“I’m going to tell you a secret, Gavin.
I only ever told your father.
My true name is Elisse Belaerys.
I’m one of the dragonlord bloodlines that survived the Doom.” She reached under the bed again and brought out two books with their covers torn away.
She placed them in his hands.
“One records the history of House Belaerys.
Our ancestor who survived the Doom carried it with him.
The other is that same ancestor’s diary, written after the Doom.
It holds some of the family’s deepest secrets.
Those secrets are the reason only I am left alive.” Gavin took the books and flipped through them quickly.
So it’s true, he thought.
I have the blood to claim a dragon.
He looked up.
“Mother, the writing in these books is the same strange script you’ve been teaching me.
That’s why you taught me High Valyrian—so I could read them?” Elisse smiled, gentle and warm.
“Yes.
High Valyrian is the language every member of our family was expected to master.
Read what’s inside.
Whether you choose to chase the secrets in the diary is a decision you can make when you’re older.” Two days later Gavin sat on the beach in front of a pot of boiling seawater.
The fire was low from lack of dry wood, but his mind was nowhere near the salt.
Elisse had told him everything that night.
He had already read both books from cover to cover.
He understood his mother’s family now.
The history book was heavy with praise for House Belaerys, light on hard facts, yet even the praise painted a clear picture of the Valyrian Freehold at its height and the brutal politics inside its council.
Forty dragonlord families had formed the ruling council of the Freehold.
Three high families served as archons together and ran the council day to day.
The other families voted, their votes weighted by their power.
The surviving Targaryens had been one of those families, but according to the book they had almost no real voice.
House Belaerys had not been ordinary.
It was one of the three ruling families and held veto power inside the council itself.
The family’s first and greatest dragon had been named Belaerys—the same name the house took for itself.
The book described a creature that lived eight hundred years.
When it flew, it blotted out the sun.
In battle it could turn its own flesh into living flame, becoming immune to harm.
Even its rider burned alongside it.
Even among the dragonlords of old Valyria, that dragon had been nearly invincible.
Most members of House Belaerys also awakened the gifts of fire sorcerers.
Even without dragons they were dangerous.
The other two high families had commanded blood magic and prophecy instead.
The diary belonged to Orphos Belaerys, the direct ancestor of Gavin’s line.
Orphos had been eighteen and in Braavos when the Doom struck, which was the only reason he survived.
His dragon had still been young, barely large enough to ride.
During the Century of Blood the slaves rose up and killed it.
Orphos escaped the chaos in Braavos but lost the family sword in the fighting.
It ended up in the Sealord’s treasury.
After that he wandered Essos, never daring to use his true name.
In the diary he wrote that House Belaerys had once built a secret underground dragonpit far from Valyria itself.
Inside were dragon eggs, the family’s accumulated knowledge, and chests of gold and treasure.
It was buried so deep that even the Doom might not have reached it.
Orphos had wanted to return to the ruins and search, but for thirty years the smoke and ash from the Doom made the Smoking Sea and the lands around it impassable.
When the air finally cleared he was nearly fifty.
He gave the remaining family tokens to his descendants, set out alone for the location written in the diary, and never came back.
For centuries afterward, members of the family kept making the journey to Valyria.
None returned.
By the time Elisse was born, she was the last living blood of House Belaerys.
Meeting Morton and choosing to stay in Westeros had been her way of trying to survive.
The fire was almost dead before Gavin noticed.
He swore under his breath, fed it more wood, and stirred the flames back to life.
When the pot was boiling properly again he reached up and touched the pendant resting against his chest.
It was milky white now, smooth and warm under his fingers, catching the weak sunlight with a faint inner glow.
According to the book and his mother, it had been carved from a piece of the great dragon Belaerys’s own bone.
It was a token of the house.
The night Elisse gave it to him, the moment his skin touched the carved bone he had felt power inside it—real, living energy.
For two days he had tried to understand it.
All he could tell was that the energy moved slowly from the pendant into his body.
He still had no idea what it was doing or how to control it.
For now he set the questions aside, packed the day’s salt, and headed for town.
The tavern was loud when he pushed through the door.
Laman spotted him at once, smiling as she came around the counter and caught his face between her hands.
“Well now,” she said, giving his cheeks a fond squeeze, “little Gavin’s getting handsomer every time I see him.” The room was full of talk.
“Heard the news?” a bearded man bellowed.
“Robert Baratheon smashed Prince Rhaegar’s chest in with one swing of that hammer of his.
This war’s about finished.” “Your news is old,” a tall thin man answered.
“The war’s already over.
Tywin Lannister tricked the gates of King’s Landing open and put the whole city to the sack.”
CaveLeather