Ben was getting to his feet, brushing the snow off.
"I"m sorry I yelled like that," Naomi whispered. "If it had been any other dog but Frisky* do you think I was heard?"
"If you"d been heard, we"d have been challenged," Ben whispered back. "G.o.ds, that was close." Now they could see the open water just in front of the ancient stone wall of Castle Delain"s outer redan, because they were looking for it.
"What do we do?"
"We can"t go on," Ben whispered, "that"s obvious. But what did he do, Naomi? Where did he go from here? Maybe he did fly"
"If we-"
But Naomi never finished the thought, because that was when Frisky took matters into her own paws. All of her ancestors had been famous hunters, and it was in her blood. She had been set upon this exciting, enticing electric-blue scent, and she found she could not leave it. So she screwed her haunches down to the ice, tensed her sled-toughened muscles, and leaped into the dark. Her eyes, as I"ve said, were the least of her sensory equipment, and her leap really was blind; she could not see the dark hole of the sewer pipe from the edge of the ice.
But she had seen it from the water, and even if she hadn"t, she had her nose, and she knew it was there.
It"s Flagg, Dennis"s sleep-fuddled mind thought as that dark shape with the burning eyes swept down on him. It"s Flagg, he"s found me, and now he"ll rip my throat out with his teet He tried to scream, but no sound came out.
The mouth of the intruder did open; Dennis saw huge white teeth* and then a big warm tongue was lapping his face.
"Ulf!" Dennis said, trying to push the thing away. Paws came up on either shoulder, and Dennis fell back on his mattress of napkins like a pinned wrestler. Lap-lap, lick-lick. "Ulf!" Dennis said again, and the dark, s.h.a.ggy shape uttered a low, companionable woof, as if to say I know it, I"m glad to see you, too.
"Frisky!" a low voice called from the darkness. "Stand down, Frisky! No sounds!"
The dark shape was not Flagg at all; it was an extremely large dog-a dog which looked too much like a wolf for comfort, Dennis thought. When the girl spoke, it drew away and sat down. It looked happily at Dennis; its tail thumped mutedly on Dennis"s bed of napkins.
Two more shapes in the darkness, one taller than the other. Not Flagg, that much was clear. Castle guards, then. Dennis grabbed his dagger. If the G.o.ds were good, he might be able to get rid of both of them. If not, then he would try to die well in the service of his King.
The two figures had stopped a little short of him.
"Come on," Dennis said, and raised his dagger (it was really not much more than a pocketknife, and was rather rusty and quite dull) in a brave gesture. "First you two and then your devil-dog!"
"Dennis?" The voice was eerily familiar. "Dennis, have we really found you?"
Dennis started to lower his dagger, then brought it up again.
It had to be a trick. Had to be. But the voice sounded so much lik "Ben?" he whispered. "Is it Ben Staad?"
"It"s Ben," the taller shape confirmed, and gladness filled Dennis"s heart. The shape began to come forward. Alarmed, Dennis raised his dagger again.
"Wait! Do you have a light?"
" Flint and steel, yes."
"Strike it." Aye.
A moment later, a big yellow spark, surely dangerous in that room filled with dry cotton napkins, flared in the gloom.
"Come forward, Ben," Dennis said, reseating his poor excuse for a dagger in its sheath. He got to his feet, trembling with gladness and relief. Ben was here. By what magic Dennis did not know-only that it had somehow happened. His feet caught in the napkins and he stumbled forward, but there was no danger that he might fall, because Ben"s arms swept him up in a strong embrace. Ben was here and all would be well, Dennis thought, and it was all he could do to keep from bursting into unmanly tears.
There followed a great exchange of stories-I think you have heard most of them, and the parts you haven"t can be told quickly enough.
Frisky"s leap was a bull"s-eye. She carried straight into the pipe and then turned around to see if Naomi and Ben would follow her.
If they hadn"t done so, Frisky would have eventually leaped back to the ice-she should have been greatly disappointed to do it, but she would not have left her mistress for the most exciting scent in the world. Frisky knew that; Naomi was less sure. She didn"t even dare call Frisky back, for fear of a guard"s overhearing. She therefore intended to go after the dog. She would not leave Frisky, and if Ben tried to make her, she would deck him with a right hook.
She needn"t have worried. The minute he spotted the pipe, Ben understood where Dennis had gone.
"n.o.ble nose, Frisky," he said again. He turned to Naomi "Can you make it?"
"If I draw back and run, I can make it."
"Don"t misjudge where the ice goes rotten or you"ll take a dunking. And your heavy clothes will drag you down very quickly.
"I won"t misjudge."
"Let me go first," Ben said. "If I have to, maybe I can catch you.
He drew back a few paces and jumped so strongly that he almost took off the top of his head on the upper curve of the pipe. Frisky barked once, excitedly. "Shut up, dog!" Ben said.
Naomi drew back to the edge of the moat, stood there for a moment (the snow had by then been coming down so heavily that Ben couldn"t see her), and then ran forward. Ben held his breath, hoping she wouldn"t misjudge the edge of the good ice. If she ran too far before trying to make her leap, the longest arms in the world wouldn"t catch her.
But she timed it perfectly. Ben didn"t need to catch her; all he had to do was to get out of her way as she carried into the pipe. She didn"t even b.u.mp her head, as Ben had done.
"The worst part of it was the smell," Naomi said as they told their story to a wondering Dennis. "How did you stand it?"
"Well, I just kept reminding myself of what would happen to me if I got caught," Dennis said. "Every time I did that, the air seemed to smell a little better."
Ben laughed at this and nodded, and Dennis looked at him with shining eyes for a moment. Then he looked back at Naomi.
"It did smell awfully bad, though," he agreed. "I remember that it smelled bad when I was a kid, but not that bad. Maybe a kid doesn"t really know how bad a smell is. Or something."
"I guess that could be," Naomi said.
Frisky was lying on a pile of royal napkins with her muzzle on her paws, her eyes moving from one person to the next as each spoke. She knew very little of what they were saying, but if she had, and if she could have spoken, she would have told Dennis that his perceptions of what made a really bad smell hadn"t changed at all since he was a boy. It had been the last dying remainder of the Dragon Sand they had smelled, of course. The odor had been much stronger to Frisky than to THE GIRL and THE TALL-BOY. Dennis"s scent had still been there, now mostly in splashes and blobs on the curved walls (these were the places Dennis had touched with his hands; the floor of the pipes was covered with a foul warm water that had washed away all scent). It was the same bright electric blue. The other scent was a dull leathery green-Frisky was afraid of it. She knew that some scents could kill, and she knew that, not so long ago, this had been just such a scent. But it was losing its potency now, and in any case, Dennis"s scent led away from the greater concentrations of it. Not too long before they reached the grating Dennis had used to get out of the sewer system, she began to lose the green smell altogether-and Frisky was never in her whole life so happy to lose a smell.
"You met no one? No one at all?" Dennis asked anxiously.
"No one," Ben said. "I ranged a little bit ahead to keep an eye out. I saw guards several times, but we always had plenty of time to get to some cover before they could see us. In truth, I think we could have come directly here and pa.s.sed twenty guards and only have been challenged once or twice. Most of them were drunk."
Naomi nodded. "Guards o" the Watch," she said. "Drunk. And not drunk out on picket along the northern borders of some p.i.s.sy little barony no one ever heard of; drunk in the castle. Right in the castle!"
Dennis, remembering the toneless, nose-blowing singer, nodded gloomily. "I suppose we should be glad. If the Guard o" the Watch was now what it was in Roland"s day, we"d all be in the Needle along wi " Peter. But I can"t be glad, somehow."
"I"ll tell you this," Ben said in a soft voice, "if I were Thomas, I"d quake in my boots every time I looked north, if such as we saw tonight are all he has around him."
Naomi looked very troubled at this. "Pray the G.o.ds it never comes to that," she said.
Ben nodded.
Dennis reached out and stroked Frisky"s head. "Followed me all the way from Peyna"s, did you? What a smart dog you are, ayes"
Frisky thumped her tail happily.
Naomi said: "I would hear this story of the sleepwalking King, Dennis, if you would tell it again."
So Dennis told his story, much as he told it to Peyna and as I have told it to you, and they listened as spellbound as children hearing the tale of the talking wolf in the gammer"s nightcap.
By the time he had finished, it was seven o"clock.
Outside, a dim gray glow had come over Delain-that clotted storm-light was as bright at seven as it would be at noon, for the greatest storm of that winter-and perhaps the greatest in history-had come to Delain. The wind howled around the eaves of the castle like a tribe of banshees. Even down here, the fugitives could hear it. Frisky raised her head and whined uneasily.
"What do we do now?" Dennis asked.
Ben, who had gone over Peter"s brief note again and again, said: "Until tonight, nothing. The castle"s awake by now, and there"s no way we could get out of here without being see under any circ.u.mstances. We sleep. Get our strength back. And tonight, before midnight-"
Ben spoke briefly. Naomi grinned; Dennis"s eyes grew bright with excitement. "Yes!" Dennis said. "By the G.o.ds! You"re a genius, Ben!"
"Please, I wouldn"t go that far," Naomi said, but by then her grin was so broad it seemed in danger of splitting her head in two. She reached over, put her arms around Ben, and kissed him soundly.
Ben turned an absolutely alarming shade of red (he looked as if he might be on the verge of "bursting his brains," as they said in Delain in those long-ago days)-I must tell you, though, that he also looked delighted.
"Will Frisky help us?" Ben asked when he got his breath back.
At the sound of her name, Frisky looked up again.
"Of course she will. But we"ll need*
They discussed this new plan for some time longer, and then Ben"s lower face seemed to almost disappear in a great yawn. Naomi also looked tired out. They had been awake for over twenty-four hours by then, you will remember, and had come a great distance.
"Enough," Ben said. "It"s time for sleep."
"Hooray!" Naomi said, beginning to arrange more napkins in a mattress for herself beside Frisky. "My legs feel as if-"
Dennis cleared his throat politely.
"What is it?" Ben asked.
Dennis looked at their packs-Ben"s big one, Naomi"s slightly smaller one. "I don"t suppose you"ve got* um, anything to eat in there, do you?"
Impatiently, Naomi said: "Of course we do! What do you think-" Then she remembered that Dennis had left Peyna"s farmhouse six days ago, and that the butler had been skulking and hiding ever since. He had a pallid, undernourished look, and his face was too narrow and too bony. "Oh, Dennis, I"m sorry, we"re idiots! When did you eat last?"
Dennis thought about this. "I can"t remember exactly," he said. "But the last sit-down meal I had was my lunch, a week ago.
"Why didn"t you say so first thing, you dolt?" Ben exclaimed.
"I guess because I was so excited to see you," Dennis said, and grinned. As he watched the two of them open their packs and begin rooting through the remainder of their supplies, his stomach gurgled noisily. Saliva squirted into his mouth. Then a thought struck him.
"You didn"t bring any turnips, did you?"
Naomi turned to look at him, puzzled. "Turnips? I don"t have any. Do you, Ben?"
No. A gentle and supremely happy smile spread across Dennis"s face. "Good," he said.
That was a mighty storm indeed, and it"s still told of in Delain today. Five feet of new snow had fallen by the time an early, howling dark came down on the castle keep. Five feet of new snow in one day is mighty enough, but the wind made drifts that were much, much bigger. By the time dark fell, the wind was no longer blowing a force-gale; it was blowing a hurricane. In places along the castle walls, snow was piled twenty-five feet deep, and covered the windows of not just first and second floors, but the third-floor windows as well.
You might think this would have been good for Peter"s escape plans, and it might have been if the Needle hadn"t stood all alone in the Plaza. But it did, and here the wind blew its hardest. A strong man couldn"t have stood against that wind; he would have been sent rolling, head over heels, until he crashed against the first stone wall on the far side of the Plaza. And the win had another effect, as well-it was like a giant broom. As fast as the snow fell, the wind blew it out of the Plaza. By dark there were huge drifts piled against the castle and clogging most of the alleys on the west side of the castle keep, but the Plaza itself was clean as a whistle. There were only the frozen cobbles, waiting to break Peter"s bones if his rope should break.
And I must tell you now that Peter"s rope was bound to break. When he tested it, it had held his weight* but there was one fact about that mystic thing called "breaking strain" that Peter didn"t know. Yosef hadn"t known, either. The ox drivers knew it, though, and if Peter had asked them, they would have told him an old axiom, one known to sailors, loggers, seamstresses, and anyone else who works with thread or rope: The longer the cord, the sooner the break.
Peter"s short test rope had held him.
The rope to which he meant to entrust his life-the very thin rope-was about two hundred and sixty-five feet long.
It was bound to break, I tell you, and the cobbles below waited to catch him, and break his bones, and bleed away his life.
There were many disasters and near-disasters on that long, stormy day, just as there were many acts of heroism, some successful and some doomed to failure. Some farmhouses in the Inner Baronies blew over, as the houses of the indolent pigs were blown over by the wolf"s hungry breath in the old story. Some of those who were thus rendered homeless managed to work their way across the white wastes to the castle keep, roped together for safety; others wandered off the Delain Great Road and into the whiteness, where they were lost-their frozen, wolf-gnawed bodies wouldn"t be found until the spring.
But by seven that evening, the snow had finally begun to abate a little, and the wind to fall. The excitement was ending, and the castle went to bed early. There was little else to do. Fires were banked, children tucked in, last cups of field-tea drunk, prayers said.
One by one, the lights went out. The Crier called in his loudest voice, but the wind still tore his voice out of his mouth at eight o" the clock and again at nine; it was not until ten that he could be heard again, and by then, most people were asleep.
Thomas was also asleep-but his sleep was not easy. There was no Dennis to stay with him and comfort him this night; Dennis was still home ill. Thomas had thought several times of sending a page to check on him (or even to go himself; he liked Dennis very much), but something always seemed to come up, -papers to sign* pet.i.tions to hear* and, of course, bottles of wine to be drunk. Thomas hoped Flagg would come and give him a powder to help him sleep* but ever since Flagg"s useless trip into the north, the magician had been strange and distant. It was as if Flagg knew there was something wrong, but could not quite tell what it was. Thomas hoped the magician would come, but hadn"t dared to summon him.
As always, the shrieking wind reminded Thomas of the night his father died, and he feared he would have a hard time getting to sleep* and that, once he was asleep, horrible nightmares might come, dreams in which his father would scream and rant and finally burst into flames. So Thomas did what he had grown accustomed to doing; he spent the day with a gla.s.s of wine always in his hand, and if I told you how many bottles of wine this mere boy consumed before he finally went to bed at ten o" the clock, you probably wouldn"t believe me-so I won"t say. But it was a lot.
Lying there miserably on his sofa, wishing that Dennis was in his accustomed place on the hearth, Thomas thought: My head aches and my stomach feels sick* Is being King worth all this? I wonder. You might wonder, too* but before Thomas himself could wonder anymore, he fell heavily asleep.
He slept for almost an hour* and then he rose and walked. Out the door he went and down the halls, ghostly in his long white nightshirt. This night a late-going maid with an armload of sheets saw him, and he looked so much like old King Roland that the maid dropped her sheets and fled, screaming.
Thomas"s darkly dreaming mind heard her screams and thought they were his father"s.
He walked on, turning into the less used corridor. He paused halfway down and pushed the secret stone. He went into the pa.s.sageway, closed the door behind him, and walked to the end of the corridor. He pushed aside the panels which were behind Niner"s gla.s.s eyes, and though he was still asleep, he pushed his face up to the holes, as if looking into his dead father"s sitting room. And here we will leave the unfortunate boy for a while, with the smell of wine surrounding him and tears of regret running from his sleeping eyes and down his cheeks.
He was sometimes a cruel boy, often a sad boy, this pretend King, and he had almost always been a weak boy* but even now I must tell you that I do not believe he was ever really a bad boy. If you hate him because of the things he did-and the things he allowed to be done-I will understand; but if you do not pity him a little as well, I will be surprised.
At quarter past eleven on that momentous night, the storm breathed its last gasp. A tremendous cold gust of wind swept down on the castle. It ran in excess of a hundred miles an hour. It tore the thinning clouds overhead apart like the swipe of a great hand. Cold, watery moonlight shone through.
In the Third East"ard Alley was a squat stone tower called the Church of the Great G.o.ds; it had stood there since time out of mind. Many people worshipped there, but it was empty now.
A good thing, too. The tower was not very tall-nowhere near the height of the Needle-but it nevertheless stood high above the neighboring buildings in the Third East"ard Alley, and all day long it had been punished by the unbroken force of the storm wind. This final gust was too much for it. The top thirty feet-all stone-simply blew off, as a hat might fly off a scare-crow in a high gale. Part landed in the alley; part hit the neigh-boring buildings. There was a tremendous crash.
Most of the populace of the castle keep, wearied by the excitement of the storm and already sleeping deeply, took no mind of the fall of the Church of the Great G.o.ds (although they would wonder greatly over the snow-covered wreckage in the morning). Most simply muttered, turned over, and went back to sleep.
Some Guards of the Watch-those not too drunk to care-, heard it, of course, and ran to see what had happened. Other than by these few, the fall of the tower went mostly unremarked when it happened* but there were a few others who heard it, and by now you know them all.
Ben, Dennis, and Naomi, who were getting ready for their attempt to rescue the rightful King, heard it in the napkin store-room, and looked around at each other with wide eyes. "Never mind," Ben said, after a moment. "I don"t know what it was, but it doesn"t matter. Let"s get on with it."
Beson and the Lesser Warders, all of them drunk, didn"t hear the Church of the Great G.o.ds fall down, but Peter did. He was sitting on the floor of his bedroom, carefully pulling his woven rope through his fingers, looking anxiously for weak points. He raised his head at the snow-muted thunder of falling stones, and went rapidly to the window. He could see nothing; whatever had fallen was on the Needle"s far side. After several considering moments, he went back to his rope. Midnight was close now, and he had come to much the same conclusion as his friend Ben. It didn"t matter. The dice had been thrown. Now he must go on.