WHEN THE RAVEN SINGS
TEMPLE OF THE PALE LION - ASSHAI
Ser Jorah Mormont growled, clutching his side as he slid down the white-wood door into swearing pile of mirth. His amusement was at irony. What form of deranged gods ruled them? Did they sit around Northern hearths in cities built of ice and watch the realms of men tumble into the fighting pits? The gods were in for a fucking surprise. Occasionally those cursed things crawled out of the depths to revel in the chaos. On their lips were songs to waken the dead. In their hands, swords that clashed to the sound of thunder.
Jorah's hand found the flesh between his ribs. It was smooth. Phantom urges – memories of pain. That is all they were. He had to banish them from his mind.
Back on your feet, he told himself. Is that not what his father had said every time the lance threw him from horseback? "We may be poor of coin but we have wealth of honour." Those were the lessons Jorah remembered. They were lectures that served to fold his guilt ten times over. He had betrayed honour for gold – for love. No. The shadow of love. On your feet.
On his feet, Jorah stumbled to the table. The ice-weapon lay across the barren stone, waiting. He eyed it as a stranger. For the first time he truly appreciated its impossible construction. What a curious thing. His thumb brushed the ice and immediately withdrew with a sharp hiss from his lips as it burned the flesh with an intense cold. He had not witnessed any propensity to melt, even thrust within a flame. Only magic could bind such a thing against the laws of the world. The wrappings themselves were nothing but old straps of leather, much like what Jorah tied around his wrists and arms. There was nothing special in them except to serve as a handle. Jorah unwound a length of leather from his arm and added it to the frozen blade.
"I wonder who owned you..." he whispered to the sword. "You were made beyond The Wall, that much I understand. Nothing good comes from there."
Jorah regarded the weapon curiously, as though it plotted betrayal. Yes, he was a Northern man but he served the Queen of fire. What would the gods make of him?
Nothing, if Quaithe does not return...
The silence was oppressive. His narrow, high-ceilinged cell of rock offered nothing. No light. No sound. No warmth. It was a void, like the rest of Asshai. The stories were true, this was a place of dead and sleeping things. Perhaps the whole city was waiting at the edge of the world for night to fall. Jorah wondered then what things may creep out of the hills and waters.
"I am going to call you Snowflake," he teased the sword, daring it to disobey. "Because I wager your allegiance is flaky and melts with the first breath of ocean wind."
The ground trembled restlessly underfoot. He wondered if something other than fire awakened the night Daenerys birthed her dragons. Or was it always this way at Asshai? Were they navigating the embers of the world with a great fire beneath them? "Don't you dare," he warned the mountains, "not yet. I am not through with this city. When I am, you can 'ave her. Lay down your fire – boil the poisoned river – beset the land with darkness, I do not care."
WINTERFELL RUINS – THE NORTH
The little raven tumbled through the snow – picked up, tossed about and discarded by the fierce winter winds laying siege to the valley.
"Shraw! Shraw!" A man cloaked in soft snow fox fur called to it, holding out his arm.
The bird fought against the weather until its sharp claws hooked into the safety of his cloak. The man drew it close, protecting the tiny creature which chattered softly at the sudden warmth.
Littlefinger brought the bird into the tent. It was lit by a dozen fires and lined with sheepskin mats to keep the ice floor at bay. Inside, several of the recently pledged houses were in discussion with his generals. Nervous, they kept their battle armour on and their swords rested on the floor nearby. The shuffle of horses and smell of ruin lingered in the tent. This is what a clean slate looked like. When there was nothing to fight for but the promise of a future and that promise perched at the head of the table drinking wine, staring blankly through the crack in the coverings toward the snow, lost in reverie.
Petyr carefully claimed the chair at the opposite end to Sansa, letting the bird hop onto the surface. He turned a blind eye as it pulled apart a piece of bread, scattering crumbs as though they were snow, thrashing it against the wood with a succession of distractingly violent movements.
The note it carried was quickly unravelled. It was a short message but the moment Petyr lingered over the words he understood that they would change the course of their world. The board had been flipped over and a new game was afoot. The squabbles of lords meant nothing if death was open to bargain.
"Your Grace," he began softly, using Sansa's new style. As Queen in the North he was careful to build her up as a regal figure – one that the entire North could rally behind. All he had to do was make them believe that she was queen and it would be so. Men were fickle and she was beautiful.
Sansa shifted her gaze to him but a veil of glass was cast over her eyes, "Yes, Lord Baelish?"
"Word from the North," he replied, sliding the parchment across the table to her. Petyr noticed the dark bruises on her hands and made a vow that should he come across the man that gave her those, that man would no longer have hands.
She read the words and remained impassive. Sansa was an unusual creation to look on with skin pale as the winter snows framed in softly curled hair, the colour of dawn. Catelyn had been fair, of that there was no doubt but she was a Riverlands woman to the core. Sansa was something different. Fierce. Stark blood ran through her veins and as much as Petyr resented Eddard for all that he had done, it was his line that gave Sansa a sharpness – an edge of ice – that he could not regret. Sometimes, when Petyr contemplated her, he wondered if she were real at all.
"Your Grace?" he pressed gently, followed by a cautious, "Sansa..."
"My brother is alive. He was dead and then he was alive again. Which do I believe? Both? The gods play carelessly. I dare not hope until I see his face."
"Your brother is alive," Littlefinger assured her. "The whispers of the Night's Watch are famously true. They say he rides to Winterfell to expel the Boltons. We must ride to greet him, show him that Winterfell is won but the North hangs in the balance. I will call on young Lord Arryn to summon the remainder of the Veil's army. Together, we have enough men to take the Dreadfort and remove the Bolton stain from the North. Peace, your Grace. When we are done, we shall return to Winterfell and rebuild your home. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Now there will be two."
Sansa's eyes were cold and clear – tainted with more sorrow than her years could bear. "And when they are dead," she whispered firmly, fixing those eyes on him, "I will watch them turn to smoke. I want the torture chambers in the Dreadfort taken apart – the place where my ancestors hung, skinless and rotting, destroyed. Evil like that will never be allowed to nest in these lands again. Not while I am queen. The Boltons will be dismantled."
"Of course," he swore. "It will be as you wish."
"How many more joined us today?"
"Five more lords," he replied, nodding at the men in the corner. "Word is spreading. Shall I send ravens to your brother?"
Sansa nodded. Then she left the tent in a rustle similar to the wind in the pines. Petyr's heart followed but his body remained, scratching out a letter to the Night's Watch.
The snow fell heavy as Sansa approached the ruins of Winterfell. They no longer smouldered and the stone had grown cold. She was glad for the fires. What the Boltons soiled had now been cleansed. Their vile occupation would be forgotten. It had been built once, it could be built again. She was not afraid of Winterfell becoming something new. All great things had a first day in the sun. Instead it was the godwood that left her mournful. The Weirwood, with all its crying bowers under which she'd been married and crowned, thickened with the cold. It relished the bitter flow of ice and the extended nights. Sansa remembered the stories Old Nan had spun about the trees. Shrivelled men living in the wood. Bleeding eyes. The whispers of Children. What had Jon seen while he was dead? Did he hear Old Nan's whispers again?
"My Lord..."
Littlefinger's peace was disturbed by a rider throwing the sides of the tent violently apart before stumbling in, shedding snow all over the floor. He was breathless from travel and smelled strongly of the road. His clothes were not made for winter and beneath a few hasty layers of wool he glimpsed a golden lion. "What is so urgent?"
"News," he presented a sealed envelope with a Baratheon mark in wax. "From the Crown. They have heard of the Boltons' unlawful expulsion from Winterfell. I am to await your immediate reply and return to the capital."
"Wait in the blue tent," Littlefinger waved him off, "you'll be offered wine and food. Harks, escort this man over there, would you? See that he has what he requires."
The Boltons had Crown favour, the Starks did not and while Petyr was not technically the cause of current events, Littlefinger suspected that his presence might be enough to incite Cersei into aggression. Time to test his fortifications... Lacking the resources to march an army North, the Crown could not hope to protect the Boltons with anything other than words. Cersei was busy chasing Sparrows. The Hightowers were last seen amassing at the boarder near King's Landing for war games. The only pieces that mattered were in the North. Would the old houses answer the beck and call of the Crown or were Northerners beginning to realise that their true strength lay with each other? The North remembers... Catelyn used to say. Set in their ways. He was counting on it.
Dragons, they say, care neither for blood nor title. The creature that slept beneath Winterfell castle and fed on the incumbent Boltons had no quarrel with your crown. Happily, from the ashes of fate, your aunt by marriage survives. Sansa Lannister holds the North and all the houses from the Riverlands to The Wall raise wolf banners. The Veil watches over your kin.
PINK CLIFF PORT – BLAZEWATER BAY
Theon Greyjoy pulled on the reigns of his horse, stopping as its hooves sank into the loose, pastel rocks of the crescent shoreline. Sunset. To his left, the enormous silhouette of the sun lay half-sunk in the warm waters of the Sunset Sea. Ahead rose the chalk cliffs. Like mirrors, they reflected the colour of the sky which usually turned them a bastard red. A scattering of peaceful buildings grew in the rubble below with the longest jetty in the known world stretching into the shallow water for hundreds of metres. Toward the end, boats rocked against their moorings and a few lone figures wandered the weathered pine boards that formed its ancient foundation.
He would gladly live out his days tending those boats. Walking the beach. Scaling a fresh catch for a few coins. Thatching the roof on the tavern which had sloped to one side with the shifting sand beneath its holdings. A few lanterns hung from the walls, blazing in the half light like weary stars. Theon smiled.
"Come on..." he patted the neck of his horse gently. Theon would need to bargain the poor companion for a short passage South. The Iron Islands lay around the curve of the bay. Home. He was so close. The water smelled of storms, smoke and salt – all the things he yearned for.
THE NARROW SEA
Varys rested against the Eastern rail of the ship. Tyrion lingered on the opposing Western edge. Both of them watched the waves. The Narrow Sea was deep with strong currents that gave its water a dark, unfriendly appearance – or perhaps it was all the blood swelling in the depths. They were between two cities, Pentos and King's Landing. Varys thought of old friends. Of promises and dreams. Tyrion reflected what had been and what could be again.
Without the dragon, the sailors scampered over the deck, unravelling fresh sails so that they made good speed, changing their banners temporarily to the star of Pentos. A few hours later, one of them shouted, catching a flicker of a watchman's glass on the horizon to the East. Varys caught it too. In a peculiar action, he managed to climb a small rise of rigging and stand on the bannister. The winds caught his robes, billowing them behind as if they were restless, deformed wings.
A merchant ship approached. It sailed light, lifted out of the water to bare a tide mark of barnacles, gaining on them fast.
"Are they sailing for us?" Tyrion asked, loitering below Varys.
"I believe they are. We cannot outrun them. It would be suspicious to try besides, we have little provision for war."
"Perhaps they wish to trade with us?"
"Or steal. As I said, pirates are common in these waters. Everyone is a mummer here, hiding beneath lies."
"Well, if they are pirates they'll be sorely disappointed," Tyrion remarked, with an air of amusement. "A dwarf, two dozen eunuchs and a menagerie of ravens. It's not exactly going to fit into their dreams of endless finery."
"Quite." All the same, Varys disappeared below deck, retiring to his cabin while Tyrion remained for a time, watching the vessel creep closer. He found the water peaceful, even it floated chaos toward him. Anything was better than the endless sand dunes of the East and the sticky heat.
Tyrion waved one of the Unsullied commanders over. "Maybe it is better to keep your men below deck," he said to the rigid figure, "for now at least. No need to provoke whispers. I shall join you." When the Unsullied warrior tilted his head in confusion, Tyrion explained, "Blonde haired dwarves are a conspicuous payload in these waters." He assumed that his sister was still dangling a filthy sum of money over his head. Her spies were everywhere.
Hours later, Missandei and Varys waited on deck for their guests. The merchant vessel leered so close that from his porthole, Tyrion could hear the waves slapping against the hull. A tall, red-clad figure lingered at the head of the ship. He bowed and though Tyrion could not see, Varys bowed in turn.
Illyrio...
"I heard a mad rumour that you were sailing with a dragon – though I admit, I had assumed that to be a metaphor." Illyrio eyed the ship's deck. It bore suspicious scratches on every surface, chew marks at the base of the mast but no dragon. "Or am I mistaken entirely?"
"Oh, my friend..." Varys assured him warmly, lifting his arm to encourage him to follow, "...there is a dragon. Share some wine – you may yet meet him."
The boats were lashed together with rope and a flimsy plank. As the sun rolled into the waves, the crews mingled. Wine was brought up from the depths of Illyrio's ship along with herbs grown in desert quartz. Smoke followed and Tyrion found himself in a pleasurable haze, introducing himself to the merchant.
"Tell me," Illyrio asked the dwarf, "how does Tywin's son come to be in the service of a Targaryen?"
Tyrion waved the colourful merchant off en-route to his glass. "Complicated. Very complicated. There was murder and drinking and marriage – slavery, champions, whoring, kidnapping..."
Varys watched as Tyrion sank further into his glass before cutting him off, "I locked him in a small crate and sent him to the other side of the world. It was the great Queen Daenerys Targaryen or an illustrious future in Meereen's fighting pits."
Illyrio was deeply amused, twisting his long beard idly between rough fingers. "Wise choice, my new friend. Fate is a cunt. More wine?"
"Fuck the gods. Bring the wine!" Tyrion lifted his glass hopefully.
"I shall help you," Varys added, standing with Illyrio. The pair of them left together, moving to Illyrio's vessel to retrieve a crate that contained something more precious than wine.
It was quiet away from the drinking. The party became a mute rumble and Varys paused to appreciate a silver trail left on the water by the moon.
"Such odd friends you've made," Illyrio added, when they were alone in his cabin. It was nothing like the Queen's ship. Illyrio lived aboard this boat for much of is life and had the inside painted lurid colours to serve as relief from the endless palette of blue outside.
"I have made them carefully," Varys assured the other man.
"The dark girl does not talk."
"Missandei has spent most of her life observing the endless prattle of men. I doubt she hears us speak at all. Now – did you bring it as I asked?"
"Of course I brought it," Illyrio heaved the crate into the middle of the floor. He took a hooked bar from the wall and levered it open. An old chest sat inside, untouched since the day Varys had willed it in his old friend's care. "It has been a long time. I was not sure you were ever coming back for it."
"I have a long memory." Varys knelt beside the crate and dipped his hands inside, running them tentatively over the leather surface of the trunk as though this were an old friend raised from the dead. "From the beginning, you and I knew this would be a long game."
"That we did. Is it true about the boy?" Varys simply nodded. "That is unfortunate."
"He was not the boy you knew, Illyrio. The world made him cruel and he shared that cruelty. We did not come this far to put a tyrant on the throne. I've had my fill of screaming children."
"That is exactly the boy I knew – a child who sold his sister as easily as a horse. I hear whispers too," Illyrio stepped closer to Varys, as the other man stood. They were both older now. The foolish dreams they'd shared a lifetime ago had manifested into tangible futures. "She is a butcher. A conflicted one but there is fire in her blood."
"Just enough, I hope," Varys replied, with a sudden flicker of darkness. "Peace is purchased with blood."
"All your birds are dying," Illyrio warned. "You have sacrificed your greatest power in order to pursue this will of yours."
"Ours..." Varys corrected. "And do not worry about my birds. That is the simple joy in them – they come in flocks at the first sight of bread."
"All the same..." They were interrupted by a flurry of screams and heavy swoop of a dragon's wings.
TEMPLE OF THE PALE LION - ASSHAI
Daenerys approached a delicate pile of broken feathers in the snow. They were half frozen into cleave of ice. She knelt beside the creature with the freezing ground stinging her bare skin, wondering how long its body had been entombed. Centuries. A thousand years. Ten thousand...
It moved.
She startled, falling back into the snow. A hideous croak came from within its throat as it twisted and bucked against the remaining frost. It turned its head. Daenerys saw three swollen eyes, tearing through her soul. Screaming in the dark. There were no words. It was the cracking of ice. The fell of cliffs. The roar of the ocean upon the shore. A song of ice.
The green fire twisted around Daenerys' body, pinning her against the wall. She flexed, fighting against its grip but the magic of the temple was feeding off her. She glimpsed the room for a moment and the shadow watching on. Quaithe? No. Not Quaithe. The vision of Quaithe rippled like a desert mirage revealing what lay underneath.
Snow again. Always snow. The three-eyed raven perched on her shoulder. In front of them, a wolf tumbled with a silver lion. The two lashed out at each other, growling and rolling with claws and fangs. Blood stained the white expanse until a black bear ambled from a cluster of lonely pines. The lion lifted its head. Then there were three fighting in the snow, like the ravens eyes. Daenerys watched impassively, no longer part of their world.
Jorah had not exactly meant to break through the door but by some act of chance he'd managed to snap the hinges and now found himself spying into an empty corridor. Caves. That's what Asshai reminded him of. Windows would make no difference. The sun did not play in these parts of the world. It had sunk away, turning its back on the foul nest of creatures – leaving them to the mercy of the mountains.
With Snowflake strapped to his back, Jorah slung a dark robe over himself, pulled the hood down and escaped the room. He moved as the others did – a shadow falling over the walls. He held his breath as the first set of footsteps approached but the sorcerers were too deep in broken Valyrian to notice him, discussing the ash clouds lingering over the city. He waited until they passed and then continued. The corridor was lined with doors exactly like his with no defining features. They reminded him of faceless men, recurring, endemic malignancy repeated over and over.
Jorah paused as the ground underfoot changed. There was an expanse of gold beneath his feet, etched with a map of the stars. On instinct he retreated, stepping off the beautiful creation. Whoever built it was long dead, along with their empire. He wondered that men could build such things and then forget.
He found more hooded creatures within, moving as packs in and out of hallways that cut a dizzying network through the temple. He took the widest, latching onto a group, keeping a few paces behind. Jorah ignored the withered hands nailed to the walls that glowed in place of torches and paid no attention to one wall decorated entirely with children's skulls. A filthy mist crept in and soon it thickened around his ankles. His hallway finished abruptly in a wide, oval room with an enormous white lion statue at its heart. The mist was sinking in from a hole in the roof. It mixed with flecks of ash that had started to fall.
Jorah was dwarfed by the statue. He could not help but move towards it. Blood dripped from its eyes, as though it were crying at a moon that would never rise where it could see. A lion of night, imprisoned in the darkness, waiting for the dawn. The Dothraki sang songs about the pale mare, galloping on a bed of ghost grass, fleeing the night. He'd nodded off by a dozen camp fires to those tales.
The walls were made of slick, melted stone that seemed to have frozen into impossible, grotesque forms. One of them appeared as the howling mouth of some blind sea creature that also served as a door. Jorah left the statue and stepped through this abomination of stone, casting it a wary glance as he cleared the jaws. Immediately he found himself surrounded by a veneer of dragonglass. He reached out, laying his hand against the cool surface. This place was not made by man – how could it be? It had been coughed up by an inferno at the dawn of the world. Perhaps it was a glimmer of the hell that awaited him.
There were no more hooded figures. Jorah found himself alone, wandering with only the faint reflection of himself to keep him company. A hallway of ghosts – all of them him.
It was sudden. The passage ended where the night began. He was outside, confronted with a vision of Asshai. Only with the city laid out below did Jorah realise that the temple was elevated, pushed out of a mountain. It was covered in ugly spires twisted into points that resembled spines. Roughly domed, it had a view on all sides and below, an endless trail of people wandered up the black steps toward it.
They were a long way from the mountains. He felt their rumblings through the rock but aside from a faint hue of orange in the sky and a cloud of soot above, they were well out of reach. The black harbour lay to his left and beyond that – Westeros.
So why were his eyes drawn East?
The green glow of Ash River meandered toward the shadow of mountains. Forbidden cities lay on the other side. Abominations of life. Magic gone mad. He should not look upon it at all.
Jorah was tugged sharply to one side. A small, bony hand dug into his flesh. Quaithe hissed furiously at him in Valyrian, dragging him back into the temple.
"All right! All right!" Jorah tried to unlatch her but Quaithe was stronger than she looked.
"Fool! You cannot walk these halls alone!" she continued in Valyrian.
The shadow binder threw him against the inside of the tunnel so hard that he felt Snowflake dig into his spine. "Quaithe – stop – I understand."
"You could not possibly understand."
Daenerys followed the raven. It sang. Mournful, soft whispers. Ducking under pine branches misshapen from the snow, pausing on protrusions of black rock jutting out of the ice. She followed until the snow was littered with bones and rotting corpses. There was a field of them, laying in the sun. Beyond, the raven swooped into a cavern. She followed. Consumed by the darkness. The raven was caught in a tangle of roots. They tightened around the tiny bird. Snapping its wing. Tearing its feathers. Strangling the life from its throat.
