Life's Brink
Twenty-Second Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC
"Then it is good that I am neither trickster, nor wizard, but a humble preacher and healer, my lord. My name is Dywen, and I have not come to sow strife in your keep or to enrich myself, but to offer aid in these dark times at the behest of my gods," you answer mildly and almost truthfully. Your deeds today will not enrich you directly, but in the fullness of time when the Iron Islands will fall under your sway.
"Aye?" the lordling, whom you are now almost sure is the heir presumptive, asks with an air of assurance. "Would a trickster walk up to the keep gate and announce himself as such, then?"
"If that is your measure of villainy, my lord, then I wonder that you ever open your gates at all," you reply, the words spoken not in mockery but good humor with perhaps a hint of gentle reproach. "I ask for only a moment under your rooftree that I may speak more in private. It is ill-advised in this day to speak too openly about matters of such import, as you never know what might listen in."
"And if I don't like your words, what then?" The man's gaze drops from yours, uncertain but unwilling to lose face before his sworn men.
Fortunately it is easy indeed to give him a way out when playing a role such as Dywen: "Then by all means you may cast me out once you have heard me out. I do not even ask for bread and salt, only a moment of your time and a chance for the gods to offer what aid they can through me."
Moments later you are swept through a long entrance hall whose dark walls are festooned with the tattered banners and dented shields of victories past, and up a flight of worn wooden stairs into a gloomy solar whose windows are barely wider than arrow slits filled with wavy glass. A brazier burns in one corner for heat as well as light painting the chamber in dark and fitful shadows.
"Talk," your not-quite-host commands, having seemingly regained his composure on the way.
Perhaps a touch of flattery might serve. "I was told about you, my lord. Great strength and will you were blessed with, and a good lord of the isle you will be for it one day. Not yet, though, for your heart yearns to see the world, not to sit in a study wrangling dusty tomes, but with blade in hand as it is a warrior's way."
He nods along with your honeyed words, perhaps even without realizing it at first, but by the end he seems more willing to truly listen. A sigh escapes his lips. "We'll do what we must not what we wish, old man. I fear my father's time is all but done, and no sorcery of yours can turn back the years."
Hearing this admission you allow your voice to drop almost to a whisper, the better to utter words of conspiracy: "I know about your fathers affliction and though I am not certain, I suspect that it is more than old age that has ravaged his mind. There are things that come from beyond... from below. Cruel things."
"Speak plainly," the lord says, though it is more of a request than a command this time, the spark of fear in his eye hinting at some knowledge of what you refer to.
"In tales they are the Deep Ones, horrors that rule the black waters where not a ray of sun can pierce," you oblige easily. "Theirs is the power to twist a man's mind as if it was clay or to make it rot like wood in the sea. If it their doing, I can't say without seeing your father, but what I offer is to use the gifts I bear to see him healed. To rule this land a little while longer and steer it through the troubles ahead of us all, and so that you might walk the path destined to you."
For a long moment there is silence as the man before you stares into the brazier's flame, struggling with all you have told him. Does he only worry about what your magic might do to his father, or does filial love battle ambition, you wonder, but you cannot read the answer from his hard expression.
To your surprise he reaches for a drawer for a piece of tack and some salt scraped off a piece of fish with a belt knife. The message is clear and ultimately heartening: if he is going to let you see his father, then he would rather both of you were bound by guest right.
On you step through the twisted corridors of the old keep until you reach a bedchamber high in one of the many towers. Here the old lord lies swathed in soft furs, looking so pale and shrunken he might almost seem dead already but for the faint movements of his chest. His eyes snap open feverishly bright: "Didn't I tell you, Hyron? The fire will rise in the east like the sun. The..."
Before he can finish whatever he had seen with the eyes of madness you reach out to clasp his wrist and wish wholeness of mind upon him. As the Sparr's eyes roll back in his head for a moment from behind you hear the scrape of iron and leather as his son begins to draw his sword.
Before the motion is even fully complete, however, his father speaks: "Who are you, traveler, and why do you come to give me this gift, bitter and sweet all at once on the eve of my death? I can see from your manner and hear from your voice that you are no Drowned Man, no man of the Iron Islands at all."
"Once I was a wandering septon, now I am a servant of gods older by far," you answer. "The Gods of Earth, Stone, and Tree have a purpose for you, my lord, to rule these lands through a time of strife and peril."
"And what would that be costing?" he asks in a faint but shrewd voice. "I've lived long enough to know that nothing's free in this world."
What do you reply?
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OOC: Decent rolls overall. 
