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JAEHAERYS TARGARYEN, SECOND SON OF THE PRINCE OF HARRENHAL212Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMrX0PCUvBx
Twenty three years earlier, this was a site of a great battle where a dragon had bled. Where princes were cut down. Where ballistae fired, flame fell, and men were toppled by the thousands. It was the year after the Good Queen died; the restorer of the House of the Dragon, who passed away as violently and sickly as she was born. The chaos of war and the rise of an usurper, however, did not come before her death; rather after, and because of it.
Jaehaerys had few smiles to offer the world. To his defense, he had few frowns, too; here, like anywhere else, he had only the solemn line of silence creased upon his young, pale face. His line nearly went extinct in this field. He might never have been born. The battle was older than he was.
Distantly looming in the horizon were the charred ruins of Tumbler's Falls. It had never been resettled—Jaehaerys wasn't certain which would be more unsettling; if the town, and all the daily hubbub that accompanied it, returned as if nothing had happened here, or if it was to remain a site of loss for the rest of eternity.
"All the same," he said to himself, turning away from the valley between two hills where his uncle had died. Where his grandfather was buried.
Just east of Tumbler's Falls was the final stretch of a waning river called Colmar's Fork, a frail tributary of the Blackwater. From here, one could sail straight to King's Landing, or even Essos, if rivers could turn. Of course, the easiest ways were often thought up freely, and impossible to carry out. Rivers like the Blackwater did not turn. Tributaries like Colmar's Fork grew thin and died in no man's land; there was only one way, and that was from King's Landing to here, from civilization to the past, from life to the graveyard of his grandfather.
The Sentinel stirred as he neared her. She wouldn't land in the valley itself; nor would she near the town ruins, so he set down on the creek where she'd have freedom to rest or cool off whilst he walked. Colmar's Fork, he thought again. Who was Colmar? Does anyone know, anymore?
"There, there," he said, raising a hand. "Lykiri."
Whitewyrm—the pale creature his grandfather nicknamed the Sentinel—was a calm dragon, much like her rider. Jaehaerys could not blame her for breaking character in a place like this. She was a Riverlander dragon; she'd spent most of her life in the Trident, and this was the only place within it she'd rather avoid.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I had to see it, before we set out. You understand."
It was twenty years ago, he thought as he clambered up to Whitewyrm's saddle and strapped himself in. And yet everybody has forgotten it. Everybody but us.
He found his prince-father not far outside Harrenhal, surrounded with the court. Whitewyrm was lithe, and so landing was a habitually easy business; he came down near the rear and slid off while creasing his shoulder-length pale hair back down to normalcy. After flight, he had the tendency to appear a banshee.
"Jae," Prince Addam said sternly as he neared him. "How many times must we have this talk?"
Jaehaerys peeled his leather gloves off and approached his side, glancing up at his father on horseback. "Did you bring Ben?"
"Your horse is in the rear," Addam said with a wave. "You ran off again. How many times, Jae?"
"Apologies, father," he said simply and turned. "Don't wait for me. I'll fly."
"You won't," his father replied with firm command. "I don't want you at court alone. Not with that…"
By this point, the whole traveling party, mounted and all, had come to a halt for him alone. He frowned. "I'll tarry until you get there. Goodbye, father," he said, walking off before he'd heard another word.
Five months ago, the river had turned. King Jaehaerys III had died. The realm had suffered two short-lived rulers since the Good Queen, and all bets—if his father were to be believed—was that it would suffer a third. But the new king had sent a summons, and marked the dour occasion with a grand tourney. Addam had no intention of answering the call. That was, of course, until Orys Summerstorm did.
As he reached the Sentinel again—he never saw his chestnut pony Ben—he saw the traveling party's rear pass out of sight. They'd started up soon after he turned back. They were headed for King's Landing, as was he. The river of his line had turned over a feud. His father had been driven into history, into the past, into the hands of the man he called 'that twisted viper prince,' out of the greater hatred of Lord Orys of Summerhall. As for Jaehaerys… he hadn't seen King's Landing since he was a young boy. He hadn't forgiven Aemon for the murder of his mother; he certainly wouldn't turn that current just because the man claimed the throne.
The road from Harrenhal to King's Landing was a long one. The sky ways were shorter, but Jae made a promise, and so he took his time. Flight had once exhilarated him; long ago, when he claimed the unruly man-eater Whitewyrm, the silent and hateful beast that had spurned every Targaryen since her rider—his grandfather—Lord Viserys of Harrenhal had been ripped off her back and plummeted into the dirt far below. Though he had cousins, he was the only Targaryen of the Trident with the power of flight. It occurred to him that he also had the power of fire, but that was one he'd never truly tested. She does not like fire anymore, he decided long ago. She is a creature of the rivers. So long as I have her, she will have peace.
Trifles such as peace were absences, he knew. He was not poorly learned; well-read for a prince, he understood all there was to know about the patterns of the realm. Under Daenerys I, peacetime was the norm, scarcely broken in the peripheries of her kingdom and swiftly restored. When she died, war broke at once. It was no simple thing, either; no small spark, but a vast blazing fire that burned so hot it slew a dragon and countless princes with it. Now, the realm lived in the shadow of an earlier war; the peace rested on the laurels of a barely won victory, and the promises of a potential tyrant. Aemon, Jaehaerys thought with the wind again pulling at his hair, the clouds drawing down to him just as much as Whitewyrm rose him higher and higher, his hands tightly clinging to the chain that kept him put, kept him alive. Everything father has said about him, and he'd risk this tourney for a feud with the Storm cousins.
I made a promise, he told himself. Curiosity tugged at him like the wind; it weighed him down, threatened to throw him off and leave him without ground or grasp. We of the Trident are made to keep our promises. He would see the grown Aemon at his father's side, no earlier.
Just then, he'd overshadowed a settlement—not more than a dot in the landscape underneath him—and thought better of passing it. I could do for a harmless drink, he decided, and pulled at the right chain, as the Sentinel careened sideways and began to turn broadly around. The weight of the world and wind pulled him in a new direction, and his body tilted down sideways—his arms and legs alone, with the aid of the saddle and the steel that held him to it, sparing him from a plummet—and he looked down from above at the place he intended to land, a clearing amidst the farmland, yellowish, perhaps soon ripe for harvest. He recalled with some strange sense of sentiment the times long ago when he'd first taken to the skies and dared look down; the way his stomach plummeted to the earth as he stayed afloat. He'd passed out the first time, and save for the equipment would have proven the Sentinel's scornful notoriety. They said she was un-claimable—a runt of House Longwaters tried and was ripped into pieces.
Whitewyrm came to a slow slamming stop as she hit the earth, and Jaehaerys slid from her elongated back onto the earth below after loosing himself from the saddle. "Stay put," he called gently, "and I'll be back soon enough."
Jaehaerys intended to be out as swiftly as he went in, yet some part of him noted the small village's crowded stables—plenty more horses jammed within than there were people living there. That part soon forgot itself when he found an inn and made for its entrance, only to be reminded when he found its interior crowded. They are on their way to the tourney, he decided. They'll be hedge knights and hangers-on.
He shouldered his quiet way through until he reached a bar, and asked as loud as he could muster—through the piercing noise of a bustling, jam-packed room of drinking men—for wine and a bite to eat. The barkeep, a fatigued-looking peasant girl probably well older than her age, mouthed that there were no tables to think of. Well enough, he said back. The wine and the food, and pulled out a velvet coinpurse.
Then, he found some place to stand, since there was no seating to think of either. While he waited, he scanned the inn. Most of its patrons were as he guessed; hedge knights, or those who slept in hedges. Men like these would spend their full on wine and not a penny on a hay bed. What they lost, they'd hope to win back in the lists. King's Landing would be different, of course; there, there'd be the noblest, best-trained knights of a generation. Baelor was one—a prince of the Red Keep, but the finest there was, of good stock and spirit. Jae knew him, years ago, when he'd warded under his lord-father Addam at Harrenhal. Then there'd be Valarr.
Other men he'd expected came to mind, too. Men unlike Valarr; whose honors were still in tact. The brothers Hightower. Olyvar Arryn, the White Falcon. Lord Titus Tyrell was frail, they say, but his brother Alekyne could fight with the best of them. Jae recalled that Ser Jacelyn Mallister had fled to the king's court, too, and surely would compete. He's got Gunthor Blackwood's blood on his hands, that one, he pondered. Ser Gunthor was of the best swords in service to my father.
"Here y'are," a voice emerged from the noise, and a trencher with green stew beside a cup of new red was thrust into his hands. Jae looked at his lunch ambivalently and again shouldered his way through the crowd, making for the door. Yet something caught his eye.
He turned and saw the silver silhouette, a shape scarcely distinguishable through the row of men surrounding it. Jae was no taller than the average, and only now realized he'd been surrounded by the above average; lacking dignity in his immediate curiosity, he lifted himself up by the tiptoes of his leather boots and caught a better glimpse from above the heads of his obstacles. Ahead of him was a girl, charming the men around her; no cheap thing, either, not a woman of low repute by the looks of it, she was accompanied by well-dressed men, one of them bearing a wolf … a Stark, Jae realized. What's a Stark doing here? All this way from Winterfell for a tourney alone?
His attention returned to the girl. Her hair was like his. Platinum, it stood out amid the mess of dirty, disheveled blonds, browns, and blacks. Her eyes, even from afar, shone in opulent amethyst purple; her skin was as clean white as the clouds he'd been soaring through half an hour earlier. She's no Andal, Jae realized. Who is this woman?
Just then, a shoulder bumped into him. Having balanced on two tiptoed boots, he stumbled, staggered, and lost his soup and wine on the back of some burlesque man ahead of him. Oh, dear. The man had paused, as if in shock, and he took the opportunity to withdraw as quickly as he could. He had nothing to fear from a common hedge knight, of course—but he had no reason to flaunt his privilege so easily, and his father would have scolded him harshly if he'd heard word of a bar fight or a dispute of any kind. Princes of the Trident were held to a fine standard. Finer than in King's Landing. Finer than in Summerhall.
He'd barreled his way out of the inn, nothing in his cup or stale trencher. But he had something on his mind. A Valyrian girl this far west, he thought. If I didn't know better, I'd think her a…
No matter, he decided. Whitewyrm would be waiting restless in some field of grain, and sooner or later his father's band would catch up to him. Better to forget and move on. The river did not stop for one pretty sight; the current pressed on ceaselessly. And, from Harrenhal to King's Landing, this river had turned; it has no good reason to stop, certainly not for a single pale-featured woman.
His pale dragon lay right where he left it, as sure as she'd ever be. "I took my time," he apologized as he clambered back up to her saddle. "We'll find a better place to rest you. Some place with fish. The Blackwater is only an hour or so west," he said reassuringly as he began to take flight. The Sentinel pulsed beneath him in reply; a silent but felt answer. Dragons do not eat grain, he thought as he rose above the fields and felt the weight of Whitewyrm's wings thrust them westward. And rivers do not turn.
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