Chapter 12: The Unsheathed Sword
The Hall of a Hundred Hearths in Harrenhal was a cavern of ghosts, a place so vast that the light of the fifty fires Daemon had ordered lit barely touched the soot-blackened ceiling high above. The lords of the Trident, the famously fractious and proud rulers of the Riverlands, had answered his summons. They came cautiously at first, their knights armed, their banners held aloft, expecting a trick. What they found was Prince Daemon Targaryen, seated alone on the high seat of Harren the Black, a flagon of wine in his hand and an amused smirk on his face. The castle was his. The garrison was gone. There was no sign of a battle. This reality was a more potent weapon than any army.
Lord Forrest Frey, a weaselly man whose house was known for its caution and opportunism, was the first to speak, his voice echoing in the cavernous hall. "Prince Daemon. A raven arrived with your… invitation. It claimed you had taken Harrenhal for the Queen."
"Do my eyes deceive you, Lord Forrest?" Daemon asked, gesturing with his flagon to the empty hall around them. "I am here. The castle is mine. The banners of House Strong are in the dirt. These are facts."
Lord Grover Tully, the ancient and ailing Lord of Riverrun, was carried in on a litter, his grandson Elmo speaking for him. "The facts are… unsettling, my prince. The smallfolk speak of a night of impossible sounds, of a tower falling without a siege engine in sight. They say the entire garrison vanished between dusk and dawn. They do not speak of the Blood Wyrm's fire."
Daemon took a long, slow drink of wine. He savored the fear and confusion in their eyes. It was a finer vintage than any Arbor Gold. "Perhaps Caraxes has learned new tricks in his old age," he said, his voice laced with mocking nonchalance. "Or perhaps the curse of this place finally consumed the usurper's men. Does the method truly matter, my lords? Or does the result? Harrenhal is taken. The Greens' power in the Riverlands is broken. Queen Rhaenyra has proven her strength." My strength, he thought. My power.
Lady Sabitha Frey, a formidable woman and Lord Forrest's wife, stepped forward. "And what would the Queen ask of us now that she has demonstrated this… strength?"
"Ask?" Daemon laughed, a sharp, barking sound that startled the lords. "My lady, the time for asking is done. I am not here to court you. I am here to accept your fealty." He leaned forward, his violet eyes pinning each of them in turn. "I offer you a simple choice. You can bend the knee to your rightful Queen, Rhaenyra, and ride with me to victory. Or you can refuse, and I will leave you here to debate the nature of the shadows that haunt these black stones. I cannot promise they will be as… hospitable… to you as I am."
The threat was veiled, but perfectly clear. He was not just offering them an alliance; he was offering them protection from the very power he had used to cow them. It was a masterful, terrifying gambit. Lord Blackwood and Lord Bracken, ancient rivals, glared at each other from across the hall, each waiting for the other to move. Finally, young Lord Blackwood drew his sword and knelt, the sound scraping loudly in the tense silence.
"House Blackwood has always been loyal to the blood of the dragon. We recognize Queen Rhaenyra," he declared.
One by one, with Bracken following grudgingly after, the lords of the Trident knelt. They pledged their swords, their men, and their lands to the cause of the Blacks. Daemon had won the Riverlands without a single drop of his own men's blood. As he accepted their oaths, a triumphant, hubristic pride swelled in his chest. He was the master of this game. The god in his pocket was proving to be a most effective tool.
The news reached Dragonstone like a thunderclap, washing away the last vestiges of fear in a tidal wave of elation. Daemon, the Rogue Prince, had done the impossible. He had taken the most formidable castle in the realm, seemingly by will alone. Rhaenyra wept with joy, seeing it as the final, undeniable sign of their destiny.
Only in the chambers of Lord Corlys Velaryon was the mood not celebratory. His wife, Princess Rhaenys's cousin Rhaella, found him staring out at the sea, his face a storm cloud.
"You do not share in the court's joy, husband," she said softly.
"I share in our advantage, but not in their blindness," Corlys rumbled, his gaze fixed on the horizon. "The boy who cried wolf may have been a liar, but that does not mean the wolf is not there. No man takes Harrenhal in a night, Rhaella. Not even Daemon. He is playing a game we are not privy to, and I fear the price of his victories will be more than we can bear."
His wife placed a hand on his arm. "He is a Targaryen. Power is his birthright."
"Power has a source," Corlys said, turning to face her, his eyes dark with a sailor's dread. "And I fear we will all drown when the bill for this providence comes due."
Krosis-Krif felt the shift. He lay dormant in a vast, water-filled cavern system deep beneath the waters of the Gods Eye, the great lake south of Harrenhal. He was processing the immense energy absorbed from the Hightower host and, more subtly, the dark, sorrowful resonance of Harrenhal itself. The castle's curse was a unique flavor of psychic energy, a patina of pain and fear layered over millennia. It added a new, colder, more terrifying dimension to his own aura.
He felt Daemon's triumph, a bright, arrogant spark in the network of minds he observed. He felt the fealty of the riverlords, the consolidation of the Blacks' power. And in this, he felt an imbalance. The scales were now tipped too far. The Greens were huddled in their capital, weak, terrified, and on the verge of total collapse. A cornered animal is dangerous, but a dead animal provides no sport and no sustenance. The hunt was ending too soon. The feast was not yet over.
The weaker wolf must be allowed a kill, he thought, the concept forming in his cold, alien mind. Lest the stronger one grow complacent. The flock must be driven back into the center of the field.
He needed to rebalance the scales. He needed to give the Greens a victory. Or, failing that, he needed to incite them to an act of such destructive madness that it would once again plunge the entire conflict into bloody, nourishing chaos. He turned his vast, unseen consciousness toward King's Landing, to the sputtering candle flame of the Green cause, and waited to see which of them would be foolish enough to give him the opening he required.
The news of Harrenhal's fall and the defection of the riverlords was the final, breaking straw for the Green Council. They were gathered in the throne room, the great, empty hall a testament to their isolation.
"It is over," Otto Hightower said, his voice a dry rasp. He seemed to have aged twenty years in a month. "We have no armies. We have no allies left beyond the westermen, who cannot reach us. The sea is closed. The land is closed. All we have is this city, and the mouths within it are beginning to starve."
Queen Alicent clutched the seven-pointed star that hung around her neck, her lips moving in silent, frantic prayer. "There must be a way. The gods cannot have abandoned us so completely."
"The gods?" Aemond One-Eye let out a harsh, barking laugh devoid of all humor. He stood before the Iron Throne, not looking at it, but at the great doors, as if expecting his demon to walk through them at any moment. "The gods are either laughing at us or they have fled this world entirely. We have been trying to fight a war of men, of swords and spears, while our true enemy fights a war of gods and nightmares."
Larys Strong spoke from his seat, his voice calm and reptilian. "The message from Bitterbridge was clear. The scales must be balanced. This entity, whatever it is, seems to follow a logic of its own. It has punished our strengths. Perhaps now it will see the Blacks as the stronger side, and punish them in turn."
"We cannot wager our survival on the whims of a monster!" Otto exclaimed. "I will send a raven to Rhaenyra. I will offer terms. A partition of the kingdom, perhaps. A full pardon…"
"TERMS?" Aemond's roar was so sudden and so full of venom that his own mother flinched. He spun on his heel, his sapphire eye blazing with a fire that seemed to rival Krosis-Krif's own. "You would sue for peace with my brother's murderers? With the usurping whore who sits on Dragonstone? You would bend the knee to the shadow that devoured our soldiers? NEVER."
"Then what would you do, my son?" Alicent asked, her voice trembling. "We have nothing left to fight with!"
Aemond's lips pulled back in a terrifying smile, a rictus of grief and rage. "Oh, we have one thing left to fight with, mother. We have a target that this thing cannot ignore. It feeds on death, does it not? On the chaos of battlefields and the terror of men. It is drawn to great slaughters like a carrion bird to a corpse."
He began to pace before them, his energy a palpable, dangerous force in the room. "I have tried to find it. I have flown Vhagar to the highest reaches of the sky and scanned the land until my eye bleeds. It is too clever. It will not be found. So I will not hunt it any longer." He stopped and looked at them, his face a mask of terrible, inspired madness. "I will make it come to me."
"How?" Otto asked, a look of dawning horror on his face.
"This creature wants a feast? I will give it the greatest feast in the history of the world," Aemond declared, his voice ringing with conviction. "The Riverlands have declared for the whore. I will give her back her new kingdom, field by field, village by village. I will take Vhagar and I will burn it all. I will burn the fields until the soil is black. I will burn the towns until the streams boil. I will create a pyre of the Trident so vast, a wave of shrieking death so profound, that the beast will not be able to resist the scent of it. It will come to feast on my massacre. And when it does," he slammed his fist into his own chest, "I, and Vhagar, will be waiting. I will be the bait in my own trap."
"Aemond, no!" Alicent cried, rising to her feet. "That is madness! You would commit atrocities on a scale that would make Maegor the Cruel blush? You would murder thousands of smallfolk, women, children?"
"They are traitors! All of them!" Aemond roared. "They chose their side! And yes, I would kill ten thousand, a hundred thousand, if it meant bringing this demon to battle! It is the only enemy that matters! Can't you see? The war against Rhaenyra is over. The war against the shadow has just begun."
He turned and strode from the hall, his black cloak billowing behind him, ignoring the frantic pleas of his mother and the horrified protests of his grandsire. He was beyond their control, beyond reason. He was a sword unsheathed, driven by a singular, obsessive purpose.
A short time later, the shadow of Vhagar passed over the Red Keep. She did not circle. She did not wait. She flew west, a great, lumbering harbinger of death. Aboard her, Prince Aemond Targaryen did not look back. He had surrendered his kingdom, his family, and his own soul to a singular purpose: to get the attention of a god by becoming a devil. The scales, he vowed, would be balanced in a sea of fire and blood. His fire, and its blood.