A Clash of Kings (2 page)

Such folly
. He leaned against the battlement, the sea crashing beneath him, the black stone rough beneath his fingers.
Talking gargoyles and prophecies in the sky. I am an old done man, grown giddy as a child again
. Had a lifetime’s hard-won wisdom fled him along with his health and strength? He was a maester, trained and chained in the great Citadel of Oldtown. What had he come to, when superstition filled his head as if he were an ignorant fieldhand?

And yet . . . and yet . . . the comet burned even by day now, while pale grey steam rose from the hot vents of Dragonmont behind the castle, and yestermorn a white raven had brought word from the Citadel itself, word long-expected but no less fearful for all that, word of summer’s end. Omens, all. Too many to deny.
What does it all mean?
he wanted to cry.

“Maester Cressen, we have visitors.” Pylos spoke softly, as if loath to disturb Cressen’s solemn meditations. Had he known what drivel filled his head, he would have shouted. “The princess would see the white raven.” Ever correct, Pylos called her
princess
now, as her lord father was a king. King of a smoking rock in the great salt sea, yet a king nonetheless. “Her fool is with her.”

The old man turned away from the dawn, keeping a hand on his wyvern to steady himself. “Help me to my chair and show them in.”

Taking his arm, Pylos led him inside. In his youth, Cressen had walked briskly, but he was not far from his eightieth name day now, and his legs were frail and unsteady. Two years past, he had fallen and shattered a hip, and it had never mended properly. Last year when he took ill, the Citadel had sent Pylos out from Oldtown, mere days before Lord Stannis had closed the isle . . . to help him in his labors, it was said, but Cressen knew the truth. Pylos had come to replace him when he died. He did not mind. Someone must take his place, and sooner than he would like . . .

He let the younger man settle him behind his books and papers. “Go bring her. It is ill to keep a lady waiting.” He waved a hand, a feeble gesture of haste from a man no longer capable of hastening. His flesh was wrinkled and spotted, the skin so papery thin that he could see the web of veins and the shape of bones beneath. And how they trembled, these hands of his that had once been so sure and deft . . .

When Pylos returned th1e girl came with him, shy as ever. Behind her, shuffling and hopping in that queer sideways walk of his, came her fool. On his head was a mock helm fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung with cowbells. With his every lurching step, the bells rang, each with a different voice,
clang-a-dang bong-dong ring-a-ling clong clong clong
.

“Who comes to see us so early, Pylos?” Cressen said.

“It’s me and Patches, Maester.” Guileless blue eyes blinked at him. Hers was not a pretty face, alas. The child had her lord father’s square jut of jaw and her mother’s unfortunate ears, along with a disfigurement all her own, the legacy of the bout of greyscale that had almost claimed her in the crib. Across half one cheek and well down her neck, her flesh was stiff and dead, the skin cracked and flaking, mottled black and grey and stony to the touch. “Pylos said we might see the white raven.”

“Indeed you may,” Cressen answered. As if he would ever deny her. She had been denied too often in her time. Her name was Shireen. She would be ten on her next name day, and she was the saddest child that Maester Cressen had ever known.
Her sadness is my shame
, the old man thought,
another mark of my failure
. “Maester Pylos, do me a kindness and bring the bird down from the rookery for the Lady Shireen.”

“It would be my pleasure.” Pylos was a polite youth, no more than five-and-twenty, yet solemn as a man of sixty. If only he had more humor, more
life
in him; that was what was needed here. Grim places needed lightening, not solemnity, and Dragonstone was grim beyond a doubt, a lonely citadel in the wet waste surrounded by storm and salt, with the smoking shadow of the mountain at its back. A maester must go where he is sent, so Cressen had come here with his lord some twelve years past, and he had served, and served well. Yet he had never loved Dragonstone, nor ever felt truly at home here. Of late, when he woke from restless dreams in which the red woman figured disturbingly, he often did not know where he was.

The fool turned his patched and piebald head to watch Pylos climb the steep iron steps to the rookery. His bells rang with the motion. “Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers,” he said,
clang-a-langing
. “I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”

Even for a fool, Patchface was a sorry thing. Perhaps once he could evoke gales of laughter with a quip, but the sea had taken that power from him, along with half his wits and all his memory. He was soft and obese, subject to twitches and trembles, incoherent as often as not. The girl was the only one who laughed at him now, the only one who cared if he lived or died.

An ugly little girl and a sad fool, and maester makes three
. . .
now there is a tale to make men weep
. “Sit with me, child.” Cressen beckoned her closer. “This is early to come calling, scarce past dawn. You should be snug in your bed.”

“I had bad dreams,” Shireen told him. “About the dragons. They were coming to eat me.”

The child had been plagued by nightmares as far back as Maester Cressen could recall. “We have talked of this before,” he said gently. “The dragons cannot come to life. They are carved of stone, child. In olden days, our island was the westernmost outpost of the great Freehold of Valyria. It was the Valyrians who raised this citadel, and they had ways of shaping stone since lost to us. A castle must have towers wherever two walls meet at an angle, for defense. The Valyrians fashioned these towers in the shape of dragons to make their fortress se1em more fearsome, just as they crowned their walls with a thousand gargoyles instead of simple crenellations.âHe took her small pink hand in his own frail spotted one and gave it a gentle squeeze. âœo you see, there is nothing to fear. âœ/p>

Shireen was unconvinced. âœhat about the thing in the sky? Dalla and Matrice were talking by the well, and Dalla said she heard the red woman tell Mother that it was dragonsbreath. If the dragons are breathing, doesnâ™ that mean they are coming to life?â/p>

The red woman
, Maester Cressen thought sourly.
Ill enough that sheâ™ filled the head of the mother with her madness, must she poison the daughterâ™ dreams as well?
He would have a stern word with Dalla, warn her not to spread such tales. âœhe thing in the sky is a comet, sweet child. A star with a tail, lost in the heavens. It will be gone soon enough, never to be seen again in our lifetimes. Watch and see.â/p>

Shireen gave a brave little nod. âœother said the white raven means itâ™ not summer anymore.â/p>

âœhat is so, my lady. The white ravens fly only from the Citadel.âCressenâ™ fingers went to the chain about his neck, each link forged from a different metal, each symbolizing his mastery of another branch of learning; the maesterâ™ collar, mark of his order. In the pride of his youth, he had worn it easily, but now it seemed heavy to him, the metal cold against his skin. âœhey are larger than other ravens, and more clever, bred to carry only the most important messages. This one came to tell us that the Conclave has met, considered the reports and measurements made by maesters all over the realm, and declared this great summer done at last. Ten years, two turns, and sixteen days it lasted, the longest summer in living memory.â/p>

âœill it get cold now?âShireen was a summer child, and had never known true cold.

âœn time,âCressen replied. âœf the gods are good, they will grant us a warm autumn and bountiful harvests, so we might prepare for the winter to come.âThe smallfolk said that a long summer meant an even longer winter, but the maester saw no reason to frighten the child with such tales.

Patchface rang his bells. âœt is
always
summer under the sea,âhe intoned. âœhe merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.â/p>

Shireen giggled. ✠should like a gown of silver seaweed.â/p>

âœnder the sea, it snows up,âsaid the fool, âœnd the rain is dry as bone. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.â/p>

âœill it truly snow?âthe child asked.

âœt will,âCressen said.
But not for years yet, I pray, and then not for long
. âœh, here is Pylos with the bird.â/p>

Shireen gave a cry of delight. Even Cressen had to admit the bird made an impressive sight, white as snow and larger than any hawk, with the bright black eyes that meant it was no mere albino, but a truebred white raven of the Citadel. âœere,âhe called. The raven spread its wings, leapt into the air, and flapped noisily across the room to land on the table beside him.

âœâ™l see to your breakfast now,âPylos announced. Cressen nodded. âœhis is the Lady Shireen,âhe told the raven. The bird bobbed its pale head up and down, as if it were bowing. âœi>Lady,âit croaked. âœi>Lady.â/p>

The childâ™ mouth gaped open. âœt
talks
!â/p>

â€A few words. As I said, they are clever, these birds.â/p>

âœlever bird, clever man, clever clever fool,âsaid Patchface, jangling. âœh, clever clever clever fool.âHe began to sing. âœi>The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord,âhe sang, hopping from one foot to the other and back again. âœi>The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay my lord, stay my lord. âœHe jerked his head with each word, the bells in his antlers sending up a clangor.

The white raven screamed and went flapping away to perch on the iron railing of the rookery stairs. Shireen seemed to grow smaller. âœe sings that all the time. I told him to stop but he wonâ™. It makes me scared. Make him stop.â/p>

And how do I do that?
the old man wondered.
Once I might have silenced him forever, but now
Â.Â.Â.Â

Patchface had come to them as a boy. Lord Steffon of cherished memory had found him in Volantis, across the narrow sea. The kingâ”he old king, Aerys II Targaryen, who had not been quite so mad in those daysâ”ad sent his lordship to seek a bride for Prince Rhaegar, who had no sisters to wed. âœe have found the most splendid fool,âhe wrote Cressen, a fortnight before he was to return home from his fruitless mission. âœnly a boy, yet nimble as a monkey and witty as a dozen courtiers. He juggles and riddles and does magic, and he can sing prettily in four tongues. We have bought his freedom and hope to bring him home with us. Robert will be delighted with him, and perhaps in time he will even teach Stannis how to laugh.â/p>

It saddened Cressen to remember that letter. No one had ever taught Stannis how to laugh, least of all the boy Patchface. The storm came up suddenly, howling, and ShipbreakerBay proved the truth of its name. The lordâ™ two-masted galley
Windproud
broke up within sight of his castle. From its parapets his two eldest sons had watched as their fatherâ™ ship was smashed against the rocks and swallowed by the waters. A hundred oarsmen and sailors went down with Lord Steffon Baratheon and his lady wife, and for days thereafter every tide left a fresh crop of swollen corpses on the strand below Stormâ™ End.

The boy washed up on the third day. Maester Cressen had come down with the rest, to help put names to the dead. When they found the fool he was naked, his skin white and wrinkled and powdered with wet sand. Cressen had thought him another corpse, but when Jommy grabbed his ankles to drag him off to the burial wagon, the boy coughed water and sat up. To his dying day, Jommy had sworn that Patchfaceâ™ flesh was clammy cold.

No one ever explained those two days the fool had been lost in the sea. The fisherfolk liked to say a mermaid had taught him to breathe water in return for his seed. Patchface himself had said nothing. The witty, clever lad that Lord Steffon had written of never reached Stormâ™ End; the boy they found was someone else, broken in body and mind, hardly capable of speech, much less of wit. Yet his foolâ™ face left no doubt of who he was. It was the fashion in the Free City of Volantis to tattoo the faces of slaves and servants; from neck to scalp the boyâ™ skin had been patterned in squares of red and green motley.

âœhe wretch is mad, and in pain, and no use to anyone, least of all himself,âdeclared old Ser Harbert, the castellan of Stormâ™ End in those years. âœhe kindest thing you could do for that one is fill his cup with the milk of the poppy. A painless sleep, and thereâ™ an end to it. Heâ™ bless you if he had the wit for it.âBut Cressen had refused, and in the end he had won. Whether Patchface had gotten any joy of that victory he could not say, not even today, so many years later.

“
The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord
,” the fool sang on, swinging his head and making his bells clang and clatter.
Bong dong, ring-a-ling, bong dong
.

“
Lord
,” the white raven shrieked. “
Lord, lord, lord
.”

“A fool sings what he will,” the maester told his anxious princess. “You must not take his words to heart. On the morrow he may remember another song, and this one will never be heard again.”
He can sing prettily in four tongues
, Lord Steffon had written . . .

Pylos strode through the door. “Maester, pardons.”

“You have forgotten the porridge,” Cressen said, amused. That was most unlike Pylos.

“Maester, Ser Davos returned last night. They were talking of it in the kitchen. I thought you would want to know at once.”

“Davos . . . last night, you say? Where is he?”

“With the king. They have been together most of the night.”

There was a time when Lord Stannis would have woken him, no matter the hour, to have him there to give his counsel. “I should have been told,” Cressen complained. “I should have been woken.” He disentangled his fingers from Shireen’s. “Pardons, my lady, but I must speak with your lord father. Pylos, give me your arm. There are too many steps in this castle, and it seems to me they add a few every night, just to vex me.”