Death of Khal Drogo

Khal Drogo's death is the hinge on which Daenerys Targaryen's fate turns. The wound that kills him is not a heroic blow in battle but a festering cut from an arakh, sustained when he slew Khal Ogo and his son Fogo. The khal's bloodriders and the Dothraki healers treat the gash on his breast, but the wound turns black and corrupt. Drogo, who once towered over every man in his khalasar, grows weak, feverish, and silent. He falls from his horse, a catastrophe for a Dothraki khal: a khal who cannot ride is no khal at all. His khalasar begins to dissolve, the riders slipping away night by night to follow new khals, until fewer than a hundred remain. Daenerys, pregnant with his son, watches her world crumble around her.

The Bloodmage's Price

Desperate to save her husband, Daenerys turns to Mirri Maz Duur, the Lhazareen godswife she had rescued from rape and enslavement. Mirri warns her that only death can pay for life, and that the spell is bloodmagic, dark and costly. Daenerys agrees, believing the price will be the stallion killed for the ritual. The maegi chants over Drogo as he floats in a bath of horse blood, and shadows dance against the tent walls. But the spell does not restore the khal. When Daenerys wakes from her fever dreams, she finds Drogo alive but utterly hollow: his eyes are open but blind, he does not speak or hear, he can walk only if led, and he will eat only if food is placed in his mouth. Mirri Maz Duur tells her that he will never return as he was—not until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, until the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves, until Daenerys's womb quickens again and she bears a living child. The price has been paid not with the horse but with Daenerys's unborn son, Rhaego, who is born monstrous, dead, and rotting.

The Mercy Killing

Daenerys is left with a man who is only a body, a shell that once held her sun-and-stars. She bathes him herself, washes the dirt from his arms and chest, combs his long black hair until it shines, and dresses him in his favorite painted vest. She braids his hair and hangs his bells one by one. That night she leads him out under the open sky, as the Dothraki believe all important things must be done. She tries to rouse him with memories of their first ride, their wedding night, the child they made together. She uses her hands, her mouth, her breasts, she covers him with kisses and whispers and prayers, and by the end she has bathed him with her tears. But Drogo does not feel, or speak, or rise. When dawn breaks, Daenerys knows he is truly lost to her. She takes a silk cushion, kneels, kisses him on the lips, and presses it down across his face until he stops breathing.

The Pyre and the Rebirth

Daenerys builds a funeral pyre for her khal, piling it high with his treasures: his tent, his painted vests, his saddles, his whip, his arakh, his dragonbone bow. She has the bloodmage Mirri Maz Duur bound and staked to the pyre as well. She places her three dragon's eggs around Drogo's body—the black beside his heart, the green beside his head, the cream-and-gold between his legs. When the first star appears, a red comet burning low in the east, Daenerys takes a torch and sets the pyre alight. The flames consume Drogo and Mirri Maz Duur together. Daenerys walks into the fire herself, naked and unafraid, her milk streaming from her breasts. The heat is immense, the logs crack and collapse, but she is unhurt. When the fire dies, she emerges from the ashes with three newborn dragons clinging to her: the cream-and-gold suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at her right, the black-and-scarlet draped across her shoulders. The Dothraki who remain fall to their knees before her, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night comes alive with the music of dragons.