"If you are found innocent, you would resume the crown. If you are found guilty-"

The Great Lawyers looked nervous at this, but Peyna did not flinch.

"If you are found guilty, you would be taken to the top of the Needle, where you would spend the rest of your life. None of the royal family may be executed; that law is a thousand years old."

"And Thomas would become King?" Peter asked thought-fully. Flagg stiffened slightly.

"Yes.

Peter frowned, deep in thought. He looked terribly tired, but not confused or afraid, and Flagg felt a faint stirring of fear.

"Suppose I refuse?"

"If you refuse, then you become King in spite of terrible charges which have not been answered. Many of your subjects-most, in light of the evidence-will believe they have come to be ruled by a young man who murdered his own father to gain the throne. I think there will be revolt and civil war, and that those things will come before much time has pa.s.sed.

"As for myself, I would resign my post and set out toward the west. I am old to begin over, but I should have to try to do so just the same. My life has been the law, and I could not serve a King who has not knelt to the law in such a matter as this."

There was silence in the chamber, a silence that seemed very long. Peter sat with his head bowed, the heels of his hands plante against his eyes. They all watched and waited. Now even Flagg felt a thin film of sweat on his brow.

Finally Peter raised his head and took his hand from his eyes.

"Very well," he said. "Here is my command as King. I will put the crown aside until I am cleared of my father's murder. You, Peyna, will serve Delain as Chancellor during the time it is without a royal head. I would that the trial should take place as soon as may be-tomorrow, even, if that is possible. I will be bound by the decision of the court.

"But you will not try me."

They all blinked and sat up straighter at this dry note of authority, but Yosef of the stables would not have been surprised by it; he had heard that tone in the boy's voice before, when Peter was only a stripling.

"One of these other four will do that," Peter continued. "I'll not be tried by the man who will hold power in my place* a man who, by his look and manner, already feels in his heart that I have committed this terrible crime."

Peyna felt himself flush.

"One of these four," Peter reiterated, turning to the Great Lawyers. "Let four stones, three black and one white, be put in a cup. The one who draws the white stone shall preside at my trial. Do you agree?"

"My Lord, I do," Peyna agreed slowly, hating the flush which even now wouldn't leave his cheeks.

Again, Flagg had to raise a hand to his mouth to cover a small smile. And that, my little doomed Lord, is the only command you will ever give as King of Delain, he thought.

The meeting which began at three o'clock was over by quarter past the hour. Senates and parliaments may drone o for days and months before deciding a single issue-and often the issue is never decided at all in spite of all the talk-but when great things happen, they usually happen fast. And three hours later, as dark was coming down, something happened which made Peter realize that, mad as it seemed, he was going to be found guilty of this terrible crime.

He was escorted back to his apartments by unsmiling, silent guards. His meals, Peyna said, would be brought to him.

Supper was fetched by a burly Home Guardsman with a heavy stubble of beard on his face. He was holding a tray. On it were a gla.s.s of milk and a large, steaming bowl of stew. Peter stood up as the guardsman came in. He reached for the tray.

"Not yet, my Lord," the guardsman said, the sneer in his voice apparent. "It needs seasoning, I think." And with that he spat into the stew. Then, grinning, showing a mouthful of teeth and gaps like an ill-tended picket fence, he held the tray out. "Here."

Peter made no motion to take it. He was utterly astonished.

"Why did you do that? Why did you spit in my stew?"

"Does a child who murders his father deserve any better, m Lord?"

"No. But one who has not even been tried for the crime does," Peter said. "Take that out and bring me a fresh tray. Bring it in fifteen minutes, or you'll sleep tonight below Flagg in the dungeons.

The guardsman's ugly sneer faltered for a moment and then returned. "I think not," he said. He tilted the tray, first just a little, then more, then more. The gla.s.s and bowl shattered on the flagstones. Thick stew splattered in ropes.

"Lick it up," the guardsman said. "Lick it up like the dog you are.

He turned to go. Peter, suddenly blazing, leaped forward and slapped the man. The sound of the blow rang in the room like a pistol shot.

With a bellow, the scruffy guardsman pulled out his shortsword.

Smiling humorlessly, Peter lifted his chin and bared his neck. "Go ahead," he said. "A man who would spit in another man's soup is perhaps also the sort of man who would cut an unarmed man's throat. Go ahead. Pigs also do G.o.d's bidding, I believe, and my shame and my grief are very great. If G.o.d wills me to live, I must, but if G.o.d wills me to die and has sent such a pig as you to do the killing, that is very well."

The Home Guardsman's anger melted into confusion. After a moment he sheathed his sword.

"I'll not dirty my blade," he said, but his words were almost a mumble, and he was not able to meet Peter's eye.

"Bring me fresh food and drink," Peter said quietly. "I don't know who you have been talking to, guardsman, and I don't care. I don't know why you are so eager to condemn me for my father's murder when no testimony has yet been heard, and I don't care about that, either. But you will bring me fresh meat and drink, and a napkin to go with them, and you will do this before the clock strikes half past six, or I will ring for Peyna, and you will sleep below Flagg tonight. My guilt is not proved, Peyna is yet mine to command, and I swear what I say is true."

During this the Home Guardsman grew paler and paler, be-cause he saw Peter did speak the truth. But this was not the only reason for his pallor. When his mates had told him the prince had been caught red-handed, he had believed them-he had wanted to believe them-but now he wondered. Peter did not look or speak like a guilty man.

"Yes, my Lord," he said.

The soldier went out. A few moments later, the captain of the guard opened the door and looked in.

"I thought I heard some disturbance," he said. His eye fell on the broken gla.s.s and crockery. "Has there been trouble here?"

"No trouble," Peter said calmly. "I dropped the tray. The guardsman has gone to fetch me a fresh meal."

The captain nodded and left.

Peter sat on his bed for the next ten minutes and thought deeply.

There was a brief knock on the door. "Come," Peter said.

The bearded, gap-toothed guard came in with a fresh tray. "My Lord, I wish to apologize," he said with awkward stiffness. "I've never behaved so in my whole life, and I don't know what came over me. For my life I do not. I-"

Peter waved it away. He felt very tired. "Do the others feel as you do? The other guards?"

"My Lord," the guardsman said, carefully setting the tray on Peter's desk, "I'm not sure I still feel the way I did."

"But do the others feel that I am guilty?"

There was a long pause, and then the soldier nodded.

"And is there some one reason they tell against me most of all?"

"They speak of a mouse that burned* they say you wept when Peyna confronted you*"

Peter nodded grimly. Yes. Weeping had been a bad mistake, but he hadn't been able to help it* and it was done.

"But most of all they only say you were caught, that you wanted to be King, that it must be so."

"That I wanted to be King and so it must be so," Peter echoed.

"Yes, my Lord." The guardsman stood looking at Peter miser-ably.

"Thank you. Go now, please."

"My Lord, I apologize-"

"Your apology is accepted. Please go. I need to think."

Looking as if he wished he had never been born, the Home Guardsman stepped out the door and closed it behind him.

Peter spread his napkin over his knees but didn't eat. Any hunger he might have felt earlier was now gone. He plucked at the napkin and thought of his mother. He was glad-very glad indeed-that she wasn't alive to see this, to see what he had come to. All of his life he had been a lucky boy, a blessed boy, a boy to whom, it sometimes seemed, no bad luck ever came. Now it seemed that all the bad luck which should have been his over the years had only been stored up to be paid at once, and with sixteen years of interest.

But most of all they say you wanted to be King and it must be so.

In some deep way he understood. They wanted a good King they could love. But they also wanted to know they had been saved by only a hair's breadth from a bad one. They wanted blackness and secrets; they wanted their fearful tale of rotten royalty. G.o.d only knew why. They say you wanted to be King, they say it must be so.

Peyna believes it, Peter thought, and that guardsman believed it; they will all believe it. This is not a nightmare. I have been accused of my father's murder, and not all my good behavior and my obvious love for him will dismiss the charge. And part of them wants to believe I did it.

Peter carefully refolded his napkin and laid it over the top of the fresh bowl of stew. He could not eat.

There was a trial, and it was a great wonder, and there are histories of the event if you care to read them. But here's the root of the matter: Peter, son of Roland, was brought before the judge-General of Delain by a burning mouse; tried in a meeting of seven which was not a court; convicted by a Home Guardsman who delivered his verdict by spitting into a bowl of stew. That is the story, and sometimes stories tell more than histories, and more quickly, too.

When 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.

No," 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.

You need me, Tommy, but it would be a very bad mistake for me to tell you that. No, you must say it to me. There must be no question about who is in charge. Not now, not ever.

"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 a.s.sure 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*

He looks dressed for gaveling.

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!"

"G.o.d makes Kings," Flagg said. G.o.d* and sometimes magicians, he thought with an inward t.i.tter. "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."