but the last three or four grains of Dragon Sand into the honey-sweetened mead. Then he opened another drawer of his desk and removed a fresh packet, which was empty. Then, reaching all the way to the back of this drawer, he brought out a very special box.

The fresh packet was bewitched, but its magic was not very strong. It would hold the Dragon Sand safely only for a short while. Then it would begin to work on the paper. It would not set it alight, not inside the box; there would not be air enough for that. But it would smoke and smolder, and that would be enough. That would be fine.

Flagg's chest was thudding for air, but he still spared a moment to look at this box and congratulate himself. He had stolen it ten years ago. If you had asked him at the time why he took it, he would have known no more than he knew why he had shown Thomas the secret pa.s.sage that ended behind the dragon's head- that instinct for mischief had told him to take it and that he would find a use for it, so he had. After all those years in his desk, that useful time had come.

PETER was engraved across the top of the box.

Sasha had given it to her boy; he had left it for a moment on a table in a hallway when he had to run down the hallway after something or other; Flagg came along, saw it, and popped it into his pocket. Peter had been grief-stricken, of course, and when a prince is upset-even a prince who is only six years old-people take notice. There had been a search, but the box had never been found.

Using the tweezers, Flagg carefully poured the last few grains of Dragon Sand from the original packet, which had been wholly enchanted, into the packet which had been only incompletely enchanted. Then he went back to the window in the corridor to draw fresh breath. He did not breathe again until the fresh packet had been laid in the antique wooden box, the tweezers laid in there beside it, the top of the box slowly closed, and the original packet disposed of in the sewer.

Flagg was hurrying now, but he felt secure enough. Mouse, sleeping; box, closed; incriminating evidence safely latched inside. It was very well.

Pointing the little finger of his left hand at the mouse lying stretched out on his desk like a fur rug for pixies, Flagg commanded: "Wake."

The mouse's feet twitched. Its eyes opened. Its head came up.

Smiling, Flagg wiggled his little finger in a circle and said: "Run.

The mouse ran in circles.

Flagg wiggled his finger up and down.

"Jump."

The mouse began to jump on its hind legs like a dog in a carnival, its eyes rolling wildly.

"Now drink," Flagg said, and pointed his little finger at the dish holding the honey-sweetened mead.

Outside, the wind gusted to a roar. On the far side of the city, a b.i.t.c.h gave birth to a litter of two-headed pups.

The mouse drank.

"Now," said Flagg, when the mouse had drunk enough of the poison to serve his purpose, "sleep again." And the mouse did.

Flagg hurried to Peter's rooms. The box was in one of his many pockets-magicians have many, many pockets-and the sleeping mouse was in another. He pa.s.sed several servants and a laughing gaggle of drunken courtiers, but none saw him. He was still dim.

Peter's rooms were locked, but that was no problem for one of Flagg's talents. Three pa.s.ses with his hands and the door was open. The young prince's rooms were empty, of course; the boy was still with his lady friend. Flagg didn't know as much about Peter as he did about Thomas, but he knew enough-he knew, for instance, where Peter kept the few treasures he thought worth hiding away.

Flagg went directly to the bookcase and pulled out three or four boring textbooks. He pushed at a wooden edging and heard a spring click back. He then slid a panel aside, revealing a recess in the back of the case. It was not even locked. In the recess was a silk hair-ribbon his lady had given him, a packet of letters she had written him, a few letters from him to her which burned so brightly he did not dare to send them, and a little locket with his mother's picture inside it.

Flagg opened the engraved box and very carefully shredded one corner of the packet's flap. Now it looked as if a mouse had been chewing at it. Flagg closed the lid again and put the box in the recessed s.p.a.ce. "You cried so when you lost this box, dear Peter," he murmured. "I think you may cry even more when it's found." He giggled.

He put the sleeping mouse beside the box, closed the compartment, and put the books neatly back in place.

Then he left, and slept well. Great mischief was afoot, and he felt confident that he had moved as he liked to move-behind the scenes, seen by no one.

For the next three days, King Roland seemed healthier, more vigorous, and more decisive than anyone had seen him in years-it was the talk of the court. Visiting his ill and feverish brother in his apartments, Peter remarked to Thomas in awe that what remained of their father's hair actually seemed to be changing color, from the baby-fine wispy white it had been for the last four years or so to the iron gray it had been in Roland's middle years.

Thomas smiled, but a fresh chill raced through him. He asked Peter for another blanket, but it wasn't really a blanket he needed; he needed to unsee that final strange toast, and that, of course, was impossible.

Then, after dinner on the third day, Roland complained of indigestion. Flagg offered to have the court physician summoned. Roland waved the suggestion away, saying that he felt fine, actually, better than he had in months, in year He belched. It was a long, arid, rattling sound. The convivial crowd in the ballroom fell silent with wonder and apprehension as the King doubled over. The musicians in the corner ceased playing. When Roland straightened up, a gasp ran through those present. The King's cheeks were aflame with color. Smoking tears ran from his eyes. More smoke drifted from his mouth.

There were perhaps seventy people in that great dining hall, rough-dressed Riders (what we would call knights, I suppose), sleek courtiers and their ladies, attendants upon the throne, courtesans, jesters, musicians, a little troupe of actors in one corner who had been going to put on a play later, servants in great numbers. But it was Peter who ran to his father; it was Peter they all saw going to the doomed man, and this did not displease Flagg at all.

Peter. They would remember it had been Peter.

Roland clutched his stomach with one hand and his chest with the other. Smoke suddenly poured out of his mouth in a gray--white plume. It was as if the King had learned some amazing new way of telling the story of his greatest exploit.

But it was no trick, and there were screams as smoke poured not only from his mouth but from his nostrils, ears, and the corners of his eyes. His throat was so red it was nearly purple.

"Dragon!" King Roland shrieked as he collapsed into his son's arms. "Dragon!"

It was the last word he ever spoke.

The old man was tough-incredibly tough. Before he died he was throwing off so much heat that no one, not even his most loyal servants, could approach closer to his bed than four feet. Several times they threw buckets of water on the poor dying King when they saw the bedclothes beginning to smolder. Each time, the water turned instantly to steam that billowed through his bedchamber and out into the sitting room where courtiers and Riders stood in numb silence and ladies cl.u.s.tered, weeping and wringing their hands.

Just before midnight, a jet of green flame shot from his mouth and he died.

Flagg went solemnly to the door between the bedchamber and the sitting room and announced the news. There followed an utter silence that stretched out for more than a minute. It was broken by a single word which came from somewhere in the gathered crowd. Flagg did not know who spoke that one word, and he did not care. It was enough that it had been spoken. Indeed, he would have bribed a man to speak it if such could have been done with no danger to him.

"Murder!" this someone said.

There was a universal gasp.

Flagg raised a solemn hand to his mouth to hide a smile.

The court physician amplified one word to three: Murder by poison. He did not say Murder by Dragon Sand, for the poison was unknown in Delain, except to Flagg.

The King died shortly before midnight, but by dawn the charge was rife in the city and spreading outward toward the far reaches of the Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern Baronies: Murder, regicide, Roland the Good dead by poison.

Even before then, Flagg had organized a search of the castle, from the highest point (the Eastern Tower) to the lowest (the Dungeon of Inquisition, with its racks and manacles and squeezing boots). Any evidence bearing on this terrible crime, he said, must be searched out and reported at once.

The castle rang with the search. Six hundred grimly eager men combed through it. Only two small areas of the castle were exempt; these were the apartments of the two princes, Peter and Thomas.

Thomas was barely aware of this; his fever had worsened to the point where the court physician had become deeply alarmed. He lay in a delirium as dawn's first light fingered its way into his windows. In his dreams, he saw two gla.s.ses of wine raised high, heard his father say again and again: Did you spice it? It tasted mulled.

Flagg had ordered the search, but by two in the morning, Peter had recovered enough of his wits to take charge of it. Flagg let him. These next few hours would be terribly important, a time when all could be won or lost, and Flagg knew it. The King was dead; the Kingdom was momentarily headless. But not for long; this very day, Peter would be crowned King at the foot of the Needle, unless the crime was brought home to the boy quickly and conclusively.

Under other circ.u.mstances, Flagg knew, Peter would have been under suspicion at once. People always suspect those who have the most to gain, and Peter had gained a great deal by his father's death. Poison was horrible, but poison might have won him a kingdom.

But in this case, the people of the Kingdom spoke of the boy's loss rather than the boy's gain. Of course, Thomas had lost his father, too, they might add after a pause-almost as if they were ashamed of the momentary lapse. But Thomas was a sullen, sulky, awkward boy who had often argued with his father. Peter's affection and respect for Roland, on the other hand, were known far and wide. And why, people would ask-if the monstrous idea was even raised, and so far it had not been-why would Peter kill his father for the crown when he would surely inherit it in a year, or three, or five?

If evidence of the crime were to be found in a secret place that only Peter knew, however-a place in the prince's own rooms -the tide would turn quickly. People would begin to see a murderer's face beneath a mask of affection and respect. They would point out that, to the young, a year may seem like three, three like nine, five like twenty-five. Then they would point out that the King had seemed, in the last few days of his life, to be coming out of along, dark time-had seemed to be growing hale and vigorous again. Perhaps, they would say, Peter had believed his father was entering a long, healthy Indian summer, had panicked and done something as foolish as it was monstrous.

Flagg knew something else; he knew that people have a deep and instinctive distrust of all Kings and princes, for these are people who may order their deaths with a single nod, and for crimes as petty as dropping a handkerchief in their presence. Great Kings are loved, lesser Kings are tolerated; Kings-to-be represent a scary unknown quant.i.ty. They might come to love Peter if given a chance, but Flagg knew they would also condemn him quickly if shown enough evidence.

Flagg thought such evidence would be forthcoming soon. Nothing more than a mouse. Small way to shake a kingdom to its foundations. but big enough in it In Delain there were only three stages of being: childhood, half-manhood or -womanhood, and adulthood. These "half-years" lasted from fourteen to eighteen.

When Peter entered half-manhood, the scolding nannies were replaced with Brandon, his butler, and Dennis, Brandon 's son. Brandon would be Peter's butler for years yet, but probably not forever. Peter was very young, and Brandon was nearing fifty. When Brandon was no longer able to b.u.t.tle, Dennis would take over. Brandon 's family had b.u.t.tled high royalty for nearly eight hundred years, and were justifiably proud of the fact.

Dennis rose each morning at five o'clock, dressed, laid out his father's suit, and shined his father's shoes. Then he wandered blearily into the kitchen and ate breakfast. At quarter to six, he set out from the family's home on the west side of the castle keep and entered the castle proper by the Lesser West Door.

Promptly at six o'clock he would reach Peter's rooms, let himself quietly in, and go about the early ch.o.r.es-building a fire, making half a dozen breakfast m.u.f.fins, heating water for tea. Then he would quickly circle the three rooms, setting them to rights. This was usually easy, because Peter was not a messy boy. Last of all, he would return to the study and lay out breakfast, for the study was where Peter liked to eat the meals he took in his rooms-usually at his desk by the east windows, with a history book open before him.