He sweetened it with honey. He put it on his desk, then went out into the corridor and breathed deeply at the window again.
Holding his breath, he came back in and used the tweezers to pour all but the last three or four grains of Dragon Sand into the honey-sweetened mead. Then he opened another drawer of his desk and removed a fresh packet, which was empty. Then, reaching all the way to the back of this drawer, he brought out a very special box.
The fresh packet was bewitched, but its magic was not very strong. It would hold the Dragon Sand safely only for a short while. Then it would begin to work on the paper. It would not set it alight, not inside the box; there would not be air enough for that. But it would smoke and smolder, and that would be enough. That would be fine.
Flagg’s chest was thudding for air, but he still spared a moment to look at this box and congratulate himself. He had stolen it ten years ago. If you had asked him at the time why he took it, he would have known no more than he knew why he had shown Thomas the secret passage that ended behind the dragon’s head-that instinct for mischief had told him to take it and that he would find a use for it, so he had. After all those years in his desk, that useful time had come.
PETER was engraved across the top of the box.
Sasha had given it to her boy; he had left it for a moment on a table in a hallway when he had to run down the hallway after something or other; Flagg came along, saw it, and popped it into his pocket. Peter had been grief-stricken, of course, and when a prince is upset-even a prince who is only six years old-people take notice. There had been a search, but the box had never been found.
Using the tweezers, Flagg carefully poured the last few grains of Dragon Sand from the original packet, which had been wholly enchanted, into the packet which had been only incompletely enchanted. Then he went back to the window in the corridor to draw fresh breath. He did not breathe again until the fresh packet had been laid in the antique wooden box, the tweezers laid in there beside it, the top of the box slowly closed, and the original packet disposed of in the sewer.
Flagg was hurrying now, but he felt secure enough. Mouse, sleeping; box, closed; incriminating evidence safely latched inside. It was very well.
Pointing the little finger of his left hand at the mouse lying stretched out on his desk like a fur rug for pixies, Flagg commanded: “Wake.”
The mouse’s feet twitched. Its eyes opened. Its head came up.
Smiling, Flagg wiggled his little finger in a circle and said: “Run.”
The mouse ran in circles.
Flagg wiggled his finger up and down.
“Jump.””
The mouse began to jump on its hind legs like a dog in a carnival, its eyes rolling wildly.
“Now drink,” Flagg said, and pointed his little finger at the dish holding the honey-sweetened mead.
Outside, the wind gusted to a roar. On the far side of the city, a bitch gave birth to a litter of two-headed pups.
The mouse drank.
“Now,” said Flagg, when the mouse had drunk enough of the poison to serve his purpose, “sleep again.” And the mouse did.
Flagg hurried to Peter’s rooms. The box was in one of his many pockets-magicians have many, many pockets-and the sleeping mouse was in another. He passed several servants and a laughing gaggle of drunken courtiers, but none saw him. He was still dim.
Peter’s rooms were locked, but that was no problem for one of Flagg’s talents. Three passes with his hands and the door was open. The young prince’s rooms were empty, of course; the boy was still with his lady friend. Flagg didn’t know as much about Peter as he did about Thomas, but he knew enough-he knew, for instance, where Peter kept the few treasures he thought worth hiding away.
Flagg went directly to the bookcase and pulled out three or four boring textbooks. He pushed at a wooden edging and heard a spring click back. He then slid a panel aside, revealing a recess in the back of the case. It was not even locked. In the recess was a silk hair-ribbon his lady had given him, a packet of letters she had written him, a few letters from him to her which burned so brightly he did not dare to send them, and a little locket with his mother’s picture inside it.
Flagg opened the engraved box and very carefully shredded one corner of the packet’s flap. Now it looked as if a mouse had been chewing at it. Flagg closed the lid again and put the box in the recessed space. “You cried so when you lost this box, dear Peter,” he murmured. “I think you may cry even more when it’s found.” He giggled.
He put the sleeping mouse beside the box, closed the compartment, and put the books neatly back in place.
Then he left, and slept well. Great mischief was afoot, and he felt confident that he had moved as he liked to move-behind the scenes, seen by no one.
31
For the next three days, King Roland seemed healthier, more vigorous, and more decisive than anyone had seen him in years-it was the talk of the court. Visiting his ill and feverish brother in his apartments, Peter remarked to Thomas in awe that what remained of their father’s hair actually seemed to be changing color, from the baby-fine wispy white it had been for the last four years or so to the iron gray it had been in Roland’s middle years.
Thomas smiled, but a fresh chill raced through him. He asked Peter for another blanket, but it wasn’t really a blanket he needed; he needed to unsee that final strange toast, and that, of course, was impossible.
Then, after dinner on the third day, Roland complained of indigestion. Flagg offered to have the court physician summoned. Roland waved the suggestion away, saying that he felt fine, actually, better than he had in months, in years.
He belched. It was a long, arid, rattling sound. The convivial crowd in the ballroom fell silent with wonder and apprehension as the King doubled over. The musicians in the corner ceased playing. When Roland straightened up, a gasp ran through those present. The King’s cheeks were aflame with color. Smoking tears ran from his eyes. More smoke drifted from his mouth.
There were perhaps seventy people in that great dining hall, rough-dressed Riders (what we would call knights, I suppose), sleek courtiers and their ladies, attendants upon the throne, courtesans, jesters, musicians, a little troupe of actors in one corner who had been going to put on a play later, servants in great numbers. But it was Peter who ran to his father; it was Peter they all saw going to the doomed man, and this did not displease Flagg at all.
Peter. They would remember it had been Peter.
Roland clutched his stomach with one hand and his chest with the other. Smoke suddenly poured out of his mouth in a gray-white plume. It was as if the King had learned some amazing new way of telling the story of his greatest exploit.
But it was no trick, and there were screams as smoke poured not only from his mouth but from his nostrils, ears, and the corners of his eyes. His throat was so red it was nearly purple.
“Dragon!” King Roland shrieked as he collapsed into his son’s arms. “Dragon!”
It was the last word he ever spoke.
32
The old man was tough-incredibly tough. Before he died he was throwing off so much heat that no one, not even his most loyal servants, could approach closer to his bed than four feet. Several times they threw buckets of water on the poor dying King when they saw the bedclothes beginning to smolder. Each time, the water turned instantly to steam that billowed through his bedchamber and out into the sitting room where courtiers and Riders stood in numb silence and ladies clustered, weeping and wringing their hands.
Just before midnight, a jet of green flame shot from his mouth and he died.
Flagg went solemnly to the door between the bedchamber and the sitting room and announced the news. There followed an utter silence that stretched out for more than a minute. It was broken by a single word which came from somewhere in the gathered crowd. Flagg did not know who spoke that one word, and he did not care. It was enough that it had been spoken. Indeed, he would have bribed a man to speak it if such could have been done with no danger to him.
“Murder!” this someone said.
There was a universal gasp.
Flagg raised a solemn hand to his mouth to hide a smile.
33
The court physician amplified one word to three: Murder by poison. He did not say Murder by Dragon Sand, for the poison was unknown in Delain, except to Flagg.
The King died shortly before midnight, but by dawn the charge was rife in the city and spreading outward toward the far reaches of the Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern Baronies: Murder, regicide, Roland the Good dead by poison.
Even before then, Flagg had organized a search of the castle, from the highest point (the Eastern Tower) to the lowest (the Dungeon of Inquisition, with its racks and manacles and squeezing boots). Any evidence bearing on this terrible crime, he said, must be searched out and reported at once.
The castle rang with the search. Six hundred grimly eager men combed through it. Only two small areas of the castle were exempt; these were the apartments of the two princes, Peter and Thomas.
Thomas was barely aware of this; his fever had worsened to the point where the court physician had become deeply alarmed. He lay in a delirium as dawn’s first light fingered its way into his windows. In his dreams, he saw two glasses of wine raised high, heard his father say again and again: Did you spice it? It tasted mulled.
Flagg had ordered the search, but by two in the morning, Peter had recovered enough of his wits to take charge of it. Flagg let him. These next few hours would be terribly important, a time when all could be won or lost, and Flagg knew it. The King was dead; the Kingdom was momentarily headless. But not for long; this very day, Peter would be crowned King at the foot of the Needle, unless the crime was brought home to the boy quickly and conclusively.
Under other circumstances, Flagg knew, Peter would have been under suspicion at once. People always suspect those who have the most to gain, and Peter had gained a great deal by his father’s death. Poison was horrible, but poison might have won him a kingdom.
But in this case, the people of the Kingdom spoke of the boy’s loss rather than the boy’s gain. Of course, Thomas had lost his father, too, they might add after a pause-almost as if they were ashamed of the momentary lapse. But Thomas was a sullen, sulky, awkward boy who had often argued with his father. Pe-ter’s affection and respect for Roland, on the other hand, were known far and wide. And why, people would ask-if the mon-strous idea was even raised, and so far it had not been-why would Peter kill his father for the crown when he would surely inherit it in a year, or
