The Mad King

The heavy oak door of the council hall shut with a dull thud after the last Lord departed, sealing out the cold, salty sea wind and the lingering tension from the heated discussion. The hall instantly fell into a dead silence, broken only by the faint crackling of embers in the fireplace and the sea wind's reluctant sigh as it squeezed through the stone window cracks, its ghostly wail pressing down the struggling flames, making them flicker and dance, casting unpredictable shadows on the cold, rough stone floor.

Kolen Greyjoy's tall frame seemed to lose its support, his authority as King of the Sea Stones receding like the tide. He slumped heavily back onto the throne carved from giant whale bones and black reef rock, the leather and bone groaning softly as he settled. In this moment, he resembled an old seal, battered against the reef by the waves, utterly exhausted, its ferocity in battling the storm gone, leaving only the deep weariness etched by years and burdens. His rough, reef-like fingers unconsciously stroked the cold rim of the pottery wine cup, the amber mead within reflecting the dying embers. His gaze, filled with a post-burdened scrutiny and an ineffable complexity, drifted over the flickering shadows to rest on the small figure at the far end of the long table.

"Speak," Kolen's voice was hoarse, breaking the silence. He took a sip of the mead; the sweet liquid slid down his throat but did nothing to dispel the heaviness in his heart. "The storm has temporarily subsided. Now, with your eyes, tell me what you saw?"

Yulon looked up, his heterochromatic eyes seeming to ignite as if a spark had been thrown into them. "Father, I heard the waves crashing on the shore, and I saw the jagged reefs. But the loudest sound wasn't from the arguments of the Iron Islands." His childish voice was clear and crisp, yet carried a chilling quality that transcended time, each word like a shard of ice condensed from salt frost, striking the empty stone walls. "It comes from King's Landing. From the one who sits upon the twisted iron thorns, whom fear and hatred call the 'Mad King,' Aerys Targaryen."

Kolen's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly, his fingers stroking the wine cup pausing slightly. He didn't interrupt, but his hawk-like eyes, which had seen countless storms, grew deeper, like the unfathomable sea before a tempest.

The child's voice suddenly took on a strange, ethereal quality, as if it weren't coming from him but from somewhere older and vaster. "Father, last night... I dreamt of the Drowned God." He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to an unseen tide. "His robes billowed with boundless deep blue, and his fingers pointed to the scarlet sky in the south... He said: 'Look, the Red Dragon of King's Landing is madly devouring its own tail! The lion's golden mane will soon be soaked in its own blood! Ravens carry venomous snakes, nesting quietly in the shadows of power. When the horns of winter blow, only a fleet bound by chains can crush the frozen sea.'"

Kolen's fingers froze completely on the cold pottery cup. An indescribable chill crept up his spine. The maesters of Pike had tried countless times to explain Yulon's rare heterochromia as "birthmarks" or "coincidences," but now, this dreamlike prophecy, with its deep-sea pressure that made one's heart race, made him doubt the maesters' confident explanations for the first time. The firelight reflected in the mead in the cup flickered violently in his eyes.

"Explain clearly," his voice was low and hoarse, like sand grinding against reef, each syllable heavy with gravity.

Yulon's childish voice returned to its almost chilling calm, as if reciting a predetermined, bloody chronicle. "The rebels of Duskendale, even after laying down their arms and begging for mercy, were thrown into eternal green flames. Their screams were the funeral dirge composed by the Mad King. The remnants of the Blackfyre pretenders were bound to the Iron Throne he claimed, roasted alive in wildfire, their flesh charred and rotten... The Iron Throne groaned in that hellfire, twisting and deforming—not forged in victory, but the very foundation of Targaryen rule for centuries, being thrown into the flames that consume all by his own hand!" His fingertips traced the tiny salt grains on the table, leaving a twisted, scorched mark, as if symbolizing the burned royal authority. "Ser Barristan Selmy, the knight who pulled him back from the hell of Duskendale... his plea, that sliver of loyalty, barely managed to snatch a three-year-old child's life from the Mad King's madness. If not for that..." Yulon's voice held a chilling pity, "even that meager bloodline, his own, would have been extinguished. Is this mercy? Or a deeper, more desperate madness?"

Kolen's breathing seemed to stop. His tall body tensed in the chair, the firelight casting shifting shadows on his face. Those bloody rumors, those deliberately obscured yet terrifying fragments of news from King's Landing, were now strung together by a five-year-old child with such clarity, such coldness, such insight into the core of the matter, forming a horrifying picture. He felt as if he were back in that oppressive Red Keep, seeing the dragon banners flying from the high towers, seeing the menacing silhouette of the Iron Throne, and even more so, seeing that king with flowing golden hair, his eyes flashing with a chaotic light like shattered glass. An old scar on his knuckle throbbed faintly—the mark left by a golden goblet thrown by Aerys in a fit of rage during an audience a year ago, the initial brand of madness.

"He became obsessed with fire," Yulon continued, his voice laced with cold mockery. "He ordered the Alchemist Rossart, who climbed to his position by licking sores, to bury countless wildfire pots beneath King's Landing, beneath the foundations of the Red Keep, like dragon eggs hidden away. These are not ramparts to protect the kingdom, Father," he raised his right eye, his ice-blue pupil reflecting the hearth fire without warmth, "these are graves buried beneath his own throne, waiting to be ignited! It is a funeral pyre he has dug for himself, for the entire Targaryen dynasty!"

He paused, his left eye seeming to absorb all the light around him, his voice dropping lower but becoming more penetrating. "Queen Rhaella, his wife, is imprisoned in the cold stone chambers of Maegor's Holdfast, accused of... an affair with Tywin Lannister?" The question was filled with icy sarcasm. "The wrath of Doran Martell of Dorne has long been boiling in the blood of the Martells! This imposed humiliation is like a poisoned spear thrust into the Dornish sun, the wound will only fester and suppurate, with no possibility of healing!"

Kolen's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. He recalled a recent letter, received from Prince Doran of Dorne, its wording veiled but its words as cold as ice. The Mad King's actions were tearing apart, burning, and turning into choking ashes the network of allies that the dragonlords had built over centuries with blood and fire, marriage alliances and promises.

"Any slight disturbance," Yulon tapped his slender fingers lightly on the salt grains, producing a faint but unnerving rustling sound, like a ticking clock, "a delay in taxes, an unintentional word, even a careless glance... can become the fuse to ignite the next pyre. Guards, commoners, criminals, noble lords... the eerie green flames of wildfire devouring the living have become a persistent shadow of death hovering over King's Landing." He leaned forward slightly, his small body appearing remarkably resolute on the huge chair. "He abolished the ancient custom of noble council, trusting only the jesters who crawled out of the mud, and those who grovel at his feet, licking the foul sores on his fingers to survive as 'loyal servants.' Father," his voice carried a heavy sense of pronouncement, "this is not rule. This is a poisonous stew brewed with fear and madness! Beneath the boiling lid are countless chains of loyalty, forcibly stretched and on the verge of snapping, and a mountain of dry firewood that needs only a single spark to ignite! He thinks those flames can forge terrifying chains, but he doesn't realize the sparks have already fallen—waiting only for a wind from fate!"

Yulon's childish voice echoed and reverberated in the vast, cold stone hall, each word like a cold iron hammer striking heavily on the anvil of reality, producing a chilling echo. Kolen fell into a long silence. His gaze shifted from Yulon's seemingly all-seeing young face to the last struggling flame in the fireplace. The flickering orange-red shifted and distorted in his eyes, merging with the terrifying green flames he had heard about, the ones that had burned the surrendering men of Duskendale. The Mad King's image, through his young son's calmly cruel analysis, had never been so clear, so concrete, so despairingly presented before him—a madman sitting on a mountain of wildfire barrels, wildly waving a torch, with the fuse already burning to its end.

"This mad fire," Yulon's voice suddenly rose, sharp as if piercing through mist, "it burns far more than just the Red Keep of King's Landing! Its sparks have already flown on ill winds, scattering to the tinder piles of all Westeros!" His fingers moved rapidly across the rough map drawn with salt grains, tapping and pointing, as if marking impending explosive barrels.

"The North!" His fingertips struck heavily on the location representing Winterfell. "The Stark family, whose bloodline is their ancient honor like the eternal ice fields! The Mad King's atrocities of burning people alive, imprisoning the innocent, and wantonly trampling on noble dignity are incompatible with the North's honor, frozen for a thousand years! Duke Rickard Stark of Winterfell, the Warden of the North known for his uprightness, has, on more than one public occasion, hurled the title 'Mad King' at the Iron Throne! Varys's little birds, the Eight-Eyed Spiders, must have carried these rebellious words into the deep palace of the Red Keep. Do you know the Mad King's reaction?" A cold arc curled at the corner of Yulon's mouth. "He smashed the dragonbone crown, passed down from Aegon the Conqueror, symbolizing royal authority!" He paused, letting this shocking symbolic act ferment in the cold air. "Father, this is not just anger, it is a complete desecration of his own bloodline, of the glory of the Conqueror! The fangs of the Northern wolves have been sharpened in silence!"

"The Westerlands!" His finger abruptly swept towards Casterly Rock. "Tywin Lannister! His wife, Lady Joanna..." The name carried a heavy weight in his mouth, "Her death, though there is no ironclad proof pointing directly to the Mad King, the lingering shadow, like the never-dissipating golden dust beneath Casterly Rock! Not to mention the years of unforgettable humiliation—treating the richest and most powerful Lord in the Seven Kingdoms like a jester or a clown!" "A Lannister always pays his debts," Father. This is not just a saying, it is a vow etched into bone! The mountain of gold accumulated at Casterly Rock, each coin soaked in cold hatred, for the Mad King, for that crumbling Iron Throne! This hatred is more flammable than wildfire, heavier than gold!"

"Dorne!" His fingertip finally landed on the scorching south. "Princess Elia Martell is about to marry Prince Rhaegar and become his bride. However, her mother-in-law, the noble Queen Rhaella, is imprisoned in Maegor's Holdfast, slandered as an adulteress and subjected to endless humiliation! The pride of the Dornish is like their desert lances under the sun, they would rather break than bend! The Mad King's contempt and harm towards the Martell family have already pushed their loyalty, which was already based on marriage alliances, to the breaking point, fragile as spider silk in the wind!"