The third person was a Shadow Binder from Asshai. She wore a lacquered wooden mask and spoke in fluent Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. "Greetings, Mother of Dragons. I am a Shadow Binder of the Shadow Lands—Kui Xi."
The red-painted wooden mask concealed her eyes and facial expression completely. From her flat voice, Dany could not discern her true thoughts.
Dany nodded and gestured for the Dothraki to clear a path. She walked ahead with the guests, while the others followed behind.
No sooner had they passed through the gate tunnel than Dany saw Ser Jorah approaching together with her Bloodriders. Thus, on the road to the palace, she introduced everyone to each other once more.
"You came seeking dragons," Jorah asked the question that had long been buried in Dany's heart. "But how did you know there were dragons here?"
"The stars in the heavens guided us," Kui Xi replied briefly.
"The stars?" Jorah was puzzled.
"That one," the warlock said, pointing at the red comet still hanging in the sky.
Three months had already passed, yet the comet had not completely vanished—only dimmed considerably compared to before.
Perhaps before long, when people looked up again, they would suddenly realize it had disappeared entirely, without knowing when it happened.
"The Bleeding Star? It keeps changing direction—how could it guide you? And what does its appearance have to do with dragons?" Jorah asked.
"To mortals like you, it is merely a comet that appears once in a thousand years. But to those of us who wield mystical power, we can personally feel the immense changes taking place between heaven and earth." The warlock stared at Drogon, his voice low and eerie.
"Isn't that a bit exaggerated? Dragons have existed before. People keep saying they've been extinct for over a hundred years, but that's only in Westeros.
The Ironborn say there are sea dragons in the depths of the Sunset Sea. Legends of ice dragons never cease. Even true dragons—there have always been rumors of them emerging from the hidden corners of the world." Jorah thought the warlock was bragging, likely trying to deceive his princess.
"Heh heh heh." The warlock's strange blue lips curled with obvious mockery. He could not even be bothered to answer a "mere mortal's" question.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. What a city full of sand, decay, and ruin—utterly unworthy of the noble Mother of Dragons." The round-headed Qartheen merchant, his bald head like a boiled egg, cracked his whip against a camel's rump and hurried forward, drawing close to Dany. With an exaggerated tone, he invited her, "Khaleesi, you were born to wear the most luxurious jewels, to dress in exquisite gowns woven of Myrish silk, to be surrounded by servants, and to dwell in a magnificent palace closest to the gods themselves.
Only Qarth, the center of the world, can satisfy all of this.
And as it happens, I have both the means and the sincerest heart to provide you with such service. Please leave this wretched place and come with me to Qarth."
"Haha, Master Daxos, you are a noble and generous gentleman," Dany replied with a smile, gently refusing. "But I still have a great many people to look after."
"Hahahaha!" Xaro threw back his head and laughed, his laughter brimming with pride and superiority. "Khaleesi, you truly should go to Qarth. This barren desert has polluted your vision.
Even the smallest corner chamber of my home could easily accommodate all of your followers.
In fact, kings and great lords from all over the world have come to Qarth to visit me. The servants they bring with them outnumber your people—and once, I hosted thirty-five noble guests at the same time."
Translated into plain terms: one random bathroom in my house is bigger than your entire home, and I have thirty-five bathrooms.
Dany really wanted to say: I have three cities.
"Ah… you may not know, but Khal Drogo is already dead," she sighed.
"Of course we know," Xaro replied at once. "The mightiest khal has passed away. The Great Grass Sea has gained several new khals, and the entire continent of Essos knows it."
Dany froze for a moment, astonished by the eerie speed at which information traveled in this world.
In truth, once she personally witnessed the utterly outrageous capabilities of ravens, she would no longer be so shocked.
"The problem is, the usurper never stopped hunting me. Last time, he even dared to send assassins to poison me in the sacred city of the Dothraki. Without a khal's protection, if I leave here and he sends people again, what then?"
"Khaleesi, there is no need to worry. Robert Baratheon—the man who usurped your father's throne—has been dead for nearly half a year."
Xaro then began recounting the news that had come from the lands of the setting sun.
Just as in the television series Dany had seen, "Old Bob" went hunting, drank wine spiked by Lancel, and in his drunken haze was gored to death by a boar.
However great a man was in life, he was just that pitiful in death.
Yes—Lancel Lannister, Queen Cersei's cousin, and an enthusiastic self-heating defensive baton.
As for Old Bob, in his youth he was absurdly overpowered. His warhammer could rank third in the Ice and Fire Weapon Compendium, surpassed only by the modded version of the Mountain and Ser Arthur Dayne wielding the greatsword Dawn.
The Red Viper, Khal Drogo, and Syrio Forel—all were a tier below Old Bob.
Rhaegar and the White Bull were another tier lower.
Jorah Mormont beside Dany looked a little awkward—probably another one or two tiers below the White Bull.
This was not deliberate exaggeration. In the entire A Song of Ice and Fire, only he had both strength and agility maxed out.
Skill can be trained; talent determines one's ceiling.
There was no need to mention how he crushed Rhaegar in his youth—just look at his final battle.
Yes, the one where he was killed by a boar.
He had drunk several large skins of spiked strong wine. Unable to dodge in time, the charging boar's tusks pierced his manhood, ripping upward from the lower abdomen and carving a gash half a meter long. If not for his ribcage blocking it, he would have been split in two on the spot.
His fat belly's intestines and organs spilled out like constipated shit finally released—splash, splash—cheerfully flowing all over the ground.
An ordinary man would have collapsed instantly even from a kick there, yet Old Bob launched a desperate counterattack. With such grievous wounds, he still managed to kill the boar clinging to his chest with his spear.
Fierce beyond measure.
Afterward, he held on for several more days, left his will, reminisced about past glories with his best bro Ned, and only then died with the help of milk of the poppy.
Yet such a valiant warrior was pitifully cuckolded countless times by his wife, the "lustful queen." None of his three sons were actually his.
Yes—Cersei's children by her own brother.
Cersei did not want to bear Robert's children. Even during marital relations—every time Old Bob drunkenly sought her out, she deliberately created the illusion that they had slept together. In truth, he never even touched her. The first time Cersei became pregnant with Robert's child, she seemed to deliberately have it aborted.
(P.S. This differs from the TV series Game of Thrones. Cersei did not love Robert at all, and was unwilling even to share a bed with him. When performing her "duties," she deliberately got Robert drunk—though he often drank himself anyway. Over fourteen years, the number of times Robert and Cersei held hands could be counted on one's fingers.)
After Eddard became Hand of the King, prompted by several ill-intentioned people, he soon realized that his best friend had been raising someone else's children.
Then, he let the Lustful Queen know that he knew.
Once she knew that he knew, she struck first—having one of her lovers, her cousin Lancel, poison Old Bob's wine. And so, as described above, Old Bob died miserably beneath the boar's tusks.
Of course, Xaro did not tell Dany the story in such detail. He merely said that there were rumors Robert had been killed by Cersei.
"So you no longer need to worry about the usurper harming you," he comforted Dany. "In Qarth, under my protection, no one will be able to hurt you."
Dany nodded and followed his line of conversation. "How far is it from here to Qarth? How many days did it take you to ride camels here?"
"About a thousand kilometers. It took us nearly a week to reach this place."
Dany calculated silently. Their speed seemed not much different from her khalasar's southward march.
The only difference was that camels could continue on for another thousand kilometers in this environment, while her khalasar had nearly collapsed after traveling just over five hundred.
As they talked, the group arrived before the palace. In the square, a crowd of elders and children stared in wonder at the three guests atop their camels.
Dany prepared fresh water and fermented mare's milk to quench their thirst, and cleared three bedrooms near the garden for them to rest.
That evening, she held a bonfire feast in the square—roasted horsemeat dipped in plum sauce, mushroom and smoked venison stew, buttered beets, stewed turnips, and the remaining grape wine she had saved.
Nearly the finest food her khalasar could produce.
The three guests from Qarth also took out red wine, sausages, and caviar from the chests hanging from their camels.
Dany even brought out her three hound-sized dragons for them to see, letting them touch the little dragons as well.
She and Jorah carefully observed their reactions. Kui Xi's movements as she stroked the black dragon were filled with reverence. The warlock's eyes could not hide his desire at all.
As for the great merchant Xaro, his eyes curved into smiling slits that seemed to glow, as he expressed amazement at the high temperature of the dragon's scales.
Overall, the guests were very satisfied with Dany's hospitality that night.
At last, when seeing them back to their rooms, Dany told Xaro that she would seriously consider the possibility of traveling to Qarth.
"What do you all think?"
Dany did not go to sleep immediately. She summoned Jorah, the Bloodriders, several elders, and three handmaids together, convening a "unified opinion meeting on whether to go to Qarth."
Unlike other khals, who treated elders as useless burdens, Dany deeply valued those who had survived past sixty in the brutal environment of the Great Grass Sea.
Aside from Watson's occasional misjudgments, the horseherder Avanti and the old blacksmith Solomon had brought her tremendous surprises.
Take Avanti, for example—he was practically a horse-breeding master.
In a desolate place like the Red Waste, not only had their horses not diminished, but over the months they had even gained more than a dozen newborn foals.
In modern times, those world-famous racing clubs would probably fight to the death to recruit him.
Solomon was a foreign tribesman with green hair and green eyes.
The Dothraki had no blacksmiths of their own, relying instead on foreign slaves to repair weapons. When Drogo's father demanded gifts from Qohor, the city-state's trade prince sent Solomon—who had committed a crime and been imprisoned—as a gift to the horselords.
After all, since Valyria was destroyed in the Doom, Qohor's smithing techniques had been unrivaled in the world.
Lysene prostitutes, Myrish crafts, Qohorik cloth and blacksmiths, Pentoshi spices and dairy, the Iron Bank of Braavos, the slaves of Volantis—
The Nine Free Cities traded in everything, but each had its own specialty.
...
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Here are a few fan-fic titles that I've recently uploaded on my Patreon:
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(End Chapter)