Blood of the Dragon

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Blood of the Dragon
Blood of the Dragon in Asimov's July 1996 Cover art by Paul Youll
Blood of the Dragon in Asimov's Science Fiction July 1996 Cover art by Paul Youll
Author George R. R. Martin
Country United States
Language English
Series A Song of Ice and Fire
Genre(s) Fantasy
Publisher Dell Magazines
Media Type novella in published in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 1996

Blood of the Dragon is a Novella published in the July 1996 issue of the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, based on the Daenerys chapters from A Game of Thrones.

It received the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

Plot

In the Free City of Pentos, Magister Illyrio Mopatis and the exiled Prince Viserys Targaryen conspire to sell Viserys' thirteen-year-old sister Daenerys in marriage to Khal Drogo of the Dothraki. Drogo commands an clan of forty thousand mounted warriors whom Viserys plans to use to reclaim his homeland from the usurper Robert Baratheon. Among the wedding gifts are three stone dragon eggs from Illyrio. Unexpectedly, Daenerys and Drogo find love as they journey east into the vast grasslands of the Dothraki sea, and Daenerys becomes pregnant with a son, to be named Rhaego after her dead brother. Ser Jorah Mormont, son of the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and a knight exiled from Westeros for dealing in slaves, joins Viserys' entourage as an advisor on the current state of the Seven Kingdoms.

Viserys becomes angry about how long he must wait before Drogo decides to invade Westeros and, in a drunken rage, insults Drogo grievously. Drogo decides to crown him right there— with molten gold. Daenerys picks up her brother's quest to reclaim the Iron Throne, but Drogo is just as obstinate with the moon of his life as he was with the Beggar King. The tables turn when a Westerosi assassin, in the pay of King Robert, nearly kills her and their unborn child; a furious Drogo agrees to invade Westeros. However, during a warm-up raid on the peaceful Lhazareen, Drogo takes a wound which festers. Daenerys loses both Drogo and her unborn son to the machinations of a Lhazareen witch, and has her burned in a pyre. Daenerys had previously felt the eggs and found them warm to her touch, but not to others'. Before she had placed them in a small fire and thought that the flames made something in the eggs alive. While the witch was being burned she placed the eggs in the very hot fire. Incredibly, the eggs hatch, and Daenerys Targaryen, the Stormborn, becomes mother to the first three dragons seen in the world for one hundred and sixty years.