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Chapter 26: The Lord of White Cloud City
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 07:37:06 +0000 UTCThe Dothraki loved to say, "everyone knows." It was not a statement of fact, but an invocation of ancient, hard-won tradition. And Dany had learned that their traditions, born from millennia of survival on a harsh continent, were often wise. Their fear of dead cities was no exception.
Why does a city die? she thought. Plague or war. A plague, of course, was to be avoided at all costs. And a city destroyed by war would be filled with rotting corpses, which would also breed disease. The "evil spirits" the Dothraki feared were the invisible germs that could wipe out a khalasar.
But this city was ancient. Whatever had killed it was long dead itself.
"I have dragons," she told her nervous followers, her voice full of a confidence she projected for their sake. "Any evil spirit that sees them will flee."
She gave the order immediately: recall the water-scouts. The entire khalasar would change course. An advance party of twenty warriors would ride ahead to search for food and water within the city walls. And to soothe the deep, abiding fear in her people’s hearts, she sent the black dragon with them, its small form perched on Aggo’s shoulder, its mind connected to hers through the Dragon Dream.
Things went more smoothly than she could have dared to hope. An hour later, as the advance party reached the city, she saw it through the dragon's eyes. It was a city as white as the moon, as beautiful as a mirage, its walls and towers shimmering in the hazy afternoon air. At her mental urging, the black dragon clumsily took flight from Aggo's shoulder. With a single glance from above, she saw it: a patch of impossible, emerald green nestled in the heart of the white stone.
As the dragon flew closer, she saw orchards. Figs. Grapes. Even peach trees. The sight was so overwhelming, so full of joyous, unbelievable promise, that the shock of it broke her connection to the dream.
"There are fruit trees!" she cried, grabbing Dorea's hand, her joy spilling over. "Water! We are saved! We can settle there, Dorea! We can farm, and wait for the dragons to grow!"
That afternoon, she could wait no longer. "There is no need to spare your strength!" she called out to the khalasar. "Our journey is only a few hours more! Aggo and his men have already found fresh fruit and sweet well water for you! Hope is just ahead!" She wanted to kick her horse into a gallop, to race toward their salvation.
As they came within five kilometers of the city, the black dragon flew out to meet them, landing gracefully on her shoulder. The sky was bleeding into the deep yellow of sunset when they finally arrived beneath the white city walls.
"I never thought to see such a majestic place in this wasteland," Ser Jorah said, his voice filled with an incredulous awe. "Even in Westeros, a city such as this would be a rare sight."
That is your Westeros, she thought, a smile playing on her lips. This is my White City.
"Then Her Grace must give her new city a name," Jorah joked, his mood lighter than it had been in weeks.
She tilted her head, thinking for a moment, then giggled. "White Cloud City," she declared, and spurred her silver filly through the broken city gates.
From a distance, it had been a pristine wonder. Up close, it was a ruin. Devil-grass grew in the cracks between the paving stones, and thick vines snaked through the collapsed houses. A gnarled, thigh-thick jujube tree had somehow taken root in the center of a wide street, its branches dotted with a few shriveled fruits.
"How long has this city been abandoned?" she wondered aloud.
"Given how well the stone is preserved, thirty to fifty years," Jorah guessed.
Dany shook her head. "Far longer than that." She spotted Avanti, who had stood on his saddle to pick some of the dates, and called him over. "Avanti, how old are you? Have you ever heard tales of this city?"
"Khaleesi, have a jujube," the old man said, offering her a handful of the tiny, finger-sized fruits. When she declined, he carefully placed them in a pouch on his horse. "I do not know my age, Khaleesi. The seasons are too long, I have lost count. I remember seeing the winter snows perhaps eight or nine times."
Even the nobles of Westeros relied on the maesters of the Citadel to mark the passage of the years. "Jorah, when was the last winter?" she asked.
The knight scratched his scalp. "The maester on Bear Island said this current summer is a long one. It began… ten years ago, I think. It is summer still." He looked up at the sultry, dark red sky and sighed. "You need a maester, Your Grace."
"If a maester came to me," she said softly, "I fear it wouldn't be long before every lord in Westeros had a detailed report on me and my dragons sitting on his desk." She saw Jorah flinch, and knew she had struck a nerve.
"In my memory," Avanti said, "the Red Waste has always been a forbidden place."
"Khaleesi, look!" Aggo exclaimed. He was pointing to an empty marble pedestal at an intersection of six wide streets. "The gods of this city were taken by the horse-people! A khalasar has been here before!"
Avanti circled the pedestal. "He is right. How could this be?"
"Only the Dothraki have the habit of stealing the gods of the peoples they conquer," Jorah explained. A memory surfaced in Dany's mind of the Godsway in Vaes Dothrak, a long avenue lined with thousands of stolen statues of gods and heroes from every corner of the world.
"Then the history of this place is older than we imagined," she mused. "The Dothraki must have come here when the river still flowed. A hundred years ago, at least."
They reached the ruins of a great palace in the city's center. The Dothraki, still wary of ghosts, refused to live in the stone houses, so Dany had them pitch their tents against the high palace walls for shelter. The advance party had gathered a bounty of figs, grapes, peaches, and apples. The fruit was small and often sour, but her people fell upon it with greedy, joyous hands, their mouths full, their faces alight with a satisfaction she had not seen since the journey began.
As night fell, and the bloody light of the comet washed over the ruins, a deep unease settled over the camp. The wind moaned through the empty alleyways, a sound like the cry of lost souls.
"The walls are white, the towers are white, even the skeletons in the streets are white," Jorah said, rubbing his arms. "It is a city of bones."
His words were a spark to the tinder of their fear. Her two Dothraki handmaidens began to tremble. "Khaleesi, we cannot stay here," Jhiqui cried. "This is the land of evil spirits! Listen, they are cursing us from the shadows!"
"Enough!" Dany’s voice was a sharp crack of a whip. She glared at Jorah. "This is not the City of Bones! This is White Cloud City. And I am the Lord of White Cloud City. This is my land."
Hiss!
As if on cue, the black dragon on her shoulder, Dahei, opened his mouth and shot out a thirty-centimeter jet of bright red flame and black smoke.
The maids fell silent, their fear instantly replaced by awe.
