Dark Sister

A slender Valyrian longsword made for a woman's hand, and carried by the most dangerous Targaryens.

The blade itself

Dark Sister is a longsword, but a narrow one ÔÇö slimmer in the blade and lighter in the hand than a fighting manÔÇÖs sword of the same length, with a shorter grip made for a smaller palm. It was built for speed and for the point rather than for hacking through plate, and everything about the proportions says it was made for a specific person. The steel is dark with the usual rippled waves running through it, close-set and fine, and it has a cold look even in firelight; where other Valyrian blades flush red near a hearth, this one seems to keep its own colour. The pommel and guard are plain, dark and unornamented.

The whole thing weighs very little. A woman of ordinary build can hold it extended for a long time without shaking, which is precisely the advantage it was designed to confer, and in the hands of somebody fast it is a nightmare to defend against ÔÇö it is quick coming in and quicker leaving. The edge has needed nothing done to it in three hundred years.

Because that is the nature of the material. Valyrian steel was made with dragonfire and with spells nobody has recovered, and when the Doom took the Freehold it took the craft entire; no living smith can forge a new blade, and the best that can be managed is a Qohorik master reheating an old one into a new shape at ruinous cost. Every sword is therefore an inheritance, and inheritances get fought over. Dark Sister has been passing between the hands of extremely dangerous people for three centuries without once, so far as the records show, being sold.

Visenya

It was Visenya TargaryenÔÇÖs. She was the eldest of the three, the sister who trained with a sword while the world was looking at the dragons, and she wore Dark Sister as a working weapon rather than an ornament ÔÇö one of a very small number of highborn women in Westerosi history to be taken entirely seriously with a blade in her hand. She rode Vhagar in the Conquest and she was, by every account that survives, the most frightening of the siblings by a considerable margin.

The best-known story about the sword involves her using it on her own brother. Aegon was walking a street in his half-built capital with guards around him when the crowd got too close and knives came out; Visenya had him behind her and the situation resolved before the guards had finished turning round. Her point afterwards, made by drawing the blade and opening a shallow cut on the kingÔÇÖs cheek before anyone could stop her, was that his protection was too slow and too many. The Kingsguard ÔÇö seven men, sworn for life, chosen for skill rather than birth ÔÇö comes directly out of that afternoon. It is the only case in this collection of a sword being used to found an institution.

Down the Targaryen line

After Visenya the blade stayed in the family, and it went, as a rule, to the ones with a talent for violence rather than to the eldest. That is the pattern in it: Dark Sister is not the kingÔÇÖs sword and never pretended to be. It went to princes, second sons and cousins ÔÇö men who fought.

Prince Daemon Targaryen carried it during the reign of his brother and into the war that followed. Whatever else can be said about Daemon, and a great deal can, he was probably the finest swordsman his family produced, and the pairing of the most gifted Targaryen fighter with the sword made for the most gifted Targaryen fighter is exactly the kind of thing that made the rest of the court nervous. That the blade found its way to him rather than to the man on the throne tells you how the family sorted itself.

Bloodraven

The last well-documented owner is Brynden Rivers, called Bloodraven ÔÇö a royal bastard with a wine-coloured birthmark, one eye, a reputation for sorcery, a thousand eyes and one, and one of the strangest careers in Westerosi history. He was a great archer before he was anything else, so a slender fast blade suited him. He fought in the Blackfyre rebellions, served as Hand of the King, ran the realmÔÇÖs spies with a thoroughness that people still speak of uneasily, and was eventually sent to the Wall for something he had done that could not be publicly forgiven and privately could not be regretted.

He took Dark Sister with him. A man condemned to the NightÔÇÖs Watch keeps nothing, but nobody appears to have tried to take a Valyrian sword off Brynden Rivers. He rose to Lord Commander in due course, and the blade went north with him on rangings ÔÇö into the one part of the world where Valyrian steel is not an heirloom but a piece of equipment.

What became of it ÔÇö if an ending is written, it is here. Spoilers.

Bloodraven took Dark Sister beyond the Wall on a ranging he never returned from. Where a Valyrian blade ended up in the country of the creatures Valyrian steel kills is a question the story leaves hanging, and it is hard to believe that is an accident.

What became of the man is stranger than what became of the sword, and is dealt with elsewhere. The blade itself has not been reported in any hand since. It is one of the two great missing swords, and of the two it is the one whose absence sits in exactly the wrong place on the map.