Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History #1) - George R.R. Martin Page 0,273

Clement Celtigar, old Lord Bartimos’s son and heir, and Lady Staunton, the widow of Rook’s Rest. On Dragonstone, young Alyn Velaryon was demanding the release of Lord Corlys (this much was true), and threatening to descend upon King’s Landing with his ships if the old man was harmed (half-true). Other rumors claimed the Lannisters were on the march, the Hightowers were on the march, Ser Marston Waters had landed with ten thousand sellswords from Lys and Old Volantis (all without truth). And the Maiden of the Vale had set sail from Gulltown, with Lady Rhaena Targaryen and her dragon (true).

As armies marched and swords were sharpened, Lord Cregan Stark sat within the Red Keep, conducting his inquiries into the murder of King Aegon II even as he planned his campaign against the dead king’s remaining supporters. Prince Aegon, meanwhile, found himself confined to Maegor’s Holdfast with no companions save the boy Gaemon Palehair. When the prince demanded to know why he was not free to come and go, Stark replied that it was for his own safety. “This city is a nest of vipers,” Lord Cregan told him. “There are liars, turncloaks, and poisoners in this court who would murder you as quick as they did your uncle to secure their own power.” When Aegon protested that Lord Corlys, Lord Larys, and Ser Perkin were friends, the Lord of Winterfell replied that false friends were more dangerous to a king than any foe, that the Snake, the Clubfoot, and the Flea had saved him only to make use of him, so they might rule Westeros in his name.

With the infallibility of hindsight, we now look back through the centuries and say the Dance was done, but this seemed less certain to those who lived through its dark and dangerous aftermath. With Septon Eustace and Grand Maester Orwyle languishing in dungeons (where Orwyle had begun writing his confessions, the text that would provide Munkun with the foundation on which he would build his monumental True Telling), only Mushroom remains to take us beyond the court chronicles and royal edicts. “The great lords would have given us another two years of war,” the fool declares in his Testimony, “it was the women who made the peace. Black Aly, the Maiden of the Vale, the Three Widows, the Dragon Twins, ’twas them who brought the bloodshed to an end, and not with swords or poison, but with ravens, words, and kisses.”

The seeds cast into the wind by Lord Corlys Velaryon during the False Dawn had taken root and borne sweet fruit. One by one the ravens returned, bearing answers to the old man’s peace offers.

Casterly Rock was the first to respond. Lord Jason Lannister had left six children when he died in battle: five daughters and one son, Loreon, a boy of four. Rule in the west had therefore passed to his widow, Lady Johanna, and her father, Roland Westerling, Lord of the Crag. With the Red Kraken’s longships still menacing their coasts, the Lannisters were more concerned with defending Kayce and retaking Fair Isle than with renewing the struggle for the Iron Throne. Lady Johanna agreed to all the Sea Snake’s terms, promising to come herself to King’s Landing to do obeisance to the new king on his coronation, and deliver two daughters to the Red Keep, to serve as companions to the new queen (and as hostages to ensure her future loyalty). She agreed as well to restore that portion of the royal treasury that Tyland Lannister had sent west for safekeeping, providing that Ser Tyland himself was granted pardon. In return, she asked only that the Iron Throne “command Lord Greyjoy to crawl back to his islands, restore Fair Isle to its rightful lords, and free all the women he has carried off, or at the least all those of noble birth.”

Many of the men who had survived the Battle on the Kingsroad had made their way back to Storm’s End afterward. Hungry, weary, wounded, they drifted home alone or in small groups, and Lord Borros Baratheon’s widow, the Lady Elenda, had only to look at them to realize they had lost their taste for battle. Nor did she wish to put her newborn son, Olyver, at risk, for that little lord at her breast was the future of House Baratheon. Though it is said that her eldest daughter, the Lady Cassandra, wept bitter tears when she learned she was not to be a queen, Lady Elenda soon agreed