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"Tell me Tell me what the women say"

He turned his face away His eyes were haunted "They say the child was"

She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it His face grew dark with shame He looked half a corpse himself

"Monstrous," Mirri Maz Duur finished for hiht was a powerful i was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely erous "Twisted I drew him forth myself He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and ss of a bat When I touched hihed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption He had been dead for years"

Darkness, Dany thought The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her If she looked back she was lost "My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried hting to be born"

"That may be as it may be," answered Mirri Maz Duur, "yet the creature that came forth from your as as I said Death was in that tent, Khaleesi"

"Only shadows," Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could hear the doubt in his voice "I saw,with the shadows "

"The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord," Mirri said "Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back"

Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living o and fed her baby to the darkness He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp "The shadows have touched you too, Ser Jorah," she told hiodswife "You warned ht you meant the horse"

"No," Mirri Maz Duur said "That was a lie you told yourself You knew the price"

Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost "The price was paid," Dany said "The horse, o and Cohollo The price was paid and paid and paid" She rose froodswife, o Shohat I bought with my son’s life"

"As you command, Khaleesi," the old woman said "Come, I will take you to him"

Dany eaker than she knew Ser Jorah slipped an arh for this later, my princess," he said quietly

"I would see him now, Ser Jorah"

After the diht The sun burned like old, and the land was seared and empty Her hando o and Rakharo stood behind The glare of sun on sand made it hard to see more, until Dany raised her hand to shade her eyes She saw the ashes of a fire, a few score horses rass, a scattering of tents and bedrolls A sathered to watch her, and beyond she gli about their work, and withered oldfeebly at bloodflies A count ht show a hundred people, no more Where the other forty thousand had made their cao’s khalasar is gone," she said

"A khal who cannot ride is no khal," said Jhogo

"The Dothraki follow only the strong," Ser Jorah said "I am sorry, my princess There was no way to hold the hi to do the sae bands and small There are a dozen new khalasars on the Dothraki sea, where once there was only Drogo’s"

"The old rehtened, the weak, and the sick And ore We reo’s herds, Khaleesi," Rakharo said "We were too few to stop the to take from the weak They took many slaves as well, the khal’s and yours, yet they left so the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lao seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now," said Jhogo "He ave her to his other bloodriders They were six When they were done with her, they cut her throat"

"It was her fate, Khaleesi," said Aggo

If I look back I am lost "It was a cruel fate," Dany said, "yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be I prood and the horse god and every god that lives I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Woo and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the ed uncertain glances "Khaleesi, " the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, "Jhaqo is a khal noith twenty thousand riders at his back"

She lifted her head "And I aaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before thehter, and I swear to you, these o"

He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun

A dozen bloodflies had settled on his body, though he did not seem to feel them Dany brushed them away and knelt beside him His eyes ide open but did not see, and she knew at once that he was blind When she whispered his name, he did not seem to hear The wound on his breast was as healed as it would ever be, the scar that covered it grey and red and hideous

"Why is he out here alone, in the sun?" she asked them

"He seems to like the warmth, Princess," Ser Jorah said "His eyes follow the sun, though he does not see it He can walk after a fashion He will go where you lead him, but no farther He will eat if you put food in his mouth, drink if you dribble water on his lips"

Dany kissed her sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to face Mirri Maz Duur "Your spells are costly, i"

"He lives," said Mirri Maz Duur "You asked for life You paid for life"

"This is not life, for one as as Drogo was His life was laughter, and s His life was an arakh in his hand and his bells ringing in his hair as he rode to meet an enemy His life was his bloodriders, and ive him"

Mirri Maz Duur made no reply

"When will he be as he was?" Dany demanded

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves When your wo child Then he will return, and not before"

Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others "Leave us I would speak with this i alone" Mormont and the Dothraki withdrew "You knew," Dany said when they were gone She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength "You knehat I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you letof them to burn my teered the Great Shepherd"

"This was no god’s work," Dany said coldly If I look back I am lost "You cheated me You murdered my child within me"

"The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust"

"I spoke for you," she said, anguished "I saved you"

"Saved me?" The Lhazareen woman spat "Three riders had takentakes a bitch The fourth was in od’s house burn, where I had healed goodMy home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads I saw the head of a baker who made my bread I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only threeas the riders drove theain what you saved"

"Your life"

Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly "Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone"

Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid thei smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a secret A word, and Dany could have her head offyet then ould she have? A head? If life orthless, as death?

They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to fill a tub, and this time there was no blood in the water She bathed hi the dirt and the dust fro his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black hair and coain as she remembered It ell past dark before she was done, and Dany was exhausted She stopped for drink and food, but it was all she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a mouthful of water Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enoughtoo long, in truth She owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights that had been, and yet ht be

The memory of their first ride ith her when she led him out into the darkness, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the ht was black and ht She took that for an orass welcoround, bare and streith stones No trees stirred in the wind, and there was no streaentle music of water Dany told herself that the stars would be enough "Reether, the day ed Reo, with the khalasar all around us and your eyes on my face Remember how cool and clean the water was in the Womb of the World Remember, my sun-and-stars Remember, and come back to me"

The birth had left her too raw and torn to take hiht her other ways Dany used her hands, her mouth, her breasts She raked him with her nails and covered him with kisses and whispered and prayed and told him stories, and by the end she had bathed hio did not feel, or speak, or rise

And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly lost to her "When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," she said sadly "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves Whenchild Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before"

Never, the darkness cried, never never never

Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars If I look back I am lost It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dreao on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face