The Eyes of the Dragon

3

The people of Delain loved her because she was kind and good. It was Queen Sasha who created the Great Hospital, Queen Sasha who wept so over the cruelty of the bear baiting in the Plaza that King Roland finally outlawed the practice, Queen Sasha who pleaded for a Remission of King’s Taxes in the year of the great drought, when even the leaves of the Great Old Tree went gray. Did Flagg plot against her, you might ask? Not at first. These were relatively small things in his view, because he was a real magician, and had lived hundreds and hundreds of years.

He even allowed the Remission of Taxes to pass, because the year before, Delain’s navy had smashed the Anduan pirates, who had plagued the Kingdom’s southern coast for over a hundred years. The skull of the Anduan pirate-king grinned from a spike outside the palace walls and Delain’s treasury was rich with re-covered plunder. In larger matters, matter of state, it was still Flagg’s mouth which was closest to King Roland’s ear, and so Flagg was at first content.