A Feast for Dragons

Euron
into exile, never to return . . .”
    “. . . so long as Balon lived?”
    Victarion looked at his fists. “She gave me horns. I had no
choice.” Had it been known, men would have laughed at me, as the Crow’s Eye
laughed when I confronted him. “She came to me wet and willing,” he had
boasted. “It seems Victarion is big everywhere but where it matters.” But he
could not tell her that.
    “I am sorry for you,” said Asha, “and sorrier for her . . .
but you leave me small choice but to claim the Seastone Chair myself.”
    You cannot. “Your breath is yours to waste, woman.”
    “It is,” she said, and left him.

----
    The
Drowned Man
    O nly when his arms and legs were numb from the
cold did Aeron Greyjoy struggle back to shore and don his robes again.
    He had run before the Crow’s Eye as if he were still the
weak thing he had been, but when the waves broke over his head they reminded
once more that that man was dead. I was reborn from the sea, a harder man
and stronger. No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness
could, nor the bones of his soul, the grey and grisly bones of his soul. The
sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge.
    The priest’s robes crackled as he pulled them down, still
stiff with salt from their last washing a fortnight past. The wool clung to his
wet chest, drinking the brine that ran down from his hair. He filled his
waterskin and slung it over his shoulder.
    As he strode across the strand, a drowned man returning from
a call of nature stumbled into him in the darkness. “Damphair,” he murmured.
Aeron laid a hand upon his head, blessed him, and moved on. The ground rose
beneath his feet, gently at first, then more steeply. When he felt scrub grass
between his toes, he knew that he had left the strand behind. Slowly he
climbed, listening to the waves. The sea is never weary. I must be as
tireless.
    On the crown of the hill four-and-forty monstrous stone ribs
rose from the earth like the trunks of great pale trees. The sight made Aeron’s
heart beat faster. Nagga had been the first sea dragon, the mightiest ever to
rise from the waves. She fed on krakens and leviathans and drowned whole
islands in her wrath, yet the Grey King had slain her and the Drowned God had
changed her bones to stone so that men might never cease to wonder at the
courage of the first of kings. Nagga’s ribs became the beams and pillars of his
longhall, just as her jaws became his throne. For a thousand years and seven
he reigned here, Aeron recalled. Here he took his mermaid wife and
planned his wars against the Storm God. From here he ruled both stone and salt,
wearing robes of woven seaweed and a tall pale crown made from Nagga’s teeth.
    But that was in the dawn of days, when mighty men still
dwelt on earth and sea. The hall had been warmed by Nagga’s living fire, which
the Grey King had made his thrall. On its walls hung tapestries woven from
silver seaweed most pleasing to the eyes. The Grey King’s warriors had feasted
on the bounty of the sea at a table in the shape of a great starfish, whilst
seated upon thrones carved from mother-of-pearl. Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short. The Storm God drowned
Nagga’s fire after the Grey King’s death, the chairs and tapestries had been
stolen, the roof and walls had rotted away. Even the Grey King’s great throne
of fangs had been swallowed by the sea. Only Nagga’s bones endured to remind
the ironborn of all the wonder that had been.
    It is enough, thought Aeron Greyjoy.
    Nine wide steps had been hewn from the stony hilltop. Behind
rose the howling hills of Old Wyk, with mountains in the distance black and
cruel. Aeron paused where the doors once stood, pulled the cork from his waterskin,
took a swallow of salt water, and turned to face the sea. We were born from
the sea, and to the sea we must return. Even here he could hear the
ceaseless rumble of the waves and feel the power of the god who lurked below
the waters. Aeron went to his knees. You have sent your people to me, he
prayed. They have left their halls and hovels, their castles and their
keeps, and come here to Nagga’s bones, from every fishing village and every
hidden vale. Now grant to them the wisdom to know the true king when he stands
before them, and the strength to shun the false. All night he prayed, for
when the god was in him Aeron Greyjoy had no need of sleep, no more than the
waves did, nor the