Chương 47: Interlude: The King Who Could Have Been I
"Vengeance is best served cold. When hot, it leads only to regrets."
Lord Darion Dayne was rather content with his lot in life. He had a wife of whom he was fond. He had no small number of children who were growing up to be fine successors to the Dayne name. He had an idiot liege who, at that very moment, should be somewhere between charred to a crisp and resting at the bottom of the Sea of Dorne. Or both. Darion cared not.
He had letters to write to his new liege.
Letters about how it would be a shame if the new Princess would not uphold her predecessors new, and far more lenient, tax policies. Not that those had existed in the first place, but her reserves of men and coins were exhausted. His own, meanwhile, were untapped.
Taxes so low they might as well not exist and protection from outside threats. Truly, the best of both worlds. Easier to be a vassal than a king. Safer, too, no matter what that Vaegon Targaryen had offered.
And all it had taken was a few early mornings, even more late nights, and enough parchment to supply his maester for three years. He did lament how much time it had taken, however. As valuable an opportunity as it had been, he did not enjoy neglecting his family.
"Father!" His darling Danelle barged into his solar. His little daughter, who shared her mother's dark eyes and his own fair hair, should not have been awake so early. Children needed their sleep, after all. Then again, when she wore a smile that stretched from ear to ear, it was hard not to let a smile of his own form in response.
"Danelle," he greeted her, the letter he had been working on forgotten for the moment. It was hardly a matter susceptible to a few hours' difference. So long as it was sent sometime that day, it would accomplish its purpose. "A bit early to be up and about, isn't it?"
Nonetheless, Darion got up from his desk to walk over to his daughter. Some things were more important than savoring the feeling of depriving his liege of all but a few pounds of gold every year. Picking her up, and straining a bit with the weight, he earned a few giggles of amusement.
"I saw a birdie," she said, gesturing towards the window. Carrying her over, all he could see was a wide-open sky colored by the beautiful hues of the rising sun. What bird could she have seen other than the odd smudge so close to the horizon?
Whatever it was, it was moving, slowly growing bigger and bigger, incrementally so. Not a raven, however. Its movements were all wrong for that. Was this the bird his daughter had seen? No, that was silly. He could barely make it out himself.
"That little black smudge?" he asked, earning an enthusiastic nod.
"Yeah!" came the response. Huh. His eyes were really starting to go bad. Or his daughter's were excellent. "Do you know what it is?"
"That's a question for Maester Pate," he said. "Why didn't you go to him first?"
"I did!" she said. "But he was busy sleeping, so I came to you. You always know stuff."
It was then that a new noise reached his ears. A noise he had never heard before. Like the roar of a bear that met the roar of a mountain lion, muffled by distance, only… only more human. Like it was not a beast roaring a challenge.
Darion Dayne had never before heard such a sound. Between his many years hunting in both the forests and the mountains that were so common in his lands, between the myriad of calls and challenges he had heard beasts bellow to the world, this was one which was unknown to him.
And his mind could not help but suggest fear.
There were, after all, few creatures whose roars could be heard over great distances.
And seeing an unknown creature flying over the horizon while a strange call filled the air? It reminded him of the lessons he had had as a child of the failed Targaryen invasion. Darion felt no shame for the fear seeping into his mind.
No shame for the fear that this was vengeance for having rejected an offer that had been too good to be true. Fear that a petty princeling was about to prove true the age-old claim that abominations of incest were naturally inclined to madness.
Where dragons were concerned, fear was the prudent response.
"Sweetheart, how about we go for a little walk?" He suggested, already making to leave at a pace some would have considered unseemly. As happy as the daughter in his arms was, there was a seed of worry taking root in his gut. Darion barged through the ajar door to his solar, finding one of his knights standing guard.
He would do.
"Ser Raymun, bring my family to the sept," he ordered. "I will be joining you shortly."
To the credit of his oldest guard, he did not question the order. He gave a nod and left to obey.
"Father?" Little Danelle asked, more than a little confused, but he paid her no mind, too busy rushing down the narrow stairs into the main hall, too busy striding through the lavishly decorated keep. He paid no attention to the paintings and murals and tapestries, too busy getting to the yard and from there to the safety of the sept.
By the time he reached the open courtyard, he was huffing and puffing, with more than a few uncomfortably clammy beads of sweat racing down his skin. Truly, carrying a child of eight name days while rushing through a castle was not something he was used to doing. Still, even if his initial guess that it was a mad princeling approaching on dragonback was correct, everything might yet work out fine if everyone moved quickly enough.
A hope which held until he was halfway through the courtyard.
With a resounding crash that he would have expected from a boulder flung against the curtain wall of Starfall, a massive black beast collided with the maester's tower, only barely catching itself with a pair of talons that gouged long furrows into the roof.
No, Darion realized to his horror as the beast quickly stabilized itself, it had landed on the side of the tower.
It moved a single wing, and a claw tore open the roof, sending a hail of shingles and wooden splinters into the courtyard, striking a guard who promptly collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut. The beast's maw stretched wide, and unleashed a gout of pale green flame, the same colors as the alchemists' accursed flame, poured forth, and a plume of smoke rose into the air.
Holding his daughter close, Darion sprinted for the sept, counting his blessings once he was within its protective walls. The sept was a place of safety. The mad princeling would not burn a sept. A sept was sacred, safe from temporal affairs.
If not…
Then he would try to satiate the princeling's bloodlust as only a knight could.
"Septon," he shouted to the priest at the very front of the sept, surrounded by silken images of the Seven, only just starting to rise. Confusion was obvious on the man's face, confusion and fear. "I need a lamp."
"A lamp?" the aging septon asked with his annoyingly reedy voice. "The Crone's wisdom comes when we need it. We cannot force it to come to us."
"Do not play the pious fool with me," he snapped, setting down his daughter. There was terror in her wide eyes, and he could see the tears threatening to fall even in the murk of the poorly lit sept. "Danelle, stay here. Hide, but do not leave. Septon, I do not need the light of wisdom, I need the light of a damned candle."
"You wish to access the shrine, then?" he asked, finally grasping his intentions. "You are a fine knight, my lord, but none would claim you are worthy of…"
"There is a damned Targaryen on dragonback burning my castle." It took every ounce of self-control for his voice to remain calm. That, and the presence of his daughter. Shouting in front of her was something he had promised himself he would never do. "I'm not about to hide while my home burns!"
"Go, then," the septon acquiesced, grabbing a devotional candle. He lit it with one already lit in honor of the Warrior and set it into an empty lamp. He began to shuffle over, but Darion met him only a heartbeat later to take the lamp from his hands. "I believe you know the way?"
"Aye, that I do," Darion confirmed, brushing aside the Warrior's silken likeness to reveal a small alcove. Within, at the very back, was another faded tapestry, woven from heavy wool. All that was recognizable was the shape of a man with a sword.
Past that second tapestry were the stairs he sought.
The torches lining the ancient passage had not been lit in decades, centuries almost, and the tunnel itself was dominated by the musky smell of neglect. But still, he descended. He descended until the stairs came to an end and the floor leveled out.
And the Shrine of Morning was revealed.
It was by no means elaborate.
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