over the realm came to join the celebration; Lyman Lannister from Casterly Rock, Daemon Velaryon from Driftmark, Prentys Tully from Riverrun, Rodrik Arryn from the Vale, even the Lords Rowan and Oakheart, whose levies once marched with Septon Moon. Theomore Manderly came down from the North. Alaric Stark did not, but his sons came, and with them his daughter, Alarra, blushing, to take up her new duties as a lady-in-waiting to the queen. The High Septon was too ill to come, but he sent his newest septa, Rhaella, who had been Targaryen, still shy, but smiling. It was said that the queen wept for joy at the sight of her, for in her face and form she was the very image of her sister, Aerea, grown older.
It was a time for warm embraces, for smiles, for toasts and reconciliations, for renewing old friendships and making new ones, for laughter and kisses. It was a good time, a golden autumn, a time of peace and plenty.
But winter was coming.
On the seventh day of the 59th year after Aegon’s Conquest, a battered ship came limping up the Whispering Sound to the port of Oldtown. Her sails were patched and ragged and salt-stained, her paint faded and flaking, the banner streaming from her mast so sun-bleached as to be unrecognizable. Not until she was tied up at dock was she finally recognized in her sorry state. She was the Lady Meredith, last seen departing Oldtown almost three years earlier to cross the Sunset Sea.
As her crew began to disembark, throngs of merchants, porters, whores, seamen, and thieves gaped in shock. Nine of every ten men coming ashore were black or brown. Ripples of excitement ran up and down the docks. Had the Lady Meredith indeed crossed the Sunset Sea? Were the peoples of the fabled lands of the far west all dark-skinned as Summer Islanders?
Only when Ser Eustace Hightower himself emerged did the whispers die. Lord Donnel’s grandson was gaunt and sun-burned, with lines on his face that had not been there when he sailed. A handful of Oldtown men were with him, all that remained of his original crew. One of his grandsire’s customs officers met him on the dock and a quick exchange ensued. The Lady Meredith’s crew did not simply look like Summer Islanders; they were Summer Islanders, hired on in Sothoryos (“at ruinous wages,” Ser Eustace complained) to replace the men he’d lost. He would require porters, the captain said. His holds were bulging with rich cargo…but not from lands beyond the Sunset Sea. “That was a dream,” he said.
Soon enough Lord Donnel’s knights turned up, with orders to escort him to the Hightower. There, in his grandsire’s high hall with a cup of wine in hand, Ser Eustace Hightower told his tale. Lord Donnel’s scribes scribbled as he spoke, and within days the story had spread all over Westeros, by messenger, bard, and raven.
The voyage had begun as well as he could have hoped, Ser Eustace said. Once beyond the Arbor, Lady Westhill had steered her Sun Chaser south by southwest, seeking warmer waters and fair winds, and the Lady Meredith and Autumn Moon had followed. The big Braavosi ship was very fast when the wind was in her sails, and the Hightowers had difficulties keeping pace. “The Seven were smiling on us, at the start. We had the sun by day and the moon by night, and as sweet a wind as man or maid could hope for. We were not entirely alone. We glimpsed fisherfolk from time to time, and once a great dark ship that could only have been a whaler out of Ib. And fish, so many fish…some dolphins swam beside us, as if they had never seen a ship before. We all thought that we were blessed.”
Twelve days of smooth sailing out of Westeros, the Sun Chaser and her two companions were as far south as the Summer Islands, according to their best calculations, and farther west than any ship had sailed before…or any ship that had returned to tell of it, at least. On the Lady Meredith and Autumn Moon, casks of Arbor gold were breached to toast the accomplishment; on Sun Chaser, the sailors drank a spiced honey wine from Lannisport. And if any man of them was disquieted that they had not seen a bird for the past four days, he held his tongue.
The gods hate man’s arrogance, the septons teach us, and The Seven-Pointed Star says that pride