Chapter 42: Ashes and Ambassadors
The Aegonfort was a place of grief. The raw, splintered wood of its halls seemed to have absorbed the king's cold fury, and the ever-present wind that whipped across the Blackwater Rush carried a ceaseless, mournful sigh. A year had passed since the catastrophe at Hellholt, a year since Queen Rhaenys and her silver dragon Meraxes had fallen from the sky, their light extinguished by a single, lucky bolt of iron. The initial, incandescent rage had cooled into the grim, grinding reality of the Dragon's Wroth, Aegon's brutal but failing war of vengeance against the unconquerable sands of Dorne.
The conqueror had become a mourner, and his court reflected his mood. He sat on his black oak throne upon a high dais, his handsome face now leaner, harder, his lilac eyes holding a permanent, chilling distance. He was a king, but the joy of his conquest had been stolen from him, replaced by the grim duty of ruling a resentful kingdom and fighting an unwinnable war.
Beside him stood Visenya, a pillar of adamant and fury. Her grief was not the cold emptiness of her brother-husband's, but a white-hot fire that had burned away all softness, leaving only the warrior. Her hand rarely strayed from the pommel of Dark Sister, and her eyes, when they looked at the map of Westeros that dominated the Chamber of the Painted Table, saw nothing but enemies, thorns, and the southern wasteland that had swallowed her sister. The triumvirate that had conquered a continent was broken. The three heads of the dragon were now two, and the balance of their shared soul was gone. Rhaenys's laughter, her curiosity, her gentle touch—all were now ghosts that haunted the grim fortress.
"The reports from the Boneway are unchanged, Your Grace," Lord Loren Lannister said, his voice carefully neutral. The former King of the Rock, now Aegon's Warden of the West, had learned the art of addressing his new, grieving monarch with extreme caution. "The Dornish refuse to meet our forces in the field. They raid our supply lines and vanish back into the mountains. We hold the passes, but we cannot force a decisive engagement."
"Because there is nothing decisive to engage," Visenya said, her voice sharp as splintered ice. "We hold castles of sand and rule over ghosts. We burn their villages, and they drink from hidden wells. Fire cannot kill the desert, and our dragons cannot burn every snake in its hole." She looked at her brother. "This war is a fool's errand, Aegon. It drains our treasury and our will, all for the sake of vengeance."
"Vengeance is all I have left," Aegon replied, his voice a low, dead thing. The loss of Rhaenys had hollowed him out. His conquest, once a glorious ambition, now felt like a vast and empty inheritance.
It was into this chamber of grief and frustration that the news from the east arrived, a thunderclap that shook their entire world. The report, delivered by a frantic Pentoshi sea captain, was so outlandish that it was at first dismissed as a madman's ravings. But then a second report came, and a third, each corroborating the last.
"It is difficult to credit, Your Grace," Lord Loren said, reading from the compiled intelligence before the royal council, "but the accounts are consistent. The Golden Dragon Theocracy of Lysaro has revealed its military strength. They assembled a fleet of what eyewitnesses claim to be twenty-five dragons. They performed complex, coordinated aerial maneuvers and, as a demonstration of power, utterly destroyed the islands of the Vulture's Roost with dragonfire. The Theocracy, it seems, has an army of trained dragons."
A heavy, deathly silence descended upon the lords of Westeros. These men, who had been conquered by three dragons, could not process the reality of twenty-five. They looked at their king, their new god of war, and saw the flicker of something they had never seen in his eyes before: uncertainty.
"It is a lie," Lord Celtigar, ever the hopeful skeptic, insisted. "A trick of the light. No such power could exist in secret for so long."
"A secret known to half the merchants in Essos," Visenya countered, her mind already cold and clear amidst the shock. She turned to Aegon, her voice low and urgent. "This changes the board entirely, brother. This is not a demonstration. It is a threat. They waited until we were weakened, until we had lost a third of our strength in the sands of Dorne. Now they reveal their true power. They are putting a knife to our throat."
"Why?" Aegon asked, his voice a dangerous whisper. "Why now? They have ignored us for a decade."
"Because they can," Visenya said simply. "Because now we are neighbors. We are the only other dragon power in the world. And they have just reminded us which of us is the superior power."
Before the council could devolve into panicked speculation, the captain of the Aegonfort's guard burst into the chamber.
"Your Grace! A ship! It has entered the bay, making for the port. It flies the banner of the golden dragon."
"A scout?" Jorah's counterpart asked.
"No, my lord. It signals that it carries an envoy. It requests an audience with the king."
The tension in the room became unbearable. Visenya's hand tightened on Dark Sister. "An envoy? After such a display? They flaunt their power and then send a messenger to our door? It is an insult! It is a trap! We should burn their ship in the harbor!"
"No," Aegon said, standing. His grief seemed to recede, replaced by the cold, hard mask of the king. "No. We will not show them fear. We will not show them rage. We will show them nothing. Grant the ship safe passage. Bring their envoy here. I will hear him."
The envoy Valerius was escorted into the hall. He carried himself with a quiet dignity that was unsettling. His eyes, dark and intelligent, took in the raw, unfinished state of the throne room, the grim faces of the Westerosi lords, and the two Targaryen monarchs on their dais. He noted the empty space where a third throne might have stood.
He bowed respectfully. "I am Valerius, emissary of the Golden Dragon Theocracy and servant of the Five Prophets. I bring greetings, and profound condolences, from my lords to King Aegon Targaryen."
Aegon's eyes narrowed. "Condolences."
"For the great tragedy that has befallen your house and the world," Valerius said, his voice pitched with perfect, sympathetic resonance. "The death of Queen Rhaenys and the noble dragon Meraxes at the hands of treacherous men was an event of profound sorrow. It proved that a dark and profane knowledge—the art of killing dragons—still lingers in this world. My god, the Golden Wyrm, and his Prophets believe this knowledge is a plague upon us all, a threat to the divine order and the very fabric of civilization."
Visenya's intake of breath was sharp and audible. To hear this stranger speak her sister's name in this hall was a violation.
"We believe," Valerius continued, his gaze fixed on Aegon, "that this threat must be extinguished. We propose a holy accord. A partnership between the two great dragon powers of this world. Let us unite our resources. Let us pool our intelligence. Let us hunt down and destroy every scorpion, every treatise, every smith who knows how to forge the bolts, from the Citadel of Oldtown to the shadowlands of Asshai. Let us work together, King Aegon, to ensure that no dragon, be it of your house or of ours, ever again falls to a mortal's hand."
He finished and stood in silence, his proposal hanging in the air. It was audacious, compassionate, and deeply, deeply suspicious.
After Valerius was escorted out to await a reply, the chamber erupted.
"He mocks us!" Visenya raged, her voice shaking with a fury she rarely showed. "He speaks of our sister's murder and dares to offer partnership? This is a spy mission! They seek to learn our strengths, our weaknesses, the disposition of our forces, all under the guise of this 'holy accord'!"
"The offer seems sound, Your Grace," Lord Loren Lannister ventured cautiously. "To eliminate such a weapon would surely be to our advantage. It would make your own rule absolute."
"My rule is already absolute, Lord Lannister," Aegon said coolly. He had remained silent during the outburst, his mind a whirl of calculation. He was processing the offer not as a warrior or a grieving husband, but as a king. And as a king, he was asking the fundamental question: Cui bono? Who benefits?
Visenya was right. The proposal was filled with traps. But Aegon sensed something deeper than a simple espionage plot. There was a desperation to it, a neediness that belied their grand display of power. Why would a power with fifty dragons be so concerned with a weapon that had, through apparent luck, killed only one?
He thought of his own heart. He thought of the unending, grinding rage and grief that had consumed him for a year. He thought of the fear he felt every time Visenya flew Vhagar into the skies over Dorne, the fear of another lucky shot, another impossible loss. He knew that fear intimately. It was his constant companion.
And then he understood.
He stood, and a king's authority silenced the room. "They are afraid," he said simply.
Visenya turned to him. "Aegon, they have an army of dragons…"
"And they are terrified," Aegon repeated, a new, cold light dawning in his eyes. He began to pace before the throne. "We have been looking at this backwards. We see their display of force as a threat, as the act of a confident power. We see their offer as the condescending move of a superior. We are wrong."
He turned to the council. "For a century, they have been the sole dragon power in the world. Their entire Theocracy, their entire religion, is built on the myth of their guardians' invincibility. They lived in a world of theory. Then, they look across the sea and see us. And what is the first thing they witness of our great conquest? They witness one of our dragons, a true beast of Old Valyria, being killed. By men. By a machine."
He let the reality of it sink in. "The Dornish did not just teach us a lesson. They taught the entire world a lesson. They proved that dragons can die. The Theocracy's grand military parade was not a threat to us. It was a panicked message to the rest of the world, a desperate attempt to shore up their own image after it had been shattered. They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle."
He looked directly at Visenya, his grief now forged into a weapon of pure strategic insight. "And this offer… this offer to 'help' us destroy the knowledge… it is the panicked plea of a king who has just realized his castle walls are made of glass. They are not offering us a partnership. They are begging us to help them eliminate the one thing in the world that they now truly fear. They are not acting from a position of strength. They are acting from a position of profound, terrifying vulnerability. The same vulnerability I feel every time I look south towards Dorne."
The revelation recast the entire encounter. The Theocracy was not a confident giant, but a paranoid one, spooked by a glimpse of its own mortality. Aegon Targaryen, the grieving king, was now the one who held the psychological high ground.
He had Valerius brought back in.
"Lord Valerius," Aegon said, his tone now infused with a regal, almost paternal magnanimity. "Your proposal is both wise and timely. My sister and I accept the truth of it. A world where dragons can be felled by common machinery is a world out of balance."
Valerius bowed, unable to hide his relief.
"We will agree to an accord," Aegon continued. "A pact of mutual security. You will share any and all intelligence your agents uncover concerning these weapons or the men who build them. We, in turn, will ensure the security of Westeros and see that this heresy is purged from our lands. Your direct assistance here will not be required."
He paused, then delivered the counterstroke, the move that changed the game. "And of course, such a monumental undertaking requires open and constant communication between our two great states. To that end, I would be honoured to receive a permanent ambassador from the Golden Dragon Theocracy, to reside here at my court in King's Landing. A symbol of our shared purpose. In turn, I will dispatch my own trusted envoy to your capital of Lysaro, to ensure our houses remain in close counsel on this and all other matters."
The blood drained from Valerius's face. He was trapped. The offer was perfectly reasonable, a standard diplomatic custom. To refuse it would be a massive insult and would reveal the Theocracy's true, secretive nature. But to accept it would be to allow a Targaryen fox into their holy henhouse.
"Your Grace… your wisdom is… profound," the envoy stammered, caught completely off balance. "I… I must convey this most generous offer to the Prophet-Regents. I am certain they will see the value in it."
"I am certain they will," Aegon said with a thin, cold smile.
He had won. He had taken their fearful, manipulative proposal and turned it into a diplomatic triumph. He had forced open their gates.
After Valerius departed, a new energy filled the throne room. The cloud of grief had, for a moment, lifted, replaced by the thrill of a game well played.
"You will send an ambassador to their city?" Visenya asked, a look of grudging admiration on her face. "Who would you trust with such a task?"
"Someone clever," Aegon said, his eyes turning back to the map of Westeros. "Someone observant. Someone who can learn all their secrets while revealing none of our own." His gaze lingered on the apathetic lords of his council, and he knew his choice would have to be from outside this room.
He looked out the high window, west, towards the setting sun. The war in Dorne was a failure. His kingdom was a resentful patchwork. His heart was a house of ash. But the game on the world stage had just begun anew. The dragons of the east were afraid. And Aegon Targaryen, for the first time in a long year, felt the stirrings of something that was not grief or rage. It was the cold, sharp, and deeply satisfying thrill of a worthy challenge.