A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twentieth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

Taking a seat upon what you rather suspect is a stolen chair, the pale lines where the wood had been mended by sorcery still clear for all to see, you ponder your options. As you look around at the two who stand before you, both strong-willed and clever in their own ways, you realize that you would be better served not with a command or even a suggestion, but a question: "What would you do with a dragon? What would it offer that would be worth the beacon to every foe you would care to name, and some no doubt that escape even my sight?"

"Same thing we've been doing to far," Dalla replies quickly. "Raiding, looting, and burning. Ain't no one that's sure clansmen can fly though we've done it lots. We'll be more careful with a dragon."

Rather than answer you turn to Nettles: "How easily would you be able to hide a dragon, my lady...?"

"I ain't no lady," the ancient dragonrider snorts. "It wouldn't be easy, but magic can do lots of things that aren't easy these days, like coming over hundreds of leagues to argue over a dragon that ain't even alive yet. Maybe he'll never be." Again you see sorrow reflected in her gaze, again she forces it away with what you suspect is near enough a lifetime's practice.

"Magic can hide and magic can find," Dany agrees. "I've done both, but they still don't hang in the same scales."

"How d'you mean?" the Godspeaker asks, seemingly genuinely curious more than defensive at Dany's easy manner.

Your sister shrugs: "Maybe you can hide a dragon. Won't be easy because it's big in more than one way, fire and magic made flesh, but what about a dragon's marks? Patches of burnt forest? Gouges in wood?"

"There are other more esoteric signs," you step in. "Echoes bound in every grain of sand, in every breath of wind. I might take up this..." you motion to the simple wooden plate in front of you, "and from it divine every word spoken in its presence for the past year."

"Is that so?" Dalla tilts her head as if not quite sure what to make of you.

From another the gesture of doubt might have seemed insulting, but the girl reminds you too much of Vee for you to be offended over a scuffing of royal dignity. Thus you simply take up the plate and speak over it words of wishcraft, bending your thoughts to its subtle memories. One after another you recite discussions that took place over the past few days, be they raiding plans, talk of blood magic and the changing times, or simply dinner table chatter of the sort one can find from the leanest hovel to the grandest of palaces.

"You heard me, you're free go and gods be with you..." Dalla's voice

"Why?" a second trembling voice, almost disbelieving. Though you heard it only briefly you know it to be the Rowan girl, Elinor.

"Because the gods will it," comes the cryptic reply.

Your eyes snap open as you ask: "Why did you release the girl you had serving you?"

"The Raven said he had need for her in a scheme of his," the Godspeaker snorts. "Something about falling in with one of the chained wisemen the lowlanders keep. She'll fill his head with tales of the Old Gods, making him forget his chain and those that hold it like a leash."

"The Maesters killed Daemon," Nettles speaks, voice low with rage. "I was old and Sheepstealer could barely fly by then or else I'd have burned their nest of rats."

"How did the Maesters..." Dany begins, then cuts herself off. "The letter, it wasn't from the queen was it?"

The pieces fall in place. It had always seemed a foolish thing for even one as flawed as Queen Rhaenyra to not only condemn her husband's paramour and one of the few dragon riders loyal to her to death, but to command Daemon himself to carry out the sentence. "How do you know?"

"Many things that are hidden to the eyes of the living are revealed in death," the dragonrider replies tightly. Then realizing you will not let her leave the matter at that she adds: "I dreamed it, as I lay in the dark of my cave, I dreamed of Daemon's death, slain not by that butcher Aemond's dragon, but by a coward's quill."

One more reason not to hand her a dragon, you think, though your heart is not unmoved by her grief. Whatever the Maesters' sins you do not need the Citadel aflame. Still you offer some hope: "Sheepstealer I might restore, though not in the Vale, but Prince Daemon I cannot allow to step from his grave. There have been enough wars for the Iron Throne and one is yet to come. A poor king I would be to court another."

"Give him another face, another name then," Nettles suggests, her calm cracking into budding desperation.

"Would his ambition then be sated?" Dany asks as gently as she can. "Would he be content to bow to another Viserys and call him king?"

"I... I don't know," the words sound almost torn from her throat with honesty she does not desire, but holds just the same.

"Then you see why I cannot take the risk?" you only half ask. "You have seen the Dance, fields and forests aflame as dragonrider battles dragonrider until all the world descends into flame and madness." Turning to Dalla again you ask: "Does she know what shall come upon next winter's wings?"

"Aye," The Godspeaker's voice is grim, with none of the bravado she so oft shows. "She knows what's coming. She knows what dragons are for." You have the strongest sense that the last includes you as much as it does simple beasts such as Joran and Valaena fly.

"Do I then have your word, both of you, that you will do nothing rash in matters of dragons or their riders?" you press.

Dalla nods at once: "I'll even give you the bones if you like."

"I need to fly at least, then," Nettles sighs. "If I swear to serve you with all my skill and knowledge, will you return Sheepstealer to me, that I might help build a world in which cravens cannot stoke the flames of war for their own damn ends?"

What do you reply?

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OOC: Sorry this took so long. I kept getting distracted IRL.