Thomas was playing with a buggerlug bug. He had it on his desk and had set his schoolbooks around it in a series of barriers. If the trundling beetle looked as if he might find a way out, Thomas would shift one of the books to keep him in.
“I’m pretty tired,” Thomas said. This was not a lie. Hearing Peter praised so highly always made him feel tired.
“You’ll like it,” Flagg said in a tone that was mostly wheedling… but a little threatening, too.
Thomas looked at him apprehensively. “There aren’t any… any bats, are there?”
Flagg laughed cheerily-but that laugh raised gooseflesh on Thomas’s arms anyway. He clapped Thomas on the back. “Not a bat! Not a drip! Not a draft! Warm as toast! And you can peek at your father, Tommy!”
Thomas knew that peeking was just another way of saying spying, and that spying was wrong-but this had been a shrewd shot all the same. This next time the buggerlug bug found a way to escape between two of the books, Thomas let it go. “All right,” he said, “but there better not be any bats.”
Flagg slipped an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “No bats, I swear-but here’s something for you to mull over in your mind, Tommy. You’ll not only see your father, you’ll see him through the eyes of his greatest trophy.”
Thomas’s own eyes widened with interest. Flagg was satisfied. The fish was hooked and landed. “What do you mean?”
“Come and see for yourself,” was all he would say.
He led Thomas through a maze of corridors. You would have become lost very soon, and I probably would have gotten lost myself before long, but Thomas knew this way as well as you know your way through your own bedroom in the dark-at least he did until Flagg led him aside.
They had almost reached the King’s own apartments when Flagg pushed open a recessed wooden door that Thomas had never really noticed before. Of course it had always been there, but in castles there are often doors-whole wings, even-that have mastered the art of being dim.
This passage was quite narrow. A chambermaid with an arm-load of sheets passed them; she was so terrified to have met the King’s magician in this slim stone throat that it seemed she would happily have shrunk into the very pores of the stone blocks to avoid touching him. Thomas almost laughed because sometimes he felt a little like that himself when Flagg was around. They met no one else at all.
Faintly, from below them, he could hear dogs barking, and that gave him a rough idea of where he was. The only dogs inside the castle proper were his father’s hunting dogs, and they were probably barking because it was time for them to be fed. Most of Roland’s dogs were now almost as old as he was, and because he knew how the cold ached in his own bones, Roland had commanded that a kennel be made for them right here in the castle. To reach the dogs from his father’s main sitting cham-ber, one went down a flight of stairs, turned right, and walked ten yards or so up an interior corridor. So Thomas knew they were about thirty feet to the right of his father’s private rooms.
Flagg stopped so suddenly that Thomas almost ran into him. The magician looked swiftly around to make sure they had the passageway to themselves. They did.
“Fourth stone up from the one at the bottom with the chip in it,” Flagg said. “Press it. Quick!”
Ah, there was a secret here, all right, and Thomas loved secrets. Brightening, he counted up four stones from the one with the chip and pressed. He expected some neat little bit of Jiggery-pokery a sliding panel, perhaps-but he was quite unprepared for what did happen.
The stone slid in with perfect ease to a depth of about three inches. There was a click. An entire section of wall suddenly swung inward, revealing a dark vertical crack. This wasn’t a wall at all! It was a huge door! Thomas’s jaw dropped.
Flagg slapped Thomas’s bottom.
“Quick, I said, you little fool!” he cried in a low voice. There was urgency in his voice, and this wasn’t simply put on for Thomas’s benefit, as many of Flagg’s emotions were. He looked right and left to verify that the passage was still empty. “Go! Now!”
Thomas looked at the dark crack that had been revealed and thought uneasily about bats again. But one look at Flagg’s face showed him that this would be a bad time to attempt a discussion on the subject.
He pushed the door open wider and stepped into the darkness. Flagg followed at once. Thomas heard the low flap of the magician’s cloak as he turned and shoved the wall closed again. The darkness was utter and complete, the air still and dry. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, the blue flame at the tip of Flagg’s index finger flared alight, throwing a harsh blue-white fan of illumination.
Thomas cringed without even thinking about it, and his hands flew up.
Flagg laughed harshly. “No bats, Tommy. Didn’t I promise?”
Nor were there. The ceiling was quite low, and Thomas could see for himself. No bats, and warm as toast… just as the magician had promised. By the light of Flagg’s magic finger-flare, he could also see they were in a secret passage which was about twenty-five feet long. Walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with ironwood boards. He couldn’t see the far end very well, but it looked perfectly blank.
He could still hear the muffled barking of the dogs.
“When I said be quick, I meant it,” Flagg said. He bent over Thomas, a vague, looming shadow that was, in this darkness, rather batlike itself. Thomas drew back a step, uneasily. As always, there was an unpleasant smell about the magician-a smell of secret powders and bitter herbs. “You know where the passage is now, and I’ll not be the one to tell you not to use it. But if you’re ever caught using it, you must say you discovered it by accident.”
The shape loomed even closer, forcing Thomas back another step.
“If you say I showed it to you, Tommy, I’ll make you sorry.”
“I’ll never tell,” Thomas said. His words sounded thin and shaky.
“Good. Better yet if no one ever sees you using it. Spying on a King is serious business, prince or not. Now follow me. And be quiet.”
Flagg led him to the end of the passageway. The far wall was also dressed with ironwood, but when Flagg raised the flame that burned from the tip of his finger, Thomas saw two little panels. Flagg pursed his lips and blew out the light.
In utter blackness, he whispered: “Never open these two panels with a light burning. He might see. He’s old, but he still sees well. He might see something, even though the eyeballs are of tinted glass.”
“What-”
“Shhhh! There isn’t much wrong with his ears, either.”
Thomas fell quiet, his heart pounding in his chest. He felt a great excitement that he didn’t understand. Later he thought that he had been excited because he knew in some way what was going to happen.
In the darkness he heard a faint sliding sound, and suddenly a dim ray of light-torchlight-lit the darkness. There was a second sliding sound and a second ray of light appeared. Now he could see Flagg again, very faintly, and his own hands when he held them up before him.
Thomas saw Flagg step up to the wall and bend a little; then most of the light was cut out as he put his eyes to the two holes through which the rays of light fell. He looked for a moment, then grunted and stepped away. He motioned to Thomas. “Have a look,” he said.
More excited than ever, Thomas cautiously put his eyes to the holes. He saw clearly enough, although everything had an odd greenish-yellow aspect-it was as if he were looking through smoked glass. A sense of perfect, delighted wonder rose in him. He was looking down into his father’s sitting room. He saw his father slouched by the fire in his favorite chair-one with high wings which threw shadows across his lined face.