He Would Be A God To Them Chapter 33 (Patreon)

This chapter changed a lot. I have a few days off this week-so next chapter by wednesday/thursday.

XXXIII

The Old Dream

The small council chamber was warm with afternoon light, the long table stretching before him, the high windows casting rectangles of gold across polished wood. Viserys sat at the head of the table, and everything was as it should be.

Then the doors opened.

Princess Rhaenys Targaryen walked in, and the room went silent.

She did not knock. She did not wait to be announced. Her eyes found Viserys across the table, and they held an expression he had never seen on her face before. Certainty.

"Your brother was right," she said.

"He is real," Rhaenys continued, "and he has power unlike anything we have ever seen."

Viserys opened his mouth. He did not know what he was going to say, but before the sound could form, before the breath could leave his lungs, he heard something else.

Laughter.

His brother's laugh, ringing through the small council chamber like a bell struck too hard, and Viserys turned toward the sound and-

The chamber was gone.

The light had changed-dimmer now, greyer, the light of a room that smelled of milk of the poppy and old candles and the particular, unmistakable sweetness of a body that was beginning to fail.

Viserys was younger, and he was in his grandsire's bedchamber.

The bed was massive-a great canopied thing of dark wood and heavy curtains, the linens crisp and white and unchanged. King Jaehaerys Targaryen, First of His Name, lay in the center of it, and he was dying.

Viserys could see it in the way the Old King's chest rose and fell. The face on the pillow was ancient and drawn, the skin translucent over the bones beneath, the silver hair spread across the linen like thread unwound from a spool. The eyes were closed.

Then they opened.

"Come closer."

The voice was a whisper. Viserys moved. His feet carried him to the edge of the bed without his deciding to move them.

"I must tell you something." Jaehaerys's eyes were open-pale, watery, still sharp beneath the fog of age and illness. They found Viserys's face and held it with a focus that was startling in a man so close to the end. "It is important that you keep this to yourself and only pass it to your own heir." A breath. A pause. The rattle of air in a throat that was losing its battle. "Promise me."

Viserys stared. He could feel the weight of the moment. He did not know what his grandsire was about to say. He could not imagine what secret a king who had ruled for five-and-fifty years would whisper to his grandson in the last hours of his life.

"I promise, Grandsire."

Jaehaerys held his gaze for a long moment. Then the Old King's eyes drifted-to the window, to the light, to something beyond the walls of the room that only he could see.

"Aegon's dream," he said, and the room dissolved.

Viserys was standing on the Wall. The ice stretched beneath his boots, white and vast and ancient, and the world fell away on either side of him - the green south, the dark north - and above, a sky so wide and so empty that it made him feel like a mote of dust suspended in the breath of a god.

He was looking at the fortress.

It stood in the Haunted Forest beyond the Wall-a thing of crystal and light, pulsing with that steady blue-white heartbeat he had heard described in a hundred reports and never seen with his own eyes. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was impossible. And on its face, glowing with a light that reached across the miles and touched the Wall itself, the symbol-the S in its shield.

"...he saw a great darkness that would swallow the world."

His grandsire's voice, echoing from somewhere outside the dream.

"The Mother claimed that the Wall was built to defend from the Others."

Rhaenys's voice now, layered over Jaehaerys's like two melodies playing in different keys.

Is the boy the great darkness that Aegon dreamed about?

The fortress pulsed. The S burned.

Or is it the Others?

The wind screamed. The ice groaned.

Both?

Viserys opened his eyes.

The bedchamber was dark. He lay still. His heart was hammering. His hands, resting on the blanket, were trembling - not much, not visibly, but enough that he could feel the vibration in his fingertips and the tightness in his tendons.

The dream. The old dream, the one that came when his mind was tired and his defenses were down and the things he kept locked away during the waking hours found their way out through the cracks. He had not had it in months. He had thought, perhaps, that it had finally faded-that the passage of years and the accumulation of duties had buried it deep enough that it would stay buried.

He had been wrong.

He turned his head.

Aemma lay beside him, still sleeping. Her silver-gold hair was loose across the pillow, her face soft and relaxed in the way it only was in sleep. She breathed slowly, evenly, the rhythm of a woman who slept well and deeply, and Viserys watched her breathe and felt something loosen in his chest.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. His lips touched her skin - warm, soft, real. Not a dream. Not a memory. The present, solid and immediate and here.

"Good morrow, my love," he said.

Aemma stirred. Her eyes opened - blue, gentle, unfocused for a moment before they found his face. A smile crossed her face, slow and sweet, the way sunrise crosses water.

"Good morrow," she said.

He lay there for a moment longer, looking at her, and the dream sat behind his eyes. Then he pushed it away. He was a king. He had a kingdom to rule. The dream would keep.

The small council chamber was warm with midmorning light.

Viserys sat at the head of the table. The lords were in their places-Otto Hightower at his right, Lyonel Strong opposite, Lyman Beesbury beside Strong, Tyland Lannister by the window. Grand Maester Runciter hunched over his parchments at the far end, his chain clinking with each movement. Larys Strong sat in the shadow of the window frame, his clubfoot braced against the chair leg, his thin smile in place. Ser Harrold Westerling stood at the door in his white cloak, his face schooled to its customary blankness.

Rhaenyra stood at Viserys's elbow. Her violet eyes moved across the lords' faces with bright, restless attention.

"Shall we?" Viserys said.

He did not rub his eyes. He did not let the exhaustion show. He was the king, and the king did not tire in front of his council.

"Your Grace." Larys Strong spoke first, as he often did - the The Master Of Whispers opening the proceedings with whatever intelligence he had gathered in the days since the last meeting.

"I have news from Essos."

The room's attention shifted. Viserys felt it-the collective sharpening of focus, the way every man at the table straightened almost imperceptibly in his chair.

"What is it?" Viserys asked.

"As we suspected, those things that flew over the city two weeks past are in Essos." Larys paused, letting the confirmation settle. "My man in Pentos reports that the city is abuzz with rumors. They say that Slaver's Bay and the Triarchy are no more."

Nobody said a word. Viserys could hear the distant cry of a gull from the Blackwater. He could hear Rhaenyra's breathing-quickened, sharp, the breath of a girl who was fighting very hard not to react.

"That strange things have been seen flying above Myr," Larys continued. "Dark hulls that move through the air as ships move through water. They have been sighted over the Disputed Lands, over the Stepstones, over the coastlands of the Valyrian peninsula."

Viserys absorbed this. The room absorbed it. He could see the calculations running behind every face at the table-Otto's sharp eyes narrowing, Lyonel's heavy brow furrowing, Tyland's fingers steepling, Beesbury's thin hands flattening on the parchment before him. Each man processing the information through the lens of his own concerns: trade, law, ships, coin, power.

Viserys felt something loosen in his chest. A knot he had not realized he was carrying - a fear, formless and persistent, that had lived in him since the day those things crossed the sky. He had been afraid that they were meant for the Seven Kingdoms. That the boy - the creature, the god, whatever he was - had turned his eye south and decided that Westeros was next. That the beams that had carved through Duskendale would carve through King's Landing, and the Wall that had cracked beneath his body would crack beneath the weight of his ambition.

But it was Essos.

Perhaps the boy is not the great darkness, he thought, and the thought was a relief so profound it was almost physical-a loosening of a fist around his heart that he had not known was clenched. Perhaps he is what he claims to be. A protector.

And then the other thought, the one that lived beneath the first like a fish beneath the surface of still water: Or perhaps the great darkness has not come yet. Perhaps the boy is here to prepare for it. And the darkness is the thing he is preparing for.

He pushed the thought away.

"Have we learned anything about these 'Hopefuls' that the High Septon has been complaining about?" Viserys asked, steering the conversation onto ground that was closer to home.

The High Septon's complaints had been filtering through the court for weeks - petition after petition, each more agitated than the last, about a group of charitable workers who had appeared in the city's poorest districts and were, in the High Septon's view, overstepping the bounds of proper religious charity by performing acts that bordered on the miraculous and attributing them to no god the Faith recognized.

"We have," said Otto. "They appeared in the city two years ago. They are led by a former red priestess and-" he paused, and Viserys watched the Hand's mouth tighten with a distaste that was not quite concealed, "-Mysaria."

"Mysaria?" Viserys frowned. The name was familiar. "Was she not Daemon's lover?"

"Yes, Your Grace," Otto said, and the disgust was visible now. "She was Prince Daemon's companion for several years. A Lyseni woman. A whore, by trade and by inclination." He said the last two words with a precision that made them cut. "She disappeared from the city after Prince Daemon's departure. It appears she did not go far."

Viserys nodded for him to continue.

"They have been helping people," Otto said. "Orphans, the downtrodden, and the like. They have been trying to improve life for the poor of the city. Food distribution. Clothing. Shelter for the homeless. Medical care." He recited: "They operate mainly in Flea Bottom and the districts along the River Gate."

"That must cost a small fortune," said Tyland Lannister. "Where do they get the coin?"

"I do not know," Otto said.

Then he did something odd. His eyes moved-not to Viserys, not to the table, but to Rhaenyra. A brief, measuring glance, there and gone, the kind of look a man gives a cyvasse piece he suspects of being more important than it appears.

Rhaenyra stiffened.

Viserys saw it. The slight tightening of her shoulders, the fractional straightening of her spine, the way her grip on the flagon shifted-subtle, involuntary, the body's honest response to attention it did not want. She was holding something back. He could see it in the set of her jaw and the careful blankness of her expression, and he filed the observation away without pressing it. She was fourteen. She was allowed her secrets. If they mattered, he would learn them in time.

"They sound like a benefit to the city," said Lyonel Strong. "What is the High Septon's problem with them?"

"Recently," Otto said, and here his voice changed again-the neutrality dropping away, replaced by something more careful, more measured, "stories have started to spread about a new member of the Hopefuls who can heal anything." He paused. "Even regrow limbs."

"That sounds like-" Lord Lyman Beesbury began, his thin voice trailing off as the implication reached his tongue.

"One of his servants!" Rhaenyra finished for him.

The words burst from her with an excitement she could not contain - bright, fierce, and entirely unprincess-like. The flagon wobbled in her grip. Her violet eyes were blazing, her cheeks flushed, her whole body oriented toward her father with the leaning, eager intensity of a hound that had caught a scent and wanted to run.

Every head at the table turned toward her. Every pair of eyes found her - the cupbearer.

Viserys saw the moment she realized what she had done. The flush deepened. The excitement flickered, not dying but being forcibly contained - pulled back behind the mask of composure she had been taught to wear, the mask that kept slipping because she was fourteen.

She composed herself. She straightened. She set the flagon down on the edge of the table with a careful, deliberate precision that was meant to say I am in control of myself and instead said I am trying very hard to appear in control of myself.

"Father," she said, and her voice was steady now, or nearly so. "Send me to see if it is true."

Viserys looked at his daughter. He saw the fire in her eyes-the same fire that had burned in her since the day she had come home from the Wall with a story that no one believed and a garment that no one could explain and a ring that pulsed with blue light on her finger. The fire that had not gone out in three years, that had only burned brighter, fed by secrets and dreams and the stubborn, unshakeable certainty that the boy who had caught her when she fell was real and important and hers to find.

He should have said no. That was what a careful father would have said. That was what a cautious king would have said.

He sighed.

"Do we know where they are?" he asked, directing the question to Otto.

"They have a building at the edge of Flea Bottom," Otto said. "A former warehouse, converted into a shelter and a healing house. It is well-known in the district. The smallfolk speak of it with-" he paused, and the distaste returned, "-reverence."

Viserys looked at Rhaenyra.

"Very well," he said. "You take Ser Criston and a dozen gold cloaks with you."

"Yes, Father." The words came fast, tripping over each other in their urgency to exit before he could change his mind.

"Take Harwin as well," said Lyonel Strong.

Viserys raised an eyebrow. Lyonel's suggestion was not unusual - Harwin Strong, Lyonel's eldest son, was a knight of considerable skill and reputation, and having a man of his size and strength along for an expedition into Flea Bottom was sensible. But there was something in Lyonel's voice-a weight, a deliberateness-that suggested there was more behind it than security.

Rhaenyra nodded, either unaware of or choosing to ignore the undercurrent. "I will."

She was vibrating with excitement. Viserys could feel it from where he sat. He suppressed a smile. He also suppressed the thought that followed it: What have I just unleashed?

"Any news from Daemon?" he asked, turning the council back to the business of the realm.

"He is still a guest of the Prince of Pentos," Larys responded. The Master Of Whispers delivered the information with his customary smoothness, but Viserys caught something beneath it-a faint edge, the slightest hint of something unsaid.

Larys knew more than he was sharing. That was Larys's way. The information would come when Larys decided it would come, and not before.

Viserys nodded. He did not press. He had learned, over the years, that pressing Larys Strong was like pressing a sponge-the harder you squeezed, the more slipped through your fingers.

He sat for a moment, considering. Then he made a decision. It was not a new decision-it was one he had been turning over for months, weighing and measuring and setting aside and picking up again, the way a man weighs a stone he knows he will eventually have to throw.

Viserys sighed again.

"Maester," he said, turning to Runciter. "Send a letter to Lady Rhea and tell her that I am summoning her to King's Landing."

"It will be done, Your Grace," he said, and bent over his parchment.

Viserys turned to Ser Harrold.

"Harrold," he said. "Take a few men and sail for Pentos. Tell Daemon that it is time to come home." He paused, and the weight of what he was about to say pressed against his chest. "And tell him that I will give him what he wants. I will annul his marriage to Lady Rhea."

Otto Hightower's face went through a sequence of expressions so rapid and so controlled that it was like watching a man fight a war inside his own skin. The Hand's mouth opened - the beginning of an objection, the first syllable of a protest that would have spoken of the Faith and the Lords of the Vale and the political consequences of dissolving a marriage - but whatever he saw in Viserys's face stopped the words before they formed. He closed his mouth. His jaw tightened. His hands, resting on the table, curled slowly into fists and then, with visible effort, uncurled.

Lyonel Strong raised one eyebrow. Tyland Lannister's steepled fingers separated and came back together. Beesbury's pen, which had been scratching notes on his parchment, stopped. Larys's thin smile widened by a fraction - the only man in the room who looked as though the news had not surprised him, which meant he had either known it was coming or was very good at performing the absence of surprise.

Rhaenyra's eyes went wide. Her lips parted. She looked at her father with an expression that moved through shock to disbelief.

He had done the right thing. He was not sure of many things these days, but he was sure of that.

The meeting continued. They discussed the treasury. They discussed the harvest. They discussed the ongoing situation in the Stepstones, where Corlys Velaryon's fleet had apparently found the Triarchy's fortress abandoned and the Crabfeeder gone-swept up, Larys reported, by the same forces that had swept through Slaver's Bay. They discussed grain prices and river tolls and the cost of rebuilding the harbor at Duskendale, which was still ongoing, funded by the mysterious gold that had appeared on the Wall three years ago.

Viserys listened. He contributed. He made the decisions a king makes, weighing counsel and issuing judgment and performing the thousand small acts of governance that kept the realm turning. But part of him was elsewhere-standing on the Wall in his dream, looking at the fortress, listening to his grandsire's voice and Rhaenys's voice braiding together in the dark.

Is the boy the great darkness?

He did not know. He might never know. The meeting ended. The lords filed out. Rhaenyra departed with a barely contained excitement that threatened to lift her off the ground, her violet eyes already fixed on the afternoon and the expedition to Flea Bottom and the thing she might find there.

Viserys remained at the table for a long time after the chamber had emptied, staring at the wood, his chin in his hand, the dream and the waking and the weight of everything pressing on him like a physical force.

The afternoon light came through the windows of Viserys's private solar in long, golden columns that caught the dust motes and turned them to drifting flecks of gold. The room smelled of glue and carved wood and the faint, persistent sweetness of the varnish he used on the finer pieces. The fire in the hearth was low, banked for warmth rather than light, and the only sounds were the scratch of his tools and the occasional creak of the floorboards beneath his feet as he shifted his weight.

He was building Valyria.

The model spread across the table in miniature-a city of white stone and crystal towers, of bridges spanning rivers of fire, of the great ring road that had circled the capital and the Fourteen Flames that had powered it. Each piece was a work of patience - carved by hand, fitted with care, painted with colors mixed from pigments he had sourced from half a dozen different merchants. He had been working on it for years, and it was still not finished.

His hands moved with the ease of long practice-selecting a piece, testing its fit, applying a bead of glue, pressing it into place. The work was meditative. It required enough attention to occupy his hands and his eyes but not enough to engage the deeper parts of his mind, and the deeper parts of his mind, freed from the business of governance, drifted where they would.

They drifted to the dream.

A great darkness that would swallow the world.

Aegon's dream. The Song of Ice and Fire.

The boy is not the darkness, he thought, firmly, deliberately, the way a man thinks a thing he needs to believe. The boy frees slaves. The boy caught his daughter when she fell.

The boy is hope.

But the word sat uneasily in his mind.

He set down the piece he was holding. It was a tower-one of the lesser spires, a minor ornament he had carved from a block of pale limewood and painted with a thin wash of silver. He held it up to the light and turned it, examining the lines, the proportions, the way the paint caught the afternoon sun.

The door opened. He looked up.

"What's wrong, my love?" he asked.

Aemma stood in the doorway. Her face was doing something complicated. Trouble was there - visible in the furrow of her brow and the tightness around her mouth. But beneath the trouble, and growing stronger as he watched was something else-joy.

"I am with child," she said.

The tower fell from Viserys's hand. It hit the table, bounced, rolled, and came to rest against the base of the greater model, where it lay on its side, small and silver and forgotten.