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A Song of Blackjack and Hookers (chapter 45)
🕑 Added 2025-10-28 09:49:02 +0000 UTCArianne
She slid from the back of her red stallion, handing his reins to one of Sunspear’s stableboys. The knights she had returned with would soon do the same.
Their procession continued into the Sandship, its halls smothered in shadows from the torches along its walls. It had been supplanted by the Tower of the Sun in the years after House Nymeros Martell had broken six crowns and become the unquestioned masters of Dorne, but the keep had remained.
Viserys met them in its throne room, his silver hair gracefully touching his plum-purple silks. “It gladdens me to see you returned.” His eyes turned upon the knights at her back. “And it stirs my heart to see knights of such renown as you ready to place your faith in me.”
The way in which he spoke reminded her of a sorcerer.
Her father next to him still leaned lightly on his pale cane, his back straight and his dark eyes glinting like onyx gemstones under the torchlight. There was a hint of reproach at her entourage, but only that.
Some of her cousins were there also, Tyene’s lips upturned into a half smirk.
Ser Gerold Dayne went to a knee first, his own silver hair a shade darker than her betrothed's, just as his eyes were a darker purple. A dangerous man, but beautiful. “Your Grace. My sword is yours if you would have it.”
Ser Daemon Sand and Ser Andrey Dalt knelt also. That all three had been her lovers at one time tickled her humors.
“You will be the first of my Kingsguard,” their would-be king proclaimed, “and though this ruse must continue some moons more, I see no reason you cannot say your vows now.”
Viserys unsheathed a sword she recognized for Valyrian steel. The question must have lingered on her, for Tyene neared and touched a whisper to her ear.
It seemed the sorcerer had returned upon a haunted Lyseni galley a fortnight ago and made a gift of it.
“Redeemer will hear you,” her betrothed continued more softly.
Her curiosity still burned for her cousin’s words as the three knights swore themselves into the Kingsguard. Daemon’s sky blue eyes met hers a moment when he spoke the words, a ghost of a smile on his handsome lips. Not that she expected any less from the Dornish bastard that had deprived her would-be husband of her maidenhead.
Arianne remembered their couplings as clumsy, but sweet. He had agreed when she had arrived at Godsgrace and suggested the idea, though he remained stubbornly sour at her hand being refused to him.
The pageantry complete, she joined her father in his solar, a question already on her lips.
“I hear that our wolf lord has stirred himself awake?”
“Maester Caleotte was most surprised,” he said in answer. “Though it will be some moons until he has recovered fully.”
She tugged at her orange silks thoughtfully. “A culprit was also mentioned.”
“One close to us, I fear. Lucinor had vanished as soon as the suspicion fell on his cohort. A man older than my years, who had served House Martell while your grandmother still ruled Dorne.” A sad smile took him. “Areo and Tyene have investigated his whereabouts, but fortune has yet to smile on us.”
A small part of her wondered if her father’s hand was not at work here, but for what purpose she could not fathom.
“Our sorcerer does not know either?”
“He named three and voiced a lack of interest in peering any closer. I cannot fault him. Lord Eddard already counts all three as enemies.”
She tugged on her lips with her teeth, her next words more nervous. “He speaks often of a new Age of Heroes, of the red comet that will herald it, of the dragons he would give us, and not a whisper more.”
She still did not know if she believed it. No eyes living had seen a dragon in the flesh, the eggs they left behind no more than ornaments.
“Viserys sees him for the father he scarcely remembers. Yet if I had to choose, I would rather he tried to curry favor with a sorcerer than the memory of Aerys the Second.”
For a breath she saw prickly lilac eyes watching men dance with the Stranger again.
“He will at least see his sister wed to him,” she heard.
That was news to her. She did not remember Solomon being as much taken with the idea as her betrothed.
Her father breathed a soft sigh after a moment. “He has kept his word to Maegon Laessaryon also. It bodes well for us.”
Arianne did not know if he believed the words he spoke. Suspicion would always be her father’s companion.
“I find myself reminded of what Elia had said haunted Rhaegar. At first it seemed an idle fancy, but not even a year after they were wed, it had consumed him.” Her father’s dark eyes met hers. “He spoke to her of a bleeding star and a prince that was promised.”
A part of her was pleased that he would speak his mind to her. It was the rest of her that was uncertain as what to make of it.
“Solomon does not remind me of Prince Rhaegar, a thought that brings me no small measure of relief. Rhaegar thought himself that prince, and then his son. In the end, all that was promised to them was an early grave.”
He touched his hand to hers with another sad smile.
“I regret sending your mother away with my stubbornness. I can only hope you will forgive me one day.”
The soft taps of his cane dwindled as he left her to her thoughts. It was not only him she blamed when she was a girl of six-and-ten, but her mother also. Neither of them had cared to hear her.
There were times she thought to travel to Norvos and see her, but she could never find the right words.
Stalking through Sunspear to find Tyene again, she spied Obara with her, snorting at something she said.
“Sarella has written us,” Tyene mentioned, parchment in hand. “She wonders if she shouldn’t return with Sunspear more mysterious than the maesters now.”
Her brow rose. Arianne hardly understood what possessed her cousin to leave at all, but then she was more prone to flights of fancy than even Nymeria. She supposed it was the Summer Islander in her.
“Where is our sorcerer anyhow?”
Tyene turned a sly smile on her sister. “Obara complained of him last.”
The eldest of her cousins scowled for it, the sunlight catching on her sunsilk cloak. “I only mentioned he was stalking the beach like a crab.”
“She would forget that he had given her a rose also, yellow as the rest of him.”
Obara clicked her tongue. “A sorcerer’s gifts are poison.” She swept from the room after.
Arianne was surprised to even hear her name him a sorcerer and not a mummer.
Tyene sidled up to her with another smile. “Your brother is returning from Yronwood.”
A frown claimed her lips. And she wondered why he had mentioned her mother.
Quentyn was never to blame for their father’s secrecy, and yet she resented him anyway. Now he no doubt saw her for a sour old crone instead of a sister.
The unhappy thought had lingered in her mind for two days before she set out to find their illusive sorcerer. Arianne had insisted Daemon accompany her, a white cloak trailing after him along the sands now.
“If you had mentioned him wandering along the Greenblood alone, I’d have suggested bringing more knights. Perhaps some of the Orphans also.” The sweat stuck to his sandy hair under the Dornish sun.
And she would have asked Garin again, but they had only found out when they reached Lemonwood. “Is that surrender I hear from you, ser?”
“Never.”
It was nearer to the evening when they had found him, the sight of him like a yellow smear in the waters of the Greenblood.
“Princess,” he greeted as she dismounted. “Ser Daemon.”
The slightest unease showed on the Bastard of Godsgrace, for the sorcerer still had his back turned to them. His black hair was more cloak than mane now.
She waded into the river after a breath, her orange silks quickly lost amidst all the yellow. “I’m no fisherman, but I believe you need a rod and a line.”
The water already reached up to her belly, where it hardly touched his thigh. The woes of womanhood.
He met her jest with another. “If I was fishing for fish.” Then he turned to meet her eyes.
She thought to see a horror of corpse-white skin and eyes greener than anything in the Greenblood. Instead she found sun-kissed skin and smiling dark eyes.
“Volantis has been kind to me.”
A part of her wondered if she shouldn’t have come alone. Swallowing noisily, she stirred herself to speech.
“Was she as grand a sight as they say?”
“Grander,” he whispered. “All the better to hide the rot.”
It was for her next question that she had sought him out. “This new Age of Heroes you have mentioned. What have you seen of me in it?”
She had already spilled her blood for his sorcery. If he meant her harm, was she not already doomed?
His smile turned amused. “I am not a woods witch to taste your blood and spit out a prophecy to haunt you. When I said that I would see dragons returned to this world, it was not a prophecy I spoke, but a promise.” His eyes returned to the Greenblood stretching from one horizon to another. “When the Long Night fell upon the world, it was only those stories written in blood and daring that saw the sunrise.”
He had spoken so beautifully that she did not wish to speak and ruin it. She only stirred when he touched her hand, his thumb ghosting over her knuckles.
“I also regret the liberties I had taken some moons ago. The septons and septas are not wrong to name sorcery a sword without a hilt. They only lack the imagination to wield it.”
The memory took her like a flame, leaving her shying away from his eyes as if she was a girl of three-and-ten again. The thought annoyed her. “Perhaps I hadn’t misliked it.”
A heat all her own stuck to her for it. A sorcerer and a bastard knight ravishing her together…
His next words returned some sense to her. “I have also seen the river Rhoyne, princess. The Greenblood is but a shadow of it.”
Arianne tried to imagine it. For all she was the blood of the Rhoynar, she had never seen their namesake.
What she had were the stories. “It is said that the Rhoynar wielded sorcery as much as the Valyrians,” she voiced.
“They frustrated the dragonlords for near three centuries. And perhaps they had the last laugh, for the Doom would soon make an end of them.”
His dark eyes caught her as much as his hand had caught hers.
“Imagine the story you would write if you returned it to its heirs.”
She liked the sound of his words, but she liked the picture they painted more. To see her name remembered along the likes of Princess Nymeria and Prince Garin…
She could not think of anything sweeter.
Bran
How long will you remain stubborn? Until the Wall breaks?
A haunting horn broke the gloom of night, the Wall undone before it. The sun would not rise on its ruin.
Until the snows pile over Winterfell?
He watched even the Broken Tower smothered under a white that stretched in every direction.
Until winter comes to the Summer Isles?
The first snowflake fell upon a land that had never seen its like.
Until…
He would not hear it. He would not see it. He repeated those words in his head until the flap of wings found him in the gloom of the cave again, his back against a weirwood. Summer stirred next to him as the stink of rot and mildew crawled into his lungs again.
He could not even count how many moons it had been, let alone how many days. It had to have been at least a moon since the others were ransomed…
The dawn brought her with it.
“Sweet dreams?” Her mane of orange curls framed her wicked smile. “No, I s’pose not. That old crow is as gentle as a storm when agitated.”
He stared spitefully into her mossy green eyes. “My brother is coming. I’ve seen it. He’ll put you all to the sword.”
He had seen Robb more than once, a black crown often on his head and his sword drenched in blood.
His words only drew her smile wider. “Would that he hurry. I wait for him as the crow waits for you, little greenseer.”
His brows furrowed, his fingers tangling in Summer’s fur. “Why?”
“‘Cause there’s Andals that need killing.”
She approached him with the stone bowl again, a paste white as bone in it, with streaks running through it red as blood. He knew there wasn’t any fighting it.
At first it always tasted bitter, then bittersweet. At the end it tasted like honey and cinnamon on his tongue, and new-fallen snow.
He tried to stay awake even as the sun set again, but his eyes drooped, and inevitably his head fell back against the weirwood.
Again he spied Robb, a black crown on his head and a bronze sword in his hand, though he could hardly see the runes past the blood smearing across the bronze.
You see only the lake’s surface. Dunk your head.
“I won’t,” he wanted to say. But the witch’s words drew him to it anyway. He drank deeper of the dream.
Theon had joined Robb with a smile more cruel than he remembered. A weirwood bow was slung over his shoulder, a score weirwood arrows filling his quiver.
There were two others there also.
One seemed grotesque to him, armored in skin and sinew as much as steel. He had eyes like two chips of ice, and a bloody knife held loosely in his hand.
The other was harder to see. Like a shadow on the wall.
You know them. See them for what they are.
He drank even deeper. It… It was Jon, and it wasn’t. His head felt hot, as if his thoughts had caught fire. He wanted to look away.
The flames can’t hurt you.
The crow lied. It always lied. Like a weirwood, he burned. And he fled.
His skin felt red and raw even as he shivered in the cave.
There wasn’t a soul to stop Summer and him from stealing away. Why would they when they were in the Mountains of the Moon? They would first need to grow wings.
He looked down from the cliffside a thousand feet high, the wind tangling in his hair. He could almost touch the clouds.
He spied a few fires across the length of the mountains also, the smoke quickly scattered in the wind.
The sight tugged on his thoughts unhappily. They did not see him as a prisoner or even a person, but a thing. Something to be appeased with grisly offerings.
He never asked to be born a greenseer. He wanted to be a knight like the Dragonknight. He wanted to be brave.
He knew they would have only mocked him to hear it.
Summer nudged him gently with his snout, drawing the smallest of smiles. All the crow would ever show him was winter, so Bran had named his wolf its opposite.
The witch soon returned with another bowlful. His dreams found him after.
The flames can’t hurt you. Your mind can.
Bran stubbornly ignored it.
There are things worse than the flames.
He did not drink deeply. Yet he was drowning.
He saw a black thing tickle the foundations of the world.
He saw a grey thing turn the world to stone.
He saw a yellow thing place its strings on all the world.
He saw a green thing shadow the world.
He saw a white thing close the curtain on the world.
He saw a red thing open them.
He saw a white thing close them again.
He saw a red thing open them again.
He saw a white thing…
A flap of wings pulled him from the waters.
Of all the dreams that followed, there was one that felt closest. A knight of suns and moons.
Comments
Paradosi
I should say that Bloodraven isn't one to see time linearly. There's a few more Solomon chapters to go until I can finally peel back the curtain.
Dune Black
Salomon is now one of the magical power of the world
