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The smoke was not grey like honest smoke from honest fires, no, the smoke filling her lungs was green, the color of spring leaves and new things growing, and wasn't that a cruel jest? That the end should smell of beginnings? I am drowning on dry land. I am drowning and I cannot stop.
Her knees had given out somewhere along the corridor that led to the main hall. She'd felt them buckle, felt herself pitch forward onto stone that burned through her skirts, and a weak voice in her mind told her to just lie down in the smoke and the heat and let it take her the way it had taken so much else already. Her ladies were ash now. Maribel, who'd braided her hair that morning and complained about the heat. Gone. Kessia, who'd served her since Duncan was born. Gone. Even the serving girl whose name she'd never learned, the one with the gap in her teeth who always hummed while she worked. Gone. All of them now little more than smoke and ash and screaming that had finally, finally stopped.
But Betha Blackwood had not survived thirty years of marriage to a Targaryen king by lying down when her knees failed her.
She pushed herself up. Her palms came away black, and she could not tell if it was ash or char or her own skin burning away. Did it matter? Nothing mattered except moving forward, moving deeper into the green hell that Summerhall had become, because somewhere in this inferno were the people she'd sworn to love forever when she'd been young and stupid and in love.
There had been berries, wild blackberries growing along the riverbank not far from Raventree Hall, fat and sweet in the late spring sun. She'd been six-and-ten and thought herself very fine in her grey riding dress, out with Alla Frey to pick berries and gossip about boys they'd never marry. They'd heard splashing and gone to investigate, thinking perhaps one of her father's men was fishing.
He'd been washing in the shallows, naked as his nameday, and he'd yelped when he saw them. Scrambled for his clothing with his face going red as a beet. He was not much younger than her, with his head shaved smooth and the first shadow of stubble on his jaw.
"My ladies," he'd stammered, clutching his smallclothes to his chest. "I didn't—I thought I was alone—"
Two days later they'd met again by that same river. He'd brought her blackberries, “Picked them myself,” he'd said with a laugh, showing her the scratches on his hands from the thorns. They'd eaten them together, sitting on the bank with their feet in the cold water, and the juice had stained both their mouths dark as wine.
When had he stopped laughing? Egg had laughed so easily once. Had smiled at her over breakfast and held her hand in the gardens and whispered foolish promises in her ear when they thought no one was listening. He'd loved her black hair, would wind it around his fingers and bury his face in it and tell her she smelled of earth and ravens and home.
Somewhere (when?) he'd started slipping away from her. Started spending his nights poring over scrolls in the library instead of in their bed. Started wearing his hair long like all the Targaryen kings before him, though she'd loved the way it looked shorn. Had it been after Jaehaerys was born? After Daeron? She couldn't remember. The years blurred together, a succession of councils and courts and children, and through it all Egg had grown more and more distant. More king, less husband. More Aegon, less Egg.
Her feet slipped in something wet, blood, perhaps, or melted gold. Everything was melting at Summerhall. The walls, the windows, the pretty lies they'd told themselves. She could see Egg's great folly now. Egg had done this, her sweet boy with berry-stained lips and scratched hands. He'd brought wildfire to Summerhall because he needed dragons, because being a good king wasn't enough anymore.
She found her granddaughter standing in one of the dozens of doorways that lined the corridor. She looked like a spectre from the stories, her white dress (why had Egg insisted she wear white today?) soaked red from waist to hem. In her arms she held a squalling thing, red-faced and furious, tiny fists beating the air. A boy, Betha saw. Another Targaryen prince to add to the tally.
Rhaella was crying, tears tracking through the ash on her face, her eyes (Egg's eyes, Gods, why did they all have to have Egg's eyes?) were wide and wasn't she much too young to already hold her own babe? "Grandmother, I can't—Aerys is—and Grandsire said the dragons would come, he promised the dragons would come, but there's only fire and—"
"Hush." Betha forced herself to walk, though her legs shook and the hem of her skirts was burning properly now, little orange tongues licking at the silk. When had she stopped being able to run? When had her knees started aching in the mornings, her back screaming when she rose from bed? She'd been young once. She'd been six-and-ten and in love and the world had been full of berries and river-water and a boy who blushed when she laughed. "Hush now, little dove. Give me the babe."
"No. No, he's mine, he's—"
"Give him to me." Queen's voice now, the one she'd learned to wear like armor over all these years. The one that made lesser men bow and great lords think twice. "You're bleeding, my darling. You can barely stand. How do you think you'll run carrying him?"
Rhaella looked down at herself as if just remembering the blood and the pain. "We cannot leave them, Uncle Duncan and Aunt Jenny, they were—they were in the hall when it started, and Aerys and I couldn't—"
"Where?" Betha seized Rhaella's shoulders, shaking her perhaps harder than she should. "Where did you last see him? Duncan, where?"
"The great hall, I said! Jenny and he were dancing when the fire started, and then—" Rhaella's voice broke into sobs. "And Grandsire made me lie down, he had Aerys say so many strange words. Grandmother, I am so afraid."
Betha wanted to weep for this girl-child but there was no time for weeping. "Give me the babe. Please, darling. Let me take him, you need to walk."
"It's all fire," Rhaella looked around wildly. "Grandmother, everything is fire."
"The eastern postern." If it still stood. If the walls hadn't collapsed. If a thousand things that might have already gone wrong hadn't gone wrong. "Through the gardens, past the sept. Can you do that?"
"I don't know. I don't—"
"You can because you must." Betha pulled the babe from Rhaella's arms, ignoring the girl's cry of protest. The child was slippery with birth-blood but he was alive, screaming his fury at the world that had sought to kill him in his first hour of life. "You're going to stand up, you're going to run, and you're going to live. Do you hear me, little dove? You're going to live."
She dragged Rhaella by one arm, felt the girl sway and nearly fall. The smoke was thicker here, green and oily, coating everything it touched. Betha's eyes streamed, her throat raw, but she kept moving. Kept dragging Rhaella toward where the exit should be, the babe clutched to her chest with one arm.
The corridor seemed to stretch forever. Stone walls running with melted gold, the floor carpeted in ash. A shape loomed out of the smoke, massive and lumbering, and for one mad moment she thought it might be a dragon, that Egg had spoken true after all. It was too big to be human, it was—
"Ser Duncan!" Rhaella's voice, high and cracking. "Ser Duncan, help us!"
The big knight emerged from the green haze like some hero from a song, his face black with soot, his white cloak scorched and blood running from a gash across his temple. But he was alive.
"Your Grace." He reached for her and Betha let him take her arm, let him steady her when her knees tried to buckle again. "Princess Rhaella. Thank the gods. I've been searching, Prince Aerys said you were in the great hall, but when I got there—"
"The babe came early." Betha pushed her granddaughter and great-grandson toward this huge man who'd spent forty years following Egg around like a faithful hound. "Get her out. Get them both out. There's a postern gate on the eastern wall, if it hasn't collapsed. Take them through the—"
"Yes." His huge hand closed around her wrist, gentle despite his strength. "All three of you. Come on, Your Grace, we need to—"
"No." She pulled free, stumbling back a step. The babe screamed louder, strong lungs, that one. "No, I can't. I need to find—my son is in the hall, and Egg, and I need to—"
"Your Grace, there's nothing left in the great hall. I tried to get to them but the fire—" His voice broke. "Your Grace, please. The king wouldn't want you to die here. Prince Duncan wouldn't want—"
The Lord Commander loved Duncan too, she knew. Had taught him to hold a sword, to sit a horse, to be the kind of prince who'd have made a good king. More Blackwood than Targaryen, that one. No silver hair, no purple eyes, no cursed dreams to drive him to destruction. Egg had let him go, had stood by while Duncan cast aside the crown, and Betha had thought (foolishly, she saw now) that perhaps it was for the best.
Instead the realm would call Jaehaerys its king soon. King Jaehaerys and Queen Shaera, her other children, the ones who'd never listened. Who'd married each other despite every expectation, despite her tears and Egg's fury, despite everything. Bad children, both of them. Selfish and strange and oh so convinced of their own greatness.
The babe was screaming so loudly that Betha could barely hear herself think. Rhaella was swaying on her feet, her eyes glazing over. The smoke was getting thicker, the heat stronger. Soon there would be no choice left to make because they'd all be dead.
"Dunk, take them both and get them out. That's an order from your queen."
"Your Grace—"
"Go." She pushed Rhaella toward him again, watched the big knight catch the girl before she fell. "The eastern postern. Don't stop, don't look back. Just go."
"What about you?"
"I'm going to find my son, I'm going to find my husband. And then..."
The knight looked defeated. He gathered Rhaella and the babe close, cradling them both against his chest like they weighed nothing. "I will come back for you."
He went. Because he was Dunk, and Dunk had spent decades following orders even when they broke his heart. He turned and lumbered back down the corridor with Rhaella cradled in one arm and the screaming babe in the other. Betha watched until the smoke swallowed them until she could not make out their shape in the thickening green haze.
And then she turned and walked deeper into the fire.
The great hall was at the heart of Summerhall. She knew the way even blind, even choking on smoke that tasted of wildfire and failed magic and the ending of all things. She had walked these corridors a thousand times; to feasts and councils, to celebrations and sorrows. She had walked them with Egg's hand in hers, back when he still reached for her without thinking.
Oh, little Egg, she thought, stumbling through the smoke. What have you done?
The doors to hung askew on their hinges, sagging downward like an old woman's mouth. Betha pushed through, and the heat hit her all at once, stealing what little breath she had left. The hall (Egg's beautiful hall, with its high windows and painted ceilings and space enough for three hundred guests) had become a furnace.
The ceiling was gone. Where there had been beams of carved oak and plaster worked with scenes from the Conquest, there was only sky, black with smoke and streaked with embers that rose up from the hell that birthed them. The floor was a carpet of ash that reached her ankles.
"Duncan," she called. "Duncan, where are you?"
He was lying near what had been the high table, a figure in white and silver, lying so still that for a moment she thought it was a fallen statue. But no statue had ever worn the look of Duncan of Dragonflies, no stone had ever captured the way her son's mouth turned up slightly at one corner even in death.
Betha sank down beside the shape that had been her firstborn, and let herself weep. Where had it started? When had Egg stopped being hers?
Maybe when the crown had come to him after Maekar fell at Starpike. Suddenly he was king and she was queen and there were so many duties, so many responsibilities, so many voices whispering in his ear about what he should do, who he should be. The boy who'd brought her berries became a man who barely looked up from his council papers when she entered a room.
Egg had never forgiven Aemon for going to the wall, she thought. He'd started wearing his hair long after that, like a proper Targaryen king. She'd asked him once: "Why'd you grow it out?"
He'd looked at her like she'd asked him why the sun rose in the east. "I'm a king now. Kings don't look like squires."
"You looked fine to me before."
His brother had been a dreamer. The Drunken, they'd called him. They said that he saw things in his sleep that came true more often than not. Egg had always been jealous of that, she thought. Had wanted his own glimpses of the future, his own way to touch the divine. Another brother had been mad. Fed himself wildfire because he thought it would transform him into a dragon. They'd tried to keep that from the realm, but all knew.
Was Egg both now? Dreamer and madman, prophet and fool?
"Betha?"
The voice came from deeper in the hall, from what had been the far end where Egg had insisted on placing the pyre. Where he'd meant to sit when the dragons came, when the prophecy was fulfilled, when all his mad plans came to fruition.
She left Duncan there—I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my darling boy—and followed the sound of her name.
Seven dragon eggs were arrayed around him in a circle, each one as large as a man's head and patterned with scales. Beautiful things. Useless things. Not a crack showed on any of them.
Egg's robes were burned away to nothing. His skin beneath was red and weeping, blistered in places, blackened in the rest. "You're still here," he said, and it might have been accusation or wonder. "I hoped Dunk would get you out."
"Dunk took Rhaella and the babe." She sank down beside him, her burned legs finally giving up their fight. This close, she could see the extent of it. There was nothing left to save. The fire had eaten through to the bone in places. "Duncan is dead."
His hand moved, reaching for hers. She took it even though his skin sloughed away beneath her touch, even though she could feel the heat of his dying radiating up her arm. His fingers were sticky with blood and char and the remnants of whatever magic he'd tried to work here.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Betha, I'm so—"
"I know." The smoke was so thick now she could barely see his face. The heat was unbearable, and yet she felt so cold. When had she gotten cold? "I know, Egg."
"Stay with me," Egg said. "Please, Betha. Don't leave me alone. I don't want to die alone."
She lay down beside him in the circle of dragon eggs that would never hatch, that had only ever been stone and wishes and fevered dreams of lost glory.
Her eyes were closing, that she could not fight anymore. She could not fight the smoke, the heat, the sorrow of all those years pressing down on her chest. She was so tired. So very, very tired.
There was water. Cold river water running over her bare feet, and the sun warm on her face. She could taste blackberries, their sweetness staining her mouth dark as wine. Somewhere nearby someone was laughing, and she knew that laugh. Had loved that laugh since she was six-and-ten and thought she understood what love meant.
"Betha," he called. "Betha, come on. I found more berries. The best ones are further upstream."
She tried to answer him, tried to say I'm coming, wait for me, but her tongue was weighted down by smoke.