SHIREEN: The Dance of Dragons: A True Telling by Grand Maester Munkun.
Being a history of the war of Targaryen succession
between the Princess Rhaenyra and Aegon, Second of His Name
that nearly destroyed the realm.
VISERYS: The Dance of the Dragons.
A stupid name for a Targaryen civil war
when my ancestors danced away my birthright.
Before the war, House Targaryen counted 18 dragons.
By the end, we had two, and nearly as few Targaryens.
We would never be as powerful or as feared again.
The dance began, as many dances do, with an old man and a young girl.
The queen had failed to produce a son for her king
so he anointed his daughter, the Princess Rhaenyra, as his heir.
But years later, the king remarried,
and his new wife, Queen Alicent of House Hightower, gave him a son.
Feeble and foolish, the old king refused to change the succession.
He didn't even see how his court had split into two rival camps of blacks and greens,
after the dresses that the princess and the queen had worn to some tourney.
One night, a servant found the old king had died in his sleep
and ran to inform Queen Alicent.
Protocol dictated that the bells would be rung and a raven sent to Dragonstone
to summon the heir, Princess Rhaenyra, for her coronation.
But Alicent had other plans.
Once she saw her dead husband's body, she sealed the room
and had the servant thrown into the black cells to ensure his silence.
At the hour of the owl, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Sir Criston Cole,
summoned the Small Council to inform them of the king's death.
Ser Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King and father to Queen Alicent,
demanded that the succession be settled immediately.
The decrepit old men of the Small Council were confused.
The succession was settled in their minds.
The old king had forced the lords of Westeros
to swear fealty to Princess Rhaenyra as his heir.
But Ser Criston Cole rightly pointed out that a son comes before a daughter.
The council argued until dawn,
when the Master of Coin finally stood up
and declared he would have no part of treason.
Ser Criston Cole wisely opened his throat with a dagger, ending the debate.
None were more surprised to hear of Prince Aegon's succession
than Prince Aegon himself.
At first, the fool rejected the crown,
but his mother pointed out that his sister, Rhaenyra,
would return such loyalty by taking his head.
As the old king's true-born son, he'd always be a threat.
Aegon relented.
He was crowned in the Dragonpit, and his wife and sister, Helaena, became queen.
His brother, Aemond, flew off to win over the few great lords
whose support Aegon didn't already have.
The banner of the gold dragon flew over King's Landing and the Red Keep
as Aegon, Second of His Name, ascended the Iron Throne.
He would not sit it long.
When ravens carried the news of Aegon's coronation to Dragonstone,
Princess Rhaenyra summoned her own black council.
With her was her uncle and husband, Daemon Targaryen,
considered by many to be the most dangerous man in Westeros.
Few lords supported her.
But the greatest of these was Corlys Velaryon, who controlled the largest fleet in the realm,
and his Targaryen wife, Rhaenys, the old king's sister.
Then there were her five sons, although none grown to manhood.
A pitiful assembly, really.
Combined, they couldn't match the power of House Hightower alone.
But Rhaenyra had dragons.
She, Daemon, and Rhaenys rode huge and formidable beasts.
And three of her five sons were riders, as well.
Dragonstone also housed six more dragons without riders.
Against this, King Aegon had only four dragons of his own.
Dragons can burn a city, but only armies can take and hold it.
If she was to prevail, Rhaenyra desperately needed the support
of the few great houses not already sworn to Aegon.
Her eldest son, Jacaerys, flew to the Vale in the north.
Her middle son, Lucerys, flew to the Stormlands.
Rhaenyra hoped that the war would begin
and, if the gods were good, end with diplomacy.
As always, they weren't.
ROBERT: Little Prince Lucerys must have wet himself when he entered Storm's End
and found king Aegon's younger brother, Aemond, already with Lord Baratheon.
Aemond was fierce, and even before he lost his eye and set a sapphire in its stead.
But the princeling pleaded his mother's case.
Finally, Lord Baratheon made his decision.
"Go home, pup, and tell the bitch, your mother,
"that the lord of Storm's End is not a dog she can whistle up."
As Aemond's false eye gleamed at him,
the princeling fled the castle and mounted his young dragon, Arrax.
The rain fell in sheets
and great bolts of lightning lit the world bright as day.
Arrax was struggling to stay aloft in the gale
when a roar shook the very foundations of Storm's End.
Aemond rose through the clouds, and below him, the monstrous Vhagar.
Vhagar was five times the size of Arrax,
and the hardened survivor of a hundred battles.
Vhagar caught him above Shipbreaker Bay.
Watchers on the castle walls saw distant blasts of flame
and heard a shriek drown out the thunder.
Prince Lucerys fell, broken, to be swallowed by the waves.
With his death, the war of ravens came to an end,
and the war of fire and blood began.
CATELYN: When Rhaenyra heard of her son's death, she collapsed.
She considered ending the war right then,
until a raven arrived from her husband, Daemon.
Her son would be avenged.
Whispers slithered through the taverns and back alleys of Flea Bottom.
Two men were found.
One was a former gold cloak,
the other, a rat-catcher in the Red Keep who knew all its secrets.
History remembers them only as Blood and Cheese.
One night, Queen Helaena entered the royal apartments
with her daughter and two sons to put them to bed.
Without warning, Blood and Cheese burst in, daggers in hand.
They told her that a debt was owed.
A son for a son.
Blood and Cheese demanded she choose which son would be ripped from her forever.
Queen Helaena pleaded with the men to kill her instead, but they refused.
Weeping, Helaena named her younger son, Maelor.
Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand,
or perhaps because the older boy was King Aegon's firstborn son and heir.
"You hear that, little boy?" Cheese whispered to the younger son.
"Your mama wants you dead."
Then Blood struck off the older boy's head with a single blow.
When the guards burst in, they found Queen Helaena still screaming,
clasping her dead son's body to her, mad with grief.
The blood of their children transformed a dynastic dispute into a war of annihilation.
The grief and rage of losing a child could burn down the world.
Either Aegon or Rhaenyra could live at the end, but not both.
VISERYS: Rhaenyra's forces struck yet another blow.
The moment the Lord of Harrenhal saw Daemon Targaryen
circling the castle on his dragon, Caraxes, he struck his banners and surrendered.
The blacks now had the strongest castle in the Riverlands.
Darker news still came to Aegon.
Thanks to Rhaenyra's sons, Winterfell had declared for Rhaenyra,
as had the Vale.
Furious, Aegon dismissed his grandfather, Ser Otto, his Hand,
and appointed Ser Criston Cole, who swore to march on all the lords
who had declared for Rhaenyra, and put their castles to the torch.
Cole and the royal army first marched north and laid siege to Rook's Rest,
a black stronghold near Dragonstone.
When their lord saw their approach, he sent a raven to Rhaenyra, begging for help.
For days, he watched his fields and villages burning,
with no response from his queen.
Until one day, a shadow passed over the green army.
Rhaenyra had sent not an army, but her former mother-by-law, Rhaenys,
and her dragon, Meleys.
As her ancestor had done at the Field of Fire,
Rhaenys gleefully began to incinerate Ser Criston's army.
But Aegon had set a trap and Rhaenys had flown right into it.
As Rhaenys and Meleys blanketed Ser Criston's troops in dragon flame,
two other dragons rose into the sky.
Aemond on Vhagar and King Aegon himself on the gleaming Sunfyre.
To her credit, Rhaenys didn't flee.
Dragon fought dragons, and a second sun blossomed in the sky.
When the smoke cleared, only Aemond and Vhagar stood uninjured.
Sunfyre, the most magnificent dragon in the world,
had one of its wings almost completely torn from its body.
Trapped beneath Sunfyre was the king himself,
broken and burned so badly in places that his armor had fused onto his flesh.
His body survived, but his mind was given over to the milk of the poppy.
Meleys had been torn to shreds, and her rider, Rhaenys, was a pile of ash.
Panicked by the defeat, Rhaenyra shipped her two youngest sons
across the Narrow Sea for their protection, only for her youngest to return days later,
clinging to the neck of his wounded and dying dragon.
He and his brother had been set upon by an enemy fleet just off Dragonstone.
Defying his mother's command, Rhaenyra's eldest son and heir, Jacaerys,
mounted his dragon Vermax and flew to rescue his other brother
and punish the enemy fleet.
But the foolish boy let Vermax be hooked like a trout
and dragged into the sea,
where he soaked up even more arrows than sea water.
His brother disappeared over the horizon or beneath the waves.
No one could say for sure.
With the loss of four dragons, Rhaenyra's only advantage was fading.
Luckily for her, over the centuries,
House Targaryen had spilled more than blood on Dragonstone.
She promised gold and title to any of the Targaryen bastards
who could tame the six unclaimed dragons on the island.
These bastards were called the dragonseeds.
Though most were called supper.
Now, perhaps the dragons were eventually sated or bored.
But four of them accepted riders, and were enlisted in Rhaenyra's cause.
ROBERT: After Rook's Rest, Aemond One-Eye took command of the greens
from his crippled and poppy-addled brother.
Aemond was the blood of the dragon, and dragons don't cower behind city walls.
He marched the king's army north
to take back Harrenhal from Rhaenyra's husband, Daemon.
But when he and Criston Cole reached the castle,
they found the gates open with Daemon and all his men gone.
That night, they feasted their victory.
Daemon had fled rather than face their wrath.
But Daemon was more snake than dragon.
As Aemond marched north, he'd flown Caraxes south,
slithering past the green army over the waters of the Gods Eye.
One day, King's Landing looked up and saw two dragons circling their foul city.
Daemon and Rhaenyra had come for her throne,
for the city was defenseless.
Aemond had taken the king's army from the city,
and worse, he'd taken his dragon, Vhagar.
Seeing that resistance was hopeless, the Small Council surrendered the city,
the Queen Mother Alicent, and the broken Queen Helaena.
But not King Aegon.
Somehow, despite his wounds and delirium, he had vanished from the city.
And so, Queen Rhaenyra climbed the steps and seated herself on the Iron Throne.
Legend has it that as she left the hall later, blood trickled down her legs and hands,
proving the Iron Throne had spurned her.
Nonsense.
It's a chair made of steel blades.
Rhaenyra had wanted it all her life and had sacrificed two sons for it.
She likely gripped the damn thing too tight.
VISERYS: When Aemond realized that his arrogance had cost him the capital,
he mounted Vhagar in a black rage
and rained fire onto every village and castle he suspected of disloyalty.
Abandoned by Aemond, Ser Criston marched the royal army
back to King's Landing, intent on recapturing the city himself.
Instead, he was trapped and cut to pieces by the riverlords
who had sworn to support Rhaenyra's claim.
When a new army of green loyalists marched up from the Reach
and laid siege to the city of Tumbleton,
Rhaenyra sent two of her dragonseeds to lay waste to them.
Instead, the dragonseeds proved their bastard nature and betrayed her.
They burned the city and all the black forces garrisoned within.
Lucky for her, they didn't turn towards King's Landing
but whored and drank in the ruins with the greens,
who were victorious and somewhat confused.
OBERYN: Rhaenyra now mistrusted all the dragonseeds,
including the girl who rode with her husband, Daemon,
hunting Aemond in the Riverlands.
She ordered the girl's head be sent to her.
But, there was a complication.
As well as her dragon, the girl had taken to riding Daemon.
When Daemon received the queen's order,
he proclaimed to the queen's words and whore's work.
He sent the girl away at dawn,
watching her and her dragon vanish into the morning mists.
Then Daemon sent a challenge to his nephew, Aemond,
and flew to Harrenhal alone to wait.
Fourteen days later, a shadow, blacker than any passing cloud,
swept over Harrenhal.
Vhagar had come at last,
and on her back rode One-Eyed Prince Aemond.
He mocked Daemon for facing him alone, "You have lived too long, uncle."
And Daemon replied, "On that much, we agree."
Then the old prince climbed stiffly onto the back of his dragon, Caraxes,
but neglected to fasten the chains that secured rider to saddle.
The sun was close to setting when, as one, the two dragons leapt into the sky.
Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly until they disappeared into a bank of clouds.
Vhagar, older and slower, ascended more gradually.
Up and up Vhagar soared, searching for Caraxes.
Sudden as a thunderbolt, a shrieking Caraxes dove upon Vhagar.
Locked together, the dragons tumbled toward the lake.
Caraxes' jaws closed upon Vhagar's neck,
but Vhagar raked open Caraxes' belly and her teeth ripped off a wing.
The lake rushed up with terrible speed.
Then Daemon Targaryen, who had never fastened his riding chains,
stood in his saddle.
He leapt from his dragon to Aemond's and in his hand was Dark Sister,
the Valyrian sword of Aegon's sister-queen, Visenya.
As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, Daemon ripped off his nephew's helm
and drove the sword down into his one remaining eye
so hard, the point came out the back of the young prince's throat.
Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake
sending up a gout of water so high
that it was said to have been as tall as Harrenhal's Great Tower.
The lake boiled with dragon blood.
And then was still.
Daemon Targaryen was nine and 40 at his death.
Prince Aemond had only turned 20.
Vhagar, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons,
had counted 181 years.
Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon's conquest.
VISERYS: Back in King's Landing, Queen Rhaenyra didn't have much time
to grieve for her stupid husband.
The mad former queen, Helaena, flung herself from a balcony
to be impaled upon the iron spikes lining the moat of Maegor's Holdfast.
That night, the city rose in riot against Rhaenyra,
demanding justice for Queen Helaena and her murdered son,
among other foolish peasant fantasies.
In the midst of this chaos, a one-handed fool called the Shepherd
began to rant against dragons.
Not just the ones of the enemy, but all dragons everywhere.
As he pointed to the Dragonpit above on the hill, he shouted,
"There the demons dwell, this is their city.
"If you would make it yours, first you must destroy them."
A cry went up from ten thousand throats, "Kill them!"
There were four dragons housed within the Dragonpit that night.
By the time the first of the attackers came pouring in,
all four were roused, awake, and angry.
Nobody knows how many men and women died that night.
Who cares? They all should have.
Trapped within the pit, the dragons could not fly.
Instead, they fought with horns, claws, teeth and fire.
For every man who died, 10 more appeared, shouting that the dragons must die.
One by one, they did.
Finally, the last remaining dragon broke her chains, spread her wings,
and flew straight up at the great dome, trying to flee.
Already weakened by dragon flame, the dome cracked under the force of impact,
and then tumbled down, crushing dragon slayers and herself.
JOFFREY: High atop the Red Keep,
Queen Rhaenyra clutched her two remaining sons to her
as she watched the end of her family's might.
Too afraid of the peasants to defend her dragons.
At least her older son, Joffrey, had a man's spine.
He stole his mother's dragon, Syrax, and tried to fly it to the Dragonpit
to save his birthright.
But the stupid beast didn't understand
and twisted beneath him, fighting to be free of the little boy.
Until it was.
A queen is still a woman, with all the weakness of that sex.
Weeping for her lost son more than her dragons,
Rhaenyra abandoned the Iron Throne
and sold her crown to buy passage for her and her last son back to Dragonstone.
Rhaenyra hoped to hatch more dragons from the eggs in the castle.
But when she landed, the welcoming party slew her guards
and marched her and her son at spearpoint to the castle,
to face a dead man and a dying dragon.
"Sister!" King Aegon, Second of His Name, called out to Rhaenyra.
Rook's Rest had left Aegon bent and twisted,
his once-handsome face puffy from milk of the poppy,
with burn scars covering half his body.
Rhaenyra, ever defiant, told her dear brother that she had hoped he was dead.
"After you," Aegon answered.
Then, Sunfyre bathed her in a blast of flame
and devoured her in six bites while her son watched,
leaving the seventh and final bite, her lower leg, for the Stranger.
VISERYS: Rhaenyra was dead. And King Aegon sat the Iron Throne again.
But only for half a year.
He was poisoned by his own men
and replaced with the very boy who had watched his mother devoured.
SHIREEN: Rhaenyra's last son wed Aegon's only daughter,
the Dance of Dragons officially ended.
Ash and burned men.
All that was left of the Riverlands.
Two scared children spouting oaths they didn't understand.
All that was left of the mighty House Targaryen.
Ancient skulls and hatchlings that grew no bigger than cats.
All that was left of the dragons.
HIGH SPARROW: The Father reached his hand into the heavens
and pulled down seven stars.
And one by one, he set them on the brow of Hugor of the Hill
to make a glowing crown.
The Maid brought him forth a girl as supple as willow,
with eyes like deep pools,
and Hugor declared that he would have her for his bride.
S0, the Mother made her fertile
and the Crone foretold that she would bear the king four and 40 mighty sons.
The Warrior gave strength to their arms
whilst the Smith wrought for each a suit of iron plates.
But, sadly, the gods no longer walk the Earth among us,
and you can see what a mess we've made of their creation since.
Yet we have hope.
The gods didn't abandon us in silence but gave us their holy words to guide us,
collected in the oldest and holiest text of the Faith of the Seven,
The Seven-Pointed Star.
Divided into seven books for the seven aspects of God,
in it we learn of the Father's justice,
the Mother's mercy,
the Maiden's innocence,
the Crone's wisdom,
the Warrior's strength,
the Smith's labor,
and the Stranger's peace.
It is a long book.
Many never read it in its entirety, even if they could.
When the Andals first sailed for Westeros, filled with divine fire,
every warrior carved a seven-pointed star into his body,
for even that was easier than carving its namesake into his mind.
But one could perhaps argue that it wasn't the warriors,
but the septons and septas, armed with the holy text of The Seven-Pointed Star,
who truly conquered Westeros.
The First Men had no letters but the runes they would scratch onto rocks.
No gods but the faces they would carve into trees.
But then came our holy men and women among them,
bearing the very words of the gods under their arms.
Trees and rocks were no match for The Seven-Pointed Star,
and most of Westeros soon turned to the Faith,
and to its guardians, their new Andal overlords.
Whilst the Andals soon fractured into warring kingdoms,
the Faith remained whole and indivisible,
bound together by The Seven-Pointed Star.
When those kingdoms fell to Aegon and his dragons thousands of years later,
the Faith remained subject only to the seven above and The Seven-Pointed Star below.
Or so it was supposed to be.
Too often, our High Septons have lost their way,
clouded by worldly wealth and power.
No matter.
We still have The Seven-Pointed Star.
Men's will and virtue may fail,
but the words never do.
As men bow to their lords, and lords to their kings,
so kings and queens must bow before the Seven, who are one.
The knees of the powerful work the same as the knees of the weak,
and were given to all for the same purpose.
To bend before the gods,
or break in the bending.
HIGH SPARROW: Today, men know the Seven as statues in the Septs,
but in the old days, the gods themselves walked among men.
They crowned Hugor of the Hill the first king of the Andal people,
and promised him that his descendants would rule great kingdoms
in a foreign continent.
When the time came,
the Andals carved The Seven-Pointed Star upon their bodies,
and set sail for the strange land across the Narrow Sea...
Westeros.
Whilst Andal warriors battled the First Men for kingdoms,
Andal septons battled for souls,
and were received just as courteously.
We don't know how many bold and pious men lost their lives,
but adversity bred strength.
Our purest and most righteous believers took up the sword
to defend and preserve the Faith from its enemies.
So was born the order of the Faith Militant.
When Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros,
the High Septon locked himself in a Sept for seven days and seven nights.
Finally, the Crone lifted her golden lamp,
and showed him the path ahead.
The High Septon, himself, would anoint and crown Aegon
as Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
And the Faith Militant rallied behind Aegon
in governing his newly united land.
Yet Aegon and his sisters never wholly accepted the Faith.
The High Septon had conceded Aegon's marriages to his sisters
as a relic of his Valyrian heritage,
which would soon fade.
But when Aegon's heir wed his daughter to his son,
the Faith could brook such abomination no longer.
The High Septon led the denunciation of the Targaryens.
And all over Westeros, the Faith Militant took up their swords
against the dynasty and its supporters.
The Faith Militant set upon and punished the septon
who had performed the ceremony.
A few of the Faith Mi|itant's more... militant members,
even scaled the walls of the castle,
and would have slain the king and his family,
had a knight of the Kingsguard not intervened.
Frightened, the king fled to Dragonstone,
where he soon died of cramps.
And so ascended the king's younger brother, Maegor the Cruel.
His first act was to challenge the Faith Militant to kill him,
if they believed his rule to be ungodly.
To the order's eternal credit, they accepted.
Ser Damon Morrigen proposed a trial by seven,
Ser Damon and six of the Faith Militant
against the king and his six champions.
lt was a contest in which the kingdom itself was at stake,
and the accounts and tales are many.
But at the end of it, Maegor alone lived,
proving that the throne was rightfully his.
He mounted the black dragon, Balerion,
and burned down the Sept in King's Landing
while the Faith Militant were inside at morning prayers.
The screams of the burning and dying men were said to echo throughout the city.
Though Maegor had won the trial by seven,
he demanded the complete destruction of the Faith Militant
and the Faith, itself, if necessary.
He made war upon the order wherever he found it.
Yet the Faith Militant would not surrender,
raising armies of their own
and turning Maegor's own lords against him.
The Father's justice may not always be swift,
but it is certain.
One morning, Maegor was found dead on the Iron Throne.
No one knows how.
Maegor's cruelty died with him.
His successor saw the wisdom of a united crown and faith,
and his Hand reached an accord with the High Septon.
As long as the Iron Throne defended the Faith,
the Faith would put aside its own swords
and its condemnation of the Targaryens.
Perhaps the High Septon felt he had no course but compromise.
Outlawed and hunted for years,
the Faith Militant was but a shadow of its former self.
Without its own guardians,
the Faith would have to rely on corrupt worldly kings
and their corrupt worldly courts.
For thousands of years, the Faith Militant had stood watch over the Faith,
and then its sun set.
Now, after years of war and destruction,
of abomination and blasphemy,
none can argue that we have been walking through darkness.
Perhaps the time has come when the sun must rise again.
VARYS: Valyria was young,
and as the young do, it sought to spread its seed.
Its first daughter was Volantis,
an outpost on the mighty Rhoyne River at the frontier of the empire.
There, the dragonlords raised the famous Black Walls,
seamless, fused dragon stone, 200 feet tall,
and so thick that six four-horse chariots can race along the battlement side by side,
as they do each year to celebrate the founding of the city.
To this day, only those who can trace their ancestry back to Old Valyria
are allowed to dwell within the Black Walls.
None are even permitted to set foot inside
without an express invitation of a scion of the Old Blood,
meaning, of course, the ancient and noble blood of foot soldiers.
For the city's first 100 years, its only inhabitants were its garrison.
But where soldiers go, vice follows.
Taverns and brothels began to sprout up outside the Black Walls,
and merchant ships began to call, as well,
bearing the favored trade of the Summer Sea...
Slaves.
The east bank filled with homes, shops and society.
And so, the taverns and brothels moved to the west bank,
where foreigners, sellswords and pirates erected their own shadow city
of fornication, drunkenness and murder.
In time, the west bank became such a cesspit of crime and depravity,
that the Volantines had no choice but to send their slave soldiers across the Rhoyne
to restore order and some semblance of decency.
Like all such missions, they succeeded, they left,
then they failed.
When the Volantines grew weary of shipping their soldiers across the Rhoyne every year,
they built the famous Long Bridge of Volantis,
strong enough to support the weight of 1,000 elephants,
and many more soldiers.
The Long Bridge of Volantis stands today
as the longest bridge in all the known world.
The Volantine rulers intended the bridge
to spread the civilization of the east bank to the west.
Instead, the depravity of the west bank spread east.
Shops, temples, taverns, inns and brothels line the bridge,
most three or four storeys tall, with each floor overhanging the one beneath it.
One can buy anything on the Long Bridge,
or steal it, if one's hands are quick enough.
But if they're not...
Though, at least half the decor committed no greater crime than displeasing a master.
For in Volantis, there are five slaves for every free man,
a proportion matched only by the cities of Slaver's Bay.
The Volantine masters mark their property with facial tattoos,
permanent and scarring, which denote the vocation of the slave.
Slave soldiers wear green tiger stripes upon their faces.
Slave whores are marked by tears beneath one eye.
The slaves that collect the dung of horses and elephants are marked with flies.
The drivers of the hathays, the carts pulled by the small elephants of Volantis,
are marked with wheels, and so on.
A master may give his slave freedom,
but no man can give a new face.
ls it any wonder, then, that the slaves and freed men
have turned, in such great numbers, to the priests who preach of a cleansing fire?
The temple of the Lord of Light in Volantis is said to be the greatest in all the world,
larger even than the Great Sept of Baelor.
All who serve within this mighty temple are slaves,
bought as children and trained to become priests,
temple prostitutes or warriors.
And one could argue its adherents outside the temple are slaves, as well,
in mind, if not in body.
Magic frees nobody,
except its practitioner, to do what he will with those who can't,
just as the Black Walls free the Old Blood to see what they will
without those they don't.
But one must wonder how much longer such freedoms will endure,
when across Essos, one hears the sound of chains breaking,
of slaves rising,
of dragons roaring.
Volantis may call itself the first daughter of Valyria,
but it is not the last.
TYCHO: Most cities are built on stone.
Braavos was built on ships.
Or, more specifically, their cargo.
Slaves who rose up against their Valyrian captors
and seized the helms of the convoy.
Of all crimes, Valyria punished rebellion most severely.
The slaves faced not execution,
but the Valyrian mines or labor camps in the most remote and savage colonies
if recaptured.
And few corners of the world can long remain hidden from dragonback.
However, our histories claim that a group of slave women
prophesied the slaves would find shelter in a distant lagoon,
behind a wall of pine-clad hills and sea stones,
where the frequent fogs would help hide the refugees
from the eyes of dragon riders passing overhead.
And so it proved.
Because they had risked their lives in the name of freedom,
the mothers and fathers of the new city vowed that no man, woman or child in Braavos
should ever be a slave.
This is the first law of Braavos,
engraved in stone on the arch that spans the long canal.
For over a hundred years, Braavos hid itself from the eyes of the world,
who called it the Secret City.
Using a dye derived from a local snail,
our captains stained their sails purple to hide their stolen Valyrian ships.
Our merchants carried false charts and lied when questioned about their home port.
Eventually, one sealord, our elected ruler, decided enough time had passed,
and initiated the unmasking of Braavos to the world and to Valyria.
Of course, it helped that the Iron Bank made handsome restitution
to the dragonlords for the stolen ships,
whilst, of course, refusing to pay for the value of the slaves themselves.
The anniversary of the unmasking is celebrated every year in Braavos
with 10 days of feasting and masked revelry,
a festival like none other in the known world,
culminating at midnight on the 10th day, when the Titan roars
and tens of thousands of celebrants remove their masks as one.
Freed of the constraints of secrecy,
Braavos quickly grew into the wealthiest and most powerful of the free cities,
and, one could argue, the most beautiful.
From the sprawling Sea|ord's Palace with its menagerie of strange beasts and birds
to the imposing Palace of Justice
and the aqueduct we call the sweetwater river
that bears fresh water from the mainland,
Braavos is without rival
in either engineering or elegance.
The temples of Braavos are also famed throughout the world
and wondrous to behold.
Descended from a hundred different peoples,
the Braavosi honor a hundred different gods.
The Temple of the Moonsingers is the foremost of these,
being the faith of the slave women whose prophecies lead our ancestors here.
The Lord of Light has a great temple, as well,
for his worshippers have grown ever more numerous
in the past hundred years.
Yet, less numerous
and even some forgotten faiths still have temples deep in the heart of the city
on the Isle of the Gods.
But the beauty of Braavos is not only in her buildings.
Braavosi swordsmanship is renowned throughout the world.
Our bravos eschew the armor and longswords of the Westerosi knights,
preferring speed, agility, and slender blades.
The greatest bravos call themselves water dancers
after the custom of dueling upon the moon pool near the Sealord's Palace.
By tradition, the greatest of all the bravos is the First Sword,
who commands the personal guard of the sealord
and protects his person at all public events.
Once chosen, sealords serve for life.
lnevitably, there are always those who wish to cut that life short
to effect some change in policy.
Though not even the First Swords are the true guardians of Braavos.
That honor goes to the Titan, who protects the entrance to the harbor.
With his proud head and fiery eyes looming close to 400 feet above the sea,
the Titan is a fortress of a kind never seen before or since.
His eyes are huge beacon fires
lighting the way for returning ships into the lagoon.
Within his bronze body are halls and chambers, murder holes and arrow slits.
Enemy ships can be steered onto the rocks by the watchmen inside the Titan.
And stones and pots of burning pitch can be dropped onto the decks
of any that attempt to pass between the Titan's legs without leave.
This has seldom been necessary, however.
Not since the century of blood
has any enemy been so rash as to attempt to provoke the Titan's wrath.
Should an enemy break through into the lagoon, however,
he would face the walls of Braavos.
Again, not of stone, like other cities, but of ships.
The arsenal of Braavos can build one of our famous purple-hulled war galleys
in a single day.
All the vessels are constructed following the same design,
so that all the many parts can be prepared in advance,
and skilled ship builders work upon different sections of the vessels simultaneously
to hasten the labor.
To organize such a feat of engineering is unprecedented.
One need only to look at the raucous, confused construction
in the shipyards around the world to see the truth of this.
Let us imagine that even the arsenal, great as it is, failed us.
An enemy who could defeat both the Titan and our fleets would be strong indeed.
But Braavos does not depend only on statues and ships.
We also have iron
and gold.
TYCHO: Who are the Faceless Men?
It depends on who's asking.
To a penitent, they may be relief.
To a victim, they may be vengeance.
To a lord, they may be an incredible expense.
And to the Iron Bank, they may be just another asset.
Nobody but the Faceless Men know their origin,
though the order is rumored to predate the founding of Braavos.
We know only that they reside in, or are somehow aligned with,
the House of Black and White,
an odd and lonely building, where few who enter ever leave.
Some whisper that those weirwood doors open not on a house,
but onto the world of the dead,
from whence the Faceless Men rise when summoned.
We can dismiss such foolishness as we do the fishwives who spread it.
The House of Black and White is merely a temple
consecrated to the Many-Faced God,
and filled with statuary of his many faces,
the Old Gods of Westeros, the Lord of Light, the Black Goat,
the Lion of Night, the Weeping Lady, the Stranger.
Perhaps now you understand what is worshipped here.
And along with them, other gods, who none alive now recognize,
brought here long ago by sailors, who never came again.
Unlike the priests of other religions,
the servants here preach no sermons and perform no ceremonies.
As far as one can see, silence and solitude form the whole of their worship,
as well as collecting the occasional devotee.
If one wants to engage a Faceless Man,
one visits the House of Black and White, and pays the price.
As for what that may be, those who have paid it, rarely speak of it.
For, make no mistake,
from the moment the Faceless Men accept your offer,
the man you named is dead, though he doesn't know it.
Perhaps not that day, perhaps not that year,
but soon and inevitably.
Many would say you are as much his murderer as if you'd swung the axe yourself.
Just as many would say that's the point.
BOLTON: Brandon the Builder, founder of House Stark,
raised Winterfell with giants over 8,000 years ago.
Or so nursemaids tell all the children of the North.
The children nod, wide-eyed, unaware of the lesson forced on them,
that if even giants obeyed a Stark,
so, too, should they.
But like every other castle,
Winterfell was built in pieces, over thousands of years.
The First Men settled there
because of the hot springs that bubbled through the ground.
The water and the heat helped them survive the Northern winters,
and they built defenses to keep it for themselves.
Nobody raised the castle all at once.
Probably nobody meant to raise a castle at all.
In those days, the Starks were not the greatest house in the North,
and Winterfell was not the greatest castle.
Barrowton was the oldest, dating to the first king.
And the Starks fought the Barrow Kings for 1,000 years.
Greywater Watch was like the crannogmen themselves,
the strangest.
Only marriage subdued its Marsh Kings.
But the greatest rival to Winterfell was always the Dreadfort
and my ancestors, the Red Kings of House Bolton.
If tales can be believed,
we fought from the Long Night until the Andals came.
Because of us, Winterfell raised its first walls.
When we took and burnt the castle anyway,
Winterfell built more keeps, more walls, more guard towers.
They expanded the granaries and larders to survive our sieges.
They tended the godswood to win favor with the Old Gods against us.
As the castle grew, more farmers and villagers flocked, every winter, from across the North
to huddle under its walls,
raising the winter town.
In the spring, these villagers would find themselves marching in the Stark armies
to fight against us.
The greatness of Winterfell is as much our doing as the Starks‘.
But in the end, neither its stone walls,
nor its tall keeps and iron gates could save Winterfell.
At its height it could have lasted a year under heavy siege.
But a handful of ironborns seized it in the night,
while its lord, the King in the North was playing in the South.
My dagger ended his reign,
and now House Bolton holds the castle of our ancient enemies.
The direwolf no longer flies from the battlements above me,
nor guards the doors and cornices of Winterfell against me.
Below me, miles of long-dead Starks fade into darkness and obscurity,
until even their faces are lost.
Some Northerners whisper that they wait for the day their house will rise again.
They will wait forever.
ALLISER: Each brother of the Night's Watch swears a sacred oath
to protect the realms of men.
That doesn't mean pissing about,
waiting for the cold to finally put an end to you.
It means bleeding.
It means fighting.
lt means going beyond the Wall and hunting down those who mean harm to the realm.
S0, how do you get a thousand rapists and thieves to fight together?
To bleed together?
That's the burden of the Lord Commander.
He keeps the builders building, the rangers ranging, and the stewards stewarding.
Or else it all falls apart.
Each Lord Commander is chosen from and by his fellow brothers,
and he serves for life.
A long time ago, you may have had men from Queensgate and Long Barrow
and the other 16 castles of the Wall come to Castle Black for an election.
These days, you'd be lucky to scrape a few dozen from Eastwatch
and the Shadow Tower,
or however many they can spare, who cast votes in their stead.
All the same,
the brothers are allowed to name whomever they think worthy of the title.
Then we vote until one man receives a majority,
however long it takes.
Some elections have lasted less than an hour.
Some have lasted weeks.
One even lasted two years.
MaesterAemon has said there have been 997 Lord Commanders
since the Night's Watch was founded.
Back then, we had true soldiers,
men of honor and strength.
Now, look who mans the Wall.
Bastards, peasants who stole a sheep to bugger,
and fat, little nobles who weren't worthy of their lord father's land.
But the Lord Commander must find a place for them all,
and turn these walking piles of horse dung
into soldiers of the Night's Watch.
Though we haven't always been so lucky to have such men to lead us.
We've had cowards and fools, as well.
Our tyrants and our madmen.
Runcel Hightower tried to bequeath the Watch to his bastard.
Rodrik Flint thought to make himself king-beyond-the-Wall.
Tristan Mudd, Mad Marq Rankenfell, Robin Hill...
Each nearly destroyed us with their foolishness.
Six hundred years ago,
the commanders at Snowgate and the Nightfort
even went to war against each other.
The simpering Lord Commander asked them politely to lay aside their quarrel,
and, incredibly, they did.
Because theyjoined forces to murder him.
The Stark in Winterfell had to intervene
and take both their heads to save the Night's Watch.
Now we've got more mouths than we can feed,
a Southern king in our castle,
and cells full of wildlings.
And no Lord Commander,
since the last was betrayed by his own men.
We need a new leader.
A man respected enough to hold the Watch together in this dark hour.
A leader strong enough to make sure
that the Night's Watch survives the coming winter,
no matter the cost.
BARRISTAN: Barristan the Bold, they call me to my face.
I know what they say behind my back.
Barristan the Old.
Well, it's true. I am old.
With hair as white as all the winters I've seen.
The older a man grows, the less sleep he needs.
These days, I barely sleep at all.
When darkness falls over this strange city,
I find myself visited by the faces of the kings I have served,
the faces of those I swore to protect,
the faces of those I failed.
All I ever wanted was to live a life of honor,
defending a king worthy of service.
During the War of the Ninepenny Kings,
I sought out Maelys the Monstrous,
last of the Blackfyre pretenders who had started this whole war.
Maelys believed that his Targaryen blood gave him a claim to the Iron Throne.
I made sure his blood claimed nothing more than the dirt around his corpse.
To show his gratitude, the king elevated me to his Kingsguard.
lt was the proudest moment of my life.
But that king died.
And |wasn't With him.
Not that I could have saved him ifl had been,
but Still.
I vowed to do better with his son,
the young Prince Aerys.
For 20 years, his reign was peaceful and prosperous.
Aerys was well-loved by his subjects and respected by his lords.
But as years went on, Aerys‘ temper soured.
He became obsessed with dragons and fire.
And the swords of the Kingsguard couldn't defend him
from the enemies he saw lurking in every shadow.
My king went mad.
But there was hope.
His son and heir.
Prince Rhaegar was everything a kingdom could hope for in a ruler.
He was strong but gentle, wise and cautious,
and a good friend.
No matter the wounds Aerys dug into the realm,
we had faith that his son would sew it back together again
when he ascended the throne.
Then came Lord Whent's tourney at Harrenhal,
the largest ever in Westeros.
I unhorsed every man against me until only Prince Rhaegar remained.
We each set our feet in our saddles and lowered our lances, and charged.
And I fell.
Muddy and bruised, I then watched Rhaegar present Lyanna Stark
with a victor's crown of roses,
though she was betrothed to Robert Baratheon,
and Rhaegar himself was married to Elia Martell.
We all know what happened after.
If I'd been a bit quicker with my lance, if I'd chosen a faster horse,
perhaps I could have spared the kingdom from the destruction that came after.
Or if I'd thought to warn Brandon Stark against his rashness.
He came to King's Landing himself, demanding Rhaegar return his sister.
Poor fool.
If he'd only known the depth of Aerys‘ madness,
he wouldn't have dared provoke him.
Aerys ordered Brandon imprisoned, and I could do nothing but obey.
When Brandon's father, Lord Rickard Stark, came to King's Landing to beg for his son,
Aerys burned him alive.
But I could do nothing but watch.
I had sworn a vow to a mad king,
and was honor-bound to obey him,
even at the cost of my soul.
Ravens soon arrived with dark news for the king.
The Vale was in open revolt.
Demanding Lyanna Stark's return,
Robert Baratheon was smashing any army that dared face him.
Eddard Stark, Brandon's younger brother,
was marching the whole of the north down the Neck
and had taken Catelyn Tully, Brandon's betrothed, for his own,
thus winning the support of the Riverlands.
The king sent ravens to Casterly Rock to beg his former Hand,
Tywin Lannister, for help.
And no ravens returned.
A plan was devised.
Prince Rhaegarwould personally lead the royal forces,
now reinforced with 10,000 Dornishmen, north to face Robert.
Of the Kingsguard, Lewyn Martell and I would ride with the prince.
Before we left, the prince confided in me that when he returned from this battle,
there would be a great many changes in court.
Despite my vows to the king,
I confess I was excited.
On the march to face Robert's army, we were sure we'd win.
We had superior numbers and we had Prince Rhaegar.
His presence lifted the spirits of our men, and he looked every inch the king
he was destined to become.
But at the Trident, the gods played a cruel joke.
Robert proved the Baratheon words as his army smashed through our lines.
Lewyn Martell was killed.
I fell in combat, badly wounded,
and could do nothing but watch as Robert's warhammer
ended Rhaegar's glorious reign before it began.
And the kingdom that would never be
washed away down the Trident with his life's blood.
But Robert spared me,
insisting his personal maester tend to my wounds out of respect.
But respect for what?
A Kingsguard shouldn't survive one king, let alone two, or one who should've been.
I sworn an oath to House Targaryen, and i failed them.
All that's left of their fire is a single ember
halfway across the world,
surrounded by darkness.
If the gods were good, i would still be young, in the fullness of strength.
But whatever the cost, I will not let this ember go out.
This time, i will not fail.
ELLARIA: Before the Seven Kingdoms,
before the Iron Throne,
there was Dorne.
Twelve thousand years ago,
the First Men crossed the land bridge from Essos to here.
Of course, they were men, so they soon broke it.
Then, while their cousins to the north built kingdoms,
the Dornish squabbled overland, water and wives,
for centuries,
until Nymeria,
a warrior princess in Essos.
She led a fleet of 10,000 ships across the Narrow Sea to Dorne.
Almost all of the petty lords made it clear that she wasn't welcome.
All, but one,
Mors of House Martell.
He saw in her a strength to match any man,
including his rivals.
After she accepted his marriage offer,
she set fire to her ships.
For 50 leagues, the coast was bright as day.
And in the burning light, Princess Nymeria named Mors Martell
the Prince of Dorne,
in the style of her people.
Dorne would be her home
or her grave.
For many years, Nymeria and Mors waged war against all rivals,
the Jordaynes, Blackmonts, Qorgyles,
and even the mighty House Yronwood.
They sent no fewer than six self-styled kings to the Wall in golden chains.
After Mors fell in battle, Nymeria took command of his armies, and united Dome,
in two years.
She ruled for 27 more, and though she married again,
those husbands were little more than councilors and consorts.
Dorne was Nymeria, and Nymeria was Dorne.
She survived a dozen attempts on her life,
put down two rebellions, and threw back two invasions.
And when, at last, she died, her eldest child succeeded her,
her daughter, not her son.
And Dorne followed her
because Nymeria had proven that women were equal to men,
if not better.
Centuries later,
Aegon Targaryen sought to unite Westeros, as Nymeria had Dorne.
The other six kingdoms fell quickly before his dragons and ambition.
When his sister-wife, Rhaenys,
flew her dragon south, and demand our surrender, as well,
Princess Meria Martell warned,
"| will not fight you, nor will I kneel to you.
"Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that."
Rhaenys threatened that the next time
the Targaryens would come with fire and blood.
Meria replied,
"You may burn us, my lady,
"but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow.
"This is Dorne.
"You are not wanted here. Return at your peril."
Rhaenys did, and she died.
Her dragon died.
All her soldiers died.
Eventually, her brother, the conqueror, conceded that what Nymeria had done
he could not undo.
Generations later,
another foolish Targaryen invaded Dorne.
He died, as well.
Eventually, we did join the Seven Kingdoms,
but when we wanted, and on our terms.
If dragons could not conquer us,
why should we fear lions?
"Unbowed, unbent, unbroken,"
the words of House Martell,
the words of Dorne.
Men may forget, but women always remember.
When we were divided, Nymeria united us.
When we were invaded, Meria defended us.
Now Dorne has been humiliated, its prince, murdered.
Who will rise to avenge us?
DAARIO: People love blood...
when it's not their own.
But tavern brawls are boring,
and wars never have good seating.
Thus, the famed fighting pits of Meereen opened shortly after the city's own founding.
I heard that originally, the combats were a blood sacrifice
to the gods of Ghis, the empire that founded Meereen.
Some still believe they are.
But the Ghiscari Empire died a long time ago and their gods went with them.
And yet, the pits remained open.
Filling the city's purse with gold from the ends of the earth.
I suppose the fighting pits are a blood sacrifice, after all.
Only the gods changed.
In the pits, slaves fought each other to the death for fame and glory,
and gold for their masters.
A lot of gold.
Enough for the masters to invest in rigorous training.
Slaves were taught to fight like Dothraki screamers,
bearded priests of Norvos, lronborn reavers,
Westerosi knights,
Qohorik hunters and Lysene pirates.
Whatever would excite a crowd.
After all, everyone wants to know who is the best.
And, of course, who isn't.
For the crowds don't come only to see men fight well.
I've seen the masters release tigers, lions,
and other exotic beasts into the arena to chase less costly slaves.
Barely trained, if at all.
A whore once told me of an amusement in one of the less prestigious pits.
One boy was rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish.
And then a bear was unleashed,
and the crowd wagered on which boy the bear would eat first.
I never heard who won.
But then again, it was obvious.
The masters.
Did such stories worry me? Of course not.
I could fight. And for a good fighter, life was luxurious.
Thousands of people chanted his name when he stepped into the pits.
He would eat the choicest meats, drink the finest wines,
and sleep on exotic furs.
Often not alone.
Women would fling themselves at him or sneak into his chambers
to wait for him after a fight.
Foreign princesses, priestesses,
and even the wives and wayward daughters of masters.
And he never had to fear punishment,
for a great fighter could be worth 300,000 honors.
Another wife was always cheaper.
And when this renowned fighter finally fell,
for all fighters will, in time,
his name would be inscribed into the Gates of Fate
among the other valiant dead.
I remember once trying to count the names,
but the gates opened before I finished,
and another fight began.
VARYS: Westeros has mighty rivers,
but none of them compare to the Rhoyne.
lt is said that there is no stream or puddle in western Essos but drains to Mother Rhoyne.
No doubt an exaggeration,
until one sees the river.
At its widest, a man in the center can't see ashore to either side.
The greatest of Mother Rhoyne's children were the Rhoynar,
a civilization as ancient and grand as Old Ghis.
Fishers, traders, scholars, workers of wood, stone and metal,
the Rhoynar raised their elegant cities from the head waters of the Rhoyne
down to her mouth, each lovelier than the last.
For many centuries, the Rhoynar lived in relative peace.
When invaders swept down from the hills, the Rhoynar, women and men,
would don silver-scaled armor, fish-head helms,
tall spears and turtle-shell shields.
If the enemy did not laugh themselves away, it was said that Mother Rhoyne
would whisper the enemy's secrets to her children
and the Rhoynish wizards could raise watery walls to drown their foes.
Whatever magic the Rhoynar may have had, it wasn't enough.
When Valyrian colonists first arrived, the Rhoynar embraced them,
for all men were welcome to share the bounty of Mother Rhoyne.
Perhaps a water people should have been more cautious of strangers
who exalted fire and blood.
Legend has it that, one day, the Valyrians netted and butchered
one of the giant turtles the Rhoynar held sacred.
As a result, thousands were killed or enslaved,
cities and towns were burned, drowned and rebuilt.
In these wars, the Valyrians emerged as victorious more often than not.
The princes of the Rhoynish cities, fiercely proud of their independence, fought alone
whilst the Valyrian colonies aided one another.
Eventually the Rhoynish princes ceased their squabbling and united behind Prince Garin,
who led the largest army Essos had ever seen, against 100,000 Valyrian colonists,
100 war elephants, and three dragonlords.
Thousands burned.
But thousands more sheltered in the shallows of the river,
whilst the Rhoynish wizards raised enormous water spouts against the foe's dragons.
Rhoynish archers brought down two of the dragons,
whilst the third fled, wounded.
And thereafter, the Rhoynar named Garin "The Great."
But Mother Valyria proved just as caring as Mother Rhoyne.
When Garin the Great marched his army against Volantis,
300 Valyrian dragons descended from the sky.
Tens of thousands burned whilst others rushed into the river.
But the fires burned so hot that the water boiled and turned to steam.
Garin the Great was captured alive
and made to watch as Valyrians butchered every last man,
so many that their blood turned the great harbor of Volantis red
as far as the eye could see.
Then they forced Garin to watch as they marched on his own city
and enslaved all the women and children his army had left behind.
The singers claim that Prince Garin called out Mother Rhoyne
to curse the Valyrians.
And she in turn flooded the city with foul waters and a damp fog
that caused the skin of the Valyrians to harden and crack
and thus was born greyscale.
Fearing a similar fate, another Rhoynish ruler, Princess Nymeria,
led her own people into every ship, skiff and raft they had
and fled Essos.
Eventually, after much hardship, they landed in sun-swept and bone-dry Dorne.
But we all know that tale.
Now Valyria has followed the Rhoynar out of this world,
and her daughters have grown into free cities,
wealthy and powerful and proud.
Still, Mother Rhoyne flows on, past ancient ruins and bustling harbors,
sweeping all man's kingdoms to the sea.
JAQEN: A young man walks beside a girl across a flowered field.
Spring has corne,
and this girl is his Iife.
He prays.
A child climbs a tree to watch the sun set over the fields.
Summer is ending,
and the harvest is Iife for his village.
He prays.
A hunter tracks a boar through the woods.
Winter is coming,
and this boar is Iife for his family.
He prays.
But to whom do they pray?
The world has as many answers as there are men to answer.
But walk far enough, climb high enough,
hunt long enough,
and a man shall find only one,
one god, with many faces.
In the Faith of the Seven,
he is the stranger who guides men from this Iife to the next.
Few seek his favor,
or, at Ieast, few realize that they do.
In the north of Westeros,
he is one of the nameless Old Gods,
staring out from the weirwood trees and the snow.
In the Iron Islands, he is the Drowned God,
calling men down to his watery hole.
What is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger.
In the far east, he is the Lion of Night,
who fathered the wor|d's first emperor on the Maiden-Made-of-Light,
and whose wrath nearly ended the world.
In Volantis, he is the Lord of Light,
whose followers feed men to the flames to beg his favor.
In Lys, he is the Weeping Lady,
who sheds her tears for the living soon to die.
In Qohor, he is the Black Goat,
and he feeds on blood offerings every day.
On holy days, he is offered condemned criminals.
And in times of great crisis,
he may even be offered the nobles‘ children of the city
to beg his protection.
Does he accept their gift?
Well, the city still stands.
For the poor, he is the Hooded Wayfarer.
For soldiers, he is Bakkalon, the Pale Child.
For sailors, he is the Moon-Pale Maiden and the Merling King.
In the House of Black and White, however,
he is all of them,
and none of them.
He is the Many-Faced God.
And wherever a man turns,
there he is.
Men come from every corner of the world to know him,
to beg his favor and seek his gift
for themselves, if their Iife has grown too hard,
or for others, who are making it s0.
lt is all the same to the Many-Faced God.
"Valar Dohaeris."
All men must serve him, beggars and kings.
"Valar Morghulis."
All men must die, good and evil.
Men worship as they will, but at the end of every road
stands the Many-Faced God,
waiting.
QYBURN: Few afflictions are more feared than greyscale,
and far past the point of reason.
A legend calls it Prince Garin's Curse,
after an ancient eastern prince, whom the Valyrians hung in a cage
and forced to watch the immolation of his city and people.
As his city burned under dragon flame, this prince called on his god for vengeance,
and a thick fog of foul humors rose from the ruin
to smother the Valyrians with greyscale.
But if diseases could be called down by the vengeful,
we'd have no health in the world.
More likely, the disease predates the Valyrians entirely,
confined to some remote region of Essos, and only spread throughout the world
once the Valyrians linked the continent with roads and dragons.
The disease begins as a rash.
The afflicted flesh stiffens, calcifies, and cracks,
and assumes the disease's nominal hue.
Victims are graciously spared pain,
as the disease dulls sensation in the infected limbs.
But the disease is insidious,
and slowly it creeps over the skin and into the organs.
Once the infection reaches the brain, feral madness replaces humanity,
and the transformation to a stone man is complete.
There is no consensus on treatment.
Some maesters advocate mustard poultices, vinegar rinses,
and scalding hot baths.
Others claim only three cures, axe, sword, and cleaver.
Hacking off afflicted parts does sometimes stop the spread of the disease,
but not always.
Many a man has sacrificed an arm or foot,
only to find the other going grey.
Those who have been miraculously cured of greyscale are few,
and usually were subjected to so many treatments,
that isolating the responsible cure is impossible.
Besides, few maesters, priests, or healers have the courage for such experiments
as would prove a cure.
Greyscale is highly contagious,
being known to spread from even the slightest contact with an infected person.
Hence the current occupation of Valyria by the stone men,
exiled from their homelands at the first sign of the disease.
What they do there with their final months or even years,
for greyscale is a slow killer,
no one knows.
No one wants to find out.
MISSANDEI: The Great Masters of Meereen...
As if calling themselves such could make them so.
Thousands of years ago, during the height of the Ghiscari Empire,
Meereen was second only to Old Ghis in wealth and glory,
a paradise by the sea,
if one didn't mind the constant clinking of chains and cracking whips.
Slaves built Meereen,
and on their backs the city rested like a litter.
Then came the dragons of Valyria.
The masters of Old Ghis would not bow, so they burned.
The Valyrians tore down their walls, burned their pyramids to ash,
and sewed their fields with salt and skulls.
An old slave woman once told me
that the Valyrians intended to break the chains of the Ghiscari slaves,
absorbing them into the Valyrian Freehold, where every man held a vote.
But the Great Masters of Meereen received their new overlords in the Great Temple,
plying them with gold, wine,
and all the wealth that slavery had brought them.
And the Valyrians, instead, took up the whip themselves.
I do not believe it.
As their empire expanded,
the Valyrians needed more and more bodies to feed their mines and colonies,
where no wage could ever tempt a free man.
The Great Masters merely accommodated their new customers,
staying rich as the Ghiscari Empire crumbled.
After the Doom fell on Valyria, the Great Masters worried for their fortunes.
By this time,
the Valyrians were their greatest providers and purchasers of slaves.
Then the Dothraki Horselords swept out of the plains of Essos,
and proved to be as fond of slaving as the dragonlords before them.
The Great Masters grew richer still.
For the first time in its history,
the Great Masters, alone, ruled Meereen,
and chaos ruled the rest of the world.
The fighting pits swallowed men, who, in previous centuries,
would have filled the ranks of the Valyrian armies.
Without these soldiers to maintain order, the wealthy had to buy their own,
which the Good Masters of Astapor were more than willing to sell.
If the buyer's nerves still needed calming,
the Wise Masters of Yunkai could sell him... further release.
The Great Masters,
the Good Masters, the Wise Masters...
Yet none were so great, good or wise,
that they recognized our queen for what she was.
Her ancestors had destroyed them, then become them.
Perhaps, they assumed she would bend as easily.
But our queen does not bend.
She breaks.