Chapter 32: Sowing Dragon's Teeth
Chapter 32: Sowing Dragon's Teeth
293 AC, Month of the Wolf's Eye
The long peace of Robert's reign was, for Alaric, the most productive and profitable war he had ever waged. While the lords of Westeros grew complacent, their swords rusting and their minds dulling with wine and tourneys, Alaric's empire grew with the silent, inexorable force of a glacier. His three pillars of power—Domain, Dynasty, and Magic—did not just stand; they intertwined, each supporting and amplifying the others in a perfect, self-reinforcing trinity of ambition.
His domain was a model of ruthless efficiency. The Blackwater March was the most prosperous and orderly province in the Seven Kingdoms. Its port city of Blackport had eclipsed Duskendale as the primary hub of trade on the eastern coast, its low tariffs and high security a beacon for merchants from across the known world. His personal wealth, managed by a flawlessly loyal Lord Nervo, was now so vast that even the Iron Bank of Braavos treated him not as a client, but as a peer.
This immense commercial enterprise was, however, merely a mask. Its true purpose was not the accumulation of gold for its own sake, but to serve as the engine for his far darker, more secret ambition. His trading house, Blackport Mercantile, had offices in Pentos, Myr, and Lys, dealing in timber, wool, and wine. But its most profitable and important acquisitions never appeared on any public ledger.
"Another shipment has arrived from our agent in Qarth, my lord," Nervo reported one morning in the Chamber of Accounts. He pointed to a line item in a coded ledger. "Listed as 'assorted antique statuary.' The price was... exorbitant."
Alaric looked at the figure without blinking. "The market for rare antiquities is volatile, Nervo. High risk, high reward. Ensure the 'statuary' is moved to the lower vaults immediately. Use only the designated legionaries for the transport."
"Of course, my lord," Nervo said, his face a mask of professional discretion. He had long ago stopped questioning his master's obsession with strange, often worthless-looking artifacts from the shadowlands of the east. He didn't need to understand; he only needed to obey. The results spoke for themselves.
The 'statuary' was, of course, nothing of the sort. It was a collection of obsidian shards inscribed with what the Qartheen traders believed were decorative patterns, but which Prometheus had identified as fragments of Valyrian ritual chants. These, along with countless other artifacts, flowed into the secret sanctum beneath Serpent's Head Keep, the true heart of Alaric's empire.
It was in this sanctum that Alaric planned his great hunt. His magical experiments had progressed rapidly. He had mastered scrying, he understood the fundamental principles of blood as a catalyst, and he had confirmed that Valyrian steel was a near-perfect magical amplifier. But he had reached a plateau. To ascend to the next level of power, to move from manipulating small energies to commanding great ones, he needed a greater power source. He needed a dragon egg.
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The Valyrian dragonlords, he theorized, had not just tamed dragons. They had merged with them on a fundamental, genetic level through centuries of blood magic. They had woven the power of fire and sorcery into their own veins. That was the source of their ability to command dragons, to withstand heat, to have prophetic dreams. Alaric intended to replicate that process, to bootstrap his own house into a new Valyria.
The hunt was a shadow war waged with gold. His agents across Essos were given a single, standing order: acquire any object matching the description of a petrified dragon egg. The bounties offered were astronomical. But he was cautious. His knowledge of the future was his greatest weapon, and he would not risk disrupting the events he knew were coming.
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He would not touch the three eggs destined for Daenerys Targaryen. Her story was a vital part of the future chaos he intended to one day exploit. He would not interfere with the Mother of Dragons. He would simply acquire his own resources.
For years, the hunt yielded nothing but forgeries and fools' gold. Then, in the spring of 293 AC, his network finally struck. An agent in Pentos, working through Alaric's old ally, Magister Presto, brought him news. A once-proud merchant family, rivals of Presto, had fallen into ruinous debt. For generations, their most prized heirloom, a relic from an ancestor who had traded with Valyria before the Doom, had been a single, perfect dragon egg of midnight black and volcanic red. They had guarded it for centuries. Now, their desperation had made them willing to sell their heritage.
Alaric acted with swift, decisive ruthlessness. He used Magister Presto as his cutout, his proxy in the acquisition.
"My dear Presto," his message read. "An opportunity to acquire a unique piece of 'sculpture' from our mutual friend, Lord Maelo, has presented itself. It is also an opportunity to finalize his financial ruin and acquire his shipping contracts. I will provide the capital. You will conduct the negotiation. Be merciless. Your discretion will, as always, be richly rewarded."
Presto, who delighted in the downfall of his rivals and was bound to Alaric by a web of shared profits and secret dealings, performed his task with relish. He ground the desperate Lord Maelo down, buying the priceless artifact for a fraction of its worth and seizing his rival's business as part of the deal. The egg was packed in a crate marked 'Olive Oil' and loaded onto a Blackwood Mercantile cog bound for Blackport.
Its arrival was a moment of profound, secret triumph for Alaric. In the deepest chamber of his sanctum, he finally looked upon his prize. It was beautiful and terrible, a perfect ovoid of petrified stone. The scales were like polished obsidian, but deep within them swirled veins of a dark, smoldering crimson, as if embers still glowed at its heart. It was cold to the touch, heavy as lead, but to Alaric's magically-attuned senses, it pulsed with a faint, dormant, and unimaginably vast power.
The acquisition coincided perfectly with the second great milestone of his dynastic plan. Lynesse, his beautiful and efficient wife, had given birth to their second child. Not the second son he had planned for, but a daughter. She was a healthy, beautiful infant, with his dark hair and her mother's blue eyes. Lynesse had wanted to name her after a flower from the Reach. Alaric had overruled her. He named the girl Cassia, another name that spoke of an ancient, imperial power. He now had his heir, Tyber, and a spare. And he had a subject for his most daring experiment yet.
He would infuse the dragon's bloodline into his children first. A test, a proof of concept, before he attempted the ritual on himself and his heir.
The ritual required absolute precision. It was a delicate, perilous weaving of life forces. He needed a drop of his own blood, as the patriarch. He needed a drop of the infant's blood. And he needed the egg and a Valyrian steel conductor. He had his loyal, Citadel-trained maester, a man named Helliwise whom Alaric had personally selected and controlled, procure the drop of Cassia's blood under the guise of testing for infant maladies.
That night, in the sealed, warded sanctum, he began. The black and red dragon egg was placed in the center of the granite altar. He drew a complex series of interconnecting runes around it with powdered silver and his own blood. He placed the Valyrian steel dagger he had taken from the Iron Islands so that its tip touched the egg. Finally, he used a glass pipette to place a single, tiny droplet of his daughter's blood onto the dagger's pommel.
He began the chant from the Gessos Fragments. It was a low, guttural incantation in High Valyrian, a language designed not just for speech, but for commanding the very laws of nature. The air in the chamber grew heavy, the flame of the single candle flickering wildly.
He felt the power begin to flow. His own blood, painted in the runes, acted as the initial circuit. The Valyrian steel dagger hummed, acting as a conduit, drawing the immense, dormant energy from the egg. And the droplet of his daughter's blood, the target of the ritual, became the focal point. It was a terrifyingly delicate operation, like performing surgery on a soul. He was not just aiming for a vague infusion; he was attempting to rewrite a strand of her very being, to weave the memory of the dragon into her blood.
The obsidian scrying bowl on a nearby table, which he was using to monitor the infant in her crib above, flared with a violet light. He watched, his concentration absolute, as a faint, ethereal shimmer surrounded the sleeping child. It was a nimbus of pure power, invisible to any normal eye. The energy flowed from the egg, through the dagger, through him, and into his daughter.
The ritual lasted less than a minute. When it was over, the chamber fell silent. The egg was unchanged, but to his senses, its deep well of power felt infinitesimally diminished. Alaric was drenched in sweat, his mind reeling from the strain of channeling such forces.
He turned to the scrying bowl. The image of his daughter was clear. She slept peacefully. But as he watched, she stirred and opened her eyes. And for a brief, stunning moment, the cornflower blue of her irises was shot through with flecks of molten gold, and her pupils narrowed into reptilian slits. Then, it was gone. Her eyes were her own again.
It had worked.
A slow, cold smile spread across Alaric's face. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated triumph. He had done it. He had taken the first step in forging a new Valyria in his own bloodline. He had elevated his house beyond the petty squabbles of men. His children would not just be lords. They would be different. Stronger. More.
He looked down at the dragon egg, the source of this new power. It was the key. He would need more. He would need to perform the ritual on Tyber, his heir. And then on himself. He would build his family into a dynasty of dragon-blooded rulers, their dominance assured not just by wealth and steel, but by the very magic of the world itself.
His three great projects were now one. His business empire existed to fund the hunt for magical artifacts. His dynasty existed to be the vessel for the power those artifacts contained. And the magic itself existed to ensure the eternal dominance of his dynasty and his domain. It was a perfect, closed loop of power.
He left the sanctum as the first rays of dawn were breaking. He walked through the silent halls of his great keep, a king in his own right, the master of a sleeping world. He went to his wife's chambers. Lynesse was asleep, the picture of serene beauty. In a cradle beside the bed, his daughter, Cassia, stirred. He looked down at her, and this time, he felt something more than detached satisfaction. He felt a flicker of what a craftsman feels for his finest, most perfect creation. He had sown his dragon's teeth, and a new, more powerful world was beginning to grow.