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Chapter Text

Here is a list of characters included and what time they are from.

10 AC

Rhaenys

37 AC

Aegon I Targaryen 

Visenya Targaryen 

Aenys Targaryen 

Maegor Targaryen 

Alyssa Velaryon

77 AC

Jaeherys I Targaryen 

Alysanne Targaryen 

Aemon Targaryen 

Baelon Targaryen 

Alyssa Targaryen 

Vaegon Targaryen 

Saera Targaryen 

128 AC

Viserys I Targaryen 

Rhaenyra Targaryen 

Daemon Targaryen 

Aegon II Targaryen 

Aemond Targaryen 

Helaena Targaryen 

Daeron Targaryen 

Jacaerys Velaryon 

Lucaerys Velaryon 

Joffery Velaryon 

153 AC

Aegon III Targaryen 

Daenaera Velaryon 

Viserys II Targaryen 

Aegon IV Targaryen 

Aemon Targaryen 

Naerys Targaryen 

Daeron I Targaryen 

Baelor Targaryen 

Daena Targaryen 

Rhaena Targaryen 

Elaena Targaryen 

209 AC

Daeron II Targaryen 

Myriah Martell

Daenerys Targaryen 

Baelor Targaryen 

Valarr Targaryen

Melarys Targaryen 

Aerys I Targaryen 

Rhagel Targaryen 

Maekar Targaryen 

Daeron Targaryen 

Aerion Targaryen 

Aemon Targaryen

Daella Targaryen 

Rhae Targaryen 

Brynden Rivers 

Aegor Rivers

Shiera Seastar

257 AC

Aegon V Targaryen 

Betha Blackwood

Duncan Targaryen 

Jenny of Oldstones

Jaeherys II Targaryen 

Shaera Targaryen 

Aerys II Targaryen 

Rhaella Targaryen 

Rhaelle Targaryen 

Steffon Baratheon

Chapter Text

Brynden Rivers was aware and used to many things that most men would not considered normal. Waking up in an unknown white room with his dead and future relatives was not one of them. He looked around taking everyone in. His family from his time was here for the most part, the ones he liked and the ones he despised. He spotted all of the kings named Aegon and the kings named Daeron and Viserys. Had he not been privy to green dreams he might not have recognized his father who looked younger than Brynden. This past version of Aegon (IV) was tall and slenderer then he had ever known him to be. Bryden had heard about his fathers long lost looks but hearing was different than seeing. He was very pale with golden white hair than fell to his shoulders with had waves and curled at the ends. Aegon's eyes were a purple so light it almost looked pink and had an almost sunken look on his handsome face. He was standing next to a pale waif of a girl with the biggest purple eyes he had every seen and looked around the age of fourteen. That could be no other than Naerys, his aunt. There was also a tall stern looking man and a younger boy next to him, both sharing the same straight silver hair (though the boys was shorter in length) and deep purple eyes. Viserys (II) and Aemon the Dragonknight. There many others that he recognized as well, all looking around with plain confusion written all over there faces. There was a bright flash then, and a stack of books landed in the middle of the room. Brynden counted seven in total. A paper was attached to one and he went to pick it up. An arm moved to stop him. Baelor. His brothers son said. "I'll do it." And so he did, with Brynden looking over his shoulder to look at the note. "You have been brought here to read these books which contain the thoughts and actions of several key players of future events. This is meant to teach you lessons and to prevent further violence in your house and put a stop to its impending doom. The room you are in is one of many. You have been brought to a mansion in a pocket dimension. You are free to roam the house as you wish and sleeping arrangements are a personal issue. Food and bathrooms are provided as well. Your only goal is to finish reading the books. Once that is done you will return back to your time. The time you stay here is irrelevant as you will return to the exact time and place you left. Also please avoid causing each other injury." The paper had no signature to identify there captor. Brynden looked around the room, realizing there were couches and seats everywhere. The room was sizable and he also noticed doors. Had those always been there?  He didn't dwell on the thought for long. "Well what are we waiting for? We might as well start." That was Daeron the Young Dragon, Bryden was sure. Daeron (II) who had come up next to Baelor took the first book of the pile. "A Game of Thrones." He said. "That's the books title."        

Daeron(II) sat downs in an armchair near the center of the room and the others followed his lead. Bryden sat down next to Shiera and Aerys (I) sat down on his other side. Valarr sat down on one couch with Daeron sitting next to him and were joined reluctantly by Aerion. Viserys (I), Daemon and Rhaenrya sat together. Her sons sat together on the closest couch next to her as her brothers and sister took the couch closest to Viserys (I). Viserys(II) sat down in a chair in the far corner and with Daenaera and Aegon (III) who kept looking over in Rhaenyra's direction with a haunted look on his face sitting on a love seat next to him. Aegon (IV), Aemon and Naerys sat together as well with there younger cousins sitting on seats close to them. Jaehaerys(I) children sat as close together as possible to. There were three children near adults by the looks of it that Bryden didn't recognize that sat together. The one was a boy looking around not in fright which would have been more appropriate but in awe. Next to him was a girl who unlike him was looking around the room shyly. They both had Targaryen coloring. Probably siblings. The third one was a tall boy with black hair and purple eyes and looked around nonchalantly at everyone. There was another group sitting close to them that he did not know as well. Most had Targaryen coloring except for the ones sitting on either side of an older man who looked like he was in his fifties though it was hard to tell with his silver hair. That man met his eyes and clearly recognized Brynden. Flipping the book open on his lap, Daeron (II) began to read.

We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. “The wildlings are dead.” “Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile. Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with the dead.” “Are they dead?” Royce asked softly. “What proof have we?” “Will saw them,” Gared said. “If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough for me.” Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. “My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” he put in. “My wet nurse said the same thing, Will,” Royce replied. “Never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit.

Visenya sent a disapproving look at the book.

There are things to be learned even from the dead.” His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest. “We have a long ride before us,” Gared pointed out. “Eight days, maybe nine. And night is falling.” Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. “It does that every day about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?” Will could see the tightness around Gared’s mouth, the barely suppressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty years in the Night’s Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of.

"There members of the Night Watch?" Aerys(II) said excitedly. "Apparently so." Aegon(V) said. Maekar looked at the book in his fathers hands with suspicion.

Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear. Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him. Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too.

"If I were them, I would follow my instincts and turn back." Aemon said. There were many nods of agreement though a few of the younger ones and the less wise didn't. "Well if your already out there you might as well go further." Daeron(I) spoke.

Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander. Especially not a commander like this one. Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will and Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch for less than half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was concerned. His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin.  Will shrugged. “A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like.” “Or sleeping,” Royce suggested. “Fallen,” Will insisted. “There’s one woman up an ironwood, half-hid in the branches. A far-eyes.” He smiled thinly. “I took care she never saw me. When I got closer, I saw that When I got closer, I saw that she wasn’t moving neither.” Despite himself, he shivered. “You have a chill?” Royce asked. “Some,” Will muttered. “The wind, m’lord.” The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frostfallen leaves whispered past them, and Royce’s destrier moved restlessly. “What do you think might have killed these men, Gared?” Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sablecloak. “It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don’t have the strength to fight it. It’s easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don’t feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy,and everything starts to fade, and then it’s like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like.”

"I'll pass on that." Aegon(II) muttered to Aemond.

“Such eloquence, Gared,” Ser Waymar observed. “I never suspected you had it in you.” “I’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. “Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face.” Ser Waymar shrugged. “You ought dress more warmly, Gared.” Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with anger where Maester Aemon had cut the ears away. “We’ll see how warm you can dress when the winter comes.” He pulled up his hood and hunched over his garron, silent and sullen. “If Gared said it was the cold . . . ” Will began. “Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?” “Yes, m’lord.” There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches. What was the man driving at? “And how did you find the Wall?” “Weeping,” Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had pointed it out. “They couldn’t have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn’t cold enough.” Royce nodded. “Bright lad. We’ve had a few light frosts this past week, and a quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill eight grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter near at hand, and the means of making fire.” The knight’s smile was cocksure.  go for his sword. It was a short, ugly thing, its grip discolored by sweat, its edge nicked from hard use, but Will would not have given an iron bob for the lordling’s life if Gared pulled it from its scabbard. Finally Gared looked down. “No fire,” he muttered, low under his breath. Royce took it for acquiescence and turned away. “Lead on,” he said to Will. Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak. Moonlight shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-to, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago. They were gone. All the bodies were gone. “Gods!” he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the stars for all to see.“Get down!” Will whispered urgently. “Something’s wrong.” Royce did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed. “Your dead men seem to have moved camp, Will.” Will’s voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not possible. His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite, stopped on the axe. A huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying where he had seen it last, untouched. A valuable weapon . . . “On your feet, Will,” Ser Waymar commanded. “There’s no one here. I won’t have you hiding under a bush.” Reluctantly, Will obeyed. Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. “I am not going back to Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men.” He glanced around. “Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire.” Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort. Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched. The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl. The Others made no sound. Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all? “Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?” It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his cheek. A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, andgaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

Daeron the Drunken made a choking sound. "Is that?" "An other." Aegon(I) finished grimacing. This was not good. At all.

Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss. “Come no farther,” the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy’s. He threw the long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very cold. The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor. Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch. The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope. They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them . . . four . . . five . . . Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them.

Rhaella shivered at the descriptions while some of the others looked mildly horrified or were trying to hide that they felt horrified.

His blade was white with frost; the Other’s danced with pale blue light. Then Royce’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser Waymar’s fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red. The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. “For Robert!” he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it.

There was a deafening silence in the room. Some leaned in closer without realizing it. All looked at Daeron(II) as he read.

 He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down. Royce’s body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy. He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waitingwith the horses? He had to hurry. Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him. His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw. The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold. 

For a while no one dared to speak. "Is that why we were brought here?" Said Aerys(I) "to prevent this?" 

"I suppose so." Brynden said gravely. "That was just the Prologue." Daeron said. "I can continue to read, unless someone else wants to." He looked around the room. "I will!" Aerys(II) spoke up, waving his arm in the air enthusiastically like Daeron was going to miss him. Daeron handed the overexcited boy the book and he began to read.

"Bran I."

Chapter Text

The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see the king’s justice done.

Daeron the Daring grinned broadly. "Seems better than having lessons."

It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran’s life. The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall. It made Bran’s skin prickle to think of it. He remembered the hearth tales Old Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible halfhuman children.

Rhaella looked horrified while some of the younger boys looked fascinated by the tales of beyond the wall.

But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall awaiting the king’s justice was old and scrawny, not much taller than Robb. He had lost both ears and a finger to frostbite, and he dressed all in black, the same as a brother of the Night’s Watch, except that his furs were ragged and greasy. The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold morning air as his lord father had the man cut down from the wall and dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat tall and still on their horses, with Bran between them on his pony, trying to seem older than seven, trying to pretend that he’d seen all this before. A faint wind blew through the holdfast gate. Over their heads flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey direwolf racing across an ice-white field.
Bran’s father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely
trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had taken off Father’s face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark
of Winterfell.
 Alysanne smiled softly. "A man who can differentiate between his role as a lord and as a father is quite a rare thing."

"If only Father could take that advice to heart." Aegon (IV) muttered under his breath and received a chastising look from his brother who disliked those who spoke ill against their father. In this Naerys silently agreed with Aegon for once though she could sympathize with her father's plights.

“Ice,”
that sword was called. It was as wide across as a man’s hand, and taller even than Robb.
The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like
Valyrian steel.
His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain of his
household guard. He took hold of Ice with both hands and said, “In the name of Robert
of the House Baratheon,

"Baratheon?" Maegor said. He scowled venomously. "Which of you lost the Iron Throne?" 

"None of us as far as we know." Aegon (V) answered. "As far as I am aware I am the ruling king who is the farthest forward in the timeline."

"Then it must happen to you or after you." Maekar said, still wondering why it was his youngest son sitting the throne. 

the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and
the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of
Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence
you to die.” He lifted the greatsword high above his head.
Bran’s bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. “Keep the pony well in hand,” he
whispered. “And don’t look away. Father will know if you do.”
Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away.

Baelor(I) inwardly cringed at the act of violence and the very thought of being forced to look on at it. For most of the Targaryens they were horrified that the message of the others threat had gone unheard and of the problems this would bring to the Seven Kingdoms.

His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the
snow, as red as surnmerwine. One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep
from bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump
drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.
The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was
a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot  on the head, and kicked it away.
“Ass,” Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not hear. He put a hand on Bran’s
shoulder, and Bran looked over at his bastard brother. “You did well,” Jon told him
solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.
“The deserter died bravely,” Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every day,
with his mother’s coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes of the Tullys of
Riverrun.

"A Stark marrying a Tully?" Jaehaerys (I) questioned. That was quite unusual, southron lords marrying into the Starks.

“He had courage, at the least.”
“No,” Jon Snow said quietly. “It was not courage. This one was dead of fear. You could
see it in his eyes, Stark.” 

"That one is wise for his age." Aegon (I) said. "Competent as the very least." Visenya agreed.

Robb was not impressed. “The Others take his eyes,” he swore. “He died well. Race you
to the bridge?”
“Done,” Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb cursed and followed, and they
galloped off down the trail, Robb laughing and hooting, Jon silent and intent. The
hooves of their horses kicked up showers of snow as they went.

"Boys and their competitions." Shiera snorted. 

Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had seen the ragged man’s
eyes, and he was thinking of them now.

There was quiet as those that had seen many deaths and had been the cause of many deaths remembered their own first time seeing someone die before them. Many had been younger than Bran. Aegon(III) looked at his uncle with thinly veiled hatred, thinking of how he had roasted his mother alive making him watch and how his uncle had enjoyed it. Grimacing he felt sick to his stomach. Picking up on her husbands dour thoughts, Daenaera put a comforting hand on his shoulder to which he gave her a week attempt at a smile. 

After a while, the sound of Robb’s laughter
receded, and the woods grew silent again.
So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the party until his father
moved up to ride beside him. “Are you well, Bran?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Yes, Father,” Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers, mounted
on his great warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant. “Robb says the man
died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.”
“What do you think?” his father asked.
Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

"Isn't that the question." Baelor said ponderingly.

“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. “Do you understand why I did it?”
“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry off women and sell them to the Others.”
His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man
was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The
deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no
matter how vile. But you mistake me. The question was not why the man had to die, but
why I must do it.”
Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a headsman,” he said, uncertainly.
“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is
the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we
hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you
would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words.
And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

"Men can lie just as easily with their eyes than they can with their tongues." Maegor disagreed.

“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your
brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take
no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”
That was when Jon reappeared on the crest of the hill before them. He waved and
shouted down at them. “Father, Bran, come quickly, see what Robb has found!” Then
he was gone again.

"What could have they have possibly found of note in that wilderness." Aerion muttered, smirk on his lips.

 Robb stood knee-deep in
white, his hood pulled back so the sun shone in his hair. He was cradling something in
his arm, while the boys talked in hushed, excited voices.
The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts, groping for solid footing on the
hidden, uneven ground. Jory Cassel and Theon Greyjoy were the first to reach the boys.
Greyjoy was laughing and joking as he rode. Bran heard the breath go out of him.
“Gods!” he exclaimed, struggling to keep control of his horse as he reached for his sword.
Jory’s sword was already out. “Robb, get away from it!” he called as his horse reared under him.
Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms. “She can’t hurt you,” he said.
“She’s dead, Jory.”
 “What in the seven
hells is it?” Greyjoy was saying.
“A wolf,” Robb told him.
“A freak,” Greyjoy said. “Look at the size of it.”
Bran’s heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift to his brothers’ side.
Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed
in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman’s
perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed
teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It was bigger than his pony, twice the
size of the largest hound in his father’s kennel.
“It’s no freak,” Jon said calmly. “That’s a direwolf. They grow larger than the other kind.”
Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two
hundred years.”
“I see one now,” Jon replied.
Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle in
Robb’s arms. He gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of greyblack fur, its eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against Robb’s chest as he cradled it,
searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad little whimpery sound. Bran
reached out hesitantly. “Go on,” Robb told him. “You can touch him.”
Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon said, “Here you go.” His
half brother put a second pup into his arms. “There are five of them.” Bran sat down in
the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur was soft and warm against his cheek.
“Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many years,” muttered Hullen, the master of
horse. “I like it not.”
“It is a sign,” Jory said.

 "But a good or bad one, that is the question." Aerys (I) thought out loud.

 Even Bran could sense their fear, though he did not understand.
His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow. “I’m
surprised she lived long enough to whelp,” he said. His voice broke the spell.
“Maybe she didn’t,” Jory said. “I’ve heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was already dead
when the pups came.”
“Born with the dead,” another man put in. “Worse luck.”
“No matter,” said Hullen. “They be dead soon enough too.”
Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.
“The sooner the better,” Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. “Give the beast here,
Bran.”
The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. “No!” Bran cried
out fiercely. “It’s mine.”
“Put away your sword, Greyjoy,” Robb said. For a moment he sounded as commanding as their father, like the lord he would someday be. “We will keep these pups.”
“You cannot do that, boy,” said Harwin, who was Hullen’s son.
“It be a mercy to kill them,” Hullen said.
Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed brow. “Hullen
speaks truly, son. Better a swift death than a hard one from cold and starvation.”
“No!” He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he looked away. He did not want to cry
in front of his father.
Robb resisted stubbornly. “Ser Rodrik’s red bitch whelped again last week,” he said. “It
was a small litter, only two live pups. She’ll have milk enough.”
“She’ll rip them apart when they try to nurse.”
“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so formal. Bran
looked at him with desperate hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father. “Three male, two female.”
“What of it, Jon?”
“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said. “Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is
the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.”
Bran saw his father’s face change, saw the other men exchange glances. He loved Jon
with all his heart at that moment. Even at seven, Bran understood what his brother had
done. The count had come right only because Jon had omitted himself. He had included
the girls, included even Rickon, the baby, but not the bastard who bore the surname
Snow, the name that custom decreed be given to all those in the north unlucky enough to
be born with no name of their own.
Their father understood as well. “You want no pup for yourself, Jon?” he asked softly.
“The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark,” Jon pointed out. “I am no Stark,
Father.”
Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into the silence he left. “I will
nurse him myself, Father,” he promised. “I will soak a towel with warm milk, and give
him suck from that.”
“Me too!” Bran echoed.
The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes. “Easy to say, and harder to
do. I will not have you wasting the servants’ time with this. If you want these pups, you will feed them yourselves. Is that understood?”
Bran nodded eagerly. The pup squirmed in his grasp, licked at his face with a warm
tongue.
“You must train them as well,” their father said. “You must train them. The
kennelmaster will have nothing to do with these monsters, I promise you that. And the
gods help you if you neglect them, or brutalize them, or train them badly. These are not
dogs to beg for treats and slink off at a kick. A direwolf will rip a man’s arm off his
shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a rat. Are you sure you want this?”

"Who wouldn't want this?" Daeron (I) said brashly. Baelor (I) gave him a skeptical look. "Some people wouldn't, it is a bad omen from the northerners demons."

Daeron (I) rolled his eyes as his little brother. "Do you have to be such a downer all the time." His mother gave him a steely look of warning.

"Yes, Father,” Bran said.
“Yes,” Robb agreed.
“The pups may die anyway, despite all you do.”
“They won’t die,” Robb said. “We won’t let them die.”
“Keep them, then. Jory, Desmond, gather up the other pups. It’s time we were back to
Winterfell.”
Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.
“What is it, Jon?” their lord father asked.
“Can’t you hear it?”
Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks,
the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else.
“There,” Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They
watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A
moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.
“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon said.
“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white,
where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man
who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have
opened his eyes while the others were still blind.
“An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. “This one will die even faster than the others.”

"That is not always so, though many wish it were." Bryden japed looking at Aegor with his one good eye.

Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look. “I think not, Greyjoy,” he said.
“This one belongs to me."

Aerys(II) looked up from the book. "Chapters over." He called out. "Who wants to read next?"

"I will." Said Aerion, to the surprise of many. He had gotten so bored by listening to the reading that he was willing to do literally anything else.

Aerys (II) tossed the book to him.

Opening to the correct page Aerion began to read. "Catelyn I."

Chapter Text

Catelyn had never liked this godswood. She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers. The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. 

“The godswoods are queer but peaceful.” Alysanne said, having seen many.  

It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.

“If they have no names, they are no true gods.” Naerys muttered under her breath, as soft as she dared. Her brother Aegon rolled his eyes at her piety. What did he care of what gods were real? Any he had ever prayed to had never done anything for him.

 But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood. Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song.

The Targaryens who subscribed to the Faith smiled at the familiarity, Naerys and Baelor especially. Maegor fought to keep his anger in check while Visenya remained stoic but seething.

 The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was fosept. For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest. At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. “The heart tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood’s bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. 

Several people shivered at the thought of the tree watching them. Aegon (V) in particular who had lied eyes upon it in his youth.

They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea. In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thousand years ago, except on the Isle of Faces where the green men kept their silent watch. Up here it was different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree,and every heart tree its face. Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. “Ned,” she called softly. He lifted his head to look at her. “Catelyn,” he said. His voice was distant and formal. “Where are the children?” He would always ask her that. “In the kitchen, arguing about names for the wolf pups.”

Rhaenyra smiled to herself thinking of how her boys had argued over the names they wanted to give to their dragons.

 She spread her cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. She could feel the eyes watching her, but she did her best to ignore them. “Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure.” “Is he afraid?” Ned asked. “A little,” she admitted. “He is only three.” Ned frowned. “He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is coming.”

Brynden grimaced at the thought of what those words meant but he kept silent.

 “Yes,” Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words.Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners were. “The man died well, I’ll give him that,” Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow. “I was glad for Bran’s sake. You would have been proud of Bran.” “I am always proud of Bran,” Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers.

The Targaryens fortunate enough to have held a Valyrian blade smiled inwardly at the memory of holding such magnificent weapons.

 Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North. “He was the fourth this year,” Ned said grimly. “The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him.” He sighed. “Ben writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is down below a thousand. It’s not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well.” “Is it the wildlings?” she asked. “Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. “And it will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all.” “Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn shudder. Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.” “There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts. His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.” “Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him. 

“Did you see any when you went north?” Aerys (II) asked to Alysanne who smiled and nodded and the excitable boy. 

“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,” he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath. “You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my lady?” Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead.”

 His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as she had known it would. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen had demanded their heads, 

“Did he just say mad?” Aegon (V) said anxiously looking at his grandson, who had a horrified look on his face. “I’m not mad.” The boy pleaded looking around the room. “I would never do such a thing.” 

“But you did, boy.” Maegor grumbled, glaring. 

“Not yet, but he will.” Bloodraven said cryptically. Rhaella disagreed. “Aerys isn’t like that.” 

“Would you all quiet so I can get on with the reading?” Aerion snapped in annoyance. Aegon (V) was chilled at the prospect of his grandson ever being like his brother. It made him ill to even think of it. Jaehaerys (II) remained quiet, pondering about how they could prevent such a fate for his son.

the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-andfalcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect. And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully. “Jon . . . ” he said. “Is this news certain?” “It was the king’s seal, and the letter is in Robert’s own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in pain.” “That is some small mercy, I suppose,” he said. She could see the grief on his face, buut even then he thought first of her. “Your sister,” he said. “And Jon’s boy. What word of them?” “The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie,” Catelyn said. “I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever her husband’s place, not hers. Lord Jon’s memory will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of family and friends around her.” “Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate, I’d heard.” Catelyn nodded. “Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is some comfort, but still . . . ” “Go to her,” Ned urged. “Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her grief.” “Would that I could,” Catelyn said. “The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek you out.” It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. “Robert is coming here?”

“Hold on a moment.” Aerys (I) said, thinking aloud. He looked at Steffon who shrunk in his seat next to his cousins. “You said you came from 257 AC correct?” The black haired boy nodded unsure why he was being asked this. “That means this Usurper must be your son, based on the timeline.” Steffon gawked. “I would never betray my family. This can’t be true.” 

“It is.” Bryden said flatly. Baelor blinked. “How can you be so sure, uncle?”

“My dreams have shown me so.” 

Daeron (II) stared at him hard. “You did not think to share this?”

“I was not sure of it till now.” Bryden defended. “Dreams are hard to interpret correctly in the best of times.” 

After that there was uneasy silence.

 When she nodded, a smile broke across his face. Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. “I knew that would please you,” she said. “We should send word to your brother on the Wall.” “Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest bird.” Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. “Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than this? How many in his party, did the message say?” “I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them.” “Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,” he said. “It is just as well. That will give us more time to prepare.” “The queen’s brothers are also in the party,” she told him. Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen’s family, Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert’s cause, when victory was all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. 

Aerys (II) 's already pale face went paler still. His best friend was going to betray him. But why? What had happened to Aerys in the future and what must he have done to earn the moniker of “mad”.

“Well, if the price for Robert’s company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court.” “Where the king goes, the realm follows,” she said. “It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman’s teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?” “Prince Tommen is seven,” she told him. “The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year.” Ned squeezed her hand. “There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.”

It was a long time before anyone spoke. 

“I can read the next chapter.” Came Alysanne’s voice softly from her corner of the room. Aerion stood and handed the book to her, ready to be rid of it.

“Daenerys I”

Chapter Text

“That cannot be me, right?” Daenerys asked. Daeron(II) hummed. 

“Perhaps it is a namesake for you.” That explanation made enough sense as all of them had been given the name of another that had lived before them in their family.

Her brother held the gown up for her inspection. “This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress the fabric.” Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. “Is it really mine?” “A gift from the Magister Illyrio,” Viserys said, smiling.

“Another namesake.” Aerys(I) guessed. “And born after us.” Jaehaerys (II) thought aloud. 

 Her brother was in a high mood tonight. “The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess.” A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. “Why does he give us so much?” she asked. “What does he want from us?” For nigh on half a year, they had lived in the magister’s house, eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the free city of Pentos. “Illyrio is no fool,” Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous hands and a feverish look in his pale lilac eyes. “The magister knows that I will not forget my friends when I come into my throne.” Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he’d never had a friend he wouldn’t cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”

“He seems stable.” Alyssa remarked dryly under her breath. Besides her, Baelon snorted.

 Her brother hung the gown beside the door. “Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount.”

“Absolutely not!” Rhaelle snapped. “She is only thirteen years old. Why give her off to some savage?” 

“It seems they do not have many options.” Maekar stated grimly. Similar expressions sprouted on many of their faces at the thought of how low House Targaryen had fallen.

 He studied her critically. “You still slouch. Straighten yourself” He pushed back her shoulders with his hands. “Let them see that you have a woman’s shape now.” His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a nipple.

“Disgusting boy.” Visenya scowled. Aegon (I) almost winced at what punishment a man who dared touch his elder sister in such a way would suffer.

 “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic.

Grumbles of dismay and anger rose up throughout the room.

 “Do you?” he repeated. “No,” Dany said meekly. Her brother smiled. “Good.” He touched her hair, almost with affection. “When they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say that it began tonight.” When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo’s manse. Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. “Our land,” he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. “Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.” 

A smile twisted on Aerion's lips. Beside him his elder brother shuddered.

And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper,

Several of the more hot headed boys in the room shouted curses and insults at the mention of the man who had dethroned their house.

 but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother’s womb. Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister

“Lannister?” Aerys said, thinking of Tywin and what the last chapter had said about himself. Surely he hadn’t gone so mad that his best friend would turn on him, he hoped.

 and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons

“What do you mean, last dragons?” Aegon (I) tensely asked. The Dragonbane stared at the floor, regret on his gaunt features. Viserys (II) seeing his brother was not about to divulge anything answered for the both of them. “The Dance of the Dragons killed almost all of the dragons and no new ones have hatched since.” This explanation only created more questions for the people who had lived before the catastrophic war of succession. “We will explain later.” Daeron said. “After this chapter we should break for the night.” That was agreed upon quickly as they were all either disgusted or growing wary at this glimpse into their doomed future. There were also the young children among them to consider who until now had stayed silent or behaved as little princes and princesses of the realm had been brought to heel to do.

 staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword. 

“Kingslayer, huh.” Baelor pondered quietly, resting his head on his hand. The Prince of Dragonstone would be keeping an eye out for that epithet. Surely since their house has fallen this ender of lines would show his face again. Meanwhile Aerys (II) face had turned the color of milk as more details were revealed about his death.  

She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her,  and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her. 

Painfully, Rhaenyra was reminded of her own mothers abrupt departure from her life. A warm, comforting hand made its way to her shoulder and squeezed. Her husband, who like his wife was brought to his own mother’s death. He could understand the resentment of an unwanted third sibling's arrival. With a swallow that felt like a nail file had been dragged down his throat he looked on at his lost mother who sat mere feet away, in the flesh, both exactly like he remembered and also different, in a way that he had either never seen from her or had been marred by time. Equally he was happy to see his father again, and not in the agonizing way that his father had left the world. Despite what was being read his own brother had not stopped smiling since their arrival here. Sometimes Daemon wished he could fall into the same level of blissful ignorance.

She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper’s brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast. She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometimes “My Lady,”

“At least she has kept a happy memory for herself.” Naerys murmured. It was sad that was all the girl had. Not for the first time she wondered why the gods let things so horrid happen and why they always seemed to happen to her family. Instinctively recognizing his sister’s depressing line of thought, Aemon put an arm around her fragile frame and pulled Naerys close. Gratefully she leaned into his emanating warmth.

 and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever. They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one.

If it was not below him Maegor would have rolled his eyes at the ignorance of this girl. “That doesn’t mean they do not exist. I would be less concerned if they were out in the daylight and not hidden in darkness.” Muttered he. Well to him it was a mutter but still it carried across the room where he was met with nods of agreement or uneasy stares, like they could not comprehend what they were hearing. 

 At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called her brother “the beggar king.” 

“Poor children.” Alysanne murmured to herself.

Dany did not want to know what they called her. “We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back.” Viserys lived for that day.

Some loud cheering sounded from the corner of the room. The culprits were found to be Baelon and Alyssa. Those that sat near them held their ears from pain.

 All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known. There came a soft knock on her door. “Come,” Dany said, turning away from the window. Illyrio’s servants entered, bowed, and set about their business. They were slaves, a gift from one of the magister’s many Dothraki friends. There was no slavery in the free city of Pentos. Nonetheless, they were slaves.

Daeron (II) sighed. “There will always be people who know how to skirt the law or have enough power not to bother.” Farther down his couch Brynden smiled to himself. Sometimes things had to be done, no matter how heinous they were. In the end a few bodies in his closet would be a few million bodies spared when the darkness finally came.

 The old woman, small and grey as a mouse, never said a word, but the girl made up for it. She was Illyrio’s favorite, a fair haired, blue-eyed wench of sixteen who chattered constantly as she worked. They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.”

“He does not realize how truthful that is.” Aerys (I) said. He had read enough in the family library to have come to a few conclusions about the Valyrian’s ancestry.

 The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the snags, all in silence. The girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was. “Drogo is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver.” There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age. For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. 

The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times;

Aegon(V) scowled. No matter their reasoning it was a disgusting practice. He had barely been able to stomach the idea of his children loving one another in that way.

 theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men. Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian. 

“If he is to sell the blood of the dragon off at least let it be for a suitable price.” Visenya said, loudly. It was pathetic what they had fallen to if they had to sell their own for the slimmest chance at retaking Westeros. And Dothraki no less.

When she was clean, the slaves helped her from the water and toweled her dry. The girl brushed her hair until it shone like molten silver, while the old woman anointed her with the spiceflower perfume of the Dothraki plains, a dab on each wrist, behind her ears, on the tips of her breasts, and one last one, cool on her lips, down there between her legs. They dressed her in the wisps that Magister Illyrio had sent up, and then the gown, a deep plum silk to bring out the violet in her eyes. The girl slid the gilded sandals onto her feet, while the old woman fixed the tiara in her hair, and slid golden bracelets crusted with amethysts around her wrists. Last of all came the collar, a heavy golden torc emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs. “Now you look all a princess,” the girl said breathlessly when they were done. Dany glanced at her image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so thoughtfully provided. A princess, she thought, but she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms.

Several people winced in sympathy at the girl’s plight. The blood of the dragon, once so proud, so priceless had indeed been given a price. Those that did not wince raged. Maekar, in particular looked as if he opened his mouth a black spattering of spoke might rise out.

 Her brother was waiting in the cool of the entry hall, seated on the edge of the pool, his hand trailing in the water. He rose when she appeared and looked her over critically. “Stand there,” he told her. “Turn around. Yes. Good. You look . . . ” “Regal,” Magister Illyrio said, stepping through an archway. He moved with surprising delicacy for such a massive man. Beneath loose garments of flame-colored silk, rolls of fat jiggled as he walked. Gemstones glittered on every finger, and his man had oiled his forked yellow beard until it shone like real gold.

Desperately the children of Aegon the Unworthy chose not to look over at his younger, slenderer version. Daeron in particular who had braved the venture into his father’s chambers during his final days fought the urge to retch. As it was, blood still ran away from his cheeks. His wife let her hand rest on the small of his back. 

 “May the Lord of Light shower you with blessings on this most fortunate day, Princess Daenerys,” the magister said as he took her hand. He bowed his head, showing a thin glimpse of crooked yellow teeth through the gold of his beard. “She is a vision, Your Grace, a vision,” he told her brother. “Drogo will be enraptured.” “She’s too skinny,” Viserys said. His hair, the same silver-blond as hers, had been pulled back tightly behind his head and fastened with a dragonbone brooch. It was a severe look that emphasized the hard, gaunt lines of his face.  He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword that Illyrio had lent him, and said, “Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women this young?”

“The fact that you needed to ask that should tell you all that you need to know!” Alyssa snapped angrily, jumping up from her seat. Baelon dragged her back down, but only to distract himself from his own rage. 

 “She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal,” Illyrio told him, not for the first time. “Look at her. That silver-gold hair, those purple eyes . . . she is the blood of old Valyria, no doubt, no doubt . . . and highborn, daughter of the old king, sister to the new, she cannot fail to entrance our Drogo.” When he released her hand, Daenerys found herself trembling. “I suppose,” her brother said doubtfully. “The savages have queer tastes. Boys, horses, sheep . . . ” “Best not suggest this to Khal Drogo,” Illyrio said. Anger flashed in her brother’s lilac eyes. “Do you take me for a fool?” 

“Yes.” Various people immediately said. Naturally Maegor and Visenya were the loudest among them.

The magister bowed slightly. “I take you for a king. Kings lack the caution of common men.

Shiera wiggled her eyebrows. “Don’t they ever.” She purred. Brynden and Aegor both smiled. Seeing the other doing the same there grins turned into glowers. Leaning back into the cushioned couch flippantly Shiera smiled innocently at the two of them.

 My apologies if I have given offense.” He turned away and clapped his hands for his bearers. The streets of Pentos were pitch-dark when they set out in Illyrio’s elaborately carved palanquin. Two servants went ahead to light their way, carrying ornate oil lanterns with panes of pale blue glass, while a dozen strong men hoisted the poles to their shoulders. It was warm and close inside behind the curtains. Dany could smell the stench of Illyrio’s pallid flesh through his heavy perfumes. Her brother, sprawled out on his pillows beside her, never noticed. His mind was away across the narrow sea. “We won’t need his whole khalasar,” Viserys said. His fingers toyed with the hilt of his borrowed blade, though Dany knew he had never used a sword in earnest. “Ten thousand, that would be enough, I could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. The realm will rise for its rightful king. Tyrell, Redwyne, Darry, Greyjoy, they have no more love for the Usurper than I do. The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children. And the smallfolk will be with us. They cry out for their king.” He looked at Illyrio anxiously. “They do, don’t they?” 

Aegon (I) put his face in his hands. “This boy.” From her corner Myriah murmured. “The legacy of the dragon.” When she had been a girl she would have been ecstatic. Now she felt only sorrow and horror.

“They are your people, and they love you well,” Magister Illyrio said amiably. “In holdfasts all across the realm, men lift secret toasts to your health while women sew dragon banners and hide them against the day of your return from across the water.” He gave a massive shrug. “Or so my agents tell me.” Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across the narrow sea, but she mistrusted Illyrio’s sweet words as she mistrusted everything about Illyrio.

“Well, at least this one is not a fool.” Visenya stated. “It would be hard to beat her brother.” Rhaenys commented airily to her sister.

 Her brother was nodding eagerly, however.

Rhaena rolled her eyes. “Speaking of which.” She was filled with rage at the idea that her brother’s name had been given to this feeble man.

 “I shall kill the Usurper myself,” he promised, who had never killed anyone,

Several snorts were heard.

 “as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And Lannister too, the Kingslayer, 

Aerys(II) who never prayed, prayed then desperately that it was not Tywin who had given him his end. With an incline of his head Baelor and some others filed that information away.

for what he did to my father.” “That would be most fitting,” Magister Illyrio said. Dany saw the smallest hint of a smile playing around his full lips, but her brother did not notice. Nodding, he pushed back a curtain and stared off into the night, and Dany knew he was fighting the Battle of the Trident once again. The nine-towered manse of Khal Drogo sat beside the waters of the bay, its high brick walls overgrown with pale ivy. It had been given to the khal by the magisters of Pentos, Illyrio told them. The Free Cities were always generous with the horselords. “It is not that we fear these barbarians,” Illyrio would explain with a smile. “The Lord of Light would hold our city walls against a million Dothraki, or so the red priests promise . . . yet why take chances, when their friendship comes so cheap?” Their palanquin was stopped at the gate, the curtains pulled roughly back by one of the house guards. He had the copper skin and dark almond eyes of a Dothraki, but his face was hairless and he wore the spiked bronze cap of the Unsullied. He looked them over coldly. Magister Illyrio growled something to him in the rough Dothraki tongue; the guardsman replied in the same voice and waved them through the gates. Dany noticed that her brother’s hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of his borrowed sword. He looked almost as frightened as she felt. “Insolent eunuch,” Viserys muttered as the palanquin lurched up toward the manse. Magister Illyrio’s words were honey. “Many important men will be at the feast tonight. Such men have enemies. The khal must protect his guests, yourself chief among them, Your Grace. No doubt the Usurper would pay well for your head.” “Oh, yes,” Viserys said darkly. “He has tried, Illyrio, I promise you that. His hired knives follow us everywhere. I am the last dragon, and he will not sleep easy while I live.” The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave offered a hand to help Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze. Her brother followed, one hand still clenched hard around his sword hilt. It took two strong men to get Magister Illyrio back on his feet. Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and sweet lemon and cinnamon. They were escorted across the entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron lanterns all along the walls. Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. “Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name,” he called in a high, sweet voice, “King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone. His honorable host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos.” They stepped past the eunuch into a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy. Moonlight painted the leaves in shades of bone and silver as the guests drifted among them. Many were Dothraki horselords, big men with red-brown skin, their drooping mustachios bound in metal rings, their black hair oiled and braided and hung with bells. Yet among them moved bravos and sellswords from Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh, a red priest even  fatter than Illyrio, hairy men from the Port of Ibben, and lords from the Summer Isles with skin as black as ebony. Daenerys looked at them all in wonder . . . and realized, with a sudden start of fear, that she was the only woman there. Illyrio whispered to them. “Those three are Drogo’s bloodriders, there,” he said. “By the pillar is Khal Moro, with his son Rhogoro. The man with the green beard is brother to the Archon of Tyrosh, and the man behind him is Ser Jorah Mormont.”

“A northman?” Jaehaerys (I) shook his head. “Strange, strange times these are.”

 The last name caught Daenerys. “A knight?” “No less.” Illyrio smiled through his beard. “Anointed with the seven oils by the High Septon himself.” “What is he doing here?” she blurted. “The Usurper wanted his head,” Illyrio told them. “Some trifling affront. He sold some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night’s Watch. Absurd law. A man should be able to do as he likes with his own chattel.” “I shall wish to speak with Ser Jorah before the night is done,” her brother said. Dany found herself looking at the knight curiously. He was an older man, past forty and balding, but still strong and fit. Instead of silks and cottons, he wore wool and leather. His tunic was a dark green, embroidered with the likeness of a black bear standing on two legs. She was still looking at this strange man from the homeland she had never known when Magister Illyrio placed a moist hand on her bare shoulder. 

Disgusted noises filled the room. “I hope he never touches her again.” Aemon muttered to his brother who added. “I’d hack his hand off if he tried that on Alyssa. That is if she had not gotten there first.”

“Over there, sweet princess,”he whispered, “there is the khal himself.” Dany wanted to run and hide, but her brother was looking at her, and if she displeased him she knew she would wake the dragon. Anxiously, she turned and looked at the man Viserys hoped would ask to wed her before the night was done. The slave girl had not been far wrong, she thought. Khal Drogo was a head taller than the tallest man in the room, yet somehow light on his feet, as graceful as the panther in Illyrio’s menagerie. He was younger than she’d thought, no more than thirty.

“Still disgusting.” Duncan commented.

 His skin was the color of polished copper, his thick mustachios bound with gold and bronze rings. “I must go and make my submissions,” Magister Illyrio said. “Wait here. I shall bring him to you.” Her brother took her by the arm as Illyrio waddled over to the khal, his fingers squeezing so hard that they hurt. “Do you see his braid, sweet sister?” Drogo’s braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny bells that rang softly as he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even his buttocks, the end of it brushing against the back of his thighs. “You see how long it is?” Viserys said. “When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braids in disgrace, so the world will know their shame. Khal Drogo has never lost a fight. He is Aegon the Dragonlord come again, and you will be his queen.” Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as onyx. Her brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he did not frighten her the way this man frightened her. “I don’t want to be his queen,” she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. “Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go home.” “Home?” He kept his voice low, but she could hear the fury in his tone. “How are we to go home, sweet sister? They took our home from us!” He drew her into the shadows, out of sight, his fingers digging into her skin. “How are we to go home?” he repeated, meaning King’s Landing, and Dragonstone, and all the realm they had lost.

Alysanne sighed sadly at the thought of these children, lost and without a family. 

 Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio’s estate, no true home surely, though all they had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even the big house with the red door had not been home for him. His fingers dug hard into her arm, demanding an answer. “I don’t know . . . ”she said at last, her voice breaking. Tears welled in her eyes. “I do,” he said sharply. “We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal Drogo’s army, that is how we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for that, you will.” He smiled at her. “I’d let his whole khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is bringing him over, and he will not see you crying.”

The young children were gaping, horrified. Some of the men went for swords that were not there, and made frustrated groans at the realization. Some of the women thought of weddings they had been forced into while others thought of the luck they had had in their own. 

 Dany turned and saw that it was true. Magister Illyrio, all smiles and bows, was escorting Khal Drogo over to where they stood. She brushed away unfallen tears with the back of her hand. “Smile,” Viserys whispered nervously, his hand failing to the hilt of his sword. “And stand up straight. Let him see that you have breasts. Gods know, you have little enough as is.” Daenerys smiled, and stood up straight.

“Alright.” Baelor loudly stated. “That is quite enough for one sitting. Now we will take a break.” From there the grounded dragons began to explore their mystical prison.