The Hightowers of Oldtown were an ancient family, powerful, wealthy, proud…and large. It had long been their custom for the younger sons, brothers, cousins, and bastards of the house to join the Faith, where many had risen high over the centuries. Lord Donnel Hightower had a younger brother, two nephews, and six cousins serving the Seven in 54 AC; the brother, one nephew, and two cousins wore the cloth-of-silver of the Most Devout. It was Lord Donnel’s desire that one of them become High Septon.

  King Jaehaerys did not care which house His High Holiness derived from, or whether he was of low or noble birth. His only concern was that the new High Septon be an Exceptionalist. The Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage must never again be questioned by the Starry Sept. He wanted the new Father of the Faithful to make Exceptionalism an official doctrine of the Faith. And though His Grace had no objection to Lord Donnel’s brother, nor the rest of his ilk, none of them had yet spoken on the issue, so…

  After hours of discussion, an understanding was reached, and sealed with a great feast wherein Lord Donnel praised the wisdom of the king, whilst making him acquainted with his brothers, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins. Across the city at the Starry Sept, the Most Devout convened to choose their new shepherd, with agents of Lord Hightower and the king amongst them, unbeknownst to most. Four ballots were required. Septon Mattheus led on the first, as anticipated, but lacked the votes necessary to secure the crystal crown. Thereafter his numbers dwindled on every ballot, whilst other men rose up.

  On the fourth ballot, the Most Devout broke tradition, choosing a man who was not one of their own number. The laurel fell to the Septon Alfyn, who had crossed the Reach a dozen times in his litter on behalf of Jaehaerys and his queen. The Seven Kingdoms had no fiercer champion of Exceptionalism than Alfyn, but he was the oldest of the Seven Speakers, and legless besides; it seemed likely the Stranger would seek him out sooner rather than later. When that befell, his own successor would be a Hightower, the king assured Lord Donnel, provided his kin aligned themselves firmly with the Exceptionalists during Septon Alfyn’s reign.

  Thus was the bargain struck, if Septon Barth’s account can be believed. Barth himself did not question it, though he rued the corruption that made the Most Devout so easy to manipulate. “It would be better if the Seven themselves would choose their Voice on earth, but when the gods are silent, lords and kings will make themselves heard,” he wrote, and added that both Alfyn and Lord Donnel’s brother, who succeeded him, were more worthy of the crystal crown than Septon Mattheus could ever have been.

  No one was more astonished by the selection of Septon Alfyn than Septon Alfyn himself, who was at Ashford when word reached him. Traveling by litter, it took him more than a fortnight to reach Oldtown. Whilst awaiting his coming, Jaehaerys used the time to call at Bandallon, Three Towers, Uplands, and Honeyholt. He even flew Vermithor to the Arbor, where he sampled some of that island’s choicest wines. Queen Alysanne remained in Oldtown. The silent sisters hosted her in their motherhouse for a day of prayer and contemplation. Another day she spent with the septas who cared for the city’s sick and destitute. Amongst the novices she met was her niece Rhaella, whom Her Grace pronounced a learned and devout young woman “though much given to stammers and blushes.” For three days she lost herself in the Citadel’s great library, emerging only to attend lectures on the Valyrian dragon wars, leechcraft, and the gods of the Summer Isles.

  Afterward she feasted the assembled archmaesters in their own dining hall, and even presumed to lecture them. “If I had not become queen, I might have liked to be a maester,” she told the Conclave. “I read, I write, I think, I am not afraid of ravens…or a bit of blood. There are other highborn girls who feel the same. Why not admit them to your Citadel? If they cannot keep up, send them home, the way you send home boys who are not clever enough. If you would give the girls a chance, you might be surprised by how many forge a chain.” The archmaesters, loath to gainsay the queen, smiled at her words and bobbed their heads and assured Her Grace that they would consider her proposal.

  Once the new High Septon reached Oldtown, stood his vigil in the Starry Sept, and had been duly anointed and consecrated to the Seven, forsaking his earthly name and all earthly ties, he blessed King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne at a solemn public ceremony. The Kingsguard and a company of retainers had joined the king and queen as well by that point, so His Grace decided to return by way of the Dornish Marches and the stormlands. Visits at Horn Hill, Nightsong, and Blackhaven followed.

  Queen Alysanne found the last especially congenial. Though his castle was small and modest compared to the great halls of the realm, Lord Dondarrion was a splendid host and his son Simon played the high harp as well as he jousted, and entertained the royal couple by night with sad songs of star-crossed lovers and the fall of kings. So taken with him was the queen that the party lingered longer at Blackhaven than they had intended. They were still there when a raven reached them from Storm’s End with dire tidings; their mother, Queen Alyssa, was at the point of death.

  Once more Vermithor and Silverwing took to the skies, to bring the king and queen to their mother’s side as quickly as possible. The remainder of the royal party would follow overland by way of Stonehelm, Crow’s Nest, and Griffin’s Roost, under the command of Ser Gyles Morrigen, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

  The great Baratheon stronghold of Storm’s End has but a single tower, the massive drum tower raised by Durran Godsgrief during the Age of Heroes to stand against the wroth of the storm god. At the top of that tower, beneath only the maester’s cell and the rookery, Alysanne and Jaehaerys found their mother asleep in a bed that stank of urine, drenched in sweat and gaunt as a crone, save for her swollen belly. A maester, a midwife, and three bedmaids were in attendance on her, each grimmer than the last. Jaehaerys discovered Lord Rogar seated outside the chamber door, drunk and despairing. When the king demanded to know why he was not with his wife, the Lord of Storm’s End growled, “The Stranger’s in that room. I can smell him.”

  A cup of wine tinged with sweetsleep was all that allowed Queen Alyssa even this brief respite, Maester Kyrie explained; Alyssa had been in agony for some hours before. “She was screaming so,” one of the servants added. “Every bit o’ food we give her comes back up, and she’s having awful pain.”

  “She was not due,” Queen Alysanne said, in tears. “Not yet.”

  “Not for a moon’s turn,” confirmed the midwife. “This is no labor, m’lords. Something’s tore inside her. Babe’s dying, or will be dead soon. The mother’s too old, she’s no strength to push, and the babe’s twisted around…it’s no good. They’ll be gone by first light, both o’ them. Begging your pardons.”

  Maester Kyrie did not disagree. Milk of the poppy would relieve the queen’s pain, he said, and he had a strong draught prepared…but it could kill Her Grace as easily as help her, and would almost certainly kill the child inside her. When Jaehaerys asked what could be done, the maester said, “For the queen? Nothing. She is beyond my power to save. There is a chance, a slight chance, that I could save the child. To do so I would need to cut the mother open and remove the child from her womb. The babe might live, or not. The woman will die.”

  His words set Queen Alysanne to weeping. The king said only, “The woman is my mother, and a queen,” in a heavy tone. He stepped outside again, pulled Rogar Baratheon to his feet, and dragged him back into the birthing chamber, where he bade the maester repeat what he had just said. “She is your wife,” King Jaehaerys reminded Lord Rogar. “It is for you to say the words.”

  Lord Rogar, we are told, could not bear to look upon his wife. Nor could he find the words until the king took him roughly by the arm and shook him. “Save my son,” Rogar told the maester. Then he wrenched free and fled the room again. Maester Kyrie bowed his head and sent for his blades.

  In many of the accounts that have come down to us, we are told that Queen Alyssa woke from her sleep before the maester could begin. Though wracked by pain and violent convulsions, she cried tears of joy to see her children there. When Alysanne told her what was about to happen, Alyssa gave her assent. “Save my babe,” she whispered. “I will go to see my boys again. The Crone will light my way.” It is pleasant to believe these were the queen’s last words. Sad to say, other accounts tell us that Her Grace died without waking when Maester Kyrie opened her belly. On one point all agree: Alysanne held her mother’s hand in her own from start to finish, until the babe’s first squall filled the room.

  Lord Rogar did not get the second son that he had prayed for. The child was a girl, born so small and weak that midwife and maester alike did not believe she would survive. She surprised them both, as she would surprise many others in her time. Days later, when he had finally recovered himself enough to consider the matter, Rogar Baratheon named his daughter Jocelyn.

  First, however, his lordship had to contend with a more contentious arrival. Dawn was breaking and Queen Alyssa’s body was not yet cold when Vermithor raised his head from where he had been coiled sleeping in the yard, and gave out with a roar that woke half of Storm’s End. He had scented the approach of another dragon. Moments later Dreamfyre descended, silver crests flashing along her back as her pale blue wings beat against the red dawn sky. Rhaena Targaryen had come to make amends to her mother.

  She came too late; Queen Alyssa was gone. Though the king told her she did not need to look upon their mother’s mortal remains, Rhaena insisted, ripping away the bedclothes that covered her to gaze upon the maester’s work. After a long time she turned away to kiss her brother on the cheek and embrace her younger sister. The two queens held each other for a long while, it is said, but when the midwife offered Rhaena the newborn babe to hold, she refused. “Where is Rogar?” she asked.

  She found him below in his great hall with his young son, Boremund, in his lap, surrounded by his brothers and his knights. Rhaena Targaryen pushed through all of them to stand over him, and began to curse him to his face. “Her blood is on your hands,” she raged at him. “Her blood is on your cock. May you die screaming.”

  Rogar Baratheon was outraged by her accusations. “What are you saying, woman? This is the will of the gods. The Stranger comes for all of us. How could it be my doing? What did I do?”

  “You put your cock in her. She gave you one son, that should have been enough. Save my wife, you should have said, but what are wives to men like you?” Rhaena reached out and grabbed his beard and pulled his face to hers. “Hear this, my lord. Do not think to wed again. Take care of the whelps my mother gave you, my half-brother and half-sister. See that they want for nothing. Do that, and I will let you be. If I should hear even a whisper of your taking some other poor maid to wife, I will make another Harrenhal of Storm’s End, with you and her inside it.”

  When she had stormed from the hall, back to her dragon in the yard, Lord Rogar and his brothers shared a laugh. “She is mad,” he declared. “Does she think to frighten me? Me? I did not fear the wroth of Maegor the Cruel, should I fear hers?” Thereafter he drank a cup of wine, summoned his steward to make arrangements for his wife’s burial, and sent his brother Ser Garon to invite the king and queen to stay on for a feast in honor of his daughter.*

  It was a sadder king who returned to King’s Landing from Storm’s End. The Most Devout had given him the High Septon he desired, the Doctrine of Exceptionalism would be a tenet of the Faith, and he had reached an accord with the powerful Hightowers of Oldtown, but these victories had turned to ashes in his mouth with the death of his mother. Jaehaerys was not one to brood, however; as he would do so often during his long reign, the king shrugged off his sorrows and plunged himself into the ruling of his realm.

  Summer had given way to autumn and leaves were falling all across the Seven Kingdoms, a new Vulture King had emerged in the Red Mountains, the sweating sickness had broken out on the Three Sisters, and Tyrosh and Lys were edging toward a war that would almost certainly engulf the Stepstones and disrupt trade. All this must needs be dealt with, and deal with it he did.

  Queen Alysanne found a different answer. Having lost a mother, she found solace in a daughter. Though not quite a year and a half old, Princess Daenerys had been talking (after a fashion) since well before her first nameday, and had gone past crawling, lurching, and walking into running. “She is in a great hurry, this one,” her wet nurse told the queen. The little princess was a happy child, endlessly curious and utterly fearless, a delight to all who knew her. She so enchanted Alysanne that for a time Her Grace even began to eschew council sessions, preferring to spend her days playing with her daughter and reading her the stories that her own mother had once read to her. “She is so clever, she will be reading to me before long,” she told the king. “She is going to be a great queen, I know it.”

  The Stranger was not yet done with House Targaryen in that cruel year of 54 AC, however. Across Blackwater Bay on Dragonstone, Rhaena Targaryen had found new griefs awaiting her when she returned from Storm’s End. Far from being a joy and a comfort to her as Daenerys was to Alysanne, her own daughter Aerea had become a terror, a willful wild child who defied her septa, her mother, and her maesters alike, abused her servants, absented herself from prayers, lessons, and meals without leave, and addressed the men and women of Rhaena’s court with such charming names as “Ser Stupid,” “Lord Pigface,” and “Lady Farts-a-Lot.”

  Her Grace’s husband, Androw Farman, though less vocal and openly defiant, was no less angry. When word first reached Dragonstone that Queen Alyssa was failing, Androw had announced that he would accompany his wife to Storm’s End. As her husband, he said, his place was at Rhaena’s side, to give her comfort. The queen had refused him, however, and not gently. A loud argument had preceded her departure, and Her Grace was heard to say, “The wrong Farman ran away.” Her marriage, never passionate, had become a mummer’s farce by 54 AC. “And not an entertaining one,” Lady Alayne Royce observed.

  Androw Farman was no longer the lad that Rhaena had married five years earlier on Fair Isle, when he was ten-and-seven. The comely stripling had become puffy-faced, round-shouldered, and fleshy. Never well regarded by other men, he had found himself forgotten and ignored by their lordly hosts during Rhaena’s wanderings in the west. Dragonstone proved to be no better. His wife was still a queen, but no one mistook Androw for a king, or even a lord consort. Though he sat at Queen Rhaena’s side during meals, he did not share her bed. That honor went to her friends and favorites. His own bedchamber was in an altogether different tower from hers. The gossips at court said the queen told him that it was better that they slept apart, so he need not be disturbed if he should find some pretty maid to warm his bed. There is no indication that he ever did.

  His days were as empty as his nights. Though he had been born upon an island and now lived upon another, Androw did not sail or swim or fish. A failed squire, he had no skill with sword nor axe nor spear, so when the men of the castle garrison trained each morning in the yard, he kept to his bed. Thinking that he might be of a bookish disposition, Maester Culiper tried to interest him in the treasures of Dragonstone’s library, the ponderous tomes and Old Valyrian scrolls that had fascinated King Jaehaerys, only to discover that the queen’s husband could not read. Androw rode passably well, and from time to time would have a horse saddled so he might trot about the yard, but he never passed beyond the gates to explore the Dragonmont’s rocky paths or the far side of the island, nor even the fishing village and docks beneath the castle.

  “He drinks a deal,” Maester Culiper wrote to the Citadel, “and has been known to spend entire days in the Chamber of the Painted Table, moving painted wooden soldiers about the map. Queen Rhaena’s companions are wont to say he is planning his conquest of Westeros. They do not mock him to his face for her sake, but they titter at him behind his back. The knights and men-at-arms pay him no mind whatsoever, and the servants obey him or not, as they please, with no fear of his displeasure. The children are the cruelest, as children often are, and none half so cruel as the Princess Aerea. She once emptied a chamberpot upon his head, not for anything he did, but because she was wroth with her mother.”

  Androw Farman’s discontent on Dragonstone only grew worse after his sister’s departure. Lady Elissa had been his closest friend, mayhaps his only friend, Culiper observed, and despite his tearful denials, Rhaena found it hard to accept that he had played no role in the matter of her dragon eggs. When the queen dismissed Ser Merrell Bullock, Androw had asked her to appoint him commander of the castle garrison in Bullock’s place. Her Grace had been breaking her fast with four of her ladies-in-waiting at the time. The women burst into laughter at his request, and after a moment the queen had laughed as well. When Rhaena flew to King’s Landing to inform King Jaehaerys of the theft, Androw had offered to accompany her. His wife refused him scornfully. “What would that serve? What could you possibly do but fall off the dragon?”

  Queen Rhaena’s denial of his wish to go with her to Storm’s End was but the latest and the last in a long string of humiliations for Androw Farman. By the time Rhaena returned from her mother’s deathbed, he was well past any desire to comfort her. Sullen and cold, he sat silent at meals and avoided the queen’s company elsewise. If Rhaena Targaryen was troubled by his sulks, she gave little sign of it. She found consolation in her ladies instead, in old friends like Samantha Stokeworth and Alayne Royce, and newer companions like her cousin Lianna Velaryon, Lord Staunton’s pretty daughter Cassella, and young Septa Maryam.

  Whatever peace they helped her find proved short-lived. Autumn had come to Dragonstone, as to the rest of Westeros, and with it came cold winds from the north and storms from the south raging up the narrow sea. A darkness settled over the ancient fortress, a gloomy place even in summer; even the dragons seemed to feel the damp. And as the year waned, the sickness came to Dragonstone.