herah had long fostered an affection for the red swords. unconventional, perhaps, but even their gruff company she preferred to the cruelty of her sisters, in those early temple days. by the time her and qoren’s red threads had crossed she’d become something sharper, a rough-cut ruby hewn in darkness. but the affection remained. other priestesses sought their morning meditations among gentle flames or soft breeze; herah’s was at the edge of a courtyard, the silence cleaved where steel met iron and wood. but there was a grace to the swordplay of red priests, a glory to it. always and only in the pursuit of his design, and all the more beautiful for it. the weapons hanging at hips around them now bore no true blessings.
what did she make of the vale of arryn? herah had spent enough time staring at stone and sky that her gaze only drifted to the planes of qoren’s profile as she contemplated her true answer. the westerosi had earned nothing more than riddles and clever deceptions of the tongue, but qoren – for a brother, she would not allow a false word.
“cold,” she decided. “empty. even without the stench of death, there is no true life here. the fires burn and the voices buzz, but there is no warmth of them to be felt.” her fingers tightened into the fabric of qoren’s robes. the lords and ladies gave her a wide berth, enough to cast her mind from the desolate shell of a home they wandered. but with nothing to distract her, the great open maw of this barren land pressed in. “the boltons can take us as far south as they like, that will not change.”
herah drew up straighter and released her grip on qoren’s sleeve with a slow exhale. “if i can make one request of you before we leave this forsaken mountain, please do not get yourself sent through the moon door. i need you by my side, for this long night and the next.” a beat. “he’s been further away from me since we left the north. his true intentions harder to grasp, harder still to hold. have you felt this?”
QOREN’S SWORD WENT WHEREVER THE red king bid it, though his hands itched for a bidding to plunge it into the hearts of some nonbelievers. for now it was sheathed at his side, safe in the copper-red scabbard, only a swing of an arm away from the throats of the enemies that seemed to cloy these hallways like the rats which swam the canals of braavos. herah was correct in her estimation. it was a cold place, somehow, he thought, colder than the north, and the vitality of so many of the kingdom’s people gathered in one place did nothing to warm it. tensions seemed high, and the presence of two red-swathed foreigners patrolling the halls did nothing but raise it. qoren could see that plain enough in the eyes of those they passed.
“aye. this is a place for rock snakes and birds. hardy goats, perhaps. not men.” god-fearing ones, certainly not. the stink of death permeated the eyrie, and in the flames qoren saw very little. it was unnerving — the lord was usually forthcoming with images in the fire to guide him on his journeys in this strange land. “i have no intention of being thrown down the door with nobody on the ground to sent me off with prayers and the kiss of life.” he said resolutely, even if his actions did not affirm such safe sentiments.
if he had had his choice of ally, it perhaps would not be the priestess of myr. he did not trust easily, and though they wore the same godly uniform of scarlet, and his the same red flames dancing behind their eyes, she was a stranger still. it was not his choice though, and he knew that as well as the prayers that fell off his tongue from the roll of memory. the lord of light had chosen for him; his lieutenant in the war of this far off battlefront, against gnarled tree spirits and the septenary of false deities who dwelled in glass-windowed temples. “i have felt just that.” he sighed, itching for the clarity that he found in essos, or even in the north. “his voice feels swept away by the mountain winds.” the things he saw in the fire were snatched - far-away screams, men falling like flies in a spider’s web, rogar’s eyes turned back in his head and shadows at his fingers. he could not make sense of them here, in such sporadic lack of clearness. “all i know for certain is that something bad is coming. if he is trying to warn us, we are too far to hear.”
