Wings shadowed her fever dreams.
“You
don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She
could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a
door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw
that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left
bloody footprints on the stone.
“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do
you?”
She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich
with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and
they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his
hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness
that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a
daylight sky. “Home,” she whispered as he entered her
and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and
across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took
flame.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon, do
you?”
Ser Jorah’s face was drawn and sorrowful. “Rhaegar
was the last dragon,” he told her. He warmed translucent
hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red as
coals. One moment he was there and the next he was fading, his
flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. “The last
dragon,” he whispered, thin as a wisp, and was gone. She felt
the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than
ever.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon, do
you?”
Viserys stood before her, screaming. “The dragon does not
beg, slut. You do not command the dragon. I am the dragon, and I
will be crowned.” The molten gold trickled down his face like
wax, burning deep channels in his flesh. “I am the dragon and
I will be crowned!” he shrieked, and his fingers snapped like
snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes
burst and ran like jelly down seared and blackened cheeks.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon . . . ”
The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy
breath behind, sweeping up on her. If it caught her she would die a
death that was more than death, howling forever alone in the
darkness. She began to run.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon . . . ”
She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her
womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo’s copper skin
and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And
he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when
he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning
through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a
moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the
promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to
steam as they touched her skin.
“ . . . want to wake the dragon . . . ”
Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings.
In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver
and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were
opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. “Faster,” they
cried, “faster, faster.” She raced, her feet melting
the stone wherever they touched. “Faster!” the ghosts
cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great
knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open
and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of
wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.
“ . . . wake the dragon . . . ”
The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close,
the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now
the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and
higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed
fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home,
she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and
great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open
the door.
“ . . . the dragon . . . ”
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as
his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his
helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice
whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted
his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire
within her, and the whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.
“No,” she moaned, “no, please.”
“Khaleesi?” Jhiqui hovered over her, a frightened
doe.
The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash
drifted upward from a brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes
through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I
was flying. But it was only a dream. “Help me,” she
whispered, struggling to rise. “Bring me . . . ” Her
voice was raw as a wound, and she could not think what she wanted.
Why did she hurt so much? It was as if her body had been torn to
pieces and remade from the scraps. “I want . . . ”
“Yes, Khaleesi.” Quick as that Jhiqui was gone,
bolting from the tent, shouting. Dany needed . . . something . . . someone . . . what? It was important, she knew. It was the only
thing in the world that mattered. She rolled onto her side and got
an elbow under her, fighting the blanket tangled about her legs. It
was so hard to move. The world swam dizzily. I have to . . .
They found her on the carpet, crawling toward her dragon eggs.
Ser Jorah Mormont lifted her in his arms and carried her back to
her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him. Over
his shoulder she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little
wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of Mirri Maz Duur.
“I must,” she tried to tell them, “I have to . . . ”
“ . . . sleep, Princess,” Ser Jorah said.
“No,” Dany
said. “Please. Please.”
“Yes.” He covered her with silk, though she was
burning. “Sleep and grow strong again, Khaleesi. Come back to
us.” And then Mirri Maz Duur was there, the maegi, tipping a
cup against her lips. She tasted sour milk, and something else,
something thick and bitter. Warm liquid ran down her chin. Somehow
she swallowed. The tent grew dimmer, and sleep took her again. This
time she did not dream. She floated, serene and at peace, on a
black sea that knew no shore.
After a time—a night, a day, a year, she could not say—she woke
again. The tent was dark, its silken walls flapping like wings when
the wind gusted outside. This time Dany did not attempt to rise.
“Irri,” she called, “Jhiqui. Doreah.” They
were there at once. “My throat is dry,” she said,
“so dry,” and they brought her water. It was warm and
flat, yet Dany drank it eagerly, and sent Jhiqui for more. Irri
dampened a soft cloth and stroked her brow. “I have been
sick,” Dany said. The Dothraki girl nodded. “How
long?” The cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it
frightened her. “Long,” she whispered. When Jhiqui
returned with more water, Mirri Maz Duur came with her, eyes heavy
from sleep. “Drink,” she said, lifting Dany’s
head to the cup once more, but this time it was only wine. Sweet,
sweet wine. Dany drank, and lay back, listening to the soft sound
of her own breathing. She could feel the heaviness in her limbs, as
sleep crept in to fill her up once more. “Bring me . . . ” she murmured, her voice slurred and drowsy. “Bring . . . I want to hold . . . ”
“Yes?” the maegi asked. “What is it you wish,
Khaleesi?”
“Bring me . . . egg . . . dragon’s egg . . . please . . . ” Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to
hold them up.
When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was
pouring through the smoke hole of the tent, and her arms were
wrapped around a dragon’s egg. It was the pale one, its
scales the color of butter cream, veined with whorls of gold and
bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it. Beneath her bedsilks, a
fine sheen of perspiration covered her bare skin. Dragondew, she
thought. Her fingers trailed lightly across the surface of the
shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she felt
something twist and stretch in response. It did not frighten her.
All her fear was gone, burned away.
Dany touched her brow. Under the film of sweat, her skin was
cool to the touch, her fever gone. She made herself sit. There was
a moment of dizziness, and the deep ache between her thighs. Yet
she felt strong. Her maids came running at the sound of her voice.
“Water,” she told them, “a flagon of water, cold
as you can find it. And fruit, I think. Dates.”
“As you say, Khaleesi.”
“I want Ser Jorah,” she said, standing. Jhiqui
brought a sandsilk robe and draped it over her shoulders.
“And a warm bath, and Mirri Maz Duur, and . . . ” Memory
came back to her all at once, and she faltered. “Khal
Drogo,” she forced herself to say, watching their faces with
dread. “Is he&mdash?”
“The khal lives,” Irri answered quietly . . . yet
Dany saw a darkness in her eyes when she said the words, and no
sooner had she spoken than she rushed away to fetch water.
She turned to Doreah. “Tell me.”
“I . . . I shall bring Ser Jorah,” the Lysene girl said,
bowing her head and fleeing the tent.
Jhiqui would have run as well, but Dany caught her by the wrist
and held her captive. “What is it? I must know. Drogo . . . and my child.” Why had she not remembered the child until
now? “My son . . . Rhaego . . . where is he? I want
him.”
Her handmaid lowered her eyes. “The boy . . . he did not
live, Khaleesi.” Her voice was a frightened whisper.
Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui
left the tent. She had known somehow. She had known since she woke
the first time to Jhiqui’s tears. No, she had known before
she woke. Her dream came back to her, sudden and vivid, and she
remembered the tall man with the copper skin and long silver-gold
braid, bursting into flame.
She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had
wept in her dream, and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks.
All the grief has been burned out of me, she told herself. She felt
sad, and yet . . . she could feel Rhaego receding from her, as if
he had never been.
Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and
found Dany standing over the other dragon’s eggs, the two
still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as hot as the
one she had slept with, which was passing strange. “Ser
Jorah, come here,” she said. She took his hand and placed it
on the black egg with the scarlet swirls. “What do you
feel?”
“Shell, hard as rock.” The knight was wary.
“Scales.”
“Heat?”
“No. Cold stone.” He took his hand away.
“Princess, are you well? Should you be up, weak as you
are?”
“Weak? I am strong, Jorah.” To please him, she
reclined on a pile of cushions. “Tell me how my child
died.”
“He never lived, my princess. The women say . . . ” He faltered,
and Dany saw how the flesh hung loose on him, and the way he limped
when he moved.
“Tell me. Tell me what the women say.”
He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. “They say
the child was . . . ”
She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark
with shame. He looked half a corpse himself.
“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The
knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that
the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous.
“Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a
lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like
the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the
bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of
corruption. He had been dead for years.” Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind
to devour her. If she looked back she was lost. “My son was
alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent,”
she said. “I could feel him kicking, fighting to be
born.”
“That may be as it may be,” answered Mirri Maz Duur,
“yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I
said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.”
“Only shadows,” Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could
hear the doubt in his voice. “I saw, maegi. I saw you, alone,
dancing with the shadows. “
“The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord,” Mirri
said. “Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them
back.”
Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did
for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living
man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the
grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp. “The shadows have
touched you too, Ser Jorah,” she told him. The knight made no
reply. Dany turned to the godswife. “You warned me that only
death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”
“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you
told yourself. You knew the price.”
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was
paid,” Dany said. “The horse, my child, Quaro and
Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and
paid.” She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal
Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you
are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s
life.”
“As you command, Khaleesi,” the old woman said.
“Come, I will take you to him.”
Dany was weaker than she knew. Ser Jorah slipped an arm around
her and helped her stand. “Time enough for this later, my
princess,” he said quietly.
“I would see him now, Ser Jorah.”
After the dimness of the tent, the world outside was blinding
bright. The sun burned like molten gold, and the land was seared
and empty. Her handmaids waited with fruit and wine and water, and
Jhogo moved close to help Ser Jorah support her. Aggo and Rakharo
stood behind. The glare of sun on sand made it hard to see more,
until Dany raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the ashes of
a fire, a few score horses milling listlessly and searching for a
bite of grass, a scattering of tents and bedrolls. A small crowd of
children had gathered to watch her, and beyond she glimpsed women
going about their work, and withered old men staring at the flat
blue sky with tired eyes, swatting feebly at bloodflies. A count
might show a hundred people, no more. Where the other forty
thousand had made their camp, only the wind and dust lived now.
“Drogo’s khalasar is gone,” she said.
“A khal who cannot ride is no khal,” said Jhogo.
“The Dothraki follow only the strong,” Ser Jorah
said. “I am sorry, my princess. There was no way to hold
them. Ko Pono left first, naming himself Khal Pono, and many
followed him. Jhaqo was not long to do the same. The rest slipped
away night by night, in large bands and small. There are a dozen
new khalasars on the Dothraki sea, where once there was only
Drogo’s.”
“The old remain,” said Aggo. “The frightened,
the weak, and the sick. And we who swore. We remain.”
“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,”
Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It is the right
of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well,
the khal’s and yours, yet they left some few.”
“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened
child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.
“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider
now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave
her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They
were six. When they were done with her, they cut her
throat.”
“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo. If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,”
Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I
promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and
the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of
Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them,
Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed
Eroeh.”
The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,
“ the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo
is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”
She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn,
Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror
and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the
dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die
screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”
He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun.
A dozen bloodflies had settled on his body, though he did not
seem to feel them. Dany brushed them away and knelt beside him. His
eyes were wide open but did not see, and she knew at once that he
was blind. When she whispered his name, he did not seem to hear.
The wound on his breast was as healed as it would ever be, the scar
that covered it grey and red and hideous.
“Why is he out here alone, in the sun?” she asked
them.
“He seems to like the warmth, Princess,” Ser Jorah
said. “His eyes follow the sun, though he does not see it. He
can walk after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no
farther. He will eat if you put food in his mouth, drink if you
dribble water on his lips.”
Dany kissed her sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to
face Mirri Maz Duur. “Your spells are costly,
maegi.”
“He lives,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “You asked
for life. You paid for life.”
“This is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life
was laughter, and meat roasting over a firepit, and a horse between
his legs. His life was an arakh in his hand and his bells ringing
in his hair as he rode to meet an enemy. His life was his
bloodriders, and me, and the son I was to give him.”
Mirri Maz Duur made no reply.
“When will he be as he was?” Dany demanded.
“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the
east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and
mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens
again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not
before.”
Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. “Leave us. I
would speak with this maegi alone.” Mormont and the Dothraki
withdrew. “You knew,” Dany said when they were gone.
She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength.
“You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet
you let me pay it.”
“It was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy,
flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great
Shepherd.”
“This was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly. If
I look back I am lost. “You cheated me. You murdered my child
within me.”
“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities
now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust.”
“I spoke for you,” she said, anguished. “I
saved you.”
“Saved me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three
riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as
a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How
then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had
healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and
in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who
made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye
fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders
drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you
saved.”
“Your life.”
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see
what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”
Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri
Maz Duur and bind her hand and foot, but the maegi smiled at her as
they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany
could have her head off . . . yet then what would she have? A head?
If life was worthless, what was death?
They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to
fill a tub, and this time there was no blood in the water. She
bathed him herself, washing the dirt and the dust from his arms and
chest, cleaning his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black
hair and combing the knots and tangles from it till it shone again
as she remembered. It was well past dark before she was done, and
Dany was exhausted. She stopped for drink and food, but it was all
she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a mouthful of water.
Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enough . . . too
long, in truth. She owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights
that had been, and yet might be.
The memory of their first ride was with her when she led him out
into the darkness, for the Dothraki believed that all things of
importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky.
She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and
spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai.
The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars
burned bright. She took that for an omen.
No soft blanket of grass welcomed them here, only the hard dusty
ground, bare and strewn with stones. No trees stirred in the wind,
and there was no stream to soothe her fears with the gentle music
of water. Dany told herself that the stars would be enough.
“Remember, Drogo,” she whispered. “Remember our
first ride together, the day we wed. Remember the night we made
Rhaego, with the khalasar all around us and your eyes on my face.
Remember how cool and clean the water was in the Womb of the World.
Remember, my sun-and-stars. Remember, and come back to
me.”
The birth had left her too raw and torn to take him inside of
her, as she would have wanted, but Doreah had taught her other
ways. Dany used her hands, her mouth, her breasts. She raked him
with her nails and covered him with kisses and whispered and prayed
and told him stories, and by the end she had bathed him with her
tears. Yet Drogo did not feel, or speak, or rise.
And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew
that he was truly lost to her. “When the sun rises in the
west and sets in the east,” she said sadly. “When the
seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my
womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will
return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.” Never, the darkness cried, never never never.
Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with
feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to
Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even
to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.
She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion
down across his face.
Wings shadowed her fever dreams.
“You
don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She
could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a
door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw
that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left
bloody footprints on the stone.
“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do
you?”
She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich
with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and
they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his
hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness
that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a
daylight sky. “Home,” she whispered as he entered her
and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and
across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took
flame.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon, do
you?”
Ser Jorah’s face was drawn and sorrowful. “Rhaegar
was the last dragon,” he told her. He warmed translucent
hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red as
coals. One moment he was there and the next he was fading, his
flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. “The last
dragon,” he whispered, thin as a wisp, and was gone. She felt
the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than
ever.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon, do
you?”
Viserys stood before her, screaming. “The dragon does not
beg, slut. You do not command the dragon. I am the dragon, and I
will be crowned.” The molten gold trickled down his face like
wax, burning deep channels in his flesh. “I am the dragon and
I will be crowned!” he shrieked, and his fingers snapped like
snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes
burst and ran like jelly down seared and blackened cheeks.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon . . . ”
The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy
breath behind, sweeping up on her. If it caught her she would die a
death that was more than death, howling forever alone in the
darkness. She began to run.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon . . . ”
She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her
womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo’s copper skin
and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And
he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when
he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning
through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a
moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the
promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to
steam as they touched her skin.
“ . . . want to wake the dragon . . . ”
Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings.
In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver
and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were
opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. “Faster,” they
cried, “faster, faster.” She raced, her feet melting
the stone wherever they touched. “Faster!” the ghosts
cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great
knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open
and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of
wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.
“ . . . wake the dragon . . . ”
The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close,
the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now
the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and
higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed
fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home,
she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and
great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open
the door.
“ . . . the dragon . . . ”
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as
his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his
helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice
whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted
his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire
within her, and the whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.
“No,” she moaned, “no, please.”
“Khaleesi?” Jhiqui hovered over her, a frightened
doe.
The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash
drifted upward from a brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes
through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I
was flying. But it was only a dream. “Help me,” she
whispered, struggling to rise. “Bring me . . . ” Her
voice was raw as a wound, and she could not think what she wanted.
Why did she hurt so much? It was as if her body had been torn to
pieces and remade from the scraps. “I want . . . ”
“Yes, Khaleesi.” Quick as that Jhiqui was gone,
bolting from the tent, shouting. Dany needed . . . something . . . someone . . . what? It was important, she knew. It was the only
thing in the world that mattered. She rolled onto her side and got
an elbow under her, fighting the blanket tangled about her legs. It
was so hard to move. The world swam dizzily. I have to . . .
They found her on the carpet, crawling toward her dragon eggs.
Ser Jorah Mormont lifted her in his arms and carried her back to
her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him. Over
his shoulder she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little
wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of Mirri Maz Duur.
“I must,” she tried to tell them, “I have to . . . ”
“ . . . sleep, Princess,” Ser Jorah said.
“No,” Dany
said. “Please. Please.”
“Yes.” He covered her with silk, though she was
burning. “Sleep and grow strong again, Khaleesi. Come back to
us.” And then Mirri Maz Duur was there, the maegi, tipping a
cup against her lips. She tasted sour milk, and something else,
something thick and bitter. Warm liquid ran down her chin. Somehow
she swallowed. The tent grew dimmer, and sleep took her again. This
time she did not dream. She floated, serene and at peace, on a
black sea that knew no shore.
After a time—a night, a day, a year, she could not say—she woke
again. The tent was dark, its silken walls flapping like wings when
the wind gusted outside. This time Dany did not attempt to rise.
“Irri,” she called, “Jhiqui. Doreah.” They
were there at once. “My throat is dry,” she said,
“so dry,” and they brought her water. It was warm and
flat, yet Dany drank it eagerly, and sent Jhiqui for more. Irri
dampened a soft cloth and stroked her brow. “I have been
sick,” Dany said. The Dothraki girl nodded. “How
long?” The cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it
frightened her. “Long,” she whispered. When Jhiqui
returned with more water, Mirri Maz Duur came with her, eyes heavy
from sleep. “Drink,” she said, lifting Dany’s
head to the cup once more, but this time it was only wine. Sweet,
sweet wine. Dany drank, and lay back, listening to the soft sound
of her own breathing. She could feel the heaviness in her limbs, as
sleep crept in to fill her up once more. “Bring me . . . ” she murmured, her voice slurred and drowsy. “Bring . . . I want to hold . . . ”
“Yes?” the maegi asked. “What is it you wish,
Khaleesi?”
“Bring me . . . egg . . . dragon’s egg . . . please . . . ” Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to
hold them up.
When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was
pouring through the smoke hole of the tent, and her arms were
wrapped around a dragon’s egg. It was the pale one, its
scales the color of butter cream, veined with whorls of gold and
bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it. Beneath her bedsilks, a
fine sheen of perspiration covered her bare skin. Dragondew, she
thought. Her fingers trailed lightly across the surface of the
shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she felt
something twist and stretch in response. It did not frighten her.
All her fear was gone, burned away.
Dany touched her brow. Under the film of sweat, her skin was
cool to the touch, her fever gone. She made herself sit. There was
a moment of dizziness, and the deep ache between her thighs. Yet
she felt strong. Her maids came running at the sound of her voice.
“Water,” she told them, “a flagon of water, cold
as you can find it. And fruit, I think. Dates.”
“As you say, Khaleesi.”
“I want Ser Jorah,” she said, standing. Jhiqui
brought a sandsilk robe and draped it over her shoulders.
“And a warm bath, and Mirri Maz Duur, and . . . ” Memory
came back to her all at once, and she faltered. “Khal
Drogo,” she forced herself to say, watching their faces with
dread. “Is he&mdash?”
“The khal lives,” Irri answered quietly . . . yet
Dany saw a darkness in her eyes when she said the words, and no
sooner had she spoken than she rushed away to fetch water.
She turned to Doreah. “Tell me.”
“I . . . I shall bring Ser Jorah,” the Lysene girl said,
bowing her head and fleeing the tent.
Jhiqui would have run as well, but Dany caught her by the wrist
and held her captive. “What is it? I must know. Drogo . . . and my child.” Why had she not remembered the child until
now? “My son . . . Rhaego . . . where is he? I want
him.”
Her handmaid lowered her eyes. “The boy . . . he did not
live, Khaleesi.” Her voice was a frightened whisper.
Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui
left the tent. She had known somehow. She had known since she woke
the first time to Jhiqui’s tears. No, she had known before
she woke. Her dream came back to her, sudden and vivid, and she
remembered the tall man with the copper skin and long silver-gold
braid, bursting into flame.
She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had
wept in her dream, and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks.
All the grief has been burned out of me, she told herself. She felt
sad, and yet . . . she could feel Rhaego receding from her, as if
he had never been.
Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and
found Dany standing over the other dragon’s eggs, the two
still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as hot as the
one she had slept with, which was passing strange. “Ser
Jorah, come here,” she said. She took his hand and placed it
on the black egg with the scarlet swirls. “What do you
feel?”
“Shell, hard as rock.” The knight was wary.
“Scales.”
“Heat?”
“No. Cold stone.” He took his hand away.
“Princess, are you well? Should you be up, weak as you
are?”
“Weak? I am strong, Jorah.” To please him, she
reclined on a pile of cushions. “Tell me how my child
died.”
“He never lived, my princess. The women say . . . ” He faltered,
and Dany saw how the flesh hung loose on him, and the way he limped
when he moved.
“Tell me. Tell me what the women say.”
He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. “They say
the child was . . . ”
She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark
with shame. He looked half a corpse himself.
“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The
knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that
the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous.
“Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a
lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like
the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the
bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of
corruption. He had been dead for years.” Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind
to devour her. If she looked back she was lost. “My son was
alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent,”
she said. “I could feel him kicking, fighting to be
born.”
“That may be as it may be,” answered Mirri Maz Duur,
“yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I
said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.”
“Only shadows,” Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could
hear the doubt in his voice. “I saw, maegi. I saw you, alone,
dancing with the shadows. “
“The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord,” Mirri
said. “Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them
back.”
Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did
for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living
man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the
grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp. “The shadows have
touched you too, Ser Jorah,” she told him. The knight made no
reply. Dany turned to the godswife. “You warned me that only
death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”
“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you
told yourself. You knew the price.”
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was
paid,” Dany said. “The horse, my child, Quaro and
Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and
paid.” She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal
Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you
are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s
life.”
“As you command, Khaleesi,” the old woman said.
“Come, I will take you to him.”
Dany was weaker than she knew. Ser Jorah slipped an arm around
her and helped her stand. “Time enough for this later, my
princess,” he said quietly.
“I would see him now, Ser Jorah.”
After the dimness of the tent, the world outside was blinding
bright. The sun burned like molten gold, and the land was seared
and empty. Her handmaids waited with fruit and wine and water, and
Jhogo moved close to help Ser Jorah support her. Aggo and Rakharo
stood behind. The glare of sun on sand made it hard to see more,
until Dany raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the ashes of
a fire, a few score horses milling listlessly and searching for a
bite of grass, a scattering of tents and bedrolls. A small crowd of
children had gathered to watch her, and beyond she glimpsed women
going about their work, and withered old men staring at the flat
blue sky with tired eyes, swatting feebly at bloodflies. A count
might show a hundred people, no more. Where the other forty
thousand had made their camp, only the wind and dust lived now.
“Drogo’s khalasar is gone,” she said.
“A khal who cannot ride is no khal,” said Jhogo.
“The Dothraki follow only the strong,” Ser Jorah
said. “I am sorry, my princess. There was no way to hold
them. Ko Pono left first, naming himself Khal Pono, and many
followed him. Jhaqo was not long to do the same. The rest slipped
away night by night, in large bands and small. There are a dozen
new khalasars on the Dothraki sea, where once there was only
Drogo’s.”
“The old remain,” said Aggo. “The frightened,
the weak, and the sick. And we who swore. We remain.”
“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,”
Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It is the right
of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well,
the khal’s and yours, yet they left some few.”
“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened
child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.
“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider
now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave
her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They
were six. When they were done with her, they cut her
throat.”
“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo. If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,”
Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I
promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and
the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of
Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them,
Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed
Eroeh.”
The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,
“ the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo
is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”
She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn,
Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror
and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the
dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die
screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”
He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun.
A dozen bloodflies had settled on his body, though he did not
seem to feel them. Dany brushed them away and knelt beside him. His
eyes were wide open but did not see, and she knew at once that he
was blind. When she whispered his name, he did not seem to hear.
The wound on his breast was as healed as it would ever be, the scar
that covered it grey and red and hideous.
“Why is he out here alone, in the sun?” she asked
them.
“He seems to like the warmth, Princess,” Ser Jorah
said. “His eyes follow the sun, though he does not see it. He
can walk after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no
farther. He will eat if you put food in his mouth, drink if you
dribble water on his lips.”
Dany kissed her sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to
face Mirri Maz Duur. “Your spells are costly,
maegi.”
“He lives,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “You asked
for life. You paid for life.”
“This is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life
was laughter, and meat roasting over a firepit, and a horse between
his legs. His life was an arakh in his hand and his bells ringing
in his hair as he rode to meet an enemy. His life was his
bloodriders, and me, and the son I was to give him.”
Mirri Maz Duur made no reply.
“When will he be as he was?” Dany demanded.
“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the
east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and
mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens
again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not
before.”
Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. “Leave us. I
would speak with this maegi alone.” Mormont and the Dothraki
withdrew. “You knew,” Dany said when they were gone.
She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength.
“You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet
you let me pay it.”
“It was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy,
flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great
Shepherd.”
“This was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly. If
I look back I am lost. “You cheated me. You murdered my child
within me.”
“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities
now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust.”
“I spoke for you,” she said, anguished. “I
saved you.”
“Saved me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three
riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as
a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How
then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had
healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and
in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who
made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye
fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders
drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you
saved.”
“Your life.”
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see
what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”
Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri
Maz Duur and bind her hand and foot, but the maegi smiled at her as
they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany
could have her head off . . . yet then what would she have? A head?
If life was worthless, what was death?
They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to
fill a tub, and this time there was no blood in the water. She
bathed him herself, washing the dirt and the dust from his arms and
chest, cleaning his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black
hair and combing the knots and tangles from it till it shone again
as she remembered. It was well past dark before she was done, and
Dany was exhausted. She stopped for drink and food, but it was all
she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a mouthful of water.
Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enough . . . too
long, in truth. She owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights
that had been, and yet might be.
The memory of their first ride was with her when she led him out
into the darkness, for the Dothraki believed that all things of
importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky.
She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and
spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai.
The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars
burned bright. She took that for an omen.
No soft blanket of grass welcomed them here, only the hard dusty
ground, bare and strewn with stones. No trees stirred in the wind,
and there was no stream to soothe her fears with the gentle music
of water. Dany told herself that the stars would be enough.
“Remember, Drogo,” she whispered. “Remember our
first ride together, the day we wed. Remember the night we made
Rhaego, with the khalasar all around us and your eyes on my face.
Remember how cool and clean the water was in the Womb of the World.
Remember, my sun-and-stars. Remember, and come back to
me.”
The birth had left her too raw and torn to take him inside of
her, as she would have wanted, but Doreah had taught her other
ways. Dany used her hands, her mouth, her breasts. She raked him
with her nails and covered him with kisses and whispered and prayed
and told him stories, and by the end she had bathed him with her
tears. Yet Drogo did not feel, or speak, or rise.
And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew
that he was truly lost to her. “When the sun rises in the
west and sets in the east,” she said sadly. “When the
seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my
womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will
return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.” Never, the darkness cried, never never never.
Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with
feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to
Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even
to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.
She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion
down across his face.