A Study in Sorcery
Twenty-Fifth Day of the First Month 293 AC
A thorny question this no matter which way you turn it. As a lord speaking to a...
likely bannerman there could be great use in hosting his daughter as your sister's companion, a prestigious position and one that would make the final commitment all the easier. On the other side of the scales if she should come to harm or worse yet be stolen from under your roof that same allegiance would snap in an instant. Had she been any other than Waymar's sister caution might have won out, but as things stand you would go to those same lengths to keep her safe wherever she may reside for his sake.
Hardly the answer Lord Royce needs to speak of such dark fates befalling his daughter, yet you have no intention of lying. "Would she be safer in the heart of my power rather than yours? I can not honestly say one way or another. While the Deep would be a great chance for her, my enemies are many. However, this would set her on a path where in a few years, she will no longer need protection and in the meantime, she will be under my aegis as if she was my own blood."
"She is a seven-year-old girl for gods' sake," Bronze Yohn shakes his head as if to clear away clear away the veil of strangeness that fell over the world. "What hope could she have for fighting..." He motions vaguely to the now empty patch of air where Tyene had been forth the seemings of monsters one by one, "
that?"
Your own sister's exploits come to mind, but those can hardly be counted to quiet one's worries. "Being able to recognize the danger and flee at need is also a skill that can more easily be acquired with an aptitude for magic," you reply instead.
"There's use in learning
of magic for all lords with an eye to the future," Tyene interjects smoothly. "Not for nothing did my uncle found a school of sorcery in Sunspear. You saw the things I conjured and understood at once that they are foes of all that lives, yet not all that is foul looks it, and not all that seems dreadful should be shunned. Deception and self-deception are the most dreadful things in this age when legends come to alive to walk the world. Without that knowledge, that understanding, we would all be as blind men in the woods at night as hungry wolves howl."
"Then perhaps I should go," Robar speaks up unexpectedly. "Surely I would learn more than Yssi could." He snorts. "She would forget all about spells and enchantments and be back to worrying about ribbons and other fripperies in a fortnight I'd wager."
The look Tyene casts him for the merest instant from beneath lowered lashes should by rights be enough to skewer a man at twenty paces, not that he notices.
"I would not be so sure," you reply quickly. "Imagine you are a child and taking lessons with the Maester, but instead of learning how to decipher musty tomes the prize for a lesson well learned is sorcery: the power to fly through the air, to take the shape of beasts and birds or conjure flame with but a thought. Would your mind truly fly from such matters?"
"Be that as it may that still leaves the matter of her being a girl," Robar replies in a faintly frustrated tone, that of a man being forced to argue a point he sees as self-evident. "How many female scholars do you even know?"
Perhaps Tyene has the right idea after all, a small and rather nasty part of you whispers.
Before your ill wishing of the middle Royce brother can go on too far, Waymar interjects, "There are only so many hours in a day you know."
"What's that got to do with it?" Andar asks, seemingly mildly supportive of Robar.
"Well, you are learning to be a lord, right?" Waymar asks. "That means knowing how to rule in peace and lead in war, how to fight with your own hands. Would you then have time to learn how to sail a ship, play the lute like a traveling singer, or set traps like the master huntsman?"
"A fair point," Andar allows. "Still it seems a strange and unpleasant thing to plan for our sister to go into harm's way."
Lord Royce, who had been following the conversation with an ever more worried look on his face, seems on the verge of speaking, so you interject. "Do you imagine she who first bore this blade on Westerosi soil would have preferred to spend her days safely ensconced on Dragonstone?" you ask, motioning to Dark Sister. "For certain Aegon himself would not, for he would then have been dead to an assassin's knife on the streets of King's Landing."
You catch Tyene ducking her head slightly caught between amusement and embarrassment. It had been
Dornish assassins who had almost slain the Conqueror then.
"Queen Visenya had a dragon," Robar hastens to point out.
"Sufficiently powerful magic is rather like a dragon," you reply. "For certain you could use it to kill one of the beasts and more dangerous things besides."
A long stretch of silence meets your offhanded remark. Perhaps you had underestimated the mystique that the broken beasts of Valyria still hold in the Seven Kingdom. It is hard not to think of them as more pathetic than fearsome knowing how much more they once were.
"I confess all this talk is rather hard to wrap one's head around," Bronze Yohn says at last. "I would almost ask for a demonstration, gauche as such a request would be to make of highborn guests."
"No need for that," you offer a reassuring smile. "There are plenty of displays those of good breeding put on, jousting, the melee...
court."
As you had hoped that gets a laugh or at least a smile from all present. "Still as we have a marked lack of both lances and silks and perfumes, I would suggest a few bouts with the sword and sorcery used to varying degrees by way of demonstration."
"A generous offer," Lord Ryce says, and you know that he means more than the last one you made.
How do you spar?
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OOC: This means both pairings and any limitations/plans regarding the use of magic.
