A Feast for Dragons

fishes of the sea.
    Dark clouds ran before the wind as the first light stole
into the world. The black sky went grey as slate; the black sea turned
grey-green; the black mountains of Great Wyk across the bay put on the
blue-green hues of soldier pines. As color stole back into the world, a hundred
banners lifted and began to flap. Aeron beheld the silver fish of Botley, the
bloody moon of Wynch, the dark green trees of Orkwood. He saw warhorns and
leviathans and scythes, and everywhere the krakens great and golden. Beneath
them, thralls and salt wives begin to move about, stirring coals into new life
and gutting fish for the captains and the kings to break their fasts. The
dawnlight touched the stony strand, and he watched men wake from sleep,
throwing aside their sealskin blankets as they called for their first horn of ale. Drink deep, he thought, for we have god’s work to do today.
    The sea was stirring too. The waves grew larger as the wind
rose, sending plumes of spray to crash against the longships. The Drowned
God wakes, thought Aeron. He could hear his voice welling from the depths
of the sea. I shall be with you here this day, my strong and faithful
servant, the voice said. No godless man will sit my Seastone Chair.
    It was there beneath the arch of Nagga’s ribs that his
drowned men found him, standing tall and stern with his long black hair blowing
in the wind. “Is it time?” Rus asked. Aeron gave a nod, and said, “It is. Go
forth and sound the summons.”
    The drowned men took up their driftwood cudgels and began to
beat them one against the other as they walked back down the hill. Others
joined them, and the clangor spread along the strand. Such a fearful clacking
and a clattering it made, as if a hundred trees were pummeling one another with
their limbs. Kettledrums began to beat as well, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom,
boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. A warhorn bellowed, then another. AAAAAAoooooooooooooooooooooooo.
    Men left their fires to make their way toward the bones of
the Grey King’s Hall; oarsmen, steersmen, sailmakers, shipwrights, the warriors
with their axes and the fishermen with their nets. Some had thralls to serve
them; some had salt wives. Others, who had sailed too often to the green lands,
were attended by maesters and singers and knights. The common men crowded
together in a crescent around the base of the knoll, with the thralls,
children, and women toward the rear. The captains and the kings made their way
up the slopes. Aeron Damphair saw cheerful Sigfry Stonetree, Andrik the
Unsmiling, the knight Ser Harras Harlaw. Lord Baelor Blacktyde in his sable
cloak stood beside The Stonehouse in ragged sealskin. Victarion loomed above
all of them save Andrik. His brother wore no helm, but elsewise he was all in
armor, his kraken cloak hanging golden from his shoulders. He shall be our
king. What man could look on him and doubt it?
    When the Damphair raised his bony hands the kettledrums and
the warhorns fell silent, the drowned men lowered their cudgels, and all the
voices stilled. Only the sound of the waves pounding remained, a roar no man
could still. “We were born from the sea, and to the sea we all return,” Aeron
began, softly at first, so men would strain to hear. “The Storm God in his
wrath plucked Balon from his castle and cast him down, yet now he feasts
beneath the waves in the Drowned God’s watery halls.” He lifted his eyes to the
sky. “Balon is dead! The iron king is dead!”
    “The king is dead!” his drowned men shouted.
    “Yet what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and
stronger!” he reminded them. “Balon has fallen, Balon my brother, who honored
the Old Way and paid the iron price. Balon the Brave, Balon the Blessed, Balon
Twice-Crowned, who won us back our freedoms and our god. Balon is dead . . .
but an iron king shall rise again, to sit upon the Seastone Chair and rule the
isles.”
    “A king shall rise!” they answered. “He shall rise!”
    “He shall. He must.” Aeron’s voice thundered like the waves.
“But who? Who shall sit in Balon’s place? Who shall rule these holy isles? Is
he here among us now?” The priest spread his hands wide. “Who shall be king
over us?”
    A seagull screamed back at him. The crowd began to stir,
like men waking from a dream. Each man looked at his neighbors, to see which of
them might presume to claim a crown. The Crow’s Eye was never patient, Aeron Damphair told himself. Mayhaps he will speak first.