章 116: Melisandre 4
289AC
The Old Woman stepped off of the boat first ahead of them, despite her advanced age. It had been odd, seeing her visibly shrink and grow weaker as they moved further away from Asshai, her place of power.
'Or perhaps,' Melisandre thought in her heart, 'blighted Stygai itself.'
Asshai it was true had a cursed reputation in the lands beyond the shadow, but it was still a city inhabited mostly by mortals, though nothing grew there.
No, if it was cursed, it was only by its proximity to its elder, Great Stygai, Black Stygai, who's walls ran for miles, decorated in great snarling gargoyles that were too-lifelike to be the work of mortal men. She had seen the strange fires that burned in its bleak windows from the valleys nearby, and the great stepped pyramid-altar that seemed to spew shadow into the clouds above it from its inky black mass, as if vomiting forth the very night itself from the depths of the earth.
She had never approached it though, for as much as power might be found in that ruin, so too sat madness, much like Old Valyria, sorcery ran rampant there beyond the Ken of mortals, and the streets were filled with monsters that slithered and crawled and took all manner of unearthly shapes.
No mortal could venture there and hope to live.
But then the Old Woman didn't seem to be a mortal, especially not at night, when her toothy grin seemed to fill the warm, sticky air around them with shadows.
Yunkai rose like a great yellow sore upon the land of old Ghys, and she could only chuckle as the fools who worked its docks failed to make way for her master. The people of Asshai had known better than those of the weak Western lands.
Her master paused before the gates, scanning then with her blind eyes as if she could see everything within the walls.
Then she smiled her crooked grin, drawing a bottle of oil from her satchel, and gesturing for Melisandre to hold the torch to her side.
Melisandre thrilled as her master begin to speak and weave magic, the black tarry liquid pouring onto the torch and dripping down onto the ground, taking shape into a grotesque creature. Half-Lizard, Half-Bird, it flapped its wings to ascend easily to the old woman's shoulder, and she whispered to it only a moment, smiling cruelly as it fled into the city, it's feathers still smoldering at the edges.
Melisandre dearly wished to ask how it was done but knew that the old woman did not share such knowledge so easily.
"The Clay will come shortly." The old woman spoke with a matter-of-fact tone. "We shall see how it has baked."
Melisandre nodded her understanding, not yet knowing why the old woman had called her here for this. Daenerys beside her frowned slightly. Her surrogate daughter did not like her brother, tugging lightly at her collar in memory, but she knew better than to complain, she had long since been burned for such actions.
They waited there for some time, and it was the old woman despite her blindness who first spotted the boy. The burning bird now returning to her shoulder, it's feathers almost ash.
No, perhaps he was not a boy anymore.
"Clay." The old woman cackled as he approached them, her blind eyes matching an iron gaze on his part.
Her words were met by the sound of a sword sliding from its blade, it was a beautiful thing, clearly a work of excellent craftsmanship, and it glinted with a polished gleam in the light of the braziers which stood before the gate.
The Viserys who stood now against them was not the same one they had left. Not a boy, no. The Targaryen was no longer a gaunt child hungry and afraid, but a lean and proud young man. His silver hair hung in a Pony-Tail down his back as he stood now taller than the old woman, though he was yet to outgrow Melisandre herself. He wore gilded lamellar of black with red fringing, and his purple eyes blazed with a dark hatred.
Like a coiled viper, he leaped forward, springing towards the old woman in a lightning motion, as if he had put all of his being into the attack. His sword moved with barely a sound as it dove towards the Old Woman's neck.
The old woman laughed, blocking it with her staff, which shown with a reddish light. "Hah, you have grown ambitious in your baking, boy. Yet you are not fully cooked just yet."
The man staggered back as if struck, though he kept his grip on his sword as the reptile-bird shot out, it's scaly tail coiling around his neck and eliciting a shriek from his mouth as it burst into a roaring fire.
All that remained as it burnt into his flesh was a line of ash around his neck, like a slave's collar.
"Did you think I didn't know what you did here. How you fell for the girl? How you plotted to slay me and find freedom?" The Old woman spit out, grabbing hold of the charred flesh of his neck and eliciting more cries of pain as she lifted him with unnatural strength. "To betray me is to invite death on not only yourself, but on her as well, her and her family, and this puss-filled sore of a city." The old woman dropped the man, who collapsed to the ground weeping at her feet, bitter, angry tears flowing from the silent Targaryen's eyes. "You are lucky R'hllor still has use for her, your efforts to protect her from me were in vain," she said, her blind eyes reflecting the firelight in an unearthly display.
The old woman turned back to Melisandre. "We leave tonight with the Clay, go tell the captain that we are doubling his pay. Arrangements need to be made in Volantis, and in Qohor as well, we will have to treat with the disgusting worshippers of the goat-mother in order to properly equip the boy."
Melisandre stared for just a moment too long, before nodding sharply, grabbing hold of Daenerys' hand and pulling back towards the ship, leaving the Old Woman alone with Viserys to work her magic upon him.
Still, to treat with the demon worshippers…
She wondered what the Old Woman was planning.
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