The Masque of Black Harren (ASOIAF AU, Oneshot)

[veteranMortal]

Dragonstone, the outpost at the edge of the Valyrian world, had stood empty for 77 years; the garrison had joined Aurion when he marched into Valyria and oblivion. Fisherfolk from Driftmark would sometimes have need to take shelter from a storm there, but they never dared enter the keep, nor did they wish to; it was a grim place, stinking of brimestone and salt, and the tower formed like a great dragon seemed to promise the Doom of Valyria to any who dared enter it.

And so it was that when the desperate survivors poured forth from Gogossos, fleeing the plague that ravaged the Free City, kept from Essos by grim-faced warriors, faces wrapped with cloth, they came to Dragonstone to find no resistance. Lord Velaryon was unperturbed by their presence; what cares a Lord whose family has gazed upon the spires of Valyria for the scurrying of fearful smallfolk, from one island to another. If they carried the plague, he reasoned, it would lay them all low, and he would have no cause for alarm.

A quarter century later, the people of Dragonstone began to sail once more, not just to fish but to trade what trinkets they had the industry to craft. As destitute as they were, they sailed the length and breadth of Westeros, seeking ports that would pay for their obsidian jewelry - fine jewelry, so dark as to be almost black, but with a bleed of red through the heart that could only be seen in firelight.

It was not long after that that the red death took Gulltown in its grasp. No pestilence in Westeros was ever so fatal, nor so hideous. Its avatar was blood, and blood was its seal. Sharp pains and sudden dizziness would take the victim first first, then bleeding profusely from the pores, the blood thinning like water, scarlet stains that marked clothes and face, marked a man condemned and exiled from the sympathy and care of his peers. In all, the disease took a half hour, from the moment it took root to the termination.

The Kings of Westeros reacted quickly, but too slowly all the same; King Loren Lannister promised all the gold of Casterly Rock to any man who could find a cure, but died with the rest when the red death came forth from Lannisport. King Mern Gardener laid healing hands upon a man stricken with the red death, and came away unharmed, but his sons were less fortunate, and all four died within the week. King Argillac Durrandon swore he feared no plague, but the roads into the Stormlands closed all the same, and his smallfolk clustered fearfully in Storm's End. Princess Meria Martell would follow suit, but the red death festered in Plankytown already, and of all the Martells, only young Deria would survive the pestilence. King Torrhen Stark did not care a whit for the news, when it first arrived; few southern plagues could survive the North, and few enough traders tried. He discovered his folly too late to save White Harbour, though the blight seemed less virulent, and travelled only so far as the Dreadfort, where Lord Bolton took no chances, slaying any man who entered his lands. When Queen Sharra Arryn found blood on her son's doublet, she did not weep, nor did she call for the maester - he lay dead in his rooms, at any rate. She simply pressed a kiss to his forehead, held him close to her and stepped through the Moon Door.

But King Harren was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When the Riverlands were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the lords and ladies of his realm, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of his Harrenhal. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the King's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had a vast gatehouse, with a mighty portcullis. When all had arrived, Harren brought a great hammer. The chains of the portcullis shattered.

Thus, he resolved, there could be no ingress, nor egress; whether desperation from without, or frenzy and despair from within. Harrenhal was richly provisioned, and with such precautions as Harren had taken, they could bid defiance to the contagion. The world would take care of itself, or it would not, and in the meantime it was folly to think, or to grieve. There were fools, there were mummers, there were courtesans, there were bards, there was Beauty, and there was wine. All these, and security, lay within. Without was the Red Death.

It was 7 months after Harrenhal had closed its gates that Harren chose to host a ball of unique magnificence. It was to be a Masque, held in the Great Tower, the largest of the towers of Harrenhal.

And what a masquerade it was, an indulgence of unparalleled scale. But first, the tower. There were seven floors of the masquerade. A staircase rose around the edges of the tower, with the design conspiring to be such that from one room it was all but impossible to see into another, and the great stained glass windows, sweeping and great, though abnormally, the windows covered only one side of the room, and looked out only into a series of corridors that sheathed the tower. The stained glass of each window varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That in the lowest chamber was hung, for example, in blue - and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange - the fifth with white - the sixth with violet. The seventh and highest chamber was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes were scarlet - a deep blood color. Now in no one of any of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro and depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the tower. But in the corridors that encased the tower, there stood, opposite each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly lit the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the seventh, or highest chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was within this chamber that there stood one final item, a great ebony clock, inlaid with obsidian glass, purchased from Myr. The pendulum at the heart of the clock swung with a ponderous, metallic clang, and when the minute hand completed its circuit of the clock's face, there would come a deep, musical sound from the very lungs of the clock, of particular note and tenor that the bards would halt for a moment, simply to hear the sound, and to know it, and such would the dancers be obliged to halt, and all would be suddenly disconcerted, their pleasure forgotten for a time; the giddiest grew wan and solemn, whilst the more venerable of the company would stop entirely, bringing fingers to brows, as though recalling something half heard and never learnt. As the echoes ceased, and the bards resumed their busy work, a thrill of light laughter passed over the whole assembly - the bards looked at one another with smiles, as though vowing to avoid a similar disturbance when next the clock sang. The minute hand would complete another migration, the clock would sing once again, and disquiet would descend.

Despite this, it was a most magnificent revel. Harren's taste ran to the peculiar, and he had a fine eye for colour and effects, a barbaric lustre glowing from all he conceived of. There had been some that thought him mad, speaking darkly of the black blood of Hoare, but they were out with the Red Death, and Harren's followers felt he was not. If one could only see him, hear him, touch him, one would know he was not.

It was by his direction that the seven floors were embellished, and it was his guiding taste that gave the character of the masquerade, which tended to the grotesque. There was much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm. There were delirious fancies as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these the dreams - writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away - they have endured but an instant -- and a light half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays of the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls on the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other floors.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps that more of thought crept, with more of time into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had done the unthinkable, the unimaginable, and gone beyond the bounds of even Harren's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of his face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When Harren beheld this visage as it stalked between revellers, he could be seen to convulse, with a great shudder of terror or disgust, but in the second moment, he flushed, reddening with rage.

"Who would dare-" He demanded of his courtiers, his voice hoarse, "Who dares insult us with this hateful mockery? Seize him, tear away his mask, that we might know who shall drown in the God's Eye at sunrise!"

It was the lowest chamber, cast all in blue, that King Harren stood as he uttered this proclamation. They rang up the tower, for Harren was a hearty and bold man, and the minstrels had ceased their music at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the king, with a group of pale knights by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the stranger, who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth a hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the king's person; and while the vast assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber up to the purple - to the purple to the green - through the green, onwards to the orange -- through this again, up to the white -- and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the King Harren, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through up the tower, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a wickedly sharp handaxe, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry -- and the axe dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death King Harren. Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse- like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

AN: Okay so this is like, mostly Edgar Allan Poe's actual work (The Masque of the Red Death, I'd fully recommend reading it, please forgive me for mangling some of his prose) but I put an ASOIAF spin on it because the idea wouldn't die. I'm a real writer and this is a real fic that I at least get co-writer credit on, I swear to god.