Chapter 43 — The Whispers of Harrenhal
The morning mists curled low over Harrenhal, ghostly tendrils rising from the sodden earth. The rain had ceased, yet the air remained heavy, thick with damp stone and the scent of old fire. In the courtyard, Vhagar, gorged on mutton, slumbered with her wings half-spread like fallen sails. Across the yard, Caraxes had claimed the summit of the Kingspyre Tower, scattering flocks of crows and bats into the gray sky.
Below, a large hound harried a black sheep through puddles, their chase echoing off the broken walls. Two guards—Mya Hogg and Mona Darklyn—crossed the yard toward the training grounds, followed by their squire, young Tom Staunton, swords clanking at their sides.
The training yard itself stretched vast and open—larger even than the Dragonpit Square in King's Landing.
The largest in Westeros, Daemon thought, recalling the boasts of Harrenhal's men-at-arms. Perhaps they were right. Everything about this place was monstrous—its towers, its halls, its shadows.
By the kitchen wall, Alys Rivers worked quietly, her sleeves rolled to her elbows, crushing herbs in a mortar. A shell necklace gleamed at her throat.
Daemon's curiosity stirred. "You're no servant. Are you a healer? Does Harrenhal not keep a maester?"
She didn't glance up. "Of course we do. Maester Mathew lives in the western tower."
She gestured lazily in its direction. "But Lord Lyonel was once a student at the Citadel. Forged a few links of his own. He never trusted the Maesters after one tried to take his son's foot to cure a clubbed leg. He's preferred his own counsel since."
Daemon smirked. "A wise distrust."
Across Westeros, the Maesters were healers, tutors, scribes—keepers of letters and learning. But out in the villages, far from their chains and ravens, it was hedge witches and monks who mended the sick and birthed the living.
Alys Rivers was one such healer. A wet nurse besides—nurse to Lyonel's children, and many others besides.
Daemon caught the faint scent of milk upon her.
"How old is your child?" he asked.
Alys's hands paused over her herbs. "He was stillborn," she said, voice quiet as the mist. "Long ago."
She told the tale with strange detachment—how she had once gone fishing upon the God's Eye, how a sudden storm had overturned her boat. When she woke, she lay upon the Isle of Faces, surrounded by crows, belly full and aching. There she birthed a monstrous babe—horned, amber-eyed, with ears long as a hare's. It never drew breath, yet her milk had never ceased to flow.
Daemon regarded her with faint amusement.
"Folk say the Isle of Faces is home to a thousand weirwoods, each carved with a watching face. Did one of the Children of the Forest plant their seed in you?"
Alys's smile was thin. "Perhaps. Or perhaps it was Harren the Black, or one of his ghosts. Harrenhal has many."
"Or perhaps," Daemon said with a glint in his violet eyes, "it was Lord Lyonel himself."
Her expression darkened. "They whisper I'm the bastard daughter of Lyonel's father. It may be true, but I care not. The Strongs are not Targaryens—they keep their lusts outside their blood."
Daemon chuckled, running a hand along Dark Sister's hilt.
"You speak boldly, witch."
She met his gaze, unflinching. "Mind your tongue, Prince. The crows and trees have ears. Harrenhal remembers."
"You pray to the Old Gods, then?"
"I believe in what answers," she said simply. "Names are wind. The gods remain."
Daemon lifted a brow. "There are no weirwoods here."
"There were," Alys murmured. She gestured at the looming towers. "When Harren the Black raised this keep, he felled every weirwood in the land to build it. The beams, the rafters, even the gates—all carved from their bones. What man forgets, the trees remember."
The wind shifted; Caraxes descended with a scream, his wings stirring the puddles to ripples. His furnace breath steamed in the chill air. The dragon's narrow head swung toward Alys, eyes glowing like molten bronze.
A lesser woman might have fled. Alys only lifted a pale hand and brushed his jaw, as if soothing a restless hound.
Daemon's tone was almost teasing. "You show no fear. Caraxes could roast you in a blink."
"Not today," she said softly. "This is not the day of my death. But you, Prince—beware. Dragons who fly too low over the God's Eye have been known to vanish beneath its waters."
Vhagar's shadow passed overhead then, vast and slow, her great wings stirring the reeds along the lakeshore.
Caraxes crooned in answer. Once, these two dragons had mirrored the brotherhood of Prince Aemon and Prince Baelon. Now, they marked a father's ghost and his son's pride.
Alys's gaze followed them. "Vhagar was your father's mount," she said. "Now she twines with yours. Yet dragons turn as men do—love to hatred, brother to foe. Even Visenya once threatened her own kin from Vhagar's back. I see the same doom in these skies—fire, blood, and ruin."
Daemon's eyes hardened. "Then you see too much."
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That night, the Hall of a Hundred Hearths groaned with wind and dripping rain. The roof leaked despite the fires, water pattering onto platters of roast swan and glazed pork. The feast was rich—plum salad, buttered suckling pig with cinnamon, stewed venison, and pike from the lake—but Harrenhal's damp seemed to leech the warmth from every dish.
Lord Lyonel Strong offered an awkward smile.
"My apologies, my prince. The hall was built for kings, not the rain."
Prince Baelon waved him off. "The hall will do."
Daemon said nothing, though droplets struck his sleeve. "Why not mend the roof? Surely the richest lord in the Riverlands can afford tar and timber."
Lyonel sighed. "Harrenhal was cursed in its making, my prince. Dragonfire melted its stones; gold cannot mend what gods have damned."
Daemon smirked. "Yet folk say House Strong grows fat on its lands."
"Once," Lyonel replied. "House Qoherys, House Harroway—they ruled vast tracts from the God's Eye to the Trident. But after Maegor's wrath, their blood ran thin, their lands divided among lesser lords. We inherited ashes, not glory."
His words echoed softly in the hollowed hall.
Daemon's thoughts drifted. Why had Grandfather Jaehaerys granted such a keep to the Strongs and not to his own blood? Harrenhal's towers could have held dragons in their vaults. It might have been a Targaryen fortress, a second Dragonstone. But the king had passed it to others, perhaps wary of the curse.
And cursed it was.
Every house that had held it—Hoare, Qoherys, Harroway, Towers—had ended in ruin.
Daemon felt the chill of those ghosts upon his neck.
---
Harrenhal whispered to him that night.
The stones sweated. The wind moaned through the cracks like a dying man's breath.
And from the lake beyond, faint as a dream, came the sound of wings—vast, unseen, circling the dark waters of the God's Eye.
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