BRAAVOS – ESSOS

"Tommen – come over here. Behind me. Don't ask questions just bloody do it..." Daario's voice rumbled coldly beneath the rustling flames. He reached out to the boy-king but hesitated, fingertips stopping scant inches short. Tommen's youth had diverted his attention, peering through the faltering light like the keen eyes of a child in the forest. Moreover, it was Cersei's eyes that returned the stare – a perfect copy of her cruel heart buried in the darkness. No… Daario told himself firmly, she is nothing but another whisper that should have died, clawing onto life. He wondered how many of them had sunk into the darkness, conspiring with the sleeping gods.

Daario remembered that Death's soldiers were pacing outside the un-lockable doors. They scratched their way up the white banks of the island only to pause at the entrance, unwilling to touch the foreboding building. He did not know why they hesitated at doors. Maybe it was not only men who feared the assassin's nest.

This time Daario took Tommen firmly by the sash around his waist and forced the boy against one of the towering pillars. There was a wreak of salt and lamp oil about the Lannister to which Daario's clothes added burned cinder and the nearby Tycho – blood. They were all a long way from civilisation's protection and now they felt every yard of that distance. "I can hear them." Daario hissed. "Listen..."

Tommen thought it sounded like storm wandering off the coast, as they often did in front of King's Landing. "What are they?" No answer. "Do you mean the thing from before?"

Daario shook his head slowly.

The pirate stepped forward with Brightroar heavy in his hand. Too big to wield easily – it was a monster of a weapon swung by heroes long vanished from the world. Northmen, probably. They were taller than everyone else. Only that old Mormont bastard could pick up a sword like Dawn as if it were a wooden stick. An Ironborn had no business with such a thing.

Moon-glow crept under the gap beneath the paired Ironwood and Weirwood doors. Where they didn't quite meet a fine thread of light divided the darkness. It was silver, like Daenerys' hair used to look against his skin. A world of dragons and demons, Daario thought to himself. He'd always feared that his Queen lusted after the darkness, as the moon chased the night. He was able to see her with perfectly clarity now... She was darkness in pursuit of the fire – a slash of ink across the sky, like Drogon with his wings outstretched within a gale. A man would be a fool to love a doomed god. He pitied the Mormont.

A gust of ice pushed in from the water and nudged the door slightly against its hinges. Mist swept around the gaps then crawled out and rose up into the limestone foyer where the eternal torches quivered. Thunder? Or something dead dragging itself up the coral banks surrounding the island… He could not tell.

"Where are those vaults, Tycho?" Daario demanded, under his breath.

"The great lion guards the night..." The delirious banker rambled. There was a growing stain of blood beneath his feet while his face had turned as pale as the dead hunting them.

"What?" Daario pulled out his dragonglass dagger so that he brandished a weapon in each hand. He did not dare turn his back on the door.

"He stands beside the Mistress of the Moon," Tycho lamented, staring longingly towards the depths of the temple where its detail could barely be made out against the playing shadows, "and all the lonely gods in their beds beneath sea."

"He sounds like a demented songbird..." Daario muttered.

"I think he means through there – stop that..." Tommen caught Tycho by the arm before he could pound his fist against the pillar in a diversion of madness. He hauled the banker halfway to his unsteady feet before realising the pirate had not moved. "Aren't you coming?"

"Look for the vaults," Daario replied, setting his gaze set on the door. "Whatever comes through there, I'll buy you as much time as I can." Given his previous experience, that was about ten seconds. "The Queen must know that Braavos has fallen and that the East is crumbling from underneath her. We are being flanked. Go! Don't wait about here. Find that vault or we're all as good as corpses. Do it now!"

Tommen tightened his grip on Tycho's arm. The pirate king did not strike him as a man who made bedfellows with fear but there was honest terror in Daario's eyes so he obeyed without protest. "Tycho – come on."

"I am not running this time, you dead bastards..." Daario murmured, once the others were out of sight. They'd chased him down once, like animal. He still dreamed of the desolate streets of Yin and the rise of ocean wind against his face before the fall into the water. He never wanted to hear another great city of man aloof with echoes and the hollow rustle of a gull's wings.


The corridors of the assassins' lair unfurled forever. Like a trick of the desert sands, its mirrored faces repeated excessively as if they were a poor man's prayer. It did not seem to matter how far they stumbled between the flame-lit halls, the House of Black and White continued in a morbid sprawl. Shadows writhed across polished rock. Scattered herbs tarnished the air with rancid spice. Skinned faces hung on hooks from the walls. Ash slithered beside them with the tips of her wings dragging scratches in the tile. She kept her distance from the unnatural spirals of green flame, skirting from side to side.

"This must be it." Tommen stopped where the forest of columns ended.

A circular room gaped in font. Set several feet lower than the rest of the temple, it was lined by towering figures carved out of the same grey stone as the Braavosi Titan standing watch over the harbour. Each one had the face of a god. The Father, the Mother, the Warrior, the Crone – Smith, Maiden, Stranger. Others…

The Storm God stood tallest with his broad, muscular chest covered in fish scales. His lightning rod brushed the ceiling while the Drowned God held a trident decorated with swollen sea pearls gleaming from the darkness like rows of teeth. R'hllor reclined in a bed of basalt flames with eyes of bloodstone and beside his demonic image, a slab of blushing quartz which had been roughly set in the image of a stallion. The Hooded Wayarer had cracked apart some time ago and lay in pieces at the feet of the Pale Child. There were half a dozen more gods that Tommen did not recognise except as faint impressions from books he'd neglected to read.

He did not like the look of the statues. Each one was cold and featureless – entirely dead. Perhaps that was the point the Faceless Men were trying to make with their elaborate temple.

The gods are dead.

At the opposite side of the room lingered a ghostly woman with real tears trickling over her stone cheeks. Tommen could hear them hit the floor with a sequence of echoes, one after the other. Drip. Drip. Drip. Like blood from a mounted corpse. Beside her rested the enormous white head of a lion, jaws agape and eyes made from sapphire surrounded by folds of marble whose imperfections mimicked the wisps of smoke trapped in Valyrian steel. The lion had no body and was simply a head set directly into the wall. Of all the gods in the room it was the oldest. Part of the building. The rest were-

"Camouflage..." Tommen realised, in a whisper. "This temple was built around the lion's head. The – the door to the vaults. It must be."

Tycho admitted it with a nod. "If you want to keep your secrets, set them into the crowd." He replied, repeating wisdom that was not his own. "And so it is with a great many things in our world. Oh gods..." Tycho clenched his leg in agony. His sense was returning and along with it came the full force of mortality's bite.

His open wound pulsed, causing him to writhe helplessly against the stone. He gripped his head and then clawed restlessly at his skin as though he might tear it off. The faces of his dead colleagues flashed across his mind. The last one lay crushed beneath a marble column with a black dragon breathing rivers of flame through the innards of the ruined bank. Eventually Tycho shook them off, opened his eyes and stared at the lion. It looked straight into his empty soul. "A – a beautiful thing," he admitted. "I never thought I would see it in the flesh. They say the head was dragged up from the bottom of the bay, long ago."

"We don't have time for this," Tommen pulled Tycho roughly over to the leering statue, a distinct lack of empathy uncurling in his Lannister features. "How do we open it? Tycho! Hurry up – or do you want to make friends with what's waiting out in the harbour for us?"

Tycho was not deliberately unhelpful, it was simply the pain. It reached to every part of his shaking bone, washed through him and left him drowning between oblivion and terror. "Open it? I-" His gaze caught the glistening gems inlaid in the lion's eyes. They were fierce. Threatening. Ice in his blood. "O-over there..." He finally replied, nodding the weeping statue beside. "Her tears they – they must be made his. That's – that's all I know. The priests. They tend to the vaults, not us."

It took Tommen a moment to understand. He dropped Tycho to the ground and set about climbing the statue of the Weeping Woman. The rock was slick but he scrambled across her chest, hooked his arm around her neck and found himself face to face with her misery. She was cold. Another dead face like all the other gods looking blankly on at Braavos' fall.

Sweat rolled off Tommen's arms, forehead and neck as he tried to collect the statue's tears. The stone woman had been built against a crack in the building which was leaking a tiny river of water. He wiped them up with a scrap of material – until he saw a bronze key hanging from a chain around the statue's neck. The key rested against the swell of her breast. Tommen tossed the rag and snatched the ornament then let himself slide to the ground. He returned to stand in front of the foreboding face of the lion.

"What now?" Asked Tycho, before they were interrupted by something smashing through the doors at the front of the temple. The familiar 'clink' of steel on rock settled on the air as Daario fought off whatever had come for them.

Tommen brandished the key furiously. "This is your vault, Tycho, shouldn't you know how to open it?"

"I told you. The assassins keep the vaults," he replied, finding himself drawn towards the frightening animal face. "I merely care for the books." It was almost as if the lion was begging for his blood. Enticing Tycho in for the kill.

"You're telling me that the Bank of Braavos allowed a coven of nameless murderers to control their fortune?" He reeled at the thought. No king of Westeros would engage in such idiocy and even if they had, his late mother would have put a stop to it.

"That is how it has always been," Tycho replied. "They were the ones that tore down the Valyrian empire and settled Braavos. The wealth is theirs."

"A revered free city," Tommen whispered, "built by thieves and assassins." The sound of clashing swords and a sharp groan from Daario snapped him back to life.

Tommen searched the lion for a keyhole and found it set into the wall near its neck. He slipped the key, turned it and listen to a serious of mechanisms hidden behind the rock clunk into place. Tommen stumbled backwards, as did Tycho, until they were sitting awkwardly on the edge of the poisonous pool of water at the heart of the room.

The lion statue in front of them shifted with a soft scream of rock. They felt the temple tremble underfoot while the dark, pool shivered like an ink well touched by its quill. Even Tommen cowered as dirt poured off the ceiling above them, falling in veils. He covered his face as the air turned into a cloud of dust. The statue was an ornate, enormous lock which had not been opened in many years. The entire lion head emerged a few inches from the wall and then everything fell silent except for the sound of Daario fighting in the distance.

"And into the lion's mouth..." Tycho whispered. "Honestly, I thought this was just a story the banks told each other over too many glasses of wine." Tycho placed his hand on the lion's nose in reverence. Then, with the weight of his wounded boy, he helped push the marble to the side revealing an entrance carved into the stone wall behind.

Tommen staggered backwards. The wall gaped with a black slit – featureless and endless, as though they were gazing into the throat of a beast.

"We're going to need torches..." The Lannister tore two out of their holds on nearby pillars. He shoved one in Tycho's hand then returned to the edge of the opening and reached his flame into the darkness. It split apart then reflected off the polished black granite walls which sparked with flecks of quartz. Its inherent imperfection could have easily passed for the night sky with all its stars scattered at random.

"And the pirate?" Tycho asked, as Tommen shoved the banker into the tunnel. Ash rushed in after him.

"I'll get Daario. You – start walking."

Tycho's blood dripped off his shoe onto the stone. He gave the boy-king a nod.


Daario found himself pressed against one of the large pillars – rusted blade digging into his neck and the stench of death radiating out of the withered flesh of the creature holding him down. It was not the sailor from before. This body was old, rotted at the edges only to be snap frozen and stuck back together with ice and magic. Its grey hair knotted right to its waist, falling in greasy strips while pieces of what looked like antique armour hung from his torso in shreds. Daario could see more than half its bones, white and cracked. He sliced through a line of them with his sword. Their shards scattered over the marble floor but the creature kept coming for him.

"Get – off – you – bastard!" Daario growled, using the pillar as leverage to shove the creature back. It stumbled away. He felt hot blood drip down the front of his neck. He tore one of the torches off the granite behind him and swiped it in front of the dead creature. Daario could have sworn that he saw its dead gaze flinch.

"Daario!"

Tommen waved at him urgently from the shadows.

Daario kicked the creature fiercely in the chest, pushing it back down before I had a chance to rush him. More of them lingered at the doors – some of them stepping inside the building as if pushing through an invisible veil of magic.

"Shit!" Daario spun on his heels and took off toward the darkness in chase of Tommen.

On foot, the living were faster. They reached the lion's head with enough time for Daario to throw his sword into the tunnel. It clattered violently to the ground as he grabbed hold of the stone lion head. Together, he and Tommen pulled the statue closed, sealing themselves inside just in time to escape the terrifying scratch of bone against rock as several dead creatures collided with the other side.

Tycho held a pair of torches. Their fire illuminated his bloody robes like a priest and rendered his eyes black. "Welcome," he whispered, "to the Braavosi Vaults."

With his back to the tunnel's cover stone, Daario felt the dead bodies pile ravenously against the lion head. The only way left to them was forwards, toward the heart of the famed vaults. "I hope the pirate legends were right about these vaults. Otherwise we've trapped ourselves inside a tomb."

Tommen draped the key around his neck for safe keeping. "I have no intention of dying in the East," he insisted, taking the lead. "Mother wouldn't approve."


"What – exactly – did those legends say?" Tommen prompted, as the three of them scuffed their shoes on the choppy floor of the tunnel.

For all the grandeur of the entrance very little effort had been put into the creation of the vault itself. At first it headed sharply downwards in several uneven levels of steps and ramps that must have taken them well below the waterline of The Bay of Braavos. The edges of these filled with chalk-dust that had rubbed off the walls. A fine layer of it hung in the air around them, catching in their lungs. It grew cold in the places where the narrow tunnels walls gleamed with water. Tommen tried not to think about the weight of bay pressing down around them – ignoring the mournful groan of stone.

"The vaults of Braavos are not physically inside the House of Black and White." Daario clarified. "This bloody, morbid temple is too small to house the rumoured treasury. Even the most idiot of merchants knows that the vaults are built into the white mountains on the mainland – the ones encircling the city that are now lit on fire. Plenty of pirates have scoured those mountains looking for a way into the vaults. Four hundred years and they found nothing – only cracks that go nowhere except into to piles of bone. My guess is that this tunnel emerges somewhere within the mountains."

"Or it might not." Tommen replied. "It might end exactly where it says it does – inside a sealed vault. We'll be rich and dead." His feet slid on the ground which had changed from a solid piece of rock into a layer of gravel. It crumbled beneath their boots – shale-like and brittle.

"We are mer-creatures now..." Daario kicked at the ground, sending half a dozen pebbles bouncing into nowhere. "Walking on the bottom of the sea."

"Is that Ironborn superstition finally making an appearance?" Tycho taunted, with what was left of his spirit. "Worried you'll offend you seaweed gods?" There was no answer. Tycho kept his eyes up to the roof and the weight of water above. He startled at the slightest sound – even the rush of his torch fire when it caught a stray breeze. "What is that smell?"

"Stale air. Stone. Salt. Seaweed..." Daario snapped. "Home. Plenty of dreams have died down here. Where'd that damn dragon go?"

"Can't see Ash any more." Tommen admitted. He knew that she was there somewhere, scratching about in the darkness.

"We should kill it."

Tommen stopped abruptly and brandished his torch at Daario's face. "We will do no such thing! It – it is a creature of the gods. To kill a dragon – it is to invite the wrath of R'hllor."

"Maybe I am mistaken but were you not standing in King's Landing as it burned to cinder?" Daario was not afraid of the flame at his face. "Dragons under Targaryen control are a catastrophe. Dragons that answer to no one are the creatures of our nightmares. Your precious Ash will never obey your will – it's not in your blood. Imagine what that thing is going to be like a few years from now. Then you will beg me to kill it."

"I am not letting you kill Ash." Tommen held his ground. "And nor would your Queen."

It was only the mention of Daernerys' name that held Daario back from his desire to run a blade through the young dragon. "Take care invoking the Queen's name. The superstitious say that she is the stealer of souls."


CASTERLY ROCK – WESETERLANDS

Victarian lifted an enormous flagpole into the raucous ocean wind screaming off the Sunset Sea before colliding with the jagged fringe of Westeros. Its silk banner rippled luxuriously in kind with a demonic squid set on an ink background snapping back and forth. The Ironborn king locked his attention on the wild harbour where a bright speck had been launched from one of the boats drifting off Lannisport's entrance. The flaming arrow tore into the sky at great speed as a bead of fire, almost invisible against the sky.

The mad king leaned against the rockery to get a better look as the arrow was pushed across the horizon by the prevailing winds. What appeared at first to be an overshot was eventually nudged toward the sails of a striken vessel which bobbed and writhed in the waves like an animal caught in a hunter's trap.

The arrow struck one of the sails. Victarian licked his cracked lips. Nothing happened. The curious among his bloodthirsty brethren fidgeted in a crowd, each one craning closer to the water. A second later, a flaming tongue of green fire flicked up out of the water tearing salt, waves and weed from the depths. Heavily laden with wildfire, the captured ship from Oldtown convulsed.

Many of Victarion's advisors had implored him to capture the ship and steal its precious cargo or ransom it back to the Flower Prince but Victarion had those voices hung from the masts of their ships, upside down, disembowelled and drying in the sun for daring to challenge his will. They didn't understand the inherent power of wilful destruction or the fear commanded by a man who'd dare to set a ship of wildfire alight purely to watch it burn. He was the terror coming from the North, not the rumoured corpse plague. 'Fear' was half the battle. 'Why do you think,' Victarion had said to them, as the blade cut through their stomachs, 'the dragon queen burns cities? Oh that dragon cunt might not want to admit it but she needs the screams to rule...'

A green sun rose out of the water as the boat evaporated in the heat. Its haze hovered above the water, burning away a layer from the waves before a strike of thunder struck the world – so loud that it emanated from the catastrophe with a force he could see approach the shore. There it was, levitated and scorching – an eye into the fire god himself. He looked deep into the burning heart before the sound wave sent every man in Casterly Rock to his knees.

Victarion covered his face as the first layer of loose rubble was blow off the top of the wall. His flag was ripped from its pole and smashed against the castle where it tore to shreds. The boats moored in the harbour listed nearly to their death, bobbing back and forth in the artificial swell. Glowing embers of the ship pelted the water, falling with curved trails of smoke until the entire scene looked like a mountain of ghost weed set to seed.

Gulls perched in the surrounding cliffs took to the air, rising in a screeching tide as their nests collapsed. Deeper, chained to the walls of Casterly Rock's dungeon, the prisoners howled as the waves broke in through the sea cave and threatened to drown them. Somewhere in those mollusc-encrusted stone caverns, a Red Priestess moaned her curses at the darkness, each one of them crushed by the creep of the tide.

"The Spider's money pays for the protection of the ship you set ablaze..." A brave Ironborn captain pointed out to his king. He was one of the few sea-lords that Victarion chose not to move against.

Victarion tossed the empty flagpole over the edge. It fell into the sea and crashed up upon the rocks. "I'm done with Varys' gold." Thick, white foam coated the cliffs at an unusual tide line. "You're here for the same reason I am and there's plenty of it in King's Landing." He waved his hand absently at the decaying castle. "I grow tired of this rock. Is it any wonder the Lannisters are all such miserable fucks with this ugly shit of a fort shadowing them. It hangs here like a corpse begging for the sea to take it like a salt whore. That's what those lords are. Empty cages – bone and rot."

The Captain was not disappointed with his king's answer. Pirates made poor settlers. The longer his crew wallowed on the shore, the more poorly and undisciplined they became. "And yer? Give up that obsession over, 'The Mother' yet?"

Victarion rested his elbows on the sea wall and leaned down onto it. "Cannot be chasing ghosts ships at a time like this." He lied. Every now and then his gaze stole away to the Northern waters where the blue dipped into a stormy navy. Victarion ached for what lay somewhere upon that frozen land of glaciers and roaming bergs but for now he knew it would be folly to let King's Landing survive while its skin was hanging loose. Things moved slower in the North, it could wait. "Get your men, then tell the others to drag theirs from the brothels. We'll sail on the first fair wind. I have a few guests to farewell before I tear the petals off the last Tyrell Rose."


WRECK OF THE MOTHER – THE LANDS OF ALWAYS WINTER

Pack ice thickened around the Ironwood hull. Its pained groans poisoned the still air, shuddering off the endless white surfaces before repeating endlessly across the swathes of frozen sea. Above, the sky boasted a strange silver hue, almost as if neither dawn nor dusk could agree. Stars marred it as freckles while occasional wisps of lurid colour lashed out in great dancing ribbons from the Northernmost horizon where it seemed that night was always kept alive as a bruise at the peak of the world.

Its Ironborn men, having tried for days to dig the ship free of the cannibal advance, had let their shovels fall to the ice and followed suit, sprawling themselves out like kills on a battlefield. Their sweat set their clothes to rock while the wicked air hung icicles inside their throats. Winter was coming. There was something other than, 'cold' in the mist. A malevolence. It made them want to die where they lay.

A roar carried on the wind. Camouflaged by the rise of a nearby mountain flank, a white bear wandered the ice. Five of the men weren't far from death and it had caught their scent. They were laid against the cargo salvaged from the ship. Several sailors scampered into the treacherous wreck, ignoring the ever-present groan of wooden planks. Occasionally, one would snap and send a shower of sharp daggers into the air. When they hit the men, they embedded deep in the flesh and started to sour with their toxic Spide Oil.

"What?" A thin, silver bearded captain snapped, catching the young cartographer staring across the deck at him. The Mother was on a list, her port side dipping lazily in the ice while the waters below clawed at its bones.

"You know what." The cartographer replied, tossing another coil of rope off the side where it was collected by his shipmate and dragged to their growing pile of salvage. "Half those fuckers out there are dead. Blue and stinking of shit. You expect us to drag them South to The Wall?" The man turned and nodded to the black stain of howling smoke coming from Bear Island. "And that-" he added, "-that is bad bloody news."

"Breaking your heart for a couple of damn Bears?" The captain scoffed. "You've raped more than your share of their women in your time. Got a few bastards to show for it."

"Aye and I know what it means to burn an island like that to the ground. Whatever is going on at The Wall, we ain't making it on foot. We need a ship. This one's done for. A few days from now she'll be under the ice."

"We are not going South." The captain paused – eyes of steel and snow. He was not the only one who had seen a dragon circling Bear Island's corpse. Indeed, he'd watched curiously as the distant speck appeared to mourn the fire. "Wrecked or moored, what did you think was going to happen? Victarion has not sent us all into this frozen shit to sail about and map the shoreline for curiosity's sake. Get your tools from the wreck. In the morning, we kill any man unable to stand, pack their flesh into the crates and head North. If you have objections one of the boys will be happy to split your spine and wear it for a crown."

The cartographer silently wound another coil of rope. He paused, keenly aware of the rope's weight in his freezing hands. "As I keep telling that mad fucking pirate, there's nothing up here. Only snow and ice. Whatever treasure has caught Victarion's eye this time, he'll have to go without." Another growl carried on the wind. The bear was getting closer. Its hide would be a welcome addition to their ruin. "Why are you so loyal anyway? The whole empire is under siege. Castles we've never dreamed of raiding lay abandoned. You and I, we could be out there – warm and rich. Victarion's a cunt. He'll not reward us for our loyalty and punish us if we fail."

At least that, the captain could answer honestly. "All of the foul, monstrous things that the gods have ever dreamed are pouring into the Seven Kingdoms but here, North of The Wall, look at it… The most we have to worry about is a bear or two. You should kiss the ground where Victarion walks, you ungrateful shit, he's kept you alive."

For a while, that was all the captain said as they stood together on deck, ignoring the sharp snap of the wind against their faces. White – endless horizons of slumbering ice.

"Victarion used to talk about Northern plague all the time, muttering and such in his sleep. The army of the dead and the king that never slept. Fuck, I listened to his stories until I wanted to throw myself into the sea but do you know what I learned? An army that destroys absolutely moves like a storm, leaving no sentries behind to hold the scorched earth. All those dead things, the might have been born here," the captain stretched out his arms wide, dislodging snow from his fur, "but it has been washed clean by their passing."

"If Victarion is such a smart cunt, how's he plan on killing the Night King? He'll 'ave to, if he wants an empire to lord over that's not a hundred feet of solid ice."

"You are his answer." The man shook his head, dislodging fragments of ice. He stepped closer and tapped the man on the head with a pointed finger. "You and that head of yours. Why'd you think I put so much effort into keeping yer alive? It ain't for the company, that's fer fuckin' sure."


BRAAVOS – ESSOS

Hours passed as three men and a dragon followed the tunnel through narrow areas which forced them to turn on edge and shuffle around bulbous outcrops of rock which left scratches on their faces. These often ended in odd bulges of empty space where parts of the cave system had collapsed into worrying pyramids of rubble. It was bare – picked clean like bone in the Grey Waste. The only tangible company they found in the catacombs was the whisper of stale air.

Tycho collapsed into a wailing heap, crying into the rock. The other two watched him sob for a while, using the opportunity to catch their breath until Daario bent down and hoisted the bleeding Tycho onto his shoulder. Tommen, now with a torch in each hand, led. He did not mind the darkness stretching out in front and would not care if it went on forever – an endless pilgrimage between nothing and nowhere. This empty purgatory was peace.

But it did end.

Instead of heading upwards into the mountains as they had hoped, the passage walls dried off to be replaced by ebony sheets. Later, the rock shifted into pure white marble and then opened out for a final time. The bright surface worshipped their torches, spreading light generously until they could see even the farthest corner of the room. It was then that they saw that the end was blocked by a rock seal. Ornate, like so many of Braavosi's front doors, this creation dripped with malevolence. Pale engravings crowded the surface causing Tommen to stumble backwards with a chill spreading across his neck.

Inlaid were hundreds of ornate snakes, each with jewelled eyes. They were not confined to the seal and instead spread out onto the edges of the tunnel walls where they lost some of their detail. No… Tommen realised. Not snakes.

"They're wyverns." He whispered, risking a step closer. "Flightless dragons from the Far East." In amongst the writhing bodies were swirls of pale smoke – or perhaps it was the sea. It was difficult to tell. "Can you read it?" Tommen asked, pointing to a line of Old Valyrian text.

"It does not say anything," Daario replied, shifting Tycho's weight on his shoulder. "Only a number. 'Vault Seven'. God knows how many of these things the Braavosi have buried around here."

For all its menace, the seal gave them no trouble. Tommen used his back to push and it shifted easily, opening into a treasure trove of immeasurable scale.

An audible sigh left their lips. Even in the relative dark behind the door, flares of golden light blinked in and out of existence like shards from heaven.

Vault Seven was a raw chasm that had opened naturally beneath a fault in the mountain, hollowed out a millennia ago by rivers that had been dead longer than humanity breathed. In their wake was left a polished cave that stepped up and down in dangerous platforms, each adorned with numerous limestone growths that looked like rows of dragon teeth. Often, a partner of equally grotesque form hung from the ceiling. Some of these had fallen and smashed to bits. Others joined their kin and created columns of bone.

Strewn, piled and stacked in every inch were riches bold enough to make even the most ambitious pirate blush. Daario had been mistaken. Daenerys' hoard taken from Old Valyria was easily surpassed in the first chamber. Men had been amassing these ancient relics from across the known world for thousands of years.

"Only the gods know what is down here..." Tycho whispered, as Daario carefully set him down on a cleft of rock. He was stunned into bewilderment, staring blankly at a sight his darkest dreams had fallen short of.

"The gods are down here too..." Daario exhaled, stepping toward the edge of the rock ledge. Sitting down against a distant wall, staring from the shadows, was the original Harpy from atop the pyramid in Old Ghis – perfectly preserved and waiting in the dark. Its golden breasts and enormous wings dwarfed the statues from the House of Black and White. "I am guessing that none of this was on your books?"

"Not a whisper. They told us we were running out of money – that we couldn't fund any more wars in the West."

Daario shook his head. "How did a thing like that end up in the vaults of Braavos?" He wondered aloud at the Ghiscari treasure, knowing that the vaults were comparatively young. "Even if the Faceless Men diligently collected relics from across the realm, there are things here that were lost before even Old Valyria was born."

The revelation hit Daario in the face. The longer he looked, the clearer the answer became for there were other things down here too – a fabulous copper horse beaten into the primitive shape of the sacred mare. The jewellery, overflowing and haphazardly strewn from wall to wall was fashioned in a style Daario had never seen. Yes, there were modern pieces in the hoard, items manufactured in Westeros or bought from the barbarian islands floating in the Jade Sea but all at once, Daario realised that he knew the truth.

The Faceless Men did not build these vaults," Daario accused. "They found them. That is how a pack of slaves fleeing the death of their masters managed to build a city at the fringe of the world. Braavos is built on top of someone else's treasure. This – this is a hoard from the Empire of the Dawn – their – what's left of their wealth..."

"You can't prove that..." Tycho rested his hand against one of the wet formations. There wasn't a scrap of floor left bare. Even now their feet pressed layers of loose gold coin down. "What are you doing – fool!"

Daario picked his way through the most valuable of the trinkets, taking whatever was light and valuable. "When we get out of here, we're going to need money to buy our way out of this shit. Unless you fancy swimming across the Narrow Sea?" No one had a good answer to that, so they filled their pockets until Tommen interrupted.

"Down here..." He'd been watching Ash pick her way through the treasure. She was heading deeper into the vault.

They had no option but to follow her. With every level they discovered, ever grander sights awaited. Even the smallest of pieces could buy a king's ransom and yet the immensity of opulence faded into a blurred mirage. Pale-faced swords, reclining statues cast from gold and a towering dragon head with its jaws propped open – all faded from view was they moved deeper into the vault.

The greatest of the treasures rested on the floor of the final chamber.

It was as though a god had dropped a coin onto the ground. Enormous, the disc inlaid into the rock was three times as wide as Daario was tall. Its surface was a tessellation of sapphires, standing in place of the night sky. Set among these priceless jewels were pink diamonds, arranged to match the patterns of the stars. Crossing one side was a smear of shattered rubies mimicking the great red comet and finally, around the edge, bands of gold and silver with text pressed into to the precious metal. No living person had ever seen such finery. It was beyond the greed of even the Ironborn.

"By – all – the – gods..." Daario knelt beside it and waved his torch slowly over he surface, watching as the crystal prisms bounced coloured light back at him. It was perfect – unblemished from its slumber. The flames revealed a deeper pattern sitting beneath the gemstones. A dark spiral radiated out from the centre. Daario recognised it immediately. The Children of the Forest left the same mark on Northern trees… "Anyone able to read it?"

Tycho shook his head. "I don't even recognise the script," he groaned, lowering his ruined body to the ground beside the seal. He could not believe the room he was sitting in. "And all this time those bastards cried poor. They've been using Braavos as nothing more than camouflage for their wealth. To what end?"

"It does not matter," Daario pointed out, "they're not here."

"Do you imagine they ran with everyone else?"

"Or they're dead. We've no idea what happened to your city, Tycho. You should prepare yourself for the possibility that everyone you ever knew is dead."

Tycho gave an almost sad shrug. He could not think of anyone to mourn.

Ash stalked around the edge of the seal, sniffing at the gap between the rock and the gold lining. "There's something under this." Tommen nudged the baby dragon out of the way. Ash snapped at his hand then wound herself under his arm, making a general nuisance of herself.

"You are never going to shift it," Daario wiped a thick layer of sweat from his forehead. His necklace of shells chattered against his chest.

"Well, this chamber is a dead end," Tommen replied. "If either of you two want to live, I suggest you give me a hand."


THE RUINS OF EASTWATCH CASTLE – THE WALL

Daenerys listened to Benjen's sour tales. They made a fire pit in the ice, dug it deep and filled it with black stone from the shore of Eastwatch where bits of driftwood washed up from the wrecked ships. Dozens of bodies beached themselves between the blocks of ice. They lay there, bloated and blue – eyes open. Fat gulls picked at the flesh, tapping their sharp beaks against the solid skin.

The Queen had chosen a camp site facing directly West. Thick trails of smoke continued to rise out of the horizon. They'd drifted with the wind, smearing into a haze that burned as the sun set through its filth. Jorah had been gone too long. Every few minutes she scanned the sky for a dragon. Sometimes a sea bird caught her eye, snatching the breath in her throat. She did not want the army behind her to imagine that there might be anything amiss so she kept her worry to herself.

"So Stark..." Daenerys picked up the threads of their conversation. "You have seen this Night King fight?"

"Rarely. He keeps himself ter the back o' the army. Even his generals hold their distance. I followed 'em for weeks through the mountains. They killed only what they had to – whatever was in their way."

"I was afraid of that," she replied, staring out from her puddle of furs. "The other men of Westeros have tried to tell me that the army of dead is a mindless thing, washing over the landscape as a storm might. If that were so, drawing battle lines and fighting them with our number may be enough. Eastwatch has made one thing clear, their king has a plan of his own. He should have rushed the ruins of The Wall – sent his creatures over the fallen rock and swamped us. You saw the number he had..."

"You believe the Night King deliberately held back?"

She nodded. "If he were a living army I'd guess that he did not want to waste the men but we know that is not true in this case. That really only leaves us with 'distraction'. Pin one flank down with the threat of attack – spread us along the full length of The Wall while he is free to attack a greatly reduced army. Divide and conquer. No. If we want to stop him breaching the ice, we have to take a risk. Find out where he's headed and show him what the forces of light look like."

Her eyes were on the sky again.

"May not be my place ter say," Benjen wished that he could warm his hands on the fire but it did no good. "I don' think yer ought to take the dragon out fer a look. If that's what yer were thinking."

"I can leave Rhaegal here with you."

Benjen was not sure that he liked the sound of that plan. The dragons had been kept to the edges of the camp – for good reason. They eyed the men often. There were stories that some who strayed too close had gone missing. The giant reptiles scratched and coughed up filthy clouds of smoke, singing to each other like monsters of the underworld. Half her army worshipped them. The other – feared for their lives.

"How old are your dragons?"

Daenerys startled at the question. "Seven years – maybe? There were many years lost to me in the Far East. Time works differently in the Red Waste. The people there measure years by the movement of the sand dunes."

"As it is with the North," Benjen replied. "We are a world of endless snow drifts."

"The North is not so desolate as I imagined." Daenerys admitted. "Even here there are remnants of a forest." Dead, as it may be. Blackened sticks protruding from the ice. "And there is a thick forest on the other side of The Wall that goes on for many miles. I think – sometimes – I have seen it in my dreams. Or, there is another forest beneath the ice… I don't know."

"This, Your Grace, is not the true North. No one understands – not even me… It goes on forever. The ice. The cold. Eventually the sun sinks right under the horizon and never rises again. A world of darkness. Forever. The long night… That is where these dead things come from. Or at least, that is where the magic that bore them lives."

"I want to see it..."

Benjen thought she looked oddly crystalline, sitting on the ice with all her white furs. Her eyes shone with violet hues creeping in amongst the sapphire. "Why?"

"Something Ser Jorah said. I have forgotten more of his advice than I should have but he always insisted that before you fight an enemy, you must do your best to understand them. Their weaknesses, he said, lay not in the make of their armour of the strength of their sword – but tucked away in their homes."

She is too curious for her own good, Benjen thought. All the smart Targaryens died young. "The ice is full of ruins from ancient battles. Those who looked for the dead joined them."

It was almost time for the sun to set again. The days were short, barely lasting long enough for her army to fish the bay. Daenerys moved to stand.

"Do you-" Benjen reached out, grabbing hold of her furs. He'd not meant to but decades as a man of the Nightswatch had muddied his manners. The Queen noted his imposition but stopped short of scorning. Perhaps she'd kept company Northmen, barbarians and pirates for too long. "Do you know what has happened to Winterfell?"

She sighed. There was a terribly sad look in his dark eyes. "I do not know as much as you think..." Daenerys could not bear the ache of sadness in his eyes – it was the same look that Jorah had given her flying off in search of his home. She wished, more than anything, that she had a home to mourn. "Winterfell stands, as far as I understand. Have faith, Benjen, you shall see it again."


While the sea fog was still sitting as a restless thrall around her knees, Daenerys prepared to leave. She walked out of the warm halo of light encompassing the camp, missing its faint press of warmth. With a bay full of ships posing as shadows on the water and a sky awash with foreign stars, she made her way over to The Wall where her dragons liked to nest among the enormous blocks of destroyed ice.

They were sea creatures, really – always hugging the edges of the world. Her dragons were happiest with a salt spray at their snouts and jagged caverns of black rock to hide away in.

The chaos of The Wall's destruction kept Daenerys at a distance. There were no passable routes to climb onto the slanted ice shelves without falling into the freezing water. Not even the dead could scale these walls. The dragons were completely safe which is why they allowed their tails to hang lazily down, bobbing slightly in the wind.

"Drogon!"

He flicked his tail, as though swatting at a seagull.

It took her a while to coax him down from his perch but and even then he insisted on scratching around aimlessly. She could see why her ancestors had sought the famous dragon horns to control their rebellious nature. Quite a large part of her feared that there would come a day that they would no longer come at her call or stop when she commanded.

Eventually they took off into the freezing air. Daenerys rode him due East, straight out over the Bay of Seals toward Skagos. Around they went, leaning into the wind as they circled the outcrop of forest perched on an angry lump of black rock – pushed out of the waves or fallen off the world, it was difficult to tell. Higher, Drogon was now out of reach from any stray attacks from the ground as they sailed toward The Wall. The damage to the East-most edge was extensive. Little but rubble divided The Lands of Always Winter from her army while the castle itself had sunk into a chasm beneath the wall. Swallowed whole, only stray fragments of its tower still lay on their side.

There was no trace of the dead army. She took three passes over the thick forest but nothing within it moved. As she suspected, her forces were being pinned to the map by shadows and fear.

Hours later, when the sun's watery corpse had plucked itself from the Narrow Sea, they had passed by several Nightswatch castles in varying stages of repair. Most were coated in thick layers of ice, grown into The Wall through centuries of neglect. True to his word, Commander Thorne had sent men to man them. Their fires lit the windows with gasps of fire. Some of them leaned out to wave.

Here, The Wall was strong, free of the cracks that had destroyed the edge. She did not know how fast his army travelled but they must be well hidden in the forest. Regardless, she was scouting for the weakest point of border and she found it at Castle Black.


BRAAVOS – ESSOS

"You stupid – son of a whore!" Tycho cursed, scrambling backwards from the opened seal on the floor.

"Probably..." Daario muttered in reply. "Look, how else were we meant to open it? Offer up a few prayers to gods we don't know in a language none of us can read?"

Tommen slid an old broadsword into the gap before using his weight to lever it open while Daario pulled. The jewelled seal continued to lift, howling against its progress with an unearthly sound that shook all of them right to the soul.

Tycho, struck dumb by the sight of the vault floor opening up, felt around on the ground for his torch. Grasping it, he finally found the courage to crawl forward – right to the edge of the black chasm beneath the seal – and hold fire to the darkness. Snakes hissed back at him, writhing over each other in the darkness. He gasped. "This is hell!" He insisted, wishing he'd taken the time to learn his prayers. "The passage to the table of the gods."

"They're only snakes..." Daario and Tommen exchanged an amused smirk. "One probably got trapped down here ten thousand years ago and couldn't work out how to get free. They'll each each other to survive – one continuous cycle of murder and birth. Not unlike our great wheel. See any way down?"

Tommen leaned as far as he dared into the hole. "Yes. There are steps leading to another level deeper in the rock. And the snakes?"

Daario paced around the treasure room for a while until he returned with an unused dish of lamp oil left sitting on a rock. He poured the amber contents into the hole, lit a piece of cloth and tossed it. Flames roared up immediately followed by hissing screams. Ash slithered off into the glow to feast on the dying embers.