Chapter 23: The Long, Quiet
Ten years passed. Ten years under the shadow of the god on the hill. The history books, were any maester brave enough to write them truthfully, would call it the Dragon's Peace. It was an age of unprecedented order. The internecine wars that had plagued Westeros for centuries ceased entirely. Border disputes between lords were resolved not by swords, but by a quiet, shared terror of attracting the wrong kind of attention. Crime in the cities plummeted to almost nothing; a thief who stole a loaf of bread might wake to find his hands fused together, a pickpocket in Flea Bottom might suddenly find himself confessing his sins at the top of his lungs in the middle of the street. It was a world of perfect, suffocating peace.
The Seven Kingdoms prospered in a material sense. Trade flourished under the quiet sea lanes. Famines became rare as harvests went unmolested by marching armies. But it was a prosperity of the flesh, not the spirit. The soul of the kingdom was held in an iron grip. Laughter in the taverns was a little quieter. Arguments between neighbors were quickly shushed. Ambition, passion, righteous anger—the very engines of the human heart—were banked like dangerous fires, lest their smoke attract the eye of the silent sentinel who watched from his throne of ruins.
Krosis-Krif had achieved his utopia. His pasture was orderly. His flock was quiet. And he was colossally, soul-crushingly bored.
In the Red Keep, the gilded cage had grown comfortable for some, and for others, it was a slow-acting poison. Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen ruled with a grace and wisdom born of her trauma. She was a good queen. She managed the realm's affairs with a steady hand, her court a model of efficiency. But the fire had gone out of her eyes. She was a magnificent portrait of a queen, hung in a gallery for the amusement of one.
Her sons were a study in the effects of the new age. Jacaerys, now a man of twenty-seven, was her stoic, grim-faced heir. His journey to the Stepstones a decade ago had been the defining lesson of his life. He had seen the handiwork of their god on a global scale, and the experience had burned away his youthful defiance, leaving behind a hard, cynical core of pure pragmatism. He did his duty, he advised his mother, but he never smiled.
It was at the morning council that the generational divide became most apparent. Rhaenyra sat at the head of the table, flanked by Jace and her younger son, Aegon the Younger, now a solemn, dark-haired boy of sixteen.
"Lord Stark has sent another raven, Mother," Aegon said, his voice quiet and formal. He was a child of the Dragon's Peace, raised entirely under the shadow. He knew no other world. "He asks again for permission to expand the port at White Harbor and build a new fleet of trading galleys."
Jacaerys gave a short, humorless laugh. "Stark is persistent. Does he wish to see his new fleet turned into a single, rather large paperweight? The god does not like new fleets."
"The god has not forbidden trade, Jace," Rhaenyra said, her tone weary. She had had this argument a dozen times. "It has only forbidden war. Lord Stark's request is reasonable. It will bring prosperity to the North."
"And a new fleet will give him power," Jace countered, his voice low. "And power breeds ambition. And ambition is… untidy. That is the word it uses, is it not? 'Untidy.' I would rather not give it a reason to tidy up the North. Forgive me if I don't wish to feel the psychic echo of ten thousand screaming Northmen."
Aegon the Younger looked from his brother to his mother, his expression thoughtful. "But if we are never to build anything new, never to take any risks, then what are we? Are we just… caretakers? Are we simply tending the garden until the gardener decides to pull up the weeds?"
The question, so simple and so profound, silenced them both. It was the question that haunted all of their lives. Rhaenyra looked at her youngest son, a boy who had never known the thrill of a dragon's flight or the simple freedom of a world not ruled by an omniscient mind, and her heart ached.
"We are survivors, Aegon," she said finally. "And that will have to be enough."
In a tavern in the Street of Silk, two old men who had once been soldiers in the City Watch shared a mug of ale. Their voices were low, a habit learned by an entire generation.
"It's strange, isn't it, Theron?" said the first man, Hobb. "My granddaughter was born ten years ago. She has never heard a war horn. She doesn't know what a raid is. She'll live her whole life in peace."
Theron, a man whose face was a map of old scars, took a slow sip of ale. "Aye, a fine, quiet peace. And she'll live it afraid to love someone too fiercely, lest the god take an interest. She'll live it afraid to grieve too loudly, lest the god find her sorrow… disorderly." He leaned closer. "You remember young Addam, the baker's boy? A good lad, but a temper. Got into a fight with a stablehand over a girl. Didn't even draw a knife, just a scuffle. The next morning, Addam wakes up and he can't speak a word. His tongue is still in his head, but it won't move. The god decided his words were too angry. He just… turned them off."
Hobb shivered, pulling his cloak tighter around him. "The god provides. The harbors are safe. The granaries are full."
"The god provides a full belly and an empty soul," Theron whispered, staring into his mug. "It's a clean, well-lit cage, Hobb. But it is still a cage."
From his throne of ruins, Krosis-Krif observed it all. He felt the Queen's quiet sorrow, the Prince's bitter resentment, the old soldier's philosophical despair, the baker's boy's silent frustration. He felt these things not as emotions, but as data points, faint, repetitive signals from his terrarium.
The order he had craved, the perfect stability he had engineered to ensure his survival, had been achieved. And it was excruciatingly dull.
The first few years had been interesting. He had enjoyed the novelty of his absolute power, the subtle ways he could impose his will. He had flattened a nascent pirate fleet in the Basilisk Isles with a thought. He had telekinetically disassembled a new temple being built to a fire god in Volantis that he found… aesthetically displeasing. He had whispered mathematical proofs into the minds of maesters at the Citadel and watched them squabble over who had made the discovery.
But now, the novelty had faded. The world was a solved equation. The humans were predictable in their terror. There were no more armies to consume, no more dragons to absorb, no more great psychic energies of war to feast upon. He was a god, and he had the divine equivalent of ennui. His human mind, the cunning, ruthless, psychopathic core of him, was not made for placid observation. It was made for the game. And this game was over.
It was time, he decided, for a new one.
Order was a means to an end, the end being his own security. But entertainment… entertainment was an end in itself. He had balanced the scales of the world. Perhaps it was time to see what would happen if he put his thumb on one side. Not with a grand gesture of destruction, but with something far more insidious. A whisper.
He had spent ten years observing the survivors of the old world. He had sifted through their memories as they slept, read their ambitions in the privacy of their own minds. He knew them all intimately. And he knew which of them was the most interesting specimen in his collection. Not the proud Queen or her bitter son. Not the defeated Hand or his pious daughter.
It was the Clubfoot. Larys Strong. A being of pure, unadulterated, pragmatic ambition. A man whose soul was a testament to the idea that a whisper could be more powerful than a sword. Larys had not broken under the new regime. He had not despaired. He had adapted. He had studied. He had been waiting, Krosis-Krif knew, for an opportunity.
It was time to give him one.
Lord Larys Strong was in his chambers in the Tower of the Hand, a place he had been allowed to keep through a carefully cultivated air of harmlessness. He was reading a history of the Rhoynar, his mind tracing the patterns of their doomed war against the Valyrians. He was contemplating the nature of power that relies on brute force versus power that relies on subtlety when the voice entered his head.
It was not a public proclamation. It was a private, intimate, and utterly terrifying whisper.
"LORD STRONG."
Larys froze, the book slipping from his numb fingers. He had heard the voice before, during the public decrees, but this was different. This was a private audience. He felt the full weight of that colossal consciousness focus entirely on him. He did not scream. He did not pray. He simply waited, his heart a cold, hard knot in his chest.
"YOU HAVE A QUIET MIND," the voice observed. "UNLIKE THE OTHERS. THEY THINK SO LOUDLY. THEIR GRIEF, THEIR RAGE, THEIR FEAR. A CONSTANT, WEARISOME NOISE. YOUR THOUGHTS ARE… ORDERLY."
Larys's mind raced, sifting through a thousand possible responses. He chose the simplest, most honest one. A thought, directed outwards. I have always found that silence offers the greatest clarity, Great One.
A feeling of cold amusement washed over him from the voice. "CLARITY, INDEED. YOU UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF POWER BETTER THAN MOST OF YOUR KIND. YOU KNOW THAT A THRONE IS MERELY A CHAIR."
I serve order, as you do, Larys thought, his response carefully crafted. It was the truth, from a certain point of view.
"ORDER HAS BECOME… STATIC," the voice said, and Larys felt a wave of cosmic boredom so profound it almost made him nauseous. "IT IS A PERFECTLY TUNED INSTRUMENT THAT NO ONE PLAYS. IT IS A FINISHED PAINTING THAT NO ONE VIEWS. IT IS… UNINTERESTING."
Here it was. The opening. The moment he had been studying and preparing for for a decade.
"YOU ONCE WHISPERED IN THE EAR OF A KING," Krosis-Krif continued, the mental voice seeming to lean closer, a conspiratorial whisper between a god and an insect. "YOUR WHISPERS SHAPED THE WORLD. YOU WERE AN AGENT OF CHANGE. AN ARTIST OF DISCONTENT."
A long, terrible silence stretched, in which Larys felt his entire life being weighed and measured.
"I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF THIS PERFECT, PREDICTABLE SILENCE," the voice concluded. "I WISH FOR A STORY. A NEW ONE."
"WHISPER TO ME, LORD LAYS. TELL ME OF YOUR WORLD'S IMPERFECTIONS, HIDDEN BENEATH THIS VENEER OF PEACE. TELL ME OF ITS RESENTMENTS, ITS SECRET AMBITIONS, ITS HIDDEN DESIRES. SHOW ME THE FAULT LINES. SHOW ME THE PRESSURE POINTS. I HAVE GROWN TIRED OF WATCHING THE GARDEN. SHOW ME WHERE THE MOST INTERESTING WEEDS MIGHT GROW."
The final word echoed in his mind, a terrifying invitation.
"ENTERTAIN ME."
Larys Strong, the Clubfoot, the Master of Whispers, sat alone in his silent room. The most powerful being in the history of the world, a creature that had unmade armies and devoured souls, had just confessed its boredom to him. It had just offered him the position of court jester, grand vizier, and chief storyteller to a lonely, psychopathic god. It was a role of unimaginable power and inconceivable danger. To succeed was to become the secret master of the world. To fail, or to become boring, was to be erased.
A slow smile spread across Larys Strong's lips. It was the first genuine smile he had worn in ten years. His game was not over. It had just been elevated to a level he could never have dreamed of. He now had the ear of God. And oh, the stories he would tell.