SUMMERHALL RUINS – THE STORMLANDS
Quaithe found herself haunted by the Isle of Faces. Row upon row of Weirwood suffocated the marsh, perched atop atolls of swamp grass. Their horrific, weeping eyes created pools of sap, ankle deep which clung at her skin. They smelled of death distilled into resin. A battle raged in the distance. Swords clashed. Leather wings beat the sky fanning flames that birthed storms of smoke. They mingled with the fog, dancing around the white trunks.
Bittersteel.
He rested against one of the howling faces in full armour.
She resisted the urge to fling her body at his feet. He vanished, reappearing a breath from her lips. A hand glid across her hip, eliciting a moan that had no place in her thoughts. Quaithe warmed to the touch. This is how she remembered him. Dark hair and fierce eyes that locked with hers. The gods would never allow him to age. He was frozen in this moment, an inch from death.
It comes as she knows it will. A sword in the dark. Slicing, upwards, through his chest, scattering her lover into shadows.
A tear hits the water at her feet. The faces change. They whisper amongst themselves, jeering. Bleeding. It is followed by a gentle rustle of wings. Quaithe closed her eyes. She wants to leave this place but the visions have a powerful hold over her. A force is keeping her here that is not her own.
"Shiera… Open your eyes..."
Afraid. She does not know what version of her other lover waits beyond the veil of darkness. Brynden or the Bloodraven? "I saw what you saw," she whispered. "I know who Daenerys is – was – might be and what lurks in our line. Westeros is nothing but the tip of a sword."
"The tip is what pierces the armour. Many times I tried to show you," Brynden edged toward his half-sister. He is the one holding her here. "This is not a dream, Shiera, nor is it a vision made of memory. I am not in your head – I am in the North, beyond The Wall – a prisoner of these trees."
Her eyes remain tightly closed. There is unmistakable horror concealed in his voice. He shields her from it.
"I feel myself fading into them." He continued. "Not long now… Their branches scratch across my skin like the claws of a bear about to feast."
Quaithe's throat tightened. Hot tears formed at the crease around her eyes. "You have been dead to me for a lifetime."
"We are in a place beyond lies."
"There is no such thing." She could not hold herself back any longer. Quaithe opened her eyes and found Brynden – a scrawny, silver-haired man with a flare of wine-stained skin. Beautiful in his rake-like form before Bittersteel had taken his eye. His hold over her had not diminished in all the years of silence. "You see?" Her question was soft and sad. "This is a lie. We are both ruined by the world and yet not a scratch of it on our faces."
"All things wear a mask in death. That is where we hover, Shiera. On the edge of life. We'll always find each other at the blade."
"Will I see you again?"
Brynden's gaze turned soft. Despite his sharp features he'd always been the gentler of the brothers. Aegor was drawn to Shiera's murky soul – he loved the malady of her sorcery. Brynden knew her goodness. "No. My mortal flesh is done but you can always find me in the trees..."
Another tear. "All I hear is their screams."
"And all I hear are yours, raging from the flames."
Quaithe startled into life, gripping her throat. Her heart throbbed in agony against her chest while the scented drapes covering the litter blurred her vision of the world. For a moment the mist lingered until she realised that it was real.
The Queen's convoy stopped at the base of the mountains where the Boneway tapered off into an indiscernible smear. The Red Mountains were at their most striking – nearing scarlet as though made from the tail of a falling star. It was easy to see why the Targaryens had chosen this position for their crowning palace – it was surrounded by a wall of flaming hills and a sky that never settled.
Its air of drama turned macabre...
Summerhall's carefully constructed gardens and layered avenues had spun themselves into a foreboding forest that wrapped around the remaining framework of stone. The famous path leading directly to the castle was wild with its pairs of aging elms woven at their crests while many of the striking 'V' branches had snapped off in the Stormland winds and lay broken on the ground.
A crunch underfoot betrayed a hidden drive of cut-marble and scraps of blushing stone all consumed by the thick carpet of wild marsh grass. Purple-headed weed rippled with the mist that many fearful eyes mistook for smoke.
Framed behind this maelstrom were the jagged remains of the building itself. Like burned hands, pieces of wall reached out with the blackened fingers of a Rhoynar beast. Moments of beauty were covered in soot and then strangled with fresh layers of vegetation. An entire Godswood grew within the heart of Summerhall complete with several Weirwood whose pale bark appeared as shrikes against the black.
Quaithe counted the ghostly trees. Seven. One for each egg that perished in the flames.
Queen Daenerys slid from her mare and, barefoot, approached the wreck. Her knight fell in step behind, leading both horses gently by the reins. They dipped their heads toward the rectangular pools of water but Jorah would not let them drink. The rest of their convoy fanned out on the flat ground and began preparations for camp.
"Khaleesi..." Jorah warned, softly. "There could be thieves hiding in the ruins. Allow me to send men in first."
She would not be deterred. "Nothing lives here but the trees..." Daenerys replied. "Feel it? There is a stain of magic in the air. It whispered through the mountains to me. I could hear it the moment we reached the shores of Westeros."
"Sometimes I feel it," he admitted. The runes beneath his skin itched with the failed sorcery that brought Summerhall to an end.
"The ashes of my family lay within these walls," she continued, picking her way carefully under the avenue of creaking limbs. Up close, they were brutally damaged – scarred and withered with jagged burns from lightning strikes. Either the gods were furious or they loved to watch life burn. "Rhaegar was born here."
"I know." Jorah replied softly. "The stories of Summerhall reached as far as Bear Island. They were told in victory by men who should have known better than to toast the death of children." Jorah could not read her intentions and he wasn't sure that he liked the way her hands brushed the rough bark. His Queen was edging closer to the gods and surely, to death itself. "What do you intend?" He asked. "There is nothing left in this place except the wailing of ghosts. Those are no good to you. I think they drove your brother a little mad." He warned.
She could not accurately express her reason. "I am not certain. My visions do not always share detail. When I see Summerhall in their depths it is always as ash – already perished. It is cold and dead. I have no illusions of bringing it life."
They reached the marble stairs that swept elegantly to the front door, caught in a cascade of lichen. The dragon-capped bannister was covered in veils of moss while the chorus of frogs screaming from every shadow silenced fearfully as they moved closer. Shreds of the ancient Targaryen banners hung from the trees like pieces of flayed skin. Daenerys cast her eyes over them and imagined her sigil in equal ruin – buried in ice.
Jorah left the horses at the base of the stairs and offered the Queen his arm. She placed her delicate hand over the leather straps wrapped around his skin. Together they climbed to the top and found a gaping wound where the doors should have been. They could hear the banners in the wind and the groan of branches against the rock.
"It is barely standing." Jorah touched one of the stones near the doorway that had been split apart by swollen roots. "Indeed, one might wager that the forest is holding up the walls." Parts of it had been turned to glass, melted in the inferno. These caught the light transforming the ground into an odd reverie of misshapen stars caught on the wrong side of night.
Daenerys slipped away from Jorah's hold. She edged through the door and scrambled over the rubble. Her bare feet turned green and black.
"Careful, Khaleesi..." Jorah followed. "More Targaryens have died here than anywhere else in Westeros. Do not add your name to that list."
"The only person keeping a list is that wolf-girl and my name is not on it." Daenerys knew well where she died and it was not in the ruins of Summerhall. Inside the palace there was no roof except that of the trees. "There is power in the blood of kings. Summerhall is drenched in it." They entered what was once the main hall. An iron chandelier lay at their feet with thick spider webs dragged between the bars. "Seven dragon eggs," she began, leading Jorah deeper into the maze, "the last in Westeros taken from sickly, cat-sized creatures dying in the Red Keep."
"Captivity kills dragons."
"Is that a warning for me or my dragons?" She could not tell. Ser Jorah guarded his words, even from her. Finally she stopped, eyeing the porcelain bark. The line of Weirwood looked like the ribs of a corpse. "Bring me the mage, I would speak with him."
"You are awake?" Jorah found Quaithe lingering at the edge of the overrun avenue. She was staring at the collapsing ruin but her golden mask hid the tears that were running down her flesh. In all the years that had passed part of her had managed to deny that night. She pretended that the flames in her dreams were nothing but tricks of the mind. Yet here it was. Solid. Real. Undeniable. Summerhall burned and with it her soul.
"Why has the Queen brought us here, of all places?" Quaithe could not fathom why.
"I am not sure but I suspect she intends to wake magic from this corpse. What?" He added, when Quaithe reached out and snapped her sharp hand around his arm.
"I would speak with her."
"She has not asked for you." Jorah felt his skin burn at her touch – painfully so. "Let go."
"The Queen will want to hear me. This, she owes."
Jorah did not know what to say when he appeared before the Queen with Marwyn, Quaithe and Sam in tow.
Ash was in a sack carried by Sam. The dragon was restless, squawking like a bird.
"My apologies. They insisted." Jorah offered.
"Let the dragon go." Daenerys nodded at Sam, who obeyed and placed the sack on the ground. As soon as the ropes were loosened, Ash scrambled out and vanished into the forest. Inside Summerhall they were completely cut off from the army. "Think carefully about staying." Sam exchanged a look with Marwyn but no one left. "Do you have something to say to me?" She asked Quaithe.
"Not in front of them."
"Yes, in front of them." Daenerys insisted. "I am done with schemes and lies."
The metal pieces on Quaithe's mask rustled. "My Queen, my kin, maesters are not to be trusted. They hate magic more than you can imagine. You are standing in proof of it. They may bow and cower to your vanity but their minds are full of rot, entrenched by the institution that birthed them."
"I know," Marwyn interrupted. "I have lived with their kind all my life and you are right, Quaithe. Yes, I know exactly who you are. I have seen you before, a long time ago when I was a scrap of a boy seeking mystery at the edges of the world. Let me assure you that I am not that kind of maester – neither is Sam." For all his easy airs, Marwyn was a dangerous, capable player who had seen more of the truth than most. "Asshai is a beast of a place but we have all been there – well, except for Sam but he has merits of his own. He lit the glass candles beneath the Citadel and slew a creature made of ice beyond The Wall." Marwyn took a bold step forward and knelt before Quaithe in honest submission. "You are a daughter of a king and whether you wish it or not, I serve you too."
Sam's eyes went wide. "She's a Targaryen?"
Marwyn nodded before struggling to his feet. "Oh yes and she was here the night Summerhall burned. Have you ever told the truth – is that what you have come to tell the Queen?"
"Whatever it is you intend," Quaithe ignored Marwyn and turned to the Queen, rattled. Her hands trembled but her voice held steady. "This is no place for magic. It is too dangerous. Anywhere but here. I beg you."
"It has to be here," Daenerys insisted, slipping away from them. "This is the place of our greatest misery. I came here to redeem it into something greater. Did you bring them?" Her knight nodded, moving forward with a leather wrapping. "Follow me."
Daenerys took them all deeper until they came face to face with one of the Weirwood trees. It was young and strong with smooth bark and no horrific face. There were no Children of the Forest to carve them any more and somehow that made these seven trees more powerful.
"Place the candles behind me," she directed Ser Jorah, who followed her order without question.
"Say it..." Marwyn closed in on Quaithe.
"She does not need to." Daenerys answered instead, though she kept her eyes on the tree. "Have the gods have punished you?"
"Beyond words." Quaithe whispered.
"Help me, then, all of you. When we walk out of these ruins it will be with a new dragon. Ash is born here, by my hand. A child of Summerhall. I am finishing what you started, Quaithe."
"Yes, my Queen..." They all murmured.
Jorah unsheathed the candles and stood them in the undergrowth, building the leaves around them to keep them upright. "Why the candles?" He asked. They were heavy in his hands and none of them a perfect black. The closer her looked the more he noticed their wisps of charcoal trapped in the glass. He knew Daenerys. She wasn't here solely to falsify the birth of a dragon. He recognised the mad glint in her eyes. He'd seen it before in the Great Grass Sea right before she mounted a pyre.
"As you said, we do not know what eyes watch from the other side. Whoever those eyes belong to – whoever is watching – I want them all to see what is coming for them."
Daenerys faced the arc of candles. One by one they lit in her presence. Images shimmered across the cut glass. The magic locked in the ruins fed into her bones. There was power in the House of the Undying and the burning hall of the Temple of the White Lion but here, where so much blood soaked the ash lay at her feet, her visions were at their strongest. She was doing everything to keep them from her waking world but now Daenerys was about to welcome them.
"I am Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons and you will hear my name until the end of time."
Jorah returned to stand with the others leaving the Queen on her own in front of the centre Weirwood. The other six were nearby, grown from the shattered eggshells. Seven trees for seven gods and all of them looked the same. Even that set him ill at ease. Who planted them? Was it Rhaegar trying to find poetry in death? Is that who Daenerys was looking for?
"Your sword, Mormont."
His Queen never called him that so he assumed it was for the benefit of those watching through the candles. He unsheathed Dawn and carried it to her, laid elegantly over both his palms. The blade was milky, near grey in the filtered light. He had a thousand questions but dared none of them. She wrapped her hand around the handle and then asked him to step away, which he did.
Marwyn was transfixed, aroused by her blatant display of power. Too long had magic festered in the dark. Sam – he knew this feeling from Castle Black when the Red Witch hissed her incantations. Quaithe – Quaithe shook in terror.
Daenerys took a measured step backwards, adjusting her weight with the heavy sword pointed toward the heart of the Weirwood. Her hands were steady. Her heart – between beats. The ghosts of her ancestors watched on from their shallow graves. Her enemies lingered at glass curtains.
She lurched forward, violently piercing the bark with Dawn. The blade slid cleanly through until only the handle remained. A sharp snap ripped the air apart then thunder, booming over the ruin. It reverberated so hard that parts of the wall tumbled around them forcing Sam to stumble out of the way. The rest of them ducked – Quaithe fell to her knees.
Then it happened.
Jorah had witnessed her do many things but never this. Maybe he was wrong and Daenerys was not a queen but a god made flesh.
A green flame erupted from the wound where the sword and tree met. It raced out, engulfing the Weirwood in a burning hell that raged without heat. The bark was undamaged, white as pearl beneath the fire. One by one, it spread to the other six trees until all were alight. Daenerys leaned in to the tree and placed her lips on the bark where a thick river of sap dribbled out. The flames melded harmlessly with her skin as she closed her eyes and drank from the Weirwood.
It was an abomination. The Queen was drinking from the tears of the sacred trees. It was forbidden but she cared nothing for the old rules and even less for the new. She drew back and wiped the edge of her lips which carried a black stain. The flames had grown, stretching well above the roof. The sticky liquid in her throat tasted of foul perfume, decay and ice.
Quaithe tried to move to her but Jorah grabbed her roughly and dragged her back. "We do as we are told!" He hissed at her.
The flames changed, producing heat but Daenerys could not tell if this was real or part of a vision that was threatening to take over her conscious. Fighting the pull was impossible. In an instant the green flames shifted to red. The forest burned away and the inferno melted the remaining stone. Summerhall became rivers of fire that ran by her feet. A dragon sang. Ash. All the dragons sang to the Weirwood.
Screaming.
Daenerys turned to find her company gone, replaced by Targaryens racing through the flames, tearing at their clothes with hysterical shrieks. Quaithe was there, back against a wall about to burn. The flames of Wildfire spilled over the floor toward her, climbing through pools of green. They caught her flowing robes. Reached into her silver hair…
The flames evaporated. Summerhall became young ruin with saplings and the beginnings of life. A boy scampered over the soot and perched on the remains of a window. He sings – mournfully.
"Rhaegar?" Daenerys whispered, tilting her head. The boy turned – offered up a smile as though he could see her ghost. Perhaps he could. The future and the past were the same thing to the Weirwood.
"Daenerys!"
The voice was distant. Part of the smoke. She paid it no attention.
Rhaegar's song continued but now the flames had bled from one vision into the next. This is different from her dreams. The world is solid. Even the ground beneath gives her purchase, allowing her to walk forward until she, too, is leaning against the window with the child. He looks nothing like Viserys. Where his bones tapered to narrow joins, Rhaegar's stretched into firm, bold edges fit for the face of a king. He was the one born for the crown, not her.
The song stopped.
"Look after him." The boy asked, kicking his legs against the rock. They are words between a shadow and a ghost.
"Who?" Daenerys asked. "Name them and I swear it."
"My boy..." Rhaegar held a stone in his hand. He chipped it against the wall of Summerhall leaving gashes in the rock which bled like the eyes of the trees.
Sam was the first to roll out of the carnage of flame and smoke. Fire had taken hold of Summerhall for the second time, incinerating the remains with violent bursts of unnatural flame that appeared to burn green at its heart – fuelled by magic.
The steps leading up to the inferno were covered in the Queen's terrified soldiers. A dozen hands reached for Sam, spiriting him away from danger and onto a spot of grass near the water. Gilly was on him at once, splashing his face. He wanted to push her away but his senses were overrun. All he could do was lay there and stare at the sky while it turned from blue to grey.
Jorah carried Quaithe from the flames. She was limp in his arms, passed out from fright. The edges of her mask had slipped revealing a tiny slither of ruined skin. He transferred her to the arms of a Dothraki blood rider and then ducked straight back into the billowing smoke amid the howled protests of his men. None could follow. The heat pushed them back.
"Marwyn!" Jorah shouted, covering his face with his arm. It did little to combat the filthy air that tried, with every breath, to choke the life from him. There was heat now. The green flames were harmless enough but the orange monsters working their way around the walls were real. They snapped at him like hungry vipers.
Coughing to his left revealed the large man, doubled over.
"Get up!" Jorah grabbed onto his arms and hauled with all his strength. "Up or die here, I'll not carry you." Jorah managed to get the man moving though Marwyn made a final move for a glass candle that had not entirely perished. "Forget them, you fool – they are gone." The candles had melted into shimmering pools and lay in the ash like black tears. Jorah wondered if that had been his Queen's intention all along.
As the air thickened, Marwyn managed to amble toward the light on his own and escaped the flames leaving only Jorah and Daenerys tapped inside Summerhall.
"They're still in there!" Darkstar fronted the flames but like the others, found himself unable to push through the burning wall.
"Nothing is in there that's still alive," Marwyn coughed out the contents of his lungs over the steps.
"The Queen is in there." Darkstar reared toward the flames again.
"Then the Queen is dead."
Everybody turned away from Summerhall and looked toward the sky. Two of the Queen's dragons had come swooping from the mountains. They screeched mournfully, flying toward Summerhall. Once overhead they circled then did the unthinkable – opening their mouths to jets of fresh dragon fire.
"Stop! Stop!" Darkstar waved his hands frantically at the beasts but they were caught up in the frenzy.
Once Jorah fell he could not find his way back up. The smoke was oppressive. It forced his face into the leaves which had dried to a bitter layer of crumble against which his last breaths gasped. There was a red glow on all sides, each indiscernible from the next. He could not remember which way to run. With every breath of poisoned air he cared less. Sleep beckoned. No, not sleep. Death. It had courted him once before and he remembered the touch of its lips.
All Jorah could do was roll onto his back. He refused to die facing the earth.
He could see the flames, pushing through the veil of smoke. His limbs were too heavy to lift so instead he watched with a morbid fascination. They danced for him. Twisting and curling. One went for his hand but at the last moment, recoiled. Jorah thought it a trick of the light until it happened again – the hungry flames diverting at the last moment, refusing to touch his skin.
Jorah looked more closely at his hand and found the runes near black. Her blood. Fire had never laid a hand on his Queen and now it shied away from him. He tested his theory – swiping his hand through a fresh column of fire. It jeered away from him angrily. Harmless.
Well fuck…
Renewed, Jorah forced his body to stand. The fire bent around him, keeping him cocooned in its terrifying veil of flame. He moved cautiously, pressing deeper into Summerhall until his world was a blur of light. It was surreal, standing in the depths of something no man was meant to see. In its own way there was beauty and the lick of flame consuming the forest gave off its own type of song. A cracking. Like ice.
Indeed it was a song that Jorah heard first. A mournful dragon cry cutting through the fire.
He found Ash clawing one of the Weirwood trees that was still alight with the green fire. Daenerys was nearby standing in front of the sword. Jorah watched as she wrapped both her hands firmly around the hilt and dragged it back from the tree. The moment the two parted, the green flames were sucked back into the Weirwood.
The sword was heavy in her hands and dripping sap at her feet. For a moment she does nothing but stare at the pools of black. This has happened before. She has seen it. In her dreams… Except instead of ash she remembers snow… There was a storm of ice. Daenerys lifted her eyes and found a squall of smoke, churning.
A bear emerged from its depths. Jorah.
