"Maester?" The girl, the farmer's wife, was dragged by the Young Maester to his deep, dungeon-like cell. His tight bone coloured hands clutched around her wrists like iron gauntlets. He was a strong and unyielding man by character but not by strength, yet right now he was as strong as Robert Baratheon. "Maester, where are we going?"
"Down," he said simply, in an agitated tone.
He opened the rotting door and they entered the dingy room that was more a library than his chambers. Something foul and sour was boiling on a table, amidst the scrolls and books which also resided on the table.
The farmer's wife had never been inside the Maester's chambers and she felt like it was not accustomed to guests either. She doubted her Prince had ever entered this room either. Only this Maester had ever entered and left before.
"Make yourself comfortable," Howland said. The Maester cleared a stool from his pots and scrolls and pointed to the seat. She made her comfort. "I assume you've heard… the Prince is dead. Killed in battle." She did indeed. She had went to the Sept and prayed for his soul. The girl mourned the boy that had given her so much.
"Yes, Maester. I… I've been very lonely since he… departed. I've mourned for him." The Maester began pouring some wine in one cup and some water in his own cup. "He was a good man, Lionel." The Maester gave her a cup of wine.
"Indeed. Drink up." He took a swing himself at his own cup, of something that was not wine.
"Is this what you brought me down here, milord? To toast to a dead boy?" She watched the Maester's cold smile form on his lips.
"Did you love him?"
"Why, yes, Maester. I believe I did."
He chuckled. "You believe? Curious. Love is a thing you know. It is either you do or you don't," he said, coldly. "…I'm told," he corrected himself. "So I ask you again… did you or did you not."
"I… I did," she said, still unsurely.
He smiled, in a somewhat less chilly way. "Good. Then you would do anything to bring him make to life?" He put the cup down on the leather of a large book.
"Uh…" There was something about his deep and dangerous eyes that provoked fear in the girl. She stumbled with uncertainty under his gaze. "Of… course, Maester."
"Good." The Maester put his hands on the arms of the chair, shackling the girl's wrists to the chair with his gauntlet hands. "Then you'll understand why I have to do this. For our last hope of a good king." For the splice of a second, Howland let go of her wrists. A blade slid out of each of his sleeves. His fingers clasped their handles and he drove them into the farmer's wife's wrists.
She screamed out in searing pain. A blood fountain ejected out from the delicate wrists. Red drops and pools spewed themselves across the Maester's face. She screamed out at him and fear, rightfully filling up with dire fear.
"NO… NO! No please! What in seven hells are you doing?!.. I don't love him... I did what he asked of me!" She screamed louder and yet even louder. No one, but the Maester, could hear her pleas.
The Maester performed some kind of ceremony. Some kind of black magic. When the pain dulled and her senses restored, she looked up at her captor. He wasn't chanting or dancing around the room or speaking some strange language like she had expected a man doing magic might do. The Maester was doing what he did best: studying a book.
The dingy, grey man stood with a leather-bound book in one hand, and writing something with a pen in the other. He wasn't very concerned about the blood on the floor, on his books and scrolls, on his face. He was not concerned with the bleeding, dying prisoner of his either. He only cared for the ink and paper.
"What do you intend to do with me?!" She shrieked at him, one the pain dulled slightly.
He shut his book and proceeded with researching into another book. "The wisest men who ever lived knew that only death can pay for life." When the meaning of the words finally clicked in the girl's brain, her fear increased tenfold. "Oh don't worry. Your death will be quick and painless."
The moment finally came. He had done his magic or whatever else it was that he did and walked up behind her. He came silent as a night owl, with a dagger in hand, and slit the girl's throat so that blood would flood the floor and his wrists. So many textual works perished in the girl's blood and the Maester paid them little heed.
Once it was done, he dropped the dagger to the ground and looked upwards, where the sky would have been instead of the red rock of the Keep.
"Lionel Lannister… you will awake, my king. Rise as the Steelheart. The Golden King. Rise to make your enemies break. Rise to enforce justice. Rise to take what you desire." There was a beat of dead silence. "… but not before I say the word."
-000-
It was easy to find Cersei Lannister. She was with her dead son's lifeless mass in the Great Sept of Baelor. It seemed these days that she had permanently relocated to Baelor's Sept, to constantly stand vigil over her son's corpse.
The boy's father was nowhere to be seen, but Howland was sure that it wouldn't be too hard to find Jaime Lannister.
"What do you want?" Cersei's viciously biting voice startled the Maester. He had entered the Sept with the silence and cunning of a snake and she had not turned her head, yet she could feel an intruder. "And how did you get passed the guards?"
"Your Kingsguard are not as great knights as you believe they are," Howland said. He made no attempt to approach the Queen. Sane men didn't approach mad, grieving mothers when they mourned for their son. "What I want is something both you and I share in common… that boy to raise from the grave."
She laughed cruelly. "Oh… and you have a way to do that, fool?"
He willing chose to approach her, against his better judgement. "I wouldn't insult someone who did know how to resurrect someone from the dead. I may be your last hope of returning your son."
Her head snapped to his direction. Her eyes were wide with hope and anger because she wanted to believe it and at the same time knew that it was not possible. But she would not forgive herself if she didn't ask. "What?"
"Do you want your son to rise again?"
"Of course! You fool?! What mother wouldn't?"
"What if I told you it was possible?"
"I'd call you a liar."
"Then I would call you a bad mother," and Howland left the Queen to her moping mourning.
-000-
After days of pondering and weeping over the corpse that she had for so long refused to conduct a funeral for, it was time the Queen took matter into her own hands.
She slammed into the crammed little room that the Maester had been given by the King's chamberlain, two Kingsguard on either side of her. She paid no mind to the butchered rotting corpse in a chair, pushed against the corner of the room. She paid no mind to the odours and filth and blood in the room. All that was on her mind was her son's life and the last hope that the dingy little Maester gave her of it.
"What did you mean?!"
The Maester had been pouring over a book. Golden spectacles hang over his pointed nose and a tome was in his hand that looked hardly light enough for the frail little Maester to carry. His eyes were bloodshot; he had not slept in days. "It took you some time, Your Grace."
"You said you could bring my son back?"
"Yes… I did. And I can. But there is a price…"
"You'll have gold and castles and women… whatever you want, just bring him back!" She screamed. "… please… " That word had been so light it barely touched the woman's lips, yet the young Maester heard them nonetheless.
"That's not the price that life demands. Only death pays for life."
A sudden surge of horror ran through Cersei Lannister's bones. "M-… my death?"
"No. That duty she," Howland pointed to the bloody corpse decomposing in the room, "had achieved—"
"Well, why is my son not awaken then?"
Howland smiled. There was leverage in his power. He could have anything. Any riches. Any lands. Anything in the Queen's power, and that power stretched further than Howland could imagine. The agents that he worked for, mystical as they were, could grant the Lion Prince's life back the second Howland would speak the word, without any promises. "Because I need a blood promise to bring him back," Howland outwardly lied to her face.
"What blood promise?"
He regarded carefully his choose of words. "A marriage, from both of the Prince's parents."
"Robert Baratheon is dead."
"Oh come on. Do you think I am as blind as everyone else in the world? Let's speak truthfully. Your guards won't hear us if you speak softly. Jaime Lannister needs to leave the Kingsguard, take residence as his father's heir. He will wed Sansa Stark. You will wed Robb Stark. You will fulfil these promises within three moons or you will lose your children in a most horrifying and brutal way a mother can possibly lose her children."
"And what will happen if I declare you blasphemous and have my guards drag you out and throw you from Maegor's Holdfast into the pit of iron spikes?" She tested the water.
The Maester smiled. "You will lose one simple Maester undistinguished from the thousands of other Maesters… and never again hold the chance to bring your dead child to life. All because you and your brother squirmed at the mere thought of two small sacrifices." He made sure that his words linger in the air and that the Queen thought about them, for if she didn't, he would be dead before the morrow. The Maester had too much to live for to have any of that. "Wouldn't it be worth it? Two marriages for your son."
There was a perpetual silence as the Queen imagined her son in the cold darkness of death. Her little boy all alone with all those ghosts and other creatures that roamed the world of the dead. It broke her stone heart to imagine her baby wandering death alone.
"I will promise… and he rise at this very moment? And Jaime and myself have three months to marry the Stark House?"
"Well, bring your brother in here and swear to me the oath… or in a Lannister's case, announce an owed debt. And you will tuck your son into bed this very night, feeding him with chicken soup as he whispers to you 'thank you, mother, for saving me. I love you more than anything in the world and I'm sorry for my sins'."
Every creature in the world had a heart prone to suffering and love alike. The Queen's suffering and love was all in one face: her children. She left to find her brother almost immediately.
It sickened her to see how her lover didn't jump at the opportunity to bring their boy back. He insisted on seeing this Maester himself and made no promises of oaths or debts. Cersei paced and waited outside, as humiliating as it was.
"Ser Jaime… we finally meet." There was something awkward in the air between two men who fucked the same woman.
"So it seems, Maester…"
"Howland."
"And you second name?"
The Maester laughed coldly. "I have no second name. I've sworn some vows… some words that I must keep now and I assume you have come to swear some words too."
"I'm not good at keeping something as… impermanent as words."
The Maester chuckled. "Perhaps… I think we both agree that words are quite foolish concepts. But that's a question for the philosophers… or well me, since that's my profession… not knights." Maester shifted in his throne made of wood and books. "Do you love your children, Lannister?"
"Why… yes."
"Well. Would you do anything to save them?" Jaime didn't answer. "Funny thing about love. You see that girl there?" He looked at the corpse behind the Kingslayer at the stinking corpse. "She was Lionel's whore. I asked her if she would do anything for Lionel. She said yes and disowned her words the moment she felt pain." The Maester chuckled. "I can only imagine what Lionel would have done to her if he heard her say those words. And I can only imagine what Cersei will do to you if you refuse to save your son… She may love you but she doesn't love you nearly as much as her children."
Jaime Lannister's teeth grinned together in tight agony. "I would rather be consumed by maggots before I beg Eddard Stark for anything."
"Would you let your son be consumed by the same maggots?"
The Kingslayer smirked. "You're a clever little man… you remind me of my brother, Tyrion. You would have liked him, he's decided to become a tourist and visit the Wall."
"Admirable. I too loved travelling, once. But being the wind is a tiresome profession."
Jaime pulled a chair out of the table and placed himself level to the Maester. "What is the wording of the debt?"
"I will bring your son back to life. You will quit the Kingsguard and wed Sansa Stark, within three months. Your sister will wed Robb Stark, within three months. If you do not honour this agreement the other three of your children will die gruesome deaths. While you honour your agreement and stay married to the Starks, your children won't die."
"One son or three children. Doesn't seem like a good deal to me. Why should I risk my other children for the life of one?"
Howland smiled and leaned forward, over the table. "I can't imagine. Mathematics and chance rule against this. But a father's or mother's feelings can't measured by mere numbers." Howland reclined back in his seat. "I hope you make your mind up soon, Lannisters. There's only so much time I can afford to hold the realms of the living and the dead close together."
-000-
When Cersei walked into the Sept again, she saw that her boy was still dead on the table. Two stones rested on his closed eyeballs and he had not moved an inch. She was absolutely livid to find herself a fool in the boy's game. She raged like a storm; her anger was limitless. Guards fled to let the mother mourn.
"That worthless cunt!" She tore down the crimson and gold draperies that decorated her son's table. "I'll butcher the bastard myself!"
A croak squawked from the throat of someone. It was barely anything, but the high ceilings of the Great Sept validated it to the mother's ears. And then again. And again. The croak repeated from her son's throat. "… mo…th..er…" The croak grew, bit by bit, louder and more prominent.
And she knew her boy would live.