On his second day living in the Red Keep, Leon was summoned to the king's private study.
It was a circular room deep inside Maegor's Holdfast.
Bookshelves covered the walls, displaying some unsettling collectibles:
Dried lizard skulls, malformed fetal specimens in jars, several blackened lava rocks supposedly from the ruins of Valyria, and more than a dozen dragon models of various designs carved from wood and stone.
There was even a small skeleton pieced together from fragments of real dragonbone.
Aerys II Targaryen sat in the middle of the room, behind a desk piled with parchment scrolls.
He looked somewhat "calmer" today than he had in the throne room; at least his fingers were not trembling incessantly, and a focused curiosity had temporarily taken over his eyes.
"Sit." The king pointed at the chair opposite the desk without looking up, carving a piece of obsidian with a small knife.
Leon sat down.
Thea had been left outside, but the door stood slightly ajar. Tyrion had insisted on that condition, and he now stood in the shadows of the corridor outside, watching in silence.
"Do you know what this is?" Aerys raised the roughly shaped piece of obsidian in his hand.
It had been carved into a dragon's head, crude but recognizable.
"Obsidian, Your Grace. Also called dragonglass."
"Dragonglass." Aerys repeated the word as though savoring fine wine. "The maesters say it is merely volcanic ore, but I know there is more to it.
"The ancient texts say it can kill Others. If it can kill creations of ice magic, it must also have some connection to fire magic. Dragons are fire incarnate, so dragonglass..."
He suddenly looked up, his violet eyes fixed on Leon. "What do you think?"
It was a trap, and a test.
Leon's [Eye of Insight] hummed softly, not in warning, but as a prompt:
The king was in a rare "logical state." The madness remained, but a kind of obsessive reason temporarily held it in check.
"I know nothing of magic, Your Grace."
Leon chose a cautious answer. "But I have read accounts from the Wall in which the Night's Watch did use dragonglass against wights."
"Read them, quickly!" Aerys suddenly grew excited and set down his carving. "Which ones have you read? Texts in Old Valyrian? Or those castrated translations from the Citadel?"
Leon decided to take a risk. "I have read fragments of An Examination of Valyria's Rise and Fall, as well as excerpts from Bloodline of the Dragon. But they were all translations."
"Fragments... excerpts..."
Aerys murmured, his eyes growing brighter. "The Citadel has locked away all the real knowledge. Those fool maesters fear fire, fear dragons, fear anything beyond their narrow understanding."
He suddenly stood, hurried between the bookshelves, and pulled out a heavy volume bound in dark red leather, slapping it onto the desk in front of Leon.
"Look at this. Genuine Old Valyrian. It took me three years to get it from a collector in Lys. Can you read it?"
Leon opened the volume.
The parchment had grown brittle and the ink had faded, but those curving characters were indeed the Old Valyrian he had studied.
He concentrated, and at that moment, [Eye of Insight] turned into a linguistic instinct.
"This is... a record of a dragon dream."
Leon spoke slowly, brushing a finger over a line of text. "A dream a Valyrian noble had before hatching a dragon egg. He dreamed he stood at the mouth of a volcano, with an egg pulsing in the lava..."
"Go on!" Aerys's voice held suppressed excitement.
"He reached for the egg, but the flames scorched his hand... Then three voices came from the sky, chanting in the ancient tongue... chanting..." Leon frowned. The text that followed was indistinct.
"Chanting what?" Aerys was practically sprawled across the desk.
Leon's intuition caught lingering images within the blurred writing:
"Blood... fire... and... a price. It seems to say that waking a dragon requires blood, fire, and some sort of price."
Aerys abruptly straightened and circled the room, waving both hands. "Blood! Fire! A price! I knew it! Those maesters say dragons are merely large lizards, that magic is dead. All lies! Magic is still here, merely asleep. It needs the right voice to wake it!"
He stopped suddenly and stared at Leon. "Your eyes... There was light in them when you looked at those words. What did you see? Not just letters, was it?"
Leon's heart skipped a beat.
Aerys's intuition was terrifyingly sharp.
"I can... sense the images behind the words."
He chose to admit part of the truth. "Not very clearly. It is like looking through fog."
"Synesthesia!"
Aerys clapped his hands. "The ancient texts mention it. Some people with strong Valyrian blood have this gift. Words are not merely symbols, but living things. Rhaegar has it too, but not as..."
He leaned closer, until their noses almost touched. "Not as strongly as you."
Outside, Thea moved the door handle, but Aerys waved a hand. "Quiet! I am speaking!"
He sat back down, his gaze feverish but focused:
"Starting tomorrow, come here every morning. We will read these ancient texts together. You will help me... understand them."
Leon froze.
This development was beyond his expectations.
"Your Grace, I am still young, and my learning is limited..."
"Young is good!"
Aerys interrupted him. "Your mind has not yet been tainted by the maesters' poison. Besides..."
He paused, his gaze deepening. "Besides, if you truly possess that gift, we must make good use of it before it is... snuffed out."
He said "snuffed out" very softly, but Leon heard the layers of meaning within it:
Rejected by Citadel orthodoxy, worn away by political struggles, or destroyed by more direct violence.
"This is the first privilege I grant you."
Aerys rummaged through the desk and produced a small bronze token engraved with the Targaryen dragon. "With this, you may enter the royal library's restricted section.
"Not the reading room outside for nobles, but the actual collection room within. There are three hundred volumes of ancient texts salvaged from the ruins of Valyria there, most of them still untranslated."
Leon accepted the token.
The bronze was cold, but the instant [Eye of Insight] touched it, it caught a faint trace of sorrow.
Who had this token once belonged to?
"The second privilege," Aerys continued, lowering his voice further, "is that you may come to see me at any time. No announcement is necessary, so long as I am in the study."
Outside, Thea finally could not hold back. "Your Grace, the Lord Hand has strictly ordered that his children must observe proper etiquette."
"Etiquette?"
Aerys turned toward her, his gaze instantly cooling. "My dear lady guard, has your Lord Hand not taught you? Before true knowledge, etiquette is merely a burden. Your master has a gift, and gifts must be cultivated, not locked in a cage of etiquette."
Thea paled, but said nothing more, merely looking toward Tyrion beside her.
Tyrion slowly shook his head, his expression even more complicated.
Aerys turned back to Leon, the manner of a mad scholar returning:
"Come tomorrow afternoon, and bring your 'eyes.' We will read the third chapter of Breath of Flame. I have been stuck there, unable to understand it."
"Yes, Your Grace."
When Leon left the study, he clutched the bronze token tightly.
Thea and Tyrion immediately followed.
"Do you know what you are doing?"
Tyrion kept his voice very low, but the anger in it was unmistakable. "Studying forbidden books with the Mad King? Making him even more obsessed with that madness about dragons and magic?"
"It was His Grace's command. I could not refuse," Leon said calmly.
"You could have played dumb! You could have said you couldn't understand!" Tyrion gritted his teeth. "Now look what you've done. He sees you as some 'gifted' treasure, and that makes you a target! Schemers will watch you, the Small Council will watch you, and everyone who doesn't want the king growing madder will watch you!"
"Then what should I do?" Leon looked up at him. "Hide in my room every day, waiting until the king suddenly wants to see me, then grows furious at my 'ignorance'?
"Or take the initiative and gain some leverage, so I at least know what he is thinking and what he is looking for?"
Tyrion froze.
He stared at Leon, surprise and a trace of... agreement flashing through his green eyes.
"He's more cunning than I thought."
Tyrion finally spoke. "But that makes it more dangerous. A madman's favor is like wildfire. It warms you for a time, but it could blow you to pieces at any moment."
"Then the flames need to be carefully controlled."
Leon said, "And to do that, we first need to understand fire."
The following afternoon, Leon arrived at the king's study on time.
Aerys was already there. An enormous ancient book lay open on the desk, its pages made from some kind of black leather, the writing on them rendered in silver powder that glittered in the candlelight.
"Breath of Flame, chapter three."
The king pointed to a line. "Here. It describes the ritual for hatching dragon eggs. But the passage in the middle uses words so ancient that even the Citadel's dictionaries of ancient languages have no entries for them."
Leon leaned closer.
The silver-powder writing danced before his eyes, and [Eye of Insight] began to work.
This time, he no longer resisted, letting that instinct flow freely.
The words turned into images:
Inside a volcano, a pool of lava, three dragon eggs arranged in a triangle. Red-robed priests stood in a circle, praying not with words, but with... blood.
They slit their palms and let blood drip onto the dragon eggs, chanting in tones outside the human vocal range, some older, rougher sound.
"This is a blood sacrifice."
Leon spoke softly. "But not ordinary blood. There is a condition hidden in the text: the blood must come from 'dreamers,' those Valyrian nobles who have dragon dreams."
Aerys's breathing quickened. "And then?"
"Then it requires the 'Kiss of Flame.' Not ordinary fire, but primordial flames from deep within a volcano. Finally, there is the 'price'..."
Leon frowned. The images that followed blurred, leaving only fragments: screams, a priest collapsing, a dragon egg cracking open, but inside was not a hatchling, it was...
What was it? The images abruptly broke off.
"What is the price?" Aerys pressed.
"I cannot see it clearly."
Leon answered truthfully. "The text has been deliberately obscured here, or the person copying it did not understand it either."
Aerys stared at those lines, his expression shifting from excitement to contemplation, then to a kind of somber understanding. "I see...
"The 'price' is that the ritual itself kills the sacrifice. Not an animal's blood, but a human life. The life of a 'dreamer' in exchange for the life of a dragon."
He leaned back in his chair, murmuring to himself. "Equivalent exchange... the oldest law of magic. No wonder... no wonder there were fewer and fewer dragons later. The Valyrian nobles could not bear to trade their own lives for dragons."
That afternoon, they read three full chapters.
Leon's "translations" enthralled Aerys. Several times, the king stood and paced excitedly, linking those mad theories together.
When they finished, Aerys handed Leon a manuscript. "These are fragments of The Three Heads of the Dragon. Take it back and read it. Tell me what you saw next week."
"Yes, Your Grace."
Leon felt utterly drained as he left the study.
Several consecutive hours of intense concentration using [Eye of Insight] had left his temples throbbing faintly.
But the gains were enormous...
He had not only earned the king's trust, but also gained access to some genuinely forbidden knowledge.
More importantly, he had established that beneath Aerys's madness lay not complete chaos, but an obsession driven by grandiose delusions.
The king believed House Targaryen was destined to revive the dragons, believed lost magic could be recovered, and all of it required "keys."
Now, the king believed Leon must be one of those keys.
When he returned to his room, Tyrion was waiting for him.
"How did it go? The Mad King didn't roast you, did he?"
"Not yet."
Leon placed the manuscript of The Three Heads of the Dragon on the table. "He even gave me this."
Tyrion whistled. "A secret volume from the royal library? How did you get it?"
"I helped him 'read' and understand some ancient texts."
Leon rubbed his temples. "The king's obsession with Valyrian magic goes beyond anything I imagined, and my eyes... have led him to believe I possess some sort of 'gift.'"
"This is still very dangerous." Tyrion immediately grew serious. "A madman's affection is the most unstable kind."
"I know."
Leon said, "But it is also an opportunity. At least now, here in the Red Keep, I have the protection of the king's special attention.
"That will make many people who want to move against me think twice."
"We must still be wary of Cersei."
Tyrion looked out the window.
Lights came on one after another in the Red Keep at dusk. "She may not want us dead, but she fears us causing a greater disaster even more.
"Now that the king has drawn you into his mad plans, she will actually be afraid to act rashly. Because moving against you would mean moving against the king's 'research project.'"
Leon thought for a moment, then suddenly smiled. "You're better at playing with fire than I thought. But people who play with fire often end up burning to death."
"Then we must have tools ready to put it out." Tyrion picked up The Three Heads of the Dragon. "And knowledge is the best tool. Only you can understand it."
Leon began to read.
[Eye of Insight] activated automatically as he read, filling in some of the missing images:
"The dragon has three heads... This does not mean one dragon has three heads, but that the dragon's power has three incarnations... blood, fire, dreams... Only when the three become one can it be awakened..."
"When the stars weep blood and winter descends, the prophesied prince shall be born... But he is not one person, but three... or, one person can contain three..."
When he reached a certain page, Leon's finger suddenly stopped.
"Tyrion, look."
In the corner of the page was a tiny note added in a different ink, written in the Common Tongue:
"Queen Rhaella said she dreamed of a dragon again. But this time the dragon was black, with violet eyes. I fear this dream."
It was unsigned, but Leon's intuition told him Aerys had written it many years ago, before madness consumed him.
Queen Rhaella had dreamed of a black dragon with violet eyes.
And Leon's eyes were pale violet.
He closed the volume, feeling a chill.
Perhaps the king's interest in him had already been foretold by a queen's dream many years ago.
Far to the north, beyond the Wall, this winter was said to be especially cold.
Whether the stars would weep blood, no one knew.
He had already been drawn into a game older and more dangerous than the politics of King's Landing.