At the same time, somewhere in Westeros.
Melisandre stood before a brazier.
Her copper-red hair stirred though there was no wind.
The red robe glowed brighter in the firelight.
She was a priestess of R’hllor, a mysterious woman from Asshai with a beautiful heart-shaped face and rose-red eyes.
The ruby collar at her throat pulsed with growing light as her power rose.
In the flames a figure slowly took shape — a stranger, powerful and unfamiliar.
His eyes burned like the red sun.
Eternal fire wreathed his body like a mantle.
He looked like a lord of heaven and earth.
Melisandre’s heart began to race.
She turned her head toward the eastern continent of Essos and whispered, “Stannis’s flame has already dimmed.
A new light will be reborn in the land of smoke and salt.” She stared into the leaping fire, eyes filled with fanatic light, then slowly sank to her knees.
She crossed her hands over her chest and began to pray.
“After the long summer the stars will bleed.
The night will come.
But the light has already appeared.
Nissa Nissa’s soul will pierce the long night.
Azor Ahai will be reborn among men.
In the flames he will draw forth the burning sword and wake the dragons from stone… I will follow the new light until the long night retreats and radiance returns to the world.” … On the grass sea the feast had ended and the noise had faded.
Beside a clear spring, Daenerys entered the tent her slaves had raised for her.
Moonlight fell on the dragon eggs resting in the corner.
For a moment she thought she saw countless tiny sparks dancing before her eyes.
She blinked and they were gone.
“Only stones,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes.
“The dragons died out long ago.
Even Illyrio said so.” She walked over and crouched down.
Her slender fingers traced the fine, scaled patterns on the shells.
Strange.
The stone felt warm — almost hot.
“It must be the sun,” she told herself.
She sighed and told her handmaidens to prepare a bath.
Doreah lit a fire outside the tent while Irri and Jhiqui carried in a copper tub.
When the water steamed, Irri helped Daenerys into the bath and climbed in after her.
“Have you ever seen a dragon?” Daenerys asked.
She had heard dragons first came from the east — from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai or the islands in the Jade Sea.
Perhaps some still lived there.
“Khaleesi, the dragons are gone,” Irri said with certainty.
“Yes,” Jhiqui agreed.
“They died out a long, long time ago.” Daenerys let out a disappointed breath.
The Doom had swept across Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and magic had vanished with it.
But she had always heard the east was different.
Manticores still prowled the islands of the Jade Sea.
Basilisks still ruled the jungles of Yi Ti.
“There are no dragons left,” Irri said firmly.
“Heroes slew them.
Dragons were terrible monsters.
Everyone knows that.” Jhiqui nodded.
“Everyone knows.” “A Qartheen merchant once told me dragons came from the moon,” Doreah said.
“He said the moon itself is a giant dragon egg.” Irri laughed.
“The moon isn’t a dragon egg.
The moon is a goddess — the wife of the sun.
Everyone knows that.” “Everyone knows,” Jhiqui echoed.
While Irri washed Daenerys’s back with a soft cloth she leaned close and whispered, “You are the moon, Khaleesi.
And Khal Rahallo is the sun.
I used to think Dothraki men only treated their wives the way they ride horses.
But Khal Rahallo… he is not like the others.” Her cheeks flushed.
She fanned her face with one hand, muttered that it was too hot, and quickly climbed out of the tub.
Daenerys gave a small, private smile and lifted a cup of honey wine to her lips.
The bathwater grew hotter and hotter until it could have boiled an egg, yet Daenerys barely noticed.
If anything, she found she liked the heat more with every passing moment.
When Rahallo finally returned to the tent she rose slowly from the water.
Her pale skin was flushed pink.
Crystal droplets ran in shining lines down the curves of her body.
Jhiqui hurried forward with a towel and dried her, then rubbed scented oil into her skin.
Irri sprinkled flower petals and cinnamon over her.
Doreah combed her silver hair until it shone like spun metal.
“My sun and stars,” Daenerys said softly, “I think tonight we should go outside.” The Dothraki believed every important moment in life should happen beneath the open sky.
She was ready to live as they lived.
“Dany, don’t…” Rahallo’s face turned red.
He caught her arm.
Daenerys was willing to embrace the Dothraki way.
Rahallo, however, still had some pride left.
He simply could not do it under the open sky.
… The next morning Rahallo disappeared into the blacksmiths’ quarter and did not come out again.
When Dothraki fought they simply stripped to the waist and charged in a screaming mob.
It was embarrassing to watch and brutally inefficient.
Even villagers brawling over water rights showed more coordination.
The Dothraki were individually brave and fearless to the point of madness, but tactically they fought like a street brawl.
During the Century of Blood the strongest khal, Temmo, had pushed east toward Qohor.
He crushed the Qohor cavalry in the open field, but at the city walls he ran into three thousand Unsullied fighting with their backs to the stone.
Temmo led eighteen charges and three arrow storms.
All were thrown back.
In the end Temmo, his sons, every kos, three bloodriders, and more than ten thousand Dothraki warriors lay dead.
The survivors cut off their braids and threw them at the Unsullied in surrender.
In Rahallo’s fight against Fogo he had won only because of surprise and his own personal authority.
If twenty thousand had met forty thousand in a straight fight the numbers would have been impossible to overcome.
Other khalasars could attack at any time.
With twenty thousand undisciplined riders the losses would mount fast.
Reforming Dothraki discipline was going to be a long, difficult task.
Rahallo had to use this rare stretch of peace to get his men into armor — at least enough to improve their chances in cavalry clashes.
He walked into the blacksmiths’ area.
The slave smiths, once treated as the lowest of the low, now worked with fierce enthusiasm because their khal respected them.
They had sworn to repay his kindness with double the effort.
Even the guards who usually watched them had vanished somewhere to drink.
A smith pulled a glowing iron ingot from the forge and hammered it into a solid chest plate, then quenched it.
The red-hot metal hissed as it hit the water.
Steam rose and a faint burnt smell drifted through the air.
The plates were shaped into front and back pieces.
Leatherworkers added soft linings, riveted everything together, and connected the sides with leather straps.
The result was a simple half-plate cuirass.
There were no shoulder guards — they would interfere with horse archery.
The helmets had a raised knob on top for a horse-tail plume.
That would be the mark of Rahallo’s khalasar.
Old Moro and several others stood at a distance, watching Rahallo move among the forges.
None of them understood what he was doing, but none dared interrupt.
CaveLeather