Redemption of the Dragon

Act 2 – Prophesy or Conspiracy · Chapter 8: The Nature of Magic

Night found them on higher ground.

They did not make camp so much as collapse into one.

The battle had cost them time, blood, and two horses. It had cost the red priests more, but dead men did not need to be fed, watered, bandaged, or coaxed onward with shaking hands. The Tears moved until the valley of red cloaks and wet grass lay behind a fold of broken hills, then moved another mile because Aemon said distance was the cheapest mercy still available.

No one argued.

By the time they stopped, the sky had gone purple at the edges and cold enough to remind Tom that even Essos could learn a little of evening. They made no proper fires. Only three small pits hidden between stones, each fed with dry scrub and covered enough to keep the light low. Horses stood with heads down. Wounded men lay on blankets, teeth clenched against Cleyton's needle and Vissenya's steady hands. Salla moved among them with water. Darro dug a shallow trench with one arm bound in linen. Boro sat on a stone and refused to admit his thigh had been cut until Mera threatened to pour vinegar on it without warning.

Tom sat apart.

Not far.

Far enough.

He had washed twice in a stream no wider than a cart rut, and still blood clung under his nails, in the seams of his knuckles, at the edge of his sleeves. Some had dried along his neck where he had missed it. His sword lay across his knees, cleaned because Jory had taken it from him and cleaned it himself when Tom stared at the blade too long.

He did not remember handing it over.

That bothered him more than the blood.

The others kept looking.

At first they tried not to. That lasted less than an hour. Fear was an honest thing and curiosity was less disciplined. Men who had seen Tom torn from an auction yard, chained in a wagon, trained in sand, and mocked by Boro now watched him as if he had become a door that might open again without warning.

But the fear had changed.

In the valley, it had been raw. The kind of fear men had for fire when it jumped a ditch. Here, in the dark, after Tom had eaten bread with shaking hands and failed to keep broth from spilling down his own wrist, the fear softened into something more troublesome.

Questions.

Mera came first.

She sat beside him without asking, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched his. Her cheek was bruised. A cut along her jaw had been closed with three stitches. She offered him a strip of dried meat.

"Eat."

"I did."

"You pretended."

Tom took it. "You sound like Jory."

"Insult me again and I will leave."

He chewed because arguing required strength he did not have.

Mera watched the camp instead of him. "Do you remember it?"

Tom swallowed. The meat sat in his stomach like a stone.

"Some."

"How much is some?"

"Enough."

"That means little."

"Aye."

She glanced at him then. Her eyes were dark and sharp, but not unkind. "Were you in control?"

Tom thought of the spear coming slowly. The priest's ruby cracking. Heat moving under his skin. Wings that may not have been wings.

"I do not know."

Mera nodded as if that answer had weight because it had not tried to be clever.

"Better than yes if yes is a lie."

"And worse than no?"

"No would mean we sleep elsewhere."

He almost laughed. It came out tired.

Across the camp, Boro pointed at him with a strip of bandage clenched in one fist. "If he starts glowing, I want warning."

"You will be the first to scream," Mera called.

"I do not scream. I announce danger loudly."

The answering laughter was small, but real.

It moved through the camp carefully, like a man testing a wounded leg. A few of the Tears smiled. One of the former slaves, a Lysene named Corren, looked at Tom and then quickly away, as if embarrassed to have been caught staring at a shrine.

Tom hated that most of all.

Not the jokes.

The reverence.

By full dark, it had found him from every corner. Men who had barely spoken to him brought water. A woman from the Tears whose name he did not know offered him a clean cloak before giving one to herself. Darro clasped Tom's forearm with his good hand and said something in Norvoshi too solemn for Tom to answer properly. Salla left a second portion of bread beside him and vanished before he could refuse it.

"They are grateful," Jory said.

Tom looked up.

Jory stood just beyond the reach of the nearest hidden fire, face half shadowed, one hand resting near his sword. He had cleaned the blood from his cheek but not from his sleeve.

"Grateful is one thing," Tom said.

"Aye."

Jory lowered himself to the ground beside him with the careful stiffness of a man whose shoulder would ache before rain for the rest of his life.

"Afraid?" Tom asked.

Jory was quiet long enough that Tom wished he had not.

"Aye," Jory said at last.

The word landed cleanly.

Tom looked at the dark hills. "Of me?"

"Of what is happening to you."

"That is a kinder answer."

"It is the true one."

Tom picked at a dried line of blood on his cuff. "I do not know what happened."

"I know."

"That does not make it better."

"No."

Jory's gaze went toward the camp, where Boro was now lecturing Darro on the moral failures of bandages. "You are moving fast."

Tom frowned. "What?"

"Since the Twins. Since the ship. Since Myr. Every time I think I understand what road we are on, it changes under your feet. Slave. Fighter. Marked man. Valyrian blood. Magic. Today…"

He stopped.

Tom heard the words he did not say.

Living weapon. Monster. Something else.

Jory's jaw tightened. "Tor was always the one who ran ahead."

"Jory."

"Let me say it."

Tom did.

Jory breathed in through his nose, slow and controlled. "I was good at keeping him alive because I knew the shape of him. His pride. His foolishness. His strength. His reach. How fast he tired. When he lied about being hurt. With you, I am losing the measure. Not of your heart. Of what stands around it."

Tom had no answer ready.

Jory looked at him then, and the firelight caught the lines grief had cut into his face. "If you grow beyond me, I do not know how to stand beside you."

The confession was quieter than a whisper.

Tom felt it more sharply than any accusation.

"I am not trying to," he said.

"I know."

"I am still me."

"I know that too."

"Then stay."

Jory's mouth moved, almost a smile and almost pain. "You say that as if it is not already what I am doing."

"Good. Keep doing it."

"Bossy for a man who spills broth."

"Experienced."

Jory huffed once. It was not a laugh, but it carried the same shape.

Cleyton came after moonrise.

He had been tending wounds and whispering with Aemon for most of the evening. Now he crossed the camp with his robe hitched above the mud and his chain half hidden under his travel cloak. He looked exhausted enough to fall over and too worried to allow himself the luxury.

Aemon walked behind him.

Not too close. Not as if escorting a prisoner. Still, Tom noticed.

Vissenya came as well, silent and bright-eyed in the dark, her platinum hair hidden under a hood with only a pale strand loose along one cheek. She sat on the far side of the low fire without being invited. Aemon remained standing until Boro looked over and said, "If you loom any harder, the boy may mistake you for a tree."

Aemon considered him. "Do you ever stop talking?"

"When sleeping."

Mera snorted. "No."

Cleyton lowered himself onto a flat stone across from Tom. As he sat, his hand lifted to his chain. His fingers found one link without looking.

Dark grey.

Almost black in the firelight.

Valyrian steel.

Tom had seen that link before, but now it seemed to draw his eye with the same quiet gravity as Aemon's sword. Cleyton's thumb rubbed across it once. Twice. He did not appear to notice.

Aemon noticed.

So did Vissenya.

Tom said, "That one means magic."

Cleyton's fingers stopped.

For a moment, the former maester looked almost embarrassed.

"At the Citadel," he said, "they call it the higher mysteries when they wish to sound less afraid of their own subject."

"You studied them."

"Enough to earn a link. Not enough to understand half of what I thought I understood."

"That is still more than most maesters," Aemon said.

"Most maesters prefer ignorance in a clean robe."

Boro leaned forward. "Good enough. We have reached the part where the chain explains the murder dance."

"It explains nothing by itself," Cleyton said. "But it may help me speak without sounding entirely mad."

"Too late."

Cleyton ignored him with the ease of long practice.

His attention settled on Tom, and his expression softened. That worried Tom more than severity would have.

"What happened in the valley was magic," Cleyton said.

Tom looked into the fire. "I was hoping you would say luck."

"Luck may have been present. It usually arrives late and claims credit."

"Then skill."

"Skill kept you alive before the magic moved. Skill gave it shape enough not to kill your friends. But no, Tom. Skill alone did not do that."

Tom did not want to argue.

He argued anyway, because northern boys were raised with mud, work, cold, and a deep suspicion of men who claimed the world had chosen anyone for anything.

"I do not believe in destiny."

"Good," Cleyton said.

Tom looked up.

Cleyton's eyes were tired but clear. "Destiny is often a pretty word used by men who want obedience without admitting it. I am not telling you that you are chosen. I am telling you something passed through you."

Vissenya shifted slightly at that.

Aemon folded his arms. "Natural magic?"

"Most likely."

"Explain it to him," Jory said.

Cleyton gave him a brief nod. "Blood magic is precise because it is forced. A life taken, a word spoken, a bargain made with whatever hears such things. Shadowbinding is precise in another way, though Asshai hides its methods behind ten thousand masks and worse poetry. These magics cut channels. They direct power. They command, or attempt to."

The fire snapped softly.

"Natural magic does not behave like that," Cleyton continued. "It is older and less focused. Not weaker, necessarily. Less obedient. It does not always answer thought or intention. Often it answers need."

Tom frowned. "Need."

"The need of the moment. The need of the world. The need of blood or root or beast or place. I do not mean the universe thinks like a man in a chair making choices. But natural magic can feel as if the world knows something is required and reacts before the person carrying it understands."

"That sounds like a tale."

"Most true things do, until they bite."

Mera looked at Tom's hands. "So he did not choose it."

"Not fully."

"And he cannot choose it again."

Cleyton's face tightened. "That is the danger."

Tom's stomach sank.

Cleyton leaned forward, hand still resting on the Valyrian steel link. "Listen carefully. Just because the magic moved you today does not mean it will move you tomorrow. It may never do so again in the same way. It may answer when you wish it silent and fall silent when you need it most. You are still a man. Flesh, bone, blood, fatigue, fear. You must enter every fight with realistic expectations of your own abilities, not with trust in a miracle you did not command."

"I know," Tom said.

Cleyton studied him. "Do you?"

Tom looked at him, then at Jory, then at the faces beyond the fire pretending not to listen.

"I remember getting hit," he said. "I remember being afraid. I remember thinking I had gone too far forward and would die because of it. Whatever happened after did not make me less stupid for stepping out of the line."

Kemal, who had arrived without Tom noticing, spoke from the dark. "Good."

Tom turned.

The master-at-arms stood with a bandage wrapped around one forearm and his sword at his hip. "A fool would call it proof."

"Of what?"

"That he no longer needs discipline."

"And a wise man?" Aemon asked.

Kemal's eyes remained on Tom. "A wise man trains harder because now he knows something in him may wake hungry."

No one spoke for a moment.

Boro broke it, because of course he did.

"Lovely. The tall boy has hungry mystery blood. We train before breakfast?"

"Before dawn," Kemal said.

Boro groaned. "I miss slavery less every day, but not by enough."

The laughter came easier this time.

Tom felt Vissenya watching him through it.

When he looked, she did not look away.

There had been curiosity in her before. Calculation. Respect sharpened by caution. Now there was something warmer moving beneath all that, something she did not seem pleased to have discovered. Her gaze traced the tired slump of his shoulders, the blood still beneath one fingernail, the way he kept glancing toward the wounded as if counting whether he had failed them.

It made Tom self-conscious in a way battle had not.

"What?" he asked.

Her mouth curved slightly. "You are very bad at being worshipped."

He grimaced. "Good."

"Most men would have stood taller by now."

"Most men are fools."

"Often."

"I did not do what they think I did."

"You killed many men today."

"So did you."

"Yes, but no one is whispering over my bread."

Tom glanced toward Corren, who was absolutely whispering over someone else's bread while looking in Tom's direction.

"They should stop."

"They will not."

"Then I will ignore it."

Vissenya's smile softened before she hid it. "Northern strategy?"

"Mostly embarrassment."

Aemon sat at last, lowering himself with the grace of a man who had been tired for hours and refused to tell his body until duty allowed. He looked at Tom across the fire with none of the open skepticism that had colored his first inspection in Selhorys.

"You are not what I expected," he said.

"I hear that often now."

"I expected more vanity after a display like that."

"It was not a display."

"No," Aemon said. "It was not."

That small agreement carried more respect than any praise he might have given.

Aemon looked toward the dark beyond the camp. "Men with power usually reach for a story that makes the power theirs by right. Blood. Gods. Destiny. Revenge. History. Injury. You are reaching for luck because it lets you give the credit away."

"Luck asks less of me."

"Does it?"

Tom had no answer.

Cleyton watched him quietly.

In his mind, behind the tired eyes and the scholar's worry, a thought settled with surprising gentleness.

Still pure, then.

Not innocent. No one who had seen the Twins, the slave ship, Myr, and the valley could be innocent in any useful sense. But there remained in Tom a stubborn refusal to make himself holy. A suspicion of praise. A northern discomfort with standing above others. A habit of crediting survival to weather, friends, luck, pain, and anyone but himself.

For now, Cleyton thought, that may save him.

For now.

Aloud, he said, "Humility is useful. Do not let them turn it into another chain."

Tom looked at him sharply.

Cleyton touched the Valyrian steel link once more and let it fall from his fingers. "If men revere you, they will ask you to become the shape of their need. Resist that. If women admire you, they may do the same more pleasantly. Resist that too."

Vissenya laughed softly. "Careful, Cleyton."

"I am trying to keep him alive."

"By warning him against women?"

"By warning him against mirrors."

Boro nodded solemnly. "I have long said pretty people are dangerous."

Mera looked at him. "No one has ever accused you of being in danger from yourself."

"That was cruel."

"Precise."

The camp settled around them after that.

The unnamed Tears who had survived the valley moved more gently near Tom now, but not away. That was another change. Fear had made distance. Reverence made orbit. The former slaves were worse, though kinder about it. Corren insisted on checking Tom's cloak clasp. Darro brought him a whetstone. Salla, who rarely spoke, said in careful Common that if he needed sleep undisturbed, she would take the watch nearest him.

"I can take my own watch," Tom said.

Salla blinked once. "You should sleep. Men who refuse sleep start seeing enemies in cooking pots."

"So should you."

"I did not kill a priest and frighten everyone."

Tom opened his mouth.

She vanished before he found a reply.

Boro wheezed with laughter until his stitches hurt.

Later, when the fires had burned down to coals and the wounded had finally stopped groaning except in dreams, Tom walked to the edge of camp. The hills rolled black under stars. Somewhere behind them lay the dead. Somewhere ahead lay Elyria, whatever Aemon's project was, whatever Baelys would become, whatever the red priests had seen in flames and feared enough to chase across half of Essos.

Jory came to stand beside him.

Neither spoke for a while.

At last Tom said, "I am not leaving you behind."

Jory's eyes stayed on the dark. "That may not be up to you."

"Then I will walk slower."

"You are terrible at that."

"I will practice."

Jory looked at him then, and this time the fear had eased enough for grief and fondness to show through. "Aye. You will."

When they returned, Vissenya was banking the last fire with the side of her boot. She looked up as Tom passed. For a moment, her face was unguarded in the coals' red light, and Tom saw not the spy, not the councilor, not the beautiful knife from Volantis, but a woman who had decided some attachment was already forming and was measuring how much trouble it would cause.

He smiled awkwardly because he did not know what else to do.

She looked amused.

That was somehow worse.

Cleyton had already wrapped himself in his cloak near the book satchel. Aemon slept sitting against a rock, hand near the hilt of his sword even in rest. Kemal took first watch because no one successfully argued with him. Boro snored before lying fully down. Mera threatened to smother him if he did not turn over. Tall Spear laughed under his breath. Darro muttered something in Norvoshi that sounded like a prayer but may have been an insult.

Tom lay on his blanket beneath a sky full of hard stars.

He expected to dream of red cloaks.

He expected heat.

He expected wings.

Instead, he heard Jory settle nearby, close enough to wake if Tom stirred. He heard the camp breathe around him. Not safe. Not peaceful. But alive.

For that night, it was enough.

One by one, the voices faded.

The Tears slept.

Tom slept with them.

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Disclaimer: Frostfyre is a non-commercial fan fiction project inspired by a Realm of Thrones campaign for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. All rights to those original settings and characters remain with their respective owners.