Snowing_Melody
patreon
Chapter 24: The First Flight
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 07:34:14 +0000 UTCDaenerys had misunderstood. Old Watson, in his final moments, had not burdened her with a lecher's handbook. He had given her a key.
Later that night, unable to contain her curiosity, she had secretly opened the thick, parchment-bound book. She had been prepared for the worst, but instead of the "twelve arts of spring's cry," she found page after page of dense data, charts, and intricate, hand-drawn maps. The twelve explicit sketches that had so horrified her were a mere dozen pages in a volume as thick as a maester's chronicle.
The rest was a work of genius. It was an intelligence dossier on almost the entire continent of Essos. There were detailed maps of the Dothraki Sea, noting the seasonal growth of pastures, average rainfall, and areas prone to disease. There was data on every major city-state: their populations, their industries, their military deployments, the height of their walls. Watson had even recorded the herbal knowledge of Dothraki witch-doctors and the survival strategies of the nomads. It was a conqueror's guide to the world.
With this, she thought, a sense of awe washing over her, Blue-Eyed Haggo could have become the greatest Khal of all. He could have unified the entire Dothraki people. The book was a treasure beyond price, and she resolved to give its author a funeral worthy of a king.
When she put Watson’s body on the small pyre, she did as she had promised. In front of all her people, she lifted her face to the heavens and called out to the weeping star, asking Khal Drogo to welcome this loyal man into his celestial khalasar. As she spoke, the Dothraki gasped. They swore the comet’s bloody tail grew just a little longer in response to her words. Dany knew it was an illusion, a trick of the mind and the ever-approaching star, but she let them believe.
A strong, healthy horse was brought forward. It neighed and struggled as two warriors held its head, its eyes rolling in terror. A third man’s arakh flashed in the torchlight, and a waterfall of dark red blood poured into a copper basin.
"Bring me the grass-horse," Dany commanded. An old warrior stepped forward, carrying an effigy woven from sticks and tough devil-grass.
"Soul, leave this body!" she cried, pointing a dramatic finger at the dying horse. Her voice shifted, chanting words in languages her people had never heard, mysterious and powerful. "Return to this vessel!" she commanded, her hand now pointing to the straw horse.
Under the awestruck gaze of her Dothraki and the baffled stare of Ser Jorah, she took a few panting breaths. "It is done," she announced. "The spirit of the fine horse has entered the grass-horse. Old Watson will have a docile but fierce steed to ride in the night lands. He will not fall again!" She waved a hand. "Place the straw horse on the pyre. It is almost dawn. Light the fire."
"And… this?" the warrior asked, pointing to the horse's body, its eyes still wet with tears.
Dany rolled her eyes. "Are you a fool? Roast it. We need the meat."
As Watson's body burned, the rest of the camp was a hive of activity. Horse meat sizzled over open fires, and a great iron pot was filled with a rich, fragrant stew of horse blood, bones, barley, and dried apples. The strange, mingled aroma of the cooking food and the burning pyre was unsettling, yet it stirred a ravenous hunger in the camp. Dany, however, found it unbearable. On the pretense of training her dragons, she took her basket and a portion of the roasted meat and walked away from the fire.
On the fourth day, they set out at dusk as always. The water pits her scouts had dug were working, a small but vital success.
But even with the temporary relief, death still walked with them. Three hours into the march, a baby girl, only a year and a half old, died quietly in her mother's arms. Her cause of death was a mystery; she had not been sick, nor had she lacked for food or water. Her mother's heartbroken wails echoed through the column, a sound of pure, desolate grief that chilled Dany to the bone.
By Dothraki tradition, a child too young to ride a horse could not enter the night lands; their spirit had to be reborn. They buried the small body in the red sand, and the khalasar marched on without stopping.
Perhaps it was a blessing, then, that the next morning brought a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. As the sun rose, Dany stood in an open patch of ground, laughing and waving at the sky. Her black dragon, after weeks of clumsy tumbles, had finally caught the wind. He soared higher and higher, a living piece of midnight against the pale dawn, until he was just a tiny, distant dot.
Then, he was gone. A wave of maternal panic washed over her. The separation felt like a physical severing. And in that moment of fear, something shifted. The world tilted, and she was no longer standing on the red sand. She was high above it, looking down through his eyes, the desert a vast, cracked map below. The connection was dizzying, overwhelming, and it lasted only a second before she was back in her own body, gasping for breath.
It is like the old tales of the wolf-kings in the North, she thought, her heart hammering in her chest. A spirit bond. I can feel him, even when he is gone from my sight.
It was the first time she had connected with one of her children without touching them. A new kind of magic, a new kind of power, was awakening within her.
