I am drawing heavily upon the writings Gary Jennings to illustrate this world in in the magnificence it deserves. If heaven exists, Gary Jennings has most assuredly earned a spot next to God himself. RIP

To His Most Excellency, Sir Loras Tyrell, Holy Knight-
Lord of The Rainbow Guard, Warden of the North by
Appointment of His Most Blessed Majesty Tommen
Baratheon, Our Lord King.

As Captain of the Guard for Your Most Excellency's prison, it has been my duty to examine one Jon, known to all as Jon the Bastard. A notorious bandit, seducer of women and leader of rabble.

As Your Most Excellency knows, this criminal is of tainted blood. Specifically that category of mixed blood the law defines as bastard. As a bastard, he is outside the protection of the Seven and there are no legal prohibitions against either his torture or execution.

The examination of this thief and murderer of uncertain ancestry and tainted blood has been neither pleasant nor profitable. Your instructions to me are to pry from his lips the location of his comrades and the location of the great hoard of treasure acquired by insult to His Majesty and to you and other citizens of The Seven Kingdoms, the rightful owners thereof.

You also commissioned me to obtain to location of the northern whore who is said to be his mother. The woman has publicly denied birthing the bastard, but, whether that is the truth or she has contrived such a story because of his tainted blood will not be answered until we find her and give her a taste of the truth-extractors we have in this dungeon prison.

I confess, Most Excellency the task you have given me is more difficult and odious than could be imagined. It is most repugnant to question this half-caste son of a whore, as if he were a legal person, rather than simply hanging him. However, the dead tell no tales and despite my ardent wish I am forced to simply seek the information by torture rather than than dispatching him to the old gods, his masters.

We began the interrogation with the cord and water method. We placed knotted cords around the prisoner's limbs and twist them with a rod. Five twists are generally sufficient to elicit the truth, but, it did nothing to this madman except excite laughter. We then increased the twists and wet the cords to create shrinkage, but, no words of confession spilled from his mouth. We could not use the cords on his head in fear it would pop out his eyes and prevent him from leading us to the treasure.

The water and cord method works well on shopkeepers and women, but it is not the equal of this bastard. We were forced to try other, more creative, methods with the tools we have available. I began loosening the prisoner's tongue with a skinning cat. The hemp cords are soaked in a solution of salt and embedded with sharp, small pieces of iron. It can reduce the skin and flesh to pulp in a short time. Most men would confess and beg for mercy after a small taste of this venomous tail. The lashing of this tree worshiper opened only a flood of the most treasonous and blasphemous of statements from his foul mouth.

Continuing the extraction, the prisoner was hoisted upside-down, hanging from his left foot with his hands bound behind his back and mouth gagged. While in this position, water was poured down his nose. When these further methods failed to assist his powers of recollection or stem the flow of foul utterances, his fingers were put in thumb screws.

The thumbscrew is a favored device of persuasion because it exerts tremendous agony with little effort. The thumb and fingers are put into a screw device between two crossbars with ribs, and the bars are slowly screwed down This is done until the screws tightened and blood squirted from his thumbs and fingers. This too failed to elicit the truth from the treasonous bastard.

My jailer swept up the vermin from the floor of the dungeon and spread them over the prisoner's body. The prisoner was kept tied up so he could not scratch or brush them off. I am pleased to report that I have never heard more pleasant music than his screams as the vermin crawled over his naked body and squirmed into his open wounds.

All of this was performed on the first day. I regret, Your Most Excellency, that no confession spilled from his lips. After those methods failed, we continued the most severe of persuasions for seven days yet the bastard has disclosed neither the location of the treasure nor the whereabouts of the bitch from whose loins this bastard dropped.

Because this bastard has neither recanted his evils nor revealed the hiding place of his comrades and stolen booty, It is my recommendation that the prisoner be transferred to the Office of His Holiness, The Most High Sparrow to answer for his blasphemies and further interrogation and repentance before he is executed.

While I await Your Most Excellency's instructions, I have given the prisoner quill and paper at his request. Can Your Excellency appreciate my astonishment when the bastard made the claim to be able to read and write like a true-born person? I confess my surprise was even greater after I had him compose a sentence and found that he indeed placed written words on paper like a Maester.

Teaching a bastard to read and write is of course, offensive to Your Most Excellency's policy of providing a lifestyle for bastards commensurate to their station in life as servants and laborers.

However, because you believe that he may inadvertently provide a clue as to the location of the treasure he has hoarded, I have given him quill and paper to record his babbling. As you have instructed, the writings of this madman, no matter how absurd, will be sent to Your Most Excellency for examination.

The Seven bear witness to the truth of this testament to Your Most Excellency, Warden of the North.

Domeric Bolton,
Captain of the Guard.

666 666 666

Men call me Jon the Bastard.

I truth, I was not named bastard. It is an accusation that the bearer was conceived outside of holy matrimony. Even less flattering words have been used to describe my person. The rape and union of men and women has created a great many bastards who fall to begging and thievery. Rejected by the people of the mother and the father, there is little choice.

I am one of these, yet, I admit to my arrogant pride in having the blood of two noble families in my veins. Of my name, true and otherwise, and other treasures, I will say more later. Like the Eastern Princess who wove tales to keep her head on her shoulders, I will not cast all my pearls in a single toss...

"Bastard, tell us of jewels. Of silver and gold." The words of the gaoler come to mind like hot embers from the torturer's pyre for the not-yet-dead.

I will speak, but first, there is the matter of my birth. My youth. Dangers surmounted and a love that conquers all. These things must not be hurried, but savored. Patience is a virtue I learned as a guest in the Warden's dungeon.

One does not hurry a torturer.

Despite the corporal damage, my soul is stalwart. It will still bethink the truth, which is all that remains to me. All else has been taken from me. So here I sit, naked before the Old Gods and the rats that share my cell.

Truth still resides in my heart, in that sanctum sanctorum that no man can touch. The truth cannot be stolen from a man, even on the rack, because it is in the custody of the gods.

I was destined from birth to play a role that made me different from other men. Secrets have always been shadows in my life. I was to find, even my birth was veiled by dark thoughts and foul deeds.

Tell the gaoler to put away his hot pincers and await this tale of treasure for I am not yet prepared to tell it. His embrace has left my thoughts in many pieces, and I must mend them to remember this jewel of life and those worldly treasures the Lord desires word of.

I must go back. Back to the days when I was suckled by a she-wolf and drank the wine of my youth.

I shall start from the beginning my friends and share with you the gold of my life.

Call me Jon.

My first memories were in the village of Seasill in the shadow of the Red Mountains of Dorne. The First Men built temples in the mountains to please the sun, moon, and, rain gods, but after the old gods were defeated by the Andals and their Seven, the land and the people upon it were divided into estates owned by Andal nobility.

Composed of a few hundred hundred red, mud and straw bricked huts, The village of Seasill and all it's people belonged to the estate of Sir Franco Peres, Knight of Seasill.

The small stone sept was was near the riverbank on the village side. On the other side of the river were the shops, corrals, and the great house of the estate. The great house was built like a fortress with a high, thick wall, arrow slits, and a huge door with braces. A banner blazoned the wall next to the door.

In old times, it is said the sun never set upon the Valyrian Freehold. It dominated not just it's doomed homeland, but stretched around the world. The lands of Essos were taken, nearly in entirety. The lands along the river Rhoyne were home to the people known as the Rhoynar.

The Lord of Seasill and his family were of Valyrian blood. This earned the not-so-secret ire of his small-folk.

It is said their cities were burned in dragon-fire. Their gods destroyed and forgotten. Their lands and riches stolen by the white haired demons. The survivors crossed the sea to escape the wrathful and greedy dragon-lords. Lead by a fierce Warrior Queen, they made land in Dorne.

Upon landing, it is said they found more white haired demons. Angered and hungry they slaughtered the dragon-less white haired people. They hunted them from one side of Dorne to the other. Settling into the Red Mountains, these people became known as the Stony Dornish, while the Rhoynar became simply Dornish.

I grew up speaking both the Andal and Dornish tongues.

Septon Antony's sept where once there sat a shrine to the Rhoynar goddess of fertility. After the Andal gods defeated the Rhoynar gods, the shrine was torn down and the stones used to build a sept. From then on the villagers gave praise to the Seven instead of the gods of their homeland.

The village of Seasill was a small kingdom in and of itself. The Dornish who worked the land grew wheat, squash, beans, and other food stuff, horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. Workshops created almost everything used on the estate, from shoes for horses and plows for tilling the soil, to the rough carts with wooden wheels used to haul the harvest. Only the fine furnishings, china and linens of the great house used by the lord, Sir Franco, came from outside the estate.

I shared the hut of my mother, Miaha. She was the first mother I knew. It was common knowledge that Sir Franco lay with Miaha, and everyone believed I was his son. Sir Franco bore the white hair and purple eyes with pale skin that marked a Valyrian. I also bore pale skin and purple eyes, while my hair was as black as my mother's.

The bastards dropped by peasant women after intercourse with nobility were favored by neither the nobility or the small-folk. To the knight, I was just an increase to his stock of dray animals. When Sir Franco looked at me, he saw not a child but a piece of property. The knight proffered no more affection towards me than he did to the cattle grazing in the fields.

Accepted by neither the lord or his people, even children spurned me as a playmate, I learned early that my hands and feet existed solely to defend my mixed blood and tainted birth. There was no sanctuary for me in the estate's great house. The knight's son Jose, was a year older than myself; his twin daughters, Maribel and Isibel, two years older. None of them were allowed to play with me, although they were allowed to beat me at will.

Privilege of nobility.

Lady Amelia was unrelentingly venomous. For her I was sin incarnate-living proof that her husband, the lord, had stuck his cock between the legs of a Dornish whore.

"WHAT IS THIS SECRET? TELL IT TO US!"

The gaoler's words appear on my paper like black ghosts.

Patience Sir Captain, patience. Soon you will know the secret of my birth and of other treasures. I will reveal the secrets in words the blind can see and the deaf can hear, but at present my mind is too weak from hunger and deprivation to do so. It will have to wait until I have regained my strength from some decent food and sweet water.

The day came when I saw with my own eyes how a person like me, who was without title and pedigree, was treated when they rebelled. I was more than halfway through my eleventh year when I came out of the hut I shared with my mother carrying my fishing spear when I heard horses and shouting.

"Move! Faster!"

Two men on horseback were driving a man before them with whips. Running and staggering, the horses breathing down his neck, their powerful hoofs hammering at his heels, the man came toward me down the village path.

The horsemen were Sir Franco's men-at-arms. Andals who protected the estate with sword and lance from bandits and used their whips to keep the Dornish working in the fields.

"Hurry up!"

Lighter of skin and taller than the average Rhoynar, dressed as a peasant, the man was a stranger to me. White hair stained with blood marked the man as of Valyrian descent.

A horseman rode up beside the stranger and squirted him savagely. The man staggered and fell, belly down. The back of his shirt was torn and bloody, his back a mass of bleeding whip marks. The other horseman charged with a lance and stabbed the tip into the cheek of his backside.

The man struggled to his feet and staggered down the village lane towards me. He lost his footing again and the the horsemen wheeled, resuming their attack with the lance and whip.

"Who is he?" I asked my mother as she came up beside me.

"A mine worker." She said. "An escapee from one of the northern silver mines in the Red Mountains. He came to one of the workers in the fields asking for food, and they called the men-at-arms. Mines pay a reward for runaways."

"Why are they beating him?"

It was a stupid question that required no answer from my mother. I might as well have asked why an oxen is whipped to pull a plow. Peasants were dray animals. Forbidden to leave the estates of their lords, they were property. When they strayed, they were whipped like any other animal that disobeys it;s master.

The King's law actually protected small-folk from being put to death, but no law exists to forbid beating.

As the man got closer I noticed that the man's face was marred by more than blood.

"His face is branded." I said.

"Mine owners brand their workers." Miaha said. "When they are traded or sold to other mines, more brands are burned on. This man was branded by many masters."

I had heard of this practice from the Septon. He explained that when the Kings of old gave the lords their original lands, they were granted tribute paying serfs. At one time, many lords branded their initials onto the foreheads of subjects to keep them from straying. The Prince had forbade the practice hundreds of years ago and it came only to be used for the forced laborers and criminals who work in the dreaded silver mines of the mountains.

From the Rhoynar who came out of their huts, I heard the word "Valyrian" hissed as an insult. The insult was intended for me as much the mine slave. When I looked toward the group, one of the men caught my eye and spat on the ground.

"Fool!" My mother said angrily.

The man melted into the group to avoid my mother's ire. While the villagers may have viewed my tainted blood with repugnance, my mother was pure Rhoynar. Of more importance, they did not want to antagonize her because it was known that Sir Franco slept with her from time to time. My own position as the supposed bastard of the knight granted me nothing. There was no blood tie from me to him that was recognized by him or anyone else.

The villagers were strong believers in the purity of blood. I represented more than tainted blood to them, I was a living reminder of the loss of their gods, homeland, and the rape of their women. I was just a boy and it broke my heart to be surrounded with such contempt.

As the man was herded toward us, I got a closer look at the agony twisting his features. I once watched men in the village beat a crippled deer to death with clubs. I saw in the man's eyes the same feral anguish.

I don't know why his tormented eyes locked onto mine. Perhaps I was the only one whose face expressed shock and horror.

"I am also human!" He shouted at me.

He grabbed my fishing spear. I thought he was going to turn and fight the two horsemen with it. Instead he shoved the spear against his stomach and fell on it. Air and blood bubbled from his mouth and and the wound as he writhed in the dirt.

My mother pulled me aside as the men-at-arms dismounted. One of the men flogged the man, cursing him to the seven hells for cheating them out of a reward.

The other drew his sword and stood over the man.

"His head, we can still get something out of his head and branded face. The mine owner will post it on a stake as a warning to other runaways."

He chopped at the dying man's neck.

AN: Before the idiots go haywire, there are no doctors in the little villages of America, much less Africa. Why would the little villages of primitive Westeros be any different with Maesters who hold the chain-link for medicine?

Thus I grew from a baby crawling in the dirt to a young boy running in the dirt, neither brown skinned nor white, neither Valyrian nor Rhoynar, welcomed nowhere save the hut of my mother and the little stone sept of Father Antony.

My mother's hut also welcomed Sir Franco. He came each Saturday afternoon, while his wife and daughters visited the lady of a nearby estate. At those times I was sent away from the hut.

No village children played with me, so I explored the riverbanks, fishing and inventing playmates in my mind. Once, I returned to the hut to retrieve my forgotten fishing spear and heard strange noises coming from the draped off corner where my mother's sleeping pallet lay. I peeked through the reed curtain. What I saw caused me to flee the hut, frightened.

I spent most of my days with Father Antony. In truth, I found more love and affection from the septon than I did Miaha. While Miaha usually treated me with kindness, I never felt the warm, passionate bond between us that I saw with other children and mothers. Deep down I always felt that my mixed blood made her ashamed of me before her own people.

I once expressed this feeling to father, and he told me it was not my blood. "Miaha is proud to to be thought of as having the Sir's child. It is the woman's vanity that keeps her from showing her love. She looked into the river once, and saw her own reflection and fell in love with it." We both laughed over comparing her to the vain Narcissus of Valyrian legend. Some say he fell into the pool and drowned.

The septon taught me to read almost as soon as I was able to walk. Because most of the great classics were written in High and Low Valyrian, he taught me my letters in both languages. The lessons always came with repeated warnings: I was never to let anyone, Andal or Rhoynar, know that I had such learnings. The lessons were always conducted in the privacy of his room.

Father Antony was a saint about everything but my education. He was determined to shape me into a scholar despite my low birth. When my mind did not grasp quick enough, he threatened to quicken my mind with a whipping stick. In truth, he never had the heart to strike me.

Such learning was not only forbidden to a bastard; Nobles were seldom literate unless they were destined for the priesthood or Citadel. The septon said lady Amelia could barely write her name. The father, at his personal peril, had educated me "beyond my means," as he put it.

Through the father, I knew other worlds. While other boys followed their fathers to tend the fields as soon as they could walk, I sat in the father's small chamber at the back of the little sept and read Aegon's Odyssey and Viserys' Aeneid.

All must labor on the estate. Had I been anyone else, I would have joined the others in the fields. The septon though, chose me as his helper. My earliest memories were of sweeping the sept with a bound-twig broom, a full head taller than I, and dusting the father's small collection of leather-bound tomes and codices of Scripture, classics, ancient annals, and medicine.

Besides ministering to the souls of all on the estate, the septon was the chief source of medical advice. Andals from many miles came seeking his attention, "as poor and ignorant as it is," he said, rather truthfully. Rhoynar, of course, had there own shamans and witches to combat sickness. In our small village we had a witch-sorceress who could be called upon to put a curse on an enemy or drive off disease-inducing demons.

At an early age I began to accompany the septon as his servant on his medical missions to those who were too ill to come to the sept. At first I only cleaned up after him. Soon I was able to hand him instruments or medicines as he worked on patients. I watched him mix his elixirs and later was able to make the same concoctions. I learned to set broken bones, remove arrows, suture a wound, and restore the humors of the body through bloodletting, although always in the guise as a servant.

All these arts I mastered by the time I was sprouting hair under my arms. Sir Franco never took notice of my skills until I was almost twelve years old and made a mistake of revealing what I learned.

That incident was to set off a chain of events that changed my life. Like so many times, changes came to me not with the tranquility of a lazy river but with the fiery bursts of the mountains called volcanoes.

It occurred during the examination of a guest, who complained of abdominal pain. I had not seen this noble before but knew from others that he was the manager of the estate that was the largest along the river. It was owned by the Cerda family of Starfall, a place I had never seen.

One day, the septon had been called to the great house to administer to Sir Eduard Cerda, who had been visiting with Sir Franco when he became ill after the noon meal. I came with the septon as his servant, carrying the leather bag in which he stored his medical tools and main jars of potions.

The knight was laying on a cot when we arrived. He stared intently up at me as the father examined him. For some reason my features had attracted his curiosity. It was almost if, despite his pain, he recognized me. This was an unusual experience for me. Knights never noticed servants, especially bastards.

"Our guest," Sir Franco told Father Antony, "flinches when you press his stomach. He has strained a muscle in his abdomen, probably from lying on too many Dornish maidens."

"Never too many, Sir Franco," the patient said, "but perhaps too tough and too tight. Some of the village women are harder to mount than a lion."

From the smell of the man's breath as he passed by me earlier, I realized that his stomach was boiling from the hot peppers and spices he had consumed. The Andals had adopted Dornish cooking, but their stomachs were not always in agreement. He needed a potion of goat's milk and olive oil to clean out his innards.

"It's an ache in his stomach from the noon meal," I blurted out, "not a muscle."

I realized my mistake immediately by the flush of anger on Sir Franco's face. I had not only refuted his diagnosis but had insulted the food of his household, literally accusing him of poisoning his guest.

Father Antony froze with his mouth agape.

Sir Franco slapped he hard across the face. "Go outside and wait."

With my face stinging, I went outside and squatted in the dirt to await the inevitable beating.

In a few minutes, Sir Franco, Sir Eduard, and Father Antony came outside. They looked at me and appeared to argue among themselves in whispers. I could not hear the words, but I could tell that the visiting knight was making some contention about me. The assertion seemed to create puzzlement in Sir Franco and consternation in the septon.

I had never seen the father in fear before but today, apprehension twisted his features.

Finally, my lord motioned me over. I was tall for my age but thin.

"Look at me, boy," the visiting aristocrat said.

The man took my jaw in his hands and twisted my face from one side to another as if he were looking for some special mark.

"You see what I mean?" He said to the others, "the same nose, ears, eyes—look at the side profile."

"No," argued the septon, "I know the man as well, and the resemblance between him and the boy is superficial. I know of this thing. You must trust my word."

Whatever the contention the father was making, it was apparent from the Sir's expression that he was not trusting it.

"Go over there," Sir Franco said to me, indicating a corral post.

I went to it and squatted in the dirt while the three men had another animated conversation and kept looking back at me.

Finally, all three went back into the great house. Sir Franco returned a moment later with a rawhide rope and horsewhip. He lashed me to a posst and gave me the worst beating in my life.

"Never again are you to speak out in the presence of a noble unless you are told to. You forget your place. You are a peasant bastard. You must never forget that you have tainted blood and that those of your type are lazy and stupid. Your place in life is to serve people of honor and quality."

He stared at me intently and then twisted my face from side to side as the other man had done. He uttered a foul curse.

"I see the resemblance," he said, "the bitch laid with him."

Flinging me aside, he grabbed his whip and rushed across the stepping stones to the village on the other side of the river.

My mother's wails could be heard throughout the village. Later, when I returned to the hut, I found my mother huddled in a corner. There was blood on her face from her mouth and nose and one of her eyes was swelling shut.

"Bastard!" She yelled and struck me.

The next morning I was spit from the mouth of a volcano.

"We are leaving the village," Father Antony said. He awoke me in the hut I shared with my beaten mother. His features were pale and drawn, his eyes red from a lack of sleep. He was nervous and anxious.

"Have you been wrestling demons all night?" I asked

"Yes, and I lost. Throw your things in a sack; we are leaving now. A cart is being loaded with my possessions."

It took me a moment to comprehend that he did not just mean that we were going to a nearby village.

"We are leaving the village for good. Be prepared to leave in a few minutes."

"What of my mother?"

He paused at the doorway to the hut and stared at me as if he were puzzled at my question. "Your mother? You have no mother."