A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Daenerys VII
The khalasar marches and Drogo's wound festers under a poultice torn away too soon; Daenerys watches her sun-and-stars begin to fall.
The chapter retold
The khalasar breaks camp and marches on, and the small wound Drogo took during the Lhazareen raid, treated with a poultice by Mirri Maz Duur, one of the captured godswomen Daenerys spared, begins to fester after the dressing is torn away too soon in the rush of travel. What should have healed cleanly instead turns, over the course of the ride, into something visibly, frighteningly wrong, and Daenerys watches ÔÇö helpless in a way she has not been helpless in many chapters ÔÇö as her husband's strength starts, for the first time since she's known him, to fail.
The chapter turns the small detail planted several chapters back into the central crisis of Daenerys's married life, and it does so with a cruel irony baked into the cause: Mirri Maz Duur's care, offered after Daenerys spared her people from slavery, becomes tangled up in Drogo's decline in ways that raise more questions than the text answers outright. Everything Daenerys has built in this marriage ÔÇö status, safety, a home of sorts among a people who were never meant to be hers ÔÇö is suddenly as fragile as the wound closing badly across her husband's chest.
This movement: The Green Fork and the Whispering Wood
- Tywin's van tramples Tyrion's hill tribes on the Green Fork ÔÇö a battle Robb never meant to win.
- The real blow lands in the Whispering Wood: Jaime Lannister taken, his host shattered under Riverrun's walls.
- Ned trades a false confession for his daughters' safety; Joffrey trades Ned's head for eternity's contempt.
- Khal Drogo takes a wound in Lhazar; Mirri Maz Duur's blood magic costs Dany her son and her sun-and-stars.