turned and turned again, the king began to fear that his niece was dead. “Balerion is a willful beast, and not one to be trifled with,” he told the council. “To leap upon his back, never having flown before, and take him up…not to fly about the castle, no, but out across the water…like as not he threw her off, poor girl, and she lies now at the bottom of the narrow sea.”
Septon Barth did not concur. Dragons were not vagabond by nature, he pointed out. More oft than not, they find a sheltered spot, a cave or ruined castle or mountaintop, and nest there, going forth to hunt and thence returning. Once free of his rider, Balerion would surely have returned to his lair. It was his own surmise that, given the lack of any sightings of Balerion in Westeros, Princess Aerea had likely flown him east across the narrow sea, to the vast fields of Essos. The queen concurred. “If the girl were dead, I would know it. She is still alive. I feel it.”
All the agents and informers that Rego Draz had engaged to hunt down Elissa Farman and the stolen dragon eggs were now given a new mission: to find Princess Aerea and Balerion. Reports soon began to come in from all up and down the narrow sea. Most proved useless, as with the dragon eggs; rumors, lies, and false sightings, concocted for the sake of a reward. Some were third- or fourth-hand, others with such paucity of detail that they amounted to little more than “I may have seen a dragon. Or something big, with wings.”
The most intriguing report came from the hills of Andalos north of Pentos, where shepherds spoke in fearful tones of a monster on the prowl, devouring entire flocks and leaving only bloody bones behind. Nor were the shepherds themselves spared should they chance to stumble on this beast, for this creature’s appetite was by no means limited to mutton. Those who actually encountered the monster did not live to describe him, however…and none of the stories mentioned fire, which Jaehaerys took to mean that Balerion could not be to blame. Nonetheless, to be certain, he sent a dozen men across the narrow sea to Pentos to try to hunt down this beast, led by Ser Willam the Wasp of his Kingsguard.
Across that selfsame narrow sea, unbeknownst to King’s Landing, the shipwrights of Braavos had completed work on the carrack Sun Chaser, the dream Elissa Farman had purchased with her stolen dragon’s eggs. Unlike the galleys that slid forth daily from the Arsenal of Braavos, she was not oared; this was a vessel meant for deep waters, not bays and covers and inland shallows. Fourmasted, she carried as much sail as the swan ships of the Summer Isles, but with a broader beam and deeper hull that would allow her to store sufficient provisions for longer voyages. When one Braavosi asked her if she meant to sail to Yi Ti, Lady Elissa laughed and said, “I may…but not by the route you think.”
The night before she was to set sail, she was summoned to the Sealord’s Palace, where the Sealord served her herring, beer, and caution. “Go with care, my lady,” he told her, “but go. Men are hunting you, all up and down the narrow sea. Questions are being asked, rewards are being offered. I would not care for you to be found in Braavos. We came here to be free of Old Valyria, and your Targaryens are Valyrian to the bone. Sail far. Sail fast.”
As the lady now known as Alys Westhill took leave of the Titan of Braavos, life in King’s Landing continued as before. Unable to locate his lost niece, Jaehaerys Targaryen proceeded as he always would in times of trouble, and gave himself over to his labors. In the quiet of the Red Keep’s library, the king began work on what was to be one of the most significant of his achievements. With the able assistance of Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, Lord Albin Massey, and Queen Alysanne—a foursome His Grace dubbed “my even smaller council”—Jaehaerys set out to codify, organize, and reform all the kingdom’s laws.
The Westeros that Aegon the Conqueror had found had consisted of seven kingdoms in truth and not just name, each with its own laws, customs, and traditions. Even within those kingdoms, there had been considerable variance from place to place. As Lord Massey would write, “Before there were