Dragonstone Castle had been built using advanced Valyria stoneworking. Since this craft had been lost in the Doom of Valyria, Dragonstone stood apart from all the other castles in Westeros.
Valyria stoneworking was undoubtedly an exceptionally advanced craft, whether used to build castles or lay roads. The several Valyrian Roads in Essos that remained as solid and level as new after a thousand years were proof enough.
After moving into Dragonstone Castle, Danyla often dreamed of how the castle had originally been built. She suspected she had awakened the Dreamer bloodline of House Targaryen.
So the next time she entered those dreams, she paid particular attention to how the dragonstone was made. Gradually, she came to understand some of the principles behind it. As it turned out, Valyria stoneworking relied primarily on dragonfire and certain substances produced by Great Dragons' bodies.
After taming Dreamfyre, Danyla had also tried building a road in Goat Town modeled on the Valyrian Roads. Although the results fell far short of the originals, it was still a remarkably fine blackstone road.
Danyla then selected a group of craftsmen specifically to help her develop a method of making black dragonstone. So far, the dragonstone they produced was rather rough, but once polished by stonemasons, it was perfectly suitable for building houses and roads. She believed that repeated experiments would eventually yield better dragonstone.
Under Danyla's planning, Goat Town had already grown to a respectable size. Its uniform blackstone streets and buildings looked neat and orderly. Danyla had also instructed the townspeople to use the nearby volcanic hot springs to build dedicated thermal baths, along with sewage pipes.
She had also selected some elderly and frail bachelors from among the refugees from King's Landing to handle the town's household rubbish and waste. Fermented together with Great Dragon droppings and volcanic ash, these made excellent fertilizer.
Goat Town now had nearly ten thousand mu of fertile farmland under cultivation. Since crops here could be harvested twice a year, Danyla had spent the past decade or so improving many grain varieties to give higher yields. With the added boost of Great Dragon fertilizer, their yields were already on par with those in the real world.
The previous season's barley harvest had reached 180 kilograms per mu. In a world where average yields were only a few dozen kilograms per mu, this was nothing short of a miracle. The people of White Sheep Town firmly believed it was a blessing brought to them by Danyla, their auspicious princess.
They therefore regarded Danyla as an incarnation of the Maiden of the Seven. While it was not as grand a title as Princess Rhaenyra's "Kingdom's Delight," at least it was closer to the hearts of the common people.
Since New Island was now her own domain, Danyla could set her own tax policies. She collected only forty percent of the grain harvest as rent. Thanks to this, all the people of New Island had spent the past two years free from worries over food and clothing.
White Sheep Town also grew increasingly lively. All kinds of handicraft trades gradually began to flourish.
Dragonstone Castle was built entirely from enormous blocks of black dragonstone, its towers carved into the shapes of dragons. Even the battlements along its walls were formed from dragon-shaped gargoyles in a multitude of poses.
Most of the castle's architectural features had something to do with dragons. Smaller dragons adorned the frames of doorways, dragon claws jutting from the walls served as torch brackets, immense stone wings housed the smithy and armory, and dragon tails formed arches, bridges, and outdoor stairways.
Yet a faint, foul smell mingled with sulfur permeated Dragonstone Castle, and its overall coloring was very dark.
Rather than a noble's castle, it looked more like a military fortress. Perhaps that had been the Valyria Freehold's purpose in building Dragonstone in the first place. Before it could take action against Westeros, however, Valyria itself had been destroyed by the Doom.
The Stone Drum Tower was Dragonstone's main keep. Whenever a storm came, thunderous echoes reverberated within its ancient walls, giving the tower its name. The immense, solemn structure of black stone inspired awe and dread at first sight.
The dungeon cells beneath the main keep were hot, dark, and damp. Being imprisoned there was a thoroughly miserable experience.
There were many secret passages and concealed stairways inside the main keep. The largest passage led across a high, arched stone bridge straight into the heart of Dragonmont. The dragonriders of House Targaryen used this route to summon their Great Dragons, then fly directly out of the immense mountain.
The Painted Table Chamber stood at the top of the Stone Drum Tower. It was a round room with four tall, narrow windows facing east, west, south, and north.
Inside the chamber stood an enormous wooden table carved into a detailed map of Westeros. During the War of Conquest, Aegon the Conqueror had used it to plan his campaigns.
The "map table" was over seventeen or eighteen meters long. At its widest, it measured roughly half its length, while its narrowest section was less than two meters across.
The position corresponding to Dragonstone had been carefully designed to align with the Dragonstone chair on a raised platform, from which the entire tabletop could be seen.
The Painted Table Chamber had the best natural light in Dragonstone Castle, so Danyla most enjoyed bringing her maids here to listen to Maester Tigris's lessons.
The whole Painted Table Chamber was shaped like a dragon lying flat on the ground, and people entered through its open mouth.
The kitchen beside it, meanwhile, looked like a dragon curled into a ball.
Aegon's Garden lay to the east and south of the Painted Table Chamber, directly overlooking the Narrow Sea, with beautiful views.
Aegon's Garden was filled with the pleasant fragrance of pine, and tall black trees rose all around it. There were wild roses and towering thickets of thorns as well, with cranberries growing in the muddy ground.
After Danyla discovered the usefulness of dragon dung, the plants here received even better care.
Only the Dragonkeepers knew this secret, however, and they could not communicate with outsiders. In a sense, it was Danyla's own exclusive technology.
The Dragon Tower offered some of the finest views among Dragonstone's towers. The screaming Great Dragon at its pinnacle had an air of utter disdain for everything beneath it. The tower was used to receive noble guests, and generally only great lords were entitled to stay there.
The Sea Dragon Tower was another of Dragonstone's towers. It faced the sea, shaped like a sleeping Great Dragon. The maesters' rooms lay beneath the tower's rookery. Its stairs were narrow and winding.
To reach the Painted Table Chamber, one had to descend the steps of the Sea Dragon Tower, pass through the gallery hung with portraits of House Targaryen's ancestors, walk between the Great Dragon heads of the middle and inner curtain walls, pass through the black iron gate in the wall, and finally climb another flight of steps.
Dragonstone's sept contained wooden statues of the Seven.
The Father was gilded from head to toe; the Mother was draped in the finest silk; the Crone's eyes were inlaid with pearls; the Stranger was carved as a figure half human and half dragon; and the Warrior wore the armor of House Targaryen.
The Maiden was said to have been modeled after Rhaenys, the sister of Aegon the Conqueror; the Smith, too, had been painted to resemble a Valyrian, with white hair and purple eyes.
All the statues had been carved from ships' masts, taken from the vessels on which the ancestors of House Targaryen had fled across the sea from Valyria.
Over the centuries, they had been coated in layers of colored paint, gilded, silvered, and set with jewels.
The sept contained several altars, as well as stained-glass windows.
It was said that Aegon the Conqueror had knelt here in prayer on the eve of setting sail to conquer the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
That claim was hardly credible, however, since Aegon was only known to have converted to the faith of the Seven after reaching Oldtown during his conquest. The sept must therefore have been built after that.
Still, people in this world liked to link their families and their deeds to the gods, though gods truly did exist in this world.
Dragonstone would be Danyla's power base for quite some time to come, so she quietly resolved to manage it well. Only then would she have the strength to protect her family's Great Dragons. Whenever she thought of how they had died such meaningless deaths in the War of the Dance of the Dragons, she found it impossible to feel at ease.
In fact, with the addition of New Island, Dragonstone's territory had already expanded considerably. Over the past few days, Danyla had made some estimates. Excluding the mountains and tidal flats, New Island had no less than five hundred thousand mu of arable land. The slopes and tidal flats suitable for growing pasture grass, flowers, and trees amounted to at least another million mu.
Even the still-smoking volcano contained many resources that could be developed. Danyla already had a rough plan in mind, though she could not put it into effect immediately. She could, however, begin experimenting little by little.
At this stage, her main focus still had to be on learning. In truth, she had not properly integrated into this world over the past few years.
For one thing, her special status limited the people and affairs she could encounter; for another, the communist values instilled in her during her previous life were difficult to change overnight. Above all, the Dragon Kingdom people's obsessive instinct for farming made it hard for Danyla to sit high above the clouds and look down on everyone below.
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