Chapter 10: Dark Days Ahead
Castle Black is teeming with dark, damp corridors. Down one such corridor, there is a door to a room stacked with dusty crates containing hundreds of years of junk that has long been forgotten. Tonight, however, light cheerily flickers from the crack under the door and a conversation dully reverberates through the wood. Someone suddenly lets out a laughing groan that turns into a coughing fit.
Once he managed to stop coughing, Stannis stood upright. The fresh slashes across his wrist were so deep; flashes of white bone could be seen beyond the mess of pooling blood. His hands hung useless and limp from the ends of his arms-his tendons were severed and useless. He would rightly pay for his sins with all of himself. He watched as his blood dripped heavily from his gashed wrists and into a fire that no longer seemed cheery. It greedily accepted his offering as kindling. The fire must have recognized his flesh and his blood, steadily growing as he fed it—he wondered briefly why the Priestess thought he would satiate her hungry god this time.
Then, he dragged his thoughts back from philosophizing and to his present: he felt his blood coursing through his veins in a way that made life feel more real. Panic slipped quietly into his heart; but too proud and too stubborn to turn back, Stannis shakily held his head high and thought of Shireen's favorite stories. The edges of his world faded a dull greyish black and the tips of his fingers grew colder, as if he held them for too long under icy waters. Shivering, he closed his eyes and prayed for forgiveness—all he could hear were his daughter's cries for his help and his wife's body gently swinging in the still air.
"The connection is weak. I cannot guarantee she receives the message," Melissandre said simply, turning away from the fire.
"What?" Lady Brienne looked at the woman with horror.
Poderick held Stannis' now cold hand, wondering what he had done and praying he had not killed a man without reason.
….
Dragonless and alone, Daenerys Targaryen was terribly outmatched. She had considered briefly fighting the horde—but as she had already come to the former conclusion, she did not resist her captors. Fear clawed at her, like a dragon trying to rip her from the inside out; but she was the Mother of Dragons and she would put this one to rest. The steppe was not a place to show weakness.
She did not protest as they bound her hands behind her back. She did not fight when the y made her walk behind as they rode. Instead, Dany listened.
"Do you see her?"
"Do you think it is…?"
"What will the Khal do with her?"
Dany, too, considered what the answers might be. Her presence made the Khalasar anxious-as it should. They had abandoned her.
Gathered around a bonfire, Dany watched the flame. The cracking and snapping of the small dry brush provided a steady base for the myriad of conversations running through the Dothraki smells of the Khalasar,horse and leather, mixed with the smoke, making the air heady. Suddenly, what was hazy and transparent grey smoke was an opaque, swirling darkness that seemed to look at and through the crowd. Daenerys Targaryen felt as if the eyeless being saw her. And, then, it raised a wavering limb toward her.
She was struck by terrible images she had never seen before: a child dying in a fire, a sea of endless white, and an old stone castle filled with scared men. One thought mixed with their fear struck her so powerfully, she doubled over: Come home. Help us, Dragon.
The Khalasar was deathly quiet.