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Harren the Black had mixed human blood into the mortar of the castle. It was true that thousands of captives had died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in summer, and their souls wandered eternally within the fortress.
But blood within the mortar--that was a new one, Alys thought, as she nursed babe after babe. How little any of them knew of this land's true power, or whence it came.
Harrenhal's colossal curtain walls now stood silently beside the lake, sheer and sudden as mountain cliffs, while atop their battlements the rows of wood-and-iron scorpions looked as small as the bugs for which they were named. Aye, in his pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow on the shore of the lake while Harren's armies plundered his neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King's Landing.
"And King Harren learned that thick walls and high towers are small use against dragons," the tale always ended. "For dragons fly." Harren and all his line had perished in the fires that engulfed his monstrous fortress, and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it was, but the people thought it cursed.
Alys knew a curse from other kinds of magic; she had survived the assault on Harrenhal by men too numerous to count, though within past decades it had been Daemon Targaryen and then the hot-tempered Prince Regent, Aemond-One-Eye.
After the greens retook Harrenhal, Aemond had ordered the deaths of the remaining members of House Strong. When he'd come round to her, bowed in her wetnurse's dress, there was a glimmer in his remaining eye. "You are Lyonel's bastard?"
Alys resisted the urge to laugh. "I am Alys. And you are a dragon, one I have seen in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we light to cook our suppers. I see much and more, my Prince."
Something darkened in his gaze. Youthful ambition. She had struck her arrow fast and true. It was nearly boring now, playing these boys like a finely-tuned lute. "This one I'll spare," he announced, with that willful curl of his lip. "She's buxom enough, and I think after all the whore on Dragonstone has stirred up, I've earned a spoil of war."
Bastard, slattern, woodswitch. Of the three, the latter had the most right of it. For the landscape near the great castle was a patchwork of rolling hills, meandering streams, sunlit fields, and holdfasts, while further south it was forested, and the forest closest Gods Eye was her domain. When warm, the water of the Gods Eye was blue and green and glimmered in sunlight, but during winter its pewter waters resembled cold steel. Odd currents and hungry fish teemed within, and Alys studied the patterns each dusk, scrying for messages within, then taking the long way round to one of the lake's feeder streams, the Rippledown Rill, to harvest carefully of potent plants. Black swans usually found her there, their onyx eyes gleaming with knowing.
Tonight it was Aemond, his sapphire eye exposed and glinting as twilight gave way to evening.
"You are a long way from your bed, my Prince."
"Without my woman to warm it, it was found lacking."
The curve of Alys's mouth lifted. She turned to the Isle of Faces at the center of her beloved lake, raven hair catching silver beams of the moon. "The moon is full, my Prince. Visions and whispers are alive this night."
"Should any of it concern my cause, you will tell me of it."
"I can do more than that." Alys turned back to him. "If you are ready to know for yourself..."
Their little boat moved swiftly through Gods Eye's waters, silent and sure as any assassin. Brave rivermen tried their luck with the Isle of Faces from time to time, hoping to glimpse the place of the Pact between the First Men and the Children of the Forest, but winds and flocks of ravens were enough to keep them from breaching its shores. Alys had no such concern. She gave as much as she took from the forest, the lake, the island. Her sacrifices were steady, and they were not stingy.
"Are they so impish as the legends go?" Aemond's voice was mild, fingers dangling with lack of care over the bow. Yet she heard the anxious query beneath.
"No Children give haunt here, my Prince." That place was High Heart, some ways West of Harrenhal and the lake, where the Andal king Erreg had slaughtered them and their weirwoods by the thousands. Such a place was beyond approach, unless the land knew you, and had time and again accepted your offerings. Even then, one ought tread with care. Restless spirits were rarely appeased by mere benevolence.
Cutting suddenly through a veil of mist, their boat beached and came to a stop. With the step of a foot onto the Isle, she could no longer tell the difference between waking and sleeping. Memory came creeping upon her in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was a year of False Dawn, it was the year after that, or perhaps the decade before. She could see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen on the wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine as she coupled with lovers long gone. The salty tang of blood and softly chanted words and horned ones, with the faces of the trees looking on and on.
Bastard. Slattern. Woodswitch.
First Man, she thought. Andal. And...
Aemond was meeting a weirwood's red gaze with his own blue and violet one. His wrist rested again over the pommel of his sword, as if to convince himself of his ease. Alys wasted no time. Her skin shone as she disrobed, dappled with shadow of leaf and moonlight. Belly softened from years of bearing children that never grew to old age, breasts over-ripe from giving suck to the children of others. "Let us be joined, my Prince."
He gave a laugh, but his focus was far from the trees now, and voraciously upon her. "What of the visions?"
"Here's the one you'll want to hear." She came to stand before him, feet burrowing into the soft earth. "An iron-and-ruby crown encircling your brow."
"As Regent, it is mine already." He laughed again. "And it suits me better than it ever did Aegon."
"But thence..." Her fingers ghosted down his black doublet, slipping beneath to the band of his breeches. "...thence, sitting upon the silver head of your son."
She scarcely needed say more. His hands were upon her at once, one eye burning with hunger, the other cold and hard as ice. His teeth scraped her throat, her nipples, the pale lines snaking her belly, further below. After his seed was spilled safely within her, after she had said silent prayers to the faces within the trees above his sinewy shoulder, then did he cup her face and smile that sly smile. "My Alys," he hissed, before spreading her legs abruptly to take her again. "My son."
A life for each tree butchered and burned, she vowed. A dragon shall be mine, and a dragon shall be yours.
She watched the moon wane and sliver away in days to come, waiting for her womb's bleed. It was within this fortnight that a different blood came, a battle carnage beneath the shadow of Harrenhal's towers. The Gods Eye was fed well that morning, and all into the afternoon, sated by blood and gut and bone. Hundreds of golden Lannisters died fighting amongst the lake's reeds, and hundreds of others drowned while trying to escape. A fishfeed, the squire called it, whence he came to tell Aemond of the crushing defeat.
"Your miserable tongue will be the lake's next meal," Aemond thundered. And he raged like a uncaged beast, his hands round the boy's neck, tightening, tightening.
"My Prince." Alys lay a hand on his tensed shoulder.
His fury fell upon her. "Did you know of this? Did you not see it?"
Of course I saw it. The Gods Eye swirled each dusk with shimmers of knowledge, beckoning like a lover. "This battle means nothing, not with the glory to come. Have you forgotten?" There was a flicker of recognition in his remaining eye. His hands slackened with careful restraint. "Leave this boy. A dragon may yet show his power."
He went on to do so without mercy, razing the black armies of the Riverlands atop Vhagar whilst Ser Criston Cole marched south. At every turn, the land wore Criston down, with ambushes of rivermen, and the fetid stench of rotting and bloated bodies from the lake.
She waited in the meanwhile, staying within the castle grounds. Harrenhal's gatehouse was as scarred as it was massive, its stones fissured and discolored. From outside, only the tops of five immense towers could be seen beyond the walls. The shortest of them was half again as tall as the highest tower of other castles, but they did not soar the way a proper tower did. They looked like some old man's gnarled, knuckly fingers groping after a passing cloud. Bards had made much of that, claiming the stones had melted and flowed like candlewax down the steps and in the windows, glowing a sullen searing red as it sought out Harren where he hid. Such a tale was easy to swallow; each tower was more misshapen than the last, lumpy and runneled and cracked.
Lady Sabitha Frey had her brought out beneath one such grotesque tower. "You are Aemond's whore? I expected a younger woman." Sharp-featured, sharp-tongued harridan of House Vypren, it was said Sabitha would sooner ride than dance, wore mail instead of silk, and was fond of killing men and kissing women. Alys respected her more than the other invaders of Harrenhal and the Gods Eye. But invader she was nonetheless.
"Wife, Lady Sabitha, and more. I have the dragon's bastard in me. I can feel his fires licking at my womb." It was early yet, but Alys had conceived and borne enough children to know it.
Sabitha arched a brow, her gaze falling upon Alys's middle. "I'd be scarce with that knowledge, were I you." Her cool eyes came back up. "Never mind a seed barely planted. You are dismissed, now. Return to whichever duties you have outside the dragon's bed."
Aemond was quick to catch word upon the wind, and Vhagar's bronze form once again fell over Harrenhal, spitting and roaring with a force that shook the castle's foundations. Later, they learned that Sabitha had hid in a privy to escape Vhagar's fiery breath. Aemond got a hearty laugh out of that. South they went, and Alys did not see the castle or its lake for a long time after that.
A challenge was hard for Aemond to ignore. One from his uncle was simply irresistible. And so on the fourteenth day of Daemon's baiting vigil, Vhagar's shadow swept a final time over the castle, blacker than any passing cloud. All the birds in the godswood took to the air in fright, and a hot wind whipped the fallen leaves across the yard. On Vhagar's back rode the one-eyed prince, clad in night-black armor chased with gold, and he had not come alone.
Alys flew with him, her long hair streaming black behind her, her belly swollen with child. Prince Aemond circled twice about the towers of Harrenhal, then brought Vhagar down in the outer ward, with Caraxes a hundred yards away. The dragons glared balefully at each other, and Caraxes spread his wings and hissed, flames dancing across his teeth.
Aemond helped her down from Vhagar’s back, then turned to face his uncle. “Nuncle, I hear you have been seeking us.”
"Who told you where to find me?"
"My lady. She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we light to cook our suppers. She sees much and more, my Alys." Aemond's lips curled up. "You were a fool to come alone."
"Were I not alone, you would not have come."
"Yet you are, and here I am. You have lived too long, nuncle."
Daemon's mercurial charm had not faded, but after years of brutal battle, his energy had. "On that much we agree."
Aemond's kiss of farewell was rough, and his gaze burned with a queer passion. "My son shall one day have his crown. Remember that."
Dusk, her old companion, had fallen like a veil over the sunset. And the duel was a sight to see. The dragons' shrieks and roars could be heard from a dozen miles away. So bright was the dragonfire that the Riverlands surely feared the sky was aflame. Red-scaled Caraxes slammed into Vhagar, locking his jaws on Vhagar's neck. Both dragons were grappling as they descended from the sky. Caraxes's jaw continued to tighten around Vhagar's neck even as Vhagar's teeth tore Caraxes's wing and his claws opened Caraxes's belly.
She knew what happened long before it became the stuff of legends and songs. It had not escaped her attention that Daemon was careless in fastening himself to the saddle. Sprinkled with the boiling blood of two dying dragons, Daemon leapt deftly from his saddle on Caraxes on to Vhagar. He drove Dark Sister hilt-deep into Aemond's eye, just as both dragons tumbled into the Gods Eye lake below, sending up a gout of water so high it was as tall as the Kingspyre Tower. And then all was very still, and very quiet.
The Wailing Tower only wailed when the wind blew from the north, and that was just the sound the air made blowing through the cracks in the stones where they had fissured from the heat. The ghosts in Harrenhal had never troubled her, though Aemond had sometimes been given to dark dreams of flame and fits of paranoia. They were all mice within those thick walls: princes, knights, great lords. Harrenhal's stables housed a thousand horses, its godswood covered twenty acres, the Hall of a Hundred Hearths was so cavernous that the greens could have feasted their entire host. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale. Was it any wonder that Harren had been consumed alive, his children entombed within his own greedy creation?
Aemond's body and Vhagar's skull were not to be found until years later. His armored bones were found still chained to Vhagar's saddle, Dark Sister crusted and living within his eye socket like a sea creature.
Daemon's body was never found, though Caraxes lived long enough to crawl from the Gods Eye back to the shore, where Alys met him and laid a soothing spell over him in his final moments. A life for each tree butchered and burned, she chanted to the water. A dragon is mine, and a dragon is yours.
Then Harrenhal was finally hers. The land was once more untamed, restored to its wild power. Broken men, outlaws, and robber knights roamed the countryside until Regis Groves marched with a hundred men to try his hand at the castle. Aegon was dead, and another in his place. First Men. Andals. Valyrians. These men never forgot their greed. These invaders never learned.
They found her gates barred and six hundred people within, a third of them her faithful warriors. Her son was four and silver-haired for all to see. "Kneel before your king, Ser Regis. This is the trueborn heir of House Targaryen, not the sullen and sad little boy you've propped upon the throne."
Regis barked with laughter. "I do not kneel to bastards, much less the baseborn whelp of a kinslayer and a milkcow."
Her pale hand lifted, and his head burst like an over-baked apple. With her other hand, she conjured the screeching presence of her dragon. He was Caraxes, glamored with the life force of all the sacrifices in the Gods Eye, his colossal corpse cloaked and animated with the souls of a thousand restless invaders. The trick worked, and terror swept over Regis's men. She turned her dark-haired head to her riders. "Go on through those gates, and make light work of this rabble."
A dozen captives she kept and tortured to death. To Darry she sent a single messenger, a survivor shaking so badly he had pissed himself. "Any man who approaches Harrenhal has two choices: submission or death. There are men here ready to kill for their true king. And there is power in these stones. Do not doubt it. You will tell them your tale and you will give this warning." He was helped atop his horse. "And another thing..." Alys held up a hand again, and the messenger began trembling anew. "Should any man find me amusing again...your death will swiftly and painfully follow."
Unfortunately for the messenger, an onlooker had indeed laughed at his news, and invisible fingers coiled about his throat, strangling the breath from him. Then, and only then, did Aegon the Younger's regents agree that Alys warranted a second glance, and a larger army.
Yet all around Aegon, men and women's faces alike began to flush red, followed by the ruthless Winter Fever. Icy water bought time for some, but by the second day, they started to shiver violently and complain of being cold, in spite of their fever. By the third day, they became delirious, and would begin to sweat. On the fourth day, the fever sometimes broke. But more often, it took its victims swiftly. The Red Keep could not be bothered with Harrenhal with thousands perishing all around, the sour stench of sickness mingling with the putrid bodies of the dead.
Alys and her son were becoming lost to the chaos of time, a mere thorn to be dealt with at a later time. Aegon the Younger would never be among the armies at her gate. Someday, when the Fever had passed, a new challenger would come. Of that, she had no doubt. But the forest rustled and rumbled with restlessness. And the Gods Eye was growing hungry once more.
Their little boat moved swiftly through Gods Eye's waters, silent and sure as any assassin. The ravens came screeching from the Isle of Faces this time, agitated and wary, before realizing it was only her. I have delayed this visit too long.
"Is this the place you always promised, mama?" Her child's voice was sweet, fingers dangling over the bow to grasp clumsily at the steely water. Yet she heard his father beneath, heard the aggressive ambition, the wild and impatient spirit.
"It is, my Prince."
Cutting suddenly through a veil of mist, their boat beached and came to a stop. Memory flooded in. The atrocities of the intruders. The forgotten words of the Pact. First Man, she thought. Andal. And...
He was meeting a weirwood's red gaze with his own violet one. "Is this really the place, mama?"
"It is. And here, your father's iron-and-ruby crown." She came to stand before him, feet burrowing into the soft earth, and though she had done this dance a dozen times before, she had waited too long, nursed him too fondly, grown too deep in her love. Tears pricked her eyes. "You are ready, my son."
His laugh was a twinkle as he fumbled with the ill-fitting crown. "Does it suit me better than my father?"
He was what he was. I know what he will become. I have glimpsed it, again and again. In a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we light to cook our suppers.
Alys smiled with effort. "Here now, at dusk, the iron shimmers, and suits you just perfectly."
She scarcely needed say more. The Green Men moved from behind the trees in their antlered headdresses. And then they were on him at once, their blades mercifully swift, their eyes docile as lambs, their hands soothing as his life force ebbed away. After his blood was spilled upon the earth, after they had gathered a spurt of his blood into an ancient gnarled bowl, after she had said silent prayers to the faces within the trees above his pale little body, after the Gods Eye was fed and settled into a deep peace...then did she cup his face. "My Aemond," she whispered. "My son."
I have given you a First Man. An Andal. A life for each tree butchered and burned . A Valyrian...
This dragon was mine, and is now yours.
Aegon the Younger never came, but after 18 long years had passed, the Gods Eye once more stirred. Falena Stokeworth, found abed with Aegon's son, had been given in marriage to Ser Lucas Lothston. His consolation--and safe distance from court--was Harrenhal.
Fiery spirits yet haunted the blackened towers. The so-called curse of Harrenhal was a heavy curtain, a fog which had been fortified with offerings and would consume all in its path. Decay came slowly, like a rust eating away at iron, and the horned ones rejoiced to see Harren's monstrosity overtaken once more by snaking roots and mossy shoots of the lake. Mayhaps this was why the Lothstons suffered misfortune after misfortune. Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead in the morning, all burnt up, or choked by phantom fingers. It mattered not to Alys, for her part was done.
First Men. Andals. Valyrians. She had borne and fed their children dutifully. And in turn, their children fed the land.