The Wanderer
Chapter 1: Where is the horse gone?
The Dothraki prophetess has a startling vision of a man who was said to have died in the womb. She leaves the khalasar and searches for him in hopes of not only saving Vaes Dothrak but conquering the Seven Kingdoms. ::: Rhaego/OFC
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This was inspired by the Old-English poem, The Wanderer, with each chapter title being a line from it. I suggest reading the poem and I also suggest reading this fic, too! I hope you like it. Enjoy and review!
The flap of his tent opened, allowing the light to stream in for only a moment, but the Khal did not have to look up to see who had entered. It had been a long time since her last visit, but the metallic chime of her golden anklets was a familiar sound to his ears. The Khal did not stand to greet the woman, did not turn to her as she walked behind him to where he was settled. He continued sitting cross-legged on the pillows, staring into the fire infront of him.
"I come humble before you," the visitor said as she stood on the opposite side of the fire, the common acknowledgement spoken if one ever happened to stand above her Khal.
"Sit," Drogo commanded, still not looking at the woman. His posture was straight and stiff as always, his shoulders broader than she remembered, his hair longer, his eyes more weary.
"Miiqa, do visions no longer plague you?" the Khal asked after she sat on her knees in front of him. He stared at her over the fire, the glow of the flames illuminating her copper skin.
"They do," she admitted to him and looked away. She meant to speak no more about her visions to the Khal, especially the ones that have been tormenting her of late. The last time she read the fire it was of the girl he would marry, who was now the Khaleesi and pregnant with his child.
"Why have you not come to me with them?"
"You have not sent for me," she reminded him.
"Never did I have to before," he said.
The woman looked back up at her Khal. "Many things have changed since then."
He said nothing in reply but continued staring at Miiqa, burning eyes reflecting the flames that separated them. She did not submit nor back down. She did not lower her eyes nor bow her head. And why should she? She never had before.
"Show me what you see," he finally said to her, and placed his hands on his knees, waiting.
The prophetess stood obediently with a soft sigh and looked down into the flame. Gingerly, she opened the pouch at her hip and grabbed a handful of black powder. She sifted the powder between her hands and then threw it into the fire. The flames roared and rose up, immediately heating the already scorching tent. Miiqa stretched out her arms and turned her black stained palms to the flame.
"The Khaleesi will give birth to a dragon," she declared as the blaze turned itself into a winged monster, red and orange and white. The inflamed dragon licked at her palms and when she was certain that the image could hold on its own, she put her hands down at her sides. They both watched the strange creature intently as it danced through dry air; Khal Drogo with fascination, Miiqa with despair.
"Forged from fire, it will be, suckled on blood - fed from the screams of our people."
The dragon changed to a wailing woman, hands pulling at her blazing hair, mouth opened in anguish. The Khal could almost hear her cries in the crackling fire. Miiqa's hands came up and she cupped her own sweaty cheeks, closing her eyes with the same misery as the fire woman. Slowly, her hands left her face, smearing the black powder across her flesh.
"The khalasars will burn. Vaes Dothrak will burn. And with it, our whole nation will burn."
She lifted her arms and the flames rose up even higher, far above her head, almost touching the top of the tent, then quickly extinguished, an ominous harbinger of things to come. The smoke rose thickly from the pyre.
Miiqa brought her hands back down, breath ragged as she waited for the Khal to speak. She could read many things, but it was always so hard to read him. The tent was silent, the bustle of the people outside barely heard by the two. At that moment it was only them - the Khal and the prophetess as they once were.
"You lie," Khal Drogo finally said.
"You know this to be true. Or else you would not have called on me."
She had been his counsel for years; the woman who rode alongside the Khal, in front of even the bloodriders. Not Khaleesi, but lover and famed prophetess who had help him amass countless victories and treasures.
"You lie!" he repeated even louder. "She will birth a stallion! My son!"
"She will birth no babe, Drogo," the woman told him. The Khal narrowed his eyes at her, displeased at the informal use of his name. That is what she had always called him, but it had been so long. He wished he did not think so, but the sound was sweet coming from her tongue. This feeling angered him even more.
Quickly he stood and stepped over the smoking pit. He took the woman by her shoulders roughly, almost picking her up in his ferocity. "She will give birth to a stallion. The stallion that will mount the world!" he growled, shaking the woman until she managed to push him away from her.
"If a stallion is what you say, then a stallion is what it will be," she said humbly but unconvinced, slightly shaken from the sudden assault.
The Khal turned from her and stood almost motionless, but she could see his hands tensing into fists as he considered her words. "What would you have me do?" he finally asked.
Miiqa but a palm on his back. The feeling of his flesh was was warm, inviting, familiar. "You know the answer, my Khal," she whispered.
He looked over his shoulder fiercely, his long hair swaying, and she quickly removed her hand from his back. "You would have me kill my wife? You see her death as your gain!"
Miiqa backed up a few steps as though his words struck her. The Khal turned to face the prophetess. "Do not mistake me for a jealous whore, Drogo! I am neither," she roared. The man stayed emotionless, allowing Miiqa to calm herself. "You trusted me once, completely. Was it not I who put braids and bells in your hair?" She reached up and stroked the loose tresses that fell down his back like waves in the wind-blown Dothraki sea. "Was it not I who you called in times of need? In times of want? I have never lead you astray, Drogo. And I never will."
The words she spoke were true. She was the love of his youth - and was she not once as the sun warming earth? He had defied his father when he told him not to seek out the guidance of the child prophetess, but he was a curious boy, a novice Khal, stubborn and unmoving. That very night was the first of many spent in a tangled heap of silvery silken sheets; a curious acquirement, but Miiqa came to learn that the new Khal was a collector of the exotic and the very beautiful. They made love in a way that only the Dothraki could appreciate while drunk on spiced wine and blithe prophecies.
When she first saw the Khaleesi, her hair reminded the prophetess of her former lover's old silken sheets. "You had a mind once to marry me," the woman said, trying to clear her head of the thought.
"We were young then," he told her, and he too spoke the truth. At that time,the young prophetess had barely seen a dozen dry seasons, and the boy Khal, only a half dozen more than her.
"As young as your child bride?" she said. The Khal leered at the woman through thick eyebrows and she looked down, ashamed at her brash words. "These are your people," she continued, still staring down at the animal-hide floor of the tent. "These are my people. They are not hers." She looked back up at her Khal, a new sense of conviction and passion present in her voice. "They will turn from the Khaleesi and she will seek her vengeance."
"This will not happen. Not while I still live."
Miiqa put a soft hand to the Khal's face, cupping his jaw as she had so many times before. She said nothing to him, but her expression told all.
"What will happen then?" the man asked. "What of my son? The stallion? Where is the horse gone?"
"Where no horse may graze, nor man walk," she said and the Khal could not reply.
Miiqa regarded Drogo sadly, then departed from his tent, leaving him staring into the embers of the extinguished fire. Tomorrow would be a new day and he would seek her out once more, she knew. He would urge her to look into the fire again, to find some flaw in the past reading, but none would be discovered. She walked out into the scorching sun, shading her eyes from the rays. The Khaleesi was returning as she left, smiling naively at the prophetess as they passed one another.
Jalan atthirari anni, she heard the Khal say to his wife after the tent flap swished closed.
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