Paths of Power
Twenty Ninth Day of the Second Month 294 AC
You consider your answer carefully. It seems absurd on the face of it, especially from one as learned and well traveled as Marwyn. On the other side of the coin perhaps he is not sure if you understand the mechanisms of your own empire and their implications fully. No matter how many deeds you performed nor how bright you shine to mage-sight you are yet only eight and ten, and youth is often assumed to be headlong.
"The idea that a sorcerer lord's power is wholly unrestrained is laughable," you reply in a measured manner, turning the sphere of healing magic by which you pay the price of wishes in your hand, the light of sorcery playing between your fingers for emphasis. "A knight in heavy armor surrounded by his men-at-arms might be nothing compared to a powerful mage, but to the smallfolk they are equally unassailable in their personal power. Yet evidence shows that the knight can't rule by fear alone, no matter how many have tried to do so. His power to compel others to act by force is limited by the reach of his blade. Likewise, the sorcerer is limited by what spells he can threaten his subjects with. To rule like this is to rule over slaves who will only obey as long as the whip is cracked at them, and the state of Essos and Slaver's Bay shows how well such systems work."
"So the Imperial Times writes to great acclaim," the archmaester replies wryly. "Yet a student of history cannot help but note that slavery has existed for as long as there have been men to practice it upon their fellows. If all tyrants were doomed to failure of malfunction than it would not be so much the way of the world."
"And do those realms seem well suited to face the world as it now is, Wisdom?" you ask in like tone. "To rule means to act in accordance with an often unspoken consensus between those governing and those governed. The governed will obey the commands of the governing as long as those are seen as legitimate in the frame of a societal agreements. A legionnaire obeys his officer because the officer has been imbued with the royal authority to give his commands. A citizen will obey the lawmen because they have been imbued with the authority to enforce the laws. But this authority rests on the royal power being seen as legitimate by the governed and the system can only work as long as that is given."
"An age of silver..." the archmaester muses under his breath. At your curious look he adds. "An old prophecy from the Whispering Stones of Asabhad, like as not nonsense or worse as most such things are, but the mind still enjoys idly teasing out meanings." Taking on a tone of practiced recitation that you imagine did not see much use in the Citadel's lecture halls he continues:
An age of silver will rise from old flame and tarnished gold
Fruits of blood from the tree of knowledge falling
Blade thrice reforged cuts through the cold
Ware thee the storm from the poisoned seas rising
"I imagine you can guess that it is no mere chill it refers to, but the first line is generally held to refer to a new age from the ashes of the Empire of Dawn. I begin to wonder if its meaning might not be more obscure and more prosaic all at once. Silver is a metal from which men strike coin, worth no more than they are willing to pay for it, yet by that does the world turn."
You nod, consigning the verse to memory and making a note to ask for a copy of the original verse. Prophecy does not bind one's fate, but it may yet illuminate an unnoticed peril in the darkness ahead. Instead you continue on to less mystical though certainly not less important matters: "The Imperium works because both the absorbed governments and the population of these entities have been convinced that the actions of the Imperium at large are beneficial to them, the laws just and their application fair. If the people assumed that the lawmen were enforcing the laws unfairly, they would disobey them. If they thought the courts ruled unfairly, they would avoid the judgement of the courts. If they thought the orders of their leader were not in their own interest, they would see to subvert and twist them. Force can be used to force compliance anyway, but said force requires compliance in turn. A sorcerer lord can't stand behind every lawman, every court and every governor to back up their orders with violence. Those institutions would be worthless if that had to be done. A sorcerer is not a god."
"And even a god is not a
god, or at least not in the way most of the faithful see them, eh?" A brief smile pulls at the archmaester's rough features, making him look if anything even more like the kind of person who would not be out of place in Drowned Town shaking down shopkeepers for protection money. Having actually done so yourself you can hardly disapprove. "Tywin Lannister seeks to move priests upon his board, you would move Powers that rule them."
"I prefer to think of it as a mutually beneficial alliance," you temporize. "Trying to manipulate such entities is foolish, seeing to both their interests and the realm's is only good sense."
"At least you did not say
common sense," Marwyn offers, soft enough not to interrupt though clearly wishing to be heard. The years of being the least favored archmaester in the Citadel have honed quite the sardonic wit. In a more normal tone he adds, "One might worry at where the interests of inhuman and vastly powerful beings will turn should the day come when you can no longer mediate the alliance."
You give him the first truly surprised look of the meeting. Was he not the one with the reputation for going to sailors' temples and conversing with foreign priests as much as hedge witches?
Reading your expression the archmaester replies simply, "I have no quarrels with priests that do not seek quarrels with me. The few times I have encountered true vessels of divine will... they have been less congenial."
That you can well imagine, recalling some of Zherys' tales about Qohor. Most powers who remained able to touch the world at the nadir of magic would not have been as pleasant to interact with as the Old Gods. "You have spoken to Yss..." It was not a question, Marwyn had entered the temple sanctum publicly two weeks ago.
"And I have found Him
fascinating, yet the same alien nature would make him difficult for others to deal with, the same could be said of the Gods to Stone, Tree and Stream..."
"And do you imagine Tywin lannister or anyone who might follow in his footsteps would do better?" you interject.
"No, no, of course not," he waves the matter aside as he would a buzzing fly. "I was speaking of Lanna again. I fear sharing some of my experiences may have inadvertently poisoned the well there, if the devils, Deep Ones and stranger things did not." He shifts sightly in his seat. "Few mistake the meaning of the first word in the Golden Shields, but it is too easy to forget the second. I suspect the attachment to familiar values and traditional authority of lord and land is born in no small measure from seeing such horrors trying to tear them down."
"So they, the Shields, Lanna, think of me a alien and inscrutable, or at least the herald of such?" You let some of your disbelief show. "I have literally spread both my history and my hopes for the future throughout Lannisport in secret. Short of personally sneaking the Imperial Times into the bedroom at Castamere I do not see how I could be better known."
"Change, true, and sweeping change can be a terror of its own," the archmaester sighs. "Half a year ago I thought she was beginning to change her mind. She visited Sorcerer's Deep you know, then Myr just as the mirrors proclaimed the annexation of Braavos, but then she turned on her heel, grew more secretive from those outside the Shields. I imagine she thinks she has a chance to preserve the old world, something about those dragons they are force growing like herbs in a glass garden. Madness...."
"Perhaps it is poor form for me to say, but yes I would not pit a dragon against the Moonchaser even Balerion himself," you nod.
"They are not trying to
use the dragons," Marywn replies to your surprise. "That is a lie for Baratheon."
That much you
can believe. Robert Baratheon is no more king to Tywn Lannister these days than Aenys Targaryen was to Maegor. "What are the Lannisters planning then?" you ask
"Sacrifice and blood forging, crafting a weapon, an
engine of sorcery bathed in the blood of dragons, invested with the purpose, the will to slay them, for all the good it will do them now," the archmaester replied, drawing a parchment from your desk and a stylus from his robes. "Here, let me show you how to get to the dragons and their forge. It would be a pity to let all that go to waste..."
There is a hint of veiled sorrow in Marwyn's gaze, but his hand does not shake as lines flow under his hand.
OOC: And this is where I have to put a cut and continue in an informational post simply because it would take too much space to write all he knows about the Golden Shields in narrative form and this is already a sizable update.
