The sixth month of the spring of the ninety-eighth year After the Conquest proved rainy, both in King's Landing and on Dragonstone. The ancient ancestral seat of the Targaryens, the last outpost of the Valyrian Freehold in the west, had always been a somewhat gloomy place, and the endless rains and fogs rolling in from the sea, in the view of many, did not make it fairer. Aegon the Conqueror, however, had loved his demesne, and his namesake great-great-grandson understood him.
The island possessed a beauty of its own: the black sand of the few beaches caressed by gray, sullen waters; black cliffs against a gray sky; the narrow, dark alleys of the village of Dragonstone at the castle's foot; the windswept pastures on the western slopes of the Dragonmont and the stony declivities of its eastern spurs where dragons nested—all this echoed in Aegon's heart with a strange, poignant feeling that might have been called tenderness, were its cause not so harsh a place. Precisely in such overcast days did the island seem real, seem itself—and that was beautiful.
The only thing that marred the Prince's exalted state of spirit remained his right leg. The council of Maesters had once proposed the Prince break the leg anew—naturally, under a colossal dose of milk of the poppy—to piece it together again and knit it afresh, but Aegon suggested they first test their method upon themselves. When they began to exchange embarrassed glances and mumble something unintelligible, Aegon, shy of neither his father nor his grandfather who had insisted upon that council, sent all seven healers to the Seven Hells.
The best way to flee the pain proved, strangely enough, to be walking. Almost daily the Prince would emerge from the Black Gate and descend to the village by the winding castle road. In the town, he would take the same Castle Street to the Square of the Five Dragons, circle it, and follow Sea Street past the port to the lighthouse standing at the harbor's mouth. There, leaning against the eternally damp dark stone of the tower, he would catch his breath, look back up at the castle, search the sky for silhouettes of soaring dragons, whereupon he would return home by the same path.
The townsfolk, busy with their affairs, quickly grew accustomed to the Prince's strange behavior and now did not shy away, pressing themselves against house walls, but merely politely gave way, bowing their heads respectfully. Perhaps it helped that Aegon walked practically alone, not counting Dennis eternally looming over his shoulder, or perhaps that the Prince had decided to speak with the inhabitants. Now in the port, he invariably inquired of the fishermen regarding their catch, asked the merchant keeping a shop at the intersection of Sea and Septon Streets for news from Driftmark, whither he sailed weekly, and gave a couple of groats to the poor in the square.
Aegon preferred to venture onto the Dragonmont at every convenient opportunity and, naturally, the dragons spurred him to this. Their old nesting grounds, improved by the Valyrians two centuries before the Doom, beckoned the Prince. More than anything in the world, he wished not to start a dance, but to obtain a dragon. Any: old, young, beautiful, ugly, spirited, lazy—it mattered not. The main thing was but the chance to saddle the beast and fly upon it to King's Landing.
Aegon often dreamt that he was flying. Unlike his first dreams, which befell him after the fall and which he named to himself the First and the Second, these were not so vivid and memorable. In his current dreams, he knew he flew astride a dragon—but that was all. Neither color, nor size, nor crests and horns by which one might identify the serpent beneath his saddle did he remember. Or rather, he did not know, and this vexed him to utter powerlessness. Aegon could not recognize his dragon, therefore he watched each one closely, waiting to see if the mystical bond between dragon and rider, of which his father and brothers spoke, would answer in his soul.
Their explanations were rather halting; they clearly lacked words in either the Common Tongue or Valyrian to convey the sensations of union with a dragon. Prince Baelon said it was more than if you loved someone to distraction, to total self-abnegation. Daemon, who had saddled Caraxes before his wedding last year, wrote with rapture from Runestone of a "complete union of souls," as if rider and dragon formed a single whole divided into two bodies. Aegon found it extremely amusing that Grandmother Alysanne described an ideal marriage in roughly the same words.
Grandfather and Father, however, did not approve of the Prince's searches, and their excuses were the same as four, and six, and eight years ago. A dragon will not submit to a weak rider, and first and foremost it notes physical weakness. Consequently, they said, Aegon, who even without his limp was a frail child, by his attempts to climb onto a dragon's neck would only anger it, and an angry dragon would surely, if not kill the Prince, then maim him further. The Dragonkeepers, on the whole, agreed with the Royal Family, but looked through their fingers at Aegon's frequent visits to the Dragonmont, limiting themselves to assigning him extra guards.
His father's refusals might simply have been annoying, but the overprotection hiding behind them was infuriating. At first, Aegon thought his father would calm down having set Dennis upon him, who was with him practically day and night, but this did not happen. The older Aegon grew, the more Baelon fussed over him, and the more the son was burdened by his father's attention. Absolutely everything irritated him: from foolish prohibitions to walk up high stairs to regular examinations by Maesters in an attempt to finally cure the old injury. It seemed his father had not yet reconciled himself to the fact that his son remained lame for life, and desperately clung to any hope to fix something.
In Aegon's view, this was foolish: he could not grow a new leg; to fix the damaged one was not in his power, nor in the power of Maesters, alchemists, and healers; at the Prince's suggestion to replace the leg with a crutch of wood and iron, his father looked with such unfeigned horror that Aegon had to fall silent in mid-sentence. The Maesters' potions had long ceased to bring anything but short-term relief, and after the death of old Elysar last year, Aegon did not give a groat for his assistants and successors, thereby provoking numerous arguments with his father.
The trouble was also that the Prince felt his father's accusation regarding Aegon's suffering hanging over Daemon like a thundercloud. Between themselves, the brothers had long settled everything and decided to consider what happened an accident, but Baelon continued to blame Daemon for the occurrence, and even the joint efforts of both sons could not shake him in this. The Heir to the Throne did not stoop to constant reminders and open attacks, but his expressive glances, as well as his even more expressive silence, were enough.
To live under one roof, ever since Viserys and his dear Aemma moved to separate apartments, became sheer torture. When it became clear that talk would not solve the problem, Aegon and Daemon formed a small conspiracy and fled, each in his own direction. Daemon unfurled the seven-colored banner before Grandmother and agreed to submit to her matrimonial plans. Taking Rhea Royce to wife, he departed for the Vale, to Runestone. Aegon, under the pretext of visiting the library of Dragonstone, began to visit the ancestral seat as often as possible.
Without supervision, however, the Prince did not remain. Grandmother Alysanne, though reconciled with her husband, could live for half a year on Dragonstone, where the happiest years of her life had passed. Toward sixty-two she had grown frail, and all that had formerly brought her pleasure—from music and flights on Silverwing to arranging hundreds of weddings throughout the Seven Kingdoms—ceased to gladden her. Having fallen from the stairs, she too had gone lame and jested mirthlessly that the Gods had restored justice: it was wrong, she said, that the grandson walked with a cane, but his grandmother did not. She became hard of hearing, made out the words of songs minstrels dedicated to her poorly, and only Aegon's playing was she ready to listen to for hours.
They often sat together in the shady and slightly gloomy Aegon's Garden by the castle, listening to the whistling of the wind in the pine branches. The gazebo they had chosen, like much on the island, was fashioned in the shape of a dragon: the beast, hewn from volcanic stone, spread its wings, beneath which cold benches were set.
By the end of the sixth month of the ninety-eighth year, they were to return to the capital for the festivities marking the half-century jubilee of King Jaehaerys's reign, but neither wished to return to court, knowing that scarce would they step beneath the vaults of the Red Keep than the court air would shatter that fragile harmony the Queen and her grandson found on Dragonstone. Both Aegon and Alysanne, without conspiring, waited for the last, most categorical summons, delaying departure to the last.
That day after the midday meal, they walked as was their custom through the Garden, laid out even before the Doom of Valyria but by some quirk of history bearing the Conqueror's name, and settled in the gazebo. Anticipating the possible desires of the royals, servants laid out piles of pillows and rugs there and brought Aegon's lute, fiddle, and flute.
"Play me something, Aegon," Alysanne asked, sinking onto the bench with a groan.
"What would you like?"
"You know, my dear, that it matters not to me—the main thing is that you play."
Aegon inclined his head in thought. Sometimes he was unsure whether Grandmother truly heard him as she said, or if his music differed not a whit for her from that of other minstrels. Finally, he settled his choice on the fiddle and, settling the instrument on his shoulder, began to play.
If Aegon did not dream of flights, then he dreamt of music. Of the most varied sort: both merry and spirited, from which one wanted to start a dance (which was especially ironic in his condition), and sorrowful and sad, moving one to tears. In the dream, he knew exactly which instrument he played, but upon waking, he recalled the motif with difficulty. The dreams did not stop for this, and the same melody continued to appear to him until he managed to reconcile the sound in the dream and in reality. Rolland of Felwood remained in constant admiration of his pupil's talents and soon admitted that the Prince's potential was far greater than his own.
This time the Prince performed a relatively old and proven "composed dream" of his, which pleased the Queen, at once sad and bright. When he finished, Grandmother sat silently for a time, and after, as if emerging from a trance, said:
"Beautiful. It always seemed to me that this is about love. Not too happy, however, but... faithful and constant."
"I know not," Aegon confessed. He too had thought something of the sort, but hardly would he have decided to admit to himself that he dreamt a ballad of love. "Mayhaps. But even if so, I feel there is a certain question here."
"Are we not a fine pair?" Grandmother pronounced with a light smile.
"Aye, something of the sort," the Prince nodded. "Once more?"
"If it is not difficult for you, my dear."
Of course, it was not difficult for him, and he played the melody thrice more. The music-making was interrupted by the appearance on the path leading to the Dragon Gazebo of Maester Gerardys. In his hands, Aegon noticed a case with a letter.
"A raven from King's Landing, Your Grace," the Maester announced, handing the letter to the Queen, and she, not looking, passed it to her grandson. No other letter did they await, and both knew of what it spoke.
"It is from Father," Aegon reported, unfolding the missive. "He urgently asks us to return as soon as possible. Writes that Daemon and Rhea arrived a week past, and Uncle Vaegon is expected any day. If he decided to travel by sea, then mayhaps his ship will call first at the port of Dragonstone and pick us up?"
"I do not think so, my boy," Alysanne shook her head. "When we decided to send our son to Oldtown, we sent him by sea, and the journey pleased him not."
"Seasickness?" Aegon suggested sympathetically.
"Aye, and judging by the ship captain's report, very severe. Vaegon, it must be admitted, bears grudges and surely has not forgiven the sea this humiliation. In the end, he is a Targaryen, and we are all great in pride, may the Seven forgive us for it. So he would choose the road by land, I am certain."
"Then we are on our own."
"If the wind be fair, we may sail even tomorrow, Your Grace," Gerardys put in.
"If all is ready, then let us not delay," the Queen nodded, rising. "I wish to bid farewell to Silverwing."
Grandmother had been unable to climb into a saddle for several years, but she visited Silverwing, who had moved to the Dragonmont, always and at every opportunity. Aegon wanted very much to invite himself along to watch the she-dragon up close, but he felt it would be somewhat inappropriate. The conversation of human and serpent would be too intimate, and he had no right to understand and share it, nor the right to watch. Instead, he kissed Grandmother on her dry, wrinkled cheek, took up the fiddle again, and began to recall his last musical dream.
The next day they were lucky twice over: the wind truly proved fair and strong enough that they left Driftmark on the horizon by midday. Aegon, standing at the very rail, tried to spot Meleys, styled the Red Queen, in the sky above the island, though with his mind he understood that Cousin Rhaenys had surely already flown to the capital. Grandmother, who managed despite the rolling to approach him unnoticed, guessed his thoughts without much labor.
"Do not fret, my boy," she said quietly, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Sooner or later they will yield."
"Unlikely," Aegon grimaced.
"Then you will take what belongs to you by right of birth. Jaehaerys found enough folly in his old head to deny Rhaenys the right to the throne, but he cannot deny your right to a dragon. It flows in our blood."
Grandmother spoke so confidently and hotly that Aegon almost believed it himself. Almost, because Father would under no circumstances let him near a dragon. But for the sake of Grandmother's peace, he simply nodded and allowed himself to be led away from the rail.
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