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- The Forsaken (Aeron I TWOW)
- It was always midnight in the belly of the beast.
- The mutes had robbed him of his of robe and shoes and breechclout. He wore hair and chains
- and scabs. Saltwater 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. In between there had been the ship, the
- Silence. The night they moved him, he had seen the moon floating on a black wine sea with a
- leering face that reminded him of Euron.
- Rats moved in the darkness, swimming through the water. They would bite him as he slept until
- he woke and drove them off with shouts and thrashings. Aeron’s beard and scalp crawled with
- lice and fleas 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 bound
- him to the wall were old and rusted, and his fetters had cut into his wrists. When the tide rushed
- in to kiss him, 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 that the visitors brought with them, and it
- came so seldom that it began to hurt his eyes. A nameless sour-faced man brought his food,
- salt beef as hard as wooden shingles, bread crawling with weevils, slimy, stinking fish.
- Aeron gobbled it down and hoped for more, though oft as not he retched the meal up after. The
- man who brought the 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 grime and mold and feces.
- Sometimes, Euron came himself. Aeron would wake from sleep 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.”
- Madness. “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 not had before?” Euron smiled. “I left the islands in the
- hands of old Erik Ironmaker, and sealed his loyalty with the hand of our sweet Asha. I would not
- have you preaching against his rule, so I took you with us.”
- “Release me. The god commands it.”
- “Drink with me. Your king commands it.”
- Euron grabbed a handful of the priest’s tangled black hair, pulled his head back, and lifted the
- 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. Gulp it down. The wine of the warlocks, sweeter than your seawater, with more
- truth in it than all the gods of earth.”
- “I curse you,” Aeron said, when the cup was empty. Liquor dripped from down his chin into his
- long, black beard.
- “If I had the tongue of every man who cursed me, I could make a cloak 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 come for you tonight. Some god, at least.”
- And when the Damphair slept, sagging in his chains, he heard the creak of a rusted hinge.
- “Urri!” he cried. There is no hinge here, 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 died.
- “You know what waits below the sea, brother?”
- “The Drowned God,” Aeron said, “the watery halls.”
- Urri shook his head. “Worms... worms await you, Aeron.”
- When he laughed his face sloughed off and the priest saw that it was not Urri but Euron, the
- 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 dwarfs capered
- round his feet and a forest burned behind him.
- “The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the
- world shall be broken and remade. 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, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, 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, the Warrior and Crone and Smith...even the Stranger. They hung side
- by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd 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 and green, half-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest,
- seawater still dripping from his 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 hail him as their king, the priest had slipped off to find their brother,
- Victarion. “Euron’s blasphemies will bring down the Drowned God’s wrath upon us all,” he
- warned. But Victarion insisted stubbornly that the god had raised their brother up and that god
- must 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 in 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 for him to undo what they had done.
- “The captains and the kings raise Euron up, but the common folk shall tear him down,” he
- promised Victarion. “I shall go to Great Wyk to Harlaw to Orkmont to Pyke itself. Every town and
- village shall my words be heard. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”
- At departing 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 the longships had been beached along the stony strand, he found a black salt
- wave searching and foaming 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 waters were breaking over his head. The taste of salt upon his lips
- was sweeter than any wine.
- Mingled with the distant roar of song and celebration coming up from the beach, he’d heard the
- faint creak of longships settling on the strand. He heard the keening of the wind and now
- whines. He heard the pounding of the waves, the hammer of his god calling him to battle. And
- there and then, the Drowned God had come to 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 belonged to... to... to...”
- Not Victarion. Victarion had offered himself to the captains and kings but they had spurned him.
- Not Asha. In his heart, Aeron had always loved Asha best of all his brother Balon’s children. The
- Drowned God had blessed her with a warrior’s spirit and the wisdom of a king—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. She should have spoken for Victarion, added her own strength to his.
- It was not too late, Aeron had decided as he shivered 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, his hair
- plastered black and dank across his brow and cheeks, he stopped for a moment to push it back
- out of his eyes.
- And that was where they took him, the mutes who had been watching him, waiting for him,
- stalking him through strand and spray. A hand clapped down across his mouth and something
- hard cracked against the back of his skull.
- The next time he had 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 wept, 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. “I have food for you. Porridge and honey.” She sat beside him
- on a stool and spooned it into his mouth for him.
- “What is this place?” he asked between spoonfuls.
- “My lord father’s castle on Oakenshield.” The Shield Islands, a thousand leagues from home.
- “And who are you, child?”
- “Falia Flowers, Lord Hewett’s natural daughter. I am to be King Euron’s salt wife. You and I will
- be kin, then.”
- Aeron Damphair raised his eyes to hers. His scabbed lips were 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 in 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 prattling happily. “My sisters used to make me wait
- on them at table, but Euron made them serve the whole hall naked! Why should he do that,
- except for love of me?” She put a 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,
- sworn by your own Drowned God!”
- Aeron would’ve 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 sat 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 dragon queen to Westeros. I’m to be
- Euron’s salt wife, but he must have a rock wife too, a queen to rule all Westeros at his side.
- They say she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she has dragons. The two of us will
- 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. Put not your trust in men. Only my
- faith can save me now.
- That night, when the tide came rushing back into the prison cell, he prayed that it might rise all
- night, enough to end his torment. I have been your true and leal servant, he prayed, twisting in
- his chains. Now snatch me from my brother’s hand, 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 Silence floated on a cold black sea.
- And a few days later, as her hull 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 bed
- chamber at night when I 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. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.”
- “Not even you would dare,” said the Damphair. “I am your brother. No man is more accursed
- 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. But his eyes grew frantic as he died. They begged
- me. When the life went out of them, I went out and pissed into the sea, waiting for 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 pressed 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’ll not kill you tonight. A holy
- man with holy blood. I may have need of that blood...later. For now, you are condemned to
- live.”
- A holy man with holy blood, Aeron thought when his brother had climbed back onto the deck.
- He mocks me and he mocks the god. Kinslayer. Blasphemer. Demon in human skin.
- That night he prayed for his brother’s death.
- It was in the second dungeon that the other holy men began to appear to share his torments.
- Three wore the robes of septons of the green lands, and one the red raiment of a priest of
- R’hllor. The last was hardly recognizable as a man. Both his hands had been burned down to
- the bone, and his face was a charred and blackened horror where two blind eyes moved
- sightlessly above the cracked cheeks dripping pus. He was dead within hours of being shackled
- to the wall, but the mutes left his body there to ripen for three days afterwards.
- Last were two warlocks of the east, with flesh as white as mushrooms, and lips the purplish-blue
- of a bad bruise, all so gaunt and starved that only skin and bones remained. One had lost his
- legs. The mutes hung him from a rafter. “Pree,” he cried as he swung back and forth. “Pree,
- Pree.”
- Perhaps that was the name of the demon that he worships. The Drowned God protects me, the
- priest told himself. He is stronger than the false gods these other worship, stronger than their
- black sorceries. The Drowned God will set me free.
- In his saner moments, Aeron questioned why the Crow’s Eye was collecting priests, but he did
- not think that he would like the answer. Victarion was gone, and with him, hope. Aeron’s
- drowned men likely thought the Damphair was hiding on Old Wyk, or Great Wyk, or Pyke, and
- wondered when he would emerge to speak against this godless king.
- Urrigon haunted his fever dreams. You’re dead, Urri, Aeron thought. Sleep now, child, and
- trouble me no more. Soon I shall come to join you.
- Whenever Aeron prayed, the legless warlock made queer noises, and his companion babbled
- wildly in his queer eastern tongue, though whether they were cursing or pleading, the priest
- could not say. The septons made soft noises from time to time as well, but not in words that he
- could understand. Aeron suspected that their tongues had been cut out.
- When Euron came again, his hair was swept straight back from his brow, and his lips were so
- blue that they were almost black. He had put aside his driftwood crown. In its place, he wore an
- iron crown whose points were made from the teeth of sharks.
- “That which is dead cannot die,” said Aeron fiercely. “For he who has tasted death once
- need never fear again. He was drowned, but he came forth stronger than before, with steel and
- fire.”
- “Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay
- drowned. All gods are lies, but yours is laughable. A pale white thing in the likeness of a man,
- his limbs broken and swollen and his hair flipping in the water while fish nibble at his face. What
- fool would worship that?”
- “He’s your god as well,” insisted the Damphair. “And when you die, he will judge you harshly,
- Crow’s Eye. You will spend eternity as a sea slug, crawling on your belly eating shit. If you do
- not fear to kill your own blood, slit my throat and be done with me. I’m weary of your mad
- boastings.”
- “Kill my own little brother? Blood of my blood, born of the loins of Quellon Greyjoy? And who
- would share my triumphs? Victory is sweeter with a loved one by your side.”
- “Your victories are hollow. You cannot hold the Shields.”
- “Why should I want to hold them?” His brother’s smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue
- and bold and full of malice. “The Shields have served my purpose. I took them with one hand,
- and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed, brother. It is up to the new
- lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are
- lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts.” He moved
- closer. “Our longships are raiding up the Mander and all along the coast, even to the Arbor and
- the Redwyne Straits. The Old Way, brother.”
- Madness. “Release me,” Aeron Damphair commanded in his sternest voice, “or risk the wroth of
- god!”
- Euron produced a carved stone bottle and a wine cup. “You have a thirsty look about you,” he
- said as he poured. “You need a drink; a taste of evening’s shade.”
- “No.” Aeron turned his face away. “No, I said.”
- “And I said yes.” Euron pulled his head back by the hair and forced the vile liquor into his mouth
- again. Though Aeron clamped his mouth shut, twisting his head from side to side he fought as
- best he could, but in the end he had to choke or swallow.
- The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and
- burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was
- no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the
- deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long
- and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement,
- male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each
- other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed...
- Aeron dreamed of drowning, too. Not of the bliss that would surely follow down in the Drowned
- God’s watery halls, but of the terror that even the faithful feel as the water fills their mouth and
- nose and lungs, and they cannot draw a breath. Three times the Damphair woke, and three
- times it proved no true waking, but only another chapter in a dream.
- But at last, there came a day when the door of the dungeon swung open, and a mute came
- splashing through with no food in his hands. Instead he had a ring of keys in one hand, and a
- lantern in the other. The light was too bright to look upon, and Aeron was afraid of what it
- meant. Bright and terrible. Something has changed. Something has happened.
- “Bring them,” said a half-familiar voice from the hapless gloom. “Be quick about it, you know
- how he gets.”
- Oh, I do. I have known since I was a boy.
- One septon made a frightened noise as the mute undid his chains, a half-choked sound that
- might have been some attempt at speech. The legless warlock stared down at the black water,
- his lips moving silently in prayer. When the mute came for Aeron, he tried to struggle, but the
- strength had gone from his limbs, and one blow was all it took to quiet him. His wrist was
- unshackled, then the other. Free, he told himself. I’m free.
- But when he tried to take a step, his weakened legs folded under him. Not one of the prisoners
- was fit enough to walk. In the end, the mutes had to summon more of their kind. Two of them
- grasped by Aeron by the arms and dragged him up a spiral stair. His feet banged off the steps
- as they ascended, sending stabbing pains up his leg. He bit his lips to keep from crying out. The
- priest could hear the warlocks just behind him. The septons brought up the rear, sobbing and
- gasping. With every turn of the stair, the steps grew brighter, until finally a window appeared in
- the lefthand wall. It was only a slit in the stone, a bare hand’s breadth across, but that was wide
- enough to admit a shaft of sunlight.
- So golden, the Damphair thought, so beautiful.
- When they pulled him up the steps through the light, he felt its warmth upon his face, and tears
- rolled down his cheeks. The sea. I can smell the sea. The Drowned God has not abandoned
- me. The sea will make me whole again! That which is dead can never die, but rises again
- harder and stronger...
- “Take me to the water,” he commanded, as if he were still back on the Iron Islands surrounded
- by his drowned men, but the mutes were his brother’s creatures and they paid him no heed.
- They dragged him up more steps, down a torchlit gallery, and into a bleak stone hall where a
- dozen bodies were hanging from the rafters, turning and swaying. A dozen of Euron’s captains
- were gathered in the hall, drinking wine beneath the corpses. Left-Hand Lucas Codd sat in the
- place of honor, wearing a heavy silken tapestry as a cloak. Beside him was the Red Oarsman,
- and further down Pinchface Jon Myre, Stonehand, and Rogin Salt-Beard.
- “Who are these dead?” Aeron commanded. His tongue was so thick the words came out in a
- rusty whisper, faint as a mouse breaking wind.
- “The lord that held this castle, with his kin.” The voice belonged to Torwold Browntooth, one of
- his brother’s captains, a creature near as vile as the Crow’s Eye himself.
- “Pigs,” said another vile creature, the one they called the Red Oarsman. “This was their isle. A
- rock, just off the Arbor. They dared oink threats at us. Redwyne, oink. Hightower, oink. Tyrell,
- oink oink oink! So we sent them squealing down to hell.”
- The Arbor. Not since the Drowned God had blessed him with a second life had Aeron Damphair
- ventured so far from the Iron Islands. This is not my place. I do not belong here. I should be with
- my Drowned Men, preaching against the Crow’s Eye.
- “Have your gods been good to you in the dark?” asked LeftHand Lucas Codd.
- One of the warlocks snarled some answer in his ugly eastern tongue.
- “I curse you all,” Aeron said.
- “Your curses have no power here, priest,” said Left-Hand Lucas Codd. “The Crow’s Eye has fed
- your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is
- power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!”
- “Count yourself blessed, Damphair,” said Stonehand. “We are going back to sea. The Redwyne
- fleet creeps toward us. The winds have been against them rounding Dorne, but they’re finally
- near enough to have emboldened the old women in Oldtown, so now Leyton Hightower’s sons
- move down the Whispering Sound in hopes of catching us in the rear.”
- “You know what it’s like to be caught in the rear, don’t you?” said the Red Oarsman, laughing.
- “Take them to the ships,” Torwold Browntooth commanded.
- And so, Aeron Damphair returned to the salt sea. A dozen longships were drawn up at the wharf
- below the castle, and twice as many beached along the strand. Familiar banners streamed from
- their masts: the Greyjoy kraken, the bloody moon of Wynch, the warhorn of the Goodbrothers.
- But from their sterns flew a flag the priest had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil
- beneath an iron crown supported by two crows.
- Beyond them, a host of merchant ships floated on a tranquil, turquoise sea. Cogs, carracks,
- fishing boats, even a great cog, a swollen sow of a ship as big as the Leviathan. Prizes of war,
- the Damphair knew.
- Euron Crow’s Eye stood upon the deck of Silence, clad in a suit of black scale armor like
- nothing Aeron had ever seen before. Dark as smoke it was, but Euron wore it as easily as if it
- was the thinnest silk. The scales were edged in red gold, and gleamed and shimmered when
- they moved. Patterns could be seen within the metal, whorls and glyphs and arcane symbols
- folded into the steel.
- Valyrian steel, the Damphair knew. His armor is Valyrian steel. In all the Seven Kingdoms, no
- man owned a suit of Valyrian steel. Such things had been known 400 years ago, in the days
- before the Doom, but even then, they would’ve cost a kingdom.
- Euron did not lie. He has been to Valyria. No wonder he was mad.
- “Your Grace,” said Torwold Browntooth. “I have the priests. What do you want done with them?”
- “Bind them to the prows,” Euron commanded. “My brother on the Silence. Take one for yourself.
- Let them dice for the others, one to a ship. Let them feel the spray, the kiss of the Drowned
- God, wet and salty.”
- This time, the mutes did not drag him below. Instead, they lashed him to the prow of the Silence
- beside her figurehead, a naked maiden slim and strong with outstretched arms and windblown
- hair...but no mouth below her nose.
- They bound Aeron Damphair tight with strips of leather that would shrink when wet, clad only in
- his beard and breechclout. The Crow’s Eye spoke a command; a black sail was raised, lines
- were cast off, and the Silence backed away from shore to the slow beat of the oarmaster’s
- drum, her oars rising and dipping and rising again, churning the water. Above them, the castle
- was burning, flames licking from the open windows.
- When they were well out to sea, Euron returned to him. “Brother,” he said, “you look forlorn. I
- have a gift for you.” He beckoned, and two of his bastard sons dragged the woman forward and
- bound her to the prow on the other side of the figurehead. Naked as the mouthless maiden, her
- smooth belly just beginning to swell with the child she was carrying, her cheeks red with tears,
- she did not struggle as the boys tightened her bonds. Her hair hung down in front of her face,
- but Aeron knew her all the same.
- “Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast
- together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.”
- The girl raised up her head, but made no answer. She has no tongue to answer with, Damphair
- knew. He licked his lips, and tasted salt.
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