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Chapter 48: The Rising Tide
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 09:14:13 +0000 UTC"Khaleesi," Aggo shouted, his head poked through the carriage window, "there is a fire mage ahead! The street is blocked!"
The noise from outside was a deafening roar, a human sea more crowded and chaotic than any market she had ever seen.
"A fire mage," Xaro said with a bored sigh. "You can see their sort in any dockside tavern. It is nothing." He took a bottle of wine from a small compartment beneath his seat. "Do you not miss your homeland? Have another glass of Arbor Gold."
"No," Dany said, shaking her head. "Fire mages are not so common in the West. I wish to see." In truth, she simply could not bear to be trapped in the carriage with Xaro for another moment. "Find me a horse," she called out to her bloodriders.
"Khaleesi," Jorah said, appearing at the window, "your gown is not suited for riding."
"Troublesome," she muttered. She looked around, but the dense crowd was a wall of bodies. Then, an idea came to her. "I will stand on the back of the bull. Aggo, you will support me."
The ox-cart was another of Xaro’s lavish gifts, the carriage itself made of ebony and gold, pulled by two immense and docile bulls, one as white as ivory, the other as black as jade, their horns tipped with jewels. Before Aggo could even offer a hand, she had leaped from the carriage and, as nimble as an ape, scrambled onto the broad, white back of the lead bull.
What she saw then made her gasp. The fire mage was a small, dark, monkey-like man in a tight red robe. As she watched, he waved a hand, and a ladder of pure, burning flame materialized in the air two meters above the ground. He leaped onto the wobbling, fiery rungs. There were no hidden supports, no wires she could see. He stood on fire, suspended in the empty air. And that was only the beginning. He waved his hands again, and more orange-red rungs appeared, spiraling upwards. Like a monkey, he climbed, and with each step he took, the rung beneath his feet dissolved into a wisp of silver smoke. Higher and higher he went, until he was four stories above the cheering crowd. He waved to them, then simply fell backward, vanishing, along with the final rung, without a trace.
Dany stared, wide-eyed, at the empty sky. Impossible, she screamed in her mind. If this is what a common street performer can do, what hope do I have?
"Aggo! Ser Jorah!" she cried to the men guarding her bull. "What did you see?"
"A very clever trick," Jorah shouted back, impressed. "Many a court magician is not his equal."
"But where did he go?" she pressed. "How did he stand on fire? Was it magic?"
Jorah laughed. "Your Grace, you think too much. It is a charlatan’s illusion. It is how he earns his bread."
"It was not a trick," a woman’s voice said in the Common Tongue.
Dany looked down and saw Quaithe standing silently beside the bull, a grey-robed, masked specter in the crowd. She had not seen her approach. For a mage, she thought, her skill at stealth is remarkable.
"Maga Quaithe," she said with a smile, turning to sit on the bull's back. "What do you mean?"
"I know this man," Quaithe said, her voice flat. "Six months ago, in this very spot, he could not so much as light a fire with dragonglass. He had to rely on gunpowder and wildfire to deceive the fools who paid him. Daenerys, you have brought the power of magic back into this world." The woman’s eyes, hidden behind the mask, seemed to glitter.
Dany blinked. "That seems… an exaggeration. If I had such power, I would not be so ignorant of it."
Quaithe pointed into the crowd. "That Qartheen priest in the colorful robes. And the girl in the felt hat behind him. Watch."
Dany followed her gaze. Seven meters away, a young girl, dressed as a wealthy merchant’s daughter, leaned against the fat priest and then slipped away into the crowd.
"She is a pickpocket!" Aggo exclaimed. "I saw her cut the man's coin-purse with a blade!"
"Now do you understand?" Quaithe asked calmly. "The fire mage is still a common thief, using his performance to distract the audience while his accomplices work the crowd. He is not some enlightened master." She paused. "But six months ago, his performance was nothing but a few cheap tricks. Barefoot on hot coals. A burning rose appearing from his sleeve. The difference between then and now is the difference between a puddle and the sea. The tide of magic is rising, and his power, along with that of every other mystic in this world, is rising with it."
"If you will not teach me," Dany said, a flash of her old frustration returning, "what use is it to tell me these things?"
"I wish to warn you, Daenerys Targaryen," Quaithe said. She stepped forward and took Dany’s hand. "You must leave this city. Leave, as soon as you can, or you will not be permitted to leave at all."
As her cool fingers touched her skin, a sharp, tingling pain shot up Dany’s arm.
"Shadow-spawn! Do not touch the Mother of Dragons!" Jhogo’s voice was a snarl. The handle of his whip struck Quaithe's hand with a sharp crack, and she instantly pulled back. Dany looked at her wrist. There was no mark, not even a reddening of the skin. Was it my imagination?
"What danger?" she asked.
"The Pureborn have seen your dragons," Quaithe said, her voice calm, seemingly unoffended. "Xaro has been rejected by you, and his patience is not infinite. The warlocks have always coveted what is yours. No one in Qarth is your friend. Is that not danger enough?"
"And where would you have me go? Not to Asshai," she said, cutting off the inevitable suggestion.
"To go north, you must journey south," Quaithe said, her voice taking on a cryptic, prophetic tone. "To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
"Why are you so insistent that I go to Asshai?" Dany asked, exasperated. "There are countless dark sorcerers there. It is a land of poisoners and bloodwitches."
"It is a land of truth," Quaithe replied. "The truth of the world, which you must know." Without waiting for another question, she bowed and vanished into the churning crowd.
"No sane man trusts a child of the shadows," Aggo snorted.
Xaro, who had been listening from the carriage, pulled back the curtain. "The barbarian has more wisdom than he knows," he said with a smile. "Even though you have rejected me, my queen, I am still your most loyal friend. My palace is your home, for as long as you wish."
"Thank you, my lord," she said with a smile of her own. You liar, she thought. It is time to leave.
Later that night, after she had dealt with Xaro, she summoned Jorah to her study. "What did you make of Quaithe’s words?"
"Though I do not trust her, I believe her warning," the knight said grimly. "The longer we stay, the more danger we are in. By the traditions of the North, a short-term visitor is a guest, and is protected. But one who stays too long becomes a sojourner, and the host's obligation ends."
"Where should we go next?" she asked.
"East," he suggested. "To the other great cities of the Jade Sea."
Dany looked at him, her gaze sharp. "To go east is to give up on Westeros. To abandon allies like Illyrio Mopatis."
Jorah’s expression hardened. "Illyrio is not to be trusted," he said, his voice full of a sudden, surprising venom. "He is a fat man, and a fat man is a glutton. As the saying goes, a glutton must also be greedy. And a greedy man is a cunning man. How can you trust one who is both?"
