A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Daenerys IX
Daenerys wakes to ashes: Rhaego dead and monstrous, Drogo an empty shell. She gives her sun-and-stars mercy with a pillow.
The chapter retold
Daenerys wakes from her labor to find the world entirely changed: her son Rhaego was stillborn, twisted and scaled, dead well before Mirri Maz Duur's magic could have saved anyone, and Drogo ÔÇö his body technically alive, his mind and spirit gone ÔÇö has been left an empty shell by the very ritual meant to cure him. Understanding at last exactly what price the blood magic actually charged, and that it was never going to be paid by her, Daenerys sits with the husband who can no longer recognize her, and gives him the only gift left to give: she smothers him with a pillow, ending what the magic left behind rather than let it linger.
It's the single starkest illustration the book offers of Mirri Maz Duur's warning, made only after the fact, that death pays for life ÔÇö Daenerys assumed the price would fall on some faceless victim of the ritual's power, never imagining the ledger would be balanced against her own unborn son and her own husband instead. The mercy she shows Drogo, ending his hollow existence with her own hands rather than leaving him to whatever comes next, is the last act of the wife she was; everything Daenerys becomes from this point forward will be built by the widow left standing over that empty shell.
This movement: Fire and Blood
- The lords of the north and Trident raise Robb Stark: the King in the North!
- Arya slips out of King's Landing shorn and renamed in Yoren's recruit column.
- Tywin sends Tyrion to court to rule as acting Hand and clean up Cersei's mess.
- Dany gives Drogo mercy, binds Mirri to the pyre, and walks into the fire with three stone eggs. Dawn: three dragons, one khaleesi, a new world.
The fallen ÔÇö spoilers
- Rhaego ÔÇö The stallion who mounts the world, dead before he drew breath ÔÇö the price of bloodmagic.
- Khal Drogo ÔÇö When the sun rose in the west and set in the east ÔÇö a pillow, and mercy.