WINTERFELL – THE NORTH
Lady Lyanna Mormont waded out into the snow drifts that embraced the old grey walls of Winterfell castle. Small, her furs trailed and her sword cut a path in the powder. There were others about in the white wilderness – hunting deer and felling trees. Stragglers from collapsing villages deviated from the King's Road and forged a pilgrimage toward the partially rebuilt fortress in the hopes of somewhere warm to curl up and die. There were less of those every day. Most, bewilderingly, pressed on towards The Wall where they'd heard the Dragon Queen fed and housed any that could hold a sword. Let them go, she thought, we cannot feed them here.
Crows scattered all of a sudden, racing into the air as a tree hit the ice. Lyanna headed left, crossing the uneven approach to the Godswood. Under the bowers of its snow-laden trees, Lyanna finally felt a sense of peace. Winterfell brimmed with tortured souls. There wasn't a hallway or scrap of ground to escape their suffering. Here, at least, the only sound was that of the creaking branches and occasional swoosh of snow collapsing onto the ground. Building and building she could not help but think, until it swallows us whole.
Deeper, she emerged onto the rock path that wound between the roots of the larger trees whose gnarled and twisted forms crossed each other in their hurry for the ground. Ironwood. Willow. Birch. Finally, Weirwood. The largest and oldest its brutal skeleton thrived in the cold. In fact, Lyanna could have sword that since the weather turned for the worse the white tree had added several feet to its height and a fresh flourish of crimson leaves. The face on its trunk gaped in ritual horror, aghast at the view with sap gathering in its folds. Screaming.
The pool at the centre of the wood continued to steam. A vibrant border of green moss saturated the rocks partially submerged around the edge. Headstones for the oldest Starks poked out from the surrounds. No one paid them much attention in the Summer but now that snow smothered the forest, they were conspicuous as was the gaping entrance to the catacombs which lay as an open throat to the world of dead things.
Though her gaze lingered, Lyanna was not here for the filthy whispers of bones.
Instead she knelt in front of the Weirwood and laid her sword across the leaf-stained snow. The hideous face shed sap tears. Thick and flowing like satin on royal gowns, it collected in the creases of the bark. She dragged her finger through the honey-like substance and did as her mother had shown her – wiping it down the length of her blade.
Tears built in her eyes and spilled, dripping over the ground as she whispered sacred prayers.
Not yet a woman, she had led men to their deaths. Commanded them to suffer the wretched horror of war and they had followed. It was their loyalty that hurt. Their absolute obedience to her will as if she, too, were a god sitting on an ivory throne among the clouds. Power fed power, or so she'd heard. In Lyanna it made her ill but that was nothing to the realisation that she'd feared since her mother died and made her Lady of Bear Island – alone on the throne were her kin dead or vanished.
She was good at killing. Brutal decisions became her and it was only a matter of time before her blade did the slaughtering.
Lyanna did not come to the Weirwood to ask anything of the gods. She came to utter the names of the dead. Remember what you lost, her mother said. Tally the cost. So that is what she did. Lyanna took stock of her own butchery and tried not to imagine the list of names she'd need if the situation at Bear Island devolved into violence.
When her prayers were done she was left with only one name. Her cousin. The disgraced lord whose memory was spat at in the great hall.
Jorah Mormont.
Blood was blood and in times like these Lyanna knew that it would be foolish to remember the past when the future waited with a noose around its neck.
"You really must stop following me, Gendry..." Lyanna said, wiping tears from her cheeks. "Most importantly because you are not very good at it. Southerns don't understand snow. You are like children when you walk through it. Brash and vulnerable. Food for the wolves."
"And you are a child," Gendry replied defiantly, stepping from his hiding place.
"Fact is not a slight if it serves no disadvantage." Lyanna sheathed her sap-stained sword and turned to the young man. He was a good deal taller than her and thickening out across the shoulders with every day he trained. His hair was thick and black while his face continued to betray his secret by looking more and more like King Robert's ghost – or so she was told.
"I meant no harm in disturbing your prayers," he admitted, sincerely. "Only, I never saw you cry before."
"Nor should you have seen it this time." Lyanna failed to offer an apology for her humanity. "It is not weakness to cry, only to let your soldiers see it. Grown men, I assure you, have plenty of tears lodged in their beards."
"Are you made entirely of proverbs?" Gendry's eyes brightened in a smile.
Lyanna rolled hers in reply. "My life is built on what I have been able to learn. My mother was my tutor and I am the poorer for her loss. The very young learn best in stories."
"Man down at the smithy was mine – in more than sword making. I don't remember my mother. No one does."
"And everyone remembers your father."
"You know who I am."
"Aye. You are a piece on the board of kings."
Gendry drew closer to the warm waters of the pool and sat himself on an oversized rock. It was slippery underfoot but worth it for the steam swirling off the surface. Anything to heat his bones. "I don't much like the games kings play," he admitted. "The last time I saw them played, a red witch tried to sacrifice me to bring on a storm. This place smells like Dragonstone. They burned bodies on the beach. At least they are already dead up here."
Lyanna crept in, wary but curious of the young man. She had not met many outsiders before coming to Winterfell. A boy from the South was somewhat of a novelty. "Magic is stronger in the North. It lives in the trees – in the air – in the blood of the old houses." Lyanna nodded at the gravestones. "There are men buried here that walked the world for hundreds of years and dreamed of aeons we will never see come to pass. Warlocks and skin changers – Greenseers..."
"Is that what your maester tells you?"
"No. That is what the songs say."
Gendry nodded at the bower of pale limbs twisted overhead. "I don't understand what Northern folk keep saying about these white trees. There was one at King's Landing but it was small, without one of them faces carved into the trunk."
"I can only tell you what my mother used to say when I was small." She climbed onto the rock beside him, rearranged his furs and looked over the lake to the mouth of the crypts. There was a near constant tumble of red leaves onto the surface. "Long ago, there were forests everywhere and trees like this. From the furthest lands of Winter to the Arm of Dorne. Perhaps all the way to the Free Cities. Their roots go deep into the earth, knitting together until some find themselves so deep that they touch the corpses of our sleeping gods. The Old Gods don't die – they dream of everything that was and is. The trees heard these whispers and shared them with the Children."
"I have heard stories of the Children – how they broke the Arm of Dorne."
"Well, the stories go that some of the First Men took these Children to bed and their blood runs through the North. Those that have the gift can hear the Weirwood trees dreaming with the gods below."
"And the faces?"
"Dreams are one thing," Lyanna murmured, "but the Children gave the Weirwood eyes with which to see."
Gendry became wary of the branches overhead. The North was a cold, frightening place. "Are there any Children left?"
"No one knows. Uncle Jeor thought so. He said the Freefolk beyond The Wall saw them often enough in the Haunted Forest. They haven't been seen this side for hundreds of years."
"And you, Lady Lyanna – do you have their blood?"
"Blackwood blood – that is what they call it. And the answer is no but you do. Gendry of the Waters, all you really are is a dragon that married a Blackwood. That is why your blood has value to the red witch, it contains two of her favourite things."
Gendry stared at the frozen world for a long time before shaking his head. "I don't feel it," he breathed, "whatever it is that you folk do. I look there at that snow and I think I'd rather the waves of the Blackwater."
"You've never dreamed?"
"Only the things men dream of."
Lyanna raised one of her thick eyebrows in amusement. There was nothing, it seemed, that surprised a bear.
"You then – you dream?"
She nodded as a fresh flurry of snowflakes caught in her hair. "Mostly of ice. There's a place I go where the seas have frozen in the night. The surface is buckled with waves paused in the cold. It goes on forever… Nothing but white. That's what I see." Lyanna did not tell him that she walked those ice fields as a white bear, heading into oblivion.
"These roots."
"What?"
"Of them Weirwood trees," Gendry clarified. "How deep to they go?"
"Deep as the mountains are high."
They both lifted their heads. An ice wind tore at the canopy of the Godswood, bending the trees enough to glimpse the Southern tip of the Frost Fangs. It was an evil rise of stone, with snow draped over the black like white velvet. Mist rose off its vertical flanks like smoke as though it were on fire.
"I heard," Gendry admitted, "about the fleet that sailed into the Bay of Ice. What will you do?"
"Break bread. Be the perfect host. They have not come for our small outcrop of rock in the sea – the Queen's Eastern fleet are moored beside the ice cliffs that lurk beneath Eastwatch. Good luck to them, I say. No force has held that scrap of stone and lived out the year. It is a harsh place full of angry souls buried underfoot."
CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL
Polished dragon scale had a pearl-like finish. The translucent surface caught the light and reflected it back in streams of colour, the same as spilled oil in the mud. It was strong too, light and sharp. Before Tormund left he'd given Littlefinger a roughly fashioned arrow head which he rolled over and over in his hand, considering it in the candlelight. The rest Tormund gave to the old Wildling women working in the armoury. They stored it away in the dark. Castle Black was turning into a crypt full of trinkets men would never return for.
He stood beside one, even now. A sword laid against the wall with blood dried on the leather grip. Forgotten. Its owner roamed sightless through the snow.
"Right yer can come in..."
Littlefinger stirred at the scratch of Thorne's voice dragging around the ajar door. It was chased by smoke, escaping the office. Dwindling forests forced The Watch to burn green pine despite the layers of filth it produced. A wall of it seeped through Littlefinger's skin as he entered and immediately took stock of the room. The Lord Commander's office was small, freezing and desperate. He'd seen fishmongers and whores with more to their name than the Night's Watch. Then there was Thorne's raven. A filthy thing it perched on the back of his chair like a tentacle curled around the Salt Throne. Side to side its small head moved – each black eye getting a solid look at Littlefinger. Corn. Corn. Corn. It snapped its beak impatiently. Corn. Though its demands fell on deaf ears. Thorne was too busy staring at the boarded window and the foot-long icicles that had formed along its sill, hungry to consume the warmth.
"Do you have need of me, Commander Thorne?"
It took Thorne a moment to draw his attention from the window and stare down the mocking lord. "Drop the ceremony, Baelish. I know you believe yourself hard done by being up 'ere and all but the whole fuckin' realm has an axe to grind when it comes to fate. Tell yer the truth, I wouldn't like to be a god at a time like this. Forget prayers – the air is thick with screamin' fucking misery. Had it myself this morning. A man with his hand removed at the wrist by a surgeon used to horses. Frostbite is nasty business. It's the stink of it. There is nothing in this world like the stench of green flesh rotting on the limb. Poor bastard. Better ter die. What chance has he… Good hand fed to the dogs."
Littlefinger reverted to silence. Listen. Not to what people say but to what they try to hide. The moment someone forced him to hold a sword, that day would be his last. He'd give the Commander no cause to hasten its approach.
"Aye, quiet bugger now, aren't yer? Have no fear of causing shock, I remember when yer were born – an' all that came after. Sweet on that Tully girl – all the good it did yer. They're a hard lot, those river people. I've a new brother says Catelyn's ghost wanders the swamp, eyes like stone and a strip of puckered flesh where they dragged the knife across her throat." Thorne noted Baelish's steely expression. He had an incredible talent for concealing his mind. A liar. "Tell me, how many languages did you pick up during your business enterprises?"
Littlefinger shifted under his black cloak. The coarse wool itched through the thin cotton shirt. It smelled of the dead boy who'd worn it before him. "A few. Some of them well – most of them less so. Dornish, I suppose. Braavosi. I understand a few screamed Dothraki words and I can barter with the Hill Tribes when the need arises."
"High Valyrian..."
There was a palpable danger to the answer but even more so to a lie. "Naturally. I can read and write it well enough as any. My pronunciation is questionable. There are not many this side of the Narrow Sea that dare to speak it since it has fallen out of fashion."
"Makin' a come back."
"So I have heard."
Thorne appreciated that Baelish was a smug bastard with a complex but his talents had value. "Good enough," Thorne nodded, making his mind up. "Today's your lucky day, Baelish."
Petyr seriously doubted it.
"We've some foreign guests – made themselves at home."
Petyr risked a step toward the desk. The crow fluttered its wings, shedding a feather. "Are you suggesting that I travel to Westwatch?"
Thorne stared dead at Littlefinger. "That information, however you came by it, is not fer you or anyone else. I understand that you have friends in high places, Baelish and that those friends share things with you that you've no right to know. Do me a favour and keep their contents to yerself or I'll find myself in the mood to organise a ranging party and I'll give you the honour of leading it."
Littlefinger's reply was a curt nod. "Where then? Clearly you require a translator or I'd be training with those baker's boys in the mud."
"Aye, I do. Tormund needs you at Eastwatch. There were runners came this morning."
Now Petyr was properly confused. It showed on his brow and the slight twist in his neck. "The Wildling king can speak High Valyrian. Tormund has an uncommon talent for foreign tongues."
"He has decided not to let on…"
"So… While he listens to what our guests really think, I am to act as official mediator?"
"That's about the sum of it. If I were you I'd take my chances with old words over frozen blades. You'll take the path along the top of the wall and I'll spare two rangers to keep you company. You're a clever man so I am certain I don't have to remind you that this Eastern army represents swords on The Wall. It might be in conflict to your nature but at The Wall we don't give two shits for politics. Your goal is to keep the peace and make sure those cunts feel welcome and that nobody takes enough offence at their presence to start a fucking war. When the dead come I want as many vicious fucks waiting to greet them as humanly possible. That's not going ter happen if we've turned ourselves into a tide of blood."
Commander Thorne was one of the most weathered men in the Seven Kingdoms. Little surprised him and nothing slipped by without him taking note. That said, he was not so good at hiding his secrets. Littlefinger sniffed them out. "There was more…?"
Thorne nodded and produced a hastily scrawled parchment. "This came with the man sent to fetch you. Take it. See what you make of it."
He did. "Old parchment," noted Littlefinger, handling it. "Fresh ink. Probably spent a century in a desk before being dragged out. Written in a hurry, too. This is – well, that is to say, I know what it looks like but-"
"Get on with it, Baelish. This is not a test, it's a question."
"The note is written in Asshai'i – poorly copied, if the formation of the text is anything to go by."
"Can you read it?"
Petyr scoffed. "No. There are barely a handful that could and fewer still that would admit to it. You – you want their names..." He sighed, shaking his head. For once he didn't know what was going on. "Certainly Leyton Hightower. He traded in writing with merchants for artefacts in Asshai."
"Be that as it may, Old Hightower is dead."
Petyr was more surprised by his own ignorance than the news. "That mad bastard Marwyn, if he's still alive. Varys – maybe although he may have exaggerated his talents and a sea captain used to run a smuggling ring for Stannis Baratheon. Of course, there are others but you'd have to cross the Jade Sea to find them."
"I will start with Marwyn. At least we know where to bloody find him." Thorne hesitated, eyeing Baelish carefully until the lord became uneasy. "You'll need more than that to wear. Eastwatch is a fucking bitch of a castle. That end of the world… Mark my words, that place wants to kill. It ain't just the cold. There's a filthy magic in that part of the realm. Yer get used to it, living on The Wall but there are still places where it rises up and smacks you on the face."
Littlefinger's lips pressed into a wry smile.
"Ah… Yer don't believe in magic, do you?" Thorne ran his finger down the crow's neck. It ruffled its feathers up against his flesh. "Take care, Baelish. Magic doesn't require belief to slaughter."
Days travelling along the cusp of The Wall gave Littlefinger a feel for the rhythm of the world. Living in King's Landing he'd forgotten. Cities were deaf. Riverrun had seasons but they were often from one tide of wet to the next. Endless downpours that endured for months until the marshes became bogs and eventually expansive lakes consumed everything from Tumbleton to Fairmarket. Cat used to whisper in his ear that there were faces in the water. Dead staring out from their graves. Floating to the surface to drift in effervescent rivers, travelling to their gods in the sea. Another of her honey-lies. He learned his trade from her. No matter how many falsities she wove in his mind, he loved her all the more.
Was she there, he wondered, wandering as a veil of white flesh – hiding in the reeds with nails like claws waiting to snatch fishermen to their deaths? Death preserving her hatred and giving it breath… If he thought it were true, he'd wade into the waters and fall into her embrace. Pay his painted rocks to the Seven. Lay in their cold hearth...
The Fingers in the Vale of Arryn were different to the Riverlands. They had seasons driven by the wind. In the Summer it brought the storms which built all day over the water until monstrous caverns surged, thick and grey as the hell at Old Valyria then they broke over the fishing settlements in roars of light and fury. Terror, so overwhelming, that they hid in the sea caves, lit fires and told stories from the Dawn. Winter winds never stopped. Instead of storms they dragged sleet and snow straight off the razor-peaks. The Mountains of the Moon vanished under white coats that cracked at the lightest touch and sent avalanches into the farmland below leaving their grey-green peaks protruding line bone from a corpse.
Which brought Littlefinger back to The Wall. It was a peculiar perspective, living on the precipice between opposing fronts. The longer he looked, the more those fronts began to blur into a single existence. Both were frozen hells. It was The Wall that rang foreign and unnatural upon the landscape, creating a divide.
The Frost Fangs was a single range of mountains, running up the Western edge of the continent creating a bump in The Wall's height where it was forced to cross. In front to his left, the Haunted Forest butted against The Wall, thick and covered in heavy snow. From this height, he could see the corpses of felled trees poking out of the snow where the open plains towards Mole's Town had once been a dense forest.
For the first time, Littlefinger considered The Wall. Not its grand presence or fearsome exterior but rather what it meant.
He stopped dead.
The two watchmen tagging behind sank in together, sharing a swig of stolen whisky and whispering in heavy Stormland accents, grateful for the pause. Littlefinger knelt beside the short rise of ice that stopped men slipping to their deaths. The Wall was not made from 'blocks' of ice cut from a distant lake. He'd seen plenty of dwellings like that. No… This surface was smooth – faultless. It rose from the ground as the mountains did – a single slab of hell. There was no possibility that First Men built this wall with a few ropes tethered to mammoths and a giant on the side. The black forts pressed into the ice, he'd grant to their merit. Those were the same ugly wrecks as everything else up this way. There was one not far from where they stood – Sable Hall. Another monstrosity good for nothing but howling wind. A sad trail of smoke suggested that some poor mob of Night's Watch were trying to rekindle life in its decrepit bones. Good luck to them. If The Wall fell, the castles would be no good to anyone. They were about as much use as crow's nests on the mast of a ship.
"Why did they build The Wall?" Petyr asked his disinterested brethren. It was a startling fact, entirely ignored. There was a huge, frozen lump of fact washing about in a tide of whispers.
"Stupid fuck," one hissed, slightly drunk. He staggered to his feet and leaned back on the ice. "Everyone knows. Keep the bloody Wildlings out. Savage cunts. Good for a fuck if yer keen." Then they laughed. It was clear they had butchered their way through life for too long.
"That is a fabrication." Petyr replied. "Created later, I'd wager, when a few doe-eyed maesters got around to laying eyes on this thing." He shook his head. The bloody Wall was a snake on the landscape, twisting up and down as far as anyone could see from horizon to horizon. Its immensity was such that it became the landscape. "No - no..." Littlefinger's pace evolved a swagger, deepening as his mind ticked over. Oh he loved this – solving puzzles. There were games afoot. Old games. The players dead – or worse. "The Wall was built during the Age of Heroes," he continued, though his audience were mid-drag on barrow-weed, "when the Free Folk and Northern Men were indistinguishable from one another. Same stock. First Men. I heard the stories enough times when I was young. It was all tribes in these parts. Ah… You lot are from the Stormlands. It wasn't the same. Up here we had fragile communities picking out a living in the forests. Their kings were the strongest. Power when power meant something. See..." Littlefinger pointed out a few petrified relics down below. "The pines grew thick right the way over these fields of snow. Something killed the trees."
"Maybe they burned the forests," the other man replied, more seriously. He had the look of a bastard. "They was fighting the Children of the Forest. Makes sense. No forest, no Children."
Petyr nodded. Possible. "This wall is for the dead, of that I am certain. A thousand feet of ice. Terror builds walls." He gripped the ice beside him in frustration. "You'd think that the largest conflict in the history of Westeros might have better records. Those maesters toil for naught in their ivory tower. They bury lies under piles of inconsequential truths. Still, there is one relic that time and ambivalence could not erase..." And Littlefinger was standing on it.
"What does it matter why The Wall was built? It's 'ere."
"On the contrary," Petyr replied. "The why, the who and the how will be the only thing that saves us when the darkness sets in."
Petyr cast his eye South towards a stain of smoke. Winterfell, nestled closer than he'd like to oblivion. Every fibre of his soul screamed at him to run. To cross The Narrow Sea and hide in some rat-infested shadow to wait out the night but when he looked toward Winterfell he felt an ache in his heart. Sansa had him tethered to the North like a ship to port in a storm. All he could hope was that he did not dash himself upon the rocks.
...
He heard the cages swing in the darkness long before his torchlight fluttered across their rusted surfaces. The air at Eastwatch was thick with salt and ate away the steel, tearing like the gnash of curved fangs at any scrap of civilisation that dared to perch from its icy shore. Swords crumbled to nothing. The great latticeworks of scaffolding groaned and collapsed at the touch of passing storms. Only the stone remained, mined from the pit beside the fortress. It lay as a frozen lake filled with rubble.
Littlefinger hissed at his companions to stop. It was the dead of night and a fog had rolled in from Skagos, suffocating the stars. The pitch hid everything not immediate to their torchlight and so the world unfolded, one terrifying step at a time. They had watched the castle approach. It cast a glow on the ice which you could see for days but the hides scattered along the top of The Wall appeared from nowhere. Their thatch roves were buried under several feet of fresh snow and no one had bothered to clear them out.
The only sign that Eastwatch was manned were the cages strung up on the walkway along The Wall. It was so cold that not even crows came to pick at what lay inside.
"Fuck. Fuck." One of the Night's Watchmen lowered his torch.
There were three cages, each containing pieces of the Night's Watchmen that had come in the earlier party with Dacey and Tormund. One cage held butchered heads, piled atop one another along with hands and feet. The next was an offering of sorts – entrails and organs snap frozen by the cold but no less horrific. Some of them dangled through the bars with a matching red stain on the ice beneath. The last cage contained whatever was left except for the skin – that had been flayed off the corpses, stretched and laid over the roof of the hide, nailed in place.
"Wait!" Whispered Littlefinger firmly, heart ramming against his chest plate. "We have no idea what happened here."
"No idea? No bloody idea?" One of them gaped. "I tell yer what happened. Those savage Eastern cunts butchered our brothers."
"Lower your voice..." Petyr warned.
"Torn ter fucking bits!"
"Why?"
"Why? Who the shit cares why?"
"The Lord Commander was clear – we were sent here to ensure peace. If we go down to the castle with anything other than pleasantries we may find ourselves occupying cages before the hour is out. That serves no one but death."
"I ain' going anywhere." The crow insisted, eyes latched onto the sight. "I don't care what vows I cursed. This – this isn't war. I-I won't..."
Littlefinger did not shy away from the callous display. Instead he crowded the panicked man, boxing him against the ice so that he was sure to feel its touch through his leathers. "You think this is war? It is theatre. I have seen worse productions hung on spikes from the walls of King's Landing. If I were a betting man I would wager these men earned their current accommodation. Stay here..." Littlefinger offered, stepping back to give the man room to draw the freezing air into his lungs. "I will go alone."
"You wear the same cloak as us," the other man said. "What makes you think they won' up an' tear your wings off? You are not a lord any more than I am a bastard."
"Faith my friend," Littlefinger purred.
"The gods piss on you – old an' new."
"Faith in one's self."
"Be our guest..." The other brother opened his arms, stepping aside so that Littlefinger could pass.
"Not afraid of the Lord Commander's wrath?"
"The Lord Commander isn't here," he replied, "and you'll be dead before the dawn."
The brothers watched Littlefinger throw his leg over the gap on the Southern side of the wall and awkwardly take to the wooden ladder. They were left with the periodic squeak of its rotten chains.
"High born," the brother scoffed, as snow fell out of the air and a strange chill climbed up The Wall. "They think they have a shield around 'em."
"Baelish isn't high born."
"Close enough. An' yer know, maybe it's true – when they've got their armies and slaves to hold swords to shadows but when they fall back to the ground they're just like us. Bone. Blood. S'all we are. Puppets for the gods."
"Are we going or not?" The younger of the two pulled his cloak tighter around his shivering body.
"Yeah." He finally answered, after staring at the cages for some time. "Fuck all this. If I'm going ter die let it be in the Summer Isles."
Opportunity and risk flirted in Petyr's mind after he set loose his minders. Around they went, dancing in waves of temptation – whispering warm thoughts like freedom from his banishment. He pushed those aside, reminding himself that his oath was not to the white tree or the malignant brotherhood that enforced it but to Sansa.
Serving her prompted him to drop the torch in a rush of panicked flame to the platform beneath. There it lay while he descended the ladder. When he reached the platform he found it to be an unsteady, weathered construction that creaked ominously underfoot as though it might give at any moment.
The next ladder waited. Littlefinger cautiously approached the rail beside it and peered nine hundred feet down to Eastwatch castle. It was built so close to the edge of The Wall that significant parts of the ice showed signs of physical strain. Vertical cracks, which in some cases widened into gulfs vast enough for wind and snow to howl through. His stomach dropped when he saw the assortment of ladders and lifts below, repeated like two mirrors placed beside one another. On and on and on it went.
Well, Littlefinger reasoned with himself, if they were sound enough to drag those Crow corpses up in their cages they were probably sufficient to hold his weight. It took him most of the night to make the trip and the only company he kept was a light snow and heavy fog, curling up from the Bay of Seals. Every now and then the wind parted it momentarily and Littlefinger was able to catch a glimpse of the moored fleet. He had never seen so many ships in one stretch of water.
In the hour before dawn, the sea mist rose up off the bay as a single sheet and smothered the castle, creating a false sky that hung a few hundred feet above their heads. It was surreal. The squatters at Eastwatch burned Ironwood from scuttled ships creating eerie blue flames that danced in the night. They lit The Wall transforming the entire scene into an aquatic vista and Eastwatch a sunken pebble.
The guards spotted Littlefinger a long way off and loitered, waiting for him to climb down to their position. When he did, Littlefinger immediately dropped his torch and held his hands over his head in obvious surrender. Jogos Nai – in the flesh. There was no mistaking those cone-heads formed by the cruel binding of fabric around the heads of infants and the brightly dyed strips of silk tied around their girth. Any that didn't take to the shape were taken into the Great Sand Sea and buried alive to honour their horse gods. The Screaming Seas – that's what they called the sand around the Leviathan Sound. There were tent cities overlooking the water and patches of ghostgrass high as houses.
"Bu Gai..." Littlefinger said, hoping they'd be confused enough to present him to their leader instead of slitting his stomach open. "Bu Gai – Bu Gai – Bu Gai..." Over and over like the Lord Commander's crow, with only one word with which to sway his life.
Presently, Littlefinger was roughly disarmed of his sword and ushered through the innards of Eastwatch. The cracks in the ice extended to the castle itself where some of the largest had forced apart the stone. It existed in a symbiosis with the ice and together they were dying, falling – Littlefinger suspected – towards the water. Every now and then a flourish of colour broke the black and white. Roses, blue and small poked out from the cracks. He reached for one, brushing its petals until a horselord shoved him forwards with an impatient growl.
Eventually they stopped outside an inner room that had a wreak of desperation. There were more guards here who exchanged harsh words with Littlefinger's escort, jostling each other with their shoulders. They must have come to the conclusion that Littlefinger was of little physical threat because they opened the doors and forced him inside, tripping him up so that he slammed into the doorway.
The Prince of Yin lay in a disarming sight amid his bed of straw, gazing at more of the strange blue firelight. There was scraps of old ship sails laid over the stone like rugs in a vain attempt to keep out the frost. Sand fox, rabbit and grey lion pelts were layered over the prince. Littlefinger averted his gaze from their eyeless heads.
He clutched his hands behind his back in a gesture of submission then knelt onto the ground, bowed low until Littlefinger's head touched the stone floor. That is how things were done in Yin. The common folk bowed to their god-like lords and humbled themselves to curry favour. A fact learned from his exotic whores.
With his palms on the filthy surface, Littlefinger began, "I have been sent by order of Lord Commander Thorne of the Night's Watch so that we may communicate," in flawless High Valyrian. "And in this capacity I would like to welcome you to Westeros, Prince Bu Gai, Seventeenth of the Azure emperors – God-Emperor of Yi Ti. You and these people with whom you travel are most welcome in these frozen lands."
He wondered where Dacey and Tormund were. Hopefully not in private cages. A murdered Wildling king was unlikely to go down well in these parts.
Bu Gai took his time manoeuvring into a seated position, propped against the wall. He was thin and ancient looking – himself a ruin with sickness infesting his flesh. "Tell me, is it customary to attack friends in times of peace?"
Littlefinger rocked back off his knees but remained on the floor. He had not been asked to stand. "Excuse my ignorance, to what do you refer?"
"My charge. A man from Lorath with whom we have been travelling these long months. He was under my protection yet your sworn brethren," Bu Gai paused to point at Littlefinger's black cloak, "saw fit to abuse him such that my priests believe him present to meet the gods."
Killing a monarch's favourite pet was not an ideal beginning… "Those, I take it, are the Night's Watchmen in the cages at the top of The Wall?" Littlefinger waited as Bu Gai nodded. "They acted alone and have been punished accordingly. For whatever they have done, I offer an apology." And so Littlefinger continued, grovelling until Bu Gai tired of his empty words.
"I am too tired to hear your pleas this night."
"Your Grace is unwell..." Littlefinger offered cautiously. "There are healers not far for which I could send."
Bu Gai waved the request to nothing. "Healers cannot amend the curses gods bestow. I have priests for that but not even they can lance the poison from my blood. I will die in this wretched place."
"And – the others that were here. A Mormont and a King?"
"Left several days ago on a ship headed South. They seek a queen and her dragons." Bu Gai closed his eyes. Insidious cold crept into his bones and though his strength came and went like the sighing of the wind, his moments of health were becoming ever more fleeting. "The queen dreamed this place," he warned Littlefinger, "and all that we see now. Make no bones, we are here to fight the real war. The last war. The war that comes upon us each time longer and darker. Our empire is lost." He opened his eyes and touched the castle wall. "Hope is a wall and this is ours."
"All of Yin is lost?" Littlefinger was not sure he had heard correctly.
"In one afternoon." Then Bu Gai nodded to the horselord guards. They surged forward and took Littlefinger roughly by his arms, dragging him across the ground. "We will speak again but not tonight. I am tired."
Littlefinger wrestled against the small men but they were stronger than they looked. He was dragged through the castle and out into the frozen courtyard where the permafrost had melted around a large blue bonfire. Thousands seethed inside the space and trailed out over short field in front of the shore. A rudimentary supply line had been built to the fleet which had emerged with the lifting fog. Thousands and thousands and thousands. A floating city.
He bucked suddenly, catching sight of an ominous cage. "No – no!" Littlefinger riled against his captors but they set him in the cage like a fucking lord's bird then left him alone out in the snow with a view of The Wall and the Bay of Seals on his right.
RED KEEP – KING'S LANDING
Varys knocked the glass inkwell from Tywin's desk in fright. It shattered on the stone with a catastrophe of black. Ink welled in the tracks between the tiles and ran off, following the alarming slant the tower had taken on since the explosions. Not for the first time. Evidence of violence was scattered through its interior. A room that had seen its share of terrible things.
"You should not be here..." Varys hissed, saving papers from the spill. The desk was surrounded by piles of financial records, almost illegible trade agreements and previously secret correspondence with the other Lords of Westeros.
Jaqen H'ghar had been concealed in the room for some time, reclined on the open window sill, encompassed by shadow. He liked to watch people. That is how the Faceless Men learned about their prey. To be someone you had to understand their behaved when the world closed its eyes. Truth in the eyes of the blind. "A man should not be anywhere. He is nowhere."
Varys dumped a pile of hefty books on the table, rattling his wine glass against the bottle he'd found in cupboard behind Tywin's desk. For all his posturing, Varys discovered the great Lord Tywin was perfectly human – vices in every corner. "Spare me the religious dogma." He wiped a glean of sweat from his forehead. "I have had my fill of well meaning messiahs." Varys sank into the chair. There was a blood stain across the bed where a noble had been torn in two by The Mountain. "I have lived nearly my whole adult life inside these walls," Varys added, gesturing at Tywin's old quarters. "Not this particular room but the Keep, in all its horrid glory – I know her. Why then do I feel like an outsider?" He shook away the moment of madness. "What good is it telling you? You were born an outsider."
"A home can be a prison," Jaqen said quietly. "I watched mine burn."
"So did I!" He snapped. Varys looked to the window and the distant flames. "There are things for you to be getting on with. I paid for a name."
"The Many Faced God is owed a name and he will have it," Jaqen assured Lord Varys. The pair of dragons were flying again – picking bodies from the sea. They'd feast until they were too heavy for their wings.
"I may have lost touch with my network of child-spies but even I know that the name you seek is in the North. You will get us all killed, lingering in the Capital. If the Queen finds out what you did we will both need new faces."
"Names are not all a god requires… My god has found another way to speak."
"A crisis of faith – is that what this is?" Varys would laugh if he wasn't so fucking tired. He couldn't think with the stench of burned flesh sitting in the room. "I don't have time for-"
"The Bastard King Snow woke from death a second time. A man put him in the ground with his own hands but Snow would not stay. When god speaks, a man listens. He finds a new way."
"How convenient," Varys shoved a particularly thick novel on the Kingdom's finances to one side. "When a god does something inexplicable you put it down to a misunderstanding. If that fails, a change of heart is in order. When kings do the same we call it betrayal."
"Is the burning of King's Landing a betrayal by your queen?"
Varys choked on his own laughter. He was so far beyond reason he was almost drunk on absurdity. "Perfect. A Valyrian slave spouting hypocrisy and following a would-be dragon king – the very symbol of your people's oppression." Yes, he knew exactly who Jaqen was when he wasn't hiding behind the faces of the dead. "Where, may I ask, did the Many Faced God come from? He is a young god. Conjecture is that he is merely an amalgamation of the first gods – the old gods that live in the air and waves – ice and stars that look down from their evening perches. Yes, their bones are worshipped from one end of the realm to the other. When I look at the world I don't see the gods. I hear silence in the leaves of the Weirwood. From East to West I've listened to the mad wailings of the devout. It's nothing but coached human fear preyed upon by institutions that make their wealth from misery." He shook his head, remembering the flames and the warlock that beckoned them. "The only voice I ever heard in the flames belonged to a child – whispering through the smoke and fire. There are no gods – just us. We have been all alone with ourselves for these thousands and thousands of years. Fucking and killing. Forgetting… We have no idea what we're capable of when the night comes. Oh, we try to write it down. Our grandparents sing the songs to us when we're small but grown men do not listen. It has sent us somewhat mad."
"The name will be presented..."
Varys would believe that when he saw it. "Preferably while I am still alive to enjoy the offering. Now, if you will excuse me, I have decades of paperwork to go pick apart and an empire in free fall. I cannot stop you from staying in the city but if you do, keep your distance from Lord Tyrion. He has a mind to murder you."
The ground beneath Valyria breathed. Its fourteen mountain peaks shifted like scales on the back of a dragon. Smoke trailed from several tips, transitioning from white to thick plumes of grey ash. Slaves ran screaming from the mines and walked into the mournful cry of a dozen dragons circling, shrieking for their nests. Jaqen emerged from a chasm in the rock, black with soot, in time to watch pools of water become geysers spewing sulphuric acid into the air. Opposite, standing on a mountain ledge, was a young woman with silver hair. Not quite real, she was washed in and out of focus by the smoke.
Jaqen startled from sleep – knife pressed to Davos' throat.
"Easy – fook's sake..." Davos flinched at the familiar press of steel to his veins. He waited for the assassin to relax and remove his blade. "Didn't mean ter wake yer but the Queen's army is movin' off from 'ere. They're taking us around ter the Western flank of the city where the fields aren't made o' mud."
It was morning – just about. There was no sun but its glow neared the watery horizon. Thick layers of smoke curled in the water but even that was blowing away. There were fewer ships. Those sagging in evening had slipped beneath the currents.
Jaqen sat up and held his face in his hands. Pain throbbed beneath his skin.
"Nightmares?" Asked Davos. "We all 'ave 'em."
"We are dead men," Jaqen murmured, "ghosting through the world – faces worn by the living." He looked up to the Onion Night. The rest of the camp rattled to life, moving themselves on command. "In all the years that I have suffered I have never seen a man torn from death. This Snow – Stark – Targaryen-"
"Hush! For gods' sake..." Davos looked around, making sure they weren't heard.
"His name is not important. He is nameless, like god. Perhaps I should have listened when his kin knocked at my door." Instead of listening he had given Arya Stark a name and sent her into the world.
Davos straightened up. "You always this bloody cheery first thing?"
Jorah found Tyrion in the throne room, seated on the floor beneath his sister's corpse with an empty bottle of wine smashed during the night. The dwarf was awake and staring at her. The only soul in the cavernous hall. He looked like a statue from the ruins of Valyria, covered in ash – silent in the horror.
"Enough of this..." Jorah strode through the throne room without his battle armour. He wore a new cloak – white, unique – with three embroidered dragons chasing each other in a circle. Matched with the dark grey undergarments he look less a knight and more a king.
"W-what are you doing?" Tyrion scrambled to his feet – swayed – and fell onto the floor where Jorah easily navigated him.
"Something I should have done last night," Jorah replied, as he climbed the steps to the throne. He bent down and prised the stiff corpse from the Iron Throne and hoisted the hellish thing into his arms.
Tyrion lost his nerve to argue as Jorah walked with Cersei's dead weight down the steps and started to cross the hall. He sobered himself up enough to follow. "You can't," he insisted, stumbling after Jorah. "The Queen's orders were clear."
"The message has been received by all capable of understanding it," Jorah assured the other man. "It does us no good to leave Cersei rotting on the throne – not when that throne belongs to the rightful heir. Forgive me but it is better for Daenerys to return to a realm washed clean of violence. I've seen the alternative. It did not end well."
"Meereen was fucked before our Queen set foot inside its walls." Tyrion waited but Mormont offered no answer, he simply continued toward the broken doors. "Where are you taking her?"
"The Dragonpit. There's a fire been made. She will burn with the birds."
Though the hour was early, survivors of the conquest came out to watch Ser Jorah carry Cersei's body along the cobbled passages and collapsed buildings. They did not have the strength to jeer as the golden-haired lion made her final passage toward the rise of stone that lay at the end of the street. The Dragonpit remained hidden from view except for the tower of smoke. During the night its flames had died down but with the rising of the sun it would enrage itself and start afresh. There were tears on Tyrion's face. Relief or grief, Jorah could not say. The stone in the streets had a flush of cool from the evening. It created pockets of mist which swirled away from his footsteps.
Grim. Jorah stopped at the stone entrance. There was a pile of corpses, roughly collected at the heart of the pit. The spectator steps that ringed the entire arena were full of makeshift livings with desperate people sleeping under the morbid glow of warmth. It was not the first time Jorah had laid eyes on a massacre. The bodies had merged into a pile of black limbs, fused like the swords on the Iron Throne. Some glowed with the heat – others collapsed into ash.
The heat pushed against Tyrion, leaving him unable to follow the knight as he approached the pyre. He spent a moment standing close to the flame. It licked around him, never daring to touch his flesh. Then he heaved the corpse – tossing it a short distance onto the slope. Cersei rolled once then ended, face to the flame. Her hair caught – then her clothes. Soon she became a bright surge of flame and Jorah stepped away, turning his back on the sight.
"Better there be nothing left of her," Jorah said quietly, as he approached Tyrion. Tyrion's eyes were fixated, watching the fire tear apart what remained of his sister. "Nothing for others to take as a trophy – nothing for the dead to resurrect."
Tyrion nodded but found no words.
Jorah laid a hand on the imp's shoulder, resting it there in a form of solidarity.
"When-when..." Tyrion stuttered as he tried to speak. "When I saw the Queen's dragon soar over the lip of the fighting pit in Meereen, I could not fucking believe it. Honestly. Those creatures take your sense from you. For a moment – or years I'd say – you lose perspective. You see them as magic. As the gods playing on Earth." He wondered if that had been what is was like for Mormont watching Daenerys step out of the bonfire with three infant dragons clutching onto her naked flesh. "Then one day you wake up after a night spent sleeping in ash and you see scaled demons unfurl their leathery wings and sing to sleeping gods who dream terrifying things from their prisons beneath the sea. Only then do the pieces of malice fall into place." He spoke as the corpses on the fire rearranged themselves, trapped in a continuous hell. "For one moment – and only in that moment – the madness sets and truth flickers into view like the green flash before the sun dies in the Sunset Sea."
Jorah had been taught not to speak ill of the dead so he stared silently at the flames.
"It was not always Jaime with my sister. I remember when the only thing she desired of the world was to marry prince Rhaegar. Yes, the match would make her 'queen' but she considered herself genuinely in love. Personally I thought the prince was a weak, selfish, average-looking, unpredictable coward."
"Daenerys said it was meant to be her that married Rhaegar, if only she had been born earlier," Jorah finally replied, his voice slow and considered.
"She is nothing like her brother. There, I think, you would agree."
"Rhaegar would not have survived years in the Great Grass Sea on horseback with the Dothraki, that is certainly true," Jorah replied. "Though they shared a connection to religious mythos. He called his male children Aegon in the hope they'd manifest into the promised hero but the gods do not sing our songs."
"Rhaegar is a dream," Tyrion breathed, "one that the Queen would dismiss if she were to meet him in the flesh. You need only look at the men she chooses. Warriors. Kings. Killers." And the Mormont beside him encompassed all three. "Whether he stole the Stark girl or not, his choices tore the realm into a thousand pieces. My sister..."
"Cersei's troubles are over," Jorah added quietly. The flames were dying and the walls around the pit were shifting from gold to grey as the sun lifted up from the water and broke the night. "Ours are only beginning. Have you heard from your brother?"
Tyrion scoffed. "No – and if I had I would not tell you."
"I would prefer Jaime Lannister to remain among the living. He heads a sizeable force – they were always more his than your sister's. If he can be swayed to our side it'll be one less blood-letting."
"Jaime killed Daenerys' father. I'm not a fool, despite jokes to my size. Sanctioned or not, the Queen will find a way to murder my brother."
"Then tell him to remain in the North," Jorah advised. "It is possible to wage war for a hundred years and never meet."
"You are not worried that he will chase the Iron Throne?"
This time Jorah turned to Tyrion and said, quite seriously, "Honour, family, loyalty. He is a soldier first."
"Is this like the pyre you saw the Queen walk from with her dragons?"
Jorah shook his head. "No. That was built with thatch and desert Willow. We laid the Kharl on an elevated platform and tied the witch to one of its pillars – hissing and screaming chants so wretched I thought they must come from The Doom. Then we fashioned a huge circle of bundled grass around the outside and soaked it with oil. I was terrified. There were stories in the East of Khaleesi that lay with their lords and journeyed on their arm into the realm of the dead – burned alive, side by side. Their screams were thought to wake the gods. She lay her wedding gift – the dragon eggs – around Kharl Drogo. When it came time to light the pyre she took the torch from my hand and lowered it to the grass. Alight, the witches' words became shrieks of agony. Daenerys walked into the fire. I watched for as long as I could bear – as her white dress caught in the fire and the smoke smothered her from view. For all that long night the Khalasaar waited. By morning most had left to find themselves a new Kharl. Strength is the only honour among the Dothraki. There was nothing left of the pyre except blackened ground. I woke after a dreamless night and walked toward the ash. I planned to take her bones and bury them in the Earth – say the words of the Old Gods to honour her family blood and to pay proper respect to the death of a Great House."
"But you did not find bones..."
"No. I found Daenerys, her silver hair dancing in the wind and three tiny dragons latched onto her flesh as children clutch at their mother. Be under no illusion, Tyrion. Her dragons are the Queen's children. They will kill for her. They protect her above all else. They know no honour except love. There is nothing more dangerous or blind upon the Earth."
HIGHGARDEN – THE REACH
Sam had never seen his home from above except on his father's maps. Horn Hill was truly a perch upon the feet of the Red Mountains, occupying one of the impish hills that were pushed up from the marshes. His home was made of white stone sent pink in the morning light. Sculpted trees with twisted trunks and heavy heads cast long, hammer-shaped shadows over the grasslands. It was an outcrop of civilisation compared to the sodden ground and fallen castles that littered the Dornish Marshes all the way from the singing towers of the burned Nightsong fortress.
Horn Hill paled when compared to its grander cousin – Highgarden. Sam could see the clear line around the rise of ground where marsh turned to lush fields and vineyards. Blessed by nameless gods, the terraced flanks of the hill dripped with fruit while the walls grew flowers in their millions. The buzz from bee colonies filled the air in a constant drone of life. Rambling roses, shaped hedges in honour of The Seven, rockeries and fountains. There was nowhere more beautiful set by the hands of man except perhaps the ruins in the Rhoyne.
The Queen shifted, sliding her legs over Drogon's back so that she could look over his wing and point to the ground. "There waits your father's army," she said to Sam. "He amassed them in the night and soon those gates will open and they'll spill onto the fields that separate the castles."
"We passed the Tyrell army several hours ago," Sam replied. "They had not made it as far as the Bitterbridge."
"And they won't make it to Highgarden for the best part of four days. It will be rubble by then and your father will preside over two dominions."
Sam looked away. He did not want to see Highgarden destroyed any more than his own home. They were places of beauty and life. These were not castles made for war.
Now it was Drogon's shadow that tracked across the fields as he sank low. He'd been sighted by the guards at Highgarden, who lit torches on the wall.
There were three rings of rock around Highgarden, each higher than the last. Between two lay the labyrinth of thorn hedges, ancient and formidable. The fiery heads of three Weirwoods grew furiously from the depths of the Godswood while hundreds of birds cried out in alarm as the dragon's shadow crossed their home.
Drogon sank his claws into the castle turret, landing on a vertical angle with Sam clinging to the harness in terror. There was shouting below but all Sam could think of was the fall and his own head smashed against the ground beneath. Daenerys had no fear. Untangling herself from the leather straps, she scaled Drogon using his horns and scales to climb out over his shoulder and down, landing on the balcony beneath his wing.
Sam knew it was expected that he follow. The dragon waited, clutched at Highgarden's castle. Heavy and unsteady in the air, Sam unhooked the tethers that wrapped around his girth. "Easy – easy..." He begged Drogon, when the dragon shifted beneath. Sam reached up and took hold of the horns protruding from between Drogon's thick, black scales.
He hit the balcony as a trembling mess. For a moment, he stayed upon the ground, simply happy for the pleasure of breath inside his lungs. Then he saw the Tyrell guards nodding to Daenerys and several princes of the realm deep in conversation. All at once, the eyes turned on Sam. Piercing and hostile. The Queen lifted her hand to still hands from swords.
They were taken into the perfumed castle. White banners hung over the walls. Each had a green hand embroidered at their heart. House Gardner, extinct except for these standards left to collect dust. Other relics lined the room and Sam realised that this forgotten tower was a shrine to times past.
"Where are we going?" Asked Sam, walking beside Daenerys as the procession twisted through the castle, heading down spiralling stairwells.
His answer was a room in an ancient part of the castle. Squat and formed with grey blocks pulled from the Red Mountains, it shared more than a passing resemblance to its ugly cousins in the North. There were echoes of Winterfell in its squashed towers and rot that lived between the stones. Sam and the Queen followed the Tyrell guards into the windowless depths until the only sound beside the flames was trickling water.
Like a crypt, the chamber was featureless. The guards formed a circle around a pile of ash and wood at its heart.
"That's not-" but it was, Sam realised. The Oakenseat. The original throne of the Gardener kings. A living seat from which the ancestors ruled and like all living things, it had died. This time in war against the Dornish.
Daenerys knelt on the stone before the Oakenseat. Placed her hands on the wretched moss and let the filth of death run through her veins. She listened to the darkness. Showed reverence for the precious, dried heart of Highgarden and heard the distant flap of wings.
Afterwards, she and Sam sat among the garden. While what remained of the castle forced readied for war, Daenerys braided her hair, attaching silver pins with dragon figurines on their tips. "What did it mean?" he asked. "The Tyrell's never sat on the Oakenseat. It was destroyed long before they took up power. Surely it means nothing to them?"
"Not everything is about who we were born as," Daenerys replied carefully. "What matters is what we will become after the fire has at our corspe. Smoke. Ash. Or are we simply salt after the snow?"
Sam didn't know what that meant either and returned his attention to the view. Horn Hill glistened in the distance. Thousands of shields caught the light, spreading out from the castle walls. His father's army was amassing fast and the Queen sought to meet them alone.
"You could very well die here," Sam warned her. "Despite my father's faults, he knows how to win a fight."
"I don't die here, Samwell Tarly," she replied, simply. "Therefore I can't."
Daenerys waited for Tarly's forces to clear Horn Hill and stagger out of the mountains' shadow. They were a sight of beauty – marching in perfect discipline as if they were one creature unfurling onto the landscape. Viserys would have drooled to think of them at his will. He did not have the vision to imagine the breadth of horror that came from the lips of a dragon.
She took to the air with Drogon. Stained and stinking of King's Landing, Daenerys circled the front lines. Randall Tarly hung back behind the first few legions of his men, using them as a transient wall. His son brought up the far left flank with a guard of his own.
The soldiers on the field saw the dragon the moment it took to the air. First a shadow on the dawn, it grew closer and closer, inflating on the sky until it filled their vision. A great, black, scaled demon. There was panic at the front. Knees dropped to the grass. Shields raised. Shells of steel formed as men huddled beneath in turtle-formations with spears thrust through the gaps. A perfect action against living men but for a dragon roaring into view – mouth open, the soldiers had done nothing but seal themselves up like mutton in an urn.
RED KEEP – KING'S LANDING
Varys found Tyrion lingering at the balcony atop the Red Keep. Too short to see over the barricade, the imp had climbed up to sit on the narrow slip of stone. A perilous perch for a lion to take at the roof of the world. Varys even said so but was treated with rebellious silence. Instead, Tyrion cast a long shadow over King's Landing.
"I am waiting," Tyrion replied, to Varys' question, "for news of Highgarden."
"The ravens are housed in the other tower."
"I am not waiting for ravens," scoffed Tyrion, looking South-East. "I am waiting for smoke."
When the smoke came it was a thick, monstrous growth upon the sky. The passing clouds which grazed by held the suggestion of ethereal gods. It was a blasphemous meeting of reality and myth. Magic and death, united by hunger and corrupted with filthy incantations that hung in the air like snow kicked up in the wind. Of course, Tyrion knew that the incantations were simply screams of immolated men. The details of its horror shrank into the dark heart where the smoke was as black as the Dragonmount.
Daenerys was setting the whole field ablaze. Flame cutting through soldiers as a blade through flesh. From one bonfire to the next. There was barely a chance to draw breath between the slaughters. He had wondered in his foolish youth how unimaginable feats of cruelty like The Field of Fire had come to pass. Now he was here to witness it afresh. The exact same battle, repeated on the flats of The Reach. Four thousand Gardeners and Lannisters – gone in the blink of an eye.
"It happened again..." He breathed, quite unable to believe it. "And I encouraged it."
"More than that," Varys slipped into view. "The suggestion was yours. The screams are yours. There will be books dedicated to the fires of The Reach baring the Lannister name. Today, I see your father."
Tyrion fantasised about throwing himself from the Keep. "This is not the world I dreamed of."
"No. This is the world as it always was – a pit of violence. We must find a way to climb out of it."
