Concord of the Spheres Part Eleven
Sixteenth Day of the Fifth Month 293 AC
Eat, drink, and make merry. From a crofter's hovel to a king's hall these words have sealed more friendships than any other. They bring with them a chance to show strength, wealth, and taste, to drown worry and hesitation in sweet wine, to speak and to listen, share secrets, hopes, and fears. Though of all the tasks of kingship in this you are the least experienced in, your mother is quick to step in besides Tyene and unexpectedly Malarys.
"You would be surprised, Your Grace, how many formal meals I had to choke down in more ways than one to win the right to a full advocate's robes under the Crimson Code," he noted wryly before boldly striding forth into the fray to do battle with seating arrangements and overly contentious cooks.
***
Seventeenth Day of the Fifth Month 293 AC
As the tables are set under the open sky in the center of the island your mother starts quietly fretting as she looks to the sky that had so recently borne witness to a storm.
"... I'll keep the rain off, mother, provided our Djinn guests do not get too exited at least," Dany assures her in jest, before running off to greet the curious Calpinas who had flown over, drawn by the sound of lute strings and the smell of food and wine.
"You can just... do that? Herd the clouds away?" The question is so soft you might almost have missed it amid the rumble of last minute hurried preparations.
"Over a narrow area and we can't change it too much," you explain. "A raging thunderstorm does not sunshine make, though thankfully we have been spared the latter of late."
Your mother shakes her head and laughs. "Well that makes it all so much more reasonable..." She hesitates a moment. "Sometimes I look around and wonder if this is all a dream for colors seem to bright and contours too outlandish, and then I stop and listen and it all makes sense, like a song I used to know coming back to me."
"Would you like to sing tonight?" you ask with a smile.
"It wouldn't be proper. I'm hardly a young girl showing off to would-be suitors," she replies, startled.
"Who is to say what is proper in such a place and in such company?" you counter. "Not for long ages of the world have such beings been gathered upon the realm they call the 'Garden of the Elements'. If it is not our place to choose, having brought them together, then to who are we to look?"
"I for one would be honored if you would join me in a song, Your Grace," Xor interjects unexpectedly, floating into view. He had caused quite a stir among the delegations when you first introduced him as a skilled scholar and a much valued friend, but by today most of the guests had come to see him more with curiosity. A Shaitan noble of a more scholarly bent had even taken some time to speak to him about his observations of the world.
"Well then. I can hardly refuse such an offer in good conscience," your mother replies, still a touch unsure which of Xor's eyes one is supposed to look into when addressing him.
What seems like mere moments later Waymar lands beside you on Cloud, announcing that the Hunter's Moon is on the horizon. Sometimes you wonder what puckish fate conspires to set Moonsong on her headings at such a perfect timing.
***
"...so then we took the stuff we got from Storm's End and sold most of it off to the clansmen in the Vale. Old Lord Arryn'll be looking for crooked alchemists a long time from now and we've got some dragonbone to boot," Theon explains excitedly.
"Where did Dalla find dragonbone?" you cut him off urgently. Though Tiamat's schemes all seem to be woven in the lands east of the Bone Mountains, you would not put it past the Mother of Wyrms to use that assumption to your ruin.
"Supposedly there was a witch with a dragon that came to live among the Burned Men before they were Burned Men. She lived in a cave up in 'the high hollows' where they paid her tribute. The clansmen used to bring her tribute day after day until she just
died and her dragon with her, not a mark on them. They left the cave to be their tomb, fearing that the witch haunted it still until Dalla went up there a few months ago looking for treasure," the boy continued, obviously eager to share the tale of daring... and from the looks of it perhaps a touch taken with the wildling mage.
Something niggled at the back of your mind, a story you heard as a child, one of the few Rhaegar ever told, about a woman dragonrider betrayed and brokenhearted. A dragonseed, but one remembered fondly by most of those who lived through the Dance. "Was the dragon called Sheepstealer?"
Perhaps Nettles had not ridden over the sea until her dragon's wings broke from exhaustion, drowning them both. Even as a child that ending seemed strange and ill-fitting to you.
"Yeah, but we figured that's just what the wildlings called him," Asha interjects. "You mean some princely rider called a dragon that?"
"No, it was probably an angry shepherd," you reply. "Was the tomb haunted?"
Asha nods. "To hear the wildlings tell it she nearly died, but the Gods blessed her for her strength in overcoming the fiend, but that's not quite how it went. They... it's better when Moonsong sings it."
***
And so, after assuring yourself that Moonsong will behave with the rest of your guests, sing it she does. The drake-gut fiddle flies and faerie magic in the air does hang to tell the tale of a girl born to neither wealth nor ancient lineage, but only boldness true, one who through wit and kindness tamed a dragon to her side and how she fought with honor until by her queen she was betrayed in those black days of old. She did not live beside her princely lover for even that sly and cunning prince could not slip death's embrace, but live she did and loved again, and when at last she laid her head to rest upon her dragon's side she vowed to keep and guard her kin until the end of days.
Thus sang the fey minstrel of the day when the witch of the mountains climbed up into the heights and pitted her power against the spirit that in ancient blood yet tarried. A match they were in strength and will, but death is ever patient and so the godspeaker proclaimed that she would share the spoils. In the dying flesh of one spearwife struck down in a raid was Nettles returned to life, by blood of Andals slain.
"...or so I've heard from wind and rain, from laughing larks and clever wrens," Moonsong finishes her song to thunderous applause.
"That didn't actually...?" you mother asks by spell-wrought whisper.
"Yes it did," you answer, still weighing the implications yourself.
Your mother just shakes her head and smiles. Though her eyes are thoughtful she jests, "A rather tricky song to follow up on."
What do you discuss first after the feast?
[] The Mirrorway
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[] The Heart of Winter
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OOC: I had to put a break in here both because the update was getting very large and because I need to know what you intend to tell the genies about not only the artifacts but also how you got them. For instance do you discuss the Others?
