A Feast for Dragons

may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!”
    “A king shall rise!” the drowned men cried.
    “He shall. He must. But who?” The Damphair listened a
moment, but only the waves gave answer. “Who shall be our king?”
    The drowned men began to slam their driftwood cudgels one
against the other. “Damphair!” they cried. “Damphair King! Aeron
King! Give us Damphair!”
    Aeron shook his head. “If a father has two sons and gives to
one an axe and to the other a net, which does he intend should be the warrior?”
    “The axe is for the warrior,” Rus shouted back, “the net for
a fisher of the seas.”
    “Aye,” said Aeron. “The god took me deep beneath the waves
and drowned the worthless thing I was. When he cast me forth again he gave me
eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to spread his word, that I might be his
prophet and teach his truth to those who have forgotten. I was not made to sit
upon the Seastone Chair . . . no more than Euron Crow’s Eye. For I have heard
the god, who says, No godless man may sit my Seastone Chair! ”
    The Merlyn crossed his arms against his chest. “Is it Asha,
then? Or Victarion? Tell us, priest!”
    “The Drowned God will tell you, but not here.” Aeron pointed
at the Merlyn’s fat white face. “Look not to me, nor to the laws of men, but to
the sea. Raise your sails and unship your oars, my lord, and take yourself to
Old Wyk. You, and all the captains and the kings. Go not to Pyke, to bow before
the godless, nor to Harlaw, to consort with scheming women. Point your prow
toward Old Wyk, where stood the Grey King’s Hall. In the name of the Drowned
God I summon you. I summon all of you! Leave your halls and hovels, your
castles and your keeps, and return to Nagga’s hill to make a kingsmoot!”
    The Merlyn gaped at him. “A kingsmoot? There has not been a
true kingsmoot in . . .”
    “. . . too long a time!” Aeron cried in anguish. “Yet
in the dawn of days the ironborn chose their own kings, raising up the
worthiest amongst them. It is time we returned to the
    Old
Way
    ,
for only that shall make us great again. It was a kingsmoot that chose Urras
Ironfoot for High King, and placed a driftwood crown upon his brows. Sylas
Flatnose, Harrag Hoare, the Old Kraken, the kingsmoot raised them all. And from this kingsmoot shall emerge a man to finish the work King Balon has
begun and win us back our freedoms. Go not to Pyke, nor to the Ten
Towers of Harlaw, but to Old Wyk, I say again. Seek the hill of Nagga and the
bones of the Grey King’s Hall, for in that holy place when the moon has drowned
and come again we shall make ourselves a worthy king, a godly king.” He
raised his bony hands on high again. “ Listen! Listen to the waves!
Listen to the god! He is speaking to us, and he says, We shall have no king
but from the kingsmoot! ”
    A roar went up at that, and the drowned men beat their
cudgels one against the other. “A kingsmoot! ” they shouted. “A
kingsmoot, a kingsmoot. No king but from the kingsmoot!” And the clamor
that they made was so thunderous that surely the Crow’s Eye heard the shouts on
Pyke, and the vile Storm God in his cloudy hall. And Aeron Damphair knew he had
done well.
    ----
    PROLOGUE
    The night was rank with the smell of man.
    The warg stopped beneath a tree and sniffed, his grey-brown fur
dappled by shadow. A sigh of piney wind brought the man-scent to him, over
fainter smells that spoke of fox and hare, seal and stag, even wolf. Those were
man-smells too, the warg knew; the stink of old skins, dead and sour, near
drowned beneath the stronger scents of smoke and blood and rot. Only man
stripped the skins from other beasts and wore their hides and hair.
    Wargs have no fear of man, as wolves do. Hate and hunger
coiled in his belly, and he gave a low growl, calling to his one-eyed brother,
to his small sly sister. As he raced through the trees, his packmates followed
hard on his heels. They had caught the scent as well. As he ran, he saw through
their eyes too and glimpsed himself ahead. The breath of the pack puffed warm
and white from long grey jaws. Ice had frozen between their paws, hard as
stone, but the hunt was on now, the prey ahead.
Flesh
, the warg
thought,
meat
.
    A man alone was a feeble thing. Big and strong, with good
sharp eyes, but dull of ear and deaf to smells. Deer and elk and even hares
were faster, bears and boars fiercer in a fight. But men in packs were
dangerous. As the wolves closed on the