Lying there miserably on his sofa, wishing that Dennis was in his accustomed place on the hearth, Thomas thought: My head aches and my stomach feels sick . . . Is being King worth all this? I wonder. You might wonder, too . . . but before Thomas himself could wonder anymore, he fell heavily asleep.
He slept for almost an hour . . . and then he rose and walked. Out the door he went and down the halls, ghostly in his long white nightshirt. This night a late-going maid with an armload of sheets saw him, and he looked so much like old Kng Roland that the maid dropped her sheets and fled, screaming.
Thomas's darkly dreaming mind heard her screams and thought they were his father's.
He walked on, turning into the less used corridor. He paused halfway down and pushed the secret stone. He went into the passageway, closed the door behind him, and walked to the end of the corridor. He pushed aside the panels which were behind Niner's glass eyes, and though he was still asleep, he pushed his face up to the holes, as if looking into his dead father's sitting room. And here we will leave the unfortunate boy for a while, with the smell of wine surrounding him and tears of regret running from his sleeping eyes and down his cheeks.
He was sometimes a cruel boy, often a sad boy, this pretend King, and he had almost always been a weak boy . . . but even now I must tell you that I do not believe he was ever really a bad boy. If you hate him because of the things he did--and the things he allowed to be done--I will understand; but if you do not pity him a little as well, I will be surprised.
111
At quarter past eleven on that momentous night, the storm breathed its last gasp. A tremendous cold gust of wind swept down on the castle. It ran in excess of a hundred miles an hour. It tore the thinning clouds overhead apart like the swipe of a great hand. Cold, watery moonlight shone through.
In the Third East'ard Alley was a squat stone tower called the Church of the Great Gods; it had stood there since time out of mind. Many people worshipped there, but it was empty now. A good thing, too. The tower was not very tall--nowhere near the height of the Needle--but it nevertheless stood high above the neighboring buildings in the Third East'ard Alley, and all day long it had been punished by the unbroken force of the storm wind. This final gust was too much for it. The top thirty feet--all stone--simply blew off, as a hat might fly off a scarecrow in a high gale. Part landed in the alley; part hit the neighboring buildings. There was a tremendous crash.
Most of the populace of the castle keep, wearied by the excitement of the storm and already sleeping deeply, took no mind of the fall of the Church of the Great Gods (although they would wonder greatly over the snow-covered wreckage in the morning). Most simply muttered, turned over, and went back to sleep.
Some Guards of the Watch--those not too drunk to care--heard it, of course, and ran to see what had happened. Other than by these few, the fall of the tower went mostly unremarked when it happened . . . but there were a few others who heard it, and by now you know them all.
Ben, Dennis, and Naomi, who were getting ready for their attempt to rescue the rightful King, heard it in the napkin storeroom, and looked around at each other with wide eyes. "Never mind," Ben said, after a moment. "I don't know what it was, but it doesn't matter. Let's get on with it."
Beson and the Lesser Warders, all of them drunk, didn't hear the Church of the Great Gods fall down, but Peter did. He was sitting on the floor of his bedroom, carefully pulling his woven rope through his fingers, looking anxiously for weak points. He raised his head at the snow-muted thunder of falling stones, and went rapidly to the window. He could see nothing ; whatever had fallen was on the Needle's far side. After several considering moments, he went back to his rope. Midnight was close now, and he had come to much the same conclusion as his friend Ben. It didn't matter. The dice had been thrown. Now he must go on.
Deep in the darkness of the secret passage, Thomas heard the muffled thunder-thud of the falling tower and woke up. He heard the muffled barking of dogs below him and realized in horror where he was.
And one other who had been sleeping lightly and dreaming troubled dreams awoke at the fall of the tower. He woke even though he was deep in the bowels of the castle.
"Disaster!" one of the parrot's two heads screamed.
"Fire, flood, and escape!" the other screamed.
Flagg had awakened. I have told you that evil is sometimes strangely blind, and so it is. Sometimes evil is lulled with no reason, and sleeps.
But now Flagg had awakened.
112
Flagg had come back from his trip into the north with a bit of a fever, a heavy cold, and a troubled mind.
Something wrong, something wrong. The very stones of the castle seemed to whisper it to him . . . but Flagg was damned if he knew what it was. All he knew for sure was that unknown "something wrong" had sharp teeth. It felt like a ferret running around in his brain, taking a bite here and a bite there. He knew exactly when that animal had begun to run and gnaw: while he was coming back from the fruitless expedition in search of the rebels. Because . . . because . . .
Because the rebels should have been there!
They hadn't been, and Flagg hated to be fooled. Worse, he hated feeling that he might have made a mistake. If he had made a mistake about where the rebels were to be found, then perhaps he had made mistakes about other things. What other things? He didn't know. But his dreams were bad. That small, bad-tempered animal ran around in his head, worrying him, insisting that he had forgotten things, that other things were going on behind his back. It raced, it gnawed, it ruined his sleep. Flagg had medicines that would rid him of his cold, but none that would touch that growing ferret in his brain.
What could possibly be wrong?
He asked himself this question over and over again, and in truth it seemed--on the surface, at least--that nothing could be. For many centuries, the old dark chaos inside him had hated the love and light and order of Detain, and he had worked hard to destroy all that--to knock it down as that last cold gust of storm had knocked down the Church of the Great Gods. Always, something had interfered with his plans--a Kyla the Good, a Sasha, someone, something. But now he saw no possible interference, no matter where he looked. Thomas was totally his creature; if Flagg told him to step off the highest parapet of the castle, the fool would want to know only at which o'clock he should do it. The farmers were groaning under the weight of the killing taxes Flagg had persuaded Thomas to impose.
Yosef had told Peter there was a breaking strain on people as well as on ropes and chains, and so there is--the farmers and the merchants of Detain had nearly reached theirs. The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty--loyalty to King, to country, to government. Flagg knew that if he made the tax-blocks big enough, all the ropes would snap, and the stupid oxen--for that was really how he saw the people of Detain--would stampede, knocking down everything in their path. The first of the oxen had already broken free and had gathered in the north. They called themselves exiles now, but Flagg knew they would call themselves rebels soon enough. Peyna had been driven away and Peter was locked in the Needle.
So what could be wrong?
Nothing! Damn it, nothing!
But the ferret ran and squirmed and gnawed and twisted. Many times over the last three or four weeks he had awakened in a cold sweat, not because of his recurring fever but because he had had some horrible dream. What was the substance of this dream? He could never remember. He only knew that he woke from it with his left hand pressed to his left eye, as if he had been wounded there--and that eye would burn, although he could find nothing wrong with it.
113
On this night, Flagg awoke with his dream fresh in his mind, because he was awakened before it was over. It was, of course, the fall of the Church of the Great Gods which woke him.
"Huh!" Flagg cried, sitting bolt upright in his chair. His eyes were wide and staring, his white cheeks damp and shiny with sweat.
"Disaster!" one of the parro
t's heads screamed.
"Fire, flood, and escape!" the other screamed.
Escape, Flagg thought. Yes--that's what's been on my mind all this time, that's what's been gnawing at me.
He looked down at his hands and saw that they were trembling. This infuriated him, and he sprang out of his chair.
"He means to escape," he muttered, running his hands through his hair. "He means to try, anyway. But how? How? What's his Plan? Who helped him? They'll pay with their heads, I promise that . . . and they won't come off all in a chop, no! They'll come off an inch . . . a haft-inch . . . a quarter-inch . . . at a time. They'll be driven insane with the agony long before they die . . ."
"Insane!" one of the parrot heads shrieked.
"Agony!" the other shrieked back.
"Will you shut up and let me think!" Flagg howled. He seized a jar filled with murky brown fluid from a nearby table and threw it at the parrot's cage. It struck and shattered; there was a flash of bright, heatless light. The parrot's two heads squawked in terror; it fell off its perch and lay stunned at the bottom of its cage until morning.
Flagg began to pace rapidly back and forth. His teeth were bared. His hands worked together restlessly, the fingers of one warring with the fingers of the other. His boots struck up greenish sparks from the niter-caked stones of his laboratory floor; these sparks smelled like summer lightning.
How? When? Who helped?
He could not remember. Already the dream was fading. But . . .
"I have to know!" he whispered. "I have to know!"
Because it would be soon; he sensed that much. It would be very, very soon.
He found his keyring and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He took out a box made of finely carved ironwood, opened it, and drew out a leather bag. He opened the bag's drawstring top and carefully took out a chunk of rock that seemed to glow with its own inner light. This rock was as milky as an old man's blind eye. It looked like a piece of soapstone, but was in fact a crystal--Flagg's magic crystal.
He circled his room, turning down the lamps and capping the candles. Soon his apartment was in absolute darkness. Dark or not, Flagg returned to his desk with quick confidence, passing easily around objects that you or I would have barked our shins on or fallen over. The dark was nothing to the King's magician; he liked the dark, and he could see in it like a cat.
He sat down and touched the stone. He slipped his palms down its sides, feeling its ragged edges and angles.
"Show me," he murmured. "This is my command."
At first, nothing. Then, little by little, the crystal began to glow from within. There was only a tiny light at first, diffuse and pallid. Flagg touched the crystal again, this time with the tips of his fingers. It had grown warm.
"Show me Peter. This is my command. Show me the whelp that dares put himself in my way, and show me what he plans to do."
The light grew brighter . . . brighter . . . brighter. Eyes glittering, cruel thin lips parted to show his teeth, Flagg bent over his crystal. Now Peter, Ben, Dennis, and Naomi would have recognized their dream--and they would have recognized the glow which lit the magician's face, the glow which was not a candle.
The crystal's milky cast suddenly disappeared, drawing into the brightening glow. Now Flagg could see into its heart. His eyes widened . . . then narrowed in bewilderment.
It was Sasha, very pregnant, sitting at a little boy's bed. The little boy was holding a slate. On it were written two words: GOD and DOG.
Impatiently, Flagg passed his hands over the crystal, which now gave off waves of heat.
"Show me what I need to know! This is my command!"
The crystal cleared again.
It was Peter, playing with his dead mother's do//- house, pretending the house and the family inside were being attacked by Indians . . . or dragons . . . or some foolish thing. The old King stood in the corner, watching his son, wanting to join in . . .
"Bah!" Flagg cried, waving his hands over the crystal again. "Why do you show me these old, meaningless stories? I need to know how he plans to escape . . . and when! Now show me! This is my command!".
The crystal had grown hotter and hotter. If he did not allow it to go dark soon, it would split apart forever, Flagg knew, and magic crystals were not easy to come by--it had taken thirty years of searching to find this one. But he would see it broken into a billion pieces before he gave up.
"This is my command!" he repeated again, and for the third time, the milkiness of the crystal drew inward. Flagg bent over it until its heat made his eyes water and gush tears. He slitted them . . . and then, in spite of the heat, they flew open wide in shock and fury.
It was Peter. Peter was slowly descending the side of the Needle. Surely this was some treacherous magic, because, although he was making hand-over-hand motions, there was no rope to be seen--
Or . . . was there?
Flagg waved a hand in front of his face, dissipating the heat for a moment. A rope? Not exactly. But there was something . . . something as gossamer as a strand of spiderweb . . . and yet it bore his weight.
"Peter," Flagg breathed, and at the sound of his voice, the tiny figure looked around.
Flagg blew on the crystal and its bright, wavering light went out. He saw its afterglow in front of his eyes as he sat in the dark.
Peter. Escaping. When? It had been night in the crystal, and Flagg had seen errant, gritty sheaves of snow blowing past the tiny figure working its way down the rounded wall. Was it to be later tonight? Tomorrow night? Sometime next week? Or--
Flagg pushed back from his desk and stood up with a lurch. His eyes filled with fire as he looked around his dark and stinking basement rooms.
--or had it happened already?
"Enough," he breathed. "By all the gods that ever were and ever will be, this is enough."
He strode across the darkened room and seized a huge weapon that hung on the wall. It was clumsy, but he held it with ease and familiarity. Familiar with it? Yes, of course he was! He had swung it many times when he had lived here and done business as Bill Hinch, the most feared executioner Delain had ever known. This terrible blade had bitten through hundreds of necks. Above the blades, which were of twice-forged Anduan steel, was Flagg's own modification--a spiked iron ball. Each spike had been tipped with poison.
"ENOUGH! Flagg screamed again in a fury of rage and frustration and fear. The two-headed parrot, even in the depths of its unconsciousness, moaned at that sound.
Flagg pulled his cloak from the hook by the door, swept it over his shoulders, and fastened the clasp--a hammered-silver scarab beetle--at his throat.
It was enough. This time his plans would not be thwarted, certainly not by one hateful boy. Roland was dead, Peyna unbenched, the nobles driven into exile. There was no one to raise an outcry over one dead prince . . . especially one who had murdered his own father.
If you have not escaped, my fine prince, you never will--and something tells me you're still in the coop. But part of you WILL leave tonight, I promise you that--that part I intend to carry out by the hair.
As he strode down the corridor toward the Dungeon Gate, Flagg began to laugh . . . a sound which would have given a stone statue bad dreams.
114
Elagg's intuition was right. Peter had finished going over his rope of twisted linen fibers, but he was still in his tower room, awaiting the Crier's announcement of midnight, when Flagg burst out of the Dungeon Gate and began to cross the Plaza of the Needle. The Church of the Great Gods had fallen at quarter past eleven; it was quarter of twelve when the crystal showed Flagg what he wanted to know (and perhaps you'll agree with my idea that it tried to show him the truth in two other ways at first), and when Flagg started across the Plaza, it was still lacking ten minutes of midnight.
The Dungeon Gate was on the northeast side of the Needle. On the southwest side was a little castle entrance known as the Peddlers' Gate. A straight diagonal line could have been drawn between the Dungeon Gate and the Peddlers'
Gate. At the exact midpoint of that line was the Needle itself, of course.
At almost the same time that Flagg came out of the Dungeon Gate, Ben, Naomi, Dennis, and Frisky came out of the Peddlers' Gate. They approached each other without knowing it. The Needle was between them, but the wind had dropped, and Ben's party should have heard the clang-rasp of Flagg's bootheels against the cobbles; Flagg should have heard the faint squeak of an ungreased wheel. But all of them, including Frisky (who was back to her old job of pulling again), were lost in their own thoughts.
Ben and his party reached the Needle first.
"Now--" Ben began, and at that moment, from the other side, less than forty paces around the outside perimeter from where they now stood, Flagg began to hammer on the triple-bolted Warders' Door.
"Open!" Flagg screamed. "Open in the name of the King!"
"What--" Dennis began, and then Naomi clamped a hand like steel over his mouth and looked at Ben with frightened eyes.
115
The voice came spiraling up to Peter on the cold post-storm air. It was faint, that voice, but perfectly clear.
"Open in the name of the King!"
Open in the name of hell, you mean, Peter thought.
The good brave boy had become a good brave man, but when he heard that hoarse voice and remembered that narrow white face and those reddish eyes, always shadowed by the hood of his robe, Peter's bones turned to ice and his stomach to fire. His mouth went as dry as a wood chip. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His hair stood on end. If someone has ever told you that being good and being brave means you will never be afraid, what that someone told you is not so. At that moment, Peter had never been so afraid in his whole life.
It's Flagg, and he's come for me.
Peter got up and, for a moment, he thought he was going to simply fall over as his legs buckled under him. Doom was down there, hammering at the Warders' Door to be let in.