A Song of Ice and Fire - A Chapter a day discussion
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A Clash of Kings
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11/16/15 - Chapter 48: Daenerys IV
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Your point 7, I think Rhaegar assumed his daughter would be another dragon head, Rhaenys, and maybe he thought, at that time anyway, he needed to have one more child to complete the set? *SPOILER FOR A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE* (view spoiler)1. This is the chapter I remember most in A Clash of Kings and is the topic of a lot of debate. Daenerys visits the House of the Undying. It is ancient and grey and is considered a ruin. It is also situated away from the other buildings of Qarth.
2. I forgot about the inky blue leaf trees surrounding it, that’s how they make their drink called Shade of the Evening. Their bark is black, almost opposite of a weirwood.
3. Jhogo says this is an evil place and wants to get out of here. Even Drogon seems unhappy. Ser Jorah and Xaro also try to encourage her not to go in there but she is resolved. If they cannot dissuade her then they offer to go with her, but Pyat Pree says she needs to do this alone. He also says if she doesn’t do this now she’ll never get the chance again. Jorah tells her to remember Mirri Maz Duur but Dany says Mirri had knowledge and was only a maegi (warlocks don’t seem much better to me in this series). Pyat Pree seems pleased by this and says she’s as wise as a crone.
4. Pyat Pree guides her toward the building but walks away from the entrance, saying the front leads in but never out again. Odd. He says this building wasn’t made for mortals so he tells her to do exactly what he says. It’s actually pretty simple, always take the first door to your right and always climb up, not down. He says some doors will be open and try to entice her to go in. Some will show the past, others the future, and some that never were, but never enter any of these doors. She’ll eventually find an audience chamber to speak to the Undying. He tells her to be patient, they are immortal.
5. He tells her to drink the Shade of the Evening so it’ll help her to see these truths. I like that the taste gets better in her mouth, of delicious things (though Drogo’s seed was a bit jarring, lol). After she drinks it she enters the building. It gets pretty trippy in here.
6. Though Pyat Pree told her to go alone she does bring Drogon with her, which I’m surprised he let her. I guess the “pet” doesn’t count.
7. Dany tells herself not to look inside the open doors, not that he told her she couldn’t, but she doesn’t want to be tempted. She looks anyway and sees a lot of weird shit. Some of which will happen in later books! I wonder how much of it is symbolic, what’s real, and what will never happen. *SPOILER FOR A STORM OF SWORDS* (view spoiler) The third door she sees her house in Braavos with the lemon tree and Ser Willem Darry. She wants badly to enter, missing it so much, but doesn’t. In another room she sees her brother Rhaegar with his wife and newborn son, Aegon. He tells a prophesy that the dragon has three heads and there still must be one more. Rhaegar says of his son he is the song of ice and fire, the title of the series, so this is significant. Rhaegar believes he is the prince that was promised. It’s creepy how he looks straight at Dany when he says this.
8. At the end of the hall are stairs going down and there were no doors to the right. It’s clever of Dany to keep following the wall and pick the last door on the left (which would be the first door on her right), especially when the darkness starts closing in on her!
9. After a while she finds Pyat Pree outside on the grass who tells her she must’ve made a wrong turn and he’ll show her the way to the Undying. He takes her further away from the door to the right saying that’s not the way, and the Undying won’t wait forever, but Dany reminds him what he told her earlier; they have all the time in the world. He calls her stubborn and lost. It is a trick! She goes through the right door and up a flight of stairs.
10. Interesting Dany prays to the Warrior for courage and the Dothraki god for strength. She didn’t seem very religious to me.
11. Now she sees inside a great hall with lots of wizards who warmly welcome her and call themselves the Undying. They beg her to enter and promise they will tell her everything she wants to know but Drogon chews at the wood of the door to the right and she enters through that door instead. It was another trick!
12. Inside this room is the real audience chamber, which is a lot creepier. A human heart is suspended in mid-air; it’s blue and corrupted and still beats. There are figures of blue shadows, hmm... She sits in an empty chair beside them. She waits for them to speak. They call her mother of dragons. In the dark she can see their figures better; they’re ancient and very blue and aren’t breathing or moving. They are dressed in Qartheen fashion, though the clothes are rotting off. She asks what she saw in that hallway. They say it’s the shape of shadows...morrows not yet made...very cryptic talk.
13. Now they call her child of three and she is confused. They say the dragon has three heads. They also tell her some prophesies I find highly intriguing:
“Three fires must you light... One for life and one for death and one to love. Three mounts must you ride... One to bed and one to dread and one to love. Three treasons will you know... Once for blood and once for gold and once for love.”
As she listens her own heart is slowing and it’s hard for her to speak.
14. When she asks for help they suddenly give her a fast-moving montage of visions; some of these things have already happened, like Viserys’s death. Other visions may have happened already or will happen later in the series, like that king with blue eyes but no shadow some say is Stannis. *SPOILER FOR A DANCE WITH DRAGONS* (view spoiler) A stone beast breathing shadow-fire comes out of a smoking ruin, may have something to do with greyscale, some say. A wall of ice and a blue flower growing out of it is the Wall and Lyanna’s favorite flower is a winter rose. For the R+L=J theory, some say this is more proof of that. At the Mother of Mountains in Vaes Dothrak she sees all the crones kneel before her. *SPECULATION ON WINDS OF WINTER* (view spoiler)
15. Suddenly Drogon wakes her from these visions and she sees the Undying Ones standing all around her, cold and dead and attacking her (reminds me of the Others). Dany is so weak she can’t fend them off. Omg, they’re trying to eat her! Then Drogon does something completely badass. He blows fire for the first time, burning up the Undying Ones! He tears at that blue heart in the middle of the room. You go, Drogon! His fire brings her strength back and she hurries out of there. She runs and finds a door and exits through it and is back outside again. Behind her the building is on fire, lol.
16. She sees Pyat Pree chanting some sort of magic. When he sees her he is pissed, tries to attack her with a knife, but Drogon saves her yet again, and her bloodriders capture him. Ser Jorah is there to comfort her. What a wild ride!
*SPOILER FOR A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE* (view spoiler)*SPOILER FOR A STORM OF SWORDS* (view spoiler)
*SPECULATION ON WINDS OF WINTER* (view spoiler)
1-Daenerys is about to go in the House of the Undying, which is long and low and seems to have no towers or Windows. Sounds pretty dark. Jhogo told her is an evil place, that drink the morning sun. Xaro was there too, telling her she’ll get nothing. Aggo said many don’t come out, and I wonder how he knows that. I would have expected Xaro to say something like that. But she won’t change her mind, so her bloodriders and then Jorah offered themselves to go with her. Pyat Pree came out from the trees and said she’ll enter alone, or won’t enter. I guess Drogon doesn’t count, lol. She wondered if he’s been there all along, he’s creepy.
2-While they are walking, Pyat tells her she should always enter the first door to her right, and if she sees a stair, always go up, never down, as she should never go to a door to her left. He tells her some doors will be open, and she’ll see visions from the past, some that will be and some that will never be. She should look for an audience chamber, and be patient once she gets there. I wonder how Pryat knows so, has he walk inside by himself several times to learn always go right and up? He made it sound (at least I understood), if she took one wrong door or goes down, she won’t be able to leave. Or was it known before which way to take.
3-There was a dwarf at the door, no higher than her knee. Wow, so so small! There she took the warlock’s wine to get in, it was one of the terms. It tasted like all the tastes she’d ever known, and like none of them. Really weird.
4-So, she goes in, and the first three rooms are the same, and she always went right, she thought it was sorcery. Well, there was something in that wine and something in those rooms I think. Drogon was with her, and she found a room with all the doors to her left, so she took none. She started to hear really creepy sounds from behind the doors, I would not go in one of those, lol. She follows Drogon, and some doors were opened, so she saw inside.
5-She saw really interesting things, but most were not nice. The woman being savaged, a feast of corpses and the dead man with the head of a wolf wearing an iron crown, holding a lamb’s leg. And his eyes followed her! I wonder what this all things mean. She also saw the house of Braavos, the one with the read door. Ser Willem was there, and told her to come. She was about to, when she remembered he was dead, and run. It must have been really weird for her, to see all those things.
6-She passed a lot of doors, until she saw a man, to her left, with dark eyes and long silver hair. She thought he was Viserys at first, but the man was taller. I think he was Rhaegar. The man said the baby should be named Aegon, and he was the prince that was promised, and had a song of ice and fire. When I first read it, I kept wondering which was that song he alredy had. But, if I am correct and this is Rhaegar’s son, he died in the sack of King’s Landing. So, did the song died with him?
7-It seemed the man looked at Daenerys, and said there must be one more, because the dragon has three heads. So, who is the one left, and the other two? Was he one of the heads, and his son the other? Was he talking to her? So many questions!!
8-She then walked for what it seemed like an hour, and found a place with all the rooms to her left, and a stair goind down. So, not good. And the torches were going out, because a darkness was creeping behind her, and there was something there. Drogon felt it too. I would shit myself, simple as that. She thought the first door to her right was the last one to her left, so she went into that one. She then keot going right, and saw Pyat Pree, who told her she took a wrong turn, the Undying couldn’t be done with her so soon. Well, she took all the right turns, and she knew he was leading her to a place she shouldn’t go. His face crumbled inward, and looked pale and wormlike. Wtf? I would run as fast as I could. Also, I don’t think it’s a good sing about him.
9-Daenerys then climbed the stairs of a tower, but she didn’t see any from outside. This place is way larger than it looked, or some weird things are going on. She saw a lot of warlocks and women, who recieved her and said they’ve been waiting for thousands of years, and they sent the comet. Mmm I don’t know. They promesed a lot of things, but Drogon apparentely didn’t like them, and Daenerys run. Good thing she had Drogon there with her, maybe she would have taken another turns if it wasn’t for him.
10-She finally gets to the audience chamber I suppose, and the first thing she sees is a rotten heart floating in the middle. How nice. Daenerys heard voices, but only sees shadows. They call her Mother of dragons, and she thinks they must be dead, but they answer they are alive. So, they are talking in her head I guess. And they said pretty interesting things.
11-They talked about drinking from a cup of ice, and a cup of fire. Host he dragon has three heads, how she’s child of three and she doesn’t understand. She would light the fire of love, life and death. Three mounts she must ride, one to bed, one to dread and one to love. By this point, her heart was beating like the one floating. She would suffer three treasons, one for gold, one for love and one for blood. Now, all this things could have a lot of different meanings, and I am not able to tell most of them.
12-All the things the voices whispered in between were pretty interesting: daughter of death, slayer of lies, bride of fire. I can’t stop but wondering what those means. She also found it hard to talk, and her voice wasn’t loud. She saw Viserys, Drogo, her brother Rhegar whispering a woman’s name while he died, a red sword in the hand of a blue eyed King who casted no shadow, a cloth dragon swayed on poles. The visión that caught my attention the most was the one with the blue eyed King. I can’t remember if she thinks about it again.
13-She had more visions, until Daenerys saw ten thousand slaves calling her mother and grabbing her all over, and she felt they needed her. So she opened her arms to them, but then her heart stopped beating. Drogo was protecting her, the Undying were reaching her and pulling. Then Drogon attacked the heart and burnt the Undying (again, great idea to take him). I remember for the show there is a scene with slaves, but I can’t remember if it happens in the books too.
14-Daenerys got out, the House of Dust was burning. Pyat Pree was gibbering in a tongue she didn’t know, and danced. He saw her and danced towards her with a knife in his hand. Drogon just flew to his face and Jhogo used his whip to take the knife from Pyat’s hand. Jorah knelt beside her. What a journey she had in that house! I forgot most of the things she thinks after this chapter, so it’ll be pretty much like the first time when I read it.