Chapter 26: The Correction of Errors
The return of the Dornish envoys cast a pall over the Red Keep. Lord Celtigar and Princess Baela stood before Queen Rhaenyra's court, their sun-darkened skin doing little to hide their pale, grim expressions. The silence in the Great Hall was absolute as Lord Celtigar delivered his report, his voice the dry rustle of dead leaves.
"Your Grace, we delivered the terms as decreed," he stated, his eyes fixed on the floor. "Prince Qyle Martell received us with all the courtesy of his station. We were heard in full."
"And his answer?" Rhaenyra prompted, her voice tight.
It was Baela who spoke, her voice clear and defiant, a spark of her father's fire in the gloom. "He was polite, Your Grace. And he was absolute." She met the Queen's gaze. "He said, 'Dorne has no king but the Prince of Dorne.' He said their sun is not so easily shadowed. He said they will not kneel."
A collective intake of breath rippled through the assembled lords. To defy a queen was one thing; to defy the god that had conquered that queen was another level of madness entirely.
"The fools!" Jacaerys Velaryon exclaimed, his voice a mixture of anger and a strange, grudging respect. "The proud, arrogant fools! Do they think this is a game? Do they not understand what they have invited?"
"They understand their own history, Prince Jacaerys," Lord Corlys Velaryon said, his voice heavy. "They understand what it means to be Dornish. It is the only answer they know how to give." He looked at Rhaenyra. "They have chosen their fate."
"And what fate will that be?" Queen Rhaenyra asked the question that was on everyone's mind, her gaze drifting towards the window, towards the silent, brooding shape on the hill. "What will it do now?"
The question hung in the air, unanswered. An uneasy, terrifying quiet descended upon King's Landing. For three days, the world held its breath. The god on the hill remained motionless, a mountain of silent judgment. The waiting was a unique form of torture. The lords at court spoke in whispers, their conversations constantly circling back to the inevitable.
"He will burn them," Lord Jason Lannister opined to Lord Cregan Stark as they walked the castle ramparts. "Just as he did the armies. A sea of fire from the Boneway to the Summer Sea."
"Fire is a weapon of conquest," the grim northern lord replied, his breath misting in the air. "This god does not conquer. It… tidies. I do not think it will be so simple as fire."
Even the former Greens, now silent observers in their own home, debated the coming doom. Otto Hightower, a man whose life had been spent calculating political outcomes, found himself utterly at a loss.
"There is no precedent," he confessed to his daughter Alicent one evening. "No historical analogue for how a being of such power responds to defiance. What moves are left when your opponent can overturn the board at will?"
Alicent, her faith now a shattered ruin, simply stared into the fire. "Perhaps it will show them a mercy it never showed my son," she whispered bitterly.
It was Larys Strong, alone in his study, who dared to engage with the silence. He had done his part, had set the great beast's gaze upon a new problem. Now, he sought to understand the nature of the coming solution, to cement his value as the god's foremost interpreter.
A fascinating conundrum, Great One, he projected in a careful, academic whisper. The Dornish prove as stubborn as the histories suggested. Their pride is their greatest shield. A truly… untidy knot. How does one impose order on a people who value their identity above their very lives?
The response, when it came, was as cold and clear as glass. Krosis-Krif was not angry. He was not insulted. He was… intrigued. The problem was novel.
"THEY BELIEVE THEIR STRENGTH IS DERIVED FROM THEIR LAND," the voice resonated in Larys's mind. "THE SUN THAT HARDENS THEM. THE SAND THAT HIDES THEM. THE SCARCE WATER THAT TEACHES THEM PATIENCE. IT IS A FLAWED PREMISE."
Larys felt a thrill of intellectual horror. The god was not focused on the people.
"ONE DOES NOT DEBATE A FLAWED ARGUMENT," Krosis-Krif continued, a sense of cosmic pedagogy in his tone. "ONE CORRECTS THE PREMISE UPON WHICH IT IS BUILT."
On the fourth day, the correction began. It did not start with fire or armies. It started with the sky.
In Sunspear, Prince Qyle Martell was walking through the Water Gardens with his sister Aliandra, discussing contingency plans for a coastal invasion they knew would be useless.
"We can harry their supply lines, draw them deep into the sands…" Qyle was saying, when Aliandra stopped, her hand flying to her brow to shield her eyes.
"Brother," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Look."
Qyle looked up. The brilliant, merciless sun of Dorne, the very heart of their identity, was beginning to dim. Not obscured by a cloud, but actively fading, as if a great, unseen lens were being drawn across the sky. Within an hour, the whole of Dorne, from the Red Mountains to the shores of the Summer Sea, was plunged into a perpetual, unnatural twilight. The heat remained, trapped beneath the shimmering dome of force, but the light was gone, replaced by a sickly, oppressive gloom.
Panic began to spread through the towns and shadow cities. The people stared at the sky, their sun-worshiping faith shattered. This was a sorcery beyond comprehension.
"What is this?" Aliandra cried, her defiance finally cracking. "What has he done?"
"He has taken our sun," Qyle said, his voice a ghost.
That was only the beginning. The next day, the rivers ran with salt. From his perch in King's Landing, hundreds of leagues away, Krosis-Krif exerted his will. He did not boil the rivers; that was too crude. He reached deep into the earth, into the great aquifers that fed the Greenblood and the other lifelines of the arid land, and he changed their very nature. He forced the deep, briny waters of the earth into the fresh, sweet currents.
A maester came running into the throne room at Sunspear, a goblet of water in his hand, his face ashen. "My Prince! The Greenblood! It is poison! It tastes of the sea!"
"All along its length?" Qyle demanded, his heart sinking.
"All of it," the maester confirmed, his voice breaking. "The fields will be barren by week's end. The people… the people have nothing to drink."
The genius of the attack was its sheer, horrifying elegance. Krosis-Krif was not killing the Dornish people. He was killing Dorne. He was systematically dismantling the environment that had forged their defiant, independent character. He was turning their greatest strength, their harsh and formidable homeland, into their grave.
For a week, the people of Dorne suffered in the twilight, their water gone, their crops withering, their spirits breaking. They were a proud people, but pride is a poor substitute for water. The lords sent frantic ravens to Sunspear, their messages no longer defiant, but desperate.
"My Prince, our wells are dust."
"The children cry from thirst."
"The sun has forsaken us. What have you done?"
Prince Qyle Martell, who had stood so proudly against the Targaryen envoys, now stood on his balcony, looking out at his dying kingdom. The twilight world was silent, the usual vibrancy of his city replaced by a stunned, thirsty despair. His sister Aliandra stood beside him, her face stained with tears.
"He is not fighting us, brother," she said, her voice hoarse. "He is… unmaking us. He is turning our home into a hell that will outlast our bones."
"I know," Qyle said. He had been proud. He had been unbent. But he was still a prince, and a prince's first duty is to his people.
It was then that the god spoke to them all. The voice entered every Dornish mind, from the highest prince to the lowest salt-wife, a calm, clear, final lesson.
"YOUR SUN IS A PRIVILEGE, NOT A RIGHT. YOUR WATER IS A GIFT, NOT A GUARANTEE. YOUR PRIDE IS BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF SAND THAT I CAN TURN TO GLASS."
The voice was patient, like a teacher explaining a simple truth to a stubborn child.
"YOUR DEFIANCE WAS BASED ON A WORLD THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. I HAVE TAKEN YOUR SUN AND YOUR WATER. YOUR PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW. THIS IS THE FINAL TERM. THIS IS THE ONLY TERM."
A terrible choice settled upon them, clear as the twilight.
"KNEEL… OR LEARN TO DRINK SAND."
The voice faded, leaving behind only the impossible choice. Aliandra looked at her brother, her eyes filled with a grief so profound it seemed to have extinguished her famous fire.
"He has won, brother," she whispered, her words a surrender. "He has won. We cannot fight the sky. We cannot fight the sea."
Prince Qyle Martell stared out at the grey gardens, at the dying palms. The words of his house, the words that had defined his people for a thousand years, echoed in his mind. Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. They had been a shield against dragons, against kings, against armies. But they were no shield against a god who could steal the sun.
He walked from the balcony, through his silent, despairing court, and out of the gates of Sunspear. He walked until he reached the dry, cracked earth of what had once been a verdant field. He fell to his knees, the dust rising around him. He looked up at the twilight sky, at the place where his sun used to be.
And for the first time in the history of his proud and ancient line, the Prince of Dorne spoke the words of submission to the empty air, knowing with absolute certainty that the god in King's Landing was listening.
"We kneel," he said, his voice breaking, the sound swallowed by the vast, thirsty silence of his dying land. "Dorne kneels."
In the Red Keep, Larys Strong felt a wave of cosmic satisfaction wash over the city from the hill. It was not triumph. It was the quiet contentment of an equation being solved, of a messy room being tidied. His gambit had been a spectacular success. The last bastion of defiance in Westeros had been broken without a single soldier being lost. He had provided his master with the most exquisite entertainment. And he had, in the process, solidified his own position as the most important—and most dangerous—mortal man in the world.