A month of real life distracting me, and then 48 hours of editing five chapters and writing two new ones. I would recommend old readers check out the changes done to The Resurrection and all subsequent chapters. A new chapter, The Dragon King Ascendant, bridges some years in the time-line. Check out this story's forum to ask questions and find out more background information for this story, including an appendix of the major players in Westeros that goes up to 295 AC. Find the link on my profile.
Sitting in the shade of an impossible garden with a girl who should have been long-dead, Harry did not know where to start.
Saraide's chiton of lace and cloth-of-silver, loosely tied around the waist with a heavy belt of emeralds and sapphires, concealed most of her figure. Her face could have either belonged to a girl in adolescence or a woman grown. Her left eye shone a brilliant green. Her right was red - not Melisandre's ruby-red, but the color of the sap of Winterfell's heart tree, the red of freshly-spilled blood. Harry wasn't sure he was reminded of Ghost or of Voldemort.
"Are you the woman in the tapestry or the child I rescued in my dream?"
Saraide tilted her head thoughtfully. "Describe this dream of yours."
While Harry struggled to recall every detail he could, a satisfied smile crawled across her face.
"Shrykos is no mere woman, but the first woman in the world, the first divinity. From her and her son Morghul was born all else." Saraide smiled up at the pomegranate tree. "I am but a faithful servant."
Harry dimly recognized the names not as deities, but as two young dragons that had died in the Dance. He told Saraide as such.
"Dragons are fire made flesh. To bond with one is to bond with one of the gods' greatest gifts to the world. Many dragons were once named for the gods in the hope they would be embodied with a fraction of their power. It is a tradition your house continued long after it forsook those gods that granted them their power." Her face fell. "Forty were the houses of the dragonlords. Forty were their lines of dragons. And now yours is the last."
Harry tried and failed to find some words of comfort.
Then the world beneath him fell away.
Saraide stood by his side as the black walls of Dragonstone coalesced around them. Even without the detailed map over which Aegon the Conqueror had planned the invasion of Westeros, Harry still recognized the Chamber of the Painted Table. His father preferred to rule there than from the Iron Throne.
Dragonstone was guarded by a small army of grotesques and gargoyles flawlessly molded from black stone, but Harry had never before seen the dragon that dominated the eastern end of the room. It stood on four legs instead of two and two unfurled pairs of wings. Twin tails twined around its body. Two heads crowned two separate necks.
A young woman who strongly resembled Daenerys wept before it. She thanked the gods for the dragon dream that had delivered her family from the total destruction of Valyria.
The years flowed by like water. Harry watched five more generations of Targaryens pass through the chamber before the Conqueror came of age and ordered construction of a massive table painted to resemble every geographical feature of Westeros. In the precise location of Dragonstone he sat upon a raised chair and appraised his future conquest. Behind him loomed the idol of his gods. In the mornings the great black dragon cast a shadow over the whole continent.
When Aegon returned home both a newly-crowned king and newly-converted follower of the Faith, he ordered the idol smashed to pieces and its pieces thrown into the narrow sea with Dragonstone's new septon at his side. Beneath the eyes of their king, the smallfolk threw their own idols and heretical texts upon a bonfire. Overnight Dragonstone was declared cleansed of evil. Aegon personally flew to Driftmark and Claw Isle to oversee similar conversions.
Then the memories carried Harry to the shores of the Blackwater and the built of the Aegonfort. Its temple to the Valyrian gods had been still under construction when Vhagar and Visenya razed it to the ground.
Visenya was left to oversee the creation of King's Landing whilst Aegon ruled from Dragonstone. Upon learning the grand sept was to be built upon her hill, she flew back home to rage at her brother for all he had forced her into. Aegon's grand vision for his city would not be altered. Visenya thought it poor consolation she was allowed only the tapestry of Shrykos and the unborn Morghul. The other six tapestries of the sacred dyads had been deemed too overtly heretical and burned.
Aegon died not long after the Aegonfort was destroyed and the Red Keep ordered in its place. Maegor could deny his mother nothing. She requested only a modest chamber and a single passage to a room built precisely over the remnants of the temple she had been forced to raze so very long ago.
And then they were back beneath the pomegranate tree, the sounds of a long-dead city drifting over the garden wall.
"Forgive me, Harry," Saraide said as if tears weren't flowing down her face. "To communicate through glass candles is to cross the world and into another's dreams. I knew Daenys once, before my studies took me east and her dreams across the narrow sea. I watched over her family for as long as I could. Visenya was the last of your house to keep the gods in her heart. Through losing her the gods of our forefathers lost their last foothold in this land. Their magic was sealed away and I could see here no longer."
Harry frowned. "Visenya died some years before Maegor, who wasn't exactly the Faith's favorite person. Why didn't he keep to the old ways?"
The shadow of the pomegranate tree grew long and dark. The pleasant breeze grew hot and heavy. Saraide's eyes burned bright when she spat, "Maegor was the one to seal us away! I was blind to what was happening in this land, to the last of the dragons and their dragonlords. Our gods could have died forever, and I could do nothing because of those-"
Saraide bit her tongue and the cool breeze returned. The long shadows retreated with her smile. "Then, ten years ago, the veil over this land briefly parted. I saw dragons had returned to the world and that your house flourished as it had not in generations. I saw you, newly blessed with the mark of Balerion."
Upon first awakening in a new life to a new family, his fevered visions had seemed nothing more than nightmares. He tried to recall if he had glimpsed Saraide and her garden before.
Saraide's fingers tried to touch his scar. Harry stood up.
"You said you served Shrykos," he said, "and I never saw you before."
Her smile never wavered. "Shrykos is the Lady of Life. From her and Morghul were born the king and queen of heaven. Meraxes brings the rain, but is Balerion who wields the thunderbolt. It is to the God Most High that the others bow. You struck down the chains that bound them as Balerion would. To serve one god is to serve them all. Fourteen are their fires, and fourteen their faces."
His instincts screamed he was being watched. Harry looked around but saw nothing. "And what precisely do your gods want of me?"
"You are heir to powers not seen in this world since the fall of the Freehold. They would like you to fulfill your potential and not let such magic die out again."
His breath hitched. He wondered if Saraide sensed his desperate longing like he had her grief and rage.
"I suppose they want you to my teacher then," he said as neutrally as he could.
Saraide's eyes flickered. "I serve Shrykos first and foremost. Her work is... women's work. Magic no man could wield. There is little I can teach you. I will show you what I can, but another time."
"Why not now?" Harry demanded.
She giggled. "Because, Harry, we do not wish you to die."
Teeth chattering, Harry's opened to freezing darkness. He wondered if the night had been but a delirious dream and he was still dying in Queen Visenya's secret room.
He blindly crawled across the floor to tuck the glass candle in the niche between his mattress and its frame. To climb into bed was to climb a mountain.
Three days later he woke when his fever had broken. Grand Maester Pycelle calmly explained his body had been fatigued from the long and strenuous festivities. He recommended bed rest. Having raised Rhaegar as a son, Rhaella had sharply curtailed his reading hours so he could not further strain himself by staying up long into the night.
Years ago Harry had poured through books on Valyria to both learn more of his new world and whatever hints of magic lurked within it. Rereading them brought no new breakthroughs. The tomes mentioned only that the Valyrians had worked fire and magic as an artisan worked clay. Their dragons and sorcerers had conquered kingdoms.
Fire and magic. He had sliced his finger upon the glass candle. His scar had split open the night he had released what was imprisoned beneath Maegor's Holdfast.
He researched glass candles. Sorcerers could enter dreams and talk to another half a world apart when seated before one. The long-dead maesters offered no further specifics.
Was it lighting the candle or sustaining the vision that had drained him? With he chill he wondered if the obsidian wall of his first dream still had its claws on him.
Finally he searched for Saraide's gods, Shrykos and Morghul, Balerion and Meraxes. Westerosi history mentioned only that some Targaryen dragons had been named for the old pagan gods. Upon Aegon's conversion the old idols upon Dragonstone, Driftmark, and Claw Isle had been ordered burned or thrown into the sea. Septons consecrated new holy ground for the Seven. The precise names and natures of these gods were unrecorded.
All Free Cities but Braavos were daughters of Valyria. Essaria had been razed by Dothraki and Gogossos forsaken when the Red Death had bubbled up in its slave pens. Lorath worshiped the chthonian gods of its mazes and Norvos a god whose name was known only by his bearded priests. Mercantile Myr cherished no one faith about the others. Many in Pentos worshiped R'hllor but slit their prince's throat to appease older gods if they suffered famine or defeat. Lovely Lys, where the old blood ran strongest, had no official religion but favored its naked love goddess just as Tyrosh favored the three-headed Trios. The common-folk of Volantis kept to R'hllor. Those within its Black Walls held the gods of Valyria.
Harry frantically flipped through Maester Ellard's treatise to his travels in Volantis. The Old Blood proudly proclaimed unbroken descent from Valyria and kept most strongly its traditions. Maester Ellard had been allowed within the Black Walls but denied every request to visit their family shrines or witness their worship. He bitterly wrote that the haughty Old Bloods were not the descendants of dragonlords, but the spawn of lowly foot soldiers.
Maester Ellard had refused to venture further east. He derided 'Mantarys and its ilk' as dying peoples that stubbornly clung to poisoned land on Valyria's outskirts.
Harry slammed the book shut.
Thoroughly sick of dead ends after a week in bed, he eagerly leapt to his feet when Pycelle gave him leave. He donned his stiff doublet and slicked his hair without complaint. A day of court with Rhaegar and Aegon seemed positively pleasant in comparison.
When not in King's Landing Rhaegar left dispensation of justice to Hoster Tully, his elderly but capable Hand, or his justiciar. Stannis Baratheon was a man more just than even Rickard Stark had been, meting out harsh but fair sentences to lord and commoner alike. Most grudgingly respected him. Harry suspected some smallfolk even loved Stannis to a degree, for even Rickard had shown preferential treatment to the noble-born.
"Stannis Baratheon is a man one might find but once in a lifetime, and even he is not infallible," Rhaegar had cautioned. "Remember that as lords is to you, not your delegates, your smallfolk will ultimately look to. You must both become competent judges of character. You must both settle disputes and, if need be, accept your role as effective executioner."
Rhaegar sat upon the Iron Throne in solemn black garb and adorned only by his simple gold crown. He calmly listened to a gold cloak's testimony of interrupting a rape before sending the gold cloak out and interviewing his three comrades separately. The girl, no more than twelve, then tearfully explained how her family had tossed her onto the streets 'to live with the rest of the whores.'
Rhaegar requested the gold cloaks to escort the girl to the queenshouse on the Street of the Sisters and, if it was full, to the one on Weir Row.
One guard frowned but did not protest. The almshouses in King's Landing were few and poorly managed. Rhaella had founded the first queenshouse on the Street of the Sisters from her own coffers and then several more throughout the city. Lyanna had later funded one not far from the young godswood in Woodside. They were not religious institutions. Most smallfolk thought otherwise.
As soon as he was dragged in the rapist pleaded the black. It spared his stalk, but not the stones. The Night's Watch swore to take no wives and father no children, after all, and some brothers needed more assistance than most.
Aegon scowled after the man when the guards hauled him out. "A pity the gelder must be well-practiced."
"On the contrary," Rhaegar said heavily, "few monsters are so straightforward."
Harry's fists clenched around his arm rests. "If the gold cloaks hadn't caught him in the act, he would have gotten away with it."
His stomach roiled when Rhaegar nodded grimly. Men slipped back into crowded alleys before they could be apprehended. Others called the womens lying or fickleminded whores. Some even claimed to be acting upon their marital rights. Few eyewitnesses were reliable as Jon Connington's gold cloaks and few criminals so eager to admit guilt. When there was sufficient proof Rhaegar recommended forcing a man to pay compensations to the victim's family if he refused the black. If there was no guilty man to convict, women could at least be directed to a queenshouse or the Faith. There were always orders of septas and silent sisters to accept those no man would marry.
"But it's not fair!" Aegon exclaimed.
"It is just," the King said. "A king who ignores his own laws decrees that there are none at all."
"A king can make his own laws!"
"How can his vassals keep their faith in such a king if the laws change with his every whim?"
"Vassals obey their king," Aegon stated.
Rhaegar arched a brow. "And when those vassals decide to not obey such a king?"
Aegon's face flushed. "He makes them obey. If they do not heed him, then they shall heed his armies!"
Rhaegar questioned what armies a king could raise if his vassals had forsaken him. Aegon furiously countered with mercenaries and outside alliances. Rhaegar asked why such vassals would heed outside powers when they had not heeded their own king. What would that king do if war raged on and his coffers ran out and his allies tired of him?
Aegon, red-faced, rose from his chair and stormed out of the hall. Harry stared after him. Had he looked so foolish whenever he had lost himself in temper?
"Has he always been this... passionate?"
Rhaegar started slightly, looking to his left as if he had forgotten his presence. "A king must have an iron will, but one tempered with reason. Your brother is but a youth yet and has reached an age where he hungers for more than just quiet complacency in my household. Ruling Dragonstone on his own will grant him perspective. Crackclaw Point is sworn to Dragonstone, Jaehaerys. Upon your wedding day you will be granted your rightful control of the Whispers. You will be expected to bend the knee to Aegon and accept him as your prince."
Years of etiquette training kept Harry from shrugging. "I know, Father. He's the next king."
Rhaegar waited a minute before realizing he had nothing else to say. The King straightened on his throne and called for the next case.
Harry sat for hours of guild disputes and criminal cases. Lysene lace and Lorathi velvet was both allowed to be traded in King's Landing, but the higher tax upon Lorathi goods stood. Lennard Langward man was ordered to honor a previous agreement to pay ten dragons a year to Hilda Brune and their bastard girl. His father ordered dragons paid and dragons returned and dragons taxed. Men were fined or walked free. Some took the black.
The final man was hauled in with a dirtied rag stuffed into his mouth. Gold cloaks had caught him ripping up new plantlings in the city's godswood and found trees carved with seven-pointed stars nearby. He had been gagged for crying all that was not of the Faith needed to be razed to the ground and nearly starting a riot in the cells.
Rhaegar inquired his background. The man was an old inhabitant of Flea Bottom. Flea Bottom had been razed when Harry was but a small child to make way for the revitalization of the city quarter. There was no room for the downtrodden in Woodside or its godswood. Most had been pushed to the fetid shanties outside King's Landing.
Rhaegar granted him the black. He first sentenced his tongue be pulled out so his brothers who followed the old gods need not heard such vile words.
The man's eyes never left the King's. Harry could not decide if he reminded him more of Voldemort's most zealous Death Eaters or those who had most resolutely stood against them at the Battle of Hogwarts.
"Father," Harry said quietly, when the man he had been dragged off to the King's Justice. "Why take his tongue?"
Rhaegar's gaze was stone. "His outbursts were but a symptom of a far deadlier disease. It must be scoured from this city and not allowed to fester on the Wall. He cannot write and so cannot spread his poison. With luck, he will die of infection or when the snow flies. We must stand together, Jaehaerys, and not tear each other apart for petty differences."
Harry wondered what those bitter men on the Wall would have said about that if the King hadn't claimed their tongues. He rose from his chair and left, for there was nothing else to say.
The idea of Flea Bottom being razed to build an entirely new section of King's Landing (including a godswood for public use) was inspired by Central Park's construction. The tradition of massive redevelopment is far older - Nero used the excuse of a massive fire to build a huge-ass palace on the ruins.