Chapter Text
There are no maps where Seirazi is born.
There are no books, nor written word she understands at first. They have tapestries. They have rugs, well worn by time and fabrics sewn with intricate patterns of their ancestors, of battles won and lost, and histories she does not know. They have stories, told around a fire, traded from mouth to mouth of dangers lurking in the grassy sea, in the bone mountains to the east, the slave cities to the west, or the red waste to the south. But there are no maps to chart the place of her second birth.
Only stars.
(And even they are new and unknown to her.)
The Lhazar are people who plot their next step only to follow the path of the migrating herds. They split off from the cities a long, long time ago. When Old Ghis was still standing, overflowing with the blood of young slaves. After the dragons took flight, after the Harpy had its head bitten off, they fled high into the mountains—where even the dragons would not follow to chain them next.
Every story Seirazi is told around the fire about their beginning comes with an air of warning. There are no Lhazareen heroes who rise up through their chains. There are no moments of greatness in Ghis. There was simply before and after, and the before comes with a warning to each child that sits around the fire, who listens to their elder speak. From chains they fled to chains they will return should they be caught again. That is the path of the Lhazareen.
The only way is forward.
Seirazi holds the lesson close as she sleeps in a cot of lambswool. Guarded by the family sheepdog, and tucked up close to her elder sisters and brother. She’s lucky to be born to a loving family. A father who adores her, five older sisters who take turns weaving plaits into her hair, dressing her in their old beaded clothes, and a brother who makes it his solemn duty to follow her around like her sworn shield. Some of them are half-siblings. Some of them aren’t related by blood. The Lhazar raise their children communally—they are all one flock . Seirazi is never short on companionship.
When she looks to her mother, dressed in ceremonial robes, surrounded by other wise women who look to her for guidance, she sees someone of great importance. Saikhan of the Asa-Raan carries the title of Godswife and Maegi. Both terms unfamiliar to her daughter, but words that inspire immense respect from her kinsmen. Seirazi toddles in her mother’s footsteps, puzzling over the words they speak during each clan meeting. She listens with rapt detail to the lessons her mother imparts to the people seeking her help. It’s Lhazareen custom to never turn anyone away.
“Take this for the nausea,” says her Uuma , as her mother passes a young woman a tea that smells strongly of fresh mountain herbs. She motions for her to remove her shoes as she sits, and Saikhan massages the woman’s joints with practiced hands. “Come to me when your joints swell. This pregnancy will not be an easy one.”
The woman presses a hand to her stomach, eyes wide. “Will the child live?”
“So long as you care for your health,” she says, moving to massage the other ankle. Seirazi watches on the sidelines, reminded of physiotherapy from her first life. Her mother seems to have a great deal of familiarity with the placement of tendons. Her touch is careful yet firm. “The first birth is always the hardest. Your body is labouring for two hearts now.”
A thought strikes Seirazi like lightning as the pregnant woman sips her tea. She blurts out in English. “ She’s preeclamptic. ”
Her mother turns to her. Familiar with her occasional bouts of another language. They know it’s not baby talk, have known she wasn’t normal from the moment she was born and didn’t cry. Looking out at the world with too-old eyes and a soul that’s known the taste of death before. But they aren’t distressed by it. If anything, they see her oddness as a blessing.
(The root of their people’s name—Lhazarus—means: Shepherd be my help . Seirazi doesn’t know how to feel about its similarity to the Latin Earth word. How the two thread over. Or even why.)
(But she is not the first of her kind.)
“Did you say something, lamb?”
Seirazi remembers her schooling. She’d nursed women with the same affliction in hospitals and at home. It was her life’s calling before. It calls to her once again.
Seirazi translates as best she can. “Her blood is… it’s pushing on her veins.”
“Is it now?” her Uuma asks, and her smile is warm and proud. She’s never once snubbed Seirazi’s comments. Welcomes them, actually. “Do you wish to help? Come, stand beside me. Tell me more of your thoughts, and I’ll show you we care for our kin.”
And she does. It’s an apprenticeship that Seirazi takes to very seriously. In another life a child her size would be in elementary school learning their ABC’s, but Seirazi aids in her first delivery before she loses her baby teeth, holding the hand of the woman in labour, and delivering fresh towels. She spends her second childhood memorizing local herbs and their applications. It’s not easy, giving up carefully designed pills and chemicals in favor of raw materials, but her clan has a great understanding of traditional medicine. They’d have to—when the difference means life or death.
She takes to her schooling so seriously that nickname her 'baahskn maegi' which roughly translates to 'little sage' from her pudgy little scowl.
(It's not her fault this new face of hers is overwhelmingly cute.)
(Unfortunately, the Lhazar don't carry mirrors, so it’s not like she knows what she looks like, apart from the black hair, brown skin, and almond-shaped eyes shared by the rest of her kin.)
But it's a peaceful second life on the planes.
Her Abaa carries her on his back when winter pushes their flock to migrate southward, and her young legs tire from travelling. Her head rests on his shoulder, and she sees endless rolling grass hills as far as the eye can see. They go from ankle-high to taller than her father’s head. Easy to be lost in if separated from the herd.
But her Abaa is a smart man, he sticks to the grasses tread by the feet before him—the hundreds of cloven hooves that give their clan their livelihood. Seirazi has never seen sheep quite like the one her family keeps, but there are so many of them, and their wool is so soft and woven into everything they have. Their important life-giving properties are understood by her before she even hears of the lamb god, the Great Shepherd . To her, the reverence makes sense. Like much of of steppe life, actually. It’s simple. Sensible. Who wouldn’t devote themselves wholeheartedly to the thing that gives them life?
As she sighs and snuggles closer to her Abaa , a part of her in conflict with this new life wears away. As though this was a place she was always meant to be. Plucked from the crowded metal cities and vicious online echo chambers. This place—these people, this peace out on the planes—her soul is at rest here.
'This can be home,' she thinks. She can move forward. She doesn’t need to look back.
“ Jijig ,” her father says, stopping to readjust his hold on her. He turns and waves a long piece of grass in front of her face. Calling her his joy again. ” Jijig , do you know what this is?“
They play guessing games with everything . It's the fastest way to expand her language, and the clan is more than happy to oblige. She knows the Lhazareen word for grass. The basic one, anyway. Living so close to the Dothraki sea, there are more than twenty different words for it. But her Abaa is testing her.
She screws her face up in thought. There are some words that don’t translate well between lives. But language is almost as important as herbs and remedies. She must learn it all.
“Whipgrass?”
“Close. But listen...” He brings the blade to his lips, and blows. It gives a trill, like a bird, and Seirazi's eyes light up in childish glee. “It's whistlegrass . Tweet tweet!”
She loves it. She loves listening to her Abaa fiddle with the blade as they migrate south with the rest of their caravan. No trucks to carry their things, but the tall, stocky sheep they shepherd, what they can fit on thin tentlike wagons, or whatever they can carry by hand. She loves his songs and his stories and the little trills he makes to her to entertain her during the long migration south.
It's love that decides little Seirazi is important enough to bring with them on the journey. There are other Lhazareen unable to make the migration with the herd, and she watches with too-old eyes as clansmen make their goodbyes in the few permanent cities that the Lhazar keep. It’s a retirement that splits families. They do not expect to meet again.
But the only way is forward.
The Lhazar are nothing without their sheep. They are one flock, united together, on the high steppes and the everlasting grassy planes. Splitting off from the herd is death. It is meeting with the things that prowl the Dothraki Sea at night. It's Harpies and slave chains and Dragonfire.
She just wished those midnight tales were farther behind them.
The first time Seirazi meets with death again, it brushes past with the quietest of whispers. She doesn’t hear it coming late at night.
Their camp is surrounded by tall grass in all directions. The sheep group in large circles at night. Their lambs and ewes in the centre, while the rams face outward, horns at the ready. Her clansmen do the same, propping up temporary tents with the children in the middle, the women sleeping around them, and the men surrounding. The Lhazar aren’t warriors by nature. They carry wooden spears and thin blades more suited to cutting wool than flesh. The only meat they need is from the flock. The only weapon they truly excel at is the bow and arrow, but it's useless in the pitch-dark.
So when Seirazi wakes in the middle of the night and needs to pee—and all the other activities one truly misses a toilet for on the steppe—it’s her older brother and the family sheepdog that take her out to the edge of the encampment, where she can squat in the grass and do her business, that death finds her.
“Hurry it up, will you?” Sarnai whispers, glancing around as the sheepdog bristles. “It’s too quiet out here.”
But death finds him first.
There's a flash of white that leaps over Seirazi's head and suddenly it's upon him with claws and teeth. Sarnai goes from her big brother, yawning and impatiently waiting—to some dead lifeless thing clamped in the jaws of a Hrakkar . A massive white plains lion the likes of which she'd never seen before. And this, she knows at an instant, is what looking death in the eyes is like.
White luminous terror in the darkness. Maw clamping shut.
It drags Sarnai into the grass in an instant, and her shrieks wake the entire encampment. The herd nearly takes off right then and there, and they search the entire night for a trace of Sarnai's remains after the dog chases after him—but find only blood, fur, and Hrakkar tracks. Seirazi never strays from the centre of the flock from there on out. But death finds her again a few years later, after the seasons change and they migrate back up the Skahzadhan river. The white lion isn't the only hunter on the plains. The sheep aren't the only game to be had.
The Dothraki on their horses strike with brutal swiftness. Her tribe is cut in two before they realize what's happening, and then again as the riders push the weaker members further onto the fringes. And it's there the women and children are pulled off their feet, thrown onto the backs of horses, and carried away.
It's not until later that the chains come. But the intent in clear. Dothraki no not keep prisoners out of kindness. It’s for bloodsport, for conquest, for rape and enslavement.
Seirazi falls into the first category as a Dothraki bloodrider sweeps past her during the chaos. She’s too short for his sword to cut off her head, but the hooves of his war horse trample her into the ground.
And Seirazi dies her second death.
⩫
When she wakes the camp is barren and her kin are scattered. Dothraki Jaqqa rahn —mercy men—walk amongst the bodies, cutting off the heads of the dead and dying. She thinks she sees her father among them. She sees her sisters, further off, bound and loaded up onto the backs of horses. Her mother is nowhere to be seen.
The mercy men take notice of her reawakening and yank her to her feet. There’s not a scratch on her they can see. She’s covered in dirt and bruises but she’s alive, miraculously. They didn’t see the warhorse’s hooves crack against her head. She thinks it’s just a fluke.
She’s taken as another spoil of war and witnesses more horrors alive than she does dead. Particularly, the rape of her sisters at the hand of the Khalasars. The Kahl joins in. His Khaleesi, a hefty, beautiful woman, drinks and toasts to the brave warriors. Her eyes ghost past Seirazi like she’s less than the dirt beneath her heels and she smiles. Her neck adorned with sparkling white Hrakkar teeth.
It’s a joke to say there’s any mercy here. This third life is nothing but pain.
⩫
Some of the Khalasars take a liking to her sisters. They don’t relinquish them all when they take their spoils through the Khyzai pass. Serazi remembers stories from her kin calling the region the passage of slaves. It was the place they fled through after Old Ghis fell. It’s the place she’s taken through now to be sold back to the empires that rose from the ashes.
It’s a common exchange between the Dothraki and the Meereen masters. Once upon a time the Lhazareen and the Dothraki were one kin, fleeing Ghis together. But time and resentment had split the herd. Seriazi turns back and watches the Khaleesi with hrakkar teeth as she stands with the rest of her tribe. The sisters they keep as concubines she never sees again.
Once they’re taken to Slaver’s Bay she’s separated from the remainder of her family. A tight metal link is put around her neck, and she’s dragged off towards where the other children are kept.
She stays in Meereen for five miserable, delirious years. She scrubs floors until her hands bleed, she fills cups, and entertains her masters with whatever disgusting tasks they ask for. As she grows older and their interest in her childish face wanes, she attracts a larger group of men who want more pieces of her. And even though she continues to take in breath, a part of her dies every night, and dies again in the morning.
It doesn’t matter that she finally sees maps in Meereen. It doesn’t matter that she realizes she’s in Essos. It doesn’t matter if she recognizes this place and these people when they have her in chains. She wants to die. But the slavers are very careful about keeping their property in working condition.
But when she reaches her fourteenth year, she’s taken to an auction. Stripped bare and paraded like chattel—and catches the eye of a red priest who buys her on sight. Like an exotic spice they’ve been shopping everywhere for. Still less than human, but worth more than her fellow enslaved. Her life is resold for a tidy sum. A sack of coin that saves her from spending the rest of her life in a pleasure house.
Then she’s loaded on a ship bound to sail west, and everything changes all over again.
It comes in the form of a tropical storm.
⩫
It’s an insult is what it is.
An undeniable act of aggression. More than enough reason for war. The stepstones have always been a vulnerable point for trade. A point of contention between the East and West. There has always been risk in sending ships through. Pirates and competition and looters of all sorts. But downing a Velaryon ship—downing one of his ships—that's something Corlys can't ignore.
He stands on the deck of his ship; Kings Landing at his back, and the Stepstones a distant sight on the horizon. The winds blow strongly from the south. It's a strong wind. A tempestuous one. The sea bites hard at the side of his ship, rocking the Sea Snake, but she's a vessel that can't be swayed, even from some tropical storm from the south. But it bodes poorly for the recovery fleet he sent for the ship that went down. With weather like this, whatever's in the drink really will be food for crabs.
Corlys knows he's out there too. He grips the bannister. Staring out where the bastard sits, enjoying the spoils of his piracy.
When his ships return, he's grateful they return in one piece. But they're cutting it close to missing the King's tourney.
“We're going to miss the joust at this rate,” Laenor complains, hanging off the bannister like the boy he is.
“I didn't raise you to stand like that, sailor,” he shoots back, and Laenor pushes himself up as the recovery ship sides up next to them. Close enough to rock the Sea Snake more. He finds his sea legs, but not like nobility. The corner of Corly's mouth twitches at his son's embarrassment. “Look sharp—the rest of the crew is looking to you to be the next captain one day. If you wanted to see the joust so badly, you should have ridden on dragonback with your mother and sister.”
“Seasmoke isn't big enough for long sea travel...” he murmurs.
“Better to have you here on deck,” Corlys replies. He ruffles the top of Laenor’s head as the crew draws the two ships together with ropes. The Sea Snake and The Albatross have a significant height difference between them. The former more than several heads higher than the Caravel, but she's no less formidable. His brother looks up at him from the deck below.
“Ahoy, Admiral! I trust the winds have been kind on your travel.”
“Kinder I expect than they've been for you,” Corlys replies. He eyes the Albatross's crew as they scurry about. Tense despite his expression. “Am I wrong to hope the sea has been forgiving for us?”
“She has her ways,” Vaemond replies. It's then Corlys knows he isn't going to hear anything good. His brother shifts, nodding up at Laenor as the boy hangs over the side again to look down on him, before turning back to the Lord of the Tides. “You’ll be interested in what we fished out of the water though.”
“Oh?” He notes there's nothing of note on deck.
“Is it treasure?” Laenor asks excitedly. Corlys can't fault him for his excitement, but Vaemond doesn't smile back.
“It's a girl,” he says, as the wind blows hard above them. “She says she has a message for you.”
⩫
They can't fucking understand her at first.
Of course they can't. They speak a garbled, nonsense version of English. The kind that makes her head spin and makes even less sense than the slave speech she picked up in Meereen.
Seirazi drinks and drinks and drinks so much water on the ship until her stomach hurts. Her mouth is cracked and dry, and everything still tastes like salt. Her hands tremble—all of her trembles. Is cold and weak and barely holding on. It doesn't help that she can’t understand anything these Westerosi sailors say. But when Vaemond Velaryon offers her fruit and crackers after starving out in the water for weeks on end, she doesn't look a gift horse in the eye.
“ Thither âr êow oðtêon? ” Someone asks from the other end of the room.
They gave her a cot and a bed to her own, but she hates the swaying of the ship. She hates everything about the water after being fished out of it. She shifts in discomfort as the speaker tries again.
“ Fremian êower beneah benugon bêga benemnan? "
It sounds like English but it's not English. It's medieval and wrong, even if the accents are right, and she dislikes the sound of it all.
Seirazi lowers her cup, looking straight into the eyes of a man who should be made of words and paper. His head is a mane of white dreads. Same as his brother, who’s marked for death. The hrakkar has its eyes on her again.
“Cor-lys Vel-ar-ee-on,” she enunciates, slowly but perfectly, so he knows she knows who he is. He straightens, attention caught. Then she says in English. “Of all the worlds I had to be fucking reborn in, it had to be yours.”
He cocks his head to the side. “ Lettan? "
It sounds like 'pardon ,’ so she keeps going. Complaining is the only thing that makes her feel somewhat better. And the fact that he cant understand her makes him a prime target. Nobody ever let her talk in Meereen. Her chest feels as though it'll burst from all the words she'd been forced to swallow.
“No, really. I'd say I'd rather be dead but your world's done enough in that department. I was happy once—I can't stand this world any longer. It's a nightmare. It's a crime. Tell your maker to fix this right now. Fix it and let me go home.”
He shakes his head. " Myne brôðor saye mâl flôwan êow nêan a flêotan flêotende hêanes duguð hwælweg forð forðbie sê Stæpstðne. Wer sîn êower feccan to? ”
“Tell your god I'm done here. Tell him to stop. I want out of this story. Out of this life—this corpse,” she spits, before the fire in her bleeds out. “But even death won’t give me a door out.”
After the ship went down, it dragged her into her fourth life. The only survivor. Some part of her still feels like it's drowning.
Despite her complaining though, there’s no going back. She’s known this since she was a child. Since she was born into her mother’s arms. After the Dothraki, after the chains. Looking back is just a reminder of everything she lost with each life shed. Something changes every time.
When Seirazi switches languages, her tongue sits uncomfortably in her mouth. It's not perfect, her manner of speaking, but neither was her atmosphere for learning. “I am gladdened you are here.”
Corlys lets out a startled laugh. When he replies, she understands it. But some of the words are still hard to grasp. Sharp, accented, and fast. “Why didn't you say you spoke a Valerian dialect?”
“I am keeping no love for 'se tongue of my masters,” she replies. Corlys eyes flick down to the bands on her wrists; still there despite her escape from the ship. The skin is raw and broken, but far less damaged than it had been when water had been streaming in from above deck, past her shoulders. She cant remember breaking her chains when the ship went under. Seirazi flicks her eyes up to catch Corlys eye, and she speaks in resignation. “Throw me back in 'se water if you have a thought of sending me back east. ”
His expression softens. Gingerly, he steps forward into the room, the floorboards squeaking under his heavy feet. “I'd sooner hang up my captain’s hat before I sell a girl back into slavery.”
“You would be 'se first in a long time to be saying so,” she replies, too old for her bones. “And I have not been a girl for even longer.”
Corlys holds her gaze for a long moment. She sees pity in his face, despite the composure he keeps. She's a pathetic, tiny thing at his mercy. The same expression as his brother's. Mercy is the only thing she has going for it. She loathes this helplessness. The uncertainty. The only thing she seems to be good at is getting caught and dying.
Then Corlys shifts to a topic that gives her an edge. “Vaemond says you had a message for me.”
“Vaemond is correct,” she replies, and he squints at how familiar she is with his name. In this world rank and address are everything. But she knows him. She knows them all. “Your kingdom is to have a crisis. Your family will be drawn in a civil war, and 'se queen about to die in childbirth. I think it was only fair to give you warning.”
It's the second time she's surprised him in as many minutes. “How do you know?”
“I've seen it,” she says. “The steps to your kingdom's downfall. The death of 'se Targaryen line. Scholars an age from now will call it 'se Dance of 'se Dragons. I know how it starts. I saw it happen another life ago. It was gratuously-" she trips over the word. "Documented. ”
He scoffs. “And I'm just to take your word on it? A sailor's worth a healthy dose of superstition but I haven't sailed nine journeys ‘round the world a fool .”
“Of course you haven't, ” she says with certainty, reaching for another cracker. “And neither will your children, if 'se future doesn't cut their lives short. Laenor. Laena.” She takes a bite. “Addam and Alyn of Hull.”
He goes still.
She chews slowly as he digests it. She's not sure the exact date is but neither boy has been born yet. He might know the surname though.
“Take me to Kings Landing and I may change it all, ” she promises, and this is the same thing she said to his brother. Earnest now, as she began. As intense as the seas lapping outside.
Corlys looks at her now with no pity in his dark violet eyes. Full apprehension and steel. “Why?”
She can feel the Hrakkar teeth around her neck. “It is 'se only way forward I can see. ”