"You were right, Father. We must be extremely wary of Emperor Hadrian. What I saw in that Throne Hall, and the tales Daemon told me, paint a picture of a being who is no mere mortal. He is the most powerful mage I have ever encountered. He vanishes with the crack of lightning. He thickens the air and bends men to his will with a mere thought. Every moment I spent in his presence was a moment I wished lasted less." Father spoke quietly, his voice carrying unmistakable traces of fear. Beads of sweat rolled down his pale forehead.
Grandfather offered a slow, deliberate nod. "It is good you did not mention this in the Great Hall. We cannot appear weaker than the Emperor. The great lords of Westeros need but a whiff of our fear to pounce upon us like a pack of starving hounds. This does not leave the confines of my solar until I command it. Is that understood?" The King's voice seeped with absolute authority. His piercing gaze swept over us until we murmured our assent.
"Did you give him the blood?" Grandfather asked.
My chest tightened. The Maesters' dark tales of blood magic and its horrific costs came reeling back to the forefront of my mind.
Father nodded stiffly. "Two vials each from myself, Vaegon, and Daemon. We attempted to deny the demand, but that only angered him. With a single glance, he pinned us entirely to the floor. It felt as if a mountain had been dropped upon my shoulders. We would have been crushed to death had it prolonged another second, so I yielded immediately."
"You did nothing wrong, Baelon," Grandfather assured him, his tone softening a fraction. "A few drops of blood in exchange for the lives of my sons and grandson is a trifling cost."
"We ensured nothing ominous will be done against our house with that blood. The Emperor even taught me to forge a true Valyrian Blood Oath. It is a powerful magic lost to us since the Doom." Father leaned forward, a desperate edge creeping into his voice. "I believe we must strengthen our connection to magic if we are to survive any future threats from the Imperium. Perhaps we should search for Maegon's Vault. It could help us recover much of our lost knowledge." He looked to the King, clearly hoping for his acquiescence.
This rapid unravelling of secrets was intensely jarring. I knew the blood of Old Valyria carried magic, but I had firmly believed the Maesters' teachings that the arcane arts had died in the fires of the Doom. Yet the truths uncovered in this solar were violently upending my entire understanding of history.
Even so, I harboured severe reservations. There were far too many tales of such pursuits leading only to madness and ash. The entirety of the Seven-Pointed Star was littered with grim warnings for those who dared to dabble in sorcery.
"Father, we must not be hasty," I cautioned, unable to hold my tongue any longer. "The pursuit of magic is a dangerous road. What if it brings down outcomes we are entirely unprepared to face?" I looked toward Uncle Vaegon, expecting the Archmaester to support my logic. Instead, Vaegon met my gaze with a strangely intense stare and remained completely silent.
Father turned to face me, letting out a weary sigh. "You do not grasp the full picture, Viserys. Our dragons are nothing to him. He treats them like cattle. Daemon confessed that the Emperor can fly unassisted. After his battle in Qohor, he simply descended upon Caraxes and forced the Blood Wyrm into a magical slumber with a mere wave of his hand. He then transported Daemon from those ruins to the capital of Ctesiphon in the blink of an eye. Tell me, how much devastation can such a man inflict upon Westeros if he can appear anywhere at any time, and even dragons pose no threat to him?"
I had no words to offer. Just imagining such a being was incredibly difficult to fathom. Had these claims come from anyone other than my father, I would have dismissed them as the mythical legends of a god, not a man.
Father offered an exhausted smile at my silence. "When we departed Ctesiphon, I steered Vhagar over the skies of Qohor. My mind refused to accept the sight before us. It was utterly annihilated. Half the ancient city was ripped asunder, while the other half was swallowed by a gaping, abyssal crater. Apparently, the Emperor fought the Qohorik God and killed him upon that very site. Even if the tale is embellished, the sheer scale of the ruins proved it had hosted a battle between divine forces. Daemon asserted it was the absolute truth. I did not believe my son then, but I believe him now."
Finally, Uncle Vaegon stepped into the fray. "All my years spent refining knowledge, learning at the heel of the Citadel... rendered entirely worthless by a single visit to Ctesiphon. I understand your apprehensions, nephew. I shared them myself until this journey. I was content believing magic was dead or fleeting in this world, but now I know the truth. Magic is the only safeguard we possess against the Emperor and his brood. We do not even know how many mages are in his service. All of his children are highly capable of it, and it is there that we find our only sliver of relief."
I looked at him questioningly, mirroring the sharp frown on Grandfather's face.
Uncle Vaegon offered a thin, calculating smile. "Daemon, through fate or his own twisted fortune, has managed to woo Princess Liliana, the Emperor's eldest daughter. Apparently, they met upon the battlefield in Qohor, and both seem completely taken with one another."
That final piece of information entirely stumped me. Daemon was married, though he notoriously despised Rhea Royce and the suffocating chains of the Vale. I knew that very suffocation had driven him to flee Westeros in the first place. For him to find a royal paramour on this disastrous journey was indeed a stroke of immense luck. Yet, it was a poisoned chalice. The inescapable fact remained: Daemon was already wed.