Therein, the line of the dragon kings ended, when Aerys II was dethroned and killed, along with his heir, the crown prince Rhaegar Targaryen, slain by Robert Baratheon on the Trident.
THE LAST TARGARYENS
[KINGS AERYS TARGARYEN], the Second of His
Name, slain by Jaime Lannister during the Sack of King’s Landing,
—his sister and wife, [QUEEN RHAELLA] of House Targaryen, died in childbed on Dragonstone,
—their children:
—[PRINCE RHAEGAR], heir to the Iron Throne, slain by Robert Baratheon on the Trident,
—his wife, [PRINCESS ELIA] of House Martell, slain during the Sack of King’s Landing,
—their children:
—[PRINCESS RHAENYS], a young girl, slain during the Sack of King’s Landing
—[PRINCE AEGON], a babe, slain during the Sack of King’s Landing,
—PRINCE VISERYS, styling himself Viserys, the Third of His Name, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, called the Beggar King,
—PRINCESS DAENERYS, called Daenerys Stormborn, a maid of thirteen years.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The devil is in the details, they say.
A book this size has a lot of devils, any one of which will bite you if you don’t watch out. Fortunately, I know a lot of angels.
Thanks and appreciation, therefore, to all those good folks who so kindly lent me their ears and their expertise (and in some cases their books) so I could get all those little details right—to Sage Walker, Martin Wright, Melinda Snodgrass, Carl Keim, Bruce Baugh, Tim O’Brien, Roger Zelazny, Jane Lindskold, and Laura J. Mixon, and of course to Parris.
And a special thanks to Jennifer Hershey, for labors above and beyond the call …
Book Two
DEDICATION
to John and Gail
for all the meat and mead we’ve shared
PROLOGUE
The comet’s tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.
The maester stood on the windswept balcony outside his chambers. It was here the ravens came, after long flight. Their droppings speckled the gargoyles that rose twelve feet tall on either side of him, a hellhound and a wyvern, two of the thousand that brooded over the walls of the ancient fortress. When first he came to Dragonstone, the army of stone grotesques had made him uneasy, but as the years passed he had grown used to them. Now he thought of them as old friends. The three of them watched the sky together with foreboding.
The maester did not believe in omens. And yet … old as he was, Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color, that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets. He wondered if his gargoyles had ever seen its like. They had been here so much longer than he had, and would still be here long after he was gone. If stone tongues could speak …
Such folly. He leaned against the battlement, the sea crashing beneath him, the black stone rough beneath his fingers. Talking gargoyles and prophecies in the sky. I am an old done man, grown giddy as a child again. Had a lifetime’s hard-won wisdom fled him along with his health and strength? He was a maester, trained and chained in the great Citadel of Oldtown. What had he come to, when superstition filled his head as if he were an ignorant fieldhand?
And yet … and yet … the comet burned even by day now, while pale grey steam rose from the hot vents of Dragonmont behind the castle, and yestermorn a white raven had brought word from the Citadel itself, word long-expected but no less fearful for all that, word of summer’s end. Omens, all. Too many to deny. What does it all mean? he wanted to cry.
“Maester Cressen, we have visitors.” Pylos spoke softly, as if loath to disturb Cressen’s solemn meditations. Had he known what drivel filled the maester’s head, he would have shouted. “The princess would see the white raven.” Ever correct, Pylos called her princess now, as her lord father was a king. King of a smoking rock in the great salt sea, yet a king nonetheless. “She would see the white raven. Her fool is with her.”
The old man turned away from the dawn, keeping a hand on his wyvern to steady himself. “Help me to my chair and show them in.”
Taking his arm, Pylos led him inside. In his youth, Cressen had walked briskly, but he was not far from his eightieth name day now, and his legs were frail and unsteady. Two years past, he had fallen and shattered a hip, and it had never mended properly. Last year when he took ill, the Citadel had sent Pylos out from Oldtown, mere days before Lord Stannis had closed the isle … to help him in his labors, it was said, but Cressen knew the truth. Pylos had come to replace him when he died. He did not mind. Someone must take his place, and sooner than he would like …
He let the younger man settle him behind his books and papers. “Go bring her. It is ill to keep a lady waiting.” He waved a hand, a feeble gesture of haste from a man no longer capable of hastening. His flesh was wrinkled and spotted, the skin so papery thin that he could see the web of veins and the shape of bones beneath. And how they trembled, these hands of his that had once been so sure and deft …
When Pylos returned the girl came with him, shy as ever. Behind her, shuffling and hopping in that queer sideways walk of his, came her fool. On his head was a mock helm fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung with cowbells.
