The Eyes of the Dragon (7 page)

“It won't take up your time for long, Peter,” Roland advised him. “If Yosef says it will die, it will die.” Roland's face was a bit pale and his old hands were trembling. The beating had pained him more than it had pained Peter, who really was his favorite . . . although Roland foolishly fancied no one knew this but himself.

“I don't know,” Peter said. “I thought that horse-doctoring fellow knew what he was talking about.”

It turned out that the horse-doctoring fellow had. The horse did not take blood poisoning, and it did not die, and in the end its limp was so slight that even Yosef was forced to admit it was hardly noticeable. “At least, when she's fresh,” he amended. Peter was more than just faithful about putting on the poultices; he was nearly religious. He changed old for new three times a day and did it a fourth time before he went to bed. Ben Staad did stand in for Peter from time to time, but those times were few. Peter named the horse Peony, and they were great friends ever after.

Flagg had most assuredly been right about one thing on the day he advised Roland against letting Peter play with the dollhouse: servants were everywhere, they see everything, and their tongues wag. Several servants had witnessed the scene in the stableyard, but if every servant who later claimed to have been there really had been, there would have been a mob of them crowded around the edges of the stableyard that hot summer day. That had, of course, not been the case, but the fact that so many of them found the event worth lying about was a sign that Peter was regarded as an interesting figure indeed. They talked about it so much that it became something of a nine days' wonder in Detain. Yosef also talked; so, for that matter, did the young horse doctor. Everything that they said spoke well for the young prince—Yosef's word in particular carried much weight, because he was greatly respected. He began to call Peter “the young King,” something he had never done before.

“I believe God spared the nag because the young King stood up for her so brave-like,” he said. “And he worked at them poultices like a slave. Brave, he is; he's got the heart of a dragon. He'll make a King someday, all right Ai! You should have heard his voice when he told me to hold the maul!”

It was a great story, all right, and Yosef drank on it for the next seven years—until Peter was arrested for a hideous crime, judged guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment in the cell atop the Needle for the rest of his life

P
erhaps you are wondering what Thomas was like, and some of you may already be casting him in a villain's part, as a willing co-schemer in Flagg's plot to snatch the crown away from its rightful owner.

That was not really the case at all, although to some it always seemed so, and of course Thomas did play a part. He did not seem, I admit, to be a really good boy—at least, not at first glance. He was surely not a good boy in the way that Peter was a good boy, but no brother would have looked really good beside Peter, and Thomas knew it well by the time he was four—that was the year after the famous sack-race, and the one in which the famous stableyard incident took place. Peter rarely lied and never cheated. Peter was smart and kind, tall and handsome. He looked like their mother, who had been so deeply loved by the King and the people of Delain.

How could Thomas compare with goodness like
that?
A simple question with a simple answer. He couldn't.

Unlike Peter, Thomas was the spitting image of his father. This pleased the old man a little, but it didn't give him the pleasure most men feel when they have a son who carries the clear stamp of their features. Looking at Thomas was too much like looking into a sly mirror. He knew that Thomas's fine blond hair would gray early and then begin to fall out; Thomas would be bald by the time he was forty. He knew that Thomas would never be tall, and if he had his father's appetite for beer and mead, he would be carrying a big belly before him by the time he was twenty-five. Already his toes had begun to turn in, and Roland guessed Thomas would walk with his own bowlegged swagger.

Thomas was not exactly a good boy, but you must not think that made him a bad boy. He was sometimes a sad boy, often a confused boy (he took after his father in another way, as well—hard thinking made his nose stuffy and his head feel like boulders were rolling around inside), and often a jealous boy, but he wasn't a bad boy.

Of whom was he jealous? Why, of his brother, of course. He was jealous of Peter. It wasn't enough that Peter would be King, Oh no! It wasn't enough that their father liked Peter best, or that the
servants
liked Peter best, or that their
teachers
liked Peter best because he was always ready at lessons and didn't need to be coaxed. It wasn't enough that
everyone
liked Peter best, or that Peter had a best friend. There was one more thing.

When anyone looked at Thomas, his father the King most of all, Thomas thought he knew they were thinking:
We loved your mother and you killed her in your coming. And what did we get out of the pain and death you caused her? A dull little boy with a round face that has hardly any chin, a dull little boy who couldn't make all fifteen of the Great Letters until he was eight. Your brother Peter was able to make them all when he was six. What did we get? Not much. Why did you come, Thomas? What good are you? Throne insurance? Is that all you are? Throne insurance in case Peter the Precious should fall off his limping nag and crack his head open? Is that all? Well, we don't want you. None of us want you. None of us want you. . . .

The part Thomas played in his brother's imprisonment was dishonorable, but even so he was not a really bad boy. I believe this, and hope that in time you will come to believe it, too.

O
nce, as a boy of seven, Thomas spent a whole day laboring in his room, carving his father a model sailboat. He did it with no way of knowing that Peter had covered himself with glory that day on the archery range, with his father in attendance. Peter was not, ordinarily, much of a bowman—in that area, at least, Thomas would turn out to be far superior to his older brother—but on that one day, Peter had shot the junior course of targets like one inspired. Thomas was a sad boy, a confused boy, and he was often an unlucky boy.

Thomas had thought of the boat because sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, his father liked to go out to the moat which surrounded the palace and float a variety of model boats. Such simple pleasures made Roland extremely happy, and Thomas had never forgotten one day when his father had taken him—and
just
him—along. In those days, his father had an advisor whose only job was to show Roland how to make paper boats, and the King had conceived a great enthusiasm for them. On this day, a hoary old carp had risen out of the mucky water and swallowed one of Roland's paper boats whole. Roland had laughed like a boy and declared it was better than a tale about a sea monster. He hugged Thomas very tight as he said so. Thomas never forgot that day—the bright sunshine, the damp, slightly moldy odor of the moat water, the warmth of his father's arms, the scratchiness of his beard.

So, feeling particularly lonely one day, he had hit on the idea of making his father a sailboat. It would not be a really great job, and Thomas knew it—he was almost as clumsy with his hands as he was at memorizing his lessons. But he also knew that his father could have any craftsman in Delain—even the great Ellender himself, who was now almost completely blind—make him boats if he so desired. The crucial difference, Thomas thought, would be that Roland's own son had taken a
whole day
to carve him a boat for his Sunday pleasure.

Thomas sat patiently by his window, urging the boat out of a block of wood. He used a sharp knife, nicked himself times without number, and cut himself quite badly once. Yet he kept on, aching hands or no. As he worked he daydreamed of how he and his father would go out on Sunday afternoon and sail the boat, just the two of them all alone, because Peter would be riding Peony in the woods or off playing with Ben. And he wouldn't even mind if that same carp came up and ate his wooden boat, because then his father would laugh and hug him and say it was better than a story of sea monsters eating Anduan clipper ships whole.

But when he got to the King's chamber Peter was there and Thomas had to wait for nearly half an hour with the boat hidden behind his back while his father extolled Peter's bowmanship. Thomas could see that Peter was uncomfortable under the unceasing barrage of praise. He could also see that Peter knew Thomas wanted to talk to their father, and that Peter kept trying to tell their father so. It didn't matter, none of it mattered. Thomas hated him anyway.

At last Peter was allowed to escape. Thomas approached his father, who looked at him kindly enough now that Peter was gone. “I made you something, Dad,” he said, suddenly shy. He held the boat behind his back with hands that were suddenly wet and clammy with sweat.

“Did you now, Tommy?” Roland said. “Why, that was kind, wasn't it?”

“Very kind, Sire,” said Flagg, who happened to be idling nearby. He spoke casually but watched Thomas with bright interest.

“What is it, lad? Show me!”

“I remembered how much you liked to have a boat or two out on the moat Sunday afternoons, Dad, and . . .” He wanted desperately to say,
and I wanted you to take me out with you again sometime, so I made this
, but he found he could not utter such a thing. “. . .and so I made you a boat. . . . I spent a whole day . . . cut myself . . . and . . . and . . .” Sitting in his window seat, carving the boat, Thomas had made up a long, eloquent speech which he would utter before bringing the boat out from behind his back and presenting it with a flourish to his father, but now he could hardly remember a word of it, and what he could remember didn't seem to make any sense.

Horribly tongue-tied, he took the sailboat with its awkward flapping sail out from behind his back and gave it to Roland. The King turned it over in his big, short-fingered hands. Thomas stood and watched him, totally unaware that he had forgotten to breathe.

At last Roland looked up. “Very nice, very nice, Tommy. Canoe, isn't it?”

“Sailboat.”
Don't you see the sail?
he wanted to
cry. It took me an hour alone just to tie the knots, and it isn't my fault one of them came loose so it flaps!

The King fingered the striped sail, which Thomas had cut from a pillowcase.

“So it is . . . of course it is. At first I thought it was a canoe and this was some Oranian girl's washing.” He tipped a wink at Flagg, who smiled vaguely at the air and said nothing. Thomas suddenly felt he might vomit quite soon.

Roland looked at his son more seriously, and beckoned for him to come close. Timidly, hoping for the best, Thomas did so.

“It's a good boat, Tommy. Sturdy, like yourself, a bit clumsy like yourself, but good—like yourself. And if you want to give me a really
fine
present, work hard in your own bowmanship classes so you can take a first-class medal as Pete did today.”

Thomas
had
taken a first in the lower-circle bowmanship courses the year before, but his father seemed to have forgotten this in his joy over Peter's accomplishment. Thomas did not remind him; he merely stood there, looking at the boat in his father's big hands. His cheeks and forehead had flushed to the color of old brick.

“When it was at last down to just two boys—Peter and Lord Towson's son—the instructor decreed they should draw back another forty koner. Towson's boy looked downcast, but Peter just walked to the mark and nocked an arrow. I saw the look in his eyes, and I said to myself ‘He's won! By all the gods that are, he hasn't even fired an arrow yet and he's won!' And so he had! I tell you, Tommy, you should have been there! You should have . . .”

The King prattled on, putting aside the boat Thomas had labored a whole day to make, with barely a second look. Thomas stood and listened, smiling mechanically, that dull, bricklike flush never leaving his face. His father would never bother to take the sailboat he had carved out to the moat—why should he? The sailboat was as pukey as Thomas felt. Peter could probably carve a better one blindfolded, and in half the time. It would look better to their father, at least.

A miserable eternity later, Thomas was allowed to escape.

“I believe the boy worked very hard on that boat,” Flagg remarked carelessly.

“Yes, I suppose he did,” Roland said. “Wretched-looking thing, isn't it? Looks a little like a dog turd with a handkerchief sticking out of it.” And
like something
I would have made when I was his age
, he added in his own mind.

Thomas could not hear
thoughts
. . . but a hellish trick of acoustics brought Roland's
words
to him just as he left the Great Hall. Suddenly the horrible green pressure in his stomach was a thousand times worse. He ran to his bedroom and was sick in a basin.

The next day, while idling behind the outer kitchens, Thomas spied a half-crippled old dog foraging for garbage. He seized a rock and threw it. The stone flew to the mark. The dog yipped and fell down, badly hurt. Thomas knew his brother, although five years older, could not have made such a shot at half the distance—but that was a cold satisfaction, because he also knew that Pete never would have thrown a rock at a poor, hungry dog in the first place, especially one as old and decrepit as this one obviously was.

For a moment, compassion filled Thomas's heart and his eyes filled with tears. Then, for no reason at all, he thought of his father saying,
Looks a little like a
dog turd with a handerchief sticking out of it.
He gathered up a handful of rocks, and went over to where the dog lay on its side, dazed and bleeding from one ear. Part of him wanted to let the dog alone, or perhaps heal it as Peter had healed Peony—to make it his very own dog and love it forever. But part of him wanted to hurt it, as if hurting the dog would ease some of his own hurt. He stood above it, undecided, and then a terrible thought came to him: