Only death can pay for life

Only death can pay for life is the central principle of blood magic in A Game of Thrones, a dark transactional law that demands a sentient sacrifice of equivalent value for any act of resurrection or supernatural healing. The phrase is spoken by the Lhazareen godswife Mirri Maz Duur when Daenerys Targaryen begs her to save Khal Drogo from a festering wound, and it becomes the grim arithmetic that governs the story's most consequential magical event: the birth of dragons.

Origin and Statement of the Principle

The principle is first articulated in the tent of Khal Drogo after the khal has been wounded in battle against Khal Ogo's khalasar. Drogo's chest wound has festered despite the poultice of firepod and sting-me-not that Mirri Maz Duur applied, and the khal lies burning with fever, beyond the reach of ordinary healing. When Daenerys implores the godswife to save him, Mirri Maz Duur warns her that there is a spell, but it is hard and dark. "Only death may pay for life," she says, specifying that this is bloodmagic, not a matter of gold or horses. Daenerys, desperate, asks if the required death is her own, and Mirri Maz Duur tells her it is not. The khal's great red stallion is slaughtered, its blood poured into Drogo's bath, and the maegi begins a ritual that summons shadows and powers old and dark.

The Price Paid and the Outcome

Daenerys believes she has paid the price with the horse's death, but the transaction proves far more costly. During the ritual, a fight erupts outside the tent; Quaro, Haggo, Cohollo, and Qotho die, and Ser Jorah Mormont is wounded. Inside, Daenerys goes into labor and is carried into the tent by Ser Jorah despite her protests. The child she bears, Rhaego, is monstrous — scaled like a lizard, blind, with a stub of a tail and small leather wings, dead for years, according to Mirri Maz Duur. Khal Drogo survives but is reduced to a mindless, vegetative state: he can walk only if led, eats only if food is placed in his mouth, and stares at the sun without seeing it. When Daenerys confronts the maegi, Mirri Maz Duur tells her that the stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now, and that Drogo will return only when impossible conditions are met: when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves, when Daenerys's womb quickens again and she bears a living child.

The Second Application: Dragons from Stone

Daenerys later invokes the same principle a second time, now with full understanding of its cost. After smothering the catatonic Drogo with a cushion, she has his body placed on a funeral pyre along with Mirri Maz Duur, whom she has bound and staked among the treasures. The three petrified dragon's eggs that Magister Illyrio gave her as a bride gift are placed around Drogo's body. As she steps into the fire herself, Daenerys recalls the maegi's words: "Only death can pay for life." The pyre collapses around her, but she emerges unharmed, naked and soot-covered, with three newborn dragons suckling at her breasts — the cream-and-gold at her left, the green-and-bronze at her right, and the black-and-scarlet draped across her shoulders. The deaths of the horse, her child, Khal Drogo, and Mirri Maz Duur have paid for the lives of the dragons, and the principle is fulfilled in a way that transforms Daenerys from a refugee khaleesi into the Mother of Dragons.