A Feast for Dragons

Targaryen was no stranger to the Dothraki sea, the
great ocean of grass that stretched from the forest of Qohor to the Mother of
Mountains and the Womb of the World. She had seen it first when she was still a
girl, newly wed to Khal Drogo and on her way to Vaes Dothrak to be presented to
the crones of the
dosh khaleen
. The sight of all that grass
stretching out before her had taken her breath away.
The sky was blue,
the grass was green, and I was full of hope
. Ser Jorah had been with
her then, her gruff old bear. She’d had Irri and Jhiqui and Doreah to care for
her, her sun-and-stars to hold her in the night, his child growing inside her.
Rhaego.
I was going to name him Rhaego, and the
dosh khaleen
said he
would be the Stallion Who Mounts the World
. Not since those
half-remembered days in Braavos when she lived in the house with the red door
had she been as happy.
    But in the Red Waste, all her joy had turned to ashes. Her
sun-and-stars had fallen from his horse, the
maegi
Mirri Maz
Duur had murdered Rhaego in her womb, and Dany had smothered the empty shell of
Khal Drogo with her own two hands. Afterward Drogo’s great
khalasar
had shattered. Ko Pono named himself Khal Pono and took many riders with him,
and many slaves as well. Ko Jhaqo named himself Khal Jhaqo and rode off with
even more. Mago, his bloodrider, raped and murdered Eroeh, a girl Daenerys had
once saved from him. Only the birth of her dragons amidst the fire and smoke of
Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre had spared Dany herself from being dragged back to
Vaes Dothrak to live out the remainder of her days amongst the crones of the
dosh
khaleen
.
    The fire burned away my hair, but elsewise it did not
touch me
. It had been the same in Daznak’s Pit. That much she could
recall, though much of what followed was a haze.
So many people,
screaming and shoving
. She remembered rearing horses, a food cart
spilling melons as it overturned. From below a spear came flying, followed by a
flight of crossbow bolts. One passed so close that Dany felt it brush her
cheek. Others skittered off Drogon’s scales, lodged between them, or tore
through the membrane of his wings. She remembered the dragon twisting beneath
her, shuddering at the impacts, as she tried desperately to cling to his scaled
back. The wounds were smoking. Dany saw one of the bolts burst into sudden
flame. Another fell away, shaken loose by the beating of his wings. Below, she
saw men whirling, wreathed in flame, hands up in the air as if caught in the
throes of some mad dance. A woman in a green
tokar
reached for
a weeping child, pulling him down into her arms to shield him from the flames.
Dany saw the color vividly, but not the woman’s face. People were stepping on
her as they lay tangled on the bricks. Some were on fire.
    Then all of that had faded, the sounds dwindling, the people
shrinking, the spears and arrows falling back beneath them as Drogon clawed his
way into the sky. Up and up and up he’d borne her, high above the pyramids and
pits, his wings outstretched to catch the warm air rising from the city’s sun
baked bricks.
If I fall and die, it will still have been worth it
,
she had thought.
    North they flew, beyond the river, Drogon gliding on torn
and tattered wings through clouds that whipped by like the banners of some
ghostly army. Dany glimpsed the shores of Slaver’s Bay and the old Valyrian
road that ran beside it through sand and desolation until it vanished in the
west.
The road home
. Then there was nothing beneath them but
grass rippling in the wind.
    Was that first flight a thousand years ago?
Sometimes it seemed as if it must be.
    The sun grew hotter as it rose, and before long her head was
pounding. Dany’s hair was growing out again, but slowly. “I need a hat,” she
said aloud. Up on Dragonstone she had tried to make one for herself, weaving
stalks of grass together as she had seen Dothraki women do during her time with
Drogo, but either she was using the wrong sort of grass or she simply lacked
the necessary skill. Her hats all fell to pieces in her hands.
Try again
,
she told herself.
You will do better the next time. You are the blood of
the dragon, you can make a hat
. She tried and tried, but her last
attempt had been no more successful than her first.
    It was afternoon by the time Dany found the stream she had
glimpsed atop the hill. It was a rill, a rivulet, a trickle, no wider than her
arm … and her arm had grown thinner every day she spent