A Wand of Weirwood Chapter 36

It had taken two full years.

Two years of sweat and fire, of snow-laden mornings and starlit labor. Two years of stone hauled from distant quarries, timber shipped on sleds, and the unrelenting will of a people rising from chaos into civilization.

And now—it stood.

The city had no na yet, but everyone called it The Port. No one needed more than that. They spoke the words with pride, as if "The Port" was a na as ancient and weighty as Old Valyria.

From the sky, it was a marvel. Streets carved in perfect symtry curved outward from the great central hill like the rays of a sun. Row houses—three- and four-bedroom hos with steep gabled roofs—lined the boulevards in neat, organized blocks. Each ho had a small yard, a fenced garden, and space enough to raise sheep, pigs, or chickens. Stone-paved roads glead under the soft enchantnt of Harry’s magic, smooth and clean even during the harshest snows.

Beneath it all ran a network of underground drains—wide, angled tunnels that carried ltwater from the snow straight into the sea. It was Harry's design, a vision drawn during long hours of study and tested with a thousand calculations. The cold here was unforgiving, but magic had beco their ally.

The city never froze.

The people could walk its streets without slipping. Children could play outside, and elders could carry water from the well without fear of frostbite.

And above it all, carved from the heart of a black granite hill, stood the new Griffindor Castle.

It wasn’t a fortress ant for war. It was a palace ant for rule.

Its towers rose like frozen spires into the sky, enchanted to shimr in the moonlight with subtle threads of silver and blue. Wide stone balconies overlooked the harbor. Great fire pits burned with ever-warm fla. And in the center, atop a grand staircase of white marble, sat the throne of Narnia's guardian.

Harry Gryffindor.

They didn’t know what to make of him at first.

So called him sorcerer, others king beyond the wall. So whispered that he must be a god. After all, he had magic that can do anything and everything. He taught them letters, numbers, order, cleanliness, law. He gave them coin, trade, markets.

But none of them were prepared for Winter.

It was the dragon’s roar that announced his arrival.

From the gray clouds above, a thunderous screech split the sky, sending flocks scattering. At first, the people panicked. Mothers clutched their children. n reached for bows and spears. Even the bravest among the Narnians—forr wildling chiefs, Essosi sell swords, freed slaves—fell to their knees in terror.

And then he landed.

Winter, the dragon of ice and fire.

White as snow, wings vast as castle walls, eyes molten gold, with steam rising from his nostrils and smoke curling from his fangs.

Harry stood atop Winter’s back, cloak whipping in the wind, his weirwood staff in one hand.

He raised it, and Winter bowed.

The crowd watched, frozen in silence, as the dragon’s head lowered like a docile steed.

"This is Winter," Harry spoke aloud, voice carrying across the plaza. "He is mine, and he is yours. He will protect the skies of this land, guard its people, and rain fire only when needed."

The first test of that fire ca two days later.

The masons had completed the central plaza, but the stone blocks were loose and uneven, mortar not setting properly due to the freezing temperatures.

"Let show you a different thod," Harry had said.

The next morning, Winter arrived again. Under Harry’s command, the dragon stood at the heart of the city and breathed carefully asured jets of fla. He didn’t incinerate or destroy. He lted the stone just enough. Like a master smith working tal, he fused the blocks into one solid surface.

Every street. Every wall. Every archway.

lted together with fire so hot, the cracks sealed and smoothed like glass.

By the end of that month, the entire plaza looked as though it had been carved from a single slab of stone.

The people were speechless.

Old Hrodan, a wildling who once lived in a tent of deer hide, stared at the polished ground and muttered, “Even the gods didn’t walk on roads like this.”

One by one, the families ca—on sleds, on foot, in wagons pulled by shaggy oxen. From the original settlent in the valley where Potter Castle first stood, they ca to the harbor.

Skilled artisans moved first—masons, carpenters, smiths. Then the forr Essosi freedn. Then the educated Narnians: midwives, scribes.

But not all left the old village.

Many elders remained, content to live out their years near the ancient weirwood grove. So hunters and furriers preferred the quiet life among the hills. The first school Harry built there still operated, and so stayed behind to care for it.

Still, the harbor grew.

Inside the newly completed Griffindor Castle, Harry stood at the high window with Lyanna at his side. Sirius sat on the floor, playing with enchanted blocks that floated in the air and reshaped themselves at his laughter.

Lyanna leaned on the windowsill, watching the city.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “I never imagined a place like this.”

Harry didn’t smile, but his voice was soft. “ You are yet to see many things.”

Snowflakes drifted down from the sky, but none touched the stone roads below. As they fell, they vanished, lted by the warmth that radiated from the enchantnts laced into every brick and pillar.

The harbor glowed like fire under moonlight.

Harry watched the ships anchored off the docks—Braavosi rchant vessels, Northern fishing boats, even a whaling ship built by the wildlings themselves.

A city had risen.

Not from conquest.

But from stone… and vision.

The na ca quietly, passed between council tongues and murmured on the lips of scribes and builders. But once Harry himself spoke it, it beca truth.

“Telmar,” he had said, eyes on the harbor’s edge. “The capital of Narnia.”

And so it was.

Telmar—once a stretch of snowy coastline where the Antler River t the icy Shivering Sea—had beco more than stone and fire. It was the beating heart of a rising nation. And at the center of that heart was its lifeline: the harbor.

Wide, deep, and sculpted with intention, the harbor could hold thirty ships at once, each with space to unload cargo, re-supply provisions, or welco passengers from distant lands. It was the largest construction effort ever undertaken beyond the Wall—and though only five ships currently floated at the dock, they were not idle vessels.

Each one had been crafted with care by a coalition of Essosi shipwrights and wildling laborers. Sleek sailing ships with reinforced hulls, painted with the sigils of Narnia—the white dragon in black background.

At their helms stood newly recruited Essosi captains. Veterans of rchant fleets and coastal warbands, n who had once sailed the Sumr Sea or the Basilisk Isles. Now they served the banner of Narnia. And under their command, crews of wildlings manned the ships with pride.

One morning, as the sun filtered weakly through the winter mist, three of the five ships prepared to set sail.

Harry stood at the edge of the stone pier, hands behind his back, cloaked in gray furs. Beside him stood Orlino, the trusted Essosi agent who had served as Narnia’s envoy and buyer for many moons now. Around them bustled the captains, crew, and traders readying their voyage.

“Five vessels is a humble fleet,” Orlino remarked, watching a group of wildlings hoist barrels of whale oil onto the Storm-Huntress. “But it will be rembered as the first breath of a storm.”

“A storm of trade,” Harry said.

They watched as walrus at was wrapped in enchanted cloth to preserve its cold, and crates of salted fish were sealed in waxed barrels. Iron rods mined and refined to make weapons or tools. Thick sheets of tough walrus leather—weather-resistant and durable—were carefully loaded and marked for shipnt. Lanterns filled with whale oil hung ready to be sold by the dozen.

Harry turned to the n and won gathered nearby. “Our people have more food than we need. We’ve built hos, roads, even schools. But what we need now,” he said, voice rising, “is trade.”

He pointed toward the eastern horizon.

“Go to Braavos. To Pentos. Even to Myr. Let them see what Narnia can offer. And bring back what we cannot grow—grain, spice, tools, books. Make them know our na.”

The captains thumped fists to their chests.

“Aye, Lord Gryffindor,” said Captain Renaro, a broad-shouldered Myrish man with a silver ring in his nose. “We’ll sell every drop of oil, every hide, every salted bone we can.”

“And bring back cinnamon, damn you,” chuckled old Hrodan, who had decided to travel with the Sea-Tooth to see the cities of the world before he died.

“Cinnamon and stories,” Harry said, smiling faintly.

As the ships left, their sails swelling with the sea breeze, Lyanna arrived with Sirius walking beside her, Sirius was pointing and shouting safe travels at the fluttering sails.

“Are they going to the ends of the world?” Sirius asked.

“Only to Essos, my love,” Lyanna replied, brushing snow from his black hair.

“But that’s the end of the world,” Sirius insisted, eyes wide.

Harry placed a hand on his son's shoulder.

“No,” he said softly. “ This is the end of the world.”

By sunset, the ships had beco dots on the sea. And yet, within a moon’s turn, they would return—not just with foreign goods, but with stories, maps, and letters from the cities across the Narrow Sea. And if all went well, with gold.

The Narnians, now well-fed and clothed, gathered to watch the harbor return to calm. Children ran along the polished stone docks. Fishern cast lines into the river mouth. Whale hunters nded nets. Even the forr wildlings, once feral and scattered, now spoke of sail lengths, trade routes, and tide calendars.

It was the farthest any Narnian had ever gone from the safety of the Shivering Sea.

For the sailors of Telmar, the wild waters beyond Skagos were once the edge of the known world. Skagos had been their frequent haunt—its jagged cliffs and icy coves familiar. The walrus hunts at Skane were brutal and cold, and the mountain goat captures in the snow-slicked peaks were equally daring. The beasts, horned and silver-coated, were so fierce and rare that even now, many in free folks whispered that they were unicorns—sacred animals touched by old magic.

Hundreds had been captured over the years. Now, they are living inside the city walls, bred by Narnian families who had grown to love their milk and at. They were more than livestock—they were a symbol of how far Narnia had co.

But this journey, this voyage eastward, was different.

For most of the crew aboard the Snowdancer, Sea-Tooth, and Storm-Huntress, this was their first ti sailing beyond Skagos. And though they had spent weeks preparing under the guidance of their Essosi captains—learning how to read stars, calculate currents, and ration salt pork—they were still not ready for what awaited them on the open sea.

It was not the sea that tested them, but ti.

Seven days out, the wildlings turned sailors grew restless. The waters were endless. The sky unchanging. So whispered of sea monsters, others of being cursed by gods they did not know.

“Never thought I’d miss the godforsaken winter snows,” muttered Borran One-Eye as he struggled with a rope in the freezing wind.

“And here I thought you are not scared of sea anymore,” growled his friend Eryk with a laugh, before the two nearly ca to blows over the insult.

Captain Renaro kept order with a firm hand. “You’re Narnians now,” he reminded them, standing tall beneath the sails. " You are not in this journey not for yourself but for whole Narnia.”

And then, after nearly two weeks at sea—just as the last of their patience wore thin—the mists broke.

And there it was.

Braavos.

The Titan rose first, a giant of bronze, his face carved with eternal scorn, sword raised in defiance of all invaders. The sea foad at his feet, and the waves slapped the hull as if in welco or warning. Beneath his legs, the ships passed, as countless had before them.

The Narnians stared in awe.

“Is it a god?” whispered Yoren, a boy of sixteen who had never seen anything taller than a pine tree.

“No,” said Captain Renaro, his eyes unreadable. “But it watches like one.”

Past the Titan lay the city itself—Braavos of the Hundred Isles. Palaces of stone and marble rising above blue canals. Towers crowned with dos. Bright flags fluttering in the breeze. The sweet scent of spice and fish mixed with the stench of docks and oil.

Nothing in Telmar had prepared them for this.

The ships docked at the Moon Pool harbor, and the Braavosi portmasters, clad in velvet and ard with ink-stained ledgers, were already waiting.

A man in a feathered cap stepped forward. “Na your port and cargo.”

Captain Renaro offered the papers Harry had given them. “Telmar. Whale oil, walrus leather, at, salted fish and iron.”

“Telmar,” the Braavosi repeated slowly, rolling the word over his tongue like a coin. “I have never heard of that place?”

“Where we are from is no concern of yours,” Renaro said.

That caused a stir. The scribes paused. One of the portmasters narrowed his eyes.

“Telmar cargo?”

“No,” Renaro said. “Narnian Cargo.”

Later that evening, the crew stayed aboard while Renaro and two of the Essosi traders ventured into the city to arrange sale and barter.

The Narnians huddled at the edge of the harbor, marveling at the brazen bridges and mirrored towers, listening to the calls of vendors in strange tongues, and the music from distant plazas.

“It’s like a dream,” said Maera, her breath catching.

“It’s not as clean as Telmar,” grumbled Borran. “Sothing unnatural about it.”

“No. It’s what a city looks like,” said Eryk. “Harry’s trying to make Telmar look like this.”

“Then gods help us,” muttered Borran, but even he could not look away.

When Renaro returned by midnight, his coat dusted with snow and his eyes gleaming, he brought news.

“The whale oil sold fast. They want more. Iron too. We got salt, grain, citrus, pepper, even a steel mold press from Myr.”

He tossed a small bag of silver coins on the table.

“And that’s just the start.”

The crew burst into cheers.

“Braavos knows us now,” Renaro said, voice rising. “Next ti, we sail with twice the cargo. They’ll know the na Narnia. And one day, when they look west, they won’t think of wildlings and lawlessness. They’ll think of Narnians. Of stone city, honest trade, and fire-forged strength.”

And aboard their ships, beneath the stars of Braavos, the crew of Telmar—once wildlings, now civilised—felt, for the first ti, like citizens of sothing greater.