Between the Free Cities and the Bones, between
the Shivering Sea and Slaver's Bay, spreads
the Dothraki Sea.
Named not for its waters but for how freely
its conquerors roam upon it.
A traveler on the Dothraki Sea will find few
villages and no farms.
Because the Dothraki view it as a sin to cut
into their Mother Earth with plows and shovels.
And the Dothraki know only one punishment.
The closest the Dothraki approach to civilization
is Vaes Dothrak.
Though to outsiders, it doesn't look like
a city.
There are no walls, because the Dothraki believe
only cowards hide behind them, instead of
facing an enemy blade in hand.
But the Dothraki couldn't do that here either.
Within the bounds of the city, no one, not
even the mightiest khal, may carry a blade,
by order of the priestesses of the Dosh khaleen.
Not that any enemy would be foolish enough
to attack the sacred city of the Dothraki
in the first place.
Two giant bronze stallions rear over the entrance
to the city, their hooves meeting in the air
to form an arch.
The famous Horse Gate.
Through it is the Godsway, where the Dothraki
drag the sacred idols of the cities and peoples
they've broken.
Along one side, stone gods look down on you
from cracked thrones with chipped and stained
faces, their names lost to time.
Across the road, monsters watch you pass.
Black iron dragons with jewels for eyes, roaring
griffins, manticores with barbed tails poised
to strike and other terrible beasts from every
corner of Essos.
But there is nothing to fear.
If these gods and devils had any power, they
would never have ended here.
Not all foreign gods in Vaes Dothrak are broken.
In the Eastern and Western Markets, merchants
worship their god of trade with the sufferance
of the Dothraki, who themselves don't understand
buying and selling.
The Western Market is a great square of beaten
earth filled with animal pens, drinking halls
and a maze of stalls and crooked aisles.
Even goods from Westeros find their way here.
Though the merchants who sell them wouldn't
know a Lannister from a Frey.
The Eastern Market is, fittingly, a stranger
place.
The elders of the Dosh khaleen view it with
suspicion and most Dothraki stay away.
They aren't wrong.
The great elephants, the basilisks in silver
cages and the striped black-and-white horses
of the Jogos Nhai are harmless enough.
But I can see how the elders wouldn't want
their younger members to see the warrior maids
of Hyrkoon, who wear iron rings in their nipples
and rubies in their cheeks.
Or listen to the Shadow Men, who cover their
bodies with tattoos and hide their faces behind
masks and whisper dark secrets for a price.
This is all of Vaes Dothrak that foreigners
ever know.
For only Dothraki are permitted in the inner
city where the Dosh khaleen live out their
lives.
A bloodrider, drunk on fermented mare's milk,
once told me that the Dosh khaleen are stewards.
They prepare for the day when every rider
of every khalasar shall return to the city.
And the Dothraki truly will be one blood and
one khalasar again, under the greatest khal
of all, the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
He will ride to the ends of the earth and
grind nations into dust, and take the whole
world as his herd.
Or so the prophecy goes.
Yet the world is vast, with many places a
horse can't go.
The Stallion Who Mounts the World couldn't
rear above a mountain range.
Or leap across the sea.
Still, the world has been conquered before.
Just not with stallions.
