The Great Death
Chapter 1
In the beginning, no one paid attention. Here and there, silent sisters were suddenly called to take care of the remains someone who had been unexpectedly summoned by the Stranger after he had been hit by the sun or eaten something that didn't agree with him and then made the situation worse by drinking cold water. But soon, it turned out that the disease was contagious. Because silent sisters were called to work on several people by the same house at the same day. And they often died themselves. One barely had the time to feel unwell when a funeral came in order.
Maesters didn't know what to think. No one had ever encountered such an illness. No one knew how to counteract it. And it seemed to be spreading like hot wind. With the wind that blew. With the air people breathed.
"I've read about similar plagues happening when I was in the Citadel," Grand Maester Netus said at the meeting when he informed the Small Council of the situation.
"How many decades ago this was?" Maekar muttered under his breath. The King heard him and gave him a warning look, although he, too, disliked the way the Grand Maester sounded – as if he wanted to convince himself that this plague was something that had already happened, that his maesters wouldn't be the first ones to confront it.
"What are you suggesting?" Maekar asked out loud now and King Daeron sighed. Trust his son to cut to the heart of things. Well, that would save them time, at least, if the Grand Maester had an answer ready.
"Nothing," the white-haired Westerner said. "It's our job to deal with the sickness. The Maesters' job. I am only bringing the matter to the Council because there are all sorts of rumours…"
"They aren't rumours."
Everyone's eyes turned to the boy who was sitting unobtrusively on a stool a few steps behind Maekar's chair. The chamber of the Council was small and bursting with candles, documents, and reports, so it was quite the feat that the boy had managed to make the member of the Council forget that he was there. He rose now, though, and the sunlight filled his purple eyes with radiance. His hair was silver and gold strands, his attire the simplest one possible.
"What do you mean, Aemon?" the King asked calmly.
The boy hesitated in his daring, for daring it was and everyone in the chamber knew it. A prince Aemon Targaryen might be but he had been sent to the Citadel to become a maester and he was now defying the highest authority of his order. For his father and grandfather who knew him better than anyone, what was more disturbing was the fact that Aemon usually avoided confrontations – he solved his problems with words, not wars. The fact that he had thrown such a challenge into the Grand Maester's face scared them more than the words themselves. It meant that Aemon truly believed the situation was far more serious than the Grand Maester would have them think. And the things Aemon believed usually turned out to be true.
"I mean that they shouldn't…" the boy started and stopped again. Everyone was watching him: his father and grandfather, Lord Hightower who was the King's Hand, Lord Rivers with his disconcerting red eye, Lord Velaryon who was Master of Ships and brother to Aemon's late mother… and the Grand Maester. "They shouldn't have done this."
"What?" the Grand Maester demanded. Having spend twenty years in service of the Realm, he wouldn't take kindly to being told off by a boy of nine, or ten, or whatever, prince or not. "What is it that we shouldn't have done?"
"Hide the truth from His Grace," Aemon said defiantly. "The plague is running wild and you have no idea how to stop it. Our maesters cannot fight it on their own. We need monetary support and help in trying to restrict any further spreading. We need people, men at arms. We need..."
The Grand Maester's face became bright red with fury, then suddenly crumpled. He was now just an old man who was trying to do his best in a situation that had never arisen before – and realizing that he was failing.
"I don't think there's ever been something exactly like this," he said softly. He was very, very weary. His long service and many successes had made him confident in his own abilities and this blow to his knowledge in his dotage was felt all more sharply because of that. "There's been diseases that spread from man to man, as well as diseases who strike extremely swiftly but never both of these combined to such devastating effects."
There was a murmur in the small chamber. The members of the Council started exchanging looks. Daeron and Maekar looked at each other, the same thoughts in both their minds: now it was the most unfortunate moment for the Grand Maester to lose his courage. They needed a strong leadership and as competent as the King was, he was no maester. Besides, Maekar was less than pleased with the fact that Netus had really hidden the truth from them, as well as himself. Daeron drank from his goblet of cold water. Maekar didn't have it in him to understand. He was merciless to any weaknesses, including his own. And after that terrible tournament last year, his temper had taken a turn for the worse. Colder. More bitter. Not exactly qualities that would help him feel sympathy for someone who had underestimated a plague that could wipe out a good deal of the people of King's Landing. Worse yet, Maekar was still young enough to have no idea what it was like to feel old and helpless when only yesterday one had been in his prime. Daeron could sympathize with Netus, for he often felt this way himself. His sympathy, though, could not change a thing. They needed an adequate Grand Maester and maybe Netus wasn't that in this crisis.
"I want an assembly of twenty experienced maesters and ten silent sisters to assess the situation," Daeron said. "I'll be expecting their opinion in a week."
The opinion, though, came only three days later when seventeen of the maesters and all silent sisters who had gone about infected houses to gather information died.
"Well, there must be something we can do!" the King exclaimed and everyone looked at him in surprise, for it was a rare event for Daeron the Good to lose his temper over anything. "We cannot just sit and watch."
"To stop the disease from spreading further, we need to burn the houses in which someone died from the sickness. We need to burn their relatives' clothes and those who had entered those houses and touched the sick ones need to be held in separate buildings and guarded until it becomes clear whether they are sick or not…" an old revered maester said.
The Master of Coin looked stunned. "Do you have any idea how much will that cost?" he asked. "King's Landing might fill with homeless… and that's without even considering the manning of that guard you mentioned…"
"Well, what do you think about the alternative?" the Master of Whisperers said, beating Maekar to it.
Kin of the diseased hid the truth for as long as they could. They didn't call silent sisters and buried their dead at night, in secret, paying the gravediggers for their silence. This way, they kept their clothes and houses. But a few days later, they lost their lives. It became a common event for a house to lose all inhabitants in two days, in a single day, with no one to take the bodies away; the only thing alerting to what happened was the stench filling the narrow street.
"Rain," the Grand Maester said. "What we need is a good, heavy rain to wipe the disease away."
Everyone looked at the windows for the rain that did not come. It usually rained in spring. Just not this one. So people kept dying in tens. Then, they were dying in hundreds. Soon, it was in thousands.
The King issued orders so severe that they had been unknown even in the days if the Blackfyre Rebellion. Daeron the Good guaranteed death to everyone who kept silence about someone being sick or dead. Those who took items from infected houses would have their own houses burned just like those where the sickness had come.
"Maybe you should send the children to Summerhall," Lord Velaryon told Maekar one day after the meeting of the Council was over. "You see how it is here…"
"Maybe you should keep silent when you have nothing wise to say," Maekar snapped. "Or have you forgotten that the city gates are closed? No one can come or leave."
Lord Velaryon sighed and looked at the sky once again. No sign of rain coming soon. He knew, of course, that Maekar didn't really have much say in the matter, than should he send Aemon and the girls away, that would be taken as a sign that the disease was indeed so fatal as to scare the dragons in hiding and the panic would reach a new level. Besides, there were small riots every day in the streets. People demanded that their King do something, as if Daeron was a sorcerer who could just will the plague away. Should Maekar send his own children to safety while the children in King's Landing were dying in crowds, no one could say how far the resentment would come. Besides, knowing how the Prince was, he would not be surprised if Maekar actually thought that leaving them here because they had been here when the disease first broke out was the right thing to do. Ridiculous. Naeryne had been the gentlest soul ever born but her husband's righteousness had rubbed even her the wrong way.
Maesters, silent sisters, and gravediggers were dying in greater rates than anyone else.
"We can't leave the sick ones without care," the King said, tiredly. His sunken eyes looked at everyone around the table. "But can we really force anyone to attend them? Anyone unwilling?"
"There are enough maesters who are not afraid," the Grand Maester declared. "For a while, attending the sick won't be a problem."
Daeron nodded. "That seems reasonable," he said. "Anyone who is willing should be allowed to help. But they have to obey the safety measures we are trying to enforce…"
"Your Grace," Aemon said as soon as his grandfather fell silent. "I'd like to go out and help as well."
"But why you?" Daeron asked, stunned and scared for the boy.
"Why not?" Aemon replied. "I am to be a maester, aren't I?"
"Exactly," Maekar said. "You still aren't one, so I'll hear no more talks about going anywhere near an infected house."
"But I have to…"
"We'll discuss it later," the King interrupted them, seeing that the quarrel was inevitable. Aemon was a good boy but in his sense of what was right, he was just like his father. The Council could do without a family fight. "My lord, are you not feeling well?" he suddenly asked, looking at the Master of Ships who was draining another goblet of cold wine – his fifth, if Daeron wasn't mistaken. It was spring. It was not this hot.
The man's purple eyes flashed – or had they been glowing unhealthily the entire time? "I am fine, Your Grace," he said but everyone could not help but think that Prince Aemon might have his chance to help without even leaving the Red Keep.
Velyn Velaryon, Master of Ships, was tied to a raft that was lowered in the sea from a boat and then set aflame by a few archers and their flaming arrows. For all his competence and popularity, there weren't many who came to see him off in his last journey – everyone was afraid to meet their kin and avoided their acquaintances. The people in the Red Keep kept their doors closed shut and the castle looked ominous, deserted, with only a few shadows passing its halls when they needed to.
"Rhae and Daella wanted to come," Aemon told his father as they stood, watching the flames engulfing his uncle's body.
Maekar gave him a look of dismay. "And how would you know? Did you see them? Aemon, I gave orders that they were to be isolated in their chambers. I cannot keep you inside but I won't let you…"
"The servants talk," Aemon said.
The sun was burning too hot, as it did each bloody day since the damned disease had started. Maekar looked at his son again. Was the high colour of his cheeks a flush from the swelter, or did he need to be seen by one of the surviving maesters?
"They do, I have no doubt," he said. On his orders, his daughters were attended only by one maid each but even so, the servants would find a way to talk.
When they turned to leave, Aemon suddenly stopped and looked back at the sea and the small spot that was the raft now. "Was this how Mother was buried?" he asked.
"Yes," Maekar said. For all her years as a Targaryen wife, Naeryne had been very much a Velaryon of Driftmark. Sometimes, it was easy for him to forget that the other Houses, too, had their pride.
"Lord Rivers says we should burn the bodies, not bury them," Aemon said after a while.
Maekar looked at him inquiringly. "And what do you think of that?" he asked.
The boy was in no hurry to answer. "I think he's right," he said. "The septons will be in uproar, though. But well, we are responsible for the living, first and foremost."
His father nodded. As much as it irked him, Bloodraven had the truth of it. He could only hope that when this was all over, they would have living to be responsible for.
Meanwhile, the sickness was worming its way into the heart of the Red Keep.