Chapter 25 - Chapter 24: Skinchangers and Wolf Wargs

Dany had misunderstood old Watson. The man had not left her a filthy erotic manual meant to embarrass her; he had truly given her a book of power—his life's work, a compilation of magical knowledge and survival lore disguised behind bawdy jokes and drawings.When she returned to her tent after the funeral, she tried to resist the temptation. But curiosity gnawed at her, and soon she could not help herself. She unwrapped the thick sheepskin-bound tome and turned again to the pages describing the Twelve Spring Cry Techniques.The name itself sounded scandalous enough. She had thought the old man was mocking her. Yet as she leafed through the brittle parchment, she realized the truth: those twelve bizarre "gymnastics" movements occupied only twelve pages, nothing more than a strange flourish on the surface. The rest of the book—hundreds upon hundreds of leaves—was filled with something far more astonishing.Dense numbers. Meticulous charts. Hand-drawn maps, so detailed that her breath caught.Not only the endless grasslands of the Dothraki Sea were recorded, but almost the entire topography of Essos stretched across its pages. Each city-state, its population, industries, defenses, trade routes, walls, and watchtowers—all carefully described. It was no idle fancy. This was the work of decades, perhaps Watson's entire lifetime.It struck her then: the book had been prepared for his son, Haggo Blue-Eye, to use in conquest.Watson had recorded everything: the growth of grasses in different pastures, rainfall patterns, temperatures and humidity, the spread of diseases among the horse herds, and even herbal remedies learned from medicine men. He had measured the length of summers, the harshness of winters, and the crop yields of villages across the continent.What had seemed at first like a rambling diary was, in truth, a masterwork of observation—nomadic wisdom distilled into maps and numbers.For a lone wanderer, perhaps useless. But for a khal, for a conqueror, it was priceless.Dany's chest tightened. If Haggo Blue-Eye had lived, perhaps with his father's guidance he could have risen above all other khals, perhaps even uniting the fractured Dothraki Sea before she herself ever dreamed of conquest.And now the book was hers.She closed the cover with reverence. Watson's work would serve her in the years to come. This was no vulgar jest but a gift of legacy. She resolved then that he would be honored with every respect.So it was that Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, presided over Watson's cremation herself.---That night, under the blood-red glow of the comet, the pyre was built."The blood comet's tail has grown longer!" Aggo gasped in wonder, pointing skyward.The other horsemen murmured. Whether by coincidence or trick of the eye, the streak across the heavens seemed indeed more vivid, as if answering their khaleesi's cry. In truth, it was an illusion—the natural brightening of the comet as it drew nearer to the world. But Dany did not correct them. She let their awe grow.She raised her arms, her voice strong. "Kill the horse!"A steed was brought forth, stubborn and plain, yet sturdier than Watson's old mount. Two warriors held its head as a third lifted his curved blade. A white flash cut across the dawn, and hot blood spurted into the basin below.The horse screamed, a sound both pitiful and proud, then fell silent.Next came the straw horse—woven from sticks and demon grass. The ritual demanded it."Soul!" Dany cried, first in High Valyrian, then in English, then in her native Sichuan dialect, then finally in the harsh tones of Dothraki. To the watching riders, it was an incantation beyond their ken, proof of sorcery.She muttered nonsense words, half remembered from childhood songs and half invented on the spot, then swept her arm dramatically toward the straw effigy. "Soul returned!"The horsemen gasped. Even Jorah blinked, uncertain if he should laugh or tremble.Dany kept her face solemn. "The steed's spirit has entered this straw horse. Now it is stronger than before—gentle as a mount, fierce as a warrior's steed. Old Watson will not be left behind."The awe in the eyes of her followers was unmistakable. They believed.When one warrior, voice breaking, asked what to do with the dead horse's body, Dany rolled her eyes. "What else? Roast it."And so they did.Watson's pyre burned while horseflesh roasted nearby. The mingled smells—sweet smoke, charred meat, spiced broth simmering in iron pots—clung to the night air. Some gagged. Others ate with ravenous hunger. Jorah partook quietly.Dany, though, could not stomach it. She left under the pretense of tending her dragons, the bitter scent of roasted flesh chasing her into the dark.---The march resumed. Karls scouted ahead, as always, finding waterholes marked with stones. Even after other riders had drawn from them, shallow pools remained. Dany pressed on, filtering muddy trickles into skins. It was enough to survive, barely.But death still followed.A child died that night. A girl of eight, wasted by diarrhea until her tiny body gave out in her mother's arms. Her wails tore through the camp. Dany's own heart cracked, helpless to heal or save. The girl had not been felled by thirst or hunger, but by sickness no poultice could touch.They buried her swiftly in the sand, for tradition demanded it. She was too young to ride, too young to enter the Night Lands. She must be reborn.The khalasar moved on. Only Dany and the grieving mother's kin lingered to tend the grave. Such was life in the Red Waste: no time to mourn, only to endure.---Yet the gods are strange. The very next morning, hope stirred.With the rising sun, her black dragon spread his wings and leapt into the air. Higher and higher he climbed until he was a speck against the red dawn. Dany's chest swelled with pride—and fear. For the first time, her bond snapped taut across distance, and she fell into what she could only call a dragon dream.Her mind flew with him. She saw through his eyes, felt the beat of wings, the taste of wind and ash. Her heart thundered.This was no mere dream. This was the gift of skinchangers.She had read of such things in her studies: wolf-blooded Starks of the North, children who could slip into their direwolves and roam as beasts.Skinchangers—men and women who entered the minds of animals, steering their bodies as their own. Those bound by blood and love found it easiest. Wolves and dogs, ever loyal, were most common.Among them, the wargs of House Stark were the most famous. Bran, Rickon, Arya, even Jon Snow—all bore the gift. Bran above all, destined not only as a warg but as a greenseer, to slip through time itself.(Author's note: In Game of Thrones, this was only hinted at through the Hodor plotline. George R. R. Martin himself acknowledged the truth in interviews—the greenseers' power touches past and future alike.)The Old Gods watched through the weirwoods, rooted in Westeros. Their sight did not stretch across the seas, not into Essos. Yet Dany now felt something akin to it, born not of wolves but dragons.Jon Snow's talent had once frightened even Varamyr Sixskins, greatest of the wildling skinchangers. Varamyr could leap from beast to beast, even into the body of a man. When he died, his spirit sought his wolf. Even so, fate placed him against Bran Stark, who outshone them all.Arya, though far from home, still dreamed through Nymeria, her direwolf roaming the Riverlands. Distance mattered little when the bond was so deep. Rickon, the youngest, foresaw fragments of the future in wolf-dreams. Even Robb's direwolf had warned him again and again, though the young king ignored the omens until doom claimed him.Sansa alone was cut off. Her wolf slain too soon, her path turned south. Perhaps she had the gift, perhaps not. It would never be known.And so the wolf-blood ran strong, feared as dark sorcery. To common folk, wargs were monsters no better than White Walkers. This fear, Dany knew, had roots in history.---Long ago, twelve thousand years, the First Men had crossed from Essos into Westeros, armed with bronze blades. There they met the Children of the Forest: small, chestnut-skinned, golden-eyed beings, wielding ancient magic.War raged for centuries, bronze against sorcery, numbers against mystery. Neither side prevailed. At last, upon the Isle of Faces in the God's Eye, they forged the Pact—peace, and a division of the land.From that mingling of blood and faith came skinchangers among the First Men. One in a thousand bore the gift. One in a thousand of those became greenseers. Rare, yes, but enough that in every age one or two Brans would be born—seers who could bend the past and glimpse the future.To the Andals who came later, wielding steel and seven gods, such powers were heresy. Wargs were cursed, hunted, reviled. Yet they endured, in the North, in the blood of Starks, and perhaps… in the veins of dragons.For as Dany's mind soared with her black hatchling, she felt it—connection, power, the mingling of spirit and flesh. She was not only mother to dragons. She was bound to them in ways no Targaryen before had known.The Red Waste stretched endless below. But for the first time, Dany felt hope.Her people still suffered. They still starved. But now she carried not only Watson's knowledge but the beginnings of something far older and greater—skinchanger's sight, dragon's bond.Perhaps the gods had not abandoned her after all.(End of Chapter)---