Chapter 17: 16 Ants on a Stage
Joffrey screamed as he woke up, flailing around in bed before puking his guts at the ground. "Oh Gods…. Oh gods…. Oh gods…" he hyperventilated, breathing faster each time.
He was suddenly aware of the Hound awkwardly patting him in the back as he kept scanning the room, discarded long sword by the side.
"Gods… Sandor… Stannis… I can't believe it, a freaking sorcerer…" Joffrey mumbled, shuddering at the memory of the horrible, agonizing pain that thing had inflicted. For a moment he thought he'd never wake up again.
"It was just a dream, Prince Joffrey. Just a dream" the Hound said awkwardly as he retreated his hand and stood up, still looking around the room.
"Sandor I… right… Ah..." he shook his head slightly.
We fought and bled and laughed together, and he doesn't remember anything…
That thought threatened to make him cry again, but he closed his eyes tightly, pinching his hand and drawing blood.
"Get me a ship, Hound, we depart for Oldtown at first light tomorrow" he told him as he steeled himself.
This complicates things… but if Stannis is some kind of sorcerer, wouldn't he be able to help me with the purple? With my questions?
He thought about that carefully.
No, he wants me dead, and might even have the means to make it permanent. To approach him now would be folly. I'm not ready.
He extended his arm to his left without looking, grabbing the whalebone tablet and examining it again.
"I will have answers" he told it, pale green eyes hardening.
It was time to stop fooling around.
-.PD.-
After the familiarly frustrating convincing session, which involved whispered words about 'making the eight as you did' and the dubious term 'Fathuncle', he had managed to get hold of a ship for Oldtown.
The city looked the same, though the sea approach certainly had its allure, and it certainly made him see the Hightower in a different light.
He'd been resorting to internal puns to get over the dark mood that had taken him… he felt Tyrion would have given him a 5 out of 10.
It was progress.
His entry to the city was certainly less cheerful than it had been last time. Now it was just him and the Hound along a dozen redcloaks he was planning on ditching at the earliest opportunity. And then he could get to work.
And this time he had a plan. It would take a while but…
Joffrey felt he didn't have the knowledge necessary to even understand, much less survive what was happening to him, and maybe the world. Whatever it was.
Not only did he need clues, he felt he needed the background knowledge to understand what the hells he was doing. He would wipe the strain of imbecility that had made a rook in his head, all those years ago in his first life.
The Summer Knights, Maergery, Tywin and all the plotter 'in the know' could go to the hells.
By the Gods, he would be as smart as Tyrion, even if it literally killed him.
-.PD.-
"Hold still, please don't move" he said as he felt around the man's sickly forehead, feeling the temperature by hand as he closed his eyes. They only had two of the precious glass thermometers here, and they were already in use.
Definitively a fever, thought Joffrey as the man coughed and he rose the man's simple knitted shirt. Red patches on the abdomen… feels blinding headaches…
He stood there for a moment, thinking as the man in the cot shuffled and mumbled indistinctly.
He nodded as he quickly walked towards the Maester's office. As he walked he passed several dozens of small cots, maybe half of them filled with people in various states of consciousness. The small 'hospital' as he'd heard a few of the foreign sailors call it, was the City's only source sanitation and health if you didn't have the money to pay for a maester. The poorer smallfolk and other inhabitants of the city thought about the whole place in between suspicion and eternal gratitude, but the truth about the whole place was neither of those… it was just practical.
The Maesters and Acolytes needed a place to learn and earn their silver link without killing their patients… or should it better be said, a place where such common fuck ups didn't entail having to deal with a group of armed furious nobles demanding compensation.
He stopped at the door as he tried to hide a smile. Normally the whole thing was supervised by a Maester or two, usually on punishment duty by the Seneschal's court. They supervised the more advanced acolytes that worked-studied here and made sure the butchers bill wasn't too high.
That was normally though…
He heard a muffled "Come in", after which he opened the door. This year however, in an incredibly surprising, almost unprecedented decision, Archmaester Ebrose the Healer, whose ring and rod and mask were made of silver, had announced he'd supervise the acolytes in the Hospital, aiding them in their training.
And that was exactly what he'd done. Although he taught one particular, anonymous acolyte a lot more than the others, even taking him for private sessions, a rarity usually reserved for the brightest Maesters with years of experience. That particular acolyte had become a subject of heated controversy, envy and speculation throughout the Citadel.
Joffrey suppressed a smirk as the gentle Archmaester received him with a sight, leaving his writing feather aside and moving the book he had been writing on to the side. He was writing a volume on the many different types of poisonous animals found in the coast of Sothoryios, continuing on his groundbreaking work regarding the scientific explanation of 'butterfly fever', a type of nasty disease prevalent on one of the nearby islands.
It was incredible what a mix of royal influence, piles of gold and promises of expeditions could do to an Archmaester hungry for the means to amass more knowledge. To reach such high levels in the Citadel, most of them had to be knowledge addicts, and the promise of Royal patronage was the perfect enabler to expand their horizons. Joffrey felt a bit guilty he'd never actually deliver on it.
"So… 'Joff'… tell me, what are your conclusions?" he asked him as Joffrey sat in a chair in front of the old desk.
"Diarrhea, cramps, dehydration… it's the Bloody flux…" said Joffrey as he stared at the ceiling, thinking hard. "I'd recommend… milk of the poppy for the pain and an infusion of bark and ashrose for the infection. And a lot of water" he said.
The Archmaester nodded as he wrote something down, a drawing of the body with several arrows pointing at sections of the stomach.
"A good treatment indeed… if it where the bloody flux. One must always make sure one does not omit the facts that don't fit the explanation… something all Acolytes should know" he rebuked him gently. Ebrose didn't like the fact that Joffrey had jumped over all the years of junior acolyte training, but he didn't bring it up all that much as he regarded Joffrey as some kind of healing genius, for someone who had never studied medicine before.
Almost as if I'd spent two years studying under him before I got here, he thought, amused.
No way was he going to train as a junior acolyte anyway. They were basically glorified servants for the senior Maesters.
"The red rashes in the belly, along with the abdominal pains are enough for a different diagnostic. Typhoid Fever" said the Archmaester as he humbled Joffrey once more.
With this one it'll make three years I've studied under the Archmaester, and I still feel dwarfed by his knowledge. He thought as he shook his head. He was feeling he needed at least another two to be vaguely competent in the area, and he was going to do exactly that.
Medicine was the first field he'd decided he needed to know thoroughly. After watching Jon die in his arms with not even an inkling of how to stop it…
Well, experiences like that gave a powerful learning incentive.
Joffrey concentrated again as they started to discuss common cures and palliatives for Typhoid Fever, and ways to make a more accurate diagnoses. He felt he was learning ten times as fast as he'd usually would reading a book, a testament to the skill and knowledge of the Archmaester. Getting him as, basically his private tutor, had been one of the smartest decisions he'd made.
The fact that I'm immortal does not mean I can dally eternally, after all…
Better to be efficient with his time. Besides, the faster he learnt about a field, the faster he could migrate to another in search of knowledge and clues about the tablet. Also, being trained by an Archmaester meant he was learning directly from the highest authority regarding that subject in the Citadel… So not only was he learning faster than he should, the quality of said knowledge was also much higher than normal.
…Sometimes, the purple was worth it.
As the lesson ended and Joffrey tried not to spontaneously combust because to the glares of the other acolytes, he walked out of the building and the Citadel in general. Grandmaester Ebrose had said he'd wait for him tomorrow at midday for their next lesson. After that, Joffrey usually would then spend the rest of the afternoon either relaxing in some manner or researching about the tablet. But not this time.
He quickly turned an alleyway and disposed of the bulky acolyte robes as he never stopped walking.
A harried acolyte came in from one end of the dark, murky alleyway, an armed sailor or mercenary came out the other. He was wearing hardy but confortable leathers, and carried both a sword and a dirk.
Joffrey walked purposely until he reached the docks, quickly boarding a somewhat smallish cog. "The Captn's on the deck!" shouted a grizzled old sailor who was missing an eye. As the 20 or so crewmembers of the Seatail stopped what they were doing and stood up in what could charitably be called respect, Joffrey stopped as he crossed his hands behind him, right beside the helm.
Joffrey knew he couldn't be trusted to run a ship, much less a kingdom, but the state of the ship and the crew he'd managed to get had assuaged his self-doubt. It was not as if he could do much worse, after all.
The ship was old and weary, and the crew were a somewhat sorry lot, even more undisciplined than usual given that their nominal 'captain' and purser, who looked more like a child than a seasoned sailor, never appeared more than once a month to pay them for doing absolutely nothing but taking up space in one of Oldtown's piers.
Until today, that is.
Joffrey stood erect, legs slightly apart as he projected his voice to carry. If he'd tried this on Nakaro's crew he'd be shitting his pants in nervousness, but with this lot…
"Gentlemen, from this day forward you will actually earn what I've been paying you. I will brook no disrespect nor insolence aboard this ship. Work honestly to the best of your ability and you will hear no problems from me. Cross me however… " he eyed the still sailors. "and you won't like what happens" he ended.
He let the silence extend a bit before barking to his left. "Chief Tobas"
"Aye Captn'?" said the only loyal and competent man on the ship. "Get us out of the Harbor and set sail for the Free Cities"
The man nodded, but seemed to hesitate, "Aye Capt'n… but, we won't be loading in any cargo?" he asked.
Joffrey smiled "The cargo has just boarded. Besides what I carried in yesterday, that is" he said.
The Chief nodded as he started giving out orders and whipping the crew into working order.
Joffrey smirked as the harbor started to disappear over the horizon.
Could have lasted two more months maybe, but better not risk it, he thought.
I'm thinking… Tyrosh for now. Been a while since I visited.
After dedicating a dozen short lives to the problem, he'd turned adept at positively ransacking the treasury. He didn't have a King's ransom… but he definitively had a princely one. One he used in part to have a personal ship waiting for him in Oldtown's harbor ready to depart at a moment's notice. It was both an insurance policy as well as a convenient way of moving around the Narrow Sea towards wherever he wanted regardless of trade routes and schedules.
He took a deep breath, savoring the salty air. He stood beside the tiller, nodding at Chief Tobas as the man silently nodded back, moving slightly to the side and leaving space for Joffrey to take it.
"Full sails! I want the deck secured and every scrap of cloth tacked on!" barked Joffrey, the sailors scrambling and making ready for the long voyage.
Joffrey took another deep breath, letting his eyes close. Sandor… After a while he couldn't bare to look at him and receive the same old wary or disgusted look, instead of the slight smirk of a Broken Knight. He'd been dumping him for the last couple of lives, it was better that way… he needed to be alone for a while.
Just me and the sea… me and the sea…
-.PD.-
He was in his cabin, puzzling over a book he'd 'loaned' from the Citadel's library. It spoke of the languages of Western Essos before the Valyrians conquered the whole place, and Joffrey was sure of one thing.
It was not what he was looking for.
He sighted as he leaned back on the chair that had been nailed to the deck, stretching his arms.
A sudden knock startled him. "Yes?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Its Chief Tobas Cap'n… I think you need to see this…" said Chief Tobas, sounding urgent and nervous.
"Right away Chief" said Joffrey, getting up and taking his arming sword.
He opened the door to find Chief Tobas frequently looking down the wooden corridor, and before Joffrey could say a word, the Chief spoke quickly.
"It's the crew Cap'n, that sea scum Morron is stirring up things up and--"
"It's okay Tobas, follow me" he told him as he walked towards the main deck. The Chief nodded warily, following Joffrey with an iron cudgel.
In the deck was Morron, a big sailor with strong arms that gesticulated wildly around 15 or so other sailors.
"And the Captain thinks he knows what he's doing? He can't tell a reef from a whale! If we keep following his orders we'll all--"
"Ah, Seaman Morron" Said Joffrey as he stepped into the deck.
I don't have the patience for this…
"And there he is! I'm lolligaging right now eh?! What are you--" Morron started again with an insolent smirk but was interrupted.
"Come on, let's do it Morron. Just you and me. You win, you get the ship and all the gold in the strongbox… I'll even give you the first move. What do you say?" asked Joffrey as he stood to the center and unsheathed his arming sword.
Morron seemed taken aback, but his frown quickly turned thoughtful, before nodding and taking his big Arahk, a curved dothraki sword. "Alright then, this is it people!" he roared with happiness as if he could barely believe it. The sailors around him looked interested but not outright cheering, that was good.
Morron wasted no time for that first strike. He boasted as he made a powerful slash at Joffrey "Time for a new Cap-Augh…"
He looked down to see a small stab wound on his left armpit.
Joffrey shook his head, standing behind him and staring down at the sailors. "Is there anyone else?" he asked, walking up and down the deck as Morron crumpled forwards as if his legs had turned to Jelly.
Silence.
"IS THERE ANYONE ELSE?!" he roared at the seamen. All of them were looking down, afraid.
Joffrey turned back and gestured lazily with a hand "Toss him to the sea" he said as he made his way to his study.
The last time he'd killed Morron he had worried about how easy it had become, just another stage in his exit strategy from the Seven Kingdoms, to kill a man again and again and not feel a thing for it.
Now he was just angry the scum had cost him 10 minutes which would have been better spent reading. Though he supposed he was being uncharitable with the man, thanks to him the crew NEVER again even thought about a mutiny until the end of his current life.
-.PD.-
The paint splotched all over the small canvas, ruining all of Joffrey's previous work. "Ah Fuck!" he muttered, staring sadly at the ruined painting.
"Ah, a great loss Ser Joff, the paintbrush can be a fickle ally" Said Grolea as she quickly got out a new canvas for Joffrey.
"I'm paying you to say that…" muttered Joffrey good naturedly. The painting had been crap anyway, barely better than Tommen's stick knights which frequently appeared in between Grand Maester Pycell's notes.
The fact that he'd started at about the same level as him was a scant consolation.
Joffrey was on top of one of the many big towers that adorned Tyrosh. Like many Free Cities, Tyrosh rose from the sea behind massive walls, and its lifeblood was commerce, as usual. Different from most of the free cities however, was the fact that its huge fortress walls were made of fused black dragonstone, incredibly strong and created using a technique long lost to man.
There are many things that have been long lost to man, Joffrey mused as he let Grolea guide his hand through another canvas, pointing out why his corners always looked so messy.
From here he could see the great Swann ships from the Summer Islands, purple sailed Braavosi galleys and even the rare Ibbenese Whaler. He always liked when one of those docked, he'd walk upon the deck like it were the most natural thing in the world and defy the crew (in Ibbenese of course) to a spear duel. It was good practice as well as a fun time, even though sometimes it ended with his split skull upon the hard wooden deck.
He had been trying to paint the harbor with the help of his ridiculously expensive teacher, Grolea Kyrratas, an old widow whose husband had been a rich noble. Not content with seating in comfortable, decadent obscurity, Grolea had used part of the dead noble's money to improve her skills and eventually run her own guild of dye makers. She made a killing in Tyrosh as the most renowned dye mixer, as most of the more reputable magisters, merchants and nobles paid her ludicrous amounts of gold for the finest of hair dyes, a necessity for a Tyroshi worthy as great as a King's need for a crown, the more extravagant and rare the better.
Painting was considered some kind of a lesser art here in Tyrosh, as they thought that wasting perfectly good colors on canvas instead of hair was simply bad form. Even so, the art had bloomed in the city thanks to the abundance and relative cheapness of the dyes (if you bought more closely to the harbor, that is), and painting had become somewhat of an accepted hobby, something Joffrey was keen to learn after remembering the cringe worthy diagrams and drawings of both backpack and bronze plaque he'd drawn for his mountain lives.
He was slow, but he was making progress.
The motto of my life, he thought irreverently.
Sadly though, it was time to get back on track with his research. A year in the Citadel and a year relaxing from the intense schedule. That was the deal he'd made with himself, and he was going to honor it.
He'd promised himself he'd be as smart as Tyrion, though he was realizing he'd be perfectly happy with half his intellect, but even that would require effort… and a lot more time.
It amused him to think that he literally didn't know which one would come first, to be half as smart as Tyrion or to find a useful clue about the tablet.
Stannis could offer a possible clue, but with time that option had turned incredibly reckless the more Joffrey thought about it. For all he knew Stannis had the magical means for killing him permanently, if he somehow guessed he was living multiple times.
After all the time he'd spent alive, he didn't think the prospect of that scared him as much as it used to, but the thought of dying permanently without knowing the reason behind his condition…
No way.
-.PD.-
And so he sailed to his last stop, Braavos. Waste not, want not.
Why kill himself if he could die just as well training his skills against other eager participants?
And so he split what remained of his gold to the crew, giving Chief Tobas four times the normal share and the ship to boot. He'd then take his customary cider at the Moon Pool. At midnight he'd nod goodbye to the serving girl and step outside armed with his dirk. His knife fighting skills were terrible, and what better way to get them better than fighting for his life? Outside, against opponents that did this every night, he usually made it for half an hour before some Bravos took him down with a water dancing move that Joffrey couldn't help but admire as pure art.
And then it was back to the Citadel.
-.PD.-
The next flurry of lives, Joffrey felt, passed quite quickly. He distanced himself from people he'd known in other lives and dedicated himself full bore to his learning and research. And when not in the Citadel he'd either work on his hobbies or on a project to further his skill.
He thought it was a bit pretentious, but in his mind he started to add maester links to himself. Obviously, he'd never be as good as a full blown Maester, but it gave him a small measure of satisfaction and fulfillment when he mentally added a link. First came silver, once Archmaester Ebrose considered him 'barely competent' in the healing arts… by his standards.
Then came the study of mathematics and economics. He would have followed up with Magic, really, but he'd wasted a half a dozen lives trying to convince Archmaester Marwyn to take him in, but it was like talking to a mule… worse, a cryptic mule. So that subject went to the end of the pile.
And so, numbers without end. Archmaester Ryam, whose ring and rod and mask are yellow gold, practically jumped on the chance to teach the heir to the seven Kingdoms a skill he felt was indispensable.
A task that almost left Joffrey in a coma. For all of the Archmaester's passion for the subject, the incredibly dry and theoretical knowledge was a slog to get through. The Archmaester had not gotten there by being stubborn however, and soon managed to take the subject to a more practical, hands on experience which Joffrey, as usual, found a lot more informative and even fun.
The Archmaester's idea though… Well, they did say that studying too intently at numbers could take a mind into interesting ways which would have otherwise remained closed.
And so, Prince Joffrey, heir to the Seven Kingdoms and incognito fake Acolyte became Joff Rivers, small trader of goods. He set up shop in a cheap part of the harbor and entered the dubious realm of shopkeepers and traders. The thought of the heart attacks which would have spread through the Reach like the Pox if the Lords and Knights had learned of it would often send Joffrey into sudden giggle attacks, scaring away potential customers.
From there, as he gained experience and the infinite books he'd read about the subject suddenly became grounded in real life, Joffrey evolved into a ship insurer, and later yet into a lender (by this point the nobility would have had their heads explode into wildfire instead of having heart attacks, had they known, to Joffrey's eternal amusement).
Here his knowledge of the ships and the sea synergized beautifully, and to his surprise he developed a bit of a reputation as one of the most competent and fair small ship insurers in the harbor. Archmeaster Ryam had to hold tears when he'd told him that, he said he'd be the greatest King the Seven Kingdoms had ever known.
Shows what numbers do to your head! He thought, amused at the memory.
He could also say with a certainty that the rune did not represent any kind of number be it 'real' or theoretical, nor any foreign version of it known to the Citadel.
-.PD.-
After that, he studied under the gruff and heavy Archmaester Benedict, whose ring and rod and mask are pure Steel.
In stark contrast to Archmaester Ryam, Benedict was absurdly hard to convince. Not out of any misplaced Noble idea about the impossibility of a prince learning to smith of all things… No, Archmaester Benedict didn't have the time nor the inclination to teach a complete novice the subtle art of blacksmithing.
But Joffrey was nothing if not persistent.
At first smithing was hell. He didn't have the build for it, and Benedict pushed him recklessly forward. Two years he spent floundering about, struggling with the terse Archmaester. He spoke the bare minimum of words needed to get his meaning across, and his frequent huffs and grunts were even more difficult to decode than the Hound's. It got so bad that Joffrey actually died in one of his Citadel years after accidently setting fire to the smithy.
He had been on the verge of giving up when it all suddenly clicked. He realized he had been thinking about smithing and metal crafting the wrong way. He had been thinking about it as if it were Mathematics or Economics, a structured, orderly thing with clear rules and definite procedures.
Most blacksmiths probably thought about their trade in the same way, but Archmaester Benedict didn't.
To him, blacksmithing was pure creation. He had long ago transcended the procedures, techniques and sketch plans other smiths or Maester's of the trade used regularly. He had internalized them so hard he didn't even think about them, to him the process of creating something in a smithy bared a much closer resemblance to painting or bone carving. A moment of pure creation were he saw the object he wanted in his mind (sometimes, other times he made things on the fly on pure intuition) and proceeded to create. Joffrey sometimes doubted the Archmaester saw what he was doing, so thick was the cloud in his eyes as he imagined what he wanted.
Not that it mattered. Some of the things Benedict made would have had a Volantene Noble crying in reverence.
That was the type of thinking the Archmaester had been trying to hammer into Joffrey.
He didn't make nearly such a good teacher as he was a blacksmith…
Once Joffrey understood that, though, his rate of learning increased exponentially. Benedict gave him parchments with entire lists of books to read, books he sometimes had to read on his cool down years in the Free Cities, so hard and dense and numerous they were. They dealt with every possible theoretical approach to Metal working in general, ranging from geology to alloys to smithy types to the history of the art and of the first legendary Andal Ironsmiths.
On the Archmaester's personal workshop however, theory gave way to creation, and Joffrey spent months upon months trying to embrace the Archmaester's way of thinking.
He thought he'd been only partially successful, but even if he never used those skills again he'd never forget that feeling of deep concentration and timeless transcendence which he sometimes managed to access, a feeling he had only felt before in a fight, but this time he used to create.
Since then he'd occasionally managed to enter that elusive state when painting or carving in wood or bone, and that was a gift from Benedict he'd never be able to repay.
He made swords, scabbards, axes, daggers and all manners of armor. He made a beautiful battleaxe he was sad he'd never be able to give it to Tyrion personally, and a helmet for the Hound that sported a tongue lolling Ghost instead of the usual dog.
He'd still sent them to King's Landing with a rider, but he'd never see their reactions.
One day he realized with a start that Archmaester Benedict entered that timeless state every time he made something.
Every. Time.
It was then he understood why all the Acolytes who were interested in a steel link spoke in reverent awe of the steel masked Archmaester.
Now there was man worthy of Respect.
Sadly, the rune did not symbolize any element known to the Citadel, nor any signature from any smith or metal worker known to them.
-.PD.-
Next came what should have been an obvious first choice in hindsight. History.
Archmaester Perestan, the historian, whose ring and rod and mask are copper, was his teacher. He was soft spoken and a wonderer, a born teacher whose private lectures with Joffrey frequently morphed into exhilarating but accurate stories of war and loss, battles and peace, migrations and extinctions. He learned about the methods the Maester used to learn about things which no mortal being had seen, methods to decode languages long lost to man.
He learned about the fanatical Andals and their drive, the First Men and their ancient traditions.
He dreamt about the Giants and the Children of the Forests, of the War for Dawn and the Age of Heroes, of Dragons and Volcanoes and Ash and Doom.
He mused about Kings and Knights, Zealots and Wisemen, Ambitious Lords and Willy Villagers.
He often dreamt of Andal Warrior monks with the Rune carved into their chests, and of fierce legions of dragon riders tracing its elusive patterns over the air…
But neither in Westeros nor in Valyria had there ever been a trace of it, or if it had, it had long been lost to time.
-.PD.-
He often took years off to both consolidate his knowledge and blow off steam in more different ways.
He'd found something interesting one time. He'd been scaling the northern mountains of the Westerlands, following and expanding some of the old routes which Jaime Hill and his Maester friend had prospected more than a hundred years ago. He'd scaled through steep hills and craggy mountain trails, venturing further into the northern mountains than anyone within living memory. He'd been putting his historical and geological knowledge to practical use as he searched for the theoretical home of Lann the Clever, the founder of his House.
And after months of detours and almost fatal moments, he believed he'd finally found it, or at least something which must have looked like pretty much the same. An ancient community of small villages, using construction styles that screamed First Men and spoke a variant of the Old Tongue, a language which Joffrey had the rudimentary basics of.
After almost getting killed by an arrow, he'd been welcome as a long lost cousin by the villagers, whose lifestyle, it seemed, had not changed significantly for thousands of years. The ancient First Men guest rights certainly had not, judging by the way they kept pumping him with food.
It was a bit uncanny, like finding out you had a dozen cousins all similar to you but subtly changed. They had a sarcastic and dry sense of humor which somewhat reminded him of Tyrion, to his eternal confusion.
Surely bloodlines can't be that strong?!
Oh, and they were also all blond.
Some of the interesting finds had been puzzling, though. He had found old, big disused stone pads with altars, something that, when he quizzed the village Elder, he'd been told had been used to 'Commune with the Lions'. He couldn't understand more than that, and unfortunately for him the Lions that had apparently prowled through the valley were long extinct.
A shame. It would have been interesting to see some kind of sacrifice to a Lion Spirit. He thought the First Men worshipped the nameless spirits through the Weirwoods only, but you couldn't learn everything from a book, he guessed.
The other find had been a curious black monolith, built from a black stone not too dissimilar to the Volantene Black Walls, though the Obelisk's stone was somewhat darker and lacked the elaborate decorations such Valyrian constructions usually boasted .
Assuming all this was not part of an elaborately practical Lann joke, they said that the obelisk had been there since basically forever, and that there had even been more of them, spread everywhere from village centers to forgotten caves, though only this one remained that they knew of.
The thing looked very eroded, weathered and scratched. Time and climate had taken its toll from it.
From the way it looked however, Joffrey was pretty confident it had, sometime in history, been smooth. Though whatever may have been carved or painted there or not was now lost to time.
Joffrey's eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets when he stabbed the thing with his steel climbing rake and the tool snapped in half. An hour of rushed improvised stress testing later (which would have had Archmaester Benedict trying to kill for his lack of thoroughness), yielded a combined total of a broken sword, knife, multitude of rakes, and a lot of teared out blond hair.
Joffrey could say with certainty the thing was hard.
Unless a team of very bored First Men siege masters had stood there for a decade or five pounding it with a battery of catapults, Joffrey felt it was safe to say that the thing had eroded with time.
That was the thing though…
Unless Archmaester Casto's Tin mask was a forgery and he'd taught Joffrey anything but geology…
Taking in mind the apparent strength of the material and an average for yearly wind and sand erosion…
He shook his head. Impossible.
He got out parchment and quill, annotating furiously on the ground next to the silent, tattered obelisk.
He calculated this thing must be at the very least a hundred thousand years old, heck, only musing with the calculations and taking so many shortcuts Archmaester Ryam would kill himself, he could see that a fair average would be at least more than a million years!
A million years!?
Impossible.
Forget about the Valyrians, heck forget about the Children of the Forest. The Wall was not even a gleam on Bran the Builder's grandfather when this thing was built.
He walked slowly away from it, regarding it with heart stopping awe.
"Who the fuck built you…?" Joffrey whispered.
And why?
-.PD.-
He had decided to continue with his plan, but that heart stopping revelation haunted him all the same, sometimes when he took a bath, or sometimes in half remembered dreams. Not a single Maester or Archmaester in the citadel believed his claims, but Archmaester Ryam had validated his calculations and placed the final verdict on the date of emplacement, if not construction, of the thing.
Assuming it had spent most of its time there, and accounting for possible errors on his testing of the general fortitude of the obelisk and changing weather patterns, the figure ranged realistically from five hundred thousand years old to a million and a half.
Frankly, he didn't know what to do with that knowledge, so he let it settle inside his head for a while.
With time, his research into the tablet had fallen unto a firm second priority, as Joffrey became more and more entranced and flabbergasted by the whole world that existed within the Citadel. He'd never, in his most deluded of dreams, thought that the world was such an enormous place. Not in the physical sense, but in terms of sheer knowledge, of how things worked and were done and were thought about. An expanse to explore both outside but also within one.
The wanderlust that had become one of Joffrey's driving ideals ever since his talks with Lord Stark under Winterfell's Heart Tree was now pointed inwards as well as outwards. He craved to know the ways things worked, to experience not only a different place or location, but to grasp different ways of thinking itself.
He was drunk with knowledge, and he wasn't going to let it go anytime soon.
-.PD.-
He spent more time than he should have on Astronomy. For very valid reasons, or that was what he told himself anyway.
Archmaester Vaellyn, called "Vinegar Vaellyn" by many, whose ring and rod and mask are bronze, had been quite pleasant to his surprise. Widely renowned as the Citadel's maximum authority on both stargazing and acid, personally devastating tongue lashings, the Archmaester had suddenly stopped with the cutting remarks when Joffrey offered to commission the biggest Myrish Far-Eye a ship could carry when he were King.
It was as if another person had taken control of Vaellyn. All of a sudden his eyes had glittered with an inner light Joffrey suspected the man had last experienced decades ago. He seemed younger too, as he animatedly taught Joffrey about Stars and Constellations, about small planets and gigantic moons, and about how Planetos itself was just one of a dozen other 'celestial objects' that orbited the sun.
Vaellyn skipped and hummed to his duties, and greeted both Acolytes and fellow Archmaesters with a wave and a smile. So incredible was the shift that some Acolytes whispered that Archmaester Marwyn 'the mage' had possessed him, in revenge from previous slights.
It made Joffrey so guilty to see the man so changed over a simple far eye he'd never see that he vowed he would, in some future life, commission a Far Eye so big the Ibb-Wogan would have to carry it to Oldtown's harbor.
He traced 'orbits' around 'The Courtyard', a big underground building where Maesters who studied the heavens drew shapes and forms on the very floor, using chalk out of all things. He learnt the constellations by memory and learned how to use a far eye himself.
They used the Observatory to watch the heavens, or the Hightower itself once every three months when its beacon was refurbished and there was no light nearby to spoil the observations. The Myrish far eyes the Archmaester used were not very big, but to call the experience magnificent would have been an understatement.
To think that other stars were suns themselves, and that each sun probably hosted another dozen worlds, worlds were maybe other people lived…
But that left even more questions. How far where they? Did other people live regularly on other planets, or were they a rarity? What was up there in the black space between the stars? Could a sufficiently strong dragon take one to other worlds?
The more he learnt, the more the questions popped up, a kind of runaway cycle that paradoxically kept making Joffrey feel more ignorant and incompetent the more he studied!
Why did everything work this way? The motion and the rotation? The light and the dark? Why did the sun even shine?!
He begun to have many a sleepless night, pondering almost in despair about how to stop this cycle of ignorance and uncertainty.
But the harder he tried to understand, the less he actually did!
One night high atop a dark Hightower, him and the Archmaester had been quietly using the Far Eyes and annotating small notes when the questions had reached some kind of event horizon, making him raise his head from the Far Eye and look at the sky with the naked eye.
Why do they move like that? Where did it all come from anyway?!
Why? Why? Why?
So many questions… and Archmaester Vaellyn, the most renowned scholar of the skies within Westeros and probably the known world didn't know!
He didn't know!!!
And Lords and Kings and Knights… playing the game… the absurd game…
By the Old Gods and the New, we are all like ants on a stage so big, so huge the combined thinking might of the freaking Citadel can't even find out how far our own sun is from us, much less its nearest neighbor!!!
Joffrey had stumbled backwards with the force of that thought, eyes wide.
Not even its nearest neighbor! And some maesters think there are stars so dim or faraway that we cant even see! Like someone trying to stand atop a table on Ib and trying to see the beacon atop the Hightower!
He'd thought he'd seen the world? He'd thought he'd known something about how things worked?
We know nothing…
I know nothing…
I know nothing...!!!
The revelation had hit him like a runaway mine cart. Forget about the purple, right in front of him was a mystery far greater! A mystery that everybody was experiencing!
He'd sat back down on a chair, mouth wide as Archmaester Vaellyn cracked a rare, knowing smile.
Even with all his lives… even him was nothing, absolutely nothing in front of the heart stopping grandiosity and infinity that surrounded them. He felt almost as if he were dying, a slow certitude that grew as he kept imagining himself from a faraway vantage point. A faraway vantage point that grew and grew and grew until not even the familiar landmass of Westeros could be seen, until not even Planetos, not even the sun could be spotted, lost in a sea of fellow stars.
He suddenly realized he was crying.
Instead of making him feel depressed, the thought filled him humility and sheer gratitude at being able to understand for even a second… of being able to understand a truth far grander and beautiful than claims and bastards… than Kings and Kingdoms…
Than pain and hate.
-.PD.-
Joffrey was drinking tea, eyes fixed on the floor as he sent the scalding liquid down again and again with each sip, not caring a wit about the burning pain.
They were in a small cellar below the Far Eyes which House Hightower had donated to the Citadel.
Sitting beside him in his own chair was Archmaester Vaellyn, drinking his own tea at a much more sedated pace, his face looking even younger as he smiled wistfully.
"I thought it would take a while longer…" said the Archmaester, reclining slightly in his seat.
Joffrey looked at him, his eyes vaguely lost. "When… did you…?" he asked, hands cupped around the hot cup as he blinked rapidly, trying to digest the experience.
Vaellyn smiled fondly as he looked up in nostalgia. "Many decades ago… it was at the end of a long week where I had slept a grand total of… must have been a single hour each day, rushing like a stereotypical Acolyte to finish the assignment old Archmaester Varros had given us, something I should have been working on for the entire year" he took a sip from his tea as he looked fondly at Joffrey.
"I had almost forgotten it, but seeing you right now has brought back the memory like it had been yesterday…" he whispered, eyes far into the past. "After a nonstop week of research and study with barely a moment of rest, I was seeing constellations in the cobblestones" he said with a sudden laugh.
"After handing in the assignment I shambled towards the private apartments my House had provided me with. I was so exhausted and delirious that when I turned around a corner and bumped into a man with a small lamp, I shrieked in terror and fell on my bum, convinced for a moment that the lantern was a distant sun that had descended upon Planetos to burn me to a crisp" he said, eyes filled with mirth.
"That's when you realized…?" asked Joffrey.
"Nono, oh no... I was so out of it I couldn't have recognized a friend, much less a worldview shattering revelation. No, it was after I crumbled atop my bed and slept for a whole day when it happened. I dreamt I was studying atop the observatory when suddenly a force seemed to pick me up, carrying me upwards at an incredible velocity, in a few seconds I saw first Oldtown, then Westeros and finally Planetos drifting far beyond my eye could see, I passed the constellations and all the stars whose name I had memorized, and then I kept rising and rising and rising… until it was as if there was no part of me left to rise any more, it was as if, for a second, I had-"
"Died" whispered Joffrey. "Really died" he repeated.
"It's interesting you would call it that. When I woke up… well, it was difficult to see the world the same as I had before… An old Archmaester, Garthon, a man renowned for his studies both into the mind and the skies, long dead before even the first Blackfyre rebellion, even coined a term for the feeling. Me-Death, he called it" said Vaellyn, taking another sip from his cup.
They spent a while like that, in companionable silence.
"Did you pass the assignment?" suddenly asked Joffrey.
"No. They had me on punishment duty for months" said the Archmaester with a fond smirk.
"Ha! What, cleaning the Far Eyes?" said Joffrey.
Archmaester Vaellyn looked at him, scandalized. "Are you insane? We never let the Acolytes approach them unsupervised. They had me cleaning the brushes used to clean the Far Eyes!"
Joffrey just stared at him.
Then bursted out laughing.
-.PD.-
He'd been studying architecture of all things when it happened.
He'd been studying under Archmaester Guyne, reading about the ancient architectural styles of Westeros.
The section had been about the Hightower and its origins… and Joffrey had been fighting the yawns for at least 2 hours.
He shook his head and kept reading.
'…even then, the origins of the Hightower's foundations remain a mystery. The only other sample of the sigil (see drawing below) I've been able to observe has been in the Imperial City, in the Empire of Yi Ti of all places. To the date of writing, I haven't found more examples of them, and the Yitish seem incredibly secretive of them.
The Wall has a much cleaner footprint, clearly the work of Bran the Builder or the group of architects that became known as him through history, the--'
Joffrey froze, and looked back at the sigil.
"Oh gods…" he said as he took out his whalebone tablet.
He compared the drawing and the tablet…
They were not the same. But they were clearly, clearly part of the same language or code.
Holy shit.
The Hightower.
Yi-Ti.
"ARCHMAESTER GUYNE!!!!" he shouted as he sprinted out of the library, the eyes of fifty other pissed off Acolytes following him.
-.PD.-
Archmaester Guyne, whose ring and rod and mask are red gold, had been touring him through the bowels of the Hightower, speaking about First Men architecture when Joffrey had suddenly asked.
"Archmaester, the foundations of the Hightower are made of fused black stone, right?"
The old man had taken a moment to process the question, before nodding. He was a bit like Pycell, only actual, useful knowledge came out after each pause "Indeed. The nature of the black stones in general and their construction technique has been a mystery many have tried to unravel, with no luck. The Hightower's foundations are an even more vexing dilemma, since its style of construction seems older than other traditional Valyrian styles, and lacking any kind of ornamentation… well, almost any kind" he'd said, voice slow and filled with knowledge.
Joffrey had perked up at what he'd said in the end. "Almost?" he asked.
The venerable Archmaester blinked. "Well, few outside those with a red gold link know about it, but the Hightower's foundations have foundations of their own, even blacker and older than the rest. It's impossible to traverse because most of the tunnels have collapsed with time, but there is one small chamber which still stands" he said with a slow shrug.
All the bells of King's Landing were tolling inside of Joffrey's head.
"And there's were the ornament is?!" he asked hurriedly.
The Archmaester took a painfully long time to answer, taking in a bit of air.
"Well, yes. Its nothing too spectacular, most of it has eroded, but--"
"Please take me there Archmaester Guyne! It's of paramount importance! At once!!!" he nearly shouted.
The Archmaester blinked.
"…I suppose there is no trouble with that" he said as he turned, agonizingly slow towards the stairs.
-.PD.-
The labyrinth like maze of tunnels grew even wilder and more tattered the deeper they went. The Archmaester had to open three different iron gates with his keys, before he opened the last one and Joffrey dashed forward with an oil lamp.
The stone seemed to drink up the light, so dark it was. Joffrey was surrounded by black, eroded walls, all torn with the passage of time. The room must have been 10 meters across, and 2 in height.
The stone… its very similar to the obelisk… Maybe even the same…
The Archmaester's light from his own lamp gradually joined Joffrey, and both of them stared at one of the walls.
It had nothing.
"Archmaester… are you sure the ornament was here?" asked Joffrey dubiously, doubting the quality of the man's memory as he took a closer look at one of the corners.
YES!
There it was, a faded twirl, almost completely gone, in a completely non intuitive spot for something so important to Joffrey. It was a bit more square like, with fewer dots surrounding it and smaller in general. It didn't look like his, though he supposed it might have, a long time ago… if you squinted hard enough…
Archmaester Guyne seemed to take a moment to get his thoughts in order as he frowned in hard recollection. Joffrey rejoined him at the center of the room and was about to tell him he'd found it, when the Archmaester spoke.
"Hmm… ah! Yes! Look up dear 'Joff', one of the last whispers from an ancient past" he said.
Joffrey looked up.
Centered at the middle of the room, carved upon the ceiling, was a face.
The man or boy was scratched and eroded, but some things were noticeable. His mouth was open in some kind of tormented agony, so opened his mandible must have been about to pop. He was suspended in some kind of substance which seemed dense, by the way its contours had been chiseled. Only an arm and a leg from the man could be seen above the dense stuff, but they were twisted, almost twisting upon themselves.
The boy's face was what caught the attention though. The opened mouth, the exaggerated eyes, the way his neck seemed to twist and collapse upon itself as the purple consumed him from the inside out—
Joffrey felt his feet go out from under him as he fell on the ground, hyperventilating, taking a breath every second.
His tendons stretched and cut, his legs twisting in an agony of pure pain.
"Ah, it's been known to have that effect on people. 'Man in the Sea of Despair', they call it. Legends used to say the whole room was covered in more carvings and symbols" said the Archmaester, oblivious.
Joffrey stumbled up, seeing the black walls spin faster and faster, full of artfully crafted frescos of Joffrey tumbling in the purple forever—
"I'VE GOT TO GET OUT!!!" he screamed as he run through the tunnel, smashing and crashing against sharp stones and remains, the long hallways stretching to infinity and never ending—
Before he emerged from the oppressive darkness, stumbling to the floor and screaming.
He took in lungful's of air, arms clutching his stomach.
…
Red leaves under the Heart Tree—gentle bumping of branches—warmth of the roots---
…
Slowly, he got back control of himself.
His breathing became regular again.
It's impossible…
…it can't be me.
IT CANT BE ME.
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