Daenerys’s eyes flickered with a sudden interest. "Captain," she asked, "how long is the voyage from Qarth to King's Landing?"
The sea merchant, thinking she was planning her return, stroked his chin. "Your Grace must understand, a man of trade does not sail in a straight line. We follow ...
2025-09-08 09:04:24 +0000 UTC View PostDaenerys had expected Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who so loudly proclaimed his admiration for her, to offer to pave her way through the gilded corridors of Qartheen power. He did not. He was happy to be her guide, to point out which hands required greasing, but the gold itself would have to come from her o...
2025-09-08 09:03:25 +0000 UTC View PostXaro Xhoan Daxos was a man of his word. The palace he provided was a wonder, a place of sprawling gardens, wide marble baths, and a towering crystal observatory that touched the sky. It was larger than the great market, with more than enough room for her small khalasar and the two hundred servant...
2025-09-08 08:59:45 +0000 UTC View Post"I have been told," Daenerys said, her voice careful, "that only those who keep the Old Gods of the North can be skinchangers. Does Asshai have weirwood trees?"
"Daenerys," Quaithe asked, her own voice flat and unreadable behind the mask, "do you know what the Old Gods truly are?"
Dan...
2025-09-08 08:58:00 +0000 UTC View PostAggo rode without sparing his horses. Three days later, he reached the first villages of Qarth. Before Daenerys had even broken camp, a caravan of a hundred camels laden with supplies was already making its way toward them.
Her khalasar had been on the march for four full days. They had los...
2025-09-08 08:57:09 +0000 UTC View PostTo go or not to go. It seemed an impossible choice, a future hanging on a single word. But Daenerys knew, with a cold certainty, that there was no choice at all.
"Your Grace," Ser Jorah began, his brow furrowed in thought, "it is obvious they have come for the dragons. But their interest in...
2025-09-08 08:56:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe third person was a woman, cloaked and silent. She wore a mask of red lacquered wood that concealed her entire face, leaving only the faintest impression of the features beneath. When she spoke, her voice was flat and unaccented, her command of the Seven Kingdoms’ Common Tongue perfect. "Gre...
2025-09-08 08:55:07 +0000 UTC View PostAfter another complaint from Daenerys about the rebelliousness of her white and green dragons, Jorah offered some practical advice. "You cannot be a mother to all three in the same way, Your Grace. Focus your efforts on the black one. He is bonded to you. Once he is grown and disciplined, you can...
2025-09-08 08:54:20 +0000 UTC View PostIn the evening, as the blistering heat of the day began to fade, the Dothraki resumed their work, clearing the ash from the pit where the Valyrian rider had been cremated. At first, there was nothing but charred bone and blackened sand. Then, a warrior let out a shout.
He held up his soot-c...
2025-09-08 08:53:18 +0000 UTC View PostThis time, the journey was different. Their purpose was clear, and they were not burdened by the old and the weak. Daenerys took the lead, her silver filly galloping happily across the red sand, kicking up a long, thin plume of dust. Jorah and her bloodriders followed three lengths behind, with t...
2025-09-08 08:52:11 +0000 UTC View PostAfter five days of relative peace, the scouting parties returned. Aggo, though tired and caked in red dust, was ecstatic.
"Khaleesi," he reported, "I rode west for half a day. There are mountains in the distance, with sparse woods at their feet. The land is full of antelope and elk." He loo...
2025-09-08 08:50:52 +0000 UTC View PostDaenerys looked at the broken man before her and felt a strange, detached pity. Jorah Mormont’s story was a tragedy, yes, but she was no stranger to tragedy. Her own life, the life of the girl whose body she inhabited, had been a litany of loss. She had no time to dwell on the sorrows of the pa...
2025-09-08 07:46:39 +0000 UTC View Post"Freeriders are sellswords, nothing more," Jorah explained, his voice a low rumble. "Men with a horse and some skill with a blade. Knights are another matter entirely." He seemed to settle into the role of teacher, the pain of his own memories momentarily forgotten.
"A boy who wishes to be ...
2025-09-08 07:44:22 +0000 UTC View PostJorah should be ashamed, Daenerys thought. In his whole story, he had not once spoken his first wife's name. It was as if she had been a ghost in his life even before she was a ghost in the ground.
The knight’s voice was a low, melancholy rumble as he continued. "Not long after she passed...
2025-09-08 07:40:55 +0000 UTC View Post"And how do you think I should choose?" Daenerys asked, turning the question back on him. She held the black dragon in her arms, feeling its warmth against her skin. With the only three dragons in the world, her future was a thing of unimaginable potential. But for now, that potential was fragile...
2025-09-08 07:39:41 +0000 UTC View PostAt dawn the next day, after Daenerys had walked the length and breadth of White Cloud City, she began to bitterly regret having slaughtered all the sheep. The resources here were richer than she could have ever dreamed, enough to sustain them for a lifetime.
Nearly every street and courtyar...
2025-09-08 07:38:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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.
W...
2025-09-08 07:37:06 +0000 UTC View PostDaenerys’s bond with her dragons was a strange and unpredictable magic. The original Daenerys, the girl whose life she now lived, had been more a vessel for this power than its master. She had loved her children, but she had also feared them, and in trying to be a good queen, she had neglected ...
2025-09-08 07:36:39 +0000 UTC View PostDaenerys 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 o...
2025-09-08 07:34:14 +0000 UTC View PostJorah was right, and the cold logic of his words was undeniable. To follow Dany’s plan, the strong would suffer immensely to prolong the lives of the weak. Their rest time would be cut in half, their work under the scorching sun doubled.
"This is my khalasar," Dany insisted, her voice qui...
2025-09-08 07:32:52 +0000 UTC View Post"He was not a pure horseman, you see," old Avanti continued, his voice a dry rasp. "Blue-Eyed Haggo had the strength of any great Khal, but he lacked their courage. He was tainted by his father's blood, and like those who live in stone houses, he was accustomed to using poison and shameless trick...
2025-09-08 07:30:16 +0000 UTC View PostHer 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, ...
2025-09-08 07:29:11 +0000 UTC View PostHarry and Ron stared at the unlocked door, their minds still struggling to process the sheer, casual efficiency with which Hermione had just broken through three legendary magical trials.
“Hurry up,” she called back, her voice echoing from the next chamber, laced with an impatient weari...
2025-09-07 08:03:43 +0000 UTC View PostThe Mirror of Erised.
The name floated up from the depths of her past life's memory. Hermione stared at the magnificent, ornate mirror, a silent sentinel in the dusty, forgotten chamber. She knew what it was, and she knew what it was destined for. Dumbledore was going to use this very mirro...
2025-09-05 17:46:27 +0000 UTC View PostA leader cannot show doubt. A leader must be a rock of confidence for her people. It was a lesson Daenerys had learned not in a throne room, but in an operating theater: a surgeon must never, ever show fear to a patient before the first incision is made.
"The horses will not drink from the ...
2025-09-05 11:49:43 +0000 UTC View PostThe Dothraki respected strength and despised weakness. Life was cheap, whether it was their enemy’s or their own. With no other entertainment, fighting was their pastime, and they would draw a blade over the smallest of insults.
"In Westeros," Dany asked Jorah, watching the two warriors c...
2025-09-05 11:49:22 +0000 UTC View PostDaenerys stared at the blank, uncomprehending faces of her new bloodriders. The Dothraki, it seemed, were baffled by any number greater than ten, and completely lost when faced with a "complicated" system of command. She raised an eyebrow. Drogo's mighty khalasar had been made of dozens of indivi...
2025-09-05 11:43:30 +0000 UTC View PostWhen the last of the ash had cooled and the sun was high in the sky, Daenerys gathered her people. She had been washed clean, and now she sat astride her silver filly, a dragonling cradled in her arms, another perched on each shoulder. The horse walked slowly through the crowd as she looked down ...
2025-09-05 11:40:53 +0000 UTC View Post"Aaaaiiiiieeeeeeeee!"
The Lhazareen priestess wailed in the heart of the flames, her voice a high, piercing shriek of pure agony. She was not, in the end, as strong as she had pretended to be.
Daenerys, sitting cross-legged beside Drogo, had thrown the torch into the pyre herself.
... 2025-09-05 11:35:49 +0000 UTC View PostAs the last light of the sun vanished and the sky bruised to a deep purple, Daenerys turned to Aggo. "Take Odo's men into custody. Give the goat-slaves what food we can spare and let them go."
Aggo glanced at the shivering Lhazareen. "Khaleesi," he said, his voice low and troubled, "they ha...
2025-09-05 11:32:33 +0000 UTC View Post