Mother's merciful gift
The waters in the Sea of Dorne were calm and clear, gently lapping against the hull of the small carrack drifting east along the Dornish coast streaking along the starboard horizon.
Elia, her children, and the last remains of her guard had boarded the Sleek Stinger at Wyl after traversing a collection of small rocky tracks and stony mountain paths to avoid the watchful eyes of Blackhaven's men in the Boneway.
House Dondarrion had guarded the treacherous pass against Dornish invasion from the south since time immemorial, but that did not make them blind and deaf to the north. The Stormlands were no stranger to internal quarrel and strive, not while united under House Baratheon and not under the Stormkings of old. A Marcherlord especially was always prepared when it came to matters of war.
So they had been forced to avoid any possibility of being spotted, though it had cost them two more days of travel, before finally reaching the safety of Dorne in the lands of Lord Wyl. The first sight of the river of the same name, and the well-maintained road travelling to the coast on its southern shore, had been a shock of relief. She was home, and her children were safe.
Right now, they were below deck; Aegon asleep and Rhaenys being entertained by a nursemaid they had taken with them from Wyl. A part of Elia felt some anxiety at having someone she had not personally hand-picked for the task watching over her children, but that was only the edge of paranoia talking.
Spending too much time in the Red Keep made you wary of every shadow and sudden noise, and see hidden motives and allegiances where there were none. The woman was Dornish to the root and had been in service to House Wyl for near on three decades without incident. Even the Spider had his limits, few though they might sometimes seem.
In the end, Elia was glad to be back in Dorne.
And before long she would be back in Sunspear as well. Their ship was quick, and the weather and waters kind, especially close to the coast. If there were any delays, they would be at the Broken Arm, whether through the unpredictable currents between the innumerable islands or through pirates.
Even without the precise details, Elia knew she had little reason to worry about the latter making trouble for them. Nonetheless, she intended to have answers today.
After their troubles in the kingswood, the changes had been immediately obvious, and they went far beyond the devastating loss of people alone. The half dozen men that remained had been changed, the exact nature of which continued to escape her.
Still loyal and attentive to their duties, no less respectful towards her and the needs of her children, but definitely on edge no matter the miles left behind them.
For a few days afterwards, she had even worried about desertion. Near every meeting between the men had seemed exceptionally tense to her and only the calm presence of the oldest among their number seemed to have kept them from anything more serious. That problem had passed eventually, though without any words to her about its resolution.
In its place, a certain awkwardness had remained. With the loss of comrades and friends, and the sudden change in command, Elia had decided against disturbing the new balance unnecessarily while they remained on the road, but that was no longer the case now.
The rasp of a cleared throat a few steps behind her. "You wished to see me, Princess?"
"I did." Elia gave an acknowledging nod over her shoulder before beckoning Dorien forward. "Join me."
The man stepped up to the rail beside her, one arm still in a sling after the injury he himself had sustained during the fighting in the kingswood. He was perhaps a decade her senior, with a placid, almost dull cast to his face and especially his blue eyes that was mirrored in his character. Straight-forward and to the point, sometimes even bordering on impoliteness, he wasn't the sort of man for negotiations and alliance-making, much less courtly intrigue, but he did understand his own craft.
A good soldier, the ones you wanted to amass in your armies, had two minds, one for the time before battle and one for the battle itself, her father had once told her. Dorien did not seem a man for smiles and laughter, even now that they were back in Dorne, but there was an unflinching steadiness to the man-at-arms, which was no doubt part of the reason that he had found himself largely in command of her decimated guard.
There was only one man not currently looking to him for leadership, the one actually in charge through both rank and self-evident lines of command, and that was also the one this was all about in the first place.
"I have a few questions that require answering," Elia began, folding her hands on the railing. "And some of the events of our journey and the difficulties it encountered, as well as the way those difficulties were dealt with, demand clarification."
"I am at your service, Princess."
The quick answer sounded almost insincere, but Elia left it at a quick admonishing glance and nothing more. Truth, she considered, had been her friend the last time she had sought answers. "Do not mistake me, Dorien. I have no need of spurs to understand some part of the matters of soldiery, even from a distance, but neither is this conversation a matter of dishonour for you. I have known Ser Naruto for longer than you have, and known of his skill for near a year more than even that, but the exact details of that skill have continued to escape me. Expediency made it a secondary matter before, but that is no longer the case now. I wish to know what you saw and understood or not. The whole truth of it."
Dull blue eyes matched her gaze for a few long, unwavering moments, not even a twitch of emotion coming over the soldier's features. Then he frowned lightly and nodded. "I'm afraid I won't have a lot of clarity or detail for you, Princess, but I can speak of what I've seen."
"Please do."
Even with only a small crew there was little beyond the barest measure of privacy on a ship, any ship – sailors were well known to enjoy the gossip snatched up in port or from their charges, especially noble ones – but with a skeleton crew manning the carrack at noon and the rest of them sleeping in their bunks after manoeuvring the shallows at night, now was as good a time as there would ever be to speak of this.
"He's too quick by half and sturdier than he has any right to be." Dorien gestured at his face with his free left hand. "You saw that mark on him. A destrier caught him fair and square without a helmet and he was up and fighting again only a little later. Some fool stableboy died like that at Skyreach five years past and that was a younger filly, not a beast bred and trained for barding and war. Ordinary men do not simply shrug something like that off. But he isn't, far from it."
Elia pursed her lips. "Meaning?"
Dorien eyed her seriously. "Meaning he can go through knights like shears through silk. If he wants to," the soldier allowed and sighed. "But he did something else that day, and that part I can't well explain to you, Princess. Not without sounding either mad or a lackwit."
"Tell me anyway." Elia frowned gently and motioned for him to continue. "I will make that judgement for myself."
"As you will," Dorien said. His brow creased as he began carefully formulating his answer. "He… I'd swear we were finished. Bound and gathered for some few final questions before being sent to meet the Stranger. But then they dragged him over. They started with him, simple enough questions borne of curiosity at his presence among us, and he did something. Four men were holding him, mighty struggle that it is, and they were torn apart from one moment to the next. Then he was spinning and everyone standing was dead."
Something deflated inside her, oddly disappointed. Men dead, a spin, a slash, and a few cut throats. Ordinary enough, all of it. "A few men dead at his hands and it makes a tale? Lackwit more than madman, from those words."
"More than a few," he replied gruffly, a touch of tightness around his eyes, "and not a matter of tales either. We fought well, but there had been a hundred of them at the start and still some twenty left by then, and that number was scattered over a few dozen yards. I was kneeling in the grass, hands bound, and I felt that invisible blade rush above my head, whatever it really was, I'd swear that by all the Seven Above. No man can kill so many in one stroke."
Elia could not loosen the hold of doubt. Battle could addle even the steadiest of minds. Yet calling the man a liar to his face would help her nothing, even if she thought her scepticism entirely reasonable. "Your impressions will be taken into account. I hope hearing the others will give me all the clarity I could need."
"He carved right through plate, and I doubt even the lowliest ghost guard at the Rock would be caught dead with slip-shod bog-iron for armour."
"With Valyrian steel," Elia said in answer. She knew Naruto carried a dagger, and the feat wasn't impossible armed so.
"Ordinary steel he had just wrested from their leader's hip." A shake of the head before Dorien continued. "Castle-forged, certainly, but I had a look myself after he'd left to reach you. There was nothing special about that piece of metal and it cut them all down without even touching them. What that means, I don't well know, but it is what I saw."
"So it is," she said, undecided whether she should keep digging for more. If it was the truth there was surely some minutiae not yet spoken off that might tell her more, if Dorien would admit to it. In the end, Elia did not think so. "Thank you, Dorien. That will be all."
The soldier left with a clipped nod, leaving her to her thoughts.
The war was as good as done, from the news that had reached Wyl by the time they had set off, and a new king had taken over in King's Landing. For the first time since its forging in Balerion's flames, a man not Targaryen though still a cousin by blood, sat the Iron Throne.
Which left her children exposed and endangered. If the events in the kingswood had not made that clear already, simple logic made it certainty. Men might have bowed to Robert now, but with their king's heir alive, how strongly and for how long would they hold to those new loyalties?
Elia did not, could not know, and if she was not able to, how could a newly crowned king conscion the chance of another focus of loyalty remaining out there for lords big and small to rally around? More than clearly, this one could not abide even the reduced threat posed by a babe as rival claimant and would act to ensure its eradication, and even a Lord of the Rock was not too proud for butchers to see it accomplished for them.
Someone would pay for that, Elia promised herself in the privacy of her own mind, though the thought felt sharp-edged and unwieldy as she swallowed it. No one tried to have her children killed without reprisal. Right now, however, she had different things to worry about.
First of them the words she had just listened to and the man they described. Perhaps, an overlap could be found there.
Assuming truth, and therefore sorcery in their midst, what did it all mean for her and her children?
A flap of cloth and then something dropped onto the wooden deck behind her, a dull rhythm of noises almost close enough to be a single one. Steps followed as Elia turned to look, and Naruto's long stride had already brought him near even with her as she did. He did not look at her, which gave her a moment to scrutinise him more closely.
Nothing about the man truly gave a hint of magicks, which a small part of her had fancifully imagined would be visible to her eyes now that she knew to look for its presence. Yet there was something sinister there nonetheless, the edge of power that could give rise to fear, hate, or veneration all. In that, dragons had surely been the very same when they had still flown over the Seven Kingdoms. Or perhaps she was simply imagining it.
Watching the coast on the horizon he leaned on the rail, face turned into the wind. There was a peaceable air about him that went contrary to her thoughts. One blue eye glanced her way, the roughly u-shaped mark on his face long since faded into unblemished skin. "If it means so much to you, you could have simply asked."
Elia matched his gaze before considering the height of the mast and the crow's nest at its peak. She could not quite hide the hint of wonder. "You heard us?"
Amusement flickered in his gaze, and he grinned at her, not quite confirming. "I knew you'd want to ask your questions eventually. Ashara didn't last half this long after she had a hint."
"Did she?" She narrowed her eyes, lips pursed. The honest truth, with this one. "Very well then. What sorcery did you wield in the kingswood to save the men and yourself?"
His amusement was even more plain now, writ large in his smile. His casual lean against the railing belied no discomfort at all. Raising his hand, he drew a circle into the air with his finger. "I take wind and sharpen it," came the simple words, as if that was an explanation at all.
Reports of ships, four where she had been told of eight originally, and the confused ravings of sailors and soldiers graced with the ocean's mercy echoed suddenly. Ravings of wood shattered in a breeze and the might of the sea as it surged up to swallow crew and ship both.
Memory and fantasy supplied visions of summoned storms and old, old tales. The wrath of flame drowning Valyria in the Doom, Garin the Great's loss and the waters rising to drown the victorious dragonlords in salt and curses, and far in the past, long before Nymeria had even been born, the Breaking, when the Arm of Dorne had been shattered in futile desperation by the mythic children of the forest.
Children's stories all. Volcanos did not feel, rivers, even ones as great as the Rhoyne, simply surged and flooded sometimes, no matter how coincidentally advantageous, and the Breaking laid thousands of years in the past, where the First Men might just have sought further reason for war in their misfortune, as men so often did.
Yet she could not deny the tales of Blackwater Bay half so easily. She had heard the prisoners speak them herself with little prompting, had beheld their ultimate results in the very existence of those same prisoners and the absence of the intended attack. There had been no storms above the morning fog, to bring about such results.
Uneasy as it made her, there was only one answer Elia could still choose to accept for the truth without inviting everlasting doubt. Wind to cut down man and tree and horse in the kingswood, and even greater sorcery in Blackwater Bay. "Then at Dragonstone you…" The docks blanketed in fog and ships still miles away. Could a storm hold the limits of fog, obscuring itself from sight, and yet sunder hardwood keels over such distances? If it could, where there any limits at all to its might, and therefore the man who conjured it at will?
Her mind ran away with that thought, imagining a hundred different ways and options.
"I know that look," Naruto said, a grave, almost foreboding note to his voice, breaking Elia from her considerations. "Whatever it is you are imagining, it's likely wrong."
"Is it?"
For a few moments he stewed in sombre silence. "The men I killed that day, I killed by hand. All those that the sea didn't do for, anyway, after I holed and tore apart their hulls. That's what I did with the wind and it's not far from what I did in the kingswood either."
By his tone, he did not intend to explain any further on this matter, but Elia still felt a few more questions gnawing at her. "Can it be learned?"
Naruto eyed her with sharp regard, mouth a thin line. "No."
Elia nodded, but she could not judge for certain whether it was a convenient lie or a convenient truth. Perhaps a smidgen of both, though what that truly meant she could not say yet. Digging further would only strain the conversation beyond what she was comfortable with, especially when she had another purpose to work towards that would not be aided by irritation. "Once we reach our destination my brother will have his own questions for you, which no doubt will mirror those you just answered."
The answers, Doran would have from her before that, but he would insist on hearing them again himself, in this case, and likely with all the other men remaining of her original guard. How an answer was worded and delivered held just as much information as the actual content, after all.
"I guessed as much already. If the Prince wants to listen, I'll talk, at least until there is a ship."
"Where to?"
"Starfall," Naruto said, answering an older question at the same time. "Once we have docked at Sunspear, my promise to you is fulfilled, and I have my wife and firstborn waiting for me. After that?" He shrugged, gazing at the distant Dornish coast. "Who knows. I am unbound in that regard."
"You are a knight and lord," Elia replied, furiously considering the implications. "I would not call that unbound."
Now his grin was sardonic. "Spurs and an empty title meant to string me along, even more now that Rhaegar is dead than before. Good lands, I'll grant him that, but taken from the surrounding lords with a ruin as my keep. I would have spent a decade fighting petty conflicts with every one of my neighbours. But it doesn't matter now, that decree will be ripped apart at the first word from one of the Riverlords to the new king. So, unbound."
"You intend to return to Essos, then? A change of scenery might suit well enough after everything that has happened, though I have never shared the same fascination for travel as my brother Oberyn. Being among the manifold curiosities of distant places has its charms, but I find little comfort in that novelty-ridden solitude." She fingered one of her rings, a band of garnets set in burnished copper. "Seeing as I only just fled from unwelcome environments myself, I suppose I cannot fault anyone else that same instinct after these past weeks."
A lone blue eye slid her way. For all that he scoffed at subtlety in conversation, he clearly recognised it well enough. But he did not reply to call her out on her attempts at nudging his plans, only waiting and watching.
Truth. Again and again. She disliked his seeming, unspoken insistence in that regard, no matter its novel charm. Perhaps it was the reason he and Dorien seemed to get along so easily, honesty and directness made a brotherly pair. But some truths were better left unspoken, whether in kindness towards its recipient – for the harsh hurts avoided in that silence – or for the opportunities harboured within them.
Life at court dealt largely with the latter, though even in the nest of it at the Red Keep one could find the former from time to time. Knowledge that was hidden or only hinted at preserved dignity and offered an escape route far preferable to an escalation into feud or outright warring, where its spoken cousin might leave one with little alternative by the end.
Naruto scowled at the sea, seemed to bite his tongue, and then sighed. "I suppose 'unwelcome' remains to be judged." When he looked at her again, his gaze was hard, but not unkind. "I will tell you now, Princess, if it hasn't been made clear enough yet. I have been a sellsword, or close enough anyway, but no chest of gold will buy my loyalty, no matter the size. I give it at my own discretion." He stood from the rail, eyes finding the coast for another moment, before he inclined his head to her. "If that is all, Princess, I will take my leave."
"One other matter," she said, deliberately cool, before he could take his first step away, "and then I would leave you to your own time." He turned and motioned for her to continue. "Your loyalty, you preclude, but what of another way? Another promise, not to your Queen or Princess, but from you to me. A singular task, nothing more than that, with whatever you might wish from me as reward."
Naruto was silent for a time, taking her in and, it seemed to her, seeing more than another would be capable of. What he thought of the things he saw, she could not discern in those sharp blue eyes. His face twitched into the shade of a grimace before once again assuming a semblance of neutral regard. "Tell me."
"As I said, a singular task, and considering the nature of your abilities surely more than manageable, with some care and planning." Inside her heart the stab of fury, tightening muscles and skin, and only an answer would care for the wound. "Killers were sent after my children, to murder them and me. Those men are dead now, and no tears will be shed for them, but their commands were given by another. One that still lives to give more of them. One more promise then, to finish what the first inadvertently began, to head north–"
"And be the tool of your vengeance," he finished for her. A drawn breath gusted from his nostrils, and he worked his jaw silently before his eyes found her own again. "I will have to decline. I cannot make you that promise."
"Cannot or will not?"
"Both. If I made it, I wouldn't mean it, and so I won't. Not for you or anyone else. Call it a matter of principle." He inclined his head to her. "If you intend to go through with this, you will have to find someone else."
"What principle would that be?"
Ser Naruto looked ready to answer immediately, and yet he stewed over his words. Then there was a sudden, tired age to his regard, standing in stark contrast to his normal youthfulness. "Revenge is a vicious cycle, always feeding on itself for sustenance. It's a kicked rock rolling down a slope." He shook his head. "Catching up is hard enough, stopping it and everything that tumbled loose in its wake is even harder. If I did kill Tywin Lannister for you, what then? He has children of his own, and siblings and cousins and friends, what happens when one of them wants to return the favour afterwards? Will you have them murdered in turn, and they you? Will every one of you continue until there is no one left?"
For the first time, this foreign man seemed truly, entirely strange to her. Not for sorcery or his martial talents, not for his unknown origins and veiled goals, but simply for the sheer naivety that had shaped those words. "You would deny me my right to retaliation, to the blood I am owed?" Elia hissed. "Those men would have butchered me and my children without second thoughts and only heartbeats kept them from success, and you would have me do nothing in response?" She narrowed her eyes, disgust a bitter taste in the back of her throat. "If someone had ordered the deaths of your wife and child, if Rhaegar had done more than to utter threatening warnings, would you have done nothing? Would you argue now or hear dissenting voices? I doubt it."
Blue eyes honed in on her, naked with lethality that stole her breath, only to be replaced with quiet frustration before he averted his gaze. "I deny you nothing." His lips were pressed so tightly they had almost disappeared. "Do what you feel you must, even if it is to take revenge on Tywin Lannister. Only once you have, let that be the end of it, for your own sake and that of the little prince and princess. Either way, I will not help you, not with this." He shook his head again. "Find someone else."
A polite nod and then he left.
Elia watched him go, thinking. She was unsure what to make of all this, much less how exactly it would affect any future plans. But there was one matter her mind had not wavered on.
Tywin Lannister had been the one to kick the rock. The landslide unleashed by it would be his to deal with.
As the afternoon began to fade, the shadow city woke below them. Even in the solar of the Prince of Dorne, high in the golden-domed Tower of the Sun, the hint of human activity did not escape their notice. The unmistakeable sounds drifted upwards and in through the windows and pale sun curtains, talking and shouting and singing and music all blending together in an undercurrent of noise impossible to dissect.
That had not changed since her childhood. 'Gods, it is good to be back.'
Elia wondered at that thought for only a short moment, fingers drifting over the sandstone sill she was leaning against. Early dusk was painting everything in vivid shades of orange and red; the colours of fire, now, and soon the shades of blood, before night's chill would begin to displace autumn's wetted heat.
The domed construction kept both at bay for the most part, a technique of the Rhoynar arrived with Princess Nymeria's arrival and binding in marriage to House Martell. That joining of blood had brought riches and technology unseen to her homeland, the secrets of the Rhoynar unveiled to benefit the new home of a lost peoples. And sorcery, Nymeria's own and that of Great Mother Rhoyne, though both were tightly kept secrets, held in memory only among the members of House Nymeros Martell, and, Elia suspected, the Orphans of the Greenblood.
This time around, sorcery had been brought to Dorne in far less spectacular fashion. No ten-thousand ships set aflame after their purpose had been fulfilled, no great joining of families and bloodlines, only a bond writ in ink, almost mercantile in its construction. The value of this acquiring remained to be seen on the morrow. Proof beyond words, at last.
"I cannot help but retain some doubt at this endeavour, Elia." Doran sat at his desk with steepled fingers, stacks of raven scrolls gathered to one side of the tabletop, more of which continued to arrive by the day to bring news of the Dornish host. A gentle frown marred her brother's forehead.
She smiled at him and left the windows for a chair of her own. "At the tales of sorcery contained within? Or at the costs incurred?"
Doran leaned forward, looked at her from over the shelf of his hands. "Both. I trust your words, but that makes it all no less strange. The opposite, if anything, until the morrow at least. Though beyond even that, it is the man himself that confounds me."
"You are not alone in that," she answered, unable to keep a small smile from her lips. "If it is his acceptance that is the cause for your worry, I would advise simply putting it to bed. Likely, he saw some humour in it all, and saw no other reason to complain. He is a simple enough man in that way."
"His acceptance is not my concern. If he is capable of even half the things he claims, I will feel no regret over this entire matter. To deny others a claim to him alone would have been worth what he demanded in return." A far-off look appeared and was gone again just as quickly, while Doran's thin lips assumed a private, sardonic smile. "Yet a simple man, that he is not. I dare say that below the unique nature of his demands there was a mind more than sharp enough for intricate games. Unpractised in some sense, at least it seemed as much, but not to be disregarded."
Elia's brows had climbed up her forehead as she had listened. Her brother's seeming amusement made her narrow her eyes. There was something else here. "What, then, is the cause of your worries, if you could so easily peer at the man's nature?"
Doran's smile slowly fell away. "Fear," he admitted softly. "Doubt and hesitation and fear. These times are bristling with trouble already, even should this rebellion truly be over now, and I question whether all this might not have made even more for Dorne. Assassinations, feuds, the politicking that will come with this new king, perhaps even war, those I can prepare and plan for. I understand them and should they be the price for the lives of my nephew and niece, then I will not hesitate to pay it." He shook his head. "But I cannot prepare for forces I have no hope of understanding, forces that, for all I know, might not even have an equal other than themselves. Unleashed from logistics and comprehension, that is an all too dangerous combination."
"You believe he will turn against you?"
"I believe he could, and far too easily. Not now, or even soon. His weariness was not an act, that, I am certain of," Doran explained. "But in a year or two? In five, when winter will have come and gone, and he has had time to settle into his new life? Who can say what will have changed in that time?" Concern was stark in her brother's eyes and for a moment she could see the weight he felt on his own shoulders. "It is not any belief that concerns me, but potential and opportunity. Words would make him the Warrior made manifest in battle, and then I have put my life and the fate of Dorne in his hands already. Armies have no hope of stopping a single man and guards have no hope of stopping this one, leaving only the sliver of loyalty engendered by lands and title, and a simple regard for stability. Shallow shields to rely on, all things considered."
"Only if you believe he lacks both," Elia found herself answering before she meant to, and wondered where the impulse to defend the man came from. No matter the dealings that had gotten her home, they were far from close. Yet whatever its origin, she nonetheless agreed with the impulse. "And shallow or not, stack enough of those shields and you might assemble a sturdy defence all the same, though I doubt it will necessary."
Doran motioned for her to continue, as usual content to listen and consider offered truths before binding himself to final words.
"I do not claim to know Ser Naruto well, but above all else I believe he is a man that values truth and honesty, even to the point of excess. Ashara saw enough in him for marriage, and Arthur tacitly approved after taking his own measure. A man like that… I think if you do not make an enemy of him, he is unlikely to become one of his own volition. A risk he might be, but a small one and surely worth the reward." She hesitated for a moment, and continued. "Should it become necessary all the same, there are a number of options. He is a man still, even if he is powerful, with the same vulnerabilities as any other." A quick grimace at the thought that came, making her want to avert her eyes in a sudden surge of quickly suppressed shame, but she continued. "Though perhaps it would be better to be done with it all now, if you feel the risk is too great."
Elia barely stopped herself from speaking of kindness. He did not deserve that thin, facile justification.
Her brother understood her even without further words, nodding once, and leaning back into his chair, eyes dark in the slowly arriving gloom. She brushed her hands, wiping away the ugly considerations.
For a time, they lingered in silence, sitting and thinking on matters to come, while dark crept further and further into the solar. Elia breathed a soft sigh, rising, and went about lighting a few candles and lamps. Dark dealings though these were, there was no need for blinding themselves in night's embrace. The final wick set alight, she quenched the embers and set the long metal lighter aside, still trailing a thin line of smoke. Then she crossed the room and poured herself a glass of wine.
The door to the solar was wrenched open with undue force at her second, larger sip, and her brother Oberyn stepped inside, his garb unassuming and marked by travel. He looked between the two of them. "I hope I am not too late. I was so looking forward to the plotting among siblings."
"You have missed little," Doran said in answer, clearly unsurprised.
"Oberyn? When did you return?" Elia asked after a questioning glance at her elder brother. She had not known of Oberyn's presence in Dorne, fraught with potential as that predicament was, for better and worse. Men did not call it exile where they could be overheard, but there were good reasons her younger brother had spent so little time in Dorne in recent years, ever since that fateful duel. The Yronwoods did not forget or forgive easily, even after near on ten years. Lord Ormond kept his grudges and debts dear. The short return upon Harrenhal's conclusion would have incensed the Blood Royal already, and this one would do the same once he knew. This would not be forgotten.
Her brother joined her and poured himself a goblet of Dornish wine of his own, smiling all the while, either ignorant or uncaring of the potential repercussions. The latter, most likely, with Oberyn. "We reached port six days past. Nymeria plays in the Water Gardens with her sisters now and I was out west, indulging my own interests to pass the time. When I had word of your arrival, I rode." He drained a third of his wine, clinked the glass against her own goblet, and sauntered over to Doran's desk to claim a chair for himself. "Now then, what has been decided? My spear needs only a lick of whetting."
"Nothing, as of yet." Doran's fingers brushed the stack of raven scrolls on the desk. "The list of names is incomplete, but an account leaves us with at most half the forces we sent north, many of them subject to ransom. Lord Stark's encirclement, as outlined by Lord Ormond, was quite exacting."
"If it is men we need, there are other sources for them. The Free Cities have taken notice. Give me leave to gather their companies and we will have three times what we sent before to accompany Dornish spears." Oberyn made no attempt to hide his venom, viper eyes dark. "As I heard it told, our late and sorely unmissed king did some devastating exacting of his own. The fiery, emerald kind. The Riverlands and Vale are spent, as are the Crownlands, and this new king is half a cripple. Now is the time to strike."
Doran shook his head. "There is still the Northmen and Reach in near all their strength between us and King's Landing. They might yet clash over Storm's End, but it will be months until those Sellswords will have crossed the Narrow Sea. If they are not stopped before then. Lord Varys no doubt retains connections in the East himself and he kept his seat on the Council even with Rhaegar's passing. What we lack most are allies, not swords. Those that would not rather bind themselves to another cause. In that regard, there is a rather clear famine in the Kingdoms at this time."
Oberyn turned his goblet, scoffed, and drank deep of the remaining wine until the last red rivulet had disappeared. "Who, then? The Reach and Ironborn? Unlikely, I think. Speed would avail us more than flowers and ships, even if it meant a smaller force. And those months of crossings might be to our advantage. If the Northmen have returned home, Winterfell will not be able to call them quickly enough to stop us. We strike for the capital and justice is done before Ned Stark can even send the first raven. If he marches still, I intend to greet him with Tywin Lannister's proud head on a spike, and all his golden brood arrayed beside him."
"If months would be to our advantage, years would be just as well. Years to build and prepare, to make alliance and plan what is necessary and what is not. Years, even, to drive wedges where appropriate and make allies of enemies, even unlikely ones." Doran pursed his lips against the quiet fire of his words, forehead softly wrinkling. "At this time, I think we stand entirely alone. All those that retain any loyalty to House Targaryen have another option. Closer to hand, more tractable by far, and without any lingering disinclinations."
"Prince Viserys," Oberyn muttered, mouth twisting. "He and his mother remain on Dragonstone?"
Doran nodded. "Under Darry protection. Though it won't last forever. The capital is far too close, and Robert will send ships before any of our own could reach them there."
"Pity, that."
A shrug as Doran leaned back. "Best, perhaps, that they should steal away before that. Seven willing, a Kingsguard will be just as equal to the task of keeping his sword sheathed, and if not him, then his cousin might advise caution – and retreat – convincingly enough." A heavy sigh. "Which leaves us little to work with. Time, as I said, to move the pieces into place, unsatisfying though that is. A snare must be set, carefully and precisely, or the Lannisters might well slip through our fingers. And that I cannot countenance."
In the silence that ensued Elia looked at them both, at her two beloved brothers. They spoke in anger, spoke of war, motivated certainly by their love for her. And it was the same anger in them both, she could see that as well, despite all their differences. In fact, shaped and channelled by those differences – Doran's caution and Oberyn's bold celerity – but the same at its core. Both of them studied her now, waiting for her own thoughts.
Ever since leaving the capital, and even more clearly after the fighting in the Kingswood and the flight that had followed, she had found her thoughts returning to what to do. Her son was the crown prince, heir to the Iron Throne and all the Seven Kingdoms it commanded as well as the legacy of House Targaryen. Nothing could change that, not even another man sitting that same throne now.
Part of those thoughts were words of others on the matter, dislike some of them though she did. She looked down at the wine in her goblet, largely untouched. A deep dark crimson, sour on the tongue in the Dornish fashion.
"Doran has the right of it," Elia said. "My son cannot sit the Iron Throne as he is. The loyalty Aegon inspires now is not the kind to be relied upon for war, much less overthrowing a king." She nodded at her older brother. "In time, that will change, but not for years yet. I would allow him that much, him and Rhaenys both." A mother's silent selfishness, that, wishing her children would remain that forever, never having to bear the weight of their forebearers and face the dangers inherent in the world.
As for revenge…
Elia felt her own anger bloom anew, a tightness in her throat and chest, a stiffness to every limb. Cool comfort, hard-edged and yet welcoming, swept through her. Justice was impossible, when it was her own word against that of a High Lord who would deny occurrence and then involvement at every turn, but she would leave its consideration to the Gods in any case. No concern of hers, that. But she would not be disregarded. She was the blood of Nymeria, of Dorne and Mother Rhoyne.
She set down her goblet, feeling her own unconscious sneer. She'd lost her taste for the fine vintage. "The Lannisters are not who I seek the first redress from, only their lord. Tywin Lannister sent those men after us, and him I want dead, nothing more. I care naught for credit or acknowledgement or even inflicting pain, much less any satisfaction gained in doing the deed myself. Any way will do, any way at all, as long as he is dead and buried by the end. And then I will raise a toast in homage to a task well done. The rest of his brood can come after."
Oberyn smiled, a vicious smile to match her intentions. "Poison, then? I must tell you of the things I have learned in the East. So many things the Maesters do not know."
From behind his desk, Doran studied them silently, his regard more for her than Oberyn. "It will not be easy," he said eventually. "Tywin Lannister is no fool. Even the most effective poison needs to be slipped into food or drink first and the staff at Casterly Rock is undoubtedly picked carefully."
"I have patience aplenty."
They continued for some time, turned to other issues. Discussing this opportunity or that, imagining a split in loyalties here, a splintering of long friendships there. Importantly, then came the issue of reactions, from the crown and all the others, to her and her children's dwelling in Dorne, out of reach.
The most extreme of those reactions was disregarded quickly, a confidence borne in the tallies of history. The Targaryens had tried, many times, with a more united realm and even dragons, and never succeeded in the end. But before that point was reached, there was an easier way.
Denial.
Even the King could not force the Prince of Dorne into everything, and if he tried anyway his own lords would betray him before long. A dangerous game to play, making that limitation so plain for everyone, but a game still. And Elia had no compunctions about twisting this new monarch's nose.
Time would tell how much offence he took.
The next day they rode out south-west along the coast, following Dagger Bay inland on the well-travelled, cobbled road that split into two not far from Sunspear – one winding directly south towards the Water Gardens while the other led out from the small peninsula towards the heart of Dorne.
Vital though Ser Naruto's talents might turn out to be, the struggle for water was not equally distributed across her homeland. The Greenblood, and the Vaith and Scourge that joined to feed it, made for bountiful, arable land for miles along its shores, as did the coasts with their small estuaries and the mountains and the springs found within them. It was the land between those places, and often the tracks and paths meant to connect them that were truly cause for concern. And beyond even them the lands of deep sands the Maesters simply called the Dornish Desert.
A trip like that would have to wait for another time. This one intended only demonstration, and through that, convincing, and for such a task, a dried up well and the abandoned caravan track north to Ghost Hill that had relied on its succour would do just as well.
After a night at Spottswood to rest and resupply, their company reached its goal by noon the second day.
A hillock rose, flattened, and fell again just as quickly, allowing a view of the shallow basin behind it that contained the circular construction of stone, with a broad awning overtop to protect from the heat of the sun by day. For all that effort, it had not made a difference for this well. Wells further west, away from coast or rivers, were sometimes built into underground caverns, as was done with many castles, to keep the construction and the precious water it supplied even safer, but even that would only go so far.
Doran stopped his horse with a touch of the reins at the end of the ascent, bringing their company to a halt. "I believe this should do."
Naruto took in their surroundings with a critical, roving eye, the only part of him visible above the veil that protected against the harsh winds. They were far enough from the coast now for the heat to be dryer, no matter autumn's coming, and even rocky plains carried plenty of material for the wind to sting with, especially while riding.
He dismounted and headed down the road to the well without another word. Arrived, he looked down into its deep, dry depths, took another measure of the surrounding earth – rocky and filmed in sand with hardy shrubs and dry grasses growing in greenish-brown clusters – before turning back to face them and giving an assenting nod.
Then he sat, legs crossed, and hands gathered in his lap, still as any statue carved. It even looked like he had stopped breathing.
Elia shared a look with both her brothers. Even hidden behind yellow and orange silk, she could see Oberyn's amusement rising. The slightest of nudges and he was riding down into the basin as well, leaving her and Doran mounted at the top of the hillock, their tail of Martell guardsmen waiting for orders.
Her younger brother reined up beside Ser Naruto and unheard words passed between the two. Barely a few sentences had been exchanged before Oberyn turned his sand steed around again and came riding back up the hillock.
"It will take a while yet, he claims." Oberyn's amusement was as clear as his doubt.
Doran gave the order to prepare camp.
They had watched and waited for perhaps half an hour before Elia decided enough was enough. There was nothing to witness here, at least not yet, and if she had to wait, she would rather it be in some semblance of comfort.
A simple pavilion was quickly assembled while the other men escaped to the shade under the sunpoles they had brought on this outing.
The afternoon was waning by the time the tent flap was lifted and a Martell guard stepped into the entrance way. The gangly man managed an interesting blend of nervousness and confusion as he bowed his head and clearly began ordering his words.
Elia noted the carved seashell pinned to his chest and wondered how long it would take before the Matrons of the Greenblood would hear of all that had transpired here today. Considering Nymeria's own secret talents, the Orphans as a whole would be quickly invested into all that occurred.
"Pardons, my Prince. Orders were to report once anything had changed."
Doran waved the man on, wiping the juice of a blood orange from his fingers. "What has happened, then?"
"He's… That is, Ser Naruto, he… He's jumped into the well." The guard gave a helpless shrug. "He was suddenly standing, though nothing had changed, and then he looked in and jumped." Another shrug and the man scratched at his forehead, while Oberyn snorted into his goblet. "I looked down and saw him moving down there, inspecting the bed or some such, but—"
Before the guardsman could voice any more of his troubles, the tent flap opened again just behind him, revealing aforementioned well-jumper.
Ser Naruto brushed past the man without fanfare or words, unpinning his veil and pulling the silk covering from his head. His skin glistened with sweat, the blonde hair plastered tightly against his skull, and the signs of fatigue were written into every heat-deepened line of his face.
A few paces to a small table and he was quaffing a cup of water, and then another. After the fourth he stopped and poured himself a thimble of wine instead that he sipped more languidly, turning to face them. More weary than truly exhausted, now. "It's done."
Areo Hotah, who had followed Ser Naruto into the tent, stood at the entrance now, his longaxe braced against the ground and held out to the side in a relaxed grip while he watched the man attentively. The lanky Martell guard had been dismissed with a motion of Doran's hand, and to Elia's eyes, rather gladly ceded any responsibility involved with being part of this meeting to the tall, scarred Norvoshi in his copper scales and yellow sandsilks.
"Truly?" Oberyn asked with a half-smile, one dark eyebrow raised. "You look rather too dry for that."
"I've found the water already, bringing it up for you to see won't take much more now." A one-shouldered shrug. "But I know nothing of wells. If you want this one to last more than a few weeks after I have done that, you'll still need well-sinkers and wrights and whoever else. Coaxing water to the surface might just make it dry out again."
"But you could do so?" Doran asked intently, voice quiet but heard all the same.
The foreign man met her brother's gaze and dipped his head. "Yes."
Doran nodded in turn and stood. "I wish to see it."
Ser Naruto frowned for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and downed the last of the wine he had poured himself. "If you want to. It's a bit cramped down there."
"I will make do."
They left the tent together, her brother's Norvoshi only a step behind. To see about having the Prince of Dorne lowered into a dry well shaft in the middle of some unnamed basin of arid, rocky ground north of Spottswood.
Oberyn stood next to her, highly amused. "Shall we go see our brother climb down a well, then?"
When her elder brother was helped from the well again some time later, Ser Naruto pulling himself over the edge just behind him, there was something different about Doran, beyond even the wet stains marking his robes at the hem. He said nothing to anyone, only turning the regard the other man silently.
Elia knew immediately that words had been exchanged in those depths, permitted to no one else.
No surprise then, that when they shook hands, the true significance of that gesture escaped her.
I hope you enjoyed chapter 51. The delay turned out way longer than I anticipated, but life kind of got in the way.
Should I not have mentioned it before this, Dorien is an original character. Many characters though there are in the show and especially the books, the parts of the world I intend to focus and expand on more seriously in part three are unfortunately rather untouched by George and so necessitate some new faces in the crowds. More are (hopefully) soon to come.
Considering what we know about Doran and Oberyn, the Martell siblings certainly seem like the type to scheme together, laying a lot of things bare to each other that they might not share with outsiders. Doran's wife Mellario of Norvos, for example, is still in Sunspear at this point, since Quentyn wouldn't be fostered with the Yronwood's until he is a page's age at least, which is what drives the final rift between those two. That is still a few years away at this point.
The Bloodroyal is the title of the Head of House Yronwood, a relic of being High Kings of Dorne, if anyone didn't know. They are roughly equivalent to House Bolton with House Stark in their relationship to the Martells: as in they are seen as second-strongest and have chosen different sides before. The Orphans of the Green Blood are the remnants of Rhoynar faith and culture in Dorne that retain a sense of independence, unlike the more general mixing that took place among the rest. The Matrons are my own name for whatever kind of exact leadership/priesthood they would undoubtedly have.
There are a few maps of Westeros out there, but even those that are included in the version of the books I own does not display all the bigger lordships and their seats. Spottswood is likely much closer to Sunspear than where it is sometimes placed on the northeastern shore.
As always thanks for reading and reviewing. Until next time.