Anatomy of Hope
Tenth Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
Malarys, last scion of House Vanor, once priest of Dread Balerion and keeper of the Crimson Code of the Dragonlords, had never considered himself particularly rigid in his thoughts, for he had too often seen such a limiting perspective crippling his elder colleagues' arguments, much as a man might split his own head open in trying to use it for a battering ram. Still since his return to the waking world and particularly his decision to aid the boy mage in battle and then pledge himself to his house, that claim had been rather sorely tested.
The streets of the colorfully-named Sorcerer's Deep were filled with all manner of folk he would not have trusted with a knife on a dark night, let alone magic: thieves, beggars, and whores, the tainted and the damned, and worst of all... the
hopeful. To a properly trained sorcerer nothing was more dreadful, and truth be told terrifying, than a man who believed with all his heart and soul that magic could cure all ills. There were all after a great many things out there in the dark places of the world and the realms beyond it who would promise to do just that, asking for ever more dreadful prices for the deed.
Had he been in the boy's place Malarys knew he would have been far more careful about demonstrating power to a world that had seen next to nothing of true magic for an age... but he could see why one of a more impetuous temperament would choose differently, the chance to grow not just mighty but beloved, one exalted above all others to forge the great realm of this age from a crucible of sorcery. And once the choice had been made it could not be unmade without inviting disaster. Like a man running over a field of broken glass, young Viserys would have to triumph or perish as the patchwork he had woven flew apart.
It was exhilarating to be part this headlong rush, enough to make him think far less of the past, to feel younger than his eight-and-thirty years.
"Lord Vanor!" a girl's voice called out from up ahead in stilted but still recognizable Valyrian. "What a pleasant surprise to meet you here."
... Not quite that young, a rather self-depreciating part of of his mind was quick to note. Valaena Velaryon was a young lady of the high blood, if not precisely what he would have counted good breeding in a world now gone to dust. Malarys had paid his respects to her along with all the others in his current patron's service who shared that privilege. He had found her pleasant enough, and the tales of her family an interesting counter-point to the dry tomes riddled with centuries of bias and error. Alas she had found him fascinating for entirely different reasons, and taken to following him like a lost puppy.
He knew quite a few men who might have found the girl's attention flattering, or at the very least useful, but he was not so much a fool as to play with the affections of a noble maiden, both by her heritage and the measure of the wild westlands. As to any more serious entanglement, the thought of effectively raising a wife from near-childhood sent a shiver down his spine.
That resolve did leave the sorcerer at something of a quandary as the girl was too naive to understand veiled rejection, and a more direct approach would likely leave her distraught and shamed, and so he played along with her 'surprise' at encountering her here outside the smith's shop.
"Did you come to have a sword made?" he asked politely. After all, the knowledge that this smith along with several others had been gifted with some bastardized remnant of the craft of Spellsteel is what had drawn him here.
"Not really... that is, I am more curious about the magic," she replied, speaking a little too quickly. "I'm learning about it at the Scholarum, but nothing seems to fit me..."
In all weeks she had been studying, Malarys noted to himself sardonically.
The impatience of youth can be a frightful thing. Aloud he said, "Ritual magic is among the most complex branches of the arcane arts, though perhaps the feel of enchanted steel in your hand might awaken the power in your blood in some more direct manner."
"Is there not some more direct, more certain way?" she asked.
Again the blasted
hope. "I am afraid not..." After all, Malarys very much doubted she would take well to the suggestion of sacrificing slaves by the hundreds until the sheer act of tearing life from their flesh would sing her slumbering magic awake. Others would not be possessed of such delicate sensibilities and they would take far less care than the death-priests of Caraxes did.
Even the Freehold paid the ultimate price in the end, the niggling voice that had been with him since that day when the skies turned to blood reminded him.
Pushing the thought away, the sorcerer returned his attention to the girl and her quandary. Perhaps if he helped her unveil her natural affinity swifter her interest in him would fade.
OOC: The reason Malarys is so repulsed by the idea of wedding a young girl (as opposed to say Westerosi norms) is that in Valyrian society nobles of both genders were expected to marry closer to mid-to-late twenties, giving them time for education in bureaucracy, arcane magic, proper dragon riding, or other equally time-consuming pursuits.
