(New) Prologue
Chaucyr
He was having trouble sleeping. The King's poet rolled out of his bed and reached for a bowl of lukewarm water that Adym had left next to the bread, cheese, and the clean knife. Lately he'd been having strange dreams. He had one that was not quite a nightmare, but he was drawn, both captive and not, to the court of a crowned sorcerer, who sat atop a throne of bones and drank blue wine from a goblet made of a wolf's skull. In another, he had visions of men dressed as Septons carrying a burning cross, marching to a hot land where they were hacked apart with curved swords. In another , men from Yi Ti built a massive siege engine – like a trebuchet, but capable of flattening a city in one go – and launched a missile from Pentos to kill Westeros and everyone on the Continent. Finally, there was the one about the snakes that breathed fire. Like lyndwyrms of Ironborn myths, but swarms of them, like rats or locust.
Fylippa tried to sooth his haunting dreams with eastern medicines and soothing remedies. Adym suggested something else.
He dried his face on a small cloth and got out of bed. He picked up a piece of bread and sliced a triangle of cheese off and took the midnight snack to his study. But at the top of the hallway stairs, Chaucyr saw light coming out from underneath the door, and smelled smoke coming from the study.
Fearing the worst, he barged into the study, cheese in one hand, bread in the other, and looked around to find a roaring fire, a bottle of Dornish red on the writing desk, and a half-dunk Adym sitting by the open door on the balcony with a long pipe in his hand. At the end of it was a little receptacle, like a small cup, that wafted a gentle stream of smoke into the night air.
"Ser?" he asked, "Are you all right?"
"I… I had thought the study was on fire."
"Whatever gave you that idea?"
"The smell of smoke," Chaucyr said. But now that he was in the room, he could smell it up close. Much drier and with a kind of "flavor" that the fireplace didn't have, "What is it that you have there?" he walked over to the table and poured himself a glass of the Dornish red (it was his wine after all) and walked over to where Adym was sitting.
"Lysene leaf," Adym said, "All the rage with sailors on the docks. In the Summer Isles, they call it tobacco." he held out the pipe to his Master. Chaucyr took it and smoked it, erupting into a fit of coughs as the smoke burned his throat and seared his eyes, "Seven hells!" he took a drink and soothed his insides, "Good gods. What a noxious substance."
"It takes some getting used to," Adym said, taking back his pipe and continuing to smoke with skill and comfort, looking happier than a pig in mud.
"For what purpose?" Chaucyr drew up a chair and sat next to his apprentice.
"Enjoyment." Adym answered, and released a cloud of smoke in the shape of a ring.
"I'll stick with wine. A proper Westerosi vice." He took another sip, this time for pleasure rather than for satiating a cough, "So," he said, "Tell me," he poured some wine into Adym's goblet, "why are you sitting alone on this balcony smoking Lysene leaf and not sleeping?"
Adym didn't answer at first, but puffed at his long pipe, "I don't know, to be honest. I guess I was just not so tired any more. What about you, Ser?"
"Me?"
"Why are you awake at this hour?"
"Oh," in an instant, all of the worlds, dark and meaningful and transcendent and wondrous, flashed before Chaucyr's mind. He wondered about the wizards, and horses, and dragon's bones and Valyrian steel, "I wish I knew," he said, "Really, I'm not sleeping well because I'm struggling."
"How philosophical." Adym said, and then started laughing ,"You know, Ser, that you are the great modern phiosopher of King's Landing?"
Chaucyr drank from his goblet to give him time to think, "Philosopher," he said, "that's..."
"I was down by the docks," Adym said, "That's where I get my Lysene leaf." he took a long drag and said, "They've been singing your verses all across the city."
"My verses?"
"The Rains of Castamere. A Parliament of Fowls. The Dornishman's Wife."
"I didn't write The Dornishman's Wife."
"Yes, but the verse about the Braavosi coins."
Chaucyr drank some wine. "I find myself in a bind, Adym."
"What do you mean, my lord?"
"I've been struggling… with my writing."
Surely Adym had already noticed. Among his many duties were to transcribe Chaucyr's scribblings into readable passages. And in recent times, there was less and less to transcribe. Adym, still in the old silver-hair's employ, spent more and more time as he wished. Hence why he had time to hang out in the docks and Fleabottom to spread the poet's songs and try out new intoxicants from Naath or Jhala or wherever, "You've been hard at work, Ser." Adym said, "working on a new editor of Boethyus' Consolation of the Philosophers."
"Yes, I have been working on that, but for my own edification. Not because I should be. The King has been paying me to compose lyrics for the court and the realm. If I was going to go the route of erudition, I should have stayed in Oldtown." Chaucyr first became interested in Boethyus as a diplomat in the service of Lord Jon Arryn, who assigned Chaucyr to entreat with the Reachlords. Chaucyr spent a year meeting the lords of the Arbor, Oldtown, and Highgarden, and in the process became so good at speaking Viejal that he considered moving to Oldtown completely. Being of old Valyrian blood, he also charmed the Maesters of the Citadel, guest lecturing on history and grammatics, earning a great deal of respect from Lord Hightower in the process.
His new friend, Maester Provence, showed Chaucyr the "protected" section of the Citadel library: a stone enclosure with a staircase that led to a solar reading room. Inside, no torches were allowed, so Maesters and Apprentices used specially bred lanters of fireflies to find the volumes for which they looked. There in Oldtown, the Maesters had copies of Boethyus' original manuscript, including three pages in the old master's hand.
Boethyus was a Valyrian philosopher and bureaucrat in the old empire. He had survived the collapse of the empire and journeyed west to enter the service of the old Andal Prince of Dorne. But he'd angered the Prince and was sentenced to death. In his prison cell in Ghaston Grey, Boethyus wrote his treatise, finishing it only hours before his execution, and posthumously created the basis of medieval Westerosi philosophy.
Shame about his head. Still. Valar morghulis.
"My heart is not in this academic work." The writer said, "I want to get back to creating. Not just analyzing."
"What do you want to write about?" Adym asked. After a long, pensive pause, he added, "You still never finished The Goldroad Tales."
"Of course," Chaucyr said, barely audibly, "I'm afraid of this point I wouldn't even know where to begin."
"What would you like to write about?"
"I was familiar with many Dothrakis when I lived in Pentos. I had even started to compose a tale of a khalasar, about a Dothraki shaman and his love for the Khal's favorite wife."
"I've never heard this one." Adym said, "When you were living in Pentos?"
"Yes," he answered, "I wrote several dozen pages."
"You should let me see them," Adym said, "so I can make proper copies."
"They're not ready for anyone to see."
"What about folding them into the Tales?"
Chaucyr felt both intrigued and confused, "What do you mean?"
"The plot of The Tales is that a bunch of pilgrims travel from Lannisport to the Great Sept telling stories. Two each on the way, and two on the return trip, no? Why not make this story of the shaman and the khaleesi one of the Tales that the pilgrims tell?"
"I had not considered that possibility before," the ole poet said.
"I know," Adym chuckled, "'Tis why I suggested it." He clinked his goblet against Chaucyr's and said,
"Come now, what other tales were you considering?"
Chaucyr told Adym all about the stories he'd had on his mind: whether they were the spearpoint of his nightmares or an earworm he acquired on his travels. When he visited Winterfell many years ago, he and Maester Luwin – Gods rest his soul – of the lands and peoples beyond the Wall. There were the solemn and dreary Night's Watchmen, the oddly bald and ferocious Thenn, lecherous fools and outcasts from Westerosi society, and an endless list of tribal Free Folk, to say nothing of the Others, the Giants, and the Wights that haunted their dreams.
Another tale he was considering, but hadn't figured out a way to do it tastefully, was about a very rich noble house, whose greatest possessions – their gold mines – had run dry. But to maintain their power and wealth decided to put that property to use and hired Essosi alchemists to concoct a substance more intoxicating than liquor, and more addictive than breathing.
Then there as another tale, about three squires – brothers of steel, not blood – who are bonded in their service, one to the Kingsguard, one to its Lord Commander, and one to the Hand. Together they fight against a Dothraki invasion when some of them learn that he is the trueborn son of the King, and another is not. The third is forced to choose from among his warring "brothers," and even fight against his teacher and Master, the Lord Commander…
"What are you doing?" Chaucyr stopped speaking.
"Writing this down, of course." Adym said, "This is really good material, Ser. You shouldn't waste it."
Chaucyr sighed and poured himself another gobletful of wine. He was mostly just thankful that king Petyr had other issues to worry about besides poetry. At least, if he was summoned to court and told to prove his royal stipend, he'd finished a full draft of A Parliament of Fowls. He had that under his belt.
The next day he awoke with a headache and a small hangover. Adym, younger and far too accustomed to imbibing, had already arrived with a mug of hot water, a half cup of beer, and hot bread and beans for breakfast, "with an egg if m'lord is so inclined."
He broke his fast with Fylippa who then arranged herself for an outing with Westerosi society. The old poet saw her off and went u to his solar, warm beer in hand.
Chaucyr looked around for a long moment and admired how Adym had arranged and kept the study neat and tidy. Of course, the fact that he'd done so little work there made it that much easier to keep clean. Every so often he flipped through the pages of his works taking scraps of paper to write notes, or making tiny, almost insignificant changes.
But today, there was an additional element that was not there yesterday: a small stack of papers. They were the notes that Adym took last night. Of stories that inspired Chaucyr. Stories from the north, the east, his nightmares, and the recesses of his own consciousness. Stories of war, of romance, of heroism, and tragedy. There were stories of magic and greed. Some were bawdy, some violent, some upsettingly political, and some of them were even fairly mundane. Then he remembered something else from last night. Between the flowing Dornish drink and the wisps of Summer Island smoke, Adym told him to fold all of these disparate stories – as diverse and colorful as they may seem – into the Tales.
What did he have to lose?
The old poet, for the first time in a long time, picked up his pen and a clean sheet of paper. He had come to a decision: he would finish what he started.