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ELIA
She sat there half in shock and half relieved. Rhaegar had ridden past her to deliver the Crown of Love and Beauty at the end of his lance to the Stark girl. The child was barely a woman by any account, half a child and half a woman, stuck in that horrid stage in between. It had come as a shock to the entirety of the tournament and with them, she felt equally shocked at the snub—especially as she was pregnant, swelling now for five moons big with the child Rhaegar had assured her would be the Prince that was Promised, for they’d conceived him the night a red star had appeared in the sky. It hurt. That Elia could not deny to herself, aye, it hurt a great deal. It felt like a leaden weight upon her heart.
Still, it was but a crown of roses, winter roses at that. The child woman could have that. And if Rhaegar wanted more from this girl, well, Aegon IV had had his noble mistresses, and she would not begrudge him a paramour—though she would begrudge him the public humiliation of not having the decency to speak openly about it with her in private beforehand. As Oberyn was apt to say, lovers must share everything if they were to take on other lovers, and clearly Rhaegar was keeping secrets, as he always did. He was a puzzle, a mystery. That had been part of his allure, Elia thought. And that allure was now making for a worse marriage than even she had expected. Though apparently he’d chosen wrongly in his lover, given how the girl’s kin reacted, and the young Lord Baratheon as well. All standing up from their seats in the moments after the girl had taken the crown laid in her lap by Rhaegar’s spear.
Something needed to break this deafening silence, something needed to be said… I should say something.
But Elia found that she wasn’t to be the calm voice of reason assuring the rest of the Seven Kingdoms that what had just happened wasn’t the beginning of another Aegon IV. Instead the clamor of simple household knights, dressed in the bats of House Whent disturbed the scene and drew all attention away from her now returning husband to his squire, and to the small white-haired dwarf that the knights dragged through the mud of the tourney ground.
The King stood up immediately, the glee being rather obvious in his voice, “That’s her! I knew it! I knew it! I knew she hadn’t been some dream of mine!”
“Who, your grace?” Elia asked, thinking she might be asking on behalf of nearly the entire Seven Kingdoms.
“The woodswitch! The woodswitch!” squealed the King, and in that moment he departed his seat and hurried down the steps to the field below. Elia searched over to Rhaegar’s side of the tourney grounds hoping that he might be able to better explain or interfere—but he had withdrawn to his tent to take off his armor.
The King by this point had reached the humbled dwarf woman and bent over and grabbed her by the hair to speak with her eye to eye—purple meeting red.
“Aye, now I see you, woodswitch! Thought you could torment me with your Knight of the Laughing Tree, did you? Ha! I saw you wandering among the trees, woodswitch! You ruined my life three and twenty namedays ago with your… visions! Your senseless dreams and talk of the Old Gods speaking to you. My grandmother may have believed you—she was a Blackwood after all—and for that convinced my parents to force my sister and me to wed and give birth to that treacherous boy, but now I shall have vengeance. Oh yes, sweet, sweet vengeance! I thought you had paid for all of that at Summerhall with your own life, but it seems someone let you escape. Mayhaps I should give you the fate you evaded at Summerhall. Someone collect wood, we have a woodswitch to burn!”
The entire tourney grounds was once again silent as all the noble lords and ladies stared in utter shock at the man, the small man who wore the crown and called himself a King. He was pale, with hair that was scraggily unkempt, a gaunt face from eating little, and his fingernails had begun to curl from their lack of trimming.
“I said, we have a woodswitch to burn!” screamed Aerys again, only to be met with blank stares and utter silence.
“My Princess, I think we should return to the tent…” urged Ashara, as she fussed with Rhaenys in that instant, preparing the babe that until that moment had been content to play with her wooden dragon, for a quick escape.
“Take my daughter back to the tent, Ashara, but I must stay here.”
“He’s worse, my Princess, I’ve never seen him so crazed, I do not think it’s safe—” began Ashara.
“And that is entirely why I must remain,” retorted Elia as she rose and approached the edge of the King’s box. She would have to draw attention away from the spectacle below.
“Must I do everything?” roared Aerys in that moment as he dropped the woodswitch into the ground unceremoniously and calling for his kingsguard as he marched over to the rails which had split the jousting ring in half and began to kick at them to pry them loose. Not much later the Kingsguard had responded to his request and began to assist the king with knocking over the rails.
Elia took her chance.
“My lords and ladies, let there be no doubt among you! This, is your King!” she declared to the entire tourney. Hoping that his vain madness might be Aerys’ undoing. But very few looked in her direction as she spoke, and the few that did, quickly turned their attentions instead to the sight of the King failing to push over a pole, some laughing at the sight, although it was very contained.
Curse Rhaegar and his crowning. What little respect Elia had commanded before, was now nil.
The King did not ignore the laughs, few though they were. “Who was that that laughed? I’ll have your tongues for that! I’ll burn you… I’ll burn you all with the woodswitch!”
“Burn?!” projected another astonished voice, and the entire grounds turned to see Rhaegar, standing just outside his tent, shocked by the sight he saw. He was out of his armor and returned to his fine black silk doublet, trousers, and red shirt.
Aerys spat at the sight of the Prince, “You! My ungrateful, treacherous son—who schemes like a bastard would!”
“I’ve made no schemes, your grace,” answered Rhaegar, as he approached the King. Elia saw Rhaegar make eye contact with Ser Arthur and Ser Oswell in that moment. This would be the moment in which everything changed. The two kingsguard stopping the task of pushing posts over to collect wood.
“And a liar too! You plot against me, as does all these noble lords, and you all shall burn! I swear it! And I shall raise a new set of lords—all loyal to me!”
Rhaegar said simply, “No, father, you will step aside.”
“I will? I will!” yelled Aerys with a fury unleashed, and then with an unexpected quickness, the King leapt at Rhaegar, a stray knee hitting him in the gut knocking the wind out of him, and the force of the King’s body knocking him over and into the dirt and mud. The King then secured his gnarled hands with long nails about Rhaegar’s throat.
The King spat, “You dare command the King? I will end your life for that!”
Ser Arthur and Ser Oswell ran in an attempt to intercede, but were stopped by Ser Jonothor, Ser Gerold, and Ser Barristan. The Kingsguard were clearly split on who to protect, and Arthur was drawing Dawn.
Madness… utter and complete madness… Ashara was right to leave. Mother’s Mercy, the Targaryens shall never recover from this.
“Come Elia, we must leave,” urged her uncle, who in that moment had split off from his white cloaked brothers and rushed to the King’s box. He stood below her, and she knew that she should go, no, that she must go. But some part of her could not help but be fixated as she stared at Rhaegar as his face was turning from red to purple under his mad sire’s grip. A mad mix of awe, fear, and horror taking hold of her in that instant.
The sound of steel ringing in the air could be heard.
“Elia, we must go!” shouted her Uncle for a second time, and she shook her head and nodded, moving towards the steps at the back of the stand so that she might slip away from the grounds without stepping on to them.
And then a low rumble of thunder was heard. Odd, it was a sunny day, but Elia turned and saw that somehow clouds had blotted out the sun and the cawing of ravens began to be heard as a gigantic flock swooped down and a sudden gale of wind blew the cloth that hung from the stands so violently, that it strained and flapped at the knots that held the cloth to the wooden frame, pulling some loose so that Elia was whipped by one flap as the gale pushed her a few steps back.
“Aerys!” called a loud and nearly deafening voice—one that sounded as though it were one and many voices all at once.
Elia, wonderstruck, turned, taking her face out of the wind and turned to see that the albino woodswitch was now standing, her height being no more than three feet, but her hair, grown long and bedraggled, seemed to stand on end and flapped in the wind that circled round her along with the swarm of ravens, some dirt and grass. Everything else was at a standstill—the King, the kingsguard, the nobles of Westeros, even the smallfolk observing with wide eyes and opened mouths. But what was most striking were the woodswitch’s eyes that had lost their pupils to show nothing but red, a deep blood red.
The woodswitch spoke again with a voice that sounded like many and one, “You say the Old Gods have judged you harshly, cursed you even. You, who are the child of Daynes and Blackwoods, you with the blood of the First Men! You know not of what curses there are when you are free from even the simplest of them all!”
The winds picked up even more furiously, and Elia felt the need to grab the wooden stands to keep from falling over, her long hair whipping about her at the wind’s mercy.
The woodswitch moved closer to the King, stretching out a gnarled hand of her own as she said, “You, who say the Gods have cursed you, shall therefore be cursed, and the realm with you! Cursed with the knowledge of what you have done.”
And with that the witch placed her hand upon Aerys’ head, and the King screamed in agony at her touch, but did not or could not move out of it. And amazingly, before Elia’s own eyes she saw the King begin to change. His hair and beard became less disheveled—seeming to regain a fullness to it, his gaunt cheeks filling out, his finger nails shrinking and his entire countenance seeming to regain vitality and strength. And then, the true horror began—as something dark and black was being pulled out of Aerys by the ravens—it was tall and dark, in the shape of a man, and yet it was a shadow. A shadow man…
“Be gone, shadow demon! And let him live with what you have wrought him,” hissed the woodswitch as she took her other hand and grabbed the shadow and ripped it from the King. The wind then took the shadow man from the woodswitch’s hand and whipped it up into the sky, the ravens tearing it apart into many pieces, at which point the winds stopped, the King’s screams eased, the ravens took flight, the sun broke through the clouds, and the woodswitch’s hold upon the King failed as she collapsed onto her back into the mud and uttered a death rattle. The entire tourney ground was stunned at the sight they saw before them, of King Aerys no longer the pale shadow of which he’d been, but instead an aged version of the handsome young King who’d been crowned in the flower of his youth—or so Elia guessed.
“The voices… the voices are gone. The voices are gone!” exclaimed the King, his voice sounding fuller and richer than the wheezy pipe it had before. The Kingsguard, recovered from shock, ran to their King, who now stood looking at his recovered good health in wonder and awe.
“Gods be good, the King is cured!” cried one of the simpering lickspittle lords who’d been whispering in his ears for moons upon moons from the crowd. A shocked and reluctant cheer rose from the audience of nobles, but the heartiest among them was from the voices of the smallfolk.
“No!” called out Ser Arthur in a long mournful wail. Elia turned to see Arthur kneeling before Rhaegar, who hadn’t moved at all since the King had risen from atop of him.
“The Prince is dead, the King has killed him!” declared Ser Oswell.
Elia felt a chill run up her spine at that moment. She knew she should go to her husband, her poor poor husband, who had not deserved such a fate. But she also knew to go would be dangerous—for both her and the babe.
“What?! My son? My son!” cried out the King, suddenly concerned for the well-being of Rhaegar for the first time that Elia had ever seen him. He rushed to where Rhaegar lay in the mud and taking up his frail lifeless body into his arms.
“Kinslayer!” called out a bellowing voice from among the nobles, Elia looked up to see Lord Baratheon standing there, beginning the chant that would doom the Seven Kingdoms to have a realm without a King.
From that day forward, none dare say even in jest that the Gods had cursed them.