111
At quarter past eleven on that momentous night, the storm breathed its last gasp. A tremendous cold gust of wind swept down on the castle. It ran in excess of a hundred miles an hour. It tore the thinning clouds overhead apart like the swipe of a great hand. Cold, watery moonlight shone through.
In the Third East'ard Alley was a squat stone tower called the Church of the Great Gods; it had stood there since time out of mind. Many people worshipped there, but it was empty now.
A good thing, too. The tower was not very tall-nowhere near the height of the Needle-but it nevertheless stood high above the neighboring buildings in the Third East'ard Alley, and all day long it had been punished by the unbroken force of the storm wind. This final gust was too much for it. The top thirty feet-all stone-simply blew off, as a hat might fly off a scare-crow in a high gale. Part landed in the alley; part hit the neigh-boring buildings. There was a tremendous crash.
Most of the populace of the castle keep, wearied by the ex-citement of the storm and already sleeping deeply, took no mind of the fall of the Church of the Great Gods (although they would wonder greatly over the snow-covered wreckage in the morn-ing). Most simply muttered, turned over, and went back to sleep.
Some Guards of the Watch-those not too drunk to care-, heard it, of course, and ran to see what had happened. Other than by these few, the fall of the tower went mostly unremarked when it happened… but there were a few others who heard it, and by now you know them all.
Ben, Dennis, and Naomi, who were getting ready for their attempt to rescue the rightful King, heard it in the napkin store-room, and looked around at each other with wide eyes. “Never mind,” Ben said, after a moment. “I don’t know what it was, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s get on with it.”
Beson and the Lesser Warders, all of them drunk, didn’t hear the Church of the Great Gods fall down, but Peter did. He was sitting on the floor of his bedroom, carefully pulling his woven rope through his fingers, looking anxiously for weak points. He raised his head at the snow-muted thunder of falling stones, and went rapidly to the window. He could see nothing; whatever had fallen was on the Needle’s far side. After several considering moments, he went back to his rope. Midnight was close now, and he had come to much the same conclusion as his friend Ben. It didn’t matter. The dice had been thrown. Now he must go on.
Deep in the darkness of the secret passage, Thomas heard the muffled thunder-thud of the falling tower and woke up. He heard the muffled barking of dogs below him and realized in horror where he was.
And one other who had been sleeping lightly and dreaming troubled dreams awoke at the fall of the tower. He woke even though he was deep in the bowels of the castle.
“Disaster!” one of the parrot’s two heads screamed.
“Fire, flood, and escape!” the other screamed.
Flagg had awakened. I have told you that evil is sometimes strangely blind, and so it is. Sometimes evil is lulled with no reason, and sleeps.
But now Flagg had awakened.
112
Flagg had come back from his trip into the north with a bit of a fever, a heavy cold, and a troubled mind.
Something wrong, something wrong. The very stones of the castle seemed to whisper it to him… but Flagg was damned if he knew what it was. All he knew for sure was that unknown “something wrong” had sharp teeth. It felt like a ferret running around in his brain, taking a bite here and a bite there. He knew exactly when that animal had begun to run and gnaw: while he was coming back from the fruitless expedition in search of the rebels. Because… because…
Because the rebels should have been there!
They hadn’t been, and Flagg hated to be fooled. Worse, he hated feeling that he might have made a mistake. If he had made a mistake about where the rebels were to be found, then perhaps he had made mistakes about other things. What other things? He didn’t know. But his dreams were bad. That small, bad tempered animal ran around in his head, worrying him, insisting that he had forgotten things, that other things were going on behind his back. It raced, it gnawed, it ruined his sleep. Flagg had medicines that would rid him of his cold, but none that would touch that growing ferret in his brain.
What could possibly be wrong?
He asked himself this question over and over again, and in truth it seemed-on the surface, at least-that nothing could be. For many centuries, the old dark chaos inside him had hated the love and light and order of Delain, and he had worked hard to destroy all that-to knock it down as that last cold gust of storm had knocked down the Church of the Great Gods. Always, something had interfered with his plans-a Kyla the Good, a Sasha, someone, something. But now he saw no possible inter-ference, no matter where he looked. Thomas was totally his creature; if Flagg told him to step off the highest parapet of the castle, the fool would want to know only at which o’clock he should do it. The farmers were groaning under the weight of the killing taxes Flagg had persuaded Thomas to impose.
Yosef had told Peter there was a breaking strain on people as well as on ropes and chains, and so there is-the farmers and the merchants of Delain had nearly reached theirs. The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty-loyalty to King, to country, to government. Flagg knew that if he made the tax-blocks big enough, all the ropes would snap, and the stupid oxen-for that was really how he saw the people of Delain-would stampede, knocking down everything in their path. The first of the oxen had already broken free and had gathered in the north. They called themselves exiles now, but Flagg knew they would call themselves rebels soon enough. Peyna had been driven away and Peter was locked in the Needle.
So what could be wrong?
Nothing! Damn it, nothing!
But the ferret ran and squirmed and gnawed and twisted. Many times over the last three or four weeks he had awakened in a cold sweat, not because of his recurring fever but because he had had some horrible dream. What was the substance of this dream? He could never remember. He only knew that he woke from it with his left hand pressed to his left eye, as if he had been wounded there-and that eye would burn, although he could find nothing wrong with it.
113
On this night, Flagg awoke with his dream fresh in his mind, because he was awakened before it was over. It was, of course, the fall of the Church of the Great Gods which woke him.
“Huh!” Flagg cried, sitting bolt upright in his chair. His eyes were wide and staring, his white cheeks damp and shiny with sweat.
“Disaster!” one of the parrot’s heads screamed.
“Fire, flood, and escape!” the other screamed.
Escape, Flagg thought. Yes-that’s what’s been on my mind all this time, that’s what’s been gnawing at me.
He looked down at his hands and saw that they were trem-bling. This infuriated him, and he sprang out of his chair.
“He means to escape,” he muttered, running his hands through his hair. “He means to try, anyway. But how? How? What’s his plan? Who helped him? They’ll pay with their heads, I promise that… and they won’t come off all in a chop, no! They’ll come off an inch… a half-inch… a quarter-inch… at a time. They’ll be driven insane with the agony long before they die…”
“Insane!” one of the parrot heads shrieked.
“Agony!” the other shrieked back.
“Will you shut up and let me think!” Flagg howled. He seized a jar filled with murky brown fluid from a nearby table and threw it at the parrot’s cage. It struck and shattered; there was a flash of bright, heatless light. The parrot’s two heads squawked in terror; it fell off its perch and lay stunned at the bottom of its cage until morning.
Flagg began to pace rapidly back and forth. His teeth were bared. His hands worked together restlessly, the fingers of one warring with the fingers of the other. His boots struck up green-ish sparks from the niter-caked stones of his laboratory floor; these sparks smelled like summer lightning.
How? When? Who helped?
He could not remember. Already the dream was fading. But…
“I have to know!” he whispered. “I have to know!”
Because it would be soon; he sensed that much. It would be very, very soon.
He found his keyring and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He took out a box made of finely carved ironwood, opened it, and drew out a leather bag. He opened the bag’s drawstring top and carefully took out a chunk of rock that seemed to glow with its own inner light. This rock was as milky as an old man’s blind eye. It looked like a piece of soapstone, but was in fact a crystal-Flagg’s magic crystal.
He circled his room, turning down the lamps and capping the candles. Soon his apartment was in absolute darkness. Dark or not, Flagg returned to his desk with quick confidence, passing easily around objects that you or I would have barked our shins on or fallen over. The dark was nothing to the King’s magician; he liked the dark, and he could see in it like a cat.
He sat down and touched the stone. He slipped his palms down its sides, feeling its ragged edges and angles.
“Show me,” he murmured. “This is my command.”
At first, nothing. Then, little by little, the crystal began to glow from within. There was only a tiny light at first, diffuse and pallid. Flagg touched the crystal again, this time with the tips of his fingers. It had grown warm.
“Show me Peter. This is my command. Show me the whelp that dares put himself in my way, and show me what he plans to do.”
The light grew brighter… brighter… brighter. Eyes glit-tering, cruel thin lips parted to show his teeth, Flagg bent over his crystal. Now Peter, Ben, Dennis, and Naomi would have recognized their dream-and they would have recognized the glow which lit the magician’s face, the glow which was not a candle.
The crystal’s milky cast suddenly disappeared, drawing into the brightening glow. Now Flagg could see into its heart. His eyes widened… then narrowed in bewilderment.
It was Sasha, very pregnant, sitting at a little boy’s bed. The little boy was holding a slate. On it were written two words: GOD and DOG.
Impatiently, Flagg passed his hands over the crystal, which now gave off waves of heat.
“Show me what I need to know! This is my command!”
The crystal cleared again.
It was Peter, playing with his dead mother’s dollhouse, pretending the house and the family inside were being attacked by Indians… or dragons… or some foolish thing. The old King stood in the corner, watching his son, wanting to join in…
“Bah!” Flagg cried, waving his hands over the crystal again. “Why do you show me these old, meaningless stories? I need to know how he plans to escape… and when! Now show me! This is my command!”
The crystal had grown hotter and hotter. If he did not allow it to go dark soon, it would split apart forever, Flagg knew, and magic crystals were not easy to come by-it had taken thirty years of
