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Suns and Storms

The Great Storm

A storm. A really fitting event to crown the day, Carral thought, angry and disbelieving. He could count up on his fingers the times he had seen such a fury from the sky in Dorne, and he'd still have enough fingers left to make a rude gesture. But now the dome above them had split up, gracing them with darkness in midday, roaring wind and downpour that made Carral remember some of the gales he had experienced in the sea. The smooth road running alongside the seashore was quickly becoming almost impossible to negotiate. In the distance, the Narrow Sea hissed and screamed and Carral prayed that the people from the villages around would have the presence of mind to climb into the hills, just in case. His mariner nose told him that the icy air they were breathing was way too salty. Even the breakwater in Sunspear might yield.

"We should have gone back," one of their knights muttered and Carral gave him a dark look.

"Well, it's too late for that now," he snapped. "We can only go forward. The storm is worse behind us. Salt Shore isn't that far."

Their horses were constantly slipping and falling. Cursing, Carral reached out and took Flame's bridle, for Alric was no longer capable of controlling him. "Here," Carral said, speaking to both man and horse, for the icy wind and cascade of rain had left his brother shivering and heightened his fever. He was not fully there now, so Carral tried to soothe him just as he did the mindless horse. "Come here," he said and made Flame stop, so he could climb behind Alric. Ser Ilon Redsand took Carral's own Nightheart by the reins.

Alric stirred slowly and Carral felt the shivers in his body. "I am sorry," Alric murmured. "I shouldn't have dragged all of you into this storm."

"It isn't as if you knew there would be a storm," Carral said reasonably. "Stay still now."

Alric did, if only because leaning back against Carral and closing his eyes was easier than staying awake. Flame, though, went rampant and there was no way for Carral to control him, not with one hand. Somehow, the stallion knew that his rider wasn't the one who held the reins and he proved unwilling to take commands from anyone else.

"Warrior's balls," Carral cursed. "I am not trying to harm him, I am trying to help him. See?"

But this appeal to Flame's reasoning proved barren; with a new curse, Carral went back on Nightheart and wrapped an arm about Alric's waist, trying to keep him stable. Flame agreed to this compromise, at least, and their party went on in the downpour the gods had seen fitting to grace Dorne with.

With each step, the road became worse. The roaring of the sea could be heard more clearly; more than once, Carral wondered whether he'd find his end in the wet grave earlier than expected and not even in the open sea. Alric was getting more and more silent, fighting to stay awake and failing. His shivering was getting worse. Carral held him and cursed in his head Arianne's carelessness, Alric's hot blood, those weird arrangements of theirs that he could not understand fifteen years into their marriage and the fact that at the end, even they had proved unable to understand said arrangements…

The few hours of traveling turned into twelve hours of torment. It was almost midnight when they finally reached Salt Shore. Mikkel rushed out into the bailey, helped Carral take Alric down and in the building, rose the servants from their sleep to feed and lodge men and horses, and brought some hot wine to the bedchamber where Carral was already taking their brother's clothing off.

A shower of puss and blood burst out from the angry wound in scarlet and grey on Alric's shoulder. The area around it was red and irritated. By the look of it, the wound was not a fresh one. It should have started healing long ago and it hadn't.

Alric didn't even stir, just kept looking ahead with too bright eyes. Carral and Mikkel exchanged a look of horror at the profound gauntness of his body and the bloated lower part of the belly. Alric's face was waxen yellow, the pulse throbbing visibly at his temple. Whatever Arianne's follies, she had nothing to do with this. What on earth could have happened in the last year to reduce Alric to this?

"I thought you were at Sunspear," Carral said, trying to give them both time to adapt.

Mikkel shrugged. "Why, yes, of course, I was at Sunspear. But when one dwells there, they can just as easily go back."

He had spent the war in the Old Palace, helping Arianne reign her disagreeable Council in. Too many of its members didn't see the war against the pirates as a pressing matter, so Arianne had had to constantly defend her decision. As usual, Mikkel supported her policy – and helping rule a region in a war was a time-consuming errand. Carral wondered whether even Mikkel had taken the young swaggerer from the Reach seriously. The moment he had seen him, he had realized why Arianne had been led to make this mistake. The little rooster was a man no hot-blooded Dornishman would take seriously. Arianne had probably not given him a thought out of bed, too occupied with pressing matters to think that scandal was scandal, no matter the character of the one causing it. Most likely, she had never thought of him as someone meriting a scandal.

Of course, he strongly believed that Alric would not see things the same way…

Before he could reply, the door opened gently and the old Maester Girar swept in followed by Doran. Mikkel hurriedly waved their nephew away, unwilling to let him see his father in such a state. Doran obeyed but not before sweeping his eyes over everything and everyone.

Even before starting to clean the wound, the Maester ordered a hot bath to be drawn and the boiled wine to be reheated; tired to the bones, Carral watched him rub Alric down with warmed towels in the meantime and headed for the door, intending to change his own dripping clothes.

"No," Alric whispered, his eyes suddenly lucid. "Stay here, stay with me."

Silently, Carral returned at his side, took his tunic off and reached for one of the towels to get his own blood a little warmer.

Today, she came a lot earlier than usual but Artos wasn't surprised. After the events the day had brought, he expected that she'd come to make her position clear to him… and by the gods, he needed to hear it, for he no longer knew what her position was or where he stood with her. He didn't know where he stood in anything related to Dorne. Nothing he had been told in this place and about this place seemed to be true. Especially where Arianne was concerned.

Scandals and dares. Sophistication and wildness. Women and weapons. Poisons and holding grudges. Tearing malcontents apart whenever he felt like it. That was how Artos had always heard about Alric Gargalen. He had seen none of this today. Alric was of age with Arianne, yet he looked years older, tired and careworn to no end. Surely Arianne couldn't content herself with this shell? Artos doubted her husband's presence, in his current state, would make much of a difference from his absence. And Alric didn't look like someone who could summon the energy to issue something more than a formal protest. Arianne wouldn't want to stay alone, right? Because right now, staying with her consort would mean just that – staying alone.

The sun was already disappearing into the vermillion of the sea like a bleeding heart when Arianne entered the solar and sank into the nearest chair, rubbing her forehead. Artos immediately saw her puffy eyes. She's been crying. "Are you well, my lady?" he asked.

"Tell me what happened," she said. "What did he say? What did he do?"

Reluctantly, he relayed the unpleasant meeting, watching her carefully to see her reaction. Her face was inscrutable, though, even more like it had been in the beginning, when they had first bargained over the terms of the treaty, each guarding their thoughts from the other. For the first time, she was treating him as if he were one of the councilors she did not trust, a man she should conceal her feelings from.

"And that was all?" she finally asked, the disbelief evident in her voice. "He didn't even inquire what you were doing here?"

"I think he already knew."

"That's bad," Arianne whispered. "He's never been like this. When he's angry, the whole world knows it."

"Maybe he isn't angry," he suggested and she gave him a look of utter puzzlement.

"Why would you say this?"

He shrugged and tugged at a golden tassel of a pillow. "Well, it is Dorne and you are the Princess…"

This had been the wrong thing to say. Her eyes went cold and her hand gripped the arms of her chair. Her face whitened. "Because we're immoral and of course, I am the Lady of Dorne and he's just someone who can be cast aside at a whim, as soon as he shows discontent in my affairs, so he's expected to suffer in silence."

He opened his mouth and closed it. "I didn't say that."

He expected a heated protest once again and insistence to make clear what he meant; instead, Arianne only shook her head. "Be that at it may, I suppose it could only be expected. And it was my doing all over. My mistake. It looks like I have given some of my own people the wrong impression, so why not you who aren't even accustomed to our ways?"

The wrong impression. The words hit him like a brick. "What do you mean?"

But Arianne was no longer listening to him. She had gone to the window and thrown the shutters open. A veritable sea of water poured into the chamber, carried by the wind. On the outside, the sky was white with rage.

For a while, Arianne stood staring in the curtain of water that permeated the room further and further, soaking the pillows in the carpet and lapping at the coffers. When she turned around, her face was set up. "It's time for you to go," she said. "I'll send people to help your servant with the packing. I'll take care to have you appraised when the roads are safe once again."

Have you appraised. She wouldn't even lose time to inform him in person. There was a hollow sensation in his chest at the thought that he might have misjudged her feelings, as he had everything else in this cursed land. "Will you stay for the night?" he asked, surprised by his own toneless voice.

She shook her head. "I should have never stayed even a single night," she said. "The only way to start mending things now is to stay away."

And besides, what could I need from you now that Alric is back? She didn't voice it, though, it would be too cruel indeed. The boy was not to blame for the appalling lapse of judgment on her part. She had been the one to make the overtures, not he. She determinedly refused to think of the possibility that terrified her more than anything: that Alric might not want to have anything to do with her anymore. Not after such a monumental blunder.

He stared at her gaunt face, ghostly white in the falling darkness, in the quivering lip she could suddenly not control, and felt how the magic of her unraveled right in front of his eyes. Her self-confidence, her willingness to defy the rules, the way she gave up to her passions, the way she had ignored her husband's very existence, refusing to even talk about him with Artos – all those things that had made her different from all other women – they had been part of the attraction that bonded him to her. Now, though, she looked like any other highborn lady, terrified at being caught, yielding to weeping and female fears, and horror at the thought that she had been proven guilty. He felt as if he had been lied to, as if the woman he had fell in love with did not exist anymore – and had never existed in the first place. She was a beautiful lady, indeed – but wed and so very ordinary. And many years older than him – which now showed.

"So you've found out that you are still in love with your husband?"

He didn't even know where the words came from. Love had never been a feeling he had picked on with regards on Arianne's relationship with Alric Gargalen. But then, he wouldn't have picked anything on since she never gave up anything. Her husband was a territory just as forbidden for conversation as their bedchamber was for entering.

"I always was," Arianne said simply.

He felt shamed and foul. For the first time, he saw their relationship for what it had been: she had been using him to indulge her passions while her precious Alric was away. Of course, he had been using her, too, to boost his self-importance. But it had been more than that to him. Not her, though. And now she was putting him aside with no second thought, focused only on how to explain things to her great love. So pitiful. So conventional, for all she reigned in her own name. She's but a mere woman, he thought and smiled. Well, she'll suffer like a mere woman. Because her beloved husband won't take her back. She doesn't know it yet but I do. I saw him in the woods and she didn't.

"I'll be waiting," he said amenably.

Arianne didn't even bother to notice the sudden change in his mood. She was staring at the storm, remembering another storm from six years ago. She had been fretting again over her small daughter's frail health and Alric had had the brilliant idea to take her out for a ride to distract her. The deluge had taken them by surprise near the coast. They had barely found shelter in a cave, praying that the sea would not come quite this high, by equal turns terrified and excited, and more passionate for each other than ever before. They had spent a day and a night in their shelter, emerging from time to time to lift their faces against the rain and then crawling back under the cover they had transformed his cloak into, to be met by eager arms and hot breath. The thunders had been a constant accompaniment to their seclusion, and the elevated sense of danger had given them some strange sort of happiness that had had nothing to do with brains and everything to do with senses. At the end, their people had found them deeply asleep on her cloak, covered with his. Alric had held the cloak in front of her, so she could dress as best as she could, and they had left to come back to the Old Palace where they had immediately gone back to sleep. Oberyn had been born just nine months later, as wild and unpredictable, and violent, and tender as that storm.

He cannot leave it all behind, Arianne now thought. He'll come back to give me hell and then we'll talk. Yes, we will.

Meanwhile, the storm had invaded more than half of the chamber, sucking the dyes from the pillows and making the candles flicker, shiver, and die.