Rewriting Targaryen History

Chapter 102: Chapter 102: The Old Song

The wings came closer.

Not quickly at first. The sound moved through the night in slow, heavy beats, half-hidden beneath the sea and then rising above it until even the harbour seemed to quiet in answer. I kept my back away from the cliff edge this time. Wisdom had not made me brave, but it had made me less available to gravity.

The air shifted again. I looked up before the shadow reached me.

The Amethyst Shadow descended from the dark with terrible control.

There was no sudden plunge this time, no violent rush over my head, no near fall that left me crawling away from the edge with my dignity bleeding out behind me. The dragon came down in a wide curve, wings spread against the moonlit cloud, each beat slowing as it neared the cliff path. Its body blotted out the stars one section at a time.

Then it landed on the broad shelf of black rock ahead of me. Stone cracked beneath its weight. Not shattered. Cracked. A deep, unpleasant sound that travelled under my boots and into my bones. The dragon folded its wings slowly, as if giving the night permission to return around it.

I did not move. That was partly courage. Mostly, it was the knowledge that running would turn me into something worth chasing.

The Amethyst Shadow stood between me and the higher path, close enough that I could feel heat move from its body in slow waves. It did not roar. It did not hiss. It did not snap its jaws, spread its wings, or make any of the grand threats men expected from beasts large enough to kill them.

It only looked at me. Its eyes were silver. That was the first detail that truly held me. Not purple, not gold, not ember-red like some smaller dragons when torchlight caught them poorly. Silver. Pale and bright against the dark shape of its head, reflecting moonlight with a cold steadiness that made the rest of the world feel briefly less certain.

The dragon’s scales looked black at first, as they had on the night it passed over me. But now it stood still enough for the colour beneath shadow to show. Deep violet ran through the hide where light touched it, not evenly, not prettily, but like amethyst buried beneath smoke. Along the neck and shoulders the colour darkened almost to midnight. Near the wing joints, a richer purple glimmered and vanished each time muscle shifted beneath scale.

It was enormous.

I had seen larger. Vhagar made most creatures feel like ambitious dogs. Yet the Amethyst Shadow did not belong with the young dragons I had watched my sons train beside, nor even with Syrax or Seasmoke. It carried the weight of age. Its chest was broad, its neck thick with old strength, its horns long and dark, curving back from a head that seemed carved for judgement rather than hunger.

Vermithor came to mind.

Not because they looked the same. They did not. Vermithor was bronze fury and old royal power, a beast whose very stillness felt like a challenge to history. The Amethyst Shadow was darker, leaner through the neck, less massive across the skull, but close enough in size and age that the comparison rose before I could stop it.

That did not comfort me.

Remembering that the creature before me was similar in scale to the Bronze Fury did not make it less dangerous. It only informed me that if it chose violence, my death would be thorough enough to require very little description.

The dragon watched. No. That was not quite right. It assessed. The distinction mattered. Watching could be idle. Assessment had purpose, even if I did not understand the purpose and feared making myself too interesting within it.

My heartbeat had not settled. I could feel it in my throat, in my scraped palm from the earlier night, in the foolish urge to say something simply because silence felt too large. I did not. Men who filled danger with words often did so because they wanted the world to mistake noise for control.

The dragon lowered its head slightly. Not submission. Not invitation. A better word did not exist. Its nostrils widened. Warm air moved across the path, carrying the smell of smoke, salt, old blood, and something mineral, like heated stone after rain. Its silver eyes remained fixed on mine.

I thought of every sensible thing a man might do. Call for the dragonkeepers. Step backwards slowly. Lower my gaze. Remain still until it lost interest.

Each thought arrived and left without becoming action. The dragon had descended in front of me. If it had wanted me gone, the path behind me remained open. If it had wanted me dead, there would not have been enough time for strategy. It had chosen neither.

So I studied it.

That seemed madness until I remembered that fear had already taught me what panic achieved. Panic made feet clumsy. Panic made breath loud. Panic made a man reach for weapons that meant nothing except insult. If I could not command the moment, I could at least refuse to cheapen it.

The Amethyst Shadow’s left horn bore an old break near the tip. Not fresh. Weathered. A pale scar crossed one side of its lower jaw, disappearing beneath darker scales at the throat. The membrane of one wing showed a narrow healed tear, visible only when the wind moved against it.

This was no untouched monster from a song. It had lived. It had fought or been fought. It had survived Dragonstone’s cliffs, storms, and whatever ancient quarrels dragons kept beyond the reach of men.

My hand had drifted near my sword without my permission. I moved it away. Slowly.

The dragon noticed. Of course it had to notice. Its head tilted by the smallest measure. The movement was worse than a snarl. A snarl would have been easier to understand. This felt like being considered by something that did not need to hurry because it had never once been forced to.

I remembered Daemon then.

Not Daemon in the yard, laughing at men who mistook caution for cowardice. Not Daemon on Caraxes, red against the smoke of the Stepstones. Another Daemon, from a life that belonged to a man dead in Dresden. A cavern. An old dragon. A song in High Valyrian, low and strange, carrying through darkness toward a beast men called the Bronze Fury.

I had watched it once and thought it beautiful. Standing before the Amethyst Shadow, with silver eyes fixed on me and heat rolling across the stone, beauty felt like the least honest part of it.

Still, the memory remained. Hāros Bartossi.

The name came first, then the shape of the melody. I did not know if the song had truly existed here in the same form, or if the world had bent around old stories in ways I still did not understand.

My tongue knew High Valyrian better than Heinrich Adler ever should have. Othorion’s blood knew less and more at once. Between the two, the song sat like a door I had no right to open and no better tool to hold.

I swallowed. The dragon’s eyes did not leave me.

"If this angers you," I murmured in High Valyrian, voice low enough that it barely carried over the wind, "I would prefer you show displeasure in a way that leaves enough of me for burial."

The dragon did not react. That seemed like permission if one was desperate enough. I began to sing. Not loudly. Not bravely.

The first notes came rough because my throat had tightened around fear. I shaped them carefully, reaching for the old cadence rather than force. The words were Valyrian, not a command, not the sharp language used to make dragons rise or descend. Older than that in feeling, though perhaps I only told myself so because terror made men sentimental.

The sound moved poorly at first. Wind caught it and carried pieces away. I nearly stopped. The dragon did not move. So I continued.

My voice steadied on the second phrase. I kept my hands open at my sides and my feet planted in the rock. I did not step closer. I did not lower myself into some foolish display of submission. Dragons were not men, and men already misunderstood kneeling enough among themselves. I only sang.

The Amethyst Shadow listened. I knew it in the stillness.

Its head lowered another fraction. Smoke curled from one nostril and slid along the ground between us. The silver eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in attention. Its tail moved once behind it, dragging stone dust in a slow arc.

I remembered the rest of the melody in fragments.

That should have terrified me more. Perhaps it did. I sang what I knew, then filled the spaces with High Valyrian words that belonged to the same feeling if not the same ancient line. Fire beneath stone. Blood answering blood. The old sky. The first riders. Not claims of mastery. Not promises of conquest.

Recognition. That was the closest word.

The dragon shifted. A foreclaw moved forward, talons pressing into rock. The sound broke through the song and nearly broke me with it. My breath caught. For one miserable heartbeat, every part of my body voted to flee except the part responsible for dignity, and that part had a poor record lately.

I kept singing. The Amethyst Shadow came no closer.

It only settled its weight differently, lowering its massive head until the heat of its breath reached my face. My eyes watered. The smell of smoke filled my nose. The dragon’s teeth were long, dark at the base, pale toward the points, and near enough that I could imagine exactly how little effort would be required to end the experiment.

My voice thinned. I forced it steady.

The old song had not been meant for comfort. I understood that now. It was not soft because dragons were gentle. It was soft because loudness had no use before a creature that could out-roar storms. It did not command because command would be absurd until the dragon allowed the word to mean anything.

A shape moved below in the harbour. A lantern lifted, then another. Men had noticed. I did not look away. The dragon’s eyes held mine. Silver, bright, and anciently indifferent to the opinions of harbourmen.

I sang the final line I trusted and let the note fade into the wind. Silence returned. Not empty silence. Dragonstone had too much sea, stone, and sleeping fire for emptiness. But the space between us held no words now, only breath.

The Amethyst Shadow remained still.

My heart beat hard enough that I wondered whether the dragon could hear it. Given its size, senses, and general unfairness as a living creature, it probably could.

Then it exhaled.

Smoke rolled over me, warm and thick, making the world vanish for a moment in grey. I did not cough until the worst of it passed. That felt like an achievement worthy of a very small song.

When the smoke thinned, the dragon’s head was still lowered.

Closer than before. Not close enough to touch. Close enough that touching it became an idea. A stupid idea. A magnificent, suicidal, history-changing idea.

My hand twitched. I stopped it. No. Not yet.

The thought came with surprising clarity. Fear had not vanished. Pride had not taken over. I simply understood that this was not a moment to steal more than had been offered. The Amethyst Shadow had descended. It had assessed me. It had allowed the song. That was already more than any sensible man should expect and more than any greedy man deserved.

I bowed my head slightly. Not deep. Not courtly. An acknowledgement.

"Thank you for not burning me," I said softly in High Valyrian. "I realise that may not sound like much, but from where I stand, it is a generous beginning."

The dragon made a sound then. Not a roar. Not a hiss. A low vibration deep in its chest, so quiet at first that I felt it through the soles of my boots before I heard it. The stone carried it. My ribs answered. It was not approval, exactly. I would not flatter myself that far. But it was not rejection.

The Amethyst Shadow lifted its head.

The movement drew the night upward with it. Wings unfurled, vast and dark, catching the moon so that violet fire moved briefly under the scales. Wind struck my face as it turned toward the outer cliff.

This time I did step back. Calmly. Mostly.

The dragon pushed from the rock. The force of its takeoff drove air across the path, but I was ready for it. My cloak snapped behind me, and ash-dust stung my eyes. The Amethyst Shadow climbed over the harbour, silent for several wingbeats before releasing one low cry that rolled across the water and woke answers from deep within Dragonstone.

Below, men shouted. Farther off, another dragon stirred. I watched until the dark shape became part of the night beyond the ridge. Only then did I let out the breath I had been pretending to control.

Grey Roach appeared on the path behind me with three Unsullied and, this time, one dragonkeeper wrapped hastily in a dark robe. The keeper was old, bald, and furious in the way men became when woken to discover death had been avoided without their supervision.

"My prince," Grey Roach said, looking first at me and then at the empty rock shelf. "You are unharmed."

"That seems to be the case."

The dragonkeeper stared at the cracked stone where the Amethyst Shadow had landed. "It came down here?"

"Yes."

"And you stood before it?"

"I did not think running would improve the arrangement."

His eyes moved to my face. "Did you speak?"

"I sang."

The dragonkeeper closed his eyes. Grey Roach looked at him, then at me. "Was singing expected?"

"No," the keeper said.

"Was it forbidden?"

The old man opened his eyes again. "Most things are forbidden when one stands before a wild dragon without keepers, chains, distance, or sense."

"That sounds comprehensive," I said.

"It is meant to."

I looked back toward the ridge where the dragon had vanished. "It did not attack."

The keeper’s anger softened, not into comfort but into concern. "That does not mean it accepted you."

"I know."

"Do you?"

His tone was sharper than most men dared with me. I let it stand because he had earned the right by knowing more than I did about not being eaten.

"I know that a dragon allowing a foolish man to remain alive once is not the same as permission to become more foolish."

"Good," he said. "Remember that with more discipline than you showed tonight."

Grey Roach remained expressionless. "Shall I assign more guards to the cliff paths?"

The keeper gave him a look of disbelief. "If the dragon wants the path, guards will only make a larger offering."

"That is a useful answer," Grey Roach said.

"It is an obvious one."

"I find obvious answers often ignored."

The keeper grunted, then turned back to me. "If it comes again, send for us before you decide to perform ancient songs at its teeth."

"I will consider that."

"My prince, consideration is not obedience."

"No, but it is the beginning of negotiation."

He looked as if he regretted every royal bloodline that had ever produced dragonriders. "Dragonstone has survived many princes with that expression. Not all of them survived Dragonstone."

That was fair.

We walked back in tense silence, though Grey Roach stayed close enough to grab me if I decided to make myself interesting to the sky again. I allowed it. A man who had sung at a dragon and lived should not become proud too quickly. Pride had worse survival instincts than fear.

Inside the castle, the corridors felt warmer. Smaller. More human.

Vaerya slept two levels below with a chipped wooden soldier near her pillow. Celeste rested in the adjoining room because exhaustion had finally defeated vigilance. Aegor dreamed, perhaps, of gulls, guards, and whatever gifts he believed his father now owed the household. Life had narrowed itself to recovery, broth, pillows, and the careful return of a child’s temper.

Yet outside, above the cliffs, the night still held the memory of silver eyes. I had not claimed the Amethyst Shadow. I had not even touched it. But the old song had crossed the space between us and not been answered with fire.

For that night, that was enough to keep me awake until dawn.