Far below, the Prince's Pass had filled with mist. A white carpet neatly covered the floor of the gorge from one side to the other, the rubble from the landslide (sandslide?) ploughing a neat path down the mountain and into the mists. As if it were a road off the edge of the world and down into the hereafter. There were bits and pieces of broken bodies visible in the wake of the rockfalls as well, dead men caught with nothing to protect them from the stony tide but blind chance. And the day the Dornishmen dropped the rocks, chance's grace was elsewhere.
"Missandei of Naath oughtn't spend so much time outside. The dead may not be able to reach us but the cold still can, as can the wind." Torgo Nudho said, coming up behind her. A Dornishman might have brought a bowl of stew flavored with a few slivers of goat, but Torgo Nudho knew well the ways of the Naathi.
"Would Torgo Nudho rather Missandei of Naath sat amidst the Dornish and listened to them grumble? At least the cold is quiet."
"This is true." They stood there for a time, though Missandei knew Torgo Nudho's eyes were on her, not the mists in the pass. I would almost welcome something moving within it, some hint that else exists but this fastness. A tomb, in time. Our food will not last forever. Once she'd heard one of the Yronwood knights say he well envied Lord Jordayne.
"Going in his sleep, now that's a lordly way to end. None of this waiting to starve, or else freeze should the cold find its way in here." Some days she almost found herself agreeing with him. Death in battle might be painful, but there's something to be said for it just being over. What good had the Weaver's death done them in the end? That the sun had managed to peek a little further down into the depths of the Red Mountains meant nothing. The sun cannot feed us. Mist still clung to their every possible route out of the mountains, confirmed by grim-faced runners from elsewhere in the expansive fortifications the Dornishmen of old had built. Who would have thought mist deadlier than dragonflame? All the while it whorled below, an endless morass of white cold that there would be no walking through. Nor running, nor riding. Had it all been for naught? She pursed her lips. The journey from Sunspear was too long by far to stand for dying in some nameless cavern, and that of waiting.
Almost without thinking, Missandei found herself taking a step forward.
"What are you doing?" Torgo Nudho asked. Anyone else would have missed the worry in his voice, even the queen, but not her. Missandei ignored him, moving down carefully so as not to snap an ankle in the loose stones and earth until she was sure to be just as visible to the floor of the pass as it was to her. Here I am, she thought. Not content to huddle in the darkness around what fires can be kept going, nor wait for death by cold or hunger. If nothing else, the sight of her ought intrigue at least one among the hungry brutish race the Others held in thrall, or perhaps an ice spider. There was no bellow, no lunging mass of teeth and claws came charging up the rubble-strewn mountainside. Absent as well was a hoot or shriek and an accompanying tangle of deft limbs. Have they gone? Missandei wondered. We would hear them if they hadn't, see them emerge from the mists even if occasionally or on accident. Or had they managed to pick the land around them clean of anything of which they might derive sustenance? Gone on to more bountiful pastures? Wherever those may be.
"Perhaps I have been out here too long. Torgo Nudho, would you take me to our chambers?" she asked, turning to him and slipping a hand in his, ignoring how cold it felt and how feeble his grip had grown. Despite the ruin his hand had become, he seemed relieved.
"Gladly. I'll have a hot bath drawn for you and fresh fruit brought as well." And everyone claims the Unsullied have no sense of humor. They sat together in what light could be found in the extensive tunnels and spaces the Dornish had made use of, speaking but rarely and listening to the rest of the living commiserate. After a time Missandei laid her head on Torgo Nudho's shoulder, content to let sleep come should it find her. She dreamed of Naath, or Naath as well as she could remember it, only it was not water that ringed the island in, but mist. No slavers came to raid them but that was hardly a consolation to Missandei, who could only think on what might hide within the wall of white. Walking corpses and cold monsters inspire little fear now. This White Lady I've heard tell of, the one working the mist, that's someone to fear.
Torgo Nudho was gently muttering in her ear, Missandei blinking Naath out of her vision to be replaced with the Dornish mountain cave.
"Mmm?" she muttered, still groggy.
"There is movement in the pass below." he told her, softly enough that only she would hear.
"Have you gone for a look without inviting me?" she asked, playing at being cross.
"Had I thought it a sight worth seeing, I'd have woken you earlier." Torgo Nudho's tone was not encouraging in the least. It is a change, though. Instead of merely waiting to die, we have something of a diversion on our hands at least. That thought was enough to get her on her feet, the pair of them heading to the mouth of the cavern where a whole complement of soldiers waited, spears at the ready. If the dead come in the numbers they must surely have, even with most not making it up the treacherous trail of rocks and rubble, a few spears won't stop them. With so many heads looking away from them it took some working through the crowd to reach the cave's mouth. Below the mist swirled as thick as ever, but vague movement could be seen within it.
"I wonder if we could hit them from here." one archer mused.
"Probably, but why bother? We'd never see if we hit anything." his serjeant replied. "Just have to wait until they come-" The rest of his words died in his throat as a figure stepped out of the mist. Clatter. Clank. Missandei's stomach turned to ice. The dead king was too far away to see in detail, but the sun caught his armor and had it glinting up at them. Even the hereafter has its kings.
"What in seven hells-" a lad young as the Allyrion boys gasped.
"Some Gardener king. When the Others smashed Kingsgrave they shook him out." Missandei said wearily."
"Aye. Just when you think things have settled the one way, the Others get up to their typical horseshit. Best get used to having the rug pulled out from under you without so much as a 'get fucked, hotblood' from their sort." Lord Ryon Allyrion told him grimly. The king began to plod forward suddenly, no doubt at the obeisance of some unseen and unheard command. The men around Missandei tensed, even Torgo Nudho, but Missandei only frowned. Beset on all sides as he'll surely be should he reach us, he'll be immediately beset by foes. The bronze armor would soon run red with Dornish gore, but even a dead king could not hope to prevail over them alone. He had not closed a quarter of the distance before the incline soon became too steep to scale save but on all fours. Either the king remembered something of his living pride or the Other pulling his strings had another notion, because he stopped. Missandei could just make out the hollows of his eye sockets when he looked up again. He bears no weapon. Though, if Kingsgrave were any hint, a dead king scarcely needed carry one. The bronze-clad right arm came up. A command to a mob of dead men in the mist was Missandei's immediate impression. He's moving too ponderously to be giving an order. Then again, the dead do have time on their side. The gauntlet closed with a sharp clank. There he stood, still as stone, pointing a single bony finger at Missandei.
"Piss on that." Lord Ryon said, frowning down at the kind as Torgo Nudho gently tugged her out of his unliving sight. She was too bewildered to do anything but go along, too mystified even to be afraid. Perhaps he needs a translator, she thought bemusedly before shaking herself. The dead are no more than puppets of the Others. Had the Weaver survived the Dornish trap after all? Could she be lying broken at the bottom of the Prince's Pass, too weak to ascend again? Then why send a dead king and not a tide of countless eyes, legs and fangs? Besides, Missandei recalled, the Weaver was not at Kingsgrave. It is not she who pulls this dead king's strings. She remembered the fine, even carpet of mist that had rolled across the room shortly before the Gardener king forced his way through the stone floor. The most formidable Others need carry no blade. The one atop the drake at Kingsgrave had been a dainty thing, slight and gracile, and yet she'd smashed the Manwoodys and their worthies as if they were a cockroach beneath her foot. As the Weaver smashed Sunspear. The Others brought hammers aplenty, yet they now wait for us to simply die on our own. The incongruence further fuelled Missandei's unease. Whoever's giving orders is more than a hammer. It certainly isn't Myrcella, from what she told me the day Sunspear fell, she wasn't much in a waiting mood to see Dorne wither. She'd heard some talk about a White Lady during her stay in the mountain caves. An Other proper, and not some vengeful wind. Wind cannot drive the dead. She swallowed. If Myrcella were in command down there, she'd have simply hurled every corpse intact enough to fight at us immediately. That such a thing had not happened was almost as unnerving a thought. We cannot get away. The mountains are hemmed by the mist from base to base, the Others know it, and it seems they want us to know they know it. There is only one way this ends, unless we puzzle out another way. And with the Gardener king standing beneath them, it seemed to Missandei that such a puzzle had but one answer.
When she proposed her intent to Anders Yronwood, he gaped at her.
"Good lady, crown or not, a corpse is a corpse. They exist only to rend the living-"
"They exist to do as the Others bid. There are more walking dead hidden in the mist, surely. Were the Others of a mind to simply hurl them at us, they would have by now. Should I go down there and the king simply kills me, well, I'm no warrior and those who are have learned something. Though, I don't think he will. Well, the Other with its hand up his back, anyway." One wrought of mist, I'll wager. Lord Yronwood looked lost for words.
"Your life is your own, my lady. I would sooner see you spend it less brashly, but it's no coin out of my purse." It was not so easy to convince Torgo Nudho of the same.
"You'll go nowhere that I cannot accompany you." he said bluntly.
"Dorne needs soldiers-" she began, but he held up his ruined hand.
"I am no more a soldier, or at least I won't be until this heals. If it heals." Torgo Nudho did not seem much concerned that he'd greatly lost his capacity to fight. As if reading her thoughts, he frowned. "Swords and spears cannot fight this enemy." A maimed man can still tire, Missandei thought. A dead one cannot. Some of the Dornishmen gawped as if they were walking off a cliffside together, but others only looked on grimly. There is no other outcome. The mists have made sure of that. With that in mind, Missandei slowly made her way down with Torgo Nudho close behind, rocks and sand shifting under their weight more than once. No corpses shuffled out of the mists behind the Gardener king and aside from the sounds of their descent echoing, there was nothing to hear. As they descended, Missandei was uncomfortably aware that the king's eyeless gaze was fixed most firmly upon her. Upon her reaching level ground, the kings arm fell by his side, though his skull still grinned out her from under its crown of hands. Slowly she straightened up, though the king was a head taller than she and that if she strained. Slowly his head turned, bronze coif clinking as he looked into the mists. Out from the morass of white budded a whorl with a mind of its own, Missandei not altogether surprised when a familiar face took shape beside the Gardener king. Distantly she heard muttered curses and the like from the Dornishmen at the mouth of the cave above. The thing that had been Princess Myrcella Baratheon had no eyes for them, nor ears it seemed, her gaze as unblinking and unfeeling as the dead king's. Her last breath remained frozen to her face and around her nose, her skin was split here and there as it had been at Sunspear, but Missandei felt no fear, nor repulsion. Only pity, and it welled up within like a wound bleeding anew. An orchid, Missandei thought, left to wither in a frost.
Myrcella did not speak, only stared, until it seemed she was as like to talk first as the Gardener king.
"How may we be of service, good princess?" she asked.
"I was never a princess. My father was not a king." Myrcella replied. Off running, how lovely.
"What am I to call you, then? We had precious little time to talk before the Weaver decided I was best served with her fangs buried in my chest." Myrcella did not blink, did not wince or twitch, only stared.
"Their name for me is Dying Breath." Missandei felt the hairs on her neck stand up.
"That's no name f-"
"It's the perfect name for me. Myrcella Baratheon wanted only to marry the Dornish sun. I want to snuff it out."
"And yet you haven't. Those of us who got away before you made Dorne yours are above. Why do you not end it?" Myrcella's mouth opened but all that came out was a formless wash of empty air, a death rattle from something ruined past the ability to die. The True Tongue. A queer sound came from the mist in answer, Myrcella evidently thinking on how to put whatever was said into the Common Tongue.
"Because as of yet, we have received no such order." "And you are no soldier." Missandei said.
"I can only gather I am speaking to an Other through you. I would look upon them." More True Tongue, and a she-Other clad in a dress of swirling mist walked barefoot into view. "Another veil." Missandei said. "I would look upon the face." And Myrcella laughed. It was a joyless sound, a hopeless sound, one Missandei tried to shut out even as the thing that made it spoke to the she-Other. She laughed in turn, and cold as her own laughter was, alien and unknowable, it was at least alive. "Is your White Lady not here now? Just beyond the mist?" Missandei asked, prompting only more laughter. The she-Other held up a hand, let a tendril of white wisps slide across her palms and down to hem her feet.
"She is the mist, Missandei of Naath. White Mist is her name, and white mist her arms, her armor and her sigil."
"And it's this White Mist who has yet to give the order to attack?"
"Yes." Missandei could not see a reason why any officer among the Others wouldn't just give the order to surge up the mountainside and damn the consequences. After all, the last of us gone is worth any number of dead men.
"May I ask why?"
"You may ask her yourself, Missandei of Naath. She waits for you on the floor of the pass." Missandei looked to the white wall before her.
"I'll not reach it, let alone be in a state to ask much of anything."
"So you wouldn't." Myrcella replied. Then the mist began to recede, the she-Other vanishing into it most devotedly. Missandei watched it shrink away like a rug being rolled up, a drink being unspilled, the sight so unnatural it gave even Torgo Nudho pause.
"Lead on, then, Myrcella." Missandei said, her hand curling around Torgo Nudho's. The fear that had been absent when Myrcella appeared had begun to blossom in her breast. There are no masters in the grave, she told herself. Morghar Dohaeris, another part replied. All dead must serve.
By the time they reached the pass floor, Missandei's hand was twitching in Torgo Nudho's. Her lip quivered as they neared the mist for a second time, the Gardener king clattering and clanking noisily while Myrcella made no sound at all. It is not death I fear, she told herself. Death has crossed my path before. She had not been afraid for herself that day in Daznak's Pit. For the queen, yes, but not herself. But what waited for her was something(one?) beyond the ken of mortal men.
"If she desired you dead, you would be so." Myrcella said, though her gaze was on the mist as well. Perhaps she can hear the terror in my breath, or the hammering of my heart.
"As you say." Missandei replied, startled to hear Myrcella translating in the True Tongue. An Other's words, not her own. The mist continued to shrink away, revealing endless ranks of walking corpses, most Dornishmen but as the pass cleared, fewer of the dead sported any flesh at all. Grinning skulls stared out from helms from every age, wore armor of every sort, clutched weapons of every edge and heft…and every empty pair of sockets facing Missandei and the last refuge of the living up the mountain. Even as her breathing grew shallow and her head began to hurt, Missandei could not stop herself moving past the dead Dornish and up to one of the walking skeletons. She spotted a hand motif much the same as the one the king behind her had espoused, if from a different age.
"These are Reachmen." she said."
"They were." Myrcella corrected. "The Reach is the most populous of the Seven Kingdoms and they bury their dead."
"Enough to build an army of ancient bones."
"An army of armies. More march south into the pass by the moment."
"To what end? The living have dwindled almost to nothing."
"But not nothing. I told you, I meant to make Dorne the Empty Land for true." Myrcella said, voice empty of pity, void of compassion. Dying Breath she called herself, and Dying Breath she is, Missandei thought, trying not to let tears fall. Myrcella floated over to where the mists had finally begun to roil in on each other. Others proper (both mist-binders as well as soldiers and others of less discernible task), a triad of drakes, hungry brutes, spiders big and small… The ruin that was once a princess nodded to the closest of the mist-binders, who nodded in return. As one, they drew up hands and pulled the mist away from whence it had congealed. As each sank into a perfect curtsy, head bowed, Missandei watched a vast shroud form, cloaking something in their midst. As the shroud descended it caught around a head, hung over narrow dainty shoulders, and drifted soundlessly to the ground. The figure beneath the shroud floated silently twenty feet off the ground, its shroud big enough for one of the brutes to comfortably hide beneath. Yet not a one of the wretches looked in the slightest to be interested in such a farce, the Others all around sinking in curtsies of their own or going to a knee before the shrouded figure. The mist-binder from before spoke, and Myrcella echoed her words. "Missandei of Naath." She gestured with a withered, windy limb to the shrouded form, which wore mist better than a dragon might its scales. "White Mist."
Missandei had been sold upon the block, served wine to men who would have gladly raped and killed her just to hurt Daenerys Targaryen, stood before an angry dragon as it roared in the face of the woman next to her. There is fear, she mused, and there is fear. One of the mist-binders slid as close to the base of the shroud as she could without coming into contact with it and ascended, nimbly as a monkey on a mummer's shoulder until she was just below her mistress' head, or so well as Missandei could guess. The utterance the mist-binder gave was short and blunt.
"Why do you desire to live?" Myrcella asked. The question had an answer before Missandei could find the words, ten before she could open her mouth, a hundred before she could begin to speak.
"Why do you desire to kill us all?" she asked. When Myrcella translated and the mist-binder whispered to her, White Mist began to advance, slowly sinking. When she stood (floated?) before Missandei, she was no more than a half-foot taller.
"What else should cold do but kill, Missandei of Naath? What else should I?" The shroud came up, as if the arm it hid had raised. All around them, the countless army of the dead readied weapons, prepared to advance. "At a word, I could empty the Empty Land of life and placate a leal vassal. If I should not, best tell me why."
"You'd have done it by now, if you meant to. If you are as callous as you act, you would not have balked at what pittance it might have cost to put an end to us." Missandei said, only half-thinking. "You sent the king to fetch me instead. Why should an audience with me prove more important than winning the war?" The shroud came up again, a tendril smoking off to caress Missandei's cheek. The cold was intense, but not unendurable, and ended as soon as it began.
"From an audience, what I will do next may be gleaned. No warrior would serve in this regard. No soldier. One to whom life is so sacrosanct would much the more be preferable, much the more be desirable." Missandei blinked. Life?
"Why should you think to let us live?"
"Because a battle fought without a war to win serves no purpose but death. Dying Breath would have just that thing come to pass."
"Myrcella has been broken by the betrayal of those who ought have protected her. I cannot speak to the truth of her pain, but I can speak to the senselessness of her reprisal." Myrcella, for her part, showed no emotion as she relayed the tongues in turn, mortal and otherwise. "Dorne is yours, White Mist, until you choose to let it go…but why should you seek to hold it? What purpose does this conquest serve but death, as you yourself proposed?" Again the shroud wrinkled as the wearer looked at the hands hidden within.
"Such means as I have, I use. The ends I would pursue, alas, elude me." The head looked up. There was no face, but Missandei could feel the Other's gaze upon her. "They would not so elude you, Missandei of Naath."
She felt her heart skip a beat.
"These are not the words of a bringer of death."
"I would sooner be at my queen's side." White Mist admitted.
"And I, mine. I cannot know where in this world she may be, or if she has left it entirely…but should I get the opportunity, I plan to look for her." Missandei said. This White Mist would sooner be at peace, she realized, but her shape is one made, honed, so equipped for war.
"You will get that opportunity, Missandei of Naath."
"Only if I should live through the battle-"
"There will be no battle, for there is no war to fight a battle in." Mystified, Missandei looked to Torgo Nudho, face rather evocatively expressing his doubt on that score.
"How can that be, White Mist? With this army you have assembled, what else must I think?"
"The war this army was assembled to fight has ended, far to the north." Missandei felt her knees buckle, Torgo Nudho moving to steady her at once.
"Are we the last, then? Not just in Dorne, but anywhere?"
"You mistake me. Your side did not lose." Missandei swallowed, feeling as though a plum had caught in her throat.
"You must put it in plain terms, White Mist. I find I am quite overwhelmed." she finally got out, voice just shy of a squeak.
"So you are. Forgive me. Our broader aims were accomplished, but we failed to secure decisive military victory. I find myself at an impasse. My standing orders are to do what I deem best, but they were given with the assumption I would continue taking warlike action until the Empty Land had been secured. Now, that is unnecessary. My latest messenger brought no new orders from my queen. Fate crafted me to be a weapon, but there is now no hand to swing me."
"Then be a hand yourself." Missandei said. "If the war is done, then weapons are of no more use. Hands will be needed, warm or cold." Living or dead, she nearly said, but forewent going so far. Again, White Mist considered the shroud that hid her limbs from sight.
"Very well. I should think such terms sufficient for an armistice between us." The dead turned away from the mountain path toward Missandei and began to kneel, first one here and one there and then in great swathes, though the living among White Mist's army remained afoot. They stretched north as far as Missandei could see, clattering to their knees in a tidal wave of bones, bronze and pitted steel. "My words, my voice, my hands are yours, Missandei of Naath." White Mist said.