The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King Page A

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.
    It was very much the room of a huntsman; in our world such a room would often be called a den, although this one was as big as some ordinary houses. Flaring torches lined the long walls. Heads were mounted everywhere: heads of bear, of deer, of elk, of wildebeest, of cormorant. There was even a grand featherex, which is the cousin of our legendary bird the phoenix. Thomas could not see the head of Niner, the dragon his father had killed before he was born, but this did not immediately register on him.
    His father was picking morosely at a sweet. A pot of tea steamed near at hand.
    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 fingernails 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?”
    â€œI—” 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.
    â€œNo!” Thomas whispered. “No, I want to see more!”
    â€œNot 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