The King of Winters

Chapter-96

Jorah

The room was small, smaller than the ones he had been given before in the High Tower when he was still married to Lynesse, but it was a welcome change to the dark and dank dungeons of the Hightower. The talks he had heard lately of Oldtown made the pit of his stomach weak, and his heart pang. They provided him with hot food and fresh clothes and even wine at times, something that he had never gotten in the dungeons. Yet all he tasted was sourness in his mouth, for fear of uncertainty.

Jorah had still been held in his cell when Oldtown had fought the battle against princess Daenerys and her dragon. He wasn't told of the battle while it was raged. He might have very well slept all the way through it. The oily black stone that made up the High Tower's basement and dungeons did very well at keeping the light and sound and even the air away.

There was neither night nor day down there. Jorah marked time by the comings and goings of the guard who brought the meals for him to eat. Here he had sunlight and fresh breath of air, food and wine to eat and servants to bring them instead of guards. "Is the battle over for good?" Jorah asked him once, as he paced around his room. "Do you have any news of the war?"

The servants never answered him. On that they could as staunch a people as the guards who had held him in the cells. "Could you tell me of the battle? Tell me that."

He had heard a few mentions of it from the guards once when they thought that he was asleep and whispered to themselves. Jorah had put his ear to the wood and listened intently grasping onto the words as much as the wooden door allowed. It wasn't much, but he heard something of fire and blood and magic. And from his window he could see smokes raising up as pale tendrils into the sky. If there was fire and blood then Daenerys must have won... Or did she? These were Hightower men in the castle and he was still a captive in all but name. That thought didn't get his hopes up.

"Is Lord Leyton here?" Jorah asked. "I wish to speak with him. Jorah would have rather stayed back in the cruel comforts of his cell. He did not know why he was taken out of the dungeons? That made him restless. After the things he had witnessed in the port of Oldtown, Jorah did not know what Lord Leyton was able to do. He might hang me for bearing the banner of the Targaryens. Or he might clap me in chains instead and ship me off to the Wall. It was either of those for he had no other reason of keeping him alive if the battle was done for. Jorah did not know which he dreaded the most. The noose or the thought of looking at his father's face again?

The servants went about his work and left the room. Sleep had never come easily to Jorah Mormont, not in a long time. In Oldtown it seldom came at all, having been looked at waves a hundred feet high and coming so close to death. At least he did not dream. He had dreamed enough for one small life. He had dreamed of love, justice, friendship, glory. As well dream of Daenerys Targaryen. It was all beyond his reach, Jorah knew now.

I should have killed myself in the sea, he thought. A little more of dishonor on his name wouldn't hurt him very much. A little more dishonor on his hands, what would it matter? He could not say why he had stayed alive while hundreds died. He had hoped to wipe that off. To win a victory worthy of the princess' love, but he had failed at that as well.

He tried so hard to sleep that night, hoping to get rid of his nightmares. There might yet come a day when he would be righting all the wrongs he had done. But no matter how hard he tried sleep would not come with the roiling thunder and wheezing winds outside. A storm, he realised then. It was rare to witness storms in summer at the sunset sea. Yet there it was keeping him up at the night.

The next morning Ser Edmund Beesbury came to escort him to Lord Leyton in his solar at the top of his High Tower. Even he never had anything to say to him during the long ascent upwards. Only when they emerged at the top floor did he say that Lord Leyton was waiting for him inside the room and opened the door. By then Jorah had been flushed and out of breath. His time in the dungeons had greatly reduced his strength. Once he had been able to make the descent in a much better way than he had now, where he had stopped Ser Edmund several times to rest.