Illusiveone - 102: Dragonborn Conqueror, The Wedding

Brandon Stark stood at the edge of the great grove on the Isle of Faces and watched the two dragons circle overhead.

One was red, the colour of blood. The other was white as fresh snow, with streaks of gold running along the edges of its wings, across the ridges of its spine, and around its horns, so that whenever it turned into the sun, the whole creature seemed to catch fire.

They flew in long, unhurried circles above the lake, sometimes passing so low that the wind from their wings stirred the red leaves of the weirwoods, and the guests gathered below would fall silent and look up until the dragons had climbed again.

Brandon had heard both of them speak. They spoke as any man or woman did, in words he could understand, and according to King Harald, they were wiser than any man living. Brandon had no reason to doubt it. They looked like gods, and from what Brandon had seen, they could have been worshipped as gods by people who knew no better.

And both served Harald Stormcrown.

Brandon let out a slow breath and lowered his eyes to the gathering. Nearly seven years had passed since the worst day of his life. Seven years since the folly that had cost him his father and sister, brought ruin upon his house, and set his feet upon a path he could never have imagined taking. There had been a time when he tried to place some portion of the blame upon others, upon unfortunate circumstances and decisions made in anger, but those excuses had long since lost their comfort.

His father's death had left him King in the North, a crown that should have belonged to him until the end of his days. Instead, Brandon had surrendered it to his brother Edric and departed Winterfell. He had accepted the Huntsman’s gift as he had agreed to, and in the beginning, he had called it a curse. He had confessed before the lords, taken the black, and gone beyond the Wall before he could speak his vows.

Hircine had plans for him.

The first year had been a hunt without end. The voice of the Huntsman came to him in dreams and sometimes while he was awake, and it named his prey: a shadowcat, a pack of snow bears, an elk the size of a warhorse that Hircine wished him to chase for nine days before he was permitted to bring it down.

At first, Brandon fought the change every time it came upon him. It tore through him with a pain he had no words for, and afterward, he would wake naked and bloody in the snow with no memory of what he had done. Slowly, through that long year, he learned to stop fighting it. He learned that the beast was not something outside himself that seized him, but something that had always been within him and that Hircine had merely awakened. Once he understood that, the change began to answer to him.

He learned to call it when he wished and to keep enough of himself inside the wolf to remember the hunt when it was done. By the end of the year, he could run for days through the haunted forest on four legs and return to his own skin as easily as a man takes off a cloak.

Then Hircine sent him farther north, beyond the familiar hunting grounds, beyond forests where even the hardiest clans seldom travelled, and into lands where winter seemed to have existed since the beginning of the world.

There, Brandon discovered that some of the oldest tales told to him as a child were not tales at all.

The Others were real.

He found the first of them in a frozen valley. The thing wore armour that seemed made from frozen mist, carried a sword of pale crystal, and moved with a speed no living man should have possessed.

They had fought beneath the moonlight, and Brandon had nearly died before finally bringing the creature down. Even then, he would never have survived without the power Hircine had granted him.

Afterward, his patron had spoken again. There were more, and Hircine commanded him to find them.

All of them.

Brandon had obeyed, and in the hunt that ensued, he learned what the Others were and what they wanted. He found the camps they had emptied and the corpses they had raised. He followed their tracks as they moved through the frozen country, always south, always toward the Wall. Every wildling clan they passed became a clan of the dead, and the dead swelled their numbers each time. They were coming, and nothing beyond the Wall could stop them.

The Thenns were the first to follow him.

He came upon their valley in the third year, during an incursion that should have ended them. The dead had come down from the mountains in hundreds, and the Thenns had fought them for two nights without hope. Brandon fell upon the Others, and when the last of them broke apart beneath his claws, the dead they had raised collapsed into the snow. The Thenns had watched it happen. When he changed back before them, bleeding and naked, their Magnar had knelt in the snow and offered him his axe.

Others followed after that, slowly at first and then in greater numbers as the stories spread through the Free Folk. They had their own tales of skinchangers, men and women who could send their minds into wolves and eagles and bears, and a few such people lived among the clans that came to him.

Yet those skinchangers only rode the beasts. Brandon became one. When they saw him change, his own flesh and bone reshaping into that of a wolf while his mind remained his own, the skinchangers among the Free Folk looked at him with something close to fear. They called him a true skinchanger, the kind the oldest songs spoke of, who wore the skin of the beast as his own. Some called him a champion of the old gods. Brandon had never corrected them. In a way, they were not wrong, though the god he served was older and stranger than any of them could imagine.

He had not set out to become a king again. Yet as the threat of the Others grew with every passing season, more clans came to him, and the Free Folk, who bent the knee to no one, began to follow wherever he led. By the fifth year, they called him the King Beyond the Wall. By the sixth, the host that followed him numbered in the tens of thousands, and every one of them knew that he was the only reason they still lived.

Yet even then, something had troubled him.

The host he had gathered was vast, and it moved through lands that the Night’s Watch had ranged for thousands of years. He should have expected the black brothers to come for him. In six years, the Watch should have sent rangers, sent armies, sent anything at all to learn what the King Beyond the Wall intended. They had not come. Whenever Brandon tried to remember any encounter with the Watch, his thoughts slid away from it, as though a fog had settled over that part of his mind. He could not explain it, and in the end, he had stopped trying.

The fog had only lifted when his scouts finally caught a black brother in the haunted forest, a frightened ranger named Ralf. From him, Brandon learned the truth. For the Watch, and for everyone south of the Wall, only a little more than a year had passed since Brandon fled. The man swore it on every god he knew.

Brandon had not understood it until he reached Winterfell.

There, he learned of something called the Dragon Break. Harald Stormcrown had fought some monster in the south, a dragon made of metal and stolen souls, and their battle had broken time itself. Whole years had passed for some people and a single night for others. Mountains had sunk beneath the sea, Dorne had been torn away from the rest of Westeros, and men remembered things that had never happened while forgetting things that had. It was unbelievable, and yet it was true, and it explained every strange thing Brandon had experienced over the years.

Soon after, word came that a great council had been called in the Reach, where the rulers of Westeros and the Targaryens from across the sea would gather for the trial of the men responsible. His brother Barthogan and the northern lords rode south to attend, and Brandon went with them as far as Cyrodiil. He did not wish to go farther. There was nothing in the south he wished to see.

Three weeks later, everyone returned. King Edmund Gardener was dead. The Citadel had been disbanded, and the Targaryens had left in fury after their king drew his sword on King Harald.

One more week passed before the king at the centre of it all returned as well, and he came with two dragons.

Brandon had been granted an audience the following day. He told Harald everything he had seen beyond the Wall, the Others, the dead, and the long, steady march south. He also told him what Hircine had revealed to him throughout the years of the hunt. The second Long Night was upon them.

When Brandon finished, the Dragonborn remained silent for several moments before asking a number of questions concerning the Others' movements, their numbers, the places where Brandon had encountered them, and what methods had proven effective against them.

Then Harald gave him his answer.

“We shall put an end to them, Brandon. Once and for all.”

There had been no uncertainty in his voice, and Brandon had found himself believing him.

That was five days ago. Now he stood among the guests on the Isle of Faces, part of what men were already calling the greatest wedding in living memory.

The union of the Heartlands and the Stormlands. Stormcrown and Durrandon.

With it, the new kingdom of the Heartlands would hold the Riverlands, the Blackwater, the Vale, most of the Reach, and now the Stormlands as well. It was the greatest kingdom on the continent, a continent that now held only three kingdoms. The North still stood, as did the Westerlands, and everything else belonged to Harald Stormcrown. Dorne had been split away from Westeros altogether, cut off by a sea where the Red Mountains had stood since the Dawn Age.

Gods, even now he could scarcely believe it.

Brandon turned his attention back to the grove.

The great grove of weirwoods had never been meant for crowds, yet the Covenant’s keepers had prepared it well. Paths had been cleared between the ancient weirwoods, and the guests stood among the trees in a broad semicircle around the oldest of them all, a weirwood so vast that its pale trunk could not have been encircled by six men holding hands.

Beside him stood Barthogan.

His brother had not spoken to him much since his return. Barthogan had not forgiven him, and Brandon had not asked him to. Yet his brother had stood beside him at Cyrodiil and stood beside him now, and Brandon understood that was more than he deserved.

The Heartlander lords filled the front of the gathering. Brandon recognised Edmyn Tully and the Blackwood and Bracken lords standing an uncomfortable distance apart. The Stormlanders gathered on the opposite side of the clearing, beneath black and gold banners bearing the crowned stag of Durrandon.

Harald Stormcrown waited before the heart tree. His doublet was deep purple worked with gold, and a cloak of the same purple hung from his shoulders, with a great golden dragon embroidered across its back.

High Keeper Leobald stood beside him, his hands folded within the sleeves of his robes.

Then the singing began.

The children of the forest sang a hymn, and Brandon turned with the rest of the gathering to see Argella Durrandon walking between the weirwoods on the arm of Lord Galadon Tarth.

She wore a gown of black velvet worked with cloth of gold, and over her shoulders hung her maiden’s cloak in the colours of her house, black and gold, with the crowned stag of Durrandon spread across it. Her dark hair had been braided and bound with gold. Three young women followed a few paces behind her, her handmaidens since childhood, carrying the train of her cloak.

Argella’s gaze never left Harald.

When they reached the heart tree, the singing faded. Leobald stepped forward, and the High Keeper’s voice carried through the grove without strain.

“Who comes before the gods this day?”

Lord Tarth answered him. “Argella of House Durrandon, Queen of the Stormlands, comes here to be wed. A woman grown, trueborn and noble, she comes to beg the blessing of the gods. Who comes to claim her?”

“I do,” Harald said. “Harald of House Stormcrown, King of the Heartlands. Who gives her?”

“Galadon of House Tarth, Lord of Evenfall, who stands this day in the place of King Argilac, her father.”

Leobald turned to the queen. “Lady Argella, will you take this man?”

Argella looked at Harald for a moment before she answered.

“I take this man.”

Harald held out his hands, and Argella placed hers within them. Together, they turned toward the heart tree and knelt upon the red leaves scattered beneath it, bowing their heads before the carved face in the bark.

Leobald raised his hands above them. He prayed first to the Nine, then to the Old Gods of the forest, the stone, and the stream, asking each in turn to bless the union of these two and the kingdoms they would rule together, and finally to the Seven.

Harald and Argella rose together.

Lord Tarth stepped behind his queen and unfastened the clasp of her maiden’s cloak. He lifted it from her shoulders and folded it carefully over his arm before stepping back.

Harald unclasped his own cloak. He swung it around Argella’s shoulders, purple and gold with the dragon spread across her back, and fastened it at her throat with a golden clasp.

“With this kiss I pledge my love,” Harald said, “and take you for my lady and wife.”

“With this kiss I pledge my love,” Argella answered, “and take you for my lord and husband.”

He kissed her beneath the heart tree.

Leobald’s voice rose over the grove. “Before the Old Gods and the New, before the Nine and before the trees that remember all things, I declare these two to be man and wife. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever. Let no one who would sunder them think the gods are not watching.”

The grove erupted in cheers.

The Heartlanders cheered first, and the Stormlanders roared their queen’s name a moment later. Above them, the two dragons roared.

Harald bent and swept Argella up into his arms.

She laughed and caught hold of his neck, and the cloak of purple and gold fell around both of them as he turned toward the feast. The guests parted before him, and lords and ladies called out blessings as he passed.

The houses of the dragon and the stag were united in marriage.

===========

The boats carried them back across the God’s Eye in the late afternoon, and by the time they reached the shore, the sun had begun to sink toward the western hills. From the water, Brandon could see Cyrodiil rising above the lake, its pale walls turned gold by the evening light and its towers hung with the banners of every house sworn to the Heartlands.

Odahviing and Durnehviir flew ahead of the boats, and the people who lined the shore and the city walls cheered as the two great shapes passed over them and landed somewhere beyond the castle. By the time the wedding party rode through the gates, the sun had set, and the grand feast had begun.

Brandon had seen many feasts at Winterfell, and he had attended a few in the south before, but he had never seen anything like this.

The great hall of Cyrodiil had been built by a king who expected to rule a great kingdom, and tonight it was full from wall to wall. Long tables ran the length of the hall beneath iron chandeliers illuminated by magical lights, and the high table stood upon a raised dais at the far end, where Harald and Argella sat beneath a vast banner of purple and gold.

Servants moved between the tables with platters of roasted boar and venison, whole salmon from the Trident, pies of lamprey and pigeon, wheels of cheese, loaves of dark bread, bowls of honeyed figs, and more wine than Brandon had seen in his life. Musicians played from a gallery above the doors, though their music was often lost beneath the noise of a thousand voices.

Every part of the Heartlands was represented, old and new alike.

The river lords filled the tables nearest the dais, the men who had risen with Harald from the beginning. Brandon recognised the Tullys and the Freys, the Mallisters, the Vances, and the Pipers, and he saw Blackwood and Bracken sitting at the same table. The Blackwater lords sat beside them, and the Stormlanders took up nearly a third of the hall, loud and proud and toasting their queen with every new cup.

Farther down sat men Brandon did not know at all. Barthogan pointed some of them out to him as the evening went on. There were Vale lords from houses that had been little more than landed knights a year ago, the Shetts, the Coldwaters, and the Melcolms, who now held lands that had once belonged to the Royces and the Hunters. Lady Astrid Waynwood sat among them with a Valyrian steel sword at her hip. There were Reachmen as well.

A year ago, many of these men had been enemies. Tonight, they drank from the same casks and toasted the same king.

The celebration went on for hours. Toasts were made to the king and queen, to the Heartlands, to the Stormlands, to the gods old and new, and to the dragons, which drew the loudest cheer of the night. Lord Bracken rose to make a toast to Lord Blackwood’s good health, and the hall held its breath until Blackwood rose to answer with a toast to Lord Bracken’s health. Then the whole hall roared with laughter.

Brandon was halfway through his second cup when Barthogan approached.

"Brother."

Brandon looked up.

"Have you come to rescue me from these southrons?"

"Not quite." Barthogan glanced toward the high table before lowering his voice. "King Harald wishes to speak with you."

"Now?"

"Aye."

Brandon looked toward the musicians, who had just begun another song, and then at the food remaining upon his plate.

"Could he not wait until morning?"

"I asked much the same. He said it would not take long."

Brandon sighed and rose.

"Very well. Lead on."

Barthogan turned and made his way through the crowd toward a side door behind the high table, and Brandon followed him. They passed through the door into a quieter corridor, where the noise of the feast faded behind them, and climbed a flight of stairs to a door guarded by two of Harald’s Spectres. The guards stepped aside without a word when they saw Barthogan, and he pushed the door open.

The room beyond was a solar, and Harald Stormcrown stood at the head of the table. Around him stood the men Brandon had seen at the high table all evening: Edmyn Tully, the Lord Chancellor, with Merrick Frey and Martyn Mallister beside him, Hother Blackwood and Rymund Bracken standing on opposite sides of the table, Olyvar Piper, Lothar Vance, and several others who had once been riverlords. These were Harald’s most trusted lords, the men who had followed him from the beginning, and every one of them turned to look at the door when Brandon entered.

Harald looked up and smiled.

“King Brandon.”

Brandon inclined his head. “King Harald.”

It still felt strange to be called a king. Harald gestured for him to join them at the table, and Brandon took a place beside his brother.

“As I was saying,” Harald continued, turning back to his lords, “we must expand the Legion. Three legions are no longer enough. We need at least ten, and more if we can train them.”

“Very much possible with the amount of land we have just conquered,” Edmyn Tully said. “From the Reach alone, we can create more than ten. The Stormlands can raise two, and the Vale another. We have the men, Your Grace. What we need is time to train them.”

“And steel to arm them,” Lord Mallister added.

“Steel we have,” Harald said. “Time is the problem.”

Barthogan cleared his throat. “The North is willing to send men as well, Your Grace. My brother the king has agreed, and I have spoken to the Glovers and the Manderlys. We could send you three thousand by the spring, perhaps more.”

Harald shook his head before Barthogan had finished. “No. You will need every man you have to defend the Wall.”

The room went quiet.

“Will you send men north, Your Grace?” Brandon asked. “I ask plainly, for my people have trusted me to keep them alive, and I would sooner know what aid to expect than comfort them with promises I cannot keep.”

Lord Bracken bristled.

“His Grace has already given his word!”

“Do you take our king for a man who abandons his allies?” Blackwood demanded, finding common cause with Bracken for the second time in his life.

Brandon looked between them.

“I have accused him of no such thing.”

“Then you would do well to choose your words more carefully,” Frey added.

Harald raised a hand, and the lords fell silent at once. He did not look angry. He regarded Brandon for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was calm.

“Of course I will help you.”

He set down his cup and leaned on the table with both hands.

“I have Aegon Targaryen to deal with. You all know that. He left Highgarden swearing that he would return with war. That war is coming whether we want it or not. But that does not mean I will leave the North to face the Others alone.”

Brandon said nothing. He did not trust himself to speak.

“Durnehviir will go north with you,” Harald said.

Barthogan blinked. “The white dragon?”

“Durnehviir knows more about the undead than any living creature I have encountered. He has practised necromancy for thousands of years, fought spirits and creatures of death, and spent longer than most men can comprehend within a realm populated almost entirely by the dead. There are few better suited to discovering the weaknesses of whatever is gathering beyond your Wall.”

“You would send your dragon north to aid us?” Brandon asked.

“I would.”

Harald glanced toward Barthogan.

“Let the Night’s Watch keep its Lord Commander and its ancient duties, but Durnehviir shall serve as the Wall’s guardian and temporary lord over its defence against the dead until this threat has passed. He will have the authority to coordinate the defence with Brandon, the Watch, and the King in the North.”

Barthogan found his voice first. “That is very generous, Your Grace.”

“It is necessary,” Harald said. He straightened and looked around the table, at each of his lords in turn.

“I want these lands to never know war again. I promised you all that after the end of our last conflict, and I mean to keep that promise, my lords.” He turned to Brandon and Barthogan. “I promise you both that the dead will never cross that Wall.”

Then he looked at the others.

“And I give the same promise to all of you concerning Aegon Targaryen. His armies shall never be allowed to set foot upon our shores. The three-headed dragon shall not be permitted to bring war to Westeros.”

Harald paused, allowing his words to settle before continuing.

“We will strengthen ourselves first. We will raise the legions and build the ships. And then, my lords, we will take the fight to the enemy.”

Edmyn Tully leaned forward.

“Your Grace?”

“We shall invade the Freehold.”

The chamber fell silent for several moments.

Then several lords began speaking at once. Harald allowed the reaction to continue for a moment before raising his hand.

“Aegon means to bring war to Westeros. He has made that abundantly clear, and whatever restraint he might once have possessed is being consumed by Mehrunes Dagon. If we wait until his armies are ready to cross the sea, we surrender the choice of when and where the next war begins.”

He looked around the chamber.

“I will not give him that choice.”

Brandon could see excitement growing upon the faces of the gathered lords, even those who had initially seemed troubled by the announcement.

Blackwood raised his cup.

“For Stormcrown!”

“For the Heartlands!” Mallister answered.

Others joined them, their voices filling the chamber until even the guards outside could surely hear.

Brandon believed every word, and he felt relief flood through him, so strong and so sudden that he had to grip the edge of the table. For seven years, he had carried the knowledge of what was coming, and now he felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Hircine had been right about Harald Stormcrown. The Huntsman had told him once, in the long dream of the forest, that this man was a different breed of man. Brandon understood it now.

They returned to the feast soon afterward.

Harald took his seat beside Argella, who leaned close and said something that made him laugh, and Brandon returned to his place beside Barthogan and watched the king and queen at the high table.

Then someone near the Stormlander tables stood on a bench and shouted.

“The bedding!”

The cry spread through the hall like fire through dry grass. Within moments, a hundred voices had taken it up, and men were rising from every table, laughing and shoving one another toward the dais while the women of the court gathered on the other side with wicked smiles. Lord Bracken was among the first on his feet, and Lady Waynwood was not far behind the Stormlander ladies. Argella’s face went red, and Harald looked at the approaching crowd with an expression Brandon could not quite read.

“The bedding! The bedding!”

“The bedding ceremony!”

“Aye! Time to put the king and queen to bed!”

“Let the bedding begin!”

“Come, lads, His Grace has kept his bride waiting long enough!”

Before the first of them reached the dais, two roars shook the hall.

They came from outside, so loud and so close that the chandeliers swayed on their chains and the candles guttered. Wine spilled from a hundred cups. The musicians stopped playing, and every head in the hall turned toward the windows. For a long moment, there was no sound in the great hall of Cyrodiil at all.

When Brandon looked back at the high table, it was empty.

Harald now stood at the side door behind the dais with Argella in his arms. She was laughing and holding on to his neck, and the king gave the stunned hall a broad grin over his shoulder.

“Good night, my lords!”

“WULD!”

He was through the door and gone before anyone could move.

Brandon looked at Barthogan, and Barthogan looked at him, and for the first time since his return from beyond the Wall, the two brothers laughed together.