After finishing his morning exercises, Lo Quen rose feeling refreshed and made his way to the great hall of Storm's End.
At this hour, gray-white light seeped through the arched windows, washing over the stone walls and tinting the hanging tapestries with a hazy blue.
Just then, a soldier's voice sounded from outside the hall.
Maester Qyburn was requesting his presence in the laboratory to discuss an important matter.
Lo Quen passed through the inner keep and headed toward the ground-floor storeroom of a secluded tower.
That space had now been converted into a temporary laboratory.
Two Unsullied guards pushed open the heavy oak doors. Inside, the room was surprisingly spacious.
At its center stood the black stone brought back from Oldtown.
It was darker than night itself, as though it devoured all light. Its surface was unnaturally smooth, and the moment one touched it, a bone-deep chill seeped in.
On a nearby table lay two horns of different sizes.
In the vast laboratory, only Qyburn was present.
His back was hunched as he leaned so close to the black stone that he seemed almost pressed against it, his withered fingers stroking its icy surface.
Hearing footsteps, he slowly turned and smiled respectfully.
"Good day, Your Grace."
Lo Quen nodded, his gaze sweeping across the empty room. "Maester Qyburn, where is Archmaester Marwyn? I thought the two of you were inseparable."
Qyburn let out a soft chuckle. "Archmaester Marwyn is a scholar who sleeps by day and wakes by night. The fire of his intellect tends to burn brightest after sunset. During the day, he is usually fast asleep among his ancient manuscripts."
He paused, his eyes glinting with barely contained excitement. "Your Grace, I asked you here because our work has made a breakthrough. One that concerns the weapon you have long been seeking to use against the Others."
Lo Quen raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Let's hear it."
Qyburn said nothing. He merely made a small inviting gesture and led Lo Quen toward a concealed iron door deeper within the storeroom.
Beyond the iron door, a hidden chamber opened up.
Pale shafts of light fell through several narrow stone windows.
Within those beams stood more than a dozen towering figures, silent and unmoving.
They were bare-chested. Their bronze-toned skin had taken on a deathly gray pallor. Once-powerful muscles were frozen stiff, like carved stone, every scar locked in the instant of death.
Their eyes were twin points of congealed crimson, empty of all emotion, holding only a hollow, unblinking stare.
As Lo Quen and Qyburn stepped inside, more than a dozen pairs of blood-red eyes turned toward them in unison. The movement of their heads was slow and stiff, unsettlingly inhuman.
Lo Quen frowned, his voice low. "These men…"
Qyburn walked up to one of the undead warriors as though admiring a work of art. His withered hand rested on its chest, and his smile brimmed with obsessive delight.
"Heh heh. Your Grace, they are creations of death, yet they go beyond death itself. With a few modest improvements, I have successfully produced these undead warriors. They have lost most of their memories and all unnecessary emotions, but they retain their instinct to fight. They feel no pain, never tire, and obey absolutely. They are perfect weapons of war, enough to make even those northern monsters feel fear."
Lo Quen stepped closer to examine them.
The war paint on the face of a Dothraki warrior was still vivid, yet no blood flowed beneath the skin, and no white mist of breath escaped his nostrils.
He simply stood there, motionless, with only those crimson eyes to show that some force still animated the shell.
Inside Lo Quen's chest, shock surged like a rising storm.
"How was this done?"
He pressed the question at once.
"Your Grace, the key lies in the soul."
Qyburn's eyes gleamed in the dim light. "As I explained to you years ago on Bloodstone Isle, after death, the soul begins to erode and disperse. This does not happen all at once. It is a prolonged process. By intervening during that period with certain ancient necromantic techniques, I can allow the deceased to lose part of their memories while retaining some of their instincts. Of course, this requires extremely precise control and a deep understanding of the essence of life itself."
Though his tone was casual, Lo Quen could easily imagine the countless forbidden experiments hidden behind those words.
A sharp light flashed in Lo Quen's eyes. "Maester Qyburn, you've done very well."
His thoughts turned to the mountains of corpses left behind in Oldtown.
If all of them could be transformed into undead warriors, then those bodies would become an inexhaustible source of troops.
He issued his order without hesitation. "Maester, Oldtown holds a vast number of corpses slain by the Ironborn. They are exactly the materials we need. I want you to take your assistants and apprentices there immediately. Devote all your efforts to producing these undead warriors and send them to the front lines without interruption."
Qyburn bowed deeply, the excitement in his eyes nearly spilling over. "Heh heh. As you command, Your Grace. This will be an undertaking unlike any before."
Lo Quen nodded in satisfaction. After casting one last glance at the silent warriors of death, he turned and left the hidden chamber.
...
Several days later, after the final convoy of supplies was moved into Storm's End's vast warehouses,
Lo Quen's army finally set out, marching north.
Within the column, the wagons carrying the black stone were heavily guarded. Archmaester Marwyn sat in a nearby carriage, buried in an ancient tome so thick it looked absurd, utterly deaf to the clamor of the marching host.
After a grueling half-month on the road, they reached Harrenhal in the Riverlands beneath a sky of fine drizzle.
Harrenhal, the largest castle in Westeros, loomed like a stone giant crouched upon the earth.
Its walls were dizzyingly high, its towers twisted and misshapen. It was said that the soul of Blackheart Harren still wandered its halls.
Rain washed over the immense black stone walls, dripping from beast-shaped gargoyles and splashing into the mud below.
Within the vast, oppressive Hall of a Hundred Hearths, Lo Quen met Queen Jaelena and Luo Wen.
Torches blazed brightly around them.
At their feet knelt two bound prisoners.
One was young, dark copper hair clinging messily to his face. Though disheveled, his head was held high, defiance unbroken in his eyes. It was Addam Marbrand, captured by Luo Wen and Jaelena.
The other was extraordinarily burly, his face covered in horrific burn scars, old and new layered together, leaving half his face looking like melted wax. His remaining eye was filled with a bitter mix of weariness and fury.
Lo Quen's gaze passed over the captives and settled on Luo Wen. "Where is Damion Lannister?"
He had expected to hear news of another Lannister taken alive.
Luo Wen's reply surprised him. "Your Grace, we were unable to capture him. The remnants of the Westerlands forces have been roaming the Riverlands. According to survivors, Damion Lannister and Steffon Swyft were attacked and captured while drinking at a river by a group of roaming Sellswords calling themselves the Brave Companions. They were later killed. When we found Ser Adam, he had fewer than ten men left. The rest were either killed earlier in clashes with the forces Jon Connington left behind or scattered in flight."
"The Brave Companions?"
Lo Quen frowned. So it was that infamous Company made up of criminals and scum, the Bloody Mummers.
"You dealt with them?"
"Yes, Your Grace. Every one of those villains has been wiped out."
Luo Wen answered respectfully.
Lo Quen nodded, then turned his attention to the burly, scarred man, a trace of amusement touching his expression. "If I'm not mistaken, you must be Sandor Clegane. I never expected to see you here."
Sandor Clegane's hoarse voice carried its usual edge of mockery. "Nor did I expect to meet the Eastern Conqueror, famous across the Seven Kingdoms, in a place like this, Your Grace. You're well on your way to becoming a second Aegon, aren't you?"
Inside, he cursed his rotten luck.
After fleeing King's Landing with Tyrion and the others during the riot, Sandor had slipped away from the group to avoid being dragged into the mess surrounding Joffrey's death. He never went to Duskendale, choosing instead to head for the Riverlands.
And in the end, he'd still been dragged out of that mire.
Catching the barb in his words, Lo Quen laughed instead. "What is it, Hound? Unhappy with an outsider like me? Or is that little king you once served so wise and admirable that you still can't forget him?"
Sandor's face twisted as if he'd swallowed something foul.
Joffrey's face flashed through his mind, along with the rumors of how the mob had torn the boy apart. His stomach churned.
That little bastard's face was the source of his nightmares.
"Your Grace…"
He looked at Lo Quen and growled, "You want me to swing a sword for you. Otherwise, you'd have taken my head the moment you saw my face."