Dorne. Sunspear. 285–287 A.C.
Axel Arryn / The Witch-king of Angmar.
The awakening was miserable. Soaked through with sweat, the sheets could have been wrung out by hand. I felt like a worm on a hot skillet. First thing I did was kick my dirty clothes straight onto the floor, then stretched and yawned without bothering to hide how good it felt. I fell back onto the bed. The pillow, damp as it was, still called to , still whispered that sleep was worth surrendering to again, but the room was suffocating. The curtains didn't hang quite flush, and the first light of dawn was already bleeding through the gap. How long had I even slept? Next to nothing. Four hours, maybe.
This Dornish heat is killing . No book, no mory could prepare a man for a climate like this. I knew it would be hot and dry, but not like this. By midday you could fry at on the stones, and by night the cold is sharp enough to frost the water. Because of it I sleep badly, my body waking on its own the mont the first ray appears.
Before I left, I had no anxiety about living in Dorne, only a burning fury at my father for selling off. From what I rembered and had read, Dorne was supposed to resemble Harad. As a Nazgul I had visited that corner of the world and found it agreeable enough. But once again the problem of perceiving the world as a wraith versus perceiving it as a man reared its head. Wraiths do not feel heat. n do. As a Nazgul I had felt none of this scorching, mind-bending heat, and now I feel all of it. I genuinely cannot understand how the Dornish survive the desert.
My daily routine has shifted considerably. I go to sleep in the evening, rise with the first ray of sun, and after a small bite to eat I go and train in full armor before breakfast. In the future that armor will be my closest companion, so I need to grow accustod to it well in advance, but training in the midday heat would cook a man alive. So it is early morning only. After that, until lunch, lessons with Maester Clover, and then free ti.
My acquaintance with House Martell did not go smoothly. The head of the house, Prince Doran, stirred nothing in but pity, contempt, and the faintest sliver of respect. The illness has made him look old and frail. His face is pale and swollen, his body soft and shapeless, gout having reduced his knee joints, his fingers, his toes to inflad, reddened knobs. At first glance he is weak and spineless, much like my father. His sister and her son were murdered and mutilated, and he responds by making peace and bending the knee to the Lannister queen. That I cannot comprehend. In every life I have lived I have had little patience for weak n, and the only thing that earns Doran even that sliver of my respect is his illness itself. He suffers from gout, and every touch brings him pain, yet he bears it without a whimper. I have never once seen him whine about it, and that, at least, is worthy of sothing. Doran made overtures to build a good relationship with , but I saw nothing in his words but falsehood and pretense, so I kept my distance.
His wife was called llario of Norvos, a young and beautiful woman with a sun-darkened complexion. Dark hair, brown eyes. She favored clothing in shades of pink. I exchanged no more than a few sentences with her and have little desire to change that. She is entirely consud by her son in any case, three-year-old Quentyn.
The heiress of Dorne, however, Princess Arianne Martell, more than makes up for everything else. She is a proper little scher. Unlike the rest of Westeros, in Dorne titles and lands pass to the eldest child regardless of sex, not necessarily a son. That puts girls on equal footing from birth, which tends to produce a bolder character in the fairer half of humanity. The heiress of Dorne makes a point of needling and pranking . Constant questions about my well-being and the "wonderful" weather beca the standard opening of every conversation between us. If only it had stayed at verbal sparring. But having a dressed snake served to at lunch, dung stuffed into my boots, or an excessive helping of heat added to my food with a glass of horse urine set politely beside it. I had told myself I would rise above it, ignore it, that I was too old for this sort of thing. But the urine. Not after that humiliation. This was war.
Leaving water out to chill through the night and pouring it over the sleeping heiress at dawn? Done. Oh, a bird seems to have defecated on the princess, how tragic. Insects weaving a nest overnight in soone's hair? Well, unfortunately this happens to be the peak breeding season, so the situation repeated itself more than once. The princess beca a blonde. What a surprising effect from a simple mixture of herbs.
At first everyone was baffled and searching for the culprit. They found nothing. But Arianne is a clever girl and she knew perfectly well who was playing against her. I made little effort to hide my satisfaction, and before long the situation settled into this: "I know that you know and everyone knows, but there is no proof, so grin and bear it." The war lasted two months. On Arianne's side stood the servants and the ho advantage. On mine, a twisted imagination, a wealth of theoretical experience, and magic. Yes. I used magic for the sake of childish amusents.
When I spoke of the impossibility of using magic, I was being slightly dishonest. My primary branch of magic is tied to the Shadow Realm, and the more magic I use, the faster it pulls back into it. But why has such a trendous force as the Wraith-world not simply swallowed the Material world whole? Because of mass, and the natural resistance of all existing things.
Even back in Nunor, scholars had identified a pattern in the force of attraction, what one might call gravity. The greater the mass, the stronger the pull. My magic operates on the sa principle, where mass is the power of the spell and pull is the degree to which the Wraith-world draws in. For instance: a middling spell costs two arbitrary units, aning the degree of my absorption by the Wraith-world would be two. But then cos the "natural resistance of all existing things." No one knows the precise formula, but it certainly depends on the strength of a person's soul and will. My resistance, let us say, is one unit. So we calculate: the Wraith-world claims one unit. And here lies the trick. My resistance is one, so if I cast a spell that costs only 0.9, does the Wraith-world take anything at all? The answer is no. Hence the little sleight-of-hand tricks serve well. Getting a guard drunk and then, after so ti, conjuring an irresistible urge in him to relieve himself? No trouble at all. Catching a maid's attention with sothing interesting and drawing it away from sothing else entirely? Placing a mark that amplifies the potency of herbs that attract insects? Easy.
After two months of war we t face to face, just the two of us. A childish fight broke out, full of mutual accusations and threats. After ten minutes of what was, for , a theatrical scuffle, we signed a peace. An actual piece of paper, written up like a proper treaty, complete with terms and reparations owed to one another. In that mont Arianne carried herself with enormous gravity, as though this docunt had brought so great war to its close.
So now we are on friendly terms. As it turned out, Arianne is the only one here with whom I can speak as an equal. Everyone else is either a flatterer and a lackey, or turns their nose up because of the Rebellion. And with her, young as she is, there is always sothing worth discussing. She says what she thinks without hiding it and loves to argue with on almost everything. So this is how we spend our ti now, tossing words back and forth between us. Though occasionally Prince Doran, for the sake of appearances, will ask after my health, my mood, and my studies.
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