Dragonstone
Gaemon was talking with his aunt Aemma and Rhaenyra when his father barged in and told him to don his leathers; they were taking a short trip to Dragonmont.
Gaemon didn’t ask why, because why would he look a gift horse in the mouth?
He’d wanted to go there since the day he arrived on this island.
So here Gaemon was, done pulling on the grey leather and making his way to the gate as his father had bid him.
Gaemon turned, about to leave the royal quarters, when he came upon Rhaenyra, hands clasped behind her back as she walked toward him — toward the quarters, to be exact.
Her eyes left the dragons she’d been watching off to the side and settled on him, and Gaemon saw that something had changed in the way she looked at him now.
Setting the observation aside for the moment, he walked in her direction, since that was the way out.
Rhaenyra only smiled and let him pass without a word — unusual, as Gaemon had expected she’d stop him and pry a few questions out of him before letting him go.
Past Rhaenyra, Gaemon hurried on toward the gate, turning her behavior over in his mind the whole way.
At the gate, he found his father speaking with the dragonkeepers in High Valyrian.
Gaemon came up and stood silent at the side.
Eventually, whatever they’d been discussing came to an end, and his father turned to him.
He looked over the leathers and nodded.
“Good.
Follow me.” Gaemon did as told and trailed after him as they made their way down toward Dragonmont.
“You’re wondering why we’re going to Dragonmont, no doubt?” His father asked.
“Yes.
The question did cross my mind.”
“Viserys and I think it’s past time you had a dragon of your own.
You’re wise and brave enough to at least try your hand at taming one.” His father’s words brought Gaemon to a halt for a full five seconds before he resumed walking, his mind reeling.
Had his uncle Viserys changed his mind on the matter?
When?
The questions were soon smothered by excitement, and his steps quickened.
“So we’re going for the older ones?” Gaemon asked, thrilled at the thought of taming a larger dragon.
“That was my first thought,” His father said as he walked, and Gaemon’s heart nearly skipped.
Was?
“But now, after hearing about the current state of them, I’m reconsidering.”
“Why?” Gaemon nearly whined.
His father sighed before answering.
“There’s no chance I’m taking you to the Cave of Vermithor.
Dragons have some measure of intelligence, unlike other beasts, and that gives them personality, most of it shaped by their rider.
Bronze Fury has known only one rider since its birth, and that man did not look kindly on your birth, nor on your mother’s house.
So he’s out of the question.
And since Silverwing nests with Vermithor, we can’t go to her either.
That leaves Dreamfyre, the only old dragon here besides that old lady Vhagar, who isn’t on the island.”
“What about the wilder ones?” Gaemon couldn’t help but blurt the moment his father stopped.
His father turned to look at him, brows raised.
“You think you’ll tame the wild dragons?
Sheepstealer, Grey Ghost — and gods forbid, the Cannibal?
They’ve evaded the dragonkeepers, and me, for decades.
They’re called wild for a reason, boy.
Don’t go filling your head with overconfidence, or it’ll lead you straight to your death.”
Gaemon breathed out, calming himself.
He couldn’t very well explain to his father that those dragons were, in fact, tameable.
So rather than fight a losing war, he asked after the one his father had named.
“What about Dreamfyre, then?
Are we going to her lair?”
“No.
I meant to take you there, but Alum, the dragonkeeper, mentioned that Dreamfyre lost her clutch to the Cannibal — he feasted on the eggs she’d only just laid while she was away hunting, and she’s been enraged ever since.
And here’s a thing you should learn: never approach an enraged dragon, not until you’re seasoned enough to read their body and have time enough to run before they strike.
Unless, of course, you truly wish to die burning.”
Gaemon’s mood plummeted, and his mind ran through every other dragon large and old enough to tame, but he came up with no name save the ones he and his father had already spoken of.
“So where are we going?” Gaemon asked.
“The nest of hatchlings.
Alum says many of this year’s survived the Cannibal’s clutches.
We’ll see if any of them take to you.
But to reach the nest, we have to pass the lairs of the older dragons.
So keep your guard up and make little noise; don’t go stirring them from their slumber.
There’ll be dragonkeepers waiting for us, but stay close to me.
You hear me, Gaemon?
No adventuring, no disobedience.
One mistake there could cost you your life.” His father warned, glancing back at him.
Gaemon only nodded, shoulders slumping, and trailed after his father in a somber mood.
–*
Gaemon and his father reached the place where five dragonkeepers waited, dressed in their muted robes, their heads shaved and hands gripping long spears.
All of them bowed to both Daemon and Gaemon and spoke in High Valyrian, some of which Gaemon caught and understood, the rest still beyond him.
The seven of them set off toward an enormous tunnel, so vast that Gaemon thought Balerion and Vhagar themselves might have kept their lairs within it.
Only such colossal beasts could have need of an opening so large.
The seven of them looked like ants walking through doors built for titans, not giants but titans.
As they walked, Gaemon realized his father hadn’t brought him here during the tour of Dragonstone.
Glancing around as they went, Gaemon noticed they were descending, not straight into the heart of the volcano but downward all the same, and the heat was climbing fast.
He and his father barely felt it, but the dragonkeepers were beginning to show the strain, though they bore it nearly as well as the two Targaryens.
Gaemon gave half his attention to the talk between the dragonkeepers and his father, and the other half to searching the cave with his Six Eyes, hoping to find something.
The mention of Bronze Fury from the dragonkeepers’ mouths snapped his full attention back to them.
His father turned to him and said, “Keep close, Gaemon.
We’re nearing Vermithor’s cave.” Gaemon fell in at once behind him.
There was little doubt Vermithor might attack him; Gaemon knew his father was right that riders shaped their dragon’s view of the world, and its temper.
Though Gaemon had never known Jaehaerys hated him to such a degree, at first he’d thought the old coot merely disliked his existence, but by his father’s words he’d learned that his great-grandfather had all but abhorred it.
It might be worth looking into someday, the root of that hatred — but not now.
The five dragonkeepers formed a circle around Gaemon and his father as they began to pass a cave opening near as large as the one Gaemon had already seen.
Barely five steps past the opening, one of the dragonkeepers exhaled, and everyone noticed it, for right after came the sound of something scraping against stone.
All of them froze.
From the corner of his eye Gaemon saw his father snatch a torch from a dragonkeeper and move to the front.
A roar shook the very earth beneath their feet as something stirred within the cave they were all staring into.
Gaemon could hear the men swallow as the dragonkeepers readied their spears.
His father shouted something in High Valyrian, stand down or the like, and the dragonkeepers lowered their spears, hesitant.
Then the dragon they’d all awaited and dreaded revealed himself in the low light of the tunnel.
The instant its snout came into view, Vermithor loosed an ear-splitting roar that came near to shattering Gaemon’s eardrums.
When Gaemon lowered his hands from his ears, he heard his father singing a Valyrian song.
He couldn’t make out much over the ringing, but the words fire-breather and winged leader were enough to tell him what the song was for.
And it seemed to work, for Vermithor’s gaze fixed on Daemon alone.
The haunting melody rang through the shallow tunnel as Vermithor loosed flame and roars of grief.
When it was done, Gaemon saw his father lower the torch and signal the dragonkeepers down, and down they went, bending both knees before the dragon, while Gaemon’s father stood before Vermithor with his shoulders squared and his head tilted up in an almost arrogant manner, as though projecting a presence powerful enough to match the beast.
The dragon roared and breathed to cow him, and Gaemon was scared shitless watching the fire build in Vermithor’s throat so close at hand, but neither man nor boy gave a hint of retreat.
Then Vermithor’s eyes left Daemon and found Gaemon.
The ancient dragon tilted his head in a curious manner and brought his snout closer.
“Show no sign of fear, Gaemon.
He can smell it, sense it.
He’ll end you the moment he catches the stench of fear off you.” Daemon said, turning casually toward him, showing Vermithor his back.
Gaemon understood what this was, and breathed in long and slow before composing himself.
In his mind he reminded himself, over and over, who he was: a Targaryen, blood of the dragon, a child of fire.
And children of fire do not fear the very thing they were born from.
When Vermithor’s snout was a hair’s breadth from him, Gaemon did something that surprised even Daemon.
He raised his hand, and with a shout of anger — a moment ago nothing but terror for his life — he slapped the dragon.
Tears streamed down his face, but some strange fuel was funneling his inner rage.
Some part of him was disgusted by his earlier fear of the beast before him; Gaemon couldn’t shake the feeling that to cower before dragons was the vilest thing he had ever done.
Why he, of all people, should feel that way, he couldn’t say.
And that rage, that fury, drove him to strike the dragon’s snout again.
Vermithor, like all the others, was so shocked that the great beast simply did not know how to react.
Before anyone comments: the rage, the arrogance, the streak of superiority in Gaemon — this is not Targaryen madness.
It’s going somewhere, and it’s deliberate.
I’ll leave it there for now.
Take your guesses in the comments if you like, and I’ll tell you whether you’ve landed near the mark or missed it entirely.
Fair warning to the impatient: nothing here gets locked behind a paywall.
If the story’s earned it, the support means more than I’ll admit in public.