But even as he proclaims himself to his enemies, Sunfyre lurches out of the forest to burn them alive. The cackle Aegon emits as he watches the soldiers burn is a laugh of pure madness. It’s probably a good thing for Larys Strong that he flew the coop before the king and his dragon were reunited.
Some dragon riders prove more pliable than others. Ser Ulf, long discontented with the highhanded behavior of his erstwhile lieges, Rhaenyra and Daemon, takes a meeting with Lord Ormund Hightower. (We learn quickly it isn’t their first meeting.) Ulf accepts Ormund’s offer to turn against Rhaenyra and fly for the Greens. His smile is every bit as bloodthirsty as Aegon’s. Denied his simple comforts and harmless vices, Ulf will now kill until he gets the life he wants.
And what of Addam of Hull, Ulf’s former comrade? He participates in the hunt for Sheepstealer and is instrumental in safely capturing his niece Rhaena. But her sister, Baela, is oblivious when Addam refers to his romantic feelings for her. She believes he is referring to the budding relationship between herself and his brother, Alyn. Rhaenyra’s side can’t afford another disgruntled dragon rider.
In the Riverlands, Rhaenyra’s forces seem to have won the day. Just ask Ser Criston. In last week’s episode, he was one of the series’s leads; this week, he’s a head on a stick, carried by Lord Roderick Dustin. “We march now toward our annihilation,” Criston once told Gwayne, perhaps his only friend. For his own part, he was right.
Meanwhile, the dragon Vhagar is still missing in action. But her rider, Aemond, is keeping very busy. In his secret stronghold, Harrenhal, Aemond’s witch nursemaid turned girlfriend, Alys, has sex with him in the form of his mother, Alicent. It’s just a hallucination … but then the real Alicent appears with a guard in tow, there to assassinate her own son so that her daughter, Helaena, will be spared. Aemond finds this coincidence confusing, as you might expect. (Frankly, so did I.)
But although Aemond kills Alicent’s guard just to be on the safe side, he believes enough in his mother’s love to accept spiced wine from her. The next time we see him, he collapses at Alys’s feet once again, poisoned. “Idiot,” Alys calls him as his mother flees Harrenhal. Whether or not Aemond survives, Harrenhal is no place for Alicent to linger — not when the man she just tried to murder counts a dragon and a witch as his best (OK, only) friends.
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