by Stephen King
Peter turned his pale face away from both of them and looked out across the city, once more struggling for control of his emotions. His fingers were laced tightly together. His knuckles were white. He looked much older than sixteen just then.
"Do you see the box on the desk?" Peyna asked.
"Yes, Judge-General," Flagg said in his stiffest, most formal voice.
"Inside is a packet which appears to be slowly charring. Inside the packet are what look like grains of sand. I would like you to examine them and see if you can tell me what they are. I urge you very strongly not to touch them. I believe that the substance in the packet may have caused King Roland's death."
Flagg allowed himself to look worried. To tell the truth, he was feeling very fine. Playing a part always made him feel that way. He liked to act.
He picked up the packet, using the tweezers. He peered into it. His gaze sharpened.
"I want a piece of obsidian," he said. "I want it right now."
"I have a piece in my desk," Peter said dully, and brought it out. It was not as big as the one Flagg had used and then disposed of, but it was thick. He handed it to one of the Home Guards, who handed it to Flagg. The magician held it toward the light, frowning a little . . . but inside his heart, a little man was jumping excitedly up and down, turning cartwheels, and doing somersaults. The obsidian was much like his own, but one side was broken and jagged. Ah, the gods were smiling on him! Indeed, indeed, indeed they were!
"I dropped it a year or two ago," Peter said, seeing Flagg's interest. He was unaware--as was Peyna, at least for the moment--that he had added another layer of bricks to the wall that was a-building around him. "The half you're holding landed on my rug, which cushioned its fall. The other half landed on the stones, and shattered into half a hundred pieces. Obsidian is hard, but very brittle."
"Indeed, my Lord?" Flagg said gravely. "I've never seen such stone, although I've of course heard of it."
He put the obsidian on Peter's desk, upended the packet over it, and poured the three grains of sand onto it. In a moment, little tendrils of smoke began to rise from the obsidian. All present could see that each grain was slowly sinking into the pockmark it was creating in the world's hardest known stone. The guards murmured uneasily at the sight.
"Be silent!" Peyna roared, whirling on them. The guards drew back, faces long and white with terror. This seemed more and more like witchcraft to them.
"I believe I know what these grains are, and how to test my idea," Flagg said, rapping the words out. "But if I'm right, the test must be performed as quickly as possible."
"Why?" Peyna demanded.
"I believe these are grains of Dragon Sand," Flagg said. "I had a very small quantity once, but it disappeared, alas, before I could study it closely. It may well have been stolen."
Flagg did not miss the way Peyna's eyes flicked toward Peter at this.
"I have been uneasy about it off and on ever since," he went on, "because it is reputed to be one of the deadliest substances on earth. I did not have a chance to test its properties and so doubted, but I see much of what I was told proved here, already."
Flagg pointed at the obsidian. The dimples in which the three specks of green sand rested were each now nearly an inch deep--smoke rose from each like smoke from a tiny campfire. Flagg guessed that each grain had eaten through half the thickness of the stone.
"Those three specks of sand are working their way rapidly through a piece of the hardest rock we know," he said. "Dragon Sand is reputed to be so corrosive that it will eat through any solid--any solid at all. And it produces fearsome heat. You! Guard!"
Flagg pointed at one of the Home Guards. He stepped forward, not looking happy to have been chosen.
"Touch the side of the rock," Flagg said, and as the guard reached a tentative hand forward to touch the paperweight, he added sharply: "Just the side! Don't get your hand near those holes!"
The guard touched the paperweight and drew his hand back with a gasp. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, but not before Peyna had seen the blisters rising there.
"Obsidian conducts heat very slowly, I've heard," Flagg said, "but that piece is as hot as the top of a stove . . . all from three gains of sand that would fit on the moon of your pinkie fingernail, with room left over! Touch the prince's desk, Lord Judge-General!"
Peyna did. He was distressed and amazed by the heat under his hand. Soon the heavy wood must begin to blister and char.
"So we must act quickly," Flagg said. "Soon the desk itself will catch fire. If we breathe the fumes--always assuming the stories I've been told are true--all of us will die within days. But, to be sure, another test--"
At this, the Home Guards looked more uneasy than ever.
"All right," Peyna said. "What is this test? Be quick, man!" He detested Flagg more than ever now, and if he had ever felt it would not do to underestimate him, he felt that doubly now. Five minutes before, Peyna had been ready to dismiss the man as the Court Nobody. Now it seemed that their lives--and Peyna's case against Peter--depended on him.
"I propose to fill a bucket with water," Flagg said, speaking more rapidly than ever. His dark eyes gleamed.
The Home Guards and Peyna stared at those small black holes in the obsidian, at those tiny ribbons of steam, with the evil fascination of birds hypnotized by a nest of weaving pythons. How deep into the obsidian now? How close to the wood? Impossible to tell. Even Peter was looking, although the tired mixture of sorrow and confusion had not left his face.
"Water from the prince's pump!" Flagg shouted at one of the guards. "We want it in a bucket, or a deep pot or pan. Now! Now!"
The guard looked at Peyna.
"Do it," Peyna said, trying not to sound frightened--but he was frightened, and Flagg knew it.
The guard went. In moments, they heard water being pumped into a bucket he had found in the butler's cupboard.
Flagg was speaking again.
"I propose to dip my finger into this bucket and let a drop of water fall into one of those holes," he said. "We'll watch this closely, Lord Judge-General. We must see if the water which goes into the hole turns momentarily green. It's a sure sign."
"And then?" Peyna asked tautly.
The Home Guard returned. Flagg took the bucket, set it on the desk.
"Then I'll put drops very carefully into the other two holes," Flagg said. He spoke calmly, but his normally pallid cheeks were flushed. "Water won't stop Dragon Sand, it's told, but it'll hold it." This was making things quite a bit worse than they were, but Flagg wanted them frightened.
"Why not just douse it?" one of the guards blurted.
Peyna favored this upstart with a horrible glare, but Flagg answered the question calmly as he dipped his pinkie finger into the bucket.
"Would you like me to wash those three grains of sand out of the holes they've made in the rock and somewhere onto the lad's desk?" he asked, almost jovially. "We could leave you in here to put out the fire when the water dried up, sirrah!"
The guard said no more.
Flagg drew his dripping finger out of the bucket.
"Water's warm already," he said to Peyna, "just from sitting on the desk."
He carefully brought his finger, from which a single drop of water hung, over one of the holes.
"Watch closely!" Flagg said sharply, and to Peter he sounded at that moment like a cheap peddler about to perform some monstrously deceiving trick. But Peyna bent close. The Home Guards craned their necks. That single drop of water hung from Flagg's finger, for a moment catching all of Peter's room behind it in perfect curved miniature. It hung . . . elongated . . . and dropped into the hole.
There was a spatting hisss, like the sound of grease dropped onto a hot iron skillet. A tiny geyser of steam arose from the hole . . . but before it did, Peyna clearly saw a cat's-eye flash of green. In that moment, Peter's fate was sealed.
"Dragon Sand, by the gods!" Flagg whispered hoarsely. "Don't, for pity's sake, breathe that steam!"
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Anders Peyna's courage was as hard as his reputation, but he was afraid now. To him that single wink of green light had seemed inexpressibly evil.
"Put out the other two," he said hoarsely. "Now!"
"I told you," Flagg said, calmly dipping his pinkie again and staring at the obsidian. "They can't be put out--well, there is one way, the tales say, but only one. You wouldn't like it. Yet we can hold them, and then get rid of them. I think."
He carefully plinked a drop into each of the other two holes. Each time there was a sullen green flash of light, and a plume of steam.
"We're all right for a bit, think," Flagg said. One of the Home Guards sighed in gusty relief. "Bring me gloves . . . or folded cloths . . . anything I can use to pick up this rock. It's as hot as fury, and those drops of water will be boiled away in no time."
Two hot pads from the butler's closet were brought quickly. Flagg used them to grasp the obsidian. He lifted it, careful to keep it level, then dropped it into the bucket. As the obsidian sank to the bottom, all of them clearly saw the water turn a momentary light green.
"Now," Flagg said expansively, "that is well. One of these guards must take this bucket out of the castle, and to the large pump by the Great Old Tree in the middle of the keep. There you must draw a large basin of water, and put the bucket in the basin. The basin must be taken to the middle of Lake Johanna, and sunk in the middle. The Dragon Sand may heat up the lake in a hundred thousand years, but let those that come in that time--if any do--worry about that, I say."
Peyna paused for just a moment, biting his lip in uncharacteristic indecision, and then he said: "You and you and you. Do as he says."
The bucket was removed. The Home Guards carried it like men carrying a live bomb. Flagg was amused, for all of this was, in large part, magician's foolery, as Peter himself had momentarily suspected. The single drops of water he had allowed to fall into the holes had not been enough to stop the corrosive effect of the sand--at least not for long--but he knew that the water in the bucket would damp it well. Even less liquid would have served for more of the sand . . . a goblet of wine, say. But let them believe what they would; in time they would turn against Peter with that much more fury.
When the guards had gone, Peyna turned to Flagg. "You said there was one way the effect of Dragon Sand could be neutralized."
"Yes--the stories say that if it is taken into a living being, that living being will burn in agony until it is dead . . . and when it is over--the dying--the power of the Dragon Sand also dies. I had meant to test it, but before I could do it, my sample disappeared."
Peyna was staring at him, white around the lips. "And on what sort of living being did you intend to test this damned stuff, Magician?"
Flagg looked at Peyna with bland innocence. "Why, on a mouse, my Lord Judge-General, of course."
41
At three that afternoon, a strange meeting took place in the Royal Court of Delain at the base of the Needle--a great room which, over the years, had become known simply as "Peyna's Court."
Meeting--I don't like that word. It's too tame and small to describe the momentous decision that was arrived at that afternoon. I cannot call it a hearing or a trial, because that gathering had no legal meaning at all, but it was very important, as I think you will agree.
The room was large enough to hold five hundred, but there were only seven there that afternoon. Six of them huddled close together, as if it made them nervous to be so few in a place meant for so many. The royal arms of the Kingdom--a unicorn spearing a dragon--hung on one of the circular stone walls, and Peter found his gaze returning to this again and again. Besides himself, Peyna was there, and Flagg (it was Flagg, of course, who sat slightly apart from the others), and four of the Kingdom's Great Lawyers. There were ten Great Lawyers in all, but the other six were at various farflung places in Delain, hearing cases. Peyna had decided he couldn't wait for them. He knew he had to move fast and decisively, or the Kingdom might bleed. He knew it, but it galled him to know he would need the help of this cool young murderer to avert such bloodshed.
That Peter was a murderer was something Anders Peyna had now decided in his own heart. It wasn't the box, the green sand, or even the burning mouse that had decided him. It was Peter's tears. Peter, to do him credit, looked neither guilty nor weak now. He was pale but calm, completely in charge of himself again.
Peyna cleared his throat. The sound echoed dully back from the forbidding stone walls of the court chamber. He pressed a hand to his forehead and was not entirely surprised to find a sheen of cold sweat there. He had heard testimony in hundreds of great and solemn cases; he had sent more men than he cared to remember beneath the headsman's axe. But never had he thought he would have to attend a "meeting" such as this, or the trial of a prince for the murder of his royal father . . . and such a trial would surely follow if all went as he hoped this afternoon. It was right, he thought, that he be sweating, and right that the sweat should be cold.
Just a meeting. Nothing legal here; nothing official; nothing of the Kingdom. But none of them--not Peyna, not Flagg, not the Great Lawyers, not Peter himself--were fooled. This was the real trial. This meeting. The power was here. That burning mouse had set a great course of events in motion. That course would either be turned here, as a great river may be turned near its source when it is still a brook, or it would be allowed to run onward, gathering power as it went, until no force on earth could turn it or stand before it.
Just a meeting, Anders Peyna thought, and wiped more sweat from his forehead.
42
Flagg watched the proceedings with a lively eye. Like Peyna, he knew that all would be decided here, and he felt confident.
Peter's head was up, his gaze firm. He met the eyes of each member of this informal jury in turn.
The stone walls frowned down on all seven. The spectators' benches were empty, but Peyna seemed to feel the weight of phantom eyes, eyes that demanded justice be rendered in this terrible matter.
"My Lord," Peyna said at last, "the sun made you King three hours ago."
Peter looked at Peyna, surprised but silent.
"Yes," Peyna said, as if Peter had spoken. The Great Lawyers were nodding, and they looked dreadfully solemn. "There has been no coronation, but a coronation is only a public event. It is, for all its solemnity, show and not substance. God, the law, and the sun make a King, not the coronation. You are King at this very minute, legally able to command me, all of us here, the entire Kingdom. This puts us in a terrible dilemma. Do you understand what it is?"
"Yes," Peter said gravely. "You think your King is a murderer."
Peyna was a little surprised by this bluntness, but not entirely unhappy with it. Peter had always been a blunt boy; it was a pity that his surface bluntness had concealed such depths of calculation, but the important thing was that such bluntness, probably the result of a boy's stupid bravado, would speed things up.
"What we believe, my Lord, doesn't matter. Guilt or innocence is for a court to determine--so I've always been taught, so I believe with my most sincere heart. There is only one exception to this. Kings are above the law. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"But--" Peyna raised his finger. "But this crime was committed before you were King. So far as I know, this terrible situation has never come before a court of Delain before. The possibilities are terrible. Anarchy, chaos, civil war. To avert all of these things, my Lord, we must have your help."
Peter looked at him gravely. "I will help if I can," he said.
And I think--I pray--you will agree to what I am about to propose, Peyna thought. He was conscious of fresh sweat on his forehead, but he didn't wipe it off this time. Peter was only a boy, but he was a bright boy--he might take it as a sign of weakness. You'll say you're agreeing for the good of the Kingdom, but a boy who could have the monstrous, twisted courage to kill his own father is also, I hope, a boy who cannot help believing he will get away with it. You believe we will help you cover t
his up, but oh my Lord, you are so wrong.
Flagg, who could almost read these thoughts, raised his hand to his mouth to cover a smile. Peyna hated him, but Peyna had become his number-one helper without even knowing it.
"I want you to put aside the crown," Peyna said.
Peter looked at him with grave surprise. "Renounce the throne?" he asked. "I . . . I don't know, my Lord Judge-General. I should have to think about that before I said yes or no. That might be hurting the Kingdom by trying to help it--as a doctor may kill a sick man by giving him too much medicine."
The lad's clever, Flagg and Peyna thought together.
"You misunderstand me. It's not a renunciation of the throne I ask for. Only that you put the crown aside until this matter has been decided. If you are found innocent of your father's murder--"
"As I will be," Peter said. "If my father had ruled until I was old and toothless, it would have made me perfectly happy. I wanted only to serve him and support him and love him in all I did."
"Yet your father is dead, and you stand accused by circumstance."
Peter nodded.
"If you are found innocent, you would resume the crown. If you are found guilty--"
The Great Lawyers looked nervous at this, but Peyna did not flinch.
"If you are found guilty, you would be taken to the top of the Needle, where you would spend the rest of your life. None of the royal family may be executed; that law is a thousand years old."
"And Thomas would become King?" Peter asked thoughtfully. Flagg stiffened slightly.
"Yes."
Peter frowned, deep in thought. He looked terribly tired, but not confused or afraid, and Flagg felt a faint stirring of fear.
"Suppose I refuse?"
"If you refuse, then you become King in spite of terrible charges which have not been answered. Many of your subjects--most, in light of the evidence--will believe they have come to be ruled by a young man who murdered his own father to gain the throne. I think there will be revolt and civil war, and that those things will come before much time has passed.