The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King [30]
Thomas said nothing, but Flagg had been well pleased. He saw that Tommy was thinking about it, all right, and he judged than another of those poisoned caskets was tumbling down into the well of Thomas's mind- ker -splash! And that was indeed so. Later, when Peter proposed to Thomas that they share the expense of the nightly bottle of wine, Thomas had remembered the great treasure room-and he remembered that all the treasure in it would belong to his brother. Easy for you to talk so blithely of buying wine! Why not? Someday you'll have all the money in the world!
Then, about a year before he brought the poisoned wine to the King, on impulse, Flagg had shown Thomas this secret passage and on this one occasion his usually unerring instinct for mischief might have led him astray. Again, I leave it for you to decide.
Tommy, you look down in the dumps!" he cried. The hood of his cloak was pushed back on that day, and he looked almost normal.
Almost.
Tommy felt down in them. He had suffered through a long luncheon at which his father had praised Peter's scores in geometry and navigation to his advisors with the most lavish superlatives. Roland had never rightly understood either. He knew that a triangle had three sides and a square had four; he knew you could find your way out of the woods when you were lost by following Old Star in the sky; and that was where his knowledge ended. That was where Thomas's knowledge ended, too, so he felt that luncheon would never be done. Worse, the meat was just the way his father liked it-bloody and barely cooked. Bloody meat made Thomas feel almost sick.
"My lunch didn't agree with me, that's all," he said to Flagg.
"Well, I know just the thing to cheer you up," Flagg said. "I'll show you a secret of the castle, Tommy my boy."
Thomas was playing with a buggerlug bug. He had it on his desk and had set his schoolbooks around it in a series of barriers. If the trundling beetle looked as if he might find a way out, Thomas would shift one of the books to keep him in.
"I'm pretty tired," Thomas said. This was not a lie. Hearing Peter praised so highly always made him feel tired.
"You'll like it," Flagg said in a tone that was mostly wheedling but a little threatening, too.
Thomas looked at him apprehensively. "There aren't any any bats, are there?"
Flagg laughed cheerily-but that laugh raised gooseflesh on Thomas's arms anyway. He clapped Thomas on the back. "Not a bat! Not a drip! Not a draft! Warm as toast! And you can peek at your father, Tommy!"
Thomas knew that peeking was just another way of saying spying, and that spying was wrong-but this had been a shrewd shot all the same. This next time the buggerlug bug found a way to escape between two of the books, Thomas let it go. "All right," he said, "but there better not be any bats."
Flagg slipped an arm around the boy's shoulders. "No bats, I swear-but here's something for you to mull over in you mind, Tommy. You'll not only see your father, you'll see him through the eyes of his greatest trophy."
Thomas's own eyes widened with interest. Flagg was satisfied. The fish was hooked and landed. "What do you mean?"
"Come and see for yourself," was all he would say.
He led Thomas through a maze of corridors. You would have become lost very soon, and I probably would have gotten lost myself before long, but Thomas knew this way as well as you know your way through your own bedroom in the dark-at least he did until Flagg led him aside.
They had almost reached the King's own apartments when Flagg pushed open a recessed wooden door that Thomas had never really noticed before. Of course it had always been there, but in castles there are often doors-whole wings, even-that have mastered the art of being dim.
This passage was quite narrow. A chambermaid with an arm-load of sheets passed them; she was so terrified to have met the King's magician in this slim stone throat that it seemed she would happily