Chapter 50: The Glass Candle

Daenerys did not immediately agree to Xaro's proposition. That night, she asked Jorah for his counsel, and the knight, as expected, advised her to have nothing to do with such mysterious and dangerous men.

"Ser, this is not Westeros, a land where magic is a half-forgotten children's story," she sighed, a deep weariness in her voice. "I wish I could keep the warlocks at arm's length, but you have seen the streets of this city. There are fire mages and shadowbinders in every alley. Magic is real here. It cannot be avoided."

She thought of the tales the sea captain had told, of what was happening even in the far west. A lord killed many times over, yet always brought back to life. A red priestess birthing a shadow that could kill a king. Curses thrown with leeches. Prophecies were no longer the ramblings of madmen; they were coming true. In such a world, to ignore magic was to invite disaster. Renly Baratheon had ignored it, and a ghost in the dark had slit his throat.

"I do not need to master their power," she continued, "for I have dragons. But I must understand it." She looked at him, her gaze firm. "Tell me of this Erathon. Can he be trusted?"

Jorah considered this. "Xaro was not lying. Erathon is more concerned with his comforts than with the great secrets of the world. His threat is far less than that of Pyat Pree. If you must go, and if your guards and I are with you, the danger should be minimal." He still looked deeply unhappy. "But the best choice, Your Grace, is not to go at all."

She did not take his advice.

Around nine that evening, they rode in the ox-cart through the brightly lit night markets, Jorah and her bloodriders providing a close escort. They came to a quieter district in the west of the city, a place of merchants and craftsmen.

"Erathon is a strange fellow, even for a warlock," Xaro said as he stepped ponderously from the carriage. "No one ever sees him during the day. But after midnight, he can often be seen roaming the streets, a grey-robed specter haunting the fountains and the docks. It is why they call him the Night-Waker."

As he spoke, the tightly closed door of purpleheart wood before them swung open. A middle-aged man with shoulder-length black hair stood in the doorway, bathed in the cool light from within. He had the milky skin and blue lips of all the warlocks, and a single black pearl was pierced through his left nostril.

"When did you…?" Dany gasped, horrified. The door had been shut a moment ago. He had appeared from nowhere.

"Hah! Mother of Dragons, you are the source of all miracles," Erathon laughed, his voice surprisingly warm. "You should not be so surprised by such a small trick."

"It is nothing," Xaro sniffed, unimpressed. "Compared to the shadow-play of Quaithe, he is not even an apprentice."

The Night-Waker did not seem offended. "In all of Qarth," he said with a smile, "who would dare claim to be stronger than Quaithe?" He gave Dany a courtly bow. "Welcome, Mother of Dragons. It is the greatest honor of my life to have you in my humble home. To show my gratitude, tonight I will do my best to show you the true power of magic." He clapped his hands three times, a sharp, echoing sound. "Please, follow me."

Confused, Dany stepped over the threshold, and her breath caught in her throat. Behind the gate was a garden path of red stone. On either side grew a forest of strange, sorghum-like plants, their slender, two-meter-high stalks glowing like white, opaque glass, their long leaves shimmering with a faint blue light. It was as if she had stepped into another world.

"Ghost grass," Jorah whispered, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword.

Clang! Instantly, her bloodriders drew their arakhs, forming a protective circle around her.

"Do not be alarmed," the Night-Waker said with a faint smile. "It is merely a landscape plant."

"Khaleesi, this is a cursed place!" Aggo shouted. "Only the souls of the damned can make the ghost grass shine! Everyone knows!"

"Calm yourselves," Dany commanded, pushing past their blades. "If the grass were so terrible, would the people of Qarth allow it to grow in their city?"

"The Mother of Dragons has a wisdom that ordinary men cannot match," Erathon complimented. He then explained, "The horsemen fear it because it is aggressive, and their horses cannot eat it. But in truth, it is a natural 'water gauge' for the tides of magic. When magic is strong in the world, the grass grows. When it ebbs, the grass withers."

"And the clapping?" she asked, touching one of the cool, glass-like stalks.

"I cursed them," Erathon said with a queer laugh, "with the souls of the newly dead, to make them glow."

He led them through the eerie garden to his laboratory. It was a strange sight. Jorah and the Dothraki looked around at the shelves of bizarre ingredients with awe and suspicion, but to Dany, it looked for all the world like a chemistry lab from her old life, full of glass beakers, measuring cylinders, and distillation racks.

"What is that lamp?" she asked, pointing to a device that looked like a small gas canister with a burner on top.

"A secondary wildfire reagent."

"Wildfire!" Jorah yelped, pulling her back. "Seven Hells, man, are you mad? In this heat, that thing could—"

"It should have exploded long ago," Erathon interrupted calmly. "But as you can see, my laboratory is intact." Dany reached out and touched the grey iron jar. It was cold as ice.

"But wildfire is a juggler's trick," the warlock said, dismissing it. He pointed to the center of the room. "The glass candle… that is the embodiment of a magician's true power."

It was a twisted rod of milky, opaque glass, more than a meter long, set in a square stone base. It looked like nothing special. "What does it do?"

"Watch," Erathon said. He stood before it and began to chant in a high-pitched, alien tongue.

FWOOM!

The candle erupted in a silent explosion of light, as brilliant and white as a thousand stars, filling the dark room with what looked like floating, incandescent snowflakes. It was like a dream, like stepping into another reality.

"Try to empty your mind," Erathon's voice came, as if from a great distance.

As she stared into the impossible light, Dany’s mind did shift. Without thinking, her soul reached out, ignoring the distance of streets and walls, and found the black dragon sleeping in her palace. She was in the Dragon Dream. But as her gaze returned to the shining candle, her head swam. The world dissolved into a blur of white light, and then snapped into focus with a sickening lurch.

She was falling, tumbling from a boundless, starry sky. She stopped suddenly, ten meters above the ground, hovering. Below her was a vast grassland, dotted with the familiar yurts of a Dothraki camp. The vision plunged downward, through the smoke-hole of a large tent.

Inside, she saw a familiar silver-haired woman. It was Lyra. And in her arms was a fat, happy, white-skinned baby. It was Jhoqo, her son, the boy whose severed head had been displayed on a spike.

"Jhoqo, my precious boy," Lyra cooed. "You eat so much."

As if hearing a sound, the silver-haired baby boy suddenly opened his eyes. And they looked directly up, through time and space, and met Dany's.

A hand gripped her shoulder, and she gasped, the vision shattering. She turned and saw Jorah, his face a mask of worry. She was back in the warlock's laboratory. But her world had been turned completely upside down.