Enigmas | Aemond Targaryen

TWENTY SIX

I slipped in and out of consciousness, stirring from one fever dream to another.

"Mother..." called out a voice in the darkness, very faint and distant.

"Daenaera?" My bare feet crunched against something as I pressed one palm against the stone-slab wall of a dimly lit corridor, trying to move in the direction where the voice came from. Looking down, I found that I was treading on a floor made entirely out of bleached and broken skulls and bone shards. A cold horror swelled so suddenly inside me I felt it would tear its way out of my body. I moaned and bent and crossed one arm across the swell of my belly in pain. There was something twisting and stretching inside me...

"Mother..." The voice called again, sounding even further away.

"Dany, where are you?" I walked awkwardly as the thing in my belly seemed to grow larger and heavier with each passing second and quickly I had to cup it with both hands. The skulls and bones cracked beneath my feet and cut deeply into my flesh but I kept on walking. "Dany?"

The long corridor went on and on and on, with only stone walls with faintly glowing red crystals embedded in them to my left and right. I had an uneasy feeling that those crystals were actually eyes like the ones on heart trees, watching me mutely.

"Mother..." I heard it once more; a whine.

I walked faster and a sticky wetness started to drip from between my thighs, soon I was leaving bloody footprints on the floor of skulls and bones.

"Dany, my baby..." I walked forward into a great feasting hall... a feast of corpses. High overhead, a long row of dragon heads stared down. Every dragon I knew of... All dead. The thing inside my womb kicked wildly. I bit my lips and stumbled to the huge centre table. Above it I saw a big wheel of rotten cheese infested with live maggots, jewelled goblets filled with congealing blood, and silver plates of scattered limbs, even severed heads. And the guests who seated about the table... they were skeletons clad in fine gowns and gilded armor. One was half covered in molten gold, another impaled on an iron spike, the third was seared and blackened, the fourth bound in chains...

I tried to walk away, but agony seized me again. I did know what possessed me to sit down at the head of the table. As soon as my backside touched the cushioned chair, the floor trembled as if the countless skulls were awakened, and in an eye blink the entire hall started to crumble to dust. I coughed and squeezed my eyes shut against the clouds of ashes that assailed my face.

"Mother..." Dany was crying but where was she?

I opened my eyes and found myself knee-deep in a subterranean river of blood. The air was hot and damp and full of metallic stench. I reached out a hand to touch the warm blood and it rippled and churned and three humanlike figures started to rise gradually. They were faceless yet so familiar...

"I always knew you were his slut."

"How could you? After what he did to me!"

"You are as much of a betrayer as he is."

The three figures burst like bubbles and a crimson rain fell on me. I wiped the blood off my eyes with the back of my hands. There was another figure at a distance. A great shadow leapt from the river of blood and swallowed it. A mighty wave roared toward me and sent me staggering backward. A cold, wet, bloody hand clasped my shoulder. I did not know when I had Blackfyre in my fist, but I pivoted and pierced the figure behind me, triggering a scarlet eruption. "My greatest accomplishment... my greatest mistake... my ambition... my downfall..." The figure distorted weirdly and dissipated. A terrible pain was coursing through me all at once. Groaning, I plucked Dark Sister from my swollen belly and dropped to my knees into the river. The thing in my womb slipped out of me. The river of blood turned into a river of burning wildfires. Unnatural green flames chanted to me. "The river will keep him safe... go... go... You mustn't look back..."