Chapter 19: The Terms of Existence
The summons from the new god of King's Landing fell upon the Black Council like a death knell. The euphoria of their supposed victory had evaporated, replaced by a cold, numbing dread. Rhaenyra Targaryen sat upon the throne of Dragonstone, the ancient seat of her ancestors, but the chair felt flimsy, a thing of driftwood and dreams in the face of the power that now occupied the capital.
Her council was in an uproar, their voices echoing in the Chamber of the Painted Table, a cacophony of fear, pride, and disbelief.
"It is a trap!" Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, argued vehemently, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He paced before his mother, his youthful face a mask of defiant fury. "He summons me, my Queen's heir, and Lord Corlys, her Hand, to the heart of our enemy's city? And he commands us to come without our dragons? He means to murder us, just as Aemond murdered Luke!"
Baela Targaryen, her father Daemon's daughter in spirit as well as blood, stood beside him, her expression fierce. "Jace is right. To go defenseless is to offer our throats to the butcher. My father would have met this demand with fire and blood, not with a diplomatic visit!"
"Your father is dead, child," Lord Corlys Velaryon's voice cut through the youthful anger, his tone heavy as an anchor chain. The Sea Snake stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes fixed on the map of Westeros, a land whose rules had been fundamentally rewritten. "And he died in a battle against a foe he could see. This is not a foe. This is a geological event. A god has summoned us, Prince Jacaerys. We do not have the luxury of refusal."
"A god?" scoffed Lord Celtigar. "It is a dragon! A great and terrible dragon, to be sure, but a beast nonetheless. And beasts can be slain!"
"The men who saw it did not call it a dragon," Corlys said, turning to face them, his expression grim. "They called it 'the night sky come to life.' They said it spoke inside their heads. They said it crushed the Dragonpit as if it were a child's toy. Ser Criston's army of six thousand men was a match for a beast. Ormund Hightower's host of thirty thousand was a match for a beast. Both are now part of the landscape. We are not dealing with a beast. To refuse this summons is not an act of defiance. It is an act of suicide for our entire cause."
"So we are to simply obey?" Jace demanded, his voice cracking with outrage. "We crawl to King's Landing, kneel before this… thing… and beg for terms? We have won this war! The Greens are broken!"
"We won a war against the Greens," Corlys corrected him gently. "And as we were about to claim the prize, a new player swept the board clean. The war is over, yes. But we did not win it. It did. Now we must go and learn the rules of the peace."
All eyes turned to Rhaenyra. She had been silent throughout the debate, her face pale, her hands gripping the arms of her throne. She was a queen who had lost her son, then her husband, all in pursuit of this chair, this crown. Now, a greater power had rendered it all moot. She looked at her son, at his fiery, Targaryen pride, and she saw the ghost of her beloved Daemon. Then she looked at Lord Corlys, and she saw the weary, pragmatic truth. Pride had cost her family everything. Perhaps it was time for a different approach.
"Lord Corlys is right," she said, her voice quiet but firm, carrying a new weight of authority. The authority of a monarch making an impossible choice not for glory, but for survival. "We cannot fight a living storm. We cannot reason with an earthquake. We can only learn its nature and hope to endure." She rose from her throne. "My son, my Hand, you will go to King's Landing. You will not take your dragons. You will go as envoys. You will listen. You will learn what this power wants from us. You will be my eyes and my ears. But you will not be my pride. You will be my hope for our survival."
Her decision was final. Jacaerys, though his heart rebelled, bowed to his mother's command. The delegation would go.
The journey across the bay was a silent, tense affair. Jacaerys stood at the prow of the swift Velaryon galley, the wind whipping his dark hair, his eyes fixed on the distant smudge of King's Landing. Lord Corlys stood beside him, his expression as unreadable as the deep sea beneath them.
"They will see this as weakness," Jace said finally, his voice low. "The lords of Westeros. The Queen, arriving not with her dragons in triumph, but sending her son on a boat like a common merchant."
"The lords of Westeros are likely on their knees, praying this thing does not look in their direction," Corlys replied calmly. "The old ways of measuring strength, of counting swords and dragons, ended the moment that creature crushed the Dragonpit. Do not think of this in terms of pride, Prince Jacaerys. Pride is a luxury we can no longer afford."
"Then what should I think of?" Jace asked, a genuine note of youthful uncertainty in his voice. "What do we say to it? How do we negotiate with a god?"
Corlys looked at the young man who would be king, a boy forced to confront a power beyond any monarch's comprehension. "You do not negotiate with the tide," the old sailor said, his voice a low whisper. "You do not reason with a hurricane. You watch it. You listen to it. You learn its currents and its winds. You show it respect, not because it is noble, but because it is vast. And you pray you are a strong enough ship to weather its passing."
In the Red Keep, from the high windows of the Tower of the Hand, Otto Hightower watched the single black-sailed galley approach. Larys Strong stood beside him, leaning on his cane.
"So, the 'true queen' sends her envoys," Otto said, a bitter, weary satisfaction in his voice. "Not with dragons, but on a boat. She has heard the voice of reason, it seems."
"Not reason, my lord," Larys corrected him softly. "Fear. It is a far more effective motivator." He watched the boat drop anchor. "When the board is overturned, all the pieces are returned to the box. King, queen, rook, bishop… they all become simple pieces of wood. The winner is not the one with the most pieces left, but the one who learns the new rules of the game fastest."
Otto looked at the Clubfoot, at his calm, analytical expression, and felt a flicker of his old fear. Larys was not just surviving this new reality. He was studying it.
The walk through King's Landing was an eerie pilgrimage. The city was silent. The people were back in their homes, peering from behind shuttered windows. The only sound was the wind and the crunch of Jace's and Corlys's boots on the cobbles. They walked with a small honor guard of Velaryon sailors, but the city's goldcloaks simply watched them pass, their faces blank with shock, making no move to stop them. They were emissaries to a new and higher power; the laws of men no longer applied.
They reached the foot of the Hill of Rhaenys and stopped. The sight was even more overwhelming up close. Krosis-Krif was not merely sitting on the hill; he was the hill. He was a mountain of living shadow and captive starlight, his sheer scale bending the familiar landscape into something alien. His head was lost in the low-hanging clouds, his great, coiled body a fortress of impenetrable black.
Jacaerys felt his heart hammer against his ribs. The instinct to run, to flee, was so strong it was a physical sickness. He looked at Corlys, whose face was grim but steady. Taking a deep breath, channeling all the Targaryen pride he possessed, Jace shouted up at the silent mountain.
"I am Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne! I am Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides and Hand of the Queen! We have come as you commanded! What do you want of us?"
The only answer was the wind. For a full, agonizing minute, they were left to stand there, two insignificant mortals at the foot of a silent god, their importance utterly negated. Jace felt a flush of anger and humiliation. He was about to shout again when the voice bloomed in their minds, cold, vast, and utterly indifferent.
"YOU ASK WHAT I WANT. A FARMER DOES NOT CONSULT HIS LIVESTOCK ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PASTURE. I WANT ORDER. I WANT STABILITY. I WANT THE BLEATING OF YOUR POINTLESS WAR TO CEASE. IT IS INEFFICIENT."
The voice was a physical pressure, forcing the air from Jace's lungs. Corlys stood his ground, his face a stony mask.
"YOUR INTERNAL SQUABBLE IS RESOLVED," the voice continued, its tone one of cosmic boredom, as if it were tidying up a child's messy playroom. "THE WOMAN RHAENYRA WILL BE RECOGNIZED AS QUEEN. HER LINE WILL CONTINUE. THE MAN AEGON IS A BROKEN SYMBOL; HE WILL REMAIN SO, A PET IN A GILDED CAGE. THIS SETTLES THE MATTER. IT IS… TIDY."
Jace stared in stunned disbelief. It couldn't be that simple. The war, the deaths, the struggle… all of it, ended with a casual thought?
"BUT THERE WILL BE NO IRON THRONE," Krosis-Krif declared, and they both felt a phantom echo of the throne's destruction. "THE CONCEPT IS ABSURD. POWER IS NOT A CHAIR. POWER… IS ME. YOUR QUEEN WILL RULE FROM THE RED KEEP. SHE WILL MANAGE THE FLOCK UNDER MY WATCHFUL EYE."
Corlys's face remained impassive, but Jace could see the old man's hand clench into a fist at his side. They were to be governors, not rulers. Zookeepers. Then came the final, most horrifying decree.
"YOUR DRAGONS… ARE A LIABILITY."
Jace's blood ran cold.
"THEY BREED CHAOS. THEIR FIRE IS UNTIDY. THEY ARE A POTENTIAL CHALLENGE TO THE NEW, STABLE ORDER. THEY ARE AN ECHO OF AN AGE THAT HAS PASSED." The voice paused, and in that pause, Jace felt a chilling sense of finality. "THEY WILL BE SURRENDERED. TO ME. BRING THEM TO THIS HILL. THE QUEEN'S YELLOW DRAGON, SYRAX. YOUR OWN GREEN ONE, VERMAX. THE SMALLER ONE, TYRAXES. THE HATCHLINGS IN THE PIT. ALL OF THEM. THEY WILL BE… REABSORBED INTO A HIGHER POWER."
"No!" The word burst from Jace's lips before he could stop it. "You cannot! Vermax… he is bonded to me! They are part of us! You would take our very souls?"
The mental voice turned its full, colossal attention onto the young prince. Jace felt a pressure in his mind so immense he staggered, clutching his head as if he had been struck a physical blow. Corlys put a steadying hand on his shoulder.
"SOULS ARE MERELY ENERGY. BONDS CAN BE BROKEN. AS CAN BLOODLINES. AS CAN CONTINENTS," the voice stated, its indifference a chilling counterpoint to Jace's passionate cry. "I HAVE DEVOURED THE SOULS OF YOUR FATHER AND YOUR UNCLE. I HAVE CONSUMED THE SPIRITS OF THEIR GREAT DRAGONS. YOUR HATCHLINGS ARE BUT A MORSEL. THEIR SURRENDER IS THE PRICE OF YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE. IT IS NOT A NEGOTIATION."
The pressure receded. Jace was left trembling, the revelation that this creature had eaten his father a wound so deep he could barely comprehend it.
"GO NOW," the voice concluded, its attention already drifting away, as if they were no longer of any interest. "INFORM YOUR QUEEN OF MY GENEROSITY. SHE MAY KEEP HER CROWN. SHE MUST MERELY SURRENDER ITS TEETH. DO NOT DELAY. MY PATIENCE, UNLIKE MY APPETITE, IS FINITE."
The presence was gone. They were alone again at the foot of the silent mountain, the echo of its words ringing in their minds. They had come seeking terms and had been given an ultimatum. They had won their war only to be told they must surrender the very heart of what made them Targaryens.
They walked back to their ship in a stunned, horrified silence. It was only when they were aboard, the galley pulling away from the shore, that Jace finally spoke, his voice a broken whisper.
"Lord Corlys… what do we tell my mother?"
The Sea Snake stared back at the city, at the colossal, dark shape that had replaced its gods and its kings.
"The truth, Prince Jacaerys," he said, his voice heavy with the weight of ages. "We tell her that we won a war for a throne that no longer exists. And that the price of peace… is our soul."