LITMIR.BIZ

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through the Kingslanders before the other loyalists fell upon his flanks, and mounted Quicksilver to lead the attack himself. But scarce had he taken wing when he heard shouts and saw his men below pointing to where Balerion the Black Dread had appeared in the southern sky.

      King Maegor had come.

      For the first time since the Doom of Valyria, dragon contended with dragon in the sky, even as battle was joined below.

      Quicksilver, a quarter the size of Balerion, was no match for the older, fiercer dragon, and her pale white fireballs were engulfed and washed away in great gouts of black flame. Then the Black Dread fell upon her from above, his jaws closing round her neck as he ripped one wing from her body. Screaming and smoking, the young dragon plunged to earth, and Prince Aegon with her.

      The battle below was nigh as brief, if bloodier. Once Aegon fell, the rebels saw their cause was doomed and ran, discarding arms and armor as they fled. But the loyalist armies were all around them, and there was no escape. By day’s end, two thousand of Aegon’s men had died, against a hundred of the king’s. Amongst the dead were Lord Alyn Tarbeck, Denys Snow the Bastard of Barrowton, Lord Ronnel Vance, Ser Willam Whistler, Melony Piper and three of her brothers … and the Prince of Dragonstone, Aegon the Uncrowned of House Targaryen. The only notable loss amongst the loyalists was Ser Davos Darklyn of the Kingsguard, slain at the hands of Lord Corbray with Lady Forlorn. Half a year of trials and executions followed. Queen Visenya persuaded her son to spare some of the rebellious lords, but even those who kept their lives lost lands and titles and were forced to give up hostages.

      One notable name could be found neither amongst the dead nor the captive: Rhaena Targaryen, sister and wife to Prince Aegon, had not joined the host. Whether that was by his command or her own choice is still debated to this day. All that is known for certain is that Rhaena remained at Pinkmaiden Castle with her daughters when Aegon marched … and with her, Dreamfyre. Would the addition of a second dragon to the prince’s host have made a difference when battle was joined? We shall never know … though it has been pointed out, and rightly, that Princess Rhaena was no warrior, and Dreamfyre was younger and smaller than Quicksilver, and certainly no true threat to Balerion the Black Dread.

      When word of the battle reached the west and Princess Rhaena learned that both her husband and her friend Lady Melony had fallen, it is said she heard the news in a stony silence. “Will you not weep?” she was asked, to which she replied, “I do not have the time for tears.” Whereupon, fearing her uncle’s wroth, she gathered up her daughters, Aerea and Rhaella, and fled farther, first to Lannisport and then across the sea to Fair Isle, where the new lord Marq Farman (whose father and elder brother had both perished in the battle, fighting for Prince Aegon) gave her sanctuary and swore no harm would come to her beneath his roof. For the best part of a year, the people of Fair Isle watched the east in dread, fearing the sight of Balerion’s dark wings, but Maegor never came. Instead the victorious king returned to the Red Keep, where he grimly set about getting himself an heir.

      The 44th year After the Conquest was a peaceful one compared to what had gone before … but the maesters who chronicled those times wrote that the smell of blood and fire still hung heavy in the air. Maegor I Targaryen sat the Iron Throne as his Red Keep rose around him, but his court was grim and cheerless, despite the presence of his three queens … or perhaps because of it. Each night he summoned one of his wives to his bed, yet still he remained childless, with no heir but for the sons and daughters of his brother, Aenys. “Maegor the Cruel,” he was called, and “kinslayer” as well, though it was death to say either in his hearing.

      In Oldtown, the ancient High Septon died, and another was raised up in his place. Though he spoke no word against the king or his queens, the enmity between King Maegor and the Faith endured. Hundreds of Poor Fellows had been hunted down and slain, their scalps delivered to the king’s men for the bounty, but thousands more still roamed the woods and hedges and the wild places of the Seven Kingdoms, cursing the Targaryens with their every breath. One band even crowned their own High Septon, in the person of a bearded brute named Septon Moon. And a few Warrior’s Sons still endured, led by Ser Joffrey Doggett, the Red Dog of the Hills. Outlawed and condemned, the order no longer had the strength to meet the king’s men in open battle, so the Red Dog sent them out in the guise of hedge knights, to hunt and slay Targaryen loyalists and “traitors to the Faith.” Their first victim was Ser Morgan Hightower, late of their order, cut down and butchered on the road to Honeyholt. Old Lord Merryweather was the next to die, followed by Lord Peake’s son and heir, Davos Darklyn’s aged father, even Blind Jon Hogg. Though the bounty for the head of a Warrior’s Son was a golden dragon, the smallfolk and peasants of the realm hid and protected them, remembering what they had been.

      On Dragonstone, the Dowager Queen Visenya had grown thin and haggard, the flesh melting from her bones. Queen Alyssa remained on the island as well, with her son Jaehaerys and her daughter Alysanne, prisoners in all but name. Prince Viserys, the eldest surviving son of Aenys and Alyssa, was summoned to court by His Grace. A promising lad of fifteen years, beloved of the commons, Viserys was made squire to the king … with a Kingsguard knight for a shadow, to keep him well away from plots and treasons.

      For a brief while in 44 AC, it seemed as if the king might soon have that son he desired so desperately. Queen Alys announced she was with child, and the court rejoiced. Grand Maester Desmond confined Her Grace to her bed as she grew great with child, and took charge of her care, assisted by two septas, a midwife, and the queen’s sisters Jeyne and Hanna. Maegor insisted that his other wives serve his pregnant queen as well.

      During the third moon of her confinement, however, Lady Alys began to bleed heavily from the womb and lost the child. When King Maegor came to see the stillbirth, he was horrified to find the boy a monster, with twisted limbs, a huge head, and no eyes. “This cannot be my son!” he roared in anguish. Then his grief turned to fury, and he ordered the immediate execution of the midwife and septas who had charge of the queen’s care, and Grand Maester Desmond as well, sparing only Alys’s sisters.

      It is said that Maegor was seated on the Iron Throne with the head of the Grand Maester in his hands when Queen Tyanna came to tell him he had been deceived. The child was not his seed. Seeing Queen Ceryse return to court, old and bitter and childless, Alys Harroway had begun to fear that the same fate awaited her unless she gave the king a son, so she had turned to her lord father, the Hand of the King. On the nights when the king was sharing a bed with Queen Ceryse or Queen Tyanna, Lucas Harroway sent men to his daughter’s bed to get her with child. Maegor refused to believe. He told Tyanna she was a jealous witch, and barren, throwing the Grand Maester’s head at her. “Spiders do not lie,” the mistress of the whisperers replied. She handed the king a list.

      Written there were the names of twenty men alleged to have given their seed to Queen Alys. Old men and young, handsome men and homely ones, knights and squires, lords and servants, even grooms and smiths and singers; the King’s Hand had cast a wide net, it seemed. The men had only one thing in common: all were men of proven potency known to have fathered healthy children.

      Under torture, all but two confessed. One, a father of twelve, still had the gold paid him by Lord Harroway for his services. The questioning was carried out swiftly and secretly, so Lord Harroway and Queen Alys had no inkling of the king’s suspicions until the Kingsguard burst in on them. Dragged from her bed, Queen Alys saw her sisters killed before her eyes as they tried to protect her. Her father, inspecting the Tower of the Hand, was flung from its roof to smash upon the stones below. Harroway’s sons, brothers, and nephews were taken as well. Thrown onto the spikes that lined the dry moat around Maegor’s Holdfast, some took hours to die; the simpleminded Horas Harroway lingered for days. The twenty names on Queen Tyanna’s list soon joined them, and then another dozen men, named by the first twenty.

      The worst death was reserved for Queen Alys herself, who was given over to her sister-wife Tyanna for torment. Of her death we will not speak, for some things are best buried and forgotten. Suffice it to say that her dying took the best part of a fortnight, and that Maegor himself was present for all of

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