That was all that was really happening in that great room that could have (and at times had) held upward of two hundred people just his father, with a fur robe draped around him, having a solitary afternoon tea. Yet Thomas watched for a time that seemed endless. His fascination and his excitement with this view of his father cannot be told. His heartbeat, which had been rapid before, doubled. Blood sang and pounded in his head. His hands clenched into fists so tight that he would later discover bloody crescent moons imprinted into his palms where his fin-gernails had bitten.
Why was he so excited simply to be looking at an old man picking halfheartedly at a piece of cake? Well, first you must remember that the old man wasn't just any old man. He was Thomas's father. And spying, sad to say, has its own attraction. When you can see people doing something and they don't see you, even the most trivial actions seem important.
After awhile, Thomas began to feel a little ashamed of what he was doing, and that was not really surprising. Spying on a person is a kind of stealing, after all-it's stealing a look at what people do when they think they are alone. But that is also one of its chief fascinations, and Thomas might have looked for hours if Flagg had not murmured, "Do you know where you are, Tommy?"
"I-" don't think so, he was going to add, but of course he did know. His sense of direction was good, and with a little thought he could imagine the reverse of this angle. He suddenly understood what Flagg meant when he said he, Thomas, would see his father through the eyes of Roland's greatest trophy. He was looking down at his father from a little more than halfway up the west wall... and that was where the greatest head of all was hung-that of Niner, his father's dragon.
He might see something, even though the eyeballs are of tinted glass.
Now he understood that, too. Thomas had to clap his hands to his mouth to stifle a shrill giggle.
Flagg slid the little panels shut again... but he, too, was smiling.
"No!" Thomas whispered. "No, I want to see more!"
"Not this afternoon," Flagg said. "You've seen enough this afternoon. You can come again when you want... although if you come too often, you'll surely be caught. Now come on. We're going back."
Flagg relit the magic flame and led Thomas down the corridor again. At the end, he put the light out and there was another sliding sound as he opened a peephole. He guided Thomas's hand to it so he would know where it was, and then bade him look.
"Notice that you can see the passageway in both directions," Flagg said. "Always be careful to look before you open the secret door, or someday you will be surprised."
Thomas put one eye to the peephole and saw, directly across the corridor, an ornate window with glass sides that angled slightly into the passageway. It was much too fancy for such a small passageway, but Thomas understood without having to be told that it had been put here by whoever had made the secret passageway. Looking into the angled sides, he could indeed see a ghostly reflection of the corridor in both directions.
"Empty?" Flagg whispered.
"Yes," Thomas whispered back.
Flagg pushed an interior spring (again guiding Thomas's hand to it for future reference), and the door clicked open. "Quickly now!" Flagg said. They were out and the door was shut behind them in a trice.
Ten minutes later, they were back in Thomas's rooms.
"Enough excitement for one day," Flagg said. "Remember what I told you, Tommy: don't use the passageway so often that you'll be caught, and if you are caught" -Flagg's eyes glittered grimly-"remember that you found that place by accident."
"I will," Thomas said quickly. His voice was high and it squeaked like a hinge that needed oil. When Flagg looked at him that way, his heart felt like a bird caught in his chest, fluttering in panic.
27
Thomas heeded Flagg's advice not to go often, but he did use the passageway from time to time, and peeked at his father through the glass eyes of Niner-peeked into a world where everything became greeny-gold. Going away later with a pounding headache (as he almost always did), he would think:
Your head aches because you were seeing the way dragons must see the world-as if everything was dried out and ready to burn. And perhaps Flagg's instinct for mischief in this matter was not so bad at all, because, by spying on his father, Thomas learned to feel a new thing for Roland. Before he knew about the secret passage he had felt love for him, and often a sorrow that he could not please him better, and sometimes fear. Now he learned to feel con-tempt, as well.
Whenever Thomas spied into Roland's sitting room and found his father in company, he left again quickly. He only lingered when his father was alone. In the past, Roland rarely had been, even in such rooms as his den, which was a part of his "private apartments." There was always one more urgent matter to be attended to, one more advisor to see, one more petition to hear.