Dead and Dragons – Yes, and Aegons
Dyanna had long ago got used to her mother's peculiarities, sternness, silences. Distance. They could be prolonged not permanent, but by no means ,and she had long ago come to realize that when it counted, Lady Elsbet would always be there, so after the first shock, she took it for granted that her mother would reconsider… up to the moment when their party was heading for the boats , to the Torrentine, the Red Mountains, the passes, King's Landing, and Dyanna's wedding and her mother only came to say goodbye.
"She really isn't coming, is she?" Dyanna whispered, stunned into temporary limitations of her words to a few disbelieving ones.
"It's for the best, Dyanna," Lady Elsbet said, coming forward to embrace her. Dyanna recoiled, angry and hurt. "I don't want to blacken your wedding with my own anguish. I tried to drive it away but I failed. It's going to bring you bad luck if I'm there and I'm not happy for you but full of foreboding that isn't even justified. I will be wishing you all the happiness in the world from here."
Dyanna avoided her mother's arms. "I see," she said coldly and proceeded for the boat because if she looked at her mother even once, she might scream. Lady Elsbet's sorrow looked so sincere! When I have children of my own, I'll never keep them at distance, for no reason, she vowed as Ultor took her hand to help her to the boat and the swift powerful strokes carried them across the Torrentine before the night tide turned it into a living whirlwind sucking everything in, just like the whirlwind that was her mother's bitterness sucked everything else and her feelings for everyone else. Her children. Her husband. Now, Dyanna remembered the period after her sister's death when it was rumoured that her father had got himself involved with many women and this time, she understood why he had chosen to seek escape. She, though, she could not find another mother as easily as he had found other women in the stead of the woman who had kept pushing him away.
"Don't take it too hard." There was a plea in her brother's voice. "You know how she can be."
That was easy enough for him to say! At his wedding, their mother would be there to the very last moment, praying for his happiness and wiping tears from time to time.
"I'm fine," Dyanna said and sat listening to the murmur of the Torrentine, the soft whisper that was slowly growing into a roar out of its control. Never before had this sound given her so much sorrow.
King's Landing met her with cheering and secret looks. It was not this different than at the time she had arrived here as part of Prince Maron's party when he ha wed King Daeron's sister but actually, it was not the same at all. At the time, she had been just one of the many. Now, she was the Dornishwoman. The one that everyone stared at. Whispered about. Waited to make a mistake. She was not used to this kind of attention, although she had been expecting it.
"Where is Elsbet?" her uncle Michael Manwoody asked literally as soon as he had his first moment alone with them.
"She isn't here," her father said and if she had not been looking at her uncle by mere chance, Dyanna wouldn't have noticed the utter lack of surprise on his face. So everyone knew just how little she meant to her mother. She felt even more wretched.
"I am not surprised," Maekar only said when she told him that her mother would not attend their wedding. "I'm afraid your lady mother doesn't like me very much."
"My lady mother doesn't like me very much," she corrected dryly and when he stared, she had the unsettling feeling that he could say how hurt she was.
All in all, the frictions just kept growing.
"There's a great statue of the first Daeron now in Oldtown," Malla Tyrell said innocently one day. "To commemorate his great victory. I suppose it needs to be taken down now? No one would like to make our new friends feel uncomfortable." Her smile was quick, showing just a hint of teeth.
Dyanna looked around, although she knew the Queen had not joined them yet. If she had, the Tyrell girl would have never dared speak of Daeron the Butcher… and the Princess of Dragonstone clearly had no intention to rein her lady in.
Everyone was looking at Dyanna, waiting to see how she would react, and she smiled. "Not at all," she said sweetly. "Do you not know what my lady grandmother said, just about King Daeron, I think? 'They hate me because they fear me'. In fact, I'm thinking of offering my lord father to erect such a statue in Starfall. It might be pointing its sword at the desert, I think," she added, wondering how her parents would react to such an idea. She had the feeling that even her ever so patient father would be overwhelmed.
Later, she would regret her impulsiveness but at the moment, she was not thinking of anything else but not letting this blow go to her. "I'm disappointed," was all her father had to say on the matter. She could hear the rest of it easily enough: if she had taken the very first bite at a moment when she wasn't even Maekar's wife, what would she do when the attacks became more direct? How would she build any authority in a court posed to dislike her? Of course, it was still Mariah Martell's court but the future queen had not involved herself directly, had she? She had simply been unwilling to deal with people who were so sadly tactless, she couldn't be blamed… We'll see, Marcher lady, Dyanna thought. You might be the queen in waiting but I won't play to your tune.
Still, it bothered her that she didn't know what Jena Dondarrion's tune was. Starfall had been a safe haven where certain topics were never discussed and although she knew the basics of the most recent history between Dorne and the Iron Throne, history writ in blood, she was quickly realizing that she was shockingly uninformed where her family's own part in it was concerned, so at the third day after her arrival, she went to the only man she could trust with the question.
"What can I do to help you, Dyanna?" Michael Manwoody asked. Although not a blood relative, he was one her parents cherished – and he would stay when everyone else would go back home. He had been present when the history had been written. She did not try to mince words. "Wherever I go, there are people talking… My mother and the Young Dragon, thirty years ago… What happened thirty years ago, Uncle?"
"Nothing that concerns you in any way," he said, looking uncomfortable. "Have your parents never discussed it with you?"
Dyanna shook her head. "My lady mother was wise not to come here, where I could have asked her some questions, wasn't she?" she asked bitterly. "I can't ask my father. And I don't think he can say this much to me anyway. He wasn't there, was he?"
"No," Michael agreed. "He was fighting the Stranger for his life after the torments the Young Dragon's torturers inflicted on him. As to your mother… Don't be unfair to her, Dyanna. She has been through so many things. It isn't easy on her. No matter howhard I tried, I couldn't fully make her believe that Prince Maekar will be good to you. Her own memories tell her otherwise."
"What memories?" Dyanna insisted, although she had started to realize the very first time she had heard the slur. Everyone knew about Cassella Vaith and discussed it aloud. Elsbet Toland, mother to a soon-to-be Targaryen bride was talked about in hushed tones but the implication was clear.
Michael Manwoody gave her a dark glance. "Dyanna, if Maekar Targaryen ever treats you the way the Young Dragon treated your mother, a death punishment will be too kind."
She gasped, comprehending and unwilling to comprehend. She did not dare ask any more questions. She had never imagined that anything could ever happen to her mother out of her will, let alone against her will – well, except for being taken hostage here, in the very same building Dyanna was residing in until her marriage. Had Daeron Targaryen actually… happened to her? Dyanna wasn't sure she wanted to know. She wasn't sure she could take it without her world turning upside down.
"Turn him down," her grandmother urged him. "Refuse to say the words." She kept repeating it until her goodson heard her and turned her out from Dyanna's chambers and then forbade her to meet his children without surveillance.
"The wounds are still not quite healed, child," her uncle would say and Dyanna would feel how the trap was springing around her. There was no way out now, even if she wanted to… and sometimes she did. When Maekar wouldn't give her anything more than the courtesy their betrothal demanded of him. How would she live with him? But he hadn't been always like this. When he had kept her close during their adventure with the Vulture King, he hadn't been; when he had grabbed the snake lying against her breast and took its poison to spare her, he hadn't been. More and more, she returned to their time in the dilapidated tower to reassure herself that their marriage would not necessarily be a cold and dutiful one. She sometimes succeeded, although with the cold blood of the past streaking their future, on the one hand, and Maekar's own grim nature sucking her natural buoyancy, how could it be anything else? Even little Astrea was scared and distrustful.
"He isn't going to beat you, is he, Dyanna?" she asked.
Dyanna was able to reassure this on this count, at least. "No," she said with absolute certainty. "He won't."
But so many things could be done without him ever raising a hand. He could confine her to her chambers under any pretext. He could keep her in cold damp chambers until she caught the wasting disease of those who grew pale and threw up blood…
What kind of thoughts were these? Sometimes, she got scared. It was not like her to be this grim. But now, everything scared her, every night and every day. Fear for Astrea and Ultor, for her father and grandmother, fear for herself. Fear that left her as soon as she left the building that King Baelor's sisters, and her mother and uncle had lived in before her.
"Astra got ill here," her uncle said a week after their arrival, staring at Astrea who simply had a cough. "And it started like this."
"Why, thank you, Michael," her father snapped. "That's just what I needed. Perhaps I should tell you how Vorian's agony started if we're going to be all talkative?"
But just two days later, Dyanna and the rest of them were moved to other chambers – disgruntling the Tyrells who had to leave their apartments and move to the Maidenvault instead. Dyanna had nothing to do with it but the move had won her and the Queen some new enemies. The desire to better accommodate a bride to be was no excuse, in Tyrells' eyes.
Still, Dyanna's fears vanished in a single night. Just like this. Only to arise a few days later as she stood before the enormous entrance of the Dragonpit. It was wide enough to house the length of all her chambers in the Red Keep! She felt so tiny and insignificant standing there, grasping the true extent of the dragon kings' power for the very first time here, at the forge where it had been created. So vast. So dark. So repulsive and compelling at the same time. She wanted to turn back and run and at the same time, she wanted to enter and look for any trace of the magnificent beasts. Not the skulls lined in the throne room; those did not impress her at all, huge as they were; but this place… She wanted to enter and see if there was a scale from a body… a claw from a leg… a shade of a dream…
"The dead and the dragons will be back," Aerys Targaryen murmured. "And the world will perish in flames and ice again, to be reborn…"
"Gods, I hope no," Ultor said briskly, not realizing how insulting he was being. Aerys did not notice, though, lost in his reverie, fascinated and terrified in equal measures. Normally, Dyanna liked the spindly youth, loved talking to him about books and old scrolls, but now recoiled, unreasonably and immensely scared of him. Just to hit a wall. Which steadied her on her feet.
"The dead and the dragons will never be back," Maekar said in a low voice, "nor should they be."
Although Dyanna could have easily regained her balance, she stayed where she was. His hands were so delightfully warm, his realism snatching her back from the thrall that the dragon abode kept her in. It was strange that this prince, so proud of his dragon lineage, should be the one to put an end to it. She squeezed his hands back and just for a moment, in the dark shadows behind the circle of torchlight, she leaned her head against his shoulder before she could think better. But she was not pushed away as she expected in a split second. He pressed a cheek against her hair before releasing her with reluctance that made her heart skip a beat.
"Why?" Aerys asked when they stepped back into the light. "Why would you say this? Ever since the dragons died, we've been trying to bring them back, do you not remember?"
"Oh, I remember all too well. That's the problem." Maekar paused. "King Aegon used to take me here," he explained levelly. "We stayed here for hours as he raved about the return of the dragons and the revenge he would exact against Dorne… starting with a certain Dornishwoman. Do you care to hear who she was?"
"No." Aerys' fascination had left him. "I never knew it was this bad."
Maekar shrugged. "It wasn't. It was tedious, more than anything."
Looking at him, Dyanna thought, Oh no, it wasn't. Still, she could say that he kind of believed it. He seemed to be a better liar than even her. At least she only lied to other people. She knew what the truth was. It chilled her when it occurred to her that he might be as good as to lie effectively to himself.
This time, even Aerys didn't believe it. "Tedious, was it?"
Maekar nodded. "After the third time, I got the point but this didn't stop him. Which was," he added, "that if he wished for the return of the dragons, it was a bad thing to wish for."
Aerys laughed harshly. "Not a bad logic at all!" He paused. "I have no doubt that he's burning in the seventh hell already. He tainted even this, didn't he?"
Maekar made no answer and Dyanna felt a surge of hatred for the dead man that surprised her. If her husband to be was as loathe to see the return of the dragons as she was, it would only bring them closer, so why was she angry?
"Luckily, I won't have to name a son after him," Maekar said finally; stunned, Dyanna saw a sparkle of real humour in his eyes. "I'm so far down in the succession that no one will expect an Aegon from me. My lady, what say you?"
Here, in the hall of the dragons, the daughter of the Torrentine smiled. The one she would wed was asking her about her opinion. And… no Aegon for her, like Aegon the Conqueror or Aegon the unworthy king. "I say 'thank you'."
For a brief moment, he smiled back.
The End