Ser Balon was waiting for me the next morning when I opened the door of my room. We were both dressed as if for an expedition north of the Wall, with knee-high leather boots, thick woolen breeches and tunics, and heavy fur cloaks.
Ser Balon didn’t say anything as I slipped past him; he simply bowed and followed behind me.
It was business as usual for him.
In the soft yellow light of early dawn, traipsing the castle felt like walking in a dream. Our steps clacked louder than expected on the marble floor, the halls stretched long and unending, and the world seemed to be covered in a fine film of peacefulness.
Reality reasserted itself quick enough when we passed through an open balcony with a view of King’s Landing. I didn’t stop to stare, but one glance was more than enough. There was a black scar in my city where the fires had burned, as if a giant sickle had cut a trench through buildings like stalks of grain, exposing the dark soil beneath.
It could have been worse, I kept reminding myself as Ser Balon and I made our way to the gatehouse of the keep. Hundreds of wildfire jars had been accidentally found beneath the Great Sept before they were removed during Robert’s reign. If there had been some underneath the Dragon Pit…
Our horses were already waiting there in the hands of a trio of young stablehands, together with three more for our companions. I gave nods and silvers to each, receiving grateful bows and beaming smiles in return before they left.
The morning air was brisk as we settled in to wait, and I clutched my cloak closer to me despite the many layers I was dressed with. Another minute or so and I would start sweating, but I could enjoy the warm clothes against the chilly wind for now. I wasn’t particularly in a hurry to get going, but many reacher lords were supposed to arrive during the day, and I had to be there for the most respectable ones.
And I had a feeling that visiting the ancient and mostly defunct order of the alchemists just wasn’t going to cut it as an excuse to miss their arrival.
A few minutes later, Tyrion Lannister, Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, and Ser Lyle Crakehall were stalking across the courtyard, long shadows trailing behind them.
“You needn’t have sent your paid thug to shake me awake in my chambers,” Tyrion grumbled as he approached us. He looked comically round and small swaddled up in winter clothing as he was, with sleep written all over the slip of face I could see behind the headscarf covering his mouth.
I graced him with a smile. “I would hardly call a member of the Kingsguard a paid thug, uncle,” I said, swinging myself up on the rouncey. “They’re not paid a penny, after all. Up and at them now; it’s past time we leave.”
Tyrion muttered something under his breath and made for his own mount, Ser Lyle doing the same to my other side. The Lannister dwarf had to have Bronn help him up the horse, which would be funny enough on a normal day; but with all the clothes he had on he looked like a fat cat scrambling up the side of the beast, and it was all I could do to look away and school my face.
Tyrion was too valuable for me to alienate over something like this, and I liked to think I was beyond mere schoolyard bullying. When I didn’t like a man, it was a knife in the ribs I awarded him with, not a petty laugh in his face.
And Tyrion Lannister was another person I unwittingly found myself liking in this world.
We left as soon as everyone was mounted and ready. The Guildhall of the Alchemists was near the Great Sept, just on the foot of Visenya’s hill, so we needed only to go straight down the main thoroughfare that cut the city in half.
I had expediency in mind, but when we made it down the hill in which the Red Keep sat upon, I took us a few streets over so we could ride along the line of demolished buildings that ringed the area most affected by the fire. Mounts of blackened stone and charred wooden beams marked where houses and shops once stood, and thin trails of gray smoke still drifted up the air from deep within the rubble. Behind that, where Flea Bottom and its labyrinth of wooden shacks had squatted, there was nothing but a black wasteland.
Imitating my uncle, I pulled the scarf I had tucked into my tunic to cover my nose. The acrid smell of smoke didn’t hold the same appeal after Melisandre’s soul left Lightbringer’s ruby.
The devastation continued for several blocks. Few enough peasants were around this early in the morning to take note of our passing, and the ones that were seemed busy enough scavenging through the ruins of the houses. One man’s trash is another man’s gold, as they say.
Before we turned in the direction of the Guildhall, I took note of an old smallfolk couple standing by the corner of the street, holding each other in their arms. Both old and gray-haired, they were staring down at a small pile of rubble by their feet, a look of utter loss and anguish on their weather-worn faces.
Was it a house they toiled their entire life to build they mourned? Or a child too slow to escape the fire? Or both?
I put heels to my mount and shook peasants out of my thoughts, lest I get too in my head about how this was all my fault. A conscience was the last thing I needed at this point in the game.
xxx
“This is it, then?” I asked, looking at the square-shaped stone building in front of me. It definitely lacked the flair I expected of an alchemist’s hall.
“Yes, yes, this is it,” Tyrion said, back to waddling afoot after we left the horses in a tavern’s stable nearby. “They do know we’re coming, no?”
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I banged a fist on the thick ironwood door, once and twice and three times, until I could hear the pounding reverberating inside the guildhall. “They do now,” I said.
Sooner than I expected, the small wicket in the middle of the door slid open and a pale young face which I could only think was an apprentice peeked out from the gloom. “What is this?”
Balon cleared his throat. “King Tommen wishes to speak with Lord Hallyne, the Grandmaster.”
The apprentice’s brows furrowed. “The king?”
Stepping up, I pulled my cloak aside and slid Lightbringer halfway out of it’s scabbard. The apprentice went wide-eyed when he caught the sight of the rippled blade that had already become legend in King’s Landing.
“Of course!” the apprentice said hurriedly. “At once, Your Grace.” I heard latches and chains being undone on the other side. The heavy door slowly groaned open. It was a short slip of a man clad in shoddy black and red robes that greeted us. “Forgive me, Your Grace. We were not expecting a visit. I, uhm, I shall call on Lord Hallyne at once,” he said, before scurrying back into a pit black passage in the wall.
“Lovely place,” I murmured, looking around at the bare stone room we found ourselves in. There wasn’t even a place to sit and wait, and only a single candle illuminated the area. Though, in fairness, I doubted the guild had many visitors of recent.
“It hides its charms well enough,” said Tyirion. “You’ll see it if you’re lucky enough to get the full tour as I did.”
We didn’t have to wait long before shuffling steps heralded Hallyne, or rather, Lord Hallyne, as Cersei had generously gifted him a lordship—though one with no lands or incomes to go with the title—for his contribution during the Battle of the Blackwater.
“Your Grace!” The old man managed a bow. In the weak light of the candle, his skin looked to be the color of chalk. “Let me just say what an honor it is to have the king visit our humble order. Truly, a great honor indeed.”
“The honor is mine, Lord Hallyne” I smiled courteously. “My uncle has told me of his own visit to your guildhall, but I was wondering if you could guide me as well if you are not too busy.”
At that, the old wisdom lit up like a beacon. The next half hour consisted of non-stop talking by the old wisdom, while he took our merry group through all tourist spots, from the Gallery of the Iron Torches with it’s black marble floors and its metallic columns, all lit up by acid-green wildfire braziers, to the lengthy storerooms where the jars were kept, and even the dark hall where we could peek into the cells where the wildfire itself was made. And while had a habit of going off on tangents, his passion for what he did was evident. That, at least, I could respect. This guild was his life’s work, and his father’s and grandfather’s too.
According to the wisdom, each cell represented a step in the process of making the substance, with its own spells and ingredients and precautions that had to be taken so the wildfire came out properly, and the acolytes only knew the steps for their assigned cells until they became full-fledged wisdoms.
That had almost made me curse out loud. I had come here to have the Grand Wisdom, or whatever his title was, taken to Qyburn for thorough questioning, so we could finally learn the secrets behind wildfire and start production ourselves. But if Wildfyre is as hard to make as it seems, I might as well work with him instead of putting more on Qyburn’s shoulders.
Pulling back from looking into one of the cells, I turned to the wisdom. “Tell me, my lord. The… spells to produce wildfire. Have they begun to strengthen recently?”
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Tyrion frowning. Bronn we had lost somewhere along the way, though I suspect he wouldn’t give two fucks about what I asked, and Ser Balon and Ser Lyle had enough experience with the supernatural to be unfazed by my question.
“Oh yes, Your Grace,” the pallid man said. “Hmmmm, yes. It started the year before last. The substance is more alive than ever now—”
That fit the timeline of Daenerys dragons hatching into life. I couldn’t help but wonder about that. Did that mean that my own powers, or those given to me by the Lord of Light or whoever brought me here, could only be enacted so long as dragons rode the winds?
“—but us, that is, the order, oh we take care with it, Your Grace. Very much so. Every apprentice must first pass rigorous tests before he becomes an aco—”
“Believe me, my lord. I would listen to your order’s whole history well into the evening if I had the time, but I’m afraid I have several appointments later today. Tell me, are there any caches of wildfire left anywhere under the city?”
Hallyne shook his head. “No, Your Grace. Not as far as we can tell. There is always a chance that some hidden stash from the time of King Aerys remains unacknowledged, but after the scare at the sept a few years back… well, we were very thorough.”
“That is good to hear. Especially after the other night’s happenings.” I glanced at Tyrion. “How many were produced before Stannis’ came knocking at our doors, uncle?”
“Ten thousand jars,” Tyrion provided. “Courtesy of your dear departed mother.”
I nodded. “I want production to start back at once, then,” I said. Knowing of three fleets that might soon be pointing my way, I wouldn’t mind having a surplus of wildfire stockpiled just in case. “But I ask that all the jars be kept here, under strict safety provisions. I want the jars buried so deep, grandmaster, that not even a dragon landing in the guildhalls roof and torching the place will set a drop of wildfire alight.”
Lord Hallyne smiled with yellow teeth. “It would be our greatest honor to serve the throne once more, Your Grace. Hmmmm, could I assume the throne will match its contribution to the cause as it did before the battle?”
It always came to money, didn’t it? At least they needed very little. From what I read from the ledgers, three-hundred dragons a year would be enough to maintain the guild operating at full capacity.
“The Crown will provide… given reasonable fund requests,” I told him, and Hallyne was quick to bow. After that, we started making our wait back upstairs, crossing the veritable maze of dark corridors that comprised the inside of the guildhall. I wasn’t done milking this trip for what it was worth though—which so far, wasn’t that much at all. I caught the wisdom’s attention with a waving hand. “Sate a young man’s curiosity, my lord, if you will.” He bobbed his head in clear excitement. “Your order was once vaunted and famous through the land, an institution older than even the Citadel, and it was even said you knew how to transmute metals. Have any of those old magics been preserved, or perhaps returned with the strengthening of your spells?”
“Unfortunately no, Your Grace. Most of our ancient knowledge has been lost to time and conflict. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “Simple curiosity, as I said. I carry a valyrian-steel sword of my own. I thought perhaps there was some form of connection between the production of this magical steel to the Alchemists’ own method of changing metal.”
The wisdom broke out in raspy chuckles. “And one we have tried revisiting as well, Your Grace. Hmmm yes, we have dug most thoroughly in the archives we have left, but those are few and mostly pertaining to order records. Most of our Valyrian texts were taken to Dragonstone during the reign of King Maegor I, when members of his guild opened a sect at the island. We lost contact with them only a few years later, and no sign of their presence was found when we sent people looking.”
I hummed, a small smile blooming on my face. “Dragonstone, huh?” The dark stairs gave way to the eerie-green gallery with the towering columns of black metal. “I just so happen to be planning a vacation there soon, dear wisdom.”
