DRAGONSTONE – BLACKWATER BAY
Rhaella's crown slid through Daenerys' hair until it latched in place, digging delicately formed claws deep against her skull. Amethysts pressed into hand-crafted metal flowers caught the light as she stepped up to the crumbling window sill and leaned into the rapture of the wind. High above the world, she watched as Daario and his ship ventured out into the bay. Viserion cawed sadly, swooping around the flanks of the Dragonmount where his golden wings dislodged storms of ash.
Her bear loomed behind in the shadows keeping quiet, as was his unusual manner of late.
"Do his tears make you jealous, Ser?"
Jorah remained fixed at his perch, withdrawn against the stonework beside the window. There were only two types of walls inside old castle. Those made of unfashioned rock, baring all the brutality of their birth in the caves and the rest, which presented alarming reliefs to any foolish enough to set foot in the castle. Their tortured subjects screamed from the stone. A blizard of dragons. Black fire. Flames arching up over cowering men. Crushed shell used in place of white eyes. Fire and blood. The savagery of the Valyrian empire laid bare and unquestioned. There were no soft words to coax the masses into submission. When this place had been built it was done so in full revelry of terror. To Dragonstone, the Iron Throne was merely a trinket of war.
They are dragons, khaleesi. His own words and yet somehow he'd forgotten through her soft smiles and crystal eyes that she, too, was a dragon. As he watched her slight figure in the soft light Jorah knew that there was every chance she'd be more destructive than the great conqueror Aegon himself. All three dragons bowed to her alone. She was not their owner, she was their mother. Was it the hesitation of his Northern blood that stilled his tongue to this truth? Perhaps. Or maybe it was the Mountain's many heavy blows visited on his bones that left him broken and resigned against the wall. Either way, he was certain that only stubbornness kept them in place among his tendons.
"Only a fool would shadow a dragon with jealousy." He eventually replied. "Viserion has a heart. That is more than can be said of his namesake."
The Queen flinched. She could not bare to sleep for fear of her brother's eyes or the liquid gold dripping from his skull. A crown that consumed its king. Promised and delivered. Kharl Drogo did not bury him. He ordered his Bloodriders to sever Viserys' neck, take the head back to their sacred city and display it where the other Kharls might look upon the kill. The rest of his body they left for the crows who dragged pieces of it over the plains. Later she learned that it was her knight that waded into the grass with a shovel and dug her brother a grave. She had never asked him why.
"What more do you seek from the vaults of Braavos?" Jorah ventured curiously. "Even if you return the banker safely to his cage, they'll not lend you more gold, nor do you need it with the hoard of jewels beneath Dragonstone."
"Men with swords," Daenerys replied. "The Lannisters were courting the Golden Company before I arrived. We will be needing their number while our foreign armies fight in the North. If we fail up in the snows our hopes will fall heavy upon the South. A disciplined army will be invaluable defending the Capital."
Her suggestion did not sit well with Jorah and it showed on his weathered face. "I thought the Golden Company were busy making a mess of Myr?"
"And so they did, Varys tells me. Their captain-"
"Old Strickland?"
"-the same."
"Some people refuse to die."
"Tycho insists that he is more of a banker than a warrior. He was most put out when Drogon tore the ceiling off his favourite vault. The wealth he has amassed sacking cities across the East cannot be worn on his person. He is, as I understand it, a particularly good customer."
"And so you have sent Daario to threaten the contents of his vaults..."
"I've sent Daario to offer my protection of the Braavosi bank and all its contents in exchange for a quiet visit to King's Landing where Strickland's men may drink and live at my expense."
"They are a company of bastards, khaleesi. There is no fondness in them for true-born heirs. If they know nothing else about you, it is the story of your claim. They are Blackfyres. Best be careful they do not learn of your nephew..." Jorah had every fear they'd rally to the bastard Stark's cause.
"I am an exile, like them."
Jorah shook his head. "Your brother entertained their captains in Pentos believing the same lie. They took his gold, drank his wine and went on their way. Laughing, I believe the story goes. If you invite the Golden Company to King's Landing they'll take your gold and sack the city for your trouble. You cannot bring them here-" His words failed as he realised the sharper edge to the Queen's arrangement. Of course. This was Varys' doing. "Be careful, your Grace," he warned the Queen firmly. "I fought these men up and down the stinking swamps of the Rhoyne. There is not a shred of honour between them."
Daenerys kept her eyes upon Daario's ship. It was nearing the dark strip of deep water – the boundary where 'bay' became 'sea'. Beyond that waited the wilderness of open water. The weather was fair but muddied with smoke from the destruction of King's Landing. They'd be able to smell the Western war on the shores of Essos before long. Jeor once told her stories of burned wood washing up on the Saltshore of Dorne after the Doom. Now she believed.
"You do not speak of the Rhoyne," she noted, turning so that her back lay against the stone and her braid caught in the wind. "That is most unusual. Tyrion often laments in his drunken nights of the beauty and death entwined along the banks."
He shrugged. "There is not much to say," Jorah admitted. "I was paid to fight the Braavosi. Unpleasant work. The Rhoyne is a swamp – an overgrown ruin like Sothoryos and just as ungodly. Death has wings on the banks of the smoking river. I've seen men fall in their dozens without a mark upon them. Even now I could not tell you what the point of it was. Why do you ask?"
"I had a dream last night," she replied softly. "I was standing on a stone bridge as its footings shook loose and collapsed into the water. Stones fell on top of me, dragging my body to the muddy riverbed and held me there. Silver flashes glinted from the dark waters with sightless eyes. Arrow heads without their shafts. I thought they might be the waters of the Rhoyne. What is wrong?"
"I too, have fallen into the waters of the Rhoyne. We were fighting on a marble bridge – what was left of it – at the point where it broke free from the overgrown banks and surged over the water like the rib of a great bear. There were swamp trees caught in its footings which dragged away slabs of stone every Summer when the floods pour from the North and lift the level of the water. One of these sprawling creatures snapped and took part of the bridge away. I remember the ground shaking underfoot. All of us fighting atop lost our swords and fell together into the steaming waters. A slab of stone followed and pinned me under. I thought for sure that my grave would be one of water. There were fish..." He added, breathless as he delved into his mind. "Silver fingerlings. They came at my face in waves. Like ghosts… Back and forth, taking a piece of me each time."
"How did you-"
"The water was not deep. My commander waded out up to his chest and used the current to roll the marble off my leg. Paid good money for me, or so he said, too much at least to waste my life in the water. That was the first time I thought of the Ironborn children, drowned in the ocean and brought back to life. It instils a new kind of terror," Jorah admitted. "Drowning… I'd rather be run through a thousand times than feel the grip of the water on me again."
Which is why, she realised, her old bear also kept one hand upon the rail of his ship and a close eye on the water. Why – when she'd sunk her own ship in the shadow of the Stepstones – he'd been unmoved by her false tears for the drowning screams. The knight preferred his water steady underfoot. Frigid and ancient, locked in Winter's steady embrace.
Daenerys looked down to the waves crashing at the roots of the castle – gnarled, black and tangled with the smouldering rocks tossed into the bay. This, Daenerys was certain, was where Rhaella lingered, her beauty faded by misery.
There was no reason for Daenerys to visit Jorah's memories in the Rhoyne but he'd been in her head lately. Desperately, she tried to shake off the blood from battlefields she'd never stood on and the smiles of a young woman spinning joyously in an old hall. Daenerys forgot which memories belonged to her. Were the creaking, frost-capped pines hers or the vaulting houses, cut into ocean cliffs at the edge of a sparkling sea? "Why haven't you told me this before? You and I..." She breathed softly, "I thought we were running out of secrets."
"Truthfully, I lost track of myself during those years in Essos. I worked to eat and thrashed out my frustrations with the gods on whatever I was paid to kill. They are not proud moments, your Grace. Not fit for the ear of a Queen."
"Fear not," she replied to her knight, "I have my fill of those moments. Remind me to thank that commander of yours, should we ever meet."
"He is dead." Jorah answered simply. "Kharl Drogo killed him when he came to take you from Pentos. That is how I broke company with the war."
"You followed the Khalasar..."
"All the way to Pentos. I thought to myself, what prize brings the Horselords from the Dothraki Sea? They are not sacking the seaport. Then I heard one of the men whisper that Illyrio had himself a pair of dragons."
"What is it," Daenerys wondered aloud, "with Mormonts and dragons? We could not be further in like and kind. Fire and ice, Ser, make only oceans. Oceans tear away the shore."
"That question is for the gods."
And so Daenerys left it. "Varys said something else. Cersei's pleas and promise of coin went unanswered. He infers that The Golden Company refused to pick up arms against my claim to the throne. That, surely, brings a wind of hope our way?"
"When is that spider going to learn?" Jorah almost snapped. "Declining to fight and refusing to kill are not the same thing at all. He is not a soldier. He does not understand the lust that drives their captains. They are beholden to nothing, not even the gods. Many in those ranks are there purely to enjoy the act of slaughter. I beg you, do not invite them to these waters. You will regret it."
"The thing is done, Ser. I'll not take it back."
"Then it is a mistake." Jorah replied harshly, and left her in possession of the room. Bad advice. There was more of it about lately and the Queen was open to its sway.
Jorah made his way through Dragonstone and down to the glum beach where a raft had been made for Ser Willem Darry. His body lay on a bed of seaweed gathered from the shore. A cluster of pirates were up to their knees in the water, holding the raft in place as it rode up and down over the lapping waves. Daario had left a pirate in charge of the others. He was as bald as Varys except he'd marred his flesh with an assortment of strange tattoos – mostly elephants in various poses of war. They were hard to pick out on his already pitch skin. A monocle swung from a chain, affixed to his shirt. He chuckled, mouth full of uneven teeth, as Jorah approached.
"You there," said Jorah, his boots sinking into the course sand that formed soft layers between the volcanic rock. "Are you Eli?"
"Lugg," he agreed, but offered no hand or notion of pleasantries. "Boss says we send this one to sea."
There was a quiver of arrows on the sand an a small fire contained in an iron claw. Jorah picked up the bow. It was much heavier than his old hunting bow – reinforced for the even heavier arrows. There was no finery in either item but they would do.
"Mate there of yours then?" Lugg asked, as the pirates set loose the raft. The waters dragged it backwards, away from the shore where it found the swift waters of a carefully chosen rip. There was nothing of beauty on the island except a few colourful shells which someone had placed around the body.
Jorah set an arrow astride the bow, nocking it. "My father's." He noticed the black feathers sticking from the end of the arrow.
"We make arrows from crows..." Lugg winked ominously.
The waves hastened poor Darry. It as as if they had thrown him into a river. Jorah waited a minute more, while the pirates cursed and headed back toward the castle. Lugg stood with him. He'd been charged with a duty and despite his uncouth looks, he seemed resolute in seeing the pirate captain's orders through.
"Thing 'll get away from you," Lugg warned, as the raft entered choppy water. It was teetering out of reach of most archers.
Jorah shifted the bow, leaning down to tip the arrowhead first into the tar, then the flames where it caught alight. Not even the vicious onshore wind could snuff the iron. Finally, the old Bear drew back and lined his eye along the shaft until all he saw were the smoking flames at the tip. He canted his shoulders back causing the supple arm of the bow to creak in protest.
Released, the arrow soared well above the waves until it struck a dozen feet in front of the raft vanishing harmlessly into the water. Darry drifted on, untouched by fire.
Lugg said nothing. The knight had missed on purpose and now no one could remedy the error.
Tycho was thankful for the fresh air on deck but he'd not settle until Westeros' shores lay over the horizon, a memory rather than a threat. "It's watching us," he insisted to Daario, who'd sauntered down from the helm to survey the banker's mood. "Cursed thing," Tycho added, in reference to the golden dragon which circled near the mountain.
Daario watched Viserion fondly as he drifted up the warm air currents – graceful from tail to snout. "You do not care for dragons."
"What gave it away?" Replied the banker, flatly. "I have cause enough. Even without the callous destruction of the Iron Bank and the graphic consumption of my colleagues, the world had its fill of dragons a thousand years ago. There cannot be any good in bringing them back."
"You're a bit of a fool, for your all your nous. Dragons never left the world. They've been sleeping under the Shadow. There are hundreds of them hatching in the smoking mountains behind Asshai. Every time the world has been conquered, it was on the back of a dragon. The only thing that concerns you is the rapid acquisition of your gold."
"...and my face..." He added, gesturing to the scabs that ran in vicious lines where Ash had attacked him. "Tommen best keep that monster below deck."
Daario was a man of the sea. He felt a longing for the water most keenly when he was upon its undulating surface. It was a shame that The Narrow Sea was such a wretched patch. Unkempt – like a garden of weeds. "Cheer up, my friend," he finished, "you'll soon lay eyes on your shallow waters and white monsters. They may even have put the roof back on your beloved bank."
"You are many things, Euron, 'friend' is not one of them."
Quaithe lingered at the crest of the Red Keep. A dark weight lifted from her bones as the Bloodstone sailed East in possession of the Ironborn pirate. When it finally returned, it would bring with it the frozen tide. She'd seen the days without sunlight visit King's Landing and lock the stone together with frost. Euron haunted those nightmares where he'd sit upon a stone throne wrapped in tentacles – a puppet of the sea. They strangled him like the roots of a Weirwood with that filthy gem set into his flesh while eyes made of pearl watched nothing.
Marwyn... He was dead, of that Quaithe was certain. His whispers, that so often filthied the air, had fallen silent. Heaven help the gods that received him.
"The sharks aren't eating the corpses any more." Her words startled Ser Davos. Quaithe wondered if he sought her company out of curiosity or vengeance for the crimes of the Red Priestess. He mistakenly saw them in the same light. He was wrong. She was a creature of shadow. "They are full but our violence remains unsated. This, I imagine, is not the first time a sea captain has seen a feast float on the waves."
Davos retreated, certain that the gods whispered secrets directly into her ear.
"Do not go North..." She added, looking over her shoulder.
Ser Davos hesitated at the edge of the steps. "Why?" He asked, but her attention returned to the sea and could not be coaxed again.
"There somethin' wrong with yer?" Jon Snow asked, as his man crossed the damp field. The evening dew refused to melt into the shadow of the city. Jaqen dressed the horses, tightening the saddles and cooing at the restless beasts. They leaned fondly against him, huffing plumes of mist into the air.
"Sooner we leave this place the better," Davos nodded. The bottom of his cape was soaked with ash and mud. The last sad trail of smoke from the Dragonpit stank the air. All he could think about was the body of his boy sinking beneath the waves. He was still here – somewhere – part of the bay.
"Then best hurry, Ser." Jon replied, throwing two satchels joined by ropes over the back of his horse. "We are not long for the road."
"Have you settled with the Queen?"
Jon held up parchment wrapped in cloth and leather. "A plan, not a promise but she does not strike me as a liar."
"True enough," Davos nodded, and looked for his horse. "North, then. North as fast as we can manage."
SOTHORYOS 16,000 BC
A chorus of wings crushed all other sound from the air. It resonated from every shadow in the forest. Louder, he was sure, where pools of still water gathered in the sand decorated by layers of suspended debris. Life dripped from the jungle. Crawled on many sets of legs. Tumbled from the swaying canopy only to die in silver nets. Colourful birds watched, coming to feast upon anything foolish enough to loiter in their death throes. Figs made cages with their roots. Tides and sunken land forged swamps where vast serpents tangled in the mud.
Duplicitous curls of water enticed fools to their deaths along the edge of the Sunset Sea. Ships cruised the horizon en-route to Moraq and beyond that, Asshai. The Bloodstone Emperor paused to watch their golden sails parade until the restless cry of his dragon cut the air.
Black pebbles shook beneath his feet, shivering with the movement of her wings as she walked along the beach. Yuishari scales were almost purple in the harsh sunlight. She was wet, fresh from hunting in the sea and never more beautiful than canted backwards with her wings spread. Her fangs were the colour of seaglass and her eyes perfectly white. His sister said that they reminded her of the moon and so they did, blemished with flecks of grey. Sad orbs always on the verge of tears.
"Where have you been, hmm?" He asked the creature absently. Dragons cared nothing for time and refused to be moved by the press of the sun.
Yuishari's head was larger than a trade ship and when she opened her jaws to caw at the sky, the birds vacated their perches and took flight in panic. Sometimes she gave chase, collecting mouthfuls of bone. Mostly she was too lazy and preferred to make a nest along of a sea cliff and watch the world crumble. Only the Bloodstone Emperor had the talent to entice her back to the sky. He had brought her all the way to the edge of the map and yet when he looked into her shield-sized eyes, he was left with the impression that she'd flown these waters before. Who could tell with dragons? They were the children of the gods.
"Stay here, now..." The emperor added, raising his hand to beg her patience. Yuishari shuffled and dropped her head down to lay it on the tide line. When she breathed, the black stones on the beach rolled away from her lips. A pair of smoke trails spiralled from her nostrils. Gnats and other insects descended as a haze to which she closed her eyes and flicked her tail in the water.
He eyed the jungle warily. Long ago one of the palms had fallen and now laid, bleached and stripped to look like the pale mast of a ghost's ship. Behind its body there was a gap cut in the undergrowth creating a door drenched in shadow. He walked toward it stopping only to inspect a marker left stabbed in the sand. Unsure if it was a warning or an invitation, he hesitated at the sight of a skull strung onto a silver thread and hung from the top of the spear. It was an unusually small head – a monkey, probably – which they'd stained yellow with powder from the rocks.
Another ghost like him, he thought, as he stepped into the jungle. He was unnaturally pale with long white hair plaited in segments past his waist which flicked from side to side like a tail as he hiked through the jungle. His arms were bare displaying lines of illegible text drawn on him by the priests while his thick leather belt contained a pictogram of a battle won before the dawn.
That night he slept curled against a filthy black stone then another half day later the jungle thinned and he came across Yeen's city gates. What wretched things they were. Grown rather than formed, he imagined that they'd been pulled from the sea bed – stolen from a sunken ruin.
Beyond them lay a dirt path lined with more black stones. The jungle infringed upon it with heavy vines bowing at head height and razor sharp cycads encroaching from the sides. The people of the city left outside went about their business brusquely but the majority of the inhabitants had retreated into hiding. It was not the first time he'd walked the streets of the Forbidden City. The last time he'd been welcomed as a god with pearls scattered over the ground, catching the light like stars on the abyss. That was before the smell of war drifted from the North. Separated from the terror by an ample sea, he'd not expected Yeen to cry out for help.
They had. Their pleas were sent on trade ships and arrived in Asshai's harbour half-mad.
The chief of Yeen brought him down to the fighting pit, cut directly from a natural bowl in the rock. Embraced by severe cliffs dotted by falls, it opened as a massive chasm where the roughest creatures in the kingdom came to war. It had been transformed into a forest of iron cages that sat, edge to edge, in lots guarded by soldiers freshly wounded with sweat and blood glistening in the sun. Inside were shivering creatures, barely human and diminutive. He had never seen wretchedness like it – not even in the peaked jungles of Jinqi.
"They came from the Southern jungles," the Chief explained, in broken Asshai'i. "Attacked the outposts and left pieces of their people swinging from the trees. Patterns, like shells, in blood and bone. The men won't touch them when they star' to curse."
One of the guards leaned heavily on his spear, dripping sweat as if it were Summer rain. Trembles wracked his body causing the Bloodstone Emperor to stare until he was pulled away by the Chief. "You must not. It is a sickness. They brought that too."
He was taken to the sacred bone tree that had ensconced itself on one side of the cliff. Enormous, it trailed its white roots through every crevice of the world, or so the stories went, with its crimson leaves shedding constantly over the misery of the fighting pit leaving it with a fractured carpet of blood. There he saw the terrible face carved into the trunk with pools of sap collecting beneath its open wound. They had done that too, the small people from the South, desecrating the sacred tree.
The Bloodstone Emperor returned to the cages, knelt at the bars and looked upon their tiny faces. He had seem them before in the Northern forests of Mossovy where clusters of white trees had been planted, long ago, in great spirals with their branches woven together with time. There, too, the horror hid among the thickets and all eyes feared the cold jungles where horses were regularly found scattered in decorative motifs – the magic, said the priests, of the old gods.
"They are everywhere," the Emperor whispered, "and so too are their monsters."
Yeen entered free-fall. He realised too late that he'd arrived at the cusp of death and instead of an army, he'd brought a sword. It wasn't going to be enough to stand up to the waves of savages pouring into the city. The screams of Yeenish children were drowned by the cages rattling in the pits. Howls echoed from the thin lips of their captives. The guards stuck their spears through the gaps in the bars and killed them all.
The Bloodstone emperor found himself herded into the heart of the pit with everyone else. There was no way to fight a battle street-to-street but he'd seen enough war to know that congregating in a pit was as good as digging a grave.
Yeenish guards held back the tiny demonic warriors on the left flank but the Bloodstone Emperor tilted his head and looked toward the towering cliffs that now surrounded him on all sides. He could hear them there, thrashing through the forest, approaching the lip of the cliff. He shouted to the men but they couldn't hear him above the raging battle so he walked alone, pushing through the tide of men, until he reached the base of the nearest cliff. He could have sworn that heard the subtle brush of the Weirwood roots against the rock.
A black arrow with a sharpened fragment of black glass soared off the top of the cliff and struck a nearby soldier through the forehead, splitting the bone with a spray of blood. He tumbled to the ground and was immediately swallowed by the crushing mass of people. Then another arrow. And another. A storm of them whistling into the pit picking off victims indiscriminately.
It's a slaughter… and he'd die in it if he didn't find a way out of the killing fields.
There was a moment of awe as Yuishari cruised overhead. Swords stilled. Salt water fell on the battle where it shivered free of her scales. The Bloodstone Emperor closed his eyes for a moment, whispering prayers even though they'd fall unheard onto the wind. She had come to save him from the uproar but found nowhere to perch. Her wings beat, knocking hundreds of men to the mud, including him. The cages were set tumbling along, crushing even more with stains of red left in their wake.
"Steady! Steady Yuishari!" He cried desperately out to his beast, as she attempted to make a perch of the black walls. Her claws ruptured the cliffs but they immediately smashed under her weight.
His skin was painted with blood by the time he reached her fallen body. Even with a broken wing, she rose out of the pit like a second mountain. Her moans of sorrow drowned the air. Fire rushed from her snout, incinerating any that dared approach except for the Emperor who felt his dragon's wounds as keenly as his own.
Terrible lengths of bone jutted from the joint in her wing. It had been snapped clean in half by the fall and even in Yuishari's desperation she could not lift it from the mud. A few of the diminutive creatures tried to climb onto her. He raced to fell them, butchering their green bodies with ungodly strength.
There was nothing he could do for her. A dragon without her wing was doomed. She was destined to die in Yeen's pit and turn to bone watching the cages rust away into dust.
Before escaping, he placed his hand on her snout and whispered soft things. Then she held the war back long enough for him to run to the safety of the beach and cast himself into the water.
BLOODSTONE ISLAND – THE STEPSTONES 252 AC
Marwyn dipped his head in a pained sigh. He'd managed to wedge his nimble form between two shelves of stone at the top of the ocean cave long enough to hold a lantern to the wall and translate the inscriptions. Like a lizard from The Summer Isles he moved over the near vertical surface, chasing the old text.
"Well – speak!" Demanded a vaguely regal voice from below. An old woman, mid way through her seventies with trailing white hair plaited through turquoise beads, leaned heavily on a stone sarcophagus. "Is that all it says?"
"Manners..." Drawled Marwyn, despite being more than half a century younger than his companion and infinitely less well born. "Remember, I'm a volunteer not a slave. I know it's difficult for dragons to tell the difference."
A pair of mismatched eyes, blue and green like the seaglass in her hair, shone in the combined light of their torches. "My mother owes a favour to your Lord's father, that is all. So far it appears your reputation may precede your talent."
Marwyn was far too young to fear the fire in royal blood. All he did was wink, lower his torch and point at the coffin beside her. The cocky shit cleared his throat.
"The tomb of the Bloodstone Emperor was hardly a stretch on an island with his namesake… Does it say what happened to him after the fall of Yeen?"
He dusted his hand over the stone, brushing thick sheets of cobweb away along with the desiccated corpses of its architects. "Part of this is ruined by an old cave in," he admitted, unable to read entire segments obscured by cracks and chipped rock, "but your ancestor found himself another dragon in Asshai – Quaithe – I think he called it."
"Dust of the Light?" Shiera translated. "Odd name for a creature."
"It was young and unruly. On his way West he left the dragon in – well – that's probably modern Valyria – switched to a locally built fleet and continued on to the furthest 'reach of ice' to search for his sister's corpse." After that, the wall fell away into a pile of uneven boulders covered in more desiccated web. Marwyn scooted down from his perch, landed deftly on the ground and crawled under an overhang to read the last few lines. "He died nameless. Unknown. A keeper of shells and things of the smouldering sea where the forests bowed low at the coming of the moon-tide. Not all things are forgotten. Here lays a god, come from the East. A son of the Shadow and keeper of the Lion's enduring night." Marwyn looked to Shiera as he finished reading. "This is the place, I'd say."
There was a renewed reverence in Shiera's touch of the sarcophagus lid. "The seal is unbroken. He has laid here since the Towers of Valyria..."
Marwyn approached. He handed the Targaryen princess his torch and picked up the iron bar he'd brought to lever open the coffin. Objectively it was a callous thing to do but both of them had their reasons for desecrating the tomb. Neither of them spoke as the iron ground against the lid. The sarcophagus was made out of the same vicious stone as the cave. Grey and riddled with veins of green marble, its surface was defiantly hostile to the attack, snapping the end off his crowbar. Marwyn fell spectacularly to the ground with a sudden crack hissing, "What a bloody nightmare of a thing!"
Hours later, after Shiera replaced the torches with a makeshift fire pit, thunder filled the air. The lid moved. Ash curled from within, riding the fresh air to freedom. Marwyn dropped the iron bar onto the ground in victory.
"The rumours are true," Shiera whispered, appearing beside Marwyn like a ghost. "His bones are as black as his soul."
The corpse of the Bloodstone Emperor lay exactly as he'd been left. It was the body of an ancient man, dressed in the rags of his former splendour with his arms crossed over his chest and a trailing braid of white hair bound with tiny metal rings in the fashion of the Dothraki. He was bare of jewellery, holding only a small book that had long since turned to an unsteady pile of dust. His bones were black as soot – as if he had been boiled first, dipped in pitch and re-assembled for his slumber in the next life.
"By all the gods..." Marwyn breathed, brought to a moment of reverence. "Is this what Time does to us?"
Shiera felt a chill settle in the pit of her heart. Yes. This man was kin. All her life she'd been chasing fragments of his story, etched in temple walls across the world. Her mother's dream was to finally understand the birth of dragons in the West. Now she looked upon the first page. "I imagined him to be a devil," she replied, her own braid grazing the lid of the coffin. "But he was as mortal as you or I. Here he lies. His story finished."
"No sword..." Marwyn noted, with a sigh of disappointment.
"And no dragon eggs..." she added, equally frustrated. "This is not a trip either of us can return from empty handed."
"Then we are equal in our folly."
"It is only folly if we fail and misfortune when we succeed."
Though it would take Marwyn a long time to appreciate the Targaryen princess' reply.
Asshai loomed from beyond the horizon. Marwyn could smell it in the air as the rickety vessel rocked wildly in sympathy with the restless sea. Storms clustered on every point of the horizon, lost and chasing their tails. A patch of clear sky survived above the ship but even that was sad and pale.
"There's smoke on the water." Marwyn pointed to the white layer hanging onto the crests of the waves. It thickened the deeper they ventured into The Cinnamon Strait.
"Comes from burning mountains of Sothoryos." A dwarfish sea captain who called himself, 'Wreab' replied. "They are worse this year – eh? Last month – the ash – it fell from the clouds like rain. The water – it was – like stone. Great big sheets of floating rock making mischief for the ships."
"Aren't you young to be sailing your own ship?" Marwyn asked, tested by the groan in the mast and sound of the pulleys swaying low on their ropes.
"In these waters?" Wreab nearly choked back a laugh. He grabbed hold of the rail and climbed up high enough to stick his face in the wind and catch a few of the tempestuous mess of sea. "Most are dead before they're men. If I make it to thirty I shall be an old man. Not much chance of that, now we're headed to the Shadow Lands. There wait vengeful waters, my friend. The waves go still and without a gasp of sunlight, the waters of The Jade Sea become a mirror of night."
"You've sailed the waters around Asshai before?"
"Ay. I've sailed them, all right. Up and down that wretched slip of land. Nothing but ghosts, horror and gold." A share in that gold explained the ruby piercings Wreab had in both ears to match his gold bracelets. Aside from his obvious diminutive height, the young captain exhibited none of the usual deformities associated with his birth. His naturally dark hair was dyed blue while a thick beard was twisted at both sides into cheerful cuves.
"My benefactor in Old Town trades with the merchants of Asshai. He has an acute interest in history."
"History's purse is open to many," Wreab agreed. "Including the silver princess you brought with you." He saw the Westerosi boy turn his nose up at the smell permeating the hull. "Nothing wrong with the smell of dried fish and horse," he insisted. "Ships like this are what keeps the black heart beating."
"And for this the Asshai'i pay you in jewels? It'd not be worth two bags of gold."
"The starving pay an emperor's ransom for a barrel of wine," Wreab shrugged. "Besides, you have to be fuckin' mad to sail this far East. There's a forest of masts beneath the waves. The pirates dream of growing fins and scale so that they might rob the waters of their gold." They were both quiet for a moment, staring out at they ocean which sloshed at their ship. Twin columns of smoke emerged from the grey horizon in the far South. The wind knocked them horizontally like a pair of colossal fishing hooks. "The princess wants a few dragon eggs – she will find them. The cliffs are littered with nests this time of the year if you have the nerve to look. What is it that your master in the Hightower seeks?"
"Nothing I'll reveal to a pirate."
"Captain..." Wreab corrected firmly. "My wages are paid. I've no interest offending the gods with thievery, not when I live my life on the back of the sea."
"All the same." Marwyn replied, and held his tongue.
Thick banks of cloud rolled over the sky from the East, masking the sunrise. Bands of ash, parallel to the approaching shore, ebbed away from their source in The Mountains of the Morn. By afternoon, the coast of The Shadow Lands rose from the Jade Sea in a wall of dragonglass cliffs capped in whispering Ghostgrass swaying in the mimic of snow.
Marwyn faced West to watch the sun's orb sink through the final layers of cloud before it was sucked into oblivion. Darkness fell. Shiera joined him on deck. Her eye was drawn to vast mats of seaweed bobbing in the dark water – floating like bergs. They glowed green like the embers of Wildfire cast out from a bonfire.
"The gods mock me..." She whispered. "I seek dragon fire and all I have is its pale imitation."
The fluorescing seaweed washed up and caught on the ring of coral reef which surrounded the Manticore Isles. Their ship traversed the shallow waters carefully. Wreab bellowed orders to his sailors who clambered through the rigging like spiders in a canopy. At night, there was nothing to be seen of the islands themselves except the occasional flicker of white limestone which formed the jagged shore. Asshai was now invisible but Marwyn could feel the city creeping closer, poisoning the darkness. Leyton's stories filled his head with horrific fears and, as the water began to bubble around the boat, he believed them all to be true.
An awful stink took to the air, far worse than Wreab's cargo.
"From the mountains..." Wreab whispered, as Asshai forced everyone's voice to a hush. "Foul things leach from the rivers and empty into the sea. I've seen it at the height of day. The water curdles like milk with carrion and all the demons your wet nursed threatened your dreams with."
They made port late into the evening, pulling aside a slanted jetty, partially consumed by the acidic water. Coils of rope hit the planks and soon the ship was reluctantly drawn into place. Even then it railed against its moorings. Marwyn was left to his own devices while Wreab took the dragon's hand and descended the plank with her.
"There's something of the Shadow about you," Wreab murmured, as Shiera pulled her hood over her face. "One might imagine you've seen these shores before." When she refused to answer, he walked her to the end of the jetty and paused at the road made of pumice. "Where you're headed, you'll need a different name. If food is gold, silver blood is priceless. You cannot be a dragon here."
Shiera cast her eye over the monstrous buildings rising from the street. It was difficult to imagine that these things were built by the same hands as Valyria. Where was the beauty? Even ruined, the soul of the lost Western cities sung lullabies to the evening stars. Nothing came from Asshai. Nothing except silence. "I know," she finally replied. "Here, you may call me Quaithe."
Marwyn returned from the nameless temple with a light purse, followed the path that ran beside the meandering Ash River and crossed one of the bridges to the Eastern side of the city. As the path approached the flanks of the mountain range, the people died away. Fewer houses kept candles in their windows. Most, he suspected, contained nothing but malice. He was used to the solitary creatures of Old Town but the Asshai'i were hostile to a glance. They hid themselves and shied away, seeping into the uncharted streets never to be found. Only The Temple of the Pale Lion, perched on the unusual hill interrupting the cityscape, had lights burning in its centre. His attention lingered on its silhouette but dared not approach.
"Well, there's a surprise," Wreab greeted the boy from a street corner. "Thought the Shadow Binders might sell you to the Pyromancers. There's good money in young flesh. They like the way it burns." He could see the usual sheen of shock worn on Marwyn's face like a mask. "You'll be all right," he added, more softly, patting him on the hip for that was as far as his reach would allow. "Everyone's like that the first time. Magic isn't natural and nor are the things that bathe in it. Dabble all you like in the books at the citadel but remember what awaits those that subvert their souls."
Quaithe joined them shortly after and led them further down the path until the original stonework gave way to raw rock with a pair of grooves worn by the wheels of ancients carts.
"How many people lived here?" Asked Marwyn.
"More than will ever live again," replied Quaithe. "Now be quiet," she insisted. "The road to Stygai follows the river and all kinds of things live in the caves that guard it."
There was no need for torches. Even in the depths of night, the Ash River lit the way with its disconcerting glow and foul breath. Shadows moved beneath the surface in the shape of serpents. Occasionally they passed a sad pile of bone washed into a crook of rock but nothing with flesh. The path beside the river was narrow, wide enough for the three of them to walk side by side before the black walls of the mountain rose up on their left. On the other side of the water the cliffs ended directly in the current. The petrified remains of an old forest was held in a state of decay on both slopes – no more than bare posts turned to stone protruding directly from the ground. Fresh layers of ash washed around their figures like a lifeless desert.
The journey was difficult and two days in, when they were well and truly surrounded by thrusting mountain peaks, Marwyn seriously questioned everything he knew about Shiera Seastar. Her birth was no secret with a father who lived as an infamous shit responsible for one of the worst blood lettings in living history and a mother brought from Lys, little more than a wealthy whore. Still – Shiera barely raised a breath as she climbed the roughest parts of the road like a leaf riding the Autumn air leaving Wreab and Marwyn collapsed in sweat.
Magic. Of course. Why else would Leyton's father procure her mother for the king? The Hightowers were known as collectors of curiosities. More than fire ran in her veins, of that he was certain.
They saw no one in the three days it took to reach the expansive valley torn into the mountain ranges. Their soft ridges collapsed into the centre as they grey, endlessly shifting toward the river which continuously washed them away. Steam lifted from their flanks and most were warm to the touch except for the highest peaks were coated in ice. In the weak gasp of daylight they could see all the way to a distant mountain which had trails of fire creeping down its face like tears.
Marwyn held his breath. There, circling the peak, was the shadow of a dragon.
Quaithe stared at the creature, her soul lifting with the sight. A living, breathing dragon and soon she'd have eggs of her own to hatch in Summerhall. "Welcome, gentlemen, to The Vale of Shadows." She laid back against the nearest cliff, revelling in the heat. Asshai was not dead like the rest of the cold world – it breathed and struggled. "It is said the people of Asshai once buried their kings in these mountain caves, safe from grave robbers where their souls could find peace dreaming with the stars."
Neither Wreab nor Marwyn were looking at the cliffs. Their attention was caught by a sprawling façade cut directly into the rock in the shape of a roaring lion in such detail it might have been frozen into place by a curse. Its jaws dwarfed the Sept of Balor and the pair of jade pillars built either side rivalled the walls of The Red Keep.
"Oh yes…" Quaithe added. "The city of Stygai."
Marwyn considered himself reckless and brave but even he hesitated to part from the safety of the cliff. The valley howled from below as sheets of wind clipped the mountains and rushed over them. "This isn't a city," he contested, pointing at the horror across the valley. "It's a tomb." He turned on Quaithe and saw that she'd been keeping a terrible truth from him. "You knew. What is this? Where the hell are we?"
"Leyton has led you here – a pilgrim without faith."
Wreab stumbled for a grip on the sliding layers of ash that coated the rock. "Clever sod. This one has too much sense to seek the Lion's Crypt."
Marwyn only understood the rising sense of fear that threatened to drown him. He stared across the valley to the hideous mouth with obsidian fangs lurching down toward any creature foolish enough to enter. Holes were burrowed in the cliffs all around it in the echo of a city. Tombs. A city of the dead. Dug in like the ant nests on the Red Waste. "The – the – Lion?" He barely choked from his throat.
"Aye, lad." Wreab dusted off his clothes. "The God Emperor of the Dawn."
DRAGONSTONE – BLACKWATER BAY
"You never speak of your mother," said Tyrion, recoiling in dismay from a table of sullen figs and gritty bread. Nothing thrived in the aftermath of war, least of all the food. Of all the deaths he'd imagined in his moments of doubt, starvation was not one of them. Drowning, perhaps. A knife through the neck – if he kept company with Varys much longer. Torture seemed another possibility, if things took a turn for the worse. Starvation? How dull. A sheep's death.
"My mother?" Varys replied, mildly shocked by the intrusion of his peace. The pair of them occupied a patch on the terrace overlooking the city. They'd sat here many times in the afternoon sun. The lion banners might be gone but the sun had the same cosy warmth and the sea air – the same bite of salt. Indeed, if Varys closed his eyes it was possible for a moment to pretend that the world was as it was. "I do not speak of her because I never knew her."
"You were born on Lys?"
"Hardly a secret," he quipped, defensive.
"It was not an accusation," Tyrion insisted. "Just making conversation."
"That I doubt…" He drawled, leaning over the table to cast his eye over the offerings. "Your curiosity is never without purpose. What is it you wish to know about my past, Lord Tyrion?"
"Well something would be nice. You know everything of my story and I, nothing of yours."
"I am not the son of a nobleman."
"Aren't you? Perhaps you are," Tyrion shrugged. "You could be the son of a king or a wealthy merchant."
"Or a child from the Lysene whore houses."
"Now – now," Tyrion cautioned, "we must be careful not to speak ill of Mormont's late wife now that he has risen above us."
"He is on the other side of the bay. Not even Bears have ears that sharp."
"Yet you did not answer my question."
Varys flinched. It was obvious Tyrion had a thread and would not stop until he'd picked it free. "All right," he admitted, "I know who my parents are." Varys sighed. "Who cares for these things any more?" He asked himself, more than Tyrion. His hands flexed against the arms of the brittle wooden chair, weathered from decades in the sun.
"I think I know," Tyrion cut him short. "At least, I suspect your father might be Leyton Hightower." He knew at once that he was right. Varys, rarely a man to display emotion, staggered in his breath and averted his eyes to the horizon, looking across all the tortured land and sea to the tiny island of Lys. "And your mother?"
"You've enough of my secrets for today."
"Fair enough," Tyrion withdrew. "But Leyton was a man of wealth and means. How does his son end up a slave?"
"It was Illyrio that first told me," Varys replied, more softly than before. "My mother cursed me the moment I drew breath and my father, you see, took threats from the Old Gods seriously. How did you know?"
"You have the look of him," said Tyrion, simply. "Manners and a peculiar turn of phrase. He was always a spider, curled up in his web above the city."
A rare moment of genuine interest crossed Varys face but a cloud trespassing the sun stole it away.
