The next day, they marched to Yunkai. The city, made of yellow bricks, towered in front of them. The wall and towers swarmed with crossbowmen and slingers. Daario and Grey Worm deployed their men and raised the pavilion, where Daenerys sat down and waited with the Professor, Irri, Jhiqui and Missandei.
Soon, the city gates swung open, and a line of slaves began to emerge. Daenerys mounted her silver mare to greet them while Missandei told them they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons.
"Mhysa!" a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. "Mhysa! Mhysa!"
Daenerys looked at Missandei. "What are they shouting?"
"It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means 'Mother'," Missandei explained.
Daenerys felt a lightness in her chest. She remembered the Magi, Mirri Maz Duur, saying she would never bear a living child. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. "Mhysa!" they called. "Mhysa! MHYSA!" They were all smiling at her, reaching for her and kneeling. "Maela," some called her while others cried "Aelalla" or "Qathei" or "Tato," but whatever the tongue, it all meant the same thing. Mother. They all called Daenerys 'mother'.
The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed to shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and they took up the call as they came. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to touch her hand, stroke her horse's mane, and kiss her feet. Her poor bloodriders could not keep them all away.
The Professor looked over at Daenerys. "You are truly a beacon of hope for these people," he told her. "Your compassion and strength have brought them a new lease on life. Go to them."
Daenerys nodded at the Professor's words. However, she couldn't help but think of a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. They wouldn't hurt her. She put her heels into her horse and rode to them. The bells in her hair rang sweet victory.
She trotted, cantered, and broke into a gallop, letting her braid stream behind her. The freed slaves parted before her. "Mother," they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. "Mother," they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as she flew by. "Mother, Mother, Mother!"