GHOST GRASS
HIGHTOWER CITADEL – OLD TOWN
Lord Leyton escorted the young woman out from the ancient stone carcass, through the crowds of meandering tourists pressing up against the fortress walls and toward a precarious lift system knotted inside the tower. Hightower's heart was a hollow shaft webbed with Valyrian steel. It seethed through the walls, emerging and vanishing into a network of pipes. Its pride was a weirwood platform held by four thick chains as wide as a soldier's arm. Suspended in the darkness, it shifted as Gilly stepped aboard, swaying silently over nothing. Her stomach turned. Gilly reached desperately for the bare wall.
"Careful," Lord Leyton knocked her hand from the stone. "Or you shall lose that limb to the tower. It would not be the first." Alarming hues on the wall confirmed his warning. The building was vengeful like the gods.
They were joined by a team of men, naked to the waist, who worked the chains. Enormous, rusted cogs groaned to life as they pulled down, shedding grease into the abyss. The men climbed the silver links, using their weight and the elusive force of the world to shift the impossible system. Gilly clutched the Lord's arm instead as the platform rose. Man's magic, she thought.
He patted her hand reassuringly. "Do not fear, child. This has stood for hundreds of years and it will remain long after we have wandered from this world into the next, dragging our bloody stumps. Oh it sounds dire, full of want and pain but that's what keeps it strong."
Gilly knew a thing or two about old things. They broke like anything else. The only promise of life was death.
As the platform neared the top, a dull roar filled the air, drowning out the screech of steel. It sounded like a storm howling at the walls.
"The flame, atop the tower." Lord Hightower explained the noise. "It is a beacon for the kingdom's ships. You can see it three days out to sea, all the way across the the Whispering Sound to the Arbor. My ancestors took the sun and trapped in a cage, or so the story goes. Wars will come. Night fall. The Winter snows as far as Dorne. That flame will keep. It will be the last light in the realm."
"Fires die, why not this one?" she asked.
"Wildfire," he replied. The lift moved smoothly, gaining speed as it climbed. Doorways in the rock streamed by, one after the other, mere flares against the darkness. The tower was as endless as its flame. "The maesters in the city produce a kind liquid fire, very rare and outlawed in the realm. Is is fed below the city in pipes, under the harbour and up into this tower. One day, if you find yourself standing beside the pyre, look into its centre. You'll find a green flicker where the liquid ignites."
"Isn't it dangerous to stand so close?"
He took the collar of his cloak, moving it aside to reveal melted, pale flesh upon his lower neck. "Very." He confirmed. "Wildfire has a vengeance of its own. Some of the maesters recently produced a batch for the capital. It was used unlawfully against the Baratheon usurper and never again. There are practices too wicked, even for war."
The lift stopped. A passage near the top arched from the stone. It was protected with a cage door more common to dog pens and opened by another pair of men, this time ornately dressed in uniforms similar to the Lord's. They bowed low, staying down as Lord Hightower strode into the hallway.
This level made of pale stone, polished to the point of reflection. Gilly saw a ghost of herself on every surface. Metal torch holds were staggered along it, worked into the form of vines. Some had false thorns, others buds. They strangled the torches, biting into the blackened wood while the end of the passage remained open to the sea where the water and sky became an indistinguishable glare. As they drew near enough to hear the waves, Hightower diverted into his study. It was a strange room, nestled in the tower as a gull makes its home precariously on the rocks.
"So many books," Gilly observed. The room was curved, running around the outside of the tower's natural form. Gracefully arched windows let the salt in while heavy wooden shutters were folded flat against the stone, closed often against storms that lurked in off the sea waging seasonal assaults on the coast. The interior was devoted to knowledge. Scrolls, books and curiosities from around the world. Hightower sat in the centre, hemmed in at the head of an enormous cedar table with a tame crow cleaning his feathers on a golden perch. "Are you certain that you're not a maester?"
"No indeed. Too many rules. I'd be thrown out before I earned by first link. Come in, closer. I'll not raise a hand at you again. I have been expecting a blade at my throat for so long that I forgot my manners. All you did was surprise me, child."
Gilly nodded, accepted the offered chair and tried to befriend the crow but it snapped at her, making the Lord laugh heartily. She could not stop her eyes from roaming the shelves. Everything was new to her. All her life it had been snow. Fire. Pine. Cold. Civilisation was fascinating. She understood Sam's longing for it. "You live here?"
"Yes, I live here. This pile of rock and ash has been my keep for two decades."
"I know what that's like. Not the castle part. The staying in one place. All my sisters lived in a building the size of this room."
"How many?"
"Twenty six. We had – different mothers." She'd given away too much. Hightower's gaze tore through her shallow narrative. "I'm from further north than I said before."
"I thought as much. No matter. Those things are of more concern to the North. We get all sorts scratching around our city and you are far from the worst of them. Can you read the common tongue?"
"A little."
Lord Hightower rustled in one of the desk's drawers until he extracted a curl of parchment. He laid it in front of her, holding both edges to stop it tumbling away in the breeze. "From Lord Commander Thorne, three nights ago," he confirmed, when Gilly lifted her head in confusion. "Your husband has a new Commander, after Snow's demise. I direct you to this-" his thumb tapped a line of scrawled text.
"The King heads South?"
"King in North. Snow did not stay dead. An alarming fashion of late. Tell me, what exactly did he send your husband to the citadel for? It is not to be a maester, for he could have easily summoned one. You have seen the city, there are thousands of maesters without a castle to call home."
"Ser, you would not believe if I said..."
"Say it anyway. I am not a ser, I am a Lord."
"My Lord, it is the dead that concern my husband's Commander – King?"
"Be wary calling him such in these parts. The King is Tommen Baratheon, first of his name."
Gilly paid not heed to those that named themselves king. "Their bones are rising in the North, picked from their graves of snow. Whitewalkers stir armies to march on Castle Black with corpses made soldier, Wildlings and Crows, there is no difference when they are dead. Snow asked my husband to come here for information about the last war. He does not think that we can win and asks only for assistance. At the moment, we are alone and the records are buried. It is as if the maesters have buried history and re-drafted it. That is what my husband says."
"So the ravens were true..." Hightower leaned back in his chair, thought deepening the wrinkles around his sharp eyes. They were the eyes of a bird, used to sitting to sitting above the world as if it were a stage. "Northerns. They are always spinning colourful tales. No one south of Riverrun places stock in their warnings. They mutter endlessly about winter and pray to their blood trees. We make furniture of their gods while you have no gods at all."
"My gods are the snow and heat of a fire."
"I realised something was amiss when Castle Black opened its gates for Wildling folk. Those men have been killing your lot since before there was a wall. Snow thought them better alive than part of the dead – yes? Wise bastard. He's made several powerful men black with rage. If he is not dead now he soon will be again."
"The war is real. I swear." Gilly insisted. "My husband killed a walker. The demon shattered in front of me as if it were made of snow. They are not whispers or stories. I'll swear on anything you like."
"Take some advice from an old man. The more you pledge to swear, the falser you ring." He left his chair and moved to a nearby shelf where he dragged books roughly out of their home, discarding them on the ground with puffs of dust. Concealed behind was a compartment. Hightower withdrew a strange, smooth rock with odd markings. He placed it in Gilly's hands. It was heavy and warm. "Dragon egg..." he explained. "I found it myself, abandoned in the labyrinth with a few Targaryen keepsakes. Forty years and no one believed. A 'pretty rock' they called it. Now there are living dragons in the world, ridden by a child. I can't promise that what I know is true but I can tell you the stories I've heard about the last great war and the demons of ice."
"Why are you helping me? No one helps unless they want something."
"My time is coming to an end. Yours is beginning. Besides, I do want something. I want peace for my children and theirs. There can be no peace if the dead come for us. Either you are a liar, in which case I lose nothing or you speak true and perhaps an old man makes a difference."
Gilly perched at the back of the boat, turned to the Hightower with the wind kicking at her hair. Her dress was weighed down with a bag of coin, gifted to her by the Lord. Around her people laughed and chattered in a dozen languages. Their words spilled like the salt spray over her face. She was numb to it. All she could think of was Old Man Hightower, bound by the walls.
UNKNOWN SETTLEMENT GHOST GRASS – THE SHADOW LANDS
Pale stalks brushed against the dragon's hips. Drogon bent his knees, placing the long, clawed finger from the tip of his wing into the soft ground to support the awkward stance. Jorah and Daenerys slid over the engorged curve of his stomach before falling the last feet.
"Seven fucking gods..." Jorah complained, rolling over, covered in sand. It streamed out of his clothes like water full of shell and bits of bone. Daenerys was a pile of silver beside him. "Can you please teach him how to land?"
"He landed well," Daenerys defended. The ghost grass broke her fall. Bundles of waxy stems had folded backwards, smooth under her hands. They grew strongly out of grey sand, towering over her and Ser Jorah in an impenetrable forest that stretched for the shore to the mountains, thriving until the snowline. Aside from Drogon and the moon, the grass was all they could see. "Were those ruins we saw?"
"Aye," Jorah nodded. "Behind us. We should get out of this weed." It was already unfurling, undamaged by their fall, seeking revenge. He took his queen's hand, pulling her from it but no sooner had she moved, her cloak caught in the grass and tossed her carelessly back to the ground.
"Dammit!" Daenerys raged like one of her dragons. For every move she made, the grass gripped at her – latching on as though it had a thousand tiny hooks. One side was smooth, the other rough. It shivered and whispered, then bit and consumed making ghosts of all that entered.
"This is why they call it a weed," Jorah explained. "The Dothraki cannot ride through it. The stems bloody their horses, blind their men and starve their khalasar. It's no good for anything." He took the robe he lent her back, folded it and laid it over his shoulder. In its place he drew the frozen sword. "We have something similar in the North only purple and shorter. The Lords require the farmers to keep their fields clear of it. You can always tell abandoned lands by the mirage of purple. It is a beautiful death."
She followed. The pair of them looked like common peasants. Worse than peasants. Dressed in the style of Asshai anyone they come across might mistake them for practitioners of magic and other vile things. Slathered in blood and ash did not help proclaim their innocence.
Drogon turned in tight circles, stamping the ground down like a wolf, making a nest of it. Thud, thud, thud.
"Do you think he'll be all right?"
Jorah was amused. "He is a dragon, khaleesi. Your time is better spent worrying for us." He cut through the ghost grass, knocking a path for them. The ice was sharper than steel, hissing against the stems.
"You've kept it then," Daenerys noted.
"Snowflake?"
"And named it..."
"No choice. Asshai was short on weaponry."
"I don't care for it."
"I promise I'll throw it away, soon as I find something better. Until then..." he swung it again. More grass fell. When he tripped over the first abandoned stone, a small hand took his shoulder.
"Careful Ser, wouldn't want to break that pretty sword..."
The ruins were not particularly impressive. "Foundations of a temple – or palace," Jorah offered, as they climbed the few crumbled steps to the elevated platform. Broken columns dusted the edges. Mostly it was bare, hundred of feet of stripped rock. They could see Drogon from the top. He had settled down, folded his wings over his face and fallen asleep.
"Let's hope he doesn't set fire to anything during the night." Jorah slid the sword into his belt and paced over the blushing rock. They may as well have been in a desert. "No water. No food. What we need is a raven," Jorah sighed, laying down the spare robe over the stone, inviting Daenerys to sit. "The others must think us dead."
She shook her head. "No. They know I'm alive."
Jorah crouched in front of her. The moonlight accentuated the patterns that covered his skin. Instead of red they appeared silver as though he were one of the decorated walls from Illyrio's home. He was conscious of her gaze and pulled some of the leather straps down to cover his hands. "Did you learn that in a vision?"
Daenerys nodded. "I saw the ships. They were surrounded by tall, broken islands. There was a strong wind on their backs."
"Stepstones. They made it across the Summer Sea. That puts them perilously close to Westeros. We must hope they hide well."
"You believe me?"
"Tell me of the time your visions were wrong..."
Daenerys shivered. She hoped they were wrong. "Missandei will stay with our plan. She'll lead the Spider and the imp to Braavos. We must find a way to meet them there." Her gaze drifted to her sleeping dragon. "If only I could explain that to Drogon. Stop..."
Jorah fussed, trying to hide his hands. "I do not like them."
"That may be so but those markings saved your life, I forbid you to dislike them."
"As you wish." He sat on the cold stone instead. The world around them was restless, stirred with the constant scratch of wind through the ghost grass. It was a hollow, desolate sound. A summary of the entire continent.
"On the mountains of Asshai," Daenerys started softly, turning to Jorah. He would not look at her. "I meant to say-"
"Do not say, khaleesi," his eyes stayed on the moon.
"Daenerys..." she corrected.
"It is better unsaid." He assured her, before a small, warm palm pressed to his cheek. This time he tilted his head, finding his queen watching intently. "We will return to your ship soon and then everything will be different."
"It does not have to-"
"You are a queen moreover a conqueror." Jorah placed his hand over hers, sliding it away from his face, holding it between his rough paws instead. "If you are to survive the path to the throne, you must be untouchable. Not only a queen but a glimpse of the divine."
"Dragons take what they-"
"No." He interrupted again. His eyes were patient. She had so much fire and life rushing through her veins. The blood of old Valyria. Her will was power. Power shared a blade with destruction. "Westeros must give you the crown. If you are worthy of it, they will lay it at your feet. Beg you to rule. You cannot take love or devotion or loyalty. They are earned. Your father forgot what your brother never understood."
"I saw my father," Daenerys whispered. "In the flames. Varys was there."
Jorah nodded in concern. "Yes he was."
"I think he wanted my father dead."
"The realm wanted your father dead. He was not a good king. That does not excuse what was taken from you or the slaughter of your family. Varys works to restore you to the throne though we may never know the whole truth of why. He is a man construct of secrets. I fear if we tug at one the whole man might come apart."
"Do you trust him – with my life?"
Jorah thought hard on that. He had known Varys for a great many years and yet when he considered the facts, he did not know the man at all. "No. I trust him more than the next man and that is all we can hope. We need his talent. Without the Spider, Westeros is an insurmountable wall. What?" he added softly.
Daenerys had seen Westeros. Walked across the throne room. Stood in its ashes. "You are so sure that I will rule."
"I would move the world to make it so."
Despite his protest, she leaned towards him, resting her head on his shoulder. Her hair rustled against his back like the ghost grass on the ruin. "Move it where?"
Jorah ran his hand slowly down the queen's naked arm. The coarse leather ties grated against her skin. He had done the same, those first nights in kharl Drogo's camp when she sat at the edge of the fire wishing for the touch of flame. His Northern silence was her comfort. "You are afraid of what you may find in Westeros..." he whispered.
"I know well enough what I will find. I fear only what you shall make of it. Westeros is your home. It is one thing to wage war under my banner in a foreign land but what happens when you see he faces of your friends on the other side of a sword?"
"The same thing that happens to anything else on the edge of my blade."
Daenerys lifted her head while lowering his. She looked deep into his eyes, searching them. Dany fell too deep. They were endless pits of ice and hope – of oceans and skies of –
His lips claimed hers, kissing her hard despite all he'd said before. He felt her moan in soft surprise, then wrap her arms around his neck and drag him closer. Her lips parted, allowing soft indulgence of the impossible. Jorah knew exactly what she had meant to say on the volcanic plains. It was buried in her kiss.
"Forgive me, your Grace," said Jorah, pulling away. "I meant what said before." It was as difficult to untangle her from around his neck as it was to walk through the grass. "What is this?" he asked, distracted by two long cuts running up the inside of Daenerys' wrists. She withdrew from him, pulling the cloak down. "Daenerys, what happened to your arms? Was it that witch that kept you?" Fury rose in his voice.
"Steady... It was Quaithe..." she whispered, holding her arms beside his.
Jorah looked between the markings on his flesh and the cuts in her skin. "What have you done? This is blood magic. There is always a price. I'll not have you pay it so – so carelessly."
"Ser, what you will and won't have is of no matter. The price is paid. You are alive. The ink, as they say, is dry."
"That is something my father would say, if I spoke of my mother."
"A Westerosi philosophy. The man that cared from my brother and I when we were very small would say it every time we cried for that which we could not change. My brother cried often." She fell silent. Distant. Had she killed her brother too? 'Please. Please!' His hapless pleadings cemented her will.
SOMEWHERE IN THE NARROW SEA
Vacant eyes stared at they abyss. Things of the water came to feast on the wrinkled flesh. Biting. Tearing. Pulling away that which makes a man until there was only bone. Illyrio's bones, sinking to nowhere. Tussled about the unmarked mass grave of every sailors' nightmare. The eyes of his friend. His mute pleas whispered at nothing.
"Sorry, am I disturbing you?"
Varys broke his gaze from the rain on the window. The imp was at his door, holding a candle. The raven waiting for his message had lost interest and had retreated to an alcove in ceiling of Varys' cabin, its head turned in sleep.
"Not at all," Varys lied, setting his quill down. Its ink had dried in a puddle on the parchment. "Though I am curious to know what lures you out so late and in such ill weather, no less." The imp was soaked through.
"Advice," he replied, climbing awkwardly into the chair opposite. Hot wax ran over his hand, congealing with his skin.
"Never had much luck with fire, did you?"
"No indeed," Tyrion replied, picking it off. "No indeed... Nice ah – bird." He pointed at the raven trying to hide.
"Advice, you say?" Varys helped Tyrion. He held the failed parchment over an open flame, letting it catch and curl.
"It is about a woman."
Even Varys had to straighten up in amusement. "I fear I am ill qualified to render such advice."
"No, I don't mean that. I'm perfectly competent at that."
"Tyrion..."
"Missandei."
"You surprise me."
"It is you that surprises her. Have you nothing to say on the subject? She is the queen's most loyal friend and if she dou-"
"I know exactly who she is," Varys assured him. Those black, spider eyes of his settled on Tyrion. They were calm – still. Entirely unreachable. "What would you have had me do? Hand you over to Cersei for a small fortune and use the proceeds to buy our queen the throne? You are worth more to me alive than to Cersei dead. Illyrio should have known that before he made the deal."
"I-" Tyrion frowned with confusion. "Thank you... Compliments do not sit well on your lips but I appreciate them all the same."
"If Illyrio was prepared to make a deal with the Crown then he was a man with a price. Cheaply bought men are what bring down usurpers the world over. Missandei understands what I did and why. I believe that you have come on behalf of yourself."
Tyrion reached forward, playing with the candle that had burned him earlier. Fidgeting was an unbreakable habit. His father had tried to beat it out of him to the detriment of his belt. "You have a plan, one that reaches further than Braavos. Why have you not shared it? Do you not trust me, after all we have survived?"
"A wise man once taught me never to share secrets with men who couple with wine."
"Then I shall give up wine."
"The sun will rise in the West before you divorce the grape. Let us speak of Braavos instead, my friend. We'll near its shores soon enough."
BENEATH THE HIGHTOWER CITADEL – OLD TOWN
A young man, more bone than flesh, knelt by the pool's side. He withdrew a glass vial from his robes, removed the cork stopper and dipped its lip below the surface. When it was full, he whispered a prayer to the many faced god. His words sank into the black stone, melding with ancient screams.
"Enter." Lord Leyton Hightower sat at his desk, scrawling letters to a selection of his trusted friends. He'd released a few ravens ready for flight. They swooped around the room, endlessly switching windows, shedding black feathers everywhere. The girl had given him a renewed sense of purpose. Word from a Commander at the Wall may go unnoticed but his name, Hightower, held weight. "Ah, you are early," he added, when the boy presented a tray with lunch. "Leave it there – can you not see that I am busy? The wine. Yes, you may bring that. Where is the other boy?"
"The kitchens, my Lord," the servant boy poured the wine into a goblet and set it into the Lord's outstretched hand. "The cook has taken him on as apprentice. Do you wish me to fetch him back?"
Leyton held the wine to his lips. "No. Never mind it now."
"As you wish. Shall I?" The boy nodded at the piles of discarded parchment.
"Fodder for the flames," he agreed, sipping the wine. "Set those books back too, before you leave."
The boy went about his work while the Lord continued with his letter. He started with the books, sliding them reverently into place. He lingered at a stuffed bird and again at an obsidian arrow. So many things for one man.
Leyton's hand spasmed and clenched around the quill. It started to vibrate. The nib, pressed uncontrollably against the paper, snapped off releasing a torrent of black upon the desk. The Lord tried to stop the shaking by holding it firm with his other hand but that, too, shook. Then his heart picked up speed as the poison took hold.
"Boy – boy!" he tried to shout for assistance but it came as a hoarse whisper – barely scratching the air.
The boy calmly appeared. Instead of helping, he took the goblet and poured the remainder of the wine into the decanter. He plucked the quill from Leyton's hands and burned the parchment in the flame beside. The Lord could only watch. His muscles were frozen. The shaking had stopped. His heart slowed. Pain shot from his shoulder to his wrist with such force he thought himself struck by a blade. A coin was set spinning on the table in front of him. It was the second of its kind that he had seen today. Silver death. Around it spun. Mocking him.
"W-w-who?" Leyton gurgled, as blood ran down his mouth, but the man would not share his secrets, not even with the dead.
The body of Lord Hightower was laid on the ground in front of the fire. A curved blade, tempered by the heat, sliced through the flesh around his face. Slowly, the skin was pulled back and the sagging flesh pealed from the muscle. The rest was given to the flames, piece by piece. The carpet too.
When the servants came in the evening to prepare the Lord for bed, they found the old man at his desk, restlessly at the parchment – as was his manner. They did not notice the ravens. The creatures refused to come near their master, not even for the want of bread. Without a sound, a lord had become no one.
SOMEWHERE IN THE NARROW SEA
The bird did not wish to go.
Varys stood in front of the open window, taking a beating from the remains of the storm. He could see it dying in front. There was a strip of a stars on the horizon and though flares of light flickered inside the cloud, their anger was far away. His crow pecked at his hands, drawing blood. It wrestled with him, fighting against Varys' hold. The last time he had released the creature it flew straight back into his cabin, drying itself on Varys' bed, much to his disdain. It was not until he threw the bird from the ship that the poor thing was forced to spread its wings and take flight.
It journeyed South, high above the water where it picked up a slipstream, ducking into the wind. There were other ravens there with messages tied to their ankles. The darkest secrets of the kingdom were suspended in this unseen world.
Varys' bird did not have far too go. Where desert met the waves, it darted low – navigating date palms and mud-built fortresses until it came upon Sunspear.
