CITADEL – OLD TOWN
Gilly pressed her body against the strange, black walls of the ancient Hightower labyrinth. They were smooth beneath her touch, congealed like outbursts of rock that used to lay in the ice around her home, thrown there by the fiery giants that live below. She remembered hiding behind boulders of it, whispering prayers to the Children of the wood, begging them to take her into the darkness. Anything to end the anguish of her life beyond The Wall.
Her prayers were answered by endless drifts of snow and swaying pines which snapped under the weight. Then, blue-eyed creatures marched down from the white deserts to feast upon their children – at least, that's what the women were told as their wails filled the emptiness. There were some nights in the North Gilly thought herself the last living thing in existence where her breaths were like thunder. Then there were other nights – nights when the air was thick with creatures screaming at the filthy crack of ice and Death made real, given form enough to wield shadows.
Rain smashed into the outer walls of the Hightower, startling Gilly. She was still getting used to the sound which was accompanied by dull roll of thunder. A few moments later, rivers formed, rushing down the steps where she stood. It was laced with ice so she retreated, ducking deeper into the fortress.
Torches lined the walls nearby. She pried one of them free and held the heavy thing aloft with both hands. Sparks danced in the halo of light above. Their embers burned on her skin. Soon she found herself amid the eerie pillars and oddly indented walls where she had first met Old Man Hightower. It looked the same, draped in cobwebs whose spiders lay as desiccated corpses. A faint hint of spice hung on the air joined by stone dust which caught at the back of her throat. The previous hum of tourists had fallen quiet, sinking away with the miserable weather.
Gilly laid her hand on the wall, following it around to the side where a strange room was tucked into an alcove. Like the rest of the ruins, its ceiling hung low – threatening to collapse. The floor was smooth, made of the same oily stone as its walls while at the centre lay a depression with a pool of sorts, collecting rainwater that had made its way through cracks in the tower above. The waters took on a poison from the stone. Perfumed with death, they held a flawless veneer until another drop touched the surface and sent endless ripples cascading then faded into nowhere.
Entranced, Gilly approached, stepping carefully over the uneven ground which held the appearance of candle wax. She held her torch over the water. Beneath lay dozens of identical coins layered like pebbles in a stream. Braavosi coins...
Gilly stumbled away from the edge.
As she turned her flames caught one of the depressions in the wall. Instead of rock the surface was pale with stretched skin. There was a face with eyes closed in death's sleep and long, brown eyelashes matted with fresh cobwebs. It was the face of a young servant boy.
Gilly raised a trembling hand to it. Closer. Her fingertips met the soft flesh. Warm... Kept alive by magic.
She dropped the flaming torch in a shower of sparks. It rolled away toward the entrance of the room giving birth to a horrific vista of dancing shadows. A peeled face on a wall – what were these people of the South? A different brand of demon... North, South – East or West. Men were the same wherever you went. She was a fool to think she'd escaped their horrors.
His ravens clung to the back of the room, shitting and shedding feathers. Great arches of stone had their shutters permanently pulled closed. They rattled fiercely with the rain. Stark shadows moved restlessly along the walls while the fire contained by the pale stone burned ferociously, fed by book after book tossed into into its depths by the Faceless Man wearing Leyton Hightower's withered face.
Standing above the flames, he ran his bone-withered hand along the dusty spine of another book. A priceless slither of history, bound with gut and wolf leather. Its pages were made from the pulp of a Weirwood. When it hit the flames they erupted in a violent blue, twisting over the edge of the stone where they caught the edge of the wooden shelf and turned it black.
Satisfied, he retired to the desk where the golden raven perch remained empty with only a single black feather laying like a crescent moon beneath.
Beside a tumbler of water sat Hightower's dragon egg. He shuffled down in his seat to bring his eyes level with the ribbed stone surface, spying it as one might face the eyes of an enemy across the field of battle. A shuffle of cloth. The heavy clunk of another dragon egg, this one emerald instead of black, gifted by a Salt Prince to The House of Black and White in exchange for a worthless crown. Side by side they stole every whisper of firelight. He had brought them here to throw them into the great flame atop the tower and destroy them.
Hours later, when the rain calmed and the temperature plummeted with the arrival of dusk, one of the servants knocked on his door.
"An archmaester requests an audience, My Lord," the servant boy said, bowing low to the crippled lord buried deep in the room. The air was putrid with the carcass of a raven left to decay upon the floor. It had partially turned to bone with its little ribs exposed. Hightower never opened the windows any more, preferring the company of candles to the sun.
It was a while before Hightower replied. "Send him in..."
Marwyn paced across the polished hallway, wandering up and down in endless ventures, driven mad by the thoughts circling around his head. The floor was slippery underfoot, left wet by the rain. A curious seagull had settled on the sill, watching him with one red eye. The other was a feathered void, lost somewhere in the sea.
Eventually the boy returned and Marwyn was left to enter on his own. He must be senile, thought Marwyn, as the stench physically pushed him back toward the door. He steeled himself, moving toward the desk where his old friend sat, surrounded by his thrall of half-used scrolls. His hands were stained with ink and the usual decanter of wine was absent. Long, silver hair had been left to grow wild and now touched the desk on either side.
"Let us open these windows – breathe fresh air in here..." Marwyn started pleasantly, unlatching a few of the dead bolts. Dust and caked salt caught in the breeze as he forced them open. The candles leaned and a momentary dark fell over the room as the air settled. He carefully scooped the dead bird up and threw it out the window into the hungry waves below. Already the room was improved.
"Your boy should be attending to such things," he continued, finding himself a seat from the far side of the room, "or if he won't – find yourself another. There are plenty seeking work in the city these days, with the wars in the North driving them here. With the capital gone to shit we've more than our share – half are thieves. Reviewing that information, perhaps it is better you stick with your current boy. You have a wealth of precious things."
Finally he sat, shifting his considerable body.
"Have you come seeking a particular treasure?" Leyton drawled – his normally pleasant air absent. There was no banter – no acknowledgement of the secrets they shared together or even their decades of friendship. Perhaps he truly was unwell. Marwyn had rejoiced when Leyton's knees prevented him from climbing the citadel steps to annoy him with freshly acquired relics.
Marwyn cleared his throat. "P-perhaps... Not for a treasure but of one." The room felt strange. He glanced at the birds, lined along the far wall beside the bookshelves. A few had built nests out of parchment fragments in desperation. They were prisoners too afraid to take flight even with the windows open. "Our old friend," their private name for the ice creature in the basement, "I believe his time may be at an end."
Hightower said nothing. He continued his writing, scraping the quill despite its frayed nib cracking against the surface.
"Technically, he is your property," Marwyn continued, "so I thought it best to check with you before any drastic steps are taken. That being said, there is new information coming out of the North that alters our situation. I believe it is too dangerous to keep it alive."
"You are here to seek my permission?" Leyton finally replied.
"Yes – that is why I'm here. It should not be a wasted opportunity either." More comfortable, Marwyn leaned in, one elbow on the table. "Dragonglass works, so does the steel. I thought you might want to give the Wildfire a go. It is, after all, a speciality of yours."
There was another heavy silence where Hightower continued writing. The scratching of the quill began to dig into Marwyn's mind. He wasn't sure if it was that or the smoke but something was making him feel quite ill. His attention shifted to an unusual object on the desk.
"Where did you find another?" Marwyn spotted the second dragon egg. It was smaller than his original but no less beautiful. "Oh – it's stunning!"
The pair of them had always had a love for magical relics. Leyton had let Marwyn borrow the first dragon egg for many years while he traced its history through fragments of legend – to no real end. He could not believe that Hightower had found another and not bothered to share it with him.
"How long have you had -" He'd been about to pick it up when Hightower rose from his chair in a flurry and slapped Marwyn's hands away sharply.
"Do not touch it," Hightower snapped, then resumed his writing without a second look.
Marwyn returned to his seat and this time stared quietly at his company. That same, one-eyed gull took up perch at the open window. The bookshelves had cavernous gaps where some of the most precious works once sat. Even the lord himself had been corrupted. His mannerisms were that of another. He was a shell. A husk of a man no better than a mummer's dragon writhing down the street amid the noise and ceremony of the foolish.
"You have not written me for some time," Marwyn started – carefully this time. "I was worried the years had caught up to you, old man." Then he waited. If there was on thing Leyton could not abide it was being called, 'old man'.
"I saw no cause to write." Hightower stilled his quill and finally caught the archmaester's eye. "Where are your robes?"
"I never wear the robes, My Lord."
They rose to their feet together. Marwyn jerked forwards, pushing over the jug of water which startled Hightower before it smashed to the ground sending the ravens to the air in fright. Hightower reached under his desk and drew out a small sword which had been fastened to the underside. With the strength of a young man, he swung it in the direction of the archmaester's head.
Marwyn swore and leaned backwards as the metal cut the air. He could have sworn that he felt a breath of it on his neck.
"Who are you?!" Marwyn demanded.
"No one of consequence..." The man replied, using the chair to vault onto the desk. He reached up, unclipping his purple robe which fell away in a curtain of colour. The candles toppled, dying in the pool of water. A moment later Hightower had jumped from the edge of the desk, coming towards the slower moving, much larger Marwyn, blade first.
Caught by surprise, Marwyn raised his hands to the sword. The tip of it split his palm, driven through the bone. Marwyn shrieked as it was withdrawn in a torrent of blood. It sprayed over his face and down his protruding stomach.
Gilly retreated from Hightower's door when something heavy hit the other side, throwing a hinge. She heard steel and stone meet followed by footsteps and loud banging as furniture was thrown. In fear she had sought Hightower out to tell him about the face on the wall but she'd hung back when she saw the archmaester enter.
She pushed open the door as Marwyn spun, slamming a book into Hightower's face. The impact knocked him back slightly but his sword, stained with fresh blood, had already started another path through the air toward the archmaester. The blade dug into the soft flesh of Marwyn's stomach but only briefly before it was ripped free.
"Gilly!" Marwyn gasped, catching her figure in the shadows.
It was a cry for help. Gilly saw an antique war axe set onto the wall. She lifted it free of the iron clasps. Struggling under the sudden weight, Gilly stumbled to the side, the head of the axe hitting the floor where it chipped the stone. She dragged it forward, held her breath and lifted it over her shoulder.
Hightower's sword was coming back for Marwyn's throat. He was all that Marwyn could see, parting the heavy smoke which had started to fill the room from the burning rug, set alight by a fallen candle. Suddenly he stopped. His cold eyes faltered, widening in shock.
Marwyn dropped to his knees, surrounded by his own blood.
Hightower fell with him – then slumped forward onto the stone floor. Gilly loomed behind, a tiny – pale child. Her hands were empty. The axe blade had sliced through Hightower's spine. She could see the bone – the parted flesh and the severed arteries. To both she was devoid of feeling. Slowly, she stepped around the body and plucked the sword from the sticky puddle of blood mixing with lamp oil and water. Then, Gilly reached down and, with her foot on Hightower's back for leverage, pried the axe free. She held both in Marwyn's direction.
His eyes were on the steel, clenched in such tiny, delicate hands. Gilly was a woman of ice – a creature of violence hidden under the slip of a girl. He wondered how many had fallen beneath her wrath and if that quiet Night's Watchman knew the truth of her.
"Wait – wait!" Marwyn begged, lifting his good hand. The other was limp, bleeding profusely. "He's one of them."
"One of who?"
The desk was overturned. Both dragon eggs had rolled freely about the room. One lay in the corner, propped against a bookshelf with a terrified raven perched on its tip. The other was coated with lamp oil which now caught alight.
"Them..." Marwyn groaned, lowering his hand to clutch his injured on. He was bleeding from his stomach as well with fresh bruises darkening on his face. "The ones that I warned Tarly about. The Faceless assassins from across the Narrow Sea."
"I – I killed a Lord..." She'd hang for this.
"No. No that man is not Leyton. Listen to me Gilly – is it Gilly?" She nodded. "Leyton Hightower is one of my oldest friends. I'd know the man anywhere. Leyton is certainly dead but not by your hand. Let me show you."
Marwyn crawled forward, dragging himself through the sodden floor where he rolled the corpse over. Fighting the urge to gag at his 'friend's' vacant eyes, he reached down, feeling around beneath his chin – carefully tracing the line of his neck. There. A faint edge. Like the skin beneath an eggshell, Marwyn scratched at the edge until it peeled away in his hands. It took more force than he had expected but eventually Hightower's whole face peeled away revealing another.
Horrified, Marwyn held up the piece of skin. "Old magic," he whispered. "Forbidden in all but the cult in Braavos. Those fucks are mad. Them and their god."
"Throw it in the fire..." Gilly whispered.
Marwyn struggled to his feet and threw it into the flames which hissed and smoked.
"H-how many faces are there?" She knelt beside the body – mimicking Marwyn. There was another tear in his flesh – a face waiting.
"Believe me..." Marwyn had torn strips from a curtain and was binding it around his hand. "They have rooms of them. Faces upon faces – like the screaming trees in your frozen forests."
She swallowed back her tears. They didn't fall solely for Hightower – whose face had been worn like a shawl in winter. It was the horror of it. What were we – faces on a wall? Trickery from the lips of gods? Fuck the gods. "We should burn that too..." she hissed.
Marwyn stared dumbly at the corpse. It would not fit in the fire. "How?"
Gilly swung the axe, cleaving off Hightower's head. Marwyn threw up as Gilly grabbed it by the grey hair, carried it across the floor with blood dripping behind her, then hurled it in the flames where it joined the ashes of books.
When the body was gone, they doused the flames that had taken hold in the room and opened the remaining windows to clear the smoke.
"Reminds me of the North," Gilly said, as they fought their way through the smoke. "Sit. Let me see – I don't bite."
"You've done this before," Marwyn noted, as the Craster girl washed his hand with some clear Dornish drink they'd found stashed in a desk drawer. It burned like buggery but not as much sewing the wound shut. He kept perfectly still, watching her work with detachment. It was not his first time either and he'd had a lot worse.
"Up North, we had to look after ourselves," she replied, tugging the thread when it got caught in his flesh. "Once I pulled a pine branch out of someone's leg. Now that was a mess. This – nice and clean." She finished and wrapped it again, neatly. "What about this..." she lifted the silk covering the cut on his stomach.
"Plenty of armour down there," Marwyn joked, referring to the healthy circling of lard around his girt. "It's saved me more than once." A few more stitches and Marwyn finished the bottle off. "What have you got over there?" He asked, as Gilly kneeled behind an overturned chair.
She rose, a dragon egg resting in her hands. "I've seen this before," she whispered. "It's his dragon egg."
"There's another one," Marwyn replied, rolling to the side where he used the wall to struggle to his feet. "It'll be here somewhere. Quick."
Gilly gave Marwyn the black egg and searched the room. She found another in a puddle of water.
"Argh!" She cried.
"Gilly?"
"The egg burned me. It must have been sitting in the flames." This time she picked it up with rags and placed it in a bag. "We can't leave all these things here..." She added, standing in front of the enormous treasure trove of relics in the office.
"See this-" Marwyn pointed out the gaps in the shelves. "He's destroyed the most important works."
"Why?"
"Do not waste your time trying to understand those that have no faces. They are no one. They want nothing..." He reached forward, giving the shelf a forceful shove. The wood groaned and slid aside, revealing a secret compartment where he and Leyton hid the valuable works. "Literally – these assassins worship death. They won't be happy until the whole world lays in ashes. Here... Find another bag for these."
"Where are we going?"
Marwyn, his arms full of priceless relics, cast his eyes up toward the blackened ceiling. "The tower."
The rain vaporised before it got anywhere near the green ball of raging fire at the peak of the Hightower.
Gilly and Marwyn emerged on the first of three landings, weighed down with an assortment of bags. Each platform was made of stone. The first two were white, forged from the hardest form of granite mined in the Braavosi mountains. Hundreds of years ago it made its way across The Narrow Sea on barges barely able to clear the waves. Several sank, scattering their treasure on the ocean floor – fodder for the gods. The last layer, guarding the flames, was constructed of black stone mined from the ancient roots of the fortress. It was the only substance strong enough to encase the wildfire. Everything else buckled, melted or exploded with the intense heat. Re-working it took longer than building the tower. They used Valyrian steel tools to carve it and even today, if you could stand to stare into the flames, you could see silver chains holding the stone blocks together.
"I thought you said these eggs were valuable?" Gilly said, guarding her face from the heat. Even here it felt as though it was burning her skin. "I don't understand."
Marwyn was hypnotised by the swirling towers of green. "They say it is like standing before the sun." He knelt, rifling through the bag. He pulled out the green egg. "That faceless creature, he was reading Leyton's notes on dragon eggs. I saw them scattered to the side. After he was done desecrating the books, he was going to throw the dragon eggs into the flames to destroy them."
"Who would want to destroy a dragon egg when you could sell them for a fortune?"
"Over a grudge... Their people began as slaves of the Valyrians. What he didn't know was that Leyton left those notes laying around for a reason." Marwyn held the egg up. It was so beautiful. "They're nearly impossible to destroy. You could climb the highest mountain in the realm and drop it onto a river of lava-"
"What is, 'lava'?"
"The melted innards of mountains. Hotter than fire. Anyway, the damn thing would float. They're made from fire. The dragons that lay them sleep deep in the ranges where the flames are at their most brutal. Leyton was a smart man. He figured that one day he'd die and someone would find the egg. If their intent was malicious he laid the perfect trap sitting right above his head."
Gilly looked at the archmaester warily. Sam had warned him about this man. His interests included the darkest forms of magic from corners of the world as dangerous as the North. "What happens when you throw the egg into the Hightower flames?"
Marwyn smiled. "With any luck... This."
He climbed up to the next platform – as far as a human could bear before the flesh blackened and curled away. Then, he threw the egg straight into the pit of flames. It vanished into the heart of the ceaseless fire, rolling into the burning abyss. Marwyn quickly retreated to Gilly, red but mostly unharmed.
"You did not answer my question," Gilly pressed. "What will happen to the egg?"
"Give it a minute..."
Gilly could feel the hot wind threatening to knock her from the platform. The entire city was visible from here, clawing into the surrounding hills. Dusk was almost finished but she could pick out the houses from the lights burning in their windows. They were so far below that they looked like a nest of stars, woven into the hills. On the other side, the harbour and sea beyond was black except for a small outburst of light belonging to another island.
She tugged on Marwyn's sleeve but he was focused on the flames.
It was only a theory – a thought Leyton had when the two of them were young enough to wile away the hours over wine and dragon tales. Yes, magic hatched dragons eggs but there had to be a simpler way. They were creatures like any other and that meant they reproduced naturally – in the wild – without the help of humans muttering curses over their shells. Marwyn travelled to Asshai while Leyton raided the libraries of the citadel. Between them they reasoned that if they could find enough heat, the egg would hatch.
"Wait..." He tried to shrug the woman off but she was insistent.
"No," Gilly hissed. "Look!"
Marwyn brushed a tear away and stepped closer to the flames. There, emerging from the edge where a chain swung against the stone, in and out of the flame, was the flick of a crimson tail.
SUNSPEAR – THE BROKEN ARM
"Is that it?" Dany lifted her arm, bracelets rattling against each other with the movement of her horse. In front, the desert wastes, burned red from an ancient cataclysm, parted like a flower with its petals peeled back.
"Ay," Jorah gave his horse a swift kick, moving up beside her. "Not many see her from the North. Wait until we pass this next range, then you will see..."
It was a day's ride before they made the soft track over a rise of dune that was making its slow progression toward the water. There, standing along the ridge, they looked down toward the great Dornish stronghold of Sunspear.
A huge, vaguely spear-like protrusion of sandstone reared out over the ocean. Water lapped on three sides and when the tide drew back, it was surrounded by soggy, impassable sand flats riddled with tiny orange crabs that sidestepped in waves. At its base, the Shadow City lingered, dwarfed by the other.
"This is not as I imagined," she whispered, dismounting her horse. The Queen sank into the soft, blushing sands. Jorah joined her but the burn of the sand against his ankles was nearly unbearable. Sunspear was a violent clash of cultures, built and re-built, layers upon layers of stone in front of the palace. Like a hive, it was fortified through sheer bulk of stone rather than ingenuity. Then, the final arm of stone reached unsupported toward the sea where the famous processions from the stories were held. In days gone past, dragons landed there, perching above the water. "I thought it would be plated in gold."
"The stone rather looks of gold, when the light is right," Jorah assured her. "This is not the East, Khaleesi. Golden cities are a thing of dreams and dust."
