Quincy Cox was merely a landed knight, belonging to the lowest tier of the minor nobility. King Aegon should not have known of him in the first place.
However, Quincy's fief was rather special. Saltfield Town was one of the few coastal trade towns in the Riverlands.
Moreover, Old Quincy's deeds were quite well known, infamous throughout the Riverlands.
For these reasons, he had the honor of being remembered by King Aegon.
"By the Seven, why haven't you gone to the Seven Hells yet?"
Aegon spoke bluntly, expressing his thoughts without reservation.
"I… I had no choice!" Old Quincy understood that Aegon probably knew about his past.
Still, he shot Aegon a glance and complained inwardly: I haven't even asked why you haven't gone to the Seven Hells yourself. Impersonating Rhaegar's son is a far graver crime than anything I did.
"I'm sixty-five this year. By the time I was alive, my mind had already begun to decline, my strength was failing, and even walking was difficult. Those blood mummers were vicious and cruel. What could I do?"
"Didn't you have sons? And what about your castle guards?" Aegon asked.
"Waaah…" At the mention of his sons, Old Quincy burst into sorrowful tears. "I had two sons. Both were brave knights. If they were still alive, how could those bandits have run wild?"
Aegon's heart stirred, and he immediately guessed how Quincy's sons had died.
"The War of the Five Kings?"
"Yes. I received the call-up order from the King in the North, so I arranged for my two sons to go to Riverrun in my stead. They took two hundred guards with them. Then they all died, and not even their bodies were ever found."
Old Quincy wailed, "Saltfield Town has some modest assets, but I am, after all, only a landed knight. There were barely a dozen old guards left in the castle. What use were they?
"My sons are all dead. They only left me two granddaughters. I had to protect them!
"Everyone blamed me for sealing the castle gates and refusing to fulfill a noble's duty to protect the common folk, but I also needed protection!
"I swore loyalty to my liege. Why didn't my liege or the king come to protect me?"
Aegon fell silent.
After crying for a while, Old Quincy suddenly froze and asked in confusion, "Wasn't my mind supposed to have declined? How is my memory so clear now, and my speech so fluent?"
"You were senile before?" Aegon asked curiously.
Old Quincy shook his head. "Not senile, exactly. My mind was just very slow to react, like a rusted iron sword."
"This is heaven. All illnesses and aging from your life before death no longer affect you here.
"Even if you were blind while alive, once you come to heaven, you regain your health," Aegon said matter-of-factly.
"So this really is heaven!" Old Quincy exclaimed excitedly.
Then he asked doubtfully, "Your Majesty Aegon, please don't be angry when I speak frankly. By any measure, you don't really seem like a saint. Why were you able to become an angel after death?"
"Actually, I'm an acting angel," Aegon admitted awkwardly.
"Angels can be acting ones?" Old Quincy gaped.
"Well… the real guide is the High Sparrow." Since there was no way to hide it, Aegon explained his temporary, substitute status in full.
"The High Sparrow is being a bit too negligent, isn't he? After all, I'm a heroic spirit, and we're old acquaintances. The High Sparrow passed through my lands many times, and I helped him more times than I can count!" Old Quincy complained somewhat resentfully.
That was true. The High Sparrow had long wandered the Riverlands as a barefoot ascetic and had visited Saltfield Town many times.
Old Quincy was a devout, old-school knight who took very good care of both the Night's Watch and wandering monks.
"I'm personally here to receive you. What more could you be dissatisfied with?" Aegon snapped.
When they were both alive, Old Quincy had been his vassal.
A liege personally welcoming his vassal was more than sufficient, no matter how one looked at it.
Moreover, Saltfield Town was too close to the Vale. Old Quincy could not refuse King Aegon's offer of submission.
If you really were Rhaegar's son, your status would of course be sufficient. But you are merely a fake prince and a fake guide.
No matter how dissatisfied he was, Old Quincy did not dare say it out loud. Even if the fake prince was a fake angel, the "authority of the guide" in his hands was very real.
After that, the two walked on in silence, finishing the last stretch of steps and arriving at a vast grassy plain.
As a guide, Aegon also had the responsibility of helping newcomers understand the structure of heaven.
"This is the High Sparrow's Heavenly Island."
Standing at the edge of the land, Aegon pointed toward the sky islands floating above the assembly grounds and repeated the very words the High Sparrow had once said to him.
"Can I go to other islands? Preferably the landmasses from the era of Aerys. Maybe I can find many old friends there, or perhaps my sons, or my parents," Old Quincy asked eagerly.
Like Aegon had back then, he also found the High Sparrow's island far too desolate.
Aegon shook his head and sighed. "Only saints have the right to freely choose which landmass they go to."
"Then can I at least visit old friends?" Old Quincy asked, settling for less.
"That will be difficult. You should first find a plot of land and build yourself a house."
After that, Aegon taught him the techniques of using the power of faith to create all things.
"Ah, this is incredible. It really is Heaven!" Old Quincy took a bite of a juicy green apple, tears streaming down his face in emotion. "I have not eaten such a delicious apple in so many years!"
That left Aegon baffled. "The Long Night has only just arrived, has it not? How could it have been so many years?"
Old Quincy grinned, revealing a mouthful of neat, gleaming white teeth. "When I was alive, I had no teeth. I could not chew them!"
"Uh…" The corner of Aegon's mouth twitched.
"Greetings, my lord angel!"
"Greetings, Lord Aegon!"
The two chatted as they walked, and before they realized it, they had arrived at the work area on the edge of the Third Ring.
Several hundred men, all dressed uniformly in black wool sweaters, stopped what they were doing the moment they saw Aegon. They bent at the waist to salute him respectfully.
"Ah, the Night's Watch," Old Quincy said, his pupils shrinking in surprise. "So many men of the Night's Watch. Are members of the Night's Watch more likely to enter Heaven?"
"They are not qualified to enter Heaven. After death, the Stranger sent them here to stay temporarily," Aegon shook his head.
"Temporarily?" Old Quincy looked confused. "Heaven even allows temporary residents?"
"We sacrificed ourselves to protect the Seven Kingdoms. Her Majesty Daenerys is merciful and could not bear for us to be immediately reincarnated, so she prayed to the Mother and arranged for us to stay temporarily on Heaven Mountain.
When the Long Night passes, summer arrives, and peace returns to the mortal world, we will then go to be reincarnated."
A skinny, monkey-like young man of the Night's Watch shook his head and said smugly, "As the saying goes, better to be a dog in the long summer than a man in the Long Night."
"Better to be a dog in the long summer than a man in the Long Night." Old Quincy savored the words carefully, then exclaimed in amazement, "Who said that? It makes so much sense! Even a dog gets meat in summer, but in winter, even a lord would not dare to eat his fill of bread."
"The Stranger said it."
"You have seen the Stranger? What does He look like?" Old Quincy asked in astonishment.
"He wears a cloak and stands in the shadows. You cannot see Him clearly," said the tall young man standing next to the skinny youth.
Old Quincy nodded. It was exactly the same as the image of the Stranger in the septs.
"Why did so many of you die?" he asked again.
The skinny youth looked him up and down and said, "You are a noble, right? Why did you not receive a raven from the Wall?"
"Well…" Quincy looked a little embarrassed. "I am only a knight, and my lands are small. I have no contact with the Wall. What happened there?"
There were several thousand landed knights like Quincy across all of Westeros, while the Wall had fewer than a thousand ravens in total.
Aside from the northern nobility, the Wall would only send letters to dukes and to some particularly powerful counts.
"The Wall collapsed," the skinny youth said, recounting what had happened that day.
"The Wall actually collapsed, and millions of wights…" Old Quincy looked dazed. "Seven gods above, can Westeros hold them back?"
"With Her Majesty Daenerys, the Long Night will surely be ended."
"Yes. With the Dragon Queen, and her five giant dragons. Wights fear fire, and dragons counter them perfectly."
The men of the Night's Watch were full of confidence.
Quincy stared at the skinny youth for a long moment, then asked doubtfully, "You said you turned into a wight while you were alive. Why was your soul still able to enter Heaven?"
"The Dragon Queen is merciful. She summoned the Stranger to bring me here."
"No," Old Quincy waved his hand. "What I mean is, you clearly became a wight. Your soul should have been…"
Aegon understood his confusion. "When a person dies, the soul leaves the body, and only then does the body become a wight. The soul is not affected."
"But he had been dead for several days."
"Yes. He spent the previous few days in the Stranger's realm. Is there any problem with that?"
Aegon said it as if it were perfectly natural. Old Quincy suddenly understood as well. In fact, the whole process was far more complicated than they had imagined.
The skinny youth was named Jaime. He had died on the very day the Wall collapsed.
By the time Dany dealt with the bull-headed, serpent-bodied monster and helped Big Black obtain the Stranger's divine office, two days had already passed since Jaime's death.
When Dany entered the realm of death bearing the Stranger's divine authority, all she found were the shattered remnants of the Night's Watch's souls. If not for her use of a soul-ensouling art to repair them, Jaime and the others would not have been able to regain consciousness at all.
Leaving the Third Ring where the Night's Watch resided and entering the Second Ring, Old Quincy frowned and said, "There are only five holy spirits in all of Heaven, yet there are seven or eight hundred Night's Watchmen staying temporarily. Is that not a bit excessive?"
This was because he discovered that, aside from himself and King Aegon, there were only three holy spirits qualified to enter Heaven living in the Second Ring.
As for the innermost First Ring, around the Great Sept stood a circle of villas, all of them empty. Such a vast area, yet only the High Sparrow lived there alone.
"Even if Her Majesty Daenerys is a saint, bringing in so many Night's Watchmen all at once…" Old Quincy complained somewhat resentfully. "She is practically treating Heaven as her own home."
Hearing the old knight speak of Aunt Dany this way made Aegon both angry and embarrassed.
"Actually, the reason I was able to enter Heaven also has a lot to do with Daenerys." With a stiff expression, he recounted how he had pulled strings to get into Heaven.
There was no way to keep this a secret. The High Sparrow knew.
Not only that, the High Sparrow was afraid others might not know. Every time a new holy spirit arrived, he would tell the story of how Aegon had used connections to get in.
"Seven gods above, you can even rely on connections to enter Heaven?" Old Quincy felt his faith on the verge of collapse.
"Saints naturally have privileges. Otherwise, why would I be able to manage such a vast Heavenly Isle?"
Old Quincy turned toward the voice and saw a familiar-looking old man: barefoot, dressed in white robes, tall and gaunt, his hair meticulously combed straight back. He walked slowly across the soft grass from the direction of the Great Sept.
It was none other than the High Sparrow.
"Ah, Your Eminence the High Septon. It truly is you!" Meeting an old acquaintance again, Quincy was overjoyed.
The High Sparrow smiled and nodded. "Ser Quincy, I said it while I was alive. Your decades of unwavering, devout service to the Seven would surely be rewarded one day."
Hearing this, Old Quincy glanced sideways at King Aegon, who had entered through connections, his expression somewhat awkward. Lifelong devout service, it seemed, was not as effective as pulling strings. Just look at this one. Heaven itself had descended into the mortal world for him. What immense glory that was!
And there were also so many men of the Night's Watch. They had almost never been to the Great Sept and had not even read the Seven-Pointed Star.
(End of Chapter)
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