Chapter 75
Jaime Lannister sat in the Highgarden dungeon cell, his eyes vacant as he stared into the gloom.
Dried blood from his broken nose itched across his chin and lips, but he ignored it.
His mind was consumed with the realization that the gods were real…not only real but at least some of them were at work in the world…and at least one was walking Westeros.
His body shivered in renewed horror at the thought..
Jaime had heard the myths of faceless men and their god. He had heard that Stannis had a Red Witch who channeled some evil magic from R'hllor.
Cersei had frothed at the mouth when she heard Sansa had been crowned Queen. Consumed by her rage she had dismissed the reports that Sansa was the paramour of a being claiming to be a god…a god who had aided her in destroying House Bolton.
Jaime had been no better. He had dismissed the reports too. Assumed it was a misdirection. False rumors. Or perhaps some remnant from Old Valyria. A shadow binder…or some strange Yi Ti witch. Whatever it was, it would be easily killed with steel or enough arrows. Their 'magic' parlor tricks are able to catch the unaware off guard and inspire fear in the weak willed.
Jaime had thought himself stronger than that. Better.
He had dismissed the reports…thought them the superstitious nonsense of fools. He had thought the reports were whispered rumors of ill educated small folk with loose tongues and old wives tales given too much hot air.
How wrong he had been.
Jaime had seen the army fleeing the walls of Highgarden. He had thought the men were cowards. He had merely caught the tail end of his men being burst like overfilled ticks. He had thought his men were cowards…fools. Idiots who had seen a few parlor tricks, seen a few of their fellows die and they had fled like the lily livered knaves they were.
His attack on the god had been foolish and fruitless. She hadn't even bothered killing him, merely blasting him back like he was a nuisance with barely a twitch of her hand. He had been so far beneath her she hadn't even considered him worthy of facing in battle.
Instead she had allowed the Stark bastard Jon Snow to cross swords with him…and he had been dispatched with embarrassing ease. The fact his head was ringing from the god's attack was no balm to his ego.
The god had lifted him like he was a child. She was a woman shorter than himself with a form more akin to a young knight, than a woman gown …yet she had lifted him, in his full armour clear off the ground with negligent ease. He had been…nothing to her.
Her headbut had knocked him out, only for him to come around enough to find himself being dragged, bound hand and found into High Garden by two guards at the command of Ser Garlan Tyrell.
That was when he had seen it.
He hadn't understood it at first as he was dragged through the rings and gates of Highgarden. The sight was too strange, too queer.
He saw some of his surviving men, kneeling, their swords lying on the ground in surrender. Their proud forms had been bowed and broken. Tears marking clear trails down their bloodied and dirtied cheeks.
Men who were the most vicious briggans, and mightiest soldiers. Men who had sacked Kings Landing and done evil deeds on his father's orders…all broken. Defeated.
There were so few of them too..hundreds at best or the vast host of thousands he had marched here.
They knelt in the mud and blood.
Before a lake.
At least he had thought it a lake at first. Jaime's concussed mind had tried to fathom why the Tyrells had a lake before their home…it was in a tactically and strategically problematic placement.
It was only when the guards dragged his form close to it, skirting the 'lake' that he realized what it was. He caught sight of some flotsam that vaguely resembled the shredded gambeson of his army. Lannister red and the paw of a gold lion.
Smaller chunks floating at the edge of the lake came into view…a finger tip…some hair….
It was then that Jaime realized the 'lake' was all that remained of his army. A hip deep lake of blood…a soup of mulched men. The glittering was powdered swords and armor.
Jaime understood then why his men had surrendered, why hardened soldiers cried and the sounds of retching and prayer floated on the wind.
The god had reduced his army to soup…living breathing men, the finest army in the south obliterated with the carelessness of a butcher culling cattle.
Bile had raced up Jaime's throat as he had realized.
Yet now he sits in his cell. The dark a comfort. In the dark he can think. In the dark he does not have to face the bright, cheerful smile of a god whose eyes had sparkled as she wiped out his army.
He had heard the guards whispering. She was called Daisy. A god of destruction, she who destroys worlds. Quake.
A god of power and merciless will, aligned with the Tyrells, the Dragon Queen and personally escorted by the Stark Bastard.
Had Sansa Starks seemingly endless meaningless pleas to the gods in the gods wood called forth this being.
It was bound to the Starks, aligned to them seemingly.
Jaime's mind and soul cried out in horror at the thought of such a being walking the lands.
His heart races and aches because it seems inevitable now that his sister…his heart is doomed. A god sides with the Tyrells. Dragons had seemed bad but defeatable with planning. The dragon Queen could be assassinated after all…but a god?
His sister was doomed.
Their fate in this life seemed set. His death a foregone conclusion…yet, while that was almost a relief, it was also the least of his concerns.
For, if the gods are real, then what awaits him in the next life?
Jaime had never considered the next life. Life after death, like the gods had seemed a nebulous concept. Like his father he had believed the gods existed but that they were absent parents who did not interfere or truly care about mortal lives. We are fireflies to them, living in squalor, so why would they care? Why would such a power care for worship or the destiny of a soul of every useless mortal man?
If the gods are real, as is now self evident. And they give a shit about humanity…which is also now self evident….why did they wait until now to intervene?
What was so special about the Starks and the Tyrells that pushed the indolent beings to once more walk the land and care for mortal woes?
Why did they not grace the land as Aery's burned noble men alive for imagined slights?
Why did they not save him from becoming a Kingslayer when Aery's planned to burn all the innocents of Kings Landing?
Why did they not intervene when Elia Martell was being dishonored and her children killed?
Why?
Why?
Why?!
Jaime's mind is consumed with thoughts of what awaits him…and Cersi, in the next life.
His sins seem to weigh upon his back like boulders. His hands feel sticky with the blood they are caked in.
Will he be judged for his own sins, or will he also be judged for the sins of his family?
Jaime is a sister fucker. He defiled his sister, took her maiden head…dishonored her and himself.
He is a kingslayer. He killed King Aerys..no he didn't even kill him in fair combat, he assassinated him. He broke his oaths as a Kingsguard.
He usurped a King. He planted his seed in his King's wife…his sister, and had children he sired called heirs to the crown. He broke his Kingsguard oaths there again.
He crippled a child. He tried to kill Bran Stark…crippled the boy.
He had murdered the Stark men who had defended Ned and tried to reveal his many crimes.
He had broken his word to Catelyn Stark, nee Tully, when he swore to return her daughters for his release.
He was a Kinslayer. He had killed his cousin Alton Lannister as nothing more than a distraction to save his own skin.
His House paid the Freys to break guest rite…to murder another King, and his whole household. They broke the gods' laws.
His sister had burned the Sept of Baelor to the ground. One of the holiest site sin all of Westeros! She has burned alive numerous holy men and and women inside…and what had he done about it? Had he tried to stop his crazed sister? No, he had aided her assent to the throne and was here actively defending her false claim!
He was here, commanding an army to take Highgarden with the intent of allowing the army to sack it, to put every man, woman and child of Tyrell blood to the sword…for what? To destroy a justified enemy seemingly favored by a god. The Tyrell enemy who were seeking to gain justice from his sister who had murdered their kin…a Queen in her own right.
Jaime's throat feels tight as he recounts all of his sins.
He has broken his personal oaths, guest rite, killed a King and Kin alike. He is doomed.
The horror of what awaits him in the afterlife burns his mind.
What this god Daisy will extract as punishment may only be the beginning of his suffering.
He flinches back from the half whispered teachings of the Septons from childhood about what awaited sinners in the next life.
Jaime rocked back and forth in the cold and dark of his cell. Numb terror in his heart. His mind consumed by pulling apart the sinful life he has lived.
.
Olenna Tyrell had seen the destruction, she'd now seen the looks on the soldier's faces. Her grandson's terror at the possibility of her insulting the one who had wrought judgment on the Lannisters was positively understated. In her long, and it had been very long, life she'd never given much of a shit about the gods. The gods would do as the gods would do, and men would use the name of gods to do what men would do.
It wasn't that she failed to believe in their existence, but rather that it'd always been abstract. What could gods possibly want from the minutiae of humanity? Clearly, the faith had as little to do with divinity as a piece of shit. But for perhaps the first time in her life she felt doubt. Because the woman from the courtyard was a god. And she clearly bothered with the minutiae of humanity, and she seemed to be allied with a different faction.
Olenna's eyes traveled to the double doors as it was opened and there was the Northern bastard prince and there the Goddess. She was beautiful, and clearly able to be feminine or masculine in dress and motion. She'd walked with comfort in pants and a jacket and now she did so in a dress. The change in motion was as easy as breathing for her. The easy air between her and the prince was notable. But then gods did take human lovers on occasion. It was well known.
She rose to her feet with the rest of them. Wouldn't do to miss the niceties with a god. Olenna was curious what sort she'd turn out to be. But then the gods always had the same appetites and passions as men. It was simply finding which ones this one had.
Willas managed to rise with the rest of them, even with his leg. "Your Holiness, your Highness. Please, we'd be honored if you would join us for our morning meal."
"Thank you for the rooms and clothing." The Goddess's lips were raised in a half smile. "I didn't exactly think to grab extra clothing. There wasn't a lot of time to get here fast enough once we got word." Her expression lost some of its humor. "Really, your hospitality is very kind of you."
Olenna couldn't help it. "Good gods Holiness, you saved our lands and lives. We'd give you the bloody castle if you wanted it."
Everyone froze in the room, looks of horror coming over their faces, Jon Stark just buried his face in his hands, and the Goddess threw her head back and laughed. She wiped a tear from her eye before looking at Olenna, seeming absolutely delighted. "You are exactly as Sansa and Loras described you Lady Olenna."
"Loras? Is he.." Alerie made a sobbing noise. "Is he at peace?"
Jon Stark and the Goddess exchanged a confused expression. Jon spoke slowly though. "He seems fine?"
Olenna and the rest of her family stilled. She looked at the bastard prince. "Are you saying my grandson is alive?"
"Did you not get Sansa's ravens?" The Goddess reached into the pocket of the dress she was wearing and pulled out a thick letter. "I mean, he asked me to bring this for whichever one of you was at Dragonstone."
Alerie fell to her knees with heaving sobs. Willas swayed on his feet. Garlan made a strangled noise as he reached for his wife, the various servants looked near to passing out.
The Goddess's eyes widened. "He's alive, he's in Winterfell. Margaery got him out and had him smuggled North. She thought Sansa would protect him, and she was right. He's got a beard now and complains about the cold a lot. Prince Rickon gets scolded for using his direwolf to spook him about once a week."
"Why would Margaery do that?" Willas sounded faint, though the lifting of some part of the grief they'd all been living under seemed to take five years off of him.
Olenna took the letter, her fingers trembling faintly from the Goddess's hands. Opening the letter she saw his handwriting and her heart ached. It was from him. "It's his hand."
"From what her letter said, your sister knew the Faith and Cersei were going to use Loras against her. So she chose to be beholden to Sansa rather than the High Sparrow or Cersei. It's not like anyone cares much he's gay in the North, and I'm pretty sure most everyone would kill anyone from the south who even looked at him wrong on principle at this point."
Garlan's voice was hoarse. "Gay?"
"Oh, likes other men. Sorry, the terms are..different here than I'm used to." The Goddess shrugged faintly.
Willas licked his lips. "You don't find his inclinations immoral?"
"No, it's fine. I don't care about gender when it comes to people personally, so it'd be pretty hypocritical to care. Also, nothing wrong with it. I don't actually know of any gods that do care about that?" The Goddess rolled her eyes. The utter dismissal of the concern was clear.
Jon Stark just sighed. "We can go, and leave you to your letter and your grief. What's happened to you has been terrible." He had a solemn melancholy to him which was frankly impressive in that it didn't make him look ridiculous.
Olenna just huffed, folding the letter and stepping forward. "Codswallop. It's breakfast, and I at least intend to eat it. The letter will keep. So long as that's acceptable with you, Holiness?"
"I would retreat to read my son's letter." Alerie spoke. "If that causes no offence?"
The Goddess touched Jon Stark's arm. "Jon and I can eat in my quarters, we had things to talk about anyways. If afterward someone could take us to your gods' wood, I'd appreciate it?"
Olenna didn't protest as Willas saw to ensuring their guests were not insulted. But the Goddess had insisted that family was important, a thing the bastard Prince agreed with her on. She noted that. It would seem their new guest at least felt some measure of empathy, or perhaps pity. She'd take it.
Olenna pinched the bridge of her nose. "That idiot boy!"
"He's alive." Garlan's voice was hoarse as he stood by his mother's side who was crying while clutching the letter. "And safe."
Willas turned his walking stick in his hand. "He's Kingsguard for an enemy Queen. If the North and the Dragon Queen do not come to terms he'll likely be burnt alive." He looked to Olenna. "Can we intercede for him? Or does he need to intercede for us?"
"Well, that is the question." Olenna's eyes narrowed. "Until we know more of this Goddess there is little we can safely do. A Goddess who he seems to have written almost nothing about except for terrifying things he's seen her do and pleas to not antagonize her. But learn what you can. Where she falls will determine everything."
Garlan spoke. "What of his warnings that the North stands poised to take the Seven Kingdoms? Or the Long Night?"
"Well, we have the North's Hand. We'd better find out what we can." She felt a spark though. A spark she'd thought grief had hardened.
/
Theon Greyjoy twitched slightly as he stood in the echoing throne room of Dragonstone. He looked up at Tyrion. "I thought Queen Daenerys would be here, my Lord?"
"Our beloved Queen has left for Highgarden. There were pressing matters to attend to." Tyrion's voice was obnoxious as always as he stood before the empty throne.
The bottom of his stomach felt like it dropped straight out of his gut. "My sister is in King's Landing. We have to get her back!"
"Which is quite unfortunate, however, our army, dragons, and Queen are not here." Tyrion opened his hands. "There is little we can do to help you. Launching an attack on King's Landing is not possible for some time."
Theon swallowed, he needed men, armies, dragons to defeat his uncle. "My sister swore to our Queen, as allies you must help me get her back."
"I'm afraid there is nothing to be done until the Queen returns." Tyrion placated.
One of the men in the hall stepped forward. "Why don't we just go save her?"
Theon blinked, he recognized the man. "Joran?" The skittish and beaten down guard with dark eyes who had followed Ramsey around at Winterfell.
Joran shifted, but his head remained high, higher than it'd ever been in Winterfell. "We don't need to take King's Landing to save the Greyjoy Queen."
"Excuse me, who are you exactly?" Tyrion looked confused as he looked at...well, a common man at arms speaking up in a royal court like he had a right to.
Joran gave a slight nod of deference, it wasn't particularly more than the minimum. "Joran of the Order of the Shield." He was actually dressed slightly differently than the normal Winterfell men at arms. "I serve the Order and the Order serves her Holiness. If her Holiness was here she'd do it herself." He looked to the Northern men. "We all know it, we're here to make an alliance, what better way than for a historic enemy to owe us her life?"
"While very interesting, I fail to see the point. Unless you're suggesting you're going to ride into King's Landing yourself, break into the dungeons of the Red Keep, steal away their new prized prisoner who might not even still be alive, then flee back out of the Red Keep, out of King's Landing, and all the way back to Dragonstone. Which if you are, you are a very great fool." Tyrion actually appeared confounded.
Theon desperately hoped the man had a better plan than that…because it was kind of the desperate plan that'd been growing in the back of his mind as his dreams of saving his sister with dragonfire died.
"Not by myself." Joran straightened. "Davos was a smuggler, if anyone can get us into the Red Keep unnoticed it's him."
An older man made a noise of alarm.
Joran continued as if he hadn't heard. "Six warriors who don't care about breaking some rules and we have a chance." He looked at Theon. "If you can get us there?"
"Aye, I can do that." Even if he had to fight his own men to get them to agree, Theon could get them to King's Landing. Something like hope burned in him.
Joran ignored Tyrion, and the various people of import, looking instead at the guards in the room. "I only need five men then. Your Queen owes at least that much to your allies."
/
Willas Tyrell had been wary when the Goddess had asked to be taken to their gods' wood. But she had saved them and thus there was naught he would not do for her. Nothing. So he led her towards their face tree, the Three Singers, three trees having grown into one giant form. It was well tended as a sign of Highgarden's ancient roots from the times of the First Men. But it was ornamental rather than religious to them. Had been so for years.
He was grateful that the Goddess and the Stark Prince didn't seem to mind walking at his pace, nor did either show the faintest disgust or pity about his leg. Instead, they just ambled beside him toward the garden.
Jon Stark spoke, it sounded like he'd been dying to ask it for a while. "Why are we going to the gods' wood?"
"Because I'm not letting you out of my sight so you're stuck with me. I'd have just found it myself if you didn't need to come along." The Goddess glanced straight ahead, through the iron gates, and towards the trees. "They're kind of loud."
Willas swallowed questions on the tip of his tongue. She could hear the trees? He took in the way the two of them interacted though. But more than the casual ease between them, he was struck by the way the Goddess seemed as at ease in Tyrell colors and dress as she'd been in her Northern garb. The utter confidence and observational skills that would require were impressive all on their own.
As they walked the sun shone down on them full force, and Willas wondered at how these inner gardens didn't show the horror and damage that the lower circles held. The outer ring was a swamp of blood and gore and mud. The walls of the first two circles were in shambles. But here there was an odd peacefulness as if the battle had left it untouched. He looked up at the sound of a crow cawing.
The Goddess stopped walking, even as two servants were opening the gates into the gods' wood. She looked up as a raven circled over them cawing. She huffed. "Well, I guess they're waiting on us."
"They?" Willas wet his lips nervously. Out of the corner of his eyes, he realized the sky was filling with crows and ravens that had been feasting from the costs of war. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
The Goddess looked over her shoulder at him as she strode towards the last of the distance between them and the gods' wood. "The old gods."
He made a sound in the back of his throat that he was grateful she likely hadn't heard. After all, she was focused on what was ahead of them, birds swooping past and around her as she walked until she vanished from sight past the bushes.
Willas followed with trepidation and awe into the gods' wood. As a boy, he'd never cared for the gods' wood. It had felt like a servant's room, a place that was a part of his home but not for him. Not hostile, but not welcoming either. Not that there hadn't been awe at the three ancient weirwood trees that had grown near each other so long they had become one tree. Their strange and bleeding faces were…beautiful in their own terrible way. A testament to the ancient religion and beliefs of a bygone era. But it had never filled him with the…awe of a sept, the feel that something was real and there. At least not before this moment.
Standing before the Three Singers, the great weirwood of the Reach, stood their strange Goddess. The air felt unnaturally heavy and still, the red leaves of the great white tree rustling ever so slightly in a breeze that did not exist. And crows, crows everywhere all crying out as they circled, swooped, and dove in a great dome about this meeting. But the sound of their cries rang and echoed before they fell silent, alighting on whatever was nearest. The wall, the trees, the ground even.
His head snapped towards Prince Jon and the words died on his lips. Because the Northern prince looked as awed as Willas felt. The man had not been expecting this.
Willas didn't dare to approach closer, nor retreat out of the garden. Instead, he stayed rooted in place, unable to tear his eyes away from the divinity before him.
/
Daisy grinned as a black bird that was probably a raven landed on her hand as soon as she raised it. Powers could be, so cool. She looked at its eyes, the gleam in them. And she certainly was aware the flocks of birds weren't normal. Which, she knew the signs of a warg. "Bran, here to translate then?"
The, probably a raven, cawed as it nodded.
"When this is over please tell your sister I'm sorry this is taking so long and I'll see her as soon as I can." She turned her attention to the face tree. The three faces thing was really cool. Their faces were all in different expressions in blood red sap. "I can feel your roots beneath this whole castle. And I know you feed on blood. So, what's up with the bloody swamp still being there?"
Daisy felt the harmonic singing of the weirwood, it changed slightly, deepening. She frowned slightly, there was a…sluggishness to it now that she focused on it and found that it was just slightly off. It felt like a whine, a groan maybe.
The birds cried out in a chorus of voices, "Tired." "Tired!" "Tired!"
"You brought me here, and now you can't even put in the effort to take in the blood sitting a few yards above your roots?" Daisy wondered if it was comforting or concerning the weird nature god…tree things…probably an alien plant honestly, wasn't capable of doing that much besides seeing shit?
The bird on her hand cried out, "Tired!" And the rest of the creepy flock cried out swelling the wood with their cries of "Tired." "Tired." "Tired!"
Daisy kind of wanted to sigh. Instead, she nodded, right so the magical, possibly alien, tree was tired. But if they didn't want like so much disease from what she'd done, she needed the trees to be useful for fucking once. "What do you need then?"
The vibrations of the tree changed, each of the individual trees creating a new harmony even as they each sang at a different pitch, despite having melded into each other. And the raven on her hand cried out. "Blood!" And the voices of the hundreds of others cried out in echo of it, "Blood." "Blood." "Blood!"
Daisy gave a faint nod and lowered her hand, the raven that had been perched there hopping to her shoulder. She slid out the knife she'd carefully hidden in the lovely, deep pockets artfully sewn into the gown she'd been given. It had really been that after years of SHIELD she didn't feel right without some kind of weapon while in territory she was unfamiliar with. But it turned out it would be useful. She considered this, whatever organism these trees were they were bound to the oaths sealed in blood to them. And if they weren't she'd make them wish that they were if they tried to cross her.
"Alright, you owe me more than just some minor cleanup if I do this." She stared at the gaping, bleeding faces in the tree. "I wake you up, you do more than just feed on the blood I spilled on your grounds."
The raven now perched on her shoulder cried out, "Grow!" and the hundreds of other birds echoed after it, "Grow." "Grow." "Grow!"
"Well, let's see what you can do then." Daisy winced slightly as she sliced her hand open. It was nothing, she pointedly ignored the sound of protest Jon made from behind her. Instead, she took the last three steps forward till she was at the base of the giant tree and pressed her hand to its bark, smearing her blood across its white surface. She didn't flinch at the pain it caused, it'd heal soon anyways.
As one every bird in the wood cried out in proper bird cawing sounds and took off in a great black mass before dispersing in the air. But it wasn't the weird birds that Daisy couldn't remove her gaze from. For the central face on the ancient tree had been drawn as if in pain, and its two sister faces had had eyes closed as if in sleep. But the very flesh of the tree moved as her blood soaked into the tree, leaving only unblemished white bark behind. The eyes of the two faces on either side opened. And the twisted mouth of the central face turned up in a smile, red sap leaking from its lower lip, an audible groan of the wood changing shape filled the space.
Daisy pulled her hand away but didn't stop the bleeding, letting her hand drip onto the grass under her feet. She wondered what these old gods were, really and truly. But she could feel it, the pitch and tone of the trees' vibrations changing, spreading out from where they stood throughout the root system that lay beneath Highgarden. And she smiled back at the tree. Cause she could work with this.
She let her careful control ease ever so and let her own vibrations sing back to the harmony the tree was making. It might not be as clear as the birds had been, but it was its own conversation. She would help them, but they owed her the same in return. And they both understood those terms. An exchange of service, and perhaps by the end of this they might even be something like allies. But she had no doubt the trees knew from her blood exactly what she'd considered doing to them when she'd realized they were connected to Bran Stark's emptiness. The threat wouldn't be lost on something that was trying to survive.