Author's Note: I'm just wondering if anyone is still reading this fic over here at ? There's been no review in 10 chapters :(
STARFALL – DORNE
They both froze.
Daenerys drew a slender dagger from the innards of her boot while Jorah searched the ruined stone for movement. Crows appeared on the wall. Fat insects, nearly too heavy to fly, landed on sprays of flowering nettle which surged out of the dust. Their stems bent under the weight, dipping toward the ground which was a mess of broken blade and blood. Somewhere, in the rock and salt, Anders Yronwood's men consorted with shadows.
There was a scrape of steel at Jorah's feet where a Martell died. A one-eyed gull perched on his back and tugged at the warm flesh. They were feasts of carrion. The scratch of wind against the tower roared in their ears. Jorah felt the sea spray across his arm and heard Drogon far below, scraping himself over the fallen boulders, impartial to their peril.
Daenerys reached to her bear, placing a tiny hand on the curve of his exposed neck where his hair prickled to her touch. "Have they gone?"
"No, Khaleesi. They have not gone."
Her stomach sank as Yronwood's men emerged as a pack from their hide behind the tower, others from within – fifty in all with bloodied swords and the swagger of victory.
"Cocky shits..." Jorah hissed, stepping slowly backwards as they approached. "It was a victory of number not skill." They had even less chance. Jorah could hear the queen's breath heavy behind him. She whispered his name but his only reply was, "Run to your dragon, my Queen."
"And leave you here?"
"Aye..." Jorah kept watch on the faces of the men. "Leave me here."
They were amused by the single knight and his tiny dragon queen. How pale and small she looked against the sea. The blue stretched forever toward the East where she belonged. Perhaps her blood was silver too. Men like these, they'd have her first then run a knife across her throat to find out. Her bones would join Ashara's, scattered as sand.
Jorah's hand tightened on the Snowflake's grip. The ice beneath threatened to burn his skin. Today he was grateful for its magic. He might be able to hold them long enough for her to scale the steps before they cut him down with the others.
He glanced over his shoulder – blue eyes fierce when she failed to move. "Now, Khaleesi!"
At the rustle of her cape, the Yronwood men sprang from their perches. Jorah spread his arms, using his considerable span and the rock-way path as a bottleneck, reducing them to four abreast. He lifted his long slither of ice to their blades but they were wise to his trick.
They avoided Snowflake, cutting low toward his body with rhythmic arcs that flowed like water. Several blades crashed against his breastplate, knocking him onto his heels while others missed and smashed against the wall in a riot of green sparks. All of them ended up with limbs dragged against the wall which was sharpened by fragments of red glass. It tore at exposed skin, leaving bloodied grazes on both Jorah and the Yronwood men.
One sword clipped Snowflake and shattered above their heads. The soldier wielding it lurched, set off balance by the sudden loss of momentum. He fell onto another's blade then to Jorah's feet. The bridge of his nose shattered under Jorah's boot and he was forced to scramble back into the froth of soldiers, clutching his face.
The rest came at the knight – swords and hands grabbing for his shoulders. Too many all at once. Jorah veered backwards, shoving men against the stone – displacing rock into the sea below. Another pair of blades met their death on his but then Snowflake was snatched from him. Beneath the ground was slick with a thousand shards of steel. Their boots rolled. One man stumbled, falling heavily against the wall. In the thrall, Jorah wrestled him right over the edge to the surprise of the others.
Protected by plate armour, Jorah lifted his arms, parrying strikes with nothing but his limbs. He fought like a bear – with furious, rebellious, stubborn violence. Another toppled over the wall. He stripped a sword and slashed it diagonally across one of their faces, splitting it in two before kicking the corpse into the crowd. That pushed them back and Jorah found a moment to breathe.
Crack!
The man holding Jorah's ice sword accidentally destroyed his neighbours'. Jorah lunged forward, picking off another. His ordinary steel cut through the fine chain-mail and carved a hole between his collarbone and neck. The man howled at the torrent of blood erupting in spurts where an artery had severed.
Another kick of salt broke over the wall startling a raven. The bird caught Jorah's eye as it sailed toward the towers, circling between the twins. Their crumbling stone reminded him of Mormont Keep, built for war. Whatever war that was had passed into the tide.
"Argh!" Jorah groaned, as a spear came from nowhere – cutting through the crowd to slam against his chest. He looked down to find a smear of poison where the blade bounced harmlessly aside. Ahead, the others parted allowing two warriors through. They carried ironwood spears, glistening with Tears of Lys. The poison already in his blood churned. For a moment, the world rippled like a dream.
Not here. Not now. Raven wings became snow. The shifting wall of Dornish men – a forest of pine.
Your visions are not real... Quaithe had told him. Do not be tempted by their hollow promises. But he was tempted. Temped by their whispers so real and crisp.
He knelt to the ground, taking hold of the discarded spear. Steel was vulnerable to his ice blade but wood was not. The soldier holding Snowflake came at him but the moment they met was marked by an odd thud. As one, the spear wielding men danced from behind, pushing off the rock walls in frightening surges. Spear first, they flew at him while he still held the weight of the other man. Jorah fell to his knees and scrambled forward, prying another sword free of a corpse before he immediately turned with both weapons lifted in a wall.
Their weapons met. A clash of steel and sticky, scented death.
On his back, Jorah was pinned. Another spear protruded between Jorah's swords – poison inching closer to his face with a promise of night. He could see it growing into a tear on the point, shivering like the sea as gravity begged.
"Finish the old bastard," one of them jeered.
To hell with it. Jorah wasn't going to die at their fumbling hands. He'd rather throw himself from The Wall. As one of them sensed their opportunity to kill, Jorah lifted both his legs and forced the lighter Dornish man off. If he was a bear, they were snakes – writhing closer – flicking their tongues and lunging like flares of light in a storm.
A sword in each hand, Jorah scrambled to his knees and spun the ornate blades – testing their weight as the rest of the soldiers lost patience and advanced. Walled in by their golden tunics, Jorah whispered a prayer to the olds gods. Let Daenerys be with her dragon.
Soldiers slipped past him. He could do nothing as they vanished down the rock-way in pursuit of Daenerys. He railed against those that remained, rising up in a nightmare of sword and blood. He survived a few strikes until the soldier with Snowflake shattered his swords in a single swipe. He tossed the handles at their faces. Unarmed, the thin rod of a spear knocked him back to the wall with a slap. Dust flared. Rocks fell.
Jorah's vision blurred again. Snow spiralled in the air. It turned to ash – dusting the landscape.
The spear struck him again. As it came in for a third, Jorah wrapped his hand around the rod and raised the man holding it from the ground. The man and the spear vanished over the edge but another had already replaced him. It was useless. There were simply too many. Even the greatest swordsman could be overcome by numbers and Jorah was a long way from holding that title. He was about to surrender to death when he heard Daenerys' screams.
Streaked with blood, Jorah twisted to see her in the arms of a soldier, writhing and striking. Jorah let out a cry of war – a bear roaring for his kin. Fearful, one of the men took the ice sword and stabbed it through the soft flesh of Jorah's thigh, slipping between the plated steel and his tunic but it was Daenerys who screeched.
Blood poured over her slender thigh as the sword was dragged back. She was dropped in surprise by the man and left to collapse in a puddle of her own blood. Mixed with dirt, she lifted her hands in shock. She could feel the memory of a phantom blade pulse deep in her muscle.
The soldiers backed away from Jorah. His skin was alive with runes and strange markings. The sword which had struck him came away clean.
Magic. Blood magic. Such things were forbidden.
Almost at once, a rustle came from behind the wall. The men looked to each other. Snowflake was dropped among the shattered bones of fallen swords. The ground beneath them vibrated. Gurgling, like blow-holes on the shores of Astapor. Then it came, rising out of the smoke and salt – a great black beast with fire for eyes and teeth the length of swords. Drogon.
Daenerys stared at the men and their tower, her eyes thick with tears and blood. As if on command, Drogon turned to them, opened his jaws and breathed flame until the world turned white hot.
Those that touched the flame did not catch fire. Instead, their clothes and armour pealed away then, before a moment had passed, their bodies became the ash Jorah saw moments earlier. He glanced down at his hands. They were clogged with Quaithe's words. His head spun. The smoke stuck in his lungs mixing with the putrid stench of burned flesh.
He dragged himself along the wall toward Daenerys with Snowflake in one hand and the sharp rock on the other. As he moved, the dragon's smoke blocked out the light, sending them into a half-night where flame replaced the sun. Drogon was in flight, circling the tower, incinerating it with fire and all that stood below. The rock glowed red, shifting form – melting.
Jeor walked along the road ahead, a vision in the ash. His trailing wool cloak and silver hair. A babe in his arms.
Then he was gone.
KING'S LANDING – WESTEROS
King Tommen Baratheon, first of his name, sat on the expanse of razor and blood which called itself a throne. He'd perched there for many hours, alone in the hall with its echoing spirits and ghastly claws of iron strung around the top of endless pillars. For the life of him, he could not fathom why wars were fought and dynasties crumbled over this morbid place. Power did not sit here. Kings and queens did. Their power came from somewhere other than dead mens' swords.
Widow's Wail lay across his knees. Even inside a case it cut painfully into his thighs. At half the size of the original sword, he could only wonder at the Northern Lords of Winterfell who swung it at their enemies in battle. Surely they were bastards of giants – or he was unusually small.
Beside him stood the second throne. Empty, his queen languished in the High Sparrow's cells. His court was too afraid to sit in session and his common people rallied outside in the streets – starving. Everything was dark – even the chandeliers with their hundred candles each replaced by torches hastily struck onto the walls. Their spirals of flame blackened the stone, dying like stars as a storm rode in.
A brush of fur scratched around his boots.
Ser Pounce, his ginger cat, rubbed his head against the leather, purring deeply. Relief washed over Tommen. The only soul in the kingdom without its eye on the throne. To Ser Pounce, the rusty chair was something to rub its back against and displace a few resting fleas. As his fingers ran through the soft, dust-laden fur he thought of his queen wailing in the Sept of Baelon. He could not bare to think of her alone with the stone and iron, confined to the floor without a window to see the moon. His power, more than ever, had become a veil. He listened to the whispers of his council. More and more, the swell of the common folk had shifted the throne from the Crown to the Faith and worse, it was his mother whom had opened the door a crack for them.
He was settled. Tonight, as with the last week previous, he'd cross the streets draped in wool and climb one of the sept's towers where his wife was kept. It took an hour to free himself of the castle – through the dungeons and out into the crumbling wall that ran beside the harbour. The rats greeted him with idle twitches in their whiskers while the moon sank behind the peaks and turrets of King's Landing.
Within the sept, the poor came and went, milling in through plain wooden doors and forks of candles that stretched into the street like twin rivers of fire. Barefoot, King Tommen murmured the words and knelt at the alter with the rest. Ducking into a shadow, he climbed the spiral steps. Close enough to the top to feel the rush of sea wind inside the windows, he paused beside a door. He knocked twice the pressed his ear to the keyhole. Moments passed. Tides dragged. A rustle of life came from within.
"My Lord... My love..." her words clawed their way to his ear.
Tommen imagined her as she was, all draped in blue with roses entwined in her glorious hair. He could not fathom the truth of her wretched state – the rags and filth that she had become. Even the slums in Fleabottom would take pity on her now. "I'm here..." he whispered back, pressing his hand against the door.
"Loras. Loras..." She asked every night but his answer was always the same.
"He is in the tower with you but I do not know where..." His crimes were greater and so his location kept hidden.
"Never forget," she'd say, when the night's began to die, "you are the king."
A powerless, paper king on a throne crafted from blood. In a way, the High Sparrow was right. What kind of king was he? A good king, Margaery would always reply. Kinder than his brother but that was no more a compliment than comparing the sun to a candle.
Tommen returned via the tunnels beneath the palace. He knew them well as did Ser Pounce, who awaited his return curled up atop a dragon skull. "That is impolite," Tommen warned his cat. "What is that on your paws?"
Ser Pounce flexed them, flashing an iridescent shade of green that seemed to take on a fire of its own. The young king touched the slippery liquid. It rubbed between his thumb and forefinger like oil. Wildfire. He'd seen his uncle Tyrion with a canister of it before the Battle for the Blackwater. It was made by he maesters, stock piled for generations all under the city. 'Tread carefully, little brother,' Joffrey used to taunt, 'you might slip and set us all alight.' Part of Tommen thought Joffrey wanted to see the city burn.
"Where have you been?" he asked the cat.
The answer was written on the stone. Smears of wildfire had been left around the ailing tunnels – a print her, graze there – wherever Ser Pounce lingered on his travels. The deeper Tommen followed, the clearer the markings became until he found himself right beneath the ocean wall of King's Landing. The granite slabs held back the water but he could still hear it crushing alongside. He lingered, tiny pale palm to the wall.
It was everywhere. Wildfire left in barrels with their sides slashed open, bleeding over the storage room. Tommen barely drew breath, frightened the heat form his lips might cast them into ash. Was it the High Sparrow who set them here? Did he seek, as his mother whispered, to tear apart the throne? No. The Sparrow was a man of words. He used them like knives, striking down people with riddles and half-truths until they were impaled on the sept walls. The city suffocated under their web. Even the sun had grown cold, falling faster in the evening – taking longer to rise. The maesters will know.
"Your Grace -" Maester Pycelle sank low, dragged down by his chain and further by bones that locked in all the wrong places. His robes were simple but laced with smoke from the whore houses. There was honesty in his faults – truth in dishonesty. It proved that he was a man. "Is there some service that I can be?"
Tommen leaned against the opposing wall. "The Battle for the Blackwater..."
"A great victory, to be sure."
"I'm – not here for vanity. Besides, wasn't it my uncle Tyrion who should be credited?"
"How so? Oh... You mean, for the destruction of Stannis' fleet."
"Yes. That was his idea, correct?"
"Indeed. He made the request directly. A gamble, Your Grace. Wildfire is by its nature, a danger to its creators and victims."
"How much of it was used during the battle?"
Pycelle was shaking his weathered head, silver beard scratching against his maester chain. "One could not say. We do not know what was there to begin with. The Mad King is rumoured to have filled every dark place beneath the city. These are strange questions for so late in the evening." Pycelle was not sure what to make of the new king. He's served the Mad King in all his glorious insanity – Robert through his drunken feuds, Joffrey and his cruelty and finally this strange, quiet child who showed more fondness for books than the Crown.
In reply, Tommen extended his hand and showed Pycelle the stain of wildfire. The maester retreated. "There are other people aware of the fire beneath our feet and I fear they plan to make use of it."
A shadow wiped across Pycelle's face. His frailty faded. He straightened up, leaning closer to the king. "Not here. Your grandfather's quarters."
They parted ways. That was the way of King's Landing. It was a world of whispers.
Tommen reached Tywin's old rooms first. His grandfather had the apartment near the top of the tower with views over the water. Always watching, it was said that he liked to keep one eye on Essos while he worked. The rooms had been kept like a tomb. Thick layers of dust covered his possessions. Books were left open. The quill he'd been using that night was blackened with ink. Tommen inched closer, lifting the parchment. Dirt slid away.
'I tire of these half-truths. Either the North is united to our cause or it is not. The vacuum of power left by the Starks must be filled. The North is a shadow over us all.'
There was no recipient and it was left unsigned. Tommen's footsteps sounded like the fell of a war hammer as he crossed the stone. Above his grandfather's bed was a golden carving of a lion. He stood beneath it, lighting its candles. Tommen was a Lannister king – a lion in the darkness – first of his house to sit the throne even if it was under a mummer's stag.
From there, Tommen moved to the window and the watched the lights flicker in the dark. They went on forever, stretching past the protective walls, across the flats of farm land and into the mountains. Ships clogged the harbour. Ravens circled, searching for their masters. The Sept of Baelon stood above them all, a beacon in the dark – or a menacing flame, threatening to ignite the hell below their feet.
Screech.
Tommen jumped away from the window. The door behind him had cracked open and through the pathetic glow of candlelight he could see nothing but the yawning chasm between the wood.
"You are up late, my dear," Olenna Tyrell shuffled toward her grandson in law.
Tommen recovered his wits and nodded respectfully at the Queen Grandmother. "I could not sleep."
"Neither could I," she admitted. "When you reach a certain age, sleep begins to feel a little too much like death. I'd rather not tempt the end." Olenna dragged one of Tywin's old chairs out and sat herself down, resting her bones. "I know... I look at it too." She was speaking of the great sept. "They hold us to ransom using your own people as a faceless army – an army that has no idea what it's really fighting for. They are cowards of the worst kind. War between lords is honest."
"I submitted to their requests, as asked and still they hold them."
"Poor boy," there was genuine pity in her tone. How could she not feel when he had Cersei as a mother? "Their demands are as meaningless as their cloaks. Power is what they're after. Power is like land – there is only so much of it to be dived therefore for it must be usurped from those that already have it."
"Then why not come for me? I am the king."
"Come closer," Olenna whispered, nodding at the chair opposite. The boy king sat, uneasy on his grandfather's perch. He had a look of Tywin though – tall for his age and well set – stern eyes and a calm facade. A ruler, perhaps, if he lived long enough. "The power of the Crown sits with your mother. That is why she is held in the cells. Your Grace is a young king, they have your wife, the implication is clear. They intend you as their puppet king. When they have no further need of you – long after the rest of us are dead, you'll join us at the bottom of the Narrow Sea."
He let the words sink in. Young but not stupid, Tommen already guessed that he was a prop for the Sparrow as his grandfather had intended for himself. "Then it would not be in the High Sparrow's interests to destroy King's Landing. Without the city and its people, he's powerless."
"Destroy the city...?" Olenna replied in alarm. Tommen shared with her the truth of the wildfire until her skin was pale as milk. "Who else have you told?"
"Pycelle. Where are you going?"
"Go back to your rooms, Your Grace." She paused, placing her hand on Tommen's arm. "You are my grandson by marriage. Family means everything where I am from. You have thorns now as well as a golden mane." Pycelle was Cersei's man. She was the only person mad enough to kill them all to prove a point was her.
"I am a stag," Tommen insisted, straightening to his full height.
"No, my boy. Consider it a blessing. Fury and jealousy make poor bedfellows on the throne. Now go."
He did not ask the old woman what she intended to do.
STARFALL – DORNE
The inferno raged around them. Jorah could hear the tear of rock and explosions where bubbles of air trapped in the glass expanded and shattered violently. Drogon lived in the heart of it, claws latched onto the smaller tower while he breathed flame and hell.
Daenerys pressed Jorah to the back of the rock-way where they'd taken cover. She shielded him from the heat, wrapping him up in her soft limbs. They sat there, crumpled together against the only wall that had been spared.
Jorah turned his head. It was like looking into a forge. Everything shimmered, rippling as if through water. The bodies of the soldiers had become piles of ash, blown in sickening spirals by the hot wind. Daenerys screamed at him to stop but the dragon was caught up in the ecstasy of violence. It was born to this. Dragons were fire and blood. Wild creatures with a lust that no amount of nurture could tame.
Fearing that he had exchanged one death for another, Jorah closed his eyes and started to sing one of the old Valyrian songs. It was lost in the roar of the flame.
It ended with a whoosh of cold air, sweeping through to claim back the world from fire's embrace. The towers were blackened wrecks, aglow like embers.
"Khaleesi..." Jorah choked through the ash. "Look-" he motioned to the look of the stone as it cooled. Black. Twisted. Oily stone. It had been following them around the world. There'd never been a single mention of a mine or even a name given to the mysterious stone used to build the ancient world. That, it appeared, was because it was not mined. It was created.
Together, they dragged themselves form the stone wall and stood facing the smouldering visage of the towers, singing in the wind. They were cooling fast, now the colour of soot. Wherever spray from the breaking waves hit, steam lifted. Every scrap of life had been burned away from the ground beneath. The trees were twists of blackened bone. Rocks, once pale pink were ashen. Hidden behind what was a thicket of weeds stood a modest stone marker. An unmarked grave, left at the base of the wall.
Jorah turned to Daenerys and pulled the fabric back from her thigh. She gasped at the boldness of his touch but Jorah was focused on the wound dripping blood onto the rocks below. The sword that should have cut through him had manifested in her flesh. His skin burned with Quaithe's marks. Even now, he'd not look out of place in an Old Town shelf.
One knee on the gravel, his hands around her thigh – rough and warn from the fight, Jorah met her gaze. "I think it's time you told me what happened in Asshai."
