"I believe God spared the nag because the young King stood up for her so brave-like," he said. "And he worked at them poultices like a slave. Brave, he is; he's got the heart of a dragon. He'll make a King someday, all right Ai! You should have heard his voice when he told me to hold the maul!"
It was a great story, all right, and Yosef drank on it for the next seven years--until Peter was arrested for a hideous crime, judged guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment in the cell atop the Needle for the rest of his life
15
Perhaps you are wondering what Thomas was like, and some of you may already be casting him in a villain's part, as a willing co-schemer in Flagg's plot to snatch the crown away from its rightful owner.
That was not really the case at all, although to some it always seemed so, and of course Thomas did play a part. He did not seem, I admit, to be a really good boy--at least, not at first glance. He was surely not a good boy in the way that Peter was a good boy, but no brother would have looked really good beside Peter, and Thomas knew it well by the time he was four--that was the year after the famous sack-race, and the one in which the famous stableyard incident took place. Peter rarely lied and never cheated. Peter was smart and kind, tall and handsome. He looked like their mother, who had been so deeply loved by the King and the people of Delain.
How could Thomas compare with goodness like that? A simple question with a simple answer. He couldn't.
Unlike Peter, Thomas was the spitting image of his father. This pleased the old man a little, but it didn't give him the pleasure most men feel when they have a son who carries the clear stamp of their features. Looking at Thomas was too much like looking into a sly mirror. He knew that Thomas's fine blond hair would gray early and then begin to fall out; Thomas would be bald by the time he was forty. He knew that Thomas would never be tall, and if he had his father's appetite for beer and mead, he would be carrying a big belly before him by the time he was twenty-five. Already his toes had begun to turn in, and Roland guessed Thomas would walk with his own bowlegged swagger.
Thomas was not exactly a good boy, but you must not think that made him a bad boy. He was sometimes a sad boy, often a confused boy (he took after his father in another way, as well--hard thinking made his nose stuffy and his head feel like boulders were rolling around inside), and often a jealous boy, but he wasn't a bad boy.
Of whom was he jealous? Why, of his brother, of course. He was jealous of Peter. It wasn't enough that Peter would be King, Oh no! It wasn't enough that their father liked Peter best, or that the servants liked Peter best, or that their teachers liked Peter best because he was always ready at lessons and didn't need to be coaxed. It wasn't enough that everyone liked Peter best, or that Peter had a best friend. There was one more thing.
When anyone looked at Thomas, his father the King most of all, Thomas thought he knew they were thinking: We loved your mother and you killed her in your coming. And what did we get out of the pain and death you caused her? A dull little boy with a round face that has hardly any chin, a dull little boy who couldn't make all fifteen of the Great Letters until he was eight. Your brother Peter was able to make them all when he was six. What did we get? Not much. Why did you come, Thomas? What good are you? Throne insurance? Is that all you are? Throne insurance in case Peter the Precious should fall off his limping nag and crack his head open? Is that all? Well, we don't want you. None of us want you. None of us want you. . . .
The part Thomas played in his brother's imprisonment was dishonorable, but even so he was not a really bad boy. I believe this, and hope that in time you will come to believe it, too.
16
Once, as a boy of seven, Thomas spent a whole day laboring in his room, carving his father a model sailboat. He did it with no way of knowing that Peter had covered himself with glory that day on the archery range, with his father in attendance. Peter was not, ordinarily, much of a bowman--in that area, at least, Thomas would turn out to be far superior to his older brother--but on that one day, Peter had shot the junior course of targets like one inspired. Thomas was a sad boy, a confused boy, and he was often an unlucky boy.
Thomas had thought of the boat because sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, his father liked to go out to the moat which surrounded the palace and float a variety of model boats. Such simple pleasures made Roland extremely happy, and Thomas had never forgotten one day when his father had taken him--and just him--along. In those days, his father had an advisor whose only job was to show Roland how to make paper boats, and the King had conceived a great enthusiasm for them. On this day, a hoary old carp had risen out of the mucky water and swallowed one of Roland's paper boats whole. Roland had laughed like a boy and declared it was better than a tale about a sea monster. He hugged Thomas very tight as he said so. Thomas never forgot that day--the bright sunshine, the damp, slightly moldy odor of the moat water, the warmth of his father's arms, the scratchiness of his beard.
So, feeling particularly lonely one day, he had hit on the idea of making his father a sailboat. It would not be a really great job, and Thomas knew it--he was almost as clumsy with his hands as he was at memorizing his lessons. But he also knew that his father could have any craftsman in Delain--even the great Ellender himself, who was now almost completely blind--make him boats if he so desired. The crucial difference, Thomas thought, would be that Roland's own son had taken a whole day to carve him a boat for his Sunday pleasure.
Thomas sat patiently by his window, urging the boat out of a block of wood. He used a sharp knife, nicked himself times without number, and cut himself quite badly once. Yet he kept on, aching hands or no. As he worked he daydreamed of how he and his father would go out on Sunday afternoon and sail the boat, just the two of them all alone, because Peter would be riding Peony in the woods or off playing with Ben. And he wouldn't even mind if that same carp came up and ate his wooden boat, because then his father would laugh and hug him and say it was better than a story of sea monsters eating Anduan clipper ships whole.
But when he got to the King's chamber Peter was there and Thomas had to wait for nearly half an hour with the boat hidden behind his back while his father extolled Peter's bowmanship. Thomas could see that Peter was uncomfortable under the unceasing barrage of praise. He could also see that Peter knew Thomas wanted to talk to their father, and that Peter kept trying to tell their father so. It didn't matter, none of it mattered. Thomas hated him anyway.
At last Peter was allowed to escape. Thomas approached his father, who looked at him kindly enough now that Peter was gone. "I made you something, Dad," he said, suddenly shy. He held the boat behind his back with hands that were suddenly wet and clammy with sweat.
"Did you now, Tommy?" Roland said. "Why, that was kind, wasn't it?"
"Very kind, Sire," said Flagg, who happened to be idling nearby. He spoke casually but watched Thomas with bright interest.
"What is it, lad? Show me!"
"I remembered how much you liked to have a boat or two out on the moat Sunday afternoons, Dad, and . . ." He wanted desperately to say, and I wanted you to take me out with you again sometime, so I made this, but he found he could not utter such a thing. ". . .and so I made you a boat. . . . I spent a whole day . . . cut myself . . . and . . . and . . ." Sitting in his window seat, carving the boat, Thomas had made up a long, eloquent speech which he would utter before bringing the boat out from behind his back and presenting it with a flourish to his father, but now he could hardly remember a word of it, and what he could remember didn't seem to make any sense.
Horribly tongue-tied, he took the sailboat with its awkward flapping sail out from behind his back and gave it to Roland. The King turned it over in his big, short-fingered hands. Thomas stood and watched him, totally unaware that he had forgotten to breathe.
At last Roland looked up. "Very nice, very nice, Tommy. Canoe, isn't it?"
"Sailboat." Don't you see the sail? he wanted to cry. It took me an hour alone just to tie the knots, and it isn't my fault one of
them came loose so it flaps!
The King fingered the striped sail, which Thomas had cut from a pillowcase.
"So it is . . . of course it is. At first I thought it was a canoe and this was some Oranian girl's washing." He tipped a wink at Flagg, who smiled vaguely at the air and said nothing. Thomas suddenly felt he might vomit quite soon.
Roland looked at his son more seriously, and beckoned for him to come close. Timidly, hoping for the best, Thomas did so.
"It's a good boat, Tommy. Sturdy, like yourself, a bit clumsy like yourself, but good--like yourself. And if you want to give me a really fine present, work hard in your own bowmanship classes so you can take a first-class medal as Pete did today."
Thomas had taken a first in the lower-circle bowmanship courses the year before, but his father seemed to have forgotten this in his joy over Peter's accomplishment. Thomas did not remind him; he merely stood there, looking at the boat in his father's big hands. His cheeks and forehead had flushed to the color of old brick.
"When it was at last down to just two boys--Peter and Lord Towson's son--the instructor decreed they should draw back another forty koner. Towson's boy looked downcast, but Peter just walked to the mark and nocked an arrow. I saw the look in his eyes, and I said to myself 'He's won! By all the gods that are, he hasn't even fired an arrow yet and he's won!' And so he had! I tell you, Tommy, you should have been there! You should have . . ."
The King prattled on, putting aside the boat Thomas had labored a whole day to make, with barely a second look. Thomas stood and listened, smiling mechanically, that dull, bricklike flush never leaving his face. His father would never bother to take the sailboat he had carved out to the moat--why should he? The sailboat was as pukey as Thomas felt. Peter could probably carve a better one blindfolded, and in half the time. It would look better to their father, at least.
A miserable eternity later, Thomas was allowed to escape.
"I believe the boy worked very hard on that boat," Flagg remarked carelessly.
"Yes, I suppose he did," Roland said. "Wretched-looking thing, isn't it? Looks a little like a dog turd with a handkerchief sticking out of it." And like something I would have made when I was his age, he added in his own mind.
Thomas could not hear thoughts . . . but a hellish trick of acoustics brought Roland's words to him just as he left the Great Hall. Suddenly the horrible green pressure in his stomach was a thousand times worse. He ran to his bedroom and was sick in a basin.
The next day, while idling behind the outer kitchens, Thomas spied a half-crippled old dog foraging for garbage. He seized a rock and threw it. The stone flew to the mark. The dog yipped and fell down, badly hurt. Thomas knew his brother, although five years older, could not have made such a shot at half the distance--but that was a cold satisfaction, because he also knew that Pete never would have thrown a rock at a poor, hungry dog in the first place, especially one as old and decrepit as this one obviously was.
For a moment, compassion filled Thomas's heart and his eyes filled with tears. Then, for no reason at all, he thought of his father saying, Looks a little like a dog turd with a handerchief sticking out of it. He gathered up a handful of rocks, and went over to where the dog lay on its side, dazed and bleeding from one ear. Part of him wanted to let the dog alone, or perhaps heal it as Peter had healed Peony--to make it his very own dog and love it forever. But part of him wanted to hurt it, as if hurting the dog would ease some of his own hurt. He stood above it, undecided, and then a terrible thought came to him:
Suppose that dog was Peter?
That decided the case. Thomas stood over the old dog and threw stones at it until it was dead. No one saw him, but if someone had, he or she would have thought: There is a boy who is bad . . . bad, and perhaps even evil. But the person who saw only the cruel murder of that dog would not have seen what happened the day before--would not have seen Thomas throwing up into a basin and crying bitterly as he did it. He was often a confused boy, often a sadly unlucky boy, but I stick to what I said--he was never a bad boy, not really.
I also said that no one saw the stoning of the mongrel dog behind the outer kitchens, but that was not quite true. Flagg saw it that night, in his magic crystal. He saw it . . . and was well pleased by it.
17
Roland . . . Sasha . . . Peter . . . Thomas. Now there is only one more we must speak of, isn't there? Now there is only the shadowy fifth. The time has come to speak of Flagg, as dreadful as that may be.
Sometimes the people of Delain called him Flagg the Hooded; sometimes simply the dark man--for, in spite of his white corpse's face, he was a dark man indeed. They called him well preserved, but they used the term in a way that was uneasy rather than complimentary. He had come to Delain from Garlan in the time of Roland's grandfather. In those days he had appeared to be a thin and stern-faced man of about forty. Now, in the closing years of Roland's reign, he appeared to be a thin and stern-faced man of about fifty. Yet it had not been ten years, or even twenty, between then and now--it had been seventy-six years in all. Babies who had been sucking toothlessly at their mother's breasts when Flagg first came to Delain had grown up, married, had children, grown old, and died toothlessly in their beds or their chimney corners. But in all that time, Flagg seemed to have aged only ten years. It was magic, they whispered, and of course it was good to have a magician at court, a real magician and not just a stage conjurer who knew how to palm coins or hide a sleeping dove up his sleeve. Yet in their hearts, they knew there was nothing good about Flagg. When the people of Delain saw him coming, with his eyes peeking redly out from his hood, they quickly found business on the far side of the street.
Did he really come from Garlan, with its far vistas and its purple dreaming mountains? I do not know. It was and is a magical land where carpets sometimes fly, and where holy men sometimes pipe ropes up from wicker baskets, climb them, and disappear at the tops, never to be seen again. A great many seekers of knowledge from more civilized lands like Delain and Andua have gone to Garlan. Most disappear as completely and as permanently as those strange mystics who climb the floating ropes. Those who do return don't always come back changed for the better. Yes, Flagg might well have come to Delain from Garlan, but if he did, it was not in the reign of Roland's grandfather but much, much earlier.
He had, in fact, come to Delain often. He came under a different name each time, but always with the same load of woe and misery and death. This time he was Flagg. The time before he had been known as Bill Hinch, and he had been the King's Lord High Executioner. Although that time was two hundred and fifty years past, his was a name mothers still used to frighten their children when they were bad. "If you don't shut up that squalling, I reckon Bill Hinch will come and take you away!" they said. Serving as Lord High Executioner under three of the bloodiest Kings in Delain's long history, Bill Hinch had made an end to hundreds--thousands, some said--of prisoners with his heavy axe.
The time before that, four hundred years before the time of Roland and his sons, he came as a singer named Browson, who became a close advisor to the King and a Queen. Browson disappeared like smoke after drumming up a great and bloody war between Delain and Andua.
The time before that . . .
Ah, but why go on? I'm not sure I could if I wanted to. When times are long enough, even the storytellers forget the tales. Flagg always showed up with a different face and a different bag of tricks, but two things about him were always the same. He always came hooded, a man who seemed almost to have no face, and he never came as a King himself, but always as the whisperer in the shadows, the man who poured poison into the porches of Kings' ears.
Who was he, really, this dark man?
I do not know.
Where did he wander between visits to Delain?
I do not know that, either.
Was he never suspected?
Yes, by a few--by historians and spinners of tales like me, mostly. They suspected that the man who now called himself Flagg had been in Del
ain before, and never to any good purpose. But they were afraid to speak. A man who could live among them for seventy-six years and appear to age only ten was obviously a magician; a man who had lived for ten times as long, perhaps longer than that . . . such a man might be the devil himself.
What did he want? That question I think I can answer.
He wanted what evil men always want: to have power and use that power to make mischief. Being a King did not interest him because the heads of Kings all too often found their way to spikes on castle walls when things went wrong. But the advisors to Kings . . . the spinners in the shadows . . . such people usually melted away like evening shadows at dawning as soon as the headsman's axe started to fall. Flagg was a sickness, a fever looking for a cool brow to heat up. He hooded his actions just as he hooded his face. And when the great trouble came--as it always did after a span of years--Flagg always disappeared like shadows at dawn.
Later, when the carnage was over and the fever had passed, when the rebuilding was complete and there was again something worth destroying, Flagg would appear once more.
18
This time, Flagg had found the Kingdom of Delain in exasperatingly healthy condition. Landry, Roland's grandfather, was a drunken old fool, easy to influence and twist, but a heart attack had taken him too soon. Flagg knew by then that Lita, Roland's mother, was the last person he wanted holding the scepter. She was ugly but good-hearted and strongwilled. Such a Queen was not a good growth medium for Flagg's brand of insanity.
If he had come earlier in Landry's reign, there would have been time to put Lita out of the way, as he expected to put Peter out of the way. But he'd had only six years, and that was not long enough.