In the Looking Glass of Years
Dawn Peeking In
"Lift me up."
The young Kingsguard's eyebrows raised not at the command itself because it wasn't something that happened rarely but rather, the tone and expression that accompanied it. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one to notice them.
"Are you trying to imitate Mother?" Daeron asked and laughed. Aemon shook his head at him and then looked away, because the sight of little Elaena keeping her chin up and leaning against the chair was quite amusing. She did manage to mimic her mother's tone and expression well but where the Queen just rested her hand against the armrest, Elaena had to lift hers to reach it at all – and then shift her weight because the angle threatened to have her topple. Before this could happen, Aemon leaned over and picked her up. She made herself comfortable on his shoulder and sighed happily, giving Daeron a look of triumph.
"You see? I'm taller than you now, and Baelor. You told me when I became bigger than you, you'd let me have your sword!"
"You aren't bigger, though," her brother protested. "You just cheated."
"I did not!" Elaena squealed and waved her arms in such a storm of indignation that Aemon had to squeeze her hard to keep her in her place.
"Be still!" he said sharply, afraid that he'd really drop her, and she froze. He immediately regretted his harsh tone. He was never rude to her. He was just scared.
"Leave me alone!" Daeron yelled. "You've been trailing me like… like… " But he couldn't find the proper word. "Don't be such a babe!" he finally said and just like that, Elaena's eyes welled up. She rubbed at the tears furiously as he strode out angrily.
Aemon sighed and brought her down. In the oppressive opulence of the hall, she looked incredibly tiny, the three set of teeth of the dragon on the tapestry right behind her ready to dig into her. For a girl of four, she weighed nothing. The bright streak in her hair was the only thing that glistened in the dark rainy day.
"They don't have the time for you, do they?" he asked and she nodded, her chin trembling.
"They say I'm a babe. Even Daena!" She was both hurt and indignant.
"Was she going out for a ride once again?" Aemon asked astutely and wondered if he should make the Queen aware of this. A look at the window made his concern rise. The weather was not one a girl of eight should be out in. The filly could slip on the wet grass. Daena could catch her death from cold. And she wasn't this good with her control over the filly, no matter what she thought. Not yet.
"Yes," Elaena replied. "She never wants to wait for me. She says I'm too slow!"
Now, that was a sentiment that Aemon couldn't say he disagreed with. Daena had just been given a filly of her own. Elaena's pony was considerably slower. If Daena had to wait for her, she would never be able to enjoy the ride.
"Come with me," he said, taking her by the hand. Her nursemaid who had been standing silently by made to follow them but he shook his head.
"There is no need," he said. "We're going to my sister. The Princess will be fine with her."
But she wasn't. A little before they reached Naerys' chambers, Elaena noticed a great movement in the corridors. A maester rushed past them and dove through the door. Someone yelled for hot water. Looking up at her cousin, Elaena saw how white he was.
"What happened?" he asked when they entered the babe's chamber.
Aegon turned away from the window and faced them. Elaena wanted to hide behind Aemon. She feared Aegon a little. But a king's daughter should never be scared. She should make the others scared! She had heard someone say that once and liked it. So she only clung to Aemon's hand tighter. But today, Aegon didn't even see her.
"She'll lose the child," he said darkly. "I told her that she should eat more but she never listens…" He headed for the door and then he noticed Elaena for the first time. "Why have you brought her here?"
Aemon looked down, surprised, as if he had forgotten about her presence. He hesitated. "Elaena, you're a big girl, aren't you?" he asked and she nodded vigorously. "Then, you can look after Daeron until his mother gets better. I entrust him to you."
She nodded, not quite sure that she could. Daeron just wasn't very interesting. He could only lie in his cradle and coo – or cry, as he was sometimes wont to. Loudly. Elaena didn't like him very much. And he was a bad omen, people said, born in the last day of the year that had seen the death of the last dragon. Elaena wasn't sure what an omen was but by the sound of it, it was an evil thing indeed.
"What happened?" she asked when Aemon and Aegon left the room. "Is Naerys ill?"
"Yes," the wetnurse murmured. "No," she checked herself.
Which one was it, yes or no? Sometimes grown-ups behaved as if they were children younger than Elaena. "Is Naerys ill?" she asked again.
"Yes," the woman said and Elaena decided that being here, with her, and taking care of Daeron was a boring thing. He wouldn't even wake up! But she couldn't say that she wanted someone to take her to her chambers. Outside, there was panic, and concerned voices, and Naerys weeping. There was a bad thing waiting outside for Naerys and she needed everyone's help to repel it. Elaena was too scared to move.
"I'll be right back," the wetnurse said and Elaena nodded. As the door opened and closed, she could hear a crisp, authoritative voice. A maester's one, she recognized. Only maesters spoke with such certainty – and her father and uncle.
The babe stirred and wailed and she stiffened, waiting for him to stop. But he didn't. Soon, the wailing reached that high peak that she knew so well but Naerys wasn't there to take care of him. Suddenly, Elaena felt a stab of fear. Would the bad thing go for him? She had promised to look after him. She dragged a footstool to the cradle, climbed on it and peeked inside. "Your mother isn't here," she informed him. "She's ill. But I'll take care of you, little babe."
To her surprise, his crying went a little down and then stopped altogether. There was a sudden delight on his face and Elaena realized that he was looking at her hair that was falling in the cradle. He reached for the gold streak but couldn't quite find it and wailed. He didn't look evil at all. He just looked miserable.
"Here, here," Elaena said, leaning so close that when she thought about that years later, she realized that she could have easily choked him with the waves of her hair or tumbled atop him. "I'll give it to you. Happy now?"
She opened his fingers and placed the streak in his palm, closing the fingers back. He immediately tried to place it in his mouth and Elaena obeyed, not minding the slaver that bathed it. When he released her hair, she gave him a finger to squeeze and finally realized what Aemon meant. She was a big girl. There was someone younger than her that she had to care of now.
She was no longer the babe.
"Are you going to read it?"
The voice coming out of nowhere startled Brynden Rivers. He looked up. In the first moment, he only saw silvery hair. The face attached to it remained in the shadow. But then, the newcomer moved and Brynden saw that he was a boy his age, a year or three older, perhaps.
"I am Aerys," he introduced himself, still looking at Bryndon curiously, his eyes a little narrowed. Brynden noticed that they were red-rimmed. Was he short-sighted?
"I am Brynden Rivers," he said in turn. His name was surely as well-known as Aerys' own but for entirely different reasons altogether. But perhaps the play of light and shades had hidden his red eyesand his birthmark from view.
Aerys' smile did not waver. If anything, he was more interested in what Brynden was doing, rather than what he looked like. "So," he asked again, "are you going to read it?"
"Why else would I take it from the shelf?" Brynden asked reasonably.
The huge tome, leather-boned and with ivory casing on the back and corners, was so heavy that he couldn't keep it comfortably on his knees and had had to place it on the oak table. It was very old but amazingly well-preserved – well, perhaps not so amazingly when so few people read it. Almost no one was interested in the history of Old Valyria written in High Valyrian by Valyrians themselves anymore, save for the maesters.
Aerys shrugged. "Some people pretend they read those books to look smart but when I ask, they never seem to know what the books read."
Ah. Brynden considered it waste of time for one to pretend to enjoy something that they didn't, instead of getting better at what they did. But he knew what the Prince was talking about. "Do you want to have it?" he found himself offering.
Aerys smiled a little. "I have one of my own," he replied, indicating the tome that looked equally ancient… and equally unread.
For a while, there was silence interrupted only by the rustling of sheet and the soft conversation of maesters in the background. Until there was suddenly an echo of steps and louder voices. Aerys looked up and Brynden thought he was stifling a sigh. "The savages are here," he announced and tried to ignore their presence.
In fact, the owners of the two pale heads far down the left isle were remarkably quiet but when one's reading was as complex as both Aerys' and Brynden' were, every sound louder than a purr could just as well be yelling, so Brynden couldn't blame Aerys too much when, at their coming close, he warned in too harsh a voice, "Be quiet!"
They weren't too impressed. Brynden noticed that the books they were carrying might be more numerous but even put together, their load looked thin compared to the mountains of bound parchment that he and Aerys were reading.
"Oh," one of them said, taking a peek at Aerys' book. "It's The Book."
The capital letter was very clear.
"Let's get out of here, Maekar," he went on. "It's too smart for us in this hall."
His companion didn't look quite ready to comply. Instead, he glared at Aerys who returned the sentiment with equal force.
"Do you want Father to find out that you were here?" the first boy insisted and that seemed to do the trick.
Behind their retreating backs, Aerys chuckled. "Sometimes, I can swear Rhaegel is the smart one in the family," he said and Brynden blinked. Wasn't Prince Rhaegel to be… well, weak of mind?
"No," Aerys said as if Brynden has asked the question aloud. "It isn't the same thing at all." He paused. "I wouldn't talk about that in front of my father if I were you, though. Or my lady mother."
Brynden nodded. It made perfect sense.
"They aren't this bad, in fact," Aerys said reluctantly. "They're just too loud. And last week Maekar murdered one of my books with his mace."
A book-murderer! Brynden could say already that he and the King's youngest son would not have nearly the rapport he, to his surprise, had started establishing with Aerys. How does one murder a book with a mace, he wondered but since it was clearly still a sore point for the Prince, he didn't ask.
Something on the next page caught his attention and he gasped, bringing Aerys' attention to the text as well.
"What?" the other boy asked. "What is it?"
Brynden hesitated but Aerys insisted. "Here, it says that Aegar Targaryen tried again to find support for his suggestion about the Rhoynar but the rest of them dragonlords did not merit his ideas favourably, as Targaryens were not known for offering wise opinions but always tried to rise above their station." How could that be? The Targaryens of old had been dragonlords, hadn't they? They had been the greatest of the great and now they were the only heirs of the great Freehold… they must have been important, right?
Aerys' mind was clearly working in a similar pattern. "You must have gotten the translation wrong," he said and Brynden bristled with insult that he wasn't ready to show, despite everything. Aerys was one of the few people who seemed to have the same interest in books and he didn't pay attention to Brynden's looks.
"I didn't," he said and now, Aerys came to his table and pushed him a little away quite unceremoniously so he could have a better look at the book.
"It isn't wise, it's well-reasoned," he said after a while but he didn't offer any disagreement with the gist of Brynden's translation.
By an unspoken agreement they kept reading together, stunned to find out more and more mentionings of the Targaryens that seemed to deny the legend of the proud heritage that was spread across the Seven Kingdoms. The first two times, Brynden looked at Aerys before turning the page. The third time, he didn't need to – he already knew that the Prince read High Valyrian as easily as he did.
"What is so interesting?" a voice started them and Brynden was surprised to see that the sun had already started going down. He rose and bowed.
"We were just reading, Father," Aerys said. "Did you know that in Valyria, we were no ones?"
He still looked shocked.
Daeron, the Second of His Name, smiled. "Ah, I see you've found a companion who shares your interests. Good, good."
Brynden wondered had the King been allowed companions who shared his interests when he had been their age. Somehow, from what he had heard about King Aegon, he doubted it. Daeron's interests were said to be the same as theirs.
"Did you know?" Aerys insisted.
"Of course I did." Daeron's face was now serious. "That only comes to prove that you would better go to the source, doesn't it? Maesters could have told you all kind of lies of how glorious our history was and you would have never known any better."
Does it matter, Brynden's grandfather would have asked. Who cares about what happened a thousand years ago? Of course, when it came to the Bracken feud, his opinion changed at once.
It mattered, though. He who did not know the past could never understand the future. Brynden said so and then wondered why he had. Save for his mother, none of the grown-ups he knew cared about such things and anyway, it sounded as if he were trying to impress the King. Which he wasn't.
"And if you could choose your future, Brynden, what would it have been?"
"I'd rise to greatness. I'd serve the realm with the power of my mind," Brynden said without hesitation. He already knew that he was extremely bright. His wit was even greater than the considerable marital prowess masters at-arms saw in him.
"What a peculiar ambition."
But there was no spite in Aerys' voice, just wonder and something like… hope? Brynden knew that the King's second son wasn't into weapons and swordplay but knowledge. At this moment, he realized that Aerys could be his friend.
"But a worthy one indeed," the King said and smiled again. "Perhaps the three of us will talk about this book later if I have the time."
"You won't," Aerys murmured. "You never do now."
But Brynden was thrilled. Finally, there was someone who thought his achievements were worth something. Someone who wasn't his mother or Maester Grandal anyway. The King, no less!
When he looked back, years later, he realized that this was the day his lifelong commitment to Daeron had started.