The Eyes of the Dragon

138

Thomas lit the fire, donned his dead father’s robe, and drew Roland’s chair close to the hearth. He felt that he would soon fall soundly asleep, and that was very good. But as he sat there, owlishly nodding, looking around at the trophies mounted on the walls with their glassy eyes sparkling eerily in the flames, it occurred to him that he wanted two more things-things that were almost sacred, things he would certainly never have dared touch when his father was alive. But Roland was dead, so Thomas had taken another chair to stand on, and from the wall he had taken down his father’s bow and his father’s great arrow, FoeHammer, from their places on the wall above Niner’s head. For a moment he stared directly into one of the dragon’s green-amber eyes. He had seen much through these eyes, but now, looking into them, he saw nothing but his own pallid face, like the face of a prisoner looking out of a cell.

Although everything in the room had been numbingly cold (the fire would warm things up, at least around the fireplace, but it would take a while), he thought that the arrow was strangely warm. He vaguely remembered an old tale he had heard as a small child-according to this tale, a weapon used to slay a dragon never lost the dragon’s heat. It seems that tale was true, Thomas thought sleepily. But there was nothing scary about the arrow’s heat; in fact, it seemed comforting. Thomas sat down with the bow clutched loosely in one hand and Foe-Hammer with its strange, sleeping warmth clutched in the other, never realizing that his brother was now coming in search of this very weapon, and that Flagg-the author of his birth and the Chief Warder of his life-was hot on Peter’s heels.