The Eyes of the Dragon (32 page)

“I think he may be,” Peyna said. In truth, he knew perfectly well that the entire Staad family was with the exiles. He kept his ear firmly to the earth, and his ears had not grown so deaf that he was not able to hear many movements in the Kingdom.

“And you'd send him down here?”

“If he'll come, aye, I mean to,” Peyna replied.

“To do what? My Lord, I'm still not clear about that.”

“Nor am I,” Peyna said, looking cross. He felt more than cross; he felt bewildered. “I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.”

“I don't understand you, my Lord.”

“Neither do I, Dennis. Neither do I. Do you know what day this is?”

Dennis blinked at this sudden change in direction, but answered readily enough. “Yes—Tuesday.”

“Tuesday. Good. Now I'm going to ask you a question that my cursed intuition tells me is very important. If you don't know the answer—even if you are not sure—for the gods' sake, say so! Are you ready for the question?”

“Yes, my Lord,” Dennis said, but he wasn't sure that he really was. Peyna's piercing blue eyes under the wild tangle of his white brows had made him very nervous. The question was apt to be very difficult indeed. “That is, I think so.”

Peyna asked his question, and Dennis relaxed. It didn't make much sense to him—it was only more nonsense about the napkins, as far as he could see—but at least he knew the answer, and gave it.

“You're sure?” Peyna persisted.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Good. Then here is what I want you to do.”

Peyna spoke to Dennis for some time, as the three of them stood in the chilly sunshine in front of the “retirement cottage” where the old judge would never come again. Dennis listened earnestly, and when Peyna demanded that he repeat the instructions back, Dennis was able to do it quite neatly.

“Good,” Peyna said. “Very, very good.”

“I'm glad I've pleased you, sir.”

“Nothing about this business pleases me, Dennis. Nothing at all. If Ben Staad is with those unfortunate outcasts in the Far Forests, I mean to send him away from relative safety and into danger because he may be of some use to King Peter. I'm sending you back to the castle because my heart tells me there's something about those napkins he asked for . . . and the dollhouse . . .
something
. Sometimes I think I almost have it, and then it dances out of my grasp again. He did not ask for those things idly, Dennis. I'd wager my life on that. But I don't
know.
” Peyna abruptly slammed his fist down on his leg in frustration. “I am putting two fine young men into terrible danger, and my heart tells me I am doing the right thing, but I . . . don't . . . know . . .
WHY
!”

And inside the man who had in his heart once condemned a boy because of that boy's tears, the stranger laughed and laughed and laughed.

T
he two old men parted from Dennis. They shook hands all around; then Dennis kissed the Judge's ring, which bore the Great Seal of Delain on its face. Peyna had given up his Judge-General's bench, but had not been able to part with the ring, which to him summed up all the goodness of the law. He knew he had made mistakes from time to time, but he had not allowed them to break his heart. Even over this last and greatest of mistakes, his heart did not break. He knew as well as we in our own world do that the road to hell is paved with good intentions—but he also knew that, for human beings, good intentions are sometimes all there are. Angels may be safe from damnation, but human beings are less fortunate things, and for them hell is always close.

He protested Dennis's act of kissing his ring, but Dennis insisted. Then Arlen shook Dennis's hand and wished him speed o' the gods. Smiling (but Peyna could still see the fear lurking in Dennis's eyes), Dennis wished them the same. Then the young butler turned east, toward the castle, and the two old men headed west, toward the farmstead of one Charles Reechul. Reechul, who raised Anduan huskies for a living, paid the grinding taxes the King had imposed without complaint, and was thus considered loyal . . . but Peyna knew that Reechul was sympathetic to the exiles encamped in the Far Forests, and had helped others reach them. Peyna had never expected to need Reechul's services himself, but the time had come.

The farmer's eldest daughter, Naomi, drove Peyna and Arlen north on a sled pulled by twelve of the dogger's strongest huskies. By Wednesday night, they reached the edge of the Far Forests.

“How long to the camp of the exiles?” Peyna asked Naomi that night.

Naomi cast the thin, evil-smelling cigar she had been smoking into the fire. “Two more days if the skies keep fair. Four more days if it snows. Maybe never, if it blizzards.”

Peyna turned in. He drifted off to sleep almost at once. Logic or illogic, he was sleeping better than he had in years.

The weather kept clear the next day, and on Friday as well. At dusk of that day—the fourth since Peyna and Arlen had parted from Dennis—they reached the small huddle of tents and makeshift wooden huts for which Flagg had searched in vain.

“Ho! Who comes, and can you say the password?” a voice called. It was strong, sturdy, cheerful, and unafraid. Peyna recognized it.

“It's Naomi Reechul,” the girl called, “and the password two weeks ago was ‘tripos.' If it's not that now, Ben Staad, then put an arrow through me and I'll come back and haunt you!”

Ben appeared from behind a rock, laughing. “I'd not dare meet you as a ghost, Naomi—you're fearsome enough alive!”

Ignoring this, she turned to Peyna. “We've come,” she said.

“Yes,” Peyna said. “So I see.”

P
eter had the same feeling.

By Sunday, two days after Peyna and Arlen reached the camp of the exiles, his rope would still, by his calculations, finish up thirty feet short of the ground. This meant that when he dangled from the end of it with his arms fully extended, he would face a drop of at least twenty-one feet. He knew that he would be wiser by far to go on with his rope for another four months—even another two. If he dropped from the rope, fell badly, and broke both of his legs so that the Plaza guards found him groaning on the cobbles when they made their round-o'-the-clock, he would have wasted more than four years, simply because he did not have the patience to pursue his labor another four months.

This was logic Peyna could have appreciated, but Peter's feeling that he must now hurry was much stronger. Once Peyna would have snorted at the idea that feelings could be more trustworthy than logic . . . but now he might have been less sure.

Peter had been having a dream—for almost a week running now it had played over and over, gradually becoming more distinct. In it, he saw Flagg, bent over some bright and glowing object—it lit the magician's face a sickly greenish-yellow. In this dream, there always came a point when Flagg's eyes first widened, as if in surprise, and then narrowed to cruel slits. His brows pulled down; his forehead darkened; a grimace as bitter as a crescent moon twisted his mouth. In this expression, the dreaming Peter read one thing and one thing only: death. Flagg said only one word as he leaned forward and blew upon the brightly glowing object, which whiffed out like a candle when the magician's breath touched it. Only one word, but one was enough. The word from Flagg's mouth was Peter's own name, uttered in tones of angry discovery.

The night before, Saturday night, there had been a fairy-ring around the moon. The Lesser Warders thought it would soon snow. Examining the sky this afternoon, Peter knew they were right. It was his father who had taught Peter to read the weather, and standing at the window, Peter felt a pang of sadness . . . and a renewed spark of cold, quiet anger . . . the need to make things right again.

I'll make my try under cover of darkness and under cover of storm, he thought. There'll even be a bit of snow to cushion my fall.
He had to grin at that idea—three inches of light, powdery snow between him and the cobbles would do precious little one way or the other. Either his perilously thin rope would hold . . . or it would break. Assuming it held, he would take the drop. And his legs would either take the impact . . . or they wouldn't.

He would trust to luck, then. King's luck. It was a thing his father had often talked about.
There are lucky Kings and unlucky. But you'll be your own King and you'll have your own luck. M'self I think you'll be very lucky.

He had been King of Delain—at least in his own heart—for five years now, and he thought his luck had been the kind which the Staad family, with its famous bad luck, would have understood. But perhaps tonight would make up for all.

His rope, his legs, his luck. Either all would hold or all would break, quite possibly at the same time. No matter. Poor as it had been, he would trust to his luck.

“Tonight,” he murmured, turning from the window . . . but something happened at supper which changed his mind.

I
t took Peyna and Arlen all day Tuesday to make the ten miles to the Reechul farm, and they were nearly done in when they arrived. Castle Delain was twice as far, but Dennis probably could have been knocking at the West Gate—if he had actually been mad enough to do such a thing—by two that afternoon, in spite of his long walk the day before. Such is the difference, of course, between young men and old men. But what he
could
have done really didn't matter, because Peyna had been very clear in his instructions (especially for a man who claimed not to have the slightest idea of what he was doing), and Dennis meant to follow them to the letter. As a result, it would be some time yet before he entered the castle.

After covering not quite half the distance, he began to look for a place where he could hole up for the next few days. So far he had met no one on the road, but noon had passed and soon there would be people returning from the castle market. Dennis wanted no one to see him and mark him. He was, after all, supposed to be home, sick in bed. He did not have to look long before he found a place that suited him well enough. It was a deserted farmstead, once well kept but now beginning to fall into ruin. Thanks to Thomas the Tax-Bringer, there were many such places on the roads leading to the castle keep.

Dennis remained there until late Saturday afternoon—four days in all. Ben Staad and Naomi were already on their way back from the Far Forests to Peyna's farm by then, Naomi pushing her team of huskies for all they were worth. The knowledge would have eased Dennis a bit if he had known—but of course he did not, and he was lonely.

There was no food at all upstairs, but in the cellar he found a few potatoes and a handful of turnips. He ate the potatoes (Dennis hated turnips, always had, and always would), using his knife to cut out the rotten places—which meant he cut away three-fourths of every potato. He was left with a handful of white globes the size of pigeons' eggs. He ate a few, looked toward the turnips in the vegetable bin, and sighed. Like them (he didn't) or hate them (he did), he supposed he would be reduced to eating them by Friday or so.

If I'm hungry enough
, Dennis thought hopefully,
maybe they'll taste good. Maybe I'll just gobble those old turnips up and beg for more!

He finally did have to eat a number of them, although he managed to hold out until Saturday noon. By then, they actually had begun to
look
good, but as hungry as he was, they still
tasted
terrible.

Dennis, who suspected the days ahead might be very hard, ate them anyway.

D
ennis also found an old pair of snowshoes in the basement. The straps were far too large, but he had plenty of time to shorten them. The lacings had begun to rot, and there was nothing Dennis could do about that, but he thought they would serve the purpose. He wouldn't need them for long.

He slept in the cellar, fearing surprise, but during the daylight hours of those four long days, Dennis spent most of his time in the parlor of the deserted farmstead, watching the traffic pass to and fro—what little there was began around three o' the clock and had mostly ceased by five, when early-winter shadows began to cover the land. The parlor was a sad, empty place. Once it had been a cheery spot in which the family had gathered to discuss the day just done. Now it belonged only to the mice . . . and to Dennis, of course.

Peyna, after hearing Dennis declare that he could read and write “pretty well for a fellow in service” and seeing him draw his Great Letters (this had been over breakfast on Tuesday—the last real meal Dennis had had since his own lunch on Monday, a meal he looked back on with understandable nostalgia), had provided him with several sheets of paper and a lead pencil. And during most of the hours he spent in the deserted house, Dennis labored earnestly over a note. He wrote, scratched out, rewrote, frowned horribly as he reread, scratched his head, resharpened his pencil with his knife, and wrote again. He was ashamed of his spelling, and terrified he would forget some crucial thing Peyna had told him to put in. There were several times, times when his poor frazzled brain could make no more progress, when he wished Peyna had stayed up an hour longer on the night Dennis had come and written his own damned note, or called it aloud to Arlen. Most times, however, he was glad of the job. He had worked hard his whole life, and idleness made him nervous and uneasy. He would rather have worked his sturdy young man's body than his not-so-sturdy young man's brains, but work was work, and he was glad to have it.