The land was red and dead and parched, and good
wood was hard to come by. Her foragers returned with gnarled
cottonwoods, purple brush, sheaves of brown grass. They took the
two straightest trees, hacked the limbs and branches from them,
skinned off their bark, and split them, laying the logs in a
square. Its center they filled with straw, brush, bark shavings,
and bundles of dry grass. Rakharo chose a stallion from the small
herd that remained to them; he was not the equal of Khal
Drogo’s red, but few horses were. In the center of the
square, Aggo fed him a withered apple and dropped him in an instant
with an axe blow between the eyes.
Bound hand and foot, Mirri Maz Duur watched from the dust with
disquiet in her black eyes. “It is not enough to kill a
horse,” she told Dany. “By itself, the blood is
nothing. You do not have the words to make a spell, nor the wisdom
to find them. Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children? You
call me maegi as if it were a curse, but all it means is wise. You
are a child, with a child’s ignorance. Whatever you mean to
do, it will not work. Loose me from these bonds and I will help
you.”
“I am tired of the maegi’s braying,” Dany told
Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after that the godswife kept
silent.
Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn
logs; trunks of smaller trees and limbs from the greater, and the
thickest straightest branches they could find. They laid the wood east
to west, from sunrise to sunset. On the platform they piled Khal
Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his
saddles and harness, the whip his father had given him when he came
to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and his son, a
mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons
Drogo’s bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well,
but she forbade it. “Those are mine,” she told him,
“and I mean to keep them.” Another layer of brush was
piled about the khal’s treasures, and bundles of dried grass
scattered over them.
Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward
its zenith. “Princess . . . ” he began.
“Why do you call me that?” Dany challenged him.
“My brother Viserys was your king, was he not?”
“He was, my lady.”
“Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House
Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now.”
“My . . . queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee.
“My sword that was his is yours, Dacnerys. And my heart as
well, that never belonged to your brother. I am only a knight, and
I have nothing to offer you but exile, but I beg you, hear me. Let
Khal Drogo go. You shall not be alone. I promise you, no man shall
take you to Vaes Dothrak unless you wish to go. You need not join
the doshkhaleen. Come east with me. Yi Ti, Qarth, the Jade Sea,
Asshai by the Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and
drink what wines the gods see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I
know what you intend. Do not. Do not.”
“I must,” Dany told him. She touched his face,
fondly, sadly. “You do not understand.”
“I understand that you loved him,” Ser Jorah said in a
voice thick with despair. “I loved my lady wife once, yet I
did not die with her. You are my queen, my sword is yours, but do
not ask me to stand aside as you climb on Drogo’s pyre. I
will not watch you burn.”
“Is that what you fear?” Dany kissed him lightly on
his broad forehead. “I am not such a child as that, sweet
ser.”
“You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my
queen?”
“I swear it,” she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven
Kingdoms that by rights were hers.
The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker
than a finger, and covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid
them north to south, from ice to fire, and piled them high with
soft cushions and sleeping silks. The sun had begun to lower toward
the west by the time they were done. Dany called the Dothraki
around her. Fewer than a hundred were left. How many had Aegon
started with? she wondered. It did not matter.
“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I
see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if
you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes
watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children,
women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday.
Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say,
give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a
place for you.” She turned to the three young warriors of her
khas. “Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was
my bride gift, and name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will
live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me
safe from harm.”
Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused.
“Khaleesi, “ he said hesitantly, “this is not
done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman.”
“Aggo,” Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo’s
words. If I look back I am lost. “To you I give the
dragonbone bow that was my bride gift.” It was double-curved,
shiny black and exquisite, taller than she was. “I name you
ko, and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my
blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”
Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say
these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a
ko.”
“Rakharo,” Dany said, turning away from the refusal,
“you shall have the great arakh that was my bride gift, with
hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too I name my ko, and ask
that you live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to
keep me safe from harm.”
“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh.
“I shall ride at your side to Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother
of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take your place
with the crones of the doshkhaleen. No more can I
promise.”
She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and
turned to the last of her champions. “Ser Jorah
Mormont,” she said, “first and greatest of my knights,
I have no bride gift to give you, but I swear to you, one day you
shall have from my hands a longsword like none the world has ever
seen, dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel. And I would ask for
your oath as well.”
“You have it, my queen,” Ser Jorah said, kneeling to
lay his sword at her feet. “I vow to serve you, to obey you,
to die for you if need be.”
“Whatever may come?”
“Whatever may come.”
“I shall hold you to that oath. I pray you never regret
the giving of it.” Dany lifted him to his feet. Stretching on
her toes to reach his lips, she kissed the knight gently and said,
“You are the first of my Queensguard.”
She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered
her tent. The Dothraki were muttering and giving her strange
sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond eyes. They
thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know
soon enough. If I look back I am lost.
Her bath was scalding hot when Irri helped her into the tub, but
Dany did not flinch or cry aloud. She liked the heat. It made her
feel clean. Jhiqui had scented the water with the oils she had
found in the market in Vaes Dothrak; the steam rose moist and
fragrant. Doreah washed her hair and combed it out, working loose
the mats and tangles. Irri scrubbed her back. Dany closed her eyes
and let the smell and the warmth enfold her. She could feel the
heat soaking through the soreness between her thighs. She shuddered
when it entered her, and her pain and stiffness seemed to dissolve.
She floated.
When she was clean, her handmaids helped her from the water.
Irri and Jhiqui fanned her dry, while Doreah brushed her hair until
it fell like a river of liquid silver down her back. They scented
her with spiceflower and cinnamon; a touch on each wrist, behind
her ears, on the tips of her milk-heavy breasts. The last dab was
for her sex. Irri’s finger felt as light and cool as a
lover’s kiss as it slid softly up between her lips.
Afterward, Dany sent them all away, so she might prepare Khal
Drogo for his final ride into the night lands. She washed his body
clean and brushed and oiled his hair, running her fingers through
it for the last time, feeling the weight of it, remembering the
first time she had touched it, the night of their wedding ride. His
hair had never been cut. How many men could die with their hair
uncut? She buried her face in it and inhaled the dark fragrance of
the oils. He smelled like grass and warm earth, like smoke and
semen and horses. He smelled like Drogo. Forgive me, sun of my
life, she thought. Forgive me for all I have done and all I must
do. I paid the price, my star, but it was too high, too high . . .
Dany braided his hair and slid the silver rings onto his
mustache and hung his bells one by one. So many bells, gold and
silver and bronze. Bells so his enemies would hear him coming and
grow weak with fear. She dressed him in horsehair leggings and high
boots, buckling a belt heavy with gold and silver medallions about
his waist. Over his scarred chest she slipped a painted vest, old
and faded, the one Drogo had loved best. For herself she chose
loose sandsilk trousers, sandals that laced halfway up her legs,
and a vest like Drogo’s.
The sun was going down when she called them back to carry his
body to the pyre. The Dothraki watched in silence as Jhogo and Aggo
bore him from the tent. Dany walked behind them. They laid him down
on his cushions and silks, his head toward the Mother of Mountains
far to the northeast.
“Oil,” she commanded, and they brought forth the
jars and poured them over the pyre, soaking the silks and the brush
and the bundles of dry grass, until the oil trickled from beneath
the logs and the air was rich with fragrance. “Bring my
eggs,” Dany commanded her handmaids. Something in her voice
made them run.
Ser Jorah took her arm. “My queen, Drogo will have no use
for dragon’s eggs in the night lands. Better to sell them in
Asshai. Sell one and we can buy a ship to take us back to the Free
Cities. Sell all three and you will be a wealthy woman all your
days.”
“They were not given to me to sell,” Dany told
him.
She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her
sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green
beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold
down between his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany
could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips.
As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur
watching her. “You are mad,” the godswife said
hoarsely.
“Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” Dany asked.
“Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the
pyre.”
“To the . . . my queen, no, hear me . . . ”
“Do as I say.” Still he hesitated, until her anger
flared. “You swore to obey me, whatever might come. Rakharo,
help him.”
The godswife did not cry out as they dragged her to Khal
Drogo’s pyre and staked her down amidst his treasures. Dany
poured the oil over the woman’s head herself. “I thank
you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you
have taught me.”
“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as
the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing.
“I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your
screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only
death can pay for life.” Mirri Maz Duur opened her mouth, but
made no reply. As she stepped away, Dany saw that the contempt was
gone from the maegi’s flat black eyes; in its place was
something that might have been fear. Then there was nothing to be
done but watch the sun and look for the first star.
When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might
ride proud into the night lands. The bodies
are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery
steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man
burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the
darkness.
Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed
voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first star was
a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail.
She could not have asked for a stronger sign.
Dany took the torch from Aggo’s hand and thrust it between
the logs. The oil took the fire at once, the brush and dried grass
a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the wood like swift
red mice, skating over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to
leaf. A rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a
lover’s breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear.
Dany stepped backward. The wood crackled, louder and louder. Mirri
Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames
whirled and writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk
shimmered as the air itself seemed to liquefy from the heat. Dany
heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri Maz Duur. Her
song grew louder, shriller . . . then she gasped, again and again,
and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of
agony.
And now the flames reached her Drogo, and now they were all
around him. His clothing took fire, and for an instant the khal was
clad in wisps of floating orange silk and tendrils of curling
smoke, grey and greasy. Dany’s lips parted and she found
herself holding her breath. Part of her wanted to go to him as Ser
Jorah had feared, to rush into the flames to beg for his
forgiveness and take him inside her one last time, the fire melting
the flesh from their bones until they were as one, forever.
She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than
horseflesh roasting in a firepit. The pyre roared in the deepening
dusk like some great beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri
Maz Duur’s screaming and sending up long tongues of flame to
lick at the belly of the night. As the smoke grew thicker, the
Dothraki backed away, coughing. Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled
their banners in that hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking,
glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark
like so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great
red wings, driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but
Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the
fire was in her.
She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she
took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not
been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who
had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their
yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet
lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them,
her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought.
Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child,
but children grow, and children learn.
Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the
soles of her feet, even through her sandals. Sweat ran down her
thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks,
where tears had once run. Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he
did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. The flames were so
beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever seen, each one a
sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and scarlet, swirling long
smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents
and unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and
monsters, wolves and bright birds and flowering trees, each more
beautiful than the last. She saw a horse, a great grey stallion
limned in smoke, its flowing mane a nimbus of blue flame. Yes, my
love, my sun-and-stars, yes, mount now, ride now.
Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let
it fall to the ground. The painted leather burst into sudden flame
as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze,
streams of milk flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she
thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before
her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He
smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing.
She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform
of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon
itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was
showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing
down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved
rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring
filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women
shriek and children cry out in wonder. Only death can pay for life.
And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and
the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the
logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard
the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki
raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name
and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do
not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn,
daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons,
don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and
smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and
came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the
firestorm, calling to her children.
The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the
world.
When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to
walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded
by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of
man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her
clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away . . . yet she was unhurt.
The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the
green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The
black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long
sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised
its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.
Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came
up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet.
“Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to
the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo
echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.
And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the
Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at
their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and
forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale
smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled
away from her breasts and added their voices to the call,
translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first
time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of
dragons.
The land was red and dead and parched, and good
wood was hard to come by. Her foragers returned with gnarled
cottonwoods, purple brush, sheaves of brown grass. They took the
two straightest trees, hacked the limbs and branches from them,
skinned off their bark, and split them, laying the logs in a
square. Its center they filled with straw, brush, bark shavings,
and bundles of dry grass. Rakharo chose a stallion from the small
herd that remained to them; he was not the equal of Khal
Drogo’s red, but few horses were. In the center of the
square, Aggo fed him a withered apple and dropped him in an instant
with an axe blow between the eyes.
Bound hand and foot, Mirri Maz Duur watched from the dust with
disquiet in her black eyes. “It is not enough to kill a
horse,” she told Dany. “By itself, the blood is
nothing. You do not have the words to make a spell, nor the wisdom
to find them. Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children? You
call me maegi as if it were a curse, but all it means is wise. You
are a child, with a child’s ignorance. Whatever you mean to
do, it will not work. Loose me from these bonds and I will help
you.”
“I am tired of the maegi’s braying,” Dany told
Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after that the godswife kept
silent.
Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn
logs; trunks of smaller trees and limbs from the greater, and the
thickest straightest branches they could find. They laid the wood east
to west, from sunrise to sunset. On the platform they piled Khal
Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his
saddles and harness, the whip his father had given him when he came
to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and his son, a
mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons
Drogo’s bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well,
but she forbade it. “Those are mine,” she told him,
“and I mean to keep them.” Another layer of brush was
piled about the khal’s treasures, and bundles of dried grass
scattered over them.
Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward
its zenith. “Princess . . . ” he began.
“Why do you call me that?” Dany challenged him.
“My brother Viserys was your king, was he not?”
“He was, my lady.”
“Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House
Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now.”
“My . . . queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee.
“My sword that was his is yours, Dacnerys. And my heart as
well, that never belonged to your brother. I am only a knight, and
I have nothing to offer you but exile, but I beg you, hear me. Let
Khal Drogo go. You shall not be alone. I promise you, no man shall
take you to Vaes Dothrak unless you wish to go. You need not join
the doshkhaleen. Come east with me. Yi Ti, Qarth, the Jade Sea,
Asshai by the Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and
drink what wines the gods see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I
know what you intend. Do not. Do not.”
“I must,” Dany told him. She touched his face,
fondly, sadly. “You do not understand.”
“I understand that you loved him,” Ser Jorah said in a
voice thick with despair. “I loved my lady wife once, yet I
did not die with her. You are my queen, my sword is yours, but do
not ask me to stand aside as you climb on Drogo’s pyre. I
will not watch you burn.”
“Is that what you fear?” Dany kissed him lightly on
his broad forehead. “I am not such a child as that, sweet
ser.”
“You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my
queen?”
“I swear it,” she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven
Kingdoms that by rights were hers.
The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker
than a finger, and covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid
them north to south, from ice to fire, and piled them high with
soft cushions and sleeping silks. The sun had begun to lower toward
the west by the time they were done. Dany called the Dothraki
around her. Fewer than a hundred were left. How many had Aegon
started with? she wondered. It did not matter.
“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I
see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if
you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes
watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children,
women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday.
Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say,
give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a
place for you.” She turned to the three young warriors of her
khas. “Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was
my bride gift, and name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will
live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me
safe from harm.”
Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused.
“Khaleesi, “ he said hesitantly, “this is not
done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman.”
“Aggo,” Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo’s
words. If I look back I am lost. “To you I give the
dragonbone bow that was my bride gift.” It was double-curved,
shiny black and exquisite, taller than she was. “I name you
ko, and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my
blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”
Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say
these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a
ko.”
“Rakharo,” Dany said, turning away from the refusal,
“you shall have the great arakh that was my bride gift, with
hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too I name my ko, and ask
that you live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to
keep me safe from harm.”
“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh.
“I shall ride at your side to Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother
of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take your place
with the crones of the doshkhaleen. No more can I
promise.”
She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and
turned to the last of her champions. “Ser Jorah
Mormont,” she said, “first and greatest of my knights,
I have no bride gift to give you, but I swear to you, one day you
shall have from my hands a longsword like none the world has ever
seen, dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel. And I would ask for
your oath as well.”
“You have it, my queen,” Ser Jorah said, kneeling to
lay his sword at her feet. “I vow to serve you, to obey you,
to die for you if need be.”
“Whatever may come?”
“Whatever may come.”
“I shall hold you to that oath. I pray you never regret
the giving of it.” Dany lifted him to his feet. Stretching on
her toes to reach his lips, she kissed the knight gently and said,
“You are the first of my Queensguard.”
She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered
her tent. The Dothraki were muttering and giving her strange
sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond eyes. They
thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know
soon enough. If I look back I am lost.
Her bath was scalding hot when Irri helped her into the tub, but
Dany did not flinch or cry aloud. She liked the heat. It made her
feel clean. Jhiqui had scented the water with the oils she had
found in the market in Vaes Dothrak; the steam rose moist and
fragrant. Doreah washed her hair and combed it out, working loose
the mats and tangles. Irri scrubbed her back. Dany closed her eyes
and let the smell and the warmth enfold her. She could feel the
heat soaking through the soreness between her thighs. She shuddered
when it entered her, and her pain and stiffness seemed to dissolve.
She floated.
When she was clean, her handmaids helped her from the water.
Irri and Jhiqui fanned her dry, while Doreah brushed her hair until
it fell like a river of liquid silver down her back. They scented
her with spiceflower and cinnamon; a touch on each wrist, behind
her ears, on the tips of her milk-heavy breasts. The last dab was
for her sex. Irri’s finger felt as light and cool as a
lover’s kiss as it slid softly up between her lips.
Afterward, Dany sent them all away, so she might prepare Khal
Drogo for his final ride into the night lands. She washed his body
clean and brushed and oiled his hair, running her fingers through
it for the last time, feeling the weight of it, remembering the
first time she had touched it, the night of their wedding ride. His
hair had never been cut. How many men could die with their hair
uncut? She buried her face in it and inhaled the dark fragrance of
the oils. He smelled like grass and warm earth, like smoke and
semen and horses. He smelled like Drogo. Forgive me, sun of my
life, she thought. Forgive me for all I have done and all I must
do. I paid the price, my star, but it was too high, too high . . .
Dany braided his hair and slid the silver rings onto his
mustache and hung his bells one by one. So many bells, gold and
silver and bronze. Bells so his enemies would hear him coming and
grow weak with fear. She dressed him in horsehair leggings and high
boots, buckling a belt heavy with gold and silver medallions about
his waist. Over his scarred chest she slipped a painted vest, old
and faded, the one Drogo had loved best. For herself she chose
loose sandsilk trousers, sandals that laced halfway up her legs,
and a vest like Drogo’s.
The sun was going down when she called them back to carry his
body to the pyre. The Dothraki watched in silence as Jhogo and Aggo
bore him from the tent. Dany walked behind them. They laid him down
on his cushions and silks, his head toward the Mother of Mountains
far to the northeast.
“Oil,” she commanded, and they brought forth the
jars and poured them over the pyre, soaking the silks and the brush
and the bundles of dry grass, until the oil trickled from beneath
the logs and the air was rich with fragrance. “Bring my
eggs,” Dany commanded her handmaids. Something in her voice
made them run.
Ser Jorah took her arm. “My queen, Drogo will have no use
for dragon’s eggs in the night lands. Better to sell them in
Asshai. Sell one and we can buy a ship to take us back to the Free
Cities. Sell all three and you will be a wealthy woman all your
days.”
“They were not given to me to sell,” Dany told
him.
She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her
sun-and-stars. The black beside his heart, under his arm. The green
beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold
down between his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany
could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips.
As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur
watching her. “You are mad,” the godswife said
hoarsely.
“Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” Dany asked.
“Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the
pyre.”
“To the . . . my queen, no, hear me . . . ”
“Do as I say.” Still he hesitated, until her anger
flared. “You swore to obey me, whatever might come. Rakharo,
help him.”
The godswife did not cry out as they dragged her to Khal
Drogo’s pyre and staked her down amidst his treasures. Dany
poured the oil over the woman’s head herself. “I thank
you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you
have taught me.”
“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as
the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing.
“I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your
screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only
death can pay for life.” Mirri Maz Duur opened her mouth, but
made no reply. As she stepped away, Dany saw that the contempt was
gone from the maegi’s flat black eyes; in its place was
something that might have been fear. Then there was nothing to be
done but watch the sun and look for the first star.
When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might
ride proud into the night lands. The bodies
are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery
steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man
burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the
darkness.
Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed
voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first star was
a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail.
She could not have asked for a stronger sign.
Dany took the torch from Aggo’s hand and thrust it between
the logs. The oil took the fire at once, the brush and dried grass
a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the wood like swift
red mice, skating over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to
leaf. A rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a
lover’s breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear.
Dany stepped backward. The wood crackled, louder and louder. Mirri
Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames
whirled and writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk
shimmered as the air itself seemed to liquefy from the heat. Dany
heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri Maz Duur. Her
song grew louder, shriller . . . then she gasped, again and again,
and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of
agony.
And now the flames reached her Drogo, and now they were all
around him. His clothing took fire, and for an instant the khal was
clad in wisps of floating orange silk and tendrils of curling
smoke, grey and greasy. Dany’s lips parted and she found
herself holding her breath. Part of her wanted to go to him as Ser
Jorah had feared, to rush into the flames to beg for his
forgiveness and take him inside her one last time, the fire melting
the flesh from their bones until they were as one, forever.
She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than
horseflesh roasting in a firepit. The pyre roared in the deepening
dusk like some great beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri
Maz Duur’s screaming and sending up long tongues of flame to
lick at the belly of the night. As the smoke grew thicker, the
Dothraki backed away, coughing. Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled
their banners in that hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking,
glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark
like so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great
red wings, driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but
Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the
fire was in her.
She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she
took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not
been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who
had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their
yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet
lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them,
her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought.
Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child,
but children grow, and children learn.
Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the
soles of her feet, even through her sandals. Sweat ran down her
thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks,
where tears had once run. Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he
did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. The flames were so
beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever seen, each one a
sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and scarlet, swirling long
smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents
and unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and
monsters, wolves and bright birds and flowering trees, each more
beautiful than the last. She saw a horse, a great grey stallion
limned in smoke, its flowing mane a nimbus of blue flame. Yes, my
love, my sun-and-stars, yes, mount now, ride now.
Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let
it fall to the ground. The painted leather burst into sudden flame
as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze,
streams of milk flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she
thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before
her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He
smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing.
She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform
of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon
itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was
showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing
down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved
rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring
filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women
shriek and children cry out in wonder. Only death can pay for life.
And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and
the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the
logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard
the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki
raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name
and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do
not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn,
daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons,
don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and
smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and
came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the
firestorm, calling to her children.
The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the
world.
When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to
walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded
by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of
man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her
clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away . . . yet she was unhurt.
The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the
green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The
black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long
sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised
its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.
Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came
up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet.
“Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to
the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo
echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.
And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the
Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at
their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and
forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale
smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled
away from her breasts and added their voices to the call,
translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first
time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of
dragons.