George R. R. Martin - Arms of the Kraken.pdf

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GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
THE ARMS OF THE
KRAKEN
THE PROPHET
Aeron Damphair was drowning men on Great Wyk when they came to tell
him that the king was dead.
It was a bleak cold morning, and the sea was as leaden as the sky. The
first three men had offered their lives to the Drowned God fearlessly, but
the fourth was weak in faith, and began to struggle as his lungs cried out
for air. Standing waist deep in the surf, Aeron seized the naked boy by the
shoulders and pushed his head back down as he tried to snatch a breath.
"Have courage." he said. "We came from the sea, and to the sea we must
return. Open your mouth and drink deep of god's blessing. Fill your lungs
with water, that you may die and be reborn. It does no good to fight."
Either the boy could not hear him with his head beneath the waves, or else
his faith had utterly deserted him. He began to kick and thrash so wildly
that Aeron had to call for help. Four of his drowned men waded out to seize
the wretch and hold him under water. "Lord God who drowned for us," the
priest prayed, in a voice as deep as the sea, "let Emmond your servant be
reborn From the sea, as you were. Bless him with salt, bless him with
stone, bless him with steel."
Finally it was done. No more air was bubbling from his mouth, and all the
strength had gone out of his limbs. Face down in the shallow sea floated
Lmmond, pale and cold and peaceful.
That was when Ihe Damphair realized that three horsemen had joined his
drowned men on the pebbled shore. Aeron knew The Sparr, a hatchet-faced
old man with watery eyes whose quavery voice was law on this part of
Great Wyk, His son Steffarion accompanied him, with another youth whose
dark red fur-lined cloak was pinned at Ihe shoulder with a ornate brooch
that showed the black-and~gold warhorn of the Goodbrothers. One of
Gorold's sons , the priest decided at a glance. Three tall sons had been born
to Goodbrother's wife late in We, after a dozen daughters, and it was said
that no man could tell one son from the others. Aeron Damphair did not
deign to try. Whether this be Greydon or Gormond or Gran, the priest had
no time for him.
He growled a brusque command, and his drowned men seized the dead boy
by his arms and legs to carry him above the tideline. The priest followed,
naked but for a sealskin clout that covered his private parts. Goosefleshed
and dripping he splashed back onto land, across cold wet sand and
sea-scoured pebbles. One of his drowned men handed him a robe of heavy
roughspun dyed in mottled greens and blues and greys, the colors of the
sea and the
Drowned God. Aeron donned the robe and pulled his hair free. Black and
wet, that hair; no blade had touched it since the sea had raised him up. ll
draped his shoulders like a ragged, ropy cloak, and fell down past his waist.
 
Aeron wove strands of seaweed through it, and through his tangled, uncut
beard.
His drowned men formed a circle around Ihe dead boy, praying. Norjen
worked his arms whilst Rus knell astride him. pumping on his chest, but all
moved aside for Aeron. He pried apart the boy's cold lips with his fingers,
and gave Emmond the kiss of life, and agait and again, until the sea cam«
tfirehinji from his mouth. The boy began to cough and spit, and his eyes
blinked open, full of fear.
Another one returned It was a sign of the Drowned God's favor, men said.
Every other priest lost a man from time to lime, even Tarle the
Thrice-Drowned, who had once been thought so holy that he was picked to
crown a king. But never Aeron Greyjoy. He was the Damphair, who had seen
the god's own watery halls and returned to tell of it. "Rise," he told the
sputtering boy, as he slapped him on his naked back. "You have drowned
and been returned lo us. What is dead can never die."
"But rises." The boy coughed violently, bringing up more water. "Rises
again." Every word was bought with pain, but that was the way of the
world; a man must fight to live. "Rises again." Emmond staggered to his
feet. "Harder. And stronger."
"You belong to the god now," Aeron told him. The other drowned men
gathered round, and gave him each a punch and a kiss to welcome him to
brotherhood. One helped him don a roughspun robe of mottled blue and
green and grey. Another presented him with a driftwood cudgel. "You
belong to the sea now, so the sea has armed you."
Aeron said. "We pray that you shall wield your cudgel fiercely, against all
the enemies of our god."
Only then did the priest turn to the three riders, watching from their
saddles. "Have you come to be drowned, my lords?"
The Sparr coughed. "I was drowned as a boy," he said, "and my son upon
his name day."
Aeron snorted. That Steffarion Sparr had been given to the Drowned God
soon after birth he had no doubt. He knew the manner of it too, a quick dip
into a tub of seawater that scarce wet the infant's head. Small wonder the
ironborn had been conquered, they who once held sway everywhere the
sound of waves was heard. "That is no true drowning," he told the riders.
"He that does not die in truth cannot hope to rise from death. Why have
you come, if not to prove your faith?"
"Lord Gorold's son came seeking you with news." The Sparr indicated the
youth in the red cloak.
The boy looked to be no more than six-and-ten. "Aye, and which are you?"
Aeron demanded.
"Gormond. Gormond Goodbrother, if it please my lord."
"It is the Drowned God we must please. Have you been drowned, Gormond
 
Goodbrother?"
"On my name day, Damphair. My father sent me to find you and bring you
to him. He needs to see you."
"Here I stand. Let Lord Gorold come and feast his eyes." Aeron took a
leather skin from Rus, freshly filled with water from the sea. The priest
pulled out the cork and took a swallow.
"I am to bring you to the keep," insisted young Gormond, from atop his
horse.
He is afraid to dismount, lest he get his boots wet . "! have the god's work
to do." Aeron Greyjoy was a prophet. He did not suffer petty lords ordering
him about like some thrall.
"Gorold's had a bird," said The Sparr.
"A maester's bird, from Pyke," Gormond confirmed.
Dark wings, dark words , "The ravens fly o'er salt and stone. If there are
tidings that concern me, speak them now."
"Such tidings as we bear are for your ears alone, Damphair," The Sparr said.
"These are not matters I would speak of here before these others."
" These others are my drowned men, god's servants, just as I am. I have no
secrets from them, nor from our god beside whose holy sea I stand."
The horsemen exchanged a look. "Tell him," said The Sparr, and the youth
in the red cloak summoned up his courage. "The king is dead," he said, as
plain as that. Four small words, yet the sea itself trembled when he uttered
them.
Four kings there were in Westeros, yet Aeron did not need to ask which one
was meant. Balon Greyjoy ruled the Iron Islands, and no other. The king is
dead. How can that be ? Aeron had seen his eldest brother not a moon's
turn past, when he had returned to the Iron Islands from harrying the Stony
Store. Balon's grey hair had gone half white whilst the priest had been
away, and the stoop in his shoulders was more pronounced than when the
long-ships sailed. Yet all in all the king had not seemed ill.
Aeron Greyjoy had built his life upon two mighty pillars. Those four small
words had knocked one down. Only the Drowned God remains to me. May
he make me as strong and tireless as the sea . "Tell me the manner of my
brother's death."
"His Grace was crossing a bridge at Pyke when he fell, and was dashed
upon the rocks below."
The Greyjoy stronghold stood upon broken headland, its keeps and towers
built atop massive stone stacks that thrust up from the sea. Bridges
knottei Pyke together; arched bridges of carved stone, and swaying spans
of hempen rope and wooden planks. "Wa; the storm raging when he fell?"
Aeron demanded of them,
 
"Aye," the youth said, "if was."
"The Storm God cast him down," the priest announced. For a thousand thou
sand years sea and sky had been at war. From the sea had come the
iron-born, and the fish that sustained them even in the depths of winter,
but storms brought only woe and grief. "My brother Balon made us great
again, which earned the Storm God's wrath. He feasts now in the Drowned
God's watery halls, with mermaids to attend his every want. It shall be for
u: who remain behind in this dry and dismal vale to finish his great work."
He pushed the cork back into his waterskit "I shall speak with your lord
father. How far from here to Hammerhorn?"
"Six leagues. You may ride pillion with me."
"One can ride faster than two. Give me your horse, and the Drowned God
will bless you."
"Take my horse, Damphair," offered Steffarion Sparr.
"No. His mount is stronger. Your horse, boy."
The youth hesitated half a heartbeat then dismounted and held the reins
for Damphair. Aeron shoved a bare black foot into a stirrup and swung
himself onto the saddle. He was not fond of horses-they were creatures
from the green lands, and helped to make men weak-but necessity required
that he ride. Dark wings, dark words . A storm was brewing, he could hear it
in the waves and storms brought naught but evil. "Meet with me at
Pebbleton beneath Lord Merlyn's tower," he told his drowned men, as he
turned the horse's head.
The way was rough, up hills and woods and stony defiles along a narro 1
track that oft seemed to disappear beneath the horse's hooves. Great Wyl
was the largest of the Iron Islands, so vast that some of its lords had
holding that did not front upon the holy sea.
Gorold Goodbrother was one such. His keep was in the Hardstone Hills, as
far as from the Drowned God's realm as any place in the isles. Gorold's folk
toiled down in Gorold's mines, in the stony dark beneath the earth. Some
lived and died without setting eyes upon salt water. Small wonder that
such folk are crabbed and queer .
As Aeron rode, his thoughts turned to his brothers.
Nine sons had been born from the toins of Quellon Greyjoy, the Lord of the
Iron Islands. Marlon, Quenton, and Donel had been born of Lord Quellon's
first wife, a woman of the Stonetrees. Balon, Euron, Victarion, Urrigon, and
Aeron were the sons of his second, a Sunderly of Saltcliffe. For a third wife
Quellon took a girl from the green lands, who gave him a sickly idiot boy
named Robin, the brother best forgotten. The priest had no memory of
Quenton or Donel, who had died as infants. Harlon he recalled but dimly,
sitting grey-faced and still in a window less tower room and speaking in
whispers that grew fainter every day as the grey scale turned his tongue
and lips to stone. One day we shall feast on fish together in the Drowned
God's watery halls, the four of us and Urri too .
 
Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, but only four
had lived to manhood. That was the way of this cold world, where men
fished the sea and dug in the ground and died, whilst women brought forth
short-lived children from beds of blood and pain. Aeron had been the last
and least of the four krakens, Balon the eldest and boldest, a fierce and
fearless boy who lived only to restore the iron-born to their ancient glory.
At ten he scaled the flint Cliffs to the Blind Lord': haunted tower. At
thirteen he could rur a longship's oars and dance the finger dance as well
as any man in the isles. At fifteen he had sailed with Dagmer Cleftjaw to
the Stepstones and spent a summer reaving. He slew his first man there,
and took his first two salt wives. At seventeen Balon captained his own
ship. He was all that an elder brother ought to be, though he had never
shown Aeron aught but scorn. / was weak and full of sin, and scorn was
more than I deserved. Better to be scorned by Balon the Brave than
beloved of Euron Crow's Eye . And if age and grief had turned Balon bitter
with the years, they had also made him more determined than any man
alive. He was born a lord's son and died a king, murdered by a jealous god ,
Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, a storm such as these isles
have never known ,
It was long after dark by the time the priest espied the spiky iron
battlements of the Hammerhorn clawing at the crescent moon. Gorold's
keep was hulking and blocky, its great stones quarried from the cliff that
loomed behind it. Below its walls the entrances of caves and ancient mines
yawned like toothless black mouths. The Hammerhorn's iron gates had been
closed and barred for the night. Aeron beat on them with a rock, until the
clanging woke a guard.
The youth who admitted him was the image of Gormond, whose horse he'd
taken. "Which one are you?" Aeron demanded.
"Gran. My father awaits you within"
The hall was dank and drafty, full of shadows. One of Gorold's daughters
offered the priest a horn of ale. Another poked at a sullen fire that was
giving off more smoke than heat. Gorold Goodbrother himself was talking
quietly with a slim man in fine grey robes, who wore about his neck a chain
of many metals that marked him for a maester of the Citadel.
"Where is Gormond?" Gorold asked when he saw Aeron.
"He returns afoot. Send your women away, my lord. And the maester as
well." He had no love of maesters. Their ravens were creatures of the Storm
God, and he did not trust their healing, not since Urri. No proper man would
choose a life of thralldom, nor forge a chain of servitude To wear about his
throat .
"Gysella, Gwin, leave us," Goodbrother said curtly. "You as well, Gran.
Maester Murenmure will stay."
"He will go," insisted Aeron.
"This is my hall, Damphair. It is not for you to say who must go and who
remains. The maester stays."
 

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