Fire and Blood

Chapter 158: The Broken Dragons

ooOoo

Flashback: Eleven months ago (133 AC)...

The first thing Aegon knew was pain. Not a clean pain, not the honest sharpness of a cut or the pounding ache of a fist-split lip after a yard fight, but something older and vaster, as if his whole body had been dragged through the fires of the Fourteen Flames and left to cool badly in the dark. It lived in his bones. It slept beneath his skin. It breathed when he breathed and woke when he woke, and when it woke, it devoured the world. He tried to scream. What came out was a thin, wet rasp. The sound frightened him more than the pain.

Aegon the Elder had once had a prince's voice. Not deep, no, not yet, but smooth enough when he chose charm and sharp enough when he chose cruelty. He had laughed loudly, cursed loudly, drunk loudly, loved applause, and hated silence unless he was the one imposing it. Now his throat felt scraped raw, as if he had swallowed a brazier full of coals. His tongue was swollen. His mouth tasted of copper, sour wine, ashes, and milk of the poppy. He opened his eyes. Only one obeyed at first. The world came back in pieces: canvas roof, low and stained; lantern-light swinging; smoke-dark beams; the smell of vinegar, boiled linen, old sweat, rot, and the cloying sweetness of poppy. Somewhere nearby, water slapped wood. A ship, he thought dimly. No, not a ship. A chamber? A cellar? A coffin? He tried to move. His left arm did not answer. His right hand twitched. Fire shot up through his ribs and lodged behind his eyes. His hip screamed. His chest seized. The rasp came again, louder this time, and at once there were hands on him.

"Hold him," a voice said.

Another: "Do not let him thrash. Gods, he'll tear the bindings."

Aegon tried to curse them. His lips cracked. Something hot slid down his chin.

"Easy, Your Grace. Easy. You are safe."

Safe.

The word was so absurd that some broken part of him wished to laugh.

He remembered fire.

Gold wings.

A roar above him, greater than Sunfyre's, deeper than thunder.

Bronze.

Vermithor.

Then heat, impossible heat, and Sunfyre screaming—not the battle-cry of a dragon, not the high proud shriek with which the golden beast had taken to the skies, but a sound no living creature should have made. Terror. Pain. Bones breaking. Aegon remembered the saddle wrenching to the side beneath him, the world turning, his left side suddenly filled with light. His armor had gone soft. That was wrong. Armor did not go soft. Metal did not melt against flesh unless the gods had forgotten all mercy.

Then falling.

Then nothing.

No, not nothing.

He remembered his mother's voice.

Not clearly. Never clearly.

Beatrice had bent over him once, or perhaps a dream had taken her face and worn it badly. He remembered tears that might have been real, and his grandfather Unwin's voice, hard and distant, speaking as if Aegon's body were a fortification damaged in a siege.

"He will live?"

"Perhaps, my lord."

"Perhaps for septons. I asked a healer."

"If the fever does not take him. Suppose the burns do not blacken. If the bones set. If his lungs—"

"Then make the ifs bend."