Capítulo 153: Melisandre 6
293AC
The fire burned and crackled with a reddish-orange hue as if it was bleeding from a freshly cut wound.
That made sense, of course, they had bled the slaves before burning them, and the fires were fat with the blood of the sacrifices, blazing away tied to stakes in a circle at the center of the clearing.
She sat at the edge of it, lingering, waiting for the Old Woman to emerge from where she stood at its center.
Her daughter, her clay, her lovely Daenerys, sat beside her.
And yet, she was a little less lovely now, a little less whole for the mark left on her by that monster in Norvos. The son of the black goat, Half-Demon.
She spoke not a word of her treatment there, but the signs had been plain to see from the bulging belly she had borne on her return, filled with his black spawn, and grown to unnatural size in a period far too short for motherhood. It had been eating away of her insides, draining the life from her like a fungus on a tree.
Melissandre had burned the foul things away herself, though the hand she used to do it was marked with the acidic bites of their death spasms, even unborn, the children of the Black Goat were deadly.
Their unwilling mother had suffered the worse and had clung to her side as she did when she was a small child, weeping and speaking of her fears and her dreams.
Melissandre had felt a bitterness grow in her heart towards the old woman for that, for using Daenerys as a pawn in such a way.
But then, she reminded herself that they were all pawns, simple tools of R'hllor, and she let that hate stop burning.
The bitterness remained though, especially when she looked at Daenerys now, still so beautiful, still trying to stand tall, to sit up proudly on her own. All of that pride though was like a white coat of paint on a splintering plank. Not broken yet, but damaged. She was thin for one, the pregnancy had been rapid and harsh.
She had wanted to go and burn Norvos to the ground, but the old woman had stopped her. The Demon was necessary, she said, a buffer to slow the armies of the Great Other. A wall of Shadows between the new lands of the faithful and the forces of the west.
A monster to hamper a greater monster.
She wondered just how far the Old Woman had seen as she stepped out of the fire, how far the eyes of the Red Witch could see, even in that gloomy pit where the Great Other Dwelled, where rain drowned the fires of R'hllor.
The old woman was scorched all over as she stepped out, though the soot seemed to fall from her like a shell of dust. She seemed almost like a corpse save for the clear tenseness in her shriveled body, every vein unnatural raised as if her whole mind had been caught in concentration.
She almost flinched when the great witch's blind eyes snapped open, blazing with a black fire that nonetheless somehow shed light.
"Girl…" she said, nodding to Melisandre, and then over towards Daenerys. "Prepare food for me. Something thin, I find much of my power expended, and will waste none of it chewing."
Melisandre shifted, moving immediately to find a stew pot and heat it up boiling as the old woman liked it. "Were you successful?" She asked before her instincts told her what a potential minefield that question was.
Thankfully the old woman just laughed.
"Ohhh, pet, I doubt I would be standing here if I did not. Our God is not merciful to failures."
Melisandre nodded, for she understood that well.
"No, though it took great effort, and error on his part, I have seen the face of the champion of the great other. The Clay's failings matter little now, this war has already served its purpose." The woman chuckled wryly sipping at her soup broth. She was curled up in such a way as to be as unremarkable and unthreatening an old woman as could be, but each word she spoke dripped venom more potent than any brewed from Lys to Asshai. "Such fortune warrants an appropriate sacrifice, wouldn't you say? I have already ordered the clay to begin building the pyre."
Mellisandre's eyes widened, her neck reflexively turning to the city beyond the thin walls of their tent.
If the old woman spoke truly, then this would be the most significant sacrifice to R'hllor in the history of the cult.
"A fitting sacrifice to our Lord." Melisandre agreed, speaking carefully, lest she blaspheme or worse, speak heresy. "But I cannot see the Triarch liking it."
Once more, dry laughter emerged from the woman, her eyes flaring slightly with that inky black fire.
"My dear Mellisandre. The Triarch shall be on top of it."
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