A Feast for Dragons

back to
the crones of the
dosh
khaleen
, where good
khaleesi
were supposed to go when their khals had died.
    He did not see her, though. The grass concealed her, and he
was looking elsewhere. Dany followed his eyes, and there the shadow flew, with
wings spread wide. The dragon was a mile off, and yet the scout stood frozen
until his stallion began to whicker in fear. Then he woke as if from a dream,
wheeled his mount about, and raced off through the tall grass at a gallop.
    Dany watched him go. When the sound of his hooves had faded
away to silence, she began to shout. She called until her voice was
hoarse … and Drogon came, snorting plumes of smoke. The grass bowed
down before him. Dany leapt onto his back. She stank of blood and sweat and
fear, but none of that mattered. “To go forward I must go back,” she said. Her
bare legs tightened around the dragon’s neck. She kicked him, and Drogon threw
himself into the sky. Her whip was gone, so she used her hands and feet and
turned him north by east, the way the scout had gone. Drogon went willingly
enough; perhaps he smelled the rider’s fear.
    In a dozen heartbeats they were past the Dothraki, as he
galloped far below. To the right and left, Dany glimpsed places where the grass
was burned and ashen.
Drogon has come this way before
, she
realized. Like a chain of grey islands, the marks of his hunting dotted the
green grass sea.
    A vast herd of horses appeared below them. There were riders
too, a score or more, but they turned and fled at the first sight of the
dragon. The horses broke and ran when the shadow fell upon them, racing through
the grass until their sides were white with foam, tearing the ground with their
hooves … but as swift as they were, they could not fly. Soon one
horse began to lag behind the others. The dragon descended on him, roaring, and
all at once the poor beast was aflame, yet somehow he kept on running,
screaming with every step, until Drogon landed on him and broke his back. Dany
clutched the dragon’s neck with all her strength to keep from sliding off.
    The carcass was too heavy for him to bear back to his lair,
so Drogon consumed his kill there, tearing at the charred flesh as the grasses
burned around them, the air thick with drifting smoke and the smell of burnt
horsehair. Dany, starved, slid off his back and ate with him, ripping chunks of
smoking meat from the dead horse with bare, burned hands.
In Meereen I
was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb
, she
remembered.
What would my noble husband think if he could see me now?
Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario …
    Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his
arakh
,
and squat down to eat beside her.
    As the western sky turned the color of a blood bruise, she
heard the sound of approaching horses. Dany rose, wiped her hands on her ragged
undertunic, and went to stand beside her dragon.
    That was how Khal Jhaqo found her, when half a hundred
mounted warriors emerged from the drifting smoke.
    ----
    EPILOGUE
    I am no traitor,” the Knight of Griffin’s Roost declared. “I
am King Tommen’s man, and yours.”
    A steady
drip-drip-drip
punctuated his
words, as snowmelt ran off his cloak to puddle on the floor. The snow had been
falling on King’s Landing most of the night; outside the drifts were ankle
deep. Ser Kevan Lannister pulled his cloak about himself more closely. “So you
say, ser. Words are wind.”
    “Then let me prove the truth of them with my sword.” The
light of the torches made a fiery blaze of Ronnet Connington’s long red hair
and beard. “Send me against my uncle, and I will bring you back his head, and
the head of this false dragon too.”
    Lannister spearmen in crimson cloaks and lion-crested
halfhelms stood along the west wall of the throne room. Tyrell guards in green
cloaks faced them from the opposite wall. The chill in the throne room was
palpable. Though neither Queen Cersei nor Queen Margaery was amongst them,
their presence could be felt poisoning the air, like ghosts at a feast.
    Behind the table where the five members of the king’s small
council were seated, the Iron Throne crouched like some great black beast, its
barbs and claws and blades half-shrouded in shadow. Kevan Lannister could feel
it at his back, an itch between the shoulder blades. It was easy to imagine old
King Aerys perched up there, bleeding from some fresh cut, glowering down. But
today the throne was empty. He had