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Essos, Vaes Dothrak
1st Moon of 58 AC
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The wind from the Great Grass Sea blew with implacable force against the upper terraces of the palace of Vaes Dothrak, but the air brought none of the usual calm of the plains. It carried the bitter stench of distant sulfur and the constant crackle of torches illuminating the marble chambers.
To the north of the palace, where the peaks of the surrounding mountains carved into the twilight sky, the shadow of a dark-scaled monster eclipsed the light. Balerion, the Black Dread, rested upon the stone slabs, exhaling thick plumes of smoke that smelled of old fire and ash. His sheer presence made the foundations of the earth tremble. But inside the domed pavilion connecting to the terrace where the dragon lay, the fire burning was not that of dragons, but that of two Targaryen women confronting one another over the divergent paths they had chosen.
Rhaena Targaryen wore neither the fine fabrics nor the silk she was accustomed to in the court of Dragonstone or distant Xandar. She wore hardened leather armor, cinched by notched bronze buckles, and her boots were flecked with water from crossing the skies at breakneck speed. She had flown without rest as soon as the rumors of the attempt on Caspian's life in Vaes Dothrak reached Xandar; the mere thought that the daggers of the Sorrowful Men had sought to end the Great Khal's life in the very palace where her daughter slept had chilled her blood, igniting a panic in her chest she hadn't felt since the darkest days of Maegor's reign.
Facing her, standing by the balustrade overlooking the horizon, was Aerea.
Yet she was no longer the frightened girl who hid behind the skirts of nursemaids, nor the timid, confined child who walked with her head bowed through the corridors of Dragonstone—always guarded, always locked away under the false premise of protection. Aerea wore the impressive Valyrian steel armor she had brought back from the ruins of Valyria itself. The dark plates, woven with ripples of gray and reddish hues, contoured to her figure, reflecting the light with an almost hypnotic, spectral gleam. And her gaze, once evasive, met her mother's with a pride and ferocity that made Rhaena step back, awestruck.
"Have you lost your mind, Aerea?" Rhaena's voice snapped through the pavilion, cracking slightly from a mixture of rage and raw anguish. "Eight days! Eight days ago they tried to murder Caspian in his own chambers! I flew from Xandar without sleeping, terrified of what would become of you in this land of savages if the king fell, and the first thing you say upon seeing me is that you are marching to war? That you are going to find the hordes to fly over Meereen?"
"Caspian is alive, Mother," Aerea replied. Her tone, unlike her mother's, was not a shout, but a measured, steady statement, heavy with resolve. "He crushed the assassins himself, and the Sorrowful Men paid dearly for every drop of blood they sought to spill. Had you been here, you would have seen that this palace is no cell. It is the heart of a kingdom."
"It is a slaughterhouse!" Rhaena took two swift steps toward her, seizing her violently by the shoulders. The Dowager Queen's hands trembled; her fingers slid desperately across the cold, legendary surface of the Valyrian steel, feeling that a vital piece of the only thing she had left in the world was slipping away. "Look at me, Aerea. Please, look at me. I spent half my life fleeing from monsters, locking myself in stone fortresses, hiding you from Maegor, from the Crown, from the lords of Westeros who only wanted to use our blood for their rotten wars. I raised you in seclusion because the world outside devours the weak. I wanted to protect you. I wanted you to have a life in peace, far from death and fire..."
Aerea did not pull away from her mother's grip, but she took hold of Rhaena's wrists with surprising strength and, slowly but unhesitatingly, set her mother's hands down from her shoulders.
"And in your eagerness to protect me, you buried me alive," Aerea said. In her deep violet eyes burned a spark of reproach mixed with a sharp affection. "You kept me confined, Mother. You forced me to watch life through the bars of your own fears. At Dragonstone, at Storm's End, at King's Landing... everywhere, I was just the 'poor frightened girl,' the fragile heir who had to be hidden from the wind. Do you know what it was like to wake up every morning knowing my only purpose was to breathe softly so that you wouldn't be afraid?"
"I did it so you would live!" Rhaena cried, tears welling at the edges of her eyes, shedding entirely the mask of the ruthless queen she presented to the rest of Essos. "You are my daughter! You are the only clean thing to come out of all the rot of Westeros! If something happens to you... if you fall on the walls of those slave cities while your husband is away, I..."
"I am not going to fall," Aerea interrupted impetuously, pointing toward the terrace where Balerion, the Black Dread, rested. "Caspian gave me what you never could, Mother. He didn't give me a golden cage, nor did he promise me a quiet corner to grow old in obscurity. He gave me a purpose. He gave me a place at his side. I am his Khaleesi, the queen of these hordes, and the entire world will know my name. I don't want to be the princess who survived by hiding. I want to be remembered. I want to see the ends of the earth, I want to tread upon cities of gold and marble, I want to feel the wind in my face while my dragon's fire destroys those who attempt to chain the weak."
Rhaena stared at the girl, bewildered. The timid, silent child was entirely gone; in her place stood a conqueror draped in Valyrian steel, a warrior whose blood burned with the same indomitable drive that had impelled her ancestors.
"Caspian is dragging you into his conquests..." Rhaena murmured, trying to grasp at a final thread of reason, though her voice sounded weak and weary.
"Caspian loves and respects me as no one ever has," Aerea countered, facing her mother with her chin held high. "And even if he didn't, this is my decision. He flew to Qarth aboard Endaxia to reduce the merchants who funded the attempt on his life to ashes. But the hordes will not come to Vaes Dothrak. They were at Vaes Yeraan, near Qohor, and from there they march directly south, toward the gates of Meereen. It is a long march, and they will not pass through here. That is why I must fly immediately. I must intercept the hordes on the road and lead them alongside the Bloodriders. Half a million riders need to see their Khaleesi at the front if that miserable city decides to resist. That is what makes me feel alive, Mother. For the first time in my existence, I feel my heart beating in my chest for a real reason."
A dense silence fell between the two. Rhaena looked into her daughter's eyes, at the iridescent sheen of the dark steel across her chest, and understood—with a pang of bitter pride—that the battle to hold her back was lost. The cage had broken forever, and there was no chain in the world capable of returning Aerea to confinement.
Rhaena let out a long sigh, running a trembling hand across her forehead. The ferocity of Maegor's widow seemed to dissipate, revealing only an exhausted mother accepting her fate.
"You are just as stubborn as your father," Rhaena murmured, a sad, bitter smile forming on her lips. "And as dangerous as your uncle. If I tell you to stay, you'll fly off tonight behind my back, won't you?"
"Without a second's hesitation," Aerea affirmed.
Rhaena approached slowly, took Aerea's face in her hands, and kissed her forehead with desperate tenderness.
"Then you will not go alone," Rhaena declared, regaining in an instant the firmness of her voice—the one that had once made the lords of Westeros tremble. "If you are going to burn down the largest slave city in the world, let us make sure not a single stone is left standing upon another. And I will not let my daughter play at war without the Blue Queen covering her back. We will fly together to meet the hordes at Meereen."
Aerea smiled, a radiant, fierce smile that had never graced her face in Westeros.
"Then let us waste no time, Mother. My dragon awaits."
The plains surrounding Meereen trembled. Following the long journey from the vicinity of Vaes Yeraan, skimming the borders of the lands of Qohor and descending southward through the western corridor, the most monumental military force ever to set foot on the continent of Essos had finally reached its destination.
From the highest pyramid towers of the Yellow City, the Great Masters and the oligarchs of the slave-trading elite gazed at the horizon with a blend of horror and disbelief. Meereen was the jewel of Slaver's Bay—the largest, wealthiest, and most heavily fortified of all the slavers' cities. Its forty-yard-high walls of yellow brick, its deep moats fed by the waters of the Skahazadhan River, and its thousands of men armed with pikes and crossbows had always been enough to deter any Khal of the Grass Sea. In the past, the Dothraki came to the gates of Meereen only to collect tribute, accepting sacks of gold, wine, and slaves in exchange for turning back.
But this was no ordinary khalasar.
Upon the hills overlooking the city to the north, the red-and-black tide of horsemen stretched as far as the eye could see, covering the land like a swarm of iron locusts. And it was precisely this that kept Meereen's commanders petrified upon their ramparts: the Dothraki no longer fought bare-chested, nor relied solely on the speed of their horses. Under the rule of Caspian, the Great Khal, warfare had evolved.
At the head of this military juggernaut, halting their stallions just beyond the range of the wall's catapults, stood not the Great Khal. Caspian was in the far east, reducing Qarth to rubble following the attack. Command on the ground lay with the King's three Bloodriders: Essino, Caqokko, and Qrano.
Three battle-hardened giants whose braids were laden with golden and bronze bells that chimed like a mortal omen with every movement of their horses.
Essino, the eldest and most strategic of the three, wore a chestplate of black iron engraved with the symbol of the dragon and the horse. Beside him, Caqokko weighed a poleaxe whose Valyrian-sharp blade could split a fully armored man in two, while Qrano adjusted his mount's reins, eyeing the yellow walls with absolute contempt.
A small herald's party from Meereen, clad in fine silk robes and guarded by fifty elite guards in polished bronze armor bearing decorated spears, emerged through the city's great bronze gate. The chief magistrate, a corpulent man laden with jewels named Grazdan zo Galare, advanced toward the Bloodriders, keeping a prudent distance.
"Horsemen of the grass," the magistrate squeaked in the distorted High Valyrian dialect of the bay, raising hands adorned with rings. "You speak with the emissaries of the Great Council of Meereen. The Yellow City seeks no war with the Horse Lords. We bring ten wagons laden with silver ingots, five hundred silk robes, and two hundred young slaves to appease your horde's thirst. Take the tribute and return to the grass, as your kind has always done."
Caqokko let out a guttural laugh that echoed above the wind. He glanced at Qrano and then spat onto the ground, right at the hooves of the magistrate's horse.
"The fat dog thinks we came to beg for scraps," Caqokko said in Dothraki, his raspy voice needing no translation.
Essino rode forward a pace. His iron armor creaked softly. He looked the magistrate dead in the eye, devoid of greed or doubt.
"The Great Khal accepts no tribute from flesh-peddlers," Essino said in coarse yet perfectly intelligible Valyrian. "We come not for your silver, nor your silk. We come for the keys to the city. Open the gates. Shatter the chains of every man and woman held in the slave pits. Hand over the Masters to face the Khal's justice. Do so before the sun sets behind the pyramids, and the lives of those who bear no arms shall be spared."
Magistrate Grazdan turned pale. Arrogance gave way to dread, but as he turned his head to look up at the colossal walls of yellow brick protecting Meereen, greed and pride swelled his chest once more.
"You are mad!" the magistrate shrieked, backing away as his guards raised their spears. "These walls have stood for three hundred years! They have never fallen to any savage army! Not with thousands of men could you scale these bricks. Your horses will rot in the moat while our crossbows skin you alive. If you want Meereen, come take it by force!"
The envoy and his guards turned hastily, retreating in panic toward the protection of the bronze gates, which slammed shut with a deafening boom that shook the ground.
Qrano unsheathed his folded-steel arakh, its blade gleaming with a dark hue under the twilight sky.
"They will not surrender," Qrano said, looking at Essino.
"Then Meereen dies," Essino answered in a ice-cold voice. "Advance the front line. Prepare the hordes for when the signal comes."
A colossal bone horn sounded down the Dothraki lines. The high-pitched, terrifying blast was joined by half a million throats roaring in unison, making the very air above Meereen grow heavy. The iron-clad horsemen began to form into perfect wedges, adjusting their bows and raising their arakhs against the yellow mass of the fortress.
Along the ramparts of the walls, Meereenese archers and crossbowmen readied their bolts. Defensive catapults loaded multi-ton stones onto wooden spoons. The Masters smiled from the heights of their pyramids, confident that the flesh and iron of the invaders would shatter uselessly against the impenetrable stone of their metropolis.
"Aim at the vanguard!" shouted the commander of the northern wall guard. "Let them know the power of Meereen!"
But before the first projectile could take flight or the troops could make any offensive move, a different roar—far deeper and more ancestral than the thudding gallop of horses—shook the skies over the bay.
The clouds over Slaver's Bay parted. The northern wind swept in a scorching heat that instantly evaporated the sweat off the soldiers' brows on the walls.
A thunderous roar—a sound that tore through the air and caused the stones of the pyramids to rattle in their foundations—descended from the heights.
"Look at the sky!" a soldier on the wall screamed, throwing his bow to the ground in terror. "A dragon!"
Cleaving through the clouds, a gigantic shadow fell over the Yellow City. Balerion, the Black Dread, dived in a majestic swoop, his outstretched wings spanning hundreds of yards, blotting out the sun entirely above the ramparts of Meereen. At his side, silhouetted against the twilight in mortal grace and scales of a dazzling cobalt blue, flew Dreamfyre.
The two beasts did not attack yet. They wheeled in a slow, menacing pattern directly above the city, casting the shadow of absolute death across the pyramids.
On Dreamfyre's back, Rhaena Targaryen held the leather reins, observing the guards' stupefaction with calculated coldness. Beside her, mounted on the Black Dread, gleaming beneath the setting sun in her formidable Valyrian steel armor, her silver hair whipping wildly against the wind, Aerea Targaryen looked down at the assembled riders below and the walls of the slaver city that dared defy them.
There was no fire yet. No flames fell upon the walls. Below, on the battlefield, the Bloodriders raised their arakhs to the sky at the sight of their Khaleesi atop the black beast, while over half a million Dothraki warriors roared as one, cheering for their Khaleesi soaring through the heavens.
Aerea kept her gaze fixed on the trembling towers of the Masters. Meereen had refused to surrender, trusting in its three-hundred-year-old walls—but when dragonfire falls, no defense endures.