Rhaello
He was having the most amazing dream. He was walking through the shattered remains of Braavos, choosing which of the many naked women that had been paraded in front of him that he would sleep with that night. So much choice! So many humiliated Braavosi! So many amazing tits!
It was then, naturally, that he came awake. He looked around wildly, his hand under the pillow where he kept a dagger. There was someone in the room with him. Who?
It was then that someone coughed gently from the door. "Magister?"
Oh. It was Raf, his steward. "There had better be a good reason behind you waking me up."
The man nodded seriously and he felt his heart sink a little. Yes. He would not have done so otherwise. "There is a fire in the city. Magister Mopatis's house is aflame on its lower Southern floors."
Shock roiled through him and he jumped out of bed. There was a robe nearby and he put it on quickly as he hurried to the window and peered out. Sure enough there was a glow coming from the building at the top of the hill. Then he realised which direction the wind was coming from and he knew in an instant why Raf had woken him up.
"The wind's blowing in the direction of the harbour," he said tersely and then hurried back to where his clothes were kept. "Rouse the household. Every servant you can find. Send word to the city watch. I want a chain of buckets set up, from the sea to that house." He was pulling on clothes almost without thinking about what he was choosing. There was a time to be fashionable. That time was not now.
Raf absorbed his instructions – and then ran off. Good. The man knew what was at stake. If the fire took full hold on that bluff above the harbour… well, it would be a disaster. Ships were notoriously prone to fire. All that canvas, all that sailcloth, all that tar, all that wood. A fire near the harbour, with all those sparks and hot ash drifting down…
He finished dressing himself and then left the room at the closest he'd come to a run for many years. As he passed down the corridor he could hear Raf shouting orders and the sound of feet running in all directions.
"Magister, the Watch have been told – many are coming!" Raf shouted and he nodded in response.
"Buckets. We need buckets. Anything that can hold water." Thank the Seven they were near the sea. The gardens of Mopatis's manse would not look doof afterwards, with so much sea water, but he didn't give a damn about that. And so he flung himself onto a horse and rode off up the hill.
Looking back on it later he was amazed that was not more hoarse by the time that the sun finally started to show itself in the East. The previous hours had been filled with shouting and not a little swearing; of frantic decisions made after periods of thought that measured bare heartbeats; of desperation and anger and sadness when reports came of losses.
But it had all worked. Yes, a third of the manse was a gutted shell and another third had fire damage in many areas, but the remaining third was still intact and above all nothing had caught fire in the harbour. Some of the ships closest to the danger had been warped out by worried captains, but no ship had burns, nor any other building.
He'd had casks of clean water and some of cold ale brought up for the men and women around him and now he was holding a tankard of ale in one hand and a piece of bread and ham in the other. The bread was fresh, the ale was cold and even though this was food that he would normally have scorned, by the Gods today it felt like the finest meal he'd ever had.
As he finished the food and swigged the last of the ale he saw Raf approach. With his was a smoke-blackened man who looked like one of the Unsullied here and also a young woman. All bowed as they reached him. "Magister," Raf said, "We have confirmed that Magister Mopatis is dead."
He nodded shortly. This had been what he had suspected for some time, after seeing that Mopatis wasn't present anywhere at all during the fighting of the fire. A man like Mopatis would have been everywhere, bellowing orders. His absence had meant only one thing. "How?"
Raf looked at the girl. "Tell him."
"I am Tirys, Magister," the girl all but stammered. She looked tired beyond words and had a look in her eyes that he had seen before. A look of someone who had seen terrible things. "Magister Mopatis was killed by Viserys Targaryen."
He stared at her in astonishment. "The Beggar King? For what reason?"
"The Magister said that he was mad. And he was. Halys vanished, the Magister's under-steward. Fled, we thought. Then I… last night The Beggar King found me near his sister's quarters. I turned to the door and… he must have hit me. When I awoke I was in a room. And Halys was there too. But he was dead. Throat cut." The girl looked down at the ground, her face working with memory.
"Go on," Raf encouraged her gently. "All of it."
"Then… then the Beggar King came in again. He had his sister! She was tied up and lacked her wits. He laid her down next to me. When she woke up he said… he said that he needed our blood. That… he needed dragons and that he didn't care how he'd get them. Even blood. He was mad, Magister. He made no sense. Then he…. he went off to get something to collect our blood."
Horror had overtaken him and he stared at her. Everyone in earshot of the girl was doing the same thing. He'd known that Mopatis had been getting worried about the stability of the boy king, but this? This was beyond madness.
"The Magister found us then – he'd been searching after discovering the princess missing. He cut the bonds on her hands. But then her brother came back and hit the Magister on the head with a bowl or something and knocked him out. He was saying mad things again, mad, mad things. But… then the Magister woke up. He was so angry with the Beggar King! He started to choke him. But the boy had a dagger and he fought back and they fought – oh how they fought! – and they knocked over lanterns. And something caught. The fire started. And… they fell into it."
He shuddered at that. Death by fire… that was no way for anyone to die. That was too horrible for words. "And the Princess?"
Tirys shook her head, tears spilling down her face. "She freed me, Magister. She picked up a dagger that had been dropped and she freed me. Got me out. But then she went back in for her dragon eggs. And the fire cut her off. I last saw her in a room to one side."
"We've cleared a way to it. Magister," Raf said quietly. "There… there won't be much to see there by now. The fire was fierce there. We think that oil for cooking was being stored there."
He nodded slowly. Well. This was a fine kettle of fish. Still, what could one expect from the only remaining son of the Mad King? Death by fire. How very apt. Historians would make bad puns about it in their books. It was a shame that Pentos would be mentioned but…
Running feet brought him out of his ruminations. "Magister! Come quick! You must see this!" It was one of the guards and he looked… well, terrified.
"Come and see what?"
"We've found Daenerys Stormborn!" And then he was gone again, running like a madman.
Frowning he followed, walking, with Raf and Tirys behind him. The passed through a still-smoking doorway, past a pile of blackened timbers that was still steaming slightly from the water that had been poured over it and then along what had once been a corridor. The room that they entered lacked a roof and also three walls, apart from a stone one that marked an internal buttress. Some stone steps arched up to one side and… oh. There were two bodies there. Or what might have been bodies. He could see that one pile was a little bigger than the other, but that bone had splintered and skulls had cracked from the heat.
There were a few men and women staring at something under the stairs though and he sighed and strode up. And then he saw what was there and his mind refused to accept it for a long moment.
Daenerys Targaryen was sitting there. Ashes had streaked her bare skin – she was as naked as the day she had been born – and her arms were crossed in front of her chest. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be asleep.
Tirys gasped to one side and he heard Raf say something under his breath, but it was at that point that the world tilted still further. Her arms had been hiding something. On the underside of her right arm was a little green and bronze creature. On the underside of her other arm was a little white and gold creature. Both seemed to be suckling from her nipples. And then a small form seemed to register their approach from her shoulder, where it had been hiding under her hair. A black and red creature that hissed a little and then flapped its wings.
Dragons. He was looking at Dragons. The word rang through his mind and he resisted the temptation to let his jaw drop open. Instead he rallied. "Princess?" No reaction. "Daenerys Stormborn!"
Her eyes flicked open. And just for a moment he saw nothing but silver light in those eyes.
Robert
The trees were flying past again. Was he running or was he being pulled by some means or other? He could not tell. All he knew that he was so close to catching her. Lyanna. She was just in front of him, hair over her face, screaming something at him. She was terrified of something. Was it Rhaegar pulling her? Where were they? Was it in the North? There were just the trees to go by. And the snow. He stretched his hand out in a desperate effort at grabbing her. So close – less than the span of a man's hand. So close.
"LYANNA!" He reached again – and missed.
Her face worked with terror again and then suddenly she was gone, pulled an unimaginably long way in front of him in an instant. He slowed and looked about wildly. For an instant he thought he could see a little face amidst the trees – and then he turned around and looked at the blue-eyed thing that might once have been human that was peering at him in what looked like horror.
"LYANNA!" He came awake in his bed with a shout, his chest heaving as if he had been running for hours. His hands were shaking and he was covered in sweat.
After a long moment he sighed and ran his hands over his face. The third time that week. Why? What did it mean? He got out of bed and strode to the window. Dawn was close. He could try to sleep again – at least Cersei wasn't there, with her sharp elbows and sharper tongue – but he knew that it would be folly to try and sleep again.
He dressed quickly, picked up Stormbreaker and then strode from the room. Outside Ser Boros was asleep on a chair by the door and Robert glared at him with contempt. Cersei's man, he was. A Lannister man. Why had he agreed to have that craven lazy fool on his Kingsguard again? Well, he would be hopefully shamed by the realisation that his King had left the room without him noticing.
He strode off down the dark corridors. It was quiet at this hour. A man could think that this hour. He reached the stairs and padded down them quietly. More training today. More arrangements. Cersei wasn't happy about the move to Winterfell. He'd been tempted to shout her down. Instead he'd just coldly told her that it was happening, no matter what she said, and that it had to happen. She'd been puzzled by that, before moving on to how much she hated the cold and how much dear Joffrey hated the cold and so on and so forth.
Not that it had made a damn bit of difference, just as her protests about Stannis becoming Hand had also not made the least difference. All of her shouted comments about Tywin Lannister being an excellent Hand in the past had not worked and she'd eventually stormed off.
He reached the throne room. Had he meant to come here? Or was it simply where his feet had led him? He peered at the throne itself and then shook his head and leant against the nearest pillar. Why was he dreaming of Lyanna so much? What was happening with those dreams? Were they just dreams or something more?
The Iron Throne squatted there in the half-light, looking like a demented vision of a normal chair dreamt up by a madman. He often wondered how much blood was on it, from the nicks and scratches that the swords it had been made from. And how much of that blood had been that of Aerys?
He stared at it with blank eyes. For how long he could not say - and then he looked, almost unwillingly, at the place where the bodies had been deposited by Tywin Lannister's men. When he looked back at the throne again he saw that someone was watching him. He squinted a little and then relaxed. "Ser Barristan."
"Your Grace." Selmy smiled wryly. "You're supposed to be escorted by at least one member of the Kingsguard your Grace. I was most annoyed with Ser Boros when I found him asleep in front of your room."
Robert chuckled a little. "He was sleeping too peacefully for me to wake him!" He sobered a little. "I am sorry that my wife insisted on his appointment."
Selmy shook his head a little. "The Kingsguard make do your Grace." He paused. "You seemed deep in contemplation – I hope that I did not disturb you?"
He sighed and then paced over to the dais where the throne was and sat down on the bare stone, Stormbreaker next to him. "I could not sleep. Not after dreaming of… well, I could not sleep. So I came here." He shifted a little. "Tell me, Ser Barristan, what would Aerys Targaryen have made of all of this? This call that went out, the talk of the Others returning, the statues of the Seven and… well, everything?"
It was Selmy's turn to sigh, as he seemed to think very carefully. "It all would have been a plot, your Grace. Directed at him, naturally. Oh and your discovery of Stormbreaker would have been an especially… treasonous part of that plot."
"I thought so," he said softly, before smiling sourly. "I always thought that I'd make a better king than Aerys. Perhaps I have not been the best of kings, but at least this is something that I can take action on. Whatever it is exactly. So hard to tell. Echoes from the past, eh?"
The old Lord Commander of the Kingsguard smiled slightly. Then he paused, as if he had something on his mind before finally saying: "May I ask a question your Grace?"
Robert peered at him. There was something odd about his tone. "Of course you can Ser Barristan."
"Have you been dreaming a lot recently?"
He seemed to see Lyanna hanging in the air again amidst the trees for a moment. "Yes," he said hoarsely. "I have. That same damn dream of Lyanna trying to tell me something – and then being pulled away from me." He looked back at the spot where the bodies had been placed on the day that he had entered the Red Keep as King. "If only she'd lived. She had a fire in her, you know! Such a fire!" He looked down at his belly. "She wouldn't have let me go to fat the way that I did until of late." And she would have been horrified at the bodies of the Targaryen children, he knew that without even thinking about it. Not that he could say anything about it.
Selmy seemed to think very hard about something, before finally taking a step forwards. "Your Grace, after Stormbreaker was found I wrote to Harvest Hall, to my great-nephew Lord Arstan Selmy, about certain records that my father had once mentioned. I remembered his tale of them only in passing, after much thought. T'was said that House Selmy was close once to House Durrandon, but I did not remember the full details. Arstan sent me a copy of the history of my house. The private one, known only to we Selmys. And… it mentioned Stormbreaker."
Curiosity kindled in his heart. "Why didn't you say anything of this before?"
"I mentioned it in passing your Grace, but all I remembered was bits and pieces of what my father told me. Arstan's copy of the history arrived yesterday. I was up most of the night reading it. I might have some answers for you your Grace, but I am still puzzling some things out."
Robert beckoned him over and Selmy sat on the raised dais by the throne, Robert with Stormbreaker now over his own lap. "Go on," he said eagerly. "What answers?"
Selmy ran a hand over his chin and then seemed surprised for a moment, as if he had only just realised that he needed a shave. "My ancestor, Ser Emrys Selmy, was swordbearer to King Argilac Durrandon himself, your Grace, sworn to be near him at all times," he said quietly. "But he did not die at the Last Storm. According to the record that Arstan sent me, King Argilac sent him back to Storm's End." Then he paused. "The record stated that the day before the battle King Argilac had a dream. A very terrible one. He never told my ancestor what exactly he had dreamt of – just that he had seen his own death. That Stormbreaker deserved a better fate. And that it was all down to his daughter now to preserve the line of the Storm Kings. So he sent Emrys Selmy back to Storm's End. With a sword."
"Stormbreaker?" He ran a hand over the hilt. "He gave away his own sword?"
"Aye, your Grace."
He paused. "You asked about dreams."
"'Tis said that the Durrandons would often have dreams. Prophetic dreams. I do not know if there is a link to Stormbreaker or not but… if you are dreaming strange dreams when you did not before then there might be some link there."
Robert stroked his own chin, discovering that he too needed a shave. "That Stormbreaker deserved a better fate… what might that mean then? I won..." He stopped in mid-word and stared at Selmy – and then he stared at the Iron Throne, that monstrosity of melted steel swords. "Could he have meant that?" He choked the words out.
Selmy went white. After a moment of silence he nodded jerkily. "Perhaps, your Grace. Perhaps."
"What else did the book say?"
"Just… that one day a Selmy would be swordbearer again for a new Storm King."
Robert snorted. "Swordbearer is too low a title for you, Ser Barristan."
"If my ancestors served the Storm Kings of old then I will be glad to serve the Storm King of now." An odd look crossed his face. "We live in times that are almost out of a song, your Grace. Strange times."
"Strange times indeed," he replied. What did it mean though? He stood. "Keep reading Ser Barristan. Keep reading. Now, I have an appointment with a log and the training yard. After which we will spar for a bit!"