Conquest Keep, the council chamber.
At the far end of the long table, Lo Quen lounged against the back of his high-backed chair, his gaze resting on the parchment spread out before him.
Morosh's secret report had arrived. Young Aegon had already led his army across Tarth and was about to land in the Stormlands.
At that moment, the doors of the chamber swung open. The man who entered was Hal, Governor of Lys and commander of its fleet.
"Your Grace."
It had been some time since they last met, and there was a barely concealed excitement in Hal's voice.
He had come all the way from Lys for a matter of great consequence.
Taking a seat, he drew a rolled parchment from his sleeve and laid it before Lo Quen.
"Your Grace, three days ago, off the coast of Lys, one of our patrol squadrons discovered three flat-bottomed merchant ships. They were carrying Yi Ti immigrants and flew the banners of Asabhad and Qarth. All three had been burned down to nothing but blackened keels, drifting at sea. Not a single body we recovered was intact…"
"There was only one survivor. He clung to a plank in the freezing water for nearly a full day and was half-delirious when we found him. From his testimony, we obtained some clues. And these items were taken from the bodies. The evidence is conclusive. This was the work of Volantis."
Lo Quen's eyes turned cold as he examined the evidence.
From the moment Luo Wen brought the first three hundred thousand people across, to the steady stream of Yi Ti migrants delivered by merchants from Asabhad and Qarth, the entire Third Daughter region now held nearly four hundred thousand Yi Ti people.
The Yi Ti were the foundation of Lo Quen's rule. He could not afford to ignore this.
And Lys was an unavoidable transit point for Yi Ti migration.
Hal continued, his voice tight with anger:
"Those vermin in Volantis don't dare challenge your fleet openly, so they resort to this despicable piracy, slaughtering our migrants at sea. They're provoking us, Your Grace. We must respond."
Lo Quen leaned back slowly in his chair.
It seemed that before setting foot in the Seven Kingdoms, Volantis, that arrogant Free City claiming to be the rightful heir of Valyria, would have to be uprooted first. Otherwise, once they landed, their rear would never be secure.
He looked at Hal.
"Effective immediately, the kingdom enters its highest state of war readiness. Hal, return to Lys and assemble the fleet. I will also inform Luo Wen, who is stationed along the border between the Third Daughter and Volantis, to prepare for an attack on Volantis."
Fire flared in Hal's eyes.
"As you command, Your Grace!"
Just then, the heavy oak doors of the council chamber were pushed open again, this time in haste.
Standing outside was a young assistant of Archmaester Marwyn. The boy's hair was in disarray, and his eyes were wide with excitement, gleaming with near-mad fervor.
"Y-Your Grace!"
His voice trembled as he spoke.
"Archmaester Marwyn has made a major discovery. He asks that you come at once. It's in the laboratory!"
Lo Quen's eyes sharpened, then lit up with barely concealed delight.
If Archmaester Marwyn was calling for him, then there had to be news about the Black Stone.
That massive enigma brought back from the ruins of Valyria… had Marwyn finally found the key to breaking its seal?
"Lead the way."
Lo Quen rose to his feet at once.
The laboratory was not located in the main keep, but deep behind Conquest Keep, within a vast natural cavern set against a sheer cliff face and burrowing into the mountainside.
Once a limestone cave, it had been transformed beyond recognition.
Deep within the cavern lay not only the laboratory itself, but, at the far exit, chambers for storing dragon eggs and housing the dragons.
Massive platforms had been carved into the cave walls, crowded with oddly shaped glass vessels, strange devices wound with copper wire, and towering piles of ancient scrolls and parchments.
At the very center of the cavern lay the Black Stone.
It rested there in silence, devouring what little light surrounded it.
Merely approaching it sent a bone-deep chill creeping up from the soles of one's feet, climbing the spine and stirring an instinctive urge to retreat.
Archmaester Marwyn paced restlessly around the Black Stone, his sunken eyes burning with both fanatic zeal and exhaustion.
He had poured countless hours and untold effort into this stone, and now, at last, the mystery was beginning to unravel.
The realization left him barely able to contain his excitement.
Qyburn stood some distance away. While continuing the work Lo Quen had assigned him, he often came to assist Marwyn in unraveling the secrets of the Black Stone.
Janice, who had been deeply involved in the research from the beginning, was there in the laboratory as well.
"Your Grace!"
The instant Marwyn saw Lo Quen's figure appear at the mouth of the cavern, he all but rushed forward.
He was so excited his words tangled together.
"It worked. The old Valyrian texts say the whirl patterns and pictographs carved by the blood mages all came from this Black Stone. Following those clues, I found the key to breaking the seal. It's magical resonance, patterned and regular, like using one tuning fork to set another ringing."
"I ran three thousand trials. I had Janice test with ghost grass, trying to find the magical resonance that matches the Black Stone's seal. And I finally found the damned frequency!"
Hands trembling, he pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from inside his robe. It was covered edge to edge in dense, twisted symbols and intricate lines, with countless tiny notes scribbled in the margins.
He shoved it into Lo Quen's hands.
"Look, Your Grace. This is the key. The Magic has to be fed in at exactly this frequency and in this sequence. Not a hair off. Not a single step wrong."
Marwyn's eyes were bloodshot from the strain of his relentless experiments.
"To confirm it, we've nearly exhausted the ghost grass. Its Magic is too weak. It can detect the correct frequency, but it can't open the Black Stone's core. But you, Your Grace, you have an enormous reserve of Magic. You can wake it. You can find out what this stone is hiding, what secret of Valyria is sealed inside!"
Lo Quen took the diagram.
The symbols were ancient and unfamiliar. The routes of Magic flow were so complex they made the eye swim, and every rise and fall in intensity had been marked with painstaking precision.
He studied the page, then lifted his gaze to the silent, massive Black Stone.
A faint, almost imperceptible ripple, like a tremor from the depths of his soul, seemed to seep from that cold core, answering the Magic surging through his own body.
He could feel it.
Something vast beyond imagining was sealed within, slumbering, waiting to be called.
Lo Quen drew a slow breath.
He still had forty thousand Magic left. It was his trump card, his last means of survival.
Was he really going to spend it here?
He did not hesitate for long. He would not let any chance to increase his strength slip away.
"I trust you, Archmaester Marwyn," Lo Quen said quietly.
He put the diagram away and stepped toward the Black Stone.
"Come. Let's see what's inside."
The cavern fell silent at once.
Marwyn trembled with excitement. Qyburn's stare sharpened even further. Janice's violet eyes flickered in the firelight.
Lo Quen walked up to the Black Stone.
The closer he came, the stronger the chill became, carrying a damp, slick, almost greasy sensation.
He raised a hand and slowly pressed his palm against the cold, black surface.
The touch was deeply unnatural.
It was icy, like ancient glacial ice, yet beneath that cold was an eerie, clinging slickness, as though the stone were coated in an invisible film of oil.
A murky presence surged through his palm and into his body, full of rejection and dead stillness.
As always, the system detected no magical fluctuation at all.
Lo Quen closed his eyes, steadied his mind, and began to release Magic in a measured rhythm, step by step, following the complex frequency diagram.