All the way back to Harrenhal, Ser Garwyn Chambers’s head hadn’t stopped spinning.
He had never once imagined that he, a mere second son of his house, would actually live to see himself dubbed a knight, and dubbed, of all things, by a young lord who had only just been knighted himself by the Prince of Dragonstone.
When Quentyn had bid him kneel and spoken the words of the oath over him, Garwyn hadn’t even been entirely sure what he was hearing, let alone what he was meant to say in return.
It wasn’t until Billy Bralley offered his congratulations on the way home that the truth of what had happened finally sank in.
In that moment, Garwyn swore to himself, quietly but with real conviction, that even if Quentyn ordered him to his own death, he’d at least ask first what manner of death his lord preferred, and only then go and see to it.
Quentyn himself, meanwhile, had only just managed to escape his parents’ clutches.
Princess Valera hadn’t so much as glanced at her own dragon egg.
The moment they’d reached Harrenhal, she’d thrown herself at once into checking her son over for wounds, for exhaustion, for anything at all amiss, while Lord Daeron, quite out of breath, had personally helped strip Quentyn’s armor from him, leaving even Baelon standing off to the side, entirely forgotten.
Only once Quentyn had been properly seen to did Lord Daeron turn, all courtesy once more, to receive the Prince of Dragonstone in proper form, bringing out cellared Arbor wine and lamb to entertain both Baelon and Vhagar in turn.
The Wailing Tower.
Its terrace.
Standing there, the God’s Eye’s own lake-wind carried its damp, cool air across Quentyn’s face, pleasant and refreshing.
“That Garwyn Chambers.
If I recall right, he’s King’s Landing’s own cloth merchant.”
Baelon came to stand beside Quentyn, his face flushed red with drink, a cup of spiced Arbor wine still in hand.
“Yes.”
Quentyn held a cup of fruit wine of his own, leaning against the railing where dragonfire had once melted and reforged the stone.
“He acquitted himself well in the fighting, and did no small amount of work besides.
He’d earned the title fairly.”
“You mean to have him manage your business affairs for you?”
“Nothing escapes your eye, my Prince of Dragonstone.” Quentyn raised his cup with a smile and touched it lightly to Baelon’s own.
“He’s a steady enough merchant, as these things go.
Worth the use.” Baelon drained half his cup in a single swallow.
[As for the matter with Daemon, King’s Landing’s been searched over these past few days, but there’s not been much to show for it.]
Baelon slipped into High Valyrian.
[Still, we did turn up a few dishonest sorts, spreading rumors against the Crown among the common folk, hoping to turn a profit from it.]
Quentyn found the result no great surprise.
“A snake that misses its strike will naturally slink back into the shadows, if a snake there ever truly was.
[But this rebellion has handed us an opportunity of its own, one worth taking.]”
“Oh?” Baelon poured the rest of his cup down his throat and couldn’t help rubbing at his own upper belly.
“You mean to use this rebellion to open negotiations with the Faith?”
Quentyn nodded.
“Whatever the truth of whether they’re really some gathering of the destitute, once they’ve raised that banner, the Faith owes the Iron Throne an answer for it.
Even if they aren’t, this is still too good a chance to let pass.”
He tapped his cup lightly against the railing.
“The Faith ought to pay some price for failing to rein in its own faithful.
After all, it was my father’s own bannerman’s lands that paid the cost, and it’s the trust between Faith and Crown that’s been damaged besides.”
“You are a crafty one.” Baelon said this with clear approval.
The two of them exchanged a smile.
The moon climbed slowly into the sky.
Harrenhal’s night was not, that evening, a particularly quiet one.
To properly honor Baelon, Lord Daeron threw open another feast once darkness fell, plying the prince and every knight and soldier who’d fought that day with drink until they were thoroughly, happily drunk.
Even the young fishermen who’d joined the battle were given proper beds, bread, meat, and strong spirits of their own.
Over the feast, Baelon proposed that he and Quentyn fly together back to King’s Landing the next day on dragonback.
Daemon’s leg had, over these past few days, healed with what seemed a miraculous speed, and Baelon, worried something might be wrong with it, wanted Quentyn’s own eyes on it.
Once back in King’s Landing, Baelon would report the whole affair to King Jaehaerys and lodge a formal inquiry with the Starry Sept.
Quentyn, meanwhile, would sail on to Dragonstone together with Daemon and Gael, aboard the merchant ship the Wandering Husk.
Quentyn understood well enough that this was only Baelon’s first, surface-level reason. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
In truth, they meant to check whether something was amiss on Dragonstone itself, and to set both Quentyn and Daemon somewhere they’d be, at once, a step removed from the danger, and ready to answer it the moment it showed itself.
Reluctant as they were to see him go, once Quentyn promised he’d be back again before long, Valera and Daeron gave their blessing for him to set out once more.
Late that night, Quentyn lay on his own feather pillow, and the door rose up before him in his mind.
He pushed against it.
It wouldn’t budge.
“Just as I thought…” Standing before the door, Quentyn ran his fingers lightly over the carved pattern worked across its surface.
Since first working out the truth of his own gift, Quentyn had spent no small effort studying it.
By now, he had pushed the door open five times in all, and seen three distinct scenes, each time coming away with some reward.
The very first time, he honestly had no idea what he’d done to meet the door’s condition.
That had simply been the first time he’d discovered a door inside his own mind at all.
He’d pushed it open and found, waiting beyond it, the same towering tree that would later grant him “Night Owl” and “Life-Weaving,” and from that first visit he had come away with the power he called “Immunity.”
That gift had left him wholly untouched by any disease, or any poison, that might otherwise have found purchase in him.
After that had come his second reward, “Night Owl,” earned through sleepless nights, and his fourth, “Life-Weaving,” earned through healing the sick.
Quentyn had come to group these three gifts together as belonging to the “Great Tree” category.
Since it was the vision he’d been granted most often, it was also the one he understood best.
“If I’ve read this right, and the Great Tree corresponds to life, to healing, to gifts of that nature, then whatever I did the very first time I opened the door ought to have had something to do with…
birth?”
Quentyn ran his fingers over the carved pattern on the door’s pale, bone-white half, turning the thought over.
It seemed to him that whatever this gift of his truly was, it might well be tied to the gods of the world of Ice and Fire itself, and this was precisely why he thought so: he recalled that, in the original story, the temple of the Many-Faced God had used this very same black-and-white door as its own emblem.
Quentyn’s hand passed over a broken moon, pale flame flowing from it like blood, gathering itself into a towering, bone-pale tree.
Small figures ringed the tree on every side: a stag-antlered being with hands carved of lapis lazuli, a creature half man and half fish, winged folk with membranous wings stretched beneath their arms, small humanlike beings with unnaturally long fingers, the leaf-cloaked children of the forest, towering giants, and gaunt, pale-as-milk Others with eyes of blue.
Below them all lay seven radiant stars, and a heart formed of gathered flame.
“So then, life and healing must be the key to unlocking the Great Tree’s own gifts…
once this season’s harvest comes in, I ought to try again and see if I can push the door open once more.”
He passed by the seven stars and walked around to the door’s other half.
“Total Recall” had been his third gift, and the first time he’d seen a different vision entirely.
Quentyn had come to call that vision the “Star-Knowledge.”
“Stars, books, knowledge…
straightforward enough, I suppose.
I’ll take knowledge as the key to unlocking the Star-Knowledge’s own gifts for now.
Perhaps I ought to try gathering up some old, forgotten knowledge somewhere and see what comes of it?
Going by how the Great Tree’s worked so far, perhaps it’ll reward me with knowledge older still.”
The carvings on the black half of the door ran more intricate still.
Beside a sun of pure black, a star with eyes of its own watched coldly from above.
A dragon of stone gripped a harpy in its claws, tearing her wings from her body by main force, setting alight the fertile Mother of Rivers, whose spilled blood gave birth to eleven ravishing maidens, dancing together across a sea of red.
Seen from further off, though, what Quentyn found himself looking at instead were kings, looking down over the whole of the world, each one’s eyes set with a different jewel entirely.
A man with eyes of blood-red jade and a woman with eyes of amethyst sat locked together, one above the other, exactly where the black door and the white door met.
What Quentyn found himself wondering now was just how many such visions might lie behind this door of his, in total.
“As for ‘Sword Mastery’…”
Quentyn frowned, turning over the gift he’d only just been granted.
The vision he’d come to think of as the “Long Night’s Meteor” had given him something simple and blunt in its effect, but the way he’d earned it had been strange indeed.
“If it’s tied to combat itself…
no, that’s not it.” Quentyn cast his mind back over exactly how he’d come to earn the gift.
“Going by that same condition, the Long Night’s Meteor probably isn’t something that opens through combat alone.”
Quentyn traced two words into the air, written in that private script only he himself could read.
Vengeance.
The punishment of sin.
What counted as vengeance, exactly?
What counted as sin deserving punishment?
Both were questions Quentyn would need to turn over carefully.
And the Great Tree’s own pattern had already taught him one more thing: each reward, it seemed, grew harder to earn than the one before it.
“Still, I’ve at least worked out something of the pattern now.
I can afford to be bolder in testing it going forward.
I only wonder whether there’s some gift tied to dragons waiting somewhere in there…”
With that thought, Quentyn closed his eyes.
The gift of “Night Owl” meant he needed hardly any sleep at all to restore himself fully, but he was still, after all, a boy in the middle of growing.
Only a week before, he’d measured himself at five feet eight inches (1.73 meters), and he was eager to break past six feet before too much longer.
So eating well, sleeping properly, living as any ordinary thirteen-year-old boy would, still mattered, and mattered a good deal.
He slept soundly through the night.
The next morning, once Quentyn had finished his breakfast and made his way to the great plaza before Kingspyre Tower, he found Lord Daeron and Princess Valera already waiting there.
Baelon stood between Quentyn’s parents, nodding again and again.
“Don’t you worry, Aunt Valera.
I’ll see little Quenny’s well looked after.”
Catching sight of Quentyn approaching, Baelon gave a slight nod in his direction and called out.
For a moment, Quentyn found himself at a loss for what to say.
Valera clasped Baelon’s hand gratefully and gave it a shake, then rushed forward and pulled Quentyn into her arms.
A mother’s embrace was always warm, always so reassuring.
Even now that Quentyn stood taller than Valera herself, he found himself utterly powerless against his own mother’s arms.
She held him a while longer before finally letting go, then reached up and took her son’s face in both hands.
She’d known, since Quentyn was very small, that her son was no ordinary child.
She had felt pride because of it, and fear because of it too.
Like her husband, Valera had never been a decisive or hard-hearted woman, and she had never quite managed to choose between wanting her son to grow up safe and whole, and wanting to let him carve out his own place in the world.
Now that her son had made that choice for himself, she found, for a moment, that she had no words left at all.
In the end, all the thousand things she might have said gathered themselves into one single line: “Come home soon.
Mind your own safety.
And listen well to your cousin.”
“What your mother says, I’ll say the same.” Daeron came forward as well.
He didn’t embrace his son, but reached out instead and clasped his arm.
“I’m sorry.
I know I shamed you.”
Quentyn shook his head.
“No, Father.
You had your own reasons for it.
But your son can shoulder more now than he could before.”
Daeron nodded, comforted by the words.
The two of them stepped back, clearing space for the great dragon.
Vhagar’s dewlap trembled, a low, rumbling roar rolling out from her throat.
Even so vast a beast seemed, somehow, a little smaller set against Harrenhal itself, though no less fearsome for it.
Her small, golden eyes settled on Quentyn, and her massive head, large enough to swallow a warhorse whole, dipped down to touch lightly against his back before drawing away again.
She lowered herself close to the ground, making room enough for Baelon and Quentyn to climb up onto her back.
“Seems Vhagar’s rather taken a liking to you.”
Baelon teased, taking hold of the rope ladder hanging down from the dragon’s flank.