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, mustnot look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she sawthat 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. Windstirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand strokedher sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down onthem, 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 tookflame.
“…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 warmedtranslucent hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red as coals. One moment hewas there and the next he was fading, his flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. “The lastdragon,” he whispered, thin as a wisp, and was gone. She felt the dark behind her, and the red doorseemed 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 thedragon. 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 hisfingers snapped like snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes burst and ranlike 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, withDrogo’s copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled forher and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She sawhis 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 turnedto 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 palefire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal andamethyst, tourmaline and jade. “Faster,” they cried, “faster, faster.” She raced, her feet melting thestone wherever they touched. “Faster!” the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herselfforward. 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. 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, thecold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high andhigher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow ofher wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and greatstone 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 redthrough the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “Thelast, 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, andDany followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, Iwas flying. But it was only a dream. “Help me,” she whispered, struggling to rise. “Bring me …” Hervoice was raw as a wound, and she could not think what she wanted. Why did she hurt so much? Itwas 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. Danyneeded … something … someone … what? It was important, she knew. It was the only thing in theworld that mattered. She rolled onto her side and got an elbow under her, fighting the blanket tangledabout 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 hisarms and carried her back to her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him. Over hisshoulder she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little wisp of mustache, and the flat broad faceof 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. Shetasted 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 notdream. 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, itssilken 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 girlnodded. “How long?” The cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it frightened her. “Long,” shewhispered. When Jhiqui returned with more water, Mirri Maz Duur came with her, eyes heavy fromsleep. “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. Shecould feel the heaviness in her limbs, as sleep crept in to fill her up once more. “Bring me …” shemurmured, 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 wearyto hold them up.
When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was pouring through the smoke hole ofthe tent, and her arms were wrapped around a dragon’s egg. It was the pale one, its scales the color ofbutter cream, veined with whorls of gold and bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it. Beneath herbedsilks, a fine sheen of perspiration covered her bare skin. Dragondew, she thought. Her fingerstrailed lightly across the surface of the shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she feltsomething 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 shefelt strong. Her maids came running at the sound of her voice. “Water,” she told them, “a flagon ofwater, cold as you can find it. And fruit, I think. Dates.”
fwater, 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 hershoulders. “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—?”
“The khal lives,” Irri answered quietly … yet Dany saw a darkness in her eyes when she said thewords, 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? Imust know. Drogo … and my child.” Why had she not remembered the child until now? “Myson … Rhaego … where is he? I want him.”
Her handmaid lowered her eyes. “The boy … he did not live, Khaleesi.” Her voice was afrightened whisper.
Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui left the tent. She had knownsomehow. She had known since she woke the first time to Jhiqui’s tears. No, she had known beforeshe woke. Her dream came back to her, sudden and vivid, and she remembered the tall man with thecopper 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 tearshad turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been burned out of me, she told herself. She feltsad, 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 theother dragon’s eggs, the two still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as hot as the one she hadslept with, which was passing strange. “Ser Jorah, come here,” she said. She took his hand and placedit 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 asyou are?”
“Weak? I am strong, Jorah.” To please him, she reclined on a pile of cushions. “Tell me how mychild died.”
“He never lived, my princess. The women say …” He faltered, and Dany saw how the flesh hungloose 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 corpsehimself.
“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Danyunderstood 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 andsmall leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, andinside 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 lookedback she was lost. “My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent,” she said. “Icould feel him kicking, fighting to be born.”
“That may be as it may be,” answered Mirri Maz Duur, “yet the creature that came forth fromyour 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. Isaw 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 hadcarried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; thegrey 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 payfor 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 hercushions. “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. “Timeenough 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 moltengold, and the land was seared and empty. Her handmaids waited with fruit and wine and water, andJhogo moved close to help Ser Jorah support her. Aggo and Rakharo stood behind. The glare of sunon sand made it hard to see more, until Dany raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the ashes of afire, a few score horses milling listlessly and searching for a bite of grass, a scattering of tents andbedrolls. A small crowd of children had gathered to watch her, and beyond she glimpsed womengoing about their work, and withered old men staring at the flat blue sky with tired eyes, swattingfeebly at bloodflies. A count might show a hundred people, no more. Where the other forty thousandhad 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 noway to hold them. Ko Pono left first, naming himself Khal Pono, and many followed him. Jhaqo wasnot long to do the same. The rest slipped away night by night, in large bands and small. There are adozen 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. Weremain.”
“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,” Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It isthe right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal’s and yours, yetthey left some few.”
“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of theLamb Men.
“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high andlow and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When theywere 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. Ipromise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god thatlives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done withthem, 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 achild, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”
She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormborn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood ofAegon 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 brushedthem away and knelt beside him. His eyes were wide open but did not see, and she knew at once thathe was blind. When she whispered his name, he did not seem to hear. The wound on his breast was ashealed 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 doesnot see it. He can walk after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no farther. He will eat ifyou 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 spellsare 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 afirepit, and a horse between his legs. His life was an arakh in his hand and his bells ringing in his hairas 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 dryand mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a livingchild. 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. “Thatangered the Great Shepherd.”
“This was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. “You cheated me. Youmurdered my child within me.”
“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nationsinto 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 awoman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How thendid you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. Myhome they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who mademy bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heardchildren 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 isgone.”
Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and bind her hand andfoot, but the maegi smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Danycould have her head off … yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what wasdeath?
They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to fill a tub, and this time therewas no blood in the water. She bathed him herself, washing the dirt and the dust from his arms andchest, cleaning his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black hair and combing the knots andtangles from it till it shone again as she remembered. It was well past dark before she was done, andDany was exhausted. She stopped for drink and food, but it was all she could do to nibble at a fig andkeep down a mouthful of water. Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enough … toolong, 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 theDothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky. Shetold herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegihad 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 withstones. No trees stirred in the wind, and there was no stream to soothe her fears with the gentle musicof 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 inthe Womb of the World. Remember, my sun-and-stars. Remember, and come back to me.”
r all around us and your eyes on my face. Remember how cool and clean the water was inthe 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, butDoreah had taught her other ways. Dany used her hands, her mouth, her breasts. She raked him withher nails and covered him with kisses and whispered and prayed and told him stories, and by the endshe 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 andmountains 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 breastsas 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.