The Eyes of the Dragon

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.

“Open up! On your feet, you licey drunken buggers! Beson, you son of a sot!”

Don’t hurry, Peter told himself. If you hurry you’ll make a mistake and do his work for him. No one’s come to let him in yet. Beson’s drunk-he was oddly at supper and probably paralyzed by the time he got to bed. Flagg hasn’t a key or he wouldn’t be wasting time knocking. So… one step at a time. Just as you planned it. He’s got to get in, and then climb those stairs-all three hundred of them. You may beat him yet.

He went into his bedroom and pulled out the rough iron cotter pins that held the crude bedframe together. The bed collapsed. Peter grabbed one of the iron side-bars and carried it back into the sitting room. He had measured this bar carefully and knew it was wider than his window, and while its outer surface was rusted, he thought it was strong yet through the middle. It had better be, he thought. It would be a bitter joke indeed if my rope held but my anchor broke.

He looked out briefly. He could see no one now, but he had observed three figures crossing the Plaza toward the Needle shortly before Flagg’s wild pounding had begun. Dennis had recruited friends, then. Had one of them been Ben? Peter hoped so, but did not dare to really believe it. Who was the third? And why the wagon? They were questions he had no time for now.

“Oh, you dogs! Open this door! Open it in the King’s name! Open it in the name of FLAGG! Open the door! Open-”

In the stillness of almost midnight, Peter heard the rattle-thud of the wrist-thick iron bolts far below being drawn back. He supposed the door opened, but he didn’t hear that. Silence…

… and then a gurgling, choked scream.