Chapter 8: The Echo of Thunder
The city did not sleep. A silence had fallen over King's Landing in the immediate aftermath of the 'Miracle at the Sept,' but it was the silence of a held breath, not of peace. As dusk settled, casting long, dancing shadows from the impossible weirwood tree that now stood as a sentinel in the plaza, the city's breath was released in a torrent of frantic, hushed whispers. The story spread faster than a plague, carried by wide-eyed merchants, terrified guards, and awestruck smallfolk. It changed with each telling, growing more fantastical, more divine. They said the Gray Giant had worn armour of pure starlight, that his hammer had sung a song of creation, that the face in the new Heart Tree wept real tears for the sins of the King.
By nightfall, the plaza before the Great Sept, once the site of a mad king's aborted spectacle, had become a shrine. Hundreds of people gathered, not with the boisterous energy of a festival, but with the solemn reverence of true believers. They left offerings at the roots of the weirwood: wildflowers, loaves of bread, carved wooden figures. A new faith was being born in the heart of the old, a wild, elemental faith with a reluctant, drunken god at its center.
But while the city whispered and prayed, the Red Keep screamed.
King Aerys II's final, tenuous grip on sanity had been incinerated by the pure, undiluted display of divine power he had witnessed. His laughter had turned to shrieks, his manic energy collapsing into a quivering, paranoid terror. He had been carried from the dais by his Kingsguard, babbling incoherently about "the whispering god" and "lightning in the walls." He saw Thor's face in every shadow, heard his thunderous voice in every gust of wind. He had clawed at his own face, drawing blood, convinced that the god had planted spies behind his eyes.
Now, he was locked in his chambers, the doors barred, attended only by his most sycophantic pyromancers. He refused all food and drink, trusting nothing. The only comfort he sought was that of fire. Great braziers were brought in, heating the room to a suffocating temperature. The King, clad only in a silk robe, would stare into the flames for hours, his lips moving in a frantic, one-sided conversation, seeking answers in the fire, a lesser power he still believed he could control. He had demanded that the new weirwood tree be burned, but no one, not even the most zealous pyromancer, dared to approach it. The tree was seen as a part of the god, and no one wanted to risk provoking that particular storm again.
This left the governance of the Seven Kingdoms in the hands of a terrified and rudderless Small Council. They gathered in the council chambers, the air thick with fear and the scent of guttering candles. Lord Owen Merryweather, the Hand of the King, a man more suited to feasts and pleasantries than to crisis, seemed to have aged a decade in a single afternoon. His jowls sagged, and his usually cheerful face was a mask of grey dread. Grand Maester Pycelle was, for once, wide awake, his hands trembling so violently that they rattled the chain of office around his neck. Lord Symond Staunton, the master of laws, wrung his hands, while Lord Lucerys Velaryon, the master of ships, stared blankly at the wall, likely contemplating a swift voyage back to Driftmark.
And then there was Varys. The Spider sat in his usual chair, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his face a serene mask. He was the only one in the room who seemed to understand the true gravity of the situation. He had unleashed a hurricane to stop a wildfire, and now he had to find a way to live in the aftermath.
"The King… is unwell," Lord Merryweather stated, the understatement so vast it was almost comical. "He cannot receive petitioners. He cannot sign decrees."
"He is mad!" Lord Staunton blurted out, his voice a squeak of panic. "Utterly, irrevocably mad! We all saw it! We all saw… him." No one needed to ask who 'him' was. The name Thor was an unspoken terror in the halls of the Red Keep.
"What was it?" whispered Lord Velaryon. "Some sorcery from Essos? A glamour?"
"A glamour does not create a fully grown weirwood tree from a pyre in the blink of an eye," Varys said softly, his voice cutting through the panicked chatter. Every eye turned to him. "Nor does it command the sky itself. We must accept what we saw. We are dealing with a power not seen in this world since the Age of Heroes. Perhaps ever."
"The Faith is in an uproar," Pycelle quavered. "The High Septon speaks of blasphemy, of a false idol being raised in the shadow of the Starry Sept. But the people… the people are calling it a miracle. They are flocking to this… Thunder God."
"And that is our most immediate problem," Varys said, his gaze sweeping over the council members. "The King is indisposed. The smallfolk have found a new focus for their faith, a faith centered on a being who has openly defied and humiliated the Iron Throne. The authority of House Targaryen has not been this fragile since the Blackfyre Rebellions."
Lord Merryweather wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "What are we to do? We cannot fight him. Ser Allar's report was not an exaggeration. An army would be useless."
"Indeed," Varys agreed. "One does not fight an earthquake. One builds around it." He leaned forward, his voice dropping conspiratorially. "Our first priority is to contain the narrative. The King's… illness must be managed. It must be seen as a temporary affliction, a sacred exhaustion from having communed so closely with the divine. We must reinforce the idea that the festival was the King's will, that the 'test' was a success, a way for the King to reveal this new protector to his people."
It was a masterful piece of political spin, a lie so audacious it might just be believed.
"Secondly," Varys continued, "we must do nothing to provoke the entity. The royal summons was a mistake, a folly of the King's… zeal. There will be no more commands. No more tests. The city guard will be instructed to consider Flea Bottom and the Plaza of the Sept as… sacred ground. To be observed, but not entered. We will build a cage of whispers and reverence around him, give him the isolation he seems to crave. We will let the storm settle."
The council members nodded eagerly. A plan that involved doing nothing to anger the being who could melt iron with a glance was a plan they could all support. They were content to let the Spider handle the strange, terrifying new piece on the board. They did not understand that Varys was not just trying to protect the realm from Thor; he was trying to protect Thor from the realm, buying time to understand him, to predict him, before another, more ambitious player tried to use or destroy him.
Thor did not feel like a god. He felt hollowed out. The walk back to Flea Bottom had been a disorienting blur of kneeling figures and awestruck faces. He had pushed open the door to The Grinning Pig and had been met not with silence, but with a roar. The people of his district, his unwilling congregation, had erupted in a cheer so loud it shook the rafters. They had swarmed him, touching his clothes, his arms, weeping with joy and relief.
He had pushed through them, the physical contact a jarring, unpleasant sensation, and retreated to his corner. But his corner was no longer a refuge. It had been transformed into a shrine. The table was laden with offerings: roasted chickens, bottles of wine that were clearly stolen from a noble's cellar, polished stones, intricately woven fabrics. A new, sturdy chair, far grander than the rickety stool he had used before, had been placed there.
Olyvar, the barkeep, approached, his face alight with a fervent, tearful joy. He placed a goblet of shining, polished silver on the table, filled to the brim with a deep red wine. "From the King's own shipment, my lord," he whispered reverently. "Nothing is too good for our protector."
Thor stared at the goblet, at the adoring faces surrounding him, and felt a wave of profound nausea. He had not done it for them. He had done it for himself. He had acted out of a deep, primal rage at the sheer, arrogant disrespect shown by the mortal king. He had flexed a muscle he had not used in years, and the resulting adulation was like ash in his mouth.
The use of his power had left him feeling… strange. It was not the familiar, draining exhaustion of a long battle. It was a deeper, more psychic fatigue. He had reached for the power of the storm, the power of a king, and had found it waiting for him, as potent as ever. But he had also felt the immense, crushing weight of the grief and failure that he had been using alcohol to suppress. The power was inextricably linked to his identity, to the man he had been, the king he had failed to be. Wielding it was like tearing open a barely healed wound. The brief, exhilarating rush of omnipotence was followed by a long, painful echo of his own inadequacy.
He pushed the silver goblet away. "Ale," he grunted, his voice hoarse.
The disappointment on Olyvar's face was palpable, but he scurried away to fetch the familiar, foul-smelling brew. Thor leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes, trying to shut out the adoring looks, the whispered prayers. He had not wanted this. He had wanted oblivion, not worship. He had shattered the King's game, but in doing so, he had created a new one, with himself at the center. He was no longer a recluse. He was a symbol. And symbols were targets.
He could feel the change in the city. The subtle web of observation that Varys had begun to weave had been pulled back, replaced by a wide, fearful buffer zone. He could feel the eyes of the Spider's little birds watching from afar, but they no longer felt like a tightening net. They felt like the bars of a much larger cage, one built of fear and reverence. He had won his isolation, but at the cost of his anonymity. Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms would now know his name. He was no longer just a drunk in a tavern. He was Thor, the Storm God of King's Landing. And he had a sinking feeling that his wish to be left alone was now, and forever, a lost cause.
The raven reached Casterly Rock four days after the Miracle at the Sept. It had flown hard, a message not for a common lord, but for the Lord of the Rock, the former Hand of the King, the most powerful and feared man in Westeros: Tywin Lannister.
Tywin was in his study, a chamber of carved stone and dark wood that overlooked the Sunset Sea. The room was like the man himself: ordered, imposing, and utterly without sentiment. He was reviewing ledgers, his mind a precise and unforgiving abacus of profit and loss, of assets and debts. A Lannister always paid his debts, but first, he tallied them with meticulous accuracy.
His brother, Kevan, entered without knocking, a privilege afforded to him alone. He held a small, tightly sealed scroll in his hand. "From King's Landing," Kevan said, his voice low. "From one of your sources."
Tywin did not look up from his ledger. "If it is another request for a loan, burn it. Aerys has squandered enough Lannister gold on his follies."
"It is not about a loan, Tywin," Kevan said, his tone grim. He broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. He read for a moment, his brow furrowing, before a look of utter disbelief crossed his face. "By the Seven Hells…"
That got Tywin's attention. He slowly raised his head, his pale green eyes, flecked with gold, fixing on his brother. "Read it."
Kevan cleared his throat and began to read the detailed report from one of Tywin's paid informants at court. The report described the King's mad 'test', the pyre, the mother and the murderer. It then described, in stark, unembellished terms, what had happened next. The sky darkening. The impossible lightning. The disintegration of the iron posts. The transformation of the pyre into a weirwood tree. The complete and total mental collapse of King Aerys.
When Kevan finished, the silence in the study was absolute. Tywin Lannister's face was a mask of carved stone, betraying nothing. He simply stared at his brother, his gaze intense, analytical.
"A god?" Kevan finally breathed, the words sounding absurd even to himself. "A man who calls himself Thor? It cannot be true. It must be some mummer's trick on a grand scale."
"Aerys is many things," Tywin said, his voice a low, cold baritone. "He is a fool, a paranoid, a sadist. But he is not easily tricked by mummery. And a weirwood tree does not simply appear in the heart of a city that has none." He steepled his long, elegant fingers. "Assume it is true. Assume every word of this report is fact. What does it mean?"
Kevan shook his head. "It means the world has gone mad."
"The world is as it has always been," Tywin corrected, his voice sharp as Valyrian steel. "A chaotic mess of grasping fools. What has changed is that a new piece is on the board. A piece of an entirely different make." He rose from his chair and walked to the grand window, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared out at the crashing waves.
"Power resides where men believe it resides," he mused, quoting a lesson he had long ago mastered. "And right now, the men of King's Landing believe it resides in a drunken giant in Flea Bottom. This 'Thor' has done what I could not. He has broken Aerys. He has humiliated the crown and captured the faith of the common man in a single afternoon, seemingly without effort."
He turned back to Kevan, his eyes glinting with a cold, predatory light. "Aerys is finished. The man is a shell. This… this event will be the final push. The lords of the realm will not tolerate being ruled by a king who is not only mad, but has been so publicly and divinely rebuked. Rebellion is no longer a possibility; it is an inevitability. Robert Baratheon and his pup of a wolf, Stark, will have the pretext they need."
"And this Thor?" Kevan asked. "Whose side will he be on?"
"He has no side," Tywin stated with certainty. "A being of such power does not concern himself with the squabbles of lions and stags and dragons. He is a force of nature. A storm. And a wise man does not try to command a storm. He watches which way the wind is blowing, and he sets his sails accordingly."
Tywin's mind was already moving, calculating, re-evaluating his grand designs. The Targaryen dynasty was crumbling. A rebellion was coming. And in the center of it all was this impossible, unpredictable variable. A god.
"This entity is a threat to all established order," Tywin continued. "He threatens the Faith. He threatens the nobility. He threatens the very idea of a hereditary monarchy. But he could also be… a tool."
The word hung in the air, audacious and dangerous.
"A tool?" Kevan said, aghast. "Tywin, did you not hear the report? He creates trees from fire! He answers to no one!"
"Everything answers to something," Tywin replied, a flicker of a smile touching his lips. It was a cold, unsettling sight. "The report says he is a god of sorrow. Wounded. Broken. A being in pain. And a being in pain has vulnerabilities." He tapped a finger against the window pane. "We will not approach him. Not yet. We will watch. We will let the other fools—the Starks with their honour, the Baratheons with their fury, the Spider with his webs—make their moves. We will let them test his patience, probe his weaknesses. We will learn."
He returned to his desk, his demeanor once again that of the cold, calculating Lord of Casterly Rock. The news that should have shaken him had instead clarified his path. The game was more dangerous now, the stakes infinitely higher, but the objective remained the same: the preservation and advancement of House Lannister.
"Send a raven to your son, Lancel's, cousin in the Citadel," Tywin commanded. "Tell him to research the name 'Thor'. Any legend, any myth, from any land, no matter how obscure. I want to know everything there is to know about this 'god'. Knowledge, Kevan. That is the only weapon that might have any effect on a being such as this."
As Kevan bowed and left the study, Tywin Lannister stared at the ledger on his desk. But he was no longer seeing columns of figures. He was seeing a new, far grander accounting. On one side, the crumbling debt of the Targaryen dynasty. On the other, the rising, incalculable asset of a broken god. And Tywin Lannister, ever the master of debts and investments, was already calculating how to turn this divine catastrophe into a Lannister profit. The thunder that had echoed in King's Landing had reached the ears of the Lion, and the Lion was listening very, very carefully.