Dragonlord

Aegon brushed his hand over a relatively intact stretch of wall, sending dust cascading down.

As the dust cleared, a mural inlaid with glass and gemstones gradually emerged.

Figures with hair fashioned from silvery-white gemstones gathered beneath fourteen volcanoes cast in red agate. One knightlike figure, dressed far more strikingly than the others, stepped out from the crowd toward a churning volcano.

The figures around him struck various poses, as though trying to stop him-or persuade him to stay.

When Aegon's fingertips inadvertently brushed the dust from the little knight, a moment of disorientation seized him-as though he were walking alongside the figure into the roaring volcanic crater.

The young knight rode a dragon skyward out of the erupting volcano, while the crowd below knelt and cheered.

A gruff question abruptly dragged him back to reality.

"What's it say up there, silver-haired boy?"

At Crow's Eye's signal, one of the Ironborn stepped forward to ask.

Aegon concealed the flash of displeasure in his eyes and answered calmly, "It tells of how the Valyrians first came to ride dragons. A group of their ancestors once ventured into the Fourteen Flames."

Drawing on his memories of his previous life, he easily deduced what the mural depicted.

The Fourteen Flames, where dragonriding began!

Crow's Eye's blue-purple lips curved like a crescent in the shadows.

"Dragons."

The word rolled over his tongue as though he were savoring mead.

The Ironborn, however, stared at the silvery-white gemstones glittering on the wall, their eyes filled with greed.

"Captain," a balding Ironborn said, licking his lips, "those shiny stones..."

Crow's Eye cast him a sidelong glance with his single eye, a trace of mockery lurking within it.

"My sailor," he said, his voice like a snake sliding over silk, "your eyes are still fixed on grains of sand, while I have already shown you the golden hall ahead." His blue-stained nails idly skimmed the silver gleam on the wall. "Pry them out. Give them to whoever proved bravest today."

He turned toward the fourteen volcanoes deeper within the mural, his voice cold as scraping ice. "The true gems... are still burning within the volcanoes."

The Ironborn cried "Long live Euron!" as they pounced on the mural, hacking with knives and axes.

Watching the gemstones being forcibly gouged out, leaving nothing but a mess of pitted holes, Aegon furrowed his sharp brows slightly and turned away in silence.

Corlyon, walking among the group, took in the entire scene.

He clenched his jaw until blood seeped out, his nails digging deep into his palms.

All of this belonged to Torregar!

"Wake the dragon... once I wake the dragon, I'll burn this place to ashes. Crow's Eye, that silver-haired bastard... everyone who desecrated this place will pay."

He swallowed the metallic sweetness in his throat and walked silently among the others, his head bowed.

Aegon continued forward, stopping before a half-collapsed wall.

Its mural was badly damaged, with only one corner still intact. He reached out and brushed away the dust.

In the painting, a dragonrider swooped down on his dragon in a fierce dive, only for an enormous spear formed entirely of water to thrust out of the churning river and impale both dragon and rider.

The dragon's wings twisted, and the rider fell backward toward the dark green waves.

Beneath the surviving pigment, several lines of High Valyrian could just be made out, carved deep into the stone:

"...the fall of Velonserys Town... the shame of our people... must be cleansed with fire..."

The final stroke of the word "fire" had almost gouged through the stone wall.

He stood silent for a moment, then turned toward an intact, towering wall on the other side.

An entirely different scene confronted him.

Thousands upon thousands of ships tangled together and capsized upon a burning sea, their varied designs marking them as vessels from many states.

And the sky-was filled with dragons.

Hundreds of dragons spread their wings, casting shadows like the coming of the apocalypse. Dragonfire poured down in torrents, boiling the sea and the fleets alike.

Above the other dragons, one especially enormous beast opened its vast jaws. Its pitch-black body was inlaid with fragments of obsidian and black jade, which shimmered in the dim light with a dark sheen that seemed to devour everything.

Wherever it passed, its flames did not merely burn, but consumed-enemy ships, waves, even light, all reduced to pale, insubstantial vapor.

Aegon lowered his gaze and found a line of fine, sharply incised lettering at the bottom of the mural. His fingertips traced the ancient characters as he read softly:

"With the blood of the Rhoynar, cleanse this profound shame."

His voice was quiet, yet it fell like a stone of ice into the deathly still depths of history.

The Rhoynish Wars!

From just two surviving murals and their inscriptions, Aegon had already pieced together the broad outlines of those events. Not only had he read about them in his previous life, but as a descendant of Valyria in this one, he had long since gathered and committed all of it to memory.

In the books he had read in his previous life, the Rhoynish Wars had begun with fierce trade rivalry between Volantis, a Valyrian colonial city-state, and the Rhoynar city-state of Sar Mell.

Volantis had joined forces with three Dragonlords to burn Sar Mell to the ground, then plowed and salted its soil as a declaration of its permanent destruction.

This had enraged the Rhoynar. Prince Garin had united their city-states and assembled an army of two hundred and fifty thousand to launch a counterattack.

Early in the war, the Rhoynar armies had won victory after victory, even crushing the allied Valyrian forces at Velonserys Town and driving back their dragons.

Yet that victory had brought utter disaster upon them.

The Valyrian Freehold had mustered three hundred dragons in retaliation.

The entire Rhoynar army had perished beneath dragonfire, and Prince Garin had been taken captive, forced to witness the destruction of his own city-state.

The war had ended with the destruction of Rhoynar civilization. Led by Nymeria, its survivors had crossed the Narrow Sea, carrying the embers of their culture to Dorne.

He had never expected a piece of world history mentioned only in passing in the books of his previous life to manifest here, where he now stood witnessing its traces with his own eyes.

"Silver-haired boy." Crow's Eye's voice came from behind him, clinging to his ears like a slithering snake.

"What does this bloody tale say?"

Aegon turned, his calm gaze passing over him and sweeping across Corlyon, who stood rigid a short distance away.

"A story of arrogance and destruction." He pointed to the mural of the devastating defeat. "Here, the dragonriders of Old Valyria suffered a crushing blow from Rhoynar water magic. Dragons and men fell together.

"This was called 'shame.'"

His fingertip shifted toward the painting of the burning sea.

"And this was called 'cleansing.' House Torregar committed more than three hundred dragons, burning the civilization and fleets of the Rhoynar... to ashes upon the Rhoyne."

Crow's Eye's single eye remained fixed on the dragon silhouettes that blotted out the sky. His blue-purple lips moved soundlessly, as though he were chewing over the number "three hundred dragons" again and again. His throat bobbed, and he licked his lips.

There was no fear in that eye, only a pure, almost obsessive greed for the power of absolute destruction.

The group pressed on, venturing ever deeper. The murals and reliefs on either side recorded the family's bloody, glorious history of conquest.

Aegon studied them as he walked, his feelings tangled.

From the scorched earth of the conquest of the Ghiscari, to the fleets advancing on the Basilisk Isles, to the boiling rivers where the Rhoynar had been crushed-this family had taken part in almost every major war of Valyria's rise.

The family members depicted always stood atop dragons, their expressions bearing the same arrogance and indifference.

They treated other peoples like livestock, and even when facing other Dragonlord houses, their bearing was not that of equals, but more like sovereigns looking down upon their vassals.

Yet the mural that held Aegon in place the longest was an enormous work titled "Sea Burner."

At its center, a dragon of unprecedented size fought a near-divine monster of the deep, which brandished countless tentacles.

Dragonfire pierced the sea monster and plunged straight into the sea.

The mural vividly depicted the terrifying sight of seawater boiling away and evaporating, exposing the abyss beneath.

The inscription proclaimed that the family's founding dragon had once evaporated an entire stretch of sea in this way, earning the title "Sea Burner."

Aegon gazed at that "evaporated" seabed, fashioned from gold leaf and deep blue gemstones, yet felt little awe.

"Evaporated an entire stretch of sea?"

He considered it privately; it seemed more like self-aggrandizement dressed up as myth.

Yet the very fact that they had solemnly inscribed such an exaggerated "achievement" here confirmed the almost insane arrogance bred into this family's bones.