Cold. Darkness. Numbness.
Those were the only things I felt for some time. There was a mounting pressure, a crushing weight as first the cold grew, then the numbness. I struggled to make sense of things, awareness slipping through my mental fingers again and again. I heard a strange sizzling in the back of my mind, the hiss of a red-hot bar cooling rapidly as it was quenched. It was the only thought that made sense so I grasped for it, but my arms were sluggish and heavy and that impossible weight still lay above them as the endless darkness lay below.
I blinked at a spark of light at the edge of my vision and something clicked. My tired mind pulled at a thread of meaning, sluggishly following it towards wakefulness. Then the pain came. It bit at the right side of my head and all across my jaw at a dull throb. It stung at my lower ribs at my every move. It burned at my chest as my body chocked and heaved. With pain came clarity. The sluggishness was less mental and more physical as my thoughts churned towards coherence with reluctance. Even doing that much was exhausting, the sizzling in my thoughts slowly growing dimmer, drowned out by the dark and cold and numbness. Another blink as realisation struck.
Ah. I was drowning. I was sluggish and surrounded by cold because I was underwater. My body hurt both because of wounds and because I had not breathed for some time. The only reason I'd even woken up was the spell of sustenance I'd cast before the battle started but it was Pyromancy, fire magic, and being submerged was already smothering it like any other flame, if more slowly. And the heavy darkness overhead was not some abstract or metaphor for death but the bottom of a ship... a ship under which the currents had pulled me.
I tried to swim, but it was hard. On top of the pain, cold, numbness and lack of oxygen, the sea around me kept twisting, up becoming down, left becoming right, forwards becoming back. More metaphorical darkness started clawing at the edges of my vision and a strange detachment came over me. That... that actually helped. It now became less a panicked struggle of an injured, drowning girl and more like a video game whose controls had been inverted, like one of the effects of low sanity in Perfect Darkness or your ships being infected by Borg nanites in a Stark Trek game whose title escaped me at the moment.
n'ghft ng ya ah ehyeIt was nothing I hadn't dealt with before, nothing to be worried about. The controls were sluggish and inverted but with trial and error I adjusted, sent the opposite commands at just the right time and like a doll on strings my avatar in this Game of Thrones RPG moved to my will. It wasn't pretty but there was nobody to see it under the sea, except maybe the other players if they happened to be looking but so what? If it looked dumb but worked it was actually genius other people just failed to comprehend, right? The slightly used bag of blood and bones flipped and flopped and slowly crawled forth until it caught one of the oars. Then it pulled itself up and...
My head broke the surface and I tried to breathe but only choking noises and water came out. Terror almost broke through both detachment and reason but with an effort of will I remained in control; to panic now would be to die just as I'd reached safety. I gripped the slippery wooden beam of the oar with both arms and pulled as hard as I could, a spark of dwindling magic jolting aching muscles to produce explosive retraction. The oar was crushed into my chest even as I tried to exhale; it hurt but more water came out than before. So I did it again and a third time, ignoring the sharp stings of something probably broken in my ribcage until seawater vacated the premises and with a gasp of relief I breathed. It tasted of salt and blood and worse things yet was the sweetest breath I'd ever taken.
I sat there for a minute, enjoying the simple ability to breathe freely. My sizzling, failing magic was coaxed back to life at every breath, numbness and cold were chased away by the pain of injuries, the drum-like beat of my heart in my chest, the clang of metal and the screams of men in the air. I wanted to stay there forever and just feel the flow of life within and around me, but the violence of reality intruded once again. The battle was still going on above, but I had no idea which side was winning. How long had it been? Three minutes? Four? Longer?
That monster of a pirate had very nearly killed me. Cracked ribs, broken jaw, probably a concussion... if I hadn't fallen overboard the next blow would have been lethal. If I'd struck an oar while falling I would be dead. If any of the pirates had thrown a spear or axe at my back? Dead again. If I'd been even a hair heavier and sunk? Dead too. Had my magic failed a little earlier? Dead, dead, dead. Why had I tried to take him on in melee instead of trying more distractions? Sent the rats, or thrown a bit of blood at him and set it on fire, or tried to burn his weapon while he fought anyone else? Hindsight was twenty-twenty. At least I was sure he was if not dead too, then a dead man walking. It all depended on how deeply my conjured dagger had gone after burning through his belt and mail.
But that left the rest of the Ironborn scum. With both me and their leader out of the way, which way would their morale go? They had taken great losses but without magical interference they could still overwhelm the far less experienced, more lightly armed crew of Shayala's Dance. Unlike typical raiders and pirates, these Squids were trained warriors; their tactics, uniform weapons and discipline all screamed "elite unit" and so did their oversized longship. I lacked the experience to guess at the outcome and knowing what the Squids did to women captives I was not about to leave even the slightest doubt as to their total, crushing defeat.
The first pull at the oar with stiff arms got me nowhere. Those that followed were only slightly better but I forced myself through the motions over my body's protests and started to climb. Twice I slipped, until I used my last knife to dig into the wood as a makeshift handhold. It was the last of my weapons. My spear and bow were somewhere on the ships above, my quiver was empty, all arrows either shot or lost in the scuffle, my other knives swallowed by the sea. But as I pulled myself out of the water strength slowly returned to my limbs, my magic burning through dwindling stores of vitality to heal what it could. Getting back into the fight in my condition would be suicide. Good thing that was not my intention.
xxxx
As carefully and silently as I could I climbed over the railing and onto the low deck not of Shayala's Dance but of the damaged longship. The Ironborn vessel was not empty, but a peek was all it took to confirm every able-bodied man was not here but on the battle on Captain Samanthes' ship beyond. The longship's deck was full of injured men, the dying, and corpses. Some were horribly burned. Others had arrows or crossbow bolts sprouting from their bodies. About half moaned or cursed or tried to staunch the flow of blood, the others standing all too still. The more lightly injured, the ones that could still move? They were all looking across the gap between their ships, all their attention on what little was visible of the ongoing battle.
Not being able to see how the fight was going was annoying but couldn't be helped with how Shayala's Dance had a higher deck than the longship, especially with how I needed to keep out of sight. Not that it mattered. If we were winning then my actions would just reduce losses. If we were losing they'd just make the difference between victory and a lifetime as a salt wife or death. So screw it, I was doing this either way.
The closest target was one of the horribly burned ones. As I snuck upon the shallowly breathing ruin of a man, the only way to tell he was still alive was my awareness of his vitality, the guttering flame of life in his chest, the sluggish, polluted flow of blood in his veins. His face was just a mass of charred flesh with bone peeking through in places. As my knife cut into his throat and his lifeblood dripped into the deck the only sign of his passing was that tiny flame of life being snuffed out and the weight of his death adding to my well of power.
The next two targets were still conscious, but agony clouded their thoughts enough for their terror to echo in my Greensight from so close. One was trying to breathe with a crossbow bolt through the chest, the was curled around the arrow in his stomach. Both were dead, they just didn't know it. As my knife ended their lives their last flash of emotion was not fear or agony but relief.
Sneaking down the length of the longship I took from the injured and the dying the last thing they had left. Every death filled me with energy, with power and magic, my steps becoming surer, my breaths more even, my limbs lighter and less stiff. By the time the four Squids in any condition to act against me noticed what was going on I was in a far better condition than they. My magic was still slow to respond but speed and surprise proved enough. The guy with one arm burned black from the elbow down died before he could awkwardly swing an axe with his off-hand. The one with the arrow through his right leg tried to stab me but I slipped around his awkward thrust, into his reach and slit his throat. The two axemen, one with two burned patches across his back and the other with a hole through the left shoulder, put up a brief fight, using their longer reach and well-timed swing to keep me at range as they shouted for help.
No help arrived. Maybe the pirates couldn't spare anyone. Perhaps nobody heard over the din of battle. Or maybe they did not care what happened to the injured. More loot for them if they died, right? I was eager to disabuse them of the notion so I used my greater strength to parry one axe with the dagger then smash my fist into the other Squid's throat before he could bring his own weapon to bear. Then I slammed my shoulder into the first guy, bringing us both down even as I forced stab after stab through his mail.
xxxx
Even as they died, I was already in my mind, in the vision of the Fourteen Flames within. Power, stolen life, churned to overflowing. I'd hit another milestone halfway through the latest string of killing, but I'd decided to deal with all nearby threats before calling up the vision. It proved to be a good decision, because the vision was a jumbled mess. All fourteen flames were flickering and spitting sparks as waves of temporary vitality and permanent power twisted around them like a raging whirlwind. All the fear, the anger, the helplessness at my near-death that had been muted before struck me now like a tidal wave.
I wanted to incinerate the reaving bastards with a wave of fire. To reach out with mastery of blood and rip out every last drop of fluid from their bodies. To become so great a warrior that no raiding, raping monster could overpower me again. But it was just as clear that I could not, and not just because just one milestone would not be enough for that kind of power. Outside this vision in the real world my body was still battered, half-drowned and near-exhaustion. The boost from the kills had helped a little but I'd already been using spells to barely stave off a post-battle crash. Even within the vision, my magic was taxed to its limit. Could I keep casting like that?
No, screw caution and the Ironborn bastards. I was not becoming one of their toys no matter what. Decision made, I reached out to the thirteenth flame. It was a tiny, dark grey spark that had never been fed before but that changed as I rammed all the accumulated power into it. From a spark it became a candle then a torch, as large as the second flame of War. The vision of the Fourteen Flames shattered, replaced by a vision of a dark forest. Trees towered overhead, bereft of leaves or other greenery. The undergrowth between them was similarly dead, dry and blackened, while the sky overhead was lightless, without moon or stars. Yet I could still see, especially what else littered the forest ground. Squirrels, snakes, foxes, bats, birds, lions both lizardy and otherwise, hares and boars and all that walked or flew or crawled in the wild. All of them were grey and stiff, dead but not yet rotting.
The closest corpse was just a mouse. It stared at me with tiny sightless eyes. Then it twitched, a flicker of motion going through the body that would fit in the palm of my hand. It did so again and again, twitching in the ground but getting nowhere. Then something unseen, unheard, intangible but still present reached out. I saw a little boy in the woods reaching down to touch the mouse, a slip of a kid that couldn't have been older than twelve. It stared back at me without eyes, because it had no eyes, just empty sockets where they should have been. In those sockets a pale light gleamed, then the mouse stood on its legs properly at the boy's command, smaller lights of an identical hue cleaming in the mouse's eyes.
The vision changed once more, becoming a room as lightless and bereft of life as the forest had been. A long chamber stretching out in the darkness, a crypt with an endless line of tombs within. A tall, slim, brown-haired man with eyes like two chips of ice walked down the endless line of tombs in the darkness, a vaguely familiar greatsword of rippled metal heavy with magic held in one hand. Valyrian steel; I'd recognize the material anywhere. The man finally stopped before a tomb that lay open, a dead body clad in black only just laid to rest within. Then another person approached, a woman. She was taller than the man and paler, skin as white as the purest snow, long hair gleaming like icicles in the moonlight, face and limbs and body impossibly graceful for a human, even her tiniest move a dance or a flowing stream or winter's breeze across a field. She wore nothing but a coating of rime over her skin, gleaming like a layer of tiny gems on a Brazillian dancer. Her eyes were blue fire and yet clearly shone with mirth as she leaned down to whisper on the man's ear.
At her instruction the tall man gripped his Valyrian steel greatsword with both arms and touched the corpse with its tip first on the right shoulder then on the left. Like a king knighting a worthy warrior except done to a corpse... but then the corpse twitched like the mouse had in the forest. It twitched again and again and then its eyelids opened to reveal the milky pale eyes of a dead man now shining with the same pale gleam as the brown-haired man's. The corpse rose, got out of the tomb, then knelt on the man's feet. As the vision slowly faded, I saw the inhuman woman kiss the man deeply even as more and more corpses rose and knelt in a circle of black-clad warriors around them.
I opened my eyes back on the ship just as my last victim took its last breath. It had felt like hours but only a minute had passed... and now I knew the secrets of necromancy. How to raise not just minor animals but human corpses into unlife to make wights. How to command them. How to direct them from afar. How to sense other undead, even attempt to usurp the control of another, or use the same magic of death to banish life and slowly kill without a single sign of a wound. Into that knowledge other magical experiences slotted in. My spells of sustenance, empowerment and healing from Sorcery fit to the animation of Necromancy like pieces of the same puzzle, making the act of raising easier, the results stronger and a bit more life-like. The life-fire of Pyromancy did the same, stripping the wights of some of their vulnerability to fire; now they would not burn any faster than normal corpses. Finally my experiences with Greensight allowed me to share senses with the dead earlier than I would have with necromancy alone. I felt more secrets clamoring for attention, deeper synergies trying to form, but my new ability with Necromancy was still rudimentary and untested. More would come either with time and practice, or further investment. For now, I had a battle to win.
Filled to bursting with stolen vitality, I used my knife to slice into the palm of my hand. Blood oozed down the blade before the shallow wound sluggishly sealed, then I flicked the bloody knife in the air. Tiny droplets of my blood were pushed by a touch of Sorcery, directed at the corpses around me. It was with this knife I'd taken their lives. It was with the same knife that I linked to them through my blood. It was through this link that I filled the bodies with the same vitality I'd stolen from them. Not actual life, no life-fire like the living had, but enough for animation. This is what made necromancy so good for making armies; the life of any living being was more - a lot more - than the power required for mere animation. A necromancer could raise everything they killed as wights and still have a net gain in power.
Laughing out loud, I pushed more and more vitality through the link, ignoring the searing ache through my every nerve as more and more of the bodies around me rose and heeded my unspoken command; slay my enemies, see them driven before you, hear their screams of terror as they died. The corpses moved, not as shambling, clumsy things in some Hollywood movie, but with the speed and agility they once had in life. They started climbing across the gap between ships, several of them drawing weapons as they did.
Then an invisible string snapped, a glass ceiling broke, and agony flooded through my mind. Invisible knives stabbed into my thoughts, overwhelming force pulled at my brain, trying to tear it in two dozen directions at once. As I toppled onto the longship's deck as if that monster from earlier was repeatedly kicking me in the head, I realized my error. I could raise the dead as wights now, yes. I could empower this spell with all the vitality from my kills, adding to my Necromancy via Sorcery. But more power did not mean more control, and I'd never controlled more than four other beings at once. And I'd just raised and linked to me two dozen.
I struggled to keep the now fighting wights under control. I struggled to pull back the vitality that I had returned to them. But the more I struggled, the closer my thoughts felt to being ripped apart, torn to smaller bits that would then inhabit a wight each. Maybe it would only last until the wights were slain. Maybe the pieces would die with their new bodies instead. Either possibility would still leave me with a shattered mind, so with a last bit of effort I severed my link to the newly made wights.
Mental hooks turned to burning fire inside my head and I passed out...
50 miles north of Lys, 13th day of the 3rd moon of the year 293
His mother had always been kind to him. Kinder than any Lysene nobility who valued the purity of their blood above all would ever treat a baseborn son, or so most would think. Kindness was strength, she always told him, for when cruelty was not a choice one had to think beyond the obviousness and expedience of force and find more intelligent means. It was also both shield and sword, for when the cruel thought you weak their preconceptions blinded them to your true skills and became a chip in their armor. It was that kindness that had given him the means to get his naval career started, the connections forged through it that had brought him the attention of sponsors. Thus he had endeavored to be kind in turn and had indeed found success through it.
But sometimes, Khorane thought as he parried the Squid's axe with his cutlass before stabbing him through the neck, the monsters of the world did not allow him to act as kind as he'd like. Did his mother ever have similar problems? As he sidestepped the thrust of a spear with the agility of his long misspent youth, then sliced through its wielder's chain shirt with the strength of a much larger man, he very much doubted it. Kindness was a better weapon in a woman's hands, his old Captain used to say, because it was accompanied by beauty and subtlety beyond the ken of man... though recent events might put the lie to that last one.
The axe of his next opponent swung across his midriff, the sudden burning pain indicating his dodging had been a hair too slow. His cutlass answered even as the pain winked away but the Ironborn raider retreated before he could gut him. Khorane might not tire or feel more than momentary agony at any injury, he might fight with agility and strength beyond his peak, but the sorcery made him neither invulnerable nor immune to error - much like both his fellow officers and the sorceress herself had found.
Their still being alive and fighting was a miracle - more than one, even. According to all his past experiences as a Captain and raider, Shayalla's Dance should have been doomed. Pursued by a faster, better-armed vessel with three times their number in trained warriors, they should be either dead or in chains. Probably the former, because the Ironborn vessel was not a raider but a warship that was, in all evidence, specifically targeting them. Not that they'd be alive much longer. Kho had been the first to die, the Summer Islander's size and strength and the toll of lives reaped by his greatclub making him a prime target for thrown axes and javelins. Locke, that big Qohorik bastard, was as good as dead. He was the third of them to be brought down by that monstrous Ironborn axeman and he'd been lying where he'd fallen ever since. Of the ten men enhanced by Lady Flann, only Khorane himself and his youngest charge still stood and both of them were wounded.
He'd known it would be so when they'd put themselves between the Ironborn scum and the rest of the crew, sorcery or no sorcery, but it had been the only way to prevent the crew from breaking. The rest had been simply too green compared to the raiders, too lacking in proper arms. They'd been smugglers, blockade runners, messengers and merchants, not warriors. And now... now the battle teetered on the edge of a knife. They had taken fewer losses than the Squids in total, but the losses they had taken were disproportionately concentrated on their combat-capable men. And Khorane Sathmantes... he felt tired. His arms felt too heavy to take more lives, not physically but in his soul.
Before he could make a decision, shout more orders that would lead to more lives lost, the battle shifted radically. Two dozen more Ironborn charged out of their crippled longship. For a moment the crewmen of Shayalla's Dance almost broke... then the newcomers fell on the other Ironborn with abandon. Unexpectedly beset by both sides, the raiders panicked but now they had nowhere to go... so they fought. Fought and died because incredibly, impossibly, the new attackers refused to die. Here one of them took a spear through the heart but ignored it. There another was stabbed multiple times but kept going. A few yards over, one was beheaded by the swing of an axe but his headless corpse fell on the terrified axeman and literally tore him limb from limb.
These... these were not men. They were monsters... nay, they were demons! If Khorane had not seen the sorceress fall overboard he'd swear she'd cast a spell far worse than any of her earlier tricks... but if not her then who? In under a minute he became witness to the brutal murder of near fifty men by half their number of unkillable terrors. Sathmantes' own men were screaming now, because who wouldn't in the face of such devilry? Some of the rowers were already throwing down their clubs and spears and crawling away.
The last of the Ironborn was reduced to a bloody smear under the axe wielded by one of those horrors... and then another charged into Khorane's own men. He did not see who started it, whether it was a terrified sailor stabbing out in reflex or a bloodthirsty monster reaching out for its next victim, but the result was the same. Three men stabbed the monster with their spears but it did not stop, its flailing arms slamming into the screaming spearment even as the men tried to pin it and failed. Then more unkillable monsters charged and the defenders' lines shattered.
Khorane Sathmantes saw one of the bigger ones raising its axe against him, a second smile at its throat grinning from ear to ear. He saw death coming with brutal violence and he gave up, his cutlass falling from his fingers. What was the point? Should he spend his last few moments futilely raging against the inevitable? No. He would die a gentle man. He didn't even look up at the demon that would be his end.
Then the axe paused, the demon passed him by, and Khorane Sathmantes still lived. He threw a bewildered look first at the monster that was now engaging another terrified crewmember that could barely raise a sword in his defense, then at the other monsters wading either through anyone attempting to resist... or over those dropping their weapons and fleeing or cowering flat on the deck.
"Drop your weapons!" he shouted frantically. "Drop your weapons now!"
It went against any warrior's instinct to stand against an obvious enemy unarmed. But most of his crew were not trained warriors. Most of them were just sailors, men scared to the Hells and back, men who'd do everything just to live another minute. They heard him, for he was the only one still saying anything coherent. And in their middle of abject terror, they fell back to old habits and obeyed... and the monsters let them live. In moments, the ongoing massacre came to a dead stop. The walking corpses - for what else could these demons be? - stood still as if their work had been done and there was nothing else to do. And his men... his men were still mostly alive.
Captain Sathmantes decided he'd take this small victory. Now he only had to think his way through the rest of this absolute fucking mess...
xxxx
White Harbor, 17th day of the 3rd moon of the year 293
He took the stairs two at a time, going from the servant's entrance to the rookery a little faster than the time before, as that had been faster than the time before it. His legs burned, knees and feet both, but it was a good burn; he could feel it. So he persevered despite all the huffing and puffing and the ungodly hour, climbing up the floors like a man on a mission - or perhaps a total idiot. If his broad smile leaned closer to the latter, he did not care.
A maid was coming down from the guest wing, two chamber pots held as far from her face as she could place them and still carry them around. Fortunately the girl saw him coming early enough to avoid a collision, and she came to a dead stop. She stood there gaping as he passed her, winking and putting a finger at his lips for silence. She would not talk, at least for a time, but she was hardly the first servant to give such a reaction. Not that he blamed her, what with the absurdity of the situation. Then again, that absurdity was what he liked best about it... OK, maybe second or third best. The other benefits were incredible, after all. One would say even magical.
Chortling at his own joke, he finally reached the top of the staircase and the door he knew was almost always closed but never locked. Who would have the temerity to barge into the Maester's private study, after all? Singing a merry tune he did exactly that, walking in without even knocking.
"Good morning Theomore, how goes the planning?" he asked jovially, because what was there not to be jovial about?
"It's still the hour of the Nightingale my Lord," the sour blond man corrected without even turning around. "The sun is not even up yet."
"That badly, huh?" he verbally riposted then paused to wipe the many rivulets of sweat dripping off his brow. "The new glassworks still not working properly?"
"It's working just fine. Her recipe works just as she said she would," his Maester said in that ever so slightly angry tone that meant he was seriously offended by something. "I just cannot find why it works."
"Oh? I thought our young guest was very thorough in her instructions?" By now neither of them needed to mention which guest they were referring to; all their late night - or early morning - discussions only ever were about that one girl. "Did she not explain it to you?"
"Yes, but her explanation is... hard to believe." Theomore sounded frustrated once more. Then again, he almost always sounded so when talking about their mutual sorcerous acqaintance. "According to her, the different results are because beech ashes contain higher quantities of a metallic element the Citadel has yet to discover. That element collected in larger quantities by specific species of trees growing in specific soils is responsible for the increased clarity of the glass."
"That's pretty believable," he told the ornery man in a calm, placating tone as he went through his stretches. His limbs shrugged off their fatigue like water off a duck's feathers. It had only been five minutes and he wanted to take the stairs again just to see if he could. "It even explains why it had been so hard to discover the Myrish glassmakers' secrets if even the Citadel was not aware of this element."
"That's not the unbelievable part," Theomore almost spat, blonde curls framing a chubby face that was now red pepper crimson. "No, it's that this element is the fifth and twenty in a series of one and ninety when the Citadel knows of only two and twenty. Preposterous!"
"And yet everything else we've been told has been the truth as far as we can verify," he countered. This was the closest he would come to chastising Theomore's academic myopia because he could ill afford it. The truth was, had it been up to him, had he known the turn of events in advance, he would have sent Theomore away and talked to the young Lady Flann in private, no matter how it would have complicated things. Because he, Wyman Manderly, Lord of White Harbor, Warden of the White Knife, Shield of the Faith, Defender of the Dispossessed, Lord Marshal of the Mander could not trust his own Maester. "But that is neither here nor there, my friend." He'd already taken off his boots as well as his coat and shirt and was sitting on one of the many stools Theomore usually employed as a scroll repository. "I need you to examine me again."
"As you wish, my Lord," Theomore responded in the long-suffering tone that meant he believed Wyman was being foolish. What followed was an extensive and by now familiar series of examinations and tests as Theomore proceeded to pick, prod, stretch and measure him and meticulously note the results in one of his many, many scrolls. Finally, after a good half-hour and the first light of day beginning to gleam over the horizon, the blond man gave his verdict. "As before, you've lost no weight but continue to exchange it for muscle. Your legs, back and shoulders are straighter, your bones continue thickening like a man in his prime going through a grueling training regimen, your skin tone is healthier and there are fewer signs of burst blood vessels. Your reflexes are more responsive and given all your late night walks I'd say your endurance is approaching that of a warrior in his prime."
"It keeps amazing me, you know?" Wyman mused as he heard the verdict. He pulled at the chain around his neck and the large, gleaming gem at its end. "She hardly ever thought about giving this away for a few paltry gold crowns. Who even does that?"
"A few 'paltry' gold crowns for you my Lord is a decade's wages for smallfolk," Theomore but Wyman was already shaking his head. Because Theomore was wrong.
"No. Nobody thinks that good health has so low a price, especially not a learned individual with the power to both give and take it. Kings are just as vulnerable to sickness as anyone else but whoever wears this little glowing rock?" He let the artifact drop back to his chest before putting on his shirt. "They just aren't. Wars could be fought over it, whole fiefs burned down and armies routed and the winner would still call it cheap."
"A learned child remains a child, my Lord," Theomore insisted, but Wyman was not so sure. He'd already been wondering about the young witch's motives, but the longer he wore her gift the more worried he got. One did not hand over a miracle, sorcerous or otherwise, without ulterior motives. Such motives did not have to be malign, but even potential benevolence did not allay his worries. If this was a gift from an ally, and with the perspective he'd been given that Theomore lacked he no longer doubted it much, how great would House Manderly's need be in the future? How bad would the prophesied war be?
"What about her other gifts?" he asked. He'd been planning to lay low, build up in secret as much as possible, but what if the warnings he had been given did not cover the full scope of the war to come? The young sorceress struck him as clever and competent, but very clever and competent people could still make mistakes beyond their area of expertise. In fact, being cleverer than many, their mistakes were correspondingly grander. What had he not been told not as a means of manipulation but because a young person with little political experience might erroneously deem it too insignificant?
"Beyond the glassworks, we found a buyer for the first of the mirrors," Theomore said and for the first time in their conversation the Maester's tone was tinged with satisfaction. "We received three thousand gold dragons as advance payment, with another seven thousand when the mirror reaches its destination in safety."
"Lord Stark responded to our letters then?" Wyman asked. Did his Lord Paramount remember the old codes they'd used during the Rebellion? Had he sent a hidden reply of his own?
"Unfortunately, Lord Stark was unavailable. He left Winterfell for Bear Island over a moon before and he's yet to return, according to Maester Luwin," Theomore's response upended all of Wyman's expectations.
"What happened?" he immediately demanded, because if Lord Stark was missing for over a moon it had to be serious.
"Jorah Mormont happened," was Theomore's snide remark, his displeasure obvious. "The new Lord of Bear Island decided to try his hand at slavery."
"He WHAT?" Much like everyone else in Westeros that wasn't a Squid, Wyman Manderly thought slavery was an abomination and not just because the Faith of the Seven said so.
"Maester Luwin did not say how Lord Stark learned of it but he did and immediately set out to execute the traitor," the blond Maester said, then shook his head. "Only a couple of days before my own message reached him, a raven from Bear Island revealed that Jorah Mormont had already fled by the time Lord Stark got there."
"I see." It was... damn bad news, really. A confirmed slavery accusation against a major northern Lord would hurt the reputation of the North as a whole... and that was before all the other issues losing the new Lord of Bear Island so soon after the abdication of his father would cause. Honestly, what possessed that man to practice slavery of all things? Then a nasty thought entered Wyman's mind uninvited. If magic was returning... could it have been actual possession like in the old stories? No, better not to borrow more trouble than they already had. "But if Lord Stark was unavailable, who bought the first mirror?"
"Lord Stannis sent us a ship from Dragonstone," Theomore said, his disapproving expression smoothing back into satisfaction. "A gift for Queen Cersei, his man said. That new knight of his, Davos Seaworth."
"Really now? The Onion Knight?" Wyman had actually met the man before and unless he missed his guess Sir Davos was cut of the same cloth as Sahlador's man Sathmanes who he'd sent the young sorceress to Essos with. As for Lord Stannis, if his real intention was to get an extravagant gift for the Queen, Wyman would not eat another pie for a whole month. "What did you think of him?" he asked Theomore. "Could we use the man to sell our future glassworks?" Not that Wyman really cared about that now.
"He seemed very interested. Fascinated by the display pieces, too," Theomore said. "Kept insisting on meeting the artisan that created them."
"He did, didn't he?" And what was the real reason behind it, Wyman wondered.
The plot thickened and people beyond the North were already starting to react to the events...
???
I was walking through a valley of blasted black rock, scoured of all life but tufts of pale grass glowing with a dead light like bleached bone. The sun overhead was black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole firmament turned blood red and torn asunder as if the stars in the sky fell to earth as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. Something of the alien landscape echoed familiarly in the turn of my thoughts, its description grating like the wails of the dying and the gnashing of teeth.
A river coursed through the valley, its waters red like blood yet with oily patches of steaming green iridescence. Its smell was a sharp tang of rusty iron and fresh mint, distilled spirits and anise, the cloying stench of rotting meat yet with a hint of lemon. As I walked barefoot across its banks, black rock melted and burned under my right foot, bloody water boiled under my left.
My destination was uncertain before following the unnatural river, walking through the valley ever towards the north and the icy mountains half-hidden behind a thick cover of hoarfrost howling in the polar wind. The black sun hung low over the horizon, less a star and more a giant hole in the sky around which crackling crimson aurorae revolved. Maybe... maybe it wasn't a sun at all but a true black hole, accretion disc and all.
There was a city upon the mountain overlooking the valley, spindly towers of granite extending over seamless walls of emery, both gleaming eerily in the unnatural gloom. They looked deceptively small in the distance, more like a castle on a hill than anything truly grand, but spans and distances were oddly twisted in this place, belying the true magnitude of an edifice half as tall as the mountain itself, tall enough for the tower's tops to scrape against the ink-black clouds. Each of those spindly spires would dwarf the greatest buildings ever shaped by human hands.
The fortress-city looked deserted from afar, but that too was a false seeming deflecting casual attention. More concerted observation revealed the black smoke rising from the fires of industry burning in the city's hidden heart, saw the tiny black specks flickering between the towers as the enormous winged monstrosities they were in truth. And as I saw the city, the city saw me. A thousand thousand eyes looked out of the Stygian darkness dwelling in these mountains, and the black sun stood still in the shattered sky as their gazes turned outwards for the first time in strange aeons, looking towards the West.
For while the river of blood and glowing ghost-light flowed from the North, I somehow still was in the West.
xxxx
30 miles west of Lys, 19th day of the 3rd moon of the year 293
I jolted upright as the dream shattered, the overwhelming awareness of being seen vanishing with it. All around me the narrow walls and low ceiling of a ship's cabin closed in, one much smaller than either mine or the Captain's. Drenched in cold sweat and still in my leathers, leathers that had gone stiff from that dip in seawater, I'd probably be reeking if my nose had not long since grown dead to the usual stench of a galley at sea.
I climbed to my feet with difficulty, limbs and back nearly as stiff as my armor from what must have been at least a day of unconsciousness, perhaps more. Almost stumbling through the first few steps in near-darkness, I got to the cabin's door and pushed. It failed to even budge so I tried again and again, and when those attempts failed too I started kicking with my big stompy boots. At least two voices came from outside, one deep and shouty, the other shrill and weak.
Then wood creaked, something snapped, and the door opened to the late afternoon light, the sun already halfway below the horizon. Two sailors stood a fair distance from the now open door, a scarred, grey-haired man with only half his teeth still remaining, the other a beardless boy that was within a few months of my own age. The older sailor was giving me wary looks, but the boy stared once, went pale as a northern snowbank, then bolted.
A few moments looking out at the mess that was the ship's deck was enough to explain the boy's terror. A group of Ironborn pirates stood tall upon a deck still bloody and damaged, all of them covered in dried blood from head to toes, all of them sporting massive burns or gaping wounds, glowing purple eyes staring at nothing. All of them had been dead for several days if the brownish, dried-out blood was any indication, yet beyond some paleness and their obvious injuries they looked as fresh and vital as the hour they had been risen. Wights, near two dozen of them.
It had not been a dream; it had really happened. Drawing upon the kills of my first real battle, I'd taken my first steps down the path of Necromancy and called forth that horror upon this world several years ahead of schedule. Well, it had felt like a good idea at the time. No, it had felt like the only idea, the only one that was workable and wouldn't get everyone either dead or worse, enslaved. Had it been the only option, though? Had it been truly?
No, but hindsight was twenty-twenty and I'd challenge anyone to reason properly right after a near-death experience. Yet excuses and explanations and the good old tradition of rationalization was not going to fix the mess. Since the mess was half my doing and those responsible for the other half were either dead or had become part of it, I reached for the bits I could fix.
Compared to commanding an animal, reaching out to the nearest wight mentally felt like crawling through a lightless tunnel full of old, dry bones. There was no mind on the other end, no shadow of self to rise up against the intruder. Yet the former presence of a mind had shaped its repository, carved grooves in the empty mind-space, echoes of the mind that had once been. Throwing my own mind-shadow into it did not change those grooves, for the vessel was already dead and no longer very mutable. Necromancy ran along those grooves, forming a pale imitation of the dead mind that could think and act like the original to a limited extent. It could rekindle moments of the original's thoughts, forcing it to repeat actions it had once performed.
Absent this direction wights were still animate, still had a spark of life-fire granted to them by the spell that called them forth, but any driving intelligence would be fragmentary and far less than human. That was the impression I got from them now that I had time to examine them. Wights, it seemed, could act on their own but to control a wight the necromancer had to actively force order to their shattered, empty minds... and could only control so many at once. I winced. Everyone onboard was very lucky my fumbling exploration of dark magic had not gotten them horribly killed and eaten, not necessarily in that order.
But why was the ship still such a mess? No oars moving, no sails straining against the wind, no repairs underway. Even if the sailors were terrified of the wights, Captain Sathmantes had seemed neither scared nor that impressed by my sorcery. He should have whipped everyone into shape by now...
xxxx
It took quite a bit of yelling and three separate conversations in the Lyseni dialect of Valyrian to finally be led to the ad-hoc infirmary set up in the aft cargo hold. Good news, the Captain was there along with two other surviving officers, his burly second in command that loved axes way too much, and the teenage blond idiot the crew must have been saddled with by some rich patron. The bad news? All three of them were dying.
According to the ship's cook who'd set up the infirmary, the burly bearded guy had never woken up after the battle. They did what they could for him, an old oarsman who'd once been a soldier had sewn his injuries even, but he remained pale, too warm and unconscious. Both the Captain and the blond dandy had still been standing after the battle, but both collapsed only hours after it. Trying to examine any of the three led to another hour of angry and/or fearful protests, the sailors who didn't speak much beyond broken Valyrian willing to bar the door to the infirmary with their bodies even when I conjured a blade of solid flame.
I didn't want to terrify them any further, but they really left me no other option. For some reason, they were convinced I'd sacrifice their beloved Captain to demons and they were willing to give their lives to stop me. The ship's cook was less convinced I was the Devil incarnate, but he lacked the authority or influence to command the scared sailors. In the end, I mentally reached out to the wights and had the two bigger ones force their way through the human barricade while two others watched my back.
Both Captain Sathmantes and the blond kid were suffering from serious infections, blood loss, dehydration, and severe metabolic issues in the aftermath of my crude enhancement spells. With proper medical care, or what passed for it in this death world, they had even chances of a slow recovery or dying in their sleep within a day or two. The axeman on the other hand? The moment I reached into him with my magic something pushed back, quickly and violently. It felt nothing so much as being slapped, followed by the feeling of not being welcome at all.
I didn't try to force the issue, which was probably my first act of common sense in a good long while. Whatever patron had a claim on the guy, let them deal with his injuries if they would. Instead, I concentrated my efforts on saving the other two dying men while terrified but determined sailors interrupted my work every so often. If it weren't for the wights and the crew's belief that all of them were under my control, they'd probably have thrown me overboard already.
Killing the infection came faster and easier than ever before, the combination of Fire and Death and Blood eradicating any microscopic intruders. Toxins were only slightly harder, but fixing the damage from the infection on top of blood loss and the side effects of my prior spells dragged on. Pushing their bodies any further would just make them crash and without a powerful source of vitality to replenish what they were missing they'd remain catatonic. I had the idea to draw upon the life-fires of the wights, consume their animating force to revive my patients much like Berric Dondarrion had done with his own life-fire and the long-dead Catelyn Stark.
Then my common sense took that idea in the back of my mind and nuked it until it croaked, and I settled with the same sacrifices, the same source of power as my very first spells as a kid; my own blood. It was a slog, it was exhausting, and fixing magical damage was not something I'd done before, but it worked. Hour after hour, cut after bloody cut, the more expensive and basic method resulted into stable improvement.
Halfway through the night Featherball dropped in, carrying a pack of salted beef stolen from the ship's stores on one leg, a freshly caught fish in the other. Suddenly feeling ravenous, I bit into the dried meat with abandon, forcing myself to chew every bite at least a few times before swallowing. Feahterball just hooted derisively at my choice of fare, then tore into the raw fish with gusto. One of these days I'd explain why humans didn't usually eat anything raw if I weren't sure I'd get snide remarks about human frailty and/or lack of taste in response.
The sky had just begun to lighten into predawn gloom when one of my patients began to stir, struggling for a good ten minutes before finally opening his eyes.
"Hey kid," I told the blond guy who had to be at least a few years older than I was. "Welcome back to the land of the living." The blond looked at me. Then he looked at Featherball. Featherball hooted loudly and flexed her multi-inch claws. The blond fell off the sickbed in his attempt to get away.
One of these days I'd teach the annoying mutant owl that not every interaction had to be a dominance display...
Khorane Sathmantes' pale, bony face stirred, blue eyes blinking sightlessly for a few moments. He reached for his face with a shaking hand weakened by his ordeal, thin fingers first wiping salty crust off his eyes then pausing to pat a growing black beard in surprise.
"What... happened..." he croaked, coughed, then continued with more strength in his voice. "How long was I out?"
"I was told you collapsed nearly five days ago," I told him, gathering the spilled blood of the sacrifice in an orb before its rapid decay could touch anything else. "You were lingering at the edge of death since the day before yesterday." Or so the sailors had believed. He'd been in a bad shape but nothing modern medicine couldn't have dealt with. "Fortunately, a small transference of vitality took care of the worst issues."
"Transfe- you mean sacrifice?!" He sprung to his feet... and would have toppled head-first if not for my steadying hand.
"The price was mine alone," I preempted his tantrum. Not that I could have asked the surviving crew; they'd have jumped overboard if I'd tried. "So please don't ruin my job by slipping and breaking your neck."
"I... thank you, lady Flann." The idiot tried to bow and nearly fell again. "But... how? Why? I was fine after the battle."
"No you weren't," I corrected him with a derisive snort. "The candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long. I warned you my spells would have a cost. Add the blood loss and infection from your injuries... why didn't you dress your wounds and rest immediately?"
"The men were too scared and there was work to be done." He took a few tentative steps across the makeshift infirmary and when he didn't immediately faceplant he assumed he was well enough. "What were those things? Walking... corpses? I thought..."
"You thought they were just stories to frighten children." I chuckled harshly as I cleaned more blood from the bed and the rest of the room. "Welcome to the reality of magic's rise, Captain. If you're very, very lucky you might avoid facing the undead in the field of battle in the future. Most of us won't have such a privilege."
"I... no... we have other problems right now. Could you get rid of them so the men can work?" He tilted his head as if trying to listen to something distant and his face hardened. "We're still in the open sea, it seems." Eyes narrowing, he took a decisive step towards the exit.
"Already dealt with. Threw most of them overboard except for a couple of guards." I sighed and helped the stubborn man up the stairs to the deck. "The crew wanted to save you from the evil sorceress using black magic on you, see."
We found said pair of wights at the top of the stairs. The two of them were the largest and most intact among the Ironborn I'd raised, though they had nothing on that beast of a Squid that had almost killed me. Sadly, the non-walking corpses had been thrown overboard long before I'd woken up. Still, two decent warriors turned wights could handle five times their number of typical foes, and having more would have taken too much of my attention.
The surviving crew had not been idle after the source of their fear had been removed. The deck had been scoured clean, a dozen minor repairs were underway, and the ship's cook was hard at work preparing a hearty stew. Those activities did not mollify the increasingly angry Captain however. In fact, the more he saw the stormier his scowl became until he finally burst into shouts.
"Why aren't we underway? Where is everyone?" he demanded sharply, making most of the crew wince. "We should have been in Lys days ago!" He pointed at one of the more grizzled sailors, a guy in his fifties that was still limping from a recent injury. "Tycho! Explain now!"
"There was... mutiny, Captain. Treason talk," the older man muttered tentatively, obviously ashamed. "It was the Squid's ship, see? When the men saw it was empty and seaworthy... most of the new hires wanted nothing to do with anything touched by sorcery..." he looked down. "Or anyone. Some of the old hands, too. We... there was no fight. Everyone who wanted to leave jumped ship."
"Of course they did," Sathmantes grumbled. "What did they take with them?"
"Just food, water, and a weapon each." And the Ironborn ship, though neither man pointed it that out. "They knew it'd be a fight if they tried to carry off anything more."
"We'll let the Prince deal with them," the Captain muttered, mostly to himself. "Any landmarks? How far have we drifted?"
"If you're looking for Lys, it's thirty miles due East," I interrupted before the old man and several other sailors could offer their best estimates. When they all stared at me I shrugged. "I have literal eyes in the sky, finding an island isn't hard."
Especially when Featherball was already raiding the place...
xxxx
At a hundred and twenty miles long and forty at its widest point, Lys was only slightly smaller than Crete back on Earth. It was an island of rocky hills, fertile valleys, sandy beaches and green-blue waters. Palm and fruit trees of many kinds covered most of the island, all of them heavy with produce. The island's position near the equator had combined with the abnormal seasons of this world and the high humidity of the area at a near-perfect balance for both the most pleasant climate and high agricultural yields. Waters rich in sea life supplemented the locals' food production with both necessary protein and delicacies through a fleet of fishing boats. Last but definitely not least, the island's natural beauty and lack of dangerous fauna combined with all those elements to make the perfect resort.
The Valyrian Dragonlords had not missed the island's potential. Unlike Tyrosh and Dragonstone, where they had just built fortresses, or the Basilisk Islands where they'd built their great biomancy labs and flesh-pits, only temples, palaces, hostels and entertainment buildings had been build upon the island. Though there was a wall around the city and several smaller settlements, the usual gigantic fortifications of fused stone, massive bridges and broad streets of the same were absent. Marble of various colors, polished granite and mortar formed arches, domes, towers and other artistic edifices in a style that resembled both Rome at its height and Classical Greece. Countless gardens cover more of the city's area than its streets do, and elaborate fountains and shrines take up much of said streets as well as the waterfront.
But the true difference between Lys and Westeros lies neither in its idyllic climate nor in its beautiful architecture but in the island's people. More than anywhere else in the known world, the blood of Old Valyria still ran strong in the Lyseni. Even the smallfolk in Lys had the pale skin, silver-gold hair, and purple, lilac, and pale blue eyes of the dragonlords of old. Many of the nobility in Lys had produced infamous beauties, and the Lysene nobility values the purity of their blood above all. Targaryen kings and princes were known to have looked at Lys for wives and paramours, for their blood as well as their beauty.
It was one thing to know this academically, another to disembark Shayalla's Dance and find myself in a crowd where a good half had hair of silver or pale gold, where people did not stare at my arrival for even in the immediate area there were girls of similarly good looks that wore far too little. Every other corner had a pleasure house or a shrine to the Goddess of Beauty, men and women with curled and perfumed hair giving the place a pleasant smell with their presence alone, a smell from which the sewage and rot of most Westerosi cities and the majority of seafaring ships produced was entirely absent.
It was a place one would gladly get lost in and forget how or why to find themselves again, but no less dangerous for its appearance. Small groups of unobtrusive guards patrolled the streets, subtly and elegantly armored in chain mail fine enough to be hidden and armed with long daggers and fine swords. Sellswords and sell-sails filled the piers of the city's harbor, proudly strutting next to pirate ships with their hulls painted in blue stripes. Two people in three bore tasteful tattos or wore elaborate chokers except if one knew even basic Valyrian they'd realize they were brands and collars of slaves. Beautiful, healthy, happy - eager even, but still slaves. Having perfected both the breeding and training of their products, the Lyseni needed neither whips, nor chains, nor the brutal mutilation practiced in Astapor to control even greater numbers of bound servants, for those servants were willing.
Sighing, I walked away from the harbor, the two wights in my wake carrying a heavy iron-bound chest each. We had not come here to sightsee, nor confirm that even the paradise of Martin's death world was horrible by modern standards. For my help in repelling the Squids and healing him and his people, Captain Sathmantes had given me a full quarter of the loot from the Ironborn longship, a truly enormous share compared to anyone else. The share had been given in coin, gems and other highly portable treasures that would make for a good start for my plans. Sell-swords, arms and armor, special materials, favors and bribes; all promised to be very costly yet necessary for what I had in mind.
Before that though, I asked around for directions and soon found myself and two wights standing before an open building with hints of steam and tantalizing scents wafting out of its front door. I walked in decisively, handed ten golden dragons to the young, scantily-clad blonde playing greeter, then retreated to the provided room and started discarding pieces of armor. The now completely dry leather was even stiffer and would probably need an armorer's attention if it could be fixed at all, but that was future-Flann's problem.
Present-Flann had traveled hundreds of miles on foot, another couple thousand on a stinky galley, had fought multiple times, been shot at, punched, kicked, stabbed, thrown overboard and almost drowned. She thus stank, and after half a decade of living in a swamp she had perspective on just how bad the stench, grime and ickiness could get thus would avail herself of this opportunity posthaste and screw all the problems a delay would create.
Armor and undergarments discarded, I stood naked in the stall and gently pulled the elaborate, gold-plated chain. That action was rewarded with pure bliss as hot water dropped on my head in a small shower, carrying away months of stench and ugliness. The little windmill attached to the cistern on top of the building turned an Archimedes Screw, bringing in water from a nearby stream. Said water was heated by both the intense local sunlight and burning firewood, providing the miracle of hot showers at an extravagant expense - at least comparatively - a good three centuries earlier in the technological progression than showers had been invented back on Earth.
This. This had been exactly why I'd picked Lys as my destination after my first talk with educated Northmen. The only other reachable destination with hot-water plumbing had been Winterfell. I'd very nearly gone there, future plans be damned, and only reconsidered Lys after my encounter with Brynden Rivers. Quick shower done, I filled the bronze tub with more warm water, heated it up further with Pyromancy, then raided the bathing house's collection of soaps, scented oils, bath salts and other needful things. Finding it as extensive as any assorted Egyptian cosmetics from antiquity, I knew I'd made the right choice. Winterfell wouldn't have had even a tenth of these things - they didn't even know soapberries existed. Content with my choices, I soaked into the steamy, bubbly slice of heaven.
Somewhere in the palm tree forest a few miles to the north, Featherball was tearing apart a brightly colored parrot for fun...