same, the condition of the mouse, so like the condition of the King, was impossible to ignore, and the Brandon family had a long and valued reputation for honesty and levelheadedness in the Kingdom. That was important, but there was something else of far greater importance: when Peter was crowned, there must not be a single stain on his reputation.
Peyna heard Dennis out and then summoned Peter. Dennis really might have died of fright at the sight of his master, but he was mercifully allowed to go into another room with his father. Peyna gravely explained to Peter that a charge had been leveled against him… a charge that Peter himself might have played a part in the murder of Roland. Anders Peyna was not a man to mince words, no matter how much those words might hurt.
Peter was stunned… flabbergasted. You must remember that he was still trying to cope with the idea that his beloved father was dead, killed by a cruel poison that had burned him alive from the inside out. You must remember that he had been leading the search all night, had had no sleep, and was physically exhausted. Most of all, you must remember that, although he had a man’s height and breadth of shoulder, he was only sixteen. This stunning news on top of all else caused him to do a very natural thing, but it was a thing he should have avoided at all costs under Peyna’s cold and assessing eyes: he burst into tears.
If Peter had hotly denied the charge, or if he had expressed his shock and exhaustion and grief by laughing wildly at such an absurd idea, the whole thing might have ended right there. I’m sure that possibility never entered Flagg’s mind, but one of Flagg’s few weaknesses was a tendency to judge others according to what was in his own black and murky heart. Flagg regarded everyone with suspicion, and believed everyone had hidden reasons for the things they did.
His mind was very complex, like a hall of mirrors with everything reflected twice at different sizes.
The track of Peyna’s thoughts was not convoluted but very straightforward. He found it very difficult-almost impossible to believe that Peter could have poisoned his father. If he had raged or laughed out loud, things probably would have ended without even a trip to investigate the supposed box with his name carved on it, or the packet and tweezers it supposedly held. Tears, however, looked very bad. Tears looked like an expression of guilt coming from a boy old enough to commit murder but not old enough to hide what he had done.
Peyna decided he must investigate further. He hated to do this, because it meant taking guards, and that meant some word, some whisper, of these momentary suspicions would leak out, to taint the first weeks of Peter’s reign.
Then he reflected that perhaps even this could be avoided. He would take half a dozen Home Guards, no more. He could leave four stationed outside the door. After this ridiculous business had blown over, all of them could be shipped off to the remotest part of the Kingdom. Brandon and his son would also have to be sent away, Peyna thought, and that was a pity, but tongues had a way of wagging, especially when liquor loosened them, and the old man’s liking for bundle-gin was well known.
So Peyna ordered work on the coronation platform tempo-rarily suspended. He felt confident that work could begin again in less than half an hour, with the laborers sweating and cursing and hurrying to make up for lost time.
Alas-
38
The box, the packet, and the tweezers were there, as you know. Peter had sworn on his mother’s name he had no such engraved box; his heated denial now looked very foolish. Peyna picked up the charred packet carefully with the tweezers, peered in, and saw three flecks of green sand. They were so small they could barely be seen, but Peyna, mindful of what had be-fallen both great King and humble mouse, put the packet back in the box and closed the lid. He ordered two of the four Home Guards still in the hall to step in, realizing reluctantly that the matter was steadily growing more serious.
The box was put carefully on Peter’s desk, little wisps of smoke escaping from it. One of the guards was sent after the man who knew more about poisons than anyone else in the Kingdom. That man, of course, was Flagg.
39
I had nothing to do with this, Anders,” Peter said. He had recovered himself, but his face was still pale and wretched, his eyes a deeper blue than the old judge-General had ever seen them.
“The box is yours, then?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you deny that you had such a box?”
“I forgot. I haven’t seen this box in probably eleven years or more. My mother gave it to me.”
“What happened to it?”
He’s not calling me “m'Lord” or “your Highness” anymore, Peter thought with a chill. He’s not calling me by any term of respect at all. Can all of this really be happening, I wonder? Father poisoned? Thomas terribly ill? Peyna standing here and doing everything but accusing me of murder? And my box-where in the name of the gods did it come from, and who put it in the secret compartment behind the books?
“I lost it,” Peter said slowly. “Anders, you don’t really believe I murdered my father, do you?”
I did not… but now I wonder, Anders Peyna thought.
“I loved him dearly,” Peter said.
I always thought so… but now I wonder about that, too, Anders Peyna thought.
40
Flagg bustled in and, without even looking in Peyna’s direction, began immediately to bombard the numbed, frightened, outraged prince with questions about the search. Had any trace been found of the poison or the poisoner? Any sign of a plot uncovered? He himself was of the opinion that it might have been a single individual, almost surely insane. He had spent the whole morning before his crystal, Flagg said, but the crystal remained stubbornly dark. He didn’t care, though, he could do more than shake bones and peer into crystals. He craved action, not spells. Anything the prince wanted him to do, any dark corner he wanted explored
“We did not call you here to listen to you babble like your own parrot, with both heads talking at once,” Peyna said coldly. He did not like Flagg. As far as Peyna was concerned, the magician had been demoted to the position of Court Nobody at the moment of Roland’s death. He might be able to tell them what those evil green flecks in the packet were, but that was the extent of his usefulness.
Peter’ll have no truck with this weasel when he’s crowned, Peyna thought. He got just that far, and then his thoughts derailed in dismay, because the chances of Peter’s being crowned seemed to be growing slimmer.
“No,” Flagg said, “I don’t suppose you did.” He looked at Peter and said, “Why am I summoned, my King?”
“Don’t call him that!” Peyna exploded, deeply shocked in spite of himself. Flagg saw this shock on Peyna’s face, and although he affected to look puzzled, he understood perfectly what it meant and was satisfied. A worm of suspicion was working its way toward the center of the Judge-General’s chilly heart. Good.
Peter turned his pale face away from both of them and looked out across the city, once more struggling for control of his emotions. His fingers were laced tightly together. His knuckles were white. He looked much older than sixteen just then.
“Do you see the box on the desk?” Peyna asked.
“Yes, Judge-General,” Flagg said in his stiffest, most formal voice.
“Inside is a packet which appears to be slowly charring. Inside the packet are what look like grains of sand. I would like you to examine them and see if you can tell me what they are. I urge you very strongly not to touch them. I believe that the substance in the packet may have caused King Roland’s death.”
Flagg allowed himself to look worried. To tell the truth, he was feeling very fine. Playing a part always made him feel that way. He liked to act.
He picked up the packet, using the tweezers. He peered into it. His gaze sharpened.
“I want a piece of obsidian,” he said. “I want it right now.”
“I have a piece in my desk,” Peter said dully, and brought it out. It was not as big as the one Flagg had used and then disposed of, but it was thick. He handed it to one of the Home Guards, who handed it to Flagg. The magician held it toward the light, frowning a little… but inside his heart, a little man was jump-ing excitedly up and down, turning cartwheels, and doing som-ersaults. The obsidian was much like his own, but one side was broken and jagged. Ah, the gods were smiling on him! Indeed, indeed, indeed they were!
“I dropped it a year or two ago,” Peter said, seeing Flagg’s interest. He was unaware-as was Peyna, at least for the mo-ment-that he had added another layer of bricks to the wall that was a- building around him. “The half you’re holding landed on my rug, which cushioned its fall. The other half landed on the stones, and shattered into half a hundred pieces. Obsidian is hard, but very brittle.”
“Indeed, my Lord?” Flagg said gravely. “I’ve never seen such stone, although I’ve of course heard of it.”
He put the obsidian on Peter’s desk, upended the packet over it, and poured the three grains of sand onto it. In a moment, little tendrils of smoke began to rise from the obsidian. All pres-ent could see that each grain was slowly sinking into the pock-mark it was creating in the world’s hardest known stone. The guards murmured uneasily at the sight.
“Be silent!” Peyna roared, whirling on them. The guards drew back, faces long and white with terror. This seemed more and more like witchcraft to them.
“I believe I know what these grains are, and how to test my idea,” Flagg said, rapping the words out. “But if I’m right, the test must be performed as quickly as possible.”
“Why?” Peyna demanded.
“I believe these are grains of Dragon Sand,” Flagg said. “I had a very small quantity once, but it disappeared, alas, before I could study it closely. It may well have been stolen.”
Flagg did not miss the way Peyna’s eyes flicked toward Peter at this.
“I have been uneasy about it off and on ever since,” he went on, “because it is reputed to be one of the deadliest substances on earth. I did not have a chance to test its properties and so doubted, but I see much of what I was told proved here, already.”
Flagg pointed at the obsidian. The dimples in which the three specks of green sand rested were each now nearly an inch deep -smoke rose from each like smoke from a tiny campfire. Flagg guessed that each grain had eaten through half the thickness of the stone.
“Those three specks of sand are working their way rapidly through a piece of the hardest rock we know,” he said. “Dragon Sand is reputed to be so corrosive that it will eat through any solid-any solid at all. And it produces fearsome heat. You! Guard!”
