Table of Contents Title Page Dedication  Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Chapter 73 Chapter 74 Chapter 75 Chapter 76 Chapter 77 Chapter 78 Chapter 79 Chapter 80 Chapter 81 Chapter 82 Chapter 83 Chapter 84 Chapter 85 Chapter 86 Chapter 87 Chapter 88 Chapter 89 Chapter 90 Chapter 91 Chapter 92 Chapter 93 Chapter 94 Chapter 95 Chapter 96 Chapter 97 Chapter 98 Chapter 99 Chapter 100 Chapter 101 Chapter 102 Chapter 103 Chapter 104 Chapter 105 Chapter 106 Chapter 107 Chapter 108 Chapter 109 Chapter 110 Chapter 111 Chapter 112 Chapter 113 Chapter 114 Chapter 115 Chapter 116 Chapter 117 Chapter 118 Chapter 119 Chapter 120 Chapter 121 Chapter 122 Chapter 123 Chapter 124 Chapter 125 Chapter 126 Chapter 127 Chapter 128 Chapter 129 Chapter 130 Chapter 131 Chapter 132 Chapter 133 Chapter 134 Chapter 135 Chapter 136 Chapter 137 Chapter 138 Chapter 139 Chapter 140 Chapter 141 Chapter 142 Copyright Page ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A TERROR. . . . The Eyes of the Dragon A tale of archetypal heroes and sweeping adventures, of dragons and princes and evil wizards, here is epic fantasy as only Stephen King could envision it. A kingdom is in turmoil after old King Roland dies and his worthy successor, Prince Peter, is imprisoned by the evil Flagg and his pawn, young Prince Thomas. But Flaggs evil plot is not perfect, for he knows naught of Thomass terrible secretor Prince Peters daring plan to escape to claim what is rightfully his. . . . Stephen King has taken the classic fairy tale and transformed it into a masterpiece of fiction for the ages. The sorcery of Stephen King . . . is expertly seductive. . . . The kind of book that keeps you up, redeyed with fatigue, until two a.m. because its not possible to stop turning the pages. The Washington Post Book World SIGNET Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada). 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3. Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road. Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi  110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First Signet Printing, January 1988 Copyright  Stephen King, 1987 Illustrations copyright  David Palladini, 1987 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. PUBLISHERS NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or thirdparty Web sites or their content. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. eISBN  9781101138076 httpus.penguingroup.com This story is for my great friend BEN STRAUB, and for my daughter, NAOMI KING. 1 Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a King with two sons. Delain was a very old kingdom and it had had hundreds of Kings, perhaps even thousands; when time goes on long enough, not even historians can remember everything. Roland the Good was neither the best nor the worst King ever to rule the land. He tried very hard not to do anyone great evil and mostly succeeded. He also tried very hard to do great works, but, unfortunately, he didnt succeed so well at that. The result was a very mediocre King; he doubted if he would be remembered long after he was dead. And his death might come at any time now, because he had grown old, and his heart was failing. He had perhaps one year left, perhaps three. Everyone who knew him, and everyone who observed his gray face and shaking hands when he held court, agreed that in five years at the very most a new King would be crowned in the great plaza at the foot of the Needle . . . and it would only be five years with Gods grace. So everyone in the Kingdom, from the richest baron and the most foppishly dressed courtier to the poorest serf and his ragged wife, thought and talked about the King in waiting, Rolands elder son, Peter. And one man thought and planned and brooded on something else how to make sure that Rolands younger son, Thomas, should be crowned King instead. This man was Flagg, the Kings magician. 2 Although Roland the King was oldhe admitted to seventy years but was surely older than thathis sons were young. He had been allowed to marry late because he had met no woman who pleased his fancy, and because his mother, the great Dowager Queen of Delain, had seemed immortal to Roland and to everyone elseand that included her. She had ruled the Kingdom for almost fifty years when, one day at tea, she put a freshly cut lemon in her mouth to ease a troublesome cough that had been plaguing her for a week or better. At that particular teatime, a juggler had been performing for the amusement of the Dowager Queen and her court. He was juggling five cunningly made crystal balls. Just as the Queen put the slice of lemon into her mouth, the juggler dropped one of his glass spheres. It shattered on the tiled floor of the great East Courtroom with a loud report. The Dowager Queen gasped at the sound. When she gasped, she pulled the lemon slice down her throat and choked to death very quickly. Four days later, the coronation of Roland was held in the Plaza of the Needle. The juggler did not see it; he had been beheaded on the executioners block behind the Needle three days before that. A King without heirs makes everybody nervous, especially when the King is fifty and balding. It was thus in Rolands best interest to marry soon, and to make an heir soon. His close advisor, Flagg, made Roland very aware of this. He also pointed out that at fifty, the years left to him in which he could hope to create a child in a womans belly were only a few. Flagg advised him to take a wife soon, and never mind waiting for a lady of noble birth who would take his fancy. If such a lady had not come into view by the time a man was fifty, Flagg pointed out, she probably never would. Roland saw the wisdom of this and agreed, never knowing that Flagg, with his lank hair and his white face that was almost always hidden behind a hood, understood his deepest secret that he had never met the woman of his fancy because he had never really fancied women at all. Women worried him. And he had never fancied the act that puts babies in the bellies of women. That act worried him, too. But he saw the wisdom of the magicians advice, and six months after the Dowager Queens funeral, there was a much happier event in the Kingdomthe marriage of King Roland to Sasha, who would become the mother of Peter and Thomas. Roland was neither loved nor hated in Delain. Sasha, however, was loved by all. When she died giving birth to the second son, the Kingdom was plunged into darkest mourning that lasted a year and a day. She had been one of six women Flagg had suggested to his King as possible brides. Roland had known none of these women, who were all similar in birth and station. They were all of noble blood but none of royal blood; all were meek and pleasant and quiet. Flagg suggested no one who might take his place as the mouth closest to the Kings ear. Roland chose Sasha because she seemed the quietest and meekest of the half dozen, and the least likely to frighten him. So they were wed. Sasha of the Western Barony (a very small barony indeed) was then seventeen years old, thirtythree years younger than her husband. She had never seen a man with his drawers off before her wedding night. When, on that occasion, she observed his flaccid penis, she asked with great interest Whats that, Husband? If she had said anything else, or if she had said what she said in a slightly different tone of voice, the events of that nightand this entire historymight have taken another course; in spite of the special drink Flagg had given him an hour before, at the end of the wedding feast, Roland might simply have slunk away. But he saw her then exactly as she wasa very young girl who knew even less about the babymaking act than he didand observed her mouth was kind, and began to love her, as everyone in Delain would grow to love her. It is Kings Iron, he said. It doesnt look like iron, said Sasha, doubtfully. It is before the forge, he said. Ah! said she. And where is the forge? If you will trust me, said he, getting into bed with her, I will show you, for you have brought it from the Western Barony with you but did not know it. 3 The people of Delain loved her because she was kind and good. It was Queen Sasha who created the Great Hospital, Queen Sasha who wept so over the cruelty of the bearbaiting in the Plaza that King Roland finally outlawed the practice, Queen Sasha who pleaded for a Remission of Kings Taxes in the year of the great drought, when even the leaves of the Great Old Tree went gray. Did Flagg plot against her, you might ask? Not at first. These were relatively small things in his view, because he was a real magician, and had lived hundreds and hundreds of years. He even allowed the Remission of Taxes to pass, because the year before, Delains navy had smashed the Anduan pirates, who had plagued the Kingdoms southern coast for over a hundred years. The skull of the Anduan pirateking grinned from a spike outside the palace walls and Delains treasury was rich with recovered plunder. In larger matters, matters of state, it was still Flaggs mouth which was closest to King Rolands ear, and so Flagg was at first content. 4 Although Roland grew to love his wife, he never grew to love that activity which most men consider sweet, the act which produces both the lowliest cooks prentice and the heir to the highest throne. He and Sasha slept in separate bedrooms, and he did not visit her often. These visits would happen no more than five or six times in a year, and on some of those occasions no iron could be made at the forge, in spite of Flaggs ever more potent drinks and Sashas unfailing sweetness. But, four years after the marriage, Peter was made in her bed. And on that one night, Roland had no need of Flaggs drink, which was green and foaming and which always made him feel a little strange in his head, as if he had gone crazy. He had been hunting that day in the Preserves with twelve of his men. Hunting was the thing that Roland had always loved most of allthe smell of the forest, the crisp tang of the air, the sound of the horn, and the feel of the bow as an arrow left on a true, hard course. Gunpowder was known but rare in Delain, and to hunt game with an iron tube was considered low and contemptible in any case. Sasha was reading in bed when he came to her, his ruddy, bearded face alight, but she laid her book on her bosom and listened raptly to his story as he told it, his hands moving. Near the end, he drew back to show her how he had drawn back the bow and had let FoeHammer, his fathers great arrow, fly across the little glen. When he did this, she laughed and clapped and won his heart. The Kings Preserves had almost been hunted out. In these modern days it was rare to find so much as a goodsized deer in them, and no one had seen a dragon since time out of mind. Most men would have laughed if you had suggested there might still be such a mythy creature left in that tame forest. But an hour before sundown on that day, as Roland and his party were about to turn back, that was just what they found . . . or what found them. The dragon came crashing and blundering out of the underbrush, its scales glowing a greenish copper color, its sootcaked nostrils venting smoke. It had not been a small dragon, either, but a male just before its first molting. Most of the party were thunderstruck, unable to draw an arrow or even to move. It stared at the hunting party, its normally green eyes went yellow, and it fluttered its wings. There was no danger that it could fly away from themits wings would not be well developed enough to support it in the air for at least another fifty years and two more moltingsbut the babywebbing which holds the wings against a dragons body until its tenth or twelfth year had fallen away, and a single flutter stirred enough wind to topple the head huntsman backward out of his saddle, his horn flying from his hand. Roland was the only one not stunned to utter movelessness, and although he was too modest to say so to Sasha, there was real heroism in his next few actions, as well as a sportsmans zest for the kill. The dragon might well have roasted most of the surprised party alive, if not for Rolands prompt action. He gigged his horse forward five steps, and nocked his great arrow. He drew and fired. The arrow went straight to the markthat one gilllike soft spot under the dragons throat, where it takes in air to create fire. The worm fell dead with a final fiery gust, which set all the bushes around it alight. The squires put this out quickly, some with water, some with beer, and not a few with pissand, now that I think of it, most of the piss was really beer, because when Roland went ahunting, he took a great lot of beer with him, and he was not stingy with it, either. The fire was out in five minutes, the dragon gutted in fifteen. You still could have boiled a kettle over its steaming nostrils when its tripes were let out upon the ground. The dripping ninechambered heart was carried to Roland with great ceremony. He ate it raw, as was the custom, and found it delicious. He only regretted the sad knowledge that he would almost certainly never have another. Perhaps it was the dragons heart that made him so strong that night. Perhaps it was only his joy in the hunt, and in knowing he had acted quickly and coolheadedly when all the others were sitting stunned in their saddles (except, of course, for the head huntsman, who had been lying stunned on his back). For whatever reason, when Sasha clapped her hands and cried, Well done, my brave Husband!, he fairly leaped into her bed. Sasha greeted him with open eyes and a smile that reflected his own triumph. That night was the first and only time Roland enjoyed his wifes embrace in sobriety. Nine months laterone month for each chamber of the dragons heartPeter was born in that same bed, and the Kingdom rejoiced there was an heir to the throne. 5 You probably thinkif you have bothered to think about it at allthat Roland must have stopped taking Flaggs strange green drink after the birth of Peter. Not so. He still took it occasionally. This was because he loved Sasha, and wanted to please her. In some places, people assume that only men enjoy sex, and that a woman would be grateful to be left alone. The people of Delain, however, held no such peculiar ideasthey assumed that a woman took normal pleasure in that act which produced earths most pleasurable creatures. Roland knew he was not properly attentive to his wife in this matter, but he resolved to be as attentive as he could, even if this meant taking Flaggs drink. Only Flagg himself knew how rarely the King went to his Queens bed. Some four years after the birth of Peter, on New Years Day, a great blizzard visited Delain. It was the greatest, save one, in living memorythe other Ill tell you of later. Heeding an impulse he could not explain even to himself, Flagg mixed the King a draught of double strengthperhaps it was something in the wind that urged him to do it. Ordinarily, Roland would have made a grimace at the awful taste and perhaps put it aside, but the excitement of the storm had caused the annual New Years Day party to be especially gay, and Roland had become very drunk. The blazing fire on the hearth reminded him of the dragons final explosive breath, and he had toasted the head, which was mounted on the wall, many times. So he drank the green potion off at a single gulp, and an evil lust fell upon him. He left the dining hall at once and visited Sasha. In the course of trying to love her, he hurt her. Please, Husband, she cried, sobbing. Im sorry, he mumbled. Huzzz . . . He fell heavily asleep beside her and remained insensible for the next twenty hours. She never forgot the strange smell that had been on his breath that night. It had been a smell like rotten meat, a smell like death. Whatever, she wondered, had he been eating . . . or drinking? Roland never touched Flaggs drink again, but Flagg was well satisfied, nevertheless. Nine months later, Sasha gave birth to Thomas, her second son. She died bringing him forth. Such things happened, of course, and while everyone was saddened, no one was really surprised. They believed they knew what had happened. But the only people in the Kingdom who really knew the circumstances of Sashas death were Anna Crookbrows, the midwife, and Flagg, the Kings magician. Flaggs patience with Sashas meddling had finally run out. 6 Peter was only five when his mother died, but he remembered her dearly. He thought her sweet, tender, loving, full of mercy. But five is a young age, and most of his memories were not very specific. There was one clear memory which he held in his mind, howeverit was of a reproach she had made to him. Much later, the memory of this reproach became vital to him. It had to do with his napkin. Every first of Fivemonth, a feast was held at court to celebrate the spring plantings. In his fifth year, Peter was allowed to attend for the first time. Custom decreed that Roland should sit at the head of the table, the heir to the throne at his right hand, the Queen at the foot of the table. The practical result of this was that Peter would be out of her reach during the meal, and so Sasha coached him carefully beforehand on how he should behave. She wanted him to show up well, and to be mannerly. And, of course, she knew that during the meal he would be on his own, because his father had no idea of manners at all. Some of you may wonder why the task of instructing Peter on his manners fell to Sasha. Did the boy not have a governess? (Yes, as a matter of fact he had two.) Were there no servants whose service was dedicated wholly to the little prince? (Battalions of them.) The trick was not to get these people to take care of Peter but to keep them away. Sasha wanted to raise him herself, at least as much as she could. She had very definite ideas about how her son should be raised. She loved him dearly and wanted to be with him for her own selfish reasons. But she also realized that she had a deep and solemn responsibility in the matter of Peters nurture. This little boy would be King someday, and above all else, Sasha wanted him to be good. A good boy, she thought, would be a good King. Great banquets in the Kings Hall were not very neat affairs, and most nannies wouldnt have been very concerned about the little boys table manners. Why, he is to be the King! they would have said, a little shocked at the idea that they should correct him in such piddling matters. Who cares if he spills the gravy boat? Who cares if he dribbles on his ruff, or even wipes his hands on it? Did not King Alan in the old days sometimes vomit into his plate and then command his court jester to come nigh and drink this nice hot soup? Did not King John often bite the heads off live trout and then put the flopping bodies into the bodices of the serving girls dresses? Will not this banquet end up, as most banquets do, with the participants throwing food across the table at each other? Undoubtedly it would, but by the time things degenerated to the foodthrowing stage, she and Peter would long since have retired. What concerned Sasha was that attitude of who cares. She thought it was the worst idea anyone could ever plant in the head of a little boy destined to be King. So Sasha instructed Peter carefully, and she observed him carefully on the night of the banquet. And later, as he lay sleepy in his bed, she talked to him. Because she was a good mother, she first complimented him lovingly on his behavior and mannersand this was right, because for the most part they had been exemplary. But she knew that no one would correct him where he went wrong unless she did it herself, and she knew she must do it now, in these few years when he idolized her. So when she was finished complimenting him, she said You did one thing wrong, Pete, and I never want to see you do it again. Peter lay in his bed, his dark blue eyes looking at her solemnly. What was that, Mother? You didnt use your napkin, said she. You left it folded by your plate, and it made me sorry to see it. You ate the roast chicken with your fingers, and that was fine, because that is how men do it. But when you put the chicken down again, you wiped your fingers on your shirt, and that is not right. But Father . . . and Mr. Flagg . . . and the other nobles . . . Bother Flagg, and bother all the nobles in Delain! she cried with such force that Peter cringed back in his bed a little. He was afraid and ashamed for having made those roses bloom in her cheeks. What your father does is right, for he is the King, and what you do when you are King will always be right. But Flagg is not King, no matter how much he would like to be, and the nobles are not Kings, and you are not King yet, but only a little boy who forgot his manners. She saw he was afraid, and smiled. She laid her hand on his brow. Be calm, Peter, she said. It is a small thing, but still importantbecause youll be King in your own time. Now run and fetch your slate. But its bedtime Bother bedtime, too. Bedtime can wait. Bring your slate. Peter ran for his slate. Sasha took the chalk tied to the side and carefully printed three letters. Can you read this word, Peter? Peter nodded. There were only a few words that he could read, although he knew most of the Great Letters. This happened to be one of the words. It says GOD. Yes, thats right. Now write it backward and see what you find. Backward? Peter said doubtfully. Yes, thats right. Peter did so, his letters staggering childishly across the slate below his mothers neat printing. He was astounded to find another of the few words he could read. DOG! Mamma! It says DOG! Yes. It says dog. The sadness in her voice quenched Peters excitement at once. His mother pointed from GOD to DOG. These are the two natures of man, she said. Never forget them, because someday you will be King and Kings grow to be great and tallas great and tall as dragons in their ninth moltings. Father isnt great and tall, objected Peter. Roland was, in fact, short and rather bowlegged. Also, he carried a great belly in front of him from all the beer and mead he had consumed. Sasha smiled. He is, though. Kings grow invisibly, Peter, and it happens all at once, as soon as they grasp the scepter and the crown is put on their heads in the Plaza of the Needle! They do? Peters eyes grew large and round. He thought that the subject had wandered far from his failure to use his napkin at the banquet, but he was not sorry to see such an embarrassing topic lost in favor of this tremendously interesting one. Besides, he had already resolved that he would never forget to use his napkin againif it was important to his mother, then it was important to him. Oh yes, they do. Kings grow most awfully big, and thats why they have to be specially careful, for a very big person could crush smaller ones under his feet just taking a walk, or turning around, or sitting down quickly in the wrong place. Bad Kings do such things often. I think even good Kings cannot avoid doing them sometimes. I dont think I understand Then listen a moment longer. She tapped the slate again. Our preachers say that our natures are partly of God and partly of Old Man Splitfoot. Do you know who Old Man Splitfoot is, Peter? Hes the devil. Yes. But there are few devils outside of madeup stories, Petemost bad people are more like dogs than devils. Dogs are friendly but stupid, and thats the way most men and women are when they are drunk. When dogs are excited and confused, they may bite; when men are excited and confused, they may fight. Dogs are great pets because they are loyal, but if a pet is all a man is, he is a bad man, I think. Dogs can be brave, but they may also be cowards that will howl in the dark or run away from danger with their tails between their legs. A dog is just as eager to lick the hand of a bad master as he is to lick the hand of a good one, because dogs dont know the difference between good and bad. A dog will eat slops, vomit up the part his stomach cant stand, and then go back for more. She fell silent for a moment, perhaps thinking of what was going on in the banqueting hall right nowmen and women roaring with goodnatured drunken laughter, flinging food at each other, and sometimes turning aside to vomit casually on the floor beside their chairs. Roland was much the same, and sometimes this made her sad, but she did not hold it against him, nor did she tax him with it. It was his way. He might promise to reform in order to please her, and he might even do it, but he would not be the same man afterward. Do you understand these things, Peter? Peter nodded. Fine! Now, tell me. She leaned toward him. Does a dog use a napkin? Humbled and ashamed, Peter looked down at the counterpane and shook his head. Apparently the conversation hadnt wandered as far as he had thought. Perhaps because the evening had been very full and because he was now very tired, tears rose in his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He struggled against the sobs that wanted to come. He locked them in his chest. Sasha saw this and admired it. Dont cry over an unused napkin, my love, said Sasha, for that was not my intention. She rose, her full and pregnant belly before her. The delivery of Thomas was now very near. Your behavior was otherwise exemplary. Any mother in the Kingdom would have been proud of a young son who behaved himself half so well, and my heart is full with admiration for you. I only tell you these things because I am the mother of a prince. That is sometimes hard, but it cannot be changed, and i truth, I would not change it if I could. But remember that someday lives will depend on your every waking motion; lives may even depend on dreams which come to you in sleep. Lives may not depend on whether or not you use your napkin after the roast chicken . . . but they may. They may. Lives have depended on less, at times. All I ask is that in everything you do, you try to remember the civilized side of your nature. The good sidethe God side. Will you promise to do that, Peter? I promise. Then all is well. She kissed him lightly. Luckily, I am young and you are young. We will talk of these things more, when you have more understanding. They never did, but Peter never forgot the lesson he always used his napkin, even when those around him did not. 7 So Sasha died. She has little more part in this story, yet there is one further thing about her you should know she had a dollhouse. This dollhouse was very large and very fine, almost a castle in miniature. When the time of her marriage came round, Sasha mustered as much cheer as she could, but she was sad to be leaving everyone and everything at the great house in the Western Barony where she had grown upand she was a little bit nervous, too. She told her mother, I have never been married before and do not know if I shall like it. But of all the childish things she left behind, the one she regretted most was the dollhouse she had had ever since she was a little girl. Roland, who was a kind man, somehow discovered this, and although he was also nervous about his future life (after all, he had never been married before, either), he found time to commission Quentin Ellender, the greatest craftsman in the land, to build his new wife a new dollhouse. I want it to be the finest dollhouse a young lady ever had, he told Ellender. I want her to look at it once and forget about her old dollhouse forever. As youll no doubt realize, if Roland really meant this, it was a foolish thing to say. No one ever forgets a toy that made him or her supremely happy as a child, even if that toy is replaced by one like it that is much nicer. Sasha never forgot her old dollhouse, but she was quite impressed with the new one. Anyone who was not a total idiot would have been. Those who saw it declared it was Quentin Ellenders best work, and it may have been. It was a country house in miniature, very like the one Sasha had lived in with her parents in rolling Western Barony. Everything in it was small, but so cunningly made you would swear it must really work . . . and most things in it did! The stove, for instance, really got hot and would even cook tiny portions of food. If you put a piece of hard coal no bigger than a matchbox in it, it would burn all day . . . and if you reached into the kitchen with your clumsy bigpersons finger and happened to touch the stove while the coal was burning, it would give you a burn for your pains. There were no faucets and no flushing toilets, because the Kingdom of Delain did not know about such thingsand doesnt even to this daybut if you were very careful, you could pump water from a hand pump that stood not much taller than your pinkie finger. There was a sewing room with a spinning wheel that really spun and a loom that really wove. The spinet in the parlor would really play, if you touched the keys with a toothpick, and the tone was true. People who saw this said it was a miracle, and surely Flagg must have been involved somehow. When Flagg heard such stories, he only smiled and said nothing. He had not been involved in the dollhouse at allhe thought it a silly project, in truthbut he also knew it was not always necessary to make claims and tell people how wonderful you were to achieve greatness. Sometimes all you had to do was look wise and keep your mouth shut. In Sashas dollhouse were real Kashamin rugs, real velvet curtains, real china plates; the cold cabinet really kept things cold.


The wainscoting in the receiving parlor and the front hall was of cherished ironwood. There was glass in all the windows and a manycolored fanlight over the wide front doors. All in all it was the jolliest dollhouse any child ever dreamed of. Sasha clapped her hands over it with real delight at the wedding party when it was unveiled, and thanked her husband for it. Later she went to Ellenders workshop and not only thanked him but curtsied deeply before him, an act that was almost unheard ofin that day and age, Queens did not curtsy to mere artisans. Roland was pleased and Ellender, whose sight had failed noticeably in the course of the project, was deeply touched. But it did not make her forget her old dear dollhouse at home, as ordinary as it seemed when compared with this one, and she did not spend as many rainy afternoons playing with itrearranging the furniture, lighting the stove and watching the chimneys smoke, pretending that there was a high tea going on or that there was to be a great dinner party for the Queenas she had before, even as an older girl of fifteen and sixteen. One of the reasons was very simple. There was no fun making ready for a pretend party at which the Queen would be in attendance when she was the Queen. And maybe that one reason was really all the reasons. She was a grownup now, and she discovered that being a grownup was not quite what she had suspected it would be when she was a child. She had thought then that she would make a conscious decision one day to simply put her toys and games and little makebelieves away. Now she discovered that was not what happened at all. Instead, she discovered, interest simply faded. It became less and less and less, until a dust of years drew over the bright pleasures of childhood, and they were forgotten. 8 Peter, a little boy who would someday be King, had dozens of toysno, if I am to tell you the truth, he had thousands of toys. He had hundreds of lead soldiers with which he fought great battles, and dozens of play horses. He had games and balls and jacks and marbles. He had stilts that made him five feet high. He had a magical springstick on which he could bounce, and all the drawing paper he wanted in a time when paper was extremely hard to make and only wealthy people could afford to have it. But of all the toys in the castle, the one he loved the best was his mothers dollhouse. He had never known the one in the Western Barony, and so to him this was the dollhouse of dollhouses. He would sit before it for hours on end when the rain poured down outside, or when the winter wind shrieked out of a blue throat filled with snow. When he fell ill with Childrens Tattoo (a disease which we call chicken pox), he had a servant bring it to him on a special table that went over his bed and played with it almost ceaselessly until he was well. He loved to imagine the tiny people that would fill the house; sometimes they were almost so real he could see them. He talked for them in different voices and invented them all. They were the King family. There was Roger King, who was brave and powerful (if not very tall, and slightly bowlegged), and who had once killed a dragon. There was lovely Sarah King, his wife. And there was their little boy, Petie, who loved and was loved by them. Not to mention, of course, all the servants he invented to make the beds, stoke the stove, fetch the water, cook the meals, and mend the clothes. Because he was a boy, some of the stories he made up to go with the house were a little more bloodthirsty than the stories Sasha had made up to go with hers as a little girl. In one of them, the Anduan pirates were all around the house, wanting to get in and slaughter the family. There was a famous fight. Dozens of pirates were killed, but in the end they were too many. They made to attack for the final time. But just before they did, the Kings Own Guardthis part was played by Peters lead soldiersarrived and killed every one of those rotten Anduan seadogs. In another story, a nest of dragons burst out of a nearby wood (usually the nearby wood was under Sashas sofa by the window), meaning to burn up the house with their furious breath. But Roger and Petie rushed out with their bows and killed every one. Until the ground was black with their icky old blood, Peter told his father the King that night at dinner, and this made Roland roar with approval. After Sasha died, Flagg told Roland that he did not believe it was right for a boy to be playing with dollhouses. It might not make him a sissy, Flagg said, but then again, it might. Certainly it would not sound well, if the tale got out to the general population. And such stories always did. The castle was full of servants. Servants saw everything, and their tongues wagged. Hes only six, Roland said, uneasy. Flagg, with his white, hungry face far back in his deep hood and his magical spells, always made him uneasy. Six is old enough to train a boy in the way he should go, Sire, Flagg said. Think you well on it. Your judgment will be right in this, as in all things. Think you well on it, Flagg said, and that was just what King Roland did, In fact, I should think it fair to say that he never thought on anything so hard during his entire twentysomeyear reign as King of Delain. That probably sounds strange to you, if you have thought of all the duties a King hasweighty matters such as putting taxes on some things or ending them on others, whether or not to declare war, whether to pardon or condemn. What, you might say, was a decision over whether or not to allow a little boy to play with a dollhouse next to those other things? Maybe nothing, maybe much. I will let you make up your mind on that. I will tell you that Roland was not the smartest King who had ever ruled in Delain. Thinking well had always been very hard work for him. It made him feel as if boulders were rolling around in his head. It made his eyes water and his temples throb. When he thought deeply, his nose got stuffed up. As a boy, his studies in composition and mathematics and history had made his head ache so badly that he had been allowed to give them up at twelve and do what he did best, which was to hunt. He tried very hard to be a good King, but he had a feeling that he could never be good enough, or smart enough, to solve the Kingdoms problems or to make many decisions the right way, and he knew if he made them the wrong way, people would suffer for it. If he had heard Sasha telling Peter about Kings after the banquet, he would have agreed completely. Kings really were bigger than other people, and sometimesa lot of timeshe wished he were smaller. If you have ever in your life had serious questions about whether or not you were good enough for some task, then you will know how he felt. What you may not know is that such worries start to feed on themselves after awhile. Even if that feeling that you arent good enough to get the job done isnt true at first, it can become true in time. This had happened to Roland, and over the years he had come to rely more and more on Flagg. He was sometimes troubled by the idea that Flagg was King in all but namebut these worries came only late at night. In the daytime he was only grateful for Flaggs support. If not for Sasha, Roland might have been a much worse King than he really was, and that was because the little voice he sometimes heard in the night when he couldnt sleep held much more of the truth than his daytime gratitudes. Flagg really was running the Kingdom, and Flagg was a very bad man. We will have to speak more of him later, unfortunately, but well let him go for now, and good riddance. Sasha had broken Flaggs power over Roland a little. Her own advice was good and practical, and it was much more kind and just than the magicians. She never really liked Flaggfew in Delain did, and many shuddered at his very namebut her dislike was mild. Her feelings might have been much different if she had known how carefully Flagg watched her, and with what growing poisonous hate. 9 Once Flagg really did set out to poison Sasha. This was after she asked Roland to pardon a pair of army deserters whom Flagg had wanted beheaded in the Plaza of the Needle. Deserters, he had argued, were a bad example. If one or two were allowed to get away without paying the full penalty, others might try it. The only way to discourage them, he said, was to show them the heads of those who had already tried it. Other wouldbe deserters would look at those flyblown heads with their staring eyes and think twice about the seriousness of their service to the King. Sasha, however, had discovered facts about the case from one of her maids that Roland didnt know. The mother of the older boy had fallen gravely ill. There were three younger brothers and two younger sisters in the family. All might have died in the bitter cold of the Delain winter if the boy hadnt left his encampment, gone home, and chopped wood for his mother. The younger boy had gone because he was the olders best friend, and his sworn blood brother. Without the younger boy, it might have taken two weeks to chop enough wood to keep the family through the winter. With both of them working at top speed, it had taken only six days. This was putting it in a different light. Roland had loved his own mother very much, and would gladly have died for her. He made inquiries and found out that Sasha had the right of the story. He also found out that the deserters had left only after a sadistic sergeant major had repeatedly refused to relay their requests for compassionate leave to their superior, and that as soon as four cords of wood had been chopped, they had gone back, although both had known they must be courtmartialed and face the headsmans axe. Roland pardoned them. Flagg nodded, smiled, and said only Your will is Delains will, Sire. Not for all the gold in the Four Kingdoms would he have allowed Roland to see the sick fury that rose in his heart when his will was balked. Rolands pardon of the boys was greatly praised in Delain, because many of Rolands subjects also knew the true facts and those who didnt know them were quickly informed by the rest. Rolands wise and compassionate pardon of the two was remembered when other, less humane decrees (which were, as a rule, also the magicians ideas) were imposed. All of this made no difference to Flagg. He had wanted them killed, and Sasha had interfered. Why could Roland not have married another? He had known none of them, and cared for women not at all. Why not another? Well, it didnt matter. Flagg smiled at the pardon, but he swore in his heart then that he would attend Sashas funeral. On the night Roland signed the pardon, Flagg went to his gloomy basement laboratory. There he donned a heavy glove and took a deathwatch spider from a cage where he had kept her for twenty years, feeding her newborn baby mice. Each of the mice he fed the spider was poisoned and dying; Flagg did this to increase the potency of the spiders own poison, which was already potent beyond belief. The spider was blood red and as big as a rat. Her bloated body quivered with venom; venom dripped from her stinger in clear drops that burned smoking holes in the top of Flaggs worktable. Now die, my pretty, and kill a Queen, Flagg whispered, and crushed the spider to death in his glove, which was made of a magical steel mesh which resisted the poisonyet still that night, when he went to bed, his hand was swelled and throbbing and red. Poison from the spiders crushed, twisted body gushed into the goblet. Flagg poured brandy over the deadly stuff, then stirred the two together. When he took the spoon from the glass, its bowl was twisted and misshapen. The Queen would take one sip and fall dying on the floor. Her death would be quick but extremely painful, Flagg thought with satisfaction. Sasha was in the habit of taking a glass of brandy each night, because she often had trouble falling asleep. Flagg rang for a servant to come and take the drink to her. Sasha never knew how close she came to death that night. Moments after brewing the deadly drink, before the servant knocked, Flagg poured it down the drain in the center of his floor and stood listening to it hiss and bubble away into the pipe. His face was twisted with hate. When the hissing had died away, he flung the crystal goblet into the far corner with all his force. It shattered like a bomb. The servant knocked and was admitted. Flagg pointed to where the shards glittered. Ive broken a goblet, he said. Clean it up. Use a broom, idiot. If you touch the pieces, youll regret it. 10 He poured the poison down the drain at the last moment because he realized he might well be caught. If Roland had loved the young Queen just a little less, Flagg would have chanced it. But he was afraid that Roland, in his wounded fury at the loss of his wife, would never rest until he found the killer and saw his head on the spike at the very tip of the Needle. It was the one crime he would see avenged, no matter who had committed it. And would he find the murderer? Flagg thought he might. Hunting, after all, was the thing Roland did best. So Sasha escapedthat timeprotected by Flaggs fear and her husbands love. And in the meantime, Flagg still had the Kings ear in most matters. Concerning the dollhouse, howeverin that matter, you could say Sasha won, even though Flagg had by then succeeded in ridding himself of her. 11 Not long after Flagg made his disparaging comments about dollhouses and royal sissies, Roland crept into the dead Queens morning room unseen and watched his son at play. The King stood just inside the door, his brow deeply furrowed. He was thinking much harder than he was used to thinking, and that meant the boulders were rolling around in his head and his nose was stuffy. He saw that Peter was using the dollhouse to tell himself stories, to make believe, and that the stories he made up were not sissy stories at all. They were stories of blood and thunder and armies and dragons. They were, in other words, stories after the Kings own heart. He discovered in himself a wistful desire to join his son, to help him make up even better tales in which the dollhouse and all its fascinating contents and its makebelieve family figured. Most of all, he saw that Peter was using Sashas dollhouse to keep Sasha alive in his heart, and Roland approved of this most of all, because he missed his wife sorely. Sometimes he was so lonely he almost cried. Kings, of course, do not cry . . . and if, on one or two occasions after Sasha had died, he awoke with the case on his pillow damp, what of that? The King left the room as silently as he had come. Peter never saw him. Roland lay awake most of that night, thinking deeply about what he had seen, and although it was hard for him to endure Flaggs disapproval, he saw him the next morning in a private audience, before his resolve could weaken, and told him he had thought the matter over carefully and decided Peter should be allowed to play with the dollhouse as long as he wished. He said he believed it was doing the boy no harm. With that out, he settled back uneasily to wait for Flaggs rebuttal. But no rebuttal came. Flagg only raised his eyebrowsthis Roland barely saw in the deep shadow of the hood Flagg always woreand said, Your will, Sire, is the will of the Kingdom. Roland knew from the tone that Flagg thought his decision was a bad one, but the tone also told him Flagg would not dispute it further. He was deeply relieved to be let off so cheaply. Later that day, when Flagg suggested that the farmers of the Eastern Barony could stand higher taxes in spite of the drought that had killed most of their crops the year before, Roland agreed eagerly. In truth, having the old fool (for so Flagg thought Roland to be in his deeper thoughts) go against his wishes in the matter of the dollhouse seemed a very minor thing to the magician. The rise in taxes for the Eastern Barony was the important thing. And Flagg had a deeper secret, one which pleased him well. In the end he had succeeded in murdering Sasha, after all. 12 In those days, when a Queen or any woman of royal birth was taken to bed to deliver a child, a midwife was called in. The doctors were all men, and no man was allowed to be with a woman when she was about to have a child. The midwife who delivered Peter was Anna Crookbrows, of the Third Southard Alley. She was called again when Sashas time with Thomas came around. Anna was past fifty at the time when Sashas second labor began, and a widow. She had one son of her own, and in his twentieth year he contracted the Shaking Disease, which always killed its victims in terrible pain after some years of suffering. She loved this boy very much, and at last, after every other idea had proved useless, she went to Flagg. This had been ten years before, neither prince yet born and Roland himself still a royal bachelor. He received her in his dank basement rooms, which were near the dungeonsduring their interview the uneasy woman could sometimes hear the lost screams of those who had been locked away from the suns light for years and years. And, she thought with a shudder, if the dungeons were near, then the torture chambers must also be near. Nor did Flaggs apartment itself make her feel any easier. Strange designs were drawn on the floor in many colors of chalk. When she blinked, the designs seemed to change. In a cage hung from a long black manacle, a twoheaded parrot cawed and sometimes talked to itself, one head speaking, the other head answering. Musty books frowned down at her. Spiders spun in dark corners. From the laboratory came a mixture of strange chemical smells. Yet she stammered out her story somehow and then waited in an agony of suspense. I can cure your son, he said finally. Anna Crookbrowss ugly face was transformed into something near beauty by her joy. My Lord! she gasped, and could think of no more, so she said it again. Oh, my Lord! But in the shadow of his hood, Flaggs white face remained distant and brooding, and she felt afraid again. What would you pay for such a miracle? he asked. Anything, she gasped, and meant it. Oh my Lord Flagg, anything! I ask for one favor, he said. Will you give it? Gladly! I dont know what it is yet, but when the time comes, I shall. She had fallen on her knees before him, and now he bent toward her. His hood fell back, and his face was terrible indeed. It was the white face of a corpse with black holes for eyes. And if you refuse what I ask, woman . . . I shall not refuse! Oh my Lord, I shall not! I shall not! I swear it on my dear husbands name! Then it is well. Bring your son to me tomorrow night, after dark. She led the poor boy in the next night. He trembled and shook, his head nodded foolishly, his eyes rolled. There was a slick of drool on his chin. Flagg gave her a dark, plumcolored potion in a beaker. Have him drink this, he said. It will blister his mouth, but have him drink every drop. Then get the fool out of my sight. She murmured to him. The boys shaking increased for a moment as he tried to nod his head. He drank all of the liquid and then doubled over, screaming. Get him out, Flagg said. Yes, get him out! one of the parrots two heads cried. Get him out, no screaming allowed here! the other head screamed. She got him home, sure that Flagg had murdered him. But the next day the Shaking Disease had left her son completely, and he was well. Years passed. When Sashas labor with Thomas began, Flagg called for her and whispered in her ear. They were alone in his deep rooms, but even so, it was better that such a dread command be whispered. Anna Crookbrowss face went deadly white, but she remembered Flaggs words If you refuse . . . And would not the King have two children? She had only one. And if the King wanted to remarry and have even more, let him. In Delain, women were plentiful. So she went to Sasha, and spoke encouragingly, and at a critical moment a little knife glittered in her hand. No one saw the one small cut she made. A moment later, Anna cried Push, my Queen! Push, for the baby comes! Sasha pushed. Thomas came from her as effortlessly as a boy zipping down a slide. But Sashas lifeblood gushed out upon the sheet. Ten minutes after Thomas came into the world, his mother was dead. And so Flagg was not concerned about the piffling matter of the dollhouse. What mattered was that Roland was growing old, there was no meddling Queen to stand in his way, and now he had not one son to choose from but two. Peter was, of course, the elder, but that did not really matter. Peter could be gotten out of the way if time should prove him unsuitable for Flaggs purposes. He was only a child, and could not defend himself. I have told you that Roland never thought longer or harder on any matter during his entire reign than he did on this one questionwhether or not Peter should be allowed access to Sashas dollhouse, cunningly crafted by the great Ellender. I have told you that the result of his thought was a decision that ran against Flaggs wishes. I have also told you that Flagg considered this of little importance. Was it? That you must decide for yourself, after you have heard me to the end. 13 Now let many long years pass, all in a twinklingone of the great things about tales is how fast time may pass when not much of note is happening. Real life is never that way, and it is probably a good thing. Time only passes faster in histories, and what is a history except a grand sort of tale where passing centuries are substituted for passing years? During those years, Flagg watched both boys carefullyhe watched them over the aging Kings shoulder as they grew up, calculating which should be King when Roland was no more. It did not take him long to decide it should be Thomas, the younger. By the time Peter was seven, he knew he did not like the boy. When Peter was nine, Flagg made a strange and unpleasant discovery he feared Peter, as well. The boy had grown up strong and straight and handsome. His hair was dark, his eyes a dark blue that is common to people of the Western Barony. Sometimes, when Peter looked up quickly, his head cocked a certain way, he resembled his father. Otherwise, he was Sashas son almost entirely in his looks and ways. Unlike his short father with his bowlegged walk and his clumsy way of moving (Roland was graceful only when he was horsed), Peter was tall and lithe. He enjoyed the hunt and hunted well, but it was not his life. He also enjoyed his lessonsgeography and history were his particular favorites. His father was puzzled and often impatient with jokes; the point of most had to be explained to him, and that took away all the fun. What Roland liked was when the jesters pretended to slip on banana peels, or knocked their heads together, or when they staged pie fights in the Great Hall. Such things were about as far as Rolands idea of good fun extended. Peters wit was much quicker and more subtle, as Sashas had been, and his rollicking, boyish laughter often filled the palace, making the servants smile at each other approvingly. While many boys in Peters position would have become too conscious of their own grand place in the scheme of things to play with anyone not of their own class, Peter became best friends with a boy named Ben Staad when both children were eight. Bens family was not royalty, and though Andrew Staad, Bens father, had some faint claim to the High Blood of the kingdom on his mothers side, they could not even rightly be called nobility. Squire was probably the kindest term one could have applied to Andy Staad, and squires son to his boy. Even so, the onceprosperous Staad family had fallen upon hard times, and while there could have been queerer choices for a princes best friend, there couldnt have been many. They met at the annual Farmers Lawn Party when Peter was eight. The Lawn Party was a yearly ritual most Kings and Queens viewed as tiresome at best; they were apt to put in a token appearance, drink the quick traditional toast, and then be away after bidding the farmers enjoy themselves and thanking them for another fruitful year (this was also part of the ritual, even if the crops had been poor). If Roland had been that sort of King, Peter and Ben would never had gotten the chance to know each other. But, as you might have guessed, Roland loved the Farmers Lawn Party, looked forward to it each year, and usually stayed until the very end (and more than once was carried away drunk and snoring loudly). As it happened, Peter and Ben were paired in the threelegged sackrace, and they won it . . . although it ended up being much closer than at first it seemed it would be. Leading by almost six lengths, they took a bad spill and Peters arm was cut. Im sorry, my prince! Ben cried. His face had gone pale, and he may have been visualizing the dungeons (and I know his mother and father, watching anxiously from the sidelines, were; if it werent for bad luck, Andy Staad was fond of growling, the Staads would have no luck at all); more likely he was just sorry for the hurt he fancied he had caused, or was amazed to see that the blood of the future King was as red as his own. Dont be a fool, Peter said impatiently. It was my fault, not yours. I was clumsy. Hurry and get up. Theyre catching us. The two boys, made into a single clumsy threelegged beast by the sack into which Peters left leg and Bens right one had been tightly tied, managed to get up and lurch on. Both had been badly winded by the fall, however, and their long lead had been cut to almost nothing. Approaching the finish line, where crowds of farmers (not to mention Roland, standing among them without the slightest feeling of awkwardness, or of being somewhere he shouldnt) were cheering deliriously, two huge, sweating farm boys began to close in. That they would overtake Peter and Ben in the last ten yards of the race seemed almost inevitable. Faster, Peter! Roland bellowed, swinging a huge mug of mead with such enthusiasm that he poured most of it onto his own head. In his excitement he never noticed. Jackrabbit, son! Be a jackrabbit! Those clodbusters are almost up your butt and over your back! Bens mother began to moan, cursing the fate that had caused her son to be paired up with the prince. If they lose, hell have our Ben thrown into the deepest dungeon in the castle, she moaned. Hush, woman, Andy said. Hed not. Hes a good King. He believed it, but he was still afraid. Staad luck was, after all, Staad luck. Ben, meanwhile, had begun to giggle. He couldnt believe he was doing it, but he was. Be a jackrabbit, did he say? Peter also began to giggle. His legs ached terribly, blood was trickling down his right arm, and sweat was flooding his face, which was starting to turn an interesting plum color, but he was also unable to stop. Yes, thats what he said. Then lets hop! They didnt look much like jackrabbits as they crossed the finish line; they looked like a pair of strange crippled crows. It was really a miracle they didnt fall, but somehow they didnt. They managed three ungainly leaps. The third one took them across the finish line, where they collapsed, howling with laughter. Jackrabbit! Ben yelled, pointing at Peter. Jackrabbit yourself! Peter yelled, pointing back. They slung their arms about each other, still laughing, and were carried on the shoulders of many strong farmers (Andrew Staad was one of them, and bearing the combined weight of his son and the prince was something he never forgot) to where Roland slipped blue ribbands over their necks. Then he kissed each of them roughly on the cheek and poured the remaining contents of his mug over their heads, to the wild cheers and huzzahs of the farmers. Never, even in the memory of the oldest gaffer there that day, had such an extraordinary race been run. The two boys spent the rest of the day together and, it soon appeared, would be content to spend the rest of their lives together. Because even a boy of eight has certain duties (and if he is to be the King someday he has even more), the two of them could not be together all they wanted to be, but when they could be, they were. Some sniffed at the friendship, and said it wasnt right for the King in waiting to be friends with a boy who was little better than a common barony clodbuster. Most, however, looked upon it with approval; it was said more than once over deep cups in the meadhouses of Delain that Peter had gotten the best of both worldshis mothers brains and his fathers love of the common folk. There was apparently no meanness in Peter. He never went through a period when he pulled the wings off flies or singed dogs tails to see them run. In fact, he intervened in the matter of a horse which was to be destroyed by Yosef, the Kings head groom . . . and it was when this tale made its way to Flagg that the magician began to fear the Kings oldest son, and to think perhaps he did not have as long to put the boy out of the way as he had once thought. For in the affair of the horse with the broken leg, Peter had displayed courage and a depth of resolve which Flagg did not like at all. 14 Peter was passing through the stableyard when he saw a horse tethered to the hitching rail just outside the main barn. The horse was holding one of its rear legs off the ground. As Peter watched, Yosef spat on his hands and picked up a heavy maul. What he meant to do was obvious. Peter was both frightened and appalled. He rushed over. Who told you to kill this horse? he asked. Yosef, a hardy and robust sixty, was a palace fixture. He was not apt to brook the interference of a snotnosed brat easily, prince or no. He fixed Peter with a thunderous, heavy look that was meant to wilt the boy. Peter, then just nine, reddened, but did not wilt. He seemed to see a look in the horses mild brown eyes which said, Youre my only hope, whoever you are. Do what you can, please. My father, and his father before him, and his father before him, Yosef said, seeing now that he was going to have to say something, like it or not. Thats who told me to kill it. A horse with a broken leg is no good to any living thing, least of all to itself. He raised the maul a little. You see this hammer as a murder weapon, but when youre older, youll see it for what it really is in cases such as these . . . a mercy. Now stand back, so you dont get splashed. He raised the maul in both hands. Put it down, Peter said. Yosef was thunderstruck. He had never been interfered with in such a way. Here! Here! What are you asaying? You heard me. I said put that hammer down. As he said these words Peters voice deepened. Yosef suddenly realizedreally, really realizedthat it was the future King standing here in this dusty stableyard, commanding him. If Peter had actually said as muchif he had stood there in the dust squeaking, Put that down, put it down, I said, Im going to be King someday, King, do you hear, so you put that down!, Yosef would have laughed contemptuously, spat, and ended the brokenlegged horses life with one hard swing of his deeply muscled arms. But Peter did not have to say any such thing; the command was clear in his voice and eyes. Your father shall hear of this, my princeling, Yosef said. And when he hears it from you, it will be for the second time, Peter replied. I will let you go about your work with no further complaint, Lord High Groom, if I may put a single question to you which you answer yes. Ask your question, Yosef said. He was impressed with the boy, almost against his will. When he had told Yosef that he, Peter, would tell his father of the incident first, Yosef believed he meant what he saidthe simple truth shone in the lads eyes. Also, he had never been called Lord High Groom before, and he rather liked it. Has the horse doctor seen this animal? Peter asked. Yosef was thunderstruck. That is your question? That? Yes.


Dear creeping gods, no! he cried, and, seeing Peter flinch, he lowered his voice, squatted before the boy, and attempted to explain. A horse with a broken leg is a goner, yHighness. Always a goner. Leg never mends right. Theres apt to be blood poisoning. Turrible pain for the horse. Turrible pain. In the end, its poor heart is apt to burst, or it takes a brain fever and goes mad. Now do you understand what I meant when I said this hammer was mercy rather than murder? Peter thought long and gravely, with his head down. Yosef was silent, squatting before him in an almost unconscious posture of deference, allowing him the full courtesy of time. Peter raised his head and asked You say everyone says this? Everyone, yHighness. Why, my father Then well see if the horse doctor says it, too. Oh . . . PAH! the groom bellowed, and threw the hammer all the way across the courtyard. It sailed into a pigpen and struck head down in the mud. The pigs grunted and squealed and cursed him in their piggy Latin. Yosef, like Flagg, was not used to being balked, and took no notice of them. He got up and stalked away. Peter watched him, troubled, sure that he must be in the wrong and knowing he was apt to face a severe whipping for this little piece of work. Then, halfway across the yard, the head groom turned, and a reluctant, grim little smile hit across his face like a single sunray on a gray morning. Go get your horse doctor, he said. Get him yourself, son. Youll find him in his animal surgery at the far end of Third Eastrd Alley, I reckon. Ill give you twenty minutes. If youre not back with him by then, Im putting my maul into yon horses brains, prince or no prince. Yes, Lord Head Groom! Peter yelled. Thank you! He raced away. When he returned with the young horse doctor, puffing and out of breath, Peter was sure that the horse must be dead; the sun told him three times twenty minutes had passed. But Yosef, curious, had waited. Horse doctoring and veterinary medicine were then very new things in Delain, and this young man was only the third or fourth who had practiced the trade, so Yosefs look of sour distrust was far from surprising. Nor had the horse doctor been happy to be dragged away from his surgery by the sweating, wideeyed prince, but he became less irritated now that he had a patient. He knelt before the horse and felt the broken leg gently with his hands, humming through his nose as he did so. The horse shifted once as something he did pained her. Be steady, nag, the horse doctor said calmly, be oh so steady. The horse quieted. Peter watched all this in an agony of suspense. Yosef watched with his maul leaning nearby and his arms folded across his chest. His opinion of the horse doctor had gone up a little. The fellow was young, but his hands moved with gentle knowledge. At last the horse doctor nodded and stood up, dusting stableyard grime from his hands. Well? Peter asked anxiously. Kill her, the horse doctor said briskly to Yosef, ignoring Peter altogether. Yosef picked up his maul at once, for he had expected no other conclusion to the affair. But he found no satisfaction in being proved correct; the stricken look on the young boys face went straight to his heart. Wait! Peter cried, and although his small face was full of distress, that deepness was in his voice again, making him sound much, much older than his years. The horse doctor looked at him, startled. You mean shell die of blood poisoning? Peter asked. What? the horse doctor asked, eyeing Peter with a new care. Shell die of blood poisoning if shes allowed to live? Or her heart will burst? Or she will run mad? The horse doctor was clearly puzzled. What are you talking about? Blood poisoning? There is no blood poisoning here. The break is healing quite cleanly, in fact. He looked at Yosef with some disdain. I have heard such stories as these before. There is no truth in them. If you think not, you have much to learn, my young friend, Yosef said. Peter ignored this. It was now his turn to be bewildered. He asked the young horse doctor, Why do you tell the head groom to kill a horse which may heal? Your Highness, the horse doctor said briskly, this horse would need to be poulticed every day and every night for a month or more to keep any infection from settling in. The effort might be made, but to what end? The horse would always limp. A horse that limps cant work. A horse that limps cant run for idlers to bet on. A horse that limps can only eat and eat and never earn its provender. Therefore, it should be killed. He smiled, satisfied. He had proved his case. Then, as Yosef started forward with his hammer again, Peter said, Ill put on the poultices. If a day should come when I cant, then Ben Staad will. And shell be good because shell be my horse, and Ill ride her even if she limps so badly she makes me seasick. Yosef burst out laughing and clapped the boy on his back so hard his teeth rattled. Your heart is kind as well as brave, my boy, but lads promise quick and regret at leisure. Youd not be true to it, I reckon. Peter looked at him calmly. I mean what I say. Yosef stopped laughing all at once. He looked at Peter closely and saw that the boy did indeed mean it . . . or at least thought he did. There was no doubt in his face. Well! I cant tarry here all day, the horse doctor said, adopting his former brisk and selfimportant manner. Ive given you my diagnosis. My bill will be presented to the Treasury in due course. . . . Perhaps youll pay it out of your allowance, Highness. In any case, what you decide to do is not my business. Good day. Peter and the head groom watched him walk out of the stableyard, trailing a long afternoon shadow at his heels. Hes full of dung, Yosef said when the horse doctor was out the gate, beyond earshot, and thus unable to contradict his words. Mark me, yHighness, and save yself a lot o grief. There never was a horse what busted a leg and didnt get blood poisoning. Its Gods way. Ill want to talk to my father about this, Peter said. And so I think you must, Yosef said heavily . . . but as Peter trudged away, he smiled. He thought the boy had done right well for himself. His father would be honorbound to see the boy was whipped for interfering with his elders, but the head groom knew that Roland set a great store by both of his sons in his old agePeter perhaps a bit more than Thomasand he believed that the boy would get his horse. Of course, he would also get a heartbreak when the horse died, but, as the horse doctor had quite rightly said, that was not his business. He knew about the training of horses; the training of princes was best left in other hands. Peter was whipped for interfering in the head grooms affairs, and although it was no solace to his stinging bottom, Peters mind understood that his father had afforded him great honor by administering the whipping himself, instead of handing Peter over to an underling who might have tried to curry favor by making it easy on the boy. Peter could not sleep on his back for three days and was not able to eat sitting down for nearly a week, but the head groom was also right about the horseRoland allowed Peter to keep her. It wont take up your time for long, Peter, Roland advised him. If Yosef says it will die, it will die. Rolands face was a bit pale and his old hands were trembling. The beating had pained him more than it had pained Peter, who really was his favorite . . . although Roland foolishly fancied no one knew this but himself. I dont know, Peter said. I thought that horsedoctoring fellow knew what he was talking about. It turned out that the horsedoctoring fellow had. The horse did not take blood poisoning, and it did not die, and in the end its limp was so slight that even Yosef was forced to admit it was hardly noticeable. At least, when shes fresh, he amended. Peter was more than just faithful about putting on the poultices; he was nearly religious. He changed old for new three times a day and did it a fourth time before he went to bed. Ben Staad did stand in for Peter from time to time, but those times were few. Peter named the horse Peony, and they were great friends ever after. Flagg had most assuredly been right about one thing on the day he advised Roland against letting Peter play with the dollhouse servants were everywhere, they see everything, and their tongues wag. Several servants had witnessed the scene in the stableyard, but if every servant who later claimed to have been there really had been, there would have been a mob of them crowded around the edges of the stableyard that hot summer day. That had, of course, not been the case, but the fact that so many of them found the event worth lying about was a sign that Peter was regarded as an interesting figure indeed. They talked about it so much that it became something of a nine days wonder in Detain. Yosef also talked; so, for that matter, did the young horse doctor. Everything that they said spoke well for the young princeYosefs word in particular carried much weight, because he was greatly respected. He began to call Peter the young King, something he had never done before. I believe God spared the nag because the young King stood up for her so bravelike, he said. And he worked at them poultices like a slave. Brave, he is; hes got the heart of a dragon. Hell make a King someday, all right Ai! You should have heard his voice when he told me to hold the maul! It was a great story, all right, and Yosef drank on it for the next seven yearsuntil Peter was arrested for a hideous crime, judged guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment in the cell atop the Needle for the rest of his life 15 Perhaps you are wondering what Thomas was like, and some of you may already be casting him in a villains part, as a willing coschemer in Flaggs plot to snatch the crown away from its rightful owner. That was not really the case at all, although to some it always seemed so, and of course Thomas did play a part. He did not seem, I admit, to be a really good boyat least, not at first glance. He was surely not a good boy in the way that Peter was a good boy, but no brother would have looked really good beside Peter, and Thomas knew it well by the time he was fourthat was the year after the famous sackrace, and the one in which the famous stableyard incident took place. Peter rarely lied and never cheated. Peter was smart and kind, tall and handsome. He looked like their mother, who had been so deeply loved by the King and the people of Delain. How could Thomas compare with goodness like that? A simple question with a simple answer. He couldnt. Unlike Peter, Thomas was the spitting image of his father. This pleased the old man a little, but it didnt give him the pleasure most men feel when they have a son who carries the clear stamp of their features. Looking at Thomas was too much like looking into a sly mirror. He knew that Thomass fine blond hair would gray early and then begin to fall out; Thomas would be bald by the time he was forty. He knew that Thomas would never be tall, and if he had his fathers appetite for beer and mead, he would be carrying a big belly before him by the time he was twentyfive. Already his toes had begun to turn in, and Roland guessed Thomas would walk with his own bowlegged swagger. Thomas was not exactly a good boy, but you must not think that made him a bad boy. He was sometimes a sad boy, often a confused boy (he took after his father in another way, as wellhard thinking made his nose stuffy and his head feel like boulders were rolling around inside), and often a jealous boy, but he wasnt a bad boy. Of whom was he jealous? Why, of his brother, of course. He was jealous of Peter. It wasnt enough that Peter would be King, Oh no! It wasnt enough that their father liked Peter best, or that the servants liked Peter best, or that their teachers liked Peter best because he was always ready at lessons and didnt need to be coaxed. It wasnt enough that everyone liked Peter best, or that Peter had a best friend. There was one more thing. When anyone looked at Thomas, his father the King most of all, Thomas thought he knew they were thinking We loved your mother and you killed her in your coming. And what did we get out of the pain and death you caused her? A dull little boy with a round face that has hardly any chin, a dull little boy who couldnt make all fifteen of the Great Letters until he was eight. Your brother Peter was able to make them all when he was six. What did we get? Not much. Why did you come, Thomas? What good are you? Throne insurance? Is that all you are? Throne insurance in case Peter the Precious should fall off his limping nag and crack his head open? Is that all? Well, we dont want you. None of us want you. None of us want you. . . . The part Thomas played in his brothers imprisonment was dishonorable, but even so he was not a really bad boy. I believe this, and hope that in time you will come to believe it, too. 16 Once, as a boy of seven, Thomas spent a whole day laboring in his room, carving his father a model sailboat. He did it with no way of knowing that Peter had covered himself with glory that day on the archery range, with his father in attendance. Peter was not, ordinarily, much of a bowmanin that area, at least, Thomas would turn out to be far superior to his older brotherbut on that one day, Peter had shot the junior course of targets like one inspired. Thomas was a sad boy, a confused boy, and he was often an unlucky boy. Thomas had thought of the boat because sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, his father liked to go out to the moat which surrounded the palace and float a variety of model boats. Such simple pleasures made Roland extremely happy, and Thomas had never forgotten one day when his father had taken himand just himalong. In those days, his father had an advisor whose only job was to show Roland how to make paper boats, and the King had conceived a great enthusiasm for them. On this day, a hoary old carp had risen out of the mucky water and swallowed one of Rolands paper boats whole. Roland had laughed like a boy and declared it was better than a tale about a sea monster. He hugged Thomas very tight as he said so. Thomas never forgot that daythe bright sunshine, the damp, slightly moldy odor of the moat water, the warmth of his fathers arms, the scratchiness of his beard. So, feeling particularly lonely one day, he had hit on the idea of making his father a sailboat. It would not be a really great job, and Thomas knew ithe was almost as clumsy with his hands as he was at memorizing his lessons. But he also knew that his father could have any craftsman in Delaineven the great Ellender himself, who was now almost completely blindmake him boats if he so desired. The crucial difference, Thomas thought, would be that Rolands own son had taken a whole day to carve him a boat for his Sunday pleasure. Thomas sat patiently by his window, urging the boat out of a block of wood. He used a sharp knife, nicked himself times without number, and cut himself quite badly once. Yet he kept on, aching hands or no. As he worked he daydreamed of how he and his father would go out on Sunday afternoon and sail the boat, just the two of them all alone, because Peter would be riding Peony in the woods or off playing with Ben. And he wouldnt even mind if that same carp came up and ate his wooden boat, because then his father would laugh and hug him and say it was better than a story of sea monsters eating Anduan clipper ships whole. But when he got to the Kings chamber Peter was there and Thomas had to wait for nearly half an hour with the boat hidden behind his back while his father extolled Peters bowmanship. Thomas could see that Peter was uncomfortable under the unceasing barrage of praise. He could also see that Peter knew Thomas wanted to talk to their father, and that Peter kept trying to tell their father so. It didnt matter, none of it mattered. Thomas hated him anyway. At last Peter was allowed to escape. Thomas approached his father, who looked at him kindly enough now that Peter was gone. I made you something, Dad, he said, suddenly shy. He held the boat behind his back with hands that were suddenly wet and clammy with sweat. Did you now, Tommy? Roland said. Why, that was kind, wasnt it? Very kind, Sire, said Flagg, who happened to be idling nearby. He spoke casually but watched Thomas with bright interest. What is it, lad? Show me! I remembered how much you liked to have a boat or two out on the moat Sunday afternoons, Dad, and . . . He wanted desperately to say, and I wanted you to take me out with you again sometime, so I made this, but he found he could not utter such a thing. . . .and so I made you a boat. . . . I spent a whole day . . . cut myself . . . and . . . and . . . Sitting in his window seat, carving the boat, Thomas had made up a long, eloquent speech which he would utter before bringing the boat out from behind his back and presenting it with a flourish to his father, but now he could hardly remember a word of it, and what he could remember didnt seem to make any sense. Horribly tonguetied, he took the sailboat with its awkward flapping sail out from behind his back and gave it to Roland. The King turned it over in his big, shortfingered hands. Thomas stood and watched him, totally unaware that he had forgotten to breathe. At last Roland looked up. Very nice, very nice, Tommy. Canoe, isnt it? Sailboat. Dont you see the sail? he wanted to cry. It took me an hour alone just to tie the knots, and it isnt my fault one of them came loose so it flaps! The King fingered the striped sail, which Thomas had cut from a pillowcase. So it is . . . of course it is. At first I thought it was a canoe and this was some Oranian girls washing. He tipped a wink at Flagg, who smiled vaguely at the air and said nothing. Thomas suddenly felt he might vomit quite soon. Roland looked at his son more seriously, and beckoned for him to come close. Timidly, hoping for the best, Thomas did so. Its a good boat, Tommy. Sturdy, like yourself, a bit clumsy like yourself, but goodlike yourself. And if you want to give me a really fine present, work hard in your own bowmanship classes so you can take a firstclass medal as Pete did today. Thomas had taken a first in the lowercircle bowmanship courses the year before, but his father seemed to have forgotten this in his joy over Peters accomplishment. Thomas did not remind him; he merely stood there, looking at the boat in his fathers big hands. His cheeks and forehead had flushed to the color of old brick. When it was at last down to just two boysPeter and Lord Towsons sonthe instructor decreed they should draw back another forty koner. Towsons boy looked downcast, but Peter just walked to the mark and nocked an arrow. I saw the look in his eyes, and I said to myself Hes won! By all the gods that are, he hasnt even fired an arrow yet and hes won! And so he had! I tell you, Tommy, you should have been there! You should have . . . The King prattled on, putting aside the boat Thomas had labored a whole day to make, with barely a second look. Thomas stood and listened, smiling mechanically, that dull, bricklike flush never leaving his face. His father would never bother to take the sailboat he had carved out to the moatwhy should he? The sailboat was as pukey as Thomas felt. Peter could probably carve a better one blindfolded, and in half the time. It would look better to their father, at least. A miserable eternity later, Thomas was allowed to escape. I believe the boy worked very hard on that boat, Flagg remarked carelessly. Yes, I suppose he did, Roland said. Wretchedlooking thing, isnt it? Looks a little like a dog turd with a handkerchief sticking out of it. And like something I would have made when I was his age, he added in his own mind. Thomas could not hear thoughts . . . but a hellish trick of acoustics brought Rolands words to him just as he left the Great Hall. Suddenly the horrible green pressure in his stomach was a thousand times worse. He ran to his bedroom and was sick in a basin. The next day, while idling behind the outer kitchens, Thomas spied a halfcrippled old dog foraging for garbage. He seized a rock and threw it. The stone flew to the mark. The dog yipped and fell down, badly hurt. Thomas knew his brother, although five years older, could not have made such a shot at half the distancebut that was a cold satisfaction, because he also knew that Pete never would have thrown a rock at a poor, hungry dog in the first place, especially one as old and decrepit as this one obviously was. For a moment, compassion filled Thomass heart and his eyes filled with tears. Then, for no reason at all, he thought of his father saying, Looks a little like a dog turd with a handerchief sticking out of it. He gathered up a handful of rocks, and went over to where the dog lay on its side, dazed and bleeding from one ear. Part of him wanted to let the dog alone, or perhaps heal it as Peter had healed Peonyto make it his very own dog and love it forever. But part of him wanted to hurt it, as if hurting the dog would ease some of his own hurt. He stood above it, undecided, and then a terrible thought came to him Suppose that dog was Peter? That decided the case. Thomas stood over the old dog and threw stones at it until it was dead. No one saw him, but if someone had, he or she would have thought There is a boy who is bad . . . bad, and perhaps even evil. But the person who saw only the cruel murder of that dog would not have seen what happened the day beforewould not have seen Thomas throwing up into a basin and crying bitterly as he did it. He was often a confused boy, often a sadly unlucky boy, but I stick to what I saidhe was never a bad boy, not really. I also said that no one saw the stoning of the mongrel dog behind the outer kitchens, but that was not quite true. Flagg saw it that night, in his magic crystal. He saw it . . . and was well pleased by it. 17 Roland . . . Sasha . . . Peter . . . Thomas. Now there is only one more we must speak of, isnt there? Now there is only the shadowy fifth. The time has come to speak of Flagg, as dreadful as that may be. Sometimes the people of Delain called him Flagg the Hooded; sometimes simply the dark manfor, in spite of his white corpses face, he was a dark man indeed. They called him well preserved, but they used the term in a way that was uneasy rather than complimentary. He had come to Delain from Garlan in the time of Rolands grandfather. In those days he had appeared to be a thin and sternfaced man of about forty. Now, in the closing years of Rolands reign, he appeared to be a thin and sternfaced man of about fifty. Yet it had not been ten years, or even twenty, between then and nowit had been seventysix years in all. Babies who had been sucking toothlessly at their mothers breasts when Flagg first came to Delain had grown up, married, had children, grown old, and died toothlessly in their beds or their chimney corners. But in all that time, Flagg seemed to have aged only ten years. It was magic, they whispered, and of course it was good to have a magician at court, a real magician and not just a stage conjurer who knew how to palm coins or hide a sleeping dove up his sleeve. Yet in their hearts, they knew there was nothing good about Flagg. When the people of Delain saw him coming, with his eyes peeking redly out from his hood, they quickly found business on the far side of the street. Did he really come from Garlan, with its far vistas and its purple dreaming mountains? I do not know. It was and is a magical land where carpets sometimes fly, and where holy men sometimes pipe ropes up from wicker baskets, climb them, and disappear at the tops, never to be seen again. A great many seekers of knowledge from more civilized lands like Delain and Andua have gone to Garlan. Most disappear as completely and as permanently as those strange mystics who climb the floating ropes. Those who do return dont always come back changed for the better. Yes, Flagg might well have come to Delain from Garlan, but if he did, it was not in the reign of Rolands grandfather but much, much earlier. He had, in fact, come to Delain often. He came under a different name each time, but always with the same load of woe and misery and death. This time he was Flagg. The time before he had been known as Bill Hinch, and he had been the Kings Lord High Executioner. Although that time was two hundred and fifty years past, his was a name mothers still used to frighten their children when they were bad. If you dont shut up that squalling, I reckon Bill Hinch will come and take you away! they said. Serving as Lord High Executioner under three of the bloodiest Kings in Delains long history, Bill Hinch had made an end to hundredsthousands, some saidof prisoners with his heavy axe. The time before that, four hundred years before the time of Roland and his sons, he came as a singer named Browson, who became a close advisor to the King and a Queen. Browson disappeared like smoke after drumming up a great and bloody war between Delain and Andua. The time before that . . . Ah, but why go on? Im not sure I could if I wanted to. When times are long enough, even the storytellers forget the tales. Flagg always showed up with a different face and a different bag of tricks, but two things about him were always the same. He always came hooded, a man who seemed almost to have no face, and he never came as a King himself, but always as the whisperer in the shadows, the man who poured poison into the porches of Kings ears. Who was he, really, this dark man? I do not know. Where did he wander between visits to Delain? I do not know that, either. Was he never suspected? Yes, by a fewby historians and spinners of tales like me, mostly. They suspected that the man who now called himself Flagg had been in Delain before, and never to any good purpose. But they were afraid to speak. A man who could live among them for seventysix years and appear to age only ten was obviously a magician; a man who had lived for ten times as long, perhaps longer than that . . . such a man might be the devil himself. What did he want? That question I think I can answer. He wanted what evil men always want to have power and use that power to make mischief. Being a King did not interest him because the heads of Kings all too often found their way to spikes on castle walls when things went wrong. But the advisors to Kings . . . the spinners in the shadows . . . such people usually melted away like evening shadows at dawning as soon as the headsmans axe started to fall. Flagg was a sickness, a fever looking for a cool brow to heat up. He hooded his actions just as he hooded his face. And when the great trouble cameas it always did after a span of yearsFlagg always disappeared like shadows at dawn. Later, when the carnage was over and the fever had passed, when the rebuilding was complete and there was again something worth destroying, Flagg would appear once more. 18 This time, Flagg had found the Kingdom of Delain in exasperatingly healthy condition. Landry, Rolands grandfather, was a drunken old fool, easy to influence and twist, but a heart attack had taken him too soon. Flagg knew by then that Lita, Rolands mother, was the last person he wanted holding the scepter. She was ugly but goodhearted and strongwilled. Such a Queen was not a good growth medium for Flaggs brand of insanity. If he had come earlier in Landrys reign, there would have been time to put Lita out of the way, as he expected to put Peter out of the way. But hed had only six years, and that was not long enough. Still, she had accepted him as an advisor, and that was something. She did not like him much but she accepted himmostly because he could tell wonderful fortunes with cards. Lita loved hearing bits of gossip and scandal about those in her court and her Cabinet, and the gossip and scandal were doubly good because she got to hear not only what had happened but what would happen. It was hard to rid yourself of such an amusing diversion, even when you sensed that a person able to do such tricks might be dangerous. Flagg never told the Queen any of the darker news he sometimes saw in the cards. She wanted to know who had taken a lover or who had had words with his wife or her husband. She did not want to know about dark cabals and murderous plans. What she wanted from the cards was relatively innocent. During the long, long reign of Lita, Flagg was chagrined to find his main accomplishment was to be not turned out. He was able to maintain a foothold but to do little more than that. Oh, there were a few bright spotsthe encouragement of bad blood between two powerful squires in the Southern Barony and the discrediting of a doctor who had found a cure for some blood infections (Flagg wanted no cures in the Kingdom that were not magicalwhich is to say, given or withheld at his own whim) were examples of Flaggs work during that period. It was all pretty small change. Under Rolandpoor bowlegged, insecure Rolandthings marched more quickly toward Flaggs goal. Because he did have a goal, you know, in his fuzzy, malevolent sort of way, and this time it was grand indeed. He planned nothing more nor less than the complete overthrow of the monarchya bloody revolt that would plunge Delain into a thousand years of darkness and anarchy. Give or take a year or two, of course. 19 In Peters cool gaze he saw the very possible derailment of all his plans and careful work. More and more Flagg came to believe that getting rid of Peter was a necessity. Flagg has overstayed in Delain this time and he knew it. The muttering had begun. The work so well begun under Rolandthe steady rises in taxes, the midnight searches of small farmers barns and silage sheds for unreported crops and foodstuffs, the arming of the Home Guardsmust continue to its end under Thomas. He did not have time to wait through the reign of Peter as he had through that of his grandmother. Peter might not even wait for the mutterings of the people to come to his ears; Peters first command as King might well be that Flagg should be sent eastward out of the Kingdom and forbidden ever to come again, on pain of death. Flagg might murder an advisor before he could give the young King such advice, but the hell of it was, Peter would need no advisor. He would advise himselfand when Flagg saw the cool, unafraid way the boy, now fifteen and very tall, looked at him, he thought that Peter might already have given himself that advice. The boy liked to read, and he liked history, and in the last two years, as his father grew steadily grayer and frailer, he had been asking a lot of questions of his fathers other advisors, and of some of his teachers. Many of these questionstoo manyhad to do either with Flagg or with roads which would lead to Flagg if followed far enough. That the boy was asking such questions at fourteen and fifteen was bad. That he was getting comparatively honest answers from such timid, watchful men as the Kingdoms historians and Rolands advisors was much worse. It meant that, in the minds of these people, Peter was already almost Kingand that they were glad. They welcomed him and rejoiced in him, because he would be an intellectual, like them. And they also welcomed him because, unlike them, he was a brave boy who might well grow into a lionhearted King whose tale would be the stuff of legends. In him, they saw again the coming of the White, that ancient, resilient, yet humble force that has redeemed humankind again and again and again. He had to be put out of the way. Had to be. Flagg told himself this each night when he retired in the blackness of his inner chambers, and it was his first thought when he awoke in that blackness the next morning. He must be put out of the way, the boy must be put out of the way. But it was harder than it seemed.