“I will speak her name,” Cressen told his stone hellhound. “Melisandre. Her.” Melisandre of Asshai, sorceress, shadowbinder, and priestess to R’hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Melisandre, whose madness must not be allowed to spread beyond Dragonstone.   His chambers¹ seemed dim and gloomy after the brightness of the morning. With fumbling² hands, the old man lit a candle and carried it to the workroom beneath the rookery stair, where his ointments³, potions, and medicines stood neatly⁴ on their shelves. On the bottom shelf behind a row of salves in squat⁵ clay jars he found a vial of indigo⁶ glass, no larger than his little finger. It rattled⁷ when he shook it. Cressen blew away a layer of dust and carried it back to his table. Collapsing⁸ into his chair, he pulled the stopper and spilled out the vial’s contents. A dozen crystals, no larger than seeds, rattled across the parchment he’d been reading. They shone like jewels in the candlelight, so purple that the maester found himself thinking that he had never truly seen the color before.  The chain around his throat felt very heavy. He touched one of the crystals lightly with the tip of his little finger. Such a small thing to hold the power of life and death. It was made from a certain plant that grew only on the islands of the Jade⁹ Sea, half a world away. The leaves had to be aged¹⁰, and soaked in a wash of limes and sugar water and certain rare spices from the Summer

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