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Lady of Dorne
Secrets Visit by the Night
In the fainted shimmer of the candles, Naeryn's eyes caressed the face of the man resting next to her, his arm thrown casually across her waist. She was as tired as him but she still had a chore to do – a very unpleasant one. Still, even that had not spoiled the joy she had found here, in this bed. This night and every night. In sleep, Anders Yronwood face was relaxed and peaceful, yet the lines of age were visible even now. How much older than me is he, she wondered absent-mindedly. Not that it mattered. In her past, she had had lovers in their twenties who made love with their bodies as if they were fifteen and with their minds as if they were seventy-year-old men. He, on the other hand… Naeryn was quite certain that when he had been fifteen, he had made love with both body and mind as if he were thirty. And if he reached seventy, he'd make love in the exact same way. Pity that she wouldn't be with him then…
She sighed and snuggled closer. She'd better take whatever she could before she left. It was a good thing that they'd leave as soon as Elia's marriage was terminated because Naeryn was starting to get somewhat attached to him. He was the man of the dreams she had once had before she realized that they'd never come to pass: a good and valiant man. And as manful as they came… Getting too attached to her lovers was something she tried to avoid, for it would only bring her pain.
When the candlelight started taking its last, hissing breath, Naeryn disentangled herself carefully and wrapped her lover's arms around her pillow, hoping to make him think it was her in his sleep. She took her nightgown off and brushed her silver hair out. Nothing about her person or attire should be tangled.
She went to the candlestick and doused all candles. Lit by the fire only, she knelt in front of the fireplace and for a while, stared at them before reaching for the small dagger she held on a nearby coffer. Scarlet drops hissed in the flames and made them dance higher as Naeryn started to weave the resulting shadows in her hair, smear them in her skin, apply them over her eyes and the red robe and dark cloak she now put on. Years of hard training had made her stronger and more skilled with her dagger than most women but she did not want to defend herself with a blade should something happen. Shadows would have to do.
She reached for the obsidian pendant on a silver chain and placed it on her forehead. The stone was bright, pulsing with life.
Now, everyone she came across would feel the inexplicable desire to look aside, not noticing the shadow that was Naeryn gliding past them. She gave a last look to the sleeping man and left the bedchamber soundlessly.
As soon as she found herself in the hallway beyond the antechamber, a dark silhouette stirred. "My lady?" he asked sleepily and then immediately slapped a hand over his mouth. Ever since they had come across each other in the Riverlands some five years ago, he left to die from his wounds on the road and she roaming the realm with her then paramour, he had become her watchdog, her self-appointed guard. There was no concealing herself from him, for it was her blood worked in her magic that had strengthened the thinned thread of his life. But there was clearly some difference in the way he perceived her when she was under disguise compared to when she wasn't. He had never been able to explain it.
She went past him. Roderic of the North followed. Neither of them spoke.
It was quite cold but that was a good thing since it helped Naeryn clear her thoughts. She climbed down a staircase and took a deep breath before stepping aside to let Roderic open the door. She had always disliked that moment after she had left the torchlight and before her eyes got used with the darkness outside.
He moved to make room for her and she went out in the courtyard, past a small garden. Tonight, there was no moon and the stars were wrapped in clouds, giving only the faintest shades of flickering. The very few people they encountered looked aside, or turned back, not noticing her once.
Naeryn knew where the tower was. She had seen it. She knew the way to it. But Red Keep at night was an entirely different place, full of shadows deeper than the ones she had disguised herself with. Especially now, so soon after practicing blood magic, she could hear the blood of all who had died screaming here. Should she enter the lower floors, she was quite sure she'd hear the groans of Maegor the Cruel's poor builders.
Two steps behind her, Roderic shivered, as if he, too, could hear the blood calling.
When the silhouette appeared before them, at first she didn't spare it much thought. But when the woman didn't look aside, Naeryn was quite taken aback. She wasn't looking at Roderic. Instead, her eyes were staring straight at Naeryn, as if she could see her – well, not actually see her because she looked quite bewildered herself. But she seemed to feel the presence – something very few people, and not one in Westeros, had done.
The Stark girl.
Naeryn had heard much about her wolfish fierceness and so on. Supposedly, that was what had attracted the madman Elia had wed. But Naeryn saw nothing of it tonight. What she saw was both a child and old crone. So youthful, yet aged beyond her years, not unlike Elia. She must have slipped out of her rooms because she hand't been able to go to sleep. And by the haunted look on her face, Naeryn would bet that it wasn't her first time doing it. She looks like a ghost, she thought without much sympathy but without much real malice either, with the detached unease she felt each time she saw a wild animal in a cage.
Lyanna Stark shivered and looked aside. The bewilderment in her eyes turned to joy. She stepped forward so fast that she almost bumped in the shadows around Naeryn. "Roderic," she said. "What are you doing here? I thought you were at Winterfell."
He made a step backward, as if being near her would make him foul. Naeryn saw the moment Lyanna looked beyond the first joy of seeing one of her own to the reality of how Roderic was now: the missing eye, the maimed ear, the scar gleaming white in the darkness. She looked stunned. How could she look so stunned? Naeryn still remembered the feverish disbelief of Roderic, the only surviving man-at-arms of those tasked to escort the Lord of Winterfell's daughter to Riverrun. She left us there, he had muttered again and again, tossing in the vortex of his dreams. Lady Lyanna just went off with him and left us there to die.
"What happened to you?"
For all her years, the girl's voice now sounded like one of a small child.
He didn't look away from her, his face a picture of scorn and grief. "How could you, my lady?" he asked. "How? Was that what Lord Rickard deserved?"
She opened her mouth and closed it again. Her face went white. Naeryn, though, had neither the time nor desire to dig into the girl's soul, so she went on her way. After a moment, she heard Roderic following.
The heavy door creaked when she opened it and Naeryn swiftly turn around to motion that Roderic should stay outside. Unlike her, he was very noticeable and if they encountered someone, Roderic would have to explain what he was doing in the White Sword Tower.
Slowly, cautiously, Naeryn felt her way through the darkness until her hand came upon the banisters of a staircase. She ascended the first few steps very carefully and then, having gained an instinct for the height and width of them, went on with more confidence.
The first door she opened slightly was the wrong one. The golden head on the pillow could only belong to Jaime Lannister and while her younger self might have found it amusing to try and seduce a Kingsguard, at the age she was she simply closed the door back and moved to the next one.
On her fourth try, she finally found the right cell. Just like with the others, the fire in the fireplace still gave some faint light, so she made her way to the fireplace without delay and unwove the shadows, feeling the sharp twinge when the obsidian became just a gem once again. Now, she crossed to the bed and shook the occupant awake.
The purple eyes opened and stared at her drowsily. And then, he gave her the welcome she least expected: his arm shot out from beneath the cover and grasped her, bringing her close to him. "You have come to keep me company, haven't you?" he asked happily.
After a moment of stunned shock, Naeryn tried to push him away but even half-asleep, he was far stronger and too quick in his reactions. The only reason she didn't end up in this bed was that Arthur woke up enough to realize that he was no longer seventeen, that they were not in Salt Shore, and their shared past was just that – a past.
Once he came to this realization, he snapped wide awake and let go off her as if she burned him.
"Good," Naeryn said, straightening to sit on the edge of the bed.
"I am sorry," he murmured, rubbing at his eyes. "Anyway, why are you here if not for this?"
"Because I need to talk to you and I can't quite manage it when you're always pasted to one of their sides. But since we're talking about it… You've lost the right to touch any part of me long ago. You're a part of all of this because for some reason, my uncle thinks you can still be saved. And I'll tolerate you because of this and because, for a reason I can fathom even less than my uncle's one, there are those of us who still care what will happen to you."
He sighed. Her answer was less than flattering but it was honest, albeit brutally so. Anyway, why had he asked if he didn't want to be told? He drew back uncomfortably, for it was the first time in almost ten years that he was so close to a young and appealing woman… But the aroma of her still clung to him, that mixture of jasmine and unique hint of her own. His mind was already working in full force but that thrice damned body of his didn't care. It had almost forgotten what it was like to press another body down, to hear whispers in the darkness, to feel soft hair between its fingers, to make love to a woman with vigour and passion… He didn't harbor any romantic feelings for Naeryn and he hadn't even during their affair but his body remembered all too well all of her.
The mocking glint of her eyes was visible in the faint light. Arthur decided to ignore it. "Those who still care?" he asked, his mood considerably brighter all of a sudden. "Ashara and Arel? Do they care?"
"Oh they do," she said. "Which doesn't mean they aren't furious with you. If you ever set a foot in Dorne again, pray that Oberyn finds you before your siblings get there first!"
He would pray for no such thing. While he wasn't eager to meet their anger, he was desperate to see them. Sure, he hadn't seen Arel all that often before and after Ashara's retiring from court, he had seen her just once. But then, he had known that he could visit. Now, there wasn't a place in Dorne that he'd be welcome to.
"Not likely to happen," he said. "I doubt I'll be visiting Dorne any time soon."
"Are you sure?"
He squinted at her. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," Naeryn admitted. "As I said, my uncle sees something about you that makes him think you can still have a chance. For a new beginning, I guess. And as reluctant as I am to see it, I don't like to have you suffer… if you do, indeed, suffer. The King could possibly be persuaded to let you go. In fact, I think he can be prompted into suggesting it himself. The High Septon can release you from your oaths. You could come back with us. Live the life that every other man does."
Live like the rest of them. The very thing he had abhorred. The second son of a minor House from the edge of the smallest of the Seven Kingdoms. What else could he do but live like the rest of them?
His eyes went to Dawn, hilt gleaming like a lightning. He had fought so hard to make something of himself. The Sword of the Morning. The Kingsguard. Someone whose name was renown all over the realm.
But the scent of jasmine was as strong as it had been when he had not quite woken up and thought that he was still in Dorne and Naeryn had come to share his bed once again.
"I… swore an oath," he finally said. His voice was so rough that he wouldn't recognize it himself. "All knights must bleed and suffer…"
"Oh please!" she interrupted and rose angrily. "Were you feeling very knightly while others bled and suffered for the ones you swore that oath to?"
"One has nothing to do with the other!" he snapped back and rose on his elbow. "My honour demanded that I serve loyally. The gods only know what it cost me! But maybe it should keep taxing me because honour is not something that can be bought off even with the most alluring of lives!"
"Be quiet!" she hissed and looked at the door. He startled and shut up. She looked back at him with a bitter, mocking smile.
"Fine, then," she said. "I have no idea why I bothered to come and give you time to think before you're taken aback by the proposal, no idea at all. But fine. Keep clinging to your honour and believing that suffering for your honour is a noble thing to do, and blaming the gods for being so cruel to you. Just like your honourable Lord Commander did thirty years ago."
He was so stunned that he could only stare. "What?"
She huffed disdainfully. "That's right, you don't know. Many years ago, Ser Gerold Hightower made a proposal to my mother. Not to wed her, of course. To bed her. Oh he didn't dress it up like this, naturally. He used much sweeter words, I am told. But generally, that was the gist of it. Because she was too soiled for him to take to wife, he decided she'd be grateful that a renowned knight like him showed her attention. That was shortly before he took the white, almost immediately after my birth. He proclaimed that the gods had decided to deny him the only woman he could possibly consider as a bride. He was made Lord Commander not even a year after entering the Kingsguard."
Arthur stared at her. His first impulse was to accuse her of making things up but he knew she wasn't. It was in Ser Gerold's character to cling to honour despite everything. And Aelinor Gargalen had been soiled. Gerold Hightower wouldn't even wed a Valyrian empress if she had been as dishonoured as King Aegon's niece was.
"Maybe he'll keep teaching you the revelations about honour he came to with time," Naeryn went on, her voice still very cold. "Just like he did the lion boy, as I've heard. Tell me, what would you say to all those the King you gave your precious oath to tortured and killed in your presence? I am sorry but I swore an oath. You must understand. I could try to intervene but I won't because my honour is more important than your life. Far more precious. Hey, is that the Starks over there? Why, come in!"
Arthur's hands clutched the coverings because otherwise, he might have grasped her by the throat.
"I can see why you're so much against honour," he spat. "You are dishonour, since the very moment you came to be and even before."
She tried to hide it but he saw that his words had wounded her. They were the most dangerous of enemies, hurling at each other vulnerabilities they had glimpsed all those years ago in the Water Gardens and later, on the pillows of the bed they had shared. They knew where to hit to hurt most, to draw blood. Naeryn, though, was not going to let this go on. He was beyond help and she couldn't even remember why she had wanted to help him.
Despite knowing that she had just given him the victory, she turned around and left the cell. She could not summon the shadows back without a fireplace, so she simply hurried through the yard as fast as she could. Roderic followed.
In the cell, Arthur was trying to make sense of everything that had happened, everything he had learned. But as much as he struggled to think of honour and being released from his oaths, his mind always came back to one thing: the scent of jasmine that lingered around his bed.
"Where are my guards?"
Rhaegar sighed and looked up from the heavy tome on the tabletop. Lyanna's bad moods were hard to put up with and the flaring of her temper was quite tiring but the worst parts were always when she woke up with what she deemed just grievance. That was a sure receipt for a day or two of cold looks and locked bedchamber.
"If you mean Ser Oswell and the rest of them, I am sorry but today it's…"
"They aren't the ones that I mean," she snapped. "If you ask me, they can stay wherever they are, indefinitely! I am sick of watchdogs and I don't need those. But anyway, that was not what I was asking about. I want to know what happened to my guards. My father's Northern guards."
The King had the terrible feeling that he knew where the conversation was headed for. In the beginning, she had simply taken his reassurances at face value and later, when she no longer had, she had been too distraught over her father and brother's fate to think of what had transpired before.
"I am not sure I understand what you're talking about," he said and gave his harp a secret look, longing for the days they had built a world of their own under the soft sounds.
His second wife glared at him, lack of sleep evident on her face.
"I am talking about the beginning of our time together," she said. "Or maybe you have already forgotten about the Riverlands? The letter you sent me? The fact that I told you the route I'd be using? The flight we took together? The undoubted unlawfulness of what we did? The men of my escort that you assured me were not that seriously wounded and could wait until we reach the nearest town and send help because their condition looked scarier than it was? The Mother help me, I actually believed you. And now I demand an answer. What happened to them?"
Rhaegar looked aside. After alerting the citizens and paying them handsomely to go to the wounded and attend them, he had moved on to the next step in his plan. "I don't know," he said.
To his enormous surprise, the fight went off her eyes. Her shoulders sagged. "So I am right," she whispered. "They might be all dead and most likely are. And you don't even care whether I am right."
He sighed. "Lyanna, they drew their swords upon us."
"Yes, because my father trusted them with my protection! They were only doing their duty. And you lied to me."
Angrily, he slammed the book closed. "Would you have still come with me if you knew they had sustained some serious wounds?"
"No, I wouldn't!"
"You see? Someone had to make the decision if we were ever going to be together."
She stared at him as if she was looking at a stranger, her wonder so encompassing that even anger couldn't come back. "My desire to be with you didn't quite reach this far. There were lines I never would have crossed!"
"You had to. And those men were in the way. I am sorry about them, truly. But…"
"Yes," she said and slowly sunk into a chair. "They were in your way to the seduction of the foolish girl who believed every word you said. And you don't even care whether they lived or died."
Now, he looked clearly uncomfortable. Out of all problems she might have come to lay at his door, the unfortunate guards had taken no place in his considerations. "You don't understand. While I am sorry for what happened to them, it could not really be avoided. You cannot possibly know how great a danger the world is in."
Lyanna had heard all this before and had vanishingly patience for it. "But people are those who live in this world, Rhaegar," she said. 'Those were Stark people. I'd known them my entire life… and you tricked me into leaving them to their fate to go into that tower at the end of Westeros!"
For a moment, he saw in her eyes the sparkle of justified anger that had once attracted him to her; but a moment later, it was replaced by the blank expression of someone who had lost their last succor.
He rose and came near; she held out a hand to stop him. "Don't you dare touch me," she warned. "Especially now. Or in the next five years! Or else you'll need that Kingsguard of yours immediately!"
"By the gods, Lyanna! Calm down!"
The anger came back, fiercer than ever. "I don't want to calm down and you can stop treating me like a child. I won't let you. Never, from this moment on."
He tried to reach for her; snarling, she bowed her head and aimed for his hand; cursing, he snatched it back before she could chow his fingers off. "Stop behaving like a madwoman and let me explain."
She gave him a look of astonishment and made a step back, folding her arms on her chest. "I must be a madwoman indeed to believe your explanations ever again, since you never give them in a timely the gods, Rhaegar! People whose only fault was being in my father's service died so you could carry me away – and you didn't think to tell me or to consider that leaving with me might not be such a good idea after all?"
"If they had thrown their weapons as both you and I commanded them, it could be avoided."
"Could it?" Lyanna asked in a harsh whisper, grabbing the arms of her chair. "You would have never let them go, lest they told someone the direction we disappeared in."
Her accusation shook him to the core. Did she really believe that he'd go this far? He didn't like placing people at risk, he just had to think on a greater scale. He was deeply sorry for every single life lost, even Robert Baratheon's. "You don't believe it."
"I do."
"Sure," he said, now angered as well. "I don't know what went into me, to think I can turn you into a queen. You're unable to see things on a broader scale beyond your Winterfell."
Not my Winterfell any more. Ned would never turn her away but Lyanna did not delude herself into thinking that he'd be happy to see her there. Not after all the deaths. Not after Father and Brandon… As to the North as a whole, she supposed that by now, her reputation was only slightly better than the one of the Night King. Roderic blamed her for his condition and the death of his fellow guards and he was right. Mothers probably used her to scare their children into obedience. Be quiet, or I'll give you to Lady Lyanna…
There was sour taste in her mouth at thinking how much she had envied Elia Martell once. What had the frail Dornishwoman done to deserve having such a handsome, romantic, chivalrous husband, she had asked herself bitterly. Gods! Now, she envied her even more, for Elia would soon break free of this quagmire of lies, madness, and lofty aims that leaned suspiciously to indifference to those who would foot the bill. Lyanna would stay in the cage she had made for herself. And with the birth of her child, she had fortified the door so that she could not run away even if she chewed her own leg off.
"I am pleased," she finally said, "that I am human."
Their eyes met, no one willing to yield or understand the other. Two worlds, the First Men and Valyria, so far away from each other that even their grievances were unable to meet in the middle of the road.