A/N: Chap 22 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thank you for reading!

Chapter Twenty-Three: Soar the Hurtling Flame

Two flaming hearts waited for them as the Laughing Lion sailed into the beautifully crafted port of Qarth.

The symbols were stitched onto crimson sails hung from the masts of two Volantine caravels crowded in with hundreds of other ships, mostly an even mix between the ugly hulks of the slave cities and Volantis, and the ribbed, square-rigged junks of YiTi.

During the three months of their voyage so far, Taylor found a little sheltered spot near the prow where she could sit and listen to the prayers of her followers. Even from across the world, she could hear voices whispering to the godswood for a healthy birth; for a successful crop.

She heard the aged Obal and her own daughter, both still in Winterfell and still serving the Stark Family, praying for the safe recovery of Lyanna Stark, lost Rickard's youngest daughter. The child twisted an ankle while chasing over the treacherous roofs of Winterfell Keep with her younger brother Benjen.

Taylor granted that prayer, sending a little of her grace through the Lyra, the same girl who once made her dress, so that her hands could quicken the child's healing.

Morag did not pray so much as just speak at night in the godswood behind her cabin. It was a habit she'd taken up, and Taylor always smiled when she heard her oldest friend's words talking about the growing towns of the Free People, or the trade they had with Braavos. Taylor always sent warmth and joy to the woman just so she would know Taylor was with her.

Staying in touch with her people helped the tedium of ship life pass by quickly. Until finally they reached the straits that separated the Summer and Jade Seas, and the city that straddled the line between East and West.

From her little nest, she saw a city that could have been a matte painting for a classic Hollywood epic. White plaster buildings, some with murals she could see from the water, climbed steadily up a gentle hill from the edge of the water. A central thoroughfare ran through the city, from south to north, and another from east to west.

Surrounding the whole was a tremendous defensive structure composed of three separate, spaced walls, each with kill zones between. She'd not read much of Qarth, but the defense spoke of a fearful people.

She didn't notice the Red Temple sails until Thoros emerged from below deck and froze as if struck. He drifted toward her, as he had throughout their voyage. "I didn't know the temples were here already."

Taylor stood and followed his gaze. "I could be wrong, Thoros, but those don't look like Temples."

Her dry wit was lost on him for the first few weeks. Now he laughed. "Yes, I know. It's just…" He shook his head. "I shouldn't be surprised. I'm just one of many acolytes who've been summoned to undergo the mysteries."

In the months spent sailing together, Taylor had come to understand that Thoros of Myr was a deeply passionate young man who never had any opportunity to live other than as a future priest of R'hllor. Over their many conversations, he'd told her of his upbringing in the Red Temple as a slave, and that all priests were slaves purchased by the Temples.

The idea of undergoing the mysteries terrified him. It took almost two weeks until he confessed it, but as they rounded the southernmost point of Valyria, he told her. "Benero was as close to a father as I ever knew. When I was ten, he left Myr and went to Asshai-Beyond-the-Shadow to be inducted in the Mysteries. When he returned, he looked younger. Stronger. But when he spoke to us…it wasn't him anymore. It is difficult to explain."

"Then why go through it yourself?"

"I've been summoned," Thoros said. "The Lord calls me, and I must answer."

That was the end of it.

Now, months later, he looked upon his fellow priests with an expression of resigned fear. He didn't speak any more as Ser Gerion tacked the sails to bring the ship into an empty berth. They were met by a portly man wearing silk robes and high pantaloons that left his milky white yet frighteningly furry chest bare, with a mustachio that hung down almost to his own rounded nipples. The man appeared to be the dock master judging by how much they had to pay to dock.

Ser Gerion walked away from the Dockmaster with muttered curses. "Greedy bastards. Highest berthing fees in the world, I swear it." He slapped Thoros on the back. "Look, lad! Some of your fellow priests there. Going to greet them?"

"I suppose I must," Thoros said. He forced a smile for the captain. "They may require me to sail with them."

"Well, lad, if that's what you think best. No refunds, I'm afraid."

The young acolyte laughed. "Of course, ser. It was an honor to sail with you."

Ser Gerion, knight and highborn he was, shook the young acolyte's hand before moving back to see to the unloading of his trade goods. Thoros turned back to Taylor.

"You're so sure you'll have to sail with them?"

"It will be expected," Thoros said. "Those were the ships from Volantis that I just missed when I arrived from Myr. My lady I…" He floundered a bit. "I've enjoyed our conversations. Thank you for your friendship."

Unmarried men and women did not hug in Essos. That was an act of intimacy that could get someone stabbed, especially if the woman was married. Instead, Taylor offered her hand like Ser Gerion did. "Good luck, Thoros. I hope we meet again."

He hesitated a moment before taking it. "Me too, m'lady. Me too. Safe travels."

With that, the morose young man gathered his things and left the ship. She watched as he walked up the white stone wharf until he reached the berth of the first Red Temple ship. A slim, elegant woman with hair such a bright shade of red Taylor could have seen it even without her bifrost eyes stepped down from the deck of the ship and met him with both her hands on his shoulders.

Ser Gerion quickly switched out the goods and supplies in his ship, selling the quality timbers and replacing it with amphoras of Qartheen wine and beer–a delicacy among the wealthy of the YiTi empire. Taylor left the ship to explore, but without status, she wasn't permitted beyond the walls of the city. And though the docks were spacious and well made, they were little different than any other.

In two day's time, with his ship restocked and loaded with a new set of trade goods, they set sail east into the Jade Sea. Taylor sat in her spot under a cloudy sky and watched as the two Red Temple ships continued their own preparations for the same voyage.

~~Voluspa~~

~~Voluspa~~

The entire horizon held a nearly black layer of cloud. It did not extend out into the almost black ocean, nor did it move like natural cloud. When she gazed at it with her power, she bit back a gasp. The cloud was filled with particulates, water, and demons.

Unlike the glistening spirits of the dawn she greeted every morning, the flitting shadows within the clouds radiated spite for the world around them. Never in her life had she witnessed such things.

"I suppose that's what 'Beyond the shadow' means," she muttered aloud.

"Aye, the whole cursed land is like that." Ser Gerion left his steering wheel in the hands of his first mate and stood beside her. "It's on the ground, too. I have a pair of thick boots that'll keep my ankles safe for a bit, but anyone who lingers too long will lose their toes. Are you truly sure of this, m'lady?"

"I give you my word that I will be fine."

"So, you are a shadowbinder?"

"No. Nor a witch. But I will be fine."

She patted the young captain's shoulders reassuringly, and with her travel bag over her shoulder walked down the same plank that the crew were using to unload the goats and pigs they picked up in YiTi for the final leg of the journey. A wooden gantry crane creaked ominously as it unloaded crates of live chickens, barrels of grain and vegetables and other food stuffs.

She was the only passenger by then, and the only person to actively leave the ship. It only took a glance around her to know that no plants would grow, nor animals thrive, in such an environment.

Taylor pulled her staff from her travel roll and started walking down the length of the dock to the city proper. It felt good to hold it in her hands again.

Like every city she'd seen, this city had walls that separated the docks and the sea from the interior. Unlike most cities, she did not see any guards, per se. A single figure stood by the open gates as if waiting for her. She walked up to him. "Is there a place for a visitor to stay?"

The man bowed from the waist. "There are four houses within Asshai, Maegi. The Red Temple houses the worshippers of R'hllor of the Fire. The Shadow Hall houses those who call and worship the shadows. The house of Ur-Kadesh is where the city's fathers dwell, and is open only to those of their choosing. The House of Knowing is open to all scholars. It will be four zhu per night."

"Thank you." She slipped him one of the iron YiTish zhu for his service.

The man bowed again. Taylor walked past him through the gate, only to pause. She stood on the edge of actual pavement. It looked black and unbroken. But it felt ancient, in a way she could not comprehend from her experience on Earth. The oldest structures on Earth were five to six thousand years old. Some monolithic structures twice that, perhaps. What she looked at spoke of twice or three times that spane, but was made so well that even after so long it somehow remained unbroken and intact.

Her feet were still bare from her time on the ship; when her bare foot touched the ground, the ground hissed at her. She jerked her foot back in alarm when she realized that the pavement wasn't truly black.

She was looking at a solid layer of demons, more so even than the unmoving cloud overhead. She looked up again into the city, at the strange, unearthly structures that a medieval society could never have even thought up, much less built. The city must have dated to the first humans to walk on the planet. But over every single surface, and flitting about within the particulate matter of permanent clouds were millions upon millions of demonic entities. They were weak, small little things. Corrupted souls, most likely. But they seemed to imbue every single surface of the city.

"Shadowlands," she whispered.

There was only one direction to go. Taylor stepped onto the smooth black rock of Asshai, and once again the demons hissed and then began to poke and bite angrily at her bare feet. The darkness of their hate swept some of her glamor away, exposing the lines of her old protections. To her shock, the demons had enough substance and power to actually hurt a little.

She summoned cold Hel wind about her feet. The minor demons were so distraught over it they fled a square yard around her feet, leaving the ancient and slightly pitted paving underneath. Turning, she saw the masked, scarred man watching by the gate. He bowed again to her before returning to his duties.

Taylor continued on into the city. Each step sent a square yard of demons fleeing in near audible rage. She saw a few figures moving about the city, but strangely she could not see into the buildings themselves. Even so, she could see what the dock attendant meant when he described four houses. While there were many buildings, there were four towers set at cardinal points of the city. The towers did not stand alone, but rose from the corners of four large stone and wood structures that vaguely resembled castles, monasteries, or a combination of the two. The towers, she felt, were eons older than the structures built up around them.

Taylor guessed which was the House of Knowledge because it was the only structure in the city that had business. As she approached, a seven-foot tall man with skin the color of teak wood who wore rows of YiTi coins on ropes like a belt, with another around his neck, stepped out of the building. He wore thick leather boots that seemed to resist the pecking of the demons. He held a long, ornate pipe in his hands and used a taper to light the contents, which he began puffing on. He turned golden eyes on her and watched as she approached.

He spoke in a language of gutturals, clicks and whistles. It might almost have been a First Language, except the meaning was carried solely by the sound itself. She answered in kind. "This is the House of Knowledge?"

The man's gold eyes widened. "Your magic trinket will not work within. To keep the dark spirits away, they strike all magic at the threshold."

Looking past him, she saw instantly what he meant. Ancient, powerful runes of a kind she could not quite recognize but understood regardless lined the wide threshold. While the demons covered the streets and the walls of the building, none could enter.

With a sinking feeling, Taylor realized that because of what she was, if she stepped past them she would shattered the magic. Not of her protection, but of the house itself. The runes were not strong enough to stop or harm her, while her being an entity of divine magic would absolutely strip them down.

She stepped past the impossibly tall, strong-looking man until she stood right at the threshold and studied the runes. It did not surprise her when a figure in the same type of mask as that at the gate appeared in front of her across the threshold.

Behind this one's mask Taylor's bifrost eyes saw a woman with a pale, wrinkled face and deep scars that ran down the length of each of her cheeks. Her eyes were cloudy with cataracts, but Taylor had no doubt the woman could still see. Her soul, though tainted with shadows and magic, was powerful and intact.

"I swear on my name and the names of my mother and father that I will do no harm to this house. I must turn the runes off long enough to cross the threshold, or I shall shatter your protection."

"Remove your trinket, Telos of the Trees." The woman spoke her native tongue–a deep, guttural language with few vowel sounds. "You are expected."

"Very well." Taylor planted her staff upright, held immobile by magic alone, and removed her glamoured necklace. She allowed more Hel wind to drive the demons further away.

With the demons driven a distance away, the ancient and powerful witch of the House began chanting a spell that caused the magical protections around the door to weaken.

Taylor stepped through; it felt like moving through a high-pressure door. The moment she was through, the old witch stopped her chanting and the protection restored itself.

"Come, Telos of the Trees. I will show you the library."

Taylor followed the masked, robed figure past the entry room and into a large, low-ceilinged parlor filled with richly appointed with red and gold woven rugs placed around the polished stone floor.

There was no sign of demonic taint within the building.

Taylor had no idea what to expect, because no one she'd encountered ever spoke about their experiences in Asshai. Perhaps a few shelves of papyrus scrolls or something? The enormity of the library, though, left her breathless. It existed within the tower that rose from the center of the building, rising up in a spiral of bookcases that followed the spiraling wooden steps. The true art of the place were the cleverly positioned mirrors and lamps that burned all the way up, creating a reflective illumination that brought some parts of the tower almost up to the lighting of a 40 watt light bulb.

As curious about the lamp as the vast library Taylor moved closer and heard a faint hissing. The lamp itself was just a burning spigot, without any obvious fuel other than a faint chemical smell.

They're burning natural gas!

Taylor made her way to a support column that rose up in the center of the tower, providing anchors both for the wooden circular steps and the many bronzed mirrors that captured and amplified the light from the oil lamps that were positioned on the outer walls. At the base of the column she found a series of bureaus crowded with massive bound books.

She opened one on to the pictographic kanji of YiTish. The next was the flowing cursive of Valyrian, a language Aemon told her of but which she never learned until she began her travels. The third was in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. Though the western world called it the Common Tongue, the rest of the world referred to it as Andalese.

She was looking at a key to two other languages.

"Yes," she said, as much to herself as the attendant. "This is where I need to be."

~~Voluspa~~

~~Voluspa~~

The very oldest books in Asshai, Taylor discovered, were not in a dark cellar. They were at the very top of an ancient tower.

The wooden steps here groaned under Taylor's weight. She could feel the cloak of demons just on the other side of the black, shaped stone of the tower roof. And on a shelf just beyond her reach, in the most upper portion of the tower, was a bound book with clearly machine-printed lettering on its thick cover.

With a minor surge of will, the spirits of the air condensed and pulled the book to her fingers. The moment she touched it, she could feel darkness emanating from the truth of the tome. But what her fingers felt was a slick, artificial binding that was not quite plastic, and not quite paper.

Looking up at the other books, their truth spoke of thousands of years passed from the one she held in her hands. These later books, some of them tens of thousands of years old in their own right, were nonetheless printed by hand. She could feel preservative magic on them–likely the pages or the books as a whole were treated with some type of potion. But the book in her hand was by far the oldest.

She grabbed two more of the younger books, marked their places in her mind, and began the long trek down the tower.

The gas-like lamps did not extend this high; but with her eyes she didn't need them. Soon, the spiral staircase that cleaved so dangerously to the center support column of the tower brought her down into wider, more well-lit sections of the tower. Finally, she reached the open base, where the supporting stone ribs held one side open into the lounge area.

When she first arrived, there were thirty to forty scholars in the House of Knowledge. When she emerged from the tower, those in the parlor had fled. Her very presence made them uncomfortable, it seemed. She didn't think about it as she brought her books to a reading table.

The oldest book had machine printing inside; a dense, small font with lettering she had never seen before, and those sheets of not-quite plastic. When she focused her eyes on the lettering, she saw that the letters were not ink printed on the page, but were actually colored molecules within the page itself. So the sheets weren't printed, so much as formed intact with the writing.

Of the letters themselves, she could see hints of her own alphabet buried in them, but whatever meaning her ABCs had was long changed by the new language.

In contrast, the next oldest book opened onto a page of alchemically preserved parchment with long, spidery script of an ink that carried its own alchemical bonding properties to keep it intact and on the parchment. It appeared to be a completely different language than the first, with a different alphabet that looked more like cuneiform than anything.

Closing her eyes, Taylor placed her hand on the most ancient of the books. Within it, she felt a small spark of energy. It was not a spirit, but rather the echo of the spirit behind its creation. That itself caused her alarm–she expected to feel the imprint of a soul. But then again, the book was not printed by a human hand, was it?

She fed a trickle of her power into the spirit echo; enough to command it, and when she opened her eyes she saw the truth of…a quarterly production report.

"Huh."

A quarterly production report of…everything. If she was reading it right, the report indicated that the factory produced one hundred twelve ground vehicles, fifty-three air vehicles, two orbital shuttles, eighty-nine weather and communication satellites, two thousand, four hundred twenty-three all-weather coveralls ranging in size from infant to extra-large adult, shoes, food, buildings…

As she paged quickly through the production report she sensed the spirit within changing. Or, rather, the deeper she went into the turned pages, she felt a different spirit emerging. It felt as if the book was printed out over a long period of time. As she reached the back half of the huge, timeless tome, the spirit within had changed to something completely alien.

And the printing itself had changed as well. Letters became more stylized and gothic in their font. Some lettering sported additional accents; words had odd symbols appear in the middle of them.

She turned the last page, and reared back in alarm and disgust.

A symbol was printed diagonally across the last page. It seemed to overlay the printing below. The reports below had changed as well–a thousand anti-personnel combat chassis, two thousand high-density particle weapons, flame throwers, and organic recycling units for body reclamation.

The symbol appeared over it, and even as she stared at it, the dark purple of it seemed to shimmer. A circle, framed on one side by a crescent on an extended staff, with a smaller crescent facing away. It seemed almost to float a millimeter above the page surface, as if it were ink suspended on water. The truth of it screamed to her of horrifying temptations, violations of flesh and soul, and a deep, eternal thirst.

i SeE yoU.

Taylor closed the book. She considered destroying it, but as soon as she had the thought she knew the book would not burn. The material it was made with was fireproof. It was likely acid proof, and proofed against anything else. If what she sensed was right, it was easily ten to fifteen thousand years old, if not more, and yet the printing within it looked brand new.

It would take powerful magic to destroy it–magic that would destroy the tower as well.

With a shaking hand, she opened the next book. Within it, she sensed the echo of an actual soul. The truth of it allowed her to understand the writing. She read the first few lines and absorbed the rest, to her disgust, before closing it.

Opposite the table from her, a robed, masked attendant sat down. It was the same older woman who met her previously, with the scars running down her cheek behind the crimson mask. "You can read it?"

"Since I've walked this world, I've learned magic to read all languages," she said. "It would have saved me some trouble if I knew it earlier."

"And your soul is still yours?"

The question sounded disbelieving, and in that moment Taylor realized that the attendants of the House of Knowledge knew exactly what the book was. Taylor touched the second book. "You can read this?"

The attendant shook her head. "We have lost most of the languages of this tower," she said. She did not hush her tone or whisper, but the shape of the lounge seemed to soften her volume. "But we know what it speaks of."

"Do the Masters of the city still bleed a ninety-nine crying children to death in the streets every solstice?"

The attendant bowed her head. "They do. Else the demons would rise up to destroy us all. This is not a good place."

Taylor was shaking. She looked down as cold, blue Hel wind began flickering along her arms. The attendant went very still, but did not run. After a moment, the worst of the outrage faded and she pulled the flame back into her arms.

"If I were the child I once was, this city would die," she said. "I would tear the towers down, drive the demons into dust and kill everyone whose steps have been corrupted by this place."

"Many would account your actions just and right," the attendant said. "The shadows that hold sway over this land would not care. And a hundred years hence it would be rebuilt, just like it has a hundred times before."

That was, Taylor knew, the crux of it. The towers were so strongly built nothing in this medieval world could damage them. The rest of the city, though ancient, had been rebuilt many times before. Without her Olympian strength, she wasn't sure even she could destroy them. Not, at least, without setting off a major earthquake.

"Where does this book come from?" She touched the printed one.

"It is the only tome to be recovered from the most ancient and holy Stygai–the First City."

"When was it recovered?"

"It arrived in this tower almost four hundred years ago, brought by Priestesses of R'hllor shortly after the Doom of Valyria."

The timing seemed suspicious. "They know I'm here, I would presume."

The attendant bowed her head in answer. "All who See saw you arrive. Even if your glamour prevented them from seeing the detail, your every step shakes the world."

"I need to go to Stygai," Taylor said. "I need to see where this book came from. Will you send these priests such a message?"

"It will be done," the Attendant said.

~~Voluspa~~

~~Voluspa~~

There were books and scrolls about the natural world. There were fifteen separate books written by the various Aristotles of their day, all in separate languages, expounding on variations of classical metaphysics and natural philosophy. All were in languages lost to the modern inhabitants of the House of Knowledge.

It was as if a civilization rose, collapsed, and took all of its learning with it so the next had no base on which to climb higher. Though she could not understand the mechanism, the end result was the complete absence of human innovation beyond a certain point.

But there were also books on magic. Like those on natural philosophy, every few generations the scholars had to start over. But she found a handful of tomes whose authors were so powerful, the soul echos in their works allowed her to absorb the book's entirety with a mere touch. It felt almost like she was taking the knowledge into her mind in the same way she absorbed the knowledge and lore of her mother's Brisingamen.

She heard the ancient sorcerers chanting their spells; she felt their fear and exhilaration as they mastered energies beyond mortal understanding. She felt their last breaths as the power overcame them, as it usually did.

"The trees are the key," one ancient sorcerer from a lost empire on the northern shores of Sothryos wrote. "The gods in the trees hold us back. The gods in the ground hold us back. But we are mighty. I have heard Her call to me, She Who Thirsts. sHe shows me such wonderful things. By heR will, I have sent my armies to destroy the god trees. ShE will be pleased with me."

It was the last thing that particular sorcerer wrote.

Some of the magic was fascinating, some abhorrent. Some sorcerers learned to embrace and empower the natural spirits of the planet, while others learned the terrible power of blood, pain and anguish. Spells that would have made the Vanir and Aesir of her home world blush in shock or horror; spells that would have made Hecate and Freya alike exult.

She learned spells that allowed her to gather the books and scrolls she wanted just with her mind alone, and to return them to their shelves in the same fashion. She became so adept at drawing knowledge from the soul echoes of the various books and scrolls that she didn't even bother opening them anymore. Thousands of years of magical practitioners recorded their works, often repeating each other's efforts. But occasionally something new came; something wonderful or terrible, and Taylor learned it all.

Suddenly, the attendant stood in front of her with a newcomer.

The arrival broke the strange fugue Taylor found herself in. She was at the same reading bureau as before, surrounded by dozens of texts. She had no memory of getting up and leaving. "How long have I been here?"

The attendant bowed. "It has been nine days, and nine nights. In that time, you have summoned or returned more than half the books in the tower."

"The other half just repeat what the first half said in different languages." Only now did she realize how hungry and thirsty she was. She recognized that her magic sustained her beyond what any mortal could have easily done, but she was still hungry.

Even so, she took time to examine the newcomer.

The woman was dressed in red satin, with silk in a brighter shade like flame as lining to the heavier satin robes. Her hair was long, luxurious and a deep copper, and her eyes were almost the same shade. A light brown creeping into red. It was the same woman who greeted Thoros in Volantis, she realized.

Around a long, slender neck she wore a choker of ornate red gold, fitted with a large, lustrous ruby that Taylor stared at in horror. The woman's soul was fractured; fractured in a way that made Taylor both angry and deeply saddened. "So that's your mystery, Melisandre? Is that what you'll do to poor, young Thoros? Shatter your soul for a few extra years of existence?"

The woman stood in a confident, patient pose until she heard the question. Her jaws gaped a moment as her cheeks flushed. Anger and indignation warred with worry and fear, until finally the woman bowed. "I am a servant of my god. I do what I must."

Taylor stood stiffly. Little bits of dust fell from her skirt as she did so. "Is there food?"

The attendant bowed her head. "This way."

Taylor sent the books and scrolls back to their places with a touch and a spell. The priestess Melisandre watched it in fascination, and then walked beside Taylor into the lounge.

"You can read the lost tongues," the newcomer said. She did not pose it as a question, but rather a statement of wistful jealousy.

"I can now, yes."

The Attendant led them to a table in the lounge already bulging with food, as if she knew that Taylor was about to wake from her fugue state.

"Please join me." Taylor motioned to a seat opposite.

The red priestess sat primly, and only after Taylor began loading a healthy amount of food into a carved wooden bowl did she do the same.

"I had some YiTish food at Yin," Taylor said as she bit into a savory pork dumpling. She dipped it into what might have been a nut sauce of some kind. "I like it. My people north of the Wall don't have access to this type of seasoning."

Melisandre picked at the food as Taylor ate robustly. "You have not eaten, nor have you had water or wine, in nine days," the priestess said. "You show no sign of deprivation."

"I'm not what I once was," Taylor admitted between bites. "But even as just a shard of my true self, I am far more than human. But you know that. You know me. Your soul is broken and fractured, so I can't see the memory perfectly, but somehow you know me. That's why you came and not another."

Melisandre glanced up at the attendant, who bowed and left the table. "I had to be sure. But now that I see your eyes, I know you."

She did not say anything further. Taylor dismissed it for the moment as she ate. "I must go to Stygai. Will you or your order assist me?"

"It is the most ancient and holy of places," the priestess said, as if by rote. "It is also a place of profound darkness. It is a place of demons, dragons and terrible things. Even the most powerful Shadowbinders fear it with just cause."

"Asshai is also a place of demons," Taylor pointed out.

"The minor shadows are nothing. Unbound and greater demons walk among the ruins of the City of Night. Shadow dragons crawl among the ruins."

"You've been there before."

The woman bowed her head. "I have."

"And you'll go again, this time with me. Because if you help me, I can save your soul and your humanity. If not…you are damned. In the name of your god you shattered your ever-lasting soul. Upon your death, you will cease to be. I can restore you, if you wish it."

"Who are you to judge me?"

"I'm a god," Taylor said simply. "You would not be here if you didn't hope for atonement."

Melisandre again opened her mouth to speak, and then thought better of it. "I did not come for you, Telos of the Trees. I came to learn of the Avatar of R'hllor. Where is he?"

Taylor regarded the woman. "Help me, and I will tell you everything I know. And you can show me what you know."

The priestess bowed her head. "I will present your words to my brethren, and they will decide."

She stood and almost ran from the room. The Attendant returned. The woman's soul didn't even possess a name any more–she was wholly, and exclusively, the Attendant. "Do you wish a room until she returns?"

"No, thank you. I wish to continue my reading."