Fic: A Year from Now (32/33)
Title: A Year from Now (32/33)
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Quaithe, Pyat Pree, Tyrion Lannister, Aegon Targaryen, Barristan Selmy, Jhogo
Ratings & Warnings: R for violence and gore
Format & Word Count: WIP, 4529 words
Summary: "Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.” Dany takes Ser Jorah's advice, setting her unborn child, her unhatched dragons, her quest for the Iron Throne, and her relationship with her faithful knight on a very different, but no less adventurous path.
Chapter Summary: At the House of the Undying, Dany learns who her captive--and her child--really are, and what that will mean for her conquest.
Author's Note: I know I thank her with each and every update, but this time I really can't express just how fantastic a beta just-a-dram has been. She's been helping me plot this chapter for months now, even as the rest of the story unfolded around it, and put up with a lot of wibbling and whining from me when I actually got down to writing it. She's a true gem and I can't thank her enough. Also many thanks and squees to polkadotsnplaid for the shiny new AYFN-inspired graphic! And to all of you, my readers, who have made it this far with Dany and Jorah and me. Not much further to go now, though quite a bit will happen before we get there. Take a deep breath…
Previous Chapters |
32. The Undying Ones
"This is madness."
As Dany stepped out from the sheltering black-barked, blue-leaved trees and into the clearing where the House of the Undying stood, Jorah caught her round the wrist and drew her back alongside him. Instinctively she tried to pull away from him, but one look at the grey ruin was enough to remind her of how he had been trapped within the crumbling façade and the nightmare visions housed there, of how she had rescued him from it only for him to lay for weeks in the relentless hold of troubled sleep, and she surrendered to the grip of his fingers.
She did not, however, concede to his opinion. "Madness, Jorah? When I asked before if you thought I was mad, you told me I was not. Or was that a gallant lie told to appease your lady wife?"
The muscle beneath Jorah's cheekbone twitched as he spoke through gritted teeth. "You are not mad, Daenerys, but this plan…"
"It's half-baked," Tyrion Lannister finished for him--insolently, though he made Dany a slight bow. "Your Grace."
"Aye. That is my thought as well," Jorah said, and before she could argue, he went on, "We are but two knights--" This with a glance at Ser Barristan Selmy, astride his horse ahead of Khal Jhogo and his bloodriders who guarded the boy Griff. "--and four Dothraki warriors."
"And a dwarf who's a dab hand with battleaxe and crossbow, if only you saw fit to give me one or the other. I see you've allowed Ser Barristan a sword."
"Even if we had the whole twenty thousand of Khal Jhogo's riders," Jorah went on, ignoring the Imp, "I am not certain they would be a match against the warlocks, let alone we six."
"Seven," Tyrion interjected.
"We don't know what they are capable of," Jorah said.
Dany let out her breath slowly through her nose. "Which is precisely why I'm not setting you six against them. Though I'm tempted to revise my plan and send in the dwarf with his axe."
She expected to see Tyrion's cheeky grin, but instead his weird gaze fixed on her with all appropriate gravity due the situation.
"Your current plan to send Griff in and let him prove whether he really is Ageon or perish is very tidy and convenient for you," he said. "But even if he does bear up against the sorcery better than Ser Jorah did, you will have two unhatched eggs, while Pyat Pree will have had time to capture Drogon."
Jorah's eyes flicked from Dany's to scan what little of the pinky violet dawn sky was visible through the canopy of blue leaves. "I say our first priority is to find the beast--"
"Drogon is my child."
"Your child," Jorah said, tearing his gaze from overhead, "who burned the Temple of Memory and carried off the sacrifices for his supper."
Dany couldn't resist the tug of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "I remember you scoffed at the sacrificial altar when Xaro showed us the city before. Perhaps that is where Drogon learned his contempt for religion."
Tyrion snorted. "Do you foster any fatherless creature that comes your way, Ser Ber?"
"Quiet, Imp."
"I will not abandon the other two." Dany's smile faltered as her heart, heavy as a stone, seemed to drop into her stomach. "I cannot."
"What about Rhaego?" Jorah asked.
His gauntleted hand settled even heavier on her shoulder, turning her to face him. She stared at the toes of her sturdy Dothraki riding sandals, unwilling to meet Jorah's gaze, lest he sway her with his.
"What if we should die here today?" he went on. "He is your child, too, and unlike the dragons, will feel what it is to be an orphan. Think of him, Daenerys." His other hand settled for an instant on her hip before his fingertips skimmed over her belly. "Think of our babe."
Her head snapped up. "They are all I think of. If I am to give them a kingdom--"
"What about a life?" Both his big hands curled around her slight shoulders now, gripping hard; he gave her a little shake, but she stood firm, her chest swelling with the ire that roiled in her breast.
"Yes, Jorah--life. For the child in my womb and the child I have borne and for the dragons I have and will hatch--all five of them. Pyat Pree!" she shouted, and as Jorah's hands fell away from her shoulders, his right hand unsheathing his greatsword, she strode toward the House of the Undying. "It is I, Daenerys Targaryen, called Stormborn, and Mother of Dragons! I have returned--"
She was cut off by a rippling in the wood. At first she thought was the wind raking its fingers through the treetops, but then she realized the morn was as still as the moment before a storm, and that the sound had swelled to the pitch of a human voice, laughing. Instantly she recognized the laughter as Pyat Pree's, though she could not see the warlock anywhere; the blue leaves clinging to their branches shuddered exactly as she remembered his blue lips doing when they contorted into his mocking smile.
"Mother of only one dragon, I think, Daenerys."
"He's got a point," said Tyrion.
Glowering at Tyrion because Pyat Pree was nowhere to be seen, she repeated, "I have returned to reclaim what you've stolen from me!"
"And what do you offer in return, Dragon Queen?"
The leaves ceased their shivering, though a chill coursed down Dany's spine in the silence that ensued, so complete that it made her question whether it had ever been broken at all…whether Pyat Pree's voice had existed only in her imagination…whether she had, indeed, gone mad.
Perhaps I am mad, she thought, at the same instant as she heard her own voice utter, "If you will let this boy seek my two eggs…" Out the corner of her eye, she saw her own hand raise and her beckon Khal Jhogo to bring forth Griff, his hands bound before him though he came along willingly enough--had done, in fact, since their altercation on Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge. "…then I will not trouble yours as they search for my dragon."
"An intriguing proposition." The warlock's voice seemed to sound from close by now, though whether to her right or to her left, before her or behind, Dany could not say. She kept her eyes trained on the House of the Undying, as if Pyat Pree were standing on the crumbling stoop. "What if we should both succeed?"
"Make no bargains with this trickster," Jorah said, his voice low--as if he thought it out of hearing of the unseen warlock. His gloved fingertips grazed Dany's elbow as she marched forward, beyond his reach. "Daenerys--"
"Then you shall have a grown dragon," she answered Pyat Pree, "and I shall have two unhatched eggs."
She would have sworn she saw smiling blue lips as the warlock's voice filled the wood.
"And if I should succeed before you do?"
Dany swallowed, hard. "Then Drogon and his unborn brothers shall be yours."
"No." Leaves crackled beneath Jorah's boots as his long, swift strides carried him at once to her side. "I will not stand by and watch you agree to this folly."
"Folly now, is it?" She turned to him, a wry smile twisting her mouth. "I suppose I would prefer to be a fool than a madwoman."
"Daenerys," Jorah said through his teeth.
She touched her fingertips to his lips. "Peace, my fierce bear. Drogon will answer no call but his mother's. Trust me."
For a moment his eyes burned into her, and she felt his lips part in argument, but then, with a slight nod of his head, he drew back from her, standing guard over her right shoulder, sword at the ready.
"Unbind him," she bid Jhogo, and she heard the snick of his arakh as it cut the ropes about Griff's wrists. "Are you ready to learn what blood flows through your veins?"
"As ready as you are." His lilac eyes met hers, and Dany felt that she had looked into a mirror, or into the past, or into the eyes of a ghost.
At once she averted her gaze, and was almost relieved to see Quaithe's red lacquered mask at Griff's shoulder, to have the red priestess' trickery on which to lay blame for the disturbing comparison.
"Why have you come, Quaithe of Asshai?"
Seemingly from nowhere, and without moving, the priestess procured a phial of liquid the color of the trees.
"Shade of the Evening," she told Griff. "To open your mind to the truths inside."
Dany steeled her body against a shiver that rippled down her spine at the eerie similarity of the present scene to the one that had played out when last she stood here, when she'd sent Jorah into the House of the Undying to rescue her other babe from his kidnapper.
"Blue lips tell lies," she said, as he had then. "Though perhaps that is apt for one who makes so audacious a claim as to be Prince Rhaegar's son."
The taunt did not break Griff's wary gaze from the phial, and to Dany's greater surprise, Jorah said, "Drink it, lad." He went on, in tones that were gruff, but not unkind, "I have oft wondered whether my errand here would have been more successful had I done. Or my sleep easier."
Without hesitation Griff tilted his head back and swallowed the Shade of the Evening. When he'd emptied the phial, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, but even so his lips retained the indigo stain. As Quaithe gave him further instruction for how to proceed through the warlocks' lair, his eyes fixed on Dany; she was relieved to see that they reflected the deep hue of his lips rather than their usual Targaryen color.
A glance up at Jorah showed his eyes to hold a more worried expression than Dany felt was justified as he watched Griff stride into the House of the Undying.
"You think I should not have sent him," she said. "Do you believe he truly is Rhaegar's heir?"
Though Jorah hesitated for only the briefest of moments, it was long enough for anger to flicker to life in Dany's breast, even before he answered.
"I believe the halls of that place are for no man to tread but a warlock."
"He is no man. He is an arrogant, insolent boy who has shown naught but contempt for me. And even more for you, I would remind you, Jorah."
"When you sit the Iron Throne, do you intend to punish every show of insolence and contempt made against you and yours? I had thought you took more after your brother, but when Aerys knew he'd lost the war he preferred to burn the kingdom rather than let another have it--"
She interrupted him with a blow so hard across the cheek that a patch of dark red erupted on his skin before she had even withdrawn her hand. As the crack, which had rung out in the silent wood, was swallowed up by a sudden rush of wind through the branches, she noticed that everyone around them, not only Quaithe in her priestly vestments, was tinted red. And not from the dawn--of that she was certain even before the shriek above the canopy heralded Drogon's arrival.
"Griff had best hurry and find those eggs," said Tyrion, "because it seems to me Pyat Pree won't have to look very long to find the dragon."
"And it won't be long before Drogon roasts a dwarf!" Jorah shoved Tyrion hard out of the way at the same moment as his callused fingers closed tight around Dany's wrist, pulling her aside just as the black serpentine form blasted down through the trees in a wreath of flame.
"COVER!" Jorah bellowed to the other men beneath the burning canopy of trees who were struggling to keep control of the horses which had instantly gone mad with fear.
Dany was herself transfixed, though for an entirely different reason than her bloodriders and Ser Barristan. She marveled at the span of Drogon's leathern wings--as long as Jhogo's horse from head to hind, and he was not yet full-grown. In the dawn the undersides of them were as red as the blood gleaming on his fangs and the lust for more of it that shone in his eyes, red as the fire that poured from his yawning maw--and surely as hot, too; how she wished she could leap onto his back and ride him now, swifter than she had flown even astride her little silver mare across the Dothraki Sea, and feel the heat of him all through her as she had the night she had birthed him in flame.
And by the gods, the strength of him… The beat of those wings was nearly enough to make her falter where she stood. Drogon seemed a god himself, his power reaching over the very seasons. Embers that had once been blue leaves swirled around in the wind of his wings like swarms of fireflies in summer, before burning out and falling to the earth as if autumn had come on suddenly, settling as ashes on the ground, white and delicate as the first fresh snow. Winter is Coming were the words of House Stark--but Dragons are Coming would be more apt a warning.
How magnificent my conquest will be! Dany looked around, dazzled and dizzy, her heart thundering in her breast like a Dothraki horde. How beautiful! Drogon is beautiful…He is my child!
"DANY, MOVE!" Jorah jerked her backward so forcefully that her wrist burned from the friction of his rough skin against hers; the socket of her shoulder was on fire, too. Drogon dived, his reptilian eyes focused to pinpricks of blood in his black face as he aimed his fire at some unseen prey.
A shriek of human agony wailed above the screams of the horses and the dragon's battlesong, and the stench of burnt flesh, the blood drained from Dany's face.
"DROGON, NO!"
He paid no heed to her command as she uttered it in High Valyrian, nor when she pronounced it again in the Common Tongue of Westeros, nor to her third desperate attempt in the guttural tones of the Dothraki. She thought she even saw an expression like spite in the twist of his mouth and the gleam of his eye as it met hers and he caught the burning charred blue-robed figure in his talons and soared upward again.
"No harm, Your Grace," Tyrion's drawl filled her ears as Jorah dragged her beneath the dubious shelter of the derelict portico of the House of the Undying. "It was only Pyat Pree. Only I'm not certain whether Prince Drogon demonstrates impeccable taste, or an unrefined palate."
"Indiscriminate, I think," said Jorah, coughing from the smoke that snaked around the burning trees. "Look."
He pointed with a sooty hand as Drogon plunged through the foliage again. His claws were empty of Pyat Pree, but Dany saw a limb dangling from his mouth for a moment before he breathed a fire that engulfed Makho, who would not abandon his terrified horse to save himself.
"The next person who japes will not long have a tongue to laugh with," Dany snarled over her shoulder at the men, though she knew Jorah had not been joking. "This is no mummer's farce for our entertainment."
Nor was it magnificent or beautiful as it had seemed to her just a few moments before. Pyat Pree may have deserved such a death, but Makho had been brother to Rakharo, and the blood of her blood before her escape necessitated his death.
Drogon was indiscriminate, as Jorah had said. The innocent and the guilty alike would burn in agony when she took him and his brothers to King's Landing; the city would reek of their blood mingled with the incense from the Great Sept of Baelor as it smoldered like the Temple of Memory had in Qarth.
Unless she controlled him.
Jorah's fingers had slackened around her wrist; Dany vaulted off the steps, heedless of her husband's shouts for her to come back and the clatter of his armor as he followed hard on her heels, dodging the burning branches that fell from the trees.
"Jhogo, your whip!"
He tossed it to her without hesitation, and she caught it by the handle. To her right, Jorah dug his heels into the ground to stop himself short of the lash as she unfurled it with a smooth backward swipe of her arm and flick of her wrist that came quite naturally to her, cracking the leather tail against Drogon's flank. As if I come from a line of dragon tamers, she thought, a smirk curling her lip. "DROGON, TO ME!"
He swung his great head toward her. He blinked at her slowly, almost cow-like, and for a heartbeat, Dany believed she had subdued him. Then, as her exhilaration rose again--as if he had timed it perfectly to spite her, a rebellious adolescent child hells bent on exerting his power over his parent--the blood gleam flared in his eye.
Drogon wheeled in the air with a shriek and a beat of his wings and tail that knocked Tyrion off his feet as he waddled across the clearing. Dany could only assume he'd decided the portico was not the safest place after all--a decision which proved wise, despite his tumble, when the dragon unleashed another volley of fire at the House of the Undying.
Dany screamed till her throat was raw, throwing her whip against Drogon's hide with the ferocity of a master against an insubordinate slave, but to no avail. He seemed not to feel the beating at all through his scaly armor--or, if he could, not to mind the pain.
The ruined building poured forth color. Red flames coiled out of the crumbling roof like snakes from underground burrows, while from the door emerged blue figures Dany did not at first recognize as human because not only were their robes and lips that hue, but their entire faces, their hands, and any bits of flesh exposed by their clothing.
"Not so undying after all, these Undying Ones," said Tyrion, coughing.
They watched the stooped and crawling figures, whose indigo skin stretched taut across their bones or sagged from it with their extreme age, escape death by fire only to meet their end at the fang and talons of the dragon.
"But Griff, apparently, is." Tyrion looked at Dany. "Can it be that I know two people who can withstand fire?"
"Or he cannot," Jorah said, "and burns there now. If the sorcery hasn't killed him already. Come--"
"Come," spoke a woman's clear voice in unison with the rasp of Jorah's.
Quaithe.
She stood at the entrance to the House of the Undying, red in the midst of the place where frail blue bodies lay dying or dead, and beckoned to Dany with a red-gloved hand.
"Come and walk the path you have chosen," Quaithe said, and Dany followed-or thought she did.
She felt Jorah's strong hands clamp around her upper arms, pulling her away from the priestess, yet his voice had receded, a muted rumble, like that of the crackling fire, while the warlocks' seat loomed ever closer. As she neared it--or it neared her--the stones crumbled or melted before her, she couldn't be sure which, revealing a maze of corridors and staircases such as she had not expected to be contained within the low long line of its façade.
On either side of her loomed open doorways, and in her mind whispered the instructions Quaithe had given Griff, and Jorah, even longer ago: Many doors may open to you. Go through none but the right one. Though she tried to walk past the first, the room beyond it seemed to yawn wider, like the maw of a ravening animal, devouring her in a single gulp.
Rather than being enveloped in the black warmth of a belly, snow swirled all around her so that everything was whited out. The only color to be found poured from a dozen wounds on the belly of a white wolf who bled the frozen ground red.
Dany moved to leave--she could see the darkened corridor of the House of the Undying on the other side of the dead wolf--but as she picked her way around the corpse, her arms raised to fend off the crows that swooped in to peck at it--she felt the wolf's glassy eyes following her, and saw that from his bloodstained fur protruded a sword.
At once she recognized the blade as Valyrian steel; the pommel had been forged into the shape of an animal's snout. Remembering the promise she'd made to Jorah on their wedding night that someday she would restore Longclaw, his family's sword, to him, she shooed away the crows. But, as her hand closed around the hilt, she realized that the animal was not the bear of House Mormont, after all, but a wolf, and turned aside to continue on her way.
Upon reaching the doorway, however, she was nearly bowled over by an enormous creature with the black shaggy body of a bear and three serpentine heads, one black, one green, and one the colour of fresh cream. Each mouth breathed a flame, and Dany cried out, not for herself, but for the poor dying wolf in the snow.
But when she looked back over her shoulder there was no wolf, nor any crows. Only a host of creatures the likes of which she had never seen, though she had heard of them in the stories Viserys used to delight to tell her, frightening her too much for her to sleep: the walking dead, human and animal alike, and the Others with their bright cold eyes and even brighter, colder blades.
Dany cursed herself for not having pulled the sword from the wolf's belly when she'd had the chance--only Valyrian steel could kill an Other, Viserys had told her. But the three-headed beast reared back on its hind legs, then, and poured its fire down on the fell creatures from Beyond the Wall, as Jorah, whom she had not noticed before, leapt down from the ursine back, wielding the dragonglass dagger she had given him for a wedding present.
He ripped it through the gullet of one Other, then plunged it into the sapphire eye of another. The White Walkers scattered, their icy robes parting like a curtain to reveal the wolf, who while clearly not dead, lingered half a ghost.
Its eyes fixed blearily on Jorah, and the black lips parted to whisper, "Unsheathe Longclaw, my Lord of House Mormont. You are pardoned. You are forgiven."
Dany saw tears in Jorah's eyes as he slowly drew the blade--whose pommel bore a bear's head now--from the bubbling blood of the wolf's belly, and she reached up to wipe them away. His fingers closed around hers, then he pulled her up behind him on the back of the bear dragon, and together they rode through the doorway into a chamber with red stone walls.
The stench of the burning flesh wafted after them into the place so strongly that Dany slipped from the shaggy back of her three-headed mount and retched. When she had emptied the contents of her stomach, she looked up from the pool of vomit on the polished red floor and saw before her the Iron Throne.
Seated on it, of course, was the king. From the tangled mane of silver hair, the yellow, jagged fingernails that curled over the swords that formed the armrests of the throne, and the scabs which made his pale skin resemble burnt parchment, she never would have guessed he was a Targaryen. She knew, however, that he was Aerys, her own lord father. There was no mistaking the madness that burned in his eyes like a wick of violet flame.
But as if it were a candle that had been snuffed out, the life in Aerys' eyes was extinguished as a bloodied blade protruded suddenly through his chest, and his limp body fell before the place where Dany kneeled.
Recoiling, She leapt to her feet, peering up to see Ser Jaime Lannister standing behind the throne. The look on his face was not at all triumphant and arrogant as the one she'd always imagined the Kingslayer would wear--at least not at first. Ser Jaime's features changed as he grew, shifting from undeniable youthful beauty tinged with sadness to something altogether horrible, his arms and legs stretching until he was as large as a giant, no, a mountain…
The Mountain that Rides, Gregor Clegane, tore a mewling newborn babe from his mother's arms and bashed his head against the wall, again and again, until Dany's outstretched hands were coated with the child's blood and bones and brains.
"AEGON!" she screeched, tasting it on her tongue and teeth and running hot and thick down her throat like the horse's heart she'd devoured before the dosh khaleen. "What have I done, by the Seven, WHAT HAVE I DONE? The last living son of my brother! Let me go, I must go to him, I will not burn!"
She struggled against Jorah's arms, which still held her back as he had before the visions came upon her, as if no time at all had passed, though it seemed to her that she had wandered for hours, days, a lifetime in that place. The fire had brought down much of the façade, but there were no corridors before her, no doorways.
Only the silhouette of Aegon Targaryen, a babe no longer, but a man grown, standing firm and resolved and wreathed in flame. Dany could not see his lilac eyes through the haze of smoke, yet she felt she had met them somehow, because she knew what he thought and felt in that moment.
And then he strode out, his clothing all burnt away but his skin and hair so white that he shone. He clutched two eggs in his unburnt hands, one cream and one green, both crackled with glowing yellow lines.
He placed them in Dany's arms, and strangely their weight made her feel that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders, their heat warming a place deep within her that she had not even realized had been cold. Peace stole over her, and Drogon swooped down gently behind her, resting his searing hot muzzle on her shoulder as together they watched his brothers hatch.
"Your children, Daenerys," said Aegon, when Viserion and Rhaegal had emerged from their eggs, Dany having pulled off the broken bits of shells that clung to their scales that shone like jewels. "Queen of Dragons."
"Not queen," she said quietly, and put her newborn children to breast. "Only mother."
Read Chapter 33
Author: MrsTater
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Daenerys Targaryen/Jorah Mormont, Quaithe, Pyat Pree, Tyrion Lannister, Aegon Targaryen, Barristan Selmy, Jhogo
Ratings & Warnings: R for violence and gore
Format & Word Count: WIP, 4529 words
Summary: "Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.” Dany takes Ser Jorah's advice, setting her unborn child, her unhatched dragons, her quest for the Iron Throne, and her relationship with her faithful knight on a very different, but no less adventurous path.
Chapter Summary: At the House of the Undying, Dany learns who her captive--and her child--really are, and what that will mean for her conquest.
Author's Note: I know I thank her with each and every update, but this time I really can't express just how fantastic a beta just-a-dram has been. She's been helping me plot this chapter for months now, even as the rest of the story unfolded around it, and put up with a lot of wibbling and whining from me when I actually got down to writing it. She's a true gem and I can't thank her enough. Also many thanks and squees to polkadotsnplaid for the shiny new AYFN-inspired graphic! And to all of you, my readers, who have made it this far with Dany and Jorah and me. Not much further to go now, though quite a bit will happen before we get there. Take a deep breath…
Previous Chapters |
32. The Undying Ones
"This is madness."
As Dany stepped out from the sheltering black-barked, blue-leaved trees and into the clearing where the House of the Undying stood, Jorah caught her round the wrist and drew her back alongside him. Instinctively she tried to pull away from him, but one look at the grey ruin was enough to remind her of how he had been trapped within the crumbling façade and the nightmare visions housed there, of how she had rescued him from it only for him to lay for weeks in the relentless hold of troubled sleep, and she surrendered to the grip of his fingers.
She did not, however, concede to his opinion. "Madness, Jorah? When I asked before if you thought I was mad, you told me I was not. Or was that a gallant lie told to appease your lady wife?"
The muscle beneath Jorah's cheekbone twitched as he spoke through gritted teeth. "You are not mad, Daenerys, but this plan…"
"It's half-baked," Tyrion Lannister finished for him--insolently, though he made Dany a slight bow. "Your Grace."
"Aye. That is my thought as well," Jorah said, and before she could argue, he went on, "We are but two knights--" This with a glance at Ser Barristan Selmy, astride his horse ahead of Khal Jhogo and his bloodriders who guarded the boy Griff. "--and four Dothraki warriors."
"And a dwarf who's a dab hand with battleaxe and crossbow, if only you saw fit to give me one or the other. I see you've allowed Ser Barristan a sword."
"Even if we had the whole twenty thousand of Khal Jhogo's riders," Jorah went on, ignoring the Imp, "I am not certain they would be a match against the warlocks, let alone we six."
"Seven," Tyrion interjected.
"We don't know what they are capable of," Jorah said.
Dany let out her breath slowly through her nose. "Which is precisely why I'm not setting you six against them. Though I'm tempted to revise my plan and send in the dwarf with his axe."
She expected to see Tyrion's cheeky grin, but instead his weird gaze fixed on her with all appropriate gravity due the situation.
"Your current plan to send Griff in and let him prove whether he really is Ageon or perish is very tidy and convenient for you," he said. "But even if he does bear up against the sorcery better than Ser Jorah did, you will have two unhatched eggs, while Pyat Pree will have had time to capture Drogon."
Jorah's eyes flicked from Dany's to scan what little of the pinky violet dawn sky was visible through the canopy of blue leaves. "I say our first priority is to find the beast--"
"Drogon is my child."
"Your child," Jorah said, tearing his gaze from overhead, "who burned the Temple of Memory and carried off the sacrifices for his supper."
Dany couldn't resist the tug of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "I remember you scoffed at the sacrificial altar when Xaro showed us the city before. Perhaps that is where Drogon learned his contempt for religion."
Tyrion snorted. "Do you foster any fatherless creature that comes your way, Ser Ber?"
"Quiet, Imp."
"I will not abandon the other two." Dany's smile faltered as her heart, heavy as a stone, seemed to drop into her stomach. "I cannot."
"What about Rhaego?" Jorah asked.
His gauntleted hand settled even heavier on her shoulder, turning her to face him. She stared at the toes of her sturdy Dothraki riding sandals, unwilling to meet Jorah's gaze, lest he sway her with his.
"What if we should die here today?" he went on. "He is your child, too, and unlike the dragons, will feel what it is to be an orphan. Think of him, Daenerys." His other hand settled for an instant on her hip before his fingertips skimmed over her belly. "Think of our babe."
Her head snapped up. "They are all I think of. If I am to give them a kingdom--"
"What about a life?" Both his big hands curled around her slight shoulders now, gripping hard; he gave her a little shake, but she stood firm, her chest swelling with the ire that roiled in her breast.
"Yes, Jorah--life. For the child in my womb and the child I have borne and for the dragons I have and will hatch--all five of them. Pyat Pree!" she shouted, and as Jorah's hands fell away from her shoulders, his right hand unsheathing his greatsword, she strode toward the House of the Undying. "It is I, Daenerys Targaryen, called Stormborn, and Mother of Dragons! I have returned--"
She was cut off by a rippling in the wood. At first she thought was the wind raking its fingers through the treetops, but then she realized the morn was as still as the moment before a storm, and that the sound had swelled to the pitch of a human voice, laughing. Instantly she recognized the laughter as Pyat Pree's, though she could not see the warlock anywhere; the blue leaves clinging to their branches shuddered exactly as she remembered his blue lips doing when they contorted into his mocking smile.
"Mother of only one dragon, I think, Daenerys."
"He's got a point," said Tyrion.
Glowering at Tyrion because Pyat Pree was nowhere to be seen, she repeated, "I have returned to reclaim what you've stolen from me!"
"And what do you offer in return, Dragon Queen?"
The leaves ceased their shivering, though a chill coursed down Dany's spine in the silence that ensued, so complete that it made her question whether it had ever been broken at all…whether Pyat Pree's voice had existed only in her imagination…whether she had, indeed, gone mad.
Perhaps I am mad, she thought, at the same instant as she heard her own voice utter, "If you will let this boy seek my two eggs…" Out the corner of her eye, she saw her own hand raise and her beckon Khal Jhogo to bring forth Griff, his hands bound before him though he came along willingly enough--had done, in fact, since their altercation on Xaro Xhoan Daxos' pleasure barge. "…then I will not trouble yours as they search for my dragon."
"An intriguing proposition." The warlock's voice seemed to sound from close by now, though whether to her right or to her left, before her or behind, Dany could not say. She kept her eyes trained on the House of the Undying, as if Pyat Pree were standing on the crumbling stoop. "What if we should both succeed?"
"Make no bargains with this trickster," Jorah said, his voice low--as if he thought it out of hearing of the unseen warlock. His gloved fingertips grazed Dany's elbow as she marched forward, beyond his reach. "Daenerys--"
"Then you shall have a grown dragon," she answered Pyat Pree, "and I shall have two unhatched eggs."
She would have sworn she saw smiling blue lips as the warlock's voice filled the wood.
"And if I should succeed before you do?"
Dany swallowed, hard. "Then Drogon and his unborn brothers shall be yours."
"No." Leaves crackled beneath Jorah's boots as his long, swift strides carried him at once to her side. "I will not stand by and watch you agree to this folly."
"Folly now, is it?" She turned to him, a wry smile twisting her mouth. "I suppose I would prefer to be a fool than a madwoman."
"Daenerys," Jorah said through his teeth.
She touched her fingertips to his lips. "Peace, my fierce bear. Drogon will answer no call but his mother's. Trust me."
For a moment his eyes burned into her, and she felt his lips part in argument, but then, with a slight nod of his head, he drew back from her, standing guard over her right shoulder, sword at the ready.
"Unbind him," she bid Jhogo, and she heard the snick of his arakh as it cut the ropes about Griff's wrists. "Are you ready to learn what blood flows through your veins?"
"As ready as you are." His lilac eyes met hers, and Dany felt that she had looked into a mirror, or into the past, or into the eyes of a ghost.
At once she averted her gaze, and was almost relieved to see Quaithe's red lacquered mask at Griff's shoulder, to have the red priestess' trickery on which to lay blame for the disturbing comparison.
"Why have you come, Quaithe of Asshai?"
Seemingly from nowhere, and without moving, the priestess procured a phial of liquid the color of the trees.
"Shade of the Evening," she told Griff. "To open your mind to the truths inside."
Dany steeled her body against a shiver that rippled down her spine at the eerie similarity of the present scene to the one that had played out when last she stood here, when she'd sent Jorah into the House of the Undying to rescue her other babe from his kidnapper.
"Blue lips tell lies," she said, as he had then. "Though perhaps that is apt for one who makes so audacious a claim as to be Prince Rhaegar's son."
The taunt did not break Griff's wary gaze from the phial, and to Dany's greater surprise, Jorah said, "Drink it, lad." He went on, in tones that were gruff, but not unkind, "I have oft wondered whether my errand here would have been more successful had I done. Or my sleep easier."
Without hesitation Griff tilted his head back and swallowed the Shade of the Evening. When he'd emptied the phial, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, but even so his lips retained the indigo stain. As Quaithe gave him further instruction for how to proceed through the warlocks' lair, his eyes fixed on Dany; she was relieved to see that they reflected the deep hue of his lips rather than their usual Targaryen color.
A glance up at Jorah showed his eyes to hold a more worried expression than Dany felt was justified as he watched Griff stride into the House of the Undying.
"You think I should not have sent him," she said. "Do you believe he truly is Rhaegar's heir?"
Though Jorah hesitated for only the briefest of moments, it was long enough for anger to flicker to life in Dany's breast, even before he answered.
"I believe the halls of that place are for no man to tread but a warlock."
"He is no man. He is an arrogant, insolent boy who has shown naught but contempt for me. And even more for you, I would remind you, Jorah."
"When you sit the Iron Throne, do you intend to punish every show of insolence and contempt made against you and yours? I had thought you took more after your brother, but when Aerys knew he'd lost the war he preferred to burn the kingdom rather than let another have it--"
She interrupted him with a blow so hard across the cheek that a patch of dark red erupted on his skin before she had even withdrawn her hand. As the crack, which had rung out in the silent wood, was swallowed up by a sudden rush of wind through the branches, she noticed that everyone around them, not only Quaithe in her priestly vestments, was tinted red. And not from the dawn--of that she was certain even before the shriek above the canopy heralded Drogon's arrival.
"Griff had best hurry and find those eggs," said Tyrion, "because it seems to me Pyat Pree won't have to look very long to find the dragon."
"And it won't be long before Drogon roasts a dwarf!" Jorah shoved Tyrion hard out of the way at the same moment as his callused fingers closed tight around Dany's wrist, pulling her aside just as the black serpentine form blasted down through the trees in a wreath of flame.
"COVER!" Jorah bellowed to the other men beneath the burning canopy of trees who were struggling to keep control of the horses which had instantly gone mad with fear.
Dany was herself transfixed, though for an entirely different reason than her bloodriders and Ser Barristan. She marveled at the span of Drogon's leathern wings--as long as Jhogo's horse from head to hind, and he was not yet full-grown. In the dawn the undersides of them were as red as the blood gleaming on his fangs and the lust for more of it that shone in his eyes, red as the fire that poured from his yawning maw--and surely as hot, too; how she wished she could leap onto his back and ride him now, swifter than she had flown even astride her little silver mare across the Dothraki Sea, and feel the heat of him all through her as she had the night she had birthed him in flame.
And by the gods, the strength of him… The beat of those wings was nearly enough to make her falter where she stood. Drogon seemed a god himself, his power reaching over the very seasons. Embers that had once been blue leaves swirled around in the wind of his wings like swarms of fireflies in summer, before burning out and falling to the earth as if autumn had come on suddenly, settling as ashes on the ground, white and delicate as the first fresh snow. Winter is Coming were the words of House Stark--but Dragons are Coming would be more apt a warning.
How magnificent my conquest will be! Dany looked around, dazzled and dizzy, her heart thundering in her breast like a Dothraki horde. How beautiful! Drogon is beautiful…He is my child!
"DANY, MOVE!" Jorah jerked her backward so forcefully that her wrist burned from the friction of his rough skin against hers; the socket of her shoulder was on fire, too. Drogon dived, his reptilian eyes focused to pinpricks of blood in his black face as he aimed his fire at some unseen prey.
A shriek of human agony wailed above the screams of the horses and the dragon's battlesong, and the stench of burnt flesh, the blood drained from Dany's face.
"DROGON, NO!"
He paid no heed to her command as she uttered it in High Valyrian, nor when she pronounced it again in the Common Tongue of Westeros, nor to her third desperate attempt in the guttural tones of the Dothraki. She thought she even saw an expression like spite in the twist of his mouth and the gleam of his eye as it met hers and he caught the burning charred blue-robed figure in his talons and soared upward again.
"No harm, Your Grace," Tyrion's drawl filled her ears as Jorah dragged her beneath the dubious shelter of the derelict portico of the House of the Undying. "It was only Pyat Pree. Only I'm not certain whether Prince Drogon demonstrates impeccable taste, or an unrefined palate."
"Indiscriminate, I think," said Jorah, coughing from the smoke that snaked around the burning trees. "Look."
He pointed with a sooty hand as Drogon plunged through the foliage again. His claws were empty of Pyat Pree, but Dany saw a limb dangling from his mouth for a moment before he breathed a fire that engulfed Makho, who would not abandon his terrified horse to save himself.
"The next person who japes will not long have a tongue to laugh with," Dany snarled over her shoulder at the men, though she knew Jorah had not been joking. "This is no mummer's farce for our entertainment."
Nor was it magnificent or beautiful as it had seemed to her just a few moments before. Pyat Pree may have deserved such a death, but Makho had been brother to Rakharo, and the blood of her blood before her escape necessitated his death.
Drogon was indiscriminate, as Jorah had said. The innocent and the guilty alike would burn in agony when she took him and his brothers to King's Landing; the city would reek of their blood mingled with the incense from the Great Sept of Baelor as it smoldered like the Temple of Memory had in Qarth.
Unless she controlled him.
Jorah's fingers had slackened around her wrist; Dany vaulted off the steps, heedless of her husband's shouts for her to come back and the clatter of his armor as he followed hard on her heels, dodging the burning branches that fell from the trees.
"Jhogo, your whip!"
He tossed it to her without hesitation, and she caught it by the handle. To her right, Jorah dug his heels into the ground to stop himself short of the lash as she unfurled it with a smooth backward swipe of her arm and flick of her wrist that came quite naturally to her, cracking the leather tail against Drogon's flank. As if I come from a line of dragon tamers, she thought, a smirk curling her lip. "DROGON, TO ME!"
He swung his great head toward her. He blinked at her slowly, almost cow-like, and for a heartbeat, Dany believed she had subdued him. Then, as her exhilaration rose again--as if he had timed it perfectly to spite her, a rebellious adolescent child hells bent on exerting his power over his parent--the blood gleam flared in his eye.
Drogon wheeled in the air with a shriek and a beat of his wings and tail that knocked Tyrion off his feet as he waddled across the clearing. Dany could only assume he'd decided the portico was not the safest place after all--a decision which proved wise, despite his tumble, when the dragon unleashed another volley of fire at the House of the Undying.
Dany screamed till her throat was raw, throwing her whip against Drogon's hide with the ferocity of a master against an insubordinate slave, but to no avail. He seemed not to feel the beating at all through his scaly armor--or, if he could, not to mind the pain.
The ruined building poured forth color. Red flames coiled out of the crumbling roof like snakes from underground burrows, while from the door emerged blue figures Dany did not at first recognize as human because not only were their robes and lips that hue, but their entire faces, their hands, and any bits of flesh exposed by their clothing.
"Not so undying after all, these Undying Ones," said Tyrion, coughing.
They watched the stooped and crawling figures, whose indigo skin stretched taut across their bones or sagged from it with their extreme age, escape death by fire only to meet their end at the fang and talons of the dragon.
"But Griff, apparently, is." Tyrion looked at Dany. "Can it be that I know two people who can withstand fire?"
"Or he cannot," Jorah said, "and burns there now. If the sorcery hasn't killed him already. Come--"
"Come," spoke a woman's clear voice in unison with the rasp of Jorah's.
Quaithe.
She stood at the entrance to the House of the Undying, red in the midst of the place where frail blue bodies lay dying or dead, and beckoned to Dany with a red-gloved hand.
"Come and walk the path you have chosen," Quaithe said, and Dany followed-or thought she did.
She felt Jorah's strong hands clamp around her upper arms, pulling her away from the priestess, yet his voice had receded, a muted rumble, like that of the crackling fire, while the warlocks' seat loomed ever closer. As she neared it--or it neared her--the stones crumbled or melted before her, she couldn't be sure which, revealing a maze of corridors and staircases such as she had not expected to be contained within the low long line of its façade.
On either side of her loomed open doorways, and in her mind whispered the instructions Quaithe had given Griff, and Jorah, even longer ago: Many doors may open to you. Go through none but the right one. Though she tried to walk past the first, the room beyond it seemed to yawn wider, like the maw of a ravening animal, devouring her in a single gulp.
Rather than being enveloped in the black warmth of a belly, snow swirled all around her so that everything was whited out. The only color to be found poured from a dozen wounds on the belly of a white wolf who bled the frozen ground red.
Dany moved to leave--she could see the darkened corridor of the House of the Undying on the other side of the dead wolf--but as she picked her way around the corpse, her arms raised to fend off the crows that swooped in to peck at it--she felt the wolf's glassy eyes following her, and saw that from his bloodstained fur protruded a sword.
At once she recognized the blade as Valyrian steel; the pommel had been forged into the shape of an animal's snout. Remembering the promise she'd made to Jorah on their wedding night that someday she would restore Longclaw, his family's sword, to him, she shooed away the crows. But, as her hand closed around the hilt, she realized that the animal was not the bear of House Mormont, after all, but a wolf, and turned aside to continue on her way.
Upon reaching the doorway, however, she was nearly bowled over by an enormous creature with the black shaggy body of a bear and three serpentine heads, one black, one green, and one the colour of fresh cream. Each mouth breathed a flame, and Dany cried out, not for herself, but for the poor dying wolf in the snow.
But when she looked back over her shoulder there was no wolf, nor any crows. Only a host of creatures the likes of which she had never seen, though she had heard of them in the stories Viserys used to delight to tell her, frightening her too much for her to sleep: the walking dead, human and animal alike, and the Others with their bright cold eyes and even brighter, colder blades.
Dany cursed herself for not having pulled the sword from the wolf's belly when she'd had the chance--only Valyrian steel could kill an Other, Viserys had told her. But the three-headed beast reared back on its hind legs, then, and poured its fire down on the fell creatures from Beyond the Wall, as Jorah, whom she had not noticed before, leapt down from the ursine back, wielding the dragonglass dagger she had given him for a wedding present.
He ripped it through the gullet of one Other, then plunged it into the sapphire eye of another. The White Walkers scattered, their icy robes parting like a curtain to reveal the wolf, who while clearly not dead, lingered half a ghost.
Its eyes fixed blearily on Jorah, and the black lips parted to whisper, "Unsheathe Longclaw, my Lord of House Mormont. You are pardoned. You are forgiven."
Dany saw tears in Jorah's eyes as he slowly drew the blade--whose pommel bore a bear's head now--from the bubbling blood of the wolf's belly, and she reached up to wipe them away. His fingers closed around hers, then he pulled her up behind him on the back of the bear dragon, and together they rode through the doorway into a chamber with red stone walls.
The stench of the burning flesh wafted after them into the place so strongly that Dany slipped from the shaggy back of her three-headed mount and retched. When she had emptied the contents of her stomach, she looked up from the pool of vomit on the polished red floor and saw before her the Iron Throne.
Seated on it, of course, was the king. From the tangled mane of silver hair, the yellow, jagged fingernails that curled over the swords that formed the armrests of the throne, and the scabs which made his pale skin resemble burnt parchment, she never would have guessed he was a Targaryen. She knew, however, that he was Aerys, her own lord father. There was no mistaking the madness that burned in his eyes like a wick of violet flame.
But as if it were a candle that had been snuffed out, the life in Aerys' eyes was extinguished as a bloodied blade protruded suddenly through his chest, and his limp body fell before the place where Dany kneeled.
Recoiling, She leapt to her feet, peering up to see Ser Jaime Lannister standing behind the throne. The look on his face was not at all triumphant and arrogant as the one she'd always imagined the Kingslayer would wear--at least not at first. Ser Jaime's features changed as he grew, shifting from undeniable youthful beauty tinged with sadness to something altogether horrible, his arms and legs stretching until he was as large as a giant, no, a mountain…
The Mountain that Rides, Gregor Clegane, tore a mewling newborn babe from his mother's arms and bashed his head against the wall, again and again, until Dany's outstretched hands were coated with the child's blood and bones and brains.
"AEGON!" she screeched, tasting it on her tongue and teeth and running hot and thick down her throat like the horse's heart she'd devoured before the dosh khaleen. "What have I done, by the Seven, WHAT HAVE I DONE? The last living son of my brother! Let me go, I must go to him, I will not burn!"
She struggled against Jorah's arms, which still held her back as he had before the visions came upon her, as if no time at all had passed, though it seemed to her that she had wandered for hours, days, a lifetime in that place. The fire had brought down much of the façade, but there were no corridors before her, no doorways.
Only the silhouette of Aegon Targaryen, a babe no longer, but a man grown, standing firm and resolved and wreathed in flame. Dany could not see his lilac eyes through the haze of smoke, yet she felt she had met them somehow, because she knew what he thought and felt in that moment.
And then he strode out, his clothing all burnt away but his skin and hair so white that he shone. He clutched two eggs in his unburnt hands, one cream and one green, both crackled with glowing yellow lines.
He placed them in Dany's arms, and strangely their weight made her feel that a burden had been lifted from her shoulders, their heat warming a place deep within her that she had not even realized had been cold. Peace stole over her, and Drogon swooped down gently behind her, resting his searing hot muzzle on her shoulder as together they watched his brothers hatch.
"Your children, Daenerys," said Aegon, when Viserion and Rhaegal had emerged from their eggs, Dany having pulled off the broken bits of shells that clung to their scales that shone like jewels. "Queen of Dragons."
"Not queen," she said quietly, and put her newborn children to breast. "Only mother."
Read Chapter 33