SEA GODS

"Come away." Jorah gripped Dany's shoulders, pulling her from the black stone. She rubbed her palms and fussed against him, freeing herself from hands that too often found themselves on her skin. Before Jorah could protest, the queen was back on her knees, pawing at the outcrop buried in the jungle. He looked around and saw it peeking out of the undergrowth as though it were the froth on an ancient, frozen sea.

The hideous stone was smooth to the touch. Dany placed her palms flat to its rancid surface, closing her eyes – listening to the faint murmurings of lost times that whispered in the rock. A flicker of light crossed her vision. Something stirred. A flap of dragon wings – leather against the wind.

"It's the stones," she murmured, turning to Jorah. He thought he saw a flame die in her eyes. "The visions are coming from the rock."

"How can visions come from stone?" he replied. "I allow that some trees hold the secrets of the past and future but they are living things, bound by magic."

"They say Asshai is built of this black gold, perhaps magic lies in its foundation. I saw the way the buildings lifted out of the land, almost as though they were grown from the black waters."

"You've not been to Asshai, my queen." The look she gave him in return dripped scorn. Of course – her visions. He continued, "Even if that is true, your magical rocks did not help Yeen. The city fell, long ago. Magic or not."

"Power is no guarantee of survival." Daenerys knew that better than most. How many dragon bones lined the narrow sea or turned to dust between kingdoms? Only a fool placed his faith in power. "Still – it's left its mark on this place." She grew distant. He moved closer, lowered his voice.

"You believe that you can use what you learn here to help you take the throne in Westeros?"

"Careful with your tone, ser. I think we can agree that the gods toss us about for a purpose. How else does a Bear end up in the company of a Dragon? There's something waiting for me here, I know it. Further in..."

"Please be careful, khaleesi. Not all of Fate's whims have been to your advantage."

Jorah was left following his dragon, trekking in the stifling heat among towering water-trees, the size of which he'd never dreamed. They could swallow whole ships with the girth of their melted trunks. Roots hung off every branch like hair, racing to the ground and strangling whatever they touched including animals that had paused to sleep. Their bones were woven into the mess. These trees were greedy – like the air stealing from their lips. Between the humidity and the claustrophobia, Jorah was starting to long for Winter.

"Here..." she had found another stone. This one was much larger but narrow and deliberately formed. It was dug into the ground, standing fifteen feet with only a slight tilt where an amorous tree leaned against its side. Writing squeezed into every space, etched deep into the stone.

Jorah approached, tilting his head curiously. He reached forward, trailing his fingertips on adorned surface. The grooves were undamaged even though they had to be very old. "Can you read this?" he asked Dany.

"No. Varys?"

"Perhaps. It is a Chart Stone. A living record of the city. They are common in this part of the world. See – down here – the writing stops." A few feet from the ground. "This must have been erected before Yeen was abandoned."

"Where is the city?"

"Close. Chart Stones stand by city gates – although the gates themselves are probably lost to the forest. If Yeen truly is made out of the same stone as this marker, it might be intact." Dany caught his concerned look. It was common between them – something he cast at her when he was unwilling to go along with her plans.

"Whatever happened to this city happened a long time ago." She assured him. "Do not harbour superstitions like a common pirate. Are you afraid of the ruins at Valyria as well? The dead do not walk there and neither are they hiding here."

"I've seen dead men walk," Jorah assured her. "In Valyria as well." When he looked at her, Jorah knew that she had seen the corpses in the snow. He'd heard her screams. Pulled her from their grip. One day, soon, he'd be pulling her from the snow.

They didn't speak again after that.


The journey wasn't easy on Varys. Mostly round and generally unwell in the heat, his robes caught on plants and he had to be carried over the difficult climbs. By the time he reached the Chart Stone, his forehead was awash with sweat. It tumbled off his nose, eyelashes and lips.

"Ser Jorah is correct," Varys wiped himself with a filthy sleeve. Oh for the tiled floors of King's Landing. The palace might have been overrun by snakes but at least he'd never had to wrangle one out of his robes. "This is a Chart Stone for Yeen." He pointed to a common repetition of characters. "Here – Yeen. This is the date and yes, beside is a population count." Varys frowned. "It falls without explanation – faster as we go down the stone. Either the population are moving on or –"

Ser Jorah ducked under the forest plants and came to tower over Varys. "How does the story end?"

Varys was helped onto a small boulder so that he could reach the base of the stone. He rubbed away the moss, squinting at the black text in the even blacker stone. "What...?" he hissed in surprise, pulling away. His eyes were wide. Despite the heat, his skin went cold. It was as though the ghosts of Yeen breathed against his neck, three-hundred souls screaming out of the stone.

"Speak!" The Queen commanded him.

"The last line," Varys whispered. "You'll notice that it is in a different style to the rest. A different language, actually. These were written many hundreds of years after by someone else. They are the old Stark words. Winter is coming." The ground beneath shook again. Varys reached out, leaning against the stone until it passed. "The people of the Summer Isles do not speak those words."


Tyrion kicked another rock along the shore. He'd been thrown out of the temporary shelter while the Unsullied lifted up the last of the floorboards – making ready for tonight. That left him wandering the beach alone without any wine. He tried to say, 'hello' to the dragons but the pair of reptiles were more interested in sun baking and growled as he grew close. Eventually he found a dwarf-sized boulder and sat with his feet in the cool wash. Tyrion was calmed by the water. It reminded him of home.

He flinched.

Being reminded of home was not necessarily a good thing.

Something caught his eye. There was a piece of driftwood caught between the black stones. At first he thought it might be part of their stricken ships, tugged apart by the sea but no – as he knelt in the water and dragged it free he realised that it was old.

Tyrion held the board up to the light, turning it over. The water made it glisten with the barest hint of polish. He looked back to the waves and soon found another. Then another. Another. Soon he realised that he was standing in the remnants of a structure. He walked up and down the beach, clearing away rubble in what must have been a curious sight to those onshore. The dragons watched him with lazy with half open eyes.

"Yes – exactly here," Tyrion muttered to himself. "Definitely."

He'd found Nymeria's fleet – thrashed and ruined on the shore a thousand years ago. Tyrion stopped digging before he found something less appealing – like a Southerner's skull. He turned his back on the sea and eyed the thick jungle. Tyrion had never placed stock in the mutterings of priests but their stories about the history of the world piked his interested. Until recently, he'd thought it mostly a fiction. That was until he'd seen a silver queen ride a dragon. He was starting to listen to that fear growing in his side – the whispers. How many of the stories were true? Were they all true? He certainly hoped that the tales of Brindled men and eyeless cave creatures were nothing but the fears of seamen.

"Why do you look to the forest?" Grey Worm asked, towering over the imp. His skin was darker by the minute, drinking in the sun. "The men have not seen green like this. Our land is sand, water and blood."

"There's plenty of blood in the forest, of that you can be certain," Amused, Tyrion handed Grey Worm one of the fragments of wood from the shoreline. Grey Worm inspected it curiously. "Our Dragon is not the first warrior queen to crash against the shore. Nymeria and her ten thousand ships made port – rebuilt the ancient harbour," he pointed out the break-wall. "Yeen cannot be far from here."

"A city?"

"A curse," Tyrion assured him. "It was already ancient when she tried to re-settle but it brought her nothing but ruin. The fleet left and the city was forgotten again. Best thing for it."

"Our Queen searches for this city?"

"I hope not. Nymeria – utterly mad, like all good rulers," Tyrion narrowed his eyes at that seething mass of green. "And do you know what our warrior queen had to say of this ruin at the edge of the world?" Grey Worm shook his head in that stoic fashion of his. If nothing else, he was a man of few and measured words. "A city so evil that even the jungle will not enter. If a crazy, war-monger thought it was the embodiment of evil then we want nothing to do with it."

Grey Worm was silent, fixed on the jungle and the foreign sounds calling out from its depth. "The only evil I have seen is that of men."

Tyrion nodded. "You're not wrong."


Jorah was not sure what he had been expecting – fragments of a ruined city, thrust up through thickets in the jungle? Something similar to the state of Valyria with its crumbling beauty? Yeen floored him. Jorah was certain his lungs fell through his ribs and hit the leaf-litter.

The expedition stopped at a rise in the jungle. They had come upon a ridge of black rock. It circled a sunken expanse that stretched impossibly far with huge waterfalls staggered around the perimetre as though a dragon egg had fallen to earth and cracked apart. Encased below this hundred foot drop was bare, black rock and a frightening city nestled right to the edges without a blemish of green. It resembled a shadow. A molten, wax structure formed in the throat of a sea god.

This creation was below water level. Beyond the jungle, in all directions, was the blue line of ocean and white froth of an approaching storm. The water that collected in rivers around the terrible city evaporated, boiled away by some unseen source of heat making it smoulder like the ruins of the dragon cities.

The Unsullied backed away from the edge. Varys covered his mouth, speech stolen from his lips. Jorah looked to his queen while she left the protection of the jungle and stepped out into the sun. She stood above the city, the wind licking her silver hair. Her arms lifted and she closed her eyes, listening to the filthy screams folded into the wind. It was a city of horror – a copy of Asshai.

"Didn't I tell you, Ser Jorah," she whispered, like the shadows. "Forgotten things at the edge of the world are placed there for us."


There was no time to explore the city before nightfall so the party returned to the beach. It was dusk by the time they reached the pebbled shore. Those that remained had constructed enormous fire stacks which burned against the failing sun like angry stars. The dragons were gone – fishing as the larger creatures lifted from the deep to hunt, unaware that they too were hunted. Pushed up against the edge of the jungle, the shelter was complete. The structure was encased by recovered sails which were pinned open and full of the queen's people, eating and drinking. The air was light and drenched in fragrant smoke. The remaining khalasar taught their tribal songs to the Unsullied.

Jorah did not enjoy the brevity. Knowing that the terrible ruin lay so close, unguarded, filled him with panic. It took him several hours to realise what it reminded him of. He'd felt the same, standing atop Mormont Keep with the frozen lands, still and deadly – waiting as Yeen waited.

He was dragged from thought by the intrusion of a wine glass.

"No."

Tyrion shrugged. "One of the other ships brought some over before it got dark. See – all of the queen's khalasar accompanied the wine. They were keen to be free of the water. They may not be throwing their innards over the deck any more but her horsemen do not take to the water. They mistrust a ground that moves and whose depths they cannot gauge."

"This is no place to find yourself without wits," Jorah explained, taking Tyrion's glass from him amid much protest. Jorah tossed the contents in the sea. "Believe me and if you do not – take a look at your friend."

Tyrion's gaze wandered to Varys, who hadn't moved from his perch by the water for many hours. He refused to go anywhere near the jungle and instead fed his crows, letting them out one at a time to stretch their wings and play at the water's edge.

"For a man that enjoys words, he's not said one since he returned from your little jungle trek," Tyrion admitted. "I take it the queen found what she was looking for? The glorious lost city. There are too many of them scattered around the world." Tyrion shrugged. "Terrible things happen everywhere – this place is no different."

"Oh really?" Jorah replied. "Why are the dragons keeping to the water?"

"They don't like the insects?"

Jorah lofted his eyebrow at the dwarf. "There's something in that forest and it's not a deserted city. I've asked for a full company on watch tonight and I've sent the queen back to the ship."

"The whole beach heard that row."

"The sun and the stars heard, I'm sure. If you sleep, keep one eye open."

"Shouldn't you be at the queen's side, Mormont Prince?"

Jorah nodded at a small light on the water. "I'm catching the last boat now. You should join me."

"Fuck the boats," Tyrion muttered.


At some point, when the half-moon was high and the stars carpeted the dark, Tyrion rolled up the beach and collapsed near a smouldering fire. At least, that's what he thought he'd done. Tyrion had actually passed out at the base of the shelter and fallen underneath the hastily built foundations, taking shelter out of sight, beneath the sleeping bodies.

The southern world was peaceful. Water lapped, creeping up the shore towards them. A pair of dragons circled silently in the distance.

Even the jungle was quiet.

He thought it strange, as his eyes fought to close, that nothing dared make a sound.