Maester Aemon, Aemon Targaryen.
The shock brought by the miracle of a centenarian regaining his youth was far more awe-inspiring and maddening than allowing a severed limb to regrow and return to its original state.
Clad in black robes, a chain of multicolored metal links hanging about his neck, and followed by a brown-black-haired apprentice whose eyes darted about, the son of King Maekar I—once Aemon Targaryen, now Maester Aemon of the Night's Watch—strode across the training yard of Castle Black.
People's gazes could not help but fall upon him.
Maester Aemon paid no heed to those looks and even, from time to time, nodded in acknowledgment to their owners.
He held a book in his arms. His silver hair was concealed beneath the hood of his cloak, and in the violet eyes revealed beneath it was nothing but gentleness, as if they could contain all things.
Cyril, the son of a prostitute from Mole's Town, followed closely behind him, his large eyes finding everything he saw novel and wondrous.
The bewildering array of heraldic banners, the various splendid suits of armor he had never seen before, and the people speaking in different accents with greatly differing appearances and skin tones all stirred his curiosity.
Compared with Castle Black three days ago—covered in snow and short of hands—today it was teeming with people, bustling and lively.
Even Mole's Town, half a league south of the Wall, was filled with folk from the south, yet those warm and damp cellars were far from enough to accommodate all these lords.
At night, bonfires burned bright as day. The merchants, troupes of performers, and camp followers who had come with the King's host provided entertainment for the army, and even granted Cyril joys beyond imagination.
Yet each day people left Castle Black. It was said they would reopen the nineteen long-abandoned castles built along this icy Wall.
Cyril scarcely dared imagine what it would look like if the entire Wall were once more fully manned from end to end.
Just as Cyril was giving free rein to his imagination, picturing the future of the Wall, Maester Aemon brought him beneath the King's Tower, where the King was lodged.
Maester Aemon lifted his head, the violet eyes beneath his hood turning toward the dragon and the dog before him.
"Good day, Robert—and you as well, JJ. I have brought you a piece of dried yak meat!"
The great golden dragon and the golden-furred hound brought by the King had taken the square before the main doors of the King's Tower as their temporary nest.
Carrying the books he had spent the entire night arranging, Maester Aemon greeted Robert and JJ—who likewise had made this place their lair—and drew a strip of dried meat from his sleeve, offering it over.
Perhaps he had grown accustomed to the life of an old man. He had not eaten the portion of dried meat set upon his tray the previous night, merely filling his belly with a little clam soup and bread.
The sound of Cyril swallowing came from behind him, and Maester Aemon handed the last strip to his apprentice as well.
Faced with Aemon's "bribe," JJ stretched out his large tongue and panted happily as he took it. His sharp teeth easily shredded the dried meat—hard enough to nick the edge of an axe—and swallowed it down.
Throughout the process, Robert merely opened one eye to glance at them, then snorted heavily through his nostrils to express his disdain, sparks spraying forth.
"I spent the night arranging some materials. I believe the King may have need of them."
After bribing the "gatekeepers," Maester Aemon finally lifted the book in his hand in indication and stated his purpose.
The dragon lay directly before the entrance to the King's Tower, its tail, even while coiled, blocking half of the iron-studded oak doors.
Yet before this silver-haired, violet-eyed Targaryen, Robert acted as though he had heard nothing, simply closing his eyes again.
Then, without warning, he suddenly lifted his tail and lashed it. With a single sweep he sent flying the foolish dog who, after eating his own strip of dried meat, had set his sights on the one in Cyril's hand and was drooling over it, flinging him into a snowbank that the soldiers of House Cerwyn had only that morning cleared and piled to one side.
Under that pressing gaze, Cyril had been hesitating over whether he ought to offer his strip as well, when his vision blurred; in the next instant, the sharp crack of the dragon's tail striking the air startled him.
Cyril straightened stiffly, staring blankly at the snowbank some seven or eight meters away, now smashed open with a hollow.
The next second, with a bark, a golden figure shot from the snow at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye and pounced toward the dragon.
Dragon and dog at once fell into a melee, sharp claws and fangs tearing and raking against fur and scales, sparks flying.
Fortunately, they had cleared the doorway.
Maester Aemon gave a wry smile and shook his head. Over the past few days, he had grown accustomed to this dragon and dog "doing battle" from time to time; the soldiers of the various houses who had come with the King to Castle Black were even more accustomed.
Thus, the moment the dragon and dog began fighting, they deftly withdrew to a safe distance and began placing wagers on who would emerge the victor today.
The dragon Robert versus the great hound JJ the King!
Place your bets!
Indeed, had one not seen it with his own eyes, none might believe that one day a dragon could tangle so fiercely with a dog.
No one knew where the King had found this golden hound, so gentle toward people that he seemed to think no one in the world was wicked.
JJ exceeded all their expectations. With a single swipe of his paw, even a dragon as large as a tower could be staggered.
So in private they called him JJ the King—meaning the king among dogs.
Stepping past the battlefield, Maester Aemon did not bother to watch the fight. He hastened into the King's Tower with his apprentice.
Entering the tower, Maester Aemon lifted back the hood from his head. Cyril hurriedly brushed the snow from his shoulders, and before long the two had reached the residence at the top of the tower.
The Kingsguard on duty the previous night was Theon. Seeing them approach, he quietly shifted his steps away from the window.
"Maester, is there some matter?"
Theon pretended he had not just been watching the commotion below and asked in a low voice.
"Today the King will lead the expedition beyond the Wall. Last night I found some materials for him. I believe these may offer him some assistance."
The silver-haired youth, so scholarly in bearing that at a glance he seemed only in his teens, spoke in the same gentle tone as ever, his face bearing a kindness at odds with his youthful appearance.
Looking at the miracle newly wrought by the King, Theon nodded and signaled for them to wait.
A few dozen seconds later, he passed through a receiving room and study and came to the King's chamber.
"Your Grace, Maester Aemon requests an audience."
Theon raised his hand to knock and called toward the King within.
Yet as he held his breath to hear the reply, a strange and distinctly rhythmic slapping sound, together with cries, reached his ears from behind the door.
"Aemon…?"
"Theon… let… him wait in the receiving room. I still… have matters to attend to."
From within the chamber, Kal's voice answered Theon outside, breath coming unevenly, as though something pressed in his throat.
Hearing the reply from within, Theon could not help but gape.
At Winterfell, he would from time to time visit the winter town beyond the walls, and the sound was not unfamiliar to him, for he too would occasionally go there and form certain attachments with the girls of the town.
What he could not understand was that the King had returned alone to his chamber the previous night. After the King had finished arranging matters concerning the nineteen castles along the Wall, and after completing the handover with Dacey Mormont, it had been Theon himself who escorted the King back.
Yet it sounded as though there was more than one person in the chamber.
Though he could not make sense of it, Theon still gave his assent, turned back, and led Maester Aemon first into the receiving room to wait.
And so more than half an hour passed. As they sat drinking tea and waiting in silence, footsteps at last sounded from within the inner chamber.
"My apologies for keeping you waiting…"
Kal entered the receiving room fastening the buttons at his chest, wearing only a single light garment.
Yet in response to his greeting, every gaze—including Cyril's—could not help but drift past him to the wide-open door behind.
A woman wholly unexpected by all followed the King out.
She was tall of stature, full in figure, with a beautiful face rich in charm.
Yet all of that was secondary, for besides those features, this woman possessed dark gray skin unlike that of ordinary people, and a pair of long, sharply pointed ears.
At the same time, Aemon also noticed that her fingernails were pitch black.
Who was she?
The question arose in everyone's mind.
As for the matter of skin color, none of them paid it much heed. The natives of the Summer Isles were dark of skin, black of hair and eye, their complexion brown as teak or deep as polished jet.
In this world there were even people with red skin, yellow skin, and many other differing hues.
But where in this damned place had the King found such a singular woman—and with such strange ears?
"So these are your subjects? They look rather interesting… especially that silver-haired little brat. He resembles those moon elves."
Before Aemon and the others could recover from their shock and confusion, the mistress of the Dread Tower, the dark elf witch, priestess of the black dragon evil god, Erevi, regarded them with keen interest and spoke to Kal.
Her gaze was filled with curiosity as she examined the three, her tone casual.
Aemon Targaryen, the hundred-year-old "little brat," could not help but swallow. For reasons he could not name, he felt from this woman an indescribable oppression.
It was like… the feeling of standing before Robert.
A pressure born of the very hierarchy of life itself, and a faint yet deadly threat.
In response to Erevi's teasing, Kal merely shrugged.
"Allow me to introduce her. Erevi—a dark elf. You may simply regard her as a race akin to what the children of the forest once were."
Kal introduced Erevi to the three with equal casualness, then went to sit upon a sofa.
He had no intention of concealing Erevi's identity; there was no need.
More precisely, he required these things to be gradually revealed before the eyes of the world.
Of the three, it was the true little brat, Cyril, who reacted first.
He hurriedly rose to his feet, face flushed red, his eyes not daring to look at the woman clad in a thin and peculiar robe.
Following the etiquette Maester Aemon had taught him, he bowed slightly. "E… Lady Erevi… good morning…"
Having never seen much of the world, and knowing only tales of the Others, the children of the forest, the Night's Watch, and the old gods, Cyril was the first to accept the explosive information the King had suddenly cast before them.
For he had little notion of its magnitude.
But the learned and wise Aemon, having seen much, could not help but widen his eyes. Looking at the woman who was plainly not human, he found himself at a loss for words.
"Your… Your Grace, this… this Erevi, um…"
At first, he had not paid much heed to the woman who had suddenly appeared in the King's chamber. Yet no one had expected the King to cast out such a shocking revelation.
As for Theon, there was no need to mention him—his jaw had nearly dropped to the floor.
Kal's words made him instinctively recall the tales the wet nurse at Winterfell had once told them.
In the face of their reactions, the dark elf witch curled her lips in a faint smile and then simply seated herself beside Kal.
She spoke no further. After casually pouring herself a cup of red wine from the small table at hand, she leaned against Kal and sat quietly observing the three before her, her dark eyes flecked with amber light shimmering faintly.
The night before, Kal had brought her into this strange world.
At the very instant she arrived, she sensed the thinness of the magic in the air, as though she were submerged beneath a shallow pool, struggling to breathe.
But that was of no importance.
For what mattered most was that, the moment she stepped into this world, she gradually felt as though she had abruptly awakened from a dream.
And as time passed, she seemed, in some ineffable way, to come to understand everything.
At the same time, from Kal she sensed an inexpressible source of anchorage, and the origin and meaning of her own existence.
Erevi could feel that all of her being existed because of Kal—including the world she had once inhabited.
Even… the god she had once believed in without doubt.
It was because he existed that all else had come to be.
And this mortal man—whom she had once nearly regarded as swine or sheep—was in truth the true god.
It was because he existed that everything existed.
Upon arriving in this world, Erevi came, in some dim awareness, to know all—what her world was, what her own existence was, even what the reality she had once believed to be real truly was.
It was nothing more than a world that the man before her could decide to reset with a single thought.
For the world she had dwelt in had already been reset countless times.
This man, who had once seemed to her no more than an ordinary mortal, a simple farmer's son…
To her—and to that world—he was the true god, the god who had created all.
He was everything to her.
Erevi's dark violet lips lightly touched the faintly bitter red wine at her mouth, and she edged a little closer toward Kal.
It seemed that only thus could she feel a sense of security.
Kal knew nothing of Erevi's thoughts, nor of what had occurred within her.
He merely patted the hand of the dark elf leaning against him, a smile upon his face.
"She comes from the realm of the gods!"
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