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Silver Tears of the Moon

River of Darkness

Many years had passed since Baelor had last been in the riverlands. In the scorching heat of a long summer, he had stared at the carpet of corpses left in the wake of yet another skirmish with a part of Daemon's forces and for the first time, he had truly cursed him for an ingrate and vainglorious fool with all the fire of his young and fiery heart.

Now, it was as if the revolt had never been. The land stretched, green and fertile, as welcoming as ever, starkly different to the rest of the realm that he had seen in his procession, and yet crops were rotting away, giving the smell of death. The Great Spring Sickness had hit hard here, in this populous region, leaving it without men and women enough to harvest them.

"It's almost as bad here as it is in King's Landing," he concluded that first night at the high table.

It wasn't. Not to him. But his life wasn't his alone. He could not measure the ailments of the Seven Kingdoms by the measure of his own heart.

"It is, isn't it?" Maekar agreed grimly. "I suppose you'll open the royal treasury more widely for them?"

"I will," Baelor agreed and gave him a curious look. "Come on, what is it that weighs on your mind? Tell it."

His new Hand wasn't slow to obey. "I suggest that you give no means directly to the lords but found an office to distribute them. With the quarrels even more prevailing now in the region, you'll never hear the end of it. Everyone's going to think that you've given more to someone else."

As he spoke, his eyes went to one of the lower tables. She wasn't hard to find. She was darker than most of the women here – olive of skin, dark of eye, dark of the mass of hair that could never be completely tamed, and she was surrounded by ladies who badmouthed her in her absence, no doubt, but were now trying to win her favour. A hard task, no doubt, and one they weren't very successful at. While Dyanna had been charming and winning hearts easily, Saryl Lothston was reserved and quite withdrawn. She was not possessed of any great beauty either. She had wed her late husband only because Dyanna had wished to give her a good match. She was so easy to overlook. But not when she's alone with Maekar, it seems, Baelor thought and wondered how many of his brother's ideas about the riverlands originated from this daughter of the dishonourable… stop it, he ordered himself. The woman couldn't be blamed for her kin's reputation. Dyanna had placed great value on her advice, so why shouldn't Maekar do the same? Am I becoming too bitter, he wondered. Am I envious of him because he still has his Lothston while I gave Flora up? She was seated at one of the lower tables as well but in a more prominent place as befitting her station as Lady Darry, wife to the new lord of one of the principal Houses in the riverlands. It'd been three years already and still the old feeling of longing crept all the way through him. He had been so in love once. Even under those circumstances, the thought that she'd soon be at King's Landing, that he'd be able to see her often made the first faint light flicker in the bleak despair that his life had been ever since his boys' deaths.

His illusions lasted two whole days. At the end, Maekar, or rather Saryl Lothston speaking with his voice, turned out to be right when they had warned him not to do this. Because, in Lord Tully's spacious solar overlooking the Water Gate, with the Red Fork glistening right beneath him, as it seemed, he received the most humiliating refusal he had ever been met with. Even his grandfather had not debased him so when Baelor had been too young enough to grasp just how deep Aegon's hatred of them ran and asked this or that from him.

Of course, there was nothing insulting about the man's voice. Tall and proud, demonstrating every sign of obedience, Lord Darry told him that the offer to come to King's Landing and join the Small Council, recently wiped next to nonexistence as Baelor's Master of Laws was a great honour but alas, one that he could not accept. He was needed here, in his lands, he said.

"More than you're needed for the good of the realm?" Baelor asked, as calm and reasonable as Darry himself.

The man rose in full height. It didn't make much impression since there were few men as tall as Baelor but he did it anyway. His brown eyes met the King's without flinching. "I'm afraid that it wasn't my abilities that Your Grace holds so high in estimation," he said quite unequivocally, "and that's something that my honour won't let me accept."

I am not going to share my wife with anyone. Baelor heard the implication as if the other man had said it aloud and a dark flush overcame him. While in those long nights with only despair to keep him company he might have imagined what it would have been to have Flora with him once again, he wasn't a man who dwelled in dreams. It was Lord Darry's makings that he had valued, not his wife's. And Flora would not have had him now anyway. He knew her well enough. Such a thing was beneath her. But he could never make the man see that and he wouldn't try anyway. There were limits to what his pride could take in a single day.

Perhaps it was for the better. He should really focus on finding a new wife. A queen. A mother to his heirs.

"Your Grace! Are you feeling well?"

Darry's voice made him blink. The man's concerned face swam into his view, and then Maekar's voice, "Of course he's well. It's just too hot here. I thought the river should provide some relief?"

With Darry's attention directed elsewhere, Baelor could now find the time to catch his breath, force away the stupor that overcame him inevitably whenever he thought of replacing Valarr and Matarys, of seating another woman in the place that, in the golden days of his youth, he had always thought would be Jena's.

When that ghastly meeting was over, Maekar just poured him some wine. He didn't say, "I told you so," for which Baelor was grateful. Taking his goblet to the window, he saw Flora going out of the shadows to meet her husband, starting to talk to him animatedly. Then, they both turned to look at the group of boys who challenged each other into diving and reaching the lowest bars of the Water Gate. He supposed their sons were close by with their nursemaids, watching the older boys, and bitterness rose in him once again. Not taking a new wife when you already had heirs, that was the lesson they had learned from the wretched marriage of Viserys and his Hightower second queen. Not taking a new wife when you already had heirs. And what do we do when we no longer have those, Baelor asked bitterly, daring his dead predecessors into answering him. What do we do then?

Suddenly, he saw his father's face, as clearly as he was seeing the river now, and he almost gasped. That wasn't the Daeron of the last days before the death annihilating his people took him but the Daeron he had been years ago, the day he had sent Aemon aboard the ship that would carry him to Oldtown. Too many dragons are as dangerous as too few, he had then told Maekar who had refused to listen. And them the brief look of helplessness and painful confusion when the King had looked at his eldest. "Am I wrong, Baelor?" he had asked, his eyes still fixed on the grandson he had almost gotten best with, the one he was now sentencing to being forgotten. "Am I in the wrong?"

"You were wrong, Father," Baelor replied. "Forgive me but you were wrong."

"Who are you talking to?" Maekar asked and Baelor realized that he had spoken aloud to someone who was no longer there. But then, a smile broke over his face, his spirits lifting a little. Because a boat was nearing the Water Gate and the figure of one of the men inside could not be mistaken, even seated. Baelor had never seen a taller man in his life – and if Aemon could be trusted, the boy had grown even taller since he had last seen him.

Aegon was coming back.