Chapter Text
Somehow, it was Vaella’s fate to always be there when Winter came.
The dawn had not come with that unpleasant notion to visit, that day. Vaella had been with her ladies, discussing the trade of Dragonstone and wondering about Corwyn Velaryon’s young son Corlys, who for his coming of age had embarked on his first voyage without his father or cousins on the Dragonstone-Driftmark sailing route a year afore.
“Ser Corlys even wrote to Ser Gyles, requesting permission to read the White Book,” Lady Beesbury gossiped. “Allegedly he wanted the record of his namesake’s sojourn north with the Conquerors. That and the Queen’s book would suit his planned voyage.”
“Young Ser Corlys would need the Crone’s guidance through the heathen lands,” a murmur from a homely Septa – one of the many that dogged their ladies’ shadows, that Vaella could not recall. “Especially the Stranger’s domain.”
It was all Vaella could do not to sigh. “Septa, despite all the attempts of the Faith to equate the Lord Commander with the Stranger, he is avowedly not of the Seven who are One. He is older than Hugor of the Hill, older than the Winged Knight, older than the Valyrian Freehold. To speak otherwise is to tempt the fates.”
And then the bells of Dragonstone rung in times with the roars of dragons, and in the resultant chaos and peering there was only the great shadow of Balerion in the distance, crowned with a figure of orange flame with wings beating ever towards the Gullet and the horizon.
One of the ladies behind Vaella murmured, “Wasn’t Balerion at King’s Landing?”
“Where is he flying?”
“A dragon running wild, what would Their Graces do…? Could the King…?!”
“That flame…” Galatea’s murmur seemed to cut through the whispers. “Mother… mayhaps… Balerion was mounted.”
Vaella could feel the hysteria bubble from her throat despite a lifetime of Court etiquette. “My dear daughter, you must be more specific. Balerion was mounted by your Einheri cousin, the Stark princess. The symbol of the Conquest is now of Winterlands allegiance.”
Internally, Vaella’s heart rabbited apace with her thoughts. This being right after Laetitia mounted Quicksilver, the Crown already proved to lose some stranglehold of the dragons – the claiming of Alkahest that should have defanged the royal family’s branch was rebalanced with Quicksilver’s mounting. And then the Starks upset the whole game board when the largest dragon currently alive, the symbol of the Conqueror himself, was claimed by the Einheri princess.
Vaella did not know how the Einherjar would measure against a dragon, but presumably the Winterlands had enough of them to strike a balance against House Targaryen even afore this matter. With this development… Jaehaerys would need at least a nominal dragon-rider, one to balance the scales. All of his sons were young and all of his daughters younger, and should he not wish to roll the dice with her sons by House Gardener, inviting the possibility that the dragons would be married out…
Vaella found her eyes drifting towards her demure daughter, and hastily caught herself – though, not before entertaining the irony if her daughter managed to claim Meraxes.
“The rest of the northerners?”
“Lady Alarra Stark has led the ladies to set up triage and nursing, sire,” Ser Gyles Morrigen had hastily reported when Jaehaerys had returned to the castle, clearly in a black rage that the Court assembled on Dragonstone stayed by the steps and sides of the great hall.
Vaella would have rather stayed to observe their healing arts, but she was still Lady of Highgarden and a Targaryen princess. She had to remain here.
“We’ve found Prince Vaegon too – his left arm is rather sliced up and a few burns and scuffs, but Ser Lucamore took the brunt of the dragon’s bite and fire of the prince’s three guards,” Ser Gyles continued. “The other two were cooked in their armour, but Ser Lucamore is still clinging to this world – Lady Alarra said that he was lucky that what meagre blood of Hagun he had lent him strength.”
The anointed Lord of the Seven Kingdoms rubbed the bridge of his nose, seated upon the high seat of Dragonstone.
It was Prince Aegon’s time to speak next from his post next to the throne. “Of the surrounding crofts and homesteads, a hundred casualties and more injuries reported. And the port is… somewhat damaged where Balerion had tackled the Cannibal away from fishing boats and chased the beast to the Dragonmont. As for the cause… Vaegon’s claim of the wild dragons was disrupted with the Cannibal’s ambush, it was bad luck-”
“And why did Vaegon choose now of all times to claim a dragon?” Jaehaerys growled. “You clearly love all your siblings, but you are the Prince of Dragonstone and my heir now. We need facts.”
“…yes, sire.” A long drawing of breath. “Vaegon had… lost to a bout of swordplay. From Alyssa. Yes he is untrained in the sword, but in this matter, Alyssa was quite beyond the pale in daring him to claim a dragon. It is a danger even to grown men, much less a boy of seven name-days. And Baelon, how he and Aemon worked to delay myself from his pursuit after what happened, is unconscionable.
“I have assigned all three to mucking out the stables for a sennight, begging Your Grace’s pardon, and once Vaegon is recovered they will apologise for endangering their brother’s life. Before the Court,” his firstborn emphasised.
“…you are still their elder brother,” Jaehaerys grumbled. “But the punishment… a moon of embroidery for Alyssa should satisfy a different sort of swordplay – Alysanne will decree when she can return to the training yard, subject to Alyssa being able to pick out our house sigil in thread.”
Vaella watched as the Prince of Dragonstone seemed to waver here – everyone who had met him knew that he doted on his siblings, and the struggle to balance his favour and the need for an appropriate punishment seemed to play out over his handsome features.
“…yes, sire,” the prince finally conceded. “But… Balerion? Father, I have flown Alkahest as far as the entrance to the Gullet, but I have not seen Balerion…”
“Your Stark cousin may be Einheri, but Balerion is a great dread,” Jaehaerys growled from his place on the throne. “I do not know how I would break the news…”
Messengers in their house colours sidled at the sides of the Great Hall, leaning forward with murmurs for the King and his heir only. Whatever those words were that he bore, Vaella would swear that the King and his heir, her brother and her nephew, looked for the moment… nonplussed.
A pause, and then the King announced to the hall: “Balerion was spotted, towing a great galleon flying the black banner… alongside the running direwolf of House Stark, and… a third device, composed on a white field of a blue… wheel with three lines above and below? Rhaena?”
Having been granted a chair a step below the dais by virtue of her exalted position, their eldest sister’s back snapped taut. “Here?!”
Alysanne followed from her chair, actually having clambered to her feet to turn towards Jaehaerys. “The White Wolf’s personal arms.”
Even despite the solemnity of his face, Jaehaerys still gave a small sigh. “The Lord Commander is known to us, sisters.”
“No, no,” Rhaena shook her head, the braids along her temple still flecked with soot and still in her dragon-riding leathers. “You misunderstand, little brother. The legal personhood of the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch is usually assumed, but the man has been known to go on furlough from his Watch duties. And in this time he is only one of the Lords of the Moat, the Prince’s thane.”
Jaehaerys pressed his lips together. “What is the difference? Speak plainly.”
Rhaena’s smile was rather edged. “The Night’s Watch needs to play this whole game of thrones. Moat Cailin’s thane only needs care about which man Prince Eddard tells him to kill, come what may. Is that plain enough, Jaehaerys?”
Alysanne’s silver teeth ground. “The last time that one came down clad in anything not black, Lys followed old Valyria to the bottom of the seas. And Jaehaerys, as our uncle once said, this Dragonstone we all stand upon is an island.”
The queens’ words aroused a furore with the surrounding courtiers, even as the Prince of Dragonstone hummed.
“Prince Alaric would use a direwolf rampant as his arms, and his children would use that sigil,” Rhaena doubted. “In this generation it would only be the main line which would use the running direwolf, and Aelfraed would not descend past the Neck so young. It can only be Walton… and the fact that Lord Tobirama is here as a thane rather than as the Lord Commander…”
“The King of the Winterlands would personally come here?” Prince Aegon burst out. “That is… my aunt, the King in the north?”
“The King of Winter, King of the Winterlands if you must,” Rhaena sternly corrected, and her lecture would certainly have enlightened a lot more lords and men when an almighty crash echoed down and the earth trembled, knocking swooning ladies off of their feet and causing men of the Dragonstone garrison to fall one after another like bone-tiles.
“Oh gods, they’re mad!”
“That’s Dragonstone!”
Already scrambling on her feet, Vaella followed behind Jaehaerys as he strode out of the great hall and down to the source of the sound – and were it not that she too was arrested by the sight, she would have walked into Jaehaerys’ back.
Behind her, she heard the prince gasp, like as not in time to the cold that steamed from her lips and the frost that danced across whatever skin was exposed to the elements. Now exposed to the skies, overhead the clouds flowed and turned as though some god had deigned to send a storm right over the island at this time, faster and faster in time with screams in the distance, both human and seagulls and swine and oxen, in and out of the walls.
There was another thunderous boom, as though the goddess Meraxes threw a tantrum or the Doom was repeating itself, and Vaella started as from her post on the steps leading to the great hall, from peering down she could see where the vaunted curtain walls of dragon-stone crumbled. Fortunately there were no men atop, though men below the walls screamed.
As they watched the legacy of the Freehold crumble in chunks, so much stone melted by dragon-flame broken into chunks, Vaella too felt like screaming. Not Dragonstone the castle, nor Dragonstone the island, but Dragonstone the material, vaunted to be harder than diamond, and now crushed.
“Gods above,” Prince Aegon breathed, the sword in his hand trembling even as he made the effort to keep it raised in the chill that descended.
There was no snow – Vaella doubted if snow would form near large bodies of water such as the Blackwater. Her thoughts though were drowned then, in the third and final crash of thunder that grated not like rock, but more of the after-echo of Sept bells and the song of steel, and in all of this there was a low basso call:
Knock knooock….
Vaella did not know whose it was, but from behind her, she distinctly heard her eldest sister huff: “Oh gods, Walton.”
A beat or two, and the echo was punctuated with crashing rubble as four men strode from the curtain wall towards Jaehaerys and the retinue and Dragonstone’s main keep, which suddenly felt very, very small.
“I think something got in my eye,” Aegon muttered. “That man bringing up the rear looks like he’s standing before me…”
“It’s a matter of scale,” a huff from Rhaena. “The doors and gates of Winterfell have to be fifteen feet tall to accommodate the occasional giant… that one just looks like a giant, but I have spoken with him, nephew, and I assure you, he is only an Umber.”
The biggest and thus most clearly identifiable was a small mountain or a walking siege engine that dwarfed his companions as he brought up the rear. On the mountain’s right was a tall man, made rather hawkish by the set of his shoulders and the inexpert hacking of his dark hair that framed his face. The mountain’s left bore a man surprisingly small, with dark hair curled and tied behind his head and the almost-arrogance of having no visible weapon – though for an Einheri, their whole body was one.
All of the men were clad in the drab furs and woollens of northern garb, though theirs were of a quality and make close to castle-made, though their leader wore it best: though lean as whipcord and dwarfed by the veritable mountain behind him, he looked as though carved of marble, more than human. The only weapon he bore was the sheathed six-foot blade along his back and the knives at his waist, and there were neither accessories nor additional wealth on his person save for the running direwolf picked out in embroidery on his surcoat just under a wolf-fur worn as though a cape. His hair was the dark locks of the First Men, riddled with the very same bone-white that Maeve bore in the entirety and woven over his ears in a short braid to keep it out of the way, his beard trimmed despite the distance and the journey by ship. Yet in spite of the physical and financial variance and the reduced retinue, their leader seemed more than human, that his very presence surpassed even the late Lord Rogar and came to match Jaehaerys astride Vermithor – splendid and dragonback, condensed into the form of a man.
The retinue stopped walking. A beat, and all four heads swivelled to peer atop the curtain wall, and then as one they turned to the ground betwixt the kings of the Realm. A breeze stirred, but rather than the salty air of Dragonstone, what tickled Vaella’s nose was instead greeted by pure and impossible cold, tinged with the last fragrance of blossoms that lingered all the way to the end of their lives.
Princess Maeve Stark had leapt out as though from the ether in a whirl, as daughter and niece to the kings now playing as herald, but Vaella was too distracted instead by her companion – he who had appeared within stabbing distance of the Prince of Dragonstone, within touching distance of the kings of the Realm, and who now filled her with an unforgettable fear — a fear that was baseless and irrational, but rooted in her very soul.
“The Stranger,” she whispered, “he is here.”