White Cloak - A GoT Fan-Fiction

The Tunnels of the Black Dread

Merwyn and Ser Harys went fast as the combination of armour and fatigue would allow. Doran skipped ahead of them, eyes to the ground and the trail of blue dye Noro Fleetfoot had left them in the snow.

"Noro knows not to kill the man, Doran?" Merwyn asked. "We'll need him to root out the others."

"Be at ease, Ser Merwyn, Noro's versed enough. I never saw a man outrun that Tyroshi. Could be that our job's already done."

Could be that Cersei will cede the crown to her imp brother, too. Merwyn had an inkling that this mummer's farce was far from its end. "What did he look like?"

"No sooner did he spot us, did he flee," Doran explained. "He came into Chatayah's and turned tail before he'd gotten over the threshold. I didn't see his face, only the pommel at his hip. I'd wager we'll know, soon enough."

The blue dye wound them back past the Dragonpit and down the eastern side of Rhaenys' Hill, into the festering rat-run that was Flea Bottom. Merwyn had been determined to avoid the place if it were possible. A boil on the face of the capital. If only there were some way of lancing it.

Nevertheless, Merwyn trailed the hem of his white cloak through unknown filth; the smell of pigsties, winesinks and worse following as they marched on. The wynds were barely sizeable enough for the three of them to walk abreast, the overhanging eaves on both sides almost touching. Here and there, peasant children swarmed; clutches of rag-wrapped bones with grimy faces and broken souls. They gawped at Merwyn as though he might be the Father himself. Merwyn returned a look that warned any and all against chancing his good mercy.

Only when they were in the belly of Flea Bottom, the Red Keep a formidable sentry on Aegon's High Hill above, did the waning trail of blue dye come to its end. It broke before a hovel; one permeated with the odour of organic rot.

Merwyn drew Thorn from his sheath, pushed on the door and stepped into the gloom beyond. "Noro," he called, but there came no answer.

With the stench of poverty in his nose, and a prickling apprehension that tuned his nerve taut as a bow-string, he glanced about the place. An old wooden table withered in the corner, four pewter tankards decorating its top. Beds of straw occupied space against the far wall; all of them looked slept on. Standard peasant fare, Merwyn thought. Then he noticed the hatch set in the middle of the floor. He had mistaken it for a brown rug in the dim light thrown forth from a sulking candle, but, upon closer inspection, he discerned the iron ring-pull fixed upon oaken planks. He heaved on it, and a trap-door groaned open.

"Gods be good," Ser Harys muttered.

Stone steps, worn smooth by the bootheels of a great many years, led down into the earth; the stairs levelling after a time. Two bracketed torches burned passionately on the walls at the bottom, illuminating a passageway that cleaved onward and out of sight.

"A tunnel?" Merwyn said, turning to regard Doran.

The Bastard observed the steps. "I've heard rumours of these before. Didn't think they actually existed, mind," Doran replied.

"They?"

"One of the Targaryen kings, Maegor the Cruel, I believe, built passageways throughout Aegon's High Hill. It's said more than a few of them could take a man down into other parts of the city, so that he might surface discreetly. Rhaegar Targaryen supposedly used them to come to Flea Bottom disguised as a lutist. The Mad King, Aerys, sealed any that entered the Red Keep, when his paranoia engulfed him. I guess he didn't bother to seal them from both sides. Either that, or he didn't find them all."