Tactically, Marika's politics were quite subtle, at least insofar as anything of hers could be.
This is not, mind you, to downplay her abuses, nor to paint her as some species of impotent figurehead – better to think it a relative statement, really. She still worked hand in glove with the Inquisition, after all, scanned their daily reports and guided their knives in the dark, and relished the opportunity, whenever it arose, to unleash upon a 'deserving' target the unconstrained depth of her brutality.
No, violence – the bluntest tool – more than had its place in the God-Queen's arsenal, if only to occupy her time.
But she liked to keep quiet about it.
Godfrey's exile and Radagon's recall saw the end of those blissful early days of forthright conquest, and Marika's retreat from the public eye – from the speeches, the sermons, the overbearing edicts and backroom handshakes, all the games and shows and pretense.
So high above the rest, contempt ripening with age, she just couldn't bring herself to care anymore.
From her palatial seclusion, Marika thus embraced the well-timed nudge, the whisper into a pliant ear, the pebble flicked down the hillside in hopes of an eventual avalanche; queenship filtered through arcane kabbalahs and faceless intermediaries,her will, her word, became an esoteric thing, ephemeral yet inviolable, like a breeze carved into stone, and as unreachable as it was ubiquitous.
By the time of my imposition, she hadn't so much as waved from a balcony for the better part of a decade.
That's what the Elden Lord was for.
"What of the land itself?" Radagon shuffled his papers, eyeing the councilors arrayed about the hall. "'Tis mine understanding the taint yet lingers."
His Parliament, he called it, an ever-rotating catalogue of some few hundred clergymen, philosophers, and magistrates, modeled after the debate societies he'd chaired at Raya Lucaria. Few had the stones to meaningfully gainsay the Elden Lord, of course, their counsel incorrigibly toothless, but the whole charade nonetheless gave his governance an air of reasoned objectivity, and the man himself an abiding satisfaction for having – as best he could under the present feudalism – empowered a central body of 'experts.'
It was a far cry from Godfrey's Round Table, and the rollicking einherjar who shared his mead.
"Seal it off, indefinitely," answered a bishop – Fundamentalist, judging by his roughspun vestures. "Bar all that enters, destroy all that leaves."
One of the frontbenchers, an older woman, draped in the mantle of a city aedile, cleared her throat. "By every indication, the initial purge was quite thorough. We may well be able to salvage something – with careful management, it might even be livable within the next century."
"Might," the bishop countered, crossing his arms. "Too much uncertainty for so much risk."
"Hear, hear!" a fair few rumbled.
"We cannot leave it to fallow," the aedile regrouped. "In time, who knows what horrors would bloom? Spare no effort, I say, excise the corruption."
"And restore the land to productivity," appended a Carian preceptor.
"Lives are more valuable than acres. Combating such an infection only spreads it further."
"You would let it flourish unopposed."
"I would starve it!"
"Friends," some aristocrat interposed, "we are all here blessed with the faculty of reason, why enslave yourselves so to blind impulse? Rushing headlong can only magnify our troubles." Hands clasped, he turned to meet Radagon's eyes. "Defer your decision, My Lord, until we know if recovery is even possible."
(See, that's the problem with the Scarlet Rot – of the myriad eldritch forces that sought to in some way supplant the Erdtree, it was far and away the hardest to subdue.
The Frenzied Flame – once that fatalistic ember within all men's hearts was stoked – needed precious time to grow into something truly malignant; it thrived on subterfuge, subversion, quietly kindling in those dark, forgotten places spurned by Order's grace. Once discovered, stamping it out was a relatively forthright affair (after eons, the Greater Will knew damn well how to fight it), though some spark would, invariably, slip through your fingers, and another blaze would at length begin to stir.
The Formless Mother, meanwhile, was a creature of desperation, a patron of the lonely and dispossessed, those wretches in the mud begging someone, anyone – anything – to wipe their tears. As such, while never exactly wanting for worship, it was the sort of deity to at most enjoy a persistent adherence at the fringes, constitutionally bereft of mass appeal. Smash one cult when it gets a little uppity, and the rest will fall over themselves to scurry back underground, the accursed blood handily mellowed with periodic letting.
But the Rot?
It was feral.
All the Outer Gods demanded vigilance – close your eyes, and they'd eat you alive – but the Rot just couldn't be planned around. There were no clever tricks, no magic bullets, only weathering the storm as best you could, while throwing everything you can right back at it – drowning it in rival divinity.
Survival, then, say nothing of healing, depended as much on honest strength as sheer dumb luck: fight back hard enough, knock enough wood, and you just might convince it to take its toys and leave.
If that doesn't work …
There's a reason even the God-Queen couldn't cure Malenia.)
"I would point … "
"It is written … "
"The Stars portend … "
Like a playground slap-fight, the rest of their sound and fury merits no dictation; all said and done, they hammered out a firm commitment to trust Radagon's judgment, and revisit the issue some undetermined time in the unspecified future.
As I said, toothless.
Having reached the end of the day's agenda, and gotten about as much out of the lickspittles as he could reasonably expect, Radagon adjourned his Parliament with the customary recitations – feeling quite satisfied with themselves, the councilors filed from the hall, huddled together into their little gossipy cliques, bowing to their lord as they rambled past his Erdwood throne.
When the last of them doddered away, doors slamming shut behind him, the room fell silent.
The Elden Lord glared at a patch of shadow lurking beyond the benches, beneath a perimetric colonnade.
"And what guidance hast you to offer?"
My veil slipped, and I wordlessly stepped into the light.
Sneering cunt she was,Marika largely dismissed the ground-level stuff, taxes and laws and the like – her chief concerns were far more transcendental – though she still, for prudence's sake, kept an eye on the latest developments, or at least the broadest of strokes in the most superficial of terms.
To that end, every once in a while, when the reports began to cloy,she'd descend from on high to eavesdrop on her own government, and covertly take as direct a look at the affairs of state she could without actually deigning to participate.
Almost like a game, really.
She never did outgrow that childish sense of mischief.
"This marks the eighth such incursion in fivesome years," he pressed, "and a grievous one, at that. Your intervention notwithstanding."
Nearing my nominal husband, I glanced at the war spoils hanging from the gallery, the shelves of scrolls lining the walls, the statue of the God-Queen looming tall behind the throne.
Golden finery jingled with each step.
Radagon rose to his feet, eyes boring into mine.
"Omen births are up by half, Misbegotten by a third. The Deathroot now spreads as far as Liurnia. Godskin have been sighted in the Dragonbarrow."
I knew all this already, of that he was doubtlessly well aware – the Inquisition was nothing if meticulous – but the demands of rhetoric evidently overshadowed any qualms about redundancy.
"Miquella ignores all summons. Ranni remains at large. Since you named him Prefect, Radahn's army hath tripled in size." A ghost of a sneer cracked through his composure. "Say nothing of Rykard's debauchery."
A mere five paces stood between us.
"And the absentee queen hath forsaken her crown."
None of the smugness or triumph, like he'd gotten one over on me, that some might imagine could be gleaned from his tone – quite the contrary, it firmly maintained that characteristic sobriety.
He was simply stating the facts.
"What of it?" I sniffed; practiced King's smothered my instinctive Welsh.
"Something must be done."
Something drastic, something decisive, something King Consort Radagon just hadn't the authority – spiritual or otherwise – to do himself; it's no small feat to save a sinking ship.
"Well, your spaniels seem to have things well in hand." My head tilted, lips curled, voice dripped with derision. "Mayhaps they could form a committee."
His eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly, the rest of him still as a stone; for a time, he studied me.
Finally, a shallow nod – "Had I not already known," Radagon said, "I would never have seen the difference. Thou mak'st a very convincing Marika."
Papers tucked under his arm, he then marched off to his next appointment.
The status quo, Order's present configuration – this Radagon championed, above any articulated principle or creed. In his mind, chained as it was to logical inquiry, the world was thus, and thus always should be, the particulars secondary to its being so.
The reactionary to his other half's revolutionary.
Neither of us much liked him – too rigid, too didactic – but he did have a point.
Something must be done.
V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V
The Doom of Valyria fell on a holiday.
Daevaria, it was called, the annual celebration of the Tyrannicides, whose legendary slaying of the autarch Haelys supposedly founded their oligarchic mess of a government.
Fourteen days of gifting and feasting, public games and riotous orgies, capped with the sacrifice of twenty virgin maids at the hilltop Temple of Arrax Best and Greatest; then, another week of gaiety.
(In earlier times, as I understand it, the festivities only lasted a couple of days – but as the Valyrians grew ever more assured in their dominance, so too did their appetites.)
Across the breadth of the empire, from the ice floes of Lorath to the steaming jungles of Gogossos, the ruling elite – the governors and generals, plutocrats and priests – clearing their calendars and packing their bags, fobbing off their duties onto half-trained flunkies, made for the City to join in the fun.
And they took their dragons with them.
Those dragons, you see, won the Valyrians that empire, and the mere threat of their flames was the glue that held it all together – the freeholders' substitute for the conventional mores of statecraft. After all, when you've thousands of the world's biggest sticks, why lower yourself to compromise, or suffer the indignity of toleration?
For a while, at least, it worked quite well for them.
But when the Fourteen Flames roared, smoke blotting the skies and quakes rocking the earth, it didn't take long for word of the capital's devastation to spread, and for millennia of eminently well-earned resentment to surge all at once to the fore. As their slaves, baying for vengeance, started pulling at their chains, those masters who remained – for the first time in their lives –knew what it was to feel vulnerable.
The flames that engulfed Eternal Valyria thus ravaged all corners of the continent.
What choice had the Essosi, then, over the centuries that followed, but to squabble over its corpse?
V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V
As I pushed my way through the stinking, rambling, jostling crowd, hobnails clicking against the dusty cobblestones, a gap-toothed hawker thrust a bruised cantaloupe under my nose – "Three coppers," he crowed. "Good deal!"
That he hadn't burst into flames was a testament to my self-control.
'The armpit of the world … '
Look, I didn't much care for Pentos.
Harsh of me, perhaps. Insensitive. Impolitic. There were, I'll admit, far worse places to be, and I'm sure it boasted a proud history and vibrant culture, a rich tapestry of … whatever, etcetera, this, that, and the other thing.
Indeed, as I understand it, when the city's mongrelized underclass cast off their silver-haired oppressors, and dove headfirst into the grueling endeavor of nation-building, they found themselves in need of an identity – and within the mystery meat beige that was their demographic stew, Andal blood ran thickest (a lingering consequence of geography), so it was there, the trappings of Hugor's bygone kingdom, that they turned when inventing one. Atop the familiar Valyrian mercantilism, a staple of the so-called Free Cities, Pentos' new rulers slathered a thin coat of nobility: nominal knights and puppet princes, courtly manner and martial glory, enough to look distinctive without materially crossing into the 'primitive' feudalism of their Westerosi 'cousins.'
The self-styled inheritors of the grand Andal tradition, they set out to carve their place in the sun – all for the glory of the Seven, of course.
But, in 209, after a dozen wars too many, Braavos neutered them, and the Pentoshi abandoned their perfectly respectable dreams of empire, settling instead for being the continent's breadbasket, the green hills of Andalos among those few locales still fertile enough to serve as such – the south, even as far up as Myr, steadily desertified in the years following the Doom, the north comprised mostly of humid marsh, while the formerly prosperous plains to the east had been utterly scoured by Dothraki.
Vast plantations now filled the surrounding hinterlands, worked by thousands and thousands of indentured drudges, with millions of tons of produce a year shipped as far as Qarth.
All things considered, they did rather well for themselves.
" – to see you! How's the – "
" – careful, boy, careful! Don't drop – "
" – hundred silver? That's too expensive – "
I just couldn't be arsed to care.
Really, if you've seen one city, you've seen them all.
A barefooted urchin swiped at the baubles dangling around my hips; a quick glare – black sclera, coruscating gold – and he apparently thought the better of it, skittering off into an alleyway.
At the end of the day, Pentos was just as much a toilet as the rest.
I made up my mind to leave the minute I got off the boat.
"Why in the Seven Hells are you so insistent on this?" Brynden groused, her voice dangerously close to a whine. "Can we not afford even a day of rest?"
A stray dog yelped as I kicked it out of the street.
"You can rest in Volantis."
(Not that I was under any illusion Volantis would be much better, but at least there we'd be closer to Valyria.)
With her cheeks puffed up in childish indignation, I half expected Brynden to stomp her feet.
She blushed at my raised brow.
"You spent the last fifty years plugged into a tree. One would think you'd have a little more patience."
"I – " The girl pursed her lips, chagrined. Opening her mouth to speak, then closing it again – perhaps realizing that continuing to beat her head against the wall wouldn't reflect too well on her maturity – she returned to her vaguely nauseous contemplation (a constant since King's Landing) and fell back in line with the others
The old Valyrian city walls, once towering things of fused black stone (its true name long forgotten, this 'dragonstone' was the linchpin of Freeholder architecture – think Roman concrete), had fallen with the rest of the empire, smashed in the frenzy of revolution, then cannibalized for material. Their replacement, a brick-faced curtain of the Aurelian sort, built and rebuilt over centuries of strife, did well enough keeping the riff-raff out, but simply hadn't thedepth, nor the garrison, to be more than a speed bump against a proper army.
Bribery, then – tribute and trade, as they insisted on euphemizing it – had thus become key to Pentoshi strategy, even something of a national art. Gold and coin, steel and mail, livestock and real estate, they gave the warbands knocking at their walls a stake in the city's continued prosperity, incentive to keep their predations to an acceptable minimum, and to hold their fellow marauders back from dipping too hard or too often – it just wouldn't do to kill the cash cow, after all.
Accordingly, the Pentoshi countryside (to the extent that it could truly be called 'theirs') was about as safe as Essos could be, largely free from the banditry and conflict that marked those lands nearer the shattered peninsula, or beyond the mainstem Rhoyne.
Safe enough, at any rate, for a veritable conveyor belt of overland caravans to – back and forth, day and night, unmolested, undefended – cart the forementioned produce into the city to feed that great export machine, then load themselves heavy with manufactured goods for resale back out in the sticks.
"No caravans at all?"
The depot master shook his head.
"Not that far south."
Terminals and warehouses – like the one I'd just barged into, making a beeline for the official-looking fellow sat behind the nicest-looking desk – filled the district closest to the walls, sprawling out and butting up, where every bushel of grain that passed through the gates was logged and parceled and stamped for shipment (probably a logistical necessity, doubtlessly a bureaucratic hassle).
Arms crossed, pointer finger tapping against my elbow, I pursed my lips.
"Any roads, at least?"
A grunt."Just the Valyrian. Or the overgrown rubble of it, anyhow." Peering over his shoulder, the depot master barked an order at a passing clerk, then scribbled a note onto his slate, before returning his attention to me. "I wouldn't chance it, not without some years to spare and a phalanx of Unsullied."
I bit back a sigh; I'd all the time in the world, and not the slightest inclination to spend any more of it tromping about the bush.
The Riverlands were bad enough.
"Look," he placated – something must've shown on my face. "If it's going to Volantis, it's going over water. You know, along the coast, around the Stepstones. Straight down the Rhoyne, maybe, if you're in a real hurry … " He grimaced, as if struck by an unwelcome memory, and rested his stylus on the desk. "But that river has its own share of problems."
Now there was an idea; I pressed him.
"The Rhoyne – it's faster than the open sea, then?"
I refused, categorically, to teleport there, to take the easy way, and slough off yet more of mortality's tedium – arbitrary as it might've been to die on this, of all hills, having flattened so many others.
Have to draw the line somewhere.
Searching for the words, he frowned at the ceiling. "It's shorter. Geographically." A handwave. "More direct. Survive what it throws at you, and you'll probably get there in half the time." He shrugged. "Hardly worth the risk, in my book. Let the mad Qohorik have it."
As if I particularly cared for his opinion.
"How far is it from here?"
"A week's ride east, less if you push it. Just follow the Sphinx road until you hit the ruins – Goyin or somesuch, you'll know it when you see it." Brow furrowed in concern, the depot master leaned forward with a nervous chuckle. "Again, though, I don't think – "
Mind already set, I strode away.
The Sunrise Gate, the easternmost of the city's twelve, boasted a far grander name than it deserved; tarnished bronze and crumbling stone, some few meters shorter than the adjoining sections of wall, it was a holdover from the original construction, left unchanged first owing to necessity, then cost, then finally tradition.
We squeezed through the archway, too narrow by half for how much traffic it served, and crossed over into a sea of golden wheat, fuzzy purple hills budding in the distance.
Here, just outside the walls, the road branched off in sundry different directions, the myriad forks as diverse as they were disorganized, from spindly gravel footpaths to the old imperial highways – these, the latter, were wide enough for sixteen riders to fit comfortably abreast, with glassy black statutes of abominable beasts plinthed at their respective medians; the forward stretch, an onyx ribbon running straight for the horizon, proudly bore a sphinx in repose, perky breasts jutting from a dragon's stocky barrel, and a young woman's delicate features frozen in orgasmic bliss.
Suppose the Valyrians thought milestones too pedestrian.
The blood magic, distasteful stuff, with which they'd molded and fused the dragonstone pavement hadn't survived the centuries; only a few tattered wisps of it still endured, fragmentary, illegible, shredded and left to rot. Although the stone itself remained more or less intact, it no longer enjoyed that preternatural invulnerability – riddled with cracks and divots, wheel ruts and potholes, patched with limestone or filled in with dirt, a road built to last ten thousand years thus barely limped to four hundred.
It was a busy route, as you'd imagine, lumbering oxen and rattling wagons, traders and itinerants and the other expected usuals; and yet, even so, I hesitate to say that there was life to it. Stale, stifled, this was a practical place – an industrial park – sweeping latifundia latticed with irrigation canals, and studded with barracks and granaries. Our fellow travelers, tight schedules to keep, offered us only the briefest of dead-eyed glances, while the hunchbacked laborers shuffling through the exhausted fields, cringing from their overseer's whips, kept heads down and hands full.
If one looked close enough, squinted through the dust clouds, they could almost see the mealworms feasting on the harvest.
A hundred miles of this, 2 days and some change of hard riding, before we cleared the flaxen wastes and ascended into the Velvet Hills. Named for the fuzz of lavender and fescue blanketing them from top to toe, they lay in a sweet spot, far enough from the city – and commanding uneven enough terrain – to be spared the worst ravages of agriculture, while still sitting well within the Pentoshi sphere of influence, and all the protections that entailed.
Along the hillsides, within the valleys, flocks of sheep grazed beside ancient Andal megaliths, on smallholdings bounded by meadows and woods, the road gently rising through the landscape, and the sun shining bright through wispy cirrus skies.
A welcome reprieve from the horrors of civilization, it did nothing to lighten Brynden's mood.
She shared a horse with Ed, all but sitting in his lap; and every so often, with that stupid bloody blackbird of hers irritably circling above, she'd tap the boy on the thigh, spurring him to close the distance and ride right alongside me – she'd stare, face scrunched, weighing the cost of confrontation, before pouting and sighing and skulking away, then repeating the whole thing all over again.
"Would you believe me if I said I forgot?"
Brynden cast me a side-eyed glance; I continued.
"The wildfire. I knew it was there, but … " I clicked my tongue. "Got buried under the rest, I suppose. Just didn't register as all that important. People killing people, more of the same old song."
A fragrant breeze, rustling grass and fluttering hair, hoofbeats clattering against the pavement.
"These things happen, you know – there's an awfully thin line between normalcy and catastrophe. Accept and move on, that's my advice."
Keep moving forward.
What other choice was there?
Brynden's countenance called to mind a steel trap, or black hole – not a crumb of emotion manifest.
"It was my home," she said.
"Some home," I huffed – couldn't help myself.
Pivoting in the saddle, she looked – really looked – at me, studying my face, eyes narrowed to slits.
"Have you have any principles at all?"
I let it pass unanswered.
"Entertainment … " she muttered. "You laid it out forthright, but I didn't believe you. Not wholly. I thought it a mask, an exaggeration."
The girl amusedly exhaled, her mouth absently curling into a sort of tremulous half-grin.
"You're hardly even a person, are you? Just a … heap of naked cynicism. Not a care in the world."
What was there to care for?
I'd won.
The Outer Gods had been turned away, the Fingers smashed to pieces, the Empyreans denied their ascension.
The Lands Between had no more need of a God, a Ring, a Marika.
And I saw no more reason to impose.
"What," Brynden chortled, "no clever little quips?"
Let the Erdtree wither, its searing light fade – retirement, I told myself, was more than enough.
It had to be.
"No point denying the obvious."