Sins of the Father
Twenty-Seventh Day of the Fifth Month 293 AC
Though a touch startled at the role Lord Grafton so lightly dispensed upon 'Dywen', from apostate septon to herald of the Old Gods, you hide it well, seeing no reason not to play along. Still, caution is ever the watchword, not wishing to unveil anything too troubling, lest the lord give lie to his earlier words and vent his anger upon the messenger. "As you say, my lord. I shall need a well-polished mirror and something of hers, a favored dress or better yet a hairbrush."
The Lord of Gulltown seems far less surprised at the request than you might have expected.
Had he tried to divine his daughter's fate before? you wonder, troubled by the implications.
What other mages had walked these halls? Might they not too have carried a whiff of brimstone? Alas that these are not questions for a guest to ask their host, particularly when is on sufferance.
Uncomfortable silence stretches through the hall as servants are sent to fetch the needed objects, while you quietly utter a spell to call of little used powers of divination, to read the pattern of bones or the eddies of smoke, a small magic fit for a hedge mage, but in its own way helping to establish your powers, or more particularly their limits. You would not wish to be thought too mighty, least you rouse suspicions best left unspoken.
Making a fire before the mirror you allow the threads of scented smoke to rise in arcane whorls, twining again and again among the girders.
What would that bloody-handed conqueror who took Gulltown by guile and treachery have thought of such magic in his hall? Would he be troubled at the apostasy, or look upon it with the same cunning eye that saw him rise from raider to lord? In the end it matters little.
The sun over a cleft peak... you read. An omen of new beginnings, as good as you are going to find. Thus you turn to the mirror and motion with the staff in one hand at the lock of faded blonde hair bound with a pale blue ribbon. The token is old and brittle, taken from a child's locks if you are to be a judge, but like to like still calls and the path is open to your power. You feel a momentary resistance as you cast, like a sudden unexpected gust of ethereal wind, but you brush it aside with a thought.
Staring back at your from the looking glass is a young woman seated on a long wooden bench, alive and well to your relief. While the old lord drinks in the sight of his daughter, you weigh her clothes and surroundings with a far more practical eye. Alyssa Grafton is dressed well and warmly, a wool cloak guarding her against the light patter of rain, solid good shoes, and even a salmon pink ribbon fastened at her throat adding a splash of color to her attire. She has the look of a wealthy trader's daughter, or perhaps minor gentry, and certainly not a prisoner of any sort.
"I thought..." the man trails off. "I thought I'd lost her, that she'd run mad somehow. But she wasn't really mad, was she? I know that now." You wonder if Gerold Grafton even recalls your presence.
"She looks to be in the stands somewhere, perhaps a tourney," you offer as discretely as you can.
"Yes, of course," the Lord of Gulltown collects himself with a start, a blotchy blush coloring his cheeks for a moment. "Can you move the... 'window'?" he asks, obviously struggling for words.
"Only in a somewhat limited manner." Thankfully, it does not take a great deal of meddling with the spell to find a recognizable banner... the trout of House Tully, the hosts of the event most likely.
"Why would the Tullys..." to his credit it does not take the lord long to put together the most likely course of events. "They don't know who she is. She ran off. We didn't know..."
You get the uncomfortable feeling that the old lord has been wishing to confess his deeds for some time. At only the lightest prodding he reveals that young Alyssa was treated for what the maester called 'female hysteria' and what you would term the 'illness of insufficient obeisance'. It is something of a struggle to keep your expression calm as he recounts the various remedies attempted, beginning with confinement and 'removal of all distracting finery' and continuing with more 'treatments' that you would count as torture, particularly for a girl who had already witnessed her escort killed by clansmen before being forced to live as a prisoner among them for months.
Much of Lord Grafton's guilt comes from the later discovery that his daughter's talk of magic was no sign of madness but simple truth.
Or perhaps he just realizes she is marriageable after all, the cynical thought arises. No, it would be too easy to cast him as the unvarnished villain. Here is a man who does love his daughter, for all he took truly atrocious advice in how to care for her. He cares enough to deal in magic to find her at least.
"She seems happy," Lord Grafton sighs as his daughter's image in the mirror rises to her feet and cheers at some spectacle you cannot see. "Tell me, Dywen, am I a coward for almost wishing to leave her to whatever life she has found?"
What do you answer?
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OOC: What happened to Alyssa was a combination of PTSD, an incredible story, and well... medieval views on mental health with a healthy dose of implicit misogyny thrown into the mix. In the meantime, Lord Grafton has had time to reflect on his treatment of his daughter if she was not in fact 'crazy' which lead to a great deal of guilt which manifested as frantic searching, including by arcane means. Unfortunately for him, no one's been able to break the nondetection spell on her before Viserys showed up with his CL 17 magic.
) should deter all other factions from reaching critical mass, and the the sheer size of your empire along with a few judicious tax increases should have you swimming in gold and able to afford a kickass retinue of a private army that raises the ceiling factions must reach to deliver an ultimatum/rebel. Then its just a job of lobbing a county at a claimant (making him your vassal), using him as a casus belli to annex what you want, and repeat. Strip titles from treacherous lords when they rebel half cocked or you otherwise have proof of their treason, and give a chunk of their land to some claimant (making him your vassal) and use him as casus belli to annex the land you wanted. Repeat.
