The Eyes of the Dragon

48

The coronation went off with no trouble or com-plications at all. Thomas’s servants (he had no butler, being too young, but this would be provided for soon) dressed him for the occasion in fine clothes of black velvet which were strewn with jewels (All mine, Thomas thought with wonder-and with dawning greed-These are all mine now) and high black boots of finest kid leather. When Flagg appeared promptly at eleven-thirty and said, “It is time, my Lord King,” Thomas was far less nervous than he had expected. The sedative the magician had given him the night before was still working in him.

“Take my arm then,” he said, “in case I stumble.”

Flagg took Thomas’s arm. In the years to come, it was a posture the inhabitants of the court city would become very familiar with-Flagg appearing to bear the boy King up as if he were an old man instead of a healthy youngster.

They walked out together into bright wintry sunshine.

A cheer so great it was like the sound of surf breaking against the long, desolate strands of the Eastern Barony greeted their coming. Thomas looked around, amazed at the sound, and his first thought was: Where is Peter? Surely this must be for Peter! Then he remembered that Peter was in the Needle and realized the cheering was for him. He felt a dawning pleasure… and I must tell you that the pleasure was not just in knowing the cheers were for him. He knew that Peter, locked in his lonely tower rooms, must hear the cheering, too.

“It does it matter now that you were always best in lessons?

Thomas thought with a mean happiness that pricked him even as it warmed him. What does it matter now? You are locked in the Needle and I… I am to be King! What does it matter that you brought him a glass of wine every night and

But this last thought caused a strange, greasy sweat to rise on his forehead, and he put it away from him.

The cheers rose again and again as he and Flagg walked first to the Plaza of the Needle and then under the arch formed by the upraised ceremonial swords of the Home Guard, dressed again in their fine red ceremonial uniforms and their tall WolfJaw shakos. Thomas began to positively enjoy himself. He raised a hand in salute, and his subjects’ cheers became a storm. Men threw their hats in the air. Women wept for joy. Cries of The King! The King! Behold the King! Thomas the Light-Bringer! Long live the King! rose in the air. Thomas, who was only a boy, thought they were for him. Flagg, who had perhaps never been a boy, knew better. The cheers were because the time of unease was past. They were cheering the fact that things could go on as they always had, that the shops could be reopened, that grim-eyed soldiers in tight leather hats would no longer stand watches around the castle in the night, that everyone could get drunk following this solemn ceremony and not worry about waking to the sounds of confused midnight revolt. No more than that, no less than that. Thomas could have been anyone, anyone at all. He was a figurehead.

But Flagg would see that Thomas never knew that.

Not, at any rate, until it was too late.

The ceremony itself was short. Anders Peyna, looking twenty years older than the week before, officiated. Thomas answered I will, I shall, and I swear in all the right places, as Flagg had coached him. At the end of the ceremonies, which were conducted in such solemn silence that even those at the farthest edges of the huge crowd could hear them clearly, the crown was placed on Thomas’s head. Cheers rose again, louder than ever, and Thomas looked up-up and up the smooth, rounded stone side of the Needle, to the very top, where there was but one window. He couldn’t see if Peter was looking down, but he hoped Peter was. He hoped Peter was looking down and biting his lips in frustration until the blood flowed down his chin, as Thomas had often bitten his own lips-bitten them until there was a fine white network of scars there.

Do you hear that, Peer? he shrilled in his mind. They’re cheering for ME! They’re cheering for ME! They’re finally cheering for ME!