The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King [81]
Flagg had murdered his father- and Flagg kept his ear to the ground.
It was a shame Peter never stopped to wonder about that vague smell of must about the napkins, or to ask if the person hired to remove the royal crests had been let go after removing a certain number, or if that person was still at work-but, of course, his mind was on other things. He could not help noticing that they were very old, and this was certainly a good thing-he was able to take a great many more threads from each than he ever would have guessed in even his most optimistic moments. How many more than that he could have taken he came to know only in time.
Still, I can hear some of you saying, threads from napkins to make a rope long enough to reach from the window of the Needle's topmost cell to the courtyard? Threads from napkins to make a rope strong enough to support one hundred and seventy pounds? I still think you are joking!
Those of you who think so are forgetting the dollhouse and the loom within, a loom so tiny that the threads of napkins were perfect for its tiny shuttle. Those of you who think so are forgetting that everything in the dollhouse was tiny, but worked perfectly. The sharp things had been removed, and that included the loom's cutting blade but otherwise it was in-tact.
It was the dollhouse about which Flagg had had vague misgivings so long ago which was now Peter's only real hope of escape.
It would have to be a much better storyteller than I am, I think, to tell you how it was for Peter during the five years he spent at the top of the Needle. He ate; he slept; he looked out the window, which gave him a view to the west of the city; he exercised morning, noon, and evening; he dreamed his dreams of freedom. In the summer his apartment sweltered. In the winter it froze.
During the second winter he caught a bad case of the grippe which almost killed him.
Peter lay feverish and coughing under the thin blanket on his bed. At first, he was only afraid he would lapse into delirium and rave about the rope that was hidden in a neat coil under two of the stone blocks on the east side of his bedroom. As his fever grew worse, the rope he had woven with the tiny dollhouse loom came to seem less important, because he began to think he would die.
Beson and his Lesser Warders were convinced of it. They had, in fact, begun to wager on when it would happen. One night, about a week after the onset of his fever, while the wind raged blackly outside and the temperature dropped down to zero, Ro-land appeared to Peter in a dream. Peter was convinced that Roland had come to take him to the Far Fields.
"I'm ready, Da '!" he cried. In his delirium he didn't know if he had spoken aloud or only in his mind. "I'm ready to go!"
Yell not be dying yet, his father said in this dream or vision or whatever it was. Ye've much to do, Peter.
"Father!" Peter shrieked. His voice was powerful, and below him, the warders-Beson included-quailed, thinking that Peter must be seeing the smoking, murdered ghost of King Roland, come to take Peter's soul to hell. They made no more wagers that night, and in fact one of them went to the Church of the Great Gods the very next day and embraced his religion again, and eventually became a priest. This man's name was Curran, and I may tell you of him in another story.
Peter really was seeing a ghost in a way-although whether it was the actual shade of his father or only a ghost born in his fever-struck brain, I cannot say.
His voice lapsed into a mutter; the warders did not hear the rest.
"It's so cold and I am so hot."
My poor boy, his glimmering father said. You've had hard trials, and there are more of them ahead, I think. But Dennis will know
"Know what?" Peter gasped. His cheeks were red, but his forehead was as pale as a wax candle.
Dennis will know where the sleepwalker goes, his father whispered, and was gone.
Peter lapsed into a faint that quickly became a deep, sound sleep. In that sleep, his fever broke. The boy who had made it his practice over the last year to do sixty push-ups and a hundred sit-ups