More news soon came from Lord Rego’s agents across the water. One report spoke of a dragon being displayed in the fighting pits of Astapor on Slaver’s Bay, a savage beast with shorn wings the slavers set against bulls, cave bears, and packs of human slaves armed with spears and axes, whilst thousands roared and shouted. Septon Barth dismissed the account at once. “A wyvern, beyond a doubt,” he declared. “The wyverns of Sothoryos are oft taken for dragons by men who have never seen a dragon.”

Of far more interest to the king and council was the great fire that had swept across the Disputed Lands a fortnight past. Fanned by strong winds and fed by dry grasses, the blaze had raged for three days and three nights, engulfing half a dozen villages and one free company, the Adventurers, who found themselves trapped between the onrushing flames and a Tyroshi host under the command of the Archon himself. Most had chosen to die upon Tyroshi spears rather than be burned alive. Not a man of them had survived.

The source of the fire remained a mystery. “A dragon,” Ser Myles Smallwood declared. “What else could it be?” Rego Draz remained unconvinced. “A lightning strike,” he suggested. “A cookfire. A drunk with a torch looking for a whore.” The king agreed. “If this were Balerion’s doing, he would surely have been seen.”

The fires of Essos were far from the mind of the woman calling herself Alys Westhill in Oldtown; her eyes were fixed upon the other horizon, on the storm-lashed western seas. Her Sun Chaser had come to port in the last days of autumn, yet still she lingered at dockside as Lady Alys searched for a crew to sail her. She was proposing to do what only a handful of the boldest mariners had ever dared attempt before, to sail beyond the sunset in search of lands undreamed of, and she did not want men aboard who might lose heart, rise up against her, and force her to turn back. She required men who shared her dream, and such were not easily found, even in Oldtown.

Then as now, ignorant smallfolk and superstitious sailors clung to the belief that the world was flat and ended somewhere far to the west. Some spoke of walls of fire and boiling seas, some of black fogs that went on forever, some of the very gates of hell. Wiser men knew better. The sun and moon were spheres, as any man with eyes could see; reason suggested that the world must be a sphere as well, and centuries of study had convinced the archmaesters of the Conclave there could be no doubt of that. The dragonlords of the Freehold of Valyria had believed the same, as did the wise of many distant lands, from Qarth to Yi Ti to the isle of Leng.

The same accord did not exist as regards the size of the world. Even amongst the archmaesters of the Citadel, there was deep division on that question. Some believed the Sunset Sea to be so vast that no man could hope to cross it. Others argued it might be no wider than the Summer Sea where it stretched from the Arbor to Great Moraq; a tremendous distance, to be sure, but one that a bold captain might hope to navigate with the right ship. A western route to the silks and spices of Yi Ti and Leng could mean incalculable riches for the man who found it…if the sphere of the world was as small as these wise men suggested.

Alys Westhill did not believe it was. The scant writings she left behind show that even as a child Elissa Farman was convinced the world was “far larger and far stranger than the maesters imagine.” Not for her the merchant’s dream of reaching Ulthos and Asshai by sailing west. Hers was a bolder vision. Between Westeros and the far eastern shores of Essos and Ulthos, she believed, lay other lands and other seas waiting to be discovered: another Essos, another Sothoryos, another Westeros. Her dreams were full of sundering rivers and windswept plains and towering mountains with their shoulders in the clouds, of green islands verdant in the sun, of strange beasts no man had tamed and queer fruits no man had tasted, of golden cities shining underneath strange stars.

She was not the first to dream this dream. Thousands of years before the Conquest, when the Kings of Winter still reigned in the North, Brandon the Shipwright had built an entire fleet of ships to cross the Sunset Sea. He took them west himself, never to return. His son and heir, another Brandon, burned the yards where they were built, and was known as Brandon the Burner forevermore. A thousand years later, ironmen sailing out from Great Wyk were blown off course onto a cluster of rocky islands eight days’ sail to the northwest of any known shore. Their captain built a tower and a beacon there, took the name of Farwynd, and called his seat the Lonely Light. His descendants lived there still, clinging to rocks where seals outnumbered men fifty to one. Even the other ironmen considered the Farwynds mad; some named them selkies.

Brandon the Shipwright and the ironborn who came after him had both sailed the northern seas, where monstrous krakens, sea dragons, and leviathans the size of islands swam through cold grey waters, and the freezing mists hid floating mountains made of ice. Alys Westhill did not intend to voyage in their wake. She would sail her Sun Chaser on a more southerly course, seeking warm blue waters and the steady winds she believed would carry her across the Sunset Sea. But first she had to have a crew.

Some men laughed at her, whilst others called her mad, or cursed her to her face. “Strange beasts, aye,” one rival captain told her, “and like as not, you’ll end up in the belly of one.” A good portion of the gold that the Sealord had paid for her stolen dragon’s eggs reposed safely in the vaults of the Iron Bank of Braavos, however, and with such wealth behind her, Lady Alys was able to tempt sailors by paying thrice the wages other captains could offer. Slowly she began to gather willing hands.

Inevitably, word of her efforts came to the attention of the Lord of the Hightower. Lord Donnel’s grandsons Eustace and Norman, both noted mariners in their own right, were sent to question her…and clap her in fetters if they felt it prudent. Instead both men signed on with her, pledging their own ships and crews to her mission. After that, sailors clambered over one another in their haste to join her crew. If the Hightowers were going, there were fortunes to be had. The Sun Chaser departed Oldtown on the twenty-third day of the third moon of 56 AC, making her way down Whispering Sound for the open seas in company with Ser Norman Hightower’s Autumn Moon and Ser Eustace Hightower’s Lady Meredith.

Their departure came not a day too soon…for word of Alys Westhill and her desperate search for a crew had finally reached King’s Landing. King Jaehaerys saw through Lady Elissa’s false name at once, and immediately sent ravens to Lord Donnel in Oldtown, commanding him to take this woman into custody and deliver her to the Red Keep for questioning. The birds came too late, however…or mayhaps, as some suggest even to this day, Donnel the Delayer delayed again. Unwilling to risk the king’s wroth, his lordship dispatched a dozen of his own swiftest ships to chase down Alys Westhill and his grandsons, but one by one they straggled back to port, defeated. Seas are vast and ships small, and none of Lord Donnel’s vessels could match the Sun Chaser for speed when the wind was in her sails.

When word of her escape reached the Red Keep, the king pondered long and hard on chasing after Elissa Farman himself. No ship can sail as swiftly as a dragon flies, he reasoned; mayhaps Vermithor could find her where Lord Hightower’s ships could not. The very notion terrified Queen Alysanne, however. Even dragons cannot stay aloft forever, she pointed out, and such charts as existed of the Sunset Sea showed neither islands nor rocks to rest upon. Grand Maester Benifer and Septon Barth concurred, and against their opposition, His Grace reluctantly put the idea aside.

The thirteenth day of the fourth moon of 56 AC dawned cold and grey, with a blustery wind blowing from the east. Court records tell us that Jaehaerys I Targaryen broke his fast with an envoy of the Iron Bank of Braavos, who had come to collect the annual payment on the Crown’s loan. It was a contentious meeting. Elissa Farman was still very much in the king’s thoughts, and he had certain knowledge that her Sun Chaser had been built in Braavos. His Grace demanded to know if the Iron Bank had financed the building of the ship, and whether they had any knowledge of the stolen dragon eggs. The banker, for his part, denied all.

Elsewhere in the Red Keep, Queen Alysanne spent the morning with her children; Princess Daenerys had finally warmed to her brother, Aemon, though she still wanted a little sister. Septon Barth was in the library, Grand Maester Benifer in his rookery. Across the city, Lord Corbray was inspecting the men of the East Barracks of the City Watch, whilst Rego Draz entertained a young lady of negotiable virtue in his manse below the Dragonpit.

All of them would long remember what they were doing when they heard the blast of a horn ringing through the morning air. “The sound of it ran down my spine like a cold knife,” the queen would say later, “though I could not have said why.” In a lonely watchtower overlooking the waters of Blackwater Bay, a guard had glimpsed dark wings in the distance and sounded the alarum. He sounded the horn again as the wings grew larger, and a third time when he saw the dragon plain, black against the clouds.