green sand was one of the deadliest poisons in all the worlds, so deadly that even Flagg was afraid of it. It came from the desert of Grenh. This huge poisoned waste lay even beyond Garlan, and was a land unknown in Delain. Grenh could be approached only on a day when the wind was blowing the other way, because a single breath of the fumes which came from the desert of Grenh would cause death.
Not instant death. That was not the way the poison worked. For a day or two-perhaps even three-the person who breathed the poison fumes (or even worse, swallowed the grains of sand) would feel fine-perhaps better than ever before in his life. Then, suddenly, his lungs would grow red-hot, his skin would begin to smoke, and his body would shrivel like the body of a mummy. Then he would drop dead, often with his hair on fire. Someone who breathed or swallowed this deadly stuff would burn from the inside out.
This was Dragon Sand, and there was no antidote, no cure. What fun.
On that wild, rainy night, Flagg determine to give a bit of Dragon Sand to Roland in a glass of wine. It had become Peter’s custom to take his father a glass of wine each night, shortly before Roland turned in. Everyone in the palace knew it, and commented on what a loyal son Peter was. Roland enjoyed his son’s company as much as the wine he brought, Flagg thought, but a certain maiden had caught Peter’s eye and he rarely stayed longer than half an hour with his father these days.
If Flagg came one night after Peter had left, Flagg did not think the old man would turn down a second glass of wine.
A very special glass of wine.
A hot vintage, my Lord, Flagg thought, a grin dawning on his narrow face. A hot vintage indeed, and why not? The vineyard was right next door to hell, I think, and when this stuff starts working in your guts, you’ll think hell is where you are.
Flagg threw back his head and began to laugh.
21
Once his plan was laid-a plan that would rid him of both Roland and Peter forever-Flagg wasted no time. He first used all his wizardry to make the King well again. He was delighted to find that his magic potions worked better than they had for a long, long time. It was another irony. He earnestly wanted to make Roland better, so the potions worked. But he wanted to make the King better so he could kill him and make sure everyone knew it was murder. It was really quite funny, when you stopped to think it over.
On a windy night less than a week after the King’s hacking cough had ceased, Flagg unlocked his desk and took out the teak box. He murmured, “Well done,” to the kleffa carrot, which squeaked mindlessly in reply, and then lifted the heavy lid and took out the smaller box inside. He used the key around his neck to open it, and took out the packet that contained the Dragon Sand. He had bewitched this packet, and it was immune to the Dragon Sand’s terrible power. Or so he thought. Flagg took no chances, and removed the packet with a small pair of silver tweezers. He laid it beside one of the King’s goblets on his desk. Sweat stood out on his forehead in great round drops, for this was ticklish work indeed. One little mistake and he would pay for it with his life.
Flagg went out into the corridor that led to the dungeons and began to pant. He was hyperventilating. When you breathe rapidly, you fill your whole body with oxygen, and you can hold your breath for a long time. During the critical stage of his preparations, Flagg did not mean to breathe at all. There would be no mistakes, big or little. He was having too much fun to die.
He took a final great gasp of clean air from the barred window just outside the door to his apartment and reentered his rooms. He went to the envelope, took his dagger from his belt, and delicately slit it open. There was a flat piece of obsidian, which the magician used as a paperweight, on his desk-in those days, obsidian was the hardest rock known. Using the tweezers again, he grasped the packet, turned it upside down, and poured out most of the green sand. He saved back a tiny bit-hardly more than a dozen grains, but this bit of extra was extremely important to his plans. Hard as the obsidian was, the rock immediately began to smoke.
Thirty seconds had passed now.
He picked up the obsidian, careful that not a single grain of Dragon Sand should touch his skin-if it did, it would work inward until it reached his heart and set it on fire. He tilted the stone over the goblet and poured it in.
Now, quickly, before the sand could began to eat into the glass, he poured in some of the King’s favorite wine-the same sort of wine Peter would be taking his father about now. The sand dissolved immediately. For a moment the red wine glimmered a sinister green, and then it returned to its usual color.
Fifty seconds.
Flagg went back to his desk. He picked up the flat rock and took his dagger by its handle. Only a few grains of Dragon Sand had touched the blade when he slit through the paper, but already they were working their way in, and evil little streamers of smoke rose from the pocks in the Anduan steel. He carried both the stone and the dagger out into the hallway.
Seventy seconds, and his chest was beginning to cry for air.
Thirty feet down the hallway, which led to the dungeon if you followed it far enough (a trip no one in Delain wanted to make), there was a grating in the floor. Flagg could hear gurgling water, and if he had not been holding his breath, he would have smelled a foul stench. This was one of the castle’s sewers. He dropped both the rock and the blade into it and grinned at the double splash in spite of his pounding chest. Then he hurried back to the window, leaned far out, and took breath after gasping breath.
When he had his wind back, he returned to his study. Now only the tweezers, the packet, and the glass of wine stood on the desk. There was not so much as a grain of sand on the tweezers, and the bit of sand left inside the bewitched packet could not harm him as long as he took reasonable care.
He felt he had done every well indeed so far. His work was by no means done, but it was well begun. He bent over the goblet and inhaled deeply. There was no danger now; when the sand was mixed with a liquid, its fumes became harmless and undetectable. Dragon Sand made deadly vapors only when it touched a solid, such as stone.
Such as flesh.
Flagg held the goblet up to the light, admiring its bloody glow.
“A final glass of wine, my King,” he said, and laughed until the two-headed parrot screamed in fear. “Something to warm your guts.”
He sat down, turned over his hourglass, and began to read from a huge book of spells. Flagg had been reading from this book-which was bound in human skin-for a thousand years and had gotten through only a quarter of it. To read too long of this book, written on the high, distant Plains of Leng by a madman named Alhazred, was to risk madness.
An hour… just an hour. When the top half of his hourglass was empty, he could be sure Peter would have come and gone. An hour, and he could take Roland this final glass of wine. For a moment, Flagg looked at the bone-white sand slipping smoothly through the waist of the hourglass, and then he bent calmly over his book.
22
Roland was pleased and touched that Flagg should have brought him a glass of wine that night before he went to bed. He drank it off in two large gulps, and declared that it had warmed him greatly.
Smiling inside his hood, Flagg said: “I thought it would, your Highness.”
23
Whether it was fate or only luck that caused Thomas to see Flagg with his father that night is another question you must answer for yourself. I only know that he did see, and that it happened in large part because Flagg had been at pains over the years to make a special friend of this friendless, miserable boy.
I’ll explain in a moment-but first I must correct a wrong idea you may have about magic.
In stories of wizardry, there are three kinds that are usually spoken of almost carelessly, as if any second-class wizard could do them. These are turning lead into gold, changing one’s shape, and making oneself invisible. The first thing you should know is that real magic is never easy, and if you think it is, just try making your least favorite aunt disappear the next time she comes to spend a week or two. Real magic is hard, and although it is easier to do evil magic than good, even bad magic is tolerably hard.
Turning lead into gold can be done, once you know the names to call on, and if you can find someone to show you exactly the right trick of splitting the loaves of lead. Shape changing and invisibility, however, are impossible… or so close to it that you might as well use the word.
From time to time Flagg-who was a great eavesdropper -had listened to fools tell tales about young princes who escaped the clutches of evil genies by uttering a simple magic word and popping out of sight, or beautiful young princesses (in the stories they were always beautiful, although Flagg’s experience had been that most princesses were spoiled rotten and, as the end products of long, inbred family lines, ugly as sin and stupid in the bargain) who tricked great ogres into becoming flies, which they then quickly swatted. In most stories, the princesses were also good at swatting flies, although most of the princesses Flagg had seen wouldn’t have been able to swat a fly dying on a cold windowsill in December. In stories it all sounded easy; in stories people changed their shapes or turned themselves into walking windowpanes all the time.
In truth, Flagg had never seen either trick done. He had once known a great Anduan magician who believed he had mastered the trick of changing his shape, but after six months of meditation and nearly a week of incantations in a series of agonizing body postures, he uttered the last awesome spell and succeeded only in making his nose nearly nine feet long and driving himself insane. And there had been fingernails growing out of his nose. Flagg remembered with a grim little smile. Great magician or not, the man had been a fool.
Invisibility was likewise impossible, at least as far as Flagg himself had been able to determine. Yet it was possible to make oneself… dim.
Yes, dim-that was really the best word for it, although others sometimes came to mind: ghostly, transparent, unobtrusive. Invisibility was out of his reach, but by first eating a pizzle and then reciting a number of spells, it was possible to become dim. When one was dim and a servant approached along a passageway, one simply drew aside and stood still and let the servant pass. In most cases, the servant’s eyes would drop to his own feet or suddenly find something interesting to look at on the ceiling. If one passed through a room, conversation would falter, and people would look momentarily distressed, as if all were having gas pains at the same time. Torches and wall sconces grew smoky. Candles sometimes blew out. It was necessary to actually hide when one was dim only if one saw someone whom one knew well-for, whether one was dim or not, these people almost always saw. Dimness was useful, but it was not invisibility.
On the night Flagg took the poisoned wine to Roland, he first made himself dim. He did not expect to see anyone he knew. It was after nine o’clock now, the King was old and unwell, the days were short, and the castle went to bed early. When Thomas is King, Flagg thought, carrying the wine swiftly through the corridors, there will be parties every night. He already has his father’s taste for drink, although he favors wine rather than beer or mead. It should be easy enough to introduce him to a few stronger drinks… After all, am I not his friend? Yes, when Peter is safely out of the way in the Needle and Thomas is King, there will be great parties every night… until the people in the alleys and the Baronies are choked enough to rise in bloody revolt. Then there will be one final party, the greatest of all… but I don’t think Thomas will enjoy it. Like the wine I’m bringing his father tonight, that party will be extremely hot.
He did not expect to see anyone he knew, and he didn’t. Only a few servants passed him, and they drew away from the place where he stood almost absently, as if they felt a cold draft.
All the same, someone saw him. Thomas saw him through the eyes of Niner, the dragon his father had killed long ago. Thomas was able to do this because Flagg himself had taught him the trick.
