A Feast for Dragons

word. Who shall be our
king in Balon’s place? Sing to me in the language of leviathan, that I may know
his name. Tell me, O Lord beneath the waves, who has the strength to fight the
storm on Pyke?
    Though his ride to Hammerhorn had left him weary, Aeron
Damphair was restless in his driftwood shelter, roofed over with black weeds
from the sea. The clouds rolled in to cloak the moon and stars, and the
darkness lay as thick upon the sea as it did upon his soul. Balon favored
Asha, the child of his body, but a woman cannot rule the ironborn. It must be
Victarion. Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, and
Victarion was the strongest of them, a bull of a man, fearless and dutiful. And
therein lies our danger. A younger brother owes obedience to an elder, and
Victarion was not a man to sail against tradition. He has no love for Euron,
though. Not since the woman died.
    Outside, beneath the snoring of his drowned men and the
keening of the wind, he could hear the pounding of the waves, the hammer of his
god calling him to battle. Aeron crept from his little shelter into the chill
of the night. Naked he stood, pale and gaunt and tall, and naked he walked into
the black salt sea. The water was icy cold, yet he did not flinch from his
god’s caress. A wave smashed against his chest, staggering him. The next broke
over his head. He could taste the salt on his lips and feel the god around him,
and his ears rang with the glory of his song. Nine sons were born from the
loins of Quellon Greyjoy, and I was the least of them, as weak and frightened
as a girl. But no longer. That man is drowned, and the god has made me strong. The cold salt sea surrounded him, embraced him, reached down through his weak
man’s flesh and touched his bones. Bones, he thought. The bones of
the soul. Balon’s bones, and Urri’s. The truth is in our bones, for flesh
decays and bone endures. And on the hill of Nagga, the bones of the Grey King’s
Hall . . .
    And gaunt and pale and shivering, Aeron Damphair struggled
back to the shore, a wiser man than he had been when he stepped into the sea.
For he had found the answer in his bones, and the way was plain before him. The
night was so cold that his body seemed to steam as he stalked back toward his
shelter, but there was a fire burning in his heart, and sleep came easily for
once, unbroken by the scream of iron hinges.
    When he woke the day was bright and windy. Aeron broke his
fast on a broth of clams and seaweed cooked above a driftwood fire. No sooner
had he finished than the Merlyn descended from his towerhouse with half a dozen
guards to seek him out. “The king is dead,” the Damphair told him.
    “Aye. I had a bird. And now another.” The Merlyn was a bald
round fleshy man who styled himself “Lord” in the manner of the green lands,
and dressed in furs and velvets. “One raven summons me to Pyke, another to Ten
Towers. You krakens have too many arms, you pull a man to pieces. What say you,
priest? Where should I send my longships?”
    Aeron scowled. “Ten Towers, do you say? What kraken calls
you there?” Ten Towers was the seat of the Lord of Harlaw.
    “The Princess Asha. She has set her sails for home. The
Reader sends out ravens, summoning all her friends to Harlaw. He says that
Balon meant for her to sit the Seastone Chair.”
    “The Drowned God shall decide who sits the Seastone Chair,”
the priest said. “Kneel, that I might bless you.” Lord Merlyn sank to his
knees, and Aeron uncorked his skin and poured a stream of seawater on his bald
pate. “Lord God who drowned for us, let Meldred your servant be born again from
the sea. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel.”
Water ran down Merlyn’s fat cheeks to soak his beard and fox-fur mantle. “What
is dead may never die,” Aeron finished, “but rises again, harder and stronger.”
But when Merlyn rose, he told him, “Stay and listen, that you may spread god’s
word.”
    Three feet from the water’s edge the waves broke around a
rounded granite boulder. It was there that Aeron Damphair stood, so all his
school might see him, and hear the words he had to say.
    “We were born from the sea, and to the sea we all return,”
he began, as he had a hundred times before. “The Storm God in his wrath plucked
Balon from his castle and cast him down, and now he feasts beneath the waves.”
He raised his hands. “ The iron king is dead! Yet a king will come again!
For what is dead