The Rhoynar believed that the world, as they knew it, began amidst calamity.
When the Age of Gods came crashing down, a kindly Goddess, one of hundreds, fled the heavens above, seeking refuge on the earth below. The Darkness, however, was rapacious – hidden in a sanctified grove, the Goddess watched, and wept, as Night fell upon the land, and the prostrate masses cried for deliverance.
Her powers paled to the hideous evil arrayed against the good, the just, the living. She was a minor deity, a celestial afterthought, no prayers or temples in her name, and weakened further still by the ongoing collapse.
Herself, or humanity, she'd only the strength to save one.
The Goddess trembled in fear, but her compassion burned the brighter.
So she plunged a dagger deep into her breast, sawing from end to end; falling lifeless, her blood turned to water, veins to creek beds, skin and hair to soil and grass. Her sacrifice birthed a river, strong and smooth, clean and bright, a sanctuary free from the Darkness and its terrors.
As Night raged on, the scattered remnants of a hundred fallen nations sheltered along its banks – until, at last, the morning sun glimmered over the horizon.
That's the story, anyways.
Whatever the case, it's hard to overstate just how central the river Rhoyne was to the Rhoynar way of life. Every facet, every angle, every verse – everything – in some way hinged on the 'Mother.'
Hell, they named themselves after it.
Beyond the river proper, though (as if it wasn't enough), this reverence also extended to the wider landscape, taken in its totality, and the manifold species that dwelled there.
Most dramatic, doubtlessly, was their worship of the giant snapping turtles, poetically known as the 'Old Men of the River.' Savage things, barbed horns and crooked beaks, surviving scriptures extoll them as the erstwhile Goddess' heavenly consorts (or fragments of a consort, singular – time has stripped away much of the finer nuance), reborn in earthly flesh. It follows, then, that the Rhoynar attended them scrupulously, obsessively, exhaustively, affording them the highest honors and utmost courtesy.
Put simply, these turtles were at once beloved pets, venerated elders, and adulated idols – just about as celebrated as anything could be.
And in 951 BC, the idiot son of a Valyrian nabob decided to go on a hunt.
Later depictions invariably succumb to the temptation of animal metaphor – a black-scaled dragon, spittle and flame, crushing the turtle between its jaws, or gnawing the poor thing's throat out, or roasting it alive within its own shell, Valyrian brutality pit against Rhoynar sagacity. Period accounts, meanwhile, are decidedly (deliberately, mayhaps) sparse on the incident's details, with no specific references to most anything, really, other than the fact a turtle was killed.
Personally, given the culprit's standing – a provincial notable, a big fish in a small pond, a cousin of a cousin, branch of a branch, theoretically related to the third son of an actual dragonlord somewhere through the distaff side – I suspect he went about the deed in much the same way you'd try for an elephant: with a long spear, firm grip, and several dozen of your closest friends.
Regardless, had the idiot kept things quiet, perhaps the whole affair would've gone unnoticed, or at least unsolved, and he'd have enjoyed a long, fruitful life of genteel foppery.
But he just had to brag.
Parading his kill through the streets of Volon Therys (a semi-independent colony of Volantis, itself a colony of Valyria), the idiot nailed the carcass to the rostrum, all but proclaiming himself conqueror of the Rhoyne, then divvied up its meat at a grand public feast, commemorative trinkets fashioned from its bones.
Incensed, Sar Mell, the nearest Rhoynar city-state, demanded the idiot's head, and answered the inevitable refusal with a declaration of war, armies soon clashing up and down adjoining floodplains. By the third week's close, eager for a victory before the Freehold proper took notice, the Rhoynish hydromancers called upon their Mother – storm clouds swirling, the waters swelled, and half of Volon Therys was swept off into oblivion.
The river-worshipers won decisively, the idiot paid dearly for his transgression (accounts differ), and the colony was crippled for generations to come; but the First Turtle War, as it came to be called, ultimately spelled the doom of the Rhoynar civilization.
It gave the Valyrians a reason.
The War of Three Princes, the War on Dagger Lake, the Second and Third Turtle, Fisherman's, Salt, and Spice – each new decade brought with it another casus belli, another grand offensive, another terrible atrocity. And each time, the Valyrians pushed that much farther, inflicted that much more destruction, and emerged that much more victorious.
By the turn of the seventh century, only 5 of the classical 13 Rhoyne principalities remained.
The Second Spice War began when the Triarchs of Volantis somehow convinced a trio of teenage dragonlords, youthful scions of the capital's preeminent houses, to join them in the destruction of their longtime rival, Sarhoy: the last – and greatest – Rhoynar port on the Summer Sea, steep in decline, as vulnerable as it ever had been.
They weren't even bothering with pretense anymore.
One bright summer day, unexpected, undeclared, the Volantenes stormed the city, put the men to sword, had their way with the women, clapped the children in chains; dragons circling above, baggage flush with booty, they set the streets aflame, blasted the locks of the canals, then salted the smoking ruins so that, in the words of Maester Yandel, "Sarhoy might never rise again."
While those around him lost themselves to hysteria, frantically preparing their exiles – "Sarhoy first," they cried, "our homes next!" – Prince Garin of Chroyane dug in his heels, leveraging every favor and leaning on every connection, and per ancient custom called a summit; delegates from all cities, all towns, all distant colonies and far-flung outposts – all places where the Rhoynar nation still endured – soon amassed on the shores of a sacred lagoon.
Standing before the collective leadership of his race, normally so absorbed in their own petty squabbles, the Prince roused them to action – "Fight, he exhorted, "while we still have the strength to do so! Avenge our countrymen, dear comrades, wash away the stink of sulfur! Fight, fight, for freedom, for glory! Even a dragon may be brought low!"
(That speech – the words, that is to say – was invented whole cloth by later historians, but I like to think there's a certain gravitas to it.)
Amidst uproarious chanting and applause, Nymeria of Ny Sar shook her head, gathering her attendants as she withdrew to her barge. "This is a war we cannot hope to win," she said, but her caution was drowned by the cheers.
The united Rhoynar scraped together a host a quarter-million strong, thrusting a spear into the hands of every man from 16 to 60, and any woman who happened to pass as such. Under Garin's leadership, this haphazard force charged down the Rhoyne, capturing Selhorys, then Valysar, and then Volon Therys, all in the space of a month. For this, they hailed their commander the 'Great,' before converging upon Volantis itself; where, on the plains just outside the walls, they enveloped and annihilated some hundred thousand of the city's finest, their hydromancers plucking that trio of dragonlords from the skies – one managed to hack his way to safety, but howling mobs of infantry dragged the other two from their saddles, then impaled their beaten bodies on the top of a nearby hill.
Now that it touched some of their own, the Freehold proper finally took notice.
Two nights later, victory celebrations still raging down below, more than three hundred dragons, the most to take the field since the days of old Ghis, blotted out the stars, and the might of Valyria's forty families set upon the Rhoynar encampment.
Come the dawn, of the sum of Garin's host, only several dozen remained – the standout prizes, the 'choicest cuts,' among them the shellshocked Prince himself.
With a token force of some thousand-odd Volantenes bringing up the rear, the dragons flew North, torching everything that crossed their path and torturing their captives every step of the way, a tribute to the memory of those 'poor, murdered boys.' Upon reaching Chroyane, they stuck Garin in a golden cage (a literary reference, apparently), and hung it from the top of the city's tallest spire, the perfect perch from which to behold its downfall.
"A place of honor for His Highness!" they supposedly taunted. "Enjoy the welcome party!"
With his people's cries piercing through the flames, Garin's thoughts turned to the Mother.
He drew the shiv that he'd hidden in his boot.
What actually happened next, the mechanics of Garin's Curse, as it came to be called, remains something of a mystery – no one survived to testify. Some posit that the river reared up like a cobra, and swallowed the marauding Valyrians whole. Others envision a noxious cloud, "full of evil humors," inflicting greyscale on whoever it touched. Raging storms, vengeful dead, the theories run the gamut from mundane to absurd – magic on this scale, you can't rule anything out.
And if you put any stock in folklore, the dragonlords are still there, trapped beneath the water, grasping for warmth they'll never find, cold breath rising to fog.
Clicking his tongue, Ed scrutinized the time-worn dragon bones crumpled amidst the waterlogged rubble.
"They really were cunts, weren't they?"
Brynden took a second, eyes narrowed in befuddlement, then turned to face the Ironman.
"Your lot's hardly better."
For as much as Lord Bloodraven had styled himself a First Man, it was his Targaryen half with which he'd always, in his heart, truly identified – the blood of the dragon ran hot and thick.
Ed scoffed. "We've standards. Milk the beast, don't butcher it."
The girl raised a brow. "You're parasites, then."
Shaking his head, Ed gave her his full attention. "Predators." A finger pointed for emphasis. "Predators. Just … selective, is all."
"Vultures," Brynden declared, "bludgeoning each other for a pair of shoes – calling that a culture, then inflicting it on the rest of us."
Ed pursed his lips. "And what were the Valyrians, but the world's greatest reavers?" He gestured all around him. "What do you call this, eh?"
"Wasteful," I answered.
Chroyane was once known as the 'Festival City' – a place of flowers and ivy, pink marble and gold leaf, tinkling fountains and teeming gardens, jubilant crowds dancing down the boulevard, air thick with music and perfume.
Now, the statues lie toppled, the columns smashed, domes crumbling; with damp grey moss enshrouding melted stone, broken spires and roofless towers thrust blindly through the pea-soup fog, as the half-collapsed skeletons of gilded palaces silently moldered in the gloom.
'Babylon is fallen … '
Filmy brine rippling across the bow, our boat crept between the ruined piers of a monumental viaduct, the erstwhile 'Bridge of Dream,' long since shattered and sunken.
Bit too on the nose, if you ask me.
Beacon lamps had been strung along the remnants of its fluted arches (kept alight by an honor system, for as much as such a thing was possible in Essos), warning passing mariners of the chunks of debris skulking beneath the surface, and the 'stone men' – feral, deformed, late-stage victims of greyscale – who lurked amongst the wreckage; these stone-skinned apparitions in soiled linen shrouds watched lifeless, unmoving, unblinking, as we sailed through the fallen city.
Reduced to little more than animals, the afflicted were notorious for their rabid aggression; in fact, some scholars theorize that, to further spread itself, the malady induces a sort of bestial drive to violence, and perhaps that's even true, on some biological level – but there was clearly more to it than that. Dragonscale is a magical disease, after all.
The magic here, the energy, the essence, scorched by Valyrian dragonfire, then drowned in Garin's enmity, no longer bore any structure, say nothing of animating will; it was shapeless, shattered, but still saturated the water, the wind, every brick and every stone, a phantom haunting Chroyane's corpse, even after a millennium.
It reminded me of the Weirwoods, really – a holdover, an anachronism, one last gasp of the Age of Heroes, of the world before the rot, of a like may never seen again. At Chroyane, along the Rhoyne, some flavor of magic – as uncorrupted as it could be – eked out a second chance, or at least a vestigial rump, but man's inhumanity to man had, as always, proved insatiable.
If those trees were an archive, then this city was a tomb.
An arm propped against my hip, the other leaning on a bulwark, I shot a prying glance at a much too ruminative Thoros.
"I don't suppose you've something to add?"
Blinking, the priest gave a tentative chuckle, fidgetly scratching his cheek.
" … May the departed find peace."
A snort.
"Call yourself a preacher?" I gesticulated. "C'mon, put some brimstone into it."
Thoros wrung his hands, gaze flicking down at the deck boards. "That is all there is to say."
Crossing my arms, I leaned my arse against the railing. "I've never known a man of god to be so indifferent."
Watching the ruins roll by, he took a moment to gather his words. "What happened here was a tragedy, truly. But … " A breath through pursed lips. "Man's quarrels are man's concern. Not the Lord's," he finished lamely.
"Awfully callous."
(As if I had room to talk.)
He swallowed. "The fight against the Other is the only one that matters."
"And do you really believe that?"
If Thoros had an answer, he elected not to share it – elbows on his knees, bags under his eyes, he instead gave me a look, then slumped back into his navel-gazing.
R'hllor, the silent spectator, evidently cared not a whit.
We continued our journey downriver, and as the stone husks of the Sorrows shrank into the distance, fetid swamp gradually yielded to sunbaked desert – scraggly bunchgrass and desiccated treestumps, barren saltpans and leathery mudcracks, hellishly hot and unbearably stale, the land itself bled dry.
The Lower Rhoyne, the "cyvasse board of empires," wasn't urbanized per se (far too depopulated for that); but enough settlements had, at one time or another,occupied that stretch to call it well-developed, if since reclaimed by the wilds. Huddled on the riverside, the towns and hamlets that we passed along the way – Selhorys, Valysar, Volon Therys … – were pitiable things: tired, dilapidated, half-abandoned, browbeaten middlemen in the singular service of the region's biggest stick, busier and busier the further we traveled south – the closer we neared their hegemon.
"Any advice, Lord Commander?"
"No." Her frown deepened. "This is my first time."
I hummed. "Not even through your birds?"
"Too much interference," she distractedly muttered – then, a grimace. "Not worth visiting, anyways."
There, in the distance, at the brackish confluence of the river and the sea, loomed the Freehold's First Daughter.
Volantis.
What a shithole.