Chapter Text
94AC
It was in the darkest hours before the dawn that his eyes opened for the first time that night. He knew himself at once: small and swift, residing in the black of the castle where there was nothing to fear.
He knew the runs of Harrenhal as well as he knew the walls; every crack and crawlway; the rotted joint where he’d once wobbled above and now crawled below.
It was not without effort, of course, small as he was. He went belly-low through the dark between the stones, his claws ticking on old mortar while, far above, the rain hammered down, a great drumming on stone that had drunk a thousand years of storms and thirsted yet.
Do you feel age as I do now? He wanted to ask of the walls. His tail was bent where some door had caught it in a year long forgotten; an ear was worn down to a nub, and moving past a shallow puddle he could see the long pale seam where his hair had grown white over a scar, given to him by a brother when he’d been only a child.
You are as cunning as you were then; you need only be as swift. It was harder on nights like these, when the cold swept from the skies with the storms, and even through his fur he could feel the shivering in his bones.
Still he ran.
Scurrying along the crevices of the wall, even age could not take the bliss of freedom his four good legs gave him as they brought him to where the run gave out to a broken place where the mortar had crumbled away, and past it lay a hall. Lightning came flickering through the high windows and threw the shadows of the mullions across a floor of dusty banners he knew in another life.
From the far side, under a door where a thin gold line of candlelight lay along the ground, came the smell of grain and tallow that brought a quick emptiness to the pit of his stomach. Despite his cunning, hunger was a master even clever old rats must serve, and he would not deny it now. He crept out onto the open stone, making his way across the stone floor, swiftly as he could, to where the passage curved.
A slit of grey light cast down with lightning and then the boom of thunder fell across the floor from an opening above, and the rat crossed it and plunged into the black.
And the black had eyes.
They opened suddenly, two green lamps low against the floor carrying the scent of blood and bone. He knew then that he’d had this dream before, and yet, despite knowing its end, he wheeled around and began his futile run.
His claws scrabbled across the wet stone in haste, but he could already hear the whispers of something huge and soft coming fast, faster than something so large ought to move as the cat gave chase behind. He could see, in the distance, the hole that would take him back to the run, where he’d be free to wait out for the morning, free to dream evermore.
The claws that cut into his spine came slowly but all at once as the great black paw pinned him to the floor. For a moment, pressed hard against the stone, he could feel his own heart beating louder than the thunder above. Then came the shrieks as the claws tore into him and lifted him from the ground.
Please, he wanted to beg, but he could only squeal and thrash against its grip as he was lifted and turned so that he might catch a glance of those empty green pits in the dark, and in those wells he caught a glimpse of himself, tiny and broken as the blood began to run.
Larys Strong awoke with a cry caught behind his teeth. For a long moment he did not know where he was. The dark still surrounded him, closer now, and he could feel his heart hammering in his chest. A weight was on his legs, and he fought against it for a moment before realizing it was only his own blanket, twisted around his body like a snake.
A dream. You’ve been driven to madness by a dream. Larys glanced around and then slumped back in his bed, where he allowed himself to lie still and try to breathe as the maester had shown him. The air came through a mouth that was dry as ash, but he was breathing all the same, and that seemed to be something to be proud of at the moment.
After a time he glanced across the room and caught sight of the shape of his brother, snoring softly and steadily. Nothing ever woke Harwin. Larys had seen him sleep through thunder while making use of a wood plank as a pillow. It was another thing to envy.
Larys’ mind never seemed to sink into sleep the way Harwin’s did, and these dreams were only making it harder and harder. He’d complained to Maester Ormund of it only a week ago, but he’d only smiled and touched his chain. “You only dream what you see. Have you not played in the cellars and the wine vaults when you should not?” He’d said with a huff. “There are more rats in this castle than servants, no matter what methods of extermination we may use. It is little wonder they’ve found their way into your dreams as well. Truly there is only one time this castle has been free of rats and that method is best not repeated.”
Larys asked then how he could hope for Balerion the Black Dread to burn out the infestation in his mind, but Ormund had only laughed and Larys, lacking any other sense of what to do, laughed with him. He wanted to ask if it was often that Ormund awoke unable to tell if he was still the creature he had been mere moments ago, but he knew he wouldn’t get much out of him.
He dared not sleep again. He lay there and watched the shutter jump against the latch, lit by the rising grey while the sound of rain against the roof above faded with the storm, which went grumbling off to the God’s eye. Somewhere below a cock crowed, hoarse and stupid.
Were I lord, I’d end our crusade against the rats and rid us of these ridiculous dumb pigeons, he thought to himself as he turned his head from the window. Were I lord.
He managed to remain awake until the light through the shutters turned from grey to gold, and then the doors to their chambers opened with a clink, and in stepped the maids with the fresh wash water, and his mother in tow.
Larys realized then that, in all his fears, he had forgotten the excitement.
“Up!” Spoke their lady mother, voice loud and firm, “Both of you. This is no day for lying abed.”
Of course not, Larys thought, rising with a blink. Today is the day the dragons come.
He’d have lept from his bed if he could, but his brother bore the excitement enough for both of them as he jumped from his blankets with a shout. “Mother!” He cried, “It is the day!”
Every day is a day, Larys snorted to himself, grateful the Gods had granted him the mind his brother was denied. Still, no one else paid any attention as their mother gave a quick, uninterested smile in Harwin’s direction.
Willa Strong had been a Mallister of Seaguard before she was a Strong and let none forget it. She was tall and straight with the white eagle of her house sewn in silver upon her sleeve amongst the blue, green and red of her new name. Once her smile faded, she returned to looking at her children as if they were hounds, come in muddy from the yard. She’d never once allowed her love for them to cloud her judgment and would not begin today, it seemed. Around the room her women worked, opening the shutters and stirring the brazier back to life as a younger servant gathered up their good clothes and laid them out over the beds.
“You were supposed to have tended to that yourself,” their mother spoke sharply as Harwin danced around her. “It was late,” he protested, “Father said I could stay out in the training yard past sundown.”
Their mother sighed, her displeasure no secret, then turned her eyes to Larys, who was still pulling himself out of bed. “And you? Did you find your way to the training yard as well?”
I would if father permitted, he wanted to say, and he could not reason why his mother would ask such a thing when she knew the answer.
“I was tired,” he said, knowing the excuse would mean little, but thankfully she seemed to have other concerns occupying her mind and only scoffed at Larys’ words.
“The both of you know what is required of you. Wash, dress, and at a pace befitting of your station. The Prince will be upon us earlier than expected-“
“How early?” Both brothers asked in unison, their heads shooting up.
“Sometime before midday. Even in age, a dragon is a dragon.”
Harwin squeezed in poorly contained excitement, and Larys couldn’t help but give a toothy smile that his mother had the grace to return briefly.
Directed by their mother, Harwin moved towards the clothes, hopping on one foot, then the other, as he pulled on the hose. He was two years the elder and a head and a half taller than Larys, who did not lack for height himself. But while Larys could only ever hope to run in his dreams, everything Harwin did was fast, loud and somehow all at once. “The dragon,” he kept saying, half to himself. “The dragon, Larys. Do you think what Ser Wyman says is true? That it is near as big as Balerion the Dread?”
Larys did not respond, too busy fitting the brace around his ill-made, twisted excuse for a leg. A friend of his father’s from his time at the Citadel had come by only three moons ago to deliver the concoction. A man by the name of Maester Runciter, the device had served him well enough, but the disappointment of realizing it would still not permit him to fight or run as he had imagined it would remained. It did not help that it took a lifetime to put on, and by the time he’d stepped foot from the bed, Harwin’s collar was already being fixed by their mother, who whistled at the servants to help Larys dress himself.
I could do it myself; would you allow it, he thought in annoyance as his face reddened and the servants swarmed around him.
“When the prince arrives, you will join with your sister and father, and you will contain this excitement. When your father presents you, you will not gape nor shout; rather, bow and perhaps say ‘welcome to Harrenhal, my prince’ if you must speak at all. Other than that, say nothing to him unless he should find reason to speak to you first. Larys.”
Larys’ head snapped up at his name, realizing only then his eyes had been cast downward. His mother met his gaze sharply. “Are you listening?”
Larys nodded quickly, and then his mother looked back to Harwin. “Remember the Prince is here on a grim business, to rid our woods of the broken men and looters who’ve made their hole there. His son travels in the baggage train, along with the men who will do the hanging. We give them a roof, and a table, and every courtesy, and we do not make ourselves a burden upon them. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, mother,” the two Strong boys said at once as Larys impatiently tapped his good foot while his doublet was tightened around him.
Their mother rose then and looked at both boys for a moment before narrowing her eyes on Larys and approaching him. He did what he could to stand up straighter as his mother leaned down and gently smoothed his hair back from his brow.
“You slept poorly?”
Larys shook his head immediately, but he could see in his mother’s eyes she did not believe him.
“It’s only the storm,” he murmured, “it kept me up.”
His mother scoffed, “You’ve been hearing storms over here since you were born. Thunder struck when I made the final push to bring you into the world, if my memory serves me.” She smiled as she said it, but when her words brought no comfort to Larys, she leaned in and spoke more softly.
“There is Mallister in you, as well as Strong, no matter your name. Your ancestors stood upon the towers of Seaguard to watch for longships from the Iron Isles throughout the night in wind and rain far worse than this, and they did not complain of losing sleep. You are of that blood. Remember it."
"Yes, Mother."
She kissed his brow and rose. “We should’ve cut your hair,” she said, glancing down at him, and then she was gone, and the servants followed.
By the time Larys was finishing preparing himself. Harwin was waiting by the door, hopping again, this time with impatience. "Ready? Are you ready? Come on, then, they'll all be in the yard by now—"
“We only just arose,” Larys protested with a slight smile as he wobbled over to the door, which Harwin hastily pulled open for him, anxiously tapping his foot while Larys went through as fast as he could.
By the time they made it to the yards, the sky above the five towers of Harrenhal was a hard-scoured blue, with the last of the clouds tearing away to the east. Everything around them shone wet and bright in the new sun.
The bailey was already thick with people. It seemed the whole of the castle had turned for the arrival. Men-at-arms were forming up in the yard, still pulling on their buff coats; servants crossed and recrossed the wet stones with the harried look of people who'd been given too many orders; somewhere a horse screamed, and the grooms cursed at it. Near the sept a knot of ladies had gathered in their brightest silks, which struck Larys as somewhat optimistic.
Do they think the Prince will take them to wife? He wanted to laugh.
Above it all, the household knights sat their mounts in a double line before the Kingspyre Tower, lances upright, and at their head, huge upon a grey courser, sat Lord Lyonel Strong.
“We should have horses,” Harwin muttered next to Larys, who was keeping his eyes trained on the skyline for any sign of the great dragon. “We’ll never see it over all their heads.”
Larys looked back at his brother, who was eyeing the forming crowd. “We could ask father-”
"There," said Harwin, tugging his sleeve. "There, come on, we'll never see from down here, let's go up the Kinspyre, we can watch from the top and see everything—"
"We’re supposed to wait in the yard, father said-" Larys protested.
"Father's on his horse and won't so much as look this way till the prince is here. Come on, Larys, when will you ever see a dragon again? We could be dead tomorrow, you know."
What a happy thought.
“We’ll get in trouble, Harwin,” Larys insisted, “We can just move away from the crowd.”
“Once he sees us, he’ll command us to sit at his side,” Harwin said quickly, and Larys realized there would be no convincing him. He looked up at his brother, who was watching him with eager, wide eyes, and after a moment, he nodded. Harwin smiled brightly, then took off, Larys following behind. It was slower for him, and no one made way for a boy who limped, so he went crabwise and careful through the crowd, keeping his brother's head in sight, and by the time he reached the door at the foot of the Kingspyre, Harwin was already three steps up and climbing.
One day I’ll be taller than all of them. They’ll see me then, Larys thought petulantly.
The Kingspyre was the tallest of the five towers, large enough that Larys knew to avoid the humiliation of trying to hike it. But in his excitement, or perhaps madness as he reasoned now, he’d briefly forgotten himself and now faced the narrow and worn stairs which wound up and around the inside of the wall with only a rope for a rail in certain parts. Balerion’s fire had left the tower partly melted, and where it had melted the steps had gone soft and then hard again, so that some were low and some were high, and no two were quite the same, and there was no rhythm you could fall into. A whole man went up it slowly and cursing. Larys went up it with his heart in his mouth. He’d done it before, of course. His father had taken him up the stairs as he had Harwin when he was only a babe, and even after he’d done it himself a few times, often with Harwin’s help, but this time when his brother offered Larys his hand, he refused it.
I have heard tales of warriors fighting with one eye, one hand, and scars across their bodies. Why should the Gods deny a boy with a crooked foot the same chance?
Pulling himself upward, he and Harwin began to climb, but his brother, even liberated from him, seemed insistent on remaining backward, eyes nervously darting in Larys’ direction anytime he took a step. Larys wanted to yell he was fine, but he knew it would just make him seem childish when he was practically already a man grown, well past his ninth nameday.
“In the north they send their children out to live in the wilderness when they reach one and ten,” Harwin had told him once, and though Larys was skeptical, it seemed possible with all else he knew of the Northerners.
You are no Northerner, a voice within spoke, but Larys would not listen as he made his way further up the tower.
Not a Northerner. I am a son of house Strong and mighty as any of them, he smiled partially to himself as he pulled himself further up the stairs and for a moment imagined-as he often did- a future where some other maester came with a new brace, a superior one that would allow him to stand next to Harwin as an equal so that he may show-
The heel of his boot skidded on the wet stone, and all at once he was falling. He threw out his hands to catch himself, but his palm scraped the rope, and he lost it. His shoulder struck the outer wall as he came down hard on the steps with his elbow under him and his teeth clacking together. For a moment he saw white and could not breathe.
Above him, Harwin turned at the sound and cried out, "Larys!"
He came clattering back down two steps at a time, all his impatience gone in a heartbeat. "Are you hurt? Here, give me your hand, I've got you—"
"I'm fine." Larys pushed himself up. His elbow throbbed, his palm was scraped raw, and tears were forming in his eyes that he blinked back furiously. He would not weep. Not here, not in front of him.
"You're bleeding."
"It's nothing. It's only my hand." He got his good foot under him and stood, wobbling, one hand on the wall, and then fell onto Harwin, who caught him and pushed him back up. “Let me,” he insisted, and Larys felt a sudden desire to send his brother falling down the stairs himself. It was an ignoble thought, he knew. And yet.
How is it fair? What duty has he performed that I would not?
Still, he wrapped his arm around Harwin’s neck, and the brothers set off once more.
It took them a long while, and by the time they’d dragged themselves out onto the roof of the Kingspyre, Larys’ good leg was shaking with the effort, his bad foot was screaming, and his palm had left small red prints on the rope all the way up. But he came out into wind and sunlight, high above the world, and for a moment the pain went clean out of his head.
He had only been so high a precious few times in his life. The whole of Harrenhal lay spread below him like a thing on a map—the five towers with the walls between them; the yards around the sept and the smithy beside the stables. The great cavernous hall with its scorched roof, and beyond the walls the fields and the woods where the shining silver plate of the Gods Eye was at west and so wide he could not see the far shore of it, only water and sky meeting in a blue haze. Gulls wheeled below him. Below me. For a moment before the fear came, Larys felt a rush that made him giggle madly. In all his life he had never in his life looked down upon a soaring bird from so high.
Harwin was at the parapet with a dozen others, servants and pages and the fat cook's boy, all of them jostling and pointing to the north. Larys made his way to him, and Harwin, who never held a grudge for longer than it took to draw breath, made room without a word and pointed.
"There," he said. "Do you see it? There."
At first Larys saw only the sky. But then, through the clouds, he made out a speck against the white, low over the northern hills, no bigger than a fly on a whitewashed wall. All of them had gone quiet at the sight until the fat cook’s boy spoke to announce “It’s not so big.”
“It’s only far off you twat,” one of the servants snapped, and the others laughed, Harwin loudest amongst them, but Larys’ eyes were locked on the horizon.
It came on faster than he would have believed a thing of that size ever could. One moment it was a fly, and the next it was a bird, a great, slow bird, and then it was no bird at all, and the bottom dropped out of Larys's belly, for now he could see its size and truly understand. He heard someone on the roof make a small sound, a woman's sound though there was no woman there. He heard the fat cook's boy begin to pray. He himself said nothing. In that moment he didn’t know if he could’ve said anything. He had heard the songs, and the histories, and the boasts of Ser Bertrand who had once seen a dragon at King's Landing and never tired of telling of it, and none of it, none of it, had prepared him.
Vhagar filled the sky.
She was bronze and green all at once, with great horns mounted above her eyes. One of the three that carried Aegon and his sisters to the conquest of the Seven Kingdoms a hundred years gone, when these very towers had run like wax beneath Balerion’s fire. Only the Black Dread had been greater than she in her time in the world, they said, and the Black Dread was dust. So, Larys’ eyes widened as he took it in: she is the greatest beast beneath the sky.
Her wings seemed wider than the great hall was long. When she banked, the sun came through the leather of them, and Larys could see the black bones inside, like the fingers of a vast hand. Her tail lashed slowly behind her. Her head, upon its long neck, swung this way and that, and even at this distance he could see the teeth in it, teeth like swords, like the swords of a whole armory hung in a single jaw.
She circled the castle once, and the shadow of her passed over the yards below, and Larys watched three hundred grown men flinch as one from the touch of it. She circled again, lower, and now he could hear her—the vast slow beat of the wings, whumph, whumph, like the largest sail in the world, and under it came deeper sound, a sound he felt in the stone beneath his feet and in the water of his own blood, a low endless rumble like far-off thunder that could not break as it opened its jaws in a chirp. “The dragon’s song,” Harwin gaped, though Larys heard nothing melodic in the rumbling of the great beast.
For a moment, Larys pondered the ghosts of the castle and wondered if they trembled at the sight; if the wings cast over the clouds reminded them of their own fiery doom now coming to claim them again. Perhaps, however, in death they had less reason to be scared than he.
Once Vhagar had circled low enough, the group at the parapet all leaned over where they could make out the small figure on her back.
He was too far to see the face, but Larys knew who it must be. Prince Baelon Targaryen, called the Brave, the King's second son and heir to the Iron Throne since the death of his brother. The Targaryens shared their songs with dragons, and those songs said that Baelon had won his knighthood at only six and ten, that he had avenged his brother at Tarth on the back of his dragon and then with the Valyrian Steel sword, Dark Sister, in hand. Larys had no doubt the stories were true, but on the back of a dragon the Prince looked smaller than any man Larys had ever seen.
Still, he sat the beast easily, one hand light upon the saddle at the base of her neck, while another cracked the long and sharp whip, his silver hair streaming out behind him like a second banner.
Beside him, Harwin had begun to shout, and was joined by the others, the whole roof roaring and pointing, but Larys was silent, and he did not know he was weeping until the wind turned cold upon his cheeks. The realization brought him swift irritation as he briefly turned to brush away the moisture on his cheeks.
The wind, Larys reasoned. It was sharp and cold up here, and he could find no other explanation for the drops that fell from his eyes.
With the whole of Harrenhal watching the sky, neither Larys nor his brother, and unlikely any soul upon that roof, marked the riders coming up the Kingsroad from the south for some time.
There were perhaps two hundred of them, horse and foot both, strung out along the muddy road in a long dark line, with a baggage train of wains lumbering at the rear. They came in through the south gate below. At the same time, every eye in the castle was fixed upon the dragon overhead, and so they came in all but unseen, the men who had ridden ahead of the prince and the men who had ridden behind, the sworn swords and the household guards and the great lords' younger sons sent to blood themselves against the broken men and bandits that had lately troubled the kingswood. A great golden carriage followed behind, which Larys reasoned must contain Prince Baelon’s son, Viserys.
The last rider of Balerion. Larys smiled at the thought, unable to imagine the rage the prince must feel, knowing that he’d once tamed the greatest of the dragons only to lose it so soon. It was certainly humiliating, Larys reasoned, made only more so by his father’s dragon now supplanting the position.
Vhagar came down at last in the great outer ward beyond the walls, where there was room for her, and folded her wings. The earth shook with the weight of her landing, and the roof beneath Larys's feet trembled, but by then Harwin had him by the sleeve again and was hauling him toward the stair.
"Come on," his brother said, "we have to get down, we have to see him close, Father's presenting the household, come on before we miss it—"
The way down was worse than the way up. Larys did not fall again, but only because Harwin, for all his hurry, kept half a step below him the whole way, his hand hovering, and Larys let him this time and said nothing about it.
Gods willing he won’t try to carry me.
Harwin was muttering about making it to the bottom before their father noticed their absence, which Larys almost found comical. They were doomed to their father’s anger the moment they chose to hike the tower, but Larys knew better than to argue with his brother when he was in his pig-headed moods.
They came spilling out into the bailey among a river of other folk all running the same way, out through the gate and into the outer ward, and there the crowd was so thick that Larys could see nothing but backs and elbows and the odd flag.
But Harwin was Harwin. He put his shoulder down and bored through the press like a young bull, dragging his brother in his wake, bellowing in the voice that always made Larys giggle, “make way, make way, we're the Lord's sons, make way there,” and no one troubled to stop two boys, as they came out at the front of it all, at the very edge of the cleared ground before the dragon.
Vhagar lay upon the churned earth, a great hill that had grown teeth. Even couched and still, she was terrible; her sides heaving slowly, and the heat coming off her in a shimmer. The smell of smoke, sulfur, and hot metal wafted through the crowd and caught in the back of Larys’ throat. In the cleared space, small before the dragon, Prince Baelon had come down, drawing off his gloves. Walking toward him, on foot now, came Lord Lyonel Strong.
Larys's father went down on one knee in the mud.
"Rise, rise," said the prince, before ever Lord Lyonel's knee had touched the ground. He caught the big man by the arm and hauled him up, laughing in a manner that made Larys and Harwin exchange a glance.
It was a good laugh, the laugh of a man well pleased with the world. "None of that, my lord, I've had a bellyful of kneeling this whole journey long. Every muddy village between here and King's Landing turns out to kneel in the road, and I must sit my horse and look solemn while my arse goes to sleep beneath me. Spare me, I beg you. Stand up and shake my hand like a man and let me look at you." And he took Lord Lyonel's great hand in his own and gripped it, and looked up at him—for even Baelon the Brave had to look up at Lyonel Strong—and grinned.
"You've grown, Strong. Last I saw you, you were a green lad at the Citadel with ink on your fingers, and now look at you, big as the castle you hold. They tell me you gave up the grey robes for the sword—a wise man. A maester's life is all draughts and books and old men breaking wind at the high table—no offense to your good maester there. A man wants sky over his head, a horse under him, and a foe worth the killing." He let go the hand at last.
“Or a man to do the killing for him,” Lord Strong said, prompting the laughter of the crowd behind him and a small smile from Baelon.
"How stands Harrenhal?" The Prince’s voice dropped to a more firm tone.
"It stands, my prince," said their Lord, in that deep, slow way of his.
Baelon clapped Lyonel on the shoulder as he glanced over to the crowd with a polite smile. Larys got a good look at him then. He was handsome; no man could deny that. A strong face, round yet defined, with windswept pale golden curls that fell across his forehead and near his shoulder. Is this what all princes of the realm have looked like? Larys found it hard to imagine them ever appearing any different.
His father and the prince were in a hushed conversation that told Larys they’d dispensed with the pleasantries.
Does he not wish to meet us? Larys looked expectantly at his brother but saw he was clearly wondering the same thing. The crowd was moving now as the Prince and lord Strong made their way past them, and he and Harwin were swept along with it.
They did not get their moment to bow. There was too great a press, and with their mother nowhere to be found, by the time the prince's party had gone in through the gate and up toward the hall, the two boys had been shouldered to the outside of everything again, as boys always are.
“How could he not have introduced us!” Harwin yelled the moment the yard began to clear of the nobles and servants who knew better than even to look the prince's way took their place. “It is royal custom-”
“He is a prince,” Larys murmured, watching the halls where Baelon would be feasted. “We never should have gone up the tower; Father will be angry; you could tell he expected us-”
"We should have gone up sooner," Harwin grumbled. "If we'd been at the front from the start, Father would've named us, and the prince would have—" He broke off, scowling.
“We will be introduced later tonight,” Larys encouraged, “Surely-”
"It was those bloody stairs,” Harwin snapped. “Why won’t you just let me carry you as I offer, Larys? And now Father will blame me for bringing you along, and we will be diminished in the eyes of the prince.” He pouted, turning his back on his brother with a huff.
Larys said nothing but found himself wishing for his old cane then.
“Gods know why I bother with you. It’s always the same,” Harwin murmured.
A moment of quiet fell between the brothers before Harwin’s shoulders slouched and he turned back to Larys with an apologetic look.
"I don't mean—" Harwin caught himself, and had the grace to look ashamed. "I don't mean it was your fault. I only meant..." He blew out a breath. "I'm sorry. Larys. I didn't mean it was your fault."
And you think I don’t know that? He knew that his brother had not meant it; what did Harwin ever say that he truly meant? His words were thoughtless, fast and heedless. I didn’t want to go up the tower, Larys thought, his lips twisting as he eyed the mud on his boots. “The prince will think nothing of us. We’re only boys,” Larys said softly before glancing back up to his brother who was standing there with his stupid mouth hanging open and that stupid honest sorry face.
This was supposed to be a good day, Larys wanted to scream, feeling his lip quiver and the burn in his hand return. I just wanted to see a dragon.
He would not let Harwin see him cry, so he wheeled around, fast as he could, and walked off.
"Larys," Harwin called after him. "Larys, come back, they're bringing out the feast—Larys!"
If he wanted, he could catch you easy as the cat, a voice in Larys’ mind spoke, but Larys buried it and hobbled off at a greater speed. He waddled best as he could, lopsided, out through the postern gate and away from the noise toward the godswood, where he could always rely on quiet.
The godswood of Harrenhal was a wood in truth, not the tame little garden that passed for a godswood in a smaller castle. It filled a good third of the ground within the outer walls, twenty acres of soldier pines and gnarled black chestnuts, where in the deep heart of it, the trees grew so old and thick that day was gloom. There stood the weirwood. White as bone and red as blood, its carved and angry face watching, old even when Harren cut his first stone. Folk did not go there much. The servants said the wood was haunted, that on quiet nights you could hear old King Harren's sons weeping, and sometimes worse things than weeping. Larys had seen the woods at night only in his dreams. But those aren’t real, and you’re no less craven than any of the others.
Larys went when the sun shone, and often. It was a fine place to lose himself in his studies, where no one made way for him, no one told him to hurry, and no one left him behind. The trees did not care how he walked. He could be as slow as he liked, and no one saw.
He knew the paths well. There was one that wound down from the postern along a little brook, under the oaks, and forked at a fallen sentinel, the left fork going toward the weirwood grove and the right toward a mossy hollow where he liked to sit. He had walked it a hundred times. He walked it now, with his scraped hand tucked against his chest and his eyes stinging, not from the fall now, though he wished it were. You have given your day to tears, and you’ve scarcely been up an hour. The thought was a bitter one. Did he have to be so childish? Prince Baelon had struck the nose of Balerion when he was Larys’ age, and they called him the Brave.
What would they call you, who runs and whimpers at the slightest insult? Even the terror of his dreams would’ve been a welcome reprieve from this. He knew that black thoughts had a way of corrupting the mind; Maester Ormund had always said as much. They would cloud his thoughts until he was vanished in his own dark, but Larys could not help but brood as he stumbled through the woods for however much time it took him to realize he did not know where he was.
The trees were thick, that was sure, but he was still on a path. It was an ordinary path, one he should know by now, running away before him and behind, yet he did not know it.
That was not possible.
He may be young, but Larys knew every path in this wood; his father had said as much a dozen times over when they entered together.
He turned and looked back the way he had come, but that was strange too; the trees were not as he remembered them. They were twisted somehow, closer than they should be, an odor of smoke coming from them now. The sound of the brook had faded to give way to an absolute silence save for the branches that were creaking and groaning without the wind to compel them to.
A fire? He thought, panicked, but that was absurd. No fire could burn through a castle damp as this one, not without a dragon.
I've only wandered off the path, he told himself. That's all. I'll go back to the fork, and I'll be right again. You are not a babe anymore. You have no excuse to lose yourself in fear. Larys swallowed and began to stumble back the way that should’ve returned him to the path. Yet when he came to the fork, the fallen sentinel was not there, and he was now in a place he was certain was unfamiliar. A chill crept up his back and arms as he tried to gather his bearings, his eyes darting around the wood. He was standing near a low dell where the trees leaned close together, standing above puddles from the night's rain. His heart was racing now, try as he may to control it. The trees seemed almost to be folding now, and he could picture them closing around him like a hand, swallowing him into the woods with all the lost souls of Harren’s fire.
“No,” he choked out, “no, no no.” He dug his nails into his palm hard enough to make the burn bleed again and then moved down to the largest of the puddles where he caught sight of his own reflection. The silence broke with the snapping of a branch behind him, and Larys turned swiftly enough that his brace clinked and he felt a sharp pain stab up his leg as he cried out. He fell backward against a tree and glanced down where he saw it.
An old rat with a bent tail and a white streak along its back. He yelped at the sight but his good foot turned on a root, and he went down hard on his back in the wet earth, the breath knocked out of him, as he scrabbled away from the puddle on his hands and heels, not caring where, only away, until his hand came down on a sharp stone and split, and the pain of it undid him at last. The tears came all at once this time and he was powerless to stop them.
“Mother, please!” He shook violently, burying his face in the leaves as if to make the world around him go away. “Harwin! Brother! I am lost!”
Father will be so angry, he thought, through the weeping. I've ruined my good doublet, they'll have to send men to find me, and everyone will know. Stupid, helpless boy. That thought made him weep harder.
"Now, now," said a voice. "None of that. It's only a wood. Trees don't bite."
He had not heard anyone come. Not the crunch of a footstep, or the bristle of a leaf. But there she was, kneeling in the mud beside him as though she had grown up out of it, a young woman in a plain grey gown, with her sleeves pushed to the elbow and her dark hair loose about her shoulders. Her face was thin and pale, with unremarkable brown eyes that looked on him with kindness, until the weeping suddenly quieted in his throat all on its own.
"There," she said. "That's better. You've a good loud pair of lungs on you, I'll say that. Half the wood must have heard." She reached out and took his hurt hand in both of hers, gently, turning it to the light, and clicked her tongue at the split in his palm. "This wants seeing to. Sit still now."
Her hands were gentle and warm as Larys suddenly reminded himself he was the son of a great lord and pushed away from her so that he could lift himself from the mud, though he dared not embarrass himself by trying to stand.
"Who are you?" Larys managed. His voice came out small and thick.
"Alys," she smiled. "I serve your lady mother. I am one of her women. You've seen me about the keep, I don't doubt, though I'll wager you never marked me. Most of you folk don't." Her voice was strange but kind, and she was dressed as any other servant. Better her than mother herself, perhaps, Larys thought as he eyed her cautiously.
From somewhere within her gown she had produced a strip of clean linen, tearing it with her teeth, and dipping one end in the rainwater of a puddle so she could begin to clean the dirt from his palm with a touch so light it scarcely hurt. "There. You've had a fright, that's all. And a fall or two, by the look of you. What's a fine young lord doing all alone in the deep wood, weeping fit to raise the drowned?"
Larys could not even begin to guess what that meant.
"I got lost," Larys said meekly. And then, trying his best to regain some dignity: "I never get lost. Father would tell you the same and Maester Ormund too.”
Alys smiled as she dabbed at his hand, but this only irked Larys further. “I swear it, if you do not believe me. I know all the paths, only this time they were all wrong and I saw-” He stopped.
"You saw?" she prompted. Her dark eyes met his and held them.
"A rat," he whispered. "In the water. An old one, with a—with a mark on it. A scar." He swallowed. "It looked at me."
Alys laughed, “Maybe it wanted to make a meal of you,” but when Larys only eyed her for that, Alys continued, “In all my time here I’ve come to reason that a day gone without a rat is a dull one, indeed. Surely you’ve seen many rats before.”
Larys looked at her. How could you understand? “That rat… the one I saw. I saw it die. It startled me, is all - to see it alive.”
“Forgive me, my lord. I did not realize you noble lot have taken to watching rats die for amusement.”
“It was not for amusement!” Larys protested.
“Forgive me, I meant no offense,” Alys smiled as Larys glared at her. Stupid serving wench. What does she know? “I’d rather the maester treat this, I think,” Larys said then, making sure to deepen his voice as Harwin did. “Take me to them.”
Alys finally looked back at him, but her eyes seemed darker all of a sudden, and Larys felt his mouth dry. “Have I caused offense, my lord?” She asked, and Larys could only shake his head.
“I meant it only as a jest. It is not my wish to insult you, my lord; I have only ever been a loyal servant to this family, and I know you are deserving of special consideration. On account of your situation.”
“Situation?” Larys cocked his head, the words out before he could realize how stupid it was even to ask. Your leg, fool. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of drawing a reaction from him if that’s what she sought.
Her fingers were gently tracing the wound now, and Larys felt his breath hitch for a moment. “I do not,” he hesitated, “what do you mean?
She ignored him and finished with his hand, bound the strip of linen round it, neat and snug, before tying it off and sitting back on her heels to look at him. "There. You'll live." She tilted her head. "Shall I tell you a secret, little lord?”
“What?”
“Two secrets. The first is this: you will not be punished. Not for the wood, nor the mud, nor the doublet. No one need ever know you came here at all. I'll see you safe back to the postern by a way you'll not miss, and you'll go in by the kitchens where none will mark a muddy boy among all the feast-day fuss, and it will be as if you were never gone. That's a promise between the two of us, and I keep my promises. Your father will not look at you today with anything but the little love he has to spare. Would you like that?"
Larys nodded, mute. The relief of it was so great it nearly set him weeping again, but he had enough sense back by then not to.
"There, then. That's the first secret." She reached out and, very lightly, tucked a strand of muddy hair behind his ear. Her fingers were cooler now. "And the second is harder. Are you brave enough for a hard secret?"
"I'm not brave," Larys said. It came out before he could stop it— though he would’ve if he’d taken only another moment. But it was true, something deep and horrible in him knew it was true, and she was looking at him in a way that made it hard to lie. "Harwin's brave,” he watched the ground.
"Ah," said Alys, softly. "Brave. Everyone's forever on about brave." She looked off through the trees, and for a moment something bleak passed over her calm face. "I've known the brave among the brave. Do you know what becomes of them, mostly? They ride out on their great horses to be brave, and they come home over the saddle, leaving their mothers weep, and the singers make a song, and in a hundred years that song can only recall his name and the faintest, most twisted, memory of his deeds. Bravery is a fine horse if you are wanting for an early grave." She looked back at him. "You saw the prince today. Baelon the Brave, they call him. You saw him on his dragon, and I'll warrant you that there is nothing so grand in all the world."
Even now, muddy and frightened, the memory of it lifted him, and her droll, endless speech would not sway Larys. "Vhagar,” he said, ensuring she knew the name, “The greatest of all the dragons.”
“And Balerion before him,” Alys smiled, “You think you couldn’t tame one?”
Larys hesitated, “Could you?”
The woman called Alys laughed at that, high and sharp but comforting in a way that wanted to make Larys laugh too, as he felt a bit of pride rush through him.
"They're gods… near enough, aren't they?” Larys continued, “My brother says they can't be burned, and Maester Ormund says the Seven have blessed them with divine blood that leaves them without illness and free to wed brother to sister and-"
"And they'll swallow themselves whole one day, root, branch and all," said Alys, "such was the fate of Valyria. The seven did not protect them when the Doom came–and, little lord, that day they all burned.”She said it lightly, almost kindly, the way she'd said everything else, and that made it worse somehow than if she'd hissed it. Larys stared at her.
"You mustn't say that," he whispered. "That's—that's treason. You’re just a servant, and my father wouldn’t even say that. They’d take your head.”
"Would they? Then it's a lucky thing there's no one here to hear it but a boy and a rat." She smiled, but there was no cruelty in the smile, only a great and patient sadness, as though she were sorry for him.
An endless silence still haunted the woods, and Alys was staring at him, unblinking and smiling with her dark eyes as Larys felt his unease return, but he did not rise. Instead, he asked, “Do you serve my mother? Truly?”
Alys blinked and looked back down. “I serve the castle, my lord. All who inhabit it and I have all my life.” She shifted closer to him, and Larys wanted to move back, but he stayed where he was as Alys took his hand once more to rub her fingers across the bandages. “You’d do best not to heed everything the maester tells you, lord. It was he who told you your dreams were only dreams, wasn’t it?”
Larys could not have pulled away then, however much he may have wanted to. “How could you know?”
“I know a great many things about this and that. I know that you are not mad, Larys, and that you know you are not mad. You are not like any soul in that castle, and you will find no comfort in their answers because they cannot give you them. You've known it your whole life, haven't you? You've felt it, true as those four legs you run on in the night. Felt that there's a passage within your mind where no soul could find you falling on and on. " She held his eyes. "You can see the world through more eyes than your own. Two legs, four legs—it's all one to you, isn’t it? She smiled her sad smile. "Am I wrong?"
Larys could not speak. He shook his head once. He would not believe this was real. It was another nightmare, one he was soon to wake up from back in his bed beside his brother. Still, he could not speak but felt his body shudder in a tearless sob.
“You don’t serve my family,” Larys breathed out in fear. He could not run, not now. Whatever this woman would do to him, she would do, and he’d lay at her mercy. But Alys made no moves towards him.
“I told you I serve this castle. I will not harm you, Larys. I only wish to help you understand your gifts before your family has convinced you it is a sickness and not a blessing. They already see you as a sort of illness, don’t they?”
Larys wanted to scream.
“You have a purity to you they could never understand. You're not cursed, little lord. You're not mad. You're a rare thing, is all, a very old and rare thing, more beautiful than any dragon—only no one's writ songs about your kind, because your kind knows better than to be sung about." She reached out and wiped his cheek with her thumb, gently, cool. "There are others like you, though not many. And there are others like me, fewer still.”
"I was born wrong, same as you, though the one who sired me left me for the roots to raise." She said it without heat and then rose, unfolding to her feet in one smooth motion, until she stood over him, and though she was not tall, in that moment, she seemed almost as large as the dragon.
"Your hand is set right, my lord. It’s time for you to go home.”
Larys glanced about the wood and realized then that he could hear the creek again, the water faint in the distance, and a wave of relief washed over him. “I… I want to travel alone,” Larys said softly, not yet looking back at Alys.
“If that is your wish. But the dreams will come again, little lord. Tonight, or the night after, or the night after that, and the larger you grow, the more dreams will come and the cat with them. Every night over and over until the day you do not wake in time." She looked down at him, and the black of her eyes went all the way down to the roots of the world. "If that is your wish, then so be it. But there is a way out, if you choose to trust me so that I might teach you to open the door and shut it as you please.” She held out her pale hand to him, palm up, over the black water of the puddle. "But I'll not force it on you." Her voice went very soft, very kind, and very terrible. "Do you want it, Larys Strong? Say the word, and it's yours."
Larys looked at the hand. He could not understand half of what she'd said to him, nor did he understand what he was giving or to whom. But he understood that for the whole of his short life he’d only ever known this crooked and wretched skin and bone that spat in the face of all he should’ve been. That his dreams could not only have been dreams as everyone kept telling him. He understood that here, at last, in the deep green heart of a haunted wood, was perhaps a thing that only he could do. A door only he could open. A grand and secret thing, all his own, that Harwin would never know.
He put his small bandaged hand into hers.
"Yes," he said.