Joining up with unexpected allies
Afternoon of February 25th, year 3019 of the Third Age, the haven of Umbar:
Despite a smaller combat out in the waters, Suleiman and his greater fleet had managed to take control over Umbar without too many losses and the current duumvirate being taken as hostages, as well all the candidates to be their successors by vote among the city council members. Now, he saw his men place the banners, the silver crescent moon of the Sultanate of Rûm and the golden sun of House Martell as a sign of the secret alliance between him and the ruling family of Dorne, across all of Umbar as proof of that the haven now was under his control as the Sultan of Rûm.
Now, the two captured members of the duumvirate were giving Suleiman a tour around the city and its harbour, so he could see its strength and weakness with his own eyes.
"I want any remaining ships and experienced soldiers of Umbar to come with us to Gondor. Not to fight against and weaken the Kingdom, but to defeat Sauron in a manner that he should not expect at all. Perhaps I can offer this haven back to Gondor under their control, as the price for a future trade agreement or something such when we have peace in Middle-earth again."
Walking behind Suleiman on a respectful distance, Morgan Sand was busy writing down details on a wax tablet, to later be added in a letter for his cousins and telling of how things went.
"Clever idea, Lord Suleiman. A peace agreement is more likely to last if both sides can find something to benefit everyone…"
A few scribes also followed after the two men, in case the new Sultan needed to have something else written down.
"Hm? Where did this strong wind suddenly come from…?!" one of the servants noticed as the wind seemed to be picking up in strength. Dark clouds began to form in haste, and there was a distant sound of thunder adding up.
"Great, an unusual late winter storm is about to fall over us!" one member of the now overthrown duumvirate of Umbar muttered as the guards prevented him from seeking shelter without permission.
"Sire! Look out there, in the sea just outside the bay!"
Almost out of nowhere, had the winds from the sea suddenly grown in amazing strength, like how a tornado would be. But Suleiman, who had spent his childhood and youth in a port city, was familiar with changes in the weather that foreshadowed storms like this, and could sense that this was not a normal storm. His instincts, after a lifetime to avoid being found out by Khamûl, told him to be on guard.
"Say, Morgan," he addressed the Dornishman, "have your cousins Doran and Oberyn sent a belated message about trying to open a portal so the Dornish fleet could join up with mine?"
Making a mental check in his memory about the past days, and that it was only four days since Suleiman had taken Umbar under his control, Morgan could not recall any such message from either Doran or Oberyn, and while the younger son of his late aunt Aria could still be rash and unpredictable like in their youth, Oberyn was nonetheless a little more careful those days when knowing that Elia had found a much better life for herself and her children, as well that he had Ellaria and his eight daughters to think of.
"No, sire! Nothing such!"
And now they could see something taking shape out in the sea.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Just like in Blackwater Bay, the massive portal between the two worlds was shaped out of sea water being pulled up in the air by the whirlwind. And while the fey-beasts had strong wings, this sort of forceful winds quickly revealed them to have a newly discovered weakness against this sort of storm winds and instead happened to be spinning around in circles as the Nazgûl got a rare taste of not having control over the situation.
"Try to cover your faces for a moment!"
"Hold on, we are several hundred meters up in the air….AAAAAH!"
Gendry may not be a reincarnation of the royal children from Kemet, but he still found a way to use his double flat hammer to break the glass pyramid thanks to how Khamûl was losing focus on them and instead had to try keeping his fey-breast somewhat upright.
"Brienne, Mya! Catch Aemon and Rhea! Eric, try to get hold of Shireen!"
When the glass pyramid scattered, they ended up apart thanks to the strong winds making them seem weightless, especially as the two princesses and daughters of Stannis were dressed in long dresses with sleeves and linen underdresses below that top layer.
"I swear, that I will make it acceptable for women to wear trousers in public, no matter what the Faith may protest!" Lyonel thought for himself while he tried to avoid slamming into another of the fey-breasts, as his twin sister and Elinor showed unmistakeable discomfort with how the winds threatened to blow up their skirts and reveal their bare legs. Shireen and Rhea wore far less adorned dresses for everyday use, but just like their royal cousins, their belts was the only thing preventing the skirts on the dresses from being spread out As Brienne and Mya tended to favor male clothing, Brienne as the sworn sword of Argella and Mya for her eventual role as a gamekeeper at Storm's End, the difference in clothing could not be ignored.
"Lyonel! Argella! Join your powers together to sink us below the surface! We should try to craft an air bubble so we do not drown!" Eric screamed from where he now clinged to Gendry, holding on to the hammer together.
"Avoiding getting caught again, may be the first step in that plan!" Mya called, grabbing hold of Elinor under one arm and Rhea under her other. It was hard to not slam into each other or the Ringwraiths, but Gendry grabbed hold of Mya's belt with one hand as Eric helped Elinor to keep Aemon from getting away from their little group and Brienne, now holding Shireen to her chest with the same arm as her sword, grabbed hold of Gendry's belt in turn. Seeing the others trying to stay together, Argella and Lyonel grabbed hands.
"Daughter of the sea, daughter of the winds! Grand us the protection needed to escape this danger together!"
It was a desperate plea to Elenei to protect her current mortal descendants, but it worked. And as the royal Baratheon twins joined their magic of water and air together, Brienne felt her own consciousness taken over by her past life:
"Hemsut, goddess of fate and protection! Shu, Embodiment of wind! Hapi, god of the annual flooding! Let us have the power to escape those beings of evilness!"
Her voice was now that of Meryatum, the prince of Kemet who had aimed for a life as a priest in adulthood because he held a strong spirituality. And Khamûl heard the once familiar voice as well as Brienne seemed to make the winds go silent for a moment:
"Meryatum?!"
But it was already too late for him to recapture them with his control over sand. An air bubble took shape around the kidnapped teenagers and children, and then Lyonel forced them downwards with the seawater he pulled up while Argella made true of her air powers.
"Run back to whatever you came from with the tail between your legs, fucking shadow mongrels…!"
Her words was cut short as they vanished below the surface, but the Nazgûl on their fey-beasts was nonetheless forced away from Umbar, screaming in vain of fury over losing the hostages as the whirlwinds dragged them along, the strength of the summoned winds not slowing down until that they was not far from the Ephel Dúath, or the Mountains of Shadow, the range of mountains that guarded Mordor's western and southern borders.
Because the whole attention had been on the whirlwind where the Ringwraiths found themselves not in a favorable manner, Black Betha appeared out from the portal with no problem.
"Well, that passage was...strong!" Matthos Seaworth, third son of Davos, groaned weakly, before he felt a rare outburst of seasíckness hitting him and he emptied his stomach over the railing.
"Miss Shireen! Miss Rhea!"
Even with everyone being a little unsteady from how powerful the whirlwind had been, Davos was still joined by his crew as they called for the young daughters of Stannis, hoping to be somewhere near where the kidnapped Baratheon heiresses and their royal cousins might be.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
But at Umbar, the arrival of Black Betha had not been missed thanks to the sailors on the ships furthest out from the harbour, who were using small telescopes to see what happened better. And right now a large air bubble below the surface suddenly bursted at ramming into the stone wall near where Suleiman and Morgan were standing, making several children of different ages and varied clothing come up to the surface for air. And one of them, the youngest boy, seemed to not be doing that great with how Brienne needed to hold him above the surface.
"Aemon, stay awake!"
"Holy River Mother, the Ringwraiths must have tried to kidnap the Baratheon children in order to weaken Westeros from being fully united against Mordor!" Morgan muttered under his breath when he realized what must have happened, and hurried to help them out on the water. As Holly was their governess, he had often visited his sister and her royal charges under the disguise as a supplier of Dornish luxury goods such as silk cloth and spices not found anywhere else in Westeros.
"Hamet," Suleiman said to one of his captains who was standing nearby, "Be kind and guide that unknown ship to the harbour, preferably without violence, if you can. I am sure that we can get some answers about today from there."
It did not take long for Black Betha to be escorted into Umbar by three ships on each side and behind, and while Brienne, the royal children, the two heiresses to Storm's End and the three present love-children of Robert Baratheon was given medicinal attention by the doctors from Rûm in the vast duumvirate palace where Suleiman had taken temporary residence, did Holly tell of what had happened earlier in King's Landing after that she, Davos and his crew was given bread and salt as a sign of guest right.
"Now this truly changes the stage, I must say," Suleiman spoke when Morgan had finished translating for his sister, as Holly had not gotten the same chance to train on the Common Tongue of Middle-earth thanks to being the governess of the royal Baratheon children, "I am not cruel enough to keep those young guests as hostages, should they wish to return home as soon as possible, but if the King of Westeros can join up with a fleet and soldiers…"
However, as an errand boy from the healers said not many moments later upon arriving into the chamber, there was no way the royal children could return back yet. Aemon had gotten a serious fever, Shireen had a broken wrist and the others had various minor injuries from being caught up in the force of the whirlwind as well. Besides, since the Ringwraiths had lost their intended hostages, there was a big risk that they may show up again and bring them to Mordor for real.
"Great, that is not a situation that would sit well with the King and his brother, how their children could be kidnapped again…"
"Captain Seaworth."
Davos looked up at being addressed by Suleiman, because the Sultan had a noticeable dialect in how he tried to pronounce some of their names, because the Common Speech of Westeros, the Rhoynar language in Dorne and his own native Haradic tongue were not very alike. Thankfully, Morgan could help with translating, because he had a native gift for it since a young age and was a fast learner about new languages:
"Would you mind acting as a messenger to King Robert Baratheon and his brother, your Lord Stannis Baratheon? That if they join up with the fleet of Sultan Suleiman, they can help get rid of the very threat that robbed them off their children so boldly in open daylight today. A great Evil, far more dangerous than what anyone can imagine, who seeks to take over Westeros and possibly Essos as well, should the Seven Kingdom fall over his domain."
Great warriors were needed in the war against Sauron, and the two surviving sons of Steffon and Cassandra would give the forces of evil a good taste of being against seasoned warriors of war.
"If...all the children give me a shared message, signed with their names, to hand over to their fathers as a sign of this being true, then I think the King and his Hand can agree to help out."
That was all Davos could promise for now, but as soon as he had both the message from Suleiman, written down by Morgan, and the pleading of help from the legal Baratheon heirs, then he would sail back to the Westerosi side of the portal.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
The North in Westeros, Castle Black at the Wall:
No one really knew what had happened to Maester Aemon, formerly a prince of House Targaryen, to make him collapse to the floor like that, nine days ago, but the older men in the Night's Watch, among them Lord Commander Jeor Mormount, said that it most likely was a stroke and his high age catching up with the old Maester. It did not help that he was 99 years old, either.
"He has only been drinking a little broth and other liquids over the past days, to avoid death by dehydration, my lords…"
He had been sleeping for a while, but now Aemon moved a little bit in his bed, under the thick blankets without opening his blind eyes. And his lips kept forming names from the past:
"Egg? What do you have there in that large barrel? Lemons sent from cousin Mahaad for all of us? Madre will be happy, she loves how lemons give extra flavour to salmon…"
One of his caretakers, a young steward, looked confused over whether Aemon slipped into more Dornish words, which was almost never heard here in the North.
"Mahaad Martell, the oldest son of Maron and Daenerys Martell, a long-gone ruling Prince of Dorne. Because she was in the same age group as the four sons of Daeron II, it seems like the children of Maekar followed their father in calling him cousin, despite it was Maekar and Mahaad who was first-cousins," Jeor explained quickly in a whisper, having a feeling that now would not be long before Aemon joined the rest of his dead family members in the afterlife. Perhaps even before the incoming night.
"Father...no, Madre dying was not your fault...she was ill, she did not want any of us children or yourself to catch the tuberculosis which claimed her life, it was why she isolated herself during her final year…"
Memories of the past, faces from various members of his expanded family as the death of Dyanna ninety years earlier seemed to have foreshadowed how not all of them would live when another ten years had followed.
"Egg. I dreamed that I was old."
A faint smile at hearing the ghost of what had been a familiar laugh from Aegon V as a young boy, and Aemon Targaryen, the longest-living son of the late King Maekar and Dyanna Dayne, drew a final breath.
A similar scene was happening much further north, inside a cave deep into the so called haunted forest:
Brynden Rivers, the bastard son of Aegon IV and Melissa Blackwood, could sense that whatever it was that had caused the great melt-down in the Lands of Always Winter, it was far too powerful for him to challenge. Not after how easy this terrifying being of fire had eased the Others out of existence like that.
"Daeron….your marriage to Myriah...was far more important than what anyone could...have guessed at that time…"
He could feel himself grow weaker and weaker for each laboured breath, and not even being a greenseer would prevent his death now. Yet he felt satisfied, because even without a successor to train as a new greenseer, there were things in the past that he had dealt with. The bloodline of Daemon Blackfyre had died out in the male line with Maelys Blackfyre, and not wanting to see her daughters be used to claim the Iron Throne like their brothers, Rohanne of Tyrosh had let them enter as virgin priestesses for life to various religious communities, effectively ending any chances of them marrying and the female line of Daemon Blackfyre dying out with said daughters.
"She was too good for Daemon in the long run...and had the common sense that he lacked. It would have been a lot less work for me as Hand, if she just had managed to send her five younger sons into priesthood and have them swear chastity as well…"
He could hear the once-familiar laughter of Daeron over something amusing Myriah told him, and feel the faint scent of the lavender perfume that Shiera had liked to make herself. As much as Brynden regretted that he would not see what would come, he was tired from this long watch as a greenseer because he had lived far beyond his natural lifespan and wanted to put a final end to the loneliness that came with outliving all those he once held dear.
"Brynden, it is way past time to give back Dark Sister to Daeron and thank him for being allowed to wear it as a sign of being trusted to protect him and Myriah!"
Ah, yes. Brynden moved a trembling hand and managed to grab the grip of the famed Targaryen sword which rested against his wooden throne. He needed to pass it over to someone who would need it far better than himself, now.
"A little gift for someone who shall use it well…"
In a small glass vial, was some old and dried blood, from both Daeron II and Myriah Martell to act as a lucky charm for Brynden. Now the last living member of their generation used this blood alongside his last strength, to send the sword to Brienne of Tarth and switch out her current sword without anyone noticing. While the current generation of House Tarth, Ser Selwyn and his four children, were the descendants of Princess Vaella Targaryen and pretty much unlikely to ever be seen as serious claimants to the Iron Throne as she had her own claim dismissed at the Great Countril in 233 A.C and her uncle Aegon V was chosen as the new King instead after Maekar I, Brienne was still the sort of female warrior which Dark Sister had been forged for, originally.
"An unexpected, but fine legacy for a Princess who sadly was too affected mentally by the constant, heavy drinking of her father to ever be able to do more than find a kind husband and have some healthy children with him…"
With this final work done, Brynden allowed his soul to run after the spirit of Shiera as she waved at him to hurry along, away from the living world.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author's note: Tolkien did not mention much of everyday life and such in Umbar, but it is notable that all four known rulers of Umbar come in pairs, suggesting that perhaps Umbar was traditionally ruled by a duumvirate.
Canon does not mention when Dyanna Dayne, the wife of Maekar I and mother to Aegon V, died but it is known to have happened before 209 with the Ashford Tourney. I chose to have her die of tuberculosis in 207 A.C, five years after the birth of her sixth and youngest child Rhae Targaryen, to explain why Aegon did not seem too grief-stricken when Dunk asked about his mother
Again, canon does not mention what happened to Rohanne of Tyrosh and her daughters past them fleeing to exile in Essos following the failure of the First Blackfyre Rebellion, but given that Aegor Rivers kept trying to make her third son Daemon II/the Younger and fourth son Haegon claimants to the Iron Throne, and two grandsons, Daemon III and Maelys, following this deathy path as well, she may as well have thought "NOT my daughters too!" and tried to protect her daughters from the whole Blackfyre foolishness by sending them to religious lives as life-long virgin priestesses, akin to nuns in the Catholic Church. So in this crossover AU, House Blackfyre is truly extinct in both the male and female lines
Canon does not mention the eventual fate of Vaella Targayren, only child of Prince Daeron Targaryen and Kiera of Tyrosh, only that she was dismissed for being both a girl and having some form of mental challenge. Personally I headcanon her to have been on the Autism Spectrum as a result of Daeron was known to be a heavy drinker in a attempt to deal with his dragon dreams, but that Aegon V tried to take care of Vaella by finding her a husband that would be kind to her despite her mental problems. As Tarth is a island, she would be free from the constant gossip at the royal court and her being the mother of Selwyn would fit with him being born in 245/246, as Vaella would be a mature woman on 23-24 years at giving birth to Sewyn as her first child rather than a teenage bride and mother