Snowing_Melody

Chapter 42: A Cloud of Guests

Daenerys’s eyes flickered with a sudden interest. "Captain," she asked, "how long is the voyage from Qarth to King's Landing?"

The sea merchant, thinking she was planning her return, stroked his chin. "Your Grace must understand, a man of ...

Chapter 41: Rumors and Bribes

Daenerys had expected Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who so loudly proclaimed his admiration for her, to offer to pave her way through the gilded corridors of Qartheen power. He did not. He was happy to be her guide, to point out which hands required greasing,...

Chapter 40: Guest Right

Xaro Xhoan Daxos was a man of his word. The palace he provided was a wonder, a place of sprawling gardens, wide marble baths, and a towering crystal observatory that touched the sky. It was larger than the great market, with more than enough room ...

Chapter 39: Qarth

"I have been told," Daenerys said, her voice careful, "that only those who keep the Old Gods of the North can be skinchangers. Does Asshai have weirwood trees?"

"Daenerys," Quaithe asked, her own voice flat and unreadable behind the mask, "d...

Chapter 38: Prophecy and Parable

Aggo rode without sparing his horses. Three days later, he reached the first villages of Qarth. Before Daenerys had even broken camp, a caravan of a hundred camels laden with supplies was already making its way toward them.

Her khalasar had ...

Chapter 37: The Rat Cook's Tale

To go or not to go. It seemed an impossible choice, a future hanging on a single word. But Daenerys knew, with a cold certainty, that there was no choice at all.

"Your Grace," Ser Jorah began, his brow furrowed in thought, "it is obvious the...

Chapter 36: An Invitation from Qarth

The third person was a woman, cloaked and silent. She wore a mask of red lacquered wood that concealed her entire face, leaving only the faintest impression of the features beneath. When she spoke, her voice was flat and unaccented, her command of...

Chapter 35: The Dragon Seekers

After another complaint from Daenerys about the rebelliousness of her white and green dragons, Jorah offered some practical advice. "You cannot be a mother to all three in the same way, Your Grace. Focus your efforts on the black one. He is bonded...

Chapter 34: Lessons for the Dragon

In the evening, as the blistering heat of the day began to fade, the Dothraki resumed their work, clearing the ash from the pit where the Valyrian rider had been cremated. At first, there was nothing but charred bone and blackened sand. Then, a wa...

Chapter 33: The Devil's Corpse

This time, the journey was different. Their purpose was clear, and they were not burdened by the old and the weak. Daenerys took the lead, her silver filly galloping happily across the red sand, kicking up a long, thin plume of dust. Jorah and her...

Chapter 32: A Conqueror's Dream

After five days of relative peace, the scouting parties returned. Aggo, though tired and caked in red dust, was ecstatic.

"Khaleesi," he reported, "I rode west for half a day. There are mountains in the distance, with sparse woods at their f...

Chapter 31: Shackles of Gold

Daenerys looked at the broken man before her and felt a strange, detached pity. Jorah Mormont’s story was a tragedy, yes, but she was no stranger to tragedy. Her own life, the life of the girl whose body she inhabited, had been a litany of loss....

Chapter 30: The Price of Love

"Freeriders are sellswords, nothing more," Jorah explained, his voice a low rumble. "Men with a horse and some skill with a blade. Knights are another matter entirely." He seemed to settle into the role of teacher, the pain of his own memories mom...

Chapter 29: The Queen of Love and Beauty

Jorah should be ashamed, Daenerys thought. In his whole story, he had not once spoken his first wife's name. It was as if she had been a ghost in his life even before she was a ghost in the ground.

The knight’s voice was a low, melancholy ...

Chapter 28: The Story of a Bear

"And how do you think I should choose?" Daenerys asked, turning the question back on him. She held the black dragon in her arms, feeling its warmth against her skin. With the only three dragons in the world, her future was a thing of unimaginable ...

Chapter 27: Seeds of a Kingdom

At dawn the next day, after Daenerys had walked the length and breadth of White Cloud City, she began to bitterly regret having slaughtered all the sheep. The resources here were richer than she could have ever dreamed, enough to sustain them for ...

Chapter 26: The Lord of White Cloud City

The Dothraki loved to say, "everyone knows." It was not a statement of fact, but an invocation of ancient, hard-won tradition. And Dany had learned that their traditions, born from millennia of survival on a harsh continent, were often wise. Their...

Chapter 25: The White City

Daenerys’s bond with her dragons was a strange and unpredictable magic. The original Daenerys, the girl whose life she now lived, had been more a vessel for this power than its master. She had loved her children, but she had also feared them, an...

Chapter 24: The First Flight

Daenerys had misunderstood. Old Watson, in his final moments, had not burdened her with a lecher's handbook. He had given her a key.

Later that night, unable to contain her curiosity, she had secretly opened the thick, parchment-bound book. ...

Chapter 23: The Old Man's Gift

Jorah was right, and the cold logic of his words was undeniable. To follow Dany’s plan, the strong would suffer immensely to prolong the lives of the weak. Their rest time would be cut in half, their work under the scorching sun doubled.

"...

Chapter 22: The Weeping Star

"He was not a pure horseman, you see," old Avanti continued, his voice a dry rasp. "Blue-Eyed Haggo had the strength of any great Khal, but he lacked their courage. He was tainted by his father's blood, and like those who live in stone houses, he ...

Chapter 21: The Twelfth Art

Her dragons, when they had first been born, were like nothing she had ever imagined. They were impossibly fragile, like malnourished kittens, seemingly all neck, tail, and wings with no torso to speak of. She could hold one in her palm and feel al...

Chapter 46: A Different Kind of Shield

Harry and Ron stared at the unlocked door, their minds still struggling to process the sheer, casual efficiency with which Hermione had just broken through three legendary magical trials.

“Hurry up,” she called back, her voice echoing fr...

Chapter 45: An Exercise in Efficiency

The Mirror of Erised.

The name floated up from the depths of her past life's memory. Hermione stared at the magnificent, ornate mirror, a silent sentinel in the dusty, forgotten chamber. She knew what it was, and she knew what it was destine...

Chapter 20: Water and Fire

A leader cannot show doubt. A leader must be a rock of confidence for her people. It was a lesson Daenerys had learned not in a throne room, but in an operating theater: a surgeon must never, ever show fear to a patient before the first incision i...

Chapter 19: Purgatory Wasteland

The Dothraki respected strength and despised weakness. Life was cheap, whether it was their enemy’s or their own. With no other entertainment, fighting was their pastime, and they would draw a blade over the smallest of insults.

"In Wester...

Chapter 18: Commanders of Ten

Daenerys stared at the blank, uncomprehending faces of her new bloodriders. The Dothraki, it seemed, were baffled by any number greater than ten, and completely lost when faced with a "complicated" system of command. She raised an eyebrow. Drogo's...

Chapter 17: My Khalasar

When the last of the ash had cooled and the sun was high in the sky, Daenerys gathered her people. She had been washed clean, and now she sat astride her silver filly, a dragonling cradled in her arms, another perched on each shoulder. The horse w...

Chapter 16: Fire and Blood

"Aaaaiiiiieeeeeeeee!"

The Lhazareen priestess wailed in the heart of the flames, her voice a high, piercing shriek of pure agony. She was not, in the end, as strong as she had pretended to be.

Daenerys, sitting cross-legged beside Drog...

Chapter 15: The Priestess and the Blood Witch

As the last light of the sun vanished and the sky bruised to a deep purple, Daenerys turned to Aggo. "Take Odo's men into custody. Give the goat-slaves what food we can spare and let them go."

Aggo glanced at the shivering Lhazareen. "Khalee...