Daenerys X

Daenerys Targaryen (Artwork by Amoka)

Dany climbs down a stony hill which she dubbed "Dragonstone", since Drogon made his lair there. For days, she tried to live alongside the dragon, and she is pretty weak now. Since she saw a stream in the distance, she is now determined to follow it as long as it takes to reach the big river flowing to Meereen and thereby returning to her city. She was not able to control the dragon. Hungry and exposed to the cold nights of autumn, she walks the Dothraki Sea, drying up around her. While she walks, her mind wanders. She remembers her first journey through the grass as part of Drogo's khalasaar. Then she thinks of it breaking up after his death, og khal Pono, khal Jaqho and khal Mago making away with parts of the Dothraki. After that, she remembers the pit of Meereen, how she climbed on Drogon, enjoying the flight but unable to control the dragon. Hoping against hope, she longs for the rescue parties, imagining Daario finding her. She is convinced that the Yunkai'i are marching home by now, honoring the peace, and that Daario is safe.

At nightfall, she makes herself a bed of grass in the old ruins of a village. Falling asleep, she wonders who it was that poisoned her, whether it was Hizdahr or the Shavepate or the Green Grace. In the night, she has a vision of Qaithe talking to her from the stars, reminding her who she really is, and what. The next morning, ants are crawling over her and biting her. She gets up, shakes them off and walks again. She is hungry, and when she comes by some berries, she casts all caution aside and eats them. The rest of the day she spends retching green slime. That night, she dreams of Viserys, who blames her for his fate and calls her names.

On the following morning, her tighs are covered in blood. She is dizzy, not sure whether it's the turn of her moon blood, and presses on. In the grass, she imagines Jorah talking to her, chiding her for conquering Meereen instead of heeding his advice and to make for Westeros. When she sits beside the stream to drink, she suddenly hears someone and observes a Dothraki scout, who hasn't seen her yet. Suddenly, Drogon emerges and starts to hunt the rider. Dany, suddenly sure, calls him down, mounts him and chases the rider until they encounter a herde of his khalasaar, roasting a horse and then eating it together with Drogon. She then stands besides the dragon and waits. Hours later, khal Jagho shows up with his riders.

This chapter is one bitch. It pretty much sums up the style and mood of "A Dance with dragons", which is why it fits perfectly into the scheme here. I remember skipping through it on my first read, since I wanted to know what the heck was happening - it's the final chapter, after all! Still I have to force myself to read every sentence, failing sometimes. It's incredible how much stuff Martin hid in this chapter, like he did in the whole book. There is awfully much happening without it being explecitly mentioned, throughout the whole book, and you have to read it several times and really think while doing so to catch it all. So what's in here?

The obvious things first. Dany can't control the dragon, which makes for a nice contradiction of certain expections you would harbor: that she, after flying out of Meereen, got the old Targ-connection rolling and learned about the dragons in the intuitive way, for example. Instead, she's lost in the Dothraki sea, hungry, cold and dellusional. At the end of the chapter, she suddenly fits the pieces together, calls Drogon like she did nothing else all her life and steers him over to the Dothraki to take control of the khalasaar (presumably). Before this, she works off the guilt about her former decisions, notably letting Viserys be killed and discarding Jorah, by speaking to them as her own imagined friends.

So far, so good, but there's much more in the chapter, especially regarding the prophecies, and here it becomes real tricky. We have to recall the various prophecies first to see what actually happens here. That's the part where you, as a reader, need not only pay close attention but also have rich background in your head. Mirri Maz Dur prophecized that Drogo would be as he was when the sea got dry, the sun sets in the east and rises in the west, the mountains blow in the wind and when she will bear a living child. The first three things happened already, the fourth is at least possible: Quentyn - the "sun's son" of Qaithes prophecy - was killed in the east, thereby setting there, and he came from the west. The Dothraki Sea is drying up due to autumn, so this is fulfilled as well. And the pyramids were blown away by the dragons like leaves in the wind.

That leads to Dany's fertility. In this chapter, she miscarries. You missed it? Never mind, so did I. When Dany eats the poisoned berries and retches them, she accidentilly kills her child, since on the next morning, she has unusually heavy bleeding while not having had her menstruation for about three months. Of course, there are two ways to read this: first, she is now fertile again, can carry a child and it will only be a matter of time until the prophecy is fulfilled. Or, second, she is doomed to always lose her children, but can still conceive. Both is possible. Now, turning to the prophecies of the Undying, she definitely rides a mount to dread, as it was predicted, until she had ridden one to bed and to love already (Drogo, but also Daario). There were definitely fires lighted, which was also in their prophecy - the one for light back when she woke the dragons, and there was pretty much fire-lightening to death in the book. If she was enflamed to love for Daario is a question about how metaphorical you want to read them.

There certainly is even more I still missed in there, and I skimmed the Westeros.org boards before writing this particular chapter. Only swarm intelligence may be able to grasp everything Martin hid here, and that's why I say that the chapter sums up in a nutshell what this book is and how it is written. It certainly isn't what we expected, but it's a masterpiece in its own right. The worst thing, however, is that many references work only in connection with the chapters from "A Feast for Crows", and I'm sure that we all missed much of the stuff yet - I scraped the surface of it sometimes in this reread, but I came nowhere near the core. I understand now why it took Martin so long to write this stuff. It is very rewarding, and I'm determined for the next reread already.

As to side notes, we get two things. First, Dany mentions that the Valyrians controlled the dragons with magic horns and spells, which refers clearly to Victarion's horn. However, she can obviously control the dragons without that stuff (although the horn might be the key to get Rhaegal and Viserion back in line), which could indicate her role as Prince Who was Promised. Second, the seasons seem to reach the east only after Westeros. Since the Heart of Winter is located in Westeros, this makes sense. The Wall is a hinge of the world indeed.