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“Not a suitable lady in all the Free Cities.” Crackle and hiss of a fire leaping in a grate. “Is my son then to die unwedded, or wait twenty years for a sister to be born and grow to flowering?”
“We must consider our own lands again. Lord Stark has a daughter.”
“Hah! The dragon does not lie with lesser beasts.”
“Of course, your Grace.”
Small sigh, and silk rubbing between two plump hands. “Your Grace, there is another candidate; a princess, and if not a dragon, kin to dragons.”
Rustling paper like fire in dry tinder. “Elia of Dorne?”
“Elia is the one of whom I speak, your Grace.”
Scraping sound like nails on a tombstone, and the pad-pad-pat of feet striding back and forth. “A maid of nineteen, and unbetrothed. There are always – questions.”
“Oh, Tywin, be not so cautious.” A rustling of papers, easing of a tiny ice-draught. “Varys, you speak with some merit.”
“Thank you, your Grace.”
“Well, do not wait. Send emissaries to Dorne, and have her recent likeness brought here. I would look upon my good-daughter.”
“Of course, your Grace. At once.”
*
The blood oranges were long gone from the trees, but still it seemed their sweet tang scented the air. In the courtyard outside the bower, on the other side from the pools where the children still played, Elia’s younger brother held his daughter on her pony, man and child both full of laughter. Elia laid her stitchery aside and watched Nymeria, barely three years old, coax the pony to a walk at Oberyn’s instruction; more than a game, but Oberyn’s diversions often were.
Mellario’s babe was healthy and strong, by all the reports from Sunspear. Elia stroked the fine cambric cap she was embroidering for her noble niece. Her bastard niece was content with kisses and lullabies.
One day her ladies would embroider small gifts for her children, and she would watch them at play and sing to them as they drowsed. But as the years passed, she heard her songs darkening, until she sang of Summerhall and kings long dead.
Not an unwed lord was there in Westeros who truly pleased her, and her mother had not, as yet, suggested she wed against her inclination. Doran promised her a ship full of bridegrooms from the Free Cities, and Oberyn promised to identify the one whose excellence in letters and lordly pursuits surpassed all others: but when Elia was given to fancies, she fancied that their efforts on her behalf would come to naught.
Behind Oberyn and Nymeria, she saw the Water Gardens’ gates open. A sand steed barded in the Martell colours cantered into the courtyard, sweat-lathered and panting; the messenger astride it dismounted, tossed his reins to the closest groom and bowed deeply to Oberyn, but instead of handing over the letter in his hand, he spoke a quick question. Elia saw Oberyn look up at her. A gust of wind rustled the trees, and she shivered.
*
There was a princess, then, a princess out of Dorne
with hair of purest jet, and beauteous as orchids.
Perhaps she would be wild, as Dornish ladies all were said to be
(though palace whispers all might say
she had a dozen midnight demons in her bed
a prince did not ascribe a mote of truth to such
and would not, never, let a word be spoke against her in his presence.)
She might not cleave to him as yet, he knew,
but kings would ever state their will, and see it done.
The princess would become his bride – and night by night
he studied this, her likeness, gift to him from Dorne,
and wondered, would she look so pleasing
when next he saw her shorn of paint and canvas
if she would sing of Dornish desert nights
and teach him of her lands and people, never fading with the sun.
*
She was to marry the Prince of Dragonstone, as her mother had written, and the letter left Elia no doubt but that this was the king’s command. She would have talked of it to Oberyn, but he had heard some little scandal from the messenger, some business of a septa birthing a child, and had ridden off with all haste, barely bidding anyone farewell. So Elia sent her acquiescence to her mother, and was measured for her bridal clothes, and insisted to Ashara that she should put the final stitches to her maiden’s cloak herself.
She had met the prince but once before; soft and sad he had seemed, like a swan in winter. Perhaps he would be different, when she knew him better. Perhaps he would laugh as he taught their children to ride.
Oberyn returned on the eve of her departure for King’s Landing, sand-caked from desert riding and with a baby girl strapped to his chest. The babe was the septa’s, he told Elia in her apartments that night, and his: she sighed a little at that, but fondly, for she knew her brother well, and had scarcely doubted it since first she heard the tale.
“I wish I knew him better,” Oberyn said, almost fretful, as he paced about her solar with a goblet of blood-red wine in his hand. “But nobody knows him, in truth – maybe no brother in Westeros could tell whether he would make a good husband.”
“All will be well,” she said, more soothing than confident.
Oberyn gave her a little mocking smile. “And if it is not?” She looked away at that, unable to answer, and when he embraced her, she felt that one of them was shaking, and was not certain which.
In the morning she kissed her nieces farewell, happy little Nymeria and the fair baby Tyene, placid and serene. Oberyn kissed them too, for he would ride with Elia to Sunspear and beyond; and when she crested the hill amid her ladies and looked back at the Water Gardens, veiled in thin early winter sunlight, Elia was glad he came with her. She had left Dorne before, but this time it would be many years, if ever, before her return, and it seemed, no matter how she knew her duty to House Martell, that the world was changing beneath her, and she could find no words for the odd sorrow she felt.
*
There was to be a wedding feast magnificent as those of old
but first the Sept of Baelor, grand and great,
yet not so lovely, to his eyes, as Elia, his bride of fire,
a dragon-mounted sun from long ago, when Daeron wedded Myriah.
The throngs within the sept might pray as dozens more without threw flowers
as Elia became his wife: and yet she faltered, not by speech or act
but by a shadow in her eye.
The sun was darkened, winter’s heart eclipsing her,
and none might know, save him alone.
*
It had not been an easy trip, up the coast to King’s Landing through winter-rough seas, but rather that than crossing the mountains, and King Aerys would not have them wait till spring. Then there had been the city, vast and crowded, and smallfolk cheering Elia as she progressed through its streets flanked by her brothers. The Red Keep – so huge; so unlike Sunspear – and King Aerys, Queen Rhaella, Prince Viserys, and Prince Rhaegar, who still seemed soft and sad to her, and she could not but wonder why.
So soon, it seemed, came the wedding. Ceremony and feast swam past her, all the grandeur that the crown could muster, which was to say a great deal; and if she spied a hint of cold calculation in those around her, Elia was not able to identify the source, so loud and bewildering was the day. Then feast became dancing, and dancing became the bedding ceremony, and when eventually Oberyn tossed her nude onto the bed beside her new husband, he did so with a smile.
Rhaegar was smiling too, though with less immediacy, almost veiled not from her but from the world. As Oberyn yanked the door shut with a closing injunction to the pair of them to stop behaving themselves, Elia said, “I trust that nothing is amiss, my prince?” As soon as the words had left her lips she cursed herself. Princes were but men, her mother used to say.
“If anything is amiss with me, it is the thought that something is amiss with you.” He lifted her hand to his lips, more chaste than loverlike. “Does this – truly – please you?”
She was about to tell him, yes, of course, when she wondered how he had come to see her within the gold-and-copper gown and all the emeralds. What would become of the remains of that gown? “It pleases me,” she said, bringing his hand down to rest on her stomach; and he was beautiful, sculpted and perfect, a dragonlord stepped out of a tale to meet her naked in her bed. “I would know you better, if you will, and your city and lands too, for one day I must be queen to them, when you are king. But, yes, it pleases me – and I hope that I please you.”
“You do,” he said, and as she leant to kiss him she suddenly saw the steel and fire within, and as she lifted his hand to her breast, she thought, yes, Oberyn, all will be well.
*
And he would write her songs of love,
and songs to tell her all he knew of this, their land, their realm,
riven now with winter’s ice, but living, breathing, loving through the dark
until the birth of spring’s warm winds and rising of the sun, her sun.
She came to him of Martells past, and Daenerys, the token bride;
they met in her and thus in him,
in him, and her, and on, till dawn.