The Sultanate of Rûm
December 25, year 3018, the Elven outpost called Rivendell, also known as Imladris in Sindarin:
It was not the first time Boromir wished that he could inform Faramir about what had happened at the Council of Elrond two months ago. Granted, it had not been that much of a surprise for him that a descendant of Princess Firiel had revealed himself, given what happened near his homeland earlier this summer, but to think that a Hobbit of all people had voluntarily offered to carry the Ring to Mordor and throw it into the lava of Mount Doom!
"A Elf and a Dwarf, those two I can imagine to be good fighters against dangers on the road to Mordor, even with the not always so peaceful history between their races, yes, but the four Hobbits? Who is from a race not exactly known for fighting skills?"
Samwise Gamgee was a humble gardener, as he had admitted himself, but Boromir had seen his type before. Men like Samwise would prove themselves a surprise in many ways, and his loyalty to his master Frodo Baggins was impressive. No, it was the two youngest Hobbits, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took, that would cause him to be most worried about during the journey. They were more mature than many youngsters that Boromir had trained as soldiers over the years, but he was not sure about whatever they truly realized what sort of dangers that would be waiting for them all.
"No, no, not thinking negative thoughts now that the Ring could pick up! Remember how Aegon would always try to give me weird warnings about arrows back when he was little!"
Nowadays, when knowing that Aegon could be haunted by dream visions about the future, Boromir had a feeling that the boy had tried to warn him about the enemy trying to kill him by the use of a bow. That weapon was common enough among both Elves, Men and orcs, so it would not be strange at all to meet your end in the living world in that manner. Still not the most happy way of thinking, though, so Boromir checked over his packing again to ensure that he had not missed anything earlier.
"Lord Boromir, can you spare a moment for a little talking? There is something I wish to ask about."
Lady Arwen, the daughter of Lord Elrond and the beloved of Aragorn, had come from an upper level of the garden. Dressed in a pale lilac dress, it could not be missed that she was a descendant of the famed Luthien, her father Elrond being a great-grandson of the Princess of Doriath. Perhaps it was the mortal blood in her lineage that made her seem less for Boromir, yet something about Arwen also reminded of Queen Elia of Rohan for some reason in his mind.
"What do you wish to know, my lady?" he asked in a polite voice, mindful of the fact that she was the daughter of his host, which was a little easier to adjust to rather than a possible Queen. Not that she would be a disaster as a Queen, from what he had witnessed over his stay here in Imladris, it was just that with his own family being the Ruling Stewards for so long, some people found it a foreign idea of a ruling family in Gondor again.
"My father has spoken of how things have changed in the south, thanks to the arrival of the current Queen consort of Rohan. If Aragorn succeeds and I weds him to become Queen of Gondor, I need to know about the royal family of the allying Kingdom so there will not be any misunderstandings if we were to meet each other face to face."
Ah, that was understandable, the meeting of two Queen consorts, each one wed to a King of different Kingdoms would be an important event. He could share some details about Elia, for sure, nothing personal, but a few things about her that could be useful for Arwen to know, such as that she had been married once before but that it was best to not ask about that period in her life.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
In Dorne, the sun was setting and the night quickly came with its shining stars and new moon. It seemed like a peaceful evening in the Old Palace, especially as Oberyn put his two youngest little Sand Snakes in their respective bed inside the Martell nursery because it was their bedtime.
"Sleep well tonight, Dorea, Loreza."
He had given Sarella the task of playing the harp softly from the room next to the nursery so her four younger sisters remained asleep while he was gone. She was less of a fighter than her three older sisters, so it felt natural for her to stay behind.
"Be careful, papa," she whispered softly to not wake up the sleeping children, sounding much younger with the chosen word.
"This may be our best chance to help Suleiman gain the crown and become the new Sultan of Rûm. Khamûl is still somewhere north of Gondor and unless Sauron has found some dragon-like beast to let his Ringwraiths travel even faster in the air, we must act before he returns to the East."
Underneath his long robe which he now removed when his four younger daughters were fast asleep, Oberyn revealed his copper armour he used in battle and Obara came with his helmet. She, Nymeria and Tyene were also lightly dressed in armour for protection, their hairs tightly braided into buns on the back of their heads so no enemy could grab the hair.
As he, Arianne and Doran waited for their relatives to arrive alongside Mellario and Ellaria, Quentyn had nearly fallen asleep against the marble wall. Not that it was odd, he simply was in that body-changing age where sleep was important.
"Brother, little brother. You need to focus on helping me with the ritual, to open the portal," Arianne said kindly, petting his shoulder to not shock him into awakeness.
"Ah, sorry, Ari. I tried to take a nap earlier but I am so tired at times…"
Both Doran and Oberyn shared an understanding smile between themselves when Quentyn said so. After all, they too had been in that age once many years before and there was no way of predicting how young boys and girls would change thanks to the mood swings.
"Ready? Arianne, Quenyn, hold up the spear of Princess Mara together and see if we can open a portal through the pool here."
The ruling Princess and her brother obeyed their father, letting Arianne speak the words:
Descendants of the Princesses
Mara and Neith of Kemet
Come together for a united goal
To free those enslaved by darkness!
May this night bring victory
and changes to a realm!
A golden light came from the pool, as a sign of the portal between the worlds opening. Nodding to his daughters after that Ellaria gave him a kiss for good luck, Oberyn jumped in first and they followed after him.
"I have no plans of joining our madre in the afterlife yet, brother! Do not worry!"
Doran kept his face passive, but a muscle twerking near his eye said enough of what he thought about that promise.
"Tell that to our padre first, little brother. Be grateful that he is not here at the moment."
But since Oberyn already had crossed the portal with his three oldest daughters following after him, the youngest child of Ihsan and the late Aria Martell did not hear that comment.
"I will go and check on sogro so he is not up out of bed and wandering in the halls again. He would be distressed if he found himself lost again when he has lived in the Old Palace for nearly all his life," Mellario told her husband, and the former Prince nodded so she could leave. It was not that Ihsan had started to develop early stages of dementia, far from it, but his mind were not as sharp as in the past anymore due to his high age and nowadays some places on the lower levels inside the Old Palace were almost unknown for him despite that he knew nearly the whole palace by heart.
On his side of the portal, where servants had helped to dress him up in a light armour to avoid injuries during a sword fight which was a very strong possibility to happen tonight, Suleiman had gathered a large group of secret followers he had found over the years. He seemed not surprised when Oberyn, Obara, Nymeria and Tyene showed up through a window, stepping into the room. Then again, they had kept the portals as small as possible in the past, to avoid being seen.
"Easy, do not draw your swords in fear of being found out. This man and his daughters are allies of mine, which I found in an unexpected manner. They will help us free my Father and brothers from death tonight," he explained before the Martell Prince and the three Sand Snakes were mistaken as attackers. Without hesitation, Suleiman pulled on both of Neith's gold bracelets in order to lead the portal to the imperial palace.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Imperial palace of Rûm:
There seemed to be a heavy air of fear and uneasiness around the whole palace tonight. The concubines and female slaves in the harem, who had been blessed with sons, could do nothing but pray for the survival of those sons because it was impossible to say which one would remain alive at dawn as the new sultan. And it was with a good reason, this was almost like a judgement day in the palace, when it was impossible to deny that the House of Osman was under the thumb of Khamûl.
"Well, my Lord," a girlish voice spoke in a mocking voice, "choose your successor wisely, because you are the one to make this choice after all."
The current sultan, Selim I, was sitting on his throne inside the audience chamber, but there was no joy in his face. Instead, he glared at the nameless girl in the center of the chamber, whose anachronistic clothing revealed her as coming from the Temple of Shadows. The very source of this dreadful atmosfere, and why all his sons had been gathered here, now kneeling on the floor with a dagger against their throats, held by the spies working for Khamûl. Not even the youngest Şehzade, a infant barely half a month old, had been spared from being taken away from his despairing mother in the harem and was crying where he laid on a pillow, a dragger not far above the little head.
"This choice is not a easy one to make, girl. All my sons have their strengths and flaws no matter their age here and now, surely you must understand that at least."
None of the princes dared to speak in fear that it would result in losing their life, even if it was understandable that the child princes was openly crying in fright, instead they could only anxiously await their father's extremely involuntary verdict that would seal their fate.
"You have to make the choice before dawn, old man."
This sort of disrespect and brashness against the sultan would never have been accepted in the harem. But this girl had not arrived to join the imperial harem, not at all. Her duty was to be a bringer of death, a reminder of how the once great Farao of Kemet would never let his descendants from Neith be free to act against Sauron.
"I know why there are only the younger sons here tonight, girl. I am not blind to the reports that all of my older sons, those older than fifteen, were found dead with the marks of a snake bite somewhere on their bodies. You were ordered to put a child Sultan on the throne by your Master, right?"
In response, the girl took off the lid of a wicker basket made of reeds next to her, and the head of a cobra, native to Kemet even in those days, peeked out. Even if the sultan said nothing, he noticeably paled in fear when he realized why the snake was there.
"Perhaps you need to see one or two of your remaining sons suffering in agony from the poisonous bite to hurry up…"
Then a unexpected male voice was heard somewhere in the chamber:
"Children who play carelessly with venomous snakes risk getting themselves bitten, young lady."
Before anyone could spot where the new voice came from, several of the spies found themselves stuck in the throat with blown darts from somewhere across the chamber they could not see, collapsing as the poison inside the darts began to numb their bodies, and then the water in the small water fountain inside the chamber began to move as if someone was controlling it by magic.
"What…?!"
From the closed doors, the sound of fighting was heard. Was it the mothers, teaming up in a desperate attempt to save their Lord and sons from what awaited them tonight?
"Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken!"
A strong wind of magic forced up the doors, even if they had been locked from the inside, followed by a smoke bomb that put the whole chamber in dark smoke. And then the rest of the spies also found themselves numbed by the poisonous darts.
"Help me get the princes out, girls!" Oberyn called over the coughing sounds, already grabbing the infant prince and taking a slightly older toddler along because he trusted his daughters to handle the other children, Tyene dropping her half of the blowguns she and Oberyn had used to paralyse the spies before the younger half-brothers of Suleiman could be harmed.
"What...no, you are not taking them away…!"
But this time, Selim was the one to act. Now with his surprising sons out of danger, he felt bold enough to not fear anyone, even with the cobra around. So with a rather forceful slap in her face, the girl found herself on the floor.
"You may have managed to kill off all my poor brothers who never got a chance to live, and who found themselves murdered because they would not be a puppet Sultan that easily, but there is one Şehzade your Master hasn't managed to find."
Entering the chamber through the fading smoke and removing the face mask so his face was visible for everyone to see, Suleiman held up his left palm with the glowing crescent moon, as proof that he was a son of the Sultan.
"No…!"
The girl looked like she could not believe this to be true. One of the imperial princes had managed to escape the spies of her Master?!
"My successor is...Suleiman."
With the name of his chosen successor among the surviving sons spoken, Selim sliced the throat of the girl before she could somehow tell Khamûl about what had happened. He also made sure to stab the cobra from above, before it could hide somewhere and possibly bite someone.
"Father...I am sorry that we could not arrive earlier, but it was a hell to find out who the spies could be and not be found by the fallen Farao."
There was an emotional hint in how Suleiman spoke, that he grieved the lost brothers he would never meet because they already were in the afterlife. Selim, on the other hand, trembled slightly as he walked over to his now oldest surviving son.
"So many years I have prayed...ever since Hafsa managed to send me a secret letter in the form of a poem and told me that you had managed to be born…"
As they hugged, Suleimen felt how thin his father was despite the fact that a Sultan should be well fed even without having to worry about food. Was it another attempt of Khamûl to keep the current descendants of Neith under his control, or merely caused by illness? Anyway, he needed to get his father, surviving half-siblings and their mothers out from this place, so it really looked like he was the new Sultan of Rûm without anyone thinking otherwise.
"Father! Father!"
Letting the other princes run over to their shared sire, Oberyn focused on calming down the infant prince, which clearly got the attention of Selim and Suleiman chose that moment to explain:
"Father. This man and his daughters are among the current descendants of princess Mara, the House Martell. Unbelievable as it sounds, she and her unborn son ended up in a different world thanks to all the magic from her murdered siblings joining together to protect her. We found out about each other some years ago, by pure luck."
Clearly familiar with the legend of the missing Spear Princess, the Sultan seemed to regain some lost energy when he heard the name.
"Blessed be this dawn, then! The House of Osman is in your debt for saving our lives tonight, and we shall no longer live in fear for the Shadow."
In return, Oberyn handed the infant prince to Nymeria before he knelt for both Selim and Suleiman as a sign of respect, because by dawn, the Sultanate would have a new ruler.
"My older brother, the former ruler of the realm from which I hails, now ruled by my niece after that he needed to retire from a horrible injury, asked me to pass this on to you from both him and his daughter Princess Arianne, Sultan Selim: To keep yourself and your younger sons alive further on, House Martell hereby offers the House of Osman to become a noble House in our realm called Dorne. We offer you an abandoned castle to call your own and restore as you please, with belonging lands to pass down to your heirs, in the region called the Broken Arm. Your sons and daughters shall be given the chance of freedom in what to do with their own lives, far away from the golden cage they have lived in until now."
Oberyn had spoken a lot with Doran and Arianne about what to do with the surviving sultan Selim and his other children, if they managed to make Suleiman the new Sultan. The hidden Şehzade had agreed to the idea of letting his father and half-siblings start a new life in Dorne, because there was no way Khamûl would be able to find the former Sultan and the younger descendants if the portals between the two worlds was kept to a minimum.
"For my sons and daughters, I accept. I do not know how your realm handles the customs of concubines, but I wish to at least keep their mothers with me, else my whole harem risks being killed for silence about this. The other girls and female servants, who I have not bedded, I wish for them to find a chance to practice an income-generating profession, for many of them are gifted in music, embroidery, story-telling, painting and teaching students who are newcomers to the harem."
Well, that sure was going to be welcomed, Oberyn thought. Such a bonus to the Dornish culture would enrich his homeland in a way that should make the rest of Westeros green by envy.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Naturally, the anxious mothers in the imperial harem wept with joy and relief when they saw that all their sons were still alive. It would take too long to explain what had happened tonight, so Tyene cast a gentle sleeping spell over all the women and servants inside the harem, so there would be no trouble transporting them all though the portal to the Old Palace.
"Suleiman, I need to place the crown on your head with my own hands before I leave for our new sanctuary. That is the sign of the new reign to start at this dawn."
The imperial crown of Rûm was kept in a hidden room right behind the audience chamber, an elegant-looking aigrette with diamonds and lapis lazuli stones, perhaps as a hint to the long-gone culture of Kemet. As Suleiman pulled on his turban and Selim placed the aigrette in the front, a male voice came from Neith's gold bracelets as they glowed slightly:
The star which bleeds will be his herald, the descendant of the moon, when the descendants of the spear return, a bloodline forgotten in history, hidden and mighty. The Prince who will break the chains of doom, the liberator of realms caught in suffering, trampled by doom. His hour is close, his power is near. A Prince that is Promised to guide into a new Age.
The prophecy of the Prince that was Promised, which the father-in-law of Mara had spoken so long ago, that fateful day as the royal family of Kemet was nearly wiped out. A proof of that Princess Neith indeed would have a descendant to become a powerful Emperor, long after her own death.
"House Martell of Dorne, descendants of Princess Mara of Kemet and her son Morgan Martell who was born under the bleeding star in the form of a red comet! I, Sultan Suleiman I of Rûm and descendant of her sister Princess Neith, hereby promise to join you and the Free People of Middle-earth against the Dark Lord in Mordor!" Suleiman spoke aloud as the crescent moon on his left palm glowed strongly, releasing his own magic across the imperial palace as a sign that Khamûl no longer had his current line of descendants from Neith under his control.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: I headcanon Quentyn and Sarella to share the same birth year, 281 A.C, with some months between them, so they would be undergoing puberty currently in-story at the age of 15
Ihsan and the late Aria Martell are both born in 224 A.C, so he is 72 years old at the moment. In Westeros, this is a rather high age to reach without modern-day health care and other things in the 21th century
Oberyn and Tyene using blowguns with poisoned darts? Yes, their canonial skills with poisons would likely involve how to not poison yourself and harm your enemy on a distance as well, so I thought that it suited the situation
Yes, Selim and his younger children are now hiding in Dorne, and will be the founding ground for a new noble House
The term aigrette refers to the tufted crest or head-plumes of the egret, used for adorning a headdress. The word may also identify any similar ornament, in gems. Aigrettes studded with diamonds and rubies decorated the turbans of Ottoman sultans