The Eyes of the Dragon

74

Time yes, time-Peter spent a great deal of time at the top of the Needle. His beard grew long, save for where that white scar streaked his cheek like a lightning bolt. He saw many changes from his window, as it grew. He heard of more terrible changes yet. The headsman’s pendulum had not slowed down but actually speeded up: treason-sedition, treason-sedition, it sang, and sometimes half a dozen heads rolled in the course of but a single day.

During Peter’s third year of imprisonment, the year in which Peter was first able to do thirty chin-ups in a single effort from his bedchamber’s central beam, Peyna resigned his post as JudgeGeneral in disgust. It was the talk of the meadhouses and wineshops for a week, and the talk of Peter’s keepers for a week and a day. The warders believed that Flagg would have Peyna jailed almost before the heat of the old man’s bum had left the judge’s bench, and that soon after the citizens of Delain would find out once and for all if there was blood or ice water in the judge-General’s veins. But when Peyna remained free, the talk died down. Peter was glad Peyna had not been arrested. He bore him no ill will, in spite of Peyna’s willingness to believe that he had murdered his father; and he knew that the arrangement of the evidence had been Flagg’s doing.

Also during Peter’s third year in the Needle, Dennis’s good old Da’, Brandon, died. His passing was simple but dignified. He had finished his day’s work in spite of a terrible pain in his chest and side and came slowly home. He sat down in the little living room, hoping the pain would pass. Instead it grew worse. He called his wife and son to his side, kissed them both, and asked if he might have a glass of bundle-gin. This was provided. He drank it off, kissed his wife again, and then sent her from the room.

“You must serve your master well now, Dennis,” he said. “Ye’re a man now, with a man’s tasks set before you.”

“I’ll serve the King as well as I may, Da’,” Dennis said, although the thought of taking over his father’s responsibilities terrified him. His good, homely face was shiny with tears. For the last three years, Brandon and Dennis had buttled for Thomas, and Dennis’s responsibilities had been much the same as before, with Peter; but it had never been the same, somehow-never even close to the same.

“Thomas, aye,” Brandon said, and then whispered: “But if the time comes to do yer first master a service, Dennis, you mustn’t hesitate. I have never-”

At that moment, Brandon clutched the left side of his chest, stiffened, and died. He died where he would have wanted to die, in his own chair, in front of his own fire.

In Peter’s fourth year of imprisonment-his rope below the stones growing steadily longer and longer-the Staad family disappeared. The throne possessed itself of what little there re-mained of their lands, as it had done when other noble families disappeared. And as Thomas’s reign progressed, there were more and more disappearances.

The Staads were only one item of meadhouse gossip in a busy week that included four beheadings, an increased levy against shopkeepers, and the imprisonment of an old woman who had for three days walked back and forth in front of the palace, screaming that her grandson had been taken and tortured for speaking against the previous year’s Cattle Levies. But when Peter heard the Staad name in the warders’ conversation, his heart had stopped for a moment.

The chain of events leading to the disappearance of the Staads was one familiar to everyone in Delain by now. The tick-tocking pendulum of the headsman’s axe had thinned the numbers of the nobility terribly. Many of these nobles died because their families had served the Kingdom for hundreds-or thousands-of years, and they could not believe such an unjust fate would or could fall on them. Others, seeing bloody handwriting on the wall, fled. The Staads were among these.

And the whispering began.

Tales were told behind cupped hands, tales suggesting that these nobles had not simply scattered to the four winds but had gathered together somewhere, perhaps in the deep woods at the northern end of the Kingdom, to plan an overthrow of the throne.

These stories passed to Peter like the wind through his win-dow, the drafts beneath his door… They were dreams of a wider world. Mostly he worked on his rope. During the first year, the rope grew longer by eighteen inches every three weeks.

At the end of that year, he had a slim cable that was twenty-five feet long-a cable that was, theoretically at least, strong enough to bear his weight. But there was a difference between dangling from a beam in his bedroom and dangling above a drop of three hundred feet, and Peter knew it. He was, quite literally, staking his life on that slim cord.

And twenty-five feet a year was perhaps not enough; it would take more than eight years before he could even try, and the rumblings he heard at second hand had grown loud enough to be disturbing. Above all else, the Kingdom must endure-there must be no revolt, no chaos. Wrongs must be put right, but by law, not by bows and slings and maces and clubs. Thomas, Leven Valera, Roland, he himself, even Flagg paled into insignificance next to that. There must be law.

How Anders Peyna, growing old and bitter by his fire, would have loved him for that!

Peter determined that he must make his effort to escape as soon as possible. Accordingly he made long calculations, doing the figures in his head so as to leave no trace. He did them again and again and again, proving to himself that he had made no mistake.

In his second year in the Needle, he began to pluck ten threads from each napkin; in his third year fifteen; in his fourth year, twenty. The rope grew. Fifty-eight feet long after the second year; a hundred and four after the third; a hundred and sixty after the fourth.

The rope at that time would still have fetched up a hundred and forty feet from the ground.

During his last year, Peter began to take thirty threads from each napkin, and for the first time his robberies showed clearly -each napkin looked frayed on all four sides, as if mice had been at it. Peter waited in agony for his thefts to be discovered.