A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

farther and longer than lions, boars, or chickens.
    That man is dead.
Aeron had drowned and been reborn from the sea, the god’s own prophet. No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could . . . nor memories, the bones of the soul.
The sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge. Euron has come again.
It did not matter. He was the Damphair priest, beloved of the god.
    â€œWill it come to war?” asked Greydon Goodbrother as the sun was lightening the hills. “A war of brother against brother?”
    â€œIf the Drowned God wills it. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair.”
The Crow’s Eye will fight, that is certain.
No woman could defeat him, not even Asha; women were made to fight their battles in the birthing bed. And Theon, if he lived, was just as hopeless, a boy of sulks and smiles. At Winterfell he proved his worth, such that it was, but the Crow’s Eye was no crippled boy. The decks of Euron’s ship were painted red, to better hide the blood that soaked them.
Victarion. The king must be Victarion, or the storm will slay us all.
    Greydon left him when the sun was up, to take the news of Balon’s death to his cousins in their towers at Downdelving, Crow Spike Keep, and Corpse Lake. Aeron continued on alone, up hills and down vales along a stony track that drew wider and more traveled as he neared the sea. In every village he paused to preach, and in the yards of petty lords as well. “We were born from the sea, and to the sea we all return,” he told them. His voice was as deep as the ocean, and thundered like the waves. “The Storm God in his wrath plucked Balon from his castle and cast him down, and now he feasts beneath the waves in the Drowned God’s watery halls.” He raised his hands. “
Balon is dead! The king is dead!
Yet a king will come again! For what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!
A king will rise!
”
    Some of those who heard him threw down their hoes and picks to follow, so by the time he heard the crash of waves a dozen men walked behind his horse, touched by god and desirous of drowning.
    Pebbleton was home to several thousand fisherfolk, whose hovels huddled round the base of a square towerhouse with a turret at each corner. Twoscore of Aeron’s drowned men there awaited him, camped along a grey sand beach in sealskin tents and shelters built of driftwood. Their hands were roughened by brine, scarred by nets and lines, callused from oars and picks and axes, but now those hands gripped driftwood cudgels hard as iron, for the god had armed them from his arsenal beneath the sea.
    They had built a shelter for the priest just above the tideline. Gladly he crawled into it, after he had drowned his newest followers.
My god,
he prayed,
speak to me in the rumble of the waves, and tell me what to do. The captains and the kings await your 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