A Feast for Dragons

his tongue and lips to stone. One day we shall feast on
fish together in the Drowned God’s watery halls, the four of us and Urri too.
    Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy,
but only four had lived to manhood. That was the way of this cold world, where
men fished the sea and dug in the ground and died, whilst women brought forth
short-lived children from beds of blood and pain. Aeron had been the last and
least of the four krakens, Balon the eldest and boldest, a fierce and fearless
boy who lived only to restore the ironborn to their ancient glory. At ten he
scaled the Flint Cliffs to the Blind Lord’s haunted tower. At thirteen he could
run a longship’s oars and dance the finger dance as well as any man in the
isles. At fifteen he had sailed with Dagmer Cleftjaw to the Stepstones and
spent a summer reaving. He slew his first man there and took his first two salt
wives. At seventeen Balon captained his own ship. He was all that an elder
brother ought to be, though he had never shown Aeron aught but scorn. I was
weak and full of sin, and scorn was more than I deserved. Better to be scorned
by Balon the Brave than beloved of Euron Crow’s Eye. And if age and grief
had turned Balon bitter with the years, they had also made him more determined
than any man alive. He was born a lord’s son and died a king, murdered by a
jealous god, Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, a storm such as
these isles have never known.
    It was long after dark by the time the priest espied the
spiky iron battlements of the Hammerhorn clawing at the crescent moon. Gorold’s
keep was hulking and blocky, its great stones quarried from the cliff that
loomed behind it. Below its walls, the entrances of caves and ancient mines
yawned like toothless black mouths. The Hammerhorn’s iron gates had been closed
and barred for the night. Aeron beat on them with a rock until the clanging
woke a guard.
    The youth who admitted him was the image of Gormond, whose
horse he’d taken. “Which one are you?” Aeron demanded.
    “Gran. My father awaits you within.”
    The hall was dank and drafty, full of shadows. One of
Gorold’s daughters offered the priest a horn of ale. Another poked at a sullen
fire that was giving off more smoke than heat. Gorold Goodbrother himself was
talking quietly with a slim man in fine grey robes, who wore about his neck a
chain of many metals that marked him for a maester of the Citadel.
    “Where is Gormond?” Gorold asked when he saw Aeron.
    “He returns afoot. Send your women away, my lord. And the
maester as well.” He had no love of maesters. Their ravens were creatures of
the Storm God, and he did not trust their healing, not since Urri. No proper
man would choose a life of thralldom, nor forge a chain of servitude to wear
about his throat.
    “Gysella, Gwin, leave us,” Goodbrother said curtly. “You as
well, Gran. Maester Murenmure will stay.”
    “He will go,” insisted Aeron.
    “This is my hall, Damphair. It is not for you to say who
must go and who remains. The maester stays.”
    The man lives too far from the sea, Aeron told
himself. “Then I shall go,” he told Goodbrother. Dry rushes rustled underneath
the cracked soles of his bare black feet as he turned and stalked away. It
seemed he had ridden a long way for naught.
    Aeron was almost at the door when the maester cleared his
throat, and said, “Euron Crow’s Eye sits the Seastone Chair.”
    The Damphair turned. The hall had suddenly grown colder. The
Crow’s Eye is half a world away. Balon sent him off two years ago, and swore
that it would be his life if he returned. “Tell me,” he said hoarsely.
    “He sailed into Lordsport the day after the king’s death,
and claimed the castle and the crown as Balon’s eldest brother,” said Gorold
Goodbrother. “Now he sends forth ravens, summoning the captains and the kings
from every isle to Pyke, to bend their knees and do him homage as their king.”
    “No.” Aeron Damphair did not weigh his words. “Only a godly
man may sit the Seastone Chair. The Crow’s Eye worships naught but his own
pride.”
    “You were on Pyke not long ago, and saw the king,” said
Goodbrother. “Did Balon say aught to you of the succession?”
    Aye. They had spoken in the
Sea
Tower
,
as the wind howled outside the windows and the waves crashed restlessly below.
Balon had shaken his head in despair when he heard what Aeron had to tell him
of his last remaining son. “The wolves have made