THE RISE OF VALYRIA

AS WESTEROS RECOVERED from the Long Night, a new power was rising in Essos. The vast continent, stretching from the narrow sea to the fabled Jade Sea and faraway Ulthos, seems to be the place where civilization as we know it developed. The first of these (not withstanding the dubious claims of Qarth, the YiTish legends of the Great Empire of the Dawn, and the difficulties of finding any truth in the tales of legendary Asshai) was rooted in Old Ghis: a city built upon slavery. The legendary founder of the city, Grazdan the Great, remains so revered that men of the slaver families are still often given his name. It was he who, according to the oldest histories of the Ghiscari, founded the lockstep legions with their tall shields and three spears, which were the first to fight as disciplined bodies. Old Ghis and its army proceeded to colonize its surroundings, then, pressing on, to subjugate its neighbors. Thus was the first empire born, and for centuries it reigned supreme.

It was on the great peninsula across from Slaver’s Bay that those who brought an end to the empire of Old Ghis—though not to all of their ways—originated. Sheltered there, amidst the great volcanic mountains known as the Fourteen Flames, were the Valyrians, who learned to tame dragons and make them the most fearsome weapon of war that the world ever saw. The tales the Valyrians told of themselves claimed they were descended from dragons and were kin to the ones they now controlled.

I n such fragments of Barth’s Unnatural History as remain, the septon appears to have considered various legends examining the origins of dragons and how they came to be controlled by the Valyrians. The Valyrians themselves claimed that dragons sprang forth as the children of the Fourteen Flames, while in Qarth the tales state that there was once a second moon in the sky. One day this moon was scalded by the sun and cracked like an egg, and a million dragons poured forth. In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai’i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals.

Yet if men in the Shadow had tamed dragons first, why did they not conquer as the Valyrians did? It seems likelier that the Valyrian tale is the truest. But there were dragons in Westeros, once, long before the Targaryens came, as our own legends and histories tell us. If dragons did first spring from the Fourteen Flames, they must have been spread across much of the known world before they were tamed. And, in fact, there is evidence for this, as dragon bones have been found as far north as Ib, and even in the jungles of Sothoryos. But the Valyrians harnessed and subjugated them as no one else could.

The great beauty of the Valyrians—with their hair of palest silver or gold and eyes in shades of purple not found amongst any other peoples of the world—is well-known, and often held up as proof that the Valyrians are not entirely of the same blood as other men. Yet there are maesters who point out that, by careful breeding of animals, one can achieve a desirable result, and that populations in isolation can often show quite remarkable variations from what might be regarded as common. This may be a likelier answer to the mystery of the Valyrian origins although it does not explain the affinity with dragons that those with the blood of Valyria clearly had.

The Valyrians had no kings but instead called themselves the Freehold because all the citizenry who held land had a voice. Archons might be chosen to help lead, but they were elected by the lords freeholder from amongst their number, and only for a limited time. It was rare for Valyria to be swayed by one freeholding family alone although it was not entirely unknown either.

The five great wars between the Freehold and Old Ghis when the world was young are the stuff of legend—conflagrations that ended each time in the victory of the Valyrians over the Ghiscari. It was during the fifth and final war that the Freehold chose to make sure there would be no sixth war. The ancient brick walls of Old Ghis, first erected by Grazdan the Great in ancient days, were razed. The colossal pyramids and temples and homes were given over to dragonflame. The fields were sown with salt, lime, and skulls. Many of the Ghiscari were slain, and still others were enslaved and died laboring for their conquerors. Thus the Ghiscari became but another part of the new Valyrian empire, and in time they forgot the tongue that Grazdan spoke, learning instead High Valyrian. So do empires end and others arise.

W hat now remains of the once-proud empire of Old Ghis is a paltry thing—a few cities clinging like sores to Slaver’s Bay and another that pretends to be Old Ghis come again. For after the Doom came to Valyria, the cities of Slaver’s Bay were able to throw off the last of the Valyrian shackles, ruling themselves in truth rather than playing at it. And what remained of the Ghiscari swiftly reestablished their trade in slaves—though where once they won them by conquest, now they purchased and bred them.

“Bricks and blood built Astapor, and bricks and blood her people,” an old rhyme says, referring to the red-bricked walls of the city and of the blood shed by the thousands of slaves who would live, labor, and die constructing them. Ruled by men who name themselves the Good Masters, Astapor is best known for the creation of the eunuch slave-soldiers called the Unsullied—men raised from boyhood to be fearless warriors who feel no pain. The Astapori pretend that they are the lockstep legions of the Old Empire come again, but those men were free, and the Unsullied are not.

Of Yunkai, the yellow city, little needs be said, for it is a most disreputable place. The men who rule it, calling themselves the Wise Masters, are steeped in corruption, selling bed slaves and boy-whores and worse.

The most formidable of the cities along Slaver’s Bay is ancient Meereen, but like the rest, it is a crumbling place, its population a fraction of what it once supported at the height of the Old Empire. Its walls of many-colored bricks contain endless suffering, for the Great Masters of Meereen train slaves to fight and die at their pleasure in the blood-soaked fighting pits.

All three cities have been known to pay tribute to passing khalasars rather than face them in open battle, but the Dothraki provide many of the slaves that the Ghiscari train and sell—slaves taken from their conquests and sold in the flesh marts of Meereen, Yunkai, and Astapor.

The most vital of the Ghiscari cities is also the smallest and the newest, and no less a pretender to greatness: New Ghis, left to its own devices on its isle. There, its masters have formed iron legions in mimicry of the legions of the Old Empire, but unlike the Unsullied, these are free men, as the soldiers of the Old Empire were.