The Annals of House Yizhou, Second Volume

The Age of Two Dragons, the Fall of Kings, and the Dragon That Would Not Die

Being the continuation of the chronicle of Ningning Yizhou, written by one who stood beneath the banners of the Burning Rain and witnessed the kingdoms break apart

Prologue

The Years That Followed the First Flame

The first volume of this history ended with a warning.

The rain had come.

The fire had survived it.

But no fire burns forever in one place.

By the year 293 A.C, House Yizhou had already ceased to be what it had been when I inherited Strongsong. We possessed the Vale. We possessed alliances that stretched farther than any Yizhou lord before me had dreamed. We possessed the blood of the dragon, and above our eastern towers circled Solstice, black and green and terrible.

Yet the years ahead would teach me a cruel truth.

It is easier to win a kingdom than to keep one.

It is easier to defeat an army than to understand a man.

It is easier to take a crown than to survive the people who wear it.

And, most dangerous of all, it is easier to hatch a dragon than to decide what should be done with it.

For I would live to see more than one dragon in the sky.

I would see kings crowned and butchered.

I would see the North break from the realm.

I would see the Riverlands choose the same road.

I would see the Ironborn rise like carrion crows over a kingdom stripped of soldiers.

I would see a king who inherited his crown as a boy become the cause of thousands of deaths.

I would see one husband fall.

And before the end, I would watch a dynasty that believed itself restored begin unknowingly to place its own blood into the hands of House Yizhou.

The histories will speak of wars.

The singers will speak of dragons.

The priests will speak of sin.

But I know what lay beneath all of it.

A family.

And families, when they grow powerful enough, become kingdoms.

I

23rd Day of the Third Moon, 293 A.C

Peace is a strange companion.

It comes softly.

It asks little.

It makes men believe that the hard years have passed.

In the spring of 293 A.C, I became friends with Lord Gilwood of Longbow Hall.

It was a small event beside the great wars that had made my name, and had the royal scribes been keeping this history, perhaps they would have left it to a footnote.

I will not.

For great kingdoms are not built only through blood.

Some are built through trust.

A lord who can speak freely in your hall is worth a hundred men who shout your name on a battlefield.

Gilwood and I spoke of the Vale, of the roads, of the old houses, of the strange customs of the eastern people who had come to live among the mountains.

And he listened.

That mattered.

Because House Yizhou had spent generations being looked at.

Gilwood was one of the few who looked at us.

There is a difference.

Ⅱ

The Whiteflame Takes Wing

23rd Day of the First Moon, 298 A.C

Years passed.

Children grew.

And the child who had once followed me through the eastern halls had become a woman.

Aelar Yizhou.

My daughter.

My heir.

My first great hope for the future.

On the twenty-third day of the first moon, she tamed her dragon.

I named the beast's color before I named its meaning.

White.

Great.

Pale as winter sunlight upon snow.

We called him Rhaegax.

And when Aelar mounted him, the skies of the Vale gained a second terror.

Solstice was the dragon of my generation.

Rhaegax would be hers.

From that day the people began calling my daughter Whiteflame.

It was not merely because of the dragon's scales.

It was because of how she carried herself.

There was no fear in her.

No childish awe.

She did not climb upon the dragon as a girl seeking adventure.

She mounted him like an heir taking possession of what was hers.

I watched her ascend into the sky.

And for the first time in my life, I wondered whether my own reign might someday be remembered not as the beginning of Yizhou greatness— but merely as its foundation.

III

The King Who Fell

2nd Day of the First Moon, 298 A.C

Then came the fall of Robert Baratheon.

My friend.

The king with whom I had once ridden.

The man who had sat the throne because thousands had bled to place him there.

He went hunting drunk.

He fell from his horse.

And the realm changed in an instant.

Kingship is often imagined as a great thing.

Gold.

Crowns.

Banners.

Trumpets.

But I learned that morning how fragile a crown truly is.

A king may die from war.

A king may die from poison.

A king may die from an assassin's knife.

Or a king may simply fall.

The corpse does not care which.

When Robert died, the peace of his reign died with him.

And the wolves came.

So did lions.

So did stags.

So did dragons.

IV

The Sentence at the Great Sept

20th Day of the Fourth Moon, 298 A.C

Lord Eddard Stark had been called many things.

Honorable.

Stubborn.

Dangerous.

Foolish.

He was all of these things at different times.

But dead men rarely care which word is chosen for them.

King Joffrey had him executed at the Great Sept of Baelor.

When word reached the Vale, I remember the silence.

There are deaths that feel like the death of a man.

There are others that feel like the death of an age.

This was the latter.

The North would not forgive it.

The Riverlands would not forgive it.

And neither would the men who had once believed that Robert's kingdom was a settled thing.

The rain had begun again.

V

The War of Five Crowns

23rd Day of the Eighth Moon, 298 A.C

Then the realm shattered.

Robb Stark was named King in the North.

The riverlords followed him.

Renly Baratheon claimed the Iron Throne.

The Targaryen prince, Rhaeger, remained upon Dragonstone with his own claim.

Joffrey sat in King's Landing.

And in the east, the Vale shut its gates.

Five kings.

One realm.

Too many crowns.

It is a strange thing to watch a kingdom tear itself apart.

From the Eyrie's heights, the roads looked peaceful.

Farmers still plowed.

Children still played.

Smiths still hammered iron.

Merchants still argued over prices.

Yet every raven carried another declaration.

Another army.

Another oath.

Another lord choosing whom he believed would still be alive by winter.

The people would later call it the War of the Five Kings.

I remember it differently.

I remember it as the year every man discovered how much a crown could cost.

“The war that plunged Westeros to its knees, the War of the Five Kings, had started after Lord Paramount Robb was named King in the North, and the Riverlords hailed him with them as they marched for their independence and revenge for the treasonous act against the Late Eddard Stark. Lord Paramount Renly Baratheon has claimed the throne outright, with the whole strength of the Reach at his back. And lastly, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen of Dragonstone, by right, coldly, and with rather fewer but loyal men to his cause. The Vale shut its gate; only the Seven will know the reason why, and Dorne says nothing. Every other house of Westeros must choose today on a war so massive that it plunged the whole realm into chaos.”

VI

The Marriage of Wolves and Dragons

24th Day of the Eighth Moon, 298 A.C

I joined King Robb's war.

My justification was family.

My true reason was loyalty.

After the death of Hoster Tully, the old marriage arrangement binding my daughter Jaedora to his line had lost its purpose.

So I broke it.

I did not do so lightly.

The men of Westeros have always treated daughters as bridges between houses.

Our people never did.

A Yizhou woman is not a bridge.

She is a pillar.

So Jaedora's hand went elsewhere.

To Brandon Stark.

The wolf and the dragon were joined.

And with that marriage, House Yizhou bound itself to the struggle of the North.

I knew the risks.

The North was far away.

The roads were long.

The war was brutal.

And my husband, Elbert, had chosen not to follow me.

But I had learned long ago that love and obedience are not the same thing.

Elbert was my husband.

He was my liege.

He was my soulmate.

But I was still Ningning Yizhou.

VII

The Dragon Leaves the Nest

3rd Day of the Ninth Moon, 298 A.C

My husband remained in the Eyrie.

I did not.

I raised the Yizhou banners.

Ten thousand marched.

Two dragonriders rode with them.

Solstice, black and green.

Rhaegax, white and magnificent.

For the first time, mother and daughter flew together beneath the same sky.

The people who saw us said that the sight was enough to make a man forget his prayers.

Perhaps they were right.

I remember looking toward the horizon and seeing two shadows moving across the earth beneath us.

One old.

One young.

One mine.

One my daughter's.

And I knew then that the future of House Yizhou would not be decided by one dragon.

There would be generations.

"I ignored my liege and husband, Lord Paramount Elbert of the Vale, as he sat in the Eyrie; the Gods know what his reason for cowering behind our mountains may be, but the dragon remembers its oaths. I raised my banner, along with my vassals. Ten thousand strong, and with two dragonriders. Me on the mighty black and green Solstice and my daughter Aelar Yizhou on Rhaegax."

8

The Burning of the Lion's Hide

10th Day of the First Moon, 299 A.C

The North's host met us near the Trident.

Seventy thousand strong.

It was an army vast enough to darken roads for miles.

With them were my forces.

And with us came the dragons.

We sailed down the Trident toward Blackwater Bay, our ships carrying soldiers, provisions, weapons and the certainty that the war could no longer be contained.

King's Landing lay ahead.

So did the Lion.

And I had decided that the Lion would burn.

The battle there has been given several names in different accounts, but in our household it became:

The Burning of the Lion's Hide

For the banners of the king still bore the stag.

Yet behind that stag lurked the pride of the West.

We gave them fire instead.

“Me and the Northen host met at the Trident. Seventy thousand strong, along with my host and dragons, with more coming their way. We went ahead and embarked on our ships in the Trident River, our sails straight to Blackwater Bay, King's Landing, and put the Lion dressed in Stag pelts to the fire.”

IX

The Death Beneath Candlelight

31st Day of the First Moon, 299 A.C

Renly Baratheon died strangely.

No spear pierced him.

No sword cleaved him.

No army surrounded him.

He was preparing for war.

Then something came through the candlelight.

His gorget opened.

And he died.

I did not see the thing myself.

I heard the accounts.

The guards swore to what they saw.

The realm invented answers before the corpse had even cooled.

Some said sorcery.

Some whispered of shadows.

Some blamed Rhaeger.

Others blamed men who were not even there.

I wrote only this:

A crown may attract enemies that no army can see.

Renly's death scattered his host.

The Reach moved toward accommodation with the lions.

The stormlords turned toward Rhaegar.

And the realm lost yet another king.

Four remained.

"King Renly died of queer causes. Not in Battle, not by any blade. He was arming for the field, and something came through the candlelight and opened his gorget; it was over before the guards outside had finished turning round. His host scattered and the Reach rode to King's Landing and made peace with the Lions. And the stormlords took their banners to King Rhaegar. Some might say he sent a shadow of origins from the dark arts of the free cities; only the Seven will know."

X

The Three Flames

2nd Day of the Second Moon, 299 A.C

Then Solstice gave us a gift.

Three clutches of eggs hatched upon the road.

Three possible futures.

Three pieces of living fire.

One I gave to Matarys, my son.

One I gave to my grandson Maeker, child of Aelar and Prince Aegon.

And the third I gave to my daughter Zarella of the Reach.

I have often wondered whether the gods had arranged the timing.

Perhaps they had not.

Perhaps the gods do nothing at all.

But from that day forward, House Yizhou ceased to be the house with one dragon.

We had become the house that bred them.

XI

The Thawing of Red

15th Day of the Second Moon, 299 A.C

Then came the storm.

The North landed in Blackwater Bay.

The walls of King's Landing filled with smoke.

My dragons descended.

The Targaryen host was already fighting elsewhere within the city, and by some strange agreement we passed one another like opposing tides that had chosen not to collide.

Our purposes were different.

Theirs was the restoration of Rhaegar's crown.

Ours was the destruction of Joffrey's.

Then came the attack upon the Red Keep.

The defenders were numerous.

The dragons were not concerned.

Fire does not care how many men stand beneath it.

They burned.

Courtiers.

Soldiers.

Men who had sworn loyalty.

Men who had perhaps never even understood why they were fighting.

The Red Keep burned.

Yet Aelar, my Whiteflame, rode into the chaos with a command that made me proud beyond words.

The women and children were not to be harmed.

No plunder would justify their deaths.

No man was to touch them.

And any who disobeyed would answer to her.

She gave the order while flames filled the city.

That day the people began calling what happened:

The Thawing of Red.

But they remembered more than the destruction.

They remembered Whiteflame.

They remembered that the daughter of the dragon had entered a city with fire enough to destroy it— and had chosen where the fire must stop.

That was the day I knew I had chosen the right heir.

"The North's host, along with me. Landed in Blackwater Bay and stormed the Red Keep. To our surprise, the Targaryen host of Rhaegar was in the northern part of King's Landing, sacking and fighting resisting Lords. We made a pact not to interfere; in return, they would let us have our independence when he is crowned King, and in return, we would sack King's Landing with our Dragons and burn the bastard King. We led a siege along with my dragons. Thousands burned defending the Red Keep, along with some of the courtiers and a bastard of the late King Robert Baratheon, all razed to flames by our dragons. The Northern host then sacked King's Landing, led by the King in the North, Robb Stark, and occupied the capital for now. However, the Queen Dowager Cersei Lannister and Ser Jaime Lannister, along with their cubs born of incest, fled the capital a day before they saw our banners on their shore. During the sacking of King's Landing, later known as “The Thawing of Red”, my heir and daughter, Aelar Yizhou, demanded that the women and children be untouched, unless they wanted to be dragonfed. This act made me proud of her and set the tone for the future of this realm. The people hailed Aelar Yizhou “Whiteflame”, named after the likeness of her dragon, and their flames are as pure as they are deadly.”

XII

The Swallowing in Turnmouth

23rd Day of the Ninth Moon, 299 A.C

The North gathered outside Turnmouth.

Joffrey's host came against it in enormous numbers.

One hundred thousand.

We had fewer than twenty thousand.

But numbers have never been the only measure of war.

We had fire.

The dragons came.

Solstice.

Rhaegax.

The vanguard burned.

The archers burned.

The Northern and Riverland host advanced.

And then the armies collided.

Forty-three thousand died on their side.

Three thousand upon ours.

It was a slaughter.

But it was also the moment the war turned.

The people called it:

The Swallowing in Turnmouth

For the bastard king's host had marched south believing it would swallow the North.

Instead, the North swallowed it.

And thereafter the remnants scattered.

The bastard king lost the strength that had sustained his claim.

The North marched onward.

The Riverlands stood with it.

The road to independence had been opened.

“The Battle of Turnmouth. The Battle south of King's Landing, at Turnmouth city, better known as “the Swallowing in Turnmouth”, marks the turning point of the North's struggle for its independence.

After the sack of King's Landing, the North spread throughout the Crownlands and sacked every castle they could find in hopes of finding the bastard King and his pack. All of the North gathered outside of the city to meet the marching host of the bastard King. They meant to take back King's Landing with their number. The bastard king's host boasted a colossal one hundred thousand men to meet the Northern host, shy of twenty thousand from them.

What we lacked in number, we made up for it in fire. We had two dragons, and they were fools for asking for a baptism through fire, so we indulged them. We bathed their vanguards and archers in flames first as the North charged with all their might. Their archers were no match for Solstice's very thick armor and Rhaegax's speed. Combined with the fearsome Northmen and Rivermen, we all swallowed their host.

Forty-three thousand perished on their side; on ours was only a mere three thousand. It was still a lot of blood on our side, but we made sure they remembered how Aegon managed to conquer a continent with only three thousand men.

13

The Six Kingdoms

The realm had once been seven.

Now it was six.

The North stood apart beneath King Robb Stark.

The Riverlands had broken free alongside it.

The South and Storm's End yet to be determined.

The Reach remained tied to the great web of marriages.

The Vale belonged to Elbert Arryn.

And House Yizhou's blood ran through all of it.

Perhaps that was the greatest irony.

We had never conquered the realm.

We had married it.

One daughter to the Reach.

Jaeodra to the North.

Aelar to the dragon throne.

And through these marriages, the Yizhou house had accomplished something that a hundred thousand swords could not.

We had made ourselves difficult to remove.

"After the "Swallowing in Turnmouth", the bastard King's host scattered and didn't recover. We won the war. The North and the Riverlands gained their independence, but the treasonous Lannister kin were nowhere to be found. The Seven Kingdoms were now six, and Robb, of House Stark, first of his name, King in the North, marched home victorious and proud, but is yet to feel accomplished, for his Father's killer is still at large."

XIV

The Dragon King's Claim

15th Day of the Twelfth Moon, 299 A.C

The North had won.

The Riverlands were free.

The bastard king's armies had scattered.

The Lannisters were nowhere to be found.

And King Robb Stark marched home victorious.

Yet Joffrey still lived.

The realm remained without a single monarch.

Then my husband moved.

For the first time, Elbert Arryn flew from his nest.

He declared for Rhaeger.

The Vale entered the struggle.

The falcon finally sought prey.

And the world did not understand why.

“The realm is still without a Monarch; many still called themselves Kings. As the King in the North marches home, I joined King Rhaegar's claim war for the Iron Throne, held by Joffrey. My husband and liege, Lord Paramount Elbert Arryn of the Vale, finally flew out of its nest and sharpened its talons. We declared for the dragon king Rhaeger, for a Targaryen is better on the throne than some mad Bastard. Only the Gods know why only know did the falcon finally sought prey, but one thing is certain: we had a plan."

XV

The Restoration of Rhaeger

17th Day of the Twelfth Moon, 299 A.C

The realm called it:

A Week for a Crown.

They laughed when they said it.

They celebrated.

They believed that the worst of the chaos had ended.

They did not know what had truly happened.

For Rhaeger believed that he had defeated his enemies.

He had.

But he had also inherited a realm whose bloodlines had been rearranged by House Yizhou.

He had accepted a Vale whose ruler was Aelar Yizhou.

He had accepted a prince married into the Yizhou line.

He had accepted grandchildren of Yizhou and Targaryen blood.

And he did not yet know what that meant.

I did.

_ _

XVI

The Duel at Freelock

17th Day of the Twelfth Moon, 299 A.C

Our host joined Rhaeger's at Freelock.

Ten thousand armies.

Two dragons.

Against a host of hundreds.

It was not fair.

Ser Durran knew it.

So he asked for a parley.

Warrior against warrior.

Dragon against no one.

Steel against steel.

I accepted.

For the realm had begun whispering that perhaps my strength came entirely from Solstice.

I wished to answer them.

So I drew Elenei's Grace.

The blade had belonged to House Durrandon, the ancient Storm Kings.

The old sword had passed through generations.

At last it had found its way into my possession through a secret bargain with an old woman who worshiped the Fourteen Flames.

I kept her secret.

She kept hers.

And so the sword became mine.

Ser Durran raised his shield.

I raised Elenei's Grace.

Then I struck.

The sword went through his shield.

Through metal.

Through flesh.

And down through the clavicle toward the stomach.

The duel ended before the watching men had even understood it had begun.

Silence followed.

Then the last armies who still supported the boy-king yielded.

Even the Lannister host, delayed by its own wars elsewhere, could not repair what had already been broken.

And so Rhaeger took the crown.

The people called him:

Rhaeger the Restorer

The Six Kingdoms received him.

Stannis was given Storm's End.

The dragon throne returned.

But there was one fact the king did not yet understand.

His restoration had been helped into existence by the very house that would one day have the greatest reason to replace him.

“'A Week for a Crown', that is what the people coined Rhaegar's victory. Just a few days short of a week, my host and Rhaegar's joined to defeat Ser Durran's host of The Grief at the battle of Freelock. It wasn't fair. Ten thousand armies and two dragons, versus a host of hundreds, was disgraceful to fight with. Ser Durran then parleyed and asked that I would fight him, warrior to warrior, in the stead of our armies. The realm is curious if all my strength lies only with my dragon, so I obliged. I drew my Valyrian sword “Elenei's Grace”. This was the ancestral Valyrian steel greatsword of House Durrandon, the Stormlords before Aegon Targaryen's half-brother and commander slew the last Storm King. Generations after generations, it fell into the wrong hands until I found out that one old crone in our lands who still worships the Fourteen Flames stole it from the free cities and fled here. I arrested her discreetly, and in exchange for me not telling everyone about her faith and being excommunicated by the Septon, she gave me the ancient Valyrian greatsword. It was an easy deal. And so I faced Ser Durran. I lifted my greatsword and struck him down so hard that my sword cut through his shield like butter and drove the metal through his clavicle down to his stomach.

No one expected the duel to end that fast, nor did I; it was all Elenei's "Grace" that made that fight trivial. Valyrians and their steel, the gods only know what they put in their crafts. After this duel, the last of the armies that were willing to fight for the bastard king stepped down, along with the Lannister host that was busy fighting some of the Lords that were joining our cause and delayed their march to help their King. And so began the reign of King Rhaeger of House Targaryen, first of his name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, the Yi'ti, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm, The Restorer. Coined by the people after he bid and took his time until he could and had brought back order to the now Six Kingdoms and his House. He then granted the Storm's End to Stannis Baratheon, making him the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands.

17

The Secret of the Whiteflame

The Pact of Blood and Crown There are matters a chronicler may record openly.

There are others that must be hidden until every living participant is dead.

This is one of the latter.

Yet I write it here.

Because history must someday know.

Aelar's marriage to Prince Aegon had not been merely an alliance.

It was the beginning of a design.

Aegon's blood would enter the Yizhou succession.

Aelar would remain Yizhou.

Their descendants would carry both lines.

And their son— my grandson— would stand at the meeting point of two dynasties.

Prince Maeker Yizhou.

Dragonlord.

Grandson of Ningning.

Descendant of the Falcon.

Descendant of the Dragon.

He was not merely an heir to the Vale.

He was a key.

And the lock was the Iron Throne.

Elbert had understood this.

Before his death, he stood down from the great struggle and prepared his men to support Rhaeger's claim.

I went farther.

I bled for the North.

He prepared for the Dragon King.

It had looked, to the outside world, like husband and wife standing upon different sides.

In truth, we were building the same road from different ends.

Rhaeger believed we had helped him because his cause was just.

He did not understand.

We had helped him because we required him alive long enough to place our blood upon the throne.

That was the secret of Elbert and Ningning.

"This was the secret plan of me and my late husband, Elbert of the Vale. He stood down to ready his men in support of King Rhaeger's claim. While I bled mine for the North, he readied his for the Dragon King. It is because our heir, Lady Paramount Aelar "Whiteflame" Yizhou of the Vale, her daughter is of her husband, Prince Aegon Targaryen, second in line to the Iron Throne after his heir and grandson, Prince Daeron Targaryen. And they were married matriarchally, the pact we made years before. King Rhaeger does not realize that we orchestrated this all along, and once our grandson Prince Maeker Yizhou ascends the throne, it will be us who rule the Six Kingdoms. Our sights were not just the Vale; it was the realm."

18

The Heir Beneath Two Dragons

Maeker grew.

Every mother watches her children.

Every grandmother watches differently.

A mother sees the child.

A grandmother sees the future.

When I looked at Maeker, I did not merely see my grandson.

I saw an intersection.

Yizhou.

Targaryen.

Arryn.

Dragon.

Kingdom.

Everything we had spent decades arranging had begun to converge upon one living boy.

He carried Zuvdar's fire.

He carried Aelar's blood.

He carried Aegon's lineage.

And one day, if the design survived us all, he would inherit something much larger than the Vale.

He would inherit the right to stand before the realm and say:

This kingdom is mine.

And the greatest secret of all was that the kingdom would not realize it had become Yizhou until the crown had already settled upon his head.

XIX

The Redfort Wars

6th Day of the Fourth Moon, 300 A.C - 24th Day of the Second Moon, 301 A.C

Lord Horton Redfort rebelled against the order of the new Vale.

The old houses never surrender their memories willingly.

They fight for dead privileges.

They fight for names.

They fight because their fathers once possessed something and they cannot endure that their sons do not.

The war was not great enough to enter the histories of kings.

But in my own histories, it deserves a place.

For revolutions are rarely destroyed by the battle everyone remembers.

They are destroyed by the hundred little defeats no singer considers worthy of a song.

We prevailed.

Then later the struggle rose again.

Again, we answered.

The Redfort learned what many others had learned before it:

House Yizhou could be resisted.

It could not easily be dislodged.

XX

The Sky Below the Stones

18th Day of the Eighth Moon, 300 A.C The last Jon Arryn came.

The old line had been broken.

But names have a peculiar way of surviving their owners.

Jon Arryn's nephew claimed what his forefathers had once possessed.

He came with the expectation that the Vale might still recognize the old blood.

We met him at Sky.

There the dragon descended.

The name of the battle became:

XXI

The Battle of Skyfall

For those who saw Solstice descend believed the sky itself had fallen.

The Arryn host broke.

The last great claimant of that old line was defeated.

And with him passed the final military shadow of the dynasty that had once ruled the Vale.

The Falcon had not merely been wounded.

It was gone.

The nest belonged to another blood.

22

The Snow That Burned

2nd Day of the Ninth Moon, 300 A.C

Willam met us afterward.

He was brave.

I will give him that.

But bravery without judgment becomes another form of suicide.

The battle took place amid cold wind and pale ground.

Thus we named it:

The Battle of the Burning Snow

For it was strange to look upon the battlefield and see winter beneath the feet of our soldiers while flame descended from the heavens.

Snow melted.

Mud formed.

The enemy slipped.

Our soldiers advanced.

And Solstice turned the battlefield into a place where the seasons seemed to have lost their meaning.

Winter below.

Fire above.

The Yizhou way.

Burn the rain.

Even when the rain is snow.

23

The White Dragon of the Reach

14th Day of the Ninth Moon, 300 A.C

My daughter Zarella, Lady of the Reach, hatched her own dragon.

She named her Vhaegal.

White.

Thick-scaled.

Brilliant in the sun.

Another dragon.

Another child of fire.

Another branch of Yizhou reaching into the future.

I began to see a pattern.

Aelar had Rhaegax.

Maeker had Zuvdar.

Zarella had Vhaegal.

And I had Solstice.

Four flames.

Four branches.

One house.

The dream of generations was no longer to possess a dragon.

It was to possess enough dragons that no one could ever again destroy the house by killing one.

24

The Battle of Yellowstone

16th Day of the Ninth Moon, 300 A.C

Ser Gwayne of Tangled Shore came against us.

I met him at Yellowstone.

The fields were broad.

The morning was bitter.

The enemy expected another battle among ordinary men.

They had forgotten who commanded the Yizhou host.

The enemy line broke beneath our attack.

Solstice passed above them.

Rhaegax followed.

For years I had watched men learn to fear dragonfire.

At Yellowstone, they learned something worse.

They learned that two dragons could coordinate.

Where Solstice struck, the enemy scattered.

Where Rhaegax descended, they found no time to regroup.

It was not merely fire that defeated them.

It was panic.

Once men believe the heavens themselves have turned against them, no shield can restore their courage.

We won.

XXV The Battle of Tangled Shore

22nd Day of the Twelfth Moon, 300 A.C

Ser Gwayne returned.

Or perhaps it was merely that men such as him always return.

The war brought us to Tangled Shore.

There we defeated him again.

The coast was treacherous.

The ground was difficult.

The enemy believed the terrain might protect them.

It did not.

Our soldiers came through.

The dragons came after.

And the sea itself seemed to become part of the slaughter.

Men who survived said that the smoke stretched over the water so thickly that the shore looked as though it had been swallowed by a black serpent.

Thus the name endured.

The Tangled Shore was untangled.

By fire.

___ _

26

The Yellow Dragon of the Young Prince

5th Day of the Second Moon, 301 A.C

My grandson Maeker Yizhou hatched his egg.

He named the dragon Zuvdar.

Yellow.

Deep yellow.

Its scales glittered in the sun until men claimed that it resembled a piece of the sun itself torn from the heavens.

I watched the creature stretch its wings.

And I thought of my own first dragon.

Solstice had been a miracle.

Zuvdar was something else.

Proof.

Proof that the fire could continue.

Proof that Solstice had not been an ending.

Proof that House Yizhou might one day possess a dynasty of dragonriders rather than one solitary miracle.

The world had begun with one.

Now there were several.

And the realm had not yet understood what this meant.

27

24th Day of the Second Moon, 301 A.C

The war against Lord Horton Redfort had begun as a rebellion against the order of the Vale.

But what made this war stranger than the others was the man whose banner stood opposite mine.

My husband.

My liege.

Lord Paramount Elbert Arryn.

Horton Redfort had raised his banners against him, and I came to the field.

There are times when loyalty becomes a thing with two faces.

I was the Lady of Yizhou.

I was Elbert's wife.

I was his vassal.

Yet I was also the woman who had spent a lifetime defending the interests of my own house.

The war became a strange thing between us.

Not a war born from hatred.

Not a war between enemies.

But a conflict between the obligations of a wife and the obligations of a ruler.

In the end, we won the war for the liberation of Lord Horton Redfort against my husband and liege.

The victory was ours.

And yet there was no celebration within me.

For it is one thing to defeat an enemy.

It is another to triumph against the man with whom you have shared your life.

The realm saw banners.

I saw Elbert.

And perhaps that was why the victory tasted of ash.

Still, the war had proven something important.

House Yizhou could fight even within the Vale's own tangled politics and emerge standing.

The Redfort had been liberated.

The victory belonged to us.

But the Falcon and the Dragon were beginning to discover that even when they stood beneath the same roof, their paths would not always run together.

28

The Egg Given to Daenerys

22nd Day of the Third Moon, 301 A.C

Then I made one of the most dangerous decisions of my life.

Artos Ullstar returned from Valyria with a dragon egg.

A true egg.

Another possibility.

Another flame waiting for blood, fate, and whatever ancient secret had once taught the world how dragons were born.

And I gave it to Daenerys Targaryen.

The princess I had once kept under my roof.

The girl who carried the blood of the dragonlords.

The girl whom I had once considered merely useful.

I gave her an egg.

Why?

Because the world changes.

Because sometimes the greatest enemy is the person you refuse to understand.

Because sometimes a prisoner must be given enough freedom to reveal whether they are truly dangerous.

And perhaps because some small part of me wanted to know whether the blood of the old dragonlords still possessed its ancient power.

I did not know what would happen.

Perhaps she would fail.

Perhaps the egg would remain stone.

Perhaps the gods would laugh.

Perhaps I was creating my own enemy.

I wrote only one sentence in my private journal that night:

May the gods forgive Ningning if this becomes a mistake.

29

The Warden Without a Falcon

14th Day of the Twelfth Moon, 301 A.C

There are deaths that leave a widow.

There are deaths that leave a realm.

Elbert's death did both.

Cancer took him.

Quietly.

Slowly.

Without trumpet.

Without dragon fire

Without dragonfire.

Without an army.

We had watched kings fall in battles.

We had watched men die beneath swords.

But none of those deaths had prepared me for this.

My husband was gone.

My soulmate was gone.

The man with whom I had shared the Vale, the war, the marriage, the children, the ambition and the secret plans was suddenly only a memory.

The Falcon had fallen from the nest.

But the dragon remained.

And that day I finally understood what the kingdom had been becoming.

The Vale was not merely a realm ruled by House Yizhou.

It was now a realm ruled through it.

Aelar, my Whiteflame, succeeded.

And King Rhaeger named her Warden of the East.

I watched her receive the title and felt pride mixed with grief.

For Elbert had wanted her to rise.

He simply did not live long enough to see how far she would climb.

The Fall of the Falcon

I think often of Elbert.

He would have understood the irony.

The Arryns had spent generations guarding the Vale beneath the sign of the falcon.

He became its lord.

Then I became its dragon.

And when he died, the falcon fell from its nest.

Yet the nest did not fall.

It remained.

Aelar inherited it.

Not by accident.

Not by fortune.

Not by some song about destiny.

By design.

We had built that future together.

Elbert and Ningning.

The falcon and the dragon.

And in the end, the dragon remained standing.

"My true soulmate, Lord Paramount Elbert Arryn of The Vale, departed from this world; he died of Cancer. Marking this the day the Falcon fell from its nest and the dragon of Yizhou roosts above all of the Vale. Lady Paramount Aelar 'Whiteflame' Yizhou of the Vale was then named Warden of the East by King Rhaeger 'the Restorer'.”

Xxx

The War of the Last Kraken

14th Day of the Fifth Moon, 301 A.C to 9th Day of the Eighth Moon, 302 A.C

Lord Balon Greyjoy rose as the last of the five kings.

The realm was exhausted.

The North had already bled itself pale.

The Riverlands were ruined.

The Reach had changed hands.

The Crownlands had known sack and fire.

The great houses were no longer fighting to win.

They were fighting because too many had died already to stop.

Balon saw an opening.

The Ironborn always do.

He believed the North was wounded beyond recovery.

He was wrong.

Robb Stark called for aid.

And in doing so, I ended the last great war of that terrible generation.

The people would later say:

The last king to stand was the Kraken.

But even the Kraken could not withstand what came against it.

The campaign became known in our household as:

The Fall of the Last Kraken

When the war ended on the ninth day of the eighth moon in 302 A.C, the War of the Five Kings had finally ceased to be a war.

It became history.

I became friends with King Robb of the North.

A strange friendship.

A Stark king and a Yizhou dragonrider.

Two houses forged by different traditions.

Two rulers carrying the scars of the same war.

He had lost his father.

I had lost my husband.

He had lost a kingdom and reclaimed it.

I had watched kingdoms fracture while strengthening my own.

We understood each other in ways that men who had not lived through the war never could.

XXI

The Tutelage of Jaedora

23rd Day of the Twelfth Moon, 302 A.C

While kings fell, children learned.

My ward Jaedora completed her tutelage under my guidance.

This too belongs in the chronicle.

Because a dynasty is not secured by killing its enemies alone.

It is secured by teaching the next generation what must never be forgotten.

I taught Jaedora the history of Yizhou.

I taught her our customs.

I taught her that a crown is not power by itself.

I taught her that blood creates claims, but discipline creates rulers.

I taught her that dragons are not pets.

They are weapons.

They are symbols.

They are living pieces of dynastic destiny.

Most of all, I taught her the words of our ancestors.

Burn the Rain.

22

The Crown Unseen

5th Day of the First Moon, 303 A.C

Daeron Targaryen was the king's grandson.

The heir.

After his father died from his sleep.

The court mourned.

The succession shifted.

The prince upon whom the future of the restored dynasty depended.

And I began to plan.

There are moments in history when a dagger is less dangerous than a marriage.

There are moments when a dragonfire is less useful than patience.

And there are moments when a child stands between two dynasties without knowing it.

I will say no more of what was planned.

Not yet.

But the old agreement between Elbert and me remained.

The throne was no longer enough.

The Vale had been only the nest.

Now we wanted the sky above it.

23

The Hunt for the Boy King

22nd Day of the First Moon, 303 A.C

Joffrey Baratheon had become a name spoken with hatred by thousands.

King.

Boy.

Murderer.

A crown had been placed upon his head before he understood what a crown truly was.

Thousands suffered beneath his reign.

Thousands died in the wars that followed.

Many men wanted him dead.

Few knew where he was.

I found him.

I found the boy king hiding.

And when I did, I remembered the city burning.

I remembered Eddard Stark.

I remembered the Red Keep.

I remembered the cries of men and women.

I remembered children who had never chosen their king.

I remembered all of it.

I brought Joffrey before Solstice.

What happened next became one of the darkest entries in my own annals.

I had him tortured.

Then I fed him to the dragon.

Slowly.

I watched.

And I did not turn away.

Some in the realm thereafter called me Boysbane.

They whispered that I had slain boys twice.

They whispered it in halls.

In taverns.

In septs.

But none said it before me.

Let them write what they will.

I know what I did.

And I know why.

The title does not shame me.

It is simply another name attached to a woman who has never allowed the world to decide what she must feel.

24

The Death of the Second King

Joffrey's end was not merely vengeance.

It was punctuation.

His reign had begun with blood.

It ended in dragonfire.

He had believed himself untouchable because the throne was above him.

He learned what all kings eventually learn:

Nothing is above the dragon.

Except the hand that commands it.

And that hand was mine.

“I successfully found out where Joffrey Baratheon was hiding. He is the reason thousands of souls were plunged into the depths of the Seven Hells. I then tortured Joffrey Baratheon and fed him to Solstice. I watched in satisfaction as that bastard boy king got eaten slowly by my dragon, as he had also watched in the same manner his people under his reign. Some of the realm then disgracefully labeled me 'Boysbane', for I killed not one but two boys already. Tho they dare not say it in my face, I don't squirm from it. I then started planning on murdering yet another boy, the grandson of King Rhaeger Targaryen, Prince Daeron Targaryen, after his heir died in his sleep.”

35

The Second Mother of Dragons

I had once believed I alone deserved the title.

The realm had called me Mother of Dragons because I had brought Solstice into the world again.

But history is rarely generous enough to leave a title uncontested.

Daenerys now possessed an egg from Valyria.

I had given it to her.

Perhaps she would hatch it.

Perhaps she would fail.

Perhaps the dragon would belong to her.

Perhaps it would belong to history.

I did not know.

And this was the first time in many years that I could not calculate the outcome.

That frightened me.

Not because Daenerys was my enemy.

But because she was the one dragonrider in the world whose blood did not depend upon House Yizhou.

She carried the old fire in its purest surviving branch.

If she succeeded, the realm would have another power to reckon with.

If she failed, the stone would remain only stone.

Only the gods knew.

And gods, in my experience, are poor advisers.

26

The Crown We Have Not Yet Taken

I write this with the knowledge that some reader, centuries from now, may call me a liar.

They may say Ningning Yizhou could never have seen so far ahead.

They may say Elbert and I could not have planned such a thing.

They may say Maeker was only a boy.

They may say Rhaeger was too wise to be deceived.

They may say no woman could have woven so many houses together without eventually being exposed.

Perhaps.

But I have never built my life upon what men believed possible.

House Yizhou crossed seas before Westeros knew our name.

We endured beneath the Arryns.

We survived contempt.

We found Strongsong.

We built our eastern castles in a foreign land.

We brought forth Solstice.

We conquered the Vale.

We joined kings.

We destroyed kings.

We made dragons from eggs thought dead.

We tied wolves to dragons.

Roses to dragons.

Trout to dragons.

Falcons to dragons.

And now the blood of the dragon itself runs through our heir.

The realm believes that Rhaeger restored the old dynasty.

Perhaps he did.

But restoration is not ownership.

A king may sit a throne while another house holds the future.

Khaeger sees a Targaryen kingdom.

I see a Yizhou dynasty wearing Targaryen colors.

He sees his grandson's blood.

I see my grandson's inheritance.

He sees Aegon's line.

I see Aelar's.

And somewhere in the space between those two truths waits the future.

Maeker is still young.

The throne remains beneath another man.

The kingdom remains divided.

Robb Stark reigns in the North.

The Riverlands breathe outside the old order.

The Reach watches.

The Stormlands serve their new lord.

The west remains rich.

Dorne remains proud.

And the Vale— the Vale belongs to Whiteflame.

But above all of this, the dragons fly.

Solstice.

Rhaegax.

Zuvdar.

Vhaegal.

Perhaps Daenerys's dragon soon.

Perhaps more yet to come.

The age of dragons has returned.

But this time there is no single House Targaryen to command it.

There is House Yizhou.

And we learned long before Westeros knew our name that fire is most dangerous not when it is largest— but when it knows where it wishes to go.

So let the maesters debate.

Let the septons condemn.

Let the lords whisper.

Let Rhaeger believe his throne secure.

Let Daenerys grow beneath our roof.

Let the princes marry.

Let the heirs be born.

Let old men laugh at secret plans.

Let the realm sleep.

For House Yizhou has never been a house that waits for history.

We shape it.

And when the rain comes again— as it always does— we will not kneel.

We will not beg.

We will not surrender the fire our ancestors carried across the world.

We will raise our faces to the storm.

We will open the dragon's jaws.

We will light the old flames.

And we will remind the kingdoms of the words that carried our house from the edge of Yi Ti to the throne of the Vale:

Rain Falls Upon All Things.

the Coward Bows Beneath it.

the Wise Endure it.

The Yizhou Set It Aflame.

And so the second volume closes.

Not with an ending.

With a promise.

For Solstice still flies.

Whiteflame still rules.

Maeker still grows.

Rhaeger still wears the crown.

Daenerys still holds the secret of the egg.

And somewhere in the halls of the Vale, beneath the carved eastern roofs of House Yizhou, the next chapter is already being written.

Burn the Rain.