The Eyes of the Dragon

139

Thomas hadn’t stopped to consider what he would do if the door to his father’s rooms had been locked, and Peter never did, either-in the old days it never had been, and as things turned out, the door wasn’t locked now.

Peter had to do no more than lift the latch. He burst in, the others hot on his heels. Frisky was barking wildly, all of her fur standing on end. Frisky understood the true nature of things better, I’ll warrant. Something was coming, something with a black scent like the poison fumes that sometimes killed the coal miners of the Eastern Barony when their tunnels went too deep. Frisky would fight the owner of that scent if she had to; fight and even die. But if she could have spoken, Frisky would have told them that the black scent approaching them from behind did not belong to a man; it was a monster chasing them, some horrible It.

“Peter, what-” Ben began, but Peter ignored him. He knew what he must have. He rushed across the room on his exhausted, trembling legs, looked up at the head of Niner, and reached for the bow and the arrow that had always hung above that head. Then his hand faltered.

Both were gone.

Dennis, the last one in, had closed the door behind him and shot the bolt. Now a single great blow fell on that door. The stout hardwood panels, reinforced with bands of iron, boomed.

Peter looked over his shoulder, eyes widening. Dennis and Naomi cringed backward. Frisky stood before her mistress, snarling. Her gray-green eyes showed the whites all around.

“Let me pass!” Flagg roared. “Let me pass the door!”

“Peter!” Ben shouted, and drew his sword.

“Stand away!” Peter shouted back. “If you value your lives stand away! All of you, stand away!”

They scattered back just as Flagg’s fist, now glowing with blue fire, slammed down against the door again. Hinges, bolt, and iron bands all burst at the same time with the noise of an exploding cannon. Blue fire spoked through the cracks between the boards in narrow rays. Then the stout planks burst apart. Shattered chunks of wood flew in a spray. The ragged remains of the door stood for a moment longer and then fell inward with a handclap sound.

Flagg stood in the corridor, his hood fallen back. His face was waxen white. His lips were strips of liver drawn back to show his teeth. His eyes flared with furnace fire.

In his hand he grasped his heavy executioner’s axe.

He stood there a moment longer and then stepped inside. He looked left and saw Dennis. He looked right, and saw Ben and Naomi, with Frisky hunched, snarling, at her feet. His eyes marked them… catalogued them for future reference… and dismissed them. He strode through the remains of the door, now looking only at Peter.

“You fell but you did not die,” he said. “You may think your God was kind. But I tell you, my own gods were saving you for me. Pray to your God now that your heart should burst apart in your chest. Fall on your knees and pray for that, because I tell you that my death will be much worse than any you can imagine.

Peter stood where he was, between Flagg and his father’s chair, where Thomas sat, as yet unseen by all the others. Peter met Flagg’s infernal gaze, unafraid. For a moment Flagg seemed to flinch under that firm gaze, and then his inhuman grin blazed forth.

“You and your friends have caused me great trouble, my prince,” Flagg whispered. “Great trouble. I should have ended your miserable life long ago. But now all troubles will end.”

“I know you,” Peter replied. Although he was unarmed, his voice was steady and unafraid. “I think my father knew you, too, although he was weak. Now I assume my kingship, and I command you, demon!”

Peter drew himself up to his full height. The flames in the fireplace reflected from his eyes, making them blaze. In that moment, Peter was every inch Delain’s King.

“Get you gone from here. Leave Delain behind, now and forever. You are cast out. GET YOU GONE!”

Peter thundered this last in a voice which was greater than his own; he thundered in a voice that was many voices-all the Kings and Queens there had ever been in Delain, stretching back to the time when the castle had been little more than a collection of mud huts and people had drawn together in terror around their fires during the darks of winter as the wolves howled and the trolls gobbled and screamed in the Great Forests of Yestertime.

Flagg seemed to flinch again… almost to cringe. Then he came forward-slowly, very slowly. His huge axe swung in his left hand.

“You may command in the next world,” he whispered. “By escaping, you’ve played into my hands. If I’d thought of hand in time I should have-I would have engineered a trumped up escape myself! Oh, Peter, your head will roll into the fire and you’ll smell your hair burning before your brain knows you’re dead. You’ll burn as your father burned… and they’ll give me a medal for it in the Plaza! For did you not murder your own father for the crown?”

“You murdered him,” Peter said.

Flagg laughed. “I? I? You’ve gone insane in the Needle, my boy.” Flagg sobered. His eyes glittered. “But suppose just for an instant-suppose I did? Who would believe it?”

Peter still held the chain of the locket looped over his right hand. Now he held that hand out and the locket hung below it, swinging hypnotically, raying flashes of ruddy light on the wall. At the sight of it, Flagg’s eyes widened and Peter thought: He recognizes it! By all the Gods, he recognizes it!

“You killed my father, and it wasn’t the first time you’d ar-ranged things in the same way. You had forgotten, hadn’t you? I see it in your eyes. When Leven Valera stood in your way during the evil days of Alan II, his wife was found poisoned. Circumstances made Valera’s guilt seem without question… as they made my guilt seem without question.”

“Where did you find that, you little bastard?” Flagg whispered, and Naomi gasped.

“Yes, you forgot,” Peter repeated. “I think that, sooner or later, things like you always begin to repeat themselves, because things like you know only a very few simple tricks. After a while, someone always sees through them. I think that is all that saves us, ever.

The locket hung and swung in the firelight.

“Who would care now?” Peter asked. “Who would believe? Many. If they believed nothing else, they would believe you are as old as their hearts tell them you are, monster.”

“Give it to me!”

“You killed Eleanor Valera, and you killed my father.”

“Yes, I brought him the wine,” Flagg said, his eyes blazing, “and I laughed when his guts burned, and I laughed harder when you were taken up the stairs to the top of the Needle. But those who hear me say so in this room will all soon be dead, and no one saw me bring wine to these rooms! They only saw your”

And then, from behind Peter, a new voice spoke. It was not strong, that voice; it was so low it could scarcely be heard, and it trembled. But it struck all of them-Flagg included-dumb with wonder.

“There was one other who saw,” Peter’s brother, Thomas, said from the shadowed depths of his father’s chair. “I saw you, magician.