Chapter 12: A Pilgrimage of Ash and Bone

Chapter 12: A Pilgrimage of Ash and Bone

The Royal Hunt was an exercise in performative masculinity. King Robert, finally free from the velvet prison of the Small Council chamber, was in his element. He roared with laughter, drank flagons of ale as if they were water, and pursued the beasts of the Kingswood with a singular, joyous fury. The lords and knights of his court fell into his wake, their own boisterousness a pale imitation of the King's.

Kaelen played his part to perfection. He was the dutiful courtier, the formidable hunting companion. He drew upon the essence of Lord Caswick, the master huntsman he'd killed on the road to Storm's End so long ago. The skills were a dormant muscle he now flexed with ease. He tracked a great, black-tusked boar through the dense undergrowth with an instinct that astonished the king's own beaters. He didn't kill the beast himself. Instead, he expertly maneuvered it into the open, directly into the path of the waiting King Robert, who dispatched it with a single, mighty blow of his spear, roaring in triumph.

"Hah! Vyrwel, you have a devil's own eye for the hunt!" Robert bellowed, clapping Kaelen on the back with a force that would have felled a lesser man. "You find them, I kill them! A perfect partnership!"

Kaelen smiled, a thin, meaningless expression. "I serve the King's pleasure, Your Grace."

But while his body went through the motions of the hunt, his soul was attuned to a different quarry. Ever since the absorption of Rhaegar's essence, there had been a quiet, persistent hum at the base of his skull. It was the faint spark of true magic he had tasted, a presence that was utterly alien to the mundane world of politics and steel. Here, in the ancient, sprawling expanse of the Kingswood, that hum was changing. It was pulling, a slow, inexorable tide drawing his attention south. It was a compass of sorcery, and its needle trembled with a strange, longing resonance.

He knew he could not simply abandon the Royal Hunt; the King's favor was a useful tool, and to spurn it would be foolish. He needed a pretext, a duty that would supersede even the King's pleasure. He had laid the groundwork a week before they'd even left the capital.

As if on cue, a rider bearing the Vyrwel serpent galloped into their camp on the third day. He carried an "urgent" dispatch from Captain Rennifer. Kaelen opened the sealed scroll in the King's presence, his brow furrowed with manufactured concern.

"Your Grace," Kaelen said, his voice grave. "I apologize for this interruption. It seems Captain Rennifer has received credible reports from his informants. A band of outlaws, styling themselves the 'second coming of the Kingswood Brotherhood,' has been raiding travelers on the southern roads. They are said to be led by a deserter from the Targaryen army."

Robert's good humor soured instantly. The memory of the original Kingswood Brotherhood, a band of outlaws that had vexed his predecessor for years, was a sore point. "Outlaws? In my own Kingswood? While I am here? The bloody nerve!"

"Indeed, Your Grace," Kaelen said, his voice laced with the tones of statecraft he'd stolen from Lord Corbray. "It is an insult to your authority. While I am certain they pose no threat to the Royal party, I cannot, as your Master of Laws, allow this challenge to the King's Peace to go unanswered. With your leave, I will take a detachment of my own men and see to this matter personally. We will hunt these men down and make an example of them."

The proposal was perfectly crafted. It appealed to Robert's authority, addressed a (fabricated) threat, and made Kaelen appear ruthlessly diligent in his duties.

"Aye, do it!" Robert growled, already turning his attention back to a fresh flagon of ale. "Hunt them down, Vyrwel. Bring me their leader's head. I want this forest clean of all filth!"

"It will be done, Your Grace."

Within the hour, Kaelen had split off from the main party. He took with him only twenty of his most loyal Vyrwel household guard, men whose unquestioning obedience had been forged in the fires of the Rebellion. They rode south, not in pursuit of phantom outlaws, but guided by the invisible, magical tether that pulled at Kaelen's soul.

The further south they rode, the stronger the sensation became. It was no longer a vague pull; it was a clear, resonant frequency, a call that vibrated deep within him. His memories of the books he had read in another life provided the map; the dragon's magic provided the destination. The Tower of Joy. He knew, with an instinct that transcended mere knowledge, that this was the source of the call.

They left the green expanse of the Kingswood behind, the landscape slowly transforming into the arid, red-tinged foothills of the Dornish Marches. The air grew hotter, drier. After two days of hard riding, following the insistent thrum in his mind, he found it.

It was not a grand tower, but a lonely, crumbling ruin on a windswept tor, looking exactly as his mind's eye had pictured it from the descriptions in the novel. It was a place of profound silence, the air heavy with the ghosts of momentous events. He ordered his men to make camp at the base of the hill, telling them he wished to survey the area alone. They obeyed without question, accustomed to their lord's strange moods.

Kaelen dismounted and approached the tower on foot. The first thing he saw were the graves. Three cairns of stones, crudely but respectfully built. He knew who lay beneath them: Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning; Ser Oswell Whent; and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Gerold Hightower. He stood before the graves, a strange sense of professional respect mixing with his predatory hunger. These were meals he had missed, prizes of legendary quality.

He reached out, his bare hand touching the sun-warmed stones of the largest cairn, the one belonging to Arthur Dayne. He closed his eyes and focused his will, extending the tendrils of his unique hunger. There was no life to take, no skill to rip from a dying mind. But there was… an echo. A faint, psychic residue left behind by a will of immense power. He siphoned it, drawing it into himself. It was a pale, ghostly sensation compared to a true absorption, but it was there. He felt a phantom echo of unparalleled swordsmanship, a whisper of a technique so pure and so perfect it made all the other skills he possessed feel crude by comparison. It was a ghost of a skill, but it was enough to refine his own abilities, to add a layer of sublime grace to the brutal power he already commanded. He did the same at the other two graves, absorbing a phantom of Hightower's unshakeable command and Whent's grim determination. These were but crumbs from a feast he had missed, but they were delicious nonetheless.

He then turned his attention to the tower itself. He entered the ruin, his assassin's stealth making his footsteps completely silent. He climbed the broken stairs, the magical pull growing stronger with every step, until it was an almost painful pressure in his mind. He entered the room at the top of the tower.

The scene was just as he'd imagined. A broken bed, its wood stained dark with old blood. A single, high window through which the wind whistled a mournful tune. This was where Lyanna Stark had died. A place of love, death, and birth. A place where the blood of the First Men and the blood of Old Valyria had mixed in a moment of profound, world-altering significance.

The magic here was thick, a palpable presence in the air. It was not the fiery, aggressive magic he might have expected from the Targaryens. This was something else. It was cold, ancient, and smelled of winter roses and blood. It was the "Ice" to Rhaegar's "Fire."

He knew he could not absorb it like a skill from a living being. This was an environmental effect, a stain of sorcery upon reality itself. He needed a different method. He drew his dagger—the same blade that had ended so many lives—and sliced open the palm of his own hand. He knelt, pressing his bleeding palm against the blood-stained floorboards where the bed had been.

He closed his eyes and focused his entire being on the hunger within him, turning it from a targeted weapon into a siphon, a vortex to draw in the ambient power of the room. The effect was immediate and jarring. He felt a wave of profound cold wash over him, a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. He felt the echo of Lyanna's pain, of Rhaegar's grief, of the promise Ned Stark had made. But beneath the emotions was the raw power itself. It was the magic of the Old Gods, of winter, of prophecy.

It didn't grant him a new, usable power in the way his other absorptions had. There was no flash of insight, no new muscle memory. Instead, it felt like a fundamental recalibration of his own soul. The magical spark he'd taken from Rhaegar, once a faint hum, now flared into a clear, steady flame. His senses expanded. He could feel the life in the sparse desert plants outside. He could feel the ancient stone of the tower breathing around him. He could now sense magic not just as a vague pull, but as a distinct texture, a color, a sound in the symphony of the world. He had attuned himself to the song.

As the last of the room's ambient magic settled within him, his newly-enhanced senses detected something else. It was a trail. Faint, almost entirely faded by the months that had passed, but undeniably there. It was a ghostly thread of magical energy, leading away from this tower of death. It was the trail of the infant that had been taken from this room. The trail of Jon Snow.

It was a cold trail, tinged with the same magic of winter and wolves that he had just absorbed, but it was intertwined with the fiery, draconic echo of Rhaegar. Ice and Fire. The song was real. And this trail was a single, pure note in that song.

A slow, predatory smile spread across Kaelen's face. He had come here chasing the ghost of a dragon and had found something infinitely more valuable. He had found a path.

The political games in King's Landing, the machinations of Littlefinger and Varys, suddenly seemed trivial, a children's squabble. He had mastered their game. But here was the beginning of a new one, a greater one. The hunt for the scattered, hidden pieces of Westeros's magical soul.

He knew he had to return to court. His position as Master of Laws was the perfect cover, the perfect tool for the next stage of his plans. But his ambition had a new focus. He looked north, in the direction the faint magical trail led. To Winterfell. The Starks, with their ancient blood and their connection to the old ways, were no longer just honorable fools. They were a potential feast. And the boy, the bastard of Winterfell, was the main course.

He had come to this tower seeking a remnant of the past. He was leaving with a map to the future. The Hunt for the Arcane had truly begun.