Essos: The Great Grass Sea:
Witches.
The kharl had been collecting them, riding from camp to camp, pulling the screeching creatures from their stone caves and miserable hovels onto the backs of horses. Here they were, huddled around the edge of the large tent. It was made from horsehide, woven together and stretched over a skeleton of bone. Every now and then the white structure protruded, catching the light of the smoldering fire at its core. Daenerys recognized it. This was Drogo's hall, mutilated and refashioned into a thing of putrid horror.
The hides were painted in human blood. It had gone black with age, leaching a scent of death into the air. Daenerys shivered despite the warmth. She made a point to look at each and every one of the witches hissing at the air. Her belly stirred where her child should have been. She'd have the world rid of these creatures if she could, but these were not hers to slay.
There it was, she thought, the blood of the mad king.
Kharl Jhaqo followed her into the temple and insisted that she take her place by the fire. There was no floor covering. In place of rugs she found dirt and grass burned back from the flaming pit. Her tangled hair fell across her face. She let the filthy strands remain as though she'd meant them to be exactly as they were. Daenerys could not shift the feeling that she was being caged, quietened by soft words and careful movements much like the dragon handlers had done with her children.
"What is it you wish of me?" Daenerys asked.
The kharl directed the witches in their own language, setting them off about the tent, scratching through chests and clay flasks. A flap of skin on the makeshift temple pulled back. Along with the gust of cold air came the other four kharls and a solitary khaleesi. The unlikely alliance was even more precarious at its tip. They were uneasy with each other, casting suspicious glances and keeping well apart.
"They insisted on seeing for themselves," Jhaqo explained, as the five rulers took their places in the tent. "I convinced them not to kill you, and now they wish to know the reason."
She did not doubt it. If she had thought Jhaqo to be a beast, then these were creatures from desert nightmares. Even the khaleesi bore the ravages of battle. Her hair was plaited and hung down past her hips. It had started to grey; the silver was threaded through it, glistening as she turned her dark eyes on Daenerys. Her lips parted to yellow, jagged teeth.
"Great Kharl Jhaqo," Daenerys pandered to his vanity, "beyond my silver hair, what would you have them see to keep their knives from my throat?"
The hissing of the witches grew louder. They started to throw bundles of grass on the fire. The green foliage crackled and smoked, turning the air into a veil of peppery incense.
"I have more witches than any other kharl. They mumble half-truths and glimpse what might be. None of them have the gifts of a dragon. Knowledge will save the kingdom of the grasslands. We may not build cities from stone or leave relics for the ages of men to wonder at, but we survive."
The perfumed air made her head spin—or was it the wine—or both? Daenerys reached to the ground, holding herself steady whilst trying to maintain the vista of a queen. She failed. Daenerys' violet eyes rolled slowly back as tears slid down her cheeks. First she saw flames, then the cruel eyes of witches, blood, smoke, and the spotted hides of long-dead horses. She hit the ground and lay there. An expanse of stars stretched in place of the tent. A star hung overhead, red and dripping blood onto her clothes.
The silver queen lifted her hand, reaching into the smoke as the witches poured horse blood over her, drizzling it as though it were gold. Her fine clothes were stained, and soon she writhed in the dirt.
"Does she dream?" asked the kharl.
"She does," replied one of the witches, in the common tongue.
Dream? Yes, she dreamed. Daenerys found herself walking through the swells of a smoking sea. The water was warm, rising and falling around her, breathing under a waning moon. From the crests of its waves came a fog, thickening toward the land, which encircled one side. The water crashed on glass, spraying salt against the black surface where a volcano's innards had found the sea. Fire and ice now met as water and stone. Their battle was put to rest, and both had died—or slept; she could not tell. The moon turned red and fell from the sky, hitting the water with a wall of fire. Daenerys watched the flames approach. They shattered over her skin and fell as snow.
*~*~*
Jorah held his hand out to still Daario. The bear was slightly bent, keeping his head low as the set of wings approached. A dragon flew lazily toward them, taking its time to ride the air currents that swirled through the valley. Eventually it sank, stretching out its back legs first to take the impact on strong limbs. It beat its wings a final time as it stopped, pushing a gust of wind over both of them and the fire, which was nearly extinguished. It took a few moments for it to flare back to life. By its light they saw that this was not Drogon at all.
"Viserion!" Jorah whispered.
The beast was a lurid mix of gold and red with black teeth lined perfectly along a mouth locked in a half-smile. He was smaller than Drogon and finer in form. There was something artful in the way his scales fit together and the patterns that formed along his crest, which, if caught in the right light, looked like ancient Valyrian script. He was beautiful.
"My gods—they have escaped the city," Daario said nervously. The dragons made him uneasy. The first time he'd met his queen's three children, they had snapped their teeth and brushed more than one sharp set of black claws in his direction. Their attitude had not improved, nor, he thought, would it have been helped by his presence in the dungeon when they'd been chained to the dark. "Careful, Mormont," he warned.
Mormont was smiling.
The old bear bowed low, nearly to the ground, before the dragon. Viserion was restless—hungry—but he eventually dipped his head, nose first, as Daenerys had taught him. Jorah knew it was safe to approach.
"How have you been, old friend?" He murmured, gently sliding his palm over the dragon's snout. Viserion made a strange, bird-like sound in reply, nudging affectionately back. No one had touched him in many months. The dragon didn't understand why.
"I don't think that's wise..."
"Viserion and I go way back," Jorah assured the other man. The dragon was acting like a pet, eyeing the knight with its golden orbs, which thinned into black slits at the firelight. "He used to perch on my shoulder when he tired of flying. I carried the damn thing halfwayacross the Red Waste. He has not forgotten. Fetch the rabbit." Jorah fed the creature the tiny offering, but as far as dragons were concerned, it was the sentiment that counted. It was not long before it had folded its legs up beneath its heaving body and curled up by the fire, taking up half their bloody camp.
Daario stood and stared dumbly at the creature for quite some time. It was sleeping, but he didn't trust it all the same. The air vibrated with each breath. Every so often, it brushed the tips of its wings across the grass.
"Sit..." Jorah insisted. "Believe me, if it were hungry enough to eat us, it would have done so already. He wants company, that is all. Dragons are social creatures." And Jorah was as good as its father.
Daario sat stiffly. "This is a bad sign—if one dragon has escaped, the other surely has as well."
"It is likely."
"They will ravage the lands, feeding. You did not see them in the pits. They were half mad when the queen fed one of the masters to them. That one," he pointed his cup at Viserion, "crushed a man's skull in his jaw while the other ripped the torso off."
"As you would be if you were chained up in the dark. I heard the stories well enough from Slaver's Bay. The dragon queen who locked up her beasts... She should not have done that. Dragons are not only her power—they are her heart." He would have advised her against it.
While the dragon slept, Jorah pried off the remaining chain around its neck. He paused to brush his hand tenderly over the scales that had been dislodged. They were starting to regrow—like feathers.
Sometimes he caught himself staring at the beast—wondering if such a thing could be real. He'd been reared on tales of dragons marauding through cities, burning the world. They were monsters in his nightmares, and yet, after raising three, he had come to realize that they were like any other predator trying to survive. Their evil came from the people that rode them into war. Viserion would rather be curled up on the rock in a sea cave, watching the world die with plenty of fish and the stirring of heat below.
"That thing will kill you one day," Daario said as he sat as far away as he could without freezing. "You are too familiar with it." The horses absolutely agreed.
The sell-sword's discomfort amused Jorah further. He was comforted by the dragon. "If I am killed by a dragon, it will certainly be Drogon. His temper is matched by that of his mother. He snaps at things, including her, because she spoiled him so—yet I will not be sorry for it."
"Has he come this way looking for Daenerys—are we close?"
"It is impossible to know." It was just as likely that Viserion had been looking for him.
*~*~*
Daenerys felt the snow underfoot. Her pale skin sank deeper into it, and in her wake she left bloodied prints. She was in a forest frozen solid by winter. The black-barked trees had four feet of frost creeping up their bases, and only the strongest of their limbs held an offering of green against the cold. Were these the forests Jorah spoke of? In the still, she could hear snow fall.
I am north of the Wall, she thought, in the realm of some other king. Her bear told her the old stories of the North—the tales that he had learned as a child. She knew them all by heart and some before that, whispered to her on the bedside of the dying Ser Willem when she was a child. He was a bear of a man with warm grey eyes and a silver beard. His deep voice used to rumble through the house, filling it with half-forgotten times. His familiar scent mingled with the smoke, and his eyes—they shifted between worlds like the smoking sea itself.
"What does she speak of?" asked one of the kharls, leaning toward the twisting body of the silver queen. She was contorted awkwardly, sweating against the heavy, perfumed smoke. Mostly she rambled in Valyrian—a language that only one witch could speak. The young, surprisingly beautiful woman stepped away from the other witches and joined the kharls, translating for them.
"She speaks of Winter," the young witch started. "Of trees and snow—of a wall made from ice dividing the land." The woman hesitated as the dragon queen's tone dropped and spilled onto the air as hissing. "She repeats an old prophecy now. A king of ice kneels in ash. The dead are reborn and walk the land."
"The stallion that mounts the world..." the khaleesi licked her wind-blown lips. They bled, leaving a constant edge of metal in her mouth.
"All she says is, 'snow.'" The young woman startled as a kharl dragged her into his lap. She ignored his groping and continued translating. The woman only made out a few words before she stopped. "No—there is no more. She has slipped from dream to fever sleep. All she speaks of now is a bear."
The rulers lost interest, arguing with Kharl Jhaqo about more pressing matters—such as food and payment for their previous raids—while the dragon queen lay half-mad on the floor. The translator escaped the kharl and knelt beside the silver lady.
Daenerys was unable to speak, but her eyes continued to see. She was overcome by the feel of magic in the air. Intangible though it was, she recognized the ripple over skin from the fire that awoke her dragons. Only this was stronger—gripping at her soul—pulling it from ice to fire and back again. The snow fell thick and heavy, covering all the world until there was only white. There... plodding through the wasteland... a solitary bear.
*~*~*
At some point in the night, Daario had drifted into a restless sleep and then fallen headlong into his usual state of coma. He was awakened by Viserion sharpening his claws on an outcrop of rock. It was a sound he never wanted to hear again.
"Good morning, princess..."
Daario held his sword in Mormont's direction with a cautionary "don't start" written in his glare.
"You were right about both dragons escaping. I spotted Rhaegal hunting livestock in the valley earlier. His coloring is better suited to the grasslands. He is not easy to see unless he's moving."
An invisible dragon was not news to put the sell-sword in a good mood.
"Don't look so worried," Jorah insisted, wandering over to the fire where, surprisingly, there was freshly butchered meat almost finished. "He stopped by earlier with a gift."
Reluctantly, Daario had to admit that the dragons were useful—as long as they weren't trying to eat the horses. Jorah tried to assure him that because they were raised with horses, they would not hunt them, but he wasn't so sure. He'd seen the golden creature give more than one lustful look in his horse's direction.
Tracking a creature that flew great distances wasn't easy. Before long, their dragon escorts lost interest and flew off, leaving only the two men and their horses picking through the grasslands and, later, the complex system of valleys. They were edging toward the coast where the ground crumpled. Beyond these hills and the sea were the remains of Old Valyria.
"Perhaps he was taking her to the ruined city?"
"Let us hope not, unless your horse can swim," Jorah replied. "There have been horses through here," Jorah added, nodding at the ground under their horses. He pulled up to a stop, swung his leg over, and slipped off the horse. The tell-tale sign of a khalasar. A large one... "Something certainly passed through here—the night before last, I'd wager."
"What is a khalasar doing so close to the water? The mountains don't suit their horses."
A glimpse of white caught Jorah's eye in the grass. He crawled forward, parting the crushed grass with his rough fingers to reveal his queen's wedding ring.