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The Black Prince by cxjenious

Harry Potter & Game of Thrones Xover Rated: M, English, Fantasy & Drama, Words: 138k+, Favs: 9k+, Follows: 10k+, Published: Mar 8, 2015 Updated: Jan 23, 2019

3,297Chapter 4: Hunting and Haunting

Disclaimer: I own neither ASOIAF/GOT nor Harry Potter. This is known.

(4)

The woods were dark, and dank, and dreary. Twelve days had come and gone since Harry's name day, since he learned he was to be fostered. He had been out here with the men for most of them, following old game trails deeper and deeper into the looming timbers. His father had yet to decide on where to foster him, but Harry felt it obvious. Ser Kevan yet remained in the city, and all his knights with him, but Ser Theodore had long since gone.

Renly had ridden out with the Reachmen when they left, but said that he would only travel as far as Tumbleton, and promised to return with a portrait of the Lady Margaery. A kind gesture, true, but useless all the same. Margaery could look no better than the back end of a flea-bitten pony, and if his father desired it, Harry would still be wed to her. But those talks had died down as well, left for later years, his mother told him. For now, there was only the fostering.

During those first four days after his name day, when he wasn't nose deep in a musty old tome, or sweating runnels in the training yard, or running about the keep with Myrcella, Harry had spent his time in the city, wandering the wharves and back alley wynds with the Nameless, to truly see the people he had honored on his nameday. He had watched the commons from afar for years now, listened to their conversations beneath the guise of cloak and tattered clothing, walked amongst them, laughed with them, but he had never truly known them. Not as he knew Tyrion, or Ser Aron, or even Meron. The Nameless, as queer and quirky a group as he knew, were slowly changing that.

But sometimes he took to the streets in the guise of the prince he was, in black and gold finery or plate of the same, as often ahorse as he was afoot. He would ride the streets and crowds of commoners would slowly gather in his wake, first a trickle and then a tide. Men and women grown would come to kneel at his feet, singing his praises. Mothers wept and brought their babes for him to kiss. Children followed barefoot at his heels, laughing and singing. They revered him, honored him with their every breath, as if he had accomplished something great beyond being born to a king. I could easily be one of you, he oft told himself. The son of a crofter, or a brewer, or a baker. A huntsman, or a hedge knight, or a cordwainer.

The morn before the hunt, when the dawn had only just come and the morning dew still glinted on the cobblestones, he found himself standing before the Great Sept of Baelor, the seven crystal towers aglitter like stars. An old crone asked him to pray with her, if it please him, so pray he did. He kneeled with her in the flowery gardens, amongst pinks and blues and reds and purples, the scents cloying for their richness. The towering statue of Baelor had stretched high above, and a hundred and more smallfolk were knelt behind him, murmuring near soundless prayers. They begged the Mother and the Father and the Warrior to bless him, the Crone to guide him, the Maiden to give him a strong, beautiful wife.

Harry had only ever prayed to the Stranger, the one god he knew as true. He had felt its embrace, as dark as the blackest night, had tasted the sweet nothingness of nonexistence, had fallen asleep in its arms a wizard and awoken a prince. When I meet you again, he had prayed, give me peace.

"There goes King Robert's boy," he would hear them say as he trod his horse down winding streets. "He'll be a great knight, that one, a true ser o' the people, just like in the songs." Everything he did was somehow grander for his being a prince, sacred even. Such regard, he would think. And so ill deserved. What great thing had he done that they loved him so? Was it only his blood, his station? Had they truly been so moved by his speech? Words were wind, he knew, but wind had never garnered such love. He made a vow then to truly earn their regard, to be a man worthy of it, terrible and great and just and true, or else he would feel false and fraudulent till his last breath, and perhaps even after.

The knights and squires of the west weren't the sort to cheer and weep and run about barefoot, though. On the second day of the hunt, the hunting party had made camp in a meadow that tumbled down a gentle muddy slope to stout rows of oaks and soldier pines. Harry was watching the servants set up the pavilions in the sludge when Ser Kevan's squire slid up beside him. Quenten Banefort was slim and slight and beetle-browed, with short black hair that brushed against his forehead, beady black eyes, and the beginnings of a beard bristling across his cleft chin. The Baneforts had been kings in the olden days, during the Age of Heroes, and had ruled the northern half of the west from their coastal seat. Now they were but a principal House sworn to Casterly Rock, powerful, prideful, and as Harry learned, prickly as thorns.

"I hear you have a talent for archery," Quenten said. Somewhere in the trees above a pair of blackcaps were warbling, and in the distance the Blackwater was a dim rumble.

"A talent," Harry agreed, then he shrugged. "But it is nothing great."

"Nothing great," echoed Quenten, disbelieving. "I hear you are not so bad with a sword either, for a young lad, but I've never seen you in the yard. I thought I might have witnessed your skill, by now."

Harry turned to face him at that, one eyebrow arched. He and Quenten were nearly the same height, for all that he was obviously older. "A young lad, am I? And how old are you, ser?"

Two others joined them then, squires both, though Harry wouldn't have known from the look of them. Herbert Plumm was big and broad shouldered, with a red face and a thick neck, much like his uncle Ser Dennis Plumm for whom he squired. Betram Estren was half a head shorter, and skinnier besides, with a stout jaw and a nose that looked to have been broken at least twice. "He's no ser," the one called Bertram said, grinning. "Just a bloody pain is all."

"More like a bane," Herbert said.

"Aye, a bane," said Bertram, "to every man he meets."

"Women too," said Herbert. Harry saw Quenten clench his fists and grind his teeth. He looked so much like Stannis in that moment that Harry couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him.

"And he'll be fifteen this year, our young Banefort lord," Bertram continued, throwing an arm around Quenten. "He's due to inherit a keep with lands and tithes -"

"And ships," said Herbert.

"- and ships, but it prickles him something fierce that Herb and I will have our spurs before him."

"Prickles him almost as fierce as that dirk he's got jammed up his arse," Herbert said.

"Buggered himself with a blade, he did," said Bertram.

"Careful then," Harry said, amused by their antics, "or might be he'll decide to take it out and bugger you instead."

"Beware, beware, the buggering Banefort!" sang Herbert.

Quenten threw off Bertrams's arm and said, "Go on, have your laughs. I'll pay them back with bruises. I'm a better blade than the both of you. I ride a horse better than the both of you. We'll see who's dirk is jammed where, alright. I'll ram a lance up in you too."

Bertram laughed. "Please, no my lord, not your lance!"

"Mercy!" begged Herbert. 'I've only ever been buggered the once!"

Then came Marvell Brax, Ser Lyle Crakehall's squire. He was the oldest and the biggest, and half Crakehall himself, with a strong jaw and arms thick with muscle. "Mind your words," he told them, his voice strangely soft considering the size of him. "You stand beside a prince, one who might one day be your lord. Save your jests and japes for your beloved wenches. Here comes one now." A pony trod past then, and Bertram and Herbert howled with laughter. Even Quenten cracked a smile.

There were more squires, some older, some younger, but they were the sons of lesser houses, if that, and they didn't venture far from their masters, nor presume to speak with Harry. They hung about at mealtimes, lingering at the outer edges of the fires, listening raptly to the grand tales his father and the men spun of war and battle and women.

He heard tale of the Ninepenny Kings, and of his father's war, and of Greyjoy's Rebellion. His father had spat into the fire when Ser Lyle – Strongboar, they called him - brought it up. "That was no rebellion," he said, half drunk with a wineskin clenched tight in his fist, face reddened by drink and flame alike. "It was a slaughtering! Never has there been a fool so great as Balon Greyjoy. Seven Islands against Seven Kingdoms? Did he think us cravens to cower away in our castles, pissing our pants in fear? Ha! Greyjoy's Rebellion... Greyjoy's Folly, more like."

Harry had tried to imagine what Balon Greyjoy had been thinking, to rebel against his father with only sailors and skirmishers to back him. He tried to imagine what Maelys and his penny kings hoped to gain by challenging the Seven Kingdoms, with all its wealth and power. Both had reached too far, too fast. Had their folly been born of pride, or merely madness? They tickled a sleeping dragon, Harry thought, and the dragon awoke.

Then the mists rolled in on the third day, and the general cheer of the men was smothered beneath it. The fog was dense and damp, hanging like drapes about the woods, clinging to drooping boughs, hugging rugged boles, the greens and browns and golds of the forest turned ashen. The hunting paths the royal party followed were overrun with weeds, half-buried roots, and scattered stones, and the going was slow. Each day dragged longer than the last. The sea was not far off; Harry could hear the waves as they whooshed against the flowstone caves and jagged clefts that dotted the rocky southern coast of Blackwater Bay. The sound waded and whispered through the silvery brume, and if he listened close, beneath the clod of hooves and the muttering of men, he could heard the gulls calling to each other out over the water, squawking, chirping, cawing.

They ranged ever deeper into the Kingswood, the days bleeding together, as the third day became a fourth became a fifth. The woods grew ever dimmer and danker, and the bolts of light that speared the green canopy dappled into dozens of gauzy, hair-thin shafts when they fell upon the mists. His father wanted a bear and refused to leave until he had one. Some of his lords had no such compunction, and as the fifth day became a sixth, a small number of them returned to the city, begging leave for some task or another. Joffrey, who'd stayed well clear of Harry for the entirety of the hunt, and his shield, Sandor, had been amongst them.

The king hadn't cared a whit. He still had Thoros, Ser Strongboar, and enough wine to last them a fortnight. Few others could match the king cup for cup, save for them. But then that sixth day had eased into a seventh, then an eighth, and Harry, tired of the woodland drear, took his fox pelt and his fowls and returned to the keep as well. Hunting had lost its luster with so many men stumbling half drunk in the woods, and game had been scarce.

Twelve days come and gone, he thought as he rode back to the city. What will the thirteenth bring? He rode hard, and his red mare, a gift from the Tyrells, was well lathered by the time he came upon the Blackwater River. The mist was even thicker near the water, a blanket of white and gray and silver, and the smallfolk that haunted the muddied hovels seemed as if ghouls beneath the brume, wailing for mercy, for coin, reaching for him as he passed, fingers brushing his boots. They daren't do more than that; the two guardsmen at his back wielded wicked iron cudgels, and while Harry was known to be kind, these men weren't. The ghouls soon returned to their crypts of thatching and timber, hands heavy with coppers.

That night, ensconced behind the castle walls, Harry dreamed of snowy white owls, freckled red-heads, and bearded, ruddy faced giants, and when dawn broke, he awoke to the leering face of the Mad King. Aerys' cheeks were sharp as daggers, his manic eyes sunken deep in his sagging, wrinkled face. Blood was splattered across his chest just like a sigil. He looked more skeleton than ghost, more ghoul than man, like those poor souls on the Blackwater.

"I know a secret, usurper spawn! You want to know it? You want to know how to wake dragons?"

Harry had never desired a wand more than he did in that moment. Would that he had one, he would banish Aerys as quick as a heartbeat. Or silence him, at the least.

The ghost floated up to the ceiling, cackled, and broke out into song. "Burn them, burn them, burn them all! Burn the walls! Burn the halls! Burn the Vault! Burn the Keep! Burn them, burn them, in their sleep!" His voice grew faint as he drifted away through the stone.

Harry scowled and muttered sleepily, "My uncle should have cut off his head."

"Better to cut out his tongue," said Maegor from the window. "A headless ghost might still yet speak." The ghost looked ever the warrior, tall and thick shouldered, with a square jaw, a square neck, and a square chest.

Harry couldn't help his groan. One Targaryen ghost was problem enough. Two would drive him mad before he could even break his fast. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" he said as he climbed out of bed, voice laden with sarcasm. A large pot sat in the hearth, hot coals warming the water inside. Meron's work, he realized, for no other could enter his chambers without awakening him. Save for the dead.

"Mind your tongue, boy," said Maegor.

"Or what? You'll have it out?" Harry scoffed. "Good luck with that, ghost." He set about his ablutions, careful to mind the steaming water.

"If I still yet drew breath," grumbled Maegor, "I'd make you beg for death."

"If," said Harry, and he scoffed again. "Is that all you have left, ghost? Ifs?"

Maegor growled like a wild animal, but said nothing. His pride and his cruelty had been tempered by death, but only just. Harry knew the stories as well as any. Maegor's cruelty had been total and absolute. Legendary, even. Aerys though, had only grown madder after his death. And I was enriched by it.

"Why are you here, Maegor?" He dried himself and looked about for something to wear.

"I want you to free me boy. Spare me from this... this torment. I tire of this half life, this damned existence. I want to pass on."

"You chose this. You turned your back on what lies beyond." He found a white tunic and woolen trousers hanging in the solar, and a pair of shining tan leather boots standing beneath. "I can no sooner free you of your torment than bring you back to life!" he called down the steps.

Maegor floated up to the solar after him. "Don't lie to me, boy. I know what you are. Free me."

"I cannot," said Harry, combing his hair with his fingers. "I haven't the right tools."

That gave the ancient ghost pause. "Tools? Are you lying to me? You've never needed such before."

"I've never needed to grant true death to a ghost either."

Maegor mulled over his words, then said, "And what sort of... tools do you need? A sacrifice?"

Harry shook his head. "A wand, Maegor. A wand."

"Make one," said Maegor, as if it were as easy as that.

"It's not so simple a thing," Harry explained as he donned the tunic. "I need the proper wood, a proper core... none of which I have been able to find. The wood must be capable of channeling magic, as need be the core."

"Weirwood, then. The Andals didn't cut them all down for nothing. And as for this core... something from a dragon. There are no other beasts of magic in this world. None known."

"Aye, something from a dragon." Harry had already considered these things, and a dozen others as well. He only needed time to test most of his considerations, but no amount of time would grant him a dragon. "In case you forgot," he said, "there are no more dragons."

"There are dragon eggs," Maegor allowed.

Harry paused, one leg still out of his trousers. "Where?"

The old king smiled, and it was a twisted, crooking thing, sharp and barbed and so very pleased. "Dragonstone, if they weren't stolen. There is a vault beneath the castle, hidden by blood magic, that holds a great many treasures. Among those treasures are two dragon eggs. From one of Vhagar's clutches. Surely even you know of the great Vhagar."

Harry finished dressing. "If it's hidden," he said, scowling," then how am I to find it?"

"Damn if I know, boy! Use your fucking magic!"

Harry shook his head, exasperated. "I'll consider it," he said. Even if there were dragon eggs beneath Dragonstone, he doubted they had survived all the Targaryens that had called the castle home over their centuries long reign. Still, he couldn't ignore the possibility. No matter what Maegor wanted, Harry needed a wand. Perhaps not in the now, but certainly in the future, far or near.

Maegor grunted and disappeared through the wall. Harry, dressed and washed, took to his daily routines. He studied under the Grandmaester, drilled with Ser Aron, took meals with his mother and sister and finally, when night fell, he sought the Nameless at the quay, between a ramshackle tavern and inn. The moon was a curved white claw against the black sky, the stars dim and distant. It was cool down on the wharves, the wind rolling swift across the waves, gusting between the stone taverns and timber storefronts.

He would call them his friends, but that wasn't quite true. Not yet. He liked them, and they amused him endlessly, but they were so far removed from court and lordly matters as to be different creatures entirely. They cared nothing for lands, for currying favor, for books and swords and finery. They weren't very successful thieves either, he had learned himself, unless they stole from cravens or crones, and even some of the crones he had seen looked tough enough to fend off Jerry's pointy stick.

"Been a while," Jerryd said when Harry came to the meeting spot. His nose was as long as ever, but his garb was clean, freshly bought with a bit of the coin he had gotten from Harry. "Thought you was done with us. Moved on to a less smelly bunch."

"I just might," Harry returned. "You smell more and more a pig with every passing day. Fat Lip, Mumbles, Aeryn." He gave a nod to each. Aeryn had rouged her lips again, Harry saw, and her hair seemed to glow beneath the moonlight. Her beauty seemed all the more unearthly for it, and if he gave her a smile along with the nod, none said aught of it.

"Where ya' been, Harry?" Fat Lip asked from around a chicken leg. He wiped his greasy fingers on his dirt-crusted tunic.

Aeryn smacked him across the head. "The Lord o' Light gave you more lips than wits, I swear. He went hunting with the king, or don't you remember?"

"If I remembered," grumbled Fat Lip, eyes already rheumy, "I wouldn'a asked, would I?" Aeryn smacked him again. "Stop it!" he squealed, stomping his feet.

Jerryd stepped between them. "Leave off him, Aeryn, you know he's a dimwit."

"Yeah! You know I'm a - hey!"

"Well, it's true, innit? You're the dull one and Mumbles is the clever one."

"Aye," Mumbles said with a nod, "and you're the craven one."

That led to more bickering. Aeryn backed away from the boys to stand at Harry's shoulder. She smelled richly of lavenders and lemons, and her fair-skin seemed all the paler for the moon. "Word is you'll be leaving us for the lions soon."

He glanced at her, eyes lingering on her face. "I might. How did you come across this word?"

She smirked. "Don't you know anything, your princeliness? Keeps have ears. Ears, eyes, and mouths."

Harry knew what she meant, but still he said, "And legs and arms too, eh? What queer sort of keep have you been living in?"

"The Keep o' the Rose Lantern," she said. "Anyway, twasn't the keep that told me you was leaving. It was Jayde."

Harry had never heard the name. "And how did this Jayde know?"

"Heard if from your father, she says. He sends for her, sometimes."

Harry hadn't forgotten what Aeryn was meant to be, but neither had he thought much of it. Nor had he given thought to the things lords and kings would say with a sweet pair of lips wrapped around their member. "What else did Jayde hear?"

"That you are a pain in the king's arse, and he hopes you give the old lion as much grief as you've given him." She seemed to take great delight in telling him that.

Harry chuckled. "Is that it? That's tame, for my father."

"There was more," she said. "Would you like to hear?" Her wicked smile made her look older than her thirteen years, and his stomach gave the tiniest flutter.

"Go on then," he returned, and go on she did. By the time the telling was done, Harry was equally upset, disgusted, and entranced, and he had a burning curiosity to see these supposed seven sighs. They sounded almost like magic.

He heard a particularly embarrassing story about his uncle Tyrion, bet thought it best forgotten in lieu of the acts described.

There was little else to do that night, save jest and jape. The waves were too strong out in the bay, and Jerryd had ripped his sail besides. The taverns were no more lively than usual, despite the twelve Tyroshi cogs swaying against the quay, and the matron of the Scraggly Squid refused Fat Lip a cup of ale, even after Jerryd offered her three stars. That was a great sum, Harry knew, for Jerryd was quite niggardly with his coin. He'd gotten the dragon broken down into stags and stars, and kept caches of them hidden throughout Flea Bottom, instead of on his person, to avoid having it stolen. Aeryn had called him a fool. The caches could be easily found, she said, flipping a silver stag in her hand. Her mother would've watched his coin for him, or even Chataya herself, for one gold dragon was nothing to them.

Eventually, he left the Nameless at the wharves, feet carrying him to the rocky beach at the base of Aegon's High Hill. The Red Keep loomed above, jutting out above the cliffs, knifing for the sky. There was a passage into the castle hidden amongst the cliffs, one that led right up to the dungeons beneath the castle. It took him half an hour to find the narrow steps up to the cave. The footing was treacherous, but he was as nimble as he was confident, and climbed them with little issue. The cave was small and damp, the shadows so black he could scarcely see a foot in front of him. Water dripped in loud wet plops. He opened his hand and thought, Fire, and roiling blue flame flared to life in his hand, gleaming off the wet stone. And on he went.

He was making his way into the bowels of the keep when Maegor appeared before him. He almost jumped, surprise giving way quickly to annoyance. "This is the second time today you've come to me, Maegor. Have I worn down that decrepit exterior of yours and warmed the black heart beneath?"

"You've had time enough to consider. I would have your answer. Will you free me?"

Like a bloody dog he is, gnawing at a bone long deprived of meat. "Lets say I find these supposed eggs from three centuries ago," Harry began, stepping through the ghost to continue on his way. "How would I hatch them?"

"Fire and blood," Maegor growled, following behind. "A life for a life, to wake the dragons. But not any wretch will do. Only magic begets magic, boy."

Harry stopped as he thought. Surely Maegor didn't mean - oh, but yes, of course he did. When the realization came upon him, he said, "Fire and blood, is it?" and spat. "There's to your fire and blood."

Maegor was bristling, almost quivering in his anger. "Somewhere in this world there exists a man who deserves to die by fire. You know it. Find them, birth your dragon, and free me!"

Blue light glinted off the walls, and the stone looked like ice. "My answer is no."

"Curse you, you little shit! I helped you! I showed you all the tunnels, every one of them! I gave you counsel -"

"And for that you have my most sincere thanks," and he smiled, all teeth and narrowed eyes, "but I won't condemn someone to death by fire for you. You were a vile man, Maegor. Viler than most. If I should construct a wand in some other fashion, I will help you, but only then."

Maegor scoffed. "Such power you have, and yet you shackle it, abiding the laws of man as if you were one of them! Usurper spawn you may be, dragon blood burns in your veins. You know it as well as I."

Harry said nothing, and eventually Maegor grew quiet. They ascended from the dank, whispering tunnel, coming up beneath the keep. More ghosts came and went, the burned, the broken, and the battered, trickling past with grumbles and mutters, sallow and silver haired. Harry followed the tortuous arched paths of long forgotten halls and corridors, the faint crash of wind and water against the cliffs echoing softly through the dead silence, walls painted a pale blue that shifted and shivered with his every step. The sight of the ghosts made him think of the mystery woman who haunted Sandor Clegane.

He had seen her thrice more since he had returned to the castle, but only when the the Clegane was near. She never uttered a sound, never took her eyes off him, doggedly hounding his steps wherever he went, her gaze as sharp and deadly as steel. Harry had asked Maegor about her days earlier, before the hunt, and he had said that the 'Martell bitch' and her screaming whelp kept to the the lower levels of the keep and stayed well clear of the living. There was only one Martell he knew of who could be the secretive ghost; Princess Elia Martell, wife to Prince Rhaegar and sister to Prince Doran.

He got it in his mind to find her now. He wanted to know the truth, the truth that none would speak of. He knew well the tales of every battle of the war, but no one ever mentioned the Sack of King's Landing. He knew little of Elia's story, of the horror and tragedy that had befallen her and her family, beyond that she and her children had been killed to secure his father's place on the throne. He knew neither the details of their deaths nor the identity of their murderers, but he assumed that Sandor Clegane had been involved. Why else would she haunt him so obsessively?

She was what Dorne hadn't forgotten, and since glimpsing her for the first time, Harry didn't think he would ever forget her either. She was small and thin, frail even, but so too was she hauntingly beautiful, with her thick dark hair and soft features.

My grandfather sacked the city, and Sandor is sworn to his banner. "Maegor, what do you know of Tywin Lannister?" Harry knew Tywin to be a stern and proud man, not given to flights of fancy and utterly scornful of ineptitude - at least, that's what he had gathered from those who had met him more than once.

"I know he needs to burn," Maegor growled. "And you as well, for refusing me after all I have done for you."

Harry shook his head in exasperation. "Begone, ghost. Go bother Rhaenyra, I'm sure she'd be delighted to see you." Rhaenyra had little respect for her ancestor; he had been killed by the Iron Throne itself, wrists slashed open by blades, and she had been swallowed by a dragon, and her brother's dragon at that. Amongst the ghosts and their macabre culture her gloriously brutal death gave her great status, and she never hesitated to remind Maegor of his pitiful end. Harry was fond of her for the sheer fact that she never bothered him, but he couldn't bare to look upon her, for she was horrible to behold, all charred, blistered flesh with gaping holes and melted bone here and there, her eyes naught but empty black craters. Maegor was a beautiful maiden in comparison, as pretty as Aeryn.

"Don't speak to me of that whore," Maegor grumbled. "She was no dragon, just a bitch playing at one. You are more dragon than she, however watered down your usurper blood is." He leaned closer to Harry. "Why the pretense, boy? Unchain yourself! Take what is yours! Be the dragon that you are."

Harry ignored him, his eyes riveted on the hall ahead. There was a torch at the very end of the hall at an intersection, the flame dim and dying, but for a moment he had seen something move in the flickering shadows. He walked towards the forked path and saw it again, a hazy silhouette floating around the curve, and he broke out into a run. Elia, he thought. "Wait!" he shouted, voice echoing through the halls. "Stop!"

Something drove him to this madness, something inherent in his soul, and he sprinted after a her, a ghost that by all rights might loathe the very sight of him. His footsteps echoed so loudly in the heavy silence of the cellars that he was certain he could be heard on all the floors above. But then there she was, facing the wall, so still that for half a heartbeat he thought her a statue. He announced himself with a tentative, "My lady?" but this wasn't Elia Martell - the ghost was much too short and small. This one is a child. The realization made him feel cold and hollow. "Rhaenys," he breathed, voice as soft as a sigh.

A great sorrow rose up in his chest. He hadn't realized how it would effect him, seeing a child ghost, a soul so broken and tortured that it had turned its back on a blissful eternity. He knew of death, knew its secrets and comforts, and to think that her soul would never pass on to the other side, would always be trapped amongst men, in the realm of the living...

It was distressing, and he found himself sniffling, his vision blurred with unshed tears. He almost laughed at the absurdity. I never cry. Death had been a release, a freedom that living men could only dream of, the last great adventure. Rhaenys would never know that freedom, would never know peace. Not unless he constructed a wand.

She was so very small, more a babe than a child, with black hair to match her mother's. She wore a man's tunic that was covered in blood. So much blood, he thought, bile rising to the back of his throat. There were dozens of cuts and tears in the tunic, some so close together they looked like one big gash. He knew what they were. Stab wounds. He counted half-a-hundred at the least, and disgust swelled in his gut. Stabbed fifty times? That was torture. Surely his father hadn't been privy to this?

"Rhaenys," he said again. He reached out, forgetting in his distress that ghosts were incorporeal. "I mean you no harm..."

The girl turned to face him, and the blue flames died in his palm. Her wide eyes were shadowed with a horrible misery, her chubby cheeks cut to ribbons. The skin hung from her face in fleshy tatters, like so many swaths of pink cloth. He could see her teeth through the gaping wounds.

His stomach turned, roiling in his gut. The taste of bile grew stronger, but he didn't vomit. He wouldn't vomit - he refused to show that weakness. His blood had done this. His grandfather. His father. Maybe he hadn't held the knife, but this girl had died so his father could sit on the throne. So his father could be king. And my mother a queen.

The disgust he felt morphed into something more, something black and twisted. It was a fury unlike any he had ever known, hot and burning and boiling, a rumbling pot of fire. He could hear his teeth grinding, feel his jaws tightening, but he was oddly removed from it all as if he had been separated from himself, detached from form and flesh, dreaming instead of living.

He wished he was dreaming.

"Best leave, boy," Maegor said. "This one's a screamer."

Harry paid Maegor no mind. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "Rhaenys, are you - " But before he could finish, the little dragon princess opened her mouth and screamed.

She screamed and screamed and screamed, without pause, an unceasing and unrelenting cacophony of terror and agony. It cut him to the core; he felt it as a sharp pain in his chest, like a knife to the heart, stabbing and twisting. Her tortured screams surrounded him, deafened him, suffocated him - the room was spinning, the torchlight was dimming and it was cold, so cold he could see his breath, so cold he was shivering, and he had to get away.

He clapped his hands over his ears, but it didn't help - the screams just got louder and louder and louder until he couldn't hear himself think, until it felt as if his head was about to explode, and his own yells joined hers, sharp shouts of disbelief that drowned beneath the waves of her anguished wails.

He turned and ran, ran as if the hounds of hell were at his back, ran as if his life depended on it, ran and ran and ran, trying in vain to escape the screams. He ran past startled maidservants working late into the night, past half-sleep guards standing post outside oaken doors, and still the screams followed him, grasping at his shoulders and snapping at his heels.

They followed him all the way to his chambers, and when he finally crashed, exhausted, they crept into his sleep and haunted his dreams.

Chapter 906 - 4