Prince Aegon Targaryen
Father, having flown to Tarth and burned the pirates, returned utterly shattered and did not even visit his sons, cloistering himself in the royal apartments with his parents and his brother's widow, Princess Jocelyn. The sorrowful tidings, which served only to confirm the details of his dream, Aegon learned from Daemon—the Grand Maester was occupied in the Small Council, and his underlings knew no more than their ravens. By evening, Father had still not appeared, so Viserys ordered supper served directly in Aegon's bedchamber.
"You ought not sit alone," he told his surprised brother, whilst servants hauled in another table and set it opposite the bed. "All are too occupied at present to make remarks regarding properties and rules."
"And even if they did, what of it?" Daemon chimed in.
Aegon smiled gratefully. In the few days that Father had been absent, he had strengthened enough that Elysar, with a heavy heart, had permitted him to sit up in bed and eat without aid, swallowing the caustic comment that evidently hung on his tongue. After his painful oblivion, Aegon constantly desired to eat, and by the Maesters' order, the Prince was served simple but hearty fare. Now, however, he had no appetite whatsoever, and Aegon aimlessly chased separate fibers of a ruthlessly mangled chicken breast around his plate in the gravy. His brothers had no appetite either.
"Will you speak of... my dream?" Aegon broke the tense silence.
"It matters not," Viserys pronounced phlegmatically and took an unseemly sip of wine. Had Grandmother been at the table, she would have awarded him a reproving glance, but Grandmother was weeping in her chambers with Lady Jocelyn, and Father and Grandfather were attempting to console them. "Even if we do not deem your dream a coincidence, we could have done nothing in time. Tarth is not Dragonstone, nor Driftmark; neither Vhagar nor Vermithor could have flown there as swiftly as was required. The Stranger walks beside us all and asks no counsel on whom to take and whom to spare. Decide for yourself."
"Father will be aggrieved," for some reason Aegon was certain of this. He and Uncle Aemon had been very close, and if he were told that Aegon knew of the looming danger but had no means to avert it (and did such a means even exist?), Baelon would certainly be aggrieved. "We must not."
"Then we heard nothing," Daemon nodded.
"You dreamt a nightmare," Viserys supported him. "It simply became reality."
"I was certain, for some reason, that you would come to this conclusion."
Deep in conversation, the brothers did not notice their father's appearance. Prince Baelon leaned wearily against the doorframe. He still wore the black traveling doublet he always donned for flights on Vhagar. Evidently, he had not had time—or perhaps the will—to change after his return and had only now returned to his family's chambers. If he had heard his sons' talk, he gave no sign.
Entering the room at last, he snatched Viserys's unfinished goblet from the table, drained it in a gulp, and sank onto the edge of Aegon's bed with a doomed sigh.
"How is Grandmother?" Daemon inquired cautiously.
"Terrible."
"When is... the funeral?" Viserys managed to force his voice to sound almost steady, even businesslike.
"Tomorrow. You need not attend, Aegon. I shall speak with Elysar; he will remain with you, and we shall return after."
"I should like to," the Prince blurted out, unexpectedly to himself. "I should like to be present... At the ceremony. I should like to be with you."
Father looked at him with surprise and no small measure of doubt. In his mind, Aegon was already sorting through arguments, realizing that even if he managed to convince him, Elysar would not let an invalid out of the room.
"The Grand Maester will drown the whole court in his venom should anything befall you. But if you wish it—so be it. We must demonstrate the unity of the family. I shall order the servants to prepare a litter."
Aegon suppressed an inappropriate desire to smile. There was absolutely nothing to rejoice at; a worse occasion for his first outing from the bedroom after his illness could scarce be imagined.
Supper ended there. The brothers and father bid one another a brief farewell and dispersed to their rooms; servants carried out the extra furniture. Soon the Maester visited the Prince to prepare his medicine. Tossing back a thimbleful of something tasteless, Aegon tried to sleep, but his thoughts constantly returned to the strange dream.
Gazing at the canopy of the bed, gleaming white in the darkness, he tried to correlate what he had dreamt with what had come to pass. What was the cause, and what the consequence? He had dreamt a dream in which Uncle Aemon died, and then he had perished. Did the Prince of Dragonstone perish because his nephew dreamt a dream? Or did the nephew see the dream because the Prince had perished? Or did the dream come simultaneously with his uncle's demise?
Entangled in probabilities and primal causes, Aegon managed to doze off, but moving awkwardly in his sleep, he disturbed his leg, and it vengefully awarded him a flash of pain. If the dream was a warning, it was untimely and belated. Moreover, even were the boy hale, he could not have influenced the events of the war. The adults would scarce have believed him, and he himself had not even a dragon to fly to his uncle's aid alone. Remembering the dragon, Aegon turned and sought the silhouette of his egg in the near-pitch-black room. It had long since turned to stone, and even the Prince himself had resigned himself that no dragon would hatch from it, no matter how long he held it in the roaring flames of a hotly stoked hearth. If he had a dragon... Aegon was not heavy; any hatchling could have borne him away.
Father, however, time and again refused his youngest son's plea to go to Dragonstone and choose a new egg or a dragon. The Maesters supported him wholly in this: the little Prince is too weak to withstand the dragon's heat, the little Prince is constantly ill, the little Prince lacks the strength to tame a dragon.
To accept the refusal and wait for his majority, as advised by his brothers (to whom the King had already promised dragons), was impossible. To forgive his father, as Septon Barth advised, was impossible too. A Targaryen without a dragon is no Targaryen. When Father or Grandfather, or anyone else, tried to remind him that not every member of the family had dragons, Aegon would answer resentfully:
"And where are they now?"
Uncle Vaegon serves in the Citadel, Aunt Maegelle in the Starry Sept, Aunt Saera is lost, Aunt Daella and Aunt Viserra are dead. Not entirely inspiring examples.
Thus, in sad reflections, regrets, and fruitless attempts to convince himself that his leg hurt a little less, Aegon passed the rest of the night. After dawn, Elysar appeared and, in his customary caustic and disrespectful tone, railed against the Prince's latest "whim" and "folly."
"Father gave me leave, Maester," Aegon managed to interrupt the flow of sarcasm. "If you do not carry me in a litter, I shall crawl there."
For a brief moment, it seemed the old man had been struck by apoplexy—so violently did his face twist. However, mastering his surprise at the unexpected rebuff, the Grand Maester raised his hands to the heavens, absolved himself of all responsibility, and began to prepare the Prince for the outing. The leg was thoroughly inspected, wiped with a sponge, wound in bandages, and laid in the splint; the Prince was changed into a black shirt with a sleeveless black doublet. Nearer to midday, servants brought the litter, constructed overnight judging by the smell of freshly planed wood. Four Maesters, under the vigilant eye of Elysar, carefully transferred Aegon into it, immediately surrounding him with pillows and hiding his legs from prying eyes with a rug of black wool. Then his brothers entered for him, also clad in black.
"Ready?" was all Viserys asked. Aegon nodded in reply. Any conversation, any words began to seem superfluous and even blasphemous to him. Since the raven had brought the tidings of his uncle's death, of all the family he had seen only his brothers and father, and for some reason, he was glad that today no one would expect words and speeches from him.
Four burly servants lifted the litter (the Seven bear witness—two would have sufficed, but Aegon was a Prince and had to observe proprieties) and bore him after his brothers through the corridors of the Red Keep. At the drawbridge separating Maegor's Holdfast from the rest of the castle, they met the Royal Family.
Jaehaerys, First of His Name, was grey of face and nodded grimly at the appearance of his grandsons—Viserys and Daemon bowed ceremoniously, and for a moment Aegon was lost, knowing not how he ought to greet the King whilst sitting in a litter. In the end, he bowed his head as low as possible, pressing his right hand to his heart; waiting a few moments and straightening up, he noticed his grandfather give a barely perceptible nod to him alone—so, it was correct. Queen Alysanne was clad in a black gown from the crown of her head to her wrists; her face, doubtless red from shed tears, was hidden by a thick lace veil, and she was supported on either arm by her husband and her eldest surviving son. Behind them stood a quietly sobbing Princess Jocelyn, his pregnant cousin Rhaenys—who, unlike her mother and grandmother, did not hide behind a veil—and her husband, Lord Corlys Velaryon. Baelon's sons took their place immediately behind them, and beside them settled the quiet and ever-silent Aunt Gael, who was not much older than Viserys. Scarce had they taken their places when the mournful procession appeared.
On a litter, at once similar and dissimilar to Aegon's own, the Silent Sisters bore the body of Uncle Aemon, shrouded in a winding sheet. Aegon felt he was criminally glad that the deceased's face was hidden—to look upon his uncle after seeing him for the last time through the eyes of Caraxes would have been ghastly. The Sisters, halting not, passed the family and bore the body into the outer yard; following them, Septon Barth, having removed his Hand's chain to perform the funeral service, stepped onto the bridge, followed by the Targaryens.
The silent procession proceeded through the outer yard to the Long Stair, upon which Aegon tried to discern traces of his fall and came to the comfortless conclusion that the dent had appeared more upon him than upon the steps. Through the Middle Bailey, passing the Royal Sept and the Tower of the Hand, the procession emerged into the Outer Yard, where, pressed against the very wall, sat Vermithor, called the Bronze Fury. In the center, where squires and knights usually trained, a great funeral pyre had been laid. The Silent Sisters placed the litter with the body before it and retreated, allowing the family to bid farewell to the departed.
From Aegon's vantage, it all turned out simply terrible. To spy upon the grief of his grandmother and Lady Jocelyn was awkward, so Aegon averted his gaze, and then the realization scalded him like boiling water. The entire royal court was looking not at the King and Queen, not at their poor son, but at him. The litter was perfectly visible from the castle walls, and from the crowd dispersed about the yard, and every lord and every lady, every squire and every serving wench was looking at the youngest of the princes sitting within. Already known for his weakness and sickliness, Aegon, by his injury, had only confirmed his status as a perpetual client of the Maesters. He felt their curious gazes studying, pawing his face—from which the traces of his meeting with the steps had almost faded—like cold, sticky hands. Like snakes, they tried to penetrate beneath the cover of the black rug hiding the splint, to peek, to see, to examine, to form their own conclusion about the wretched boy who would now never sit in a saddle for any price. One need not be a prophet to understand that after the funeral, the main subject of gossip would not be the widow and the wretched mother of the deceased, but his broken nephew who had the folly to appear in public.
Aegon felt the alien glances upon him the whole time the Targaryens took turns bidding farewell to the deceased; while Septon Barth read the prayers over Prince Aemon, asking the Seven for mercy for the departed and forgiveness of his sins. Some did not look away even when Vermithor, obeying the royal "Dracarys," lit the funeral pyre. He wanted terribly to flee. Naturally, Grandfather would have allowed him to leave, but that would have been a display of weakness even greater than the litter. One must not give the court more cause for gossip than it already has.
Aegon remembered the return to Maegor's Holdfast poorly; all his strength went into maintaining a sufficiently mournful expression, not breaking down, and not ordering the lords to turn away and the servants to walk faster. Only in his own bedchamber did he manage to regain some semblance of self-control, but the feeling of shame from his infirmity displayed to the whole court (and worst of all—displayed by his own will!) stuck to him fast, became a second shadow, and rubbed into his skin.
In the Red Keep there are no secrets, for at night the rats tell them to the sleepers. On the night after his uncle's funeral, Aegon dreamt that grey insolent creatures, grown fat in the royal larders, were whispering to the courtiers of the youngest prince's weakness.
. . . . .
If anyone suddenly wished to ask Prince Aegon what time of day he deemed the worst, he would have answered without hesitation—the morning, and the earlier the better.
While it was still dark, at the Hour of the Owl, the Prince was woken by pain in his crippled leg; by the Hour of the Wolf, it intensified so that Aegon wanted to howl, and by dawn—to cut off the leg so it would not torment him. When he had the folly to confess this to Elysar, the man gave his charge a strange look and ordered all sharp objects removed from the room. After a very modest breakfast, consisting more of strengthening draughts than real food, Aegon managed to find oblivion in a light sleep until somewhere around mid-morning, when his brothers and, briefly, his father visited him. After them, Elysar, as it seemed to him, unobtrusively tried to distract the Prince from the pain with conversations in which poorly masked lessons could be divined.
In the second week, Aegon begged mercy of his father, promising to go mad or hobble to the Long Stair and fall from it again if all his coming days were filled only with the company of Elysar. Father laughed, ruffled his son's silver locks, but after the midday meal, a black-haired minstrel with a lute in his hands appeared on the threshold of his room.
"My Prince," he pronounced cautiously. "Grand Maester."
"What do you want, young man?" Elysar inquired grumpily, highly displeased by the invasion of his territory.
"My name is Rolland, Grand Maester," answered the 'young man,' who looked even older than Father. "I am a minstrel; my Lord Prince Baelon sent me. He said that, mayhaps, my Lord Prince Aegon would wish to learn music..."
"He wishes it," the Prince nodded actively, thinking how precisely Father had managed to guess his desires. On the other hand, what else could he do if knowledge had become loathsome, and he could not yet leave the room? Elysar, expressing displeasure with his whole demeanor, rose and, muttering under his nose something about youth understanding nothing, withdrew with an order not to overexert.
"Where are you from, Minstrel Rolland?" Aegon asked, scarce had the Maester's grey robe disappeared behind the door.
"I was born in Felwood, my Prince," he answered modestly. "By the mercies of the Seven, I found myself in the retinue of Princess Jocelyn when she wed the late Prince Aemon, and now I serve your Lord Father and you, my Prince."
"Sit where it suits you, Rolland of Felwood," Aegon invited him. "Where shall we begin?"
Rolland looked about the room and chose one of the chairs halfway between the bed and the door. Perching on the very edge, he settled the lute on his knees, making the strings chime. For one who had spent so many years at court, he was remarkably modest, Aegon thought.
"Today I shall play you several melodies to show how the lute sounds. You have surely heard it, but to listen for amusement is not at all the same as listening to learn to play. If it does not please you, or the lute seems too difficult to you, I know also how to play the fiddle, the flute, the pipes, and a little on the harp, so I can teach you those as well."
Aegon laughed, perhaps for the first time since his uncle's funeral:
"The lute will suit me well enough, but you shall teach me all the rest as well," he said and patted the bed beside his leg. "I, as you see, am in no haste to go anywhere."
The minstrel smiled too and began to play something light and unobtrusive. From then on, Rolland of Felwood came every day at the same afternoon hour so that Prince Aegon might torment the lute. At first, from the sounds he extracted from the wretched instrument, one wanted to cut off one's ears—first and foremost one's own—but he truly had plenty of time. Elysar grumbled but dared not oppose Prince Baelon's will, and with each day Aegon played better and better.
'Tis a pity the same could not be said of his leg. Two months after the fall, the Maesters removed the splint, and Aegon was surprised at how thin the right leg looked compared to the left.
"Is it my fancy, or has it become... a little shorter?" asked Father, who was present.
"Aye, my Prince, it is natural," Elysar nodded. "The break was complex, and that which might have gone to growth went to the knitting of the bone. Prince Aegon's leg will continue to grow, but, I fear, a slight disproportion shall remain. However, it may be compensated by a high heel."
He carefully ran his fingers around the scar, and Aegon hissed through his teeth.
"Does it hurt, my Prince?" the Grand Maester inquired, but did not remove his hands.
"Nay. Just... Unaccustomed."
Elysar only nodded and continued the examination. Aegon remembered that day well, for then he was allowed to walk for the first time. Supported on one side by his father, and on the other by Elysar, Aegon tried to take a couple of steps but cried out at once from a piercing pain. Father scooped him up in his arms and sat him back on the bed.
"Aye, my Prince, it is painful," Elysar nodded. "But your injury is not so grave that you should spend the rest of your life lying and sitting. We must restore the mobility of the muscles. For this, you must labor; it will be painful, but you will be able to walk yourself, on your own two feet. We shall learn gradually."
Thus, to the old lessons with Maester Elysar and the new ones with Minstrel Rolland, one more was added—Aegon learned to walk anew. By the Grand Maester's instruction, they attended to this before taking up mathematics, history, geography, laws, and languages; therefore, the morning hours of dozing, in which Aegon rested from the predawn pain, had to be curtailed. Naturally, there were even fewer reasons to love the morning.