Returning to the initial purpose of the journey was pleasant and somewhat exciting. Braavos was not one of the "daughters" of Old Valyria, like Myr and Lys, nor a stepchild, like Pentos. A city founded by runaway slaves could not boast Valyrian ruins or surviving traditions; on the contrary, over several centuries of its existence, it consistently absorbed every culture of every people whose representatives were carried into its lagoon, and as a result, Braavos belonged to none of them. Nevertheless, Aegon had a certain premonition not fully realized, more resembling anticipation, and he was accustomed to trusting premonitions; entrusting himself to the fate leading him, on the third day after settling in the Westerosi merchant house, he set off for the Isle of Gods.
He was not interested in the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea, subordinate to the High Septon in Oldtown and giving comfort mostly to sailors and merchants from Westeros rather than locals; Braavosi Andals preferred to go to the Sept of the Titan—its Septons considered the colossus at the entrance to the city harbor an embodiment of the Warrior and mostly worshiped him, not other aspects of the Seven. One should not expect benefit from the temples of Tyroshi Trios with his three heads, the Lysene Weeping Lady and the Lysene Panther (at the sight of her sanctuary, strangely resembling Nerra's brothel, Aegon involuntarily smiled); temples of Aquan, Semosh and Selloso, the Great Shepherd and the Patternmaker hardly kept secrets of Valyrian magic, though the cults of almost each of them appeared during the heyday of the Freehold.
Aegon pinned most hopes on the Temple of the Lord of Light and the Holy Refuge. Followers of R'hllor worshiped flame and prayed in High Valyrian—in the Prince's view, this served as sufficient grounds to pay them a visit. However, before that, as a true Maester and historian, he preferred to visit the Refuge, called the Warren among the Braavosi common folk.
Least of all did this building resemble a temple or sanctuary. Built of old brick crumbling from age, it was overgrown with moss and lichen and looked unkempt, forgotten, like the gods to whom it served as a last refuge. The laws of Braavos, proclaiming religious tolerance one of the foundations of society, did not allow disrespectful treatment of any gods, even those whose followers no longer remained. Deprived of their own sanctuaries, priests, and believers, altars, statues, and other religious objects were transferred to the Warren, where they remained in honorable, sad retirement. Occasionally some rare traveler who did not find a temple of his cult on the island wandered here to shake dust off a deity whose name citizens no longer remembered, pray and pay him due honors, only to leave him languishing in expectation of the next pilgrim or the predicted end of times.
Aegon's calculation was simple: not all slaves fleeing to Braavos from the Freehold were from colonies; over time Valyrian lords began to enslave their less noble kinsmen too. With some assumption, one could hope they remained faithful if not to their masters, then at least to their gods; in Braavos they had not heard of their own Valyrian religion for a long time, so the only place where one could dig up evidence of miracles of bygone times remained the Warren, more a warehouse than a holy place.
He and Dennis preferred to refuse the services of a guide in the person of Wat of Blackwater—it was not enough for someone to spread rumors about Prince Targaryen's strange visits. Under the vaults of the Holy Refuge, it was gloomy, quiet, and dry; few windows were located under the very ceiling and cast narrow strips of light onto the stone-flagged floor; fragments of some sticks, bird bones, dried and rotten food—offerings left years ago—lay here and there underfoot. Something crunched under Dennis's foot, and he swore mutedly—the knight crushed a bird skeleton.
"Not a sanctuary, but some barn! Does no one clean here at all?"
"I do not think anyone needs it," remarked Aegon, examining the nearest altar. "As far as I understand, rarely does anyone come here."
"Is it not even guarded?"
"The city has already appropriated everything most valuable. Besides, a belief exists among locals that stealing from gods, even dead ones, is dangerous."
They stopped near an elegant, dancing statue which Aegon at first mistook for a figure of a man; the idol possessed a peacock tail ten feet in diameter and a double set of genitals at once: both male and female. The pattern on the feathers was likely inlaid with precious stones before, but now colored glass, broken here and there, replaced it. The man seemed to writhe under an alien gaze, trying to demonstrate himself like a real peacock; his smile was full of voluptuousness.
"Some lustful little god," commented Dennis, skeptically examining the creation of an unknown cult.
"And probably chicks were sacrificed to him."
"And they fucked for show for him."
"Or right with him."
"Never understood the custom of savages to arrange temple orgies," admitted the knight. "Both are good, of course, but to mix like that..."
"That is Andal blood speaking in you," Aegon remarked maliciously; the sworn shield only snorted in response.
And they went further, deeper. They passed the sanctuary of eyeless Boash, the cast-down god of Lorath; a drained granite bowl, the bottom of which was decorated with a starry mosaic ornament; a strange structure very reminiscent of a gallows with hanging half-rotted loops; a statue of a woman with octopus tentacles instead of legs and inch-long needle-like teeth in her mouth and many others. The further they went, the older and more neglected the altars looked, the deeper they descended, the darker it became; Dennis picked up a candle miraculously preserved near one of the statues and, suffering with a flint for a couple of minutes, lit it.
They passed several floors and finally found themselves on the lowest level, the exit to which was barred by a rusty grate. Aegon stepped aside and bowed to Dennis jokingly, inviting him to work. He silently handed over the candle and examined the sudden obstacle; taking a step back, he easily kicked out the grate. A pitiful screech swept through the Warren, and then a crash, seeming deafening in the silence of the house of forgotten gods. Triumphant grin on his face, the knight returned just as foolish a bow to his suzerain and let him pass.
There were no sanctuaries on this floor—only bare corridor walls on which damp streaks appeared in places; evidently, they descended significantly below sea level, and moisture seeped through the stone. Drawn by that very premonition-anticipation, Aegon hobbled on confidently. Soon the gallery turned a corner, and the Prince froze rooted to the spot.
The turn hid a niche in the wall in which another altar was located. Tongues of flame were carved in high relief on a large slab of red granite, appearing almost real. They superimposed on each other, overlapped each other, intertwined, merged, in a word, looked like the most real fire. A practically unworked dark boulder was pushed to the slab, in which Aegon did not immediately recognize volcanic stone. Several recesses were made in its uneven surface, with almost vanished traces of wax and oil—here, likely, lamps and icon lamps were placed.
But the most interesting thing was located on its top. The stone was as if cut from above, so smooth and ideal looked the formed shelf. On it in a row stood three small carved figures, each barely two feet high. The first on the left depicted a Valyrian sphinx; the wings of the mythical creature were open, and a grimace of rage distorted the female face. Taking the candle from Dennis who caught up with him, Aegon brought the flame closer and distinguished small, dully gleaming, sharp teeth in the open maw.
"This is... Valyrian steel!.." exhaled the Prince in shock, marveling at the fine work.
The sphinx-woman trampled and tore with clawed feet an unknown creature in which a Ghiscari harpy was not immediately recognized.
"This is..." whispered Dennis.
"War?" spoke Aegon uncertainly. "Looks, at least, like an allegory for the victory over the Ghiscari Empire."
In the center stood a male figure surrounded by oilily gleaming obsidian tongues of flame. In both hands, a man with a stern face and long hair swirling around his head like a crown held a small sphere, a reduced copy of what was due to Aegon as Master of Dragons; both the sphere and hair were also made of dragon glass.
Last in the row stood a woman whose left half of the face was covered by a patch-mask of the same Valyrian steel. In her left hand she held a steel spear pointed down, and extended her right forward in some semblance of a blessing gesture.
"Amazing," finally squeezed the Prince out of himself, regaining the gift of speech. "I knew it! I knew it would not be in vain! What did I tell you? Premonition never failed me!"
"Would be good to understand what it is," remarked Dennis reasonably, but it was noticeable that he was also impressed by the find.
"I wonder, can we take this?"
"And who said one cannot steal from gods?"
"Do not twist," pulled up the knight the Prince, taking the central statuette in his hands, which turned out quite heavy. "I said that in the opinion of Braavosi stealing from gods is dangerous. But we are not Braavosi, are we? No, we are Valyrians, and these are our gods."
"We do not even know their names," objected Dennis, but took a sack from his bosom nonetheless. Why he took it initially if they did not know what they would find here, Aegon did not imagine; Dennis always had everything most necessary with him, starting from several knives hidden in his bootleg and a flint and ending with several rusks in reserve, which he regularly gnawed.
"That we do not know their names is not a problem," waved the Prince off, stuffing statuettes into the sack with some petty pleasure of an owner. "I shall devise something, read, do... Give them blood to drink, maybe they will send me a dream."
"About Nerra?"
Aegon stopped and looked at Dennis point-blank; it was visible the knight tried to bluster.
"If you want, I shall personally take you to her when we return to King's Landing."
"For that, one must return first," grumbled the sworn shield, tying the strings.
Suddenly the knight froze, then, saying not a word, pushed his suzerain aside and down, and Aegon hit his head painfully against the wall. It went dark in his eyes, became hard to breathe, someone stumbled over him, something clinked, choice curses in a mixture of Valyrian and Andal rang out, and, what was especially terrifying, the ringing of blades. When the Prince could breathe again, he felt rather than saw a struggle going on nearby; the candle did not go out, but rolled aside behind the altar-stone, and there was terrifyingly little light. Aegon convulsively groped for the cane a couple of feet from himself, pulled it to himself, and drew Valyrian Candle from the scabbard, thrusting it before him.
The skirmish ended just as unexpectedly as it began. One of the figures dropped a sword, but sharply dodged the opponent's blade and slashed his neck with some knife. A wheeze rang out, gurgling, and the defeated slumped to the floor. The figure, breathing heavily, turned to Aegon and, hissing from pain, moved toward him.
"Do not approach," hissed the Prince in Braavosi.
"My Lord, it is I," answered the figure in Dennis's voice in Common—he never mastered the Braavosi tongue.
"Prove it!"
The figure bent down and picked up the candle. The face truly belonged to the sworn shield, but Aegon heard of a sect of face-stealing assassins and was not too encouraged.
"How many steps in Balerion's skull?" asked Aegon.
"Ten," answered the figure without doubting in the slightest.
Aegon exhaled with relief: strictly speaking, the answer was incorrect, but when on the day of Balerion's death Aegon forced his future knight-servant to measure the length of the Black Dread's skull, he counted exactly ten steps. Only a person who personally experienced the excitement of being with the body of a dead dragon could give such a precise and quick answer.
"And what the Hell was that?" inquired the Prince of Dennis grumpily.
"It seems they tried to kill us," the knight felt his face and grimaced, touching a scratch on his cheek. "Did I not say stealing from gods is a bad idea?"
"We already paid for this with the killer's blood. By the way, who is he?"
Somehow the Prince rose to his feet and hobbled to the corpse, in no hurry to sheath the Candle. Kicking him over, Dennis illuminated the face of the one who attempted their lives. It was an unremarkable middle-aged man, unshaven, with a dirty shaggy head. In King's Landing thousands of such dwelt in Flea Bottom; undoubtedly, such rabble found a place in the poor quarters of Braavos too. He had a short sword with a double-edged blade, ideal for cutting someone (for example, one careless Westerosi Prince) in a narrow space, a pair of stilettos in his sleeve and nothing more.
"Pick up the sack," ordered Aegon. "We leave here, quickly."
The candle hid in the wooden case again, and they hurried to the exit; Dennis with sword in hands, despite being hit quite well, skipped three steps at a time, tensely waiting on each landing for the Prince to catch up. Aegon felt dizzy, the disturbed leg began to ache, and nausea rose to his throat from the gained speed, but he stubbornly hobbled up, praising himself for every conquered step. Only on the first floor did he manage to catch his breath and recover, so the Prince emerged onto the street only slightly alarmed and a little confused. However, Braavos's daily stock of surprises was not yet exhausted.
The porch was surrounded by half a hundred soldiers in blue-and-azure uniforms; scarce had the Westerosis appeared in the light when the formation immediately took a ready position, grabbing sword hilts.
"Premonition, you say?" whispered Dennis.
"What does this mean?" asked Aegon loudly in Braavosi, ignoring the inappropriate banter.
From behind the ranks of soldiers emerged a lean short man with a neat beard, wearing the same blue clothes as the soldiers, differing from them only by a purple sash across the right shoulder.
"My name is Moredo Prestayn," like all Braavosi, he spoke hoarsely; Aegon supposed humidity and frequent fogs were to blame for the peculiarities of the local dialect. "I am the First Sword of Braavos. At your service, Prince Aegon."
Having said this, he clicked his heels crisply and bowed briefly, simply nodding his head.
"How did we deserve such... high attention?" Aegon began to kick lazily fluttering thoughts in his head. They arrived without a dragon, only sers-merchants knew they were here and... damn it, all the Purple Harbor knew, everyone who saw the blockhead Wat collapse on his knees before him knew. "I arrived as a private person."
"The Sealord of Braavos pays you his respects and asks you to honor him with a visit," answered Prestayn.
"A herald would have sufficed for this, not a pile of soldiers," noted the Prince the obvious.
"It is a matter of security, my Lord Prince."
"Whose security? Ours or the Sealord's?"
The First Sword preferred to let the question pass his ears and took a step aside, opening a passage through the formation.
"Please, my Lord Prince, a gondola awaits you and your knight."
"What does he want?" hissed Dennis, understanding not a word.
"For us to go with him to the Sealord."
"And does he not want to go to the Seven Hells with such proposals?"
"I do not think he will agree. And his lads will not understand your advice."
"Shall we go like this?"
"Have to."
Aegon, grimacing from displeasure and pain, descended from the porch and, passing through the Sealord's guards, saw that the gondola served to the pier of the Isle of Gods differed greatly from its fellows by its covered superstructure with a small barred window. The Prince exchanged expressive glances with Dennis and, following Moredo Prestayn's inviting gesture, boarded.
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