Chapter 5: V: Pentos and... disappointment

V: Pentos and… disappointment

They had arrived in Pentos a few months after they left Westeros, and a magister of the city magnanimously offered them his hospitality, claiming that his grandsire had once hosted the Rogue Prince when he had lived in that Free City.

The city had many towers, the highest of them up to three hundred feet, square in shape. To build one at the typical height of almost two hundred feet took the work of many slaves, over a course of between three and ten years. Their foundations had been dug thirty feet deep, the base was made from big blocks of stone, but the walls were thinner and lighter the higher the towers rose.

He had counted almost two hundred towers, though the most striking of them were but forty - for the forty families of the magisters, a number equal to the Forty Families of Dragonlord of the lost Freehold.

While their host was eager to show them his own tower, Aelinor had not been impressed - for fair reasons, since she was of Hightower blood, and the tallest of Pentos' towers was not even half as tall as the Hightower.

These towers had been built in times of strife, and, in the shadow of the towers, the magisters had built themselves manses, with tall brick walls. Inside they lived their life of luxury, hidden from the eyes of the common man - lazing about in their richly decorated rooms and their luxurious gardens, everyone of their whim attended by a slave.

Aerys did not think much of the magister, though he took care not to insult their host, even if he tried to offer them a dozen courses at a dinner, or half a dozen drinks - from the pale amber ale of Pentos to Myrish fire wine, from Dornish red ro Arbor Gold. But Aerys had never cared for alcohol, and watching the magister overindulge himself in their presence disgusted him.

Rego Myrakis, for that was his name, was a gracious host, though overly curious about their stay in Braavos. Perhaps he was afraid that, growing rich and mighty from the bounties of the Shivering Sea, the Hidden City might once again look south and challenge Pentos.

If that ever happened, Aerys would welcome it. The magisters of Pentos were lazy, libidinous and repugnant in their lack of care over anything that was not gold, power, or various vices.

The Braavosi? In Braavos, a man's worth was judged by how hardworking they were, and wealth was seen as proving a man's worth in working to bring his family to prestige and power. There, every man was free, and some of the merchants and keyholders only employed married servants, for they thought a man's worth was how much could he work for the welfare of his family. For them, an unmarried servant was prone to laziness - for if he cared not for anything but his food and board, he did not excel in his duty. A father would do his best to please his employer, to gain perhaps his favour for a son, who might apprenticed to a trade, or aided in becoming a clerk, and become better than his sire.

One thing could be said favourably about the Pentoshi: unlike in Braavos, they did not treat a whore more fancy than the others as if she was a respectable woman. Yet they overindulged in whoring, and his host had even offered him a few bed-warmers, and he had hardly kept his disgust for him hidden, only enough to offer a polite refusal.

Myrakis had also shown him the training of the city's citizen militia, though he was overly proud of it, without good reason. He thought that the soldiers were better than peasant levies taken from the field when war came, but he'd have preferred a hedge knight to their officers. Young sons of magisters and wealthy merchants, with delusions of grandeur, half-drunk on their own perceived martial valour, half-drunk on wine.

And when the Dothraki khalasars came, they did not confront them with their militia, or even hire sellsword companies. Rather they were generous in their gifts to the khals, so they would avoid their lands - then patted themselves on their own backs for solving the issue without bloodshed. 

Men proud of paying tribute? Aerys could not call them men. The cockless slave soldiers that some of the magisters had as guards, imported from Slaver's Bay, were more men than them. But even then, the famed martial worth of eunuch soldiers was overblown. It was said that the wine of courage they drank at every meal deadened their sensitivity to pain. Maybe it was so, but he rather thought it did more than that. An eunuch could hardly be a good soldier without his balls, becoming somewhat womanlike. That wine that they drugged themselves with gave him a substitute for the ferocity and fury of a soldier gone berserk, though they kept more of their reason. Aerys would wager that without their wine, they would hardly be a challenge in war. And left to themselves, they were keen to overindulge in food, becoming fat.

He could not criticize the slaves, for they were not the masters of their own fate. But the free men? Struggling under the rule of their fat overlords, they made a living by becoming performers, singers or tumblers or other such trades, perfecting their art generation by generation. It would have been somewhat commendable, were it not for the fact that it was to act as dogs doing tricks in front of their masters in hope of a bone. He saw Myrakis clap at their performances, but Aerys would have only clapped if, instead of swallowing a sword, the juggler would have plunged it right into his host's heart.

Who knew that all Braavos had to do to bring Pentos to ruin and decline was to divert their attention for half a century. They could not even have a great man to rule over them, as some of Braavos' Sealord where. Rather they chose a ceremonial prince to preside over balls and feasts, to deflower maidens every year - to ensure the prosperity of Pentos on land and at sea. Aerys spat at their prince.

And for all that the Prince hardly did anything to rule this city, when they lost a war or a famine came, they cut their prince's throat, sacrificing him to appease the gods. And the man who would eventually be subject to this fate could not refuse his choosing - which meant they chose princes for the slaughter. Why none of them drew a blade in those chambers and tried to slay the entire conclave, or invited them to a feast and poisoned the lot, Aerys could not fathom.

Pentos deserved to fall, either humbled at the hands of Braavos, or ransacked by countless Dothraki khalasars, their sudden decline becoming swift as a raging river.

He had begged to see the hinterlands of the Free City, for maybe he could escape the degeneracy in the countryside. Mykaris had taken them at his country manse.

They had gone by way of the Valyrian road, and Aerys saw two great statues of Valyrian sphinxes by the road, male and female. After a short negotiation with the closest landholder, who nominally claimed these statues, he had purchased them and had them sent to Summerhall.

They had departed Pentos in a wheelhouse, and Mykaris had spent most of the journey gorging himself on food and wine - proving himself more of a disgrace. He had a train of mules trailing behind their party, carrying many chests of fine food and casks and barrels to satisfy his gluttony. They had many times begged off the carriage to ride outside to escape his presence, and their host was too lazy and too fat to ride a horse.

They traveled through the lands of Old Andalos, and as they went through the fields, towards the Velvet Hills, and he saw what remained of the Andals left here. Reduced to slavery, worked and whipped by cruel overseers, here in fields and orchards, elsewhere in mines.

Oh, how could the mighty race of the sons of Hugor have fallen so low? To be now rules, and call as masters these mongrel people, who instead of blood and flesh were made of blood and gluttony, but dared to call themselves of the blood of Old Valyria?

They did not stay much in the Velvet Hills, for rumours of some sickness came from Pentos, so they decided to leave these lands at once. To return to Pentos, to take a ship and sail away was too risky an enterprise.

He had thought briefly to ride towards Myr with his party, but then he changed his mind. Some strange desire, or maybe the call of the Rhoynish blood inside him had made new plans - they were to cross the Little and Greater Rhoyne, visit Norvos, and then Qohor. From then they would go down to Dagger Lake then past the Sorrows, to Selhorys and Valysar and Volon Therys, and then to the great city of Volantis. Once their stay there would end they would visit Tyrosh, then Myr. Their journey ended, they would head home. Or so was the plan.

They went through the ruins of Ghoyan Drohe, a once mighty city long since fallen, its canals choked with reeds and mud, with pools of stagnant water. The temples and palaces of the Rhoynar were now only broken stones, sinking back into the earth. They did not stay there much - for the water gave birth to swarms of flies, and disease was sure to follow. So they followed the Valyrian road towards Norvos.

Norvos was surrounded by limestone hills and dark forest, but the land was one of rolling hills and terraced farms, full of small walled villages. The hills of Norvos were full of caverns, one of them a vast cave system, considered a natural wonder by Longstrider, and by the superstitious, given to fables and legends, an entrance to the underworld.

They stopped to see the caves, with their giants' bones and painted walls. By now they have seen some of Lomas Longstrider's Wonders, though those Made by Man - the Titan of Braavos and the Valyrian road. They would see and hear the Three Bells in Norvos, and later walk the Long Bridge in Volantis.

They did not venture too deep in the caves, for if their torch spluttered and the flames died, they would surely become lost in that grand labyrinth, never finding a way out.

The caves were carved out of the limestone by the water, forming many flowstones, stalactites and stalagmites.

Some of the chambers were barely the height of a man, with tubes hanging from the ceiling, in various colours. Others were tall, some even thirty feet. A certain room had a small basin, where stalagmites formed, looking like capped mushrooms. Another vault had many columns, giving it the appearance of a great and ancient forest.

There were hundreds of cave paintings, and Aelinor wished to see them all. Thousands of years ago, some ancient and forgotten people had painted them - animals and men and other objects and figures, and people now looked and admired them - though some were now in an advanced state of degradation.

Some animals painted there were not alive now, though the strangest paintings were of dragons burning men alive - Aerys thought those were the youngest. They were all red, and he thought those had been painted in human blood, by the survivors of Qarlon the Great's army, which had been all but destroyed by the hundred dragonlords which came to aid Norvos.

The Scouring of Lorath had destroyed, and taken from history most of the historical evidence about the reign of Qarlon. So Aerys thanked his wife for her stubborn desire to see all the paintings, and spent a fortnight sketching on parchments the stick figures of men and dragons. Only when his work was finished did they depart for Norvos at last.