The Wandering Knight
Twenty-Third Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
Fell Keep looked smaller than he remembered it, Richard Lonmouth thought, looking down the narrow cliff-side road winding its way to the twin grey towers by the sea. As a boy he had always been conscious of the fact that his father had been fortunate to wed the third daughter of House Fell, and that his grandfather held richer, stronger lands in trust than his father. Looking back, he realized that may have even played a part in his attempt to draw the eye of the prince that he might use royal favor for a ladder. And now here was wearing Valyrian Steel armor, bearing a talking sword, and bedecked in enough talismans and charms to fill a hundred bedside tales while his grandfather was dead at Robert Baratheon's hand, his uncle having bent the knee there upon the field of battle.
Coward...
The knight's thoughts curdled to bitterness as he remembered the day he heard the news. He had been too ashamed to meet the prince's eyes for weeks and drank far more than any man expecting to see battle any day should. Luckily, Rhaegar did not even seem to notice.
The King would have, he knew. He would have found the time to untangle the knot of guilt in his chest somehow, but Richard had long since stopped comparing the elder brother to the younger. Rhaegar had been a man desperately chasing his destiny where Viserys almost seemed to
be destiny at times.
What does that make you, then? Richard who has been his shield and his sword for so long? The question was disconcerting. The village with its old creaking mill, the narrow bridge over Blind Harry's Gorge, the keep itself, they all looked so fragile, as though the storms of a world turned could suddenly sweep them all asunder, leaving them no more substance than his childhood's memories.
"Bad memories?" Dany asked, her gaze no less searching for being cloaked in the glamour that made her appear as his squire. Still, it was clear the words were an offer of support, not a demand. Once it would have seemed absurd to confide in a child, but then the little princess was hardly a child in anything other than years, proven time and again in battle.
"My uncle is a traitor, yet... I am thankful for it, thankful that he could keep my mother safe, but the thought sits ill," he explained, grimacing at his own hypocrisy.
"Was he any worse than Lord Stark who raised the North in rebellion, only to turn around and keep Jon safe from harm at the cost of his own honor?" the little princess answered with another question.
The comparison was not one Richard would have considered, still... "He practically knelt in a puddle of his father's blood while pledging to serve his killer."
"Perhaps it was the only path he saw forward for his House," she countered. There was something to her words Richard admitted. He had been little more than a boy then with little to guard besides his own honor. Timos Fell had been a man grown with three children already, only one of them grown. For the first time in a long time Richard wondered about his cousins. How had they won their spurs? Had any of them caught the eye of a great lord to serve in their households? Or had they fallen afoul with the strangeness in the world?
As they crossed the bridge over the gorge one of the armsmen on the far side called out a challenge: "Who goes there?!"
"A knight," Richard replied. Whatever else he had become over these past four years he certainly was that.
***
Richard was not sure how exactly he had expected to find his mother. He had certainly feared to see her sorrowing and hoped that she was well, but for some reason he had not really expected her to have gotten older.
Memories never age... Lucinda Lonmouth had far more grey in her dark blond hair than when last he saw her. The lines of worry and strain were new, too. The dress was one he recalled, but faded from turquoise to the color of a distant autumn sky. She looked up, likely about to demand the reason for their intrusion into the sowing room, when Richard allowed the glamour to fall, from his face at least. He did not expect his mother was ready to see his armor or his sword.
Far from the smile he had expected to see, however, a look of terror showed on her face at the show of magic. "You... you aren't real," she stuttered, reaching for the chain on her neck, for the Seven-Pointed Star forged in silver. "You are just wearing his face. He..."
The knight, who had faced so many horrors sword in hand was left reeling, not knowing even how to begin to answer, to make her understand.
"Who said that to you? Who
lied?" the princess dropped her glamour all at once, her full presence shimmering like a beam of moonlight come to earth.
"The septon, he..." the words were soft, barely spoken.
"Septons are men, just like the rest of us. They have their own purposes," Dany cut her off. "Tell me, did this septon bear a sword? Did he call the faithful to battle?"
"It was needed... There are monsters, fiends..."
"More than you know, mother," Richard replied, collecting himself. "But septons who bear steel have never been friends to dragons, nor those who dare stand under the Dragon Banner."
"It can't just be. It's not..." In spite of her words, Lucinda Lonmouth walked towards her only son as though drawn by unseen threads. Finally they embraced, and so they stayed a long while as years worth of unshed tears poured out beside a torrent of questions.
Over his mother's shoulder Ser Richard Lonmouth met the princess' eye at once in deepest thanks. The time to deal with the one who had tried to poison her mind would come in time. For now... he was just happy for her company.
OOC: Varys was not the only one who thought to use Ser Richard's mother. Luckily Dany's socials were more than enough to break through when combined with the fact that she did not wish to believe her son was gone.[