Drogo's khalasar had already been stalled in this desolate Gobi for two full days. Within the tribe, news that "the Khal is about to die" spread every moment of every hour.
This could hardly be called a rumor, because everyone knew it well: Khal Drogo was so ill he could no longer mount his horse. And without a Khal to lead them, the khalasar could not move.
That night, Mirri Maz Duur announced with a face ashen as death, "The Khal's wound has festered. There is no healer left who can save him. What remains is only to guide him along the dark road, so that he may ride without pain into the night country."
Daenerys pretended to be overwhelmed with grief, begging her to save her "Sun-and-Stars" no matter what.
Mirri Maz Duur sized up Dany and her high, swollen belly with eyes as black as night. Her voice was strangely quiet, little more than a murmur. "There is indeed another way. A kind of magic.
But this spell is not only difficult to perform, it is also exceedingly dark. To some, death would be the cleaner choice.
I learned this spell in Asshai, and paid a terrible price for it—my mentor was from the Shadow Lands."
"Blood magic." She softly breathed out the word, and for the first time openly revealed her true identity—a maegi.
Before this, she had always denied being a witch, claiming only to be a healer and priestess.
There seemed to be a dark power woven into her voice. Dany, baked by the blazing hearth, suddenly felt as though an icy, clammy tentacle had wrapped around her throat—she couldn't breathe, her brain starved of air, her thoughts dissolving.
She heard herself say hazily, "Do it… hurry… save him…"
A surge of searing magma suddenly erupted from her lower abdomen. The intense heat shocked her nerves and snapped her awake at once.
—The dragon eggs had been hidden close to her flesh against her belly all this time.
Suppressing the terror in her heart, she put on a hesitant expression. "Khal Drogo's bloodriders won't agree. Is there really no other way?"
The maegi froze for a moment, then shook her head. "There is none."
Dany pressed her lips together and stared straight into her eyes, saying coldly, "So you admit you are a maegi now?"
"Do I?" Mirri Maz Duur seemed utterly unafraid, smiling faintly. "Silver Lady, at present, only a maegi can save your warrior. And you must pay a price."
Dany glanced at Drogo, unconscious and unaware of all around him, and asked, "What do you want? Gold? Horses—"
The maegi cut her off without ceremony. "This is not a matter of gold or horses, my lady. This is blood magic. Only death can be exchanged for life."
"Death? You want my life?"
The maegi assured her, "Not yours, Khaleesi."
Her gaze flicked again and again to Dany's belly, her eyes dark, hiding a poisonous malice.
Dany decided not to tangle with her any longer and asked directly, "Then whose death will awaken my Sun-and-Stars? Surely not his steed?"
"Silver Lady, you are very brave, daring to face the cruelest truth—you have already guessed, haven't you? The equal exchange of blood magic: trading the life of a noble Khal, to obtain from the Night God the rebirth of another great horselord."
Mirri Maz Duur smiled as she pointed at Dany's belly, like a hellish demon eyeing sacrificial flesh offered by the impure. "Khal Drogo is not only your Sun-and-Stars; he is also your guarantee of safety.
As long as your husband lives, there will be many children waiting for you to raise in the future. Perhaps, like that Silver Lady before you, you will give birth to twins who represent the Sun-and-Stars."
Dany's expression changed violently. She grabbed the teapot before her and hurled it.
"Bang!"
The maegi had not expected such a reaction. The teapot struck her squarely on the forehead. Blood mixed with milky-white mare's milk streamed down her face.
"Aggo, Rakharo—drag this maegi away. Gag her and bind her." She shouted orders to the guards on duty outside.
Two days and two nights passed. Drogo's khalasar was on the verge of collapse. Every night, Dany could hear the sobbing of Irri, Jhiqui, and the other handmaids.
That morning, she saw bruises covering Doreah's chest, belly, and thighs.
It was Khosho and Hago.
A Khal's bloodriders could share everything with the Khal except his mount. Drogo had forbidden them from touching Dany, but her handmaids had always been theirs to take as they pleased.
Before, they had not been this excessive. But now—
"Everyone knows the Khal is about to die. By Dothraki custom, his bloodriders live and die with him. Seeing their own end approaching, Khosho and the others have gone mad—dead men have nothing left to fear." Ser Jorah told her, his face haggard.
The one who suffered most these past two days was actually him. From the moment he put on his heavy armor, he had never taken it off. By day he stood guard outside the tent; by night he set a chair at the entrance, a cold-glinting sword laid across his knees.
"And this land is barren. The stream three li away has almost been drunk dry by men and horses. Worse still, there's no grazing. The animals can barely hold on." Jorah rubbed his dull, exhausted eyes and said in despair, "The Dothraki will never watch their horses starve or die of thirst. Soon they will act—if not tonight, then tomorrow."
I did it on purpose. I deliberately let Drogo choose the wrong direction, deliberately selected this wasteland that could not sustain a massive khalasar for long.
Because I wanted the various kos to give up, to lead their own khasar and scatter.
Ambitious men must never be allowed to contend for the Khal's position near my small khas. Otherwise, in the chaos of battle, her khasar would not survive—and as Khaleesi, her own life might not be spared.
Feeling that the final moment had arrived, she said to the gaunt-faced knight with dark circles under his eyes, "I expect I will give birth tonight. Go and bring Mirri Maz Duur."
Pain flashed through Ser Jorah's eyes. He wanted to tell his princess: in such circumstances, she must not place any more hope in the child, or she would be unable to endure the devastating blow that was bound to come.
"Khaleesi, didn't you say she wanted to sacrifice your child?" he said hoarsely.
"Don't worry. I only need her to chant the birthing song. I won't let her near my body." Dany reassured him.
The maegi had been held in a small tent nearby these two days. Aside from disheveled clothes and hair, her spirits seemed quite good.
"I hear the whispers of many mounted warriors. Your husband's khalasar is about to fall apart. Only if he returns from the darkness can all this be changed—your fate, and the fate of your future child." She spoke calmly, persuading Dany.
"My belly hurts. I'm about to give birth. Help me deliver the child first." Dany lay on the furs, her whole body "soaked" in sweat, "as if" she had just bathed in hot water while fully clothed.
"I will help you—" Mirri Maz Duur froze, then started toward Dany's bed.
"Wait." Dany had Irri stop her and said, "I'm delivering at full term, naturally. You will chant the birthing song from behind the screen."
Then she turned sternly to the handmaid. "Irri, stand guard outside. If she does anything abnormal, shoot her dead with the crossbow at once."
"You don't trust me?" The maegi's face darkened.
"No. At least not until my son is safely born. You know why." Dany glared at her.
Mirri Maz Duur stood stiffly, thinking to herself: should she let her give birth? No matter what, that son prophesied to be "the Stallion Who Mounts the World" was doomed. He would die—either at the hands of a new horselord Khal, or be sacrificed by herself to the demons in the shadows.
Why hadn't this silver-haired woman collapsed into madness as expected? Even the seductive black sorcery woven into her words last time had failed to take effect…
To be unable to personally grant her the cruelest revenge—how unwilling she felt.
Yet no matter what churned in her heart, faced with the Dothraki handmaid beside her holding a crossbow and watching her like a hawk, Mirri Maz Duur could only obediently chant the birthing song.
This labor was unexpectedly smooth. Dany cried out hoarsely for only half an hour before the weak, soft cries of a newborn rang out from behind the wooden screen.
"Don't move!" Irri shouted a warning.
The maegi halted her steps around the screen and turned to the handmaid. "Your Khaleesi needs me. After the child is born, there is more complicated work to be done."
In truth, she had no other schemes at that moment. She only felt that something was very wrong with today's birth and desperately wanted to see it with her own eyes.
"Stay where you are. Don't move." Irri leveled the hand crossbow, unmoved.
From inside, Dany spoke weakly, "Irri, let Jhiqui and Doreah come in. Mirri Maz Duur has proven her loyalty. Take her back to her tent—don't bind her anymore. Mm… give her some wine and meat."
This is not normal. That silver-haired woman has a trick up her sleeve!
The maegi was completely certain of it—yet she could not figure out what Dany had done, or what she intended to do.
Irri, Jhiqui, and Doreah had never given birth, nor studied midwifery. They assumed everything was the effect of Mirri Maz Duur's miraculous birthing song.
Even Ser Jorah and the others outside thought the same. After all, a few days ago, everyone had "seen with their own eyes" the maegi help the dying Lillia give birth to a pair of auspicious twins.
Before that, every hairless one had been one hundred percent certain that Lillia, who had fallen from her horse, was beyond saving!
From this, it was clear that Mirri Maz Duur was no ordinary midwife-witch.
With her help, it was only natural that the Khaleesi would smoothly give birth to a son.
When Qotho, Khosho, and Hago—the three bloodriders—were brought into the grass-curtain palace by Ser Jorah, they naturally took the frail infant in Dany's arms to be their Khal's son.
"My Sun-and-Stars, your 'blood of my blood.' He is dying." Dany lowered her head, fiddling with the infant's sparse black hair, speaking casually.
"Woman, the Dothraki are not like your sunset lands," said the so-called wise old man Qotho, believing he had seen through Dany's absurd ambition of ruling from behind the curtain. He mocked her without restraint. "Since the Horse People were born from the Womb of the World, there has never been an infant Khal.
In fact, even an adult son of a Khal cannot inherit his father's position unless he is the strongest warrior of the khalasar."
By this point, they did not even call her "Khaleesi" anymore.
Just as Ser Jorah had said: while Khal Drogo lived, she was the Khaleesi of a hundred thousand horsemen. Once he died, she would be nothing.
Daenerys said to them, "I have accepted my fate—the Dosh Khaleen of Vaes Dothrak. But as the blood of my blood of my husband, this child is his continuation, and also your bloodline.
I hope that one or more brave warriors among you will flee through the night and take my Rhaego"—the name of Daenerys's son, decided from the day she became pregnant—"north.
Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother of Mountains is a holy land of the Horse People, where blades are not drawn, blood is not spilled, disputes are set aside, and hatred is abandoned.
Find the old crone of the Dosh Khaleen who prophesied that I would give birth to 'the Stallion Who Mounts the World.' Ask her to withdraw her prophecy for Rhaego, and beg her to take Rhaego as a lifelong attendant.
If all these requests are fulfilled, I will swear in place of Rhaego, in the identity of the Dragonstone Princess, Stormborn: to forever renounce any claim to inherit the legacy of his biological father, Khal Drogo."
(End of Chapter)