Vaes Dothrak

You enter Vaes Dothrak through the Horse Gate, two huge bronze stallions reared on their hind legs, their forelegs meeting thirty meters above the road to form an arch. Past it begins the Godsway, where the Dothraki have lined up, sack after sack, the statues of gods and heroes taken from the cities they burned.

The city beyond has no wall and no fixed edge: wide streets, buildings in clashing styles because slaves dragged from half the world raised them, most standing empty most of the year. At the foot of the Mother of Mountains, on the eastern side, there's a well where the old women of the dosh khaleen read what's coming in the smoke.

Vaes Dothrak sits right at the middle of Essos, so its markets never really stop. The Western Market is a wide square of packed earth, ringed by mud-brick houses, stables and whitewashed taverns, with trapdoors in the ground leading down to cool storerooms; the stalls cluster in the middle, roofed with woven-grass awnings.

Traders come to that square from the Free Cities, from Qarth, from Bayasabhad, from Kayakayanaya and from farther lands still. Most aren't there to sell anything to the Dothraki — they come to trade with each other, since every road from half the world crosses there.

Newly married to Daenerys Targaryen, Drogo brings his khalasar to Vaes Dothrak to present her to the dosh khaleen, as custom demands. After the ritual bath, he throws a feast for his people.

In the middle of it, Viserys Targaryen draws a blade and threatens his sister in front of the whole khalasar. No one may spill a free man's blood inside the city, so Drogo doesn't stab him — he pours molten gold over his head instead. He dies without a single drop of blood touching the ground.

When Byan Votyris's caravan reaches the city and sets up in the Western Market, Daenerys goes to see it. One of the traders, a wine seller, tries to kill her right there. He fails, and as punishment he's sentenced to walk behind his own mare, tied to it.