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Chapter 21: The Twelfth Art
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 07:29:11 +0000 UTCHer dragons, when they had first been born, were like nothing she had ever imagined. They were impossibly fragile, like malnourished kittens, seemingly all neck, tail, and wings with no torso to speak of. She could hold one in her palm and feel almost no weight. But when they spread their wings, it was another matter. The wingspan was three times their body length, each a delicate, colorful, translucent membrane stretched taut between long, thin bones.
The girl whose body she now inhabited had been small for her age, her growth stunted by a childhood of hunger and fear. At fourteen, Daenerys had no curves to speak of, and her small breasts could not provide nearly enough milk for three hungry mouths.
And they were always hungry. When they weren't fed, they would stretch their long necks and let out piercing screams, little puffs of hot white smoke jetting from their nostrils. Dany had tried everything: jerky, mare’s milk, bloody raw meat, cooked meat. They would sniff at it and turn their heads away in disgust. She had been growing desperate. Even Jorah had no answers; the dragons had been gone from the world for more than a century.
The solution had come during her first bath in the fire. The black dragon had wiggled free from her arms and hungrily gnawed on a piece of charred bone from the embers. That was when she understood. They ate only burnt meat, charred black all the way through. They were too young to breathe their own fire, so she had to be their flame.
And their appetites were miraculous. She had tested it herself: they could eat three times their own body weight in a single feeding. It defied every law of science she had ever known. She had once gently prodded the black dragon's belly as he ate, trying to understand where it all went. The stomach just kept wriggling, and he just kept eating.
Because they ate so much, they were growing at a rate she could see with the naked eye. Soon, she often thought with a thrill of joyous anticipation, I will be able to ride them.
But first, they had to learn to fly. For now, they were hopelessly clumsy, flapping their wings furiously only to tumble to the ground after traveling less than a meter. Every morning, as the egg-yolk sun climbed the horizon, she would take them to an open space for their lessons, tossing them into the air like paper airplanes. They would flutter, fall, and then dutifully crawl back to their mother to line up for the next attempt. In the distance, a group of Dothraki children, naked but for their shorts, would hide behind the hills and watch, their round almond eyes wide with a mixture of curiosity and awe.
Around mid-morning, the Dothraki mothers would call their children back to the camp to eat and then sleep through the worst of the day’s heat. It was a simple, ancient rhythm. The children had mothers, but unless they were the sons of a ko or a Khal, they had no fathers to speak of. The khalasar raised them. The boys would become warriors, and the girls would become mothers, repeating the cycle of their parents. Perhaps, Dany often thought as she watched them, the future will be different.
She picked up her wicker basket, gathered her three tired children, and walked slowly back to her tent. After a quick rub-down with fine red sand to clean her skin, she shared a piece of charred jerky with the dragons, then curled up with them on her furs and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
On the evening of their third day of travel, half an hour into the march, a man fell from his horse. Because of the new command structure, the news reached Dany at the head of the column almost immediately. Leaving Jhogo in command, she rode back with Aggo and Rakharo to see.
The fallen man was old, with a pair of dead-looking blue eyes and skin far fairer than any Dothraki. The roots of his gray hair were a faded gold. He was one of the slaves that had been part of Drogo's khalasar, and one of the first beneficiaries of her new decree granting all slaves the status of free tribesmen.
He had no teeth. A quick inspection showed no signs of heatstroke. His arm was broken from the fall.
"How old are you?" she asked, offering him a skin of fermented mare’s milk.
"I do not remember, Khaleesi," the old man rasped, waking from his stupor.
"What happened?"
"My hand," he moaned, cradling his broken arm. It was a comminuted fracture, but all she could do was set it with two flat boards and bind it tightly. A doctor without medicine was no doctor at all.
"Avanti," she called to the old herdsman, who was the man’s Commander of Ten. "Find a place for him in one of the carts."
As the two old men made room, her maid Irri spoke, her voice flat and certain. "He should be left here, Khaleesi. His time has come. No one should outlive his own teeth." The other Dothraki murmured in agreement.
"Have you ever thought," Dany countered, "why a man so old was kept in the khalasar at all? We do not keep useless people. He must have some great skill."
"Perhaps he knows medicine," Jorah offered.
Dany shook her head. "No, not medicine. Perhaps he is a great herder. Is that it, Avanti?"
Avanti, riding half a horse-length behind her, gave a clumsy, flattering smile. "You are truly astute, Khaleesi. Nothing can be hidden from you." The compliment was so blunt and unpracticed it was almost charming.
"What is his special skill?" Aggo asked curiously.
"Watson," Avanti said, giving the old man his name, "is a master of the twelve arts of spring’s cry."
"The blue-eyed man is Volantene," he added, as if that explained everything.
"The art of spring’s cry?" Dany asked, completely baffled. "What is that?" A moment later, a deep blush spread across her cheeks as she understood. The erotic arts. She felt a flash of irritation, as if she’d been slapped in the face. This is his great skill?
"Ah, those who live in stone houses have many strange customs," Avanti said, waving a dismissive hand. He seemed to sense her displeasure and quickly tried to explain. "Khaleesi, even the great pleasure houses of Qarth know only seven of the arts. Watson is Volantene. He knows five of the twelve secret arts that were once practiced only for the dragonlords of Old Valyria. It is enough to conquer the world, they say."
"Even if he is the master of such things," Dany said, still puzzled, "what use is he at his age? Why would a Khal keep him?"
"He is Khal Haggo's father," Avanti said, his voice dropping to a solemn tone. "A Khal's father cannot be abandoned."
"Khal Haggo?" Dany was even more confused, thinking of Drogo's brutish bloodrider.
"Not that one, Khaleesi," Avanti chuckled. "The blue-eyed Khal Haggo, from twenty years ago. There are at least three boys named Haggo in our small khalasar now."
"So this Watson is not so simple," Dany nodded, pulling her white lion cloak tighter around her shoulders. "The son of a slave became a Khal."
"A half-blood," Avanti corrected. "Haggo’s mother was Dothraki. Because Watson served the old Khal so well, his brave son was made a ko. Later, this Blue-Eyed Haggo became a Khal himself, and he made a great name for himself on the Grass Sea… until he met the father of our Khal Drogo."
Dany nodded, a new respect for the old man in the cart growing within her. A person's value was not only in their strength.
"Khaleesi," Avanti said suddenly, "do you know the story of when Khal Drogo was stolen as a boy?"
"I know it," she said. "It was Cohollo who rescued him, and for his bravery, he became the Khal's most trusted companion, and later his bloodrider." As she spoke the words, a sudden thought struck her, a cold, sharp connection. She looked at Avanti, her eyes wide.
"Was it Blue-Eyed Haggo who stole him?"
