A Feast for Dragons

a weakling of him, as I
feared,” the king had said. “I pray god that they killed him, so he cannot
stand in Asha’s way.” That was Balon’s blindness; he saw himself in his wild,
headstrong daughter, and believed she could succeed him. He was wrong in that,
and Aeron tried to tell him so. “No woman will ever rule the ironborn, not even
a woman such as Asha,” he insisted, but Balon could be deaf to things he did
not wish to hear.
    Before the priest could answer Gorold Goodbrother, the
maester’s mouth flapped open once again. “By rights the Seastone Chair belongs
to Theon, or Asha if the prince is dead. That is the law.”
    “Green land law,” said Aeron with contempt. “What is that to
us? We are ironborn, the sons of the sea, chosen of the Drowned God. No woman
may rule over us, nor any godless man.”
    “And Victarion?” asked Gorold Goodbrother. “He has the Iron
Fleet. Will Victarion make a claim, Damphair?”
    “Euron is the elder brother . . .” began the maester.
    Aeron silenced him with a look. In little fishing towns and
great stone keeps alike such a look from Damphair would make maids feel faint
and send children shrieking to their mothers, and it was more than sufficient
to quell the chain-neck thrall. “Euron is elder,” the priest said, “but
Victarion is more godly.”
    “Will it come to war between them?” asked the maester.
    “Ironborn must not spill the blood of ironborn.”
    “A pious sentiment, Damphair,” said Goodbrother, “but not
one that your brother shares. He had Sawane Botley drowned for saying that the
Seastone Chair by rights belonged to Theon.”
    “If he was drowned, no blood was shed,” said Aeron.
    The maester and the lord exchanged a look. “I must send word
to Pyke, and soon,” said Gorold Goodbrother. “Damphair, I would have your counsel.
What shall it be, homage or defiance?”
    Aeron tugged his beard, and thought. I have seen the
storm, and its name is Euron Crow’s Eye. “For now, send only silence,” he
told the lord. “I must pray on this.”
    “Pray all you wish,” the maester said. “It does not change
the law. Theon is the rightful heir, and Asha next.”
    “Silence!” Aeron roared. “Too long have the ironborn
listened to you chain-neck maesters prating of the green lands and their laws.
It is time we listened to the sea again. It is time we listened to the voice of
god.” His own voice rang in that smoky hall, so full of power that neither
Gorold Goodbrother nor his maester dared a reply. The Drowned God is with
me, Aeron thought. He has shown me the way.
    Goodbrother offered him the comforts of the castle for the
night, but the priest declined. He seldom slept beneath a castle roof, and
never so far from the sea. “Comforts I shall know in the Drowned God’s watery
halls beneath the waves. We are born to suffer, that our sufferings might make
us strong. All that I require is a fresh horse to carry me to Pebbleton.”
    That Goodbrother was pleased to provide. He sent his son
Greydon as well, to show the priest the shortest way through the hills down to
the sea. Dawn was still an hour off when they set forth, but their mounts were
hardy and surefooted, and they made good time despite the darkness. Aeron
closed his eyes and said a silent prayer, and after a while began to drowse in
the saddle.
    The sound came softly, the scream of a rusted hinge. “Urri,”
he muttered, and woke, fearful. There is no hinge here, no door, no Urri. A flying axe took off half of Urri’s hand when he was ten-and-four, playing at
the finger dance whilst his father and his elder brothers were away at war.
Lord Quellon’s third wife had been a Piper of Pinkmaiden Castle, a girl with
big soft breasts and brown doe’s eyes. Instead of healing Urri’s hand the
    Old
Way
    ,
with fire and seawater, she gave him to her green land maester, who swore that he
could sew back the missing fingers. He did that, and later he used potions and
poltices and herbs, but the hand mortified and Urri took a fever. By the time
the maester sawed his arm off, it was too late.
    Lord Quellon never returned from his last voyage; the
Drowned God in his goodness granted him a death at sea. It was Lord Balon who
came back, with his brothers Euron and Victarion. When Balon heard what had
befallen Urri, he removed three of the maester’s fingers with a cook’s cleaver
and sent his father’s Piper wife to sew them back on. Poltices and potions
worked as well for the