Chapter 45: The Golden Road
The peace was a different kind of war. In the decade following their successful deterrence of the Volantene coalition, the Golden Dragon Theocracy had settled into the long, arduous, and often tedious work of governing. The shadow war with Westeros had become a cold, patient game of whispers and subsidies, a slow-moving chess match played by Lyra's agents on a board a continent away. The great, existential threats had receded, replaced by the daily challenges of administration, infrastructure, and cultural integration. For the five immortal Prophets, who had been forged in the crucible of constant crisis, the quiet hum of a stable empire was a profoundly alien sound.
Their god, however, saw the bigger picture. He observed his thriving civilization, his secure borders, his deep wellspring of faith, and saw not an end state, but a completed foundation. The structure was sound. The defenses were proven. It was time to build upwards, to expand the enterprise in a new and unexpected direction. The Century of Blood had been a fire that had cleared the forest; now, new trade routes, like great rivers, were beginning to carve new paths through the landscape. The most vital of these flowed from the mythic, wealthy lands of the far east—from Yi Ti and the Jade Sea. And at the mouth of that river, acting as a parasitic tollbooth, sat the ancient, decadent city of Qarth.
The god turned his divine gaze eastward. He saw the Warlock Kings in their House of the Undying, the Pureborn in their Palace of Dust, the merchant guilds in their opulence. He saw them as an old, entrenched monopoly, strangling the flow of global commerce for their own enrichment. For his Theocracy to achieve true, lasting economic supremacy, the Qartheen monopoly had to be broken.
"It is economic warfare, pure and simple," Lyra stated, her voice sharp with indignation. She stood before the High Council in Lysaro, a stack of trade ledgers and intelligence reports before her. "The Tourmaline Brotherhood has quintupled the tariffs on all uncut gems passing through their port. The Ancient Guild of Spicers has declared a selective embargo, refusing to sell saffron and certain medicinal herbs to our merchants at any price. They are trying to bleed us."
Hesh slammed a heavy fist on the council table. "They dare? After we humbled Volantis?"
"It is precisely because we humbled Volantis that they dare," Lyra countered. "They see us as the only true rising power, the only rival to their control of eastern trade. They will not challenge Jorah's legions or our Guardian Fleet. They are merchants. So they fight us in the only way they know how: with tariffs, embargoes, and price-fixing. They seek to make our prosperity too expensive to maintain."
Jorah paced the chamber like a caged lion. "Qarth is a den of effete peacocks and parlor magicians. Their walls are high, but their soldiers are soft. One of our legions, with dragon support, could break their gates in a week."
"And be drawn into a protracted war a thousand leagues from our home?" Lyra retorted. "Fighting their sellswords, angering their trade partners in the Jade Sea, and leaving our western flank exposed to the Targaryens? No, Jorah. A military solution is what they would expect. It is a brute's answer to a surgeon's problem. We cannot fight a trade war with swords."
The council was once again at an impasse. Their military might, the very thing that had secured their peace, was a useless tool against this new economic assault. They were being choked by an enemy they could not strike.
Kaelen listened to the debate, feeling the frustration of his friends. He knew they were thinking in terms of direct confrontation, of breaking the obstacle in their path. He closed his eyes and sought the perspective of his god, the divine CEO, who did not think in terms of breaking obstacles, but of making them irrelevant.
The vision was of a great, winding river of liquid gold, flowing from a sun-drenched land in the east. But before it could reach the golden plains of the Theocracy, it was forced to pass through a narrow, treacherous canyon of dark, cracked rock—the city of Qarth. In this canyon, old, wizened men stood on the banks with great nets of fine mesh, scooping out the majority of the gold, leaving only a pitiful trickle to emerge on the other side. Kaelen then saw a magnificent golden dragon appear. It did not attack the canyon or the old men. It flew high above the mountains, and with a great roar of its Thu'um, it carved a new, straight, wide channel through the landscape. The river of gold, now unobstructed, changed its course, pouring in a mighty, uninterrupted flood directly into the Theocracy's lands, leaving the old canyon and its greedy net-wielders with nothing but a dry, dusty riverbed.
The god's whisper was a lesson in pure, disruptive innovation.
A true merchant does not pay the toll. He builds a new road. A true emperor does not attack the chokepoint. He makes it obsolete. The wealth of the world is being held hostage. Go and liberate it.
"We will not go through Qarth," Kaelen announced to the council, the divine vision having laid out their new grand strategy. "We will go around it. We will build our own road to the east."
He pointed to the great map, his finger tracing a bold, improbable line. From the eastern edge of their empire, from the rebuilt city of Old Ghis, his finger moved across the vast, red desert known as the Red Waste, a land believed to be an impassable wasteland, and connected with the far-off, almost mythical lands of the Jade Sea.
"A new Silk Road," Lyra breathed, the sheer audacity of the plan dawning on her. "A Golden Road. We bypass them entirely. We cut them out of the supply chain. We make them irrelevant."
"The Red Waste is a death trap," Jorah cautioned. "No army has ever successfully crossed it. And it is Dothraki territory."
"An army would die," Kaelen agreed. "But an expedition of explorers, guided by our god, will not. And we will not fight the Dothraki for the land. We will become their patrons. We will offer them a gift no Khal has ever been able to give his people: water in the desert."
The plan was named Operation Golden Road. It was a breathtaking feat of exploration, engineering, and diplomacy, a quest to reshape the commercial geography of the world.
The first phase was exploration. Tarek, their first free citizen, now a seasoned spymaster and explorer, was chosen to lead the expedition. He was accompanied by a small, elite force of Wyrmguard, led by the young rider Vorion, mounted on his swift, sapphire-blue dragon, Cyranon. Their mission was not to fight, but to map the wasteland, to find a viable path, to locate underground water sources, and, most importantly, to make contact with the scattered Dothraki clans who claimed the desert as their own.
They journeyed for months into the vast, red emptiness. It was a harsh and unforgiving land, but Vorion's dragon provided an unparalleled advantage. From the sky, Cyranon could spot hidden oases, ancient, half-buried ruins that offered shelter, and the distant dust clouds of Dothraki riders long before they became a threat.
They eventually found the clan of a powerful Dothraki chieftain, a grizzled old warrior named Khal Drogo's second cousin, twice removed, who, for the sake of simplicity, we shall call Khal Jhaqo. He was a proud and territorial man who viewed their intrusion as a challenge. His bloodriders surrounded Tarek's small party, their arakhs drawn.
Tarek did not show fear. He presented a gift: a waterskin, not of water, but of fine Lysaro wine. And he made his offer, translated by a man from their own party who knew the Dothraki tongue.
"The Dragon God of the West sees your people thirst," the translator said. "He knows the Red Sun is your enemy. He wishes to be your friend. He proposes a pact. My people will build a road through this land. Along this road, we will dig deep wells, lined with stone, that will never run dry. These wells will belong to your clan, and all the clans who swear to protect this road. You will have water. Your herds will grow fat. In exchange, you will grant our caravans safe passage. You will be the guardians of the Golden Road, and all the Dothraki will honor you for making the desert bloom."
Khal Jhaqo looked at the small party, at the magnificent blue dragon that circled patiently overhead, and at the waterskin in his hand. He was a man of the desert. He understood the value of water better than any man understood gold. A road was meaningless to him. But permanent wells, a source of life in the wasteland… that was a gift from a god. He agreed.
With the Dothraki pact secured, the second phase began. Hesh, the Prophet of the Hand, arrived with his Covenant Corps of engineers. It was his greatest project yet. Following the path Tarek had mapped, they began the construction of the Golden Road. It was not a simple dirt track. It was a great, paved highway, and at every key point, they used their advanced drilling techniques to sink wells deep into the earth, raising stone waystations and fortified trading posts around them. These posts became small, self-sufficient towns, oases of order and commerce in the vast emptiness, each protected by a garrison of the Serpent Guard and the allied Dothraki.
The work took three years. It was an undertaking that rivaled the construction of the Valyrian roads of old.
Finally, the day came. The first great caravan of the Serpent Trading Company assembled at the eastern gate of Old Ghis. It consisted of a hundred massive wagons, laden with the finest goods of the Theocracy—Saris steel, Mantaryan textiles, Lysaro singing glass—and protected by five hundred soldiers of the First Legion. At its head rode Lyra herself, determined to oversee the culmination of her grand economic strategy.
Their journey was arduous, but successful. They travelled along their new road, resupplying at the fortified waystations. They were met not with hostility by the Dothraki, but with riders who served as honored escorts, guiding them through the shifting sands.
Their arrival in the far eastern city of Yin, a port on the Jade Sea, was a momentous event. The merchants of Yi Ti, long accustomed to the exorbitant prices and arrogant dealings of the Qartheen, were stunned by the arrival of a new, powerful trading partner from the west. Lyra opened negotiations, and her offer was simple: better goods, at a fairer price, transported along a new, secure route. The YiTish, shrewd merchants themselves, immediately recognized the dawning of a new economic era.
The return journey was a triumph. The caravan was now laden with the treasures of the east: chests of saffron and cloves, bolts of priceless silk, strange and wonderful animals, and texts of ancient lore for the Academy.
When Lyra's caravan re-entered Lysaro, its wagons overflowing with the wealth of the Jade Sea, the city erupted in celebration. They had done it. They had bypassed their rival, conquered the desert, and had seized control of the world's most lucrative trade route.
The economic effect was immediate and devastating—for Qarth. The news of the Golden Road spread through the ports of the world like wildfire. Why pay the outrageous tariffs of the Tourmaline Brotherhood when one could trade directly with the east via the safe and efficient route provided by the Serpent Trading Company? The flow of caravans to Qarth slowed to a trickle, then stopped almost entirely. The great merchant guilds, their monopoly shattered, descended into bitter infighting. The city, deprived of the trade that was its lifeblood, began a slow, inexorable decline. The Theocracy had not fired a single shot, yet they had brought their rival to its knees.
In his domain, the god watched his celestial map transform. A new, brilliant golden line now bisected the continent, a great artery of commerce flowing directly from his empire to the heart of the east. The light of Qarth, once a proud and arrogant beacon, was now a dim, flickering ember.
The faith that surged from this victory was one of pure, unadulterated commercial and industrial pride. It was the faith of explorers, of engineers, of merchants, of innovators. It was the belief in a god who did not just conquer, but out-competed.
The Great Tree in his domain responded to this new influx. It sprouted a new kind of fruit on its highest branches. They were not of glass or steel, but of pure, intricate design: a glowing mariner's compass, a crystalline spyglass, a perfectly balanced set of merchant's scales. They were the symbols of their new mastery over the world's economy.
The god was deeply satisfied. He had guided his people to a victory more complete and more permanent than any military conquest. He had taught them the ultimate lesson of the shrewd businessman: do not fight your competitor for market share. Do not try to break their monopoly. Instead, build a better product, create a more efficient system, and make them utterly and completely obsolete. He was no longer just the god of a nation or an empire. He was the god of global commerce, the master of the Golden Road. And the wealth of the world now flowed directly to his door.