Marwyn the Mage and the Fellowship of Scientific Elucidation Crooks IV
Marwyn
Seven of the formerly dead were shuffling luggage on the ship.
They had seven wights of excellent make. Qyburn had toiled for a sennight to raise them, selecting the finest specimens from the Brave Companions' last donation. Qyburn could command but one. Marwyn managed three, with effort and a headache that lingered after. Malora could have edged to ten, mayhaps twelve.
Yet the maid had declared that since they were blaspheming the gods so readily, they would at least observe a modicum of piety.
Seven wights it was.
Sarella, the jester, had proposed naming them after the Kingsguard.
"No."
"Not even Ser Ossifer Whent?"
"No."
"It would amuse me."
"It would bring too many unwanted eyes, girl!"
"It would still amuse me."
Marwyn left her unanswered on principle.
The creatures moved with grace and precision along the quay, carrying trunks, water casks, and bundled provisions with tireless patience. They had imposed on Tregar to provide seven sets of plate armor. The suits were ill-fitted to the wights, but with the addition of full helms and cloaks, their lively deficiencies were adequately hidden. No stampedes of terror erupted on the docks. Not a soul suspected a thing.
Yet passers-by still shied away from the menacing file of tireless, steel-clad warriors.
Better armor was being prepared in Oldtown. Malora had dreamsent her father, and the Hightower smithies were on task. They would forge the thickest plate imaginable—thicker than even the monstrosity that protected the Mountain That Rides. The dead were stronger than half-giants like Gregor Clegane.
Qyburn did superb work.
Ser Humfrey Hightower stood nearby in polished mail, watching the harbor with the look of a man at the Last Crossroads. Marwyn suspected that Leyton's youngest had long known the depths of magic that his sire and older sister commanded. But he had never considered the shape it would take. That, or he was offended by boyish notions of who was the better knight. Insecure in his own sword arm. His worth as a man.
He was to return west with some of the Hightower swords, all seven wights and a packet of sealed letters for Lord Leyton. The Old Man of Oldtown had recalled all of his sons and grandsons for a ritual.
Marwyn, Sarella, Malora, and Qyburn would remain in Lys.
Their conclusion regarding Tal's identity was damning. The sort of thing that got men killed for knowing it. The sort of thing that set his mind ablaze with giddiness. They had embarked on the hunt for a ghost and a legend and stumbled on a kingly secret regardless! The entire affair was a spark to his mind. He wanted to wrestle with the truth, to hound it, to expose it.
Expose it in secret rooms, that is. Marwyn was fond of his neck still.
The secret was opportunity besides. If they were right, they hunted not merely a sorceress, but a dragonrider. That might set continents aflame, but Marwyn cared more for Oldtown.
Oldtown's portent was Doom. Its face was Euron Greyjoy. They did not know the shape of it, only its inevitability. Leyton Hightower had labored ceaselessly for an answer. A sympathetic dragonlord might yet be the providence they sought.
But providence required proof. So they would stay in Lys, chasing whispers and shadows, while Ser Humfrey sailed west. He would return from whatever scheme Leyton had concocted. And when he did, he would bring word from the Hightower: answers, perhaps, or fresh questions.
Until then, Marwyn had work to do. There were Red Priests to observe, rumors to test, and a necromancer to keep from doing anything too involved within Tregar's manor. They were staying under that roof, after all.
Besides, making a laboratory of another man's abode was discourteous.
⊙
Humfrey returned to Lys after moons enough to make a man wonder if he'd ever come back at all. He was late—late enough for a complication or a significant detour.
Marwyn watched as the wights disembarked.
It was a sight. Their armor was fearsome—small walking keeps of blackened steel, each one a fortress on legs. The plate was thick enough to stop a ballista, layers upon layers of hammered metal. The Hightower smiths had left elegance at the forge; they had sought only function. The wights moved with the weight of siege engines, every step a quiet thunder on the stone of the dock.
Their cloaks were Hightower green. Each wight bore a number of painted beacons on its cloak, ranging from a single flame to a circle of seven. The markings identified them plainly. They were no less terrifying for it.
Marwyn strongly suspected that Leyton had paraded them through the breadth of Oldtown before having them anointed at the Starry Sept. Some lie about a vow of silence for these most devout of killers, or some such.
His patron was wise in these matters.
Sarella, however, had nagged them unceasingly for moons. As such, she had the last word when it came to naming privileges.
And so Wight One, Ser Aemon Targaryen, the Paleknight, led the necromantic procession into the docks.
Ser Duncan the Dead was hot on his heels.
Curiously, there was also a milkmaid among the new arrivals. She clutched a babe of maybe one or two—Marwyn usually shunned the little blighters, so he had no head for their ages. Curiouser still was the coloring. The wet nurse had honey hair, but her charge's was black. And he had the bluest eyes.
As for Humfrey, the lad was looking like a wight himself. Whatever Lord Hightower had done, it had rattled him into corpse-like pallor.
Bothersome.
They quickly convened inside the Conspiracy Chamber. Malora worked the shielding spell again, then nodded readiness.
"Well?" asked Marwyn.
Humfrey had three mugs of ale arrayed before him. He seized the first and drank deep.
"I saw the past."
He drank again.
"Father recalled every living male Hightower to Oldtown. He bled us all. He cut the throats of seven men bound for the Wall. Their blood made a pool. In it he placed seven glass candles. We borrowed four from the Citadel to make seven."
He emptied the first mug and reached for the second.
"I do not understand what happened next. But the pool of blood caught fire. It burned green like our beacon. The glass candles burned witchfire too. Then their flames twisted together, and an image began to form. A ghost of a vision dancing atop the burning blood."
He drank from the second with an unsteady hand.
"Father threw the leeches heavy with our blood into that vision."
He stopped, staring into the ale as if something might be looking back. Then he set the mug down.
"Then I saw."
"I saw Granduncle Gerold. I saw him in his white cloak. I saw him guarding Prince Rhaegar."
He snatched up the third mug.
"I saw a lone tower in red mountains. I saw Lyanna Stark heavy with child. I saw wolf banners below.
"I saw Ser Arthur Dayne himself getting stabbed in the back by some bog-dweller!"
He drained the third mug to the dregs, then sat very still.
Humfrey had grown up on stories of the Kingsguard, of his Granduncle—the White Bull's strength, of the honor of the white cloak. The Sword of the Morning was more storied still. To see them reduced to corpses in a vision must have skewered any hope of certainty from his heart. Severed the last thread of it.
He continued with a hint of madness.
"I saw no babes in the vision. No cradle. No birth. But I saw enough.
"You were right, maester.
"The girl is Targaryen.
"Jon bloody Snow is Targaryen.
"And Eddard Stark may yet be the best player in the game."
Marwyn wished for some ale of his own. He had guessed true, then. Damn him, he had guessed true.
...and yet, a hint of scholarly vindication shone in his eyes.
His companions stood in silence, each turning the words over in their minds like children with a captured firefly, wondering if broken wings might yet fly.
Truth had a way of unsettling old certainties. It demanded new reckonings. Hard work, that.
Sarella resumed the conversation with an indignation that was entirely Dornish. Marwyn had seen the same flash of dark eyes in her father—though with more menace and less genuine feeling.
"What game is Ned Stark playing? Why did he claim only one of the pair? Why leave the girl? Isn't his honor sung up and down the Kingsroad?"
"Sarella," he began gently, "remember where he was fostered."
"In the Vale, as a ward of the Hand."
"Correct. And a ward of Jon Arryn learns to value honor—but honor as the Vale defines it. Bastard sons matter. Daughters are... secondary. Jon Arryn would have taught him to care for every son. Daughters, however, would have been a more tentative matter. Virtuous to claim them, certainly, but not necessary to acknowledge in the grand scheme of things."
He paused, tugging at his chain.
"And we might be uncharitable to the man regardless. He may have seen to the girl's needs with coin enough to satisfy her keepers. He may have hidden her more thoroughly than the boy, to shield her further. He may have claimed her, but only to family—not the world at large. We simply do not know."
"Aren't you forgetting about her time in the Citadel, old friend?" asked Malora.
Indeed he was. What a conundrum.
He nodded agreement.
"She would have been too young. How old is she now? Thirteen? She would have joined the Citadel at ten or nine."
"She was in Oldtown from a tender age, then. A curious place to hide a little girl. Winterfell is a mite distant."
"Then he didn't hide her—just left her south when he returned to his kingdom. Maybe he left her with trusted retainers? Do we know who journeyed with him?"
"Humfrey?"
The man in question raised his head askance.
"We were wondering if there were trusted lords among Stark's retinue with whom he could have left the girl. Have you seen his party?"
"Yes. But his retinue got butchered by the Kingsguard. Only Stark survived. And that bog devil, whoever he is."
"Two men, then. Two tired men, two mewling babes, and the corpse of his sister. Stark surely must have had help from somewhere. Or had a larger party nearby."
"I think we're talking in circles, friends," Malora interjected again.
She was right. They were reeling and ruminating.
Not thinking. Not nearly.
Marwyn took command of the room again.
"Let us forget the matter of Stark for the moment. We lack details. Let us focus on certainties instead. We know the girl is Targaryen. We know she is a mage of considerable skill already. We know she infiltrated the Citadel as a child. We know Tal was every bit the prodigy my fellows reported.
"Such prodigies are not unheard of, but they are exceedingly rare. Tal has wit enough to match her fearsome magic. On that we can agree."
He paused.
"Now, are there other thoughts we can make certain? Ser Hightower, did Lord Leyton send us more information?"
The knight rose from the table and went to a pack he kept close. He withdrew a messenger satchel from it, then carefully extracted aged and half-burnt parchment.
"Father entrusted me with these, maester. We think they are remains of an old journal Granduncle Gerold kept. They are all but ruined. What we could read pertains to some doom Prince Rhaegar foresaw. Also something to do with three heads?"
"Three heads?"
"Father's best guess is that Rhaegar wanted both a Rhaenys and a Visenya for his Aegon. Something to do with symmetry. With the past? I don't understand those sorcerous notions."
"Well, he bloody got himself a Visenya, and another besides," Sarella snorted.
Then she blinked.
"Say, maester—a little girl of impossible wit and magic, bearing the name Visenya? Is she Queen Visenya reborn?"
Qyburn exploded.
"No! That is an impossibility. Souls linger, yes. They leave a residue after death. That is how ghosts are formed. But you cannot bottle that echo into another body. The echo is its own person." Qyburn was most passionate in his reply. Those truths had cost him his chain, after all.
"What about her brother?" asked Marwyn.
"Nothing of note," replied Humfrey. "Kept behind Winterfell's walls and growing as any other boy would grow. There were no whispers of arcane might from beyond—if that was the question."
"Do you think Stark intends to press his claim at some point?" asked Sarella.
"It is a possibility, especially with how the court grows ever more Lannister. But your thoughts are straying once more. Focus."
Sarella demurred. However, her jape about a reborn queen had set Marwyn thinking. Tal—Visenya—had wit and power out of a song. That suggested her dragonblood had manifested like no other Targaryen bar her namesake. Was she further marked by her Valyrian inheritance? A silver-haired, violet-eyed babe would have been reason enough for her uncle to leave her south. Stark could never have smuggled her from Dorne to Winterfell without setting tongues wagging.
But Tal was reported to have dark hair. Was it glamour, as they had thought previously? Or was it Northern blood edging out the Valyrian?
On and on his thoughts went. This was a most vigorous mystery. The spark of scholarly delight had become a roaring blaze.
"What kept you so long from Lys?" he further asked. "The ritual alone wouldn't have cost you that many moons."
"We sailed to King's Landing first. Father's instructions. He said you would understand. He also entrusted me with these." Humfrey rose, went to his pack again, and removed a small strongbox. He opened it and extracted three silver scales and four smaller pink ones.
"Scales from Silverwing. We kept them in our vaults from the time of the Dance. The pink ones are from Morning, Rhaena Targaryen's dragon."
Marwyn took the scales with no small measure of reverence. Silverwing's scales were warm to the touch, as if the dragon's fire still lingered in their depths. The smaller pink ones were cooler, smoother. Morning was another adult dragon unaccounted for. Perhaps the scales grew hotter the closer they were to their dragon? And if they kept sailing the seas, would the pink scales grow hot too? Could they find Morning that way?
He turned them over in his palm, feeling the weight of centuries and the whisper of magic. A thread.
As for Leyton's design, he did understand it indeed. The Old Man's unspoken order was to conduct a grand scrying of their own. Close to Silverwing, their ritual would be more potent. But that was not the end of it. His patron had also sourced one of the most sought-after reagents there was.
The blaze in his mind would not bank itself. He fed it with questions and watched the shadows dance. Come morning, they would begin anew.
He hungered for secrets still.