Dragonlance, Chapter 10: Conspiracy (Patreon)

Second Moon, 175 AC

Daeron

The wind rushed in my ears and I couldn’t help but smile as my heart pounded in the exhilaration. My hair flowed gently in the cool breeze over my shoulders as we flew. Paarthurnax roared in elation and my soul soared, answering his call.

Yet the most exciting thing of all was my son’s screams of utter childlike joy and glee as we barreled and rolled through the air.

“Faster Kepa! Faster!” Daemon screamed and I couldn’t help but laugh, Paarthurnax indulging my silent heartfelt request as the dragon picked up speed in response.

We twirled through the air so quickly and violently that I almost felt as if I would throw up, but of course Daemon—adrenaline gremlin as he was—was only thrilled, screaming louder than ever. I chuckled (once I finally recovered) and ruffled my eldest son’s head affectionately as Paarthurnax finally leveled out, mussing his hair with my fingers.

If Daemon was anything like the man I had named him for in that alternate timeline, then I supposed his adrenaline addiction only made sense. Hopefully he and his brothers proved to be every inch like the men I had named them for, if not even better.

“Up Kepa! Up! To the clouds!” Daemon cried.

“Demanding little urchin, aren’t you?” I teased before ordering Paarthurnax up into the sky.

Since coming back from the war in the Iron Islands, I had done my absolute best to reestablish my bonds with all of my children and if taking them on daily joy rides on my dragon and indulging their childish demands was what that took, then I’d gladly do it.

Up and up, we went, higher and higher until the clouds were close enough to touch. Daemon’s eyes went wide as the rising sun reflected off the clouds and the sky shone gold, illuminating the normally dark waters of Blackwater Bay. With an awestruck expression, Daemon reached out his hand into the clouds and we both enjoyed the feeling of the chilly mist cooling our skin and washing away the sweat and exertion of our flight.

King’s Landing was so far below us it could be covered by the palm of my hand. It made me wonder sometimes if there was some evolutionary advantage or trait engineered into our bloodline by blood magic that let us breathe so high up because neither I nor Daemon or any of our ancestors had ever noted any difficulties with breathing the thinner air high up in the skies.

Leaning forward in the saddle, I nudged Paarthurnax to descend ever so slightly below the cloud layer as we circled around King’s Landing, seeing the dark waters of the bay and the green hinterlands about the capital all the way to the horizon.

“Look, Daemon. This is your birthright. One day, all of this will be yours,” I told my son.

“Really?” Daemon asked, sounding amazed.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to fill my five-year old son’s head with expectations, but he was mine and Daena’s undisputed heir. It couldn’t hurt to get started on some training early.

“That’s right,” I said with a nod. “But that power comes with an important responsibility too. This land will be yours not just to rule, but also to protect and safeguard, to govern wisely and ensure it prospers. Do you think you can do that?”

Daemon nodded eagerly, because of course any five-year old would, and I ruffled his hair again. “Don’t worry too much about it for now. You have many years still to learn. I just want you to promise me something when the time comes.”

“Anything!”

“Keep your brothers close. Never let the bond you have with them fade. It will be your greatest strength.”

“Of course!” Daemon declared as if he couldn’t imagine it any other way and I couldn’t help but feel optimistic that that future might just be achievable. A golden timeline where versions of Daemon Blackfyre, Aegor Bittersteel, Baelor Breakspear, Maekar, and maybe even Brynden Bloodraven found themselves on the same side, brothers in arms and by blood, with no reason to fight or oppose each other. Now wouldn’t that be a sight to see?

And until that future came to pass, I would reign alongside Daena, doing everything to ensure that they were left the greatest inheritance I could give them.

“Embrot, Paarthurnax!” I ordered and to Daemon’s squealing cheers, my dragon folded his wings in and dived straight out of the sky. With a rapid plunge we plummeted down as King’s Landing got larger before us and finally Paarthurnax extended his wings again, slowing our descent into a gentle glide.

Starfyre and Artaxes zipped past us all of a sudden then, throwing our hair into our faces as the wind all but exploded and I smiled as I heard Baelor and Maekar’s cheers of joy in their mothers’ arms. Rhaena cradled Baelor close to herself while Elaena dared to toss Maekar up into the air briefly. Daemon waved to his brothers eagerly as they flew by.

“Shall we go after them?” I said mischievously.

“Yeah!” Daemon’s purple eyes glittered with excitement.

The race was on. As Daemon screamed in delight in my arms, I urged Paarthurnax forward and he answered with a blinding, quick beat of his wings, almost throwing us forward as we accelerated with a burst of speed towards Starfyre and Artaxes.

Before long we were running laps about the city, flying high and low, twirling and barreling in rolls and acrobatics for the amusement of the children as we raced each other through the skies. Idly, I wondered what the townsfolk must be thinking below.

Our ultimate victory was stolen from us however as a blue and red blur cut ahead all of a sudden, announcing his presence with a fearsome roar that made Daemon flinch. Daeral.

“Hey there, darling. Wanna ride with Muña now?” Daena said with a smirk on her face as she and Daeral pulled up beside us.

When Daemon eagerly accepted, I couldn’t help but sigh a little. Seems Daemon was still a mommy’s boy despite my best efforts. Oh well, I thought as I led Paarthurnax into a twirl, flying upside down right above Daeral and plopping Daemon safely into the saddle.

With our son safely ensconced in her arms and chained into to Daeral’s saddle, Daena took Daemon up to join the others higher up as they continued the race. I couldn’t help but watch for a few moments before they disappeared into the clouds, leaving me to my thoughts as Paarthurnax and I gently glided low over the city that would one day be Daemon’s inheritance.

I wasn’t content with just leaving it to him as it was. House Targaryen did not have a large demesne and this was not an era of history which gave us ample opportunity to expand that demesne. So instead of building wide, I would build tall, maximizing what we did have and developing it to its highest potential.

Before I had awakened in this world, I had imagined the possibility of expanding King’s Landing to the south bank and linking both sides of the city with a grand bridge but such ambitions were not realistic without modern technology or the indestructible dragonstone of Old Valyria that had built the Long Bridge of Volantis. The Blackwater Rush was one and a half miles wide at the mouth where King’s Landing sat and the river was treacherously deep and swift with strong currents. No bridge was possible by the current technology or magic available to me and so any grand ambitions of a vast city straddling both sides of the river had to be suspended.

Instead, I had made the decision to expand the city further to the north and west, ordering that a new set of double walls inspired by the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople be built far out enough to double the land area of the city. Those walls were under construction even now, giving work to tens of thousands of the city’s poor as the only job requirement was the strength for manual labor.

In the space between the original set of single walls (which would be upgraded and repaired) and the new set under construction, I had worked with the Small Council and countless architects and engineers to plan a great expansion of the city, laying down sewers and roads years in advance with pre-planned zones for housing and more. I would move the entire population of Flea Bottom and all the other slums and poor areas into the new neighborhoods as they were completed, freeing up space inside the older parts of the city for much needed renovations and upgrades there as well.

My mother and Rhaena had been of huge help throughout this process; with them spearheading our charitable efforts and endorsing this plan, the city’s denizens were not just supportive but downright eager for the plan, and our grip on the Faith had never been stronger. With enough bread and circuses, the populace of King’s Landing would be pacified and made loyal and productive. Their lives would be better and House Targaryen would benefit for it. A win-win if ever there was one.

Obviously, I appreciated having the smallfolk’s support and consent for my plans but I would do it with or without them. I would drag King’s Landing and its people into a new era, kicking, screaming, and shitting if I had to, until it became the greatest city Westeros had ever seen.

It would be a Queen of Cities, a veritable Constantinople, with fountains and parks, statues and roads, sewers and waterworks, and great marble monuments and everything imaginable that made a city beautiful, great, and clean. There would be barracks and forts for my royal army and professional trade schools found nowhere else that would train and employ the city’s population, maximizing our human resources instead of leaving them to waste in slums.

And while a bridge across the Blackwater wasn’t possible, we would by no means neglect the south bank either. A large fort and tower were already under construction that would control one half of the great boom chain and winches I had commissioned to control access to the river and King’s Landing’s port and it would also monitor the ferries that crossed the river and access to the Kingsroad heading south. Perhaps in time, a second city might sprout along the south bank of the river, making Aerys II’s fever dream come true and further maximizing the potential of our small demesne.

I had also made sure to appease Daena and communicate to her that work was ongoing to pave the gravel Kingsgroad as well as the Roseroad and extend them towards the Dornish Marches around Nightsong and Blackhaven, as near as we could get them to the Prince’s Pass and Boneway, as part of our preparations for the eventual war with Dorne.

She was a lot more patient and less bloodthirsty these days, even if I still needed to occasionally discipline her in bed so she stopped making trouble for our Small Council. It was almost funny how often we ended up inadvertently derailing her ambitions to ride in various tourneys or improve her athletic or martial skills with our ceaseless lovemaking and her inevitable pregnancies but I wouldn’t change a thing about our relationship.

Daena could go from cursing me out for always getting her pregnant one minute, to begging me to breed her the next, and then fawning over the new dragonbone bow I had gifted her like the tides rose and fell and maybe there was something wrong with me, but I could only see that as feisty and endearing.

She was far from the only wife who amused me with such a vibrant character. There was Rhaena of course, always so easy to make red and flustered with anything that was even slightly lewd even after five years of marriage. And then there was Elaena.

Always so jealous and needy, always wanting proof that I loved her as much if not more than her sisters and feeling entitled to more of my love because she had loved me first. I still remembered the way she had lit up in joy when I had dedicated the new royal bank to her.

The White Gold Bank, I thought with pride as Paarthurnax flew over its headquarters’ marble pillars and golden dome roof. It had just opened a few moons ago but business was already booming, as I knew it would.

We had everything we really needed for a royal, central bank to thrive in all honesty. The Iron Throne had traditional control over taxation, mints, customs, and the treasury. Lord Jon Hightower, the Master of Laws, had brought his ties to the Rogare Bank of Oldtown and my father’s still unbelievably successful negotiations in Lys had brought several banking experts from our Rogare kin there as well.

Yet most importantly of all, we had Elaena. She had a mind for numbers, mathematics, and money like nothing I had ever seen before and with her at the helm as Mistress of Coin, there was no way the bank could fail.

That was the main reason I had shot down any proposals for more boring names like the Dragon Bank or the Royal Bank of King’s Landing and insisted that we pay proper homage where it was due. Elaena would be the bank’s first governor and it would be one of her greatest legacies and wildest successes. It only made sense that the bank was named for her.

But I hadn’t wanted it to be too overt or tacky like naming it the Princess Elaena Bank or anything like that either. I wanted something that sounded unique but also professional and prestigious. The name had finally come in a stroke of inspiration one night as I had run my fingers through Elaena’s beautiful long hair in bed, idly nothing to myself the unique colors before I realized what a great name they would make.

It was honestly a great branding too, one that just oozed wealth and luxury and that was exactly what you wanted in a bank. And so, the White Gold Bank had been born.

As the official central, royal bank of Westeros, it had power over all the other banks such as the Bank of Oldtown, and over all mints and monetary policies, in addition to helping increase the funds available for House Targaryen’s usage and stimulate the economy. Elaena had already started working her magic and I honestly couldn’t wait to see what she could do with a whole bank at her beck and call in addition to her powers over trade, taxation, and the treasury as Mistress of Coin.

It truly was convenient to have such a genius administrator that you knew you could trust implicitly with all of your finances. There would be no Littlefinger embezzling here, that was for sure, and with the systems of double bookkeeping and other accounting methods that Elaena was already setting up to counter corruption, there never would be.

Of course, the White Gold Bank was far from the only notable institution in the city. No great city was complete without its fair share of those and the landmarks that housed them.

The Dragonpit was by far the most noticeable example. Work had begun on reconstructing the ruined building as soon as Daena and I had been crowned and it was how we had rediscovered and summarily repurposed Lamentation for our own uses. Luckily, we only really had to rebuild the domed roof and so the main structure had already been rebuilt after five years though I had also ordered a large curtain wall raised around the Dragonpit as protective fort to ensure the Storming could never be repeated.

Naturally, you couldn’t have a Dragonpit without any Dragonkeepers. The original order was all but gone with more than four decades since the Dance and Baelor the Befuddled had destroyed almost all of House Targaryen’s dragonlore (may his memory forever be cursed). Fortunately, in an absolute stroke of luck, one that wouldn’t have existed if we had waited even just ten years more, we had been able to salvage things. We had been able to recruit a few grizzled old veterans of the original order living in retirement on Dragonstone and it turned out my grandfather had preserved pretty much all the books Baelor had burned in his own personal collection and dared him to do anything about it.

My grandfather’s hidden stroke of badassery aside, it would take time before the Dragonkeepers were at full strength, even with all of our luck. Training a large force of knights to handle dragons and vetting them for absolute loyalty was no simple task, especially since I wanted to increase the number of Dragonkeepers from the traditional seventy-seven to a massive seven hundred and seventy-seven to ensure they could just hole up in the Dragonpit’s new fortifications and tank any peasant mob that even dared to repeat the Storming.

Not that I anticipated that was likely with all of our public relations efforts unknowingly helmed by my mother and Rhaena, but it was always better to be overprepared.

For now, all four dragons were still small enough to stay close to us in the Red Keep but once those new fortifications were complete and the Dragonkeepers fully restored, we would likely move at least two into the Dragonpit full time. Probably Artaxes and Starfyre.

And in time, as the dragon population hopefully expanded back to its former heights, we would reopen the hatcheries on Dragonstone and dispatch Dragonkeepers there. I had no intentions of leaving any dragons to go wild and possibly get stolen on Dragonstone this time either. I would wall up all those hatcheries and ensure they were firmly protected and build a second Dragonpit into the Dragonmont to house any dragons living on Dragonstone. All of which would be safely protected by the walls of the castle and the patrols of the Dragonkeepers and a whole host of House Targaryen’s most loyal guards.

We had already lost our dragons once before. We couldn’t spare any expense in their protection now that we had been given a second chance. We just couldn’t. The future of our house was at stake. My children’s future. I knew all too well where the road ended for our house if dragons went extinct yet again and I refused to let it happen under my watch.

Which was why it was especially irksome that I still couldn’t get rid of the snake under my own roof, I thought, my mood souring. I was almost completely certain by now that Alford had had something to do with dragons going extinct the first time, especially since he kept asking to study the dragons we had now for ‘academic purposes’.

And the most frustrating part of all was that no one believed me when I mentioned my suspicions to them. Alford was just too entrenched in my family, too trusted. He had delivered my mother, myself, and all of my wives, and then he had gotten his grubby hands all over my wives and helped to deliver my youngest children. I shuddered to think of what damage he could have done with that kind of power and influence.

I didn’t trust him at all and he knew it. It was why he avoided acting out for the most part but I had to lure him out. I could not tolerate this threat any longer.

Even before Alford had come to King’s Landing, I had been giving royal favor to the Alchemists’ Guild, sponsoring an expansion of their guildhall and new recruitment for their order. I had also ordered construction for a new Citadel in the city, all part of a plan to pressure the Maesters to move their headquarters to King’s Landing as the Faith had and give me influence over them.

After I had come home to Alford in my castle, I had redoubled those efforts, trying to provoke any anti-magic and anti-dragon conspiracy inside the Citadel as much as I could while allying with the more magic-friendly Maesters and preying on the fears of others that I would replace the Maester Order with the Alchemists’ Guild to apply pressure inside the Conclave to support the move.

Yet despite my efforts, neither Alford nor any other conspirators had acted in a way that gave me sufficient cause to act. Not enough to go against my whole family to arrest them.

I hated even thinking of it, but perhaps it was time to take a gamble.

__________________________

The Good Maester

‘Finally,’ Alford couldn’t help but think.

King Daeron was far too suspicious for his own good. His efforts had been completely derailed ever since he had returned from the war in the Iron Islands and all but forbidden him any and all access to the dragons, even when he had requested it for perfectly valid reasons like academic research and studies.

Of course, Prince Viserys hadn’t exactly allowed him full access while Daeron had been away either, but his guard had been comparatively lower and Alford had been able to slip through his watch for short periods of time, enough to get started on what had to be done.

Yet now at long last, after months of wary caution, Daeron had finally slipped up enough for Alford to get a brief window of access to the meats being prepared to feed the dragons. He slipped in a careful cocktail of substances that were common in volcanic environments and arguably even good for dragons in lower doses. In higher doses however, and after repeated exposure, those substances would slowly poison the dragons from within and interfere with their growth and development until they inevitably sickened and died.

It was the same tried and tested method that had been used to dispatch of Morning, the last dragon, and all the other stunted and deformed hatchlings that had hatched after the Dance.

This particular dose would not be enough to kill the dragons, but with the accumulation from the previous doses he had managed to slip into their food before Daeron had returned from the Iron Isles, Alford anticipated that it would only take a few more doses before it began having noticeable effects on the dragons.

He was well aware that he was risking interrogation, torture, and death if he was caught, but Alford was long past the point of caring about that. As long as the dragons were driven extinct yet again, he would die happily.

Alford was not a young man. He had been born at what some would have called the height of House Targaryen, during the twilight of Jaehaerys the Conciliator’s reign at the turn of the century. He had grown up during the reign of Viserys I, during the decades in which the realm had inevitably spiraled towards war. It was why he knew the truth so intimately.

Dragons were the root of all evil in Westeros. How many lives had they taken? How many towns and villages had they destroyed? If not for the dragons, the Dance would never have happened or it if had it would have at least been far less devastating. Perhaps his hometown of Bitterbridge might not have been so ruined.

Maesters swore to put aside their old lives when they completed their chains, but they were still human. They still had feelings. And Alford remembered well the feeling that had burned in his heart when he had returned to Bitterbridge after the war to find it a ruin of ash and rubble. Few of his family and friends have survived the dragons’ wrath, and those that had wished they did not.

He remembered the rage that had burned in his chest, the hatred that had festered as he had sworn then and there that he would not rest until every last dragon was dead. Until those they had slaughtered had been avenged and the world was made safe from their pestilence forevermore.

He had returned shortly to the Citadel and devoured every book and tome he could find on dragons, searching relentlessly for any way that they could be killed, made extinct forever. He hadn’t been able to find the answer, hundreds of generations of Maesters had tried, especially in the days of Old Valyria, yet at the very least his efforts had not gone unnoticed.

To Alford’s relief and joy, a small faction of likeminded folks had formed in the Citadel in the aftermath of the Dance and they had soon recruited him into their ranks. Their numbers were not large, for fear of discovery, but each and every one of them had been well known in their field and influential beyond their weight in the Citadel, with even a few members in the Conclave counted amongst them.

That influence had been sufficient to fast track Alford’s promotion to Archmaester, and when Aegon III’s regency had ended and the boy king dismissed most of his Small Council, including the then Grand Maester, Munkun, they had seen their opportunity.

At the young age of thirty and six, he became the Grand Maester for the first time. His allies in the Conclave had argued that a young Grand Maester might be able to more easily befriend Aegon III and the rest had eventually yielded to the argument. They had been right, after all.

Perhaps because they had both suffered so much from the Dance, but Alford had found a kindred soul in the young Aegon III, a pitiable lad who had lost and suffered so much from the war that he had almost hesitated when the time had come to begin putting their plans into action. And that hesitation had gotten him caught red-handed.

Yet what happened next was something neither Alford nor anyone else in his faction could have ever imagined in their wildest dreams. Far from being enraged by Alford’s actions, Aegon III had approved of them. 

It turned out that Aegon III’s distaste for dragons ever since he had watched Sunfyre devour his mother alive had fermented into a hatred even greater than Alford’s own and with their faction as his accomplices, he could finally implement his own plans to bring about their end.

They honestly couldn’t have succeeded without him. Aegon as King had given them legitimacy and a shield of protection, hiding their activities from the more suspicious eyes of his own siblings. He had given them fulltime access to all the extant dragons and their eggs, and he had shared with them critical dragonlore that House Targaryen had long hoarded to itself, giving them the knowledge they needed to put an end to the dragons once and for all.

Alford still thanked the Seven that Silverwing, Sheepstealer, and Cannibal had all killed each other on Dragonstone before Prince Viserys had been old enough to try and claim them or their plans might have failed before they could truly get started. Fortunately, the Seven had ensured their deaths and their plans had progressed rapidly after that.

With the knowledge that King Aegon had given them, Alford’s allies back in the Citadel had been able to slowly poison Morning to death once Lady Rhaena had moved to Oldtown and married Ser Garmund Hightower. Alford himself meanwhile had worked with Aegon directly in King’s Landing and Dragonstone. They had sabotaged all of House Targaryen’s dragon eggs, immersing them in ice cold water baths to induce their early petrification and kill the dragon hatchlings within.

They hadn’t always been completely successful, a few deformed and stunted weak hatchlings had managed to survive, including the last dragon, but as King, Aegon had simply imprisoned those and allowed Alford to slowly poison them, cleaning up the loose ends.

Their plan had worked so well that Aegon had even been willing to let his own children be gifted the last dragon’s final clutch of eggs and allowed his brother Viserys to bring in Essosi mages at huge expense to try and hatch dragon eggs. It had all been part of the ruse. Aegon had allowed his brother to slowly ‘convince’ him yet all the while he had been confident that no new dragon would ever hatch. And he had been right.

Westeros called Aegon the Dragonbane, but they would never know how much his old friend had truly done to rid the world of their menace once and for all. No new dragon had ever hatched since the last had died in 153 AC, no matter how much Aegon’s children had hoped and prayed.

Not until Daeron Dragonlance had hatched four on the pyre of Baelor the Blessed. Alford still wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened. Those four eggs had been from the final clutch of the last dragon. Aegon and he had personally submerged them in ice baths that should have killed the hatchlings inside long before they had been placed anywhere near Aegon’s children.

Perhaps they had survived in some weakened form, as some of the other eggs had, and there had been some sort of blood magic interaction that had awakened them when they had been burned on Baelor’s pyre. It didn’t really matter how they had survived ultimately, only that they had.

They had hatched healthy and strong and were already large enough to ride now after five years. King Daeron and all three of his wives had become the first dragonriders in the world since Lady Rhaena had last ridden Morning.

Despite what King Daeron seemed to fear, Alford had no prejudice against him or any of his family. They were the children and kin of his dear friend, Aegon, after all. He had personally delivered several of them and been their trusted healer and confidant for many years. He remembered well the vows all Maesters swore; he had no desire to harm any member of House Targaryen.

But neither could he abide by letting them keep their dragons, even if it meant bending if not outright breaking his vows now that he was no longer fortunate enough to have a supportive king. It was only a matter of time before those wretched beasts were large enough to take to war, and Alford shuddered to imagine what damage would be done with them. How many cities would be destroyed as Bitterbridge had been? How many mothers would be devoured alive as his friend’s mother had been?

He refused to let that happen. Even if it cost him his life, even if it cost him everything, he refused to let his friend’s legacy die in vain. He would not let everything that he and his allies had worked so hard to achieve go to waste.

Alford continued pouring as much of the cocktail into the meat as he dared, mixing and spreading it thin to ensure it avoided detection by the Dragonkeepers and was fed directly to the dragons. When his task was complete, he slipped out of the room and tried making his escape.

To his horror and fear, he barely made it thirty paces before he saw his path blocked by a unit of all too familiar knights in gleaming black armor, with helms crested by dragon scales that diminished down their backs. At the head of the company stood the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard himself, Ser Aemon the Dragonknight.

Alford raised his hands in surrender. He knew he had lost.

Unbidden, a single tear fell from his eyes. The dream that he and Aegon had shared would never be realized now.

“I’m sorry, old friend,” he said before the armed men took him prisoner.

__________________________

Author’s Note: Sorry for the delays with the chapter as I was busy with uni as I said in my earlier announcement! Hope you guys enjoyed it!

Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, and questions in the comments below or over on Discord!