The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King [62]
And if he grew depressed enough to jump, would anyone care? Not much. It would save the state the expense of feeding and housing a blue-blooded murderer.
As the sun began to move across the floor and up the wall, Peter sat and watched it. His dinner-more fatty meat, watery ale, and salty bread-came. Peter did not touch it.
When the sun was gone, he sat in the dark until nine, and then went into the bedroom. He stripped to his singlet, knelt, and prayed with small white puffs coming from his mouth. He got into bed, laced his hands behind his head, and lay on his back, staring up into the darkness. He lay there thinking about what had become of him. Around one o'clock in the morning, he slept.
So he was on the second day.
And the third.
And the fourth.
For a full week Peter ate nothing, spoke nothing, and did nothing but stand at his sitting-room window or sit in his chair, watching the sun crawl across the floor and then up the wall to the ceiling. Beson was convinced that the boy was in an utter blackness of guilt and despair-he had seen such things before, especially among royalty. The boy would die, he thought, like a wild bird that was never meant to be caged. The boy would die, and good riddance to him.
But on the eighth day, Peter sent for Aron Beson and gave him certain instructions and he did not give them like a prisoner.
He gave them like a King.
Peter did feel despair but it was not as deep as Beson believed. He spent that first week in the Needle carefully thinking out his position, and trying to decide what he should do. He had fasted to clear his head. Eventually it did clear, but for a while he felt terribly lost, and the weight of his situation pressed down on his head like a blacksmith' anvil. Then he remembered one simple truth: he knew he hadn't killed his father, even if everyone else in the Kingdom thought he had.
During the first day or two, he grappled with useless feelings. The childish part of him kept crying out, Not fair! This is not fair! And of course it wasn't, but that sort of thinking got him no place. As he fasted, he began to regain control of himself. His empty belly peeled the childish part of him away. He began to feel cleaner, husked out, empty like a glass waiting to be filled. After two or three days of eating nothing, the growlings in his stomach subsided, and he began to hear his real thoughts more clearly. He prayed, but part of him knew that he was doing more than praying; he was talking to himself, listening to him-self, wondering if there was a way out of this prison in the sky where he had been so neatly put.
He had not killed his father. That was the first thing. Someone had blamed it on him. That was the second thing. Who? There was only one person who could have, of course; only one person in all of Delain who could have had such an awful poison as Dragon Sand.
Flagg.
It made perfect sense. Flagg knew he would have no place in a kingdom ruled by Peter. Flagg had been careful to make Thomas his friend and to make Thomas fear him. Somehow, Flagg had murdered Roland and then arranged the evidence which had sent Peter here.
He was this far by the third night of Thomas's reign.
Then what was he to do? Simply accept? No, he wouldn't do that. Escape? He couldn't do that. No one had ever escaped from the Needle.
Except
A glimmer came to him. This was on the fourth night, as he looked at his dinner tray. Fatty meat, watery ale, salty bread. A plain white plate. No napkin.
Except
The glimmer grew brighter.
There might be a way to escape. There might. It would be horribly dangerous, and it would be long. At the end of much work, he might only die in spite of all his efforts. But there might be a way.
And if he did escape, what then? Was