The Bone King, Chapter 63

What if? #6, Part 2

All hail the Father of Serpents.
All hail the Lord of the Slithering Things.
All hail the King of the Mountains and the Skies.
All hail the Father of the Earth Shaker.
All hail the King of the Bone Zone
Kneel before the Great Erector of Jason Lee, the Big Snek Boss.

The chants rang out through the marble-boned hall like the drone of hornets caught in honey, echoing off ribs of stone and steel that arched above the congregation like the jaws of a god. The crier’s voice rasped raw with the weight of ritual, his arms outstretched in devotion, and yet still he called out as though the ceiling might open and swallow him whole for silence.

“Yeah, enough of that; it’s getting tacky,” A hand rose from the throne. Fingers like sculpted ivory, long and clean and unnervingly still. The crier faltered mid-syllable, voice catching like meat on a hook. Jason Lee, known across the known world, from Asshai by the Shadow to the Iron Islands, by names both sacred and absurd, let his arm fall to rest once more on the coiled arm of his seat. He said nothing at first. Just looked down.

The throne itself loomed twenty feet high, carved from the fused bones of Fire Wyrms and painted with the blood of ancient, white-barked trees with snarling faces carved upon them. His bare feet rested upon the head of a petrified basilisk. His chest was bare, save for a draped chain of living serpents that slid lazy over his collarbones. The skin around his lips lay bare and beardless. His black hair was tied back with a strip of dragon leather. The man looked neither amused nor angry—just aware. Eyes like blazing coals watching ants that moved too slow for interest.

At the foot of the throne knelt five travelers in foreign garb, heads bowed, cloaks trailing dust behind them. Wool dyed rich but fraying at the hems, hands crusted with the journey. Their boots creaked when they shifted, one by one rising as Nazra Ak-Adar turned to them with a nod.

Nazra wore silks the color of dried blood and the sheen of fresh oil. His lips were inked black in the tradition of the Bone Priests of the Deep Wells, and in his right hand he carried a staff crowned with the skull of a young Leviathan. It was the symbol of his office. The skull was said to have been the stillborn offspring of the Serpent Father’s firstborn, the Dalamadur, Snakey. He stood with shoulders squared and gaze forward, though one eye was milk-white and the other yellow like a crow’s. He sniffed once.

Behind the five rose a larger retinue, left waiting in the courtyard below. They had not been allowed entry. Not out of fear. There were no guards in the room. No archers on the walls. Jason Lee had no need of either. His gaze alone had once boiled a man in his armor, and the tale had spread like rot in wheat. Still, the men outside waited, uneasy. It was not just fear. It was the smell. The foreigners brought it with them, heavy as a corpse tide. Unwashed wool. Spiced oils that clung too long. Horses uncleaned. Meat uncured. The palace priests had burned six bowls of incense before their arrival and lit seven more after.

Nazra did not smile as he stepped forward. He raised his voice just enough to carry across the long span of the hall.

“You have come far, strangers,” he said. “Too far for curiosity. The Bone Zone is not a realm easily reached. And the Serpent God does not grant audience lightly. Nor does he tolerate waste. Speak now, strangers. And may your words not crawl slower than the worms beneath our feet.”

The hall fell still. One of the travelers swallowed, the sound audible. Dust motes drifted like ash in the shafts of light cutting in through high, narrow slits in the wall. The Serpent God leaned forward, one arm draped across his knee. Waiting. And then, the eldest of the delegates stepped forward. A woman. Red of hair, pale skin and clearly undead, but not one of the Serpent God’s creations. This one, it seemed, was borne of the god of the Red Priests. A deep scar ran across her throat and she spoke with a raspy voice. “I am–or I used to be–Catelyn Stark, widow of Eddard Stark, once the Warden of the North, before he was murdered by King Joffery. I am the mother of Rob Stark, King in the North, and I was there to see the light fade from my boy’s eyes as the Freys murdered him under guest rights. My daughters, Arya and Sansa, and my son, Rickon and Bran… they’re all missing, but I believe they’re alive.”

She paused. “I beseech thee, Father of Serpents, to aid me in avenging my family and saving those who yet live.” 

Jason Lee did not stir at first. He held Catelyn Stark’s gaze as if he measured the worth of her breath. There was no flicker of light in those eyes. No movement on his face save for a faint tightening at the corner of his mouth. His serpents coiled around his shoulders, forked tongues flicking at the stale air, and for a moment the hall felt smaller than any tomb.

Nazra Ak-Adar tapped his staff upon the floor. The echo was hollow, as though it reached down into depths unknown. He shifted his weight, the scarlet silk rustling against itself like a dying fire. The assembled foreigners stood in a hush. A lesser woman might have cast her eyes aside, but the red-haired figure kept her chin raised, though her hands trembled at her sides. One could see the black veins that crept along her throat, the brand of some foul resurrection that set her apart from the living.

Finally, Jason Lee spoke. His voice was low, each syllable a slow coil of sound that curled in the ears of all who listened. “You stand among bones older than any of your gods, come asking for blood. My blood. My power.” 

He rose from his throne, the chain of serpents sliding from his shoulders to the armrest, hissing in protest at being disturbed. His bare feet came down on the stone with a calm weight, and his eyes locked on the woman like a hawk sighting prey. “You ask the Father of Serpents to set right the slaughter of your kin. Do you believe there is justice left in me?”

He stopped an arm’s length from her. He smelled of incense and old magic, of scaled things that swam in darkness. She met his stare, her scar drawing tight beneath the edges of colorless lips, but she made no move to kneel again. Nazra watched them both. The staff in his hand remained upright, the skull perched on its tip seeming to grin at the scene.

Somewhere beyond the high walls, the wind groaned through the bone spires of the fortress. The ground shook and clouds of dust puffed from the ceiling; the Dalamadur was moving once more. One of the foreigners swallowed hard enough that his throat clicked. Another reached to steady the hilt of his blade. Jason Lee’s hand drifted past the heads of the living serpents coiled about him, not petting them so much as acknowledging their slithering presence.

“I will hear your tale,” he said at last. “And then you will hear my price.”

The chamber seemed to pulse with a deep and voiceless expectation. Jason Lee stood before Catelyn Stark, head tilted, eyes unwavering as they danced across the dark veins that rimmed her throat. The serpents at his feet hissed like children in complaint, shifting around his ankles, their scales rasping against the stone floor. And so she told him everything and spared no detail. Every so often, the Great Lord would ask her to clarify something and she would, but her story was spun without distraction or pause, culminating in the deaths of her husband, her son, herself, and the scattering of her family.

He held up one hand and the movement stilled.

“You come here bearing grief and rage,” he said. His voice was scarcely above a breath but carried to every corner of the hall. “I have both in abundance.”

Catelyn’s throat worked as she swallowed, and the scar there stood out like a fresh brand. She lifted a trembling hand to brush the ragged edge of her cloak. The dust that clung to it fell in small clouds around her boots. Nazra Ak-Adar watched with his head bowed, the staff’s skull gleaming in the drifting light.

A rustle from the travelers at her flank. One of the men took a step forward, only to think better of it. Jason Lee’s gaze flickered and the man froze. The Serpent God turned back to Catelyn, and there was no warmth in his stare—only a consideration like a butcher to his block.

“You wish me to destroy the Freys,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “To show them a debt paid in blood. And then you would have me break open King’s Landing as well, to claim a Stark child from its talons.” 

He paused. The living serpents draped across his shoulders snapped their jaws at the air, tasting the tension like the faint tang of lightning before a storm. “You’re in luck, then, that the little blonde son of a bitch has thrown an insult at my feet. I will do this. And you shall see the fruit of your desperation.”

The undead woman inclined her head. Her words came quiet. “Thank you.”

Jason Lee stepped back, the chain of serpents shifting to form a coiled mass behind him. He glanced once at Nazra, who inclined his head in silent understanding. The staff of bone tapped the floor again, resonating like a drum in a deep cavern. The distant retinue stirred, their whispers an anxious hiss echoing through the towering doors.

“Go,” the Serpent God said. “You will have your vengeance—and your daughter.” 

He gestured for Nazra to lead them out. “You will witness what you have asked of me. And, in return, your line shall bend the knee to me and no other. They shall know no other king, no other ruler, and no other lord but me.”

He turned away, mounting the throne in a single fluid stride. The watchers only moved once his gaze slid past them. Catelyn followed Nazra through the high-vaulted corridor, torches flickering over walls etched with serpents devouring men. Their footsteps fell in near silence, broken only by the rasp of wool against stone.

They reached a balcony, its banister made of carved spine segments that overlooked the valley. Mountain peaks jagged the horizon, dark against the setting sun. Nazra gestured outward with the tip of his staff, as though guiding her sight. On the far slope, something titanic moved in slow undulations, larger than any beast that walked the world.

A ridge rose from the mountain’s flank and then another, each lined with scales that caught the dying light in a shimmer of rust and bone. The Dalamadur, firstborn of the Serpent Father. A roar that was half hiss, half avalanche tore through the sky, and its gargantuan coils spiraled around the mountain’s crown. Whole swaths of pine toppled like stalks of grain beneath its weight. The ground trembled under Catelyn’s feet, and dust drifted from the masonry as if the fortress itself feared collapse. 

She watched that ancient dragon-snake as it curled tighter, shaking the earth in a thunderous roll, and in that moment the wind carried the echo of a distant prayer—or a warning—through the halls behind her. Nazra smiled and bowed his head at the holy offspring of the Father of Serpents. “The Great Erector found the Divine Serpent as an egg and raised it as his own child. Dalamadur listens only to the Great King, Jason Lee, and no other. He is the God of Death and the God of Life in one physical vessel.”