Author's Note: This one is for Norah.
THE SKIES ABOVE DORNE
Jorah eyed the fresh line of muscle running between Drogon's shoulder blades. His wings barely moved as he cruised through the night, tilting slightly to dip his claws into a fresh current of air. Daenerys spurned the saddle to lay face down along the dragon's spine with her eyes watching the stars. His scales tore at her ruined clothes. She preferred this. Gold and crowns were for mortal kings. She was a dragon. Her crown was cast of fire. Her empire lay in the clouds.
"I've been wondering," she began, "was it wrong?" She caught Jorah off guard. He was reclined against the rugs in the saddle, loosely bound in leather straps. They had both become complacent on Drogon's back. "I've stolen a sword and set the world on fire."
"We won't know the answer to that question until the battle is finished, Your Grace." Jorah replied.
Daenerys lifted her head, bemused. "How can that be?"
Jorah shrugged, sucking in the desert air. It was clean, like the Northern winds. "Well, if you were right, victory is ours. Doran Martell and his kin will back your claim and with your army blooded, we all ride unabated through the Red Hills to King's Landing carrying a sword you saw in a vision."
Fodder for maesters, Jorah thought quietly. He was curious how much truth would make it to their sprawling libraries and how much had already been brushed away by the Baratheon reign. He pitied them. Deciphering Daenerys was a fool's errand. She was unknowable.
"Conversely if you are wrong we will find ourselves floating in the sea by the end of the week and that pretty sword will become a spoil of war for the new Yronwood dynasty."
"Thank you, Ser. I didn't realise morality hung on the fate of battle."
"Of course it does," he assured her. "The winner vanquishes truth as well as battle. Imagine the Targaryen legacy if Aegon's conquest had failed. A tyrant and his sisters, slain over the water... Monsters from the East felled by seven kingdoms and their lords. I support your claim," he assured her, "but there are many who lost against your kin who remember the bones of their ancestors. They'll not greet you as a friend. We are fortunate that Dorne is indifferent, so long as you remain indifferent to them. They'll never love you. They'll never follow you – unless it is for their own reasons. In that, the Dornishman can be relied upon."
Dragon-back was they only place that Daenerys found peace. The steady beat of Drogon's heart kept time with the waves far below. His warmth protected her from the cold desert air. "How far away are Yronwood's men?"
Jorah leaned over from his perch, looking backwards at the flanks of the Red Mountains. They were illuminated in moonlight as silver curtains with a sea of false stars. Black stains marbled them like veins running dry.
"Yronwood's ranks are moving onto the flat. His army hasn't made camp which means they intend to push on toward the city." He confirmed. "We'll beat them to the Sunspear but not by much."
"I see a lot of things in my dreams," she changed the subject, turning her head so that her other cheek rested on Drogon's scales, "but last night I saw a young man from Ancient Valyria sail through the great western seas of ice. Bergs knocked against his ship until it became trapped, walled in by white. He abandoned the vessel with his men and made their way through the frozen waters. I never saw what became of him but his sword fell between a pair of black boulders where a ghost tree struggled into life. Ser?"
Jorah looked North. "That is our house sword," he replied softly. "The Mormonts found it on a ranging... Far in the North. Nameless and lost. The other houses bought or stole their swords. Ours was a gift from the snow."
The shadow of Yronwood's army thickened. In front, the Sunspear hung like a spirit, risen from the waves surrounded by a flat tide. The last lights in the Shadow City were snuffed while a small convoy of traders could be seen fleeing along the waterline. Others trickled in toward the coming fight. Allies of Doran. All the while Jorah's skin prickled with the ghost of the queen's lips. It worried him that her dreams had settled in the North.
"This is the calm before the storm..." Jorah warned, eyes on the night.
Hers remained on the approaching doom but her thoughts drifted to the stoic knight. "You don't speak about your family... Except in the distance."
"What is there to say?" Jorah returned, shifting against the leather straps. He did not wish to speak of them now either.
"It is unusual – as you clearly love them. We will see the North again. It is likely you will stand before your house with an army at your back."
"And no honour." His reply was swift, cutting the air.
"No honour? How can you say that... Your honour was earned a hundred times over, Ser."
"Not all sins can be undone with good deeds – certainly not where I come from. Honour once lost is lost forever. If I ever see my family again I'll accept the sword at my neck. I'm tired of running from its blade. If Eddard Stark had found me you might already be queen of the Seven Kingdoms. I betrayed you too."
"Well there at least, you are wrong. Without you I am dust washing across the Dothraki Sea."
"Yronwood has a lot of men..." Jorah lamented.
"And we have two dragons," she countered. "That has to count for something." She paused, eyeing her knight. "Ser – you'll not offer your neck to any sword. Is that understood?"
CITADEL – OLD TOWN
Marwyn moved with unexpected pace, wobbling from side to side with his outrageous gut. He and Sam navigated the narrow streets dividing the great libraries of Old Town. Either side, crumbling walls towered leaving the streets locked in vicious wind tunnels, too violent for lanterns to hang.
In darkness they continued, guided by Marwyn who knew the exact curve of every cobblestone and set flight up stairs before Sam saw their edges. Nimble for his size, part of Sam wondered if Marwyn's exterior might be some form of enchantment.
Finally Marwyn stopped outside an unassuming maplewood door. He took a key from his robe, turned the lock and drove his shoulder against the wood to force it open, unleashing a layer of rust.
Sam heard a pile of parchment shift as they stepped inside. "What is this place?" he asked.
"Sh..." Marwyn closed the door and in the absolute pitch, locked it. Silence. Click. Click. Click. Whoosh! The archmaester had knelt on the ground and was smashing flint against a candle which erupted in light. He used it to light several lamps, turning up their wicks to bring the small space to life. "This is Leyton's room, when he'd rather keep his business private."
"A tower fortress isn't private?"
Sam received no answer.
A thick skin of dust coated everything except the collapsed pile of letters at the door. The room was a poky hovel with a bed pushed to one side, a desk in the centre and an old rug curled at the edges. "It doesn't look like anyone's been here for a while..." Sam pointed out.
Marwyn collected the pile of letters and then fished one out, turning it over reverently. "That is because dear Leyton has been dead for a long time... May his soul rest with his gods." There was a moment where Marwyn pressed his fingertips tenderly to the parchment. A crack in his armour. It vanished. "Quick – help me," he insisted, moving to the table where he laid the letters out. "We must see who he was in contact with before he died."
Sam and Marwyn huddled around the trio of lanterns, skimming each letter. They sorted them into piles. Soon it became clear what old Hightower's intention had been. "Where do all these come from?" Sam asked, snapping a wax seal .
"Leyton used to call them 'little birds'. In reality they were packs of wild children, roaming the street. They brought the messages ravens could not."
"Varys again..." Tarly unfolded a letter. "This time he writes,
'She is upon our shores. A Targaryen with a title and a birthright. An army of loyal supporters to sweep aside the corruption of the realm.'
"As if he intends Hightower to act." Sam skipped through a considerable amount before realising, "This Varys person has been planning a coo with the old houses of Westeros for some time. Look at these..." He pointed to the smaller piles littered over the floor. "They're everywhere."
"Varys or The Spider as some know him, is renowned as a dangerous man." Marwyn assured Sam, as he slipped the letter from his fingers. "But I trust Leyton. If they were working together then we should honour their cause."
"Blindly? Marwyn, these men are building kingdoms... Manipulating our future."
"They were backing a Targaryen conquest. It wouldn't be the first. Come, we must send these letters on."
Tarly stared dumbly, empty handed as Marwyn gathered up the letters, panic written in his eyes. "No – wait!" He put his hands over Marwyn's. "We can't do this... Lord Hightower is dead and I'm sorry – I know he was your friend but this – this cause that he's involved with, surely it should be passed on to the next Hightower in line – or one of the other lords?"
"The Faceless Men are in Westeros..." He lowered his voice seriously. "Who knows how far their influence reaches – who they've replaced with their soldiers. If I know anything it's that Leyton feared those fanatics more than war. He drove himself into a recluse, choosing to live in a prison of his own making in order to escape their blade and not even that was enough. If they got to him, they could get to anyone."
Anyone. Sam eyed Marwyn with a flicker of suspicion. Marwyn hit him with the pile of letters for thinking it.
"No matter where you go in the world, Tarly, everyone says the same thing about the cult of the Faceless Men."
"And what do they say?"
Marwyn's tone darkened. "That they are men who worship death. Is that what you want for Westeros?"
Sam shook his head. Of course he didn't want that but at the same time he'd been an avid purveyor of history. Targaryens were a gamble for those who liked high risk games. Mad. Brilliant. Violent. Peaceful. "Marwyn, I'm not sure I want you in Westeros."
He was prepared to take that as a compliment. "I may enjoy the fringes of acceptable interests – nudge the boundaries of the known... but I have made a career of opposing those that are set upon destroying the realm."
"You're referring to the maesters?"
"I am sorry, I know you came here to become one-"
"No. I came here to learn what I must to help Jon fight the Others. Instead I found you."
A smile cracked over Marwyn's lips as the lanterns struggled. The room was deprived of oxygen and suffocating in dust. "Good. Then help me."
"I guess – we have a dragon... If we don't know who to trust, why don't we go and find the Targaryen queen ourselves? These letters say that she is in Dorne – we can make that distance."
"You are right," Marwyn added, packing the letters up. "We do have a dragon but if you are correct about the armies gathering North of the wall, we're going to need something a little bigger to sway the odds." He moved to leave and this time Sam made not attempt to stop him. "Let's avail ourselves of the library's ravens before we go."
With Leyton's correspondence aloft, they returned to find Gilly nursing Little Sam by the fire, singing softly. Sam took a second look at the flames. Nestled in the raging fire was the scarlet body of their infant dragon.
"He won't come away from the fire," Gilly complained, seeing their surprise. "It doesn't like the rain."
"Actually, I believe you'll find that is a female dragon..." The dragon's tiny paws were tucked underneath its body leaving her tail swishing, side to side, disturbing the coals. Incredible. The egg could be a day old or a thousand years and still hatch an infant monster. "It'll need a name," Marwyn advised. "If you wish it to be tame."
"Ash..." Gilly replied, almost immediately. "That is what it'll look like when it comes out of the fire."
"Gilly..." Marwyn lowered himself to the bed beside the young Wildling as she fed her child. It dipped low under his weight. "We need to get that dragon out of the fire. Sam and I have unfinished business then we're all leaving Old Town – immediately."
Gilly turned on Sam. "Leaving for where?" she asked, ignoring Marwyn.
"Gilly, please – I'll explain everything – I will."
"What about Little Sam?"
Sam stepped forward and delicately brushed the baby's soft hair from his forehead. Little Sam wriggled at the touch, turning in toward Gilly. "He's not safe here any more. We have to go."
"And you're certain about this?" Sam asked for the hundredth time, as they spiralled around the stairs beneath the library heading for the crypts. The rush of Sam's torch licked across the walls and his face as if they were the same. Marwyn lagged behind, struggling under the weight of an urn whose liquid sloshed around inside. Sam could hear it keeping time with their steps.
"No." He puffed. "I thought – you'd be – pleased – Tarly – I'm finally – agreeing – with you."
"Perfect. Right when I was starting to agree with you..."
Down again. The ground evened out into tunnels which were interrupted by sets of locked doors and ever-increasing putrid air. Marwyn entrusted Sam with the keys. He struggled with their corroded bodies, shuffling them in the locks until the last door creaked open. Black glass. A cell made of night. Mist streamed out from Sam's lips as the temperature of the room plummeted.
"We're here..."
"Leyton's last gift," Marwyn purred, as he stumbled through the room. He set the heavy urn down in front of the bars separating the undead creature of ice from the world. "Come on out, I want one last look at you... It would be rude, after all, to end this without a goodbye."
From the frost-covered depths inside the prison emerged the Whitewalker. It moved slowly, running its clawed fingers along the glass bars in temptation of death. It knew exactly why they had come.
"It's been waiting for us..." Sam whispered. "See – I warned you – they can hear our thoughts."
Marwyn strutted up to the bars and came within a breath of the hideous construct of Winter. He stared into the sapphire eyes. Searched them for life. He found magic instead. "If the world could see what we see Sam, it might take a different path... How small our petty wars are when you look upon a thing like this. At the end of the day, there is only life and death. Targaryens. Baratheons. Starks. Lannisters. Ironborn. What of it? Who cares who wields the swords so long as they strike the depths of Winter. That is what Leyton was playing at. He wants the most sword. He looked upon this thing and chose to back a dragon usurper. Of course his solution to the problem was political. Leyton was a measured man. I prefer a more direct approach."
He bent over, unlatching the lid of the container. Iridescent liquid spilled onto the lid and splashed over the floor causing Sam to stumble away in alarm.
"And you're certain this will work?" Sam asked nervously, holding the torch away from the Wildfire.
"No," Marwyn admitted, "but it should – unless you want to have a go with one of those black daggers?"
Sam shook his head. Once was a fluke. He had a feeling that if he faced another Whitewalker he'd end up wandering the snows with a set of matching blue eyes.
"I thought so. Now careful..." he warned, as he readied himself. They took a collective breath. Marwyn kicked the barrel. It sloshed over the ground, pouring through the bars of the cell. The Whitewalker did nothing. It held its ground at the bars, wrapping one of its awful hands around the dragonglass sending shards of ice up the bar. Soon the cell was flooded, glowing against the layers of frost that had built up over the years.
Marwyn retreated.
"Are you sure?" Sam asked, one final time.
"We can't take it with us and we can't leave it here..." Marwyn took the flaming torch from Sam's hands. "So yes, I say we find out if Death can die."
With that, Marwyn tossed the torch toward the cell. The Wildfire ignited before the torch hit the ground. A rush of burning air knocked Marwyn and Sam violently against the wall, pinning them as the fireball engulfed the Whitewalker's cell.
Sam closed his eyes as the flames churned on each other, consuming everything until the bars melted and the walls drooped inwards. The heat was unbearable. Marwyn was the first to his senses. Grabbing hold of Sam's robes, he dragged the younger man toward the door and pushed him through. They slammed it shut as the Wildfire spun out of control – overwhelming the entire room. Sweat poured off their skin. The heat seeped from the heavy door as if the world itself had cracked and spewed forth hell.
"Nothing could survive that..." Sam whispered. "I've – I've never seen anything like it..."
"Wildfire..." Marwyn whispered. "They said it melted Stannis' ships into stone before they sank to the bottom of Blackwater Bay. That the very water itself was set alight."
"We're going to need a lot of that where we're going..."
"The maesters make it day and night – squirrelling barrels of it away." They retreated from the door as flames licked through onto their side, transfixed by the sight. A red door to the underworld.
The Wildfire's eruption tore a hole in the opposite side of the cell. Its heat boiled water bubbles trapped in the dragonglass, causing the bricks that kept the Whitewalker prisoner to explode. They shattered like a thousand stars. Before the heat took hold, the creature picked its way around the edge of the fire and, obscured by the green flames, slipped through the ruined wall that had kept it prisoner.
At the surface, it paused as the first brush of moonlight passed its pale bone. Ash marred its limbs, fusing ligaments to its skeleton in a painful web of crystal flesh. One arm hung by a sinew which eventually broke. A pair of eyes searched the night, reading the stars. It noticed the smear of red from a comet tail, hanging low in the North. In front, a warm sea swelled in and out with the turn of the sun and moon. War loomed nearby. It could smell the stench of death on the air.
There was more...
The Whitewalker moved toward the hills, unseen and silent with a trail of mist.
Gilly, Marwyn and Sam followed the trade route which snaked around the coast, keeping to the flat – easy ground. They passed a constant stream of caravans, each squeaking along with a hush of chatter. Most spoke the Common Tongue but occasionally Sam picked out Dornish and even High Valyrian from Eastern convoys. Their dragon was tucked in its sack while the rest of their possessions lay in an open cart. Marwyn had left his quarters in the citadel shut up, choosing only a few relics to bring along. The risk of theft was real and none of them, save Gilly, could fend off a robbery. Instead, they cried poor.
"We follow this past the Three Towers, the Sun House and then across the river at Starfall. After that, we're deep in Dornish land. Best we hire a ship if we want to make it to the Sunspear while the queen is there. The desert is too harsh for the child."
Gilly, who was carrying Little Sam close to her chest, nodded. "The old lord gave me coin – enough for passage on a ship."
The lights of Old Town faded into the coast. To their right, an endless world of black lapped at the cliffs beneath. White sails caught the moonlight. Gulls, disturbed by the passing wagons, screeched briefly before retreating to their nest inside the rock.
"You speak of the gods," Sam started, keeping their conversation as they walked, "but who are your gods?"
"My gods are the wandering stars," Marwyn replied, wistfully. "The moon. The sun and the night." He caught Gilly's eye. As a Wilding, they shared many gods. "I learned this in Asshai. Every god conceived has lived those cursed shores. The city is a buffet of theology. Some hold more weight than others."
"In Westeros, it is the Faith of the Seven."
"A new cult – historically speaking. The trick, Tarly, is to find the true gods lurking beneath. To do that, you must look further back. Find out where the story began."
"Is that what you did? Seek out the oldest religions looking for magic..."
"No indeed. I was looking for dragons," he admitted, with a moment of cheer. "Finding the gods was an accident. Dragons, you see, worship at the same alter. Did you know that they sing to the stars? I heard one, curled around a dead Weirwood on the outskirts of Asshai, crooning at the darkness as if in prayer. I walked the smouldering flanks of the volcanoes behind Asshai. The mountains were breathing fire. Spewing it into the air. Poisoning the fog. It was there that I held an egg as it cracked. I felt the burned sand rise beneath my feet while a monster slithered under. The fires burning in the throats of those mountains made the most hideous screams. The sound," he lifted his hands to his ears, "it haunts me still."
"You are haunted by fire. I am haunted by ice..."
Marwyn nodded toward Gilly. "She is haunted by magic."
KINGSROAD – THE NORTH
Melisandre felt four hundred years in her aching bones as her horse trudged through the snow. The path North was a mess of mud and ice, worn nearly to ruin by the constant trail of supplies and soldiers. Most of the wagons were draped in Tyrell banners. Roses adorned the shields of the guards that marched beside, shivering in the fresh snow. The rest were fleeing violence in the South. War was threatening at every boundary. Farmers, raped by the Capital, escaped with their families while entire small Houses had decided to pledge their support for the rising families in the North in the hope of reward, bewitched by the tales of rising kings. The rest were murderers and thieves.
She did not ride alone. The Stark bannermen followed, led – oddly, by the Wilding king Tormund. He kept both eyes on her, trotting up and down the road. If the Northerners following had objections they didn't voice them. Perhaps they were too cold to care about the Wildling.
"We'll make camp at the Long Lake," he eventually said, signalling to the trail of men to take the fork toward the pale slither of ice to their right.
Apt, thought Melisandre. It wasn't the first time a Wildling king had seen those frozen waters.
They made camp right in the centre. It was the Wildling's that showed the men of the Vale how to cut holes through the ice to fish while the Stark men hunted in a nearby wood. The camp divided into smaller fires, all shrouded in a cloud of smoke and mist that was pressed close to the earth by the freezing air.
Tormund sat opposite Melisandre, staring. She wondered if, like Jon Snow, he could see through her glamor.
"Red-haired cunts should stick together."
Perhaps not... Slowly, she lifted her gaze to his greying canopy of red hair. It was overwhelmed by his beard which had grown several inches as the cold took hold. "Such pigment is not common where you are from." It was stated as a fact, not a question.
"I was always a bit of a bastard, me-self," Tormund insisted. "Who knows what was fucked to make me."
It was difficult not to admire his spirit – if not his choice of words. Even from the lake, they had a view of the Kingsroad and all the souls wandering toward the frozen edge of the world. Wordlessly, they sipped warmed wine and watched the sad trail of lights. "What drives men in such a desperate search?"
"Hope," he replied simply. "Same thing tha' brought us here." Tormund shoved his stick into the ice, chipping away aimlessly. "He was dead, you know. Gone. I seen some messed up shit beyond tha' wall but I never seen tha'."
"He spoke of it once," she brought the cup to her lips. Her eyes were set on the fire and its dancing flames. She imagined it as her soul, growing smaller in a sea of ice. "I asked him what he saw. Nothing, Snow replied. Shadows. Whispers. Something else... Too terrible to say. It was sleeping in the dark. That's what awaits us – a crypt full of whispers. Lost songs. Creatures from our nightmares. I think the fright snapped him back to life. Snow was stolen from death and death will come for him."
"Cheery company... 'ave a drink."
NEFER, PREVIOUSLY SI QO THE GLORIOUS – ESSOS
The sands gave way to rock. Shale collapsed into drifts of ghostgrass. Even that faded, strangled by the powerful roots of purple figs where the jungle prevailed. It existed in the last vestige of warmth behind a towering barrier of pastel cliffs that trapped the sun. On the other side of their ochre faces lay the frozen sea and beyond that – death.
Nefer was buried among this mess of foliage, scattered between fallen mountains, ancient eruptions and an ice age whose long lost glaciers had torn great scars through the land. The lava tubes beneath were littered with ceilings made of spider roots and carpets of orange mushrooms. It was here that the party led by Yi Ti prince, Bu Gai, paused – seeking shelter from the thrum of insects.
The traveller from Lorath collapsed against the rough volcanic wall. He was drowning in his own sweat – his skin cracked from their weeks in the desert sun now turned to sticky dead sheets with the salt water. He peeled them from his arm with a grimace of pain. The fresh skin below burned.
Suddenly, he let out a screech and backed away from the depths of the cave toward the mouth where green light from the forest beckoned. Suspended from the ceiling by a an old length of chain was the skinned body of a Dothraki rider, swaying slowly with a sickening creak. Is ponytail hung nearly to the floor, matted with blood. Beneath, his horse had been butchered and its pieces arranged to form a spiral of blood on the ground.
"Like shell..." Bu Gai managed, his language had improved over the long journey. He held his hands up and twisted them to demonstrate. "Sea gods. Old gods. These prayers."
The man from Lorath steadied himself and approached the corpses. He found the blood dry. There was evidence of festering flesh where the flies had come and gone. The meat had cured almost as if they were in a cellar. "Who?"
"N'ghaiese..." He nodded to some of their number, "Like Jogos Nai. Older. Fishermen."
From that the traveller understood the N'ghaiese to be related to the horsemen of the plains. Their barbarity did not shock him, only the artful way they chose to display the dead. "A man thinks this is a ritual..." He muttered, speaking to himself as no one else in their group could understand his words. With the eyes of the hoard on him, he stalked around the pieces of the slaughtered horse. "A ceremony to-" he paused, catching Bu Gai's attention. "Water? Ocean?"
Bu Gai pointed North. "Great sea."
"A ceremony to the ocean..." He squatted down to the dirt where a fresh flurry of mushrooms feasted on the corpse. "Or whatever lives beneath the waves."
Bu Gai rose from the rock where he'd rested, gesturing to the others to follow. He covered the wound in his stomach with layers of smoked cloth and had the witches in his caravan hiss over him while he slept. They were gifts from his horse-lord counterpart, Pol Qo but all the witchcraft in the kingdom could not save his soul. The fresh bindings at least, slowed the inevitable.
Their enormous entourage was pulled out of the surrounding jungle and into the lava tube.
"Name?" Bu Gai gestured at the man's chest. They'd been travelling together for many weeks and, try as he might, the Prince of Yi Ti could not free himself of the traveller.
"A man has no name." He was met with a great facade of confusion. "Lorath..." He decided upon instead, pointing at his own chest "A man's name is, 'Lorath'."
Bu Gai nodded and grunted the name in the back of his throat. The language of Yi Ti was a slither of sounds, perfectly rounding into each other like a song. The Common Tongue was abrupt. He opened his hand, pointing deeper into the tunnels and said one word. "Nefer..."
Above ground, the city was a ruin of fallen temples and strange, life-like sculptures terrifying traders brave enough to seek them out. Beneath, the ground had been burrowed out, mostly by the natural movement of molten rock enhanced by long gone ice and rushing melt-water. There were enormous bodies of fresh water kept in perfectly still lakes that never saw the sun. Chambers where gold lay beside grain in equal measure, guarded by skeletons of sea-snakes the size of Braavosi trade ships. All of it abandoned.
"Something happened here..." Lorath muttered, as the group proceeded slowly. They all held flaming torches and found themselves showered in a constant drip from the ceiling which hung close to their heads. He stopped at the sea-serpent's skull. Fragments of its skin lay in the dirt, curled and bleached from age while the rest of the corpse had rotted into nothing leaving only a spine. Despite the wealth locked in the frequent caverns that adorned the passage, no one dared raise a hand to it.
"Cursed..." Bu Gai explained. "All."
The far East was a festering wound of superstition and, after what Lorath had seen in the past year, he agreed with their paranoia. "Better that it be cursed and abandoned," he continued, sticking close to the prince, "because its inhabitants are reported to be the most fearsome barbarians known to build cities. If you could call this a city. Nest feels more appropriate. This party is a few months late. Oh... That's Nefer."
Lorath was brought to a stop by the abrupt end of the lava tube where it broke into a huge cavern. Big enough for a small city – or one of the Stepstones, it contained a maze-like collection of buildings forged from oily black stone. Their torches paled against the many giant urns scattered through the streets which never died, fuelled from gas beneath. The streets and restless waters of Nefer were crowded with corpses. Small with cone-shaped heads, their collective stench pushed the expedition backwards. A swarm of crabs shifted as they devoured the N'ghaiese. A mutter of prayers washed through the people.
Bu Gai stepped forward, about to undertake the twisting, black stairwell toward the city. Lorath's arm crossed his chest.
"No..."
The prince's lips cracked into a laugh. "Dead." He replied simply. There was nothing to fear from the dead.
Crossing the mythological city was the only way to reach the harbour. As a horde, they entered the streets. Lorath touched the wall of the nearest building, feeling the waxy surface of the stone rub off onto his skin. It was melted. They found more offerings to the sea gods. Spirals of white shells were common, scattered across the ground. The bodies themselves were riddled with wounds. Knives. Spears. Swords. Rocks. All of these things had been used in acts of violence. Lorath was relieved. Whatever killed these people, it has nothing to do with the sickness that was ravaging the far East and Bu Gai's beautiful city. His hands were smacked away.
"Not touch dead!" Bu Gai insisted, grabbing Lorath by the collar of his shirt. "They sleep. We quiet."
They picked their way along the streets. Lorath turned, catching sight of the near endless trail of their caravan. Animals. Children. Wagons. All of it was hauled along the cracked pathway. He was at the front with Bu Gai. The prince's hand kept brushing across the bandages on his stomach. His skin was paler than before. Discolouration left his veins a darker shade of blue.
On the other side they found the wall of the great sea temple. Its columns, made of the same black stone as the rest of the settlement, stretched all the way to the ceiling. Freezes had been carved into it displaying krakens, whales – ships smashed apart and sailors vanishing into waiting jaws beneath the waves. These were the polished faces screaming out at them. Lorath scratched madly at his piece of parchment, sketching what he could. They were truly in the depths of hell.
"Sea – listen..." Bu Gai whispered.
Indeed, the waves thrashed against the cliffs somewhere in the distance. The only way to the water for a hundred miles was through their great city's tunnels. They owned the water and the trade. The temple facade was a form of ornate gateway. The tunnel beyond was another cavity left behind by molten rock, grander than the last. It was walled in by a series of statues. They came in pairs, easily three times life size with their eyes fixed on their partner. Bu Gai stopped dead at the first set – recognition stilling him with fright. He said nothing. Proceeded into the dark with his torch and approached the next set of statues. This time he knelt down in front of one and placed his free hand on its stone feet.
"Name?" Lorath whispered, not sure how else to ask his question.
Bu Gai took another moment to finish his prayers. "Emperors..." he replied. "Kings..."
His kings. Kings of Yi Ti. They littered the tunnel, each stepping further back into history. Bu Gai must have recognised the first few sets as his kin but as they delved toward the water, the statues grew larger and their forms, more spectacular. Some of them carried weapons. A great spear with inlaid diamonds. A bow cutting layers of stone fabric. A sword.
Lorath looked down. The gravel turned to cobblestone tiles inlaid with runes. The pretend stone weapons became real. One statue clutched a dagger like death with its blade cut from black glass. Finally, another pair. One man. One woman. The floor was a carpet of unreadable text. Purple jewels, amethysts of varying size – some as large as his fist, were locked together concealing the stone beneath so that she wore the gleaming curtain as a dress. Unlike the stoic faces of her descendants, the Amethyst Empress' face was aghast in agony. Her hands clasped her stomach. Rubies bled through the precious stones. Her face, contorted with rage, was set on the statue opposite.
He turned to the emperor. In one hand he held a sword whose tip touched the ground. In his other was the dagger that killed the empress. The Bloodstone Emperor. This must have been a city of Yi Ti. An old heart. Its centre had moved many times.
The final statues formed sentries at the exit. A great white lion and a pale dragon watched the seas.
"By the old gods and the new..." Lorath whispered, as a gust of salt caught his hair. It was freezing. The cold lashed against the chalk cliffs that lined the entire sea from left to right, as far as they could see. Their tunnel emerged on a beach where long jetties collapsed in various states of disrepair, stretched into the water. The debris from the white faces of the cliffs had almost become rock with the pressure of the waves. Then, in the distance on their right – the Thousand Islands shrouded in sea mist.
Ice bergs loomed on the water line. Their ghostly forms ebbed at the horizon, slowly melting or crashing into the beach. The water was a dark green – cold. Lorath knew it well. These were exactly like the waters around his home. The plan had been to trade for a fleet of ships but there was no one to trade with and no boats.
"All this way – for nothing..." Lorath said in dismay. Bu Gai tapped him on the shoulder and pointed again to the East. Where the shadows of the Thousand Islands met the sea, he saw ships...
THE RUINS OF VALYRIA – THE SMOKING SEA
Quaithe tried to fight but sleep gripped her throat and forced her under.
She lay sprawled over Daario's bed, thrashing against the sheets as the pirate ship entered the first gasp of open water where it pulled away from the ruined islands of Valyria. The Sunset Sea delved into the Smoking Sea. Essos became Westeros.
The bloodstone dragged her deeper. Visions were baseless things, pits without end. Some dreamers had fallen forever, lost in the blur which left them collapsed in city streets, ranting at the moon with their eyes rolled back. Asshai was full of the fallen. She fought. Grasping at reality.
History collapsed around her. Past the wars of Westeros. Beyond her silver-haired kin. Dragon wings. A roar of fire. Rubble beneath the water. The Doom bled away into nothing but forest and sea. She landed in the North-East amidst a jungle littered with enormous black stones, freshly cut. Chalk cliffs swept around them, separating the pocket of warmth from the frozen sea beyond where bergs wandered and seals lay in the sun.
Tiny, sprite-like people wrapped in leaves and flowers scampered away from another block of stone as it was dragged toward the beginnings of a building. In the distance came the cry of a dragon living in the cliffs. Nefer, bustling soul of the sea-fairing Empire of the Dawn, was at its beginning.
Together, the imps and the pale-skinned, fair-haired people of Nefer planted Weirwood seedlings in a giant spiral so that when grown their branches might twist together in a forest of bone. Quaithe reached toward one of the saplings but her dream shook and she moved beyond the cliffs to the beach. It swarmed with ships. The infant empire had grown. Its simple people were adorned with jewels from all over the world. Their ships lined dozens of docks as Nefer became a trading city instead of a capital.
A pair of children played in the surf. A boy and girl. They ran from the water, shivering. The boy knelt first with his knees in the sand as he showed his sister a black jewel found in the waves. The bloodstone. A gift from the sea gods. The girl, older, tried to snatch the stone away but he pushed her to the ground and stormed off toward the cliffs. Quaithe noticed the small people watching from the caves, their faces untouched by time.
The boy became a man. He knelt under a twisted Weirwood forest and chanted at the stars with the stone in his hands. A sickness came over the people of Nefer. Their minds darkened. Violence spread. A civil war wiped out a third. The prince whispered to his stone again. The winds grew colder. Ice capped the chalk mountains and the first snow dusted the forest.
The violent inhabitants turned on the Children of the Forest, murdering them – skinning them and suspending their corpses from the trees they helped plant. The seas churned. Storms cracked over the city. Floods gouged their way through the black stone buildings until they were left fighting among the ruins of the city while the snows fell.
A man was captured and tied against a Weirwood. The Children circled, chanting their own prayers until one approached with a shard of volcanic glass. The man screamed as it was plunged into his heart then held in the wound as magic ravaged his flesh. His eyes rolled back. The snows seeped into his skin and turned him to ice. He became a walking demon, stitched together with old magic. Released, he bent down and took hold of his sword. Its blade quivered and transformed into a point of ice. The Children backed away as the Other headed toward Nefer.
They have done this before.
When the prince came face to face with the Other, he fled South with his army.
Snow encased the entire Northern shoreline. Ice bridged the Plains of the Jogos Nai and in twenty years the top half of the empire became an impasse of Winter. Glaciers locked The Mountains of the Morn and even The Shadow Lands had their first snow. Asshai glittered at the water's edge. A beacon of hope in a ravaged empire. The realms of men gathered at her gates, preparing for the final war.
The young girl was grown. She sat upon a black throne surrounded by murals of wyvern. Her silver hair curled to her waist while a thin crown of amethysts was draped over her head.
"Brother..." she addressed the veiled man in her court.
"Wife..." he replied, nudging his hood back. A fresh scar crossed his face, put there by a blade of ice. The wars outside raged.
"You should have left that thing where you found it. Our gods are old and full of malice. You were played by their will."
"I know," he agreed. "It is too late to put the stone back."
"You are not the first plaything of the gods. The Pearl Emperor built a wall of ice and five forts to stop these creatures coming through the Land of the Shrykes many thousands of years ago." She had been reading. Parchment lay scattered across the floor, tossed there in anger. "Their battle was finally won with the complete destruction of our ancestral home. It lays as a thousand islands in a vengeful sea because the gods willed it so. That is not an option for us."
"You've been dreaming," he realised.
"You are not the only one who speaks with the gods. Our world is dying," she replied, then stood and walked over to a table where a beautiful, milkglass sword had been laid out. Its blade was so sharp that it had scratched the pedestal. "The steel was mined in the West, picked out of the sands where a great star fell."
"Did your council of witches tell you to do this?" He could feel their presence behind the throne room door, gathered from all corners of the realm with their horse-gods and goat-gods; gods of the fish and gods of the jungle. None of them had the power to push back the snows.
She shook her head and outstretched her hand. "The stone." He was reluctant. "Don't you trust me, husband?"
That was a difficult question. "With the fate of the realm, yes." With their lives? He relinquished the bloodstone which she set into the sword's hilt and folded the gold clasps in place. "And that, you believe, will be enough to fight them? You've not seen what I have."
"Of course not. Those creatures are born of magic." The Amethyst empress held the sword up to the starlight raining in from the open roof of the temple. "We should have stayed here," she lamented, of Asshai. "The North has been poison for us, as far back as history stretches." The ground beneath them shuddered with another quake. The gods were restless. The dragons, too. "Now, this city will burn before the Winter is out." She handed the sword to her husband and brother. "Blood magic can only be undone by blood magic. Only life can pay for death."
He refused the sword. "You are mad!"
"I am right..."
When the sword plunged through her heart, the Bloodstone Prince became an Emperor. He howled at the night while his sister bled over the floor. As he pulled the sword free, it caught alight – burning green with her blood. Snow fell with ash and the mountains burned.
Quaithe looked down to find her feet standing in a pool of blood. Instead of black walls, she was surrounded by animal skin. A Dothraki tent fought against the snow with its fires stoked high and a cluster of witches trembling on the floor.
Then she woke.
THE SKIES ABOVE DORNE
The black throne loomed in front of Daenerys. Her dreams returned her here. Over and over. This time, a body lay in the centre of the room, covered in a layer of ash and ice. The pool of blood surrounding the woman was dry. Shadows crept in from the edges of the room. Necromancers and witches wailed at the sight. They slit their wrists over the corpse as the mountains erupted behind the city.
Risen from death into something not-quite-life, the empress boarded a ship to the West while war ravaged the shores of The Shadow Lands. She felt it – when the blade finally sliced through the last ice demon. The ring of volcanoes erupted, setting a line of fire through the sky. Asshai turned from gold to black, poisoned by an explosion of magic until only its skeleton remained to haunt the shore.
Her brother followed but standing on the foreign shore where the survivors made their home, he looked upon his sister's walking corpse and killed himself, falling on the milkglass sword. She and her followers retreated to an island locked by land and there they waited for several thousand years.
Daenerys felt every one of those years brush by. The Red Mountains twisted and dunes moved like waves toward the sea. Starfall remained the same.
Daenerys fell to the ground, knocked off balance. Snow. Ash. She looked up and saw open fields of ice where The Wall now stood. The silver woman walked toward the abyss. Daenerys tried to follow – stumbling forward. The ice cracked beneath her feet. A chasm appeared. For a moment she balanced on the edge, screaming at the empress – and then fell.
Jorah lunged after the queen, wrapping one arm around her as she walked straight off Drogon's back into the air. The dragon, having sensed the danger, veered sharply, trying to land. Neither made it in time. Jorah caught Daenerys but lost his footing. Wildly, he grasped at one of Drogon's horns. Brushed the ivory surface and then fell.
Daenerys woke from her vision with a rush of desert air and Drogon's screams. She was in Jorah's arms and the pair were falling. They hit the cusp of a dune a moment later. Jorah growled at the impact – his pain mirrored immediately in the queen's shoulder. Then, they rolled – tumbling in a vicious spiral of sand and milkglass. Drogon circled above, panicking.
Eventually their bodies dug into the sand and they stopped, coughing up sand. Jorah laid back, panting furiously with his heart racing. He swore at the old gods. Daenerys shook, certain she could see blood on her skin from her dreams.
"Not now..." Jorah raised a hand to stop her, as she tried to explain. He didn't care what she'd seen in the dark. Those visions were going to be the death of her – and him. "Look..."
Yronwood's men were at the edge of The Sunspear. The palace fires were lit. The sun was primed below the water line – about to lift from its nightly grave. A blush of orange lingered in the sky. Yronwood's army was about to breach the gates.
