City of Dragons

Chapter Three.

The sun was beating down even heavier on the city of bones than it had been the day before and Daenerys Stormborn, though she knew that she should be boiling hot, felt only cold. The cold of fear, thought it had only been a day and a half since she had sent her bloodriders out into the Red Waste, she had the feeling deep inside her that she would not be seeing any of them again.

She tried to tell herself that she was simply being foolish, allowing the fears of a little girl to cloud her judgement but she found that she could not stop the fear from growing and growing within her. Each hour she expected them to return with news of what they had found but they had not returned yet, she wondered if she had sent them all to their deaths.

She supposed that it was good practice, she was a queen after all and if she ever wanted to sit on her throne then she would have to get used to sending men to their deaths, the Usurper would not give her throne after all and according to what Viserys had always told her the man had a bloodlust, the stories of him smiling and laughing at the mauled bodies of the children of her brother Rhaegar and Elia of Dorne, of how cold Ned Stark had simply called them Dragonspawn and how Lord Tywin had done it simply to ensure his own survival.

She would see that they all paid for it, they had taken her brother's throne and with that they had taken the brother she might have had as well, wanting the throne back, wanting to go home as badly as Viserys had done had ruined him, he had begged and pleaded and demanded when he had no power to do so.

He had gotten a crown in the end, not the one he had wanted and getting it had destroyed him just like she had always known that would happen. She hadn't wept for him, she had no tears left to shed for him. The fear of him that he had instilled into her had dried them up a long time ago. Though even now, she could not deny that she still grieved for the boy that her brother had been or the man that he might have been.

She wondered what Viserys would have been like if they had never been force to run their entire lives from the blades of the usurper, what their lives would have been like if they had never been forced to flee from Westeros. If she had been raised as a true princess in the Red Keep, if Rhaegar had ruled as king and Viserys had none of the duties and expectations forced on to him, the survival of their family.

She shook her head, it would do no good to look back on what might have been. The usurper had bested Rhaegar on the Trident and Viserys was just as dead as he was and if Dany looked back then she was lost, she could not have any doubts. Daenerys suddenly felt tired and so she set herself down in the shade of a fig tree and laid down with her almost completely bare head resting against the warm ground, slowly baking in the sun.

Irri asked if she wanted her to fetch her something to drink or if she wanted to help her inside but Daenerys dismissed, she just wanted to lay here for a moment and in peace to just forget her problems. She didn't know exactly how long she had been laying there in the shade when she felt the heavy weight of sleep pulling her eyelids down but she knew that she was too tired to fight and soon she was consumed by darkness.

She soon found herself standing in front of the Iron Throne, a twisted monstrosity that did not look like it could or should be sat on at all. Thin wisps of smoke drifted up from the burnt metal that made up the chair, and every point, every barb was covered in blood that dripped down to the floor. The throne seemed almost like it was standing on a dais made of blood.

Dany wanted to leave and never look at it again, she found herself being pulled away. She was standing in a cold, dim chamber where the only light came from a few dim candles whose flames feebly danced in the wind. Daenerys was standing in front of a large table that had been carved and painted to look like Westeros, her fingers reached out to brush it's surface but no matter how hard she tried to reach it the table seemed to slip further and further away from her.

She was flying then, she watched as far below a wall made of ice over grown with vines and blues flowers slipped away beneath her, she passed over a wolf den, smoking rising up from the middle of it and the mournful cries of a mother wolf who had lost her mate, echoing in her ears as she flew by. She passed over a ruin overgrown with vines and over a large marsh with flowers as tall as a man.

She flew further and further south, she flew over large rivers that ran red with bright blood, she flew over dozens of castles and keeps of different sizes until she finally reached where she was going, where she had always been going for as long as she could remember. A city built on three hills, shining in the light of the sun going down.

Daenerys opened her great jaws and breathed flame down on to it, screams of tiny people below rose up to greet her and she found that they irritated her. She breathed more flaming, bathing all below her and they were so very far below her. She bathed the great keep in flames even as a giant clad in shining weight with a helm covering his face and black ichor leaking from the slit in his visor came to greet her.

A giant was no match for a dragon and it could not stand against her as she bathed it in flame, armour melting as easily as flesh due to the heat of her flames, as the giant, rotting inferno fell to the ground with a thunderous crash and wild and mangy dogs crawled out of the slums to chew on it's bones, Daenerys's turned her attention back on to the Red Keep itself, burning it and burning it until all that remained was ashes and blackened walls, only the iron throne was left standing in the ruins.

She flew away from the ruin, shrieking her victory and her delight as she did so. She let her fire breath consume the city below her as she flew to the other hill, a great building stood atop it with seven crystal towers all around it. She did not stop to think and she opened her great maw and let fire rush out of her mouth and watched as it consumed the entire building, the crystals catching the light of her flames and sending a dozen different colours flying in every direction.

Violet. Blue. Red. Orange and Green. So much green everywhere, it drowned out all of the colours no matter where she happened to look, soon, no matter where she flew or how fast. All she saw where ever she looked was that horrible, sickening green.

That was when she woke up, jolting up and look at either side of her and causing Irri and Jhiqui to fall backwards. "Khaleesi? Are you alright? You would not wake no matter how much we tried, you were squirming and making strange noises in your sleep. We about to go and fetch your bear knight before you woke." Irri explained as her slender brown fingers reached out and stroked through Daenerys's silver hair.

"No, no. Irri, I'm fine don't worry." She spoke quietly as her eyes slid shut as she allowed herself to enjoy tender movements for a moment. "I just had a strange dream, that was all. My throat is parched however, Jhiqui, would you please go and find me something to drink?" The girl nodded and stood up before running off while Irri stayed with Daenerys, soothing her as best she could.

"Are the blood of my blood back yet?" Daenerys asked quietly after she had taken a sip of the cup of fig juice that Jhiqui had brought to her, she had to admit that she was getting quiet sick of figs now but she couldn't complain as it was all that they had and they were alive because of finding the trees. She just wished they had something to break up the diet, they didn't have enough horses left to slaughter any for meat and Dany did not even like horse meat but she would have it right now if it was available.

She was suddenly caught in a memory of when she, Doreah Irri, Jhiqui, and her bloodriders when they had only been her khas and assigned to protect her by Khal Drogo walking with her through the Western Market of Vaes Dothrak, eating those spiced sausages made of horsemeat and giggling like little girls as they watched her kos trying to prove who could eat the most.

It had seemed oh so very long ago now, Doreah, Quaro, Viserys and even Drogo were all dead now, she had been a little girl back then and now she had to be a queen. She forced them back into her mind. there she would let all of them rot until she could not remember them ever again. If she looked back then she was lost.

"No Khaleesi, none of them have returned yet." Jhiqui said as she sat down in the sand, her eyes trying desperately to try to hide the worry and the hurt inside of them and Dany watched as the same emotions were mirrored inside of Irri's eyes. It didn't come as a surprise to her, for as long as they had been serving as her handmaidens they had been spending a great deal of time around Aggo, Jhogo and Rakharo and thus it was only natural that they had grown fond of them in that time.

Daenerys had grown fond of them as well and the thought that she had sent them to die out in the wastes along with the outriders she had sent with them gnawed in her stomach like a rat. It did not sooth her mind to think on what Ser Jorah was always quick to remind her, that she had sent away a great part of their fighting men.

Ser Jorah was still with her as was the old mercy man Rommo but they were the closest she had to trained warriors, Ser Jorah had continued to train the boys of her Khalasar as she had asked of him but he had run into a problem in that he was trained to fight in Westeros and as a knight while the young of the Dothraki were expected too fight in an entirely different way and thus were not used to the change in technique.

The only good news that Ser Jorah had relayed to her was that thankfully all of the boys knew how to shoot a bow, Irri had once told her that all Dothraki boys learned how to use a bow from horseback from as young as eight. If worse came to worse and the city did come under siege then they could shove bows into their arms and make them man the walls so they would not be completely undefended if they were attacked.

Of course the Dothraki were used to firing their arrows from horse back and not on foot and not from on top of walls and Ser Jorah had made it plain that while they would be defended if they came under siege he doubted that it would be enough to throw any attackers back. Dany consoled herself by thinking that even if her bloodriders and outriders were there they probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

The thought had did little to make her feel better but at least they were unlikely to suffer a siege at the very least, unless someone desperately wanted figs there was nothing else here that was worth anything. The city had been sacked and anything that had been of any worth had long since been taken away. Of course, another problem was that the gate of the city had already been broken by the last time it had been sacked.

She had ordered that the gate be fixed but how exactly was something of another problem, the only wood was the fig trees and they needed those more than anything else at the moment. Even if they did have any other wood that they could use to fix the gates they didn't have any tools. So far they had settled for piling large white stones that had broken from the walls and arranged them in front of the gate and around the walls of the city, only a narrow opening in between the stones in front of the gates so they could get through it, but even to someone who knew little of siege craft like herself it didn't look like a defence, it looked like a line of salt when she looked down from it the walls.

Still, at least for the moment it was the best that they could do. And it was important that she kept them doing something, the Dothraki got restless easily. Sooner or later they would want to move on. The problem was none of them knew where they could move on too, Jorah spoke of ports but he had never travelled this far east before and he did not have any maps with him with which to guide them, Daenerys had only chosen to come this way because they had no other choices that they could take.

Once again, she wondered if her choice had lead them all to their deaths. She could show no doubt of course, not for a single moment. And so she let out a sigh and cupped both of her handmaiden's faces. "I am sure that they are well, they are brave and strong all of them. Any day now they shall return, I am more sure of that than I have ever been."

But they did not return the next day, nor did they return the one after that, or the one after that or the one after that. More than once she had laid awake in her bed in the manse she had claimed and listen as Jhiqui and Irri both pretended to cry silently, every whimper like a dagger being driven into her heart. But that pain was nothing when she thought of her bloodriders, out there in the wastes, her outriders with them as well.

She thought of them dying from thirst or from the heat or from the bite of a snake or the sting of a manticore and that felt like someone had reached into her chest and ripped her heart out of it and showed it to her. They had only gone out into the wastes because she had commanded it, if they were dead then it was because she had sent them off to their deaths.

She wasn't sure what she would do if they didn't come back, they wouldn't survive going further into the Red Wastes without any guides who knew where any rivers or other cities were and they could not go back the way they came, even if they did survive the journey the first Khal that came across her would either kill her or drag her back to Vaes Dothrak.

Staying where they were, it seemed, was the best option.

At one point, late at night when she could not sleep and her handmaidens had fallen asleep, she found herself wondering what they could do to make the city at least a little more bearable. There were wells and though the water was warm it was clean enough, it occurred to her that they could possibly dig cannels to divert the water to a field to plant crops.

The problem was that she wasn't certain if they could dig that far down and if they could she didn't want to risk ruining one of their only sources of water. Another problem was that the Dothraki were not a people that grew much of anything, they slaughtered horses and lambs for meat and when the horde made camp they would find roots and berries to season the meat but they didn't grow any of it, they had no seeds.

And sadly she didn't know what exactly they could even grow in the dry, dusty ground of the Red Wastes. She knew that things could grow as the fig trees had grown strongly and rapidly and they certainly had a large collection of fig seeds lying about. Sadly trees took a long time indeed to grow and even if by some miracle the trees would grew overnight, she wasn't sure they would survive on just fruit.

They would not starve but that wasn't what she was thinking off, she was not sure that the Khalasar would stand by her if all she could wind up offering them for their pains was fruit from trees a few years in the future. Once again she was lamenting sending her bloodriders away from her, Aggo, Jhogo and Rakharo has sworn themselves to her, to protect her and fight by her side. If she died then they would hunt down who had killed her before casting off their lives, she had no doubt that she could trust them.

And she had sent them away. Ser Jorah loved her, she had no doubts to that but she could tell that he still had doubts about all of this. He had lain his sword at her feet, had declared himself blood of her blood and had become the first of her queensguard. But she wasn't truly sure if she could trust him, he had saved her and Rhaego from that wine merchant's poisoned gift and she had not forgotten that.

But often as she sat in her room, watching as the candle's flame tried valiantly to not be blown out, she wondered how Ser Jorah had known about it. He had said that a letter had come with a trader's caravan from Magister Illyrio about an attempt on her life and that had made him suspicious. But how he had he known, it seemed so unlikely that just as he received a letter that warned him of an attempt that she would be in danger that he happened to stop a poisoning attempt on her, it seemed so unlikely.

She had sighed then and wondered if she had been going mad, they had called her father mad, once. Viserys had always said that it was a lie put about by the Usurper and his supporters to try and sway them to siding with them. It was easier to rebel against a madman who was cruel to the lowfolk then it was usurp a rightful king from his throne.

That night she had wondered if there had been a grain of truth in what had been said about her father, had this been how he had started to descend into madness? By question those closest to him, forever wondering about their loyalties. Seeing secret plots in every shadow and always waiting for a knife to be planted into her back.

She had blown out the candle flame then and had let herself sit in the darkness.

The only things that had brought her anything close to joy in those days had been her children, her three dragons. She had been concerned for them for such a long time as they had refused to eat anything that was offered to them until they learned about charring their food black. They had grown, not by much and they were still far to small to ride, or even to fly properly yet but seeing how they had grown had pleased her.

But not as much as when she had finally watched as Drogon had creped forward towards the tiny piece of raw meat that she had placed in front of him and had opened his tiny jaws to let out a stream of fire, in moments the meat had been blackened and the black dragon had devoured it in a matter of moments. Her other children had not quiet reached, Rhaegal had just managed a few thin streams of fire and Viserion had only managed a few single puffs of steam but she wasn't too concerned, he would get there in time.

Of that she had no doubt, when given enough food and open space, a dragon never stopped growing. She remembered all the stories that Viserys had told her about their family's dragons. He had memorised all of their names and the names of all the Targaryen's who had ridden them. As she looked down at Drogon she remembered all the stories of another dragon that had colouring exactly like this, just like this.

The thought of riding Baelerion the Black Dread come again was indeed an exciting one, she could not deny that. Sadly, she doubted that they had enough meat for any of her dragons to grow so larger that there shadows would cover entire towns in darkness nor be able to swallow entire mammoths from the wild North whole. It did suddenly occur to her then that while they wouldn't grow that big on what they had they would get bigger, so big in fact that they would certainly be needing more and more meat to eat.

What would she do then, would she need to select a horse every now and then and have that slaughter for her dragons to eat? What about when the grew larger, would they need to eat more and be less inclined to share with one another? Would she need to slaughter a single horse for each of them, they had so few strong steeds left and the Dothraki would not like it. She could ration them of course but she needed her dragons to be grown if she wanted a chance in taking Westeros.

And how would they react if she didn't feed them when they wanted food? Dragons were dangerous, that was the whole point of them. What if they attacked someone and ate them? What would she do then? Her head felt oh so heavy and all she wanted to do was go back to sleep, all she wanted was to be back in the House with the Red Door and for sweet old Ser Willem Darry to be alive again.

It had been close too a fortnight since her bloodriders were gone and she has resigned herself to the fact that all three of them and the outriders were all dead, they had given them all water and food but it would be almost completely gone by now and if they were lost in the Wastes then there was nothing that could be done for them.

The young boys of the Khalasar's training had continued out, she had decided that it was for the best if Rommo joined in with helping Ser Jorah to train the boys as they weren't responding well to her knight's methods. Rommo had decreed that Ser Jorah's techniques with the bow that he had been showing them were adequate but that there Khaleesi need more than for them to be adequate, she needed them to be true warriors of the plains.

She wanted to interrupt him and say that while that might be what she needed it wasn't what she wanted, most of those boys were younger than she was. The thought of sending them to fight and die for her did not sit at all well with her. She did not interrupt and watched from the balcony of the manse as the young Dothraki took turns firing at a target, a wooden bucket atop a low wall that had eyes and a thin line for a mouth painted in the juice from the figs.

All of them managed to hit it without any difficulty, it was an actually an easy target to hit. Each time one of them hit it they would take their arrow back and allowed someone else to take their shot as well. Rommo wanted to use a moving target as well but Dany had forbidden it as they couldn't afford to waste any of their horses, not even one.

She was watching as they move on to training with whips when Ser Jorah came up to her and tapped her on the shoulder, he had a look that Daenerys could not understand. It looked anxious and yet relived as well, she would take him looking like this then she would him looking as though he was angry with her. "My queen, I must ask that you come with me now. Aggo and the outrider you sent with him have returned."

For a moment Dany had to wonder if she was dreaming, it would not be the first time that she had a dream like this one. More often it would be that all three of her bloodriders and all the outriders she had sent with them, all of them looking even better than when they had left the city. In her dreams they would have found a city, near to the sea with waters as blue as a sapphire. The city itself would be abandoned but there would be food in every home, the walls would be surrounded with grass and over flowing with food that had been grown in them. And outside the cities walls, in the harbour, there would be a thousand ships waiting to carry them across the sea, more than they needed.

Sadly, neither Aggo nor the outriders had looked like they had just left the city nor was she going to guess that they had found a miraculous city waiting for them in the sands. Aggo's face was thinner and Daenerys was certain that could make out the bones in his face, he had always been a lean man but now even the small count of muscle that had in his chest was gone and the painted vest that he had worn was practically hanging off of him. The outrider was not in much better straights either.

As soon as she saw Aggo she ordered both of her handmaidens to go and find some food and whatever the could find to drink, both girls scrambled to obey her command as she approached her bloodrider. "Blood of my Blood, I am glad to see that you have returned to me. What news do you bring?"

"Khaleesi, we went as far south as we could go before we could go no father into the wastes, this is a dead and cursed land. I saw no rivers or other cities." Aggo seemed to be both angry and tired and Dany was certain that she could see frustration brewing in his dark eyes. "But, we did find something but I am not sure of how much use it will be to you. We found a dragon's skeleton, I swear it to be so. It's skull was so big that you could ride through it's mouth while sitting and not needing to bow your head."

One of the outriders brought a large sack over to them and held it open, she looked in to it and her eyes widened when she saw several bones that were as black as iron. She reached in and pulled out a curved bone, the weight of it surprised her and she very nearly tipped her over but Aggo was quicker and shot out to stop her from falling.

She stood back up with what little dignity that she could muster and brushed a thumb over the bone, she knew that bows could be made of dragonbone and they were believed to even more flexible and capable of shooting arrows further than any over kind of bow in the world, even the goldenwood bows of the Summer Islands could not hope to match it.

She was certain that there were other uses for the bone as well, she was certain that she had read somewhere that the Valyrian's had used Dragonbone to make armour that was both light and strong. Sadly, that art had been lost when the Doom had came to Valyria, it was a shame cause she imagined that sort of armour might be perfect for the Dothraki.

Still if they could find a way to make the bone into bows, well, she could think of worse things than having every single one of her fighters having a dragonbone bow. She placed the bone back into the bag and thanked Aggo with a smile, Irri and Jhiqui then came running up to them. In Irri's hands was a platter that had been filled with fruit, mostly figs she noticed, and Jhiqui had a skin that Dany was going to assume was filled with fermented mare's milk, there hadn't been a lot it left.

She had dismissed Aggo and the outrider from her presence and the two men went to sit down in the centre of a circle that had formed, it was clear that the rest of her horde wished to hear the story and what had taken them so long. Dany was still overjoyed to know that Aggo had returned so she decided to go inside and take a bath, she had been so down lately that the thought of doing it had slipped out of her mind and given the heat she had to imagine that she was staring to stink, if anyone noticed then she assumed no one minded.

Though to be fair, it wasn't as though anyone else exactly smelt like a room filled with roses.

More good news came to her after she had finished her bath, Jhogo had returned. She had herself dressed in a dress of sheer violet silk but she kept her painted vest over it, when she reached Jhogo and his outriders she was happy to see that all of them looked better than Aggo had done. The sun had burnt their copper skin to a darker shade than it had been before, when he saw her Jhogo smiled and knelt, taking his whip from his hip and laying it at her feet. "Blood of my Blood."

"Blood of my Blood." Dany responded in greeting, she gestured for him to take his whip back and then to stand up. Once Jhogo was back on to his feet, Dany spoke. "What news do you have to bring from the North?"

"Little of good news Khaleesi, we found two cities but the both of them were abandoned. One was warded with skulls, we dare not enter them. Evil sprits would be waiting for us inside. It is known. The other was just as dead as the first, but we did not have much time to look inside before a sand storm blew upon us, this is what we found." Jhogo held up an iron bracelet and Dany had to admit that she was disappointed but she said nothing as she reached out to take it.

They would have to go back to both of the cities before too long, she would need to see what was truly of value inside of them. It would not be easy as while she was certain that her Khalasar would follow her, or at least as certain as she could be, it wasn't going to be easy to get them to go into the first city that was warded with Dothraki clung on tightly to what they knew, more than anything else. They knew that warding with skulls meant evil sprits dwelt within and nothing would convince them to go inside.

But they also knew that a woman did not lead a Khalasar, not on her own at the very least. And they also knew that a woman burned when she stepped into fire and that all the dragons were dead and gone from this world. She had proved them wrong on all three counts once and she would do it again a fourth time if she had to.

With both Aggo and Jhogo returned and with all the outriders she had sent with them as well, the mood in the city of bones that night was a cheerful one. Fires had been light and there was dancing and Daenerys even allowed herself to have a mouthful of fermented mare's milk. It was as terrible as she remembered it being but it also tasted like being alive.

When she crawled into her bed that night, Irri and Jhiqui at either side of her, she convinced herself that she would be waken up in the middle of the night with the news that Rakharo had returned as well.

But no news had came that night, nor the night after that or the night after that. Soon the good mood that had infested the city started to dim as the days that Rakharo and the outriders she had sent with him had been gone ticked away until finally an entire moon had passed and still, none of them had been sighted. Many times over those days that seemed to pass both slowly and quickly at the same time, Dany had listened to Irri as she cried into both her and Jhiqui's arms. It wasn't a surprise, she had know that Irri was fond of the man and they were the closest in age.

To try and cheer her up Dany had sat with her in the garden of the manse, Irri's head in her lap as she read to her from the book of stories that Ser Jorah had given to her at her wedding to Khal Drogo. She had been reading to her about the story of Brave Danny Flint, more a song than a story but it was in the book regardless, when suddenly Ser Jorah himself came running up to her. "Khaleesi, I need you come and I need you to come now."

"What is the matter Ser?" She asked as she got to her feet. Irri pushing herself into sitting up. "Has Rakharo returned?"

Ser Jorah looked hesitant to answer the question but after a moment he spoke. "Yes my queen, he has returned but I am afraid that it is a complicated situation. Please come with me."

Dany frowned and held up her hand to gesture to Irri to stay where she was, she didn't seem happy with that decision but she stayed where she was as Daenerys followed Jorah through the streets of her city. They were approaching the gates but Jorah took a sudden turn that confused her and she nearly kept walking on tot the gates, still she managed to follow him until she reached the carved stairs that would take them up to the battlements, as they ascended Daenerys felt a feeling of dread settling in her gut.

That feeling only grew stronger when she saw several of her men, lead by Aggo, near the ruined gates pointing their bows with several arrows ready to be loosed at something she could not see. Dany broke from Ser Jorah and rushed over so they could see what had caused the alarm, it couldn't be a Khalasar as Khal wouldn't wait and would not be dissuaded by a few men with bows on walls, and when he saw the gate was broken open he was have his horde ride straight through it, paying no attention to their tiny barrier.

It wasn't a khal and his Khalasar, it was a tiny party made up of three men and a woman. the two men were unknown to her but one looked like a skeleton that had skin like old parchment stretched over his bones with lips so blue they were almost black, the other man had skin that was pale as milk and what looked like metal shoved into his nose, the other man was Rakharo and her heart swelled with joy to see him alive though she could not deny that it didn't last long when she noticed that he was the only one who had returned, there was no sign of the outriders she had sent with him.

The woman was the strangest of them all, it seemed to her. She wore a lacquered mask of wood and Daenerys could only just make out her eyes from the tiny holes. The sight of her caused a feeling of terror and mistrust to unfold in her.

"Who are you. and why are you here?" She asked, hoping her voice sounded stronger than she felt at the moment.

"Khaleesi." Rakharo answered. "I have journey as you have asked me too and brought back these guests from the great city of Qarth, Xaro Xhoan Daxos of the thirteen, Pyat Pree of the Warlock's guild and Quaithe of the Shadow, all have asked to look upon your beauty."

"We have come to seek the Mother of Dragons." The woman in the mask spoke and Daenerys glanced between Ser Jorah and Aggo for a moment as she considered what to do. There were only three of them, if she had her men fire then she would no doubt kill them all but surely they would have told others where they were going and they could not survive a war.

With a heavy breath and a force smile, she spoke. "Please, come in and be welcome in my city."

End of Chapter Three.

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