PROLOGUE

"Aegon Targaryen stood at the balcony at the highest tower of Dragonstone castle, overlooking Blackwater Bay with a goblet of wine in his right hand and his two sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya by his sides.

It was high late in the quell, a dark and dusky night, yet the world was still visible in a strangely clear light.

It was the grey-white, sharp yet smokey first light of the moon, which shone down through the dark storm clouds above, illuminating the high towers of the castle in that dull, serious greyness of vague light, and made the skyline alongside the horizon's edge seem even brighter and the sea below even darker. The perfect time of day according to all three of them – the sacred tenth hour of the second half of the Valyrian dygn, when all of the island had finally settled down and lay still under their watching eyes; when there was nothing in this world but the swale chill of the wind, a still sort of silence in the air and sharp, elevated thoughts.

Yes, they were all very different of mind and could not always agree on much, but this was something which they all shared a liking for, thought Aegon. The quiet calm under the dark storm clouds pressing above, when the rest of the world had already begun to slumber below, in tiredness or fear or both, and theirs was the hour.

He swirled the wine glass in his hand, calmly yet excitedly, watching the dark red-and-black liquid wallowing up and down, heaving and arising and descending again, each mellow, darkly gleaming wave swallowed up by the next, and then the next, all coalescing into a pattern which was partly predictable and possible to control, but nevertheless impossible to ever fully understand,] just like the crashing of the waves of the vast murky sea far below them.

His sharp vision gradually sated itself on the sight after a while and drew up from the swirling waves of the wine, climbing slowly up along the inside of the smooth transparent walls of the glass, [ ] on his sisters, and then shifted its focus to something much far away.

His sisters had already switched their gaze towards the horizon. Rhaenys and Visenya, his sweet little sister Rhaenys like a ray of light in his heart to his left and somber, elder Visenya, like a moonlit marble shadow to his right. They were all standing there with their sight on the same thing now, as pale and still as the stone gargoyles of the castle, like tall immoveable statues in the night. Visenya's stern yet beautiful face held the same sorrow and a severity as always; a depth and strength which had been watching over him since he was a young boy too small to walk. She watched along and over his head now, watched with severity, watched with silent serenity and heavy marble steps, her large feet sliding forward a pace or two along the smooth valyrian stone of the balcony. She watched in her melancholy, in her alware, and he turned and he saw what she saw.

His vision was now focused straight across the horizon, stretching out across the dark grey waves of the Narrow Sea, from the wind-whipped straits of the Gullet behind, all the way towards the misty hint of another, greater landmass further away.

It was only a dark smidgeon, the vaguest promise of land which settled on the white mists above the sea's edge, and yet they all knew it to be out there, at the horizon, waiting for them. Westeros.

He watched it with murky intensity, watched with sharp vision and intent, and yet watched it with deep, content amusement, as if the entire horizon itself was just some riddle for him to solve, his purple eyes deeply concentrated, his silvery grey eyebrows arched and furrowed. They could always tell when he was in deep contemplation of some matter, like he was now. They were siblings, and yet much more than that. They were the Blood of the Dragon, and with that they held a special connection. They were three different, and yet all the same.

"Tell me, brother.", said Rhaenys, her voice still and innocent, wanting to know.

"Tell her.", agreed Visenya, in her somber eternal voice, echoing her younger sister in a deeper note of severity, her entire shape as still and clear as the shaft of moonlight which covered the light half of her face.

"Why need I tell you, when you can always read my mind anyway?" replied Aegon with a smile.

They all stood so for a second, with Aegon holding Rhaenys lovingly to his left, and Visenya looming down over him to his right. He was not sure himself who he had said it to. It did not matter much. They were all three and the same. And so they stood, for another moment, as the cool high winds of the dark cloud enbankment canopy above swept down on the castle, sweeping with invisible grace through the silvery white of their hair, [ ] it [ ], making them question themselves and their supremacy only for the briefest of moments, elevated and divine as they were up here, two hundred feet in the air, looking down on it all.

"It is time", said Visenya finally. "I think it, along with you. … I have also dreamt it now."

Aegon looked long and hard on his elder sister, with steel consideration, as if he was fencing against some invisible foe within himself, the blade of Blackfyre weighed against all his worries and objections inside, as she met his gaze with Dark Sister and told him with her eyes, with her mind, mayhaps even a little with her heart, that she was certain.

"...Yes", he finally said. "You are right."

"Tell me what you're thinking of, sweet brother", repeated Rhaenys again. "Tell me, dear sister."

Aegon moved his face towards Rhaenys, his love, his darling sister, taking the chance as he always did to nuzzle at her soft silky hair and kiss her forehead with the very sweetest affection and lust, and he told her. "It is time we move forward, my darling sister", he said, as he drowned ever so slightly in the sweet glimmering light of her purple eyes. "We have waited long enough. The time has come that we move forth and strike." He let the message sink in for a brief moment.

"Right then." And with that, he turned from her embrace right where he stood and went back into the [drawing room/[ ]] with decided, frantic steps, his cloak/cape sweeping behind him in the draft like the crackling of thunder.

The goblet was still in his hand, as he put it down on the Great Table which took up most of the room. It was magnificently designed, a perfectly sized [cylindrical glass goblet cylinder with a valyrian steel [handle/foundation] shaped like [dragons' scales/scaly back/wings/[ ]]. He filled it up to the top again from the jewel-encrusted flagon, and then filled up both his sisters' goblets as well.

His sisters strode gracefully into the room a couple moments after him, moving slowly hand in hand like two austere white swans gliding over a frozen lake as they went past the lilac silk curtains flowing from the open doorway of the balcony.

"Did you really have the dream too, dear sister?" asked Rhaenys and looked up at Visenya, who was a full head taller than her. She had always taken a certain amount of comfort in Visenya and listened to her at times, more so than Aegon, in the way that younger siblings do, and even more so since the passing of their lady mother a few years ago.

"I did."

They walked further into the drawing room, nearing the table, still hand in hand, with Visenya leading Rhaenys along. Aegon stood thinking, grasping his fingers across the smooth wood of the table, then tapping his fingers, brooding, maniacally flicking his eyes back and forth over the table, his eyes [ ] with [ ].

"We shall need a good map", he declared loudly. "The lands of Westeros are an enormous mass of peoples, cities, rivers, lakes, mountains and hills. We will need to know the land exactly before we set to it."

"A good thing that we have already seen two or three parts of it", said Visenya. "Our links to King Mern will be of good use now, for all the faith and love he has for us."

Yes, thought Aegon. Although I wonder if that good faith will keep when he learns we want to rule over him. He was far from certain of that.

"All the same, there are many lands, even in the Reach, which we have yet to fly over and see with our own eyes. Rivers, mountains and lakes. Things of strategic importance to anyone who would lay claim to it. And we don't have time to do an endless amount of scouting ourselves, or we will be old before we are begun.

"I will summon our finest wood carpenters to start work first thing on the morrow", announced Rhaenys, glad to be able to help. Of the three of them, she was the one with the best connection with all of the island's many craftsmen and artisans and was usually the one who spoke with them in great detail on everything from new building constructions to statues, tavern signs, castle decorations and the like.

"Good", said Aegon. He then stopped himself, acutely aware of the importance of the particular task at hand. "Who are our best builders then?" he found himself asking with a critical tone of voice. Even though his sisters were great at many things and he felt safe in their judgement, he nevertheless liked to be in control whenever he could.

"Our best woodcarvers, you mean? I should say Haegon, Feistos... Jaren perhaps…"

"Jaren? Who is that?" asked Visenya, who had the least to do with artisans and generally only seemed to care for the art which swords could bring. "A regular commoner?"

"Yes. Jaren will do a good work, I'm sure. He's a fine artisan", said Aegon. In truth he did not really care for the man, but what of it. Rhaenys always liked to talk and befriend all manner of smallfolk and treat them almost as equals. He thought that she could have at least chosen some more of the valyrian craftsmen to have near her, but they were few now, and growing fewer for each generation. Although they did not necessarily marry brother to sister, they were still of valyrian blood and seemed to have similar problems with producing offspring at times. Some would marry into other families, and each time weaken the bloodline somewhat, yet that would at least lead to more children.

At any rate, Jaren was fine for an andal of Westeros, he supposed, but none could truly ever hope to match Haegon in the art of carving. All valyrians held the secrets of the shapes in their ancestors' creed to a degree. How to trace a line unbroken around edges and roundabout ways, how to create supple curves and archways, waves and swirls like the flow of water or fire or living flesh, all eternalised in stone. Theirs was a noble people of philosophers and artisans, for thousands of years back, with or without the aid of magic. Aegon almost believed that he could compete with Jaren in skill himself, although why should he waste his time on such a thing when he could tell others to do it for him? Mud-haired, scraggly [ ] Jaren it is, then, along with the others.

Visenya moved towards the table, her heavy shoes clamping down on the stone floor.

"We will need craftsmen who actually know the land, though. We cannot only look to our own men here. What we need is craftsmen from the mainland, with a good view and know of the land. The maps we have will only get us a certain length of the way."

"Our maps of the Blackwater rush and its confines are perfect, the best depictions of the coastlands one could ask for", said Aegon. He had studied them intensely, more and more during these past couple of moons, and would continue to do so. A sleep lost is fine so long as it is a new thing learned, his father Lord Aerion had said to him once when they had been in the library together. Throughout the generations, his forebears had become great in knowledge of Westeros, even though they had long lingered at the memory of Old Valyria, never truly letting it go in their mind until recently. His father and mother both had sat with all three children along with Maester [Thulian? ] and taught them how to read and speak the common tongue, chronicles of the lands' histories, [ ]. Most of all, they had a great knowledge of the lands closest to them, of natural reasons. The [ ] Rosby, Duskendale, [ ] and [ ], [ ]. This, at least, had been gained during the more than one hundred years they had lived here, if not much else of greater importance.

"The coastlands, yes. What about the rest of the lands? We will need to acquire excellent maps of all the kingdoms. That will require travelling to those kingdoms somehow without causing suspicion."

"It will be done", said Aegon. "All things shall be done, dear sister. Trust me." He walked away from his nervous pose at the table, relieved that Visenya had seemingly overtaken his worries. Suddenly he was calm, growing sated with the knowledge of their power before the task at hand.

"There is no hurry in this world, sister", he said smiling, lifting the glass of wine to his mouth to take a swallow. "Not for us."

He laid his hands around Rhaenys's shoulder, cradling her thin smooth sleeves and down towards her hips, and then lifting her high up in the air so that she squealed and laughed in excitement.

"Who do you think will be the hardest to win over?" Visenya continued, her voice a dull note of persistance. She did not show her jealousy, whether it was there or not. In truth, she most like wasn't particularly jealous. Although Aegon had somewhat less lust in store for his older, more dour sister than he did for his younger, more vibrant one, she did not exactly pine over him either. All in all, she seemed sufficiently satisified with their arrangement, he supposed, as long as they didn't overshower their love for each other in her immediate presence. ...Which was exactly, as fate would have it, what they loved doing more than anything else. Although what she said now, from her ever-dour elder sister's mouth, certainly held some relevance, even though it at present competed with the delightful sight of Rhaenys's fluttering silver-blonde hair for his attention. Who will be the hardest king to win over...?

Aegon stopped himself for a moment, thinking. "The hardest to win over or the hardest to defeat?"

"Is there any difference?" asked Visenya.

"Only the small issue of dragonfire and a respectful laying down of swords", mumbled Aegon with a smile between Rhaenys's melon-scented / wine-flavoured lips. Rhaenys giggled back, filling his mouth with the sweet taste of melon-scented wine.

Visenya drew her fingers across the hilt of her sword, feeling the smoothness of its side.

"Nevertheless. How many of then do you think will fight back? And with how many men?"

Aegon gave Rhaenys a quick kiss, pulled back from her again and allowed himself to be drawn in by the steely, conversational allure of his older sister.

"I don't know. Truth be told, we don't know them that well even now. Sure, I have met with King Mern and King Lorien but I cannot be sure of how they and their subjects would react. What do you say?"

Visenya seemed to stand and think for another brief moment, raking her nails on the table with consideration, before pushing down her sword into its sheath and answering.

"Perhaps they will fight. Most like, some few will come out with all their armies' might, and the rest will cower in fear or seek some special accord or middle-ground. Unless they are all fools."

"King Lorien is a smart man, said Rhaenys. I am sure that he will kneel."

"I am not so sure", said Visenya. "The Westerlands are an old land, proud and ancient. They would not like risk their millenial-held birthright and their bloodline's hold on their seat for some strange foreigners washed up on their shores."

"Ancient maybe. Are we not also ancient? The gods drove us up from the Fourteen Flames and taught us to shape the stone around us while they were still skulking about these cold, haggard woods with blades of bronze and stone."

"Ancient back there, yes. But not here. The Westerosi know their history just as we do. It is their land, by the toil and blood spilled of hundreds of generations. They will do all they can to protect it from what they see as an intrusion of change."

"And we will do all we can?" asked Rhaenys. She was not a fighter like her sister, and out of the three of them the least knowledgeable in such matters. Neither did she seem hellbent on the idea of it, at least thus far.

Aegon turned to look at her, sizing up the two of them and trying to be the bridge in between their two sides, as he felt he often was. He grasped the glasses of wine from off the table and [ ]. Pouring slowly, he once again considered the situation, with all of its uncertainties and huge risks, before finally seeing the path to victory clearly written in the hard lines of Visenya's face. She was decided, [ ], and so would he be. He had never had any reason to go against her decisions, and least of all now, at last after a hundred years of waiting finding himself the leader of his house with the temptations of an entire continent at the tip of his fingers. They strode out to the balcony again, three flapping shapes of [pink and purple, lilac and red and black? . ] in the brisk wind.

"We will do all we must, in order to succeed", answered Aegon at last. "We may need allies, deals brokered, compromises. All of these things we cannot know of yet. But yes. We will use all our force and might, no matter if it will take one year, or two, or ten, or fifty. Westeros shall be ours."

...

The next moment, he was in deep thought again, despite his resignation.

Few are those of the noble blood, who fly high and great above, by the wisdom and design of the gods, for else they would block out the sun from ever reaching those below. So had his father spoken a long time ago, when Aegon was still a young boy, on the topic of their people. He had once curiously inquired to his father why the servants and [ ] all seemed to have so many siblings who lived and grew up, whereas they were only three. His father's words on the matter was still the stone foundation which made him certain of their joint destiny, despite their remaining small number. Gods did not need to be in great numbers, he thought. They were gods.

It could not be entirely true, of course, or the enormous sprawling wonder of Valyria herself, with her hundreds of families and even greater numbers of dragons, would never have existed. But mayhaps here at least, on and around these tiny grey-green specks of land and seaways which they had grown up around, it could be a reasonable thing to claim and hold to. For all its size, the Blackwater Bay was smaller than all of Valyria had been.

Three, or five, or seven might be an even number to rule over it. And his father's words applied to dragons as well, it seemed. Their enormous, scaly brothers and sisters had never flourished in large numbers after the Doom either. At their most, during the reign of his grandfather Daemion and his two brothers Aelyx and Baelon, they had numbered nine dragons, all in different sizes and colors.

Then that number had quickly decreased again, then wavered up and down for the last couple of generations, during his father's and grandfather's time, and now they were down to the three for three. Balerion was the oldest, and Aegon had claimed him for himself when he was only [ ]. He knew him well, his great black [ ]

When he from time to seldom time again took the time and rode upon Balerion, usually clad in his [ black/dark grey/ ] suit of armor and with his heel-spurs fastened in a hard grip and [ ] hardly fastened as well, they would be one and the same in all the intensity of the dragon's thoughts. It was like a great, smoking haze of dreams rising up from deep within the enormous creature, rising towards Aegon's head along with the smoking hot steam from beneath his deep black glistening scales, and he would sense strongly his mind, and all of his ancient, magnificent dreams, echoing away in eternity, screaming towards his human rider and the world itself with all the fury of one hundred years of jet-black, fiery heartache, ten or twenty or a hundred times stronger than the his own deepest human desires. In the bonding moment of flight, especially, they were connected.

Dragon and rider was almost like one and the same, and more often than not the dragon would overwhelm its rider; at least that was the case with Aegon and Balerion. Balerion, with his ancient dreams and magical sights, steaming from the burning desire to share his pain with someone, to share it with another human in the long line and hope that this one at least would last longer than its father had.

Aegon had seen stranger things than men could ever have dreamt within Balerion's mind; sounds and scents which humans could not fathom, and other sensations which were hard to explain, along with the strong visual memories, just like visions which appeared and laid themselves over the world around them, hanging in the air, smudgy and hazy, one single distinct memory or sight at times, a distorted and mixed haze at times, and yet still as clear as the light of day. He had even glimpsed what he thought was Valyria itself, in the blurry visions which his dragon-brother/[ ] showed to him. It was the most beautiful sight any living man had beheld, and only the two of them, out of every living being which had once drawn breath in this world, now

still could see it.

No other dragons remained from Balerion's own age, and his vast, divine, massive, world-engulfing, ancient yet somehow young and fanciful soul weathered the winds of melancholy and sang and roared with the memories each time they flew through the slenderly tapering towers at Dragonstone or the [ ], the green summer grass and the [ ] grey-white of the valyrian stonework below them swishing past in a few fleeting seconds and filling him to the core with longing tears from another lifetime. That was one of the biggest reasons why he did not fly on Balerion as often as his sisters did Vhagar and Meraxes. The intensity of the memories of the time before the Doom, along with all else, was just too strong for him to bear at times, even for the lood of the dragon.

He thought and wished and hoped that in time, as he aged himself, at least in human terms, he could become stronger and grow used to it, so that Balerion's love and anger and sorrow could slowly wane itself into his own small ones, like the [ ] of valyrian steel. Another five years, another ten years, and I will have grown a little bit older. It will never be enough, but it will gradually become closer. Balerion already understood, he was certain. He would tell him so, in his mind, whenever he wasn't overtalked, and the dragon understood most things going on in his head as well as any beast could with the strange, wiry, frenetic, finger-entangled thoughts of men.

Vhagar was somewhat old and aging, too, to be sure, with all of her life-long angers and sorrows, yet she was born here on the island, and had never known another home which was now forever gone. He knew his

ancient young Balerion, Balerion the young dragon, Balerion the innocuous young dragon who had flapped his wings beneath the palace archways of the [ ] of [ ] and Aenar Targaryen at his [ ] in Valyria for already an entire generation before they all packed up left for good. Balerion the young black shadow, who grew and flew and made his reluctant home along the salt and stone of the Narrow Sea in the years after the Doom, Balerion the feisty shadow who lived on and was claimed by rider after rider, Balerion who outlived them all and saw his newer siblings and cousins hatch from their eggs and grow in size and then saw his elder ones slowly die, one after the other.

All of these thoughts his scaly black brother imprinted on him with stone intent each time they talked in such a way. He could stand near him, of course, down on the ground, and pet him and talk to him there, but most every time they flew, he would scream to him, dare him, challenge him to take it all in and endure it, for he was the new rider. And Aegon would handle it. Every time. There was no other choice for the blood of the dragon, the heir of his father's line. But each time, he also put a little resistance of himself in, and grew the tiniest smidgeon bolder. When I have braved another five years, another ten years of manhood, when my children are born and grown up, we will have grown strong together. And after that, when they are grown and are to have children of their own. Then we will be inseparable and I will brave his back any time, feeling the flap of his wings as my own, or put on the huge, metal-encased saddle just like the act of putting on my cape in the morning. Thus he thought to himself. Thus he was certain.

]]

…

The Carved wooden lion stood on the margin of the Painted Table, bringing dry tears to Aegon's eyes.

Things shall be as they shall be.

...

Aegon and his sister-wives, Rhaenys and Visenya, stood smiling, clinking their glasses together above the sight of Blackwater Bay."