Chapter 119: ' The Tributes '

POV: Qyburn;

Castle Dungeon, Torrhen's Square.

A few days after Ronan left for the Barrowlands ...

It was late in the evening in the private rooms of the Master of Knowledge. The evening was accompanied by one of the last spring snowfalls in the North.

Soon those snows would turn to rain. But unfortunately, it rarely snowed between late spring and summer in the Tallhart lands.

The melted candles signalled to the man that perhaps it was time to lie down in bed. Qyburn could have indulged in luxury that evening. The hardworking man had recently finished scanning and drafting instructions for all the documents in the 'High Urgency Level' section.

No 'Highest Level Urgency' came in the last few days. Tomorrow night he would move on to the 'Medium Urgency' section.

In the early morning, the Maester would teach a lesson to Benfred, Eddara, and little Elminster--then it would be up to the advanced class for the new apprentice healers.

The guinea pigs gathered in the Frey lands continued to moan desperately for safety in the Knight of the Mind's personal cells.

Three bastard sons and a grandson of Walder Frey, along with two 'knights' of the Twin Towers. Rapists, thieves, and murderers took to brigandage by assaulting Northern wagon trains in isolated spots near the Green Forks just outside the Frey borders.

Tomorrow Qyburn would teach his would-be healers how to properly stop a bleed on the battlefield...

The experienced healer wondered how many would fall unconscious tomorrow and how many would sully his temple of learning.

Those young men and women were willing and able, but youth was often accompanied by arrogance. Many of them still did not heed his warm recommendation to 'show up for the class on an empty stomach.'

Ser Qyburn finished sorting out the papers that had required more urgent attention.

At last, the Knight of the Mind could delegate the spy network to competent and trustworthy minds.

There was so much study and research that Qyburn wished he could have invested time in. But that ephemeral, relative and irrepressible notion called 'Time' was never enough...

'An assistant, I need a trusted assistant... Soon the Tower of Babylon and The Philosopher's Stone Tower will be finished and ready for operation.' Pinned the man in his mental mnemonic file.

Qyburn should have dared more and given other talented individuals a chance to prove themselves.

House Tallhart, the North ... no ... 'The whole Continent' could wait no longer. It was time for action.

The Wizards of the Magical Confederation would soon arrive.

His Lord Master had even promised him a private one-hour meeting with Chief Sorcerer Supreme. So naturally, Qyburn was looking forward to it.

If Marwyn had known, he would have been green with envy.

The maester allowed himself a little gloating laugh.

"What do you think of my collection, Martyn? What about you, Erret? An honest opinion about the wall?" Asked the man of science, turning his gaze to the wall decorated with dozens of transparent glass frames with thank-you letters inside.

*Ungh! Muuuhgh!*, *Hiihm! Uamm!* the tongue-less brigands bound by dozens of boiled leather straps shed bitter tears in their helplessness.

"I hope this doesn't sound too lofty... But, look...This is one of my favourites. A letter of gratitude from Lord Eddard Stark himself.

Oh...Forgive me; it would be better to say, 'King Eddard,' now. One of the crown jewels, if we may say so.

However, my favourite piece remains the letter from young Robin." Qyburn carefully set the frame back in its predetermined place, replacing it with the larger one in the centre.

"A humble son of a former potato farmer. The poor boy had severe respiratory problems.

It broke my heart when I learned what bleak and forbidding conditions he had lived in for much of his boyhood.

A child of that age should be able to run, play and have fun with other children. Not being chained to blankets and hearths that are constantly burning." Qyburn looked at the acerbic handwriting stained with dozens of minor spelling and grammatical errors.

It was undoubtedly one of the boy's first attempts at writing.

The text itself foreshadowed it.

As soon as Commander Gellert's little brother learned to write, he decided to thank the healer who allowed him to go to school like a normal child.

"Unfortunately, I could not reveal to the young man that the credit was not only mine. The contribution of Septon Utt, an old friend of mine from Brave Companios, was indeed considerable...

Rejoice, my friends. You too will have a chance to be mentioned in my forthcoming new book, 'The Bulwarks in the Art of Healing.'" The only responses were desperate whimpers and sounds of light headbanging on wood.

"Today was also a significantly productive day.

Rest, my friends... Tomorrow we have a long and busy day ahead of us.

I will be with you at dawn, I promise. Goodnight...

Oops...how careless of me. I was about to leave some papers out of place." Qyburn detested clutter. Every instrument, text, ampoule, or document was always arranged in proper order in his laboratory.

The folder with six mismatched pages under the desk was like a giant inkblot in a harmonious painting.

The maester noticed that the documents must have slipped out of the 'Medium Urgency' section.

It was a report written by Ronan... Qyburn's eye could not help but catch at least the gist of the topic at hand.

'Statistical inconsistency on % orphans in Oldtown?' The maester decided it was worth lighting another candle before dismissal time.

He whispered a little chant in Draconic, and the candlestick tapers were lit again in a moment. Now Qyburn had officially become a wizard by the standards of the Confederation. He did not yet know any spells above the 2nd circle, but soon the North would get its hands on invaluable and unknown magical texts.

He looked forward to learning all the knowledge considered 'forbidden' by the Citadel.

Although he possessed only Rare blood in his veins, the enchanter was confident that he could attain the rank of Grand Mage.

It was not just a matter of blood but of talent for understanding the world's truth. If a clueless person with a hint of magical gift in his veins had recklessly cast spells above 1st level without studying their nature, he would most likely have blown his brains out.

Only spells with Royal Blood tribute could compensate for such harmfulness...

For Qyburn's mind, cantrips (0°) and spells of the 1st were trivial.

The Knight of the Mind scrutinized the document in detail, internally praising his Former Student for the meticulousness of each mathematical demonstration.

Reading the last line, Qyburn could not help but agree that there was a glaring but, at the same time, invisible inconsistency.

Braavos had the highest average of economically well-off and productive families. A good census system. However, taking away the 'hardened Braavosi duelists' factor, the registered orphan children were ten times fewer than those in King's Landing.

And Oldtown, a town heavily focused on naval and overland trade, had a percentage almost eight times lower than that of Braavos?

Yet many ships, whether from a storm, a pirate attack, or any other peril of the sea, were not returning...

Substantial numbers of reports to the City's city guard were reported. Family members seeking help from many nearby villages as well. Twice as many as in King's Landing.

Population records had been altered beyond a shadow of a doubt.

'Numbers never lie... No... math never lies. Am I right, my lord?' thought the man, remembering his master's past quotes.

There was also a relatively high average of missing sons and daughters of nobles and minor knights. So many reports of hunting accidents, bandit attacks and failed expeditions--too many for land as fertile and safe as the mouth of the Honeywine.

An unsettling question arose in Qyburn's mind...

"What dark fate befell all those children?"

End POV.

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POV: Malora Hightower

On a ship more than two hundred miles west of Oldtown, Sunset Sea.

289 A.C. 13th day of the ninth moon. About a dozen days before a Northern maester analyzed documents...

It was the fifth day on the open sea. The merchant galley 'Bearer of Lymph' continued undaunted on its westward course.

The crew did not seem frightened by the route in the eyes of the world unexplored and dangerous. Another hundred miles, and they would circumnavigate seas beyond Lonely Light, the last island to the West known to man.

Many adventurous explorers tried their luck in exploring these seas, but none ever returned.

The endless seas beyond those borders were a Taboo in world history.

Malora recalled a quote from a partial text more than three thousand years old.

[Lands belonging to Deities and Races more ancient and dangerous than man... Calamities... Unspeakable Horrors...] those were the only interpretable words left.

But the crew did not seem frightened. Her father assured her that they were all men loyal to the High Tower. The eyes of many looked glassy. That they were subject to a spell?

"Malora." A soft, deep voice caught The Mad Maid's attention. It had been more than a day and a night since Leyton had left his private cabin.

"Father, I am so glad to see you. I was afraid... I was afraid that you were not feeling well. I..." The woman's milk-pale cheeks took on a glimmer of colour.

"No, my daughter. I had to make sure the spell arrays would hold. So many creatures larger and more dangerous than sharks haunt these waters. The ship must remain invisible to their senses..."

Leyton replied, calmly stroking the Ebony-colored wood of the keel.

The man-made no mention of the armour worn, Keeper of Knowledge. Malora thought Leyton could only wear it during the council and in times of war... However, the man's dark blue eye secreted a spark of awe that did not escape his daughter's notice.

"Lord Father, how many more days will we sail west?" Malora.

"Days? We are almost there, Malora. The island is already in sight." Leyton pointed a finger toward the horizon.

Malora carefully scanned the indicated horizon but saw absolutely nothing--only endless expanses of water.

"Only Captain Welgend and I can see beyond the island's illusory curtain. Wait a few more minutes. We will soon cross the veil." Leyton.

Not even five minutes later, the veil lowered-it was as if the ship had passed through a body of water. The landscape was very different.

The clouds were thicker and darker in the sky, it looked like a thunderstorm, but it was abnormal. From a closer eye, the masses of dark gas were slowly circulating in a circle like a titanic cyclone with the centre of the island as the eye...

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White birds flew in the sky, cawing was... crows! White crows!

And then the natural spectacle...

A dense dark sapphire bedspread across the island. A blue forest composed of thousands of trees.

Trees of different sizes with ebony-black bark and inky blue leaves...

"Father, but ... those are all ..."

"Black-barked trees, yes. There is not a single specimen of them in Westeros. The Keeper of Beauty would go out of his domain himself to uproot everyone with his own hands if that were the case.

A few wild specimens can still be found in Ulthos and Sothoryos but cultivating them requires the explicit permission of the Magic Confederation and the blessing of all three Guardians.

Do you know the properties of that tree?" asked Leyton after a brief notion known to few and not mentioned by any text in the Citadel.

"The Shade-of-the-Evening should be synthesized mainly from those leaves...and the bark could be one of the ingredients to make Black Stone." Malora pulled out every piece of information and plausible theory she knew.

"Mmm, not bad, my daughter. Yes, it was House Hightower that supplied King Harren with Black Stone. A peculiar stone much used in Asshai and in Carcosa itself. However, few know the working formula to recreate the natural black stone.

Material resistant to magic and heat. We knew that the Valyrians would turn their attention to Westeros within a few decades. Therefore, we had to field test its properties. Balerion's black fire even managed to melt that stone..." Malora was fascinated by the short but intense history lesson.

"Why is it forbidden to grow them, father?" his daughter asked, frustratedly biting her nails. Malora loved and hated asking the man questions.

She revered every single word her father uttered but at the same time cursed herself inwardly for her stupidity in not being able to find an answer on her own.

"Because they are the natural counterpart of the Trees highly prized by the Children of the Forest and the First Men... yes, I'm talking about the Weirwood Trees. There is always a balance in this world, Malora. 'There are givers, and there are takers.'

The Weirwood Trees demand life tributes by releasing magic in return.

The Black-barked trees feed on magic and, in return, bestow life.

If the ingredients made from the lifeblood and bark of those trees were used correctly, an ordinary man could live for hundreds of years...

The wizards of Qarth routinely take Shades-of-the-Evening, and they actually manage to derive some benefit from it, but it remains an incomplete formula with many side effects in the long run.

'The Shades-of-The-Night' is the true elixir craved by all the world's wizards." Malora began to understand why all that level of security and secrecy was raised in the area. Forbidden Island was almost as large as Oak Shield, the largest among the Shield Islands.

It also explained the reason for his father's unnatural longevity. Lord Leyton Hightower was born in the year 236 After the Conquest. And he did not look like an ordinary 50-year-old man. Yes, the face was marked by a few wrinkles, but the body still exuded the longevity of a 30-year-old.

Malora turned his gaze toward Ser Murdor Wylfghar, 'The Black Perennial'. His personal sworn Paladin in the service of the Stranger's Astra Wisdom.

Rumour had it that Ser Jon Cupps, the Lord Commander of the Seven Keepers, was called among the twenty-one swords 'The Indomitable' because of his tenacity and impressive ability to face multiple opponents at a time...

But Ser Murdor was nicknamed 'The Black Perennial' because he was rumoured to be immortal. His deeds had been handed down since the time of Daeron I.

A black knight who even jousted against Ser Aemon Targaryen, The Dragonknight...

Malora did not know if Murdor was the strongest warrior among the twenty-one best swordsmen in Oldtown, but he was undoubtedly the most feared.

'Hihi! Ehehehe! The Black Knight is mine! I might even order Ser Murdor to pay a little visit to sweet Lynesse!

After all, my dear little sister loves brave and heroic knights! Ahahaha! Hihihi... No... I must restrain myself.' Malora maintained control by suppressing the exhilaration of the moment.

She was so excited to meet her mother, the enchantress secretly feared by the most powerful man in Oldtown! The Mad Maid deemed the Black Knight a more than apt Paladin for The Astra Wisdom of the Strangers.

Ser Murdor never uttered a breath unless explicitly called upon by those who had the authority and the right to impose it upon him. The man's voice with the face perpetually covered by the dark steel helmet of Valyria was dark and deep... All the servants of the knight were sisters of silence, and the only squire was a boy who was blind but not by birth or by any disease...

A voice that was more awe-inspiring than the massive two-handed broadsword of the same steel, serrated by razor-sharp spikes at the base of the blade.

Who knows how many lives that sword, called precisely 'Soul Devourer,' had claimed.

"Father ... so it is thanks to this island that magic in Westeros is so refractory?" asked the Mad Maid.

"Basically, that island feeds on the Magic of the Great World Tree, commonly known as Druidic Magic. It does not influence other kinds of Magic...

Before the Andal invasion, Westeros was filled with Heart-Trees from the Red Mountains of Dorne to The Wall. Beyond the Five Forts, between the lands of the Shrykes to the borders of Mossovy, were expanses of forests filled with Black-barked trees. They maintained a delicate balance with Weirdwood Trees of the Sons of the Forest.

Should a tree at either end of the world perish, the Guardians of Beauty and Magic would provide by working together so that the balance would persist.

Today, all that remains of those forests is a desolate heath called the Grey Desert.

The fall of the Valyrian Empire was the most brutal blow that almost paralyzed the Magic of the Great Dragon God. Nevertheless, draconic Magic still persists thanks to the descendants of Fire and Ice.

The Guardian of Magic should guard in some remote place in the Shadow Lands one or two dozen dragons, and in the lands of eternal winter, there should still exist ancient populations of Ice Dragons." Leyton.

"What about the Great Mother Phoenix? Do Phoenixes of Light and Shadow still exist in the world?" asked Malora with ardent curiosity.

"Phoenixes are the rarest and oldest creatures in this world. Although, in the Empire of Yi Ti, they are revered as 'Messengers of the Gods,' legend has it that The God-on-Earth, the legendary first ruler of the Empire of Dawn, received two eggs of the Phoenix Goddess as gifts from his parents, The Lion of Night and The Maiden-Made-of-Light.

Phoenixes do not reproduce as 'normal Dragons'. Instead, they die and are reborn from their own ashes. When the God-on-Earth left the mortal world to rise into the realm of deities, he left behind the two now-adult Legendary Phoenixes, 'Song of Sunset & Song of Dawn.'

They want to protect all the hundred sons and daughters born of the emperor's hundred wives, burned in the heavens fragmenting their ashes into fifty eggs dark as night and fifty brights as the sun.

Two ancient cities arose in the respective nests of the creatures. I guess you can already deduce which ones they were..." Leyton.

"Asshai 'The City of Shadows' and Carcosa 'The Starry City'... Do they exist? There are a hundred Phoenicians in the World?" Malora.

"They existed... Many were lost during The Long Night and their respective protectors, turning into sleeping stone eggs.

No one has seen a Phoenix of Light since before the Age of Heroes, but even now, there persists a Phoenix of Shadow still known in the World.

Clarsurix 'Root of the Night,' a creature far more powerful and ancient than Balerion, Meraxes and Vhagar. She answers only to the current Guardian of Magic." The wonder and terror in Malora's bluish eyes created a contrast that caught Leyton's attention.

"Soon, we will dock... Do you see that tree towering over the others? That's where your mother is waiting for you." So explained the father with a concealed hint of revulsion in his voice.

"You will not come with me, father?" asked The Mad Maid in a worried and disappointed tone.

"No... Whatever countermeasures you have devised regarding the problems of the High Council, it will be to your mother that you will have to reveal them. I cannot conceal anything from the Guardian of Love.

I would be an open book for any suspicion... But if I don't know, I won't have to sing scandalous lies to The Watcher." Leyton.

"Sly move. So ... not even the Guardians are aware of my mother's existence?" Leyton gave no answer to that question.

The ship docked at that exact moment at a small port used for a couple of boats at most.

"Ser Murdor, gather the 'tributes' so that they are ready to follow my daughter." The Black Knight bowed, taking his leave toward the hold.

Malora knew what tributes her father was talking about. There was more than one reason for that enchanted ship to moor in a secret harbour in a cave at the base of the High Tower.

Leyton's gaze lowered to conceal the twinge of regret that haunted him.

"Always remember, Malora-whatever entity you ask favours from, sooner or later, will always demand a price in return for them.

This is the tribute our dynasty must pay to repay the favours of the past, present, and future."

*****

A few minutes later.

The Mad Maid was not entirely unmoved by the cruelty of the moment.

A dozen stern overseers lashed blows toward a few tributes intent on disobeying the commands.

The march of the procession had just begun, and already the suffering in the air was palpable. So many of the tributes' gazes were lost, others desperate, and the remainder full of hatred and pain.

'The price of magic... Any magic requires a blood tribute.' He chanted Malora in his head to cover the cries and laments of those innocents.

It was what had to be done to gain the longed-for power.

It was the only way to gain the love of her mother and father.

Wars claimed far worse blood tolls than this.

No general had any qualms about giving orders to attack villages and towns well aware of the genocide and destruction.

Good and Evil were foreign concepts to war. Oldtown and Hightower House had been at war for millennia against forces that would not hesitate an instant to burn the foundations of their homes.

These convictions spurred Peremore's heir to not look back and continue on his chosen path.

Malora and Ser Murdor were at the head of the procession. Finally, after a few hundred feet, they reached the beginning of the path that led into the forest's interior. There they met the island's welcoming committee.

One hundred and forty-one hooded women in black bowed to the island's guests. Afterwards...without asking anyone's permission, the servant followers of the island ruler prepared to collect every single boy and girl of the same number.

The crying and wailing of the bound creatures suddenly ceased. The songs of the enchantresses whispered in the tiny ears of the four- to nine-year-olds dozed the fears and pains felt by the victims.

Bright blue lips and smooth pale chins were all Malora could glimpse from the faces of the island witches.

The servants wandered into the forest, cradling and carrying in their arms the sleeping tribute that would soon be offered to their Goddess...

End Chapter.

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