POV- Aemon Targaryen
The council chamber at Harrenhal had been a nursery in Kingspyre Tower once, or so Maester Cressen had told him, in the centuries before Black Harren's line burned with the rest of the castle. Aemon did not think any child had laughed inside it since. Dragonfire had blackened the walls into a smooth glassy scar that no amount of hung cloth could fully hide, and the narrow windows let in a grey afternoon light that made every face around the table look older than it was.
He had held only one council in this chamber before the Great Council, and no he was a little more convinced that Harrenhal did not want to be governed from, that Black Harren's ghost, if such a thing existed anywhere here, resented every crown that tried to rule from inside his burned home. Aemon did believe in ghosts, he had seen gods and horrors that lived beyond the wall, he knew ghosts weren't far-fetched from that.
Ghost lay across the threshold, white against black stone, head on his paws and eyes half-lidded, and Aemon let his own gaze rest on the direwolf a moment before the council began. Five days since the great council in the hall. Five days since a thousand witnesses had watched Jon Connington tear his own boy's claim apart with his bare hands, and Aemon still felt the fiery gaze of Daenerys in his chest like a stone he had swallowed and not yet found a way to pass.
Catelyn Stark had taken her vows before the Silent Sisters three days past, and Ned Stark and his son Robb, together with Lord Hoster and his son Edmure were already on ship sailing toward the Wall under guards, and still the weight of that morning had not eased even a little. A king was supposed to feel lighter, he had thought more than once since, once the sentences were passed and the guilty were led away. He had not yet managed to feel it, Ned and Robb were his kin and he had turned them away. Though Aunt Shiera reminded him later, only when they did it first.
He looked now instead at the men and women filling the chamber, and found some comfort in counting them, the future small council of his. Raw still, but he had time to choose later from amongst them.
Ser Barristan stood at his right shoulder, as he stood every now and then, his white cloak dulled by the room's grey light, his weathered face giving away nothing, Oathkeeper sheathed at her hip. Brienne stood by the door itself, and Aemon had noticed, more than once this week, how the lords' eyes kept finding her and sliding away again, uncertain whether courtesy demanded they pretend not to stare or had simply failed them outright.
Doran Martell sat at the table's near end, his gout-swollen leg propped on a low stool a servant had carried in for him, his face as unreadable as it had been at the first council and then the great council that Aemon had watched him through. Beside him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, Oberyn lounged rather than sat, one leg over another, his dark eyes moving over the room with the restless hunger. Beric Dondarrion stood rather than sat at all, his single eye fixed on nothing, or on everything at once, the eyepiece covered his ruined his eye. Though he looked much happy in expression after meeting his betrothed, Lady Allyria Dayne who had arrived with Dornish delegation.
Randyll Tarly had claimed the chair nearest Aemon's own, as he always did, his arms crossed, his face set in the permanent, weathered scowl. Mathis Rowan sat across from him, a patient man who let sharper men speak first and waited to see whether they were right before spending words of his own. Androw Ashford, younger than either of them by years, sat straight-backed and tight-lipped.
Lord Leyton Hightower had come himself. That fact alone had made half the chamber go quiet when he had first arrived, an old, eccentric man who had not left his tower in Oldtown for decades by every mouth Aemon had heard, walking still with grace, and his son Baelor a half step behind him, stern-faced, handsome and watchful.
Yohn Royce sat with his bronze armor catching what little light the windows gave, his jaw already set for an argument no one had started yet. Lord Gerold Grafton of Gulltown had the careful stillness of a lord who had bent the knee early and meant to prove, every day since, that the choice had been the right one. Beside him sat Adrian Celtigar, white-bearded and hawk-nosed, his mouth already pressed into the sour line. Desmond Mooton, still more soldier than lord in his own bearing, sat near the door. Tytos Blackwood, with his raven-feather cloak settled over one shoulder, watched the room with the patient eye. And Lord Darry, with his intelligent grey eyes, sat with his hands folded before him, a man whose house had bled for dragons more than any of the rest of them had even thought to.
Somewhere near the chamber's far corner, half in shadow, Shiera Seastar sat with her fingers buried in Ghost's fur where the direwolf had settled near her feet, saying nothing, but watching everything.
Jojen Reed sat at Aemon's other side, quiet as he always was before he was needed.
"We have much to discuss beside Aegon and Daenerys," Aemon said, when the last of the muster reports had trailed into silence that meant no one had anything left worth adding to it. "Lords of Crackclaw Point holds our banners amongst them. Few of the Reach Lord gather behind Mace command now after the Council. Dorne stands whole by my back." He let his eyes move to Doran, who inclined his head.
He let the matter rest there and turned back to the table at large. "That is the war men can see coming. I would speak now that threatens realm the most."
Yohn Royce's jaw tightened before he had finished the thought. "The dead men beyond the Wall."
"They are not men any longer, Lord Royce, whatever they were before." Aemon kept his voice even. "You saw what came out of that crate five days past. Every soul in this castle saw it, whether they wish to remember it now or not."
"We remember it, your grace." Randyll said flatly.
"Then you will understand why I have already begun preparing for it, Lord Tarly, rather than waiting for it to knock down the wall." Aemon let that sit a moment. "Steel kills them, if the steel is Valyrian, and there is not enough Valyrian steel left in this realm to arm even a single legion of the Unsullied. Fire kills them, fire born of dragon's neck or a magical touch of Red Priests, and both get tired afterwards, and a wight does not tire the way a living tires. There is a third thing that kills them. Dragonglass."
Seeing everyone confusion, Maester Cressen started who had arrived with Lord Velaryon but had stayed behind to manage the castle. "It's also called Obsidian my lords."
Tytos Blackwood's brow drew down. "Obsidian, your grace? Stone men once carved knives made from that, before the Andals brought steel across the narrow sea. What use is a brittle glass dagger against a thing that has immunity to live steel?"
"More use than steel that shatters on contact, my lord." Aemon met his eyes. "Obsidian as Maester said, has fire frozen in it, I don't know the magic and reason behind but I know its use."
Lord Darry cleared his throat, the sound small in so large a room. "Forgive an old man's plain question, your grace. But where would we find it and that too so much of this material to arm every man? A castle's armory worth of daggers does little good against an army large enough to cover miles, if half of what the black brothers whisper of it is true."
"Dragonstone holds more than you would think, my lord, though less than I would like." Aemon answered. "Enough, if the mining goes as Thoros reports it, to arm Freefolk, men of Night's watch and even then about a million men. Not enough, of what I wanted but the work continues."
Adrian Celtigar's sour mouth pulled sideways, not quite a smile. "Glass daggers against dead men walking. I have heard madder plans hold up in worse wars than this one, your grace, and lived to watch most of the sane ones fail instead. I'll not argue with a king over what kills a corpse that has no right to be breathing. I only ask that men of Claw Isle sees its share of the arming before the dead learn to cross the sea."
"Men of Claw Isle will see its share, my lord. You have my word on it, though I doubt they would be able to cross even New Gift." Aemon replied.
"Dragonstone sits on volcano and thus there lay a cavern of dragonglass in its caves," Aemon went on, before the silence could settle. "I sent word with Lord Velaryon to let his smiths start shaping what comes out of them into blades, arrowheads, spearpoints. I have also long since sent Thoros of Myr to see the work does not slow for want of urgency. He is overseeing the mining himself, and ready what stores he can for shipment to whatever army needs them first."
"A drunk red priest, overseeing a mining operation." Oberyn's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Westeros grows stranger by the week, your grace."
"Despite his habitual action, he is the man of gods and honor, Prince Oberyn." Aemon did not raise his voice to say it. "I would rather have a man who believed my word not even asking for proof against than one who has, however he takes his wine."
Randyll grunted something that might have been agreement. Leyton Hightower had said nothing at all since he sat, but Aemon caught the old man's eyes on him now, sharp and assessing beneath heavy lids.
It was Jojen who broke first, and not with words.
Aemon caught his body slacking before most of the room did, the stillness that came over the boy a breath before his spine simply stopped holding him, head tipping back, eyes rolling white beneath half-closed lids, his hands going slack on the table's edge as though every string holding him upright had been cut at once. Ghost's ears came up at the threshold, but the direwolf did not rise. He had seen this before too.
Lord Darry came half out of his chair with a small, startled sound. Lord Blackwood's hand went to his sword hilt out of pure instinct before he caught himself. Ser Baelor went pale as parchment. Brienne's hand twitched before she caught the motion and stilled it. Only Randyll, Ashford, Royce, and Ser Barristan and others did not so much as flinch, men who had watched this happen enough times now to know that whatever was happening to the crannogman, it was not a fit and it was certainly not death. Oberyn, for his part, watched with open fascination rather than fear, head tilted.
"He is well," Aemon said, into the tightening silence, though he did not take his own eyes off the boy. "Leave him be."
"What is happening to him?" Baelor Hightower's voice had gone low and careful.
"The gift of his line," Aemon said. "Greensight. He sees things no one could and carry message faster than ravens." He said nothing further.
The room held its breath, Jojen's chest gone still beneath his tunic, the color gone from his lips.
Then Jojen's back arched and he drew a breath that tore the quiet apart, sharp and ragged, his eyes snapping open, green again, wet and blinking against the grey light as though it burned him. He sat forward too fast, one hand braced flat against the table, and for a moment he only breathed, in and out.
"Tywin Lannister counseled Aegon and Daenerys moments ago," Jojen said, before anyone had thought to ask him a single question, his voice thinner than usual but steady enough. "They are on the road toward King's Landing." He looked at Aemon directly, and Aemon felt the whole room's attention swing toward him with it. "The Dothraki have landed at Rosby, your grace. Ten thousand riders, sworn to Queen Daenerys."
"That is no surprise," Randyll said. "We knew she would send for them eventually."
"It is not the Dothraki I mean to tell you of first, my lord." Jojen's gaze had not left Aemon's face. "Tywin means to send Lannister men and the Westerland levies against Crownlands and the Stormlands both, to bring our allies at Crackclaw Point and Lord Stannis to heel before they can finish gathering. And he has asked the Reach to turn its remaining strength inward. Against all of you." His eyes moved to Randyll, then to Rowan, Ashford, then, last and longest, to Leyton Hightower. "Against your houses, all four. He named you in that tent, Lord Hightower. He means to sack and burn what will not bend to Aegon."
The chamber went utterly still. Aemon watched it happen face by face. Mathis Rowan's jaw tightened, Androw Ashford's hands, so carefully still on the table a moment before, curled slowly into fists. Randyll Tarly did not show any expression beside his hard eyes. Doran Martell's face had settled into a stillness Aemon recognized from the ship off the Blackwater Bay, the look of a man already three moves further into the game than anyone else at the table, saying nothing until he had finished.
"Horn Hill has stood for centuries," Randyll said at last, flat and quiet. "I will not have it burned by my own liege lord's order because I chose the rightful king."
"Nor will I let that stand unanswered, Lord Tarly." Aemon kept his voice level. "Finish it, Jojen. What of Stannis, and Lord Velaryon."
"They have sailed from Maidenpool few days past your grace, as you know. What I did not know until now is that Tywin means Dragonstone and Storm's End both to fall before they can be reinforced. He urges Daenerys to meet burn them in the sea." Jojen's voice thinned further on the last of it. "And when word reaches Tywin that you have flown to answer that attack, he means to send the Dothraki here. To Harrenhal. While this hall still holds guests under its roof, and you are not here to stand for its protection."
Lord Darry made a sound that was almost a laugh, bitter and disbelieving. "Guest right means nothing to horse-riders from across the sea."
"Which is precisely why Tywin means to use them for it, my lord, and not men of Westeros." Ten thousand riders who owed no oath to bread and salt, loosed on a hall he himself had chosen to be a proof that this reign meant something better than the ones before it. He thought, with a bitterness he did not let reach his face, that Tywin Lannister had found the one weapon in this war that could turn Aemon's own honor into tragedy worse than Summerhall itself.
Oberyn's low whistle broke the silence that followed. "Wonderful. I dislike admitting it of the man, but it is wonderful."
"It is monstrous," Baelor Hightower said.
"It is both, ser. Most things Tywin Lannister do are." Oberyn's dark eyes had lost their earlier restlessness, now carried sadness in them.
Randyll leaned forward, both forearms flat on the table, and Aemon recognized the shift in him at once. "Then you cannot be in two places, your grace, and Tywin has built his whole plan on knowing it. Dragonstone and Storm's End cannot hold long against a coordinated fleet without you, and Harrenhal cannot survive ten thousand Dothraki without walls and men enough to answer them."
"Say what you mean to say, Lord Tarly."
"You take the dragon and fly for the coast the moment Tywin's ships are sighted. Burn whatever comes for Velaryon and Baratheon before it can land a single man, the way only you can. That threat ends in an afternoon if you are there for it." Randyll's eyes swept the table, looking at the present lords. "Harrenhal is another matter. We do not need your dragon here. We need walls held, and archers enough on them to turn Dothraki into hedgehog."
Aemon turned the plan over before he answered, he thought of Rhaenyra, dead a hundred years now, who had learned too late what happened to a claim once its dragons were scattered across too many fires at once. He thought, too, of Harrenhal's own black towers, cracked and slumped from the last time a Targaryen had tried to hold too much ground with too little patience. History did not repeat itself kindly toward kings who forgot its lessons.
"You would have me leave this castle undefended by its own king, while its guests wait for ten thousand riders mean to march upon them." Aemon said it plainly, not as a rebuke, only as the weight the plan actually carried.
"I would have you save two allies who cannot save themselves, your grace, because you are the only weapon in this war that can do it in a single afternoon rather than a siege." Randyll did not soften it. "And I would have this council trust that the men in this room are not so poorly armed, nor so poorly led, that we require a dragon's shadow over every wall we mean to hold. We will have archers mounted on every wall and rocks and boiling water and oil on the parapet. Jojen had given us time to gather your grace and I promise that I will give you the castle still standing when you return."
"We." Adrian Celtigar commented eyeing Randyll, "We, your grace."
Ser Barristan shifted at Aemon's shoulder, a small motion, but enough that Aemon felt it. "Forgive me, your grace, but no man swears the vows I swore, to stand at a king's back, and then sits easy while that king flies alone into a sea fight where no sword of Kingsguard can follow him."
"Then go with him, ser, if it eases you," Randyll said, not unkindly.
"There would be a dance of dragons high in the sky, Ser Barristan." His eyes turned to Ser Barristan as he said. "I doubt it would be comfortable for you or me to fight and command in that situation."
"Then let it be Harrenhal that Ser Barristan guard instead, your grace, and let me ride for the coast with you not on dragon but horse." Brienne's voice, from the door, drew every eye in the chamber that had not already found her there through the whole council. "I am the faster rider of the two of us, and I carry no old wounds to slow me. If His Grace means to fly ahead, someone should still reach the coast roads by horse, to carry word to whatever men Lords of Crackclaw Point already hold ground there."
A short, startled silence followed, and then, unexpectedly, Ser Barristan's mouth curved, the barest fraction, the closest thing to a smile Aemon had seen cross the old knight's face in five days. "She rode down three of the knights in the training yard past day, your grace, and did not draw a hard breath doing it. I taught her most of what she knows with a blade. That speed, I did not teach her. She found it on her own."
"High praise, ser, coming from you," Brienne said, and something almost like color touched her face before she controlled it and lest she let whole of the council see it.
Aemon looked between them, the old knight and the young one, and felt, for the first time since the council began, something that was quite warmth. "You will both stay at Harrenhal." He said it gently, but left no room in it for argument. "A horse, however fast, cannot outrace a dragon to the coast, Brienne, and I will not have my Kingsguard scattered across three kingdoms when the whole purpose of a Kingsguard is that they need not be. Harrenhal will need every sword it has when the Dothraki come. I would rather have both of yours here than chasing a fight I mean to end alone, and faster, before either of you could reach it regardless."
Brienne inclined her head and said nothing further, accepting the order. Ser Barristan said nothing further either.
Yohn Royce's bronze-armored shoulders had gone rigid through the whole of it, and now he spoke, blunt as a hammer. "I have held worse ground with less warning, your grace. I do not love the fact Tywin stands closer to Lords of Crownland, but I have yet to hear a better one offered."
"Nor I," Baelor Hightower said slowly. "Though I would ask, your grace, that word reach Horn Hill and Goldengrove and Ashford and Oldtown before the moment Lord Mace's men are confirmed to march. A man defends his home better when he is not surprised in it."
"You will have that word before Mace's ravens finish drying their ink," Aemon said, and looked to Jojen, who nodded once, pale still, but steady.
Aemon let the council run a while longer after that, numbers and positions and which gate would hold and which would need shoring before any rider reached it, and answered what needed answering, and let the rest of it move past him. When at last the chamber began to empty, lords filing out into a grey afternoon that had not brightened at all while they sat inside arguing, Aemon remained at the table a while longer, one hand resting flat against the old wood.
Jojen had not moved either, still gathering himself the way he always did after a sight took more from him than the last one had.
"You did not tell them everything," Aemon said, quiet enough that it would not carry to the door.
"No." Jojen's green eyes found his, steady despite the pallor still clinging to his face. "There are things I saw that would only have frightened them without helping them stand any straighter for the fright."
Aemon almost smiled at that, the closest he had come to it in five days. "You judge more wisely than men three times your age, Jojen Reed."
He rose, and went to find Meleys, where a person stood nearby just like Jojen has said. Hearing his steps the man turned and the man's hand went to his face as he stripped it of his old face and let a new one cover it. The man continued before he could begin, "Tell me King Aemon, how is it that you never die."
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