Sorry about the delay on this, I have been recovering from my little bout of gastric flu.
Oberyn
It was late, even as he reckoned time. The moon had set but parts of the city were still bustling.
Arryn had unrolled a great map of the city out onto the table, securing the ends with candlesticks, and as men came and went with their messages, some pale-faced and trembling as they handed them over, the old Lord of the Vale added yet another circle of red ink with a number next to it.
The numbers were beyond troubling.
As he stared at the map from his perch on the desk to one side he suppressed a shiver. The memory of the search would stay in his memories for some time to come – and in his nightmares. Especially the moment that he had unbarred that old storeroom door in the very bottom of the Red Keep, filled with barrel after unmarked barrel – and then saw the eerie green glow from the seeping green slime at the base of the barrels. He had told the rest of the men to stay out and had then crept in, on feet as stealthy as he could make them be, to count the barrels. The room had been larger than he had thought. And the number of barrels had been greater than his worst fears.
And now there was a red circle around the red Keep on the map, with the notation '350 barrels' next to it. The thought of it made his skin crawl. The growing number of other red marks made the sensation even worse.
As for the other men in the room… well, Arryn was sitting there and staring bleakly at the map, his nose beakier than even with tension, Velaryon was half-slumped in his chair, his face grey, whilst Merryweather was a red-eyed wraith at a window, looking out over the lights of the city. And then there were the two others. The huddled figure of the head pyromancer at the head of the table and the grim-faced presence of Ser Davos Seaworth next to him, clutching a short sword and eying the pyromancer balefully.
The door opened again and Pycelle strode in with the High Septon next to him. Both looked weary and sombre.
"We have a count of the cache under the Great Sept," Pycelle said tiredly as they both sat at the table. "At least 250 barrels."
Arryn blanched but then reached out and dipped the quill in the inkstand and added yet another circle and a notation next to it. "So, then," he said in an admirably level voice. "That takes the total to a truly disturbing number. There are fifty barrels beneath each of the gates. The Dragonpit contains 300 barrels. The Great Sept has 250. The Red Keep has 350. And there are additional caches of at least 50 barrels under the Streets of Steel and Sisters."
As the others groaned or looked as if a ghost had walked over their graves, Oberyn stood up, grabbed a piece of foolscrap from the desk and then crossed over to the table, where he pulled out the special little pen that he had designed for himself that used slivers of hard charcoal. He frowned for a moment as he recalled the formulas from his youth and then he started to calculate quietly.
"But why," Velaryon all but wailed. "Why would Aerys order this?"
"He was called the Mad King for a reason, my Lord," Arryn replied dryly. "We can only conclude that he did it because he was raving mad."
"I think I know why," Oberyn replied as he kept calculating and the others all stared at him. He sighed. "My sister Elia often wrote to my brother Doran and I. Towards the end, after Rhaegar died at the Trident and his cause collapsed, Aerys's paranoia grew terrible indeed and her letters had to be smuggled out, sewn into the clothes of those passing through Sunspear.
"In her last letter she spoke of how she had hidden behind a statue in a corridor after hearing the Mad King approach. She heard Aerys muttering some madness about Aerion Brightflame, and how he had not gone about it all in sufficient quantities. Given what we know now…"
There was a pause. Arryn had gone as white as parchment, as had Velaryon. Merryweather looked confused however. "I don't understand," the Master of Coin said after a moment.
"Aerion Brightflame," said Pycelle bleakly, "Better known as Aerion Targaryen, thought that by drinking wildfire he could turn himself into a dragon. Granted, he was extremely drunk at the time, but there was a, erm, tendency amongst some of the more unstable Targaryens to link wildfire with being able to transform into dragons. Nonsense of course."
"I only just put the pieces together in my head, Lord Merryweather," Oberyn added as he kept calculating. "Perhaps the Mad King thought that using wildfire on King's Landing would be the blood magic sacrifice he needed to turn himself into a dragon?"
There was a long and horrified pause. "But…" Merryweather seemed to be having severe trouble with the concept. "But…"
Oberyn completed his calculations, raised an eyebrow for a moment and then sighed. "Do you know why I studied at the Citadel, my Lords?"
This time the pause was a more baffled one. Oberyn broke it. "I wanted many things there. To learn, so I could annoy the officious cunt of a maester that I grew up with at Sunspear by telling him things that I knew but he didn't. But also because I was curious about the world. And because in certain books, certain facts about the world are distilled down to their purest form. To numbers. And numbers do not lie. You cannot get a number to lie – the truth is always too self-evident. And I know what the numbers are for wildfire."
The men stirred – but the head pyromancer jerked upright in his chair. "No!"
He raised an eyebrow at the wretched little man. "What?"
"The Substance cannot be reduced to mere numbers – that is blasphemy!"
"All chemical processes – because that it was wildfire is – can be reduced to mere numbers. If you are clever enough that is. I know that I am. You should be more concerned about why it is that your Guild of Lunatics made so much of the filthy stuff for the Mad King."
"Aye," Seaworth growled at the wretched man. "And speaking as a man from Flea Bottom, whose family used to live here, I am not particularly happy with your guild."
"We knew nothing of this plot!" The Head Pyromancer wailed. "I was an acolyte at the time! We were just told to make the Substance, it was Rossart who directed us at the time! He and his lieutenants!"
"Who all died," Seaworth said stonily. "Murdered by the Kingslayer?"
"No-one knows!" The Head Pyromancer was still at the wailing stage. "They… just all died!"
"Regardless of all that," Oberyn broke in, "I know what would have happened if the Mad King had ignited the wildfire." He slid the calculations over to Pycelle, who took them with a frown. "For the Red Keep alone… that amount of wildfire, ignited at once, would have created a fireball that is called an 'explosion'. The wildfire is located in the lowest level of the Red Keep. With nothing below it other than bedrock, there would be only one direction for the fireball to vent – upwards. And the chamber it was in was built to withstand pressure from above and not pressure from below. Put simply, if a man dropped a candle in that room now we would barely feel a thing before we all died. The burning fragments of the Red Keep would fall somewhere downwind in Blackwater Bay, leaving a charred stump of bedrock."
There was a strained silence that was broken by Arryn. "And if all of the wildfire in the city had been ignited?"
Oberyn sighed and then swapped troubled glances with Pycelle, who then slid his calculations back with a nod. "The entire city would have been destroyed," Oberyn half-whispered. "And everyone within its walls. The smoke from the explosion would have been seen from Storms' End, perhaps as far South as Sunspear. All that would have remained of King's Landing afterwards would have been a glowing, smoking hole in the ground. And the sound of it all… it would have deafened people for leagues around."
Arryn ran a hand over his face. "And the army that Ned and I led here would have all died. Tywin Lannister's too."
A nod greeted those words. "You all know how much we Martells mourn the death of my sister and her children. Given this plot… the odds of their survival were always a lot smaller than we ever knew. Or ever feared. I always knew that the man was mad, but this…" He leant back in his chair and pulled the tattered remnants of his composure around him. "This is beyond madness." He needed to write to Doran at once. This was a quarrel to the heart of the dying remnants of their plan.
"Then the question now becomes what we do with this wretched stuff," Velaryon asked. "It's like a knife to the throat of the city."
Arryn stroked his chin and then shot a look at the Head Pyromancer that made the man cringe in his seat. "Can it be removed safely?"
The wretched little man started to gobble out something, but Oberyn tapped the table to silence him. "Yes. But it will be difficult. Many of the barrels are leaking. The Pyromancers will have to deal with those. But for the most part, given careful planning, it can be safely removed. The thing then is what to do with it."
Arryn stroked his chin – and then stopped. Something had obviously occurred to him. "I think I might have an idea about that." He looked at Pycelle and oddly enough Seaworth. "But it will depend on if it is practical."
Robert
The trees seemed to stop dead as they came to a halt, his boots digging into the snow and leaves on the ground. He had her by the wrist and she was holding him too. She looked exactly as he remembered her and – no, wait, no. She was a little older than the last time he had laid eyes on her in Harrenhall and there was strain in her eyes. Oh, those eyes.
As he looked at her he felt his heart swell. He'd forgotten how alive she looked, how… what was the word… vital, yes, that was the word. "Lyanna," he half-whispered as he looked at her. "I caught you. You're here."
She looked at him almost wildly and then down at their joined hands – and then she smiled at him and muttered what sounded like a prayer to the Old Gods. "You caught me," she muttered. "At last. At last, Robert."
He looked her up and down. "You're just as I remembered you," he said, feeling the tears in his eyes. "Just as before."
Lyanna smiled a very small smile. "I'm dead, Robert," she said almost curtly. "The dead can never age." And then she smiled the smallest and bitterest of smiles, one that faded as she looked at him. "You got fat, but you look better than you used to."
He blinked at that. "Aye, well, I've been doing my best to get back to fighting trim…" He paused. "How did you know? Oh wait, this is just a dream isn't it?"
"Not entirely," she said – and then something roared far off in the distance, something inhuman and bestial. It was a noise from a nightmare and the trees around them seemed to shiver in response.
"What the bloody hell was that?" He asked as he looked in the direction that the noise had come from, but before he could step away to peer into the trees she pulled him back, her face white and her hands shaking.
"Robert, we don't have much time. They're looking for me."
Bewildered he stared at her. "Who's looking for you?"
She pulled a face. "The Others and their ally. I don't know what to call it, it's a thing that they use to hunt in places like this, between death and life."
"The Others are hunting you?"
"Yes, so we have very little time," she said as she looked at the trees again, a harried expression on her face. "I am only here because the Old Gods have given me permission to talk to you."
"The Old Gods?"
"Aye, they have brought me here. They have more power than before, but they have their limits. They cannot bring me back the way that they brought Robb back in time, but they can do this much."
This made no sense – and then he looked at her, looked properly. She looked strained and nervous. "Is this a dream?" He had to ask the question.
To his shock she shook her head and gave him that sad little smile. "You're in Winterfell, Robert. I'm buried here. And Winterfell is special… the walls between the living and the dead are… thinner here."
He just stared at her again. "Then… you're real? I mean… you're really here?"
"It's... complicated." She seemed about to explain further, when the howl started again, a little closer and this time filled with what he could tell was bottomless hate. "We have no time. Robert – you need to warn Ned. The Others are coming to the West. They seek to outflank the Wall somehow. Ned needs to heed Maege Mormont's warning. They're using their magic to hide what they are doing, but there is danger to the West, Robert. You and Ned must watch out there."
He nodded, trying to absorb her words whilst he stole a look at the trees. There was danger there, he could tell. Danger coming closer by the heartbeat. "Right. Danger to the West."
And then she tightened her grasp a little. "You must do something else Robert. You need to become what you were born to be. You need to be the Storm King. There's a lot more at stake than you know. Ned is becoming what he needs to be, but you need to change as well."
He wanted to laugh for a moment. "Be the Storm King… I keep being told that. But how? How can I do that, Lyanna? I can't call on the storm or call down lightning or cast… whatever a Storm king casts."
She smiled again at him, a smile of infinite sadness. "You need to let go of me Robert. The memory of me is holding you back. You're wallowing in grief. Let go of the past and step forwards. You must do this."
But he shook his head. "Let go of you? Never! You're my Lyanna. My she-wolf! The Knight of the Laughing Tree. I fought a war to get you back. Ned and I fought to avenge your father and your brother and to get you back from that bastard Rhaegar Targaryen. When I killed him at the Trident, when I swung my Warhammer and smashed every rib of his chest in, I did it for you."
"I know!" She almost keened the words. "And I love you for it! When word came that he was dead and that you had killed him I exulted! I threw the fact that he was dead in the face of the three whoresons who guarded me! And told them that they were no knights, not any more." She closed her eyes as if in pain. "They stopped being knights the first… the first time that they held me down. So that… so that he could…"
He did the only thing he could think of – he took her in his arms and hugged her. "Shhhh, shhh, it's alright. They're all dead. I killed Rhaegar and Ned took care of the others. They're all dead."
She wept in his arms for a moment – and then the thing in the trees howled yet again, startling them both and she pushed herself out of his arms.
"I'm dead," she said shortly. "Remember me, but let go of me Robert. I anchor you to the past. You need to let go of me."
He looked at her for a long moment, wanting to shake his head again, but knowing that he couldn't somehow. He felt almost helpless. "I can try," he said eventually. "I don't know if I can succeed though. Lyanna – if only you'd lived…"
"I wanted to," she said tremulously. "By the Old Gods, I wanted to. But those three fools guarding me…" She looked at him again and then she wiped the tears from her eyes. "There is another reason why I had to talk to you. I wanted to beg you for a life."
He frowned. "What?"
There was a short pause as she closed her eyes as if in agony, before opening them again and clenching her fists in his chest. "Rhaegar… he took so much from me. He lied to me, again and again and then he… he raped me. Again and again. I fought, Robert, I fought. But there were four of them and just one of me and… I lost."
Fury boiled within him. "I'll have their crimes added to the White Book of the Kingsguard, Gods damn them."
"But… he gave me one thing that I do not regret. I died as a result, but I don't regret it, not when I looked at that little face in my arms."
He froze. "He got you with child." He did not ask the words, he just stated them, flatly.
She stared at him, her face working with some undefinable emotion. "Yes," she said eventually. "He gave me a babe, a child of my blood. And the babe was in a way my own revenge. Rhaegar was obsessed with prophecy, the Valyrian Song of Ice and Fire. He thought that he was an important part of it and that he needed three children who would be his ancestors come again. He had an Aegon and a Rhaenys. He needed me to give him a Visenya. I did not. I gave him a son instead."
"A son," he repeated, still reeling from this. "You bore him a son."
"My son. My blood! There's nothing of his father in him." And then to his horror she got to her knees and clutched at his breeches. "Spare him! Please, I beg of you! He's no threat to you, he's not legitimate, but he's a Stark, he's my son, he's not a Targaryen! Please Robert, if you ever loved me, spare my son! He's blameless! I told Ned to protect him from your wrath, I heard about how you laughed at the sight of Rhaegar's children, I made him swear to protect him, please, I beg you, spare him!"
He stood there, stunned, for a long moment – and then he reached down and pulled her up. "Gods, Lyanna, please don't do that. You need never beg anything from me. Not you. Never you. I'll never have you on your knees before me." He looked into her eyes and realised that she was terrified and a part of his heart broke for a moment. "Your son will never be in any danger from me, I swear it. I will not harm him, or, or allow others to harm him. I swear it Lyanna."
She looked at him – and then she burst into tears and hugged him. "Thank you," she whispered brokenly. "The dead see only short glimpses of the living. He's a good lad. He's a Stark, through and through. He hasn't had an easy life, but Ned has kept him safe."
Ned. Ned knew. Oh Gods. Something of that sense of shock and betrayal must have shown on his face, because Lyanna looked at him again, this time fiercely. "Don't you blame Ned! I was dying, on my deathbed, when he arrived and saw my son. I made him swear to keep him safe. I made him swear to protect him. If you want to blame someone, blame me, not him!"
Various things clattered together in his head – and formed an ugly pattern. "You and Ned thought that… that I would have killed your son?"
She nodded. "I was afraid. So afraid."
Gods. Did people think that he was a monster? Then he thought back to that day, that terrible day when he and Ned had had that argument that ended up with Ned screaming in his face, angrier than he had ever been with him. He still had nightmares about that day.
"I will not hurt your son," he said again, thickly. "Or have him killed. I swear it, on the Old Gods and the New."
She looked at him again and then she smiled tremulously and ran a hand over his face. "Thank you."
There was a long moment of silence – and then the trees to one side burst apart as a… a thing came through them. It was a howling dustdevil, black as night. Whatever was in it was thin as a stick, had clawed hands and empty eyes and… tentacles? He took a step back, before remembering himself and placing him between it and Lyanna. Whatever it was he was glad that the wind was hiding most of it.
"What is that thing?" He had to shout the words.
"The Other's new ally!" She replied, also shouting. "It's found me!"
He swallowed. "What will it do to you?"
"It's too late – I've talked to you!"
The thing advanced slowly, the timbre of the howl changing subtly, and Robert heard noises from another part of the forest. "Lyanna – what will it do to you?"
"I'm already dead, Robert. You can't hurt the dead."
He knew at once that she was lying. And that… made his hands hurt for some odd reason, as if they were too hot for a moment. He looked about at the trees quickly, looking for a stick, a branch, anything that might be used as a weapon. And then movement to one side caught his eye. A thing shaped like a man strode into view. It was… blue-skinned, with white hair that floated behind it like a wake and its eyes shone like bright blue stars. The black howling thing shuddered and then drifted next to the newcomer.
He swallowed and backed away from the hideous pair, escorting Lyanna away. He looked about desperately – and then he blinked as one of the trees to their right seemed to shiver as a face appeared on it. "What the fuck is that?"
Lyanna stared at it. "The Old Gods! They are here!"
He paused as his hands burnt again for an instant. "Get to that tree Lyanna! I'll keep them off!"
"What with?"
"My bare bloody hands if need be! Go! Run!"
She paused for a long moment and then she kissed him on the cheek and ran for it, picking up her skirts as she did. The two things approaching them stopped briefly and then darted after her. So he did the only thing he could – he ran and roared as loudly as he could, coming once again between them.
Jon had once told him that only madmen and fools were never afraid, which was a good thing because right now he was fucking terrified. As he skidded to a halt in front of them they both paused and eyed him, or at least the blue-skinned thing did. This was an Other, it had to be. "You leave her alone," he shouted after a moment of tongue-tied terror. "Leave her alone!"
The Other stared at him and then raised its hand to backhand him. He watched the arm sweep back and then forwards and he knew that if it touched him he was dead. His hands were burning more fiercely than ever and he realised there and then that this was important, that this meant something. Hands, burning, why – and then suddenly something opened in his mind, something that he had no idea had even been there before, spurred by terror and desperation. Light burst from his hands, white light that annihilated shadows and which sent the two things reeling back with choked cries.
He stared at his hands in astonishment and then realised that he could almost feel the shape of a sword in his hands. What was this? Was it Stormbreaker? He looked back as Lyanna reached the Heart Tree and then looked at him in what seemed to be astonishment. "Robert?"
"Lyanna – go. GO!" She blinked at him and then she placed both hands on the tree and muttered something. After a moment the eyes on the tree seemed to burn with red fire – and then she was gone.
He turned back to the things in front of him with a savage grin. "Right, you cunts." The Other eyed him balefully, something forming in its hands, like a blade being spun out of ebon night, whilst the howling thing seemed to grow in strength. He concentrated into that strange new place inside him and new light burst forth from the sword in his hands. "Go back to the shadow that awaits you!" The words sounded strange in his throat and his mind, as if he was speaking in a different language. "You shall not pass!"
The light grew and grew and everything seemed to shudder away from him as he suddenly thrust the sword into the earth in front of him. Fissures erupted in front of him and something gibbered and howled as the light poured out.
He shuddered as he clenched his fists around the sword – and then suddenly he was back in his bed, upright, covered in sweat, his heart pounding. As he ran his hands through his sweat-soaked hair he finally noticed two things. First, that Stormbreaker was on the bed with him. And the second thing was that Ser Barristan Selmy was standing next to the bed, along with Oakheart, both white-faced and trying not to look terrified.
"What?"
"Your Grace," Ser Barristan said eventually. "There was light coming from your room. Bright white light. From Stormbreaker. Your Grace… it was hovering in the air, held by you. Glowing."
Oh. Bugger. Now he knew how Ned felt at times. He handed Stormbreaker to Ser Barristan and then got out of bed and stuck his head in the nearest bowl of water. As he scrubbed his hair clean he noticed that his hands were still shaking as if he had had an argue, but as he looked at them they shook a little less. He paused, closed his eyes and made his decision.
"Ser Barristan?"
"Your Grace?"
"My compliments to Lord Stark and tell him that I need to see him at once in the crypts, at the grave of his sister. Ser Arys?"
"Your Grace?"
"Once Ser Barristan has escorted Lord Stark in, you are to guard the entrance and let no-one in. Not a soul. Do you both understand?"
"Aye, your Grace," they chorused and then strode out.
He watched them go and then sat on the bed again. All of a sudden he wanted to weep.