The Iron Throne: Essos

[Garlan Gunter]

DOREAH



The nights were long now, dark and chill and full of strange noises. Night had always been her domain, but the nights she wove were full of colour, the ordered harmonies of music, plucked string and sung melody, the beating of dancing, the thuds upon soft and scented beds. Now these gathering nights as they veered towards the Demon Road - surely not heedlessly named, the Lysene girl thought, gulping down more tears - were filled not just with terrors, but rivals. Viserys had, Doreah realised with an increasing lurch of sickly instability, never come to her bed with much more than amusement. She offered him diversion and some usefulness, but she lacked what his new friends promised, for which he had so long yearned: power.

"It will be the death of me, Your Grace," she moaned from the covers again. "Death amid deserts and demons; I had hoped to serve you better. If you must give ear to...them...at least send me to do your business and pleasure in Volantis."

The smile did not leave her employer and occasional, somewhat lacklustre by now lover, but his tone was bored and more than that, disdainful, even veering at the edge of the anger she dreaded by now so. "Business and pleasure! I know well what you would have in mind for those. No, you are a thing of value yet, and you will stay with me, with my other things of value." Since surrendering the first egg to the Qohoriks to obtain the security of his enslaved bodyguard, Viserys, the girl knew, had become almost jagged with possessiveness over the remaining pair, even as he insisted on dragging them all to the perils of the East to ratchet up their price.

She had thought about doing to him as he had done to Drogo, of course. A single egg would be enough to afford her comfort and freedom in Lys, or even further afield from home; she felt unsure of her connections there. Though it had been her scheme to sell the Westerosi knight to his woman's keeper, somehow her heart besought her that the notion would lead to little good yet, for her, lordly Tregar, or perchance even the Beggar King.

But, as so often, her thoughts of disloyalty and escape were now scattered by fear, as the dreadful twain, the priest and the mage, entered the tent without thought for ceremony. Viserys did not seem to mind. Where not so recently he had insisted on being addressed by as many titles as occurred to him as consistently as possible, he now seemed wilder, looser, heedless, bold and improvising moment by moment. Sometimes Doreah wondered if the Red Priest was chanting him into the true Targaryen madness which, hitherto, she had felt only as petulance and desperation. Or even whether the Qohorik sorcerer was slipping something into his drink.

"Three days," this latter now said, a goodly looking man, youthful with a gleaming complexion, but old, old dark eyes that made the pleasure-slave shudder. She wondered again if Mantarys had been Tantalus' maddened conception, or, worse, the Beggar King's own. "Three days and you will stand before Mantarys. I see it in your eyes, Your Grace. You are ready for the monsters, and they for you."

"How well can the monsters fight?" the would-be king enquired abruptly, and the mage smiled.

"Your Grace, they are greatly feared over all these lands. Could such fears be idle?"

Now it was the priest Illyrgue's turn to intone, his voice as quavering as his hands were palsied. "I see a great Red Temple. I see the last dragon hailed by lesser beasts. My fires flicker over armed men rising up beside him."

"Have any of these men two heads?" Viserys quipped, his curiosity apparently dispassionate, but Doreah, her heart cast into further gloom, could sense his genuine interest. She sighed, and it was enough to let his irritation rise truly.

"Girl, you are fit to hear the councils among feathers, not fires. The eunuch commander said something of new ravens. Go and see to them."

It was one of the unexpected aspects of the girl's new life that she found herself nightly arranging the correspondence of a king, even a beggarly one. By the time she plucked up her spirits to approach Red Fist, she was in haler spirits. The ravens were her only hope, and sometimes she found the same kind of reassurance in their black, beady, meretricious eyes that she knew the king sought as he stared at his eggs. We are whores all, she would whisper inwardly to the messenger birds, one of Viserys's earliest purchases in Qohor, you of the air, I of the earth, Viserys of the flames.

When Doreah returned to the king's tent her step was light, and she fought hard against the tactlessness of a grin. Viserys was a swift reader, she would grant him that, and she watched his torn confusion grow.

"You said it was my fate to deal with the monsters," he queried the mage and the priest, his fury beginning to swerve aside from the girl at last. "Yet this missive..."

"The beasts who will follow you," the priest answered with a sudden confidence that made his shaking tone wax low and loom out in an echo, "are on the banners of the Westerosi Lords. This the fires tell me."

Returning to lay attar among the crimson linen of the bed, Doreah smiled, and knew the demons should not take her just yet.

[Garlan Gunter]

PROCLAMATION TO THE CHIEFTAIN OF THE HORSELORDS



I stand ready for you before the gates of the greatest city of Essos. If you would parley, it is well. If you would fight, it is the same to me. All the world knows what the Three Thousand of Qohor did to barbarians just like yours, and my Unsullied are marshalled by the wrath of the last true dragon.

Sworn in Fire and Blood,

Viserys Targaryen, the Third of His Name

[Garlan Gunter]

THE BLOOD MAGE



Tantalus of Qohor, Initiate of the Sixth Circle of the Unforbidding, was not a man inclined to feel disconcerted; even as he cast a pall of timidity about all who looked on his wanly handsome face and his blackly glittering glances. But here, in the Red Temple of Volantis - the Temple of the Lord of Light, as Illyrgue and his pompous ilk, the Red Priests, seemed to prefer to call it - the Qohorik sorcerer felt his stomach turn in an way that was alarmingly hard to remember having experienced before. The vast edifice, with its flame-tabooed warrior slaves and its votive maniacs teeming in every alcove, stank of belief, and Tantalus in his own way was a foe to such things - a man, instead, of enquiry.

The aged and mumbling Illyrgue was not, and clearly never had been, such a man. The Lysene chit, Doreah - whom Tantalus would have bedded long ere since had he cared to, but whom it amused him to surprise by resisting - had the flickering, feline intelligence common enough in her profession, but, he perceived, little true boldness or substance of spirits.

But as to the 'King' they served for a time...well, that was another matter. Viserys's long line were reputed for brilliance and for madness, but in truth, the mage saw neither in the callow young Targaryen. The youth possessed only an instinctive low cunning born of hard years, and the sort of occasional, intoxicated courage that, Tantalus well understood, was natural companion to an engrained cowardice. And yet, somehow, he found himself at times wondering whether by some haphazard process, these doubtful qualities might yet prove to be enough.

The Targaryen boy at least knew his own mind, and now and then his decisions and his tongue could impress. If the rumour that had turned them back from the demon road ran aright, Viserys's allurements had met certain crucial listeners in the Sunset Lands with success. It remained to be seen if such luck would hold now, as the Beggar King consorted with the Triarchs of Volantis.

"You are in the house of the Lord, mage," Illyrgue was stuttering out his reprimand. "At least pretend to pay him his due respects...or rest assured, he will take them."

"The night is dark," the pale pleasure slave was obediently murmuring. Her nights would have been dimmed rather than dark, Tantalus thought amusedly, and terrors would have seemed far away indeed; even now her bought courtesies overcame her, as she struggled to please the old priest and his fellows.

"And have you paid him his due respects?" cut in another voice, high and wheedling, which seemed to take Illyrgue thoroughly off balance. "I have heard you hint that the Targaryen boy is none other than Azor Ahai reborn. By what authority? Not mine. Not yet." The speaker was old too, old and bald and all but faceless from his tattoos, but the other priests seemed to treat him with exaggerated respect. Tantalus, for his part, shrugged in impatience, and hefted back a cup of wine.

"Most High Benerro, the proof is yet..." Illyrgue was beginning to whine, when Viserys Targaryen returned at the Temple's threshold. He wore the armour of a Volantene noble of the Old Blood, and a smile of more thorough confidence than the blood mage had ever seen before.

"Tantalus, my old friend. Have these pious prattlers been boring you? I think you deserve a kingly reward."

They would have been more delightful words had their patron had more to bestow, but Tantalus bowed gracefully. "The time has passed as interestingly as ever in such parts, Your Grace. What gift were you considering?"

"Oh, the girl," Viserys explained amiably. "A king's leavings. I want you to take her."

"Most kindly expressed, Your Grace, and I...gratefully accept, though I do not see that it can be a matter of much moment," Tantalus murmured in rising caution, even confusion. The Lysene looked as if she was struggling with passion and horror in the same moment, laying down the cup of wine she had been finishing.

The king was muttering with the old Red Priest, then his superior; their eyes widened and Illyrgue gulped, but there were nods and the priests all about began to fall quiet and expectant. At that moment the whole Temple was lit up in magnificent crimson as the comet without coursed its way beside the darkened glass.

"You misunderstand me," the young king gently reproached, as he stepped nimbly towards the casket where the eggs were kept, guarded by six of the mightiest among the Unsullied. "You must take her now, before all of us. I would have you linked by blood and seed, if the ritual is to be performed intact."

The wine, Tantalus thought unsteadily, as he and the girl moved upon each other with limbs on longer their own, and the Unsullied drew trenchant steel, while some among the slaves of the Fiery Hand drew back a ragged red curtain to reveal a pyre...

[Garlan Gunter]

BENERRO



Alike in their advanced age, and their astonishment, Benerro and his Qohorik subordinate among the priests of R'hllor, Illyrgue, now increasingly found themselves at odds with two factions among their flock - the hot-blooded young men, and the slaves.

"The foreigner is false," one of the most devout among the Tiger Cloak captains was urging, "ever more filling to fawn on his own kind, the most decadent among the Old Blood, than he is to risk himself in battle. What are these new-birthed monsters but the fruits of his cowardice and treachery? While his slaves and the city's bled outside its gates, he burnt two of his last followers rather than sully his hands with blood and steel."

"He used you to gain what he desired, the dragons of his House," a more thoughtful and generous worshipper from the merchant's quarter muttered, sounding almost admiring. "But even now the Targaryen boy waits not on the High Priest of the Red Temple, but on our faith's sworn foe, the Triarch Malaquo Maegyr. They say the dragon's son seeks a tigress for a bride. We shall hear no more of him."

"Do they? Shall we not?" Benerro had granted some of the Temple's myriad keys to his distinguished guest, and he was more amused than impressed to see Viserys's facility for a grand entrance exploiting them. The priests followed the youth's proud, harmonious cold voice to where he stood by an inner alcove, Unsullied attending him, delicate young Volantene noblemen with their courtesans mingling like parakeets every few paces, and two dragons perched on the sunset prince's wrists like hawks.

"Welcome back to us, most honourable Lord Viserys," Benerro quavered with a well-acquired evenness of tone, quite ignoring Illyrgue's nervous correction to "Your Grace."

"Back among you," the Targaryen agreed, "with my progeny, your youngest two faithful of the Lord of Light." Benerro grinned; the Westerosi never could pronounce the Lord's true name; that evasive title had been a fine notion of that supple and talented, if worldly and superficial linguist, Thoros of Myr.

"Aeryxes," the boy continued blithely, "Rhaellar." The High Priest was not surprised the would-be King had named his new pets, and greatest assets, for his sire and mother, but he thought it scarcely a prudent sign of the prince's willingness to win over the Mad King's many foes. Still, he felt a return of that involuntary awe, even gratitude, as he watched the young beasts whorl and steam, white and gold and green and bronze.

"I am back among you indeed," Viserus announced, in a few long strides the better to be seen between his creatures, "whence, if my will holds, I never intend to depart."

The words surprised many, though they were evidently carefully planned and prepared, for the Volantene Old Blood youths exhibited no signs of shock and much of smug intimacy.

"You would remain in Volantis," the Tiger Cloak captain challenged in mingled alarm and confusion, "when your kingdom appears to cry out for you?"

"No," Viserys riposted with careless but decisive emphasis. "I will take you all with you, sons of the Red God, as many as are bold enough to fight in the best of causes. We will burn night-fires all over the realm that is my birth-right."

So much, Benerro could not quite keep himself from thinking in bitter satisfaction, for all his decades of training in indifference to the basely personal, for the mighty Triarch Malaquo Maegyr. This dragon takes the stripes not of tigers but flames to adorn his crown.

"All hail the sacred name of R'hllor," he intoned in turn, drawing upon the imagery that lent to his quivering voice a new and lingering resonance, "and Viserys his servant, King of Westeros!"

Viserys evidently did not much relish being described as a servant - Benerro was despite himself pleased he had not said slave, as was more proper and accurate - but the cheering and chanting that followed the declaration appeared to put the King, apparently a Beggar no longer, back in quite excellent spirits.