Dorne. Sunspear. 287–289 A.C.
Axel Arryn / The Witch-king of Angmar.
I cannot stand Dorne. Not the blazing sun, not the dryness in the air, and certainly not the sand. Especially the sand. But all of it was offset by wine, fighting, and won. The won of Dorne are fire. They are nothing like the pampered castle ladies of the central regions of the Seven Kingdoms. Where highborn ladies spend their days sewing, praying, and dreaming of a knight on a white horse, these magnificent creatures will just as readily beat you, poison you, or bed you senseless. Even as a Nazgul I never made the mistake of underestimating won. Take Galadriel. The elf could stand against the spirit of Sauron as an equal, and he was a Maia, a lesser god at that, and one who had drawn considerably closer to the power of the Ainur after seizing the strength of the shadow realm. Or the shield-maiden of Rohan who managed to unmake . In short, I hold that won are no lesser than n, and the won of Dorne prove it daily.
Two months after we t, Oberyn asked an important question: "What do you want from life?" It was precisely the right question, and it helped give shape to sothing I had been carrying without a na. I had long since made peace with the fact that I would die. Whether tomorrow, in a month, or in decades, the end is the sa. So I intend to do everything that brings pleasure. Won, drink, self-improvent, and killing.
The first three need little explanation, though Oberyn made an attempt to initiate into the art of sword-swallowing and I found it not to my taste. The draw toward killing, and the satisfaction it brought, were things I had carried over from my previous life. Through the Ring, Sauron had made a will-less slave who felt nothing, not wind, not sun, not the warmth of a woman's body, not the taste of food, only emptiness. But as a small amusent he had left open one wretched avenue through which I could feel sothing at all. I took a deep, pathological pleasure in death, in suffering, in the fear of n. It is considerably less consuming now than it once was, thanks to the emotions I have reacquired, but it has not gone away.
I discovered this particular quality in myself when Oberyn assembled a company to clear out a band of nomads who refused to recognize the authority of the Martells. Naturally I was refused permission to join, but who was going to stop ? Oberyn had no choice but to take along. The nomads were an ordinary pack of bandits and savages preying on common peasants. They left the lords alone, knowing that would bring a hunt down on them. And so it did. These desert rats had killed the nephew of Lord Santagar on the road to Sunspear. Doran would ordinarily have cared little, but the killing had happened within sight of his own seat, and it struck hard at the reputation of House Martell, badly undermining the trust people placed in Doran. So Oberyn gathered fifty riders and rode out to run down the n responsible.
Two weeks we searched for those nomads. At last we caught them. They had settled themselves in an old abandoned city. We waited for darkness and then went in. These dregs were not fighting n, and we cut through them very quickly with minimal losses. In that fight I killed one nomad, although I was forbidden to take part in the fighting, I took it from one ear and let that order go through the other.
It was simple. Too simple. Two movents and he was a corpse. I had driven a sword through his body. When I heard the sound of steel entering flesh, the crack of bone, and felt blood run warm over my hands, sothing in settled into ease. My thoughts sharpened, my body answered better, and a warmth spread slowly through my chest.
I understood it was not normal. That it was wrong. But when sothing has been your only pleasure for nearly four thousand years, it becos a reflex whether you intend it to or not. At so level beneath thought, drawing on everything my past life had made , I believe that killing, blood, and violence are good for . I know there is sothing broken in my mind, but I find that I simply do not care. I enjoy killing. So what of it? The world is full of people who can be killed without consequence. Though that line of thinking is a dangerous one. I ought to build myself so kind of moral frawork, sothing fixed in the mind. It might help channel this particular quality of mine into sothing that does not end with my head on a spike.
After that expedition Oberyn regarded as, provisionally, his equal. The logic being that he was a warrior and I was a warrior, but he was seasoned and I was green. His displays of patronage were amusing to watch. In the end I can say that Oberyn beca both a friend and a ntor to . He was the one who first took to a brothel and began teaching the art of seduction. For the latter, my separate and sincere gratitude. It has added considerable variety to my life. Nyria in bed is insatiable. I will leave it at that.
Nyria and I could reasonably be called lovers. At fourteen she is well-developed. Slender and supple as a willow branch, with straight black hair worn long and usually braided, a sharp widow's peak on her brow like her father's, large gleaming dark eyes, high cheekbones, full lips of a vivid scarlet, and skin pale as milk.
There is no love between us and there will not be. Only animal desire. I know her well enough to understand that, and there is no trace of anything resembling love in it. Nyria is also sothing of a sensualist. So we beca friends who share a bed.
With Doran, I was forced to engage at Oberyn's firm insistence. I cannot say spending ti with the Prince of Dorne was pleasant, but it was unquestionably useful. He explained to the things a paramount lord needs to understand. What can I say about the structure of power in Westeros? It is completely alien to .
Núnor had twenty-five rulers over its history: twenty-two kings and three ruling queens. All of them were descendants of the line of Elros, the first King of Núnor, and only mbers of his house held the right to inherit the Scepter, the symbol of royal power. The kingdom eventually descended into civil strife, driven by a bitter cultural divide and a growing fear of death that culminated in open rebellion long before Sauron ever set foot on the island. In other words, Núnor fractured itself from within; Sauron rely exploited a society that was already broken to convince its final, usurping king to turn to the dark worship of Morgoth.
I had no understanding of the relationships between vassals and their liege lords, between noble houses, the regional tensions, the questions of religion and ancestral inheritance. My father had managed to explain so of it, but his illness and then the Rebellion had badly stunted my education, and Doran was now filling in those gaps. I ca to understand the reasons for Dorne's capitulation during the Rebellion. I would still have done things differently.
After those sessions I had to revise my opinion of the ruling prince sowhat. We will never be close friends, given my nature and his secrecy, but Doran beca the man I turn to when sothing in politics escapes .
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