King’s Landing, The Red Keep
Viserys, King of the Seven Kingdoms, was making his way to wherever his wife happened to be — her chamber, as it turned out.
Not a single day had passed since Daemon left with his son, and already a raven had flown from Dragonstone with news that made Viserys leap up in joy when he read it.
He had been with Otto and Lyonel when the Grand Maester came bearing the letter.
It was long and detailed, an account of how they had come to find it and what obstacles Gaemon and Daemon had faced on their way to Visenya’s hidden chamber.
Viserys reached his wife’s chamber, and the Kingsguard stationed at the door opened it for him.
Aemma’s handmaidens and companions looked at him in surprise before scurrying off, but not before settling among themselves when next to meet.
Only once they were all gone and he was alone with Aemma did Viserys let the joy show on his face.
“Something good has happened, I presume?” Aemma asked, rising and meeting him halfway.
Viserys was struck anew by the beauty of his wife in her lilac dress, and let his hands wander through her hair as he considered how best to share this great news with her.
“Something great has happened.
Gaemon has found what two generations of Targaryens could not.
A legacy long lost — and now, reclaimed, it will bring us one step nearer to being the true heirs of Old Valyria.” Viserys revealed, his eyes fixed on his wife’s confused face as his hands slid from her hair down along her body.
“My own sire and his brother, Aemon Targaryen, searched for this lost piece of our house’s legacy and never found it.” Viserys’s joy climbed as he watched Aemma’s breath quicken beneath the slow track of his hand, from her neck to the valley he found more enticing than any across the Seven Kingdoms.
“You… I think you had best tell me the rest before we begin, lord husband.” Aemma said as the two of them began drifting slowly toward the bed.
“Gaemon has found Visenya’s hidden chamber — where she kept the magics the Targaryens once practiced on Dragonstone, even after the Doom,” Viserys said as they reached the bed.
“We sail there on the morrow.
This is enormous, Aemma.
To my mind, Gaemon has found the greatest treasure this whole world could hold.” Viserys said, his mouth beginning to work at his wife’s neck.
“I understand, husband.
But… may I ask why we are having this particular talk with quite this much excitement?” Aemma asked, and loosed a moan the very next moment at what he was doing.
“The gods have been good to the House of the Dragon of late.
So perhaps this time, they will look upon us two kindly as well, and we would have the son we want.” Viserys said, easing his wife gently down so that he might continue.
Dragonstone
Mornings were always tiring, but fulfilling in their own way, to Gaemon.
Sure, his father had slowly begun to show the rogue side the world feared during training, but this training was ensuring that Gaemon would become the best there was, and Gaemon did have that ambition.
He wanted to become the greatest swordsman of the era.
Though this particular morning was not so fulfilling; the curiosity of learning what was written inside those scrolls was eating him from the inside.
But Daemon being Daemon, he’d said he would only read to Gaemon once they finished the morning routine AND he was pleased with Gaemon’s performance.
So naturally, Gaemon had to push well past his usual limits to satisfy his sadistic father and meet the man’s absurd expectations for a body of six years.
“Will you read it now?” Gaemon asked, sprawled on the ground, spent to the very last brink of the energy left in him, looking up at his father as he worked his breathing to drag in as much air as he could.
“I’m somewhat impressed.
Seems you’ve been holding out on me, boy.” Daemon mused, half to himself, before his eyes settled on Gaemon.
There was satisfaction in his father’s gaze, the very opposite of the dread in Gaemon’s own.
“Matters not.
But not before you take a bath and scrub that stink off your body.”
With that, Daemon Targaryen turned and took his leave.
Gaemon looked up at the dark clouds above and wondered what his cousins in the North were doing just now.
What would they make of the life Gaemon was living?
Rickon had never liked it when Gaemon pushed himself too far.
His family in the North was quite the opposite of the Targaryens.
The thought made Gaemon laugh, which did his body no favors, since it needed more air than his mouth and nose could give.
Starks were ice, and Targaryens fire, indeed.
Gaemon rose with some effort.
Pain was an old friend; better to embrace it and walk on carrying it than to wait for it to leave.
One hour later,
Gaemon sat before Daemon as his father lost himself in the scrolls, his expression shifting every so often.
Gaemon toyed with a knife while he waited for his father to finish reading and tell him what was written.
The Maester of Dragonstone had been commanded to teach him High Valyrian; the lessons started from today, and Gaemon had found that his Six Eyes sharpened his mind as much as his senses; on the very first day he’d made great progress, and the Maester had been shocked down to his grey robes.
Gaemon was studying the knife’s steel when the sound of a scroll being set on the table drew his eyes back to his father, who seemed to have had his fill of reading.
Gaemon straightened and looked at him expectantly.
Without so much as a glance, Daemon said, “Ask away.”
His father crossed the chamber to fetch the wine and a glass as Gaemon began.
“What was written in the ones you read?” He needed to know the kind of magic or text his father had gone through before he could ask anything worthwhile.
“The ones I read held how to work pyromancy, though there were gaps here and there; perhaps you’ll puzzle those out and fill them yourself.
Beyond that, a fair bit on blood magic, and the history of the caste in Valyria that practiced flesh-shaping.
And last, how to forge a dragon-binding horn.” Gaemon’s eyes went wide.
The first two were surprising enough, but the last was something else entirely.
How to forge the horn — surely that ought to be a closely guarded secret?
Then why did the Targaryens have it written down at all?
And if Visenya had it, had she, or any Targaryen, ever actually tried to forge one?
“Which would you like to hear of first?”
“How to forge a horn.” Gaemon replied at once.
“Hmm.” His father drank again while Gaemon stared, Six Eyes catching every nerve twitch before the limb ever moved.
“Truth be told, it’s so simple no one would ever think of it — and even if you did, it’s impossible to lay hands on what the ritual demands.
The exact rite isn’t set down, but there’s no need for it, seeing as we don’t have the key ingredient.
Care to guess what that might be, Gaemon?”
Gaemon caught the disappointment on his father’s face and was left confused.
“Human sacrifice,” Gaemon answered, since it was the first thing that came to mind.
There was another, too, but Gaemon refused to speak it aloud, the sacrifice of their own dragons, though he did think the Valyrian dragonlords heartless enough for even that.
“After a fashion.
They sacrificed hundreds pure-blooded Valyrian dragonlords to forge a single bloody horn.” Daemon’s mouth twisted.
“The place I’d fancied a paradise for dragonlords, and they were butchering their own to make a horn.
I didn’t expect that.
And as if that weren’t enough, the ritual calls for more than ten dragon hatchlings besides — never mind the common slaves, whose number isn’t even named.
It simply says: the more, the better.” Gaemon watched his father keep drinking, and though he too felt sick and disgusted at the revelation, the curiosity, and the possibility of solving his own problem of being unable to use magic, made him shove the sick feeling back down and pry every scrap of information out of his father before the man got too deep in his cups.
“Well, Valyria was never known for her kindness.
Tell me of the pyromancy.
Is there anything on how to weave a spell — anything I might use to get past my hurdle?” Gaemon asked.
His father didn’t answer at once, only went on drinking as though he hadn’t heard a word.
Before Gaemon could speak again, Daemon looked at him with wine-heavy eyes and answered, “If you’re at peace with sacrificing another man’s life to weave a spell, then aye.
There’s more than a little of it written here.
I could set down the whole of how it’s done, if you like.” Gaemon’s face contorted in disgust, but he cast the feeling aside and met his father’s eyes with determination.
“It would help me a great deal if you’d write it down, Father.
The whole process.”
Daemon’s brow rose as he reached for a parchment.
“I never took you for one so desperate to learn magic, Gaemon.” Blinking every few moments, Daemon set to writing, his hand near enough to a child’s who had only just learned his letters.
“I would never take a man’s life to work magic.
I only want to see the whole framework the Valyrian sorcerers built, to learn whether I can wring something useful out of their monstrous way of doing it,” Gaemon replied.
His father paused, and chuckled.
“Glad to hear it.” Then he went on writing.
“Oh?
I’d have thought you, of all people, wouldn’t mind the Valyrians’ way of working magic,” Gaemon said skeptically.
The line could land him somewhere far worse, with Daemon drunk, but he had to say it, to take the measure of his father’s character and where his moral compass truly pointed.
“Oh, I’m all for killing men, make no mistake.
But I’d sooner do it with my blade, or with Caraxes’s flame.
Butchering them by the score, or wringing them dry of blood to work magic and bend the elements to my will — that turns even my stomach.” After that Gaemon kept silent as his father finished writing it all out in the common tongue, which Gaemon could read with ease.
Before Gaemon could rise from his seat and leave, his father tapped the table to catch his attention.
“Your uncle, the king, arrives on the morrow.
To see this lost legacy of Valyria for himself.
Be ready to greet him when I call for you.”
Gaemon nodded and made his way out, already reading the pages.
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