Песен за огън и лед 24 - If I look back, I am lost

   "Your place is where I want you" - Euron to Damphair
    Another mute in the service of Euron
    Aeron is covered in lice and fleas
    Euron licked Aeron's spit after Aeron spit at him
    Lots of talk about the various gods
    Aeron loved Asha most of all of Balon's children
    Aeron thinks about Asha marrying Victarion to consolidate power
    Aeron loved Asha most of all of Balon's children
    Falia Flowers appears & says she is to be one of Euron's salt wives. She says she is Euron's 'love' & thus safe
    Aeron just learned that Victarion is on his way to Dany
    Falia Flowers says her and Daenerys will be "as close as sisters"
    Fuuuuck further confirmation Euron was a molester. Asks Aeron if he was praying to be chosen or be passed by
    Aeron calls Euron a "demon in human skin"
    Lots of religious figures there, including Red Priest and some warlocks from Qarth, one saying Pree repeatedly
    Euron wearing iron crown with shark teeth on it
    Euron doesn't care about keeping the Shield Islands, that's for the new lords to deal with
    Euron forcing Aeron to drink shade-of-the-evening again
    Damn good visions to analyze in this chapter
    Lucas Codd sitting in a place of honor
    "Words are wind, but blood is power" - Lucas Codd
    Euron's got some fancy new armor with runes and glyphs...Aeron says it's made of Valyrian steel!
    Euron had Falia Flowers tied to the prow with Aeron
    взято здесь https://twitter.com/MeereeneseKnot

    EURON IS NO RIGHTFUL KING
    NO GODLESS MAN MAY SIT THE SEASTONE CHAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    AERON IS IN THE DUNGEON HAVING VISIONS!! THIS IS LIKE HOUSE OF THE UNDYING!!!!!
    YO EURON HAS SO MANY MUTES WHERE DOES HE GET THEM ALL? MUTE STORE?
    "PRAY TO ME"
    "NO MAN IS MORE CURSED THAN THE KINSLAYER"
    BALON!!!!!
    "ALL GODS ARE LIES"
    SO MANY VISIONS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    "WORDS ARE WIND BUT BLOOD IS POWER"
    взято здесь https://twitter.com/AngryGoTFan

    Коментари и реакция:
    GRRM - I CONSTANTLY REWRITE SO EVERYTHING YOU JUST HEARD MIGHT BE CHANGED IN TWOW
    взято здесь: https://twitter.com/ninafriel/status/737010009909932032
    WOW. That Damphair chapter - just wow. I'll have plenty to say later, but trust me, it was INTENSE
  взето оттук:https://twitter.com/AngryGoTFan
    GRRM says his villains are smarter than Trump
    GRRM - I DONT AGREE WITH EVERYTHING MY CHARACTERS SAY
    GRRM - NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION WOULD BE LIKE EVERY HOUSE HAVING DRAGONS
    GRRM - FANTASIES OF THE 70S AND 80S IRRITATED THE PISS OUT OF ME THEYRE LIKE DISNEYLAND MIDDLE AGES
    GRRM - MY BOOKS ARE AN ACCURATE DEPICTION OF MEDIEVAL WORLDVIEWS
    "Let 1000 goofy theories reign" when asked if he would confirm that Arthur Dayne is dead
    GRRM - I CONFIRM NOTHING
    Jon Snow's parents are one of the Kardashians and Justin Bieber -
    GRRM - THE TRUTH IS IM PROBABLY MORE LIKE SAM
    GRRM similar to Sam, disappointed he doesn't get females writing in saying they love Sam. "Really? You're attracted to THEON?!"
    GRRM - BRIENNE WAS MY ANSWER TO DUNGEONS & DRAGONS BIKINI ARMOR FEMALE WARRIORS
    GRRM throws shade at shitty sexualized female armor
    GRRM says even though he loves Brienne, that doesn't mean she's safe.
    

    INTRODUCTION

    He enjoys doing readings at conventions, because it’s the essence of what it’s all about - the story.


    3 possible chapters: 2 from TWOW: Mercy or Aeron; One of fake history.(70k from E and L, GRRM delivered 350K of sidebar, kept them for a second book for the “Macaroonies who actually like fake history.” Called “Sons of the Dragon” about Aegon’s two sons.


    When people started cheering for the Aeron chapter, he said that there were lots of Greyjoy fans, “you scary sons of bitches.”


    When it was chosen in the voting, he said “The Greyjoys have it, you sick motherfuckers.” Also warned that any children had to be taken out of the room and that it would appeal to Ramsay fans.


    CHAPTER SUMMARY

        “Alone in the belly of the beast. Tide ebbing and flowing as high as his genitals. Feet in water swollen as big as hams.” Mutes robbed Aeron of his clothes, he’s beaten and chained. Saltwater hurts his wounds. Toes are getting supper puffy and rats biting feet.

        “There was a dungeon before this, then a ship, the Silence.” By the saltwater, in a dungeon
            Moved from another dungeon on the Silence

            Leering face of the moon, reminds him of Euron.
        Chains are short and bind Aeron to the wall

        He dreams of a “scream of a rusted hinge”

        “Light of the lantern so seldom it hurt his eyes.”

        Describes food. Had worms in it. Ate it anyway and was grateful. Then retched it up.

        The man who brought food was dark, grim, MUTE (Euron took this tongue).

        Sometimes, Euron visited him, aboard the Silence, his ship.
            Silver cups, poured wine. He wore a shirt of iron scale, a red silk cloak, a red patch over his eye, his lips were blue.
        Euron is sailing south--for conquest, plunder, and dragons.
            Aeron: what do you ask of me.

            Euron: I am your king. Left Eric Ironmaker in charge of Pike, gave him the hand of Asha to seal the deal. You were preaching against me, so I took you with me.
        Euron took Aeron so Aeron wouldn’t be able to undermine Erik Ironmaker’s rule of the Iron Islands

        Aeron forced to drink Shade of the Evening
            It wasn’t wine, it was thick, viscous, tasted changed with every sip. Forced it down his throat. The “Wine of the Warlocks.”

            Euron: “There’s more truth in it than all the gods on earth.”

            If I had the tongue of everyone who had cursed me I could make a cloak of them.

            “Your god will come for you tonight - some god, at least.”

            In his dream, creak of the rusted hinge. Urri was long deal, black stinking maggot arms. Aeron asks him, “What lies below the sea?”
        Dream
            “Worms await you, Aeron.” And then it was not Urri, but Euron Bloodeye - sitting upon a throne of black skulls. Dwarves attending him, bleeding star, the world will broken and remade. A horn blew and summoned dragons and krakens and sphinxes. “I am your king, I am your god.”

            Aeron thinks no godless man may sit the seastone chair.

            Damphair dreams of Urri (Urrigon Greyjoy)

            Urri says worms await the Damphair in the dreams

            Euron’s face is sloughed off, and Aeron can see Euron’s one bloody eye, black as onyx

            He says the bleeding star bespoke the end

            Euron on a throne of skulls and dwarves are running around. (Seems vaguely similar to the dwarves Dany see is in House of Undying.)

            Blows a horn and sphinxes and other creatures bow to him

            “Euron says, ‘Look and see what I am seated on.’”

            Skull throne replaced by Iron Throne with all the different gods impaled on it
                The seven hung around him, the goat, the pale ??, the butterfly god, the red god. And the drowned god, with crabs, and sea water dripping from his hair.
        FLASHBACK

        The Kingsmoot was the last thing he could remember.

        Euron’s blaspheming would bring the down the wrath of the drowned god. God has raised him up but god will bring him down. Men had raised him, who were foolish and swayed by gold.

        The Common folk will raise him down.

        Flashback to Aeron walked into waves after the kingsmoot
            “He wanted no company but god.”

            Black waves, white foam, icy water breaking over his head.

            Could hear the creak of the longships, wind in the lines.

            Heard his gods calling him to battle

            Heard Drowned God say Euron cannot be king--king should be…[long pause] he doesn’t say

            Aeron thinks Victarion should have married Asha and put their strength together to win. Asha was always Aeron’s favorite “and had a heart of a king but cursed by being given a women’s body”
                “The drowned god came to him.“Aeron, good and faithful servant tell ??. The drowned god did not raise him up. The seastone chair should belong to… not Victarion, not Asha (she was cursed by a woman’s body). She should have gone for Victarion. Asha should have been married to Victarion. They used to have a salt king and a rock king, and they could again.”
            Then the mutes came and took him, knocked him out. Then he was imprisoned, had a favor, tasted blood. He prayed, thinks that god is testing him. Mutes brought him food, etc.




        Another flashback: Aeron sees a woman and asks to be set free-- she does free him but feeds him
            Aeron is held in Oakenshield of the Shield Isles
        Falia Flowers, bastard of Lord Humfrey Hewett of Oakenshield; says she is to be Euron’s salt wife, will be kin to Aeron through Euron
            She was gifted many luxuries by Euron

            Real heartbreaking story. Rubs her belly saying “i will give him so many sons.”
                Aeron: Woman-run-he will hurt you. He will kill you.

                Falia: Silly, he is my love. Gives her clothes and jewels, Crows eye calls them rags and rocks. That’s why men like him because he doesn’t keep treasure for himself.I am going to give him sons. He has sons, but he says mine will be before them.

                Aeron: Give a message to Victarion to rescue me.

                Falia: Victarion has sailed for Dany. She will be his rock wife. We will be like sisters.

                Aeron: Victarion was gone, half a world away or dead. Put not faith in man. Prayed for death.
        Euron takes little of the plunder in general. Makes people loyal. Most captains take the lion’s share of the loot.
            Made Falia’s sisters serve her naked as “revenge”
        Euron has gone east with all of his ships to get Dany to be his rock wife

        “The two of us will be close as sisters,” Falya says.

        Aeron prays to the Drowned God to die

        Aeron dragged up the stairs to the Silence, and Euron has a dagger
            Euron: “God has forsaken you. I taught you to pray when we were children and I would visit your bedroom. When you prayed, was it that I would choose you, or pass you buy. Pray to me to end your life.”

            Aeron: Accursed is the kinslayer

            Euron used to visit Aeron and Urri in their room as boys
        Euron admits to killing his brothers to Aeron: Harlon who had greyscale, Robin who was their half-brother.
            From Feast, “The Prophet” Chapter: “a sickly idiot boy named Robin, the brother best forgotten.”

            Aeron is surprised that Harlon was murdered. He couldn’t move from the greyscale, he had mouth up from the greyscale. Euron just pinched his nose and looked him in the eye as the life went out of him. “If the gods didn’t curse me for killing those brothers, they won’t curse me for killing you.” (note this happens when he was a kid.
        Admits to killing Balon, but says it was not his hand


        When Aeron is imprisoned again, he is joined by priests of other religions
            Priest of the greenlands.

            Priest of R’hllor-Man with burned face and arms

            Warlocks, one without legs (?!) and and he keeps shouting “Pree” as he hangs. He assumes “pree” is the name of the demon that he worshiped.
        Aeron questions in his mind why Euron is collecting priests

        Septons make soft noises but their tongues are likely cut out

        When Aeron sees Euron again, his lips are so blue that they are almost black
            Wears an iron crown instead of driftwood, that is covered with shark teeth
        Gave away shields--”a good king is open-handed”
            Called them fools. I will be remembered for the glory of taking them. If they lose, loss belongs to those who took the gifts so eagerly.

        Euron forces more Shade of the Evening down Aeron’s throat

        Dreams
            Saw longships burning

            Euron on Iron throne, changed into a kraken-like figure with tentacles

            Accompanied by a long, tall terrible shadow of a woman with hands of white fire, standing next to him

            Male and female dwarves are running around naked and copulating and fighting (??)

            Euron and the woman laugh
        Aeron is then dragged upstairs

        Dragged into a torchlit gallery with another amount of corpses hanging
            Captors are drinking
                Rogen Saltbeard

                Red Oarsman

                Left-hand Lucas Codd
            The corpses belong to the people of the Arbor
        “Words are wind but blood is power”

        Redwyne fleet is creeping to the Arbor, where Euron’s crew is located
            Leyton Hightower is trying to get the Greyjoy fleet from the rear.
        The men joke about Aeron apparently knowing what it is like to be taken from the rear (confirming the molestation from Euron)

        When Aeron is to be brought back up, he hears a familiar voice that says to hurry because Euron is impatient

        Sees Euron clad in black scale armor, edged in red-gold
            The armor has runes and glyphs in the steel--the armor is Valyrian steel

            Euron is the only one who owns a suit of Valyrian steel

            Hasn’t been seen since the doom 400 years ago. Even then would have cost a kingdom.
        Aeron says to himself that Euron has been to Valyria. No wonder he is mad

        Euron is binding the priests to the prows of the ships

        When Aeron is brought out he sees Goodbrother banner, the Wynch banner and Euron’s new banner, which is a red eye with a black pupil under an iron crown supported by two crows

        Aeron is bound to the prow of the Silence

        As they are sailing away, he sees the castle above them burning

        Out at sea, Euron said he had a gift for Euron

        2 of Euron’s bastards brought out a woman, pregnant and crying: It is Falya Flowers
            She has no tongue

            She is tied to the other side of the prow
        Last line of Aeron’s: “He licked his lips and tasted salt.”



    POST-READING Q&A

        At the end said he was a frustrated song writer. Mnay of his book and stories have “song” in the title. Song of ice and fire, Dreamsongs, Song for Lya, etc. Now, since the songs from the show have been put to music, he has officially become a lyricist, and is a member of ASCAP.

        Westeros is a “fantasy land rooted in medieval history. It irritated the piss out of me that the fantasy of the 70s and 80s. “Disney fantasy where they had knights and castles but 20th century mindsets.” Referenced monty python where everyone is covered in shit but no one would read it.

        He liked how shakespeare uses history but still changes stuff. He said to steal from history when writing but turn it up to 11.

        When asked which character he relates to most, I relate to all of them. I develop sympathy for them. Empathy is the challenge of every writer. When he teaches writing, he tells people to instead of “writing what you know” you should write the opposite of you. Need to walk around in their skins. Would like to be jon and robb, but really he’s like sam.

        Mentioned that he doesn’t share Aeron’s faith but find it interesting. He’s a shattered man who is only holding himself together because of his faith.

        “Brienne is my answer to DND women warriors in chainmail bikinis.”

        Someone asked to confirm if arthur dayne was dead. “I CONFIRM NOTHING. Let 1000 goofy theories reign”.

        Who are Jon Snow’s parents? One of the Kardashians, and Justin Bieber.

        When asked which religion he enjoyed writing much, he gave a long answer about relgion in general. Religion is a very strong force. Thought it was strange that Tolkien totally omitted religion. I always had a rationality to me. When i was six i figured out that santa wasn’t real but i didn’t tell anyone because I was afraid i would stop getting presents. Religion would be much different if magic didn’t exist. People asked why the brotherhood without banners converted to r’hollor. They just saw someone raised from the dead. If i saw someone raised from the dead, I would convert too. But now I’m like tyrion, and follow the god of tits and wine.

        Someone asked if Brandon Stark said anything else when he rode up to King’s Landing except for Rhaegar to come out and die. George said history didn’t record it, but it was probably something like, “That was a long ride. Is there anything to eat? Boy, take care of my horse.”

     

THE WINDS OF WINTER – THE DAMPHAIR (PART 1)
Posted: May 29, 2016 in ANGERNEWS   
0

                                                                     The Winds of Winter

The Forsaken

It was always midnight in the belly of the beast. The mutes had robbed him of his robe and cloak. He wore hair and chains and scabs. Salt water sloshed about his legs whenever the tide came in, rising as high as his genitals, only to ebb again when the tide receded. His feet had grown huge and soft and puffy, shapeless things as big as hams. He knew that he was in some dungeon but not where or for how long. There had been another dungeon before this one, and in between there had been the ship, TheSsilence. The night they had moved him, he’d seen the moon floating on a black wine sea, with a leering face that reminded him of Euron. Rats in the darkness, swimming through the water, they would bite him as he slept and drove him to shouts and thrashings. Aeron’s beard and scalp crawled with lice and worms. He could feel them moving through his hair and the bites itched him intolerably. His chains were so short that he could not reach to scratch. The shackles that held him to the wall were old and rusted and cut into his feet and wrists. When the tide rushed in to kiss them, the salt got into the wounds and made him gasp.

When he slept, the darkness would rise up and swallow him, and then the dream would come, and Urri, and the scream of a rusted hinge. The only light in his wet world came from the lanterns visitors brought with them, and it came so seldom that it began to hurt his eyes. A nameless, sourfaced man brought his food. Some beef, as hard as wooden shingles, bread crawling with weevils, slimy, stinking fish. Aeron Damphair gobbled it down and hoped for more, thought oft as not he’d retch the meal up after. The man who brought him food was dark, dour, mute. His tongue was gone Aeron did not doubt. That was Euron’s way. The light would leave when the mute did, and once again his world would become a damp darkness, smelling of brine and mold and feces.
Sometimes Euron would come himself. Aeron would wake from some dream to find his brother, standing over him, lantern in hand. Once, aboard The Silence, he hung the lantern from a post and poured them cups of wine.

“Drink with me, brother,” he said.

That night he wore a shirt of iron scales and a cloak of blood red silk. His eyepatch was red leather, his lips blue.

“Why am I here,” Aeron croaked at him. His lips were crusty with scabs, his voice hard. “Where are we sailing?”

“South. For conquest. Plunder. Dragons. Men.”

“My place is on the islands.”

“Your place is where I want you. I am your king.”

“What do you want of me?”

“What can you offer me that I have no had before?” Euron smiled. “I left the islands in the hand of Old Erik Ironmaker and sealed his loyalty with the hand of our sweet Asha. I would not have you preaching against my rule, so I took you with us.”

“Release me. The god commands it.”

“Drink with me. The king commands it.”

Euron grabbed a handful of the priest’s tangled black hair, pulled his head back, and lifted his wine cup to his lips, but what flowed into his mouth was not wine. It was thick and viscous, with a taste that seemed to change with every swallow. Now bitter, now sour, now sweet. When Aeron tried to spit it out, his brother tightened his grip and forced more down his throat.
“That’s it, priest. Go on. Drink it down. The wine of the warlocks. Sweeter than your seawater, and more truth in it than all the gods of earth.”

“Curse you,” Aeron said when the cup was empty. Liquid dripped down his chin and onto his long, black beard.

“If I had the tongue of every man who cursed me, I could make a coat of them.”

Aeron hawked and spat. The spittle struck his brother’s cheek and hung there blue-black, glistening. Euron flicked it off his face with a forefinger, then licked the finger clean.

“Your god will forgive you tonight. Some god, at least.”

And then the Damphair slept, sagging in his chains. He heard the creak of a rusted hinge.

“Urri,” he cried.

There was no hinge there, no door, no Urri. His brother Urrigon was long dead, yet there he stood. One arm was black and swollen, stinking with maggots, but he was still Urri. Still a boy. No older than the day he’d died.

“Do you know what waits below the sea, brother?”

“The Drowned God,” Aeron said. “In watery holes.”

Urri shook his head. “Worms. Worms await you, Aeron.”

When he laughed, his face sluffed off, and the priest saw that it was not Urri, but Euron’s smiling eye, hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now. Dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx. He sat upon a mound of blackened skulls, as dwarves capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.

“The bleeding star stoaked the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade, and a new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons, and krakens, and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him.

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king. I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

“Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair.”

“Why would I want that hard, black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.”

Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye. A great, tall seat of razor-sharp iron of barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood. Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there, and the Father, and the Mother and the Warrior and Crone and Smith, even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer, foreign gods, The Great Shephard and the Black Goat, Three Headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light, and the Butterfly God of Naath, and there swollen in green heft devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the Red Sea Horse, still dripping from its hair.

Then Euron Crow’s Eye laughed again and the priest woke screaming in the bowels of Silence as piss ran down his leg.

It was only a dream, a vision, born of foul, black wine.

The Kingsmoot was the last thing Damphair remembered clearly. As the captains lifted Euron onto their shoulders to take him as their king, the priest had slipped off to find their brother Victarion.

“Euron’s blasphemies will bring down the Drowned God’s wroth upon us all,” he warned.

But Victarion insisted stubbornly that their god had raisd their brother up and the gods would cast him down.

He will not act, the priest had realized then. It must be me.

The Kingsmoot had chosen Euron Crow’s Eye, but the Kingsmoot was made of men, and men were weak and foolish things too easily swayed by gold and lies.

“I summoned them here, to Nagga’s Bones, to the Grey King’s Hall, I called them all together to choose a righteous king, but in their drunken folly they have sinned.”

It was up to him to undo what they had done.

“The captains and the kings raised Euron up, but the common folk shall tear him down,” he promised Victarion. “I shall go to Great Wyk, to Harlaw, Oakmont, to Pyke itself. In every town and village shall my words be heard. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair.”

After parting from his brother he’d sought solace in the sea. A few of his drowned men made to follow him, but Aeron sent them off with a few sharp words. He wanted no company but god. Down where long ships had been beached upon the stoney sand he found the black salt waves surging in foamy white where they broke upon a snarled rock half-buried in the sand. The water had been icy cold as he waded in, yet Aeron did not flinch from his god’s caress. Waves smashed against his chest one after another, staggering him, but he pushed on deeper, and deeper until the water wall was breaking over his head. The taste of salt upon his lips was sweeter than any wine. As he moved a distant roar of the song of celebration was coming up from the beach. He heard the faint creak of longships settling upon the strand. He heard the keening of the wind in their lines and heard the pound of the waves, the hammer of his gods calling him into battle.

And there and then the Drowned God had called him once more, his voice welling up from the depths of the sea, “Aeron, my good and faithful servant, you must tell the Ironborn that the Crow’s Eye is no true king. That the Seastone Chair by rights belongs to…to…to…”

Not Victarion. Victarion had offered himself up to the captains and they had spurned him. Not Asha. In his heart, Aeron had always loved her best of all his brother Balon’s children. The Drowned God had blessed her with the warrior spirit, but he had cursed her with a woman’s body, too. No woman had ever ruled the Iron Islands. She should never have made a claim, should have spoken for Victarion, added her own strength to his.
It was not too late, Aeron had decided as he shriveled in the sea. If Victarion took Asha for his wife, they could yet rule together, king and queen. In ancient days, each isle had its salt king and its rock king. Let the old way return.

Aeron Damphair had struggled back to shore full of fierce resolve. He would bring down Euron, not with sword or axe but with the power of his faith. Padding lightly across the stones as his hair pressed black and damp across his cheeks he pushed it back out his eyes, and that is when they took him. The mutes who had been watching him, waiting for him, stalking him through strand and spray. A hand clamped down across his mouth, and something hard cracked across the back of his skull.

The next time he opened his eyes, the Damphair found himself fettered in the darkness. Then came the fever, and the taste of blood in his mouth as he twisted in the chains deep in the bowels of Silence. A weaker man might have weap, but Aeron Damphair prayed. Waking, sleeping, even in his fever dreams, he prayed. My god is testing me. I must be strong. I must be true.

Once, in the dungeon before this one, a woman brought his food in place of Euron’s mute. A young thing, buxom and pretty. She dressed in the finery of a greenland lady. In the lantern light, she was the loveliest thing Aeron had ever seen.

“Woman,” he said. “I am a man of god. I command you. Set me free.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she said. “But I have food for you. Porridge and honey.”
She set it beside him on a stool and spooned it into his mouth for him.
“What is this place,” he asked between spoonfills.

“My lord father’s castle on Oakenshield.”

The Shield Islands. A thousand leagues from home.

“And who are you, child?”

“Falia Flowers.”

“Are you his natural daughter?”

“I am to be King Euron’s saltwife. You and I are to be kinmen.”

Aeron Damphair raised his eyes to hers, his scabbed lips crusted with wet porridge.

“Woman,” his chains clinked when he moved. “Run. He will hurt you. He will kill you.”

She laughed. “Silly. He won’t. I’m his love, his lady. He gives me gifts. So many gifts. Silks and furs and jewels. Rags and rocks, he calls them.”

“The Crow’s Eye puts no value on such things.”

That was one of the things that drew men to his service. Most captains kept the lion’s share of their plunder, but Euron took almost nothing for himself.

“He gives me any gown I want,” the girl was crowing happily. “My sisters used to make me wait on them at the table, but Euron made them serve the whole hall naked. Why should he do that except for love of me?”

She put her hand on her belly and smoothed down the fabric of her gown. “I’m going to give him sons. So many sons.”

“He has sons. Baseborn boys and mongrels, Euron says.”

“My sons will come before them, he has sworn by your own Drowned God.”

Aeron wept for her. Tears of blood, he thought.

“You must bear a message to my brother. Not Euron but Victarion, Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet. Do you know the man I mean?”

Falia stepped back from him.

“Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t bring him any messages, he’s gone.”

Gone. That was the cruelest blow of all. “Gone where?”

“East,” she said. “With all his ships. He’s to bring the dragons to Westeros. I’m to be Euron’s salt wife, but my love must have a rock wife, too, a queen to rule all Westeros by his side. They say she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she has dragons. The two of us would be as close as sisters.”

Aeron Damphair hardly heard her. Victarion is gone, half a world away, or dead. Surely the Drowned God was testing him. This was a lesson for him. I must not steel trust in men – only my faith can save me now.

That night when the tide came rushing back into the prison cell, he prayed it might rise all night enough to end his torment. I have been your true and leal servant, he prayed, listing in his chains. Now snatch me from my brother’s hands and take me down beneath the waves to be seated at your side.

But no deliverance came, only the mutes to undo his chains and drag him roughly up a long, stone stair to where the Silent floated on a cold, black sea. And a few days later as her foals shuddered in the grip of some storm, the Crow’s Eye came below again, lantern in hand. This time his other hand held a dagger.

“Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.”

“You’re wrong.”

“It was me who taught you how to pray, little brother, have you forgotten? I would visit your bedchamber at night when I’d had too much to drink. You shared a room with Urrigon high up in the Seatower. I could hear you praying from outside the door. I always wondered, were you praying that I would choose you, or that I would pass you by?”

Euron pressed the knife to Aeron’s throat.

“Pray to me. Pray to me to end your torment, and I will.”

“Not even you would dare,” said the Damphair. “I am your brother. No man is more cursed than the kinslayer.”

“And yet, I wear a crown, and you rot in chains. How is it that your Drowned God allows that, when I have killed three brothers?”

Aeron could only gape at him.

“Three?”

“Well, if you count half-brothers. Do you remember little Robin? Wretched creature. Do you remember that big head of his, how soft it was? All he could do was mewl and shit. He was my second. Harlon was my first. All I had to do was pinch his nose shut. The greyscale had turned his mouth to stone, so he could not cry out. His eyes grew frantic as he died. They named me. When the life went out of him, I went out and pissed into the sea and prayed to the god to strike me down. None did. Oh, and Balon was the third, but you knew that. I could not do the deed myself, but it was my hand that pushed him off the bridge.”

The Crow’s Eye pushed the dagger in a little deeper, and Aeron felt blood trickling down his neck.

“If your Drowned God did not smite me for killing three brothers, why should he bestir himself for the fourth? Because you are his priest?”

He stepped back and sheathed his dagger.

“No. I’m not killing you tonight, a holy man with holy blood. I may have need of that blood later. For now, you are condemned to live.

Holy man with holy blood, Aeron thought while his brother climbed back up on deck. He mocks me and he mocks the god. Kinslayer. Blasphemer. Demon in human skin. That night he prayed for his brother’s death.

(TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE THRILLING CONCLUSION)