c19: Curse and the Red God
"This is a true story that happened in Pentos, as recorded in the chronicles," Viserys said, holding a thin vellum-bound book and muttering softly. "It happened at the port of Pentos, the second-largest of the Free Cities. The author, after much effort, learned the story from a friend, who insisted on concealing his name. Therefore, no names will be mentioned."
"One night, there was a frantic knocking at my friend's door. When he opened it, he found his childhood companion, drenched with sweat and terror, begging for sanctuary.
My friend, being a man of decent heart and loyal to the old Pentoshi customs, immediately brought him inside and asked for the cause of his distress.
The friend claimed his life was under threat: the magisters who oversaw the shipping insurance guild in Pentos sought to kill him, as he could not pay the recompense demanded after a shipwreck. Already, his father, captain of the vessel, and two uncles, both senior officers aboard, had perished.
All knew the merchant-princes of Pentos were ruthless, but they were famed for following the law. Had it not been for the deep trust forged since boyhood, my friend would have thought it drunken madness.
The doomed voyage had intended to sail from Pentos across the Summer Sea to the Summer Islands. They had made that journey a hundred times. The insurance was standard, offered by the Red Harbor Consortium a name synonymous with shrewdness but not dishonor.
But fate turned cruel. A hurricane rose from the Narrow Sea, and the merchant galley, battered and leaking, struck a reef. The keel broke; the ship was lost along with her cargo. Most of the crew died. The survivors drifted for days before being rescued by a Braavosi trader.
Having lost everything, the family hoped to salvage their fortune through the insurance.
All seasoned merchants knew it took months, even years, for such claims to be honored. Ships vanished in the Summer Sea every year, and magisters were not fools. They demanded proofs: witness accounts, ship's logs, relics. Negotiations dragged on endlessly.
Prepared for this delay, the family left their uncle in Pentos to negotiate.
At first, it seemed ordinary tragedy. The uncle, after a night of drinking in the Silk Market, fell into one of Pentos's countless canals and drowned. Such deaths were common; drunken sailors and merchants floated to the harbor all the time.
Yet two weeks later, another uncle tasked to continue the negotiations was also found drowned, face down in the same canal.
The father grew suspicious. He knew his brothers: neither would risk such a death. Sober and cautious men, unlike the common drunkards of Pentos. He warned his son.the man who later begged my friend for help to remain wary.
Still, with no proof, business continued.
The father, an old sea-wolf wise in the ways of magisters, took every precaution. He stayed in a guarded inn in the Ragman's Harbor, never walked alone, and touched no wine.
But it made no difference. After a massive storm from the Narrow Sea flooded Pentos crumbling warehouses, drowning livestock, and leaving whole districts awash the father was found dead, crushed beneath the wreckage of his lodging.
The officials ruled it an accident, another grim tally to the storm's casualties.
Thus, my friend's friend became heir to the claim.
The insurance company summoned him to complete the claim, but terror rooted him. Three deaths? He smelled treachery.
This was the tale he poured out to my friend.
My friend, being a rational man, suspected hysteria. Nevertheless, he sheltered the young man in a safe house and dispatched agents to investigate, even taking the risk of confronting the magisters directly.
As my friend expected, the shipping consortium had acted properly. There was no sign of foul play. The deaths were tragic, but not unnatural by Pentoshi standards.
He thought the matter a grim coincidence.
Weeks passed. Trade resumed. The summer sun glared on the harbor once more.
Then calamity struck again.
One morning, my friend's steward came running, pale as milk: the sheltered youth had drowned.
"He went swimming with a maid," the steward stammered. "Boasted he could breathe water like a Merling King. Got tangled in seaweed. When they pulled him out, he was bloated and dead."
This death shook my friend to the core. Once was misfortune. Four was something darker.
Haunted by tales of the supernatural he had dismissed as sailor's prattle, my friend hurried to the Temple of R'hllor, the Red God, whose followers had long whispered of curses, shadows, and flames.
The High Priestess heard his plea and dispatched a Red Priest—one of the flame-robed servants of the Lord of Light.
The priest examined the body and those of the earlier deceased, commanding them to be burned immediately.
"It is a curse," the Red Priest declared grimly, as smoke blackened the temple pyres. He demanded all belongings of the dead be brought forth.
In sifting through the heirlooms, the priest found it: a pearl necklace, its largest pearl stained with a black smear invisible to mortal eyes but clear to those trained in the fires of R'hllor.
"This bead is poisoned with blood magic," the Red Priest said. "Each soul that touched it was doomed."
My friend, shaken to the marrow, obeyed without question. He sent the surviving maidservants and stewards to be purified at the temple.
The deaths ended.
Shivering from the smoke and terror, my friend dared to ask the priest: "Is the curse real?"
"All things are real in the sight of R'hllor," the Red Priest said solemnly. "The night is dark and full of terrors."
"And how can one guard against such evil?"
"Only the Light can protect you," the priest answered. "Trust in the fire. Trust in the King of Light. In the end, only His fire will cleanse the darkness."
From that night onward, whenever the Red Priests lit the great braziers in the temple and sang their prayers to the Lord of Light, my friend would join them, bowing his head and praying for R'hllor to bring the dawn.
When Viserys read this aloud, he could hear the distant chants of the red-robed priests carried by the evening breeze, their voices rising from beyond the high walls of Illyrio's manse. The firelight flickered faintly against the skyline. Viserys could not help but let out a soft, mocking laugh at the coincidence.
Daenerys turned to him, her silver hair gleaming in the fading light. "What's so funny?"
"What a sorry sermon this is," Viserys replied with a half-smile, tapping the thin booklet against his knee. The parchment pages were filled with neat lines of Valyrian script, clearly a work collected by the temple of the Red God. It was a book assembled by some dutiful scribe for the purpose of preaching. There were many such short tales missionary stories, cautionary fables, and miraculous accounts. Most fell into simple categories: those that displayed blessings where the faithful prospered, avoided death, or gained wealth through belief in R'hllor; those that displayed warnings where the unbelievers met terrible fates; and then there were the strange and uncanny tales that most caught Viserys's attention. These last stories were poorly constructed, often ending abruptly with divine intervention, yet they fascinated him more than the rest.
Despite the clumsy storytelling, Viserys could tell the non-fiction parts of the book were painstakingly accurate. It described in vivid detail the rites of the Red God: how followers lit fires at dusk, the offerings they laid before the flames, the ceremonies for entering a temple, the manner in which red-robed monks prayed and sang, even the curious rituals surrounding the temple prostitutes how they offered their earnings as acts of devotion.
From such careful detail, Viserys concluded that even the stranger stories might hide lessons. Not lessons about faith, but about the hidden ways of this world a world more magical and perilous than he once dared believe.
"And what happens next?" Daenerys asked dutifully. Though she hardly cared for the strange fables, she had learned to indulge her brother's new habits. In these past days, she had realized she must adapt to this new way of living. Viserys seemed lighter now, almost content no longer so quick to rage or bitter over every slight. He spoke often of strange things and told stories freely, as if he had all the time in the world. As if he had no urgency to reclaim their lost crown.
It unsettled her.
Viserys gave a little shrug. "No more. Let's rest. I'm tired of talking."
They sat beneath the canopy of the pavilion in Illyrio's gardens, overlooking the golden waters of the Narrow Sea. The sun was sinking, casting long shadows across the tiled paths and marble balustrades. Sweet cakes and chilled wine rested upon the low table between them, the air rich with the scent of oranges and lemons from the trees. A cool, steady breeze, fresh from the sea, played across Viserys's face and ruffled his silver hair. He leaned back in his chair with a soft sigh, utterly at ease.
Daenerys glanced up at him through lowered lashes. He had changed.
More than half a moon's turn had passed since they had come to Pentos. Viserys ate well now, trained his body, and walked the gardens daily under the tutelage of Illyrio's retainers. His limbs no longer looked so frail, and his hollow cheeks had filled out. His violet eyes, once wild with frustration, now burned with a quieter, steadier fire. He carried himself with new purpose, and the raw desperation she remembered from the alleys of Braavos seemed a distant memory.
Daenerys, by contrast, still felt small and wary. She could not understand this sudden transformation in her brother nor the strange, cold wisdom that sometimes flashed behind his smiles.
Since her legs had healed, Viserys had taken her everywhere: through the winding passages of Illyrio's manse, through shaded gardens, even once to the great market by the fishmongers' square. He spoke kindly, told her tales of lost Valyria and ancient heroes, and often asked her to listen to odd stories he had collected.
Yet the more gentle he became, the more uneasy Daenerys grew. There was a hidden current beneath his words, a secret she could not touch. She tried once or twice to ask him directly what had changed, but Viserys had only smiled vaguely and turned the conversation elsewhere, as if dancing away from her grasp.
And so, she had grown cautious.
She watched him now, as he sat with his long legs stretched lazily under the pavilion's low table, one hand cradling a goblet of sweetwine, his silver hair shining in the last rays of the sun.
Viserys stared out toward the horizon, where the Narrow Sea kissed the sky with molten gold.
Daenerys followed his gaze, saying nothing.
In the silence, the distant chanting of the Red Priests rose again, carried over the garden walls deep, slow, and solemn, like the heartbeat of some ancient god.
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