The Far North
In some ways, the dragon hadn't changed the Watch at all.
The same black clothes and armour. The same cold and ice. The same faces in the barracks with him in the same colour. The same isolation on the Wall. The same duties. The same oaths.
In some ways, it was almost dizzying how much the Watch had changed since the dragon arrived.
The black brother leaned over the side of the Wall and picked a good open spot in the courtyard of the Nightfort.
What had once been an overgrown, broken abandoned fort like the dozen other keeps and forts along the base of the Wall had seen some change. The wild overgrowth had been trimmed, with the trees removed from the old stables in a lumber pile by the rotten gate and the old yards cut back to groves instead of small forests. It would never be pristine, with old tree roots growing up through the gravel and stone and the gnarled weirwood in the kitchen was still there, but it was a purposeful look. Most of the larger buildings had been repaired over the past moon with the great hall gaining three walls, a new roof and a giant door, the library rebuilt and new construction plain to see on the broken towers.
And it was no longer abandoned.
In the cleared courtyard, a silver dragon was proving herself a late riser. From up high on the Wall as he was, the great beast looked like a king had just up and lost his entire treasury of silver coins, leaving them laying a big heap. The overcast sky kept the dragon from being blinding, but the weak light glittered on the silver scales all the same.
Behold, the new terror of the far North.
Curled up like a cat before a lit hearth with her head tucked under a wing.
He put two fingers into his mouth and
blew.
Down below, the dragon stirred. The piercing whistle should have faded to nothing for a man's ears and a man wouldn't be able to see his wave from the bottom of the Wall either, but the dragon had wolf ears and hawk eyes. Once the horned head rose, he backed up a few steps.
The old winch and pulley lift of the Nightfort had long fallen apart from a lack of maintenance since the Watch abandoned it over a century ago. The frozen steps were much the same, so iced over from the winter they resembled jagged bumps in the Wall more than anything else. There was only one way to get down.
Very fast.
He gripped his lyre in both hands and took a running leap off the top of the Wall.
The wind screamed past as he fell. The cold snuck in through every slightest give in his clothes as his stomach joined his heart in his chest as the ice of the Wall blurred past. The crumbling walls and broken towers of the Nightfort grew bigger as the rush forced tears into his eyes. Mance kept falling faster and faster and just when he could see the dragon's toothy
grin as it watched him plummet and started to
panic - !
White feathers puffed around him. Instead of splattering all over the broken stone, he floated gently like a leaf in a breeze to land on his feet.
"You are a fucking
cunt," Mance Rayder declared loudly.
The dragon laughed.
Grumbling, he straightened his clothes and walked into the great beast's shadow. The kitchens of the Nightfort had been completely repaired, he saw. The bell tower's bell lay at the foot of its tower with its bronze coating polished to gleaming, ready to be put back into place. The dungeon had been scavenged for stone and metal as the dragon had seemingly found rebuilding the bath and brewhouses of greater import. The rebuilt great hall was large enough to be a keep in its own right with an opening unrestrained by doors wide enough for a dragon to crawl through. There were statues standing guard before it, made out of snow, wood and ice.
They each had a plaque of ice, carved with their name and that of their house. They were made with the exacting precision of a master at the art, each link in chainmail, every scale of scale armour, every rivet in plate was all there. There were winged helmets and decorative pauldrons and even the cloaks were frozen mid flutter from an unfelt breeze. Each face was carved as if at any moment, they could brush off the snow and head to battle. It could even be seen that one was a woman, as fierce and unyielding as the rest. Of all the icy knights in their snowy armour with heroic determination staring an unseen evil in the face, there was a palpable difference in the statue of one of the winged 'angels.'
Braganon had a grin full of
trouble and a gaze searching for an unseen companion instead. Less commemorative, more intimate.
He had never been heartless enough to ask.
"Almost done, aren't you?" He inspected the abandoned forge and pointed towards the dilapidated rookery. "Might be better to tear that down too. Not like you got a maester."
The dragon's silver eyes swept the fort as it hissed, a long, eerie sound Mance had come to recognize as her counterpart to thoughtful humming.
"You may have a keep, but you ain't a lord."
The dragon huffed.
"I don't make the rules." He waved a hand towards the South. "Ask the bloody Citadel. Only lords get maesters."
The dragon's eyes narrowed.
Mance palmed his face. "Why do you even
want one? All you could need one for is sending letters and I thought you hated ravens."
"I do hate them," the beast snarled. A puff of vapour glittering with ice shards leaked through teeth as long and sharp as swords.
"Rats on wings with a death wish."
A single missing silver coin from her small stash by an opportunistic bird and now any and
every stray raven was killed on sight. He wasn't fond of them much himself, not after a moon full of bad dreams.
"Why are you here?"
"What?" Mance asked innocently. "I'm not allowed to visit now?" The dragon tilted her head towards him silently and he shrugged, a tad uncomfortable under the molten silver gaze. "Sky's still overcast. I figured you'd let the storm blow over before going on your expedition and wanted to ask if you wouldn't mind company."
Iron bellied clouds were gathered in a thick layer high above them and the air was thick with moisture. Maybe southerners would be unable to tell, but the cold had a certain vicious bite to it that told the tale. There was a warmer wind that blew in from the sea to the east, and sometimes the snow it brought with it was half ice water that fell thick and fast.
"I'm a ranger," Mance offered. "I know the terrain and could help you avoid the wildling tribes out there."
"Or not avoid them," the dragon remarked shrewdly, because a head that large had to have a big mind too.
"The Weeper? He makes sport of killing rangers with that scythe of his and the so-called Lord o' Bones, his tribe is cruel and brutal. You don't owe us nothing." Whatever debt existed between the Night's Watch and the dragon had been settled the first sennight. "But if what you're looking for is anywhere close? I wouldn't mind you
not avoiding them
vigorously."
"I have yet to decide what I am to do with the wildlings," the great beast admitted with a displeased rumble that Mance could feel shaking his bones.
"Too many oddities. In your oaths. Your history. The Wall…"
"There's something…" He lowered his voice, feeling unsettled and silly at the same time. "Something is
calling me out there," Mance admitted. "I feel like I have to go into the far North, but I don't know where or
why."
It was the beating of drums and marching feet in his very soul. The chordant cries of battle, the heady iron taste of blood, the crash of thunder and above it all,
the triumphant horn.
The sky had burned with falling stars. Greedy, desperate ravens with three eyes haunted his dreams and in his waking hours, Mance Rayder heard music.
The common castle-forged steel of arms and armour had dull, clunking and quiet notes, but there was an audible
difference between freshly forged works and those that had seen battle. The hesitant, tentative melody. The smokey grey rippled Valyrian steel of old Wynton Stout's trinket and Maester Aemon's chain snarled their bloody hymn. The pretty white blade of the prince's sworn sword had chimed
gold in his ears.
"You know Qorgyle's too cautious a man to give me men for a fool's errand," he argued. "If I go
alone without permission, I'll be beheaded as a deserter."
That would not be the case if he went with the dragon.
The food on the Wall wasn't the same. Even if it was the normal fare of mash and bread, there was more of it. The mash was far less watered down and sometimes replaced with boiled small white grains spruced up with herbs, chunks of bacon or fresh roasted venison. The bread was thick and moist instead of stale, dry and thin. They had full roasts of boars that had been dropped from a great height and frozen all the way through before cooking, leaving the meat surprisingly tender. Before the prince arrived, they had once been served fatty steaks of
leviathan because the dragon had gotten
restless?
Flew out to sea for a fight or some such and she only wanted the tail of her conquest to gnaw on, like a dog with a bone.
Almost a year into winter and the snow
should have piled high enough to bury a man standing straight, but it hadn't. Their stores of firewood and coal mysteriously replenished without comment. The few blacksmiths the Watch had found themselves with dangerously idle hands when one day all their allotted repair work on arms and armour had been completed without them, only for the dragon to put them to work on commissions for the Nightfort. He supposed he could not blame the surge of attendance to the septs on the dragon
directly, but they were treated no differently no matter their fear. Torn cloaks mended, swords sharpened, even the septs themselves tidied up. They had all whispered quietly in bewilderment.
Was the Watch being fucking
pampered by a
dragon?
One, and only one, black brother got it into his head that the great beast could be used to break his oath. They all knew he had been planning something. To fly down south and get a pardon from the king, mayhaps. They kept their heads down, watched their commanders and held their breath.
The dragon killed him herself.
The great beast respectfully delivered his body to the Lord Commander. The man had asked why. The creature had looked
confused at the question.
'Why would I dishonour your order?'
It went far beyond simple indulgence. The dragon
believed in the Night's Watch. That it was an
honourable calling. That it was a
noble sacrifice.
That they were
worth their weight in silver.
And to Mance Rayder, that had been the biggest change of them all.
The great beast lowered her head to study him, putting her molten silver eye close enough for him to see that she had a
second iris and pupil within the first, the same way she had a second eyelid. The second eye rotated and spun and narrowed and he felt as if the beast could see right through him.
"And how were you planning on keeping pace with me?"
Mance grinned.
The dragon's eye narrowed to a slit.
"Glad you asked!"
"No."
He waggled a finger at her. "If you would just let me - "
"No."
Mance cut his losses.
"Is walking beside us mere mortals beyond your
grace?" He jested dryly and yelped when he suddenly had an irate dragon in his face.
"Do I seem as if I can walk long distances with this form?"
He took a few steps back and looked over the creature with its long back legs and wing-arms near flat against the ground, sloping back and bunched muscle groupings giving it the appearance of all one hundred feet permanently hunching forward. Now that he thought about it, the only time she actually looked
comfortable was asleep.
"Not at all."
"I did not think so."
"Be a wolf," he suggested. One with silver fur, a black nose and blue eyes. He knew she could do it. "They have those four legs you love so much."
The dragon blew out a breath hard enough to send him staggering back and then in a radiant flash of light, the woman stood in its place. She was dressed as a black brother if he wore white instead, with a ringmail coat of shining steel under the white surcoat, a plain hunting dagger on her belt. The only change was her white hooded cloak that she drew up over her silver hair.
Mance made a sound in his throat.
"Would it
kill you to look hideous for
once in your
damn life?"
The dragon gave him an unimpressed look.
"Why do I tolerate your cheek?"
"You're an honourable sort," he replied with the same flat tone. "And have a great deal of compassion for dim-witted fools."
She barked her harsh laugh. "That I do!"
He was just about convinced that was the only reason the Wall was still standing.
The new septon had yet to convince himself that he
hadn't drunk so much wine as to see dragons, the Lord Commander tried to have her poisoned, so did Commander Mallister and three quarters of the fucking Watch were mighty curious how true her female form was and just as indelicate in their japes. At least his brothers had their oaths forbidding women turning them half-mad as an excuse. He had been curious too. For about a day. He had been there the first night she arrived, after all. Had the privilege of seeing her before she discovered the concept of 'clothing.'
Then he saw the beast idly snap up
two of their old horses in her maw with
one bite and he could swear his balls
fled all the way back up into his gut.
"Permission to accompany you on your ranging,
ser Nightfort commander?"
Her eyes rolled skywards, but the corner of her lips pulled up as well. "Granted."
Then she turned on her heel, flashing the foreign heraldry on her cloak and headed right for the rebuilt gate through the Wall.
"Wait,
now?"
"Indeed."
He scrambled to match her stride, feeling out of sorts. "I just have my
lyre?" It was hung on its thick rope tight against his back, as usual. "What about my tent?
Supplies? A sword?"
"I am capable of feeding you," she replied evenly, as if he were a whinging pet animal. "Shelter will be provided and as for your weapons…" The dragon tilted her head in that odd way of hers, as if she were a sea eagle tracking him through its peripheral vision. "I will be with you. Are they
necessary?"
Guess not.
"If I die, I will say I told you so."
"If you die, I will find a way to
bring you back." As she stopped before the Nightfort's gate, the dragon did not so much smile, as
bare teeth. "If I cannot, I
will avenge you. You are
mine. My guide. And I do not like it when death touches what belongs to
me."
That was terrifying.
Oddly comforting.
But mostly terrifying.
"Well, then," Mance breathed.
Satisfied that she had addressed his concerns, the beast stalked to the gate and knelt. With the screech and grind of wood and metal, she lifted the several hundred pound gate and held it comfortably over her head. He hesitated for only a moment before passing under it into the dungeon darkness of the tunnel through the Wall. The gate was lowered with the same ease as before and in the dark, her eyes held a faint silver glow like that of a cat.
"Guide, you say?" Mance prodded as they began their trek through the cold, dark tunnel. The Wall above their heads groaned very quietly, the sound almost faded beneath his own footsteps and the clink of his blackened mail.
"Drinxkikaarin," she replied in a rasp, bordering a growl. The dragon moved like a shadowcat, graceful, but silent even in chain as if her feet never actually touched the ground. "That is our word for it, but there are many of yours that fit."
"Such as?"
Lights flared to life, three orbs of red, yellow and white danced about their heads. The light splashed off the ice of the tunnel, blending until it almost looked like they walked beneath a rainbow.
"Guide. Servant," was the calm response. "Shield-brother. Advisor. Tool. Trusted.
Mine."
Mance swallowed thickly.
"This distresses you," the beast murmured with a small frown, because of course her wolf ears heard.
"I am...not certain," Mance said honestly. "It's rather
heavy, isn't it?" He said. "You could kill us all and ain't nothing anyone could do about it. Not even if Stark rallied the entire North."
"I have no reason to."
That wasn't a denial.
"What'd I do to deserve it?" He asked next, because that was what bothered him more. "Is it because you're
lost?" The statues had told him the dragon had left something, somewhere,
someones behind, for all that she didn't seem to wallow in melancholy. "And all I know is the Wall? Am I trusted because I have little reason to betray you?"
"Nothing so complex."
Her dark blue eyes lazily roamed the tunnel instead of looking at him and he was oddly flattered. He had already figured out from their wide set eyes that dragons had large blindspots directly in front of them and were sensitive to movement. It was an instinct to turn to see whatever had caught their attention, always on the hunt for prey.
She was ignoring his presence in her peripheral vision.
"What am I?"
"Dragon?"
"Yessss," she hissed, low and long, finally glancing towards him. "And you seem to be the only person who understands what that means." He raised his eyebrows questioningly. There was a story there. He could actually
smell it. "I am not your long lost glory," she sighed. "You trust that I
mean you no harm. You are willing to believe me when I say I can and when I cannot. I am not a threat to your faith - "
"Wasn't that strong anyway." He waved off.
"I am not a god - "
"Arguable."
"Mance."
"I'm not tellin' you…" He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm just
tellin' you."
"And gods
forbid you want me for a wife - "
"Fuck no!" Mance gasped and made a hand sign to ward off evil. "Do I look fucking
mad?"
Amusement and no small amount of relief lit in the great beast's eyes.
"Should I be
offended?" She asked dryly. "Are you saying you are
not fond of me in the
slightest?"
"Where did you get the notion that you
don't scare the piss out of me?" Mance wondered aloud.
"The lack of piss!" The dragon said with some vicious glee. "You
struck me within two days of my arrival."
"
You threw me off the Wall!"
"You lived, as promised!"
He was not going to dignify that with a response. "Who's the fucking madman?"
"Guess."
He had a half dozen names of brothers who would probably not mind taking the dragon for a tumble in her female form if they thought they could get away with it.
Wedding her was a different story. It took him a bit, but he got there.
"Well," Mance grunted. "I'll be sure to give the southern prince pointers on how smacking your woman around is part and parcel of
dragon wooing."
The beast snorted.
It had already begun to snow when they emerged on the far side of the Wall. Mance tugged down his black woollen cap and fluffed up his furs to combat the bitter wind picking up the pace. The sky was nothing but dark grey and the snow fell in clumps, blown a bit sideways. He could only see a bit in front of him, before the snow turned everything into shadows and silhouettes that made it hard to tell when the snow on the ground ended and the snow in the air began.
"Fuck," he muttered, but he raised a hand and pointed deeper into the shadow of the Haunted Forest, to the northwest. "What's got its hooks in me is that way."
The dragon's eyes narrowed as her gaze swept the tree line. "How far?"
"Can't tell," he mumbled, squinting as the wind blew snow into his face. "I know you can navigate through snow storms just fine." He adjusted the strap of his lyre and hugged himself stubbornly. "I won't whinge about it, but I
will be miserable."
In response, the dragon raised her hand towards the sky.
Mance
choked on a yell, stumbling backwards as silver light burst from the dragon, streaking up to the clouds as a brilliant pillar. Veins glowing every colour of the rainbow scrawled across the clouds, twisting upon themselves to form braided, curling, looping, circling patterns in the sky above them, stretching out as far as the Wall was tall in all directions. The air itself came
alive with the feel of lightning giving him gooseflesh as the drumbeats of his soul pulsed in his gut and in his temples. A nauseating fluttering sensation was in his chest as he stared up in awe at the largest working of sorcery known to man since the raising of the Wall itself.
He almost didn't notice when the wind calmed.
He
did notice when the snow ceased and the dark clouds behind the shining patterns thinned. When the dragon dropped her hand and the light faded, the sky was as blue as a robin's egg. The dark clouds of the sea born snow storm had been pushed far off, banished from the great beast's consideration.
"
You - " Mance waved at the sky, for the first time in his life, left speechless.
"What?"
That damnable amusement flared within eyes still bright from a fading silver glow. "I
can navigate through snow storms rather easily. I
prefer not to."
That didn't answer a
single godsdamned thing!
"No," Mance said. He jabbed a finger at the dragon. "
You do not get to keep pulling
miracles out of your
arsehole and
make like nothing changes - !"
The dragon laughed.
"Nothing
has changed!" The beast spoke with her savage delight evident in her smile, curved like an axe blade. She turned away and began walking towards the small copse of broken and iced over trees beyond the Wall. "I am, as always, a dragon."
"Explain it to me in small words," Mance said as he waded through the snow after her. "You
changed the
weather. How - " He licked his dry lips. "How long will it last?"
"As long as necessary."
"Fuck," he muttered, eyeing the dark clouds far off in the distance and knew every man on the damn Wall and half the far North had seen that show of light. "What's the difference between your 'dragon' and your
'god?'"
"I cannot hear prayers," was the flat response.
Oh, was that
it?
"But you
can see into a man's mind."
"Not
prayers."
Mance nodded agreeably as they entered the shadow of the Haunted Forest and the snow burdened trees.
"But have you
tried?"
"Mance."
The heart tree stares back at her with a sneering face.
It looks as all Weirwood trees do, with blood red five pointed leaves, a wide trunk with smooth bone white bark. The tree is bent forwards, having grown next to an old oak and having run out of space. It only contributes to the feeling of menace in its carved expression as it looms over her, red sap leaking from the narrowed eye sockets as if it wept blood. It is only when she puts in the effort to truly
see the tree for what it is that the truth unfolds.
The trees are constructs.
Just as the Weirwood tree growing twisted in the kitchens of her Nightfort, these were also created,
altered life with a basic intelligence, a network of scrying mirrors, repositories of knowledge, crude -
phylacteries, but now beyond the Wall she can feel the thousand and one eyes observing her silently from every white tree in the grove. She waits, but they seem content to stare.
Terendelev is not.
"They say a man cannot lie before a heart tree," Mance Rayder murmurs at her side, staring up at the sneering face. "For the old gods know when a man lies."
"Is anything said about offering blood?" She unsheathes her dagger and draws the blade across the flesh of her hand. It parts easily, for the skin of this shape she wears is not the toughened hide of her silver scales.
Mance shrugs. The movement does not capture her attention, like the fluttering of black wings as a crow flees. That is reserved for enemies and prey. Allies are neither.
"Old tales, mostly. Offering the blood of a man's enemies to the Weirwood trees, or the hanging of entrails on the branches on Skago - " He jumps when he turns to her and she knows it to be from the burning blue colour of her eyes. "What are you doing?"
"Discovering if I had needed only to burn the
one tree," she says as she reaches out with her bleeding hand.
Her lips pull back from her teeth as the
hate and
rage bubbles up, scorching her throat as she meets the sneering gaze in the bark.
"Or if I need to
burn them all."
She reaches with her bloody palm to press it against the pale tree. Her blood sinks into the white wood.
The wood reaches back.
It is not the grasping, greedy fingers tearing and biting that greets her this time. It is an abyss.
She falls.
It is by instinct alone that she spreads her great wings and
flies.
She looks up and there is a sky, but it is a bloody red colour from horizon to horizon rather than the bright blue she had left -
this is a vision.
There is a ring, shining and golden as it spins in the place of the sun. A loud sound echoes out, like a hammer striking an anvil and the ring cracks. Sections within the lines turn an ominous black, as if in warning. Another strike of the hammer, and the cracks spread. The third strike is a gong.
The ring shatters.
Shards and fragments fall from the sky as a shower of falling stars, leaving burning trails behind them. The land they fall upon is familiar -
Westeros. The general outline she recognizes from the old maps at Castle Black, except the southernmost region is connected fully to the eastern continent by a land bridge where the region of the Stepstones should have been.
Her wings beat and the wind from them breaks the land apart into islands.
A black bird, half-burned with terrible scarring screeches. A vast expanse of sky before it and the daft animal flies
directly into her eye.
Her roar echoes. She snaps her jaws and it narrowly avoids her teeth with a drunken swoop.
'You have gone too far back!' It cries.
A terrible cacophony rises up from the eastern continent where one of the great shards had fallen. She sees through the carved faces of the trees and witnesses the darkness pour out. The empty speaks to her in a cajoling tone with words she almost understands. She turns to look and the bird attempts to blind her again. She snaps, sees its red eye and recognizes it to be the same as the one that had attempted to
chain her when she arrived.
You!
The
rage rises. The bird turns with a squawk and flees north.
She follows.
The land beneath her wings blurs together, changing through shifting seasons, storms, disasters and the wild land is tamed by shadows that cut down trees and hew stones to build. The ground between the blades of grass is white with littered bones, blood feeds the roots of bone trees and still they fly. For her size, she is not slow, but always the raven -
crow stays one step ahead. Every missed swipe of her claws, every time her jaws close on air makes her blood
boil.
'Control yourself, creature!'
Die!
The Wall rises, singing its bold chant,
We are the shields that guard the realms of men!
She stops before it with an aching remembrance and the crow alights on the ice.
'We must speak,' it says.
'And you must leave before you are seen. This place is not for you.'
There is a cave, its third eye shows her. A cleft in a wooded hillside between two Weirwood trees and the passage is long and dark.
You bid me to come to you, slaver, in the midst of your allies in your seat of power beneath the earth?
The bird's beak clacks.
'We do what we must.'
Her grin is bloody.
I accept your invitation.
'Then wake up!'
She does with a choking gasp.
"Whoa now!"
Rough hands grab her around the shoulders -
my wings are gone and pull her upright. Her blood
burns and she wrenches away from the hands -
ally, discard when no longer of use. It is only when her sore eyes fall upon the sneering tree does she realise that she had fallen in a faint amidst the Weirwood's gnarled roots. With a soft snarl, she yanks her legs free from the thin pale tendrils that had snaked around her ankles -
I am no one's slave.
"Light, warmth - " She stops the aria for a healing spell for her cut hand when there is no response. She spits a hissing curse instead. She does not understand why her grasp on channelling positive energy is so
inconsistent - why am I always denied!
"You going to tell me what happened?" Mance Rayder's concerned brown eyes follow as she stands.
She owes him
nothing, certainly not an explanation -
but I am not so petty. "I have discovered that I do not
need to burn
every Weirwood I find." But oh, she
wants to
. "I simply have to
murder a certain someone instead."
The black brother casts a dubious eye towards the pale tree.
There is not even a single drop of her blood left on the white bark and a muscle in her jaw jumps. A hiss of smoke leaks from her lips, but she turns away. The trees are not going anywhere -
I have an invitation.
And she has no intention of being fashionably late.
"Stay here," she orders. "This should not take long - "
"Hold a moment." Mance grabs her arm and Terendelev goes still with the effort it takes to convince herself not to tear it clean off -
ally, must remember. "Are you
well? You seem…"
"Agitated?" She hisses. "
Furious?"
"Tense," he offers weakly.
She
burns.
"You fainted. The tree
moved," Mance whispers tightly, but he lets his hand fall away. "And you come up spitting
fire. What
happened?"
She is silent for too long contemplating her response. She sees it in the way Mance shifts in his crouch to even his balance, ready to spring to his full height and the halted gesture, his hand drifting towards the memory of a sword at his hip that is not there. She is pleased at the show of proper
respect - there is a flicker of unease -
I have not given him a reason to fear me yet.
"Know you of the mind that lives in these trees?" She asks idly.
"The mind - " Mance blinks and glances towards the Weirwood grove around them with their five fingered crimson leaves.
"That sees through them?" She reframes the question and the black brother's face blanks.
"You mean the
old gods?"
So it was to be
deicide.
"One of them did me a
grave injustice," she says slowly and everything in her
simmers. "He saw a dragon and believed I could be made to
obey." Serve. Save. Sacrifice.
Slave. Her smile is a cold thing. "He believed falsely." She starts walking, eager to leave the grove and head deeper into the wood with the general direction of the cave at the forefront of her mind. "It falls to me to relieve him of his burden."
Of existence.
She hears Mance's hesitant footsteps crunch through the snow behind her -
I said stay here!
"We will be moving faster than you are accustomed," she says instead. Being disobeyed is
vexing, but she truly does not care beyond that. Allies can be left to sink or swim on their own merits.
"Wha - "
"To be as swift as an arrow, the acceleration of the mind and agility of form…"
Make
haste.
She runs on the wind.
The crow lamented his folly.
He had been too hasty. In the surprise, confusion and even
pain - too much, too much! He had overreached and had been overly sure of the power of his blood. In his scrambling, he had forgotten the one unvarnished truth that his would-be-is-not grand niece would have put into words:
Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor.
A dragon is not a slave.
The crow's jaw creaked and shuddered. It took a moment for him to remember how the tongue was supposed to move in a human mouth. At one time, he had been Brynden, a Targaryen bastard of a king and Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Commanded to take the black for doing what had been necessary.
He had not been Brynden in a long time.
"Boy," he whispered to his student. "Can you see her?"
"Yes." The Stark spoke as a breeze. He was little more than a shade, the leaf upon the river that spread ripples with its light touch. The impression of the youth curled his fingers deeper into the thick coat of the golden eyed direwolf at his side. "She's
bright."
The dragon was
blinding.
The crow was on unsteady ground. Nothing was as it should be. The pieces on the cyvasse board had not just been moved, the table itself had been flipped.
Gods were rising.
All he could see was strange and frightening.
It was the dragon
prince and not a princess that did not burn and what use would he have for blue winter roses? There was no winter chill that could overcome the new heat of Rhaelle Baratheon's blood. Aerys Targaryen's ambition to see a Valyrian bride for his son and heir had been waylaid by the flame that had
burned the blue from Steffon Baratheon's eyes and the black from his hair. He could see no orphans of the Greenblood for they were orphans no longer. Elia Martell could not drown. Ironborn gathered on their ships. Some few walked into the sea. They returned. The dwarf remained a clever child and that saved his life, for his older sister was a thief that spoke to a golden haired ghost. It was a Reach lord's bastard that could coax seeds to sprout, not the lord's heir.
Instead of his second youngest son, it was Ned Stark himself that was the strongest greenseer seen in
centuries, wedded to the trees as firmly as the crow was. Their roots did not bind the boy, for he did not
need them. Not root, dream, blood or Weirwood seed to awaken his talents. An impossibility made manifest, a Child of the Forest in the skin of a child of man.
A singer whose blood
alone sang the right note.
A
second son of House Stark, the crow thought with faint amusement. The Has-Been-Never-Will repeats. The youngest had bonded with a pup from the kennels, half wild. The daughter was stubborn and dreamed of wielding swords like men and brushed minds with her steed. The eldest was unremarkable.
"Tell me - " The crow coughed. His faint breaths rattled in his chest. He had never felt the heat of the dragon's flames, but he had been burned all the same.
The hunger in them had travelled the roots to seek him out.
"Tell me when the dragon arrives." His head lolled from the effort, cradled against his throne of Weirwood roots. The cavern was filled with the bone white roots, a cage of pale wood and dark soil. Out the corner of his remaining crimson eye, he saw the direwolf's lip curled in a canine snarl of one flashing bronze fang. "Please," the crow added with unease and the wolf subsided. "Please."
"I will," the boy who was-is-never promised.
The crow drifted back into the roots.
He needed to
see.
He did not know how much time had passed when the boy guided him back to his body, for time had a different meaning to the trees. For men, it was a rushing river and they could not swim against the current. For the Weirwood, now was then and it was after. The tree laid the roots and formed the seed. The seed became a tree whose roots intertwined with the roots of before to become now and formed the seed…
Greenseers could see through the trees and witness everything they saw. Separating the strands of time, the roots, took practice and concentration.
It was best not to spy on beings that even a thousand years past, or a thousand hence, could
look back.
Hide! The direwolf snarled at the boy in a voice of babbling brooks and great trees laboriously bending before a storm.
Ned Stark pressed against the wall and the dragon stepped through the cavern opening.
The form she wore was irrelevant. It was her
presence.
Overlaid, towering over, burning through the form of a woman was the dragon. Beheld with his own eye, the crow knew how his nephew Aemon Targaryen felt. A majesty all the more precious for its long absence. The heat of the fire under the skin radiated outwards as a smokeless flame. The scales were as silver as Sunfyre's was gold and he was embittered all the more at what Hightower had squandered grasping for the Iron Throne in the Dance. Little Aemon had
dreamed of dragons. The crow knew the wonder would have never left him. Not even the cold of the Wall could have taken it away.
That one night alone when the stars fell, would have kept his nephew warm for the rest of his days.
The dragon's slitted and silver eyes fell upon him. They were filled with a proud cruelty and the crow lamented his folly.
"None lying in wait?" The dragon asked as she lazily crossed the bridge over the abyss that separated him from the rest of the underground network of passages and caves. "No tricks?"
The crow's mouth worked. "Do you not wish to know?"
It was barely a whisper, but the dragon heard.
"Know
what?"
"Why you are in this land."
A dark fury crossed the dragon's face, but it stood still. It was not a question of control, for she was an intelligent being and was always in control herself. It was the self that was in question. Altruism and avarice. Compassion and disregard. Rage and peace. Love and hatred. Truth and lie bound together.
But the dragon was always proud and always had a predator's cruelty no matter what side of it was true and what was false.
"Speak
quickly."
"Will you sit?" The crow asked in turn.
She eyed the nest of gnarled roots and stone that made up the ground before him. The crow waited. The direwolf huffed and stepped forward. The crow does not understand what had changed, but the dragon's eyes snapped to the wolf with a hungry intensity as if just now able to see it.
You must learn to bend that stiff neck of yours, beast.
The dragon raised silver eyebrows and trailed her gaze slowly from the wolf's ears to its feet before looking back up with an unkind smile.
"Hypocrite."
The wolf chuffed.
A beast can do as it likes, but we were promised a prince.
The dragon's expression curdled with bewilderment. "Promised?"
"Born amidst salt and smoke, beneath a bleeding star herald of their coming," the crow stated. "It is an old prophecy, of a 'prince' to banish the coming darkness and bring the dawn of a new age of glory."
There was a shift in the dragon's face in the midst of the crow's second sentence and the wolf barked.
You know whom we speak of, do you not?
"Perhaps," the dragon allowed. "A god I knew of was said to bring an age of glory and banish darkness. However, the prophecy was
broken over a hundred years ago."
We were promised! The wolf snapped.
"The dead are not much for keeping promises." The dragon lowered its voice dangerously. "And do not presume you can extort
me in exchange."
Arrogant child! The wolf bit at the air once more.
The exchange was already made, or do you believe your Father is ignorant of your whereabouts? The dragon reeled back as if struck.
You think the dead cannot pay debts? Do not be so naïve. You died, the wolf sneered.
We yet live to be owed.
The dragon lunged.
The crow could only watch, unable to move his decrepit body from the roots as she snatched up the wolf by its throat with one hand.
"If you continue to carry on as you are, you will not
live for much longer," the dragon said softly and amusement curled in the corner of the crow's mouth. It was what the brother he hated would have done.
Dragons of either stripe, beast or man, had their similarities.
The direwolf laughed in its grip, paws flailing.
Yes! Keep that hatred of yours, that rage, but aim it at the ends approaching. The wolf bared its gleaming bronze teeth in a too wide grin, golden eyes glowing.
The rot comes.
The dragon's eyes widened.
The bleed comes. The flame comes. The void comes. Winter comes.
"And death with it," the crow finished.
"Your prince was a
god," the dragon snarls. "Your bargain with my Father was a poor one."
Our bargain seems very well struck. It was clear the wolf was pleased, despite the threat of choking.
Gold is a pretty and useless metal, it spat and the crow was disquieted in his lack of understanding. What need did any here have for gold?
Far too soft for our needs. Bronze is outmatched by man's steel. Copper and Brass are decorative, useful tools when we need champions. But Silver… Those golden eyes gleamed.
Silver without impurities is brittle, it breaks.
"You have
erred." The dragon of silver scales whispered and the claws about the wolf's throat began to squeeze. "Impure silver...
rusts."
A sacrifice we expected to make. The wolf began to wheeze and the crow watched.
Dra - gons are… magic, sor - cery made ma -nifest. It was suffocating. The wolf still grinned.
A -nd sor…cery is a …swo -rd …with - out… a… hilt.
The dragon's hand spasmed closed.
The direwolf slipped free in a gust of wind, swirling with five fingered bloody leaves.
"Your place is not in the North," the crow said. The dragon's shoulders shuddered. "Not yet. The Seven Kingdoms must stand united against what is to come. Take the blade. Keep it or give it to the prince, I care not."
The dragon turned to face him and the crow was pleased to see that it was calm.
"There is a dragon egg at Summerhall. You will be able to find it. That you must give to the prince." Here, the crow frowned. The Has-Been-Never-Will was beyond his reach, but not all of it must be abandoned as lost. If it could repeat once, it could do so again. "Guide the boy to wed north, to the daughter of Stark. Be his leal ally."
"Must I?" The dragon asked softly.
"A dragon is not a slave," the crow admitted. "Duty is a choice. Life or death is a
choice."
The dragon approached his throne of Weirwood roots.
She is contemplative and saddened, the fury bled dry as she reaches out and gently cupped the crow's gaunt, thin face. She brushed back the long, brittle white hair and looked into his eye. The crow looked back silently. There is a Weirwood root growing into his empty eye socket, but the other is the same crimson eye of his Before. The crow cannot see what colour eyes belong to the form she took. He saw only the dragon's eyes of molten silver.
Time did not have the same meaning to trees as it did for man. The crow is ageless, but
Brynden Rivers was tired.
"We do what we must," the crow said.
The dragon leaned in and gently laid a kiss on his dry skin.
The crow knew fear.
Into the roots, into the trees he flew and was met with the bronze teeth and fangs of a direwolf blocking the path.
A False Prince glutted on the blood of war was your plan? To wear our Starks as animal skin? We could not speak and we could not act, Bloodraven, the voice of the old gods snarled and he gaped.
That did not mean we could not listen and we could not see.
'No. You cannot! We have a pact!'
We keep our word. Be great or we will discard you and find another. We have found another.
Ned Stark was not his reward, the crow realized.
The boy was his
replacement.
He struggled bitterly.
He did his duty! He had been trying to save them all!
'I did what was asked of me! I did what I must!'
"I know," the dragon replied to the crown of his head.
Then she
breathed.
The cold and ice had come for him early. He could only watch as the dragon pulled back her fist.
"So do I."
Young Ned Stark wakes from his short rest crying softly for a lost teacher as the howling winds that have battered the Gates of the Moon abruptly cease. In the sudden silence, young Robert Baratheon falls out of his sickbed, screaming.
From the cold grey sky of the Vale of Arryn, blue lightning
strikes.
Thunder rolls.
