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The Targaryes came by sea from Old Valyria, and made a home for themselves in the Seven Kingdoms. The Conqueror, they called the first Targaryen king; they sung of his deeds and his dragon and of the Field of Fire, and yet with the years the world seemingly forgot of how vicious and dangerous the blood of the dragon could be.
Every one of them was the flip of a coin, they said; and just like Volantene coins showed Death opposite a crown, the Targaryen coin had greatness on one side, and madness on the others; and as the years went by and the Dragonpit emptied the coin started landing on the wrong side more often than not, until it came the time of Aerys the Second, and the realm rebelled.
It was a bloody affair the way most civil wars are, brother against brother and duty against honor. It lasted for close to a year, and when the Usurper’s blood stained the waters of the Trident they all thought it was over; and yet it wasn’t.
It wasn’t over until the victorious Prince returned home to the family he had abandoned and confronted his mad father in the shadow of the Iron Throne. Even then, no one could say with certainty what happened, for there were no witnesses but the king’s sworn white swords.
Some said King Aerys cursed his son with an ancient Valyrian spell long forgotten; some said he had one of his pyromancer do it, with wildfire, or some Red Sorcerer of R’hllor. Some others even said that it never was Prince Rhaegar at all, killed upon entering the city, but no one ever knew the truth.
Everyone knew what happened after the Prince’s disappearance, however, how the Mad King called forth his Lords with the news of the new dragon he himself had made hatch from a forgotten egg; and how they went to the Dragonpit, believing it yet another folly, only to find themselves face to face with a beast they had only seen in books before.
He was silvery white, his eyes a deep lilac.
Aerys had his new dragon brought to the Dragonpit after that, and he ordered a cover put on it so that the beast could not fly away. The dragon was still small enough that he could pass from the gates, so the Mad King had had a maze built all around the exists. He wanted another Balerion the Black Dread, that much was clear, and yet this new dragon had a kind and gentle nature. Like Prince Rhaegar’s, it was whispered, though very few knew of this fact and no one dared to say it out loud.
No one dared oppose the Mad King’s rule after that, not even one of the rebellious lords who’d bent the knee, even when the whole realm expected Aerys to take a furious vengeance on those who had betrayed him. They all dreaded him, yet they could do nothing, and so every lord in the Seven Kingdoms was surprised when the king announced there wouldn’t have to be further bloodshed.
Even when the king called for a boy and a girl from every kingdom they could not complain, for it was still less than they all expected, and they still could say nothing when the Mad King had all fourteen his young hostages released in the Dragonpit for the beats who hadn’t been fed since the day the maze had been built.
The years went by, and nothing changed. The Mad King sat on the Iron Throne with an Alchemist as his Hand, and every Great House kept to his own kingdom, for the Lords no longer dared to consort together. Soon enough they all had realized that the king did not require hostages of high birth as long as they came, and so it was always some unlucky orphan boy or farmer’s daughter who was sent to King’s Lading every year.
The years went by and nothing changed, until the day it was Arya Stark who made the journey.
Arya shouldn’t have been chosen and, in fact, never truly was. She was the daughter of a Great Lord, after all, albeit a rebellious one, three-and-ten and all her life in front of her. She was not as beautiful as her sister, a beam of Southron summer among the snows of the North, but she burned bright with the light of fresh youth and enthusiasm and was told to resemble the lively Lady Lyanna they had all gone to war for.
The Rose of Winterfell, they had all taken to call her, the youths in subtle mocking for the Lord’s daughter who liked to ride like a man; and the elders with their wary awareness of things long past and things to come.
Arya Stark of Winterfell was made for some sort of extraordinary life, or so everyone she knew had decided within minutes of meeting her. Whether it was to escape her home for the Free Cities or make a scandal refusing a betrothal, the whole of Westeros would hear of Arya Stark one day. Perhaps the singers would even write songs about her the way they knew did of Lyanna, and yet no one expected her to defy death quite so soon.
No one expected it to go as it did; and Arya less of all.
Young Bran Stark fell one day from the top of the Broken Tower in Winterfell, and lied in his bed unmoving for days. When he later woke up he said it had been a lightning that fell near him and made him lose his grip, and Old Nan murmured a cryptic warning about lightning on a sunny day. Little Lord, it was the gods that made you fall, she said, but if it truly had been the gods, no one had said his sisters that.
Sansa, who’d had a fight with Bran hours before his fall, had been distraught and spent hour after hour in the sept her father had built for his Southron wife to pray the Seven Gods that were One. Let him live, she begged the Mother. Let him live and I will give everything, she told the Maiden, and asked the Warrior to give her strength. Let him live, Bran wants to be a knight when he’ll grow up, she cried, feeling guilty and frantic and, in some dismissed corner of her mind, very much like the young maiden in some of the songs she liked to hear.
I will give everything, Arya heard her sister promise, and rolled her eyes. Everything to sweet, ladylike Sansa, would not be much. Silk dresses and lemon cakes, perhaps, or even vowing to marry some second son if she was feeling particularly guilty.
She would offer something meaningful, Arya decided, and made her way to the Godswood to say her own prayers. Bran was her favourite brother, her little brother and yet still fun to play with, her faithful companion of mischief and swordplay.
Let him live, she thought, standing before the heart tree, and I’ll go South.
Like one of Sansa’s song, except it was the other way around. She the knight doing the rescuing instead of the maiden waiting in the tower, the Dragonknight in place of frail Queen Naerys. Like the Prince of Dragonflies, who’d sacrificed his throne for his Jeyne’s sake, and it would have been better for us he hadn’t, she thought bitterly as the day of her departure grew closer, but she was a Stark, and Starks always keep their words.
Septa Mordane told her as much once, even though Arya suspected that her answer would have been a much different one, had she known the whole truth. She would have insisted that a vow made to the Old Gods had no value and told Father and Mother first thing, and so Arya stayed silent and kept her oath.
She could not have, and no one would have known, but yet she had, grasping to her thoughts of songs and princes until she had left Winterfell for White Harbor. It had been easier than expected, with her hair tied back and wearing boys’ clothes, because who would have expected her to run away now? Someday, that much was clear to everybody, as soon as Mother tried to marry her to someone she wouldn’t like, but there was no reason for her to escape now.
She left no message behind, and only had her letter sent from White Harbor the day before leaving on the ship the king himself had provided, whose captain would never let her go no matter who her father was. She took the place of a mouse-faced slip of a girl who couldn’t be older than Bran, unlucky enough that her mother had died leaving her without a home, and tried her hardest to feel pious about it like the septons said. A life is worth as much as any other, Arya tried to tell herself, lords’ lives as much as smallfolks’, for we are all called to serve the gods. It did not seem to work, for Arya had never much cared for serving the gods, so she started thinking of her family instead, and how the other girl had already suffered so much, and that seemed to work, a little.
The boy was from the Dreadfort, dark haired and older even than Robb, and he had taken staring at her with pale, unblinking eyes that made her shiver, as though he was looking straight into her soul.
He can think what he wants, Arya decided. It doesn’t matter anyway.
They arrived in King’s Landing after what felt like only a couple of days, and yet Arya knew it couldn’t be. They had stopped in the Vale and Riverlands for four of the other hostages, and all the others had already arrived, young men and women from the Westerlands and the Iron Islands, from the Stormlands and Dorne.
“Why does the king want hostages from Dorne and not from the Reach?” Arya had asked Father once, when she was very small.
“King Aerys trusts Mace Tyrell more than he trusts Doran Martell,” her Father had answered, and Arya still remembered how odd that had sounded to her, that someone could do that to his own family, even relatives they did not like. She had gone to Sansa after that and apologized for hiding her favourite ribbon. She remembered hugging her sister, and they had not fought for weeks.
The ship landed on a bright morning in a harbor that was grander and more colourful than anything she had ever seen in her life. They were given quarters in the Keep, a handful of rooms to share that were bigger than Jeyne Poole’s room back in Winterfell, and clean clothes finer than what most of the others had ever worn in their lives. They even had a Kingsguard escorting them, golden-haired Jaime Lannister, and were told that King Aerys liked to feast his young hostages every year with a banquet in the Great Hall.
Arya tried with all her heart to focus on the excitement that a young, proper lady would feel in visiting the Red Keep, but all she could feel were Ser Jaime’s uncanny green eyes trailed on her, and fear in remembering that she was to die in two days.
He was looking to her as well, a small frown in his brow, and made her a sign as soon as the other had gone inside the rooms. Four rooms and fourteen beds, for boys and girls alike, she had noticed. Who cares of the virtues of some peasant girls who’ll soon be dead? Septa Mordane would probably have a fit.
“What is your name?” He called, as soon as they were alone. She had been expecting that and raised her chin. It did not matter anymore, and it would have been good to hear herself say her name, to remind who she was. But it was her secret to keep.
“Does it matter?”
She sounded like Rickon playing defiant to refuse his dinner, and yet it was worth it to see Ser Jaime wince. He was expecting something, but not this.
Some of her satisfaction must have shown on her face, for the Kingsguard threw her a small, ironic smile. “Feeling content of yourself, child? Don’t you know how where you are?” He added that last part in a whizz.
“Do you know that you are dead?”
It was her turn to wince. She had almost managed to forget her worries lost in the meaningless satisfaction of those last few moments, and yet he wouldn’t let her. In the space of a moment, Arya hated him for it, all the feelings of bother and annoyance she’d ever had for Sansa and Mother and her septa dwarfed like candles in front of the sun by what she was feeling for Jaime Lannister.
“Do you do this often?” She found herself asking, with the boldness she’d thought she’d left in Winterfell. “Escort children to die?”
She saw a flash of… something in his eyes for a moment hurt perhaps, but it was gone so fast she might have as well imagined it.
“This, and more,” he answered, features so carefully neutral he looked like a statue. “You so remind me of another girl we all had to go to war for. I do hope it’s nothing more than a passing resemblance, girl, because the kingdom doesn’t need it.”
He made for the door and Arya heard the noise of the key in the lock, and of course he would lock the door. We are all prisoners here.
And then, she decided. I am not going to die here.
I will kill the dragon, and I will go home.
They were indeed feasted by the King that night if it could be called a feast. The vests they had been given were of fine linen, white as snow, and Arya barely wasted time glancing at herself in the mirror before leaving the room.
I look like Death, she decided, noticing how the white of the cloth went with her pale skin and dark colouring. She liked the thought.
They were seated in the Great Hall on a table just steps below the king’s, in the shadow of the Iron Throne. They were escorted one by one among the gazes of the court, lord and ladies who looked bored enough of seeing death year after year to still care, or otherwise drunk enough it did not seem to matter.
Still, it was a grander affair than anything she had ever seen in Winterfell, more lavish as well, the kind of banquet someone like Sansa might have even enjoyed, had she not been in King’s Landing to die. The wine flowed freely, cup after cup, and most of the boys and girls she’d come with seemed thrilled enough by their court experience to even seemingly forget what was to happen. The attitude of the lord and ladies in the room surely seemed efficient enough, Arya decided, noticing men and women in various states of drunkenness.
She had only been sat at the table for an hour when she decided to rise and walk a little around the hall. She was by no means the first one – already many had discarded their assigned seats for one reason or the others – but she was the first of the hostages to do so, and still no one moved to stop her.
It is not like I can go anywhere else, after all. And with this dress in this place… The white, she had noticed earlier, seemed to almost shine in the darkness, marking her. The room itself was as big as its name suggested, too big perhaps, for the torches and candles to light it fully. The Great Hall was dim and its corners dark, the Iron Throne like a monster of shadows from a distance. And the Mad King himself, with his long pale hair and claws, looked almost like a man-wolf out Old Nan’s stories.
You got it all wrong, Arya told herself. He is a dragon. You are the wolf.
Did wolves fear of dragons? I won’t.
Arya had no idea of how long she stayed there, in her shadowed corner, her cup in her hands. It was some sour Dornish wine, strong and red, and she fancied it tasted of spices and Summer and sands. And what do I even know? I have never tasted Dornish spices before.
Liquid courage, the men at Winterfell said of red wine. She had heard Jory tell Robb as much, on the day Lord Karstark had come to visit, some six turns and a lifetime ago. Liquid courage. She took another sip. I can be brave.
“That is my spot,” a voice called, and she turned with a small jump.
“Seven hells,” Arya murmured, more out of habit than anything else. There was a stain of wine on her vest, big and red as rubies, and yet she could not bring herself to care.
It was only after a while that she turned her gaze to the man who’d addressed her earlier, and then she almost flinched a second time.
His hair was silvery and his eyes purple, his clothes in Targaryen red-and-blacks, and that was all it took for Arya Stark to give a name to a face she had never seen before. Prince Aegon. Bloody Prince Aegon, she realized in a bolt of surprise, taking notice of his comely face and expectant look, and she felt her surprise turn into anger.
“You can take it when I’m gone,” she heard herself answer, defiant. Lady Arya Stark would have to be polite curtsy for the Crown Prince, but a nameless girl from the North could afford to say whatever she wanted to the heir of the madmen who’d condemned her to die.
If her words gave him offence he did not show it, his courtly mask firmly in place. How he precisely managed to look both pleasantly interested and unbelievably bored at the same time Arya did not know, but it seemed like an interesting skill to have.
“I suppose I shall,” he told her, calmly, and Arya had already turned her back to him and took a deep breath to calm down when he spoke again.
“Who are you?”
Arya had already heard this once today, and she was sorely tempted to answer in the same way.
“No one,” she answered instead, and had the pleasure to see the prince’s lips twist in an approving smile.
“A fitting answer,” he said.
“And yet are you sure you do not wish to leave something of yourself behind, as a token?”
He talks like a true Prince of the songs, Arya thought, amused. Like Mother had instructed Robb to talk around Lady Alys, and yet his words were more blunt and direct than someone like Mother would have liked. Yet, she appreciated it.
“Even my name?” She asked, lightly.
“Even your name,” the prince confirmed.
“Too bad,” Arya answered, and suddenly felt like she was eleven again, and teasing Robb on his first beard. The prince wasn’t expecting that answer either, it seemed, and faltered a little before speaking up again.
“You remind me of a certain ghost I am very acquainted with,” he said, eventually, and Arya suppressed a shiver.
“It must be the dress,” she said, and spun on her feet to show him. All the wine must have made me light-heated.
“Look,” Arya added, brushing two fingers against the wine stain on her chest. “This looks almost like blood.”
Not that it’ll make much of a difference in two days’ time, she thought, and when she raised her head to look at the prince she could see he’d been thinking the same, his face almost white among the shadows.
“Look,” she repeated, moving away. “I must go. Ser Kingsguard down there must be worried he’s missing a hostage.”
And she made her way back to her seat as quickly as she could, not stopping to look at Prince Aegon’s face. And if she heard his voice call for her, well, there was plenty of noise in the Great Hall now, especially since the king had apparently retired.
Jaime Lannister seemed to have disappeared, and Arya went looking for the first guard she could find. “I have to go… to the privy,” she told the man, who rolled his eyes. “Do I have to be escorted?”
The guard had dark blue eyes and a balding head that caught the light of the candles. “No need,” he said. “It is not like you can escape.”
I don’t need to.
She walked slowly, tracing her steps carefully. Maegor’s holdfast was much smaller than Winterfell, small enough that she did not fear to get lost, but it was a specific room she was looking for. There must be a yard somewhere. An armoury. Anything.
Arya tried to remember Old Nan’s stories about dragons. Has anyone ever killed a dragon? They were fearsome beasts, it was said, but King Aerys’s was a twisted creature by all accounts. The Mad King lets him in the dark, and he cannot fly.
She walked for what seemed to her like hours before returning to her room, through corridors and halls and stairwells, and still she couldn’t find an armoury. It must be near the stables, she decided. In Winterfell, it was. But I cannot go to the stables; they will think I’m trying to escape…
Arya was frantic by the time she reached the rooms they had all been assigned, and almost let out a scream in feeling a hand grasping around her wrist.
“Still!” A voice whispered, and it took Arya a moment to take notice of her own hands twisted into fists, right before she recognized the voice.
“Aegon?” she asked, incredulous, not even realizing she had used the Crown Prince’s name with such familiarity.
He looked at her from under his eyelashes, sat on her bed as if he had a right to be there. He did not seem to take insult, and smiled instead. “I wasn’t even sure you knew who I was,” he said instead, and Arya snorted.
“It’s obvious. I’m not stupid.”
“I do not believe you are,” he answered slowly, and Arya felt heat going to her cheeks. She cleared her throat loudly.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” He answered, easily. “Although I have been waiting for quite a while. Did you get lost?”
“Shut up.” She moved as far away from the prince as she could without needing to leave the room. I was looking for the stupid armoury, for all the good it did.
“Come again?” Aegon asked, a note of amazement in his voice, and only then Arya realized she must have added the last part out loud.
Seven hells. It would do no good to deny it now, she decided, and the prince did not seem the type to go complaining to the king. Who would go talk to the Mad King of his own free will? Arya shivered at the thought.
“I was looking for the armoury.” She repeated, louder. “I have no intention of dying like a lamb at the slaughter.”
A flash of… something passed through Aegon’s eyes. It might have been amusement, she thought, or admiration. And perhaps, deep down, sadness.
“And you think you can fight your way out against a dragon.” His voice was flat. “A woman. If it was this easy, someone would have done it already.”
“I am not a woman,” Arya answered, quick as thunder. Only when she saw Aegon raise one eyebrow in amusement she realized what she’d said. I am not a lady, it usually went. But woman… No one has called me a woman before.
“And who would have tried?” She continued, before he had the time to say a word. “Those lordlings the first years, who did not know it was a dragon they would be facing? Or the ones that came after… do you think any of the others even know how to hold a sword?”
The prince’s purple eyes seemed to shine in the darkness of the room. “Do you?”
She blushed again and refused to answer, and he gave out a sigh.
“Look, it will no matter. You won’t find a way out even if you kill him.” He frowned. “Matter of fact, you’ll sooner die of hunger than killed by the dragon. It is how usually goes – not even a beast that big can eat fourteen people all at once.” His voice had taken a detached note by the ending, flat and empty as though he was repeating a lesson rather than talking.
He seemed to realize that as well, and winced. “I apologize. Sorry. I did not mean to…”
“Tell me,” Arya said lightly, doing her best impression of Sansa’s sweet, courtly tone. “Is this usually how you entertain your ladies, with tales of their imminent deaths?”
He seemed shocked by her words, as though they were the last thing he would’ve ever expected, and she continued quickly, before he had time to speak.
“And now I pray you excuse me, My Lord. I am very tired.”
His reaction to that voice, and these words, must have been at least as deeply ingrained in Aegon as it was in Robb, for he was on his feet and by the door faster than Arya would even have hoped.
“Of course,” he said. “Goodnight…”
He let his voice trail off after that as if realizing that it was Arya he was talking with, not one of the young ladies at court; or perhaps he’d just remembered that he still did not know her name. He had no time to add anything else, however, as Arya all but pushed him through the door and slammed it shut.
Only then she let herself cry.
Arya’s last day, she decided that night, was very much like her voyage by sea; flat and uneventful, and ultimately way too short.
It turned out that the palace guards were all more cautious during the day than they had been that past night, only letting them out the chambers in the dead hours of the afternoon, when they could not go anywhere without being spotted from some two hundred paces, standing out with their bright white vests like patches of dried snow on a field. Arya never managed to get even close to the armoury, and resigned herself to ask to be escorted to the Godswood.
She did not pray, not like Father would have. She decided she’d prayed long enough already, and stopped to think instead. I can kill the dragon when it sleeps. If she could get some sort of weapon, of course, but the alternative did not even bear thinking of. Even dragons must sleep, sometimes.
Arya stayed in the tree for hours and hours, kneeling, then sitting, then laying down on the red leaves when her back started to hurt. She stayed there until the day turned to dusk and the brightest stars started to appear in the sky, all the meanwhile trying to come up with a plan that wouldn’t need the involvement of a certain silver-haired prince to work.
But she could not, and when he came to her all Arya could do was trying to muster some small measure of surprise, trying not to look as if she’d been expecting him, needing him to have even a small possibility of survival.
She felt almost ashamed of herself until she remembered something Mother had told her once, at the feast they’d had for her own flowering, when Lady Catelyn had first curled her youngest daughter’s rebellious hair with the flame-hot iron. Sometimes we must use unpleasant tools to get a result, sweetling, she had said to Arya’s incredulous look in seeing her ladylike mother handling a rounded bar of metal that wouldn’t have been out of place in Mikken’s forge.
And if Aegon must be a tool, he’s not an unpleasant one, Arya decided. He’s almost as fun as Robb, and as comely as any of the knights from Sansa’s stories.
“Are you praying?” He asked her first thing, softly, and Arya shook her head in a fit of anger, eyes fixed on the tree.
Men pray when they’re about to die. “I am thinking.”
“Ah.”
“Will you give me your sword?” She asked all of a sudden, and she felt him jump some behind her, surprise. It did not last long.
“Will you give me your name?” The prince countered swiftly, and Arya did not know whether to laugh or snort.
“No,” she answered before thinking, before she could remember what was at stake.
“My brothers call me Arry,” she offered, and heard Aegon chuckle as he sat closer next to her.
“Arry.” He tried. “Do they?”
They didn’t, but he had no way to know it, and it was close enough to Arya that he had no excuse to complain.
“Yes,” she said abruptly. “Will you give me your sword?”
“I was going to offer you something else, you know,” he said, and Arya turned to look at him. He had a cloak on, with a hood deep enough to hide his head of silvery hair, to mask his features completely.
“What?” She found herself asking, suspicious. She could not see his face, and yet she imagined he was smiling.
He handed her something in response, a small ball of… wool?
“It is… thread?” She could not quite keep the disappointment from her voice. It looked like something Septa Mordane would have given her, not a knight’s gift at all.
“A very long thread,” he answered, and she wasn’t imagining the laugh this time. “Tie one end to the door when you enter the Labyrinth, and you will find your way out.”
If, remains unsaid in the air between them, and she decided to break the uneasiness in some other way instead. “Labyrinth?”
“It is how the king calls his maze,” Aegon explains her. “For it only has one way out.”
Oh.
“Well,” Arya cleared her throat. “Thank you. It is a clever idea.”
“You sounds as though you weren’t expecting it,” and was it Arya’s imagination or his voice was deeper now, his teasing more purposeful than Robb’s had ever been?
“I wasn’t,” she said, her words coming out more quickly than she meant them to. “You do not seem clever enough to…”
He stopped her with his lips on hers and Arya wondered, briefly, is this how living in the songs feels like?
She has only kissed one boy before, a young stable boy with blue eyes at Torren’s Square one year before, and the boy had refused to go near her again once he’d known who she was. Aegon was older and more handsome and, she decided after a while, definitely better. There were no mysterious trails of spittle joining their mouths, Arya noticed when he moved away, and this time had truly felt as good as Jeyne Poole kept saying it should.
“Do you do this often?” She asked him, some sort of twisted echo of her brief exchange with Jaime Lannister. “Comfort young girl who’ll die in the morning?”
He winced and moved as quickly as he would have had she slapped him, and he was almost three feet away when she started chuckling.
“Sorry,” Arya told him, breathless. “Truly, I’m sorry.”
Aegon made a strange face that made her laugh even more, before finally joining in.
“You are heartless,” he told her, and the leaves on the ground crackled as he shifted closer once again.
“I need to go back,” Arya shook her head, feeling somewhat disappointed. Back to her too-thin bed, and the cries of thirteen other souls.
“You needn’t. No one will care, as long as you are at your place on the morrow,” Aegon said. “And no one ever comes here, never.”
The sky was full of stars now, and the light of the moon filtered through the foliage of the trees. It is almost as beautiful as Winterfell.
But she did not say it out loud. “Do you promise?” She asked instead, and he nodded, his breath warm on her cheek.
“I swear.”
It rained on the morning Arya Stark entered the Labyrinth, and yet she did not mind. It won’t matter, inside.
There were no ceremonies, not even a drunken farce like the feast had been, for the king did not care to attend and none of the members of the court liked to be reminded of the madness they had allowed to save their lives. There was nothing but fourteen boys and girls in snow-white vests being shoved one by one behind a black iron door that the guards slammed shut with a wooden bar as soon as they could.
Arya, who had traded her red-stained dress for Aegon’s sword and a clew of wool, did her best to stay behind the group to avoid being seen tying the thread to the door, afraid that someone would cut it or steal it from her. She was somewhat surprised, however, when the others split within minutes of crossing the door.
“They say right is the straight way to the centre,” a tall boy from the Iron Islands explained to her. His nose must have been broken at least two times, but he had a fearsome smile. “I will die with honor, and be with the Drowned God soon.”
The Dornish girl snorted at that but joined him all the same, and so did some of the others. The Ironborn girl and the boy from Lannisport, Willys Stone from the Vale and the fair-haired Riverland boy, and a couple of others Arya did not know. They took right, the others all went left, and Arya remained alone.
She tied the knot quickly enough and went right as well, taking Aegon’s sword out of her vest and holding it with a trembling hand. I need to find the dragon and wait until he sleeps, Arya reminded herself.
Arya walked for what seemed like hours and hours, until her feet hurt and her stomach started to grumble in hunger. I’ll find the centre before stopping, she had decided at the beginning. Then sleep and face the dragon first thing tomorrow. But still she did not know whether she was truly going in the right direction or merely moving in circles. And how will I know when it’s tomorrow? There was no light in the Labyrinth, nothing but a few beams passing through in the spots where the roof had started to crack, but elsewise it was as dark as a night with no moon.
I’ll make it as far as I can before sleeping, Arya told herself when she felt her head starting to spin, and that was when she heard the screams.
She let out a gasp at first, before pressing her free hand against her mouth as hard as she could. Screams, and… breaths? Furious breaths, it seemed to her, and Arya was hit with the horrible certainty that, somewhere, her companions were being consumed by fire.
Arya ran then, turning on her heels and dashing away as fast as she could, forgetful of plans and directions, quicker and quicker, trying to escape the sound of screams and snapping teeth, the heat in the air and the acrid smell of burnt flesh.
She ran and ran until she could no more and let herself fall to the hard ground, a sharp pain in her side and her lungs bursting in her chest; and she brought her hands to her face to find it wet. She had lost her thread somewhere, Arya noticed then, her way to salvation, and yet she found she did not really care. I will never even have need of the thread, she thought bitterly, desperate screams still resounding. She thought of Winterfell and Bran and her father at the Godswood, and of Aegon who’d shown her that no all Targaryens were mad. He’ll stop this when he’s king, she told herself, and then she slept.
When Arya woke up on her second morning in the Labyrinth, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t nervous either; she was feeling nothing at all. Much like she had felt in discovering she had lost the thread before falling asleep, she was oddly detached, as though it was all happening to someone else. It does not matter anymore.
She walked swiftly, not faster than she had the day before but without purpose, no longer caring when she reached a junction. She did not hear any more screams, the only noise that of her own steps and, occasionally, of her rumbling stomach. She did not met anyone of her companions, and did not cry.
It seemed like only a moment had passed when she finally reached the centre.
Arya felt it more than seeing it, for it was as dark in the Pit than it was in the surrounding maze, the weight of the roof heavy on her head. It was more spacious, however, she knew it, the air not quite as stale as it was in the corridors; and it all stank like some animal’s den.
A dragon’s.
She clutched her weapon and waited, eyes closed and lips shut; waited and waited until she felt something, a whizz behind her and then a clutch and she felt a sting of sharp regret, in the curious way queer thoughts always find their ways into serious situation, Oh how I wish I could see him.
Arya could not, however, and she was lucky enough that neither could the dragon. There was a blow of air on her left, so hot it almost hurt, and she realized the dragon must have spat fire at her, and missed. How do you slay a beast you cannot see? She wondered, and the dragon started to rumble. A beast with claws and scales, and fire-spitting as well.
She couldn’t, Arya realized with sudden clarity, but still, she could try.
You wait in your spot like a chicken to be roasted, or you charge blindly with all you’ve got.
Arya ran towards the dragon, her sword arm high above her head, swinging furiously. She screamed, or maybe she didn’t, and yet it didn’t matter. She slashed, and hit something, feeling the blade bounce back on the hard scales. Is it a leg? A piece of the trunk? Again and again she hit, feeling the beast’s screech and his body move around her, thinking of Winterfell and Mother’s stories of the Warrior’s paradise for those knights who die with a sword in their hands.
But I’m not a knight, she found herself thinking, and then something hit her legs and she hit the ground in a sharp fall. It was so dark around her. Where’s my sword?
Arya Stark was no knight and she had no longer a sword either, and it was all so fun, in some twisted way. She would have laughed, but there was nothing let in her lungs, the air all around her as hot as the fire in Mikken’s forge. She closed her eyes to protect them from the heat, and she clawed and she ran in the dark, trying to escape the shrieks, the fire, rushing and sprinting until she fell again and could not get up, blood in her mouth and her heart throbbing in her chest. This is how I die, Arya thought, and she opened her eyes.
It was no longer dark.
The ground where she had fallen was brown with dirt and dust, and Arya Stark could see that because there was some light filtering through the cracked roof above her. It is day outside, she thought, absentmindedly, and somehow it felt odd.
The dragon rumbled again behind her and Arya turned with a jump, eyes wide.
He was as white as the Mad King’s long beard, silvery like Aegon’s hair, his scales the colour of the sky on a winter’s day, sun shining from behind the clouds. It was a beautiful colour, Arya decided, and yet it was the only beautiful thing about the dragon, stunted and twisted creature that it was. She could see the roof now, how close it was to the ground, how small the space really was. What will happen when he’s too big?
She stared at the dragons for what felt like minutes, stared by the beast in return. He had eyes as deep and violet as any Targaryen’s, a shade that was as close to blue as the purple in Aegon’s eyes was to red, and Arya found herself staring at them the longest. It was only when her neck started to ache that she realized she was still down on the ground.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” She wondered aloud, and the dragon said nothing. Of course he wouldn’t, stupid. He’s an animal.
Arya got back on her feet slowly, the dragon still before her. He seemed to have titled his… face? some, the way Maester Luwin’s ravens would, sometimes.
“What?” She told the dragon, feeling more foolish by the moment.
He stayed silent and she turned her head to look for her sword, scanning the ground looking for the place she’d fallen the first time, turning around to search better. It must be somewhere in the dark part of the room, Arya decided, reluctant to leave the cone of light.
“It doesn’t seem as I will need it again,” she said in a snort, turning back to the beast, noticing his gaze still on her. “Why’s that you stopped trying to kill me?”
She moved some, a step or two on the right, and the dragon’s eyes followed. “What is it with you?”
The dragon took a step all of a sudden, and Arya winced in surprise. He’s coming towards me, she thought, taking notice of the way he walked, how he moved and halted and slammed his wings.
“Does it hurt?” She asked, truly speaking to the dragon for the first time, grey eyes staring into huge, violet ones. One of his legs seemed shorter than the others, somewhat. “Can I do something?”
The dragon tilted his head once again, letting out a slow rumble. Arya decided to take it as, yes.
“I will help you,” she promised.
The Targaryens came from Old Valyria and took Westeros with fire and blood, and dragons. They ruled with steel and fear at first, and splendour and strength later; and those lasted longer, as the dragons died and the realm’s awe at their dragonlords faltered.
Yet they ruled, in Winters and Summers, the good and the bad, for nigh on three centuries when the realm rebelled and the king declared a blood price in retaliation, and then it was fire and blood, fear and dragons holding the realm together once again.
That was it and nothing changed, until the day Arya Stark went South.
They did not know it was her at first, no one knew, not even the Dragonprince whose heart she’d stolen with a jape and a frown. It was only later that the truth came to light; but in those first few days there were hundreds upon hundreds of tale, each one different, and every man had his own.
Some said it had the beast himself, tired of his prison, destroying the roof of the Pit in a fit of anger; some said he was never truly trapped at all, biding his time, and he had simply left one day. There was who said it had been Lady Lyanna’s ghost come to free the spirit of her beloved from the beastly prison he was caged in, and the singers wrote songs after songs on their forbidden love.
Some others said it had been no ghost at all, but Lady Lyanna herself for she was never dead, merely hiding, and those were mocked most of all. And yet Lady Lyanna’s body has never been found, they answered, And what of the dragon, then? Where did it go, if not with his lady? They said he’d crossed the Narrow Sea, flying to Asshai in search of a Priest who’d turn him into a man again.
They said all this and more, tale after tale and each one different from the other, and yet no one ever knew the truth.
No one, but Arya Stark.