Through Familiar Eyes
Thirtieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC
Intellectually, Varys understood why her familiar was playing this game, on some level she could play it as well as he, for they were one in mind and magic. But they were also different, one a man who would be dragon, the other a snake, and snakes were by their nature startlingly direct beings.
"I have found it to be the most important part in ruling over such diverse people to accept that they are thus, and that deep in their hearts, they will always be different from one other. Too many rulers fancy themselves as the masters of their subjects and that they can shape their very souls with their acts, yet even as the centuries grind their palaces to dust and eventually extinguish the very culture that brought them forth, people have remained people."
She thus found it to be quite amusing to feel the ripple of deception within Viserys' thoughts, like a seed planted deep in fertile soil. Many mages thought it was the serpent's long association with treachery that made those who chose them as familiar more skilled liars. In truth it was the opposite. Snakes did not lie, and so they spotted the lies in the minds of their bonded most keenly. In knowing how not to deceive themselves, they polished their art to a finer sheen when it came to the rest of the world. Case in point, the rapt expression on the face of the Lord of Last Lament.
His sorceress bride took a slightly more skeptical approach to the whole thing. "And yet you change them. The people upon these shores are not as you have found them, much less the ones who came here," she replied thoughtfully. "Even the tongues of their forefathers melt into the bubbling cauldron of trade tongue. Every man as a sailor or innkeeper in his own home, the young learning in your schools, the local notables bound to the crimson ribbons of your administrators."
"I changed nothing at the heart of it," came the reply, unwavering. Upon other lips, Varys might have called it humble, but she did not think that could be farther from the truth.
"What you speak of is merely the expression of who they are, not their nature itself. A good man will be a good man, no matter the tongue he speaks, and a wicked man will be a wicked man, no matter if he drapes himself in precious silk or rough furs."
He paused and took a drink of tea, not for thirst but for effect.
"Take the former slavers living in my realm. I have no illusion that they suddenly found respect for the lives and freedoms of their fellow men. Some of them always had it and you can tell them apart by how they treated those deemed property by their culture with kindness and dignity, while others will always lack it, even if they were not so callous and cruel that justice demanded dark fates for them. But as I know that they will always desire to dominate, to rule and to gain power with little regard for others, I can temper them. Divert their urges to where they have to do good to achieve their desires. Where the best way to gain the influence and prestige they crave is to better the lives of those around them."
This time is was the prince Yanda Zaq who replied, "When the men of Ghis and later those of Valyria came to our shores, we traded with them in peace and it was good for us and good for them, yet when they next came they found it better suited them to give nothing and take much, even unto the lives of our ancestors carried away in chains. It was only when we gave unto them the bright feathered gifts of the goldenheart bow that they came to respect us again and traded in peace once more. You may have put the chain of law upon the necks of slavers, but I ask you how long can it be expected to last if in their hearts they still hold the same twisted will?"
"It will endure so long as the name Imperium has any meaning at all." For a moment Viserys' thoughts flew to distant realms and far off years, so swift that even Varys could not follow it.
"It stands to hope that they will change in time. Or their children after them. Though it would be folly to imagine that the darker urges in man's nature can be fully banished. The law will always have to remain. It will always have to bind those that seek to harm their fellow man, and always have to protect those who can not do so themselves."
"And yet there is a kind of slavery that law alone cannot lightly forbid, one that is still passed down by parents to their children, by those in crimson to the faithful who heed their words and brand their souls in slavery eternal." Jola Daa's eyes glowed faintly green like moonlight seen though thin leaves. "I have seen it upon them. The good as much as the wicked, all bound to the path without end, the wheel ever-turning. Him I fear more than any mortal slaver, and He is mighty indeed in your realm."
All souls bound to the wheel, Varys recalled memories not her own of a place outside of time. She saw deeply and she saw true, but she had never been given the chance to see as much as Varys and her familiar had. Daring akin to madness perhaps, but it had served them well. And so Viserys answered, words soft but sure,
"Even the gods are people in their own sense."
He let the words sink in a moment, enough for an incredulous reply to form in the mind, but not fall from the lips.
"They too have their natures and desires, and they too can be bargained with. I have found that for most faiths that the cruelest and most deplorable acts committed in their names spring not from doctrine and dogma, but from the desires of those seeking to gain dominance through the trapping of faiths. Rare is the faith where the rot comes from the gods themselves, and those have no place in this realm. For all others, however, common ground can be found and conflict mediated. Have you seen the Temple of Unity during the parade? It is a monument to that ideal. That even the gods of water and fire, death and life, nature and man can coexist. That the gods too can put aside their differences for a greater goal that they share."
"I have
seen the Red God through the mind of his faithful. I know
why he seeks to consume the souls of men as kindling for his fire," the sorceress replied, a whispering wind swirling around her like a mantle. "The greatest evils are born of a desire to do good, that makes them all the more terrible for it."
This was no abstract pronouncement, no dogma passed down through the teachings of the Tall Trees, Varys saw. No, this was a pain that still flared bright in the mind, a scar only half-healed.
"Despair, seeing the path bleak and without hope, can all too easily make monsters," Viserys agreed somberly.
"Yet while one still walks another path may open before the traveler's feet. I ask again, have you seen the Temple of Unity, spoken to the priests there? That is my hope for the gods of the realm, just as the road new built is my hope for the trader and the forges my hope for the smith."
"I... I have not seen it. We shall speak again when I know more of this, lest I speak in ignorance," the reply was slightly shaky in that way that thankfully neither the mouths of snakes nor dragons were made to show. It was also sincere, she thought.
So it was that Viserys Targaryen rose from his seat and bid his farewells, turning instead to the crowd at large for one last speech before war took hold in the west.
What do you say?
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OOC: Edits done. Hopefully this works better with the intent of the vote.
