Daenerys
It was close to sunset when the guard came to call her for the urgent small council meeting. Dany followed the guard to the small council chambers at once. A knight of the Kingsguard was always posted outside the doors of the council chambers when the small council was in session. Today it was Ser Daemon Sand, handsome in his white armor. "Ser Daemon," Dany said pleasantly.
Ser Daemon's cheeks dimpled when he smiled. "Princess," he replied, his sky blue eyes twinkling. Rhaegar had left him in king's Landing to guard the royal family while taking Ser Gerold, Ser Oswell, Ser Jaime and Prince Lewyn with him to Braavos. Her brother hadn't wanted to take any chances after the thing with Viserys.
With Rhaegar gone to Braavos, Aegon to Dorne it fell to Dany to take care of the things in the court. Dany passed through the doors Ser Daemon held open for her. The councillors quieted as she entered. Proud and prickly Lord Jon Connington gave a taut look as a greeting. The others rose, mouthing pleasantries. Dany allowed herself the faintest of smiles. "My lords, I know you will forgive my lateness."
"We are here to serve Your Grace," said the eunuch Varys. "It is our pleasure to anticipate your coming."
"So what is this important news which concerns the Crown." Dany seated herself between the Lord Hand Jon and Varys. These are my councillors now. Men whose loyalty belongs to her family. It is hard to find men of this kind now. Men like Jon Connington and Varys. Of the others, Dany had very little trust in them. The newly made Master of Ships, Aurane Waters, the dashing young Bastard of Driftmark, have proven himself to be a worthy replacement for her brother but still, Dany doubted the loyalty of the tricksy smirk in his narrow face.
Without Ser Gerold Hightower the seat of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was free. Dany was tempted to bring Ser Barristan to take his place. At least the Old Knight would tell her the truth and give her good counsel unlike the lackwits surrounding her. Jon Connington was an able man but too prickly and proud even to a princess. Without Rhaegar she would find only a little of his help, she was sure. Varys can prove his worth but at the same time, no one other than him knew what he knows and what he is telling you. Littlefinger was loyal only to Littlefinger, with the pointy beard and sly smile he would talk one thing while playing at some other in his mind. Grand Maester Pylos was good at following orders but never the one to provide some. And her future good father Lord Mace Tyrell, she didn't know what to make of him but he was happy enough to be here and the Tyrells were one of the most loyal houses of the Targaryens from the time of Aegon the Conqueror when Aegon the Dragon came along and cooked the rightful King of the Reach on the Field of Fire and gave the castle Highgarden to the Tyrells and elevated them to the post of a High Lord from a mere steward. The Tyrells are the richest house in the Seven Kingdoms only next to the Lannisters and they can raise more swords than any of the other Great Houses. It is good to have Mace Tyrell near them even if he proves to be useless.
The council was a tedium the princess knew well. She sat upon her cushions, listening, one foot jiggling with impatience. They had told her that it was urgent but nothing they spoke of felt like an urgent matter for her.
When they brought to bring her concern to the meeting the room was lit by the candles while the darkness had swallowed the outside world. Jon Connington handed her the parchment which turned his face sour.
Dany unrolled the parchment slowly and read it over once, and then again.
"So how does this concerns us?" Dany asked when she read the contents on Varys' letter carefully.
Jon Connington gave her a plain harsh look. "Don't you understand what this means? Or have you forgotten why your brother did all those things until now, even your betrothal?"
He dares say this in open council? Dany felt a blaze of anger. He has courage, I grant that, but if he thinks I am about to suffer another scolding, he could not be more wrong. "This is just another marriage in the realm like many others," she said, "why should this trouble us?"
"It is not just a marriage," the Lord Hand said. "Alliances are sealed by marriage and this alliance once threatened your father's rule and your brother's after him. Now it has started again."
It was true. Both her father and her brother had been wary about the Stark-Baratheon-Arryn-Tully alliance. To see it happen again is not a good thing.
"This is the thing which has troubled the crown from the first," Lord Connington said. "We were wise to cut off the tree but not so wise enough to root it out. This marriage between Robert Baratheon's son and Jon Arryn's daughter it still binds four great houses together. And that means it is trouble for us."
Dany unrolled the parchment and examine it again. "This changes nothing," she said as she smoothened her skirts. "They are very well welcome to marry whoever they wish, without a Stark it will never be fulfilled. Eddard Stark lies dead in the ground with his wife and son so I don't care if Robert Baratheon wishes to marry his daughter to a ghost."
The members of the small council gave her puzzled looks but Dany ignored them all. "We shall talk about it once my brother returns." The princess rose. "Then we are done for now." She left them all and made her way to her apartments.
In the quiet of her chambers, Dany stripped off her finery and donned a loose robe of purple silk. She fell on her bed and closed her eyes. That night she dreamt that she was in a battlefield. She was mounted on Drogon but her other children weren't with her. Below the war rushed in the waters all along the river. Her enemies were massing across the river and Dany flew over them and bathed them in fire. She rounded and rounded over them on her dragon until she finally saw that she was not on Drogon anymore. Round and round she went, falling.
She woke suddenly in the darkness of her cabin, still flush with fear. Drogon seemed to wake with her, and she heard the faint whisper of his wings flapping outside the castle, a footfall outside her chambers. And something else.
Someone was in the chambers with her.
"Who is there? Where are you?" There was no response. "Vaella, is that you?" she called for her hand maiden. It was too black to see, but she could hear her breathing.
"They sleep," a woman said. "They all sleep." The voice was very close. "Even dragons must sleep."
She is standing over me. "Who's there?" Dany peered into the darkness. She thought she could see a shadow, the faintest outline of a shape. "What do you want of me?"
"Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
"Quaithe?" Dany sprung from the bed and threw down her blankets. She hasn't heard from the woman ever since she left after helping her to bring back her dragons. Those were the same words the shadowbinder had told her before she left her, she remembered.
She was clad in a hooded robe that brushed the dark floor. Beneath the hood, her face seemed hard and shiny. She is wearing a mask, Dany knew, a wooden mask finished in dark red lacquer.
"Quaithe? Am I dreaming?" She pinched her ear and winced at the pain.
"You're not dreaming. Not now, not ever."
"What are you doing here? How did you get past my guards?"
"I came another way. Your guards never saw me."
"If I call out, they will kill you."
"They will swear to you that I am not here."
"Are you here?"
"No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the stranger in his dark horse and after him the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and wolf, the gods' son and the mummer's hero will clash. Beware all of them. Beware!"
"Beware? Why should I fear them?" Dany rose from the bed. Her blankets slipped down her legs, and gooseflesh covered her arms in the cool night air."
"If you have some warning for me, speak plainly. What do you want of me, Quaithe?"
Moonlight shone in the woman's eyes. "To show you the way."
"I remember the way. I go north to go south, east to go west, back to go forward. And to touch the light I have to pass beneath the shadow." She pushed back her silvery hair from her face. "I am half-sick of riddling. I am a Targaryen princess. The blood of the dragon. I command you to tell me everything."
"Daenerys. Let me show you."
In a moment the solid floor beneath her dissolved into a puff of smoke and Dany fell as she had fallen from Drogon in her dreams. Soon her feet came back to meet with land but it was not the land she had known. Quaithe emerged beside her silent as a ghost.
"Where are we?" Dany asked her.
"Qarth," the shadow woman answered.
That was all Dany needed to know to figure out where Quaithe had brought her. Qarth is known as the city of splendors. From all of Quaithe's talks about the Undying, Dany had expected the House of the Undying Ones to be the most splendid of all but the building before her was a grey and ancient ruin.
Long and low, without towers or windows, it coiled like a stone serpent through a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink Quaithe had called as the shade of the evening. No other buildings stood near. Black tiles covered the palace roof, many fallen or broken; the mortar between the stones was dry and crumbling.
"There lies the answers for all your questions," Quaithe said. "But be careful, Warlocks are bitter creatures who eat dust and drink of shadows. Don't overstay your welcome."
"Won't you come with me?" Dany asked.
"You should do this alone."
It was darker than she would have thought under the black trees, and the way was longer. Though the path seemed to run straight from the street to the door of the palace, Quaithe soon turned aside. When she questioned her, the shadowbinder said only, "The front way leads in, but never out again. Heed my words, Daenerys. The House of the Undying Ones was not made for mortal men. If you value your soul, take care and do just as I tell you."
"I will do as you say," Dany promised.
"When you enter, you will find yourself in a room with four doors: the one you have come through and three others. Take the door to your right. Each time, the door to your right. If you should come upon a stairwell, climb. Never go down, and never take any door but the first door to your right."
"The door to my right," Dany repeated. "I understand. And when I leave, the opposite?"
"By no means," Quaithe said. "Leaving and coming, it is the same. Always up. Always the door to your right. Other doors may open to you. Within, you will see many things that disturb you. Visions of loveliness and visions of horror, wonders and terrors. Sights and sounds of days gone by and days to come and days that never were. Dwellers and servitors may speak to you as you go. Answer or ignore them as you choose, but enter no room until you reach the audience chamber."
"I understand."
"When you come to the chamber of the Undying, be patient. Our little lives are no more than a flicker of a moth's wing to them. Listen well, and write each word upon your heart."
When they reached the door—a tall oval mouth, set in a wall fashioned in the likeness of a human face."
"Now you may enter," said the Asshai'i woman. Dany took a deep breath, and went inside.
She found herself in a stone anteroom with four doors, one on each wall. With never a hesitation, she went to the door on her right and stepped through. The second room was a twin to the first. Again she turned to the right-hand door. When she pushed it open she faced yet another small antechamber with four doors. I am in the presence of sorcery.
The fourth room was oval rather than square and walled in worm-eaten wood in place of stone. Six passages led out from it in place of four. Dany chose the rightmost, and entered a long, dim, high-ceilinged hall. Along the right hand was a row of torches burning with a smoky orange light, but the only doors were to her left.
The mold-eaten carpet under her feet had once been gorgeously colored, and whorls of gold could still be seen in the fabric, glinting broken amidst the faded grey and mottled green. What remained served to muffle her footfalls, but that was not all to the good. Dany could hear sounds within the walls, a faint scurrying and scrabbling that made her think of rats. Other sounds, even more disturbing, came through some of the closed doors. One shook and thumped, as if someone were trying to break through. From another came a dissonant piping that made her heartbeat quicken. Dany hurried quickly past.
Not all the doors were closed. I will not look, Dany told herself, but the temptation was too strong.
In one dark, dank room, a beautiful woman with dark hair curled up in a corner, crying. The rats and her tears were her only companions. The woman was covered in a blanket of night but she shone as a star bright enough to keep herself from drowning in the darkness.
Farther on she came upon a feast of corpses. Savagely slaughtered, the feasters lay strewn across overturned chairs and hacked trestle tables, asprawl in pools of congealing blood. Some had lost limbs, even heads. Severed hands clutched bloody cups, wooden spoons, roast fowl, heels of bread. In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. A beautiful glowing raven haired woman was on his lap while a white knight stood beside them, his sword glowing like pale fire to keep the dark away from them.
She fled from them, but only as far as the next open door. I know this room, she thought. She remembered those great stone beams and the carved dragon faces that adorned them. And there outside the window, a storm raged. The sight of it made her heart ache with longing. No sooner had she thought it than a woman with silver hair dry and brittle and a body that covered with half a hundred of nail scratches and teeth bites held on to a baby. "Daenerys," she said in a voice faint as death. Her lean wrinkled hand reached for her, soft as old leather, and Dany wanted to take it and hold it and kiss it, she wanted that as much as she had ever wanted anything. Her foot edged forward, and then she thought, she's dead, my mother's dead, I never knew her, she died a long time ago. She backed away and ran.
The long hall went on and on and on, with endless doors to her left and only torches to her right. She ran past more doors than she could count, closed doors and open ones, doors of wood and doors of iron, carved doors and plain ones, doors with pulls and doors with locks and doors with knockers. Dany ran and ran until she could run no more.
Finally a great pair of bronze doors appeared to her left, grander than the rest. They swung open as she neared, and she had to stop and look. Beyond loomed a cavernous stone hall, the largest she had ever seen. The Throne room. The skulls of dead dragons looked down from its walls. Upon a towering barbed throne sat an old man in rich robes, an old man with dark eyes and long silver-grey hair. "Let him be king over charred bones and cooked meat," he said to a man below him. "Let him be the king of ashes." A woman shrieked, but the king on his throne looked amused, and Dany moved on.
Rhaegar, she thought when she paused in the next room. "Aegon," he said to a woman she didn't knew nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?"
"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.
"He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door.
"There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way. It was not long before she stopped at another room. This time the walls were covered in red blood but everything around felt the same except for the woman. Dany saw her brother with his wife, naming his son Aegon in the same way he had named that other Aegon she'd seen with that unknown woman.
It seemed as though she walked for another hour before the long hall finally ended in a steep stone stair, descending into darkness. Every door, open or closed, had been to her left. Dany looked back behind her. The torches were going out, she realized with a start of fear. Perhaps twenty still burned. Thirty at most. One more guttered out even as she watched, and the darkness came a little farther down the hall, creeping toward her. And as she listened it seemed as if she heard something else coming, shuffling and dragging itself slowly along the faded carpet. Terror filled her. She could not go back and she was afraid to stay here, but how could she go on? There was no door on her right, and the steps went down, not up.
Yet another torch went out as she stood pondering, and the sounds grew faintly louder. Dany turned to the blank wall once more, but there was nothing. Could there be a secret door, a door I cannot see? Another torch went out. Another. The first door on the right, he said, always the first door on the right. The first door on the right . . .
It came to her suddenly. . . . is the last door on the left!
She flung herself through. Beyond was another small room with four doors. To the right she went, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, until she was dizzy and out of breath once more.
When she stopped, she found herself in yet another dank stone chamber . . . but this time the door opposite was round, shaped like an open mouth, and Quaithe stood outside in the grass beneath the trees. "Can it be that the Undying are done with you so soon?" she asked in disbelief when he saw her.
"So soon?" she asked, confused. "I haven't even seen them yet."
"You have taken a wrong turning. Come, I will lead you." Quaithe held out her hand.
Dany hesitated. There was a door to her right, still closed . . .
"That's not the way," Quaithe said firmly, her wet eyes glinting with disapproval. "The Undying Ones will not wait forever."
"You should do this alone," Dany said, remembering.
"Stubborn girl. You will be lost, and never found."
She walked away from her, to the door on the right.
"No," Quaithe screeched. "No, to me, come to me, to meeeeeee." Her masked face crumbled inward, changing to something pale and wormlike.
Dany left her behind, entering a stairwell. She began to climb. Before long her legs were aching. She recalled that the House of the Undying Ones had seemed to have no towers.
Finally the stair opened. To her right, a set of wide wooden doors had been thrown open. They were fashioned of ebony and weirwood, the black and white grains swirling and twisting in strange interwoven patterns. They were very beautiful, yet somehow frightening. The blood of the dragon must not be afraid. Dany said a quick prayer, begging the Warrior for courage and strength. She made herself walk forward.
Beyond the doors was a great hall and a splendor of wizards. Some wore sumptuous robes of ermine, ruby velvet, and cloth of gold. Others fancied elaborate armor studded with gemstones, or tall pointed hats speckled with stars. There were women among them, dressed in gowns of surpassing loveliness. Shafts of sunlight slanted through windows of stained glass, and the air was alive with the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
A kingly man in rich robes rose when he saw her, and smiled. "Daenerys of House Targaryen, be welcome. Come and share the food of forever. We are the Undying of Qarth."
"Long have we awaited you," said a woman beside him, clad in rose and silver. The breast she had left bare in the Qartheen fashion was as perfect as a breast could be.
"We knew you were to come to us," the wizard king said. "A thousand years ago we knew, and have been waiting all this time. We sent the shadowwoman to show you the way."
"We have knowledge to share with you," said a warrior in shining emerald armor, "and magic weapons to arm you with. You have passed every trial. Now come and sit with us, and all your questions shall be answered."
She took a step forward.
Doubt seized her. The great door was so heavy it took all of Dany's strength to budge it, but finally it began to move. Behind was another door, hidden. It was old grey wood, splintery and plain . . . but it stood to the right of the door through which she'd entered. The wizards were beckoning her with voices sweeter than song. She ran from them.
Through the narrow door she passed, into a chamber awash in gloom.
A long stone table filled this room. Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light. The figures around the table were no more than blue shadows. As Dany walked to the empty chair at the foot of the table, they did not stir, nor speak, nor turn to face her. There was no sound but the slow, deep beat of the rotting heart.
. . . mother of dragons . . . came a voice, part whisper and part moan . . . . dragons . . . dragons . . . dragons . . . other voices echoed in the gloom. Some were male and some female. One spoke with the timbre of a child. The floating heart pulsed from dimness to darkness. It was hard to summon the will to speak, to recall the words she had practiced so assiduously. "I am Princess Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen." Do they hear me? Why don't they move? She sat, folding her hands in her lap. "Grant me your counsel, and speak to me with the wisdom of those who have conquered death."
Through the indigo murk, she could make out the wizened features of the Undying One to her right, an old old man, wrinkled and hairless. His flesh was a ripe violet-blue, his lips and nails bluer still, so dark they were almost black. Even the whites of his eyes were blue. They stared unseeing at the ancient woman on the opposite side of the table, whose gown of pale silk had rotted on her body. One withered breast was left bare in the Qartheen manner, to show a pointed blue nipple hard as leather.
She is not breathing. Dany listened to the silence. None of them are breathing, and they do not move, and those eyes see nothing. Could it be that the Undying Ones were dead?
Her answer was a whisper as thin as a mouse's whisker. . . . we live . . . live . . . live . . . it sounded. Myriad other voices whispered echoes . . . . And know . . . know . . . know . . . know . . .
"I have come for the gift of truth," Dany said. "In the long hall, the things I saw . . . were they true visions, or lies? Past things, or things to come? What did they mean?"
. . . the shape of shadows . . . morrows not yet made . . . drink from the cup of ice . . . drink from the cup of fire . . .
. . . mother of dragons . . . child of three . . .
"Three?" She did not understand.
. . . three heads has the dragon . . . the ghost chorus yarnmered inside her skull with never a lip moving, never a breath stirring the still blue air. . . . mother of dragons . . . child of storm . . . The whispers became a swirling song. . . . three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love . . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt . . . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . .
"I don't . . . " Her voice was no more than a whisper, almost as faint as theirs. What was happening to her? "I don't understand," she said, more loudly. Why was it so hard to talk here? "Help me. Show me."
. . . help her . . . the whispers mocked. . . . show her . . .
Then phantoms shivered through the murk, images in indigo. Viserys screamed as a star came down upon him, filling him to purge the cold blue soul he had. A blue star reigned high above in the sky, it's light guttering in fire and blood. The Red Keep was filled with the sound of steel dragging over stone. . . . mother of dragons, daughter of death . . . Glowing like sunrise, a red sword was raised in the hand of a king who had a frozen crown upon his head. A cloth dragon swayed torn on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great white beast fell, breathing shadow fire, its wings heavy and useless. . .
Faster and faster the visions came, one after the other, until it seemed as if the very air had come alive. Shadows whirled and danced inside a tent, boneless and terrible. A silver haired woman knelt and bowed to a God in all his eternal glory. A wild voice shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting in the fire behind her. Behind a silver horse a bloody corpse of a naked woman bounced and dragged. From a pitch dark cavern, two bright red eyes emerged before sulking off in the dark. A man cradled a woman in his arms whose hair shone bright as the summer sun until her fires finally died out. Ten thousand men rushed against a man with a frozen blue sword. One by one they fell and in the end those cold grey eyes were directed towards her. . .
A scream of fury cut the indigo air, and suddenly the visions were gone, ripped away, and Dany's gasp turned to horror. The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs. She could not move. Even her heart had ceased to beat. She felt a hand on her bare breast, twisting her nipple. Teeth found the soft skin of her throat. A mouth descended on one eye, licking, sucking, biting . . .
Then indigo turned to orange, and whispers turned to screams. She felt smoke coming out from her and little by little she disappeared like those visions she had seen. Her heart was pounding, racing, the hands and mouths were gone, cold and damp washed over her skin, and Dany blinked at glooming darkness of her chambers.
"Quaithe?" Dany called for the woman. "Where are you Quaithe? I don't understand this visions."
She never saw the woman but heard her voice. "Remember who you are, Daenerys." Her voice grew faded and distant. "Remember the Undying."
Author's Notes: So another chapter guys. This time some prophecies and some sneak peeks to both the past and future. If anyone had unbound any of my mysteries or prophecies give it a go in the comment section. Who knows you could have it right. Also these things are very important incidents which happened or are going to happen in the story so definitely give it a try. Also this chapter has been the toughest to write by far so please leave a review and say how I did it. It really means much to me and encourage me to write further for you guys.
Have a nice day and I'll meet you in the next chapter.