Melisandre I
The harbor of Oldtown smelled of salt, tar, and rot—old rot, the kind that had soaked into stone and timber for thousands of years and would never truly leave.
Melisandre stood at the prow of the galley as it slipped between the great breakwaters, her red robes drawn tight against the sea wind, her copper hair bound in a simple braid. Above her rose the Hightower, pale and immense, its beacon already burning though the sun had not yet fully set.
Fire called to fire.
She felt it in her bones the moment the light touched her eyes.
Oldtown was ancient. Older than Valyria. Older than Volantis. Older, perhaps, than truth itself.
The stones remembered things men had forgotten, and some stones preferred to stay silent. She did not like places that remembered too much.
The sailors whispered prayers as they docked. Some made the sign of the Seven. One spat for luck. None met her eyes. They never did, not when they sensed what walked among them.
She disembarked alone.
The Red Temple of Oldtown was smaller than she had expected—humble, almost apologetic, tucked away from the grand septs and towers as if ashamed of its own existence. A single brazier burned in its courtyard, tended by a novice who froze when he saw her.
"Light of the Lord," Melisandre said softly.
The boy stammered a reply and fled inside.
She did not follow him.
Instead, she stood before the brazier and closed her eyes, letting the warmth soak into her skin. Fire was truth. Fire did not lie—though those who watched it often misunderstood what it showed.
'To guide the one in a dark debt back to light.'
The words returned to her unbidden, as they often did.
The High Priestess had spoken them on the night she departed, her voice echoing through the black marble halls of the temple, the flames rising high enough to kiss the ceiling.
"You will go." the woman had said. "Beyond the Narrow Sea. Beyond the old lies. There is one who walks beneath a debt so deep it has forgotten it is owed. You are to guide him back to the light."
"Who?" Melisandre had asked.
The High Priestess had smiled, thin and knowing. "If the Lord of Light wished him named, He would have named him."
That had been answer enough.
She had crossed half the world since then—through storms and ports, through whispers and omens—and always the fire had shown her fragments. A crowned stag wreathed in smoke. A shadow with a sword of darkness. A throne of iron melting into slag.
But lately… lately the visions had shifted.
Snow had begun to appear in her flames.
Melisandre opened her eyes.
Oldtown lay before her in tiers of stone and slate, its streets already filling with torchlight as dusk settled in.
The Citadel loomed like a crouching beast, its domes and towers silhouetted against the reddening sky. Maesters. Chains. Knowledge bound and gagged with iron.
She felt the Lord of Light's displeasure keenly there.
Not hatred. Wariness.
She turned from the city and entered the temple.
The chamber they gave her was small, windowless, its walls stained by years of smoke. A brazier sat in the center, coals banked low, waiting. Melisandre dismissed the acolytes with a gesture. This was not a reading for untrained eyes.
She shed her traveling cloak and knelt before the fire.
The ritual was familiar, comforting in its precision. Oils poured. Words spoken in the High Valyrian of the old prayers. Her ruby warmed against her breast, pulsing faintly as the flames rose higher.
"Show me," she whispered. "Show me the path."
The fire answered.
At first, only shapes. Flickers. The usual dance of light and shadow. She let her breathing slow, her mind empty, her will open.
Then the flames deepened.
A crown appeared, golden, heavy, sinking into fire until it glowed red-hot. A man laughed as it burned him. Smoke curled upward, forming antlers, then breaking apart.
She watched, unblinking.
The vision shifted.
Water now. Dark water. A ship breaking against rocks. A tower burning like a candle against the night.
Oldtown.
Her brow furrowed. This place again. The fire lingered on it, as if reluctant to move on.
"Give me the one," she asked. "The one in darkness."
The flames guttered.
For a heartbeat, she thought the fire might die entirely. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the brazier.
Then—snow.
Not falling. Drifting.
White flakes descended into the heart of the flame, and where they touched, the fire did not hiss. Did not shrink. It accepted them.
Her breath caught.
Ice did not belong in fire.
The image sharpened. The snow gathered, swirling, forming the vague outline of a beast.
A wolf, vast and indistinct, its body made of shadow and pale light. Its eyes were not red, not green, but empty—voids that swallowed the glow around them.
The wolf stepped forward.
The flames bent.
Not extinguished. Bent.
She recoiled, her voice rising. "This is not your dominion."
The wolf opened its mouth.
Fire poured into it.
The vision shattered.
Melisandre staggered back, gasping, her heart hammering against her ribs. The brazier burned low now, the flames sullen and dim, as if exhausted.
Sweat slicked her skin despite the cool stone air.
That had not been Azor Ahai.
Nor any servant of the Great Other, as she understood Him.
It was… something else.
She forced herself upright and tried again.
The second reading came harder. The fire resisted her, flaring erratically, refusing to settle. When at last it yielded, it showed her only fragments: a woman crowned in sun-gold light, her face turned away; a sword thrust into snow; a great hall echoing with laughter that curdled into screams.
And beneath it all, always, that sense of wrongness. As if the fire were looking at something it could not fully see.
She slammed her palm against the stone floor.
"You try to deceive me and you fail," she said aloud, her voice sharp in the empty chamber. "The Lord of Light clears my path."
The flames answered with silence.
At length, she rose, her movements slow and controlled. Dissatisfaction gnawed at her—a rare, dangerous thing. Fire had always spoken to her, even when its words were cruel or cryptic. This… this was evasion.
Something was interfering.
Or someone.
She extinguished the brazier herself, pinching the flames between her fingers. They flared briefly, then faded. The fire obeyed at last, retreating into ash.
Melisandre wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and left the temple without another word.
The Woods of Honeywine lay days away, but even here, on the outskirts of Oldtown, the trees grew thick and tangled, their branches clawing at the sky. She walked alone beneath them, her steps soundless on the loam.
She needed distance from stone and chain. From towers that watched too closely.
The fire would speak more freely here.
She gathered deadwood with practiced ease and built a small pyre in a clearing where the moonlight filtered through the leaves. When she lit it, the flames leapt eagerly, hungry and bright.
Again, she knelt.
Again, she prayed.
The fire answered—but weakly.
She saw the snow again, but now it was melting, turning to black water that pooled around the roots of unseen trees. The wolf was gone. In its place stood a man-shaped shadow, crowned, faceless.
Melisandre leaned closer.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
The shadow did not answer.
Behind it, the fire dimmed, as if choked by an unseen hand.
Fear stirred in her then—not panic, but a cold, creeping unease she had not felt since her days in the east.
Since the man with the knife.
She drew back sharply, breaking the vision.
"No," she whispered. "You have no power over me."
The fire flickered uncertainly.
Melisandre stood, her decision made. Oldtown was not the place for her work. Too many eyes. Too many old truths buried beneath newer lies.
She would go north.
Whatever stirred there, whatever bent fire instead of extinguishing it, it was tied to her task. To the debt spoken of in Volantis.
Behind her, in the distance, torches appeared between the trees. Voices. Shouts.
She did not turn as she walked away.
Later, long after Melisandre had vanished from the forest path, the men found the clearing. They saw the sigils carved into the earth, the strange ashes, the red stains left behind.
"A witch," one said, making the sign of the Seven.
They dragged a woman from a nearby hut—a hedge-witch, old and toothless, protesting her innocence in a cracked voice. The fire was still warm.
They bound her to a stake and lit it.
The flames rose high, hungry, bright.
Far away, Melisandre paused, one hand pressed to her ruby, feeling a sudden flare of heat—and then nothing at all.
The Lord of Light had not shown her that fire.
Which troubled her more than she cared to admit.