Dragonstone Castle, Gendry's study. Daenerys had arranged the room with great care. Bright yellow flowers stood inside, along with Stormlands wood carvings and furs, but none of them could outshine the dragon eggs Gendry had obtained, or the dragons themselves.
Several young dragons were biting and wrestling with one another on the precious Myr carpet. Once they tired themselves out, they would curl up around the brazier and sleep.
Black-haired and blue-eyed, Gendry opened a cedar chest inlaid with black Dragonglass. Thick velvet and brocade lined the bottom, and three dragon eggs appeared before Daenerys Targaryen.
Gendry had searched the dragon lairs on Dragonstone's eastern slope to find these three scattered dragon eggs. They were priceless beyond measure.
There might be more dragon eggs, but any eggs or fossils hidden in the deeper, more treacherous reaches of Dragonmont's lairs would be far too difficult to obtain.
Without the Firebinder ring and the fire magic Gendry had studied and begun to understand, retrieving these three eggs from the depths of the eastern dragon lairs would have been no different from suicide. Ordinary people could never withstand the searing heat or the poisonous sulfurous mist.
"How did you get them?" Daenerys asked in surprise. She wore a purple dress that matched her violet eyes. Her figure was slender and graceful, her frame delicate. As the last true dragon, her almost inhuman beauty was enough to outshine everything.
"Silverwing's lair, the Cannibal's lair, and one that may have belonged to some unknown dragon. Deep inside the dragon lairs," Gendry said calmly. Yet that calm only made him seem all the more extraordinary.
"That's terrifying. Even for dragon eggs, that was far too reckless." Daenerys looked at the three dragon eggs, then kissed Gendry's face again and again, her hands a little tense and uncertain. "I have no family left. Only you."
Both of them came from tragic beginnings, with dead parents and lives shaped by hardship. In this chaotic age, there was a sense that they had only each other to rely on.
"Great deeds are born from hardship." Gendry stroked Daenerys's silver-gold hair. He had raised Daenerys well. Now she depended on him and loved him, rather than becoming a queen who had crossed a path of thorns and blood. But perhaps that was for the best. A cruel world should be left to men, and Daenerys had already seen enough cruelty.
"All right, go touch the dragon eggs. For my beautiful wife, I'll have to live a long, long life."
Daenerys went over to the dragon eggs, while Gendry thought of something else.
"How did that madman Euron Greyjoy enter the volcanic ruins and take that dragon egg, along with so many Valyrian treasures?" Gendry wondered. The ruins of Valyria were far more dangerous than Dragonstone, and Crow's Eye had no ring.
"Perhaps skinchanging. Maybe he did not enter in person." Gendry quickly came to a conclusion. If Crow's Eye could control an entire ship's crew, and later even communicate with and summon a great Kraken from the depths, then his skinchanging ability was already close to miraculous. Only a mind of terrifying resilience could control so many puppets and remain unharmed. Sending someone else into the ruins under his control was certainly possible.
In truth, Crow's Eye and Gendry had touched upon somewhat similar paths. Their power came from Bloodline rather than faith, though the direction was completely different. This was tied to the histories of their houses. Durran Godsgrief was a mortal who defied the gods, violent and stubborn, but not evil. Gendry was studying the power of the Storm bloodline, fire magic, and perhaps, in the future, water magic and the power of the Greenhand.
Crow's Eye, on the other hand, could trace his path to the Drowned God, and to the skinchanging that so often appeared among the First Men. The Drowned God was a cruel and bloody god. He created the Ironborn so they could rape, plunder, and carve out a new heaven and earth with blood, fire, and song, writing their names upon it. Perhaps the more twisted, tormented, and depraved Crow's Eye became, the greater the reward the Drowned God would grant him.
"They're alive," Daenerys said excitedly. When the cedar chest opened, the dragon eggs drew her gaze at once. Even though she already had true dragons, seeing dragon eggs again still stirred her deeply, especially since these were not fossils.
Daenerys lifted them with great care. It took both hands for her to hold a single egg. The dragon eggs still gave off a warm touch, nothing like the fossilized eggs she had once received from Illyrio.
As Daenerys turned them in her fingers, the dragon eggs shone with a metallic luster. Every one of them was worth a kingdom.
The first dragon egg was golden, brilliant as the sun, with pink flame patterns across its shell. The second was red, revealing bright copper spots and pink spirals as her fingers turned it. The last was silver, marked with beautiful, elegant purple waves and swirls.
"Will they hatch into dragons?" Daenerys asked hopefully. "These dragon eggs can be given to our children."
"They should, but not now." Gendry stroked the warm dragon eggs. "A dragon's colors are reflected on its egg, even its flames. If they hatch, they will be a golden dragon, a silver dragon, and a red dragon. One main color, with other colors mixed in. Dragons are many-colored."
Only the dragons hatched from the fossilized dragon eggs that Gendry and Daenerys had faced were truly special, because they had been touched by the magical formula: only death can pay for life. Those three dragons had been born in answer to the age, and their growth was extraordinary as well.
As for the other dragon eggs, they would only have a chance to hatch once magic rose to a certain level. They had sat on Dragonstone for so long already. A little more time would not matter.
"I wish I could tell you where the other dragon eggs are, but I don't know either," Daenerys said regretfully.
The Targaryen dynasty had fallen by the time Daenerys was born. She had no idea where the dragon egg vault was. Not just Daenerys, even Viserys had not known. If the siblings had possessed even a few dragon eggs, even fossilized ones, they would never have fallen so low as to beg and sell crowns.
The secret of the dragon eggs was likely known only to the Mad King himself. Given how bitterly the Mad King and Rhaegar had opposed each other, even Rhaegar might not have known.
"It's all right. We'll find them eventually. Whether the dragon egg vault is in King's Landing or Dragonstone."
"Should I put them in the brazier, my love?" Daenerys asked.
"Yes."
The three dragon eggs were placed in the brazier. Black tongues of flame licked every side of the eggs, and the scales on their shells seemed to glow, drinking in every trace of heat.
...
Riverrun was triangular, and the chambers of Great Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun were triangular as well, with a balcony jutting eastward. At the castle's corner, the swift Tumblestone flowed into the calm Red Fork of the Trident.
At that moment, the room was filled with the smell of death, thick, sweet, and rotten.
"Tansy." Great Lord Hoster could no longer open his eyes. His hair and beard were white, and he had lost even the strength to lift his lids.
"Father, I'm here." Catelyn Tully hurried forward. "And my two precious children, Robb and Sansa. Your grandson and granddaughter."
"Forgive me... all that blood... please, Tansy..." Hoster cried. "The child... dead... but it doesn't matter. There will be more..."
The maester looked at the Tullys, at Catelyn, Edmure, and the Blackfish, then shook his head. "Lord Hoster's final hour has come."
"Ah..." Brynden Tully sighed, then said quietly, "Lysa will never come to see him. He should have understood that when he saw the Storm off. Once he understood the truth, perhaps he no longer wanted to live."
Catelyn said nothing. Lysa was her family, but she had also been a curse upon House Tully. Catelyn did not know what to say. The feeling was too tangled.
Great Lord Hoster's hand groped outward. His eyes suddenly opened wide, and through the blur he saw Sansa Stark. "You came to see me...?"
Sansa Stark looked at her aged grandfather. They had not met many times, but blood had still passed down to her, red hair and blue eyes. Sansa stood there awkwardly, unsure what to say.
"She has forgiven you, Father..." Catelyn gave her daughter a look. Sansa Stark reached out and took her grandfather's hand.
Catelyn had loved her father most deeply. As his eldest daughter, after two of her brothers died years ago, Great Lord Hoster had once considered grooming her as his heir.
"No, you're not her." Hoster felt Sansa's hand, then pushed it away. The red of her hair was not the same. Sansa was younger, brighter. The daughter in his memory had always been shy and fragile. Lysa.
With that cry, Hoster lost the last of his strength. His power, his courage, his faith.
A little while later, Hoster fell into his final sleep.
Great Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun had become an old corpse.
"Father..." Edmure wailed, falling to his knees beside Hoster's bed.
Tears filled Catelyn's eyes as she watched the blue-and-red striped sheets slowly lose their warmth. Another Tully was gone. Her father and her sister had both died in the chaos of Westeros.
Brynden Tully stood frozen, staring at his brother's body. He had once hated him, but he had to admit that Hoster had been the one who steered House Tully through every current, securing good marriages for his children at the best price.
Edmure's face twisted in pain. "Damn it all. Why did Father have to know these things? Lysa, Littlefinger, the Arryns."
"Shut up, you fool. The Arryns have done nothing wrong to us, and neither has the Storm." Brynden looked at Edmure. "Look at you. Everything is for the family. What must be sacrificed, must be sacrificed. We cannot become kin to the Vale anymore, and I do not want every house refusing to marry into House Tully."
Catelyn hesitated, looking at her children, who seemed at a loss. Yes, they were family, but in truth, judging by how often they had visited, the siblings had not seen their grandfather many times.
"Do not mention Lysa again. It does none of us any good. It offends the Vale, and it offends our king." Brynden's face was bitter. "Your father sold her for a fine price. For the sake of the Tully army, Jon agreed to the bargain."
"Mm." Catelyn nodded painfully. Her sister's dull marriage, her tragic life. Let it end there.
"There is one more thing." Robb Stark glanced at the others. "We may need to go to King's Landing again. Father is in King's Landing, and the king is about to be crowned. We should send people to the Storm's coronation."
Sansa pricked up her ears. She knew the weight of that letter. Father had been found. Joffrey had died in a mob uprising, and that hateful Varys was close to death as well. She could go and look upon the Storm. That would be sweet.
"After your grandfather's rites are finished," Catelyn said. "I do want to see your father, but I must see this done properly first."
"Exactly. Must we really discuss this now?" Edmure Tully turned his head, tear tracks still on his face.
"We could have gone in with great fanfare. It was you, Edmure, who insisted the lords return to repair their castles. After the First Battle of the Red Fork, and then the Second Battle of the Red Fork, we could only watch as Tywin's army secretly found a ford and slipped away," the Blackfish could not help saying. "If not for that, we could have gone there carrying Tywin's head. That would have been proper."
"How is that my fault?" Edmure stared at him in bewilderment. "They told me openly and in secret that it was time to go home. Once we won the first battle, Tywin certainly wasn't coming back. What was I supposed to do? Their homes had been burned, looted, and ransacked. They had to clean up, and winter is nearly here."
"Uncle, leave it at that. Why didn't we press the advantage in one stroke?" Robb rubbed his temples. "My Northern army was helpless too. While we were dealing with the Kingslayer's reserve force breaking through upstream, Tywin crossed downstream. This war should never have lasted this long. We still have to go back and prepare for winter... I was supposed to win glory in this war, but my victory vanished just like that."
"All right, enough." Catelyn said. "Take this outside. I don't want you arguing here. Once Eddard arrives, you'll have the victory you want."