ATLAS RANGES - ULTHOS
Jorah Mormont wrapped the glass candle in scraps of cloth and leather. He hid it in his satchel and turned to find Daenerys perched on the edge of the giant's table, running her hands over the bleeding wood. He came to stand beside her, leaning heavily on his good leg.
"Why is the wood red?" she asked. It was rough at her touch, splintering a thousand times into her skin. "No craftsman in the East would use it for anything but kindling. Even the Dothraki'd turn their noses."
"It's fused with blood, so the legends go," he replied. "When the Faith of the Seven first took over Westeros they deliberately made idle things out of the sacred trees. It was a form of sacrilege to the Old Gods and the First Men. Everything was burned in the end. The most paranoid of the Kings thought the power of the wood lived on and that there were creatures watching them from inside their chairs and tables." Jorah laughed softly. "They play so many games in the South that they lose sight of what's real. Snitching furniture is not."
"That does not explain what it's doing in this cave."
"No, I suppose not," he admitted. It was suffocatingly hot. Jorah's shirt stuck to his skin while several of his worst cuts bled through the fabric, enticed by the sickly air. "Although I did notice a great deal of red scattered through the jungle on our flight over... I did wonder."
"Wonder if they were Weirwood trees?"
He nodded. "Indeed. There are many things that we don't know about this part of the world, including how a giant founds its way from the North. It must have walked which can only mean that there was a land bridge to Essos. What's troubling you?"
Daenerys pointed to the flaming pools. They hissed and writhed, reminding Daenerys of her brother's flesh, boiling beneath a layer of gold. Those years were so far away and yet clear in her mind. She couldn't let the vision go. Why had she looked? Was it better to know the horrors of the world or continue toward the shadows?
"I wouldn't worry about those," he assured her.
"I just can't help thinking," she whispered, "is that what Valyria is like? Filth and flame? Is that what dragons make of the world?" Daenerys was upset, a tear sliding through the scratches on her cheek. The salt stung. Her dreams of The Doom were as vivid as her brother. She'd felt the ground shake and the world crack apart. The city had been consumed by the fires that built it.
"Oh, my queen," Jorah reached down, gently easing her back to her feet, turning her away from the scene. He made sure that he had her attention before continuing. "You are not Old Valyria," he assured her. "I've seen the way you rule and it is nothing like the kings and queens of your past, or even mine. I think -" he stopped a moment, not sure if he should continue. His hands were at her cheek, wiping away the tears he couldn't bear to see. "-I think your rule will atone for the mistakes of the past."
"Is that why you follow me?"
No.
"You know why I follow you," he replied softly.
Daenerys leaned closer, reaching up to place her hand over his. "To send information back to Varys?"
This time they both laughed until their foreheads touched, seeking out comfort. "It is as good a reason as any, your Grace."
"Liar..."
His kiss didn't lie. Daenerys fell into it, allowing herself to forget that they were at the edge of the world, soon to die and thought instead only of silent forests in the snow.
Jorah never shared what troubled him or the reason he often watched her in the firelight with more than longing.
He flinched from her hands when they found an open cut on his chest. Daenerys broke their kiss and fixed him with one of her stern looks famous with dragons the world over. "You never told me about this one..." she snapped crossly.
"I was afraid you'd try and fix it, your Grace," he replied honestly. That earned him a playful slap which he probably deserved.
"Well you're safe. We've nothing left to attend to it," she pointed out. "Yesterday I was a queen," she added wistfully, then ran her hands over the tattered remnants of her clothes.
"You are are still the queen," he assured her.
Daenerys danced her fingers absently over his lips, near killed him, then broke away to find a way down from the Weirwood table. When he'd located enough courage to follow, they returned to the main cavern and drank from the cool water.
Jorah's attention was stolen by one of the mysterious piles of pulverised ice beside the pool. He moved the flame of his torch closer, nearly touching it. The ice refused to melt, even at the first lick of flame. It wasn't ice.
"What has you so intent?" Daenerys asked, from the other side of the pool.
"Not sure..." He ran the handle of the torch through the granules, which fell away like sand. A soft clink stopped him. Jorah frowned, digging with his free hand instead until he recovered an obsidian spear head at the centre of the pile. He sat back, the leathers of his boots creaking against the floor. Jorah shifted his gaze from the pile at his knees to several others, scattered through the cave. After a while he paced over to another, dragging his hand unceremoniously through it until a dragonglass dagger clattered against the floor.
Jorah backed away from it, standing anxiously. Slowly, he turned and truly observed the cave, understanding. A dozen piles at least. He stopped at a questioning set of dragon eyes.
"It's not ice, is it?"
"No, khaleesi. It's something much worse."
They searched each pile. Most had an obsidian weapon of some kind buried within. Beside one of them, Jorah's suspicions were confirmed. "Over here..." he called his queen. Jorah shone the flame over a five foot spear of ice, bound with lengths of black leather. It was ethereal, neither steel nor ice but some form of impossible weave of the two. "I've never seen one before," he continued. "I doubt any man has held one." Jorah was almost afraid to touch the Whitewalker weapon in case it lashed out at him in fury. Eventually he found his Mormont nerve and plucked it from the tomb.
The weight surprised him. It was heavy in his grip and riddled with magic. He could feel it rippling up his arm, bringing with it an unusual chill. He had expected it to exude evil but it did not. Magic, fire or ice, felt the same in his grip.
"We shouldn't have this, khaleesi," he whispered, holding it away from his body. It was a stunning thing. Beautiful. Enthralling. Horrific.
"Are you saying that these are the corpses of those things in the North?"
He nodded. "I don't understand how but there was a battle here. The dragonglass killed them. It must have been freezing for them to reach this far South."
They were both thinking it. The Long Night. There were stories all over the world.
"Keep the spear," she commanded. "If we're not meant to have it, all the better that we do." Jorah nodded. "And we're not leaving until we search this cave properly." Daenerys pried another torch off the wall and held it to Jorah's until a flame erupted between the two.
Thirty-nine Whitewalker corpses at final count. There were no more ice weapons but in the cave's entrails they found the bones of the giant that had lived there. It was large but not the monster she'd dreamt of from Ser Darry's stories. This creature was laid on its side peacefully, wrapped in a patchwork of direwolf furs. He'd certainly outlasted the Whitewalkers.
Tucked beside the skeleton was something that they could not ignore.
"Are they?"
"They sure are..." Jorah agreed. It was a stash of dragonglass weapons, tied up inside old travelling packs that were perfectly preserved in the cool of the cave.
"We can't possibly carry even half of this," Daenerys dismayed.
"No but your dragons could. We can tie the straps to the horned ridges on their backs."
"You mean the dragons that we haven't seen for several days?"
"Those are the ones, your grace."
"Why are you looking at me like that, ser?" Jorah's eyebrow arched further. "I don't know what you expect me to do, they come and go as they please. Stop it. I command it."
Hours later and countless falls on the treacherous cave floor, the ancient weapon cache sat on the desert in front of the cave. There was enough to arm their entire force and more beside. In the light, Jorah noticed that the queen looked like a common peasant. Hell knows what a passer-by might make of him, especially with the addition of the five foot spear strapped to his back.
Daenerys turned her attention to the sky. It was full of smoke from the smouldering mountains at Asshai and moisture sinking off the Atlas Ranges behind them. A ripple of thunder ran through where the two met. There certainly weren't any dragons in sight.
"How does it go?" she asked, ser Jorah. "What did you sing to them when we were in the Red Waste?"
Jorah knew one of the Valyrian dragon songs. His father had sung it to him when the winter storms raged, threatening to bring the world down. All the Targaryen children used to know the songs but Daenerys was an orphan of her own culture.
"Alai noquoire, sarl hu riar..." he sang, stepping through the desert toward her. They were words of blood that slipped into the air like silk.
There was an unexpected melody in the knight's voice. It broke, wavered and held its tone in a way she expected the mountains to sing. It was an older form of High Valyrian, rarely heard. Odd, how a language could vanish – replaced by another version of itself, like the succession of thrones.
Daenerys closed her eyes. She'd heard these words before when she was small, sung in that same icy-gravel. Why did she know those words so well?
Dragon songs were meant to lure the beasts from the air. Hundreds of years ago, they were common place but Jorah had no idea if it would work on untrained dragons. He'd sung it to them when they were little things, just in case. They'd chirped at him, leaping in and out of the camp fire flames, scaring the horses. It used to get him into trouble with some of the queen's less patient ladies who thought he was stirring the creatures up – or practising magic. He was almost sure neither of those were true.
Jorah was almost out of breath when he heard a terrifying flap of wings on the air. He tapped Daenerys on the shoulder. Still singing, they both turned to see Rhaegal playfully clip the mountain peak with his claws, showering them in dust. The queen covered her head with her hands as it rained down over them. Jorah couldn't stop grinning. Rhaegal had always been the most playful of the three. He must have remembered.
"Well there you are, you silly lizard..." he greeted, as the beast landed in front of them. It flapped its wings excitedly, buffeting them with more dust. Jorah was sure that he'd grown even in these few short days. "Beautiful, isn't he?"
"I think you have a soft spot for my dragons," Daenerys pointed out, with mock disapproval. "You spoiled them when they were small and you spoil them still."
Jorah didn't care. He bowed at the creature, which returned one in kind – then nudged forward and nearly knocked the bear over with enthusiasm.
At dusk, Rhaegal took to the sky, weighed down with bags of dragonglass. His silhouette shrank as he veered left, found a current of ocean air and flattened his wings.
"Do you believe there's any chance that worked?" Daenerys asked, standing beside the knight.
"You showed him the image of the boat?"
Daenerys nodded. "That's all I did while you tied those things to him."
Jorah shrugged. "Well, that's how it's meant to work. At least he's headed the right the way. I'd loved to be on deck when he lands. Someone's going to have to get all that off him."
"It won't be Grey Worm. He's terrified of the dragons."
"Drogon attempted to eat him."
"By accident."
"Twice. Are you ready?" The queen was exhausted but to linger in this place was surely death. Instead she nodded. "Cheer up, your Grace," Jorah continued. "Perhaps Drogon will show up and give us a lift."
The queen side-eyed her knight.
THE FEVER RIVER - ULTHOS
Drogon barely noticed his brother clamber through the thick forest, clawing up one of the water trees. A moment later the other dragon was gone, scaring a flock of white birds as took off in the direction of the song, whispering over the mountains.
Feathers rained down with leaves and bits of bone as the enormous black dragon folded its wings closer to its body. Ulthos was choked with dense forest, grown from black earth that had once burned for a thousand years. The Great Fire Sea, they'd called it. Now it was a mess of poisoned water and tangled jungles. Swarms of biting insects circled him but got nowhere with the impenetrable dragon hide. Every now and then Drogon snapped at them, slamming his jaws closed with sickening snaps. They didn't quite fit together, with his bottom fangs sitting against the edge of his snout – always visible. If anything, it gave the dragon a malevolent air. So too did remnants of human flesh from the massacre on the beach.
At the point where The Fever River met the Yellow Stain, sat sprawling Weirwood. Supported by the jungle, it had grown far larger than any of its frozen cousins. Drogon, who was already the size of Braavosi house, was dwarfed under one of the lower limbs. Most of its weight loomed above the canopy, exploding in a vision of red as though it were fire itself.
The dragon pawed at the roots, which themselves rose and fell, dipping in and out of the wet ground like serpents. He couldn't get any nearer. It was impossible for a creature his size to navigate the mess of roots and mud without becoming stuck, so instead the dragon dipped its head back and started to sing.
A hideous, screaming face trapped in the bark listened while all thousand eyes, and one watched on.
A CAVE – BEYOND THE WALL
An old man cried out as the dragon song filled his ears. It was all consuming, reverberating down the trembling roots of the Weirwood trees that had grown through his body. He was neither living nor dead. A parasite, some would say, existing through the network of seeing trees.
There was a dragon in his vision – a filthy, black beast, born of the fire-rocks. It screeched at the magic of the forest, sounding its warning to the Old Gods, announcing its presence to the world. The warmth burned Byrnden Rivers, making the roots in the cave twist sharply together, taking some of his flesh with them. The heat – it had been an age since he'd felt the flame of a dragon's breath. There was nothing to compare to it, for they were fire and magic.
Beside the dragon was a silver girl, dressed in rags with an aging knight. The Mormont sigil was crafted into his Ghiscari robes. He held a lemon, which he offered to the girl as the ground beneath them caught fire, roaring over the tree until he saw only flame and blood. His old house words. He thought those had died with an old man at the wall.
"Do not touch that." The Blood Raven stirred on his throne of roots. His one good eye cracked open from its sunken hide to see Bran Stark hover near his old Valyrian blade.
"They're coming!" Bran whispered urgently. "Can't you hear them?"
"I can see them," the old man hissed back. "Dancing about in the snow. What is it that you think you'll do with that sword? A cripple and a tree? Your days of sword wielding were done before they began."
Bran itched to take the blade. His father would have. His brothers – Arya even. She'd have been first. Dark Sister was a slender instrument, faintly curved and made for queens. There was a layer of blood dried on its edge. It had been left, forgot, among the bones and whispers of the trees.