At the sight of them, the green dragon drew back into her nest at once, her hissing growl now carrying a note of real fear.
Quentyn steadied his own thoughts, calling back to mind the knowledge he’d drawn from the black-and-white door.
“Forgotten Knowledge,” true to its name, was simply the sum of those hidden things that had, by now, vanished entirely from this world.
Quentyn ran a rough survey over the knowledge now sealed away in his own mind.
Nothing in it surprised him.
The gift earned from taming a dragon was, indeed, bound up entirely with dragons themselves.
Special methods for hatching dragon eggs…
The hidden truth behind a dragon’s own birth…
Methods for training a dragon for war…
Methods for strengthening the dragon-bond itself…
Methods for shielding a dragon against the influence of magic…
Still, having combed through all of it, Quentyn found nothing in what he’d gained that struck him as truly overwhelming.
Take, for instance, the horn Euron claimed, in the original story, could directly command dragons themselves, Dragonbinder.
Among the knowledge Quentyn had gained, the method for crafting such a horn proved fantastically involved, requiring vast quantities of blood sacrifice and materials he’d never even heard of, and even once finished, waking its runes required the sacrifice of a king’s own blood, or that of true dragon-blooded nobility.
Even then, its power worked only on ownerless, wild dragons.
What was more, whatever hold it gained over a wild dragon would fade with time, and a dragon tamed by such means could never form a true dragon-bond with its rider at all.
What genuinely interested Quentyn was the special method for hatching a dragon’s egg.
And, alongside it, the methods the old Valyrian dragonlords themselves had once used to tame dragons.
The Song of the Dragon was one such method.
The ancient Valyrian dragonlords would sing the dragon-song in a particular register, imitating the dragon’s own voice, drawing it in, soothing it, and, in the end, taming it.
That was precisely the method Daemon had tried, and failed, to use on Cannibal.
“Mother…
Quenny, I…
I…”
Gael glanced first at her mother, then gripped tight at Quentyn’s own sleeve.
In all honesty, as one of dragon blood herself, she couldn’t help but long for a dragon of her own, and unlike her sister Daella, she’d never carried any real fear of the great beasts.
“Why didn’t you call for me?” Daemon leaned in, sounding rather put out.
“Seven hells, you get Quenny and you forget all about your own nephew?”
“Ah, right, you’re our nephew now, aren’t you.” Quentyn teased him.
“Piss off.” Daemon shot back, none too pleased, and threw an arm around Quentyn’s shoulders anyway.
Alysanne couldn’t help wiping at the corner of her own eye.
From where she stood, all she could see was Gael leaning against Quentyn, and Daemon draped over him besides.
The realm’s own young folk, so at ease with one another.
House Targaryen’s own younger generation, so close, so warm.
Wasn’t this, more than anything else in her whole life, exactly the kind of scene she’d always longed to see?
“Go on.”
Quentyn wrapped an arm around Gael’s slender waist.
The girl had not yet fully grown into womanhood, her waist small enough to fit easily within the circle of his own arm, and at the light pull of it, she very nearly toppled straight into him.
Daemon’s mouth curved up in a small smirk, and he leaned in close to Quentyn’s ear to murmur something.
“Brother, this is a fine chance to win a girl’s heart, don’t say I never told you…”
He straightened up, grinning, glanced down at his own chest, and looked at Quentyn with an air of encouragement.
On the way here, Daemon had already sung Quentyn the dragon-song’s melody and words once through.
Between “Total Recall” and the knowledge he’d only just gained, Quentyn hadn’t merely locked the words and tune firmly into memory.
He’d worked out, on top of it, the different dragonlord houses’ own variant dragon-songs, and the correct tones Daemon himself had never quite managed to hit.
For a moment, Quentyn found himself entirely at a loss for how to respond to Daemon.
He shot him a helpless glance, wrapped his arm around Gael’s waist, and leaned in close to the girl’s ear, humming softly.
“Sing with me.”
“Drakari pykiros.
Tīkummo jemiros.
Yn lantyz bartossa.
Saelot vāedis” (Beast who breathes and swallows flame, winged lord of all creatures, of the twin heads one is yet missing, so sing now to the third.)
Gael’s face went instantly, fiercely red.
She stammered, plainly at a loss for how to even begin singing.
Quentyn guided her patiently, syllable by syllable, coaxing the first verse out of her.
Her voice was halting and uncertain at first, thin as a mosquito’s whine, but little by little, it grew smoother, and louder besides. This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.
She repeated the melody Quentyn had taught her, over and over, singing the dragon-song out more and more completely with every pass.
The green dragon crept her head out of the nest once more, glancing, puzzled, toward Moon Crown, and let out a low, hissing growl.
Moon Crown swayed her head slightly, her throat working.
The great moon-silver beast’s own voice was low and deep, but woven together with Gael’s own singing, it carried a strange, particular beauty all its own.
Dragon-cry and human song blended together so seamlessly that, for a moment, it was impossible to tell whether it was the girl singing, or the dragon.
So that, it seemed, was the true principle behind the dragon-song…
Quentyn confirmed, against his own experience now, what “Forgotten Knowledge” had told him of the dragon-song.
It seemed the earliest form of the song truly had grown out of the dragon’s own cry.
“Henñuhā elēnī: Perzyssy vestretis.
Se gēlȳn irūdaks.
Ānogrose” (Hear the song within my throat: the fire has already spoken, the price of sacrifice is paid, by the magic of blood.)
Gael’s own singing grew steadily more fluent.
By the second verse, Quentyn no longer needed to guide her syllable by syllable; he had only to murmur a single line softly in her ear, and Gael could carry the whole verse through to its end on her own.
The green dragon wavered, caught between Gael’s own song and Moon Crown’s growl, as though she’d never once faced anything like this before, plainly unsettled by it all, and Moon Crown made no move, this time, to shield her.
That left the green dragon deeply uneasy.
And yet Gael’s own singing stirred some strange, inexplicable comfort in her all the same.
The blue-eyed dragon’s gaze settled on the girl’s own reflected shape, and though she couldn’t have said why, something about this singing girl gave off a scent that filled her with real delight.
The handsome, striking boy at the girl’s side carried, along with her own protector Moon Crown’s scent, a second scent that made her tremble despite herself, while the other boy, just as handsome, carried the scent of blood.
That was another dragon’s own scent, and it set the green dragon instantly on guard, though the girl’s own delight melted that wariness away like ice under sun.
Slowly, the green dragon crept forward out of her nest.
Gael flinched, startled, and the once-smooth melody wavered.
“Don’t be afraid.
I’m right here.
Keep singing.”
Gael felt a warmth spread out behind her.
She steadied herself and carried on, following Quentyn’s own melody.
“Perzyro udrȳssi.
Ezīmptos laehossi.
Hārossa letagon.
Aōt vāedan” (With flame as my words, with eyes clear and bright, bind the three as one, I sing for you.)
The green dragon crept slowly forward until she stood before the three young people.
Moon Crown climbed down from the mountainside as well, her wings scattering loose stone, whatever savagery had lingered in her eyes now entirely gone, leaving only calm.
“Now.
Reach out your hand.
Touch her.”
Quentyn’s breath brushed lightly against the girl’s earlobe, deepening the flush already coloring it, though by now, Gael had already been entirely swept up in the sight of the great dragon before her.
She reached out her hand slowly, and the green dragon leaned carefully in to meet it.
The girl’s slender fingers came to rest against the dragon’s snout.
For an instant, girl and dragon both flinched back, but what followed close behind was a bond drawn only tighter still.
Gael drew nearer and nearer to the dragon, her own courage growing with every step, until at last she leaned her whole body against the great creature’s head, and the green dragon lowered herself just as obediently, letting the girl press close against her.
Alysanne was the first to break into applause, and the two white knights followed close behind.
Daemon blinked, caught off guard, then clapped just as hard as the rest.
“Congratulations, Gael.” Quentyn straightened up, smiling.
“You’re a dragonrider yourself now.”
King’s Landing.
The Red Keep.
The Long Table Hall.
The Sea Snake departed, carrying Jaehaerys’s own promise with him.
Sixty years old now, Jaehaerys had come to prize the warmth of children and grandchildren gathered close around him more than almost anything else.
In all honesty, Corlys’s own proposal hadn’t cut quite as deep against the old king’s own resolve as it might once have.
And besides, if Quentyn was allowed to keep the dragon he’d tamed while Laenor was given nothing at all, that would hardly be fair.
Having spent a lifetime playing the wise king, the reconciler, the arbiter, Jaehaerys now found himself bound, in turn, by the very rules and order he himself had built. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping.com.
This was politics.
This was the price of being a wise king, a peacemaker, an arbiter.
And so, after a good deal of argument, Jaehaerys finally agreed to let the Sea Snake choose a dragon egg for his eldest son, Laenor.
Corlys was far from satisfied with the outcome, but he had no choice, in the end, but to accept it.
“Father, Lord Corlys really is…”
Baelon looked ready to say something further, but at the sight of his father’s own weary face, he swallowed the complaint back down.
Corlys Velaryon had never been a man content to sit quietly.
Two years before, in the dispute over the succession, Rhaenys herself had actually pressed her own claim far less forcefully than her husband had on her behalf.
But all of that, of course, rested on the simple fact that Corlys was Rhaenys’s own husband.
Fighting for one’s wife’s rightful due was as natural and unquestionable under Valyrian tradition as it was under the customs of the Andals, the Rhoynar, or the First Men alike.
Neither Baelon nor Jaehaerys could find any real fault in it.
Through his own effort and his own defiance, Corlys had proven the depth of his “love” for Rhaenys, and in doing so, had won himself immense standing among the nobility of Westeros.
“My boy, this realm will fall into your hands eventually.”
Jaehaerys’s voice had grown a little thick and unclear.
It was plain enough that the old king had grown truly weary.
“You will have to face this same helplessness, these same balances of power, yourself one day.
House Velaryon has risen under Corlys’s own stewardship, and that much cannot be undone.
Rhaenys pressing for her own children’s right to tame a dragon was never going to be avoidable.”
“Father, that’s precisely why I’d suggest you formally recognize Quenny’s own dragon-taming, and grant him some honor besides, one that binds him closer still to the royal family.”
Before they’d set out to tame Jade, Alysanne had already set the whole account down in writing and sent it on by raven to King’s Landing.
That Gael, too, had managed to claim a dragon of her own came as a welcome, unlooked-for joy to House Targaryen, and stood as no small part of the reason Jaehaerys and Baelon’s own reception of the whole matter had proven so measured, so calm.
Baelon let out a sigh and picked up his own councillor’s orb.
“You’re right.”
Jaehaerys’s own voice had begun to blur further still.
Age, plainly, was catching up with even his own strength now.
“I remember telling you, and your brother both, the history of old Valyria once…”
Baelon rose to his feet and crossed to the old king’s side, helping his father up.
“In legend, the dragonlords were gods come down to walk among men.
But in truth, in history, the first dragonlords were nothing more than shepherds eking out a bare existence upon the Fourteen Fires…
They signed their pact of shared life with dragons in their own blood, and from that day on, earth, sky, and sea alike came to belong to dragon and dragonlord together.”
The old king’s gaze slowly drifted, unfocused, as he fell into the same history he’d once told his own children and grandchildren, over and over, more times than he could count.
“For the first thousand years, those shepherds’ own descendants held dragons above all else.
When both an elder son and a younger son each tamed a dragon of their own, their parents would leave the family’s own holdings to the elder, and leave the glory of founding a new bloodline to the younger instead.
And so every rider of dragons came to found a bloodline all his own, every dragonlord claimed his own seat within the Freehold, every corner of the sky came to bear the mark of our own passing.
We shattered the Ghiscari Empire, and raised up a dynasty greater than any that had come before…”
In his own mind, Baelon carried the history forward, through the chapters his father left unspoken.
Prosperity bred corruption.
Power shattered kinship.
Through that first thousand years, the shepherds’ own descendants had placed no limit at all on how far a dragonrider’s line might branch and divide, and that alone had let Valyria swell and grow with astonishing speed.
But as the old bloodlines thinned, as brother turned against brother, as cadet branches rose to overtake the main line, no, perhaps by that point it was truer to say one dragonlord house had simply come to dominate another.
Some houses fell into ruin.
Others rose in their place…
And so, once Valyria reached the very height of its power, the forty dragonlord houses that remained, now settled into some rough balance among themselves, came to a quiet understanding: dragonriders would no longer be permitted to found new branches of their own.
Instead, dragonriders themselves would be kept under careful, centralized management, to ensure the dragons’ own inheritance stayed orderly, and the great houses themselves stayed strong.
As the Freehold flourished, both dragonrider and dragonless kin alike grew steadily more content to remain beneath their own family’s protection, content to enjoy the Freehold’s own luxury and excess.
And yet there remained some among the dragonless who still burned with ambition, who refused to be made a joke among the dragonlords, and chose instead to break away and found houses of their own…
In the days of Valyria’s own height, whenever a cadet branch’s descendants managed to produce a dragonrider of their own, the main line would, more often than not, draw that dragonrider back into the family fold, to strengthen the main house’s own power.
But any branch that, across three full generations of contact with dragons and dragon eggs alike, still failed to produce a single dragonrider, would in time come to be regarded by the dragonlords as nothing more than subjects, no longer truly kin at all.
But this was no longer old Valyria.
This was Westeros.
Baelon and Jaehaerys, both long since shaped by Andal custom and culture, found themselves, without a word between them, reaching for that same Andal way of thinking.
“Father, whatever else is true, Quenny has tamed one wild dragon, and returned a second to the family’s own care besides, and through it all, he’s brought Mother closer to mending the rift between the two of you.
Both Viserys and Daemon are genuinely close with Quenny.
Nothing that’s happened does the royal family any real harm, and House Qoherys can now serve as a counterweight to House Velaryon in turn.”