SEA OF SOULS – ASSHAI

Heat bled from the mountains as though they were a smouldering camp fire on a Winter's night. Either side, where the black rock met the shallow sea, there were patches of liquid fire raging against the tide. The poisoned waters crashed up against the bleeding fire, fusing bone fragments into the morbid shore as it boiled in a hideous, final gasp.

Daenerys Targaryen and a Northern prince clambered onto a dead section of shore where it was cool enough to tread. She used the solidified bubbles in the lava as handholds, freeing herself from the foul waters. The rock was smooth underhand but riddled with dragonglass weapons consumed by the molten rock. It was a nightmare, one that left them stumbling and covered in deep gashes whenever they fell until their blood was as much apart of the mess as the smoke. The surface tore their shoes apart and caught on what remained of Daenerys' hem, dragging her backwards with every stop she took forwards.

"This place is hell," Daenerys tripped again, halfway toward the flank of the nearest mountain. Asshai lay beyond the natural barrier, under the shadow. It was the only inhabited port at this end of the world and their sole chance to make it back to the queen's fleet.

"If we make it to Asshai," Jorah began, breathless. His limp was now a crippling gait. The waters had been his final undoing and as he looked to the towering mass of ash and fire above, separating them from the city, he knew his chances of surviving were slim. "Trust no one. Asshai grants sanctuary to the darkest creatures in this world. Enemies mingle with friends, your Grace. Your Grace..." He fell at his last words, landing hard on the broken ground. A partial arrow head protruding from the surface sliced between his ribs. He cried out and rolled off it leaving a fresh tear in his flesh.

"Jorah?" Daenerys stooped with him. Her arm wrapped around his waist, trying to haul him back onto his feet but who could move a bear? "Get up!" She insisted sharply. The enormous ice sword, strapped to his back, grazed her arm, burning her exposed flesh with its cold. She hissed, lowered her grip and tried again. This time her knight canted backwards onto his knees. He face was pale and she could see the tracks of his veins beneath the skin. Poison. Blood ran over her tiny hands.

"A moment..." he begged. Jorah tried to breathe but the air was filth. All around, the world rumbled and shook. Instead of snow, ash flurries encircled them, falling on his queen's silver hair. Eventually he nodded and with a growl, returned to his feet.

"I've seen this before," Daenerys said, rubbing the burn on her arm as they moved toward the mountains. "In Valyria. The fires that came from the deep are what destroyed their entire civilisation, even its dragons. Is this what magic does?"

"I doubt it, your Grace," Jorah replied. They ran out of rock and found ash instead. It was several feet deep and uncomfortably warm. They sank in to their knees. This was all there was on either side, traversed in the distance by burning rivers on their way to the water. "By the gods..." Jorah swore, heaving his leg out from the ash. It left them crawling forward through the soft deposits that had collected at the foot of the mountain range. "I've heard it said that beneath the waves, the world is thus. A sea of fire. We live on the cusp between two warring gods. Such a thin – line – of existence."

"The night and day."

"Ice and fire – storm and the sea – it is all the same to the many faced god."

The warmth of the ash was the worst of it. Jorah could not be further from the roots of his heart – from his home, from the calm that all men of the North longed for. He did not wish to tell Daenerys the truth, that magic had destroyed the world at Asshai. That it was choking on it. Valyria, The Arm of Dorne, The Thousand Islands, they were all places where magic had collapsed in a calamity. This place endured its destruction. It was dead and yet lived. A breathing paradox.

Hours of crawling through ash ended with the edge of the mountain. They climbed out onto the basalt and sat, looking over the Sea of Souls and the dead desert they'd crossed. Day or night, who could tell? A heavy cloud, erupted from the mountains, covered the sky in artificial night with its own glow of a dozen bastard suns.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong with your leg?"

Even for a bear, Jorah had been silent for too long. He felt as though the only things binding him to this life were the lengths of Daenerys' dress and off-cuts of leather wrapped around his limbs. "I got nicked by a tainted sword," he finally admitted. "When I failed to die on the shores of Sothoryos, as I should have, I thought maybe..."

"That you had escaped the poison."

He nodded. "Tears of Lys is strong, khaleesi. By all rights..."

"Finish that sentence and I'll banish you again." Jorah didn't need to. It was obvious that he was dying. "The uh – mountains," she shifted the subject, unable or unwilling to face the truth, "how do we cross them?"

Her knight turned and pointed to a gently sloped section that passed through a valley. It was still a long way up but there were no impassable cliffs to contend with. "We must hope the other side is favourable." He went to stand.

"Rest..."

"We cannot," Jorah insisted.

"Ser..."

"Now!" he growled sharply. Jorah fought against his failing body until they were both standing. They were barely human, birthed again in the smoke. "Tell me why we're in Asshai." It was a command to keep her occupied as they began the climb toward the treacherous pass.

"For a ship."

"For a ship," he nodded, with a steady, solid voice. "They will know who you are but the longer you linger, the more danger you'll be in. Do not bend to their temptations."

"There is nothing in Asshai that I want."

"Oh there is," he promised her. "You need nothing from them except your safe passage, keep saying that to yourself, no matter what they lay at your feet. A ship. A way back to Westeros. To your father's crown. A ship."

"You will be there with me," she whispered. His silence rose louder than the rumble of the mountains. He will be dead, Daenerys told herself. Death had been conquered in Asshai, is that what he meant? Were they going to offer up her knight's corpse as trade – his life for her crown? Her dragons? Her visions? To all she must say, 'a ship'. Daenerys watched him lead the way up the ridge of stone. That's why he warns me... She'd bargain away the realms of men if he were gone.

"Daenerys – we must hurry."


She had never seen the Mormont knight falter, now every few metres he did, striking the rough surface of the mountain. Each time he'd pick himself up, moving forwards with a fresh stain on his faded, yellow shirt. Always a little weaker. He dripped sweat onto the ground as he started humming some old tune that she recalled from her childhood. Maybe it was all a dream and they were back in the Red Waste with half a khalasar and dragon hatchlings chirping at the stars.

Jorah fell again. And again. Again. Again.

Daenerys began to cry quietly as she watched. He must have known this was coming from the moment her dragon abandoned them on the ranges. He could have died there, with fresh water and the cool mountain air but instead he'd dragged her as close as he could to a ship.

"Dany?" It was half a whisper from Jorah. He'd fallen beside and overhang of basalt. Settled in the shadow beneath was a clutch of dragon eggs. Five eggs of varying sizes snuggled together, partially covered in ash. They look like stone, Jorah thought, as he reached in.

"No," she stopped him, "don't touch them." He obeyed, pulling his hand away. "Leave them be. There are enough dragons in the world."

"They'll hatch on their own, khaleesi."

"I hope so." Daenerys tried not to think about the bones of baby dragons in the desert. Did they all die, trying to make it to water? Was this part of the world too sick even for dragons?

"I wonder when they were laid?" Jorah added, enamoured by the eggs. If they had found these so easily then there must be more, hidden in the cliffs. Maybe thousands. "Yesterday? A hundred years ago? It's impossible to tell."

"We should move quietly. Some say the dragons only sleep."

He nodded and they left the eggs where they were.

At the cusp of the ridge they hit a cool wind, rushing up the Northern side of the mountains. Laid out at their feet was the dead sprawl of Asshai. They took a step back. The city was folded around the land, creasing like a maiden's gown or the flows of cooling lava crowning the peaks.

"Have you seen anything like this?" Daenerys whispered.

"No, my queen. Never like this. You could keep all the cities in the seven kingdoms inside that. A million people, easily. More even – look – it goes further East down that filthy river and into the next range."

"A million people, is that what we saw under the water? What war is worth so much life?"

"The battle for the dawn," Jorah was certain. "I was wrong," he murmured, unsteady on his feet. The mountain below shook and a fresh crack appeared, spewing fire close by. Its heat was brutal and too much for the bear. "There is something in Asshai you need. Answers..."


"Ser Jorah. Ser Jorah. Please. Mormont you wake up this instant!"

It rained ash with all the ferocity of a Southern storm until there was only ridge where they sat. Either side it was as though the clouds had come to earth and laid with the ground, all grey and dead. Truly, this was the end of the world. Only a flaming caldera on the adjacent rangers cut through the horror, erupting with fresh violence. Whenever they breathed the ground shook. Molten rock was thrown into the air and either laid to rest on the mountain like fiery hair or returned to the surging pits of magma which sloshed inside the volcano like a second sea above the land.

Daenerys was terrified. Jorah laid in front of her, half buried by the falling ash as though it were trying to snatch him from life and drag him into the abyss with all the other stolen souls. She brushed it off his face and shook him by the shoulders, screeching at him.

"You listen to me, Jorah the Andal!"

He stirred. "I'm not a bloody Andal..." Jorah croaked in protest. Her hand lay on his cheek. He managed to open his eyes. They were black with only a faint rim of ice. "I am blood of the First Men."

Despite herself, the queen found a smile. "Is there a difference?" she brushed her thumb lightly over his cracked lips.

"Insurmountable."

She grabbed his hands and used her weight to pull him into a seated position. Eventually he untangled himself from her grip and shook his head firmly, telling her no. "Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons," Jorah's voice was thick with gravel. He could barely speak but with his last words, he wished to say her name. He did it with tears forming in the creases of his eyes. "Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains – Queen of Meereen..."

Her own tears fell. The city she'd left broken in the sands. He continued and she couldn't bear it because he believed every word as though it were truth and not a dream. She was no queen. It was a mirage, rippling in the flames, about to be chased away by the night.

"Princess of Dragonstone and Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. You get up." He implored her.

Daenerys closed her eyes, more tears falling. They left tracks in her soot-stained skin. "I can't."

"You must." Jorah insisted. "The night is coming and you are the only dragon in the world." He could see her cowering at the violence of the mountains and the fire raining around them. She trembled at the thunder, looking to him. "Do not fear the flames. Not now. Remember what you used to tell that little shit of a brother?"

"Fire cannot burn a dragon..." she murmured. The poison had him. It counted down his breaths.

"Exactly. These mountains cannot hurt you. They are the seat of your power and power is frightening. Look into those flames." He waited until she turned and stared. They welled up and were thrown out, falling like stars and laying in burning rivers that could have been a night sky. "That is what nests in your heart. I saw it, when you stepped into the fire."

Daenerys turned back to him, her friend. "You're not going to die in this forgotten place."

"I am."

"I forbid it!"

"Valar morghulis..."

"Those are not my words."

"Fire and … blood." Jorah was starting to sag toward the ash. He could feel the pull of death's tide.

"Yours?" she insisted. "Make sure the gods hear them."

"Here … I -"

"Stand..." Daenerys finished when he could not. "On your feet, Mormont."

From nowhere, Jorah Mormont recovered strength enough to kneel but he simply could not stand. He reached behind and slid the ice-sword free of its tethers and brandished it.

Daenerys' breath caught in her throat. He was staring straight past her to the figures assembled behind.

There were five cloaked shadows on the ridge. They said nothing. Did nothing. Their hoods were charcoal with a red trim, torn at the base from travel. Odd angles formed where their concealed weapons pressed against the fabric. Thieves or worse.

"We seek passage to Asshai," Daenerys said, standing as they grew uncomfortably close. "And a ship, to the West."

The world rumbled around them. A long silence drew out until Jorah's ruse faltered. His strength failed. He dropped the ice weapon and fell to his hands and knees, unable to move. Daenerys picked it out of the ash. It too heavy and long for her. She looked unwieldy, easy to vanquish and she knew it.

Four of the men pushed their hoods back to reveal twisted faces, riddled with scars. They too had swords – heavy broadswords that could sever her with a well placed strike.

"That's a fine sword you've got there," one of them said in rough Common Tongue. Daenerys gripped the handle of her weapon more tightly. "Mind if I have a look?"

"Stay back..."

"Or what?" he replied. "Your knight is dead."

Daenerys knew it was true. She'd heard him fall. "We seek passage to Asshai," she repeated, defying her fear.

"Come on, princess, a bit closer. Give us the sword... It's such a pretty thing."

"I am you queen," she choked.

"You were his queen."

She couldn't look. "I am -"

"We know who you are."

The largest of the men stepped forward. In a smooth motion, he twisted his sword and lunged at the dragon queen. In fright, she lifted the ice weapon. The two blades met and in an instant, the man's steel sword shattered. The sound rang out over the mountains, bouncing off the smoke. The remains of his sword scattered with the ash at his feet. Daenerys spun, pointing the weapon at the man's throat. His unholy eyes dropped inquisitively to the blade.

"That's not your magic," he whispered, before dissolving into smoke.

The others blew away with him until only one figure remained. They had been nothing more than shadows bound in magic. It was a woman who pushed her hood back and approached Daenerys. She was recognised at once – from her dreams.

"Quaithe..." The sword slipped from her hold.

"You're going to need that. Welcome to the Shadow Lands, your Grace." Quaithe's attention lowered to the fallen knight. She shook her head, almost as a parent might scorn a misbehaving child. The man was nearly beyond her help. "What would you give to bring him back?"

Finally Dany sat beside him, clearing away more ash from his face. He was going cold beneath her touch. "You know already."

"He'll never forgive you."

Daenerys nodded. "I understand."