Chapter 24: The Crown of Ashes
The march on King's Landing was not a triumphal procession. It was a funeral dirge. The great host of the rebellion, an army forged in the fires of vengeance and righteous fury, moved south not with the swagger of conquerors, but with the grim, hesitant tread of men walking into a haunted house. The news of what had transpired in the capital and the Westerlands had flown ahead of them on black-winged rumour, and now every farmer's field and quiet village they passed seemed to hold its breath, watching them with wide, fearful eyes. They were not seen as liberators. They were seen as mortals, daring to claim a prize that a god had already touched.
Robert Baratheon, the newly acclaimed king, was the heart of this grim procession, and his heart was a cold, shrivelled thing. He rode at the head of the column, a giant of a man in black steel plate, his crowned stag banner fluttering bravely above him. But his usual boisterous laughter was gone, replaced by a sullen, brooding silence. He had won. The war was over before his grand final battle had even been fought. He had been handed a victory he had not earned, a crown he had not truly conquered. Aerys was dead, but not by Robert's hammer. The Lannisters were broken, but not by Robert's armies. His great, defining purpose had been stolen from him, executed with an efficiency that was both a relief and a profound, personal insult. He was a king by default, a monarch by celestial intervention, and the crown felt less like a prize and more like a consolation.
Ned Stark rode beside him, his own heart a heavy stone in his chest. He watched his friend, his brother in all but blood, grapple with the hollowness of his victory. Ned felt no triumph. He felt only a vast, chilling sense of foreboding. He was a man of order, of laws, of tradition. He understood wars fought for grievances, kingdoms won by the sword. He did not understand this. A god had descended, broken the game, rewritten the rules, and then vanished, leaving them to make sense of the pieces. It was a world unmoored from its foundations, and Ned, a man who drew his strength from those very foundations, felt hopelessly adrift.
When they finally crested the last hill and saw King's Landing spread before them, a collective, uneasy silence fell over the army. The city was not burning. There were no columns of smoke. There were no signs of the chaos they had expected after a sack and a subsequent massacre. The city was just… quiet. Terribly, unnaturally quiet.
As they approached the gates, they were met not by a delegation from the Small Council or a challenge from Targaryen loyalists, but by a crowd of smallfolk. They did not cheer. They did not throw flowers. They simply stood there, their faces thin and pale, and watched the army approach. At their head stood the mummer-priest, Leo the Storm-Crier, his tattered robes a mockery of a septon's vestments.
"King Robert Baratheon!" Jon Arryn announced, his voice carrying the weight of command. "We have come to restore order in the name of the realm!"
Leo stepped forward, his expression not one of deference, but of serene, unshakeable faith. "There is already order in the city, Lord Arryn," he said, his voice ringing with a newfound authority. "It is the God's Peace." He gestured to the city behind him. "He has cleansed this place of its tormentors. He has judged the wicked. His will is done. The city is under his protection."
Robert spurred his horse forward, his frustration finally boiling over. "I am your king now, priest!" he roared, his voice the familiar thunder of old. "This city is mine! It is under my protection! You will bow, or I will have your head!"
The threat, which would have sent any other man scrambling, had no effect on Leo. He simply smiled, a beatific, pitying expression on his face. "You are a lord, and we will grant you the respect due to a lord," he said calmly. "But a king? There is only one true king of this city. And his throne is a storm cloud, not a chair of iron." He looked past Robert, at the thousands of soldiers behind him. "Your army is welcome to enter, Lord Baratheon. But know that you enter a holy city. The God of Storms is watching. Tread lightly."
With that, he turned and walked back into the city, the crowd parting for him and then closing ranks, their silent, watchful eyes a far more intimidating barrier than any portcullis.
Robert sat on his horse, his face a mask of apoplectic fury. He was speechless. He, the victor, the conqueror, the king, had just been lectured and dismissed by a penniless mummer. He wanted to give the order to charge, to ride them down, to teach them what real power was. But he couldn't. The memory of the reports, of an army turned to ash, of mountains crumbled to dust, stayed his hand. His power, his hammer, his rage—it was all useless against a foe like that. For the first time in his life, Robert Baratheon felt truly, utterly powerless.
"Let's go, Robert," Ned said softly, nudging his horse forward. "The city is yours. Let's go and claim it."
With a curse that was thick with impotent rage, Robert urged his horse forward, and the rebel army marched into their silent, conquered capital.
The Red Keep was a tomb. The bodies of the Lannister soldiers had been cleared from the courtyards by the city's silent sisters, but the stones were still stained dark with their blood. The air itself felt thin, charged with the lingering ozone of Thor's wrath. The castle's garrison of Targaryen guards had surrendered without a fight, meekly laying down their arms, their eyes filled with the same haunted, reverent terror as the smallfolk.
While Robert and Jon Arryn dealt with the immediate, messy business of establishing a government, the grimmest task fell to Ned. As the man with the strongest stomach for grim duty, he took it upon himself to secure the throne room and deal with the remains of the Mad King.
He entered the Great Hall with a handful of his own Northmen, good, steady men with beards of ice and hearts of iron. But even they faltered when they saw the scene. The lingering, sickly-sweet smell of wildfire and death hung in the air. The green-glazed scorch marks on the floor and tapestries were a testament to the King's madness. And on the throne, the architect of all their woes sat slumped in his grotesque final pose.
Ned Stark, a man who had seen battle, who had taken lives, felt a wave of profound revulsion. He looked at the withered corpse of Aerys Targaryen and felt no triumph, no satisfaction. He felt only a deep, weary pity for a kingdom that had suffered under such a creature. He saw the remains of the pyromancers, their bodies twisted and burned not by their own fires, but by the King's final, desperate rage. And he saw the silent, white-cloaked figures of the Kingsguard who had died defending their mad king.
His men wrapped the King's body in a black shroud. Ned gave the order for it to be burned, a final, ironic purification for the man who had loved fire above all else. As they worked, Ned found himself looking at the Iron Throne. It was just as the stories described it: a monstrous, ugly, uncomfortable-looking chair, a thing of barbs and blades and twisted metal. And it was empty. He thought of Thor's judgment. An act of brutal, divine intervention that had ended a war but solved nothing. The god had removed the tyrant, but had left the true source of the realm's misery—the throne itself, the ambition it inspired, the game it created—untouched.
His men found Jaime Lannister in the White Sword Tower, polishing his armour with a numb, methodical focus. The golden boy looked… diminished. The arrogant swagger was gone, replaced by a hollow, haunted look in his green eyes. He answered Ned's questions in a flat monotone, recounting the events of that night with a chilling, detached clarity. He described Thor's arrival, the silent, effortless dispatching of the guards, the final confrontation.
"He judged him," Jaime said, his voice barely a whisper as he buffed a spot on his gilded breastplate. "He looked at Aerys, and he judged him. And then… he was gone." He looked up at Ned. "I was there. I was sworn to protect him. I did nothing."
"There was nothing you could have done, Lannister," Ned said, his voice softer than he intended. He felt a strange, unwilling pang of sympathy for the Kingslayer who wasn't.
"No," Jaime agreed, a bitter, humourless smile touching his lips. "There wasn't. And that, Lord Stark, is the most terrifying thing of all."
Three days later, in a ceremony stripped of all pomp and grandeur, Robert Baratheon was officially crowned. They did not dare use the Great Sept, which was now the heart of the "Faith of the Storm." Instead, the ritual was performed in the cold, cavernous, and blood-stained throne room of the Red Keep. A handful of lords, both rebel and newly-pardoned Targaryen loyalists, stood as witnesses.
A new crown had been hastily forged by the castle smith, a simple, heavy band of black iron with golden stag antlers rising from it. Jon Arryn, acting as both Hand and High Septon, placed the crown on Robert's head.
"In the sight of gods and men," Jon's voice echoed in the hall, though it lacked its usual conviction, "I proclaim Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms."
A ragged cheer went up from the assembled lords. "Long live King Robert!"
Robert stood before the Iron Throne. He did not sit on it. He seemed almost afraid to touch it. He looked out at his lords, at his new kingdom. He was king. He had everything he had ever wanted. So why did he feel so empty? Why did his victory feel so much like a defeat? He looked up at the high, vaulted ceiling of the throne room, as if he could see through the stone to the sky above. He was the king, but he knew, with a certainty that gnawed at his soul, that he was not the greatest power in the land. He was simply the man brave, or foolish, enough to sit in the chair while the real god was away.
Far to the south, on his lonely Dornish mesa, Thor felt it. He felt the shift, the insignificant ripple in the great cosmic sea as a mortal man placed a metal hat on his head and declared himself king of a patch of dirt.
He was sitting on the cliff's edge, staring into the setting sun, his form silhouetted against a sky of brilliant orange and purple. The weeks of fasting and isolation had stripped him down to his essential self. He was leaner, harder, the lines of grief on his face carved deeper, like canyons in the rock. The act of regicide and the subsequent slaughter had not brought him peace. It had scoured him clean, leaving him raw, exposed to the full, unfiltered force of his own long-buried sorrow.
He had not been blind to the world. He could feel it all. He had felt the terror of the sack, a distant, screaming agony. He had felt the cold satisfaction of his own wrath. And now he felt this… this pathetic attempt by the mortals to restore their own broken order.
A king. They had crowned a new king. They had taken the board he had shattered and had clumsily glued the pieces back together, hoping the game could continue as before.
A sound escaped his lips, the first he had made in weeks. It was not a word. It was not a groan of despair. It was a soft, dry, humourless chuckle. The sound of a being witnessing an act of such profound, cyclical futility that it bordered on performance art.
They did not understand. They could not understand. They were crowning a king to protect them from their enemies, to lead their armies, to make the laws. But their greatest enemy was not the Targaryen prince hiding on his island. Their greatest threat was not the ambition of rival lords. Their greatest threat was him. The indifferent, grieving god who could unmake their world with a single, weary thought.
And what was their new king's plan for that? What treaty could he sign, what army could he raise, what law could he pass that would protect them from a being who saw their entire existence as a fleeting, tragic dream?
Thor did not move. He did not send a storm. He did not strike the new king down. That would require an investment of energy. It would require him to care. His indifference was now his only shield, his only weapon, his only true response to their folly.
He had judged one king. He would not dignify this new one with a judgment. He would simply ignore him. He would let him rule his kingdom of ashes. He would let him wear his crown of fear.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and the stars began to appear in the darkening sky. The stars of a universe that was not his own. Robert Baratheon was king. The rebellion was over. A fragile, terrified peace had settled over the realm.
But as King Robert I sat uneasily in his new capital, he and every other soul in Westeros would now go to sleep each night with one ear cocked to the sky, listening. Listening for the distant, tell-tale rumble of a storm. Listening for the thunder that had fallen, and could fall again at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. The Age of Fear had a king, but it was ruled by the weather. And the forecast was eternal, unpredictable, and bleak.