Chapter Twenty One: Terms of Service
The ships sailed into their berths with far less voice than one would expect from vessels of their size.
Each was a thing of staggering dimensions, a hundred feet wide and five times that in length.
Zaldrizes Logor, dragonship. A craft built of to provide a safe resting place for dragons which had to make dangerous journeys. Few existed in all of the Freehold, costing fortunes to produce and being an overt statement of ambition besides.
Beyond the Chambers of the Senate, only the Fourteen Orders could claim use of the great ships.
So had six of the vessels been claimed by the Order for their solemn journey.
The isle was known simply as the Rest or the Place of Sleep.
It was a small isle resting amid the Summer Sea, so sacred that the steps of outsiders were punishable by death regardless of status.
Gaema raised her hood and followed behind her master as he crossed the plank off of the ship.
Six other masters of the Order descended from their own vessels, each trailed by an acolyte like her. Some were years her younger and others perhaps twice over her elders.
As they dismounted, their great behemoths launched themselves from the boats, each trailed by a lesser creature as they flew towards the enormous citadel which dominated the small isle.
The ships evened out violently as they were freed from the great weight. One of the ships along could normally carry as many as four wyrms of a century but the ancients and their dragons had forced the vessels to their straining points.
To say nothing for the over one hundred Order-bound servants which had followed them.
Every master was like that, with massive dragons which seemed to shake the world around them with their wingbeats.
Gaema paid them little mind as she followed her master.
Failure was not something she could relish, it was not in her by nature and pain had only entrenched that dislike.
But that day, a mistake was even less forgivable.
The Citadel which dominated the isle was a massive construct, taller than the highest spires of Valyria and crowned with fourteen towers wrought into the shapes of the gods.
Each tower was a citadel onto itself, broader than the ships which had carried them and crested by great wings of black stone.
Twin roars reverberated as two great dragons rose from the island to greet the newcomers.
By ancient tradition two Valiants, those who swore themselves to the Order of Balerion, guarded that place. Gaema knew that each carried the gifts of many orders. Including the rarest of works, breastplates and helms of Valyrian Steel.
Fourteen Orders, for the Fourteen Gods, each blessed with power and charged to safeguard the Pact.
It was only there, where they all came to Rest. It was only there that the Orders stood as one to honor their dead.
Behind their small progression came over a hundred of the servants whose blood had served the Order of Meraxes since time immemorial. Many carried sealed urns like the one the eldest master but the chief source of mourning was the great dragon skull brought forward by a great chariot pulled by three teams of horses. The heavy steeds had long since been bred to offer no fear to dragons and they obediently plotted forwards.
They walked along the fused dragonroads from the docks towards the citadels, passing the small farms which sustained the servants and the rude little villages which they had made for themselves.
Were fear not alive in her, Gaema might have asked questions.
She had heard so much of that place, wished to go so often as a small girl.
Now she could only feel the eyes of her god upon her.
Their quiet procession marched through great gates of fourteen-hued stone and down the torchlit halls of the Rest.
There no hymns or prayers when a master passed, no gods or demons which were to be invoked or cursed. From the moment of ascension, each dragonrider to swear itself to an order had no need for such things.
Their souls were sworn to their masters in death as they had been in life.
The procession came to a stop before a sealed gate adorned with the half-made hammer of Meraxes. Their god of Crafts.
Before the gate they were awaited by two Chisels.
They dressed as did all of their order. Jade torcs and bands and rings over robes the colours of wet mud and polished marble.
Their features were hidden beneath their heavy hoods.
It did matter to Gaema. They are servants to the Shape-Giver as the masters are servants of the Earthbone. Their features and names are meaningless.
"Who comes?" They asked, words so matched that there might as well have been only one speaker.
The eldest master, the one with the urn who always wore a single earring (which was why she always called her 'the Ringed One'), answered.
"A wary servant comes, a wary servant and he who shared her life," She answered. "We who were her kin and peers come to aid her in this final journey."
"A servant?" They asked. "A servant of whom? Who was she to demand rest?"
The elder shook her head and raised the urn before her, "One who served She-Who-Is-Steel, the Earthbone, the Refiner, Meraxes who is both the Smith and the Breaker. This humble servant served her master for years beyond count, forged blades from deepest passion and honed them to their finest edge."
"Then by the terms of that pact it is our honor to aid you as kin," The twin figures nodded as they stepped back, the great gate of god-willed stone opening to allow entry.
Gaema held her breath as she followed the retinue.
Beyond them was a chamber which reached high into the heavens, revealing the conical shape of the tower-tomb's vast interior.
Row upon row of plinth awaited them within, massive columns reaching towards the distant light of day in a spiraling formation.
The vastness of the chamber struck her immediately, Gaema knew it was a trick of the Chisels, for Akaqo was ever a god fond of shapes. Their structures could seem as large or as small as they wished, Gaema knew that as well as any raised in the great fortresses at the heart of the Freehold.
But it was a matter of scale. So great was the chamber that their dragons roared distantly above them as they peered through the great oval of the ceiling, the great leviathans of the masters made so small that their forms barely impacted the perfect circle of the sky.
The ritual began as they entered the tower.
The masters and their servants slowed their steps to match pace with the servants which pulled forward the skull of the fallen dragon, before them came the eighty servants which had accompanied them on their journey.
Their column split first into two, then four and then eight columns as they walked through the great spires which lined the Order's advance.
Gaema risked glances at the pillars. Tall twists of black stone lined with small shelves, some of which already held urns and other which were bare.
Eighty bloodlines served the Order of Meraxes as did every one of the Orders, born into a service which was ordained by their ancestors dating back to the first days of the Freehold.
In life they served the masters which in turn served Meraxes.
And in death, they rested along with their masters.
They came to a stop before the lowest plinth, one which was scarcely a foot above the ground and empty save for a simply dais which lay at its very front.
Without a word the thirty men and women who had accompanied the skull lifted its great weight, a lifetime of labour and practice making the load seem inconsequential as the moved forward and laid the skull of the great beast so that it face the dais.
With well-timed practice, they picked up the heavy chains which seemed to risen from the stone rather than anchored to it. They set about binding the skull in place even as the head of their procession walked forward.
Behind her the other masters formed a semi-circle around her while Gaema and the other acolytes took their place behind their instructors and fell to their knees in deference.
Gaema felt the footsteps as every servant walked forward in time with their lady. The place of the acolyte was less than that of a servant in that sacred place, for the servant and the master were sworn in heart and in soul where the acolyte was neither, a mere aspirant rather than truly one whom belonged.
The Master of the Ring brought the urn before her face, an action imitated throughout the chamber.
"Elder," She began, the words were not commanding, they were scarcely more than a whisper. "Elder, your time has come and we must bid farewell."
Gaema risked a glance as the Ringed One kissed the urn gently and laid it on the alter.
"Elder, where you once worked and toiled, now another must take your place," Gaema wondered if it was some magic of the place which made it seem as if all spoke as one. "Come now elder, come and take your rest."
"Rest, my dear elder, and dream for ages to come," the clink as the chains which hung on both dais and alcoves were wrapped around the urns. "For the day is done and now must come the night. Elder, you must rest as must we all. For on the morrow you must work again."
The plain and impersonal nature of the burial struck Gaema, it was grand in its own way but also so different from the feasts and revelries that accompanied the burnings of the wealthy and the internment of their ashes.
Their servants burned their dead and stored their ashes in the temples of their order, awaiting the next time a Master went to their rest. Gaema had at first thought it uncaring but it had become clear that master and servant were made more akin in death than they ever had been in life.
As if to punctuate that idea, the chamber sang with the sound of unsheathing steel.
The Ringed One raised a blade high over her head.
Dark ripples over a hilt of purest white.
"Rest well, dear elder so that you may be strong when we meet again," She sang as she hilted the sword in a slot carved before the urn.
Gaema marveled at the sound of eighty blades being slid beneath alcoves across the chamber.
She did not understand how it had been done, how the cost had been surmounted.
But eighty-one blades were interred that day.
"Rest now, elder one," The Ringed Master finished. "For all men may rest."
"But we must serve."
...
The first thing I noted when I awoke was that I was drooling still, my arms were wrapped around a gorget and my legs were being held by arms.
Piggyback, I mused as the fog of sleep faded while I blinked. "My thanks, Ebermen."
The Bull snorted.
"Ah!" Arral greeted from next to us. "You awake! Horrible place to fall asleep! Take it from experience! The floors are quite hard! Conclusively hard! You are fortunate that Ser Ebermen was quick enough to catch you."
"Then I thank you for saving me from a fairly embarrassing injury," I muttered as I shifted my weight to free a hand and rub my eyes. "'And he fainted' would not be the most impressive demise in the history of House Targaryen," refreshingly normal though.
"As you say," The Bull snorted again, humor edging into his monotone voice.
"Far from!" Arral protested. "Two of the previous Litsen Lords were slain by the Bloody Flux! And there was the one slain in a brothel while dressed as a woman while engaged in the services of five boys! Quite embarrassing by the Andal custom! A touch unfair mayhaps but still!"
I opened an eye to regard the pointy-haired maester.
To my surprise he was casually riding Clearsky as the dragon crawled alongside the bull.
Grey-blue eyes met my own and the dragon raised her head up to try and nuzzle.
Despite myself I smiled and used my free hand to scratch beneath her jaw.
As for the Maester's comment...
I… I am not going to engage with that, I chuckled and smiled slightly while looking around us. We were still below the Hightower but the light from the torches suggested we were close to the surface. The interval suggested that we were only a floor or two from the surface.
"Might as well let me down," I sighed. "Enough men probably saw my little nap but no need to make a show of it."
Without word the shield fell to a knee and helped me down from his shoulders.
Unsurprisingly my balance was far from great and I stumbled a few steps before getting a hold of myself.
"Right," I said as I straightened my smoothed out my linens and straightened my leathers. "Let us get back to my apartments before I slip up."
I needed to get to my room and scream for a good few hours.
The tomb had been terrifying but the dream managed to be worse, in implication if not in sight.
Magic, I thought sourly. More and more magic. Tombs with shared elements buried beneath legends and all cloaked in the baloney of ritual. That was harsh but actually believing that the gods of Valyria had any power was ridiculous. Valyria had been sunk, exploded and was probably irradiated. If they had any real gods or some magic beyond fancy swords, forts and occasional fireproofing, it had not saved them.
It was a panicked thought and not one that I could believe.
And even if there is some truth to it, I concluded. I have no interest in it. I want the Steel but I have no intention whatsoever in being played by some abominations so incompetent that they might have gotten multiple civilizations ruined.
I needed to survive and the Steel was my meal-ticket towards that end, but if the dreams asked too much I would just happily ignore them.
Still… "It was fascinating."
"Finally!" Arral exhaled. "Finally! I have been trying to get Hightowers down there for years! But noooo! They always claim it to be boring! That they have seen the tombs many times!"
It occurred to me that they probably meant the tombs in the upper floors.
That the Maester had somehow neglected to mention which tomb did not surprise me at all. No man was perfect and one of the many flaws of Arral was that you needed to really make it clear that you do not follow his train of thought.
"I think it is better if we all agree to not mention this to anyone," I sighed. It was a long shot but I could not risk some idiot trying to loot a tomb which had 'WARNING: DO NOT FUCK WITH THIS' painted on the proverbial wall. Especially since most Westerosi could not be trusted to read.
"As you say," Ebermen said mechanically and seemingly earnestly. It was becoming harder to maintain that my habitual paranoia around the man. He had plenty of opportunities to betray my trust and yet he had singularly failed to let me down.
"Not mention?!" Arral tilted his head a full ninety degrees. "I have been mentioning it for years! YEARS! How the dragons in the stones and the corpses of ancient men can be uninteresting is beyond me!"
...I am not sure how to react to that. If the Maesters conspired against magic then they had screwed up. If they were not, then they were incompetent.
Or…
"How detailed were you?" I asked.
"Detailed?!" The man's head seemed about to snap from how hard he nodded. "I summited a Thesis! I can't go reporting my findings without approval! Poor form! Poor form it would be! Never bad my research proposal approved! But my word was good enough for Lo Han! It should be good enough!"
Despite myself, I chuckled. "I will get you approval if you agree to keep it quiet for now."
Arral considered that, he tugged at his beard a few times, his face wrinkled up in consideration.
"Very well! Yes! A bargain!" The old man nodded.
Good, the last thing I needed was to have word spread about the crypt until I had the means to prevent idiocy.
However…
There was something to be said about rites of initiation…