The Mad King

The heavy oak doors of the council chamber swung shut with a dull thud after the last lord had left, shutting out the cold, salty sea breeze beyond and the lingering tension of the confrontation that had just taken place. The hall fell silent in an instant, save for the faint crackle of dying coals in the hearth and the sea wind's ghostly wail as it squeezed through the stone window slits, pressing the struggling flames low and casting shifting, unpredictable shadows across the cold, rough stone floor.

Kolen Greyjoy's towering frame seemed to have lost its supporting mast, and the majesty of the King of the Sea Stones ebbed away like the tide. He sank heavily into his throne, carved from enormous whale bones and black rock, its leather and joints giving a faint groan. Now he looked more like an old seal, exhausted after being hurled against the rocks by the waves. The ferocity with which he had fought the storm was gone, leaving only the deep weariness carved by time and burden. His rough, rock-hard fingers absently stroked the cold rim of his earthenware cup. Amber mead reflected the dancing embers within. His gaze, carrying the scrutiny of a man relieved of a burden and a complexity difficult to name, passed through the wavering light and settled on the small figure at the end of the long table.

"Speak," Kolen said, his voice slightly hoarse, breaking the silence. He sipped his mead. The sweet, cloying liquid slid down his throat but did nothing to ease the weight in his heart. "The storm has quieted for now. Tell me what you see, with your own eyes."

Yulon raised his head. The differently colored whirlpools of his eyes seemed to catch fire, burning without a sound. "Father, I heard the waves breaking on the shore, and I saw the jagged rocks. But the loudest sounds didn't come from the arguments in the Iron Islands." His child's voice was clear, yet carried a chill that seemed to pierce through time. Each word was like an icicle crusted with salt, striking the empty stone walls. "It came from King's Landing. From Aerys Targaryen, seated upon the twisted iron thorns, whom fear and hatred have named the 'Mad King.'"

Kolen's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly, and his fingers paused on the cup. He didn't interrupt. But his hawk-like eyes, which had weathered countless storms, grew deeper, like the fathomless sea before one struck.

The child's voice suddenly took on a strange, ethereal quality, as if it came not from him but from some older, more boundless place. "Father, last night... I dreamed of the Drowned God." He tilted his head slightly, as though listening to an invisible tide. "The hem of his robe churned with boundless deep blue. His finger pointed toward 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, in the end, be soaked with its own blood! A raven carries a viper, quietly building its nest in the shadow of power. When the horns of winter sound, only a fleet bound together by iron chains can crush the frozen sea.'"

Kolen's fingers froze completely on the cold clay cup. An indescribable chill crept up his spine. The maesters of Pyke had repeatedly tried to explain Yulon's rare mismatched eyes as a "birthmark" or "coincidence," but now this dreamlike prophecy, bearing the heart-stirring oppression of the deep sea, made him question the maesters' confident explanation for the first time. The firelight reflected in his mead flickered wildly in his eyes.

"Be clear," he said, his voice low and hoarse, like gravel scraping against rock. Every syllable was heavy with gravity.

Yulon's child's voice returned to its almost cruel calm, as though reciting a bloody chronicle already written. "The rebels of Duskendale laid down their arms and knelt in surrender, yet were thrown into the eternal green flames. Their screams were the funeral song composed by the Mad King. The surviving remnants of the Blackfyres were bound to the iron thorns he claimed as his throne, and roasted alive in wildfire until their skin blackened and their flesh charred... The Iron Throne groaned, twisted, and warped in the flames of that hell—not forged in victory, but the very foundations of centuries of Targaryen rule being cast into a blaze that consumed all!" His fingertips traced the tiny grains of salt on the tabletop, leaving a twisted, blackened line, as though it symbolized the scorched crown. "Ser Barristan Selmy, the knight who pulled him out of the hell of Duskendale... His plea, that scant measure of loyalty, barely managed to save the life of a three-year-old child from the Mad King's madness. Otherwise..." A cold pity crept into Yulon's voice. "Even that meager trace of his own bloodline would have been extinguished. Is this mercy? Or a deeper, more despairing madness?"

Kolen seemed to stop breathing. His tall frame tensed in the chair, firelight casting shifting shadows across his face. The bloody rumors and the deliberately obscured yet chilling fragments of news from King's Landing had now been pieced together by a five-year-old boy in language so clear, so cold, and so penetrating that they formed a horrifying picture. It was as if Kolen had been transported back to the oppressive Red Keep, seeing the dragon banners fluttering atop the towers, the Iron Throne's savage outline—and the king, his golden hair flying, his eyes flashing with the madness of shattered glass. An old scar on his knuckle throbbed faintly. It was the mark of a golden cup Aerys had hurled in a fit of inexplicable rage during an audience a year ago, the first brand of madness.

"He's become obsessed with fire," Yulon continued, his voice edged with cold mockery. "He ordered Rossart, the Pyromancer who climbed to power by licking his sores, to bury countless jars of wildfire beneath King's Landing, under the very foundations of the Red Keep, like dragon eggs hidden away. Those aren't fortifications to protect the kingdom, Father." He raised his right eye, its icy blue pupil reflecting the firelight without warmth. "They're a grave buried beneath his own throne, waiting to be lit! A pyre he dug for himself and the entire Targaryen Dynasty!"

He paused. The blackness of his left eye seemed to absorb every trace of light around it. His voice lowered, yet grew more penetrating. "Queen Rhaella, his wife, is imprisoned in a cold stone chamber in Maegor's Holdfast, accused of... sleeping with Tywin Lannister?" The question dripped with cold mockery. "Doran Martell's fury has long been boiling in the blood of House Martell! This humiliation forced upon them is like a poisoned spear driven into Dorne beneath its blazing sun. The wound will only fester and suppurate. It will never heal!"

Kolen's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. He recalled a letter he had received not long ago from Doran, the Prince of Dorne, its wording veiled but every word as cold as ice. The Mad King's actions were tearing apart and burning to ash, piece by piece, the network of allies the dragons had built over centuries with blood and fire, marriages and promises.

"Any hint of disturbance," Yulon's slender fingers tapped lightly on the grains of salt, making a faint but unsettling rustle like the pendulum of a countdown clock, "a delayed tax payment, a careless word, even an unguarded glance... any of them could become the fuse that lights the next pyre. Guards, commoners, criminals, noble lords... The unnatural green flames that devour the living have become a deathly shadow circling above King's Landing." He leaned forward slightly, his small body seeming unusually resolute in the enormous chair. "He abolished the old custom of allowing the nobility to take part in governance. He trusts only the fools who crawled out of the mud and the 'loyal servants' who survive by kneeling at his feet and licking the foul sores on his fingers. Father," he said, his voice carrying the weight of a solemn verdict, "this isn't rule. It's a pot of deadly poison, boiled up with fear and madness! Beneath its bubbling lid lie countless chains of loyalty, stretched to the brink of breaking, and heaps of kindling that need only a spark to explode! He thinks those flames can forge iron chains that inspire terror, but he doesn't know that the sparks have already landed—now they only await a wind from fate!"

Yulon's childish voice echoed and clashed through the empty, frigid stone hall. Every word was a cold hammer pounding against the anvil of reality, ringing with a sound that set one's teeth on edge. Kolen fell into a long silence. His gaze left Yulon's small face, which seemed to see through everything, and turned toward the last struggling flame in the hearth. The dancing orange-red light shifted and warped before his eyes, overlapping and merging with the terrible green flames he had heard had consumed the surrendering rebels of Duskendale. Through his youngest son's calm, almost cruel analysis, the Mad King had never seemed so clear, so real, so despairingly present before him: a madman sitting atop a mountain of wildfire casks, wildly waving a torch, with the fuse already burned to its end.

"This mad fire," Yulon's voice suddenly rose, sharp as a blade piercing the fog, "isn't scorching only the Red Keep in King's Landing! Its sparks have already ridden an ill wind and landed on the kindling scattered across all of Westeros!" His fingers moved quickly across the rough map traced in salt, tapping here and there as though marking one powder keg after another on the verge of exploding.

"The North!" His fingertip struck the spot representing Winterfell. "House Stark, whose bloodline is bound to the honor of the ancient ice plains! The Mad King's atrocities—burning people alive, imprisoning innocents, and wantonly trampling the dignity of the nobility—are completely at odds with the North's code of honor, frozen for a thousand years! Duke Rickard Stark of Winterfell, that famously upright Warden of the North, has publicly hurled the title 'Mad King' at the Iron Throne on more than one occasion! The birds of Varys, the Eight-Eyed Spider, must have carried those rebellious words into the Red Keep's inner chambers. Do you know how the Mad King responded?" Yulon's lips curled into a cold smile. "He smashed the dragonbone crown passed down by Aegon the Conqueror, the symbol of royal power!" He paused to let this appalling symbolic gesture sink into the cold air. "Father, this isn't mere anger. It's a complete desecration of his own bloodline and the Conqueror's glory! The fangs of the wolves of the North have been silently sharpened!"

"The Westerlands!" His finger slashed toward Casterly Rock. "Tywin Lannister! His wife, Lady Joanna..." The name carried a weighty significance as it left his lips. "Though there's no hard evidence directly implicating the Mad King in her death, the shadow that clings to it is like the gold dust deep beneath Casterly Rock, never to be swept away! And that's not to mention the year after year of unforgettable humiliation—treating the richest, most powerful lord in the Seven Kingdoms like a fool or jester, summoning him and dismissing him at will! 'A Lannister Always Pays His Debts,' Father. This isn't just a saying. It's a vow carved into their very bones! Every coin of the mountain of gold amassed at Casterly Rock has already been steeped in cold hatred—hatred for the Mad King, and for the tottering Iron Throne! That hatred is more flammable than wildfire and heavier than gold!"

"Dorne!" His fingertip finally came to rest in the sun-drenched south. "Princess Elia Martell is about to marry into the Red Keep and become Prince Rhaegar's bride. Yet her mother-in-law, the noble Queen Rhaella, has been imprisoned in Maegor's Holdfast, branded an adulteress and subjected to endless humiliation! The pride of the Dornish is like the blazing sun of their desert, their spears unbending! The Mad King's contempt and mistreatment of House Martell have pushed their loyalty, already founded on marriage, to the brink of breaking. It's as fragile as a spider's thread in the wind!"