A Whisper in Darkness
First Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC
There is a change in the air, a current more felt than seen, the rumble of distant thunder over the western shore. As you lay down on your pillow to sleep, you do not find it dreamless, as is commonplace. A raven leads you down familiar paths, through skies that were and are, and perchance those that will be, onto the hollow hill in pale branches crowned, onto the darkness below warded from the sight of gods and men. You can feel Dany at your side, though it is not her will that leads you on.
Why is she being summoned? you wonder, but do not speak aloud, for Bloodraven would not summon you thus without great need for counsel taken and received. No sense risking your questions to the Enemy's ear.
***
Elsehwere, Elsewhen
You stand before the bone-white throne as you had done all those years before, though it has been long since you have come here as a supplicant, you stand before the Last Greenseer. There is a smile on his face, whose cause you can well guess, but also a wary look in his eye. Brynden Rivers is always wary.
"Robert Baratheon is dead, killed by a bound spirit of Winter under the guise of Lyanna Stark..."
Finally, after all these years. It has been a long time since you have counted Baratheon among your foremost foes, and longer still since you had nightmares about him, but you can recall that time still. You cannot say you are relieved, but content, yes... content at a job well done.
Dany is less concerned with the deed and more with the means "How the Hells? Why?"
"Willful cruelty on the part of the Queen, she wanted him to think that he could have it all, Lyanna and his throne, before it was all revealed as a lie, he proved more strong-minded at the last and saw through the deception, but chose sweet death over bitter duty just the same." There is a faint note of disgust to the ancient voice.
Dany looks like she does not know what to do with the answer, and to be honest neither do you. You have always hated the Usurper, first for the harm done to your family, then for his dereliction of duty, but that is just a thoroughly twisted way to kill someone. All things told, you suppose you are glad he managed to break the spell and die on his own terms and not just for what a boon Cersei Lannister's anger is likely to be.
According to Bloodraven, her spite has already given you gifts aplenty; a king dead in sight of gods and men, free for anyone to divine, and killed with a weapon any sane person would find horrific. It had already caused a walk-out of the Golden Shields' most senior mages. The fact that you have letters written in her hand asking for the spirit's prison and the tainted fey itself had all the subtlety of a rampaging dragon makes the propaganda coup all the better. Besides that, the confirmation that the Queen is a sorceress and laid the last of the trap herself barely registers. There is no doubt in your mind Bloodraven can deal with her.
All momentous news, but it turns out not the most surprising thing you were summoned here to hear. "I will give Cersei Lannister this much credit, she bound her monster aright. It was still in the clearing when I came upon it and the unclothed corpse of her victim. I
bound it in a diamond, although the prison is decaying as we speak due to the touch of the emptiness within."
"No matter, uncle Brynden. We have those who can deal with such perilous baubles and reward us for it besides," Dany replies grimly.
"I have not forgotten that, but that is not the reason I have summoned you here," he replies. "Before it was bound, the Winter Spirit attempted to taunt me with my supposed ignorance. I believe I came out the better in that contest, as in her haste to prove my ignorance and the folly of resisting, she implied something that might be of momentous worth. That Lanna Lannister's will may not be her own anymore..."
You have no need to breathe here, yet your breath still catches in your chest.
If that is true... "What did she say exactly, the dark fey?"
"There is nothing to fight for but the sweet lies you tell yourselves. Just as she who bound me now was bound in turn by unseen chains of her betrayer-kin," Bloodraven recites. "I divined that last to mean Lanna Lannister, Lady of Castemere."
"That does not necessarily have to mean arcane bindings," Dany points out slowly. "The unseen chains can mean just foolish loyalty to her goodbrother and lord."
"It could, but three things incline one to believe otherwise." Bloodraven's hand moves to count them off on his fingers, something he cannot do in the flesh, but reached for instinctively. "Firstly, the use of the past tense 'was' rather than 'is' would imply that these chains were added after the winter fey was bound. Secondly, the fact that according to our new Golden Shield source there has been a seeming shift of behavior for her to allow something as mad as giving Cersei access to the fey's binding. And thirdly, the fact that the spirit...
froze for a moment after speaking the words, no jest meant."
"She is under perfect scying and divination wards.
Usually that means an inviolate mind, but it would not be impossible to have one without the other," you muse. You have spent enough nights trying to consider how such defenses may be defeated to know that.
What do you do next?
[] Try to get more information out of Robert's killer
-[] Bargain, perhaps with Rina's aid
-[] Mental invasion (risk of corruption)
-[] Sacrifice it to a god (risk that any information will be lost since it is recent and not intrinsic to the spirt)
-[] Write in
[] Set the matter to one side for now, you have many other things to do now that Robert is dead
-[] Send a letter to Winterfell (write in contents)
-[] Start your propaganda campaign
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: I'm not revealing any of the rolls that lead to this because they could spoil the mystery one way or the other, but I will say they were interesting. Not yet edited.
