The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King [134]
Flagg seemed to flinch again almost to cringe. Then he came forward-slowly, very slowly. His huge axe swung in his left hand.
"You may command in the next world," he whispered. "By escaping, you've played into my hands. If I'd thought of hand in time I should have-I would have engineered a trumped up escape myself! Oh, Peter, your head will roll into the fire and you'll smell your hair burning before your brain knows you're dead. You'll burn as your father burned and they'll give me a medal for it in the Plaza! For did you not murder your own father for the crown?"
"You murdered him," Peter said.
Flagg laughed. "I? I? You've gone insane in the Needle, my boy." Flagg sobered. His eyes glittered. "But suppose just for an instant-suppose I did? Who would believe it?"
Peter still held the chain of the locket looped over his right hand. Now he held that hand out and the locket hung below it, swinging hypnotically, raying flashes of ruddy light on the wall. At the sight of it, Flagg's eyes widened and Peter thought: He recognizes it! By all the Gods, he recognizes it!
"You killed my father, and it wasn't the first time you'd arranged things in the same way. You had forgotten, hadn't you? I see it in your eyes. When Leven Valera stood in your way during the evil days of Alan II, his wife was found poisoned. Circumstances made Valera 's guilt seem without question as they made my guilt seem without question."
"Where did you find that, you little bastard?" Flagg whispered, and Naomi gasped.
"Yes, you forgot," Peter repeated. "I think that, sooner or later, things like you always begin to repeat themselves, because things like you know only a very few simple tricks. After a while, someone always sees through them. I think that is all that saves us, ever.
The locket hung and swung in the firelight.
"Who would care now?" Peter asked. "Who would believe? Many. If they believed nothing else, they would believe you are as old as their hearts tell them you are, monster."
"Give it to me!"
"You killed Eleanor Valera, and you killed my father."
"Yes, I brought him the wine," Flagg said, his eyes blazing, "and I laughed when his guts burned, and I laughed harder when you were taken up the stairs to the top of the Needle. But those who hear me say so in this room will all soon be dead, and no one saw me bring wine to these rooms! They only saw your"
And then, from behind Peter, a new voice spoke. It was not strong, that voice; it was so low it could scarcely be heard, and it trembled. But it struck all of them-Flagg included-dumb with wonder.
"There was one other who saw," Peter's brother, Thomas, said from the shadowed depths of his father's chair. "I saw you, magician.
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Peter drew aside and made a half-turn, the hand with the locket hanging from it still outstretched.
Thomas! he tried to say, but he could not speak, so struck was he by wonder and horror at the changes in his brother. He had grown fat and somehow old. He had always looked more like Roland than Peter had, and now the resemblance was so great it was eerie.
Thomas! he tried to say again, and realized why the bow and arrow were no longer in their places above the head of Niner. The bow was in Thomas's lap, and the arrow was nocked in the gut string.
It was then that Flagg shrieked and threw himself forward, raising the great executioner's axe over his head.
It was not a shriek of rage but of terror. Flagg's white face was drawn; his hair stood on end. His mouth trembled loosely. Peter had been surprised by the resemblance but knew his brother; Flagg was fooled completely by the flickering fire and the deep shadows cast by the wings of the chair in which Thomas sat.
He forgot Peter. It was the figure in the chair he charged with the axe. He had killed the old man once by poison, and yet here he was again, sitting in his smelly mead-soaked robe, sitting with his bow and arrow in his hands, looking at Flagg with haggard, accusing eyes.
"Ghost!" Flagg shrieked. "Ghost or demon from hell, I care not!