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"Dany, I think I've figured out what the real problem in the North is," Clay said.
Daenerys was doing much better now, though it was clear that the ordeal she had just endured still left her shaken. The violent invasion of power from the Old Gods had struck at her with merciless force, and for a moment her bloodline's fiery magic nearly collapsed under the weight of it.
Had Clay not swiftly wrapped her in a protective shield of his own magic from the outside, the consequences might have been disastrous beyond repair.
"To explain it to you… well, that would take quite some time," he continued, his tone carrying both patience and weariness. "It's tangled, and it reaches into things hidden deep behind the surface of this world."
He met Daenerys's gaze. Her violet eyes were still clouded with confusion. Clay could tell she hadn't truly understood.
And why would she? To more than ninety-nine percent of the living creatures in this world, reality was only the layer they could see and touch before them. As for the struggles that stirred behind the curtain, most could neither glimpse them nor imagine their existence.
But Clay understood.
The problem, however, was that the cost of explaining such truths was far too high. This wasn't something he could clarify to Daenerys in just a few sentences. Words alone could not pierce through the veil of what lay hidden.
"Mm…" Daenerys murmured. She was still in a state of discomfort, her body and spirit unsettled. Hearing Clay speak in such a way, she chose not to press him. She understood that someone who had risen with lightning speed, as Clay had, must have secrets buried in his past.
Yet his words had not suggested that he could never share them with her, only that doing so right now would take more time than they had.
So Daenerys chose to trust him. She believed that sooner or later, he would tell her everything. Now, he had other matters to attend to, and she herself was in no condition to accompany him.
"I'll return to Sunspear first," she said firmly. "I need to steady the situation there. Clay, how do you want me to arrange things on that side?"
Daenerys knew very well what her next step ought to be.
"Tell Doran Martell," Clay instructed, his voice calm but resolute, "that no matter whether the two crowned stags decide to put aside their weapons for now and join hands against Dorne, or whether they remain locked in their endless struggle, he must hold Dorne firmly. Defend it without yielding. Once I've settled matters in the North, he will have his chance for vengeance."
"Tell him as well that if the time comes when weakness must be shown, he should not hesitate to do so. He will understand what I mean."
Clay did not doubt the Dornish. On the contrary, he knew very well just how much strength he actually commanded there.
Even without counting the dragons, purely in terms of men, thirty to forty thousand soldiers formed an army powerful enough to alter the balance of the realm in any direction they struck.
He had already mounted a dragon's back. That meant it was time for this force to step onto the stage as well.
So long as he could successfully unify the North and the Riverlands, then join hands with Dorne, the Lannisters, stripped of their main host, would no longer be a true obstacle.
After that, the only foes left would be the two Baratheons, still ramming their antlers against each other over the throne. Once their struggle was resolved, the state of the Seven Kingdoms would finally become clear.
Yet what had happened just now stirred in Clay's heart a faint and gnawing unease.
He had never once imagined such a thing could occur.
Daenerys had only felt her body turn unwell, without realizing the cause. But from Clay's perspective, it was staggering that the power of the Old Gods had spread so far, reaching directly into the Neck.
The scale of magic that had revealed itself was immense. And added to that, Clay had received no word from the North for a long time now.
All of this weighed heavily upon him, deepening the unease that had already taken root.
In all his memory, nothing like this had ever happened before.
Could those pale creatures beyond the Wall truly possess power of such magnitude? Was their strength not meant to be held back by the Wall itself, woven from spells and bound with magic at its very foundation?
"Clay," Daenerys said softly, her beautiful voice carrying both worry and determination, "whatever you plan to do in the North, remember this… watch over yourself. Our cause is not something I can carry alone. Do you understand?"
When she finished, she vaulted onto Drogon's back. The great black dragon rumbled low in his throat, his eyes still heavy with drowsiness, yet at her command he unfurled his vast wings. With a single thunderous beat he surged upward, ripping through the dark clouds above.
Since she could not take part in the matters of the North, she had to reach the place where her own presence was most needed.
Clay watched until the great black shadow dwindled into a speck and then vanished altogether beyond the horizon. Only then did he draw in a deep, steadying breath and turn his gaze back toward the northern sky, where not a single glimmer of sunlight could be seen.
"Damn it… Brynden Rivers, what in the world are you doing?" he muttered.
He and Daenerys both wielded powers unlike those of the Old Gods, which allowed them to feel the disturbance directly. But the people of the North, who had no magic of their own, would be helpless against this "fog" of sorcery that now cloaked their lands. Clay could not help but worry for them, his unease tightening like a fist in his chest.
He abandoned the thought of flying straight to Winterfell. As the very heart of the North and seat of House Stark, the place was certain to be struck hardest by this power.
Instead, he resolved first to uncover the truth of this overwhelming surge of magic, to find out where it came from and what it truly meant.
With that decision made, he turned Gaelithox eastward, setting his course toward White Harbor.
His family was there, and that alone was reason enough. But there was another factor as well: White Harbor's people were more diverse than those of any other northern city, and the proportion of Old Gods worshippers there was perhaps the lowest in all the North.
Clay had long known that the Three-Eyed Raven's influence was weakest in White Harbor. A single glance at the godswood was proof enough, for its heart tree looked half-dead, its pale bark cracked and withering, its red leaves clinging on out of stubborn habit rather than any true vitality.
For all these reasons, White Harbor would be the best place to begin his work. It was also, in truth, his stronghold and base of power in the North.
Once his course was set, Clay wheeled his dragon and flew east without hesitation. White Harbor lay in that direction, waiting.
The moment he crossed into the borders of the North, he felt it again… the strange, suffocating magic that clung to the very air. It drifted everywhere like mist, carried by the shifting winds.
But what struck him as most peculiar was this: whenever the magic reached the very edges of the North, it seemed to strike an unseen wall. It would shudder, recoil, and could advance no further.
"How strange," he murmured. "What could be limiting the spread of this magic?"
He remembered what the Three-Eyed Raven had once told him, that the strength of the Old Gods was tightly bound within the North.
At the time, Clay had assumed the words referred only to this stretch of land and to a few other places where the Old Gods still had worshippers.
The Vale, for instance, or certain ancient families in the Riverlands who still clung to the old ways.
But never had he imagined the restriction would be this absolute.
It was as if someone had drawn a line straight across the earth, and the Old Gods' power dared not cross it, as though an invisible taboo kept it firmly penned in.
What made Clay brood even more deeply was the stark difference between Daenerys's reaction and his own.
Why was it that someone bearing the blood of fire magic found herself unable to endure here, her body faltering as though stricken with altitude sickness, unable to take even a step with ease?
And he himself, an outsider in this world dominated by the Old Gods' influence, was no less an aberration.
Yet why was it that he, and even Gaelithox, the dragon he had raised and steeped in his own magic, seemed to suffer far less beneath this same oppressive force?
Leaving aside his own anomaly, why, once the Old Gods' power had fully flared, did it reject fire magic with such violence?
When Melisandre had come to the North before, the Old Gods' strength had never shown itself so openly.
In Clay's memory, the hostility between the two powers had never seemed so absolute, never so fierce in its rejection. But now it seemed plain: they might truly be bound in a relationship where ice and fire could never coexist.
If that was the case, then many things suddenly gained new explanations, pieces of the puzzle falling into place with chilling clarity.
Still, this was no time to lose himself in speculation.
First, he needed to see what had actually happened. Only then could he decide on a course of action.
Gaelithox bore him swiftly through the skies above the waters of the Bite.
Here, the Old Gods' presence was faint, barely perceptible, so much so that Clay could almost convince himself it was not there at all.
But after several hours of flying, when they began crossing the bay and drew nearer to White Harbor, that hidden pressure grew heavier and heavier, until it pressed against his mind like an unseen tide.
Soon enough, he realized something was wrong.
Why was there not a single ship moving along the entire stretch of White Harbor's coastline?
That was not quite accurate. The better way to put it was, why was there not a single ship still sailing?
As the thought took shape, Clay's eyes caught a stranded merchant vessel, grounded far from the main channel on a desolate stretch of shore.
From the banners still clinging to its mast, it should have been a ship out of Braavos.
Its sails had sagged halfway down, the great hulk wedged across sand and shingle. The ship loomed silent and lifeless, not a soul in sight, as if even its shadow had long fled.
Clay's brow furrowed.
It doesn't make sense! Impossible.
The entire Bite was now under the full control of House Manderly.
Those who dared sail the Narrow Sea and beyond were hardened veterans of the waves. Seasoned sailors like them would not drift so far off course, not even when faced with pirates or storms.
There had to be another reason.
Very well, let it start with you.
Clay commanded Gaelithox to descend onto the beach.
The vast creature of blue and gold let out a deep-throated rumble as it landed, and in that rolling dragon's cry, Clay thought he heard something like excitement.
Gaelithox had been raised near these very shores in its younger days, and perhaps it still carried some memory of home. To the beast, this was nothing more than another simple journey, another flight above familiar waters.
It did not understand the weight of the moment. Born of magic though it was, its mind could never follow the turns of human thought, never grasp the hidden tensions woven into this land.
Clay's boots pressed into the hard-packed sand. The beach here seldom held snow, but the cold of the North was inescapable. Water trapped between the grains of sand had frozen into tiny crystals, glinting faintly beneath his feet like shards of glass buried in the earth.
He drew the Valyrian steel sword that was now his own. "Lady Forlorn" — that name would serve for the moment, though he had yet to settle on one truly fitting.
The long blade whirled easily in his hand, its dark rippled steel flashing as he carved a few swift flourishes through the air. Clay Manderly was no stranger to the sword, and he carried himself with the quiet assurance of a man long accustomed to its weight.
Holding the weapon ready, he began a slow walk toward the big-bellied merchantman stranded in front of him.
He was, after all, a son of House Manderly. To him, ships and the sea were as familiar as hearth and home. One look at the stranded vessel was enough to tell him that this was no deliberate grounding.
His eyes traced the splintered wood of the hull, then the deep gouges trailing behind it across the sand, long scars dragged into the earth by tons of displaced timber.
It was as if the ship had charged straight in, driven up onto the shore without hesitation.
What kind of madness was this? For such a thing to happen, the entire crew would have to be asleep, the navigator blind drunk, and the helmsman dancing on deck instead of steering the wheel.
That was no accident. That was suicide.
Clay climbed up the side of the ship, finding foothold through a great tear torn into her portside.
The moment he pulled himself onto the deck and looked around, he froze.
He had assumed the ship was abandoned, empty of life.
But he was wrong. So very wrong.
The deck was covered in bodies.
Everywhere he looked lay men sprawled in a tangle of limbs, some facedown, some slumped against rails or ropes, their breath and pulse uncertain, their condition suspended somewhere between life and death.
Clay knew at once the grounding had happened not long ago. The gouges in the hull, the wreckage, the fresh scars along the shore all told him that whatever had unfolded aboard had done so only recently.
His grip on the sword tightened as he moved, step by slow step, toward one man slumped against the splintered stump of a mast.
The features were unmistakable: the sharp nose, the olive skin, the wiry build of a Braavosi.
The wind whipped across the deck, rattling loose sails and moaning through the rigging. When Clay first climbed aboard, the gusts had drowned out finer sounds. But now that he stood close, his heightened witcher's senses caught something beneath the roar of the wind.
A strange noise… it was like the rattling breath of a man on his deathbed, a wet, heavy snore dragged from a failing chest.
Yes… that was it exactly.
Clay's heart gave a small jolt. He lowered himself, left hand outstretched, and pressed his fingers lightly to the man's filthy neck, greasy with sweat and grime.
There it was.
The man was still alive. Clay had not misheard.
The Braavosi was asleep.
He stood again, frowning, and began moving from one body to the next.
One by one he checked them. And what he found made the hair prickle on his arms.
Save for a few unfortunates who had perished outright in the collision, thrown against timbers or crushed beneath falling spars, the rest of the crew lay in the same unnatural slumber. Not dead. Not awake. Simply locked in a sleep so deep that nothing could stir them.
But it was no ordinary rest. Clay soon noticed the wrongness.
Some had fallen in such awkward postures that they had trapped their own limbs beneath them. And now, hours later, those limbs had withered where they were pinned.
He stared down at a sailor whose arm had been crushed beneath his own weight. The flesh was waxy and grey, the skin stiff as leather. In the bitter northern air, the limb had frozen solid, as lifeless as a block of ice.
Clay lifted his sword and with a swift stroke severed the man's bloodless hand.
Yellow fluid seeped sluggishly from the wound, oozing in place of blood. Yet the man did not wake. His face remained slack, his breathing unchanged, his mind lost in that same endless dream.
Clay exhaled, low and grim.
"This is trouble…" he murmured to himself.
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