Stephen King - The Eyes of the Dragon

If the magician showed him scary things in the castle some-times, he did it because he knew that the more frightened of him Thomas was, the more power he would gain over Thomas… and he knew he could have that power, because he knew some-thing I’ve already told you-that Thomas was weak and often neglected by his father. Flagg wanted Thomas to be afraid of him, and he wanted to make sure that, as the years passed, Thomas had to throw many of those locked boxes into the darkness inside him. If Thomas were to go insane at some point after he became King, well, what of that? It would make it easier for Flagg to rule; it would make his power all the greater.

How did Flagg know the right times to visit Thomas, and take him on these strange tours of the castle? Sometimes he saw what had happened to make Thomas sad or angry in his crystal. More often, he simply felt an urge to go to Thomas and heeded it-that instinct for mischief rarely led him wrong.

Once he took Thomas high into the eastern tower-they climbed stairs until Thomas was panting like a dog, but Flagg never seemed to lose his breath. At the top was a door so small that even Thomas had to crawl through it on his hand and knees. Beyond was a dark, rustling room with a single window. Flagg had led him to that window without a word, and when Thomas saw the view-the entire city of Delain, the Near Towns, and then the hills which stood between the Near Towns and the Eastern Barony marching off into a blue haze-he thought that the sight had been worth every stair his aching legs had climbed. His heart swelled with the beauty of it, and he turned to thank Flagg-but something about the white blur of the magician’s face inside his hood had frozen the words on his lips.

“Now watch this!” Flagg said, and held up his hand. A spurt of blue flame rose from his index finger, and the rustling sound in the room, which Thomas had first taken for the sound of the wind, turned to a rising whir of leathery wings. A moment later Thomas was screaming and beating the air above his head as he blundered blindly back toward the tiny door. The little round room at the top of the castle’s eastern tower had the best view in Delain save for the cell at the top of the Needle, but now he understood why no one visited it. The room was infested with huge bats. Disturbed by the light Flagg had raised, they whirled and swooped. Later, after they were out and Flagg had quieted the boy-Thomas, who hated bats, had been in hysterics-the magician insisted it was just a joke meant to cheer him up. Thomas believed him… but for weeks after he awoke screaming with nightmares in which bats flapped around his head, got caught in his hair, and ripped at his face with their sharp claws and ratty teeth.

On another excursion, Flagg took him to the King’s treasure room and showed him the mounds of gold coins, tall stacks of gold bars, and the deep bins marked EMERALDS, DIAMONDS, RUBIES, FIREDIMS and so on.

“Are they really full of jewels?” Thomas asked.

“Look and see,” Flagg said. He opened one of the bins and pulled out a handful of uncut emeralds. They sparkled wildly in his hand.

“My fathers’s name!” Thomas gasped.

“Oh, that’s nothing! Look over here! Pirate treasure, Tommy!”

He showed Thomas a pile of booty from the encounter with the Anduan pirates some twelve years ago. The Delain Treasury was rich, the few treasure-room clerks old, and this particular heap hadn’t been sorted yet. Thomas gasped at heavy swords with jeweled hilts, daggers with blades that had been crusted with serrated diamonds so they would cut deeper, heavy killballs made of rhodochrosite.

“All this belongs to the Kingdom?” Thomas asked in an awed voice.

“It all belongs to your father,” Flagg replied, although Thomas had actually been correct. “Someday it will all belong to Peter.”

“And me,” Thomas said with a ten-year-olds confidence.

“No,” Flagg said, just the right tinge of regret in his voice, `just to Peter. Because he’s the oldest, and he’ll be King.”

“He’ll share,” Thomas said, but with the slightest tremor of doubt in his voice. “Pete always shares.”

“Peter’s a fine boy, and I’m sure you’re right. He’ll probably share. But no one can make a King share, you know. No one can make a King do anything he doesn’t want to do.” He looked at Thomas to gauge the effect of this remark, then looked back at the deep, shadowy treasure room. Somewhere, one of the aged clerks was droning out a count of ducats. “Such a lot of treasure, and all for one man, “Flagg remarked. “It’s really something to think about, isn’t it, Tommy?”

Thomas said nothing, but Flagg had been well pleased. He saw that Tommy was thinking about it, all right, and he judged than another of those poisoned caskets was tumbling down into the well of Thomas’s mind-ker-splash! And that was indeed so. Later, when Peter proposed to Thomas that they share the expense of the nightly bottle of wine, Thomas had remembered the great treasure room-and he remembered that all the treasure in it would belong to his brother. Easy for you to talk so blithely of buying wine! Why not? Someday you’ll have all the money in the world!

Then, about a year before he brought the poisoned wine to the King, on impulse, Flagg had shown Thomas this secret passage… and on this one occasion his usually unerring instinct for mischief might have led him astray. Again, I leave it for you to decide.

Tommy, you look down in the dumps!” he cried. The hood of his cloak was pushed back on that day, and he looked almost normal.

Almost.

Tommy felt down in them. He had suffered through a long luncheon at which his father had praised Peter’s scores in geometry and navigation to his advisors with the most lavish superlatives. Roland had never rightly understood either. He knew that a triangle had three sides and a square had four; he knew you could find your way out of the woods when you were lost by following Old Star in the sky; and that was where his knowledge ended. That was where Thomas’s knowledge ended, too, so he felt that luncheon would never be done. Worse, the meat was just the way his father liked it-bloody and barely cooked. Bloody meat made Thomas feel almost sick.

“My lunch didn’t agree with me, that’s all,” he said to Flagg.

“Well, I know just the thing to cheer you up,” Flagg said. “I’ll show you a secret of the castle, Tommy my boy.”

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.”