FicWad

Chapter 24: the Rock of the Rock
MARGAERY

The existence of messenger ravens made information flow a little faster than you would expect in a medieval world. This decreased the chances of an incident like the “Battle of New Oleans” my previous life’s history had. But the ravens were limited in the length of messages they could carry. Edric and I had ways around this. Edric had his owl, that could carry larger letters than a raven could and his ability to magically travel to familiar places like: Storms End, King’s Landing, Highgarden, and Winterfell. I had planted birth blossoms in all those places and so could also travel to them on my own. But for most of the people of Westeros, the traveling musicians were the way in which they learned the latest news. These bards would sing the latest news in the form of a song. And since nearly everyone was illiterate, the singer would only need to sing the song once before everyone knew the chorus. The Riverlands was different from the other kingdoms in that our traveling musicians tended to sing and play Jazz style. Recently the musicians that came from the North were playing in a new style, one that was familiar to Edric and I, even if the songs were a little before our time. But “Satisfaction”, “Midnight Special” and “I want to hold your hand” were all known to the two of us. It was a welcome sound of our previous lives.

Tonight we were being entertained over dinner with a Northern Band of guitar, racket and timbrel drum that were playing “The Rock of the Rock”, a well known song that had originated in the Westlands. We had a Jazz version from when someone local had re-written it. Now we were listening to the version someone from The Wall had re-written to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven”. The “Rock of the Rock” told the story of how the King had refused to recognise the Lady of the Iron Islands’ Rock marriage to a Wilding, and how he feared that her heirs would be fathered by the former Prince Tommen. And so, Yara Greyjoy had made a deal with and married the Imp of Casterly Rock. But she hadn’t given up her wilding wife and brought her with her to the marriage bed. The Punchline of the song was: that the wildling woman had given Lord Lannister a bastard son before Yara had given him a trueborn daughter.

Although the song was essentially true, there was more to it. Like the fact that their rebellion had caused most of the men in both the Westlands and the Iron Islands to either die or be sent to The Wall. And the deal that had been made concerning heirs. Tyrion Lannister’s oldest son by Yara Greyjoy would inherit Casterly Rock. But all of Yara’s children would be trained to potentially be elected Lord of the Iron Islands.

The introduction of Rock and Roll to Westeros was tied in with the conflict between the faiths. Rock was considered to be music of the Old Gods. While Jazz was more acceptable to the followers of the Seven. In fact, the new Septon at the Stoney Sept, Septon Walder, had issued a denunciation of Rockenrole.
There was a lot of fighting between villages amongst the Small Folk over the issue of religion. The Same thing was going on in King’s Landing and I was contributing to it. There was a group of septons, known as the Sparrows, that were on a moral crusade against the Old Gods and more importantly, against the sins on which I had built my criminal empire. Although my plants allowed me to keep an eye of things going on in the capital, I often had to use my birth blossoms to travel there and take care of things personally. This also allowed me to help the Crown Princess Shireen learn acrobatics and unarmed martial arts. I would usually meet her in the Gods’ Wood where there was a tree with a couple of branches of the right thickness and height to be used as uneven parallel bars.

I had just arrived in the Red Keep’s Gods’ Wood. The birth blossom bent over and I slid out, standing there, naked and green with my arms over my head. Shireen was already waiting for me and was holding the dress I kept in the gardening shed to wear when I traveled here. From behind her I heard a woman gasp, in shock.

“Mother! What are you doing here!?!” shouted Shireen.

“I came to see what you doing, sneaking our here at night,” replied her mother, as she stepped out from behind the tree where she had been hiding. “I never suspected . . . I never realised . . . . the Old Gods are real!”

She had stepped forward and fell on her knees before me.

“Could you hand me my purse?” I asked Shireen. When she did so, I took out my lipstick and applied some to my lips before bending down, taking Selyse’s cheeks in my hands and planting a kiss on her lips. As I expected, she responded to my kiss. I can guess why Shireen doesn’t have any siblings.

“What is your command, my Goddess,” said Selyse, when I ended our kiss.

“You will not interfere with my training of your daughter nor with her Water Dance lessons,” I commanded.

“Yes, my Goddess,” agreed Selyse. “May I join her for her training sessions with you?”

“That would be acceptable,” I replied. To my surprise she then started stripping out of her clothes.

“Mother, what are you doing!?!” asked Shireen.

“I’m getting undressed so that I can train with you and the Goddess,” replied Selyse. “Now, take your clothes off!”

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “She can wear whatever she likes for our sessions. If she feels more comfortable in that pants and shirt, that is fine with me. It is important that you feel comfortable to freely move when we train.”

“So I can be undressed like you?” asked Selyse.

“Actually, I usually wear leaves when I am in this form,” I said as I quickly made myself a skirt of leaves and stuck two of them on me to form a top. While I was doing the same for her mother, Shireen stripped down so I made her a leaf skirt too.

“Thank you my Goddess!” gushed Selyse. “I shall wear this always!”

“That’s not necessary, either” I replied. “You can wear your dress when we you are at Court. Now lets do some training.”

As in turned our, Shireen’s mother was in horrible shape! She couldn’t even pull herself up onto the branch. But she kept trying during the whole session I spent with her daughter as we moved amongst the branches of the tree. After the session, Selyse put her clothes on over the leaves, leaving a trail of broken leaves behind her as she walked. In future sessions, Shireen went back to wearing her pants and shirt. But her mother asked me to dress her in leaves every time.


TORMUND

I had lost Wun-Wun to the west. He had gone west with the rest of his people and settled on the Iron Islands, where Ygrette had proceeded him. Toreg had been part of the first expedition to the Stepstones, the unsuccessful one. He had disappeared and is believed to have either been killed or sold to slavers. When I personally went to the Stepstones, we were more successful. Over time, we had developed a repeating strategy. I would land with a group of Free Folk we had picked up at Hardhome. After we were all on dry land, Stanis’ fleet would fight against the pirate ships, while we would fight the pirates in their base, which often included a castle. Once the pirates were defeated, and the new settlement was fortified, the surviving pirates would be loaded into the Kneeler fleet. Sometimes he would stop by Kings Landing while we were settling things in our new home. When we returned North, we would always stop off at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, to drop off our pirate captives before returning to Hardhome to pick up more Free Folk.


SAM

The religious gang war continues between the Sparrows and the Plant Gang. Daily there were confrontations between the two factions that escalated into fisticuffs. My stories about these incidents were beginning to attract the attention of the upper classes, most notibly, the Crown Princess’ mother, who had transferred her allegiance from the Fire God of Essos to the Old Gods of the forrest. Women at Court were starting to notice that she often left a trail of leaves as she walked the halls of the Red Keep.
This conflict was associated in the public minds with a new musical sound that had burst upon the social scene. The King had commissioned the creation of a Big Jass Band and the music it produced had inspired the existence of a similar band that played the same sort of Jass music, only better. This band was playing in an enormous dance hall in Fleabottom. Many people thought this second band was better. But they played the same sort of music as the King’s Big Band. The people of Fleabottom loved this new music, as it gave them an excuse to put aside doctrinal differences and dance the night away.


TRYSTANE

“Oysters! Oysters and muscles! Get your Oysters and Muscles!” cried a blond-haired girl with a wheel barrow full of them that she was pushing through the waterfront as I stumbled off the ship.

That was horrible! And I have to do it again if I ever want to return to Westeros! I hate ships!
Anyway, I came here to search for Danerys Targaryan and the last place she was seen, was the House of Black and White. So I suppose I should start there first. It wasn’t hard to find. I asked for a few people who gave me directions. But every one of them looked at me like I was crazy to ask such a thing. It was a tall building with one half painted white with black trim, the other half painted black with white trim. I climbed the steps and knocked on the bronze door, which was answered by a person wearing the illusionary face of an old man. That’s okay. I was currently wearing the illusion of a being a Summer Islander, which this man appeared to be too.

“May I help you?” asked the fake man who answered the door.

“Yes, I’m looking for a girl named Danerys Targaryan,” I explained. “Have you seen her?”

“There is No One by that name here,” said the fake man, before shutting the door in my face.

Well, I wasn’t going to quit that easily. I danced into the wereworld. Normally, in the wereworld, a building like this would appear to me in the form of a great sandstone butte. It had the butte shape all right. But instead of sandstone, the butte was made of thousands of skeletons linking arms and standing on each other’s shoulders. I ran through them like a they were a line of football players only to find myself confronted by more skeletons! An army of them that were fighting people dressed in westerosi clothes. In the distance, I could see skeletons hanging people, and scaffolds of skeletons that where sky-buried. I dodged and weaved through the skeleton army, only to be confronted by the bear-slug-thing from my past life that was crowned with the skull of Coyote-Woman. I dodged the claw it tried to swipe me with, and danced into a crowd of everyone I had ever killed! I dodged the claw of the lobsterman, then ducked under the beak of the Monk, who was actually a 6 foot tall talking crow, the bullets from that Israeli assassin almost got me, then I danced away from those Hashishim. The Mountain, dressed as a cowboy, swung at me. But I rolled away and into a new crowd of people. It was everyone one I had ever appeared to be. I danced past them and finally managed to bust through the walls again!
Once I was out I returned to the real world. A man wearing an illusionary face with multi-coloured hair opened the door.

“A man trusts that the Many-faced God will not have to repeat this lesson?” said the fake man.

I nodded and backed away. I would have to figure out another way of finding her.


EDRIC

Bran had allowed me to set up a small potions lab in the top of one of the towers. I was not very good with potions, but I figured for completeness sake I need to at least try teaching how to make potions. Margaery took an interest in this. I tried teaching her to make a few simple potions but for some reason they would not work for her. But if Bran or I or even Jon tried the exact same steps, the potion would work. Margaery was able to understand the interactions better than me. I decided to wait until Bran had caught up before trying any experimental potions. If this worked out, I may try building a lab at Winterfell so I can teach potions to Sansa. One thing I quickly learned. Many potions produce fumes that are heavier than air. So our potions were making a stink in the lower parts of the tower. This caused us to move our potions lab into the dungeon.

I was still re-growing weirwood trees. I often had to do it more than once, as the locals would cut down the tree. Other times, I would find the tree a source of worship. In those villages, I would return to late at night and transplant sprigs from the tips of branches into the ground forming a ring around the village.

There was conflict between villages, the conflict that had been stirred up by my regrowing the weirwoods. One day, Bran received a raven that stated that open warfare had broken out between the Blackwoods and the Brakens. At the Stoney Sept, Septon Walder was calling upon the faithful to join the Brakens in a holy crusade to cleanse the land of the followers of the Old Gods.


JON

Although my betrothed and I were separated by distance, I still was able to keep in touch with her. Raven messages were too short. Fortunately, Edric had an owl that was capable of carrying larger letters. And Margaery often made trips to King’s Landing using her plants. While there she was helping Shireen learn to fight, unarmed and to do acrobatics. I could have gotten Edric to magically transport me to see her. But I found magic to be painful and didn’t even want to try using magic to travel long distance. Besides, after Margaery and I had a discussion about the ethics of marrying someone much younger than yourself, I decided it would be best to wait until Shireen was grown before beginning our official courtship.

Edric was starting to teach Bran Potions, which I found to be an almost painless form of magic. It reminded me a little of Sith Alchemy and I wish I had a holocron to brush up on the subject. Margaery, Edric and I often had discussions on the subject and planned to start doing some experiments once Bran learned enough to be a participant.

And Bran was still having those dreams about the big Weirwood tree and the Crow with three eyes. I couldn’t help thinking that these were Force visions. But what did they mean?

On the political front, things were heating up. I try to avoid getting involved. If I did to the Riverlords what I had done to the Lords of the Ironborn, there would probably be trouble.


JOFFREY

There were starting to be some new “recruits” that were former pirates from the Stepstones. They liked my music. From what I had been able to gather from the stories I had heard from the musicians that I had come to hear me play, my music was starting to spread outside of the North. One of them played me a funny song about my Uncle Tryrion. As a lark, I sang it back to him but re-set it to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven.” I wish I had put more thought into it. Setting it to the tune of “Rock Around the Clock” would make more sense.

One night, when I arrived at the Mole Hole, Colleen approached me with a serious look.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m pregnant,” said Colleen.