Smiling inside his hood, Flagg said: "I thought it would, your Highness."
23
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 secondclass 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 eaves-dropper--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, unobtrusive. 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 passageway, one simply drew aside and stood still and let the servant pass. 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 passed 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 bloody 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 passed 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.
24
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 handsome 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 glass of wine.
Peter had come to Thomas and said, "I was thinking it would be nice if we brought Dad a glass 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 sixmonth, 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 jus
t 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 through the eyes of the dragon and saw it all.
25
If you had asked Flagg straight out why he had shown Thomas that place and the secret passageway 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 passages 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 mishief 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 sometimes, 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 something 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 passed, 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 hands 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.
"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 treasureroom 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 killballs 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-old's 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 that 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 passage . . . and on t
his one occasion his usually unerring instinct for mischief might have led him astray. Again, I leave it for you to decide.
26
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--bloody and barely cooked. Bloody 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 buggerlug 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?"
Flagg laughed cheerily--but that laugh raised gooseflesh on Thomas's arms anyway. He clapped Thomas on the back. "Not a bat! Not a drip! Not a draft! Warm as toast! And you can peek at your father, Tommy!"
Thomas knew that peeking was just another way of saying spying, and that spying was wrong--but this had been a shrewd shot all the same. This next time the buggerlug bug found a way to escape between two of the books, Thomas let it go. "All right," he said, "but there better not be any bats."