“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 pres-ent could see that each grain was slowly sinking into the pock-mark 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 finger-nail, with room left over! Touch the prince’s desk, Lord JudgeGeneral!”
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!”
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, I 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 uncharac-teristic 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 momen-tarily 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.