The Eyes of the Dragon

92

At eight of the clock, Dennis left the fields and entered the King’s Preserves. He knew them well enough. He had been a squireen for Brandon when his Da’ buttled the old King in the fields of the hunt, and Roland had come here often, even in his old age. Thomas came less often, but on the few occasions when the boy King did come, Dennis had, of course, been required to come with him. Soon he struck on a trail he knew, and just before midnight he reached the verge of this toy forest.

He stood behind a tree, looking out at the castle wall. It was half a mile away over open, snow-covered ground. The moon was still shining, and Dennis was all too aware of the sentries who walked the castle parapet. He would have to wait until Prince Ailon had driven his silvery chariot over the edge of the world before crossing that open space. Even then he would be horribly exposed. He had known from the first that this would be the riskiest part of the whole adventure. Parting from Peyna and Arlen, with the good sun shining down, the risk had seemed acceptable. Now it seemed utterly mad.

Go back, a cowardly voice inside him begged, but Dennis knew he couldn’t. His father had laid a charge on him, and if the gods meant him to die trying to fulfill it, then he would die.

Faint and yet clear, like a voice heard in a dream, came the call of the Crier, drifting out to him from the castle’s central tower: “Twelve o’clock and all’s well…”

Nothing’s well, Dennis thought miserably. Not one single thing. He drew his thin coat more tightly around him and began the long job of waiting down the moon.

Eventually it left the sky, and Dennis knew he had to move. Time had grown short. He stood, said a brief prayer to his gods, and began to walk across the open space as rapidly as he could, expecting a hail of Who goes there? from the castle walls at every moment. The hail did not come. The clouds had thickened across the night sky. All below the castle wall was one dark shadow. In less than ten minutes, Dennis had reached the edge of the moat. He sat on its low bank, the snow crunching under his bottom, and took the snowshoes off. He slid down onto the moat itself, which was frozen and covered with more snow.

Dennis’s thundering heart slowed down. He was in the shadow of the bulking castle wall now, and would not be seen unless a sentry happened to look straight down, and most probably not even then.

Dennis was careful not to go all the way across the moat, not yet-because the ice close to the castle wall would be rotted and thin. He knew why this was so; the reason for the thin ice and the unpleasant smell here and the mossy wetness on the huge stones of the outer wall was his hope of entering the castle se-cretly. He moved carefully to the left, ears listening for the noise of running water.

At last he heard it, and looked up. There, at eye height, was a round black hole in the solid castle wall. Fluid ran from it in listless streams. It was a sewer outflow pipe.

“Now for it,” Dennis muttered. He drew back five paces, ran, and leaped. As he did, he felt the ice, rotted by the constant outflow of warm waste from the pipe, give under his feet. Then he was clinging to the mossy lip of the pipe. It was slick, and he had to clutch hard to keep from falling. He pulled himself up, digging for purchase with his feet, and finally yanked himself inside. He paused for a moment, trying to get his breath back, then began to crawl along the pipe, which slanted steadily up-ward. He and several of his playmates had found these pipes when they were children, and had been quickly warned off by their parents, partly because they might become lost, mostly because of the sewer rats. Still, Dennis thought he knew where he would come out.

An hour later, in a deserted corridor of the castle’s east wing, a sewer grating moved-was still-then moved again. It was shoved partway aside, and a few moments later a very dirty (and very smelly) butler named Dennis pulled himself out of a hole in the floor and lay panting on the cold cobbles. He, could have used a longer rest, but someone might come along, even at this unearthly hour. So he replaced the grating and looked around.

He did not recognize the hallway at once, but this in no way upset him. He started down it toward the T-intersection at the far end. At least, he reflected, there had been no rats in the warren of sewer pipes below the castle. That had been a great relief. He had been prepared for them, not just because of the gruesome tales his Da’ had told him, but because there had been rats on a few occasions when he and his mates had ventured with fearful screeches of laughter down into the pipes as children-the rats had been part of the scary, dare-you adventure of it.

Probably there were just a few mice, and your memory’s exaggerated them into rats, Dennis thought now. This was not the truth, but Dennis would never know it. His memory of the rats in the sewers was a true one. The pipes had been infested with great, disease-bearing rodents since time out of mind. It had only been for the last five years that they had ceased to teem in the sewers. They had been wiped out by Flagg. The magician had rid himself of both a piece of stone and his own dagger by means of a sewer grating similar to the one from which Dennis had emerged on this early Sunday morning. He had rid himself of them, of course, because there were a few flecks of the deadly green Dragon Sand on each. The fumes from those few grains had killed the rats, burning many of them alive even as they paddled through the scummy water in the pipes, suffocating all the others before they could flee. Five years later, the rats had still not come back, although most of the poisonous fumes had dissipated. Most, but not all. If Dennis had entered one of the sewer pipes a bit closer to Flagg’s apartments, he might well have died himself. Perhaps it was luck that saved him, or fate, or those gods he prayed to; I’ll not take a stand on the matter. I tell tales, not tea leaves, and on the subject of Dennis’s survival, I leave you to your own conclusions.