Not so. He still took it occasionally. This was because he loved Sasha, and wanted to please her. In some places, people assume that only men enjoy sex, and that a woman would be grateful to be left alone. The people of Delain, however, held no such peculiar ideas-they assumed that a woman took normal pleasure in that act which produced earth’s most pleasurable creatures. Roland knew he was not properly attentive to his wife in this matter, but he resolved to be as attentive as he could, even if this meant taking Flagg’s drink. Only Flagg himself knew how rarely the King went to his Queen’s bed.

Some four years after the birth of Peter, on New Year’s Day, a great blizzard visited Delain. It was the greatest, save one, in living memory-the other I’ll tell you of later. Heeding an impulse he could not explain even to himself, Flagg mixed the King a draught of double strength-perhaps it was something in the wind that urged him to do it. Ordinarily, Roland would have made a grimace at the awful taste and perhaps put it aside, but the excitement of the storm had caused the annual New Year’s Day party to be especially gay, and Roland had become very drunk. The blazing fire on the hearth reminded him of the dragon’s final explosive breath, and he had toasted the head, which was mounted on the wall, many times. So he drank the green potion off at a single gulp, and an evil lust fell upon him. He left the dining hall at once and visited Sasha. In the course of trying to love her, he hurt her.

“Please, Husband,” she cried, sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Huzzz…” He fell heavily asleep beside her and remained insensible for the next twenty hours. She never forgot the strange smell that had been on his breath that night. It had been a smell like rotten meat, a smell like death. Whatever, she wondered, had he been eating… or drinking?