Chapter 18: The Crow's-Eye
Summary:
Euron Greyjoy has been to many strange places over the years since his exile, and seen many strange things. When he sets his eyes on an ice dragon, he realizes he may be able to seize a power nobody else has ever been able to claim throughout history.
On Dragonstone, Melisandre knows she must hurry to meet Jaehaerys and Daenerys Targaryen, to warn them of the battles to come...
Notes:
This chapter has some pretty violent/disturbing bits. I don't go too deep into them, but Euron Greyjoy is his own warning.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter Eighteen: The Crow's-Eye
Exile from Pyke and the Iron Islands meant little and less to Euron Greyjoy.
One of his younger brothers was throwing a tantrum over Euron fucking the man's wife. So what? The whore had begged for it. Eventually.
Well, he didn't care. He'd been getting bored of Westeros, anyway.
He took his crew of thralls aboard the Silence as he always did and sailed off to explore the world. Let Balon and Victarion squabble for power on those wretched islands. They could have them, for all Euron cared. The Seastone Chair never meant anything to him.
So he set sail. He first went south around Westeros, occasionally raiding some unsuspecting fishing village on the coast when it so suited him. The Dornish put up a better fight than the cunts in the Reach. Their women were more fun, too. He was pretty sure he'd fathered a bastard or two on that stop.
Not that it mattered. Euron wasn't going to raise whelps like Balon or Victarion wanted to. "Legacy" and all that nonsense was pointless in his mind. If someone wanted his seat, they'd have to claw it out of his cold, dead hands. Make him bleed for it. If they couldn't wrest his position on their own strength, they deserved to die when they failed.
With Westeros behind him, Euron sailed east across the Summer Sea. Lys was an enjoyable stop. Nice whores, though they were expensive. He decided he wouldn't stop there again for pleasure. No cunt was worth that much coin.
He didn't bother with Volantis yet. Euron had longed to sail the Smoking Sea through the ruins of Old Valyria. Few sailors dared to test their mettle in those waters—fewer still survived.
A couple of his men caught Greyscale while they passed through the ruined landscape. Euron cut their throats and threw them overboard. Idiots should have known better than to try and touch anything in this cursed place.
Nobody else had been stupid enough to search for treasures after that.
Euron himself had no use for treasure, in any case. It was part of the reason why his men followed him so loyally—he was not the typical Ironborn Captain who took the lion's share of plunder. He'd take some coin for himself now and again, but his men got most of the loot. They were welcome to it.
Well-paid men were generally loyal men.
Of course, he'd had one or two try to betray him over the years, so they could take all the plunder for themselves. Euron had enjoyed beating them bloody, carving their cocks and stones from their nethers and stuffing them down the throats of the would-be mutineers. There was something laughable about the traitors choking to death on their own cocks.
If they were going to kill him, they could at least get it right the first time. Euron wasn't an idiot like his brothers. He knew how to deal with plots and assassination attempts. He'd dealt with them before, and he would deal with them again.
He would deal with them until one lucky bastard could actually get the job done.
Slaver's Bay was enjoyable enough, he supposed. It had taken him a year to sail to the infamous home of the Masters, and it was grand enough a sight. Great Pyramids filled the city of Meereen, and the likes of Astapor and Yunkai were glorious in their own right, if not quite so splendid as Meereen itself.
The "Wise Masters" were stuck-up pricks who thought themselves oh-so superior, but Euron had seen their like before. They were small men with small cocks and huge egos. He'd have loved to listen to them squeal as he tore them from their seats of power and exposed them for the sniveling cowards that they were, but the Unsullied were not to be trifled with.
He'd gotten to see the eunuch warriors in action against a Dothraki assault once. They were bloody good at killing people. Euron could appreciate that. He was tempted to purchase a few of them for his own means, but they had no ambition. They were just killing machines, without cocks or a sense of self.
He quickly grew bored with them and left Slaver's Bay, probably leaving behind at least one more bastard with his blood.
Euron thought about sailing west again, perhaps to see the likes of the Free Cities for himself. Braavos was out of the question, of course—the city was notorious for how it dealt with pirates. Maybe he'd sail close enough to see the Titan and then keep going.
But there was still more to see in the easternmost places of the world.
So he sailed for Qarth.
Euron made some stops by Old and New Ghis just to slake his curiosity. They weren't much different from the cities of Slaver's Bay, still run heavily on slavery. The Masters of New Ghis thought they were tough shit, just because they were descended from an old empire that had fallen over five thousand years ago.
Euron had seen the ruins of the Great Pyramid of Ghis. Dragonfire had turned the city into a smoldering oblivion. If New Ghis believed itself to be so damned amazing, it was only because the dragons were all dead.
Some months after he left Ghiscar behind him, Euron reached Qarth.
It was certainly different from any city he'd seen before. Euron thought all women across the world should wear those dresses with a breast exposed.
Qarth was a trading city connecting Essos to the rest of the old world much farther to the east. It was rather wealthy, and Euron would admit he found himself curious of many things he saw there. If there were towns nearby the city itself, he thought it would be worth raiding them. Perhaps he'd even keep something for himself beyond some coin and a woman to warm his bed until he grew tired of her.
Eventually, he found himself in the House of the Undying—the seat of power of Qarth's warlocks. It was said that many may enter, but few would leave.
Euron did not fear them. He accepted the shade of the evening he must drink in order to enter, according to the warlock Pyat Pree. The fuck kind of name was that meant to be?
He followed the man's instructions, if only to see what all the fuss was about. Magic was interesting to him—power he did not understand was usually of interest to him.
He did not really know what he was meant to be looking for in the House of the Undying, but after a time, he stumbled upon a room with a great object on display in the center.
It was a strange horn—a massive thing, nearly six feet long and made from some material he did not recognize. It had a black gleam to it, and was banded with red gold and the unique metal he recognized immediately as Valyrian steel.
He set his hand upon it, not remembering when he approached the object in the first place, and felt warmth emanating from the horn. The bands were covered in strange glyphs he could not read.
This was not a simple treasure, he knew. This was something else.
"You are a curious man, Euron Greyjoy."
Euron turned his head only slightly when he heard Pyat Pree speak. He didn't know when the warlock had entered the room—he could've sworn he'd been alone ever since he'd entered the House of the Undying, but there the man was.
"How so?"
"Your path has led you to a wonder of the ancient world," Pyat Pree murmured. "Behold, for what lays before you is the horn of a dragon long-dead. The Old Valyrians crafted it many centuries ago with their magics. It is a Dragonbinder, and those who master it may claim the loyalty of a dragon who hears its cry.
A Dragonbinder. Euron regarded it with some intrigue for a few moments before he shook his head and stepped away. "The dragons are all dead."
In more ways than one, he reflected. House Targaryen itself was now decimated after Robert's Rebellion.
"For now," whispers the warlock. "But one day, they will return. It is known."
"Well they aren't here now," Euron muttered, and he left the way he came. Somehow, it felt like he had no further reason to stay here, and yet he could not bring himself to feel disappointed.
When he left the House of the Undying behind, he turned to look at it one last time, his eyes narrowed in thought. He was sure there was more in the House, but it would not be worth pillaging.
Euron had a very small list of places he had sworn never to raid. This House joined that list—for now, at least. Magic was still too unknown to him.
He chose to sail west. He'd had his fill of the far east for the moment.
Several years went by and Euron sailed the Silence through many shores and seas before he took the channel of the Narrow Sea to the north.
Now back in familiar waters, his crew proceeded to raid and rape and pillage as they saw fit. It was like coming home in a way, Euron thought with a chuckle. They bounced back and forth between Essos and Westeros, raising hell and havoc wherever they struck.
He kept drinking shade of the evening after his visit to the House of the Undying. Soon, his lips turned blue from drinking the elixir as often as he did. His dreams were strange things, filled with visions that made perfect sense and no sense at all, and when he woke only rarely did he remember what he had seen.
The Silence made its presence lesser when they snuck daringly close to Braavos in the night. Euron got a good look at the Titan in the moonlight, its eyes fiery braziers, and admitted it was an impressive sight.
If he could find a way to take Braavos, he would do it, if only to claim the Titan for his own. Though he did not partake in treasure often, wonders were something he could lust for, he thought.
Not that it was worth it if he died first. He'd have to think about how to best raid the city—any plan would take years to put into action, in any case.
He sailed along the southern edge of the Shivering Sea, raiding more towns and fishing villages on the way. This was the farthest north he'd ever been in the world, and he wanted to see more.
As they sailed, he learned that the frozen island of Ib was home to mammoths and unicorns. Ever curious, he decided to visit to see if he could find them.
He wondered what they tasted like.
They raided more as they got further north, if only to acquire warmer clothing. Euron and his crew had gotten soft in the warm lands of the south. He quickly whipped them all back into shape.
Ib wasn't quite what he expected. He thought it'd be a frozen wasteland, but it was covered in snowy forests and grasslands, visible even from the shore. He saw large mountains in the distance, too—supposedly, that was were the unicorns lived.
The people were too uptight for his liking. Only those with an Ibbenese host could venture into the lands beyond the Port of Ibben.
Euron sailed around the port to the west of the landmass, made anchor, and explored to his content. Wherever he stood was his land. The laws of men meant nothing to him.
He did get to see a small herd of mammoths, but could not think of a way to kill them. They were immense beasts, with great thick tusks and deep pelts of fur. Arrows would be useless against them.
It wasn't worth the risk.
Euron did, however, manage to kill a unicorn.
When he shot the thing from a ledge on a nearby cliff, he found himself rather disappointed by the sight of it. The "unicorn" was little more than an especially hairy mountain goat with a bizarre horn growing from the top of its head.
It tasted alright, he supposed. The meat was stringy and tough, but not especially delicious. He kept the horn for himself.
They stopped by a small village to the far north of the island nation, as far north as Euron intended to go into the Shivering Sea. The people were alarmed when they made port, but he didn't give a damn. He was cold, hungry, and ill-tempered at the moment.
He heard some interesting stories from the whalers who ventured into the northern waters beyond Ib—stories of lights in the sky and the cries of creatures made from ice.
The tales were enthralling. Euron bought himself a coat of thick mammoth's fur and decided he wanted to see the lights with his own eyes.
The Shivering Sea was aptly named. It was fucking cold like Euron had never experienced before.
If he'd guessed their course right, they were even further north than the likes of Skagos and the Wall in Westeros by now. The Silence was full of food and supplies to keep the crew fed and warm during their voyage to the furthest reaches of the northern sea.
Whalers rarely went much further than this. Euron pressed on.
It was nearly two months before they saw the White Waste.
He'd heard about this place—a wilderness of ice and snow with a shoreline that receded and expanded with the seasons. Given that it was Summer, he could get further in than he would have been able to in Winter.
No one lived up here. There were no raids to be had, and Euron was certain they'd be attacking any whaling vessels they saw on their way back to Ib.
The day they arrived was spent moving up and down the deck to keep warm—at least for his crew. Euron had kept a woman he'd stolen from Ib for himself and spent his time fucking her, mostly just to keep his cock from freezing off.
At night, the temperature dropped yet further, but the lights in the sky consumed the world.
Euron set his eyes upon the fluctuating colors, the twists of green and blue and red, and claimed another sight few men had ever seen for himself. The shade of the evening he'd drunk not long before they emerged made them appear even more vibrant. He saw faces and places in the lights as he stared up at them, lost to time.
And then he heard it.
At first, he thought there was a blizzard coming their way, but then Euron saw a shape flying across the lights on gigantic wings. It screamed, and the sound was like a glacier in its death throes.
It could only have been a dragon. As he watched, a second dragon appeared, and then they shrieked at each other with terrible fury. Euron and the crew of the Silence observed their battle from far away, watching as the titans clashed in the sky, gouging and tearing and ripping at each other.
Finally, the bigger of the two caught its foe in its claws, sank its teeth into the neck, and tore the second dragon's head off. It shrieked its victory and flew away as the body plummeted to the frozen wasteland below, crashing with a sickening thud.
Euron made sure the victorious dragon was gone before he started barking orders. "Take us over there!"
His silent, tongueless thralls did his bidding.
They only approached by rowboat when morning came and the temperatures had risen somewhat—even though it was still colder than the seven hells.
Euron clutched his mammoth cloak around him and stepped near the body of the beast, and the breath he let out was a thick mist of fog.
It was a dragon made, seemingly, from pure ice, and it was a goliath of a beast. Euron remembered the tales of Balerion the Black Dread, said to be the greatest dragon Westeros had ever seen, and knew immediately that Balerion was smaller.
Walking the length of it, he guessed the dragon was nearly three hundred feet long—an absurd size for any living thing. The Silence was utterly dwarfed by its sheer mass, and yet the dragon that slew this one was yet bigger.
He approached the skull and stared at the lifeless, dull blue eyes—both of which were as large as Euron's entire head, if not bigger. The teeth were longer than his swords and thicker around than his leg. Hell, it could have swallowed a mammoth with little trouble, he suspected. The blood oozing from the back of the decapitated skull was an eerie blue, and made a hissing sound when he prodded it with the tip of his sword.
His blade could not scratch the dead dragon. The hide was too thick and tough. Even a hammer could not break through the frozen armor. Euron picked up a shattered piece of its horn, a tiny fragment that had broken off in the fall, and scowled. He may as well have been holding an especially durable icicle as far as anyone else would be able to tell.
But as he stared at the dragon, he remembered his visit to Qarth almost nine years before.
Could the Dragonbinder work on an ice dragon? The Valyrians had never tried it as far as he knew, but they lived in a land of fire.
What use would they have for ice, even if they could tame one of these beasts?
Euron kept the piece of horn and left the rest of the corpse behind as he strode for the rowboat with purpose in his step. He needed to speak to a warlock.
He didn't even have to travel all the way to Qarth, as it turned out. Just when the Silence was about to enter the Smoking Sea of Old Valyria, a year after he had seen the battle between the ice dragons, fortune smiled upon him.
Euron captured a ship from Qarth, which just so happened to carry upon it Pyat Pree and three other warlocks—along with the Dragonbinder itself.
He sat Pyat Pree across his desk on the Silence and placed the horn fragment of the ice dragon he'd obtained. The warlock, who had been less-than-pleased about the capture of his ship, stared at it with wide eyes.
"What is this?" His voice sounded hungry.
"It is a piece of an ice dragon's horn," Euron told him. "I took it from the body of an ice dragon that was killed by one of its own kin."
The warlock set his bare hand upon it and yelped at the terrible cold that stung his skin. Euron smirked—the horn was as cold as it had been when he took it from the dragon's body. Even when he wore gloves, it was a terrible, piercing freeze that could strip flesh from the body if one held it for too long.
It made for an interesting toy when he needed to punish someone.
"There is power inside of it," Pyat Pree declared, not surprising Euron in the slightest.
"Where are you taking the Dragonbinder?" Asked the Crow's-Eye.
"To Westeros," was the answer. "We have seen the signs and all shared the same visions—a dragon has come back to the world! The blood of Old Valyria has not yet died, and the last Targaryens will move soon in the coming years. We must take the dragon before they do."
It was a surprise, but Euron had seen and heard stranger things in his life.
"Can the Dragonbinder take an ice dragon?"
Pyat Pree's brow furrowed. "I do not know. Perhaps…if you give me the horn, I might be able to divulge some answers for you."
"Do it. You and your warlocks are my guests," Euron told him cheerfully. He'd always have a dagger at the man's back for when the warlock inevitably tried to cheat him.
He knew this type of man well.
"It will require a blood sacrifice."
"I have blood to spare."
The warlocks were able to divulge much more than Euron anticipated.
Along with the Dragonbinder, they'd brought a collection of tomes from the House of the Undying, all studies on dragons and the magics of Old Valyria.
After slaughtering a thrall Euron had recently picked up in Essos and spilling his blood all over the frozen dragon horn, the warlocks cast several spells and enchantments. The process took some hours, as they chanted beneath the black sky of a moonless night.
The deck of the Silence was lit only by three torches, held by Euron's thralls. Pyat Pree took the blood-soaked horn from the ice dragon, writing in glyphs through the dripping red with his fingers as he spoke in languages old and mystical.
As he approached the Dragonbinder, so much larger than the tiny fragment Euron had acquired from the corpse of the ice dragon, the black horn glowed with red glyphs of its own, the color of deep fires. Pyat Pree held the ice horn above the Dragonbinder, and Euron watched a single drop of blood fall upon the Valyrian artifact.
The horn screamed, for lack of a better word, a cry like a thousand dying souls, followed by the howl of the ice dragon that had died to its greater kin. Pyat Pree's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he shook as if seizing, but he kept chanting and held the ice dragon's horn above the Dragonbinder as it dripped blood, drop after drop after drop.
The flames of the torches whooshed out all of a sudden and the temperature dropped noticeably, and with a final shriek from the Dragonbinder, the icy horn in Pyat Pree's hand shattered into a thousand bloody fragments.
It was only the next morning when Pyat Pree came to Euron again.
"It can be done."
Euron raised an eyebrow. "Can it?"
"Indeed. I was skeptical, but the Dragonbinder dominated the piece of the ice dragon you gave me," said the warlock. "That is why it shattered."
"Will it just kill any ice dragon that hears it?"
"Nay—it will dominate their will if the Dragonbinder's Master deems it so."
"And how does one become the Master of the Dragonbinder?"
"I do not know. Not yet."
Pyat Pree was lying. Euron imagined he was reluctant to divulge such information because the warlock himself was likely the current Master. No matter. He'd figure it out.
He spent the rest of the day poring over the books the warlocks had brought with them, offering them a chance to rest and recover from their voyage with the bounty of his own ship. They seemed uncomfortable, but did not deny him—not after he'd provided them such…wisdom.
Euron searched furiously for passages about the Dragonbinder and at last found what he was looking for.
By the next morning, Pyat Pree's body was dumped overboard after Euron bathed the Dragonbinder in the warlock's blood. He slashed his own arm open and spilled his own blood upon the horn, the glyphs of which glowed in response.
"Blood of the former, blood of the new", or so the book had told him. It was a simple ritual—with the warlock now dead at his hand, Euron had the only claim to the Dragonbinder.
He put the other three warlocks in chains and tossed them belowdecks in case he needed them for something else.
And then he sailed to the Shivering Sea once again.
Unfortunately for Euron, finding another ice dragon was not easy.
He'd been incredibly lucky it seemed to witness two of them so close to the water when first he came to the White Waste. Though he eventually found the body of the dragon that had died in that fateful battle, he saw no sign of any other ice dragons.
He took what he could from the dragon's corpse—more pieces of its horn, broken fragments of its razor-sharp wings. Chunks of its icy armor were brittle enough to take off with a good swing of a hammer here and there.
It was the happiest the warlocks had been since he'd commandeered their treasure and lives for himself.
He didn't give a damn about this possible Targaryen dragon in Westeros—the ice dragons, as far as he could tell, were bigger and more importantly, within reach. If he could find them once, he could find them again.
The problem was the Dragonbinder.
Blowing into the horn killed the one who did so, unless they were Dragon Lords in their own right—or so the tomes claimed. The first time he'd ordered one of his men to blow into the horn, his lips had been charred. Cutting him open had revealed his lungs to be black, as though burnt from the inside-out.
So he couldn't just command a thrall to blow into the horn every damned day and hope a dragon would answer the call of the Dragonbinder. He needed these men to get him to-and-from the mainland in Essos until he was successful in his mission.
Claiming an ice dragon could bring the rest of the world to heel. No one else had ever done such a thing.
He had researched them for many long hours, sending men to the libraries of Essos and Westeros in search of their lore. Much of it was nonsensical, but a curious passage in the library of Volantis explained why the dragons weren't found in the frozen land beyond the Wall in Westeros.
The ice dragons had not been seen in Westeros for thousands and thousands of years. They had long left the Land of Always Winter behind, fleeing as if from demons unknown to the world, and took to the White Wastes forevermore.
Euron had to wonder what could frighten such beasts of immense size and power. If the tales were true, perhaps the lands beyond the Wall were home to far more dangerous things than the odd Wildling settlement.
No matter. He had no interest in the lands beyond the Wall. But if he could get one of these ice dragons to do his bidding—well, his brothers would see how small their eyes really were.
Why settle for Pyke when he could have the world? The Iron Throne, Braavos, Slaver's Bay—even the lands beyond.
What was west of Westeros? With a dragon at his command, perhaps he could find out. Old empires would bow to beasts that put even the fire dragons of Old Valyria to shame for their sheer size.
He could become King of the whole goddamn world if he so chose. King of wherever he walked or sailed.
But first, he needed one of the beasts at his heel.
It was nearly a fortnight of sailing along the shores of the White Wastes when Euron heard that familiar scream in the sky.
He couldn't tell if it was the same dragon that had killed its kin, but it was still damned big—bigger than the dragon that had died, for sure. One of his thralls hurriedly blew into the Dragonbinder and collapsed soon after its screaming voice tore over the land.
Euron watched, blood pounding as the ice dragon trembled and spasmed in the sky, screaming in confusion and fury. It nearly fell out of the air several times, spitting what might as well have been a blizzard from its frozen jaws.
The Dragonbinder's glyphs glowed fierce and red, and then suddenly faded. The ice dragon shrieked one last time and flew farther inland as fast as it could, away from them.
Euron was seething.
The Dragonbinder had failed. He brought the three warlocks to him, all of them gaunt and thin in furs that swallowed their filthy robes.
"Explain," he demanded. "Why didn't it work?"
"We cannot the sure," one of them said hesitantly. "Perhaps the dragon was too powerful for the horn to claim."
"Your leader was sure it would work. He said the Dragonbinder dominated that piece of the ice dragon I brought to you."
"That may be, but not one of us carries the blood of a true Dragon Lord. That likely influences the effect it has on the dragons. And perhaps the creature you tried to claim was too large and old. I suggest trying a smaller one. A younger creature might not resist the magic of the Dragonbinder as much."
It was the best he could do, but they still had to sail back to the mainland to resupply and recover from the difficult trip. Time would be wasting, and if what the warlocks said was true, the fire dragon in Westeros would be growing. Surely it wouldn't be as big as Balerion the Black Dread by the time he returned, but every year it would become larger and more problematic to deal with.
He pushed away his rage and began to plan as the warlocks were dragged away to their residence below decks. He was patient. He could wait.
Three expeditions to the White Wastes yielded nothing over the next few years.
On two of those trips, he never saw another ice dragon at all. The one he did, it was again too large and managed to resist the Dragonbinder long enough to flee.
The only consolation Euron had was the beasts went away from the Dragonbinder's call, and didn't approach to try and destroy it. He'd have been long-dead if that first dragon chose to fight rather than turn-tail.
Robert's Rebellion had come to an end nearly twelve years ago. How time went by, Euron reflected. But still he did not give up.
He would do this. The ice dragons responded to the Dragonbinder. He just needed to call to one that was smaller and less-resistant to the spell of the Old Valyrian artifact.
Euron sailed north for his fourth trip to the White Wastes.
Three days after they arrived at the frozen shores, a bit further to the west than they normally explored, the Crow's-Eye found what he was looking for.
The Silence came around a glacier to a small bay. Euron was standing near the prow of the ship and went stock-still when he set eyes on the creature on the shore.
It was an ice dragon—closer than any of the living ones he'd seen, for sure. It hadn't yet noticed them, seeing as its frozen skull was currently tucked into the body of a dead whale. The crystals adorning its face were a bloody red, stained with the ichor of its prey.
Euron stared at it. The dragon was big, but it was considerably smaller than the ones he'd seen before. Sixty feet? Seventy? It was a fraction of the size of its much larger kin.
Within minutes, the Dragonbinder's howl filled the air.
The ice dragon's head tore free of the whale's corpse and it let out a shriek, stumbling backwards and shaking its head as if in pain. The creature's tail thrashed, pulverizing the ice around it as the thick mace slammed down again and again.
Euron scowled as it tried to spread its wings and ordered another thrall to blow the Dragonbinder again. The second, eerie howl had the dragon throwing its head back and wailing. The wings tucked in close to its side and it crouched low to the ground, shivering from head to toe.
Fuck, this was the closest he'd ever gotten. He had memorized what was to be done now long ago. Euron slashed his hand open and pressed it against the hot surface of the Dragonbinder, hissing at the pain as he barked orders for the rowboat to be lowered into the water.
His men hurried to bring him to the shore and he screamed at the Silence to sound the Dragonbinder again when the ice dragon struggled to rise. He would not fail again.
The horn's agonized voice made the ice dragon collapse onto its side, keening and gasping for breath. One of its wings flailed and seized, and for a moment Euron feared that third call might have actually killed the dragon.
He leapt onto the shore, freezing water splashing on his thick boots, and raced to the dragon. His bloody hand, still oozing red, came up to touch the ice dragon's frozen snout.
His blood turned colder than the Shivering Sea, rushing in glacial currents throughout his body. The dragon convulsed at his touch, one, twice, thrice it spasmed and kicked out with its powerful legs. The blue eyes pulsed, trying to resist.
"Stay down," Euron snarled, pressing his hand to the dragon harder. The skin of his palm was blistering and freezing against the icy hide, but the pain was nothing to him.
The dragon's jaws parted and it shrieked, a sound that made his bones feel like they would splinter and shatter from cold.
The Crow's-Eye gnashed his teeth and ripped himself free of the dragon's muzzle, losing most of the skin on his palm, then shoved his bloody hand onto the frozen armor next to that gleaming blue orb.
He glared into the dragon's eye and roared at the top of his lungs. "STAY DOWN! YOU! ARE! MINE!"
The dragon convulsed again and Euron was about to order the Dragonbinder to sound once more—he would kill the fucking thing if it wouldn't submit to his will. He had had enough of these dragons resisting his commands.
And then it slumped over, the fight gone from its heart.
He watched the blue eye glaze over, and the ice dragon made a long, deep sigh. Euron glared at it suspiciously for a minute, but it did nothing. He felt a strange connection to the beast—a silent, formless chain that bound it to his mind.
He yanked the bloody mess of his hand away, sneering at the stain of flesh and frozen blood stuck to the dragon's hide, and stepped back. The dragon watched him intently.
Euron stared at it in silence for a time. And then he spoke.
"Stand."
Its blue eyes pulsed at the command and slowly, the creature pushed itself up to stand on its powerful legs. The wings were tucked into its side, and it looked like a gigantic bird in a strange sort of way.
It watched him, waiting for another order.
Euron smiled a devil's smile.
He learned quickly that the dragon obeyed his will, be it silent or spoken, and that it was most obedient soon after the Dragonbinder sounded.
The call of the Valyrian relic no longer caused the creature pain, as far as he could tell. It wasn't fighting the magic anymore—it had submitted to the spell, and thus to Euron himself.
The range of the Dragonbinder didn't seem to matter, either. Euron sailed back to Ib and after raiding a small village, ordered one of the men he captured to blow into the horn, purely for his own interest.
It took two days, but the dragon arrived. It had been drawn to the call, to the magic that bound it to Euron, or so the warlocks told him.
He let the dragon slaughter a herd of mammoths out of sheer delight. It ripped the beasts apart with icy claws and teeth, and it gorged itself on the rich meat.
Euron took some for himself and his crew. He found mammoths to be more delicious than the unicorn he'd killed so long ago.
Whatever the case, he sent the dragon back to the White Wastes now that he was certain it would come whenever he called for it, wherever he might be. No matter how far he sailed, even at the southern shores of Dorne, he could still feel the connection the Dragonbinder had created between him and the ice dragon.
He would keep his trump card a secret until it was time to wage war upon Westeros.
Euron would start at Pyke. He would take the Seastone Chair from his miserable brothers and ravage the North. Then he would work his way down through the Vale, the Westerlands, and everywhere else with a growing army and an ice dragon at his back.
Once Westeros was his, he would turn his eyes to Essos. And, perhaps, beyond.
He would take whatever he wanted. He would sit in the Iron Throne and put Robert Baratheon's head on a spike for his own amusement. He would fuck the Queen Cersei and keep her as a salt wife until he got bored of her. He would feed Eddard Stark to the ice dragon when it so suited him.
He'd freeze the Titan of Braavos in a block of dragon's-ice and then ravage the city as no one else ever had. He'd take their famous courtesans for himself to warm his bed, and then he'd go to Volantis, Lys, and Slaver's Bay. He would make the "Wise Masters" piss and shit themselves when they saw what true power was, and then he would make them squeal like pigs as he pit them against each other in the fighting pits for his own entertainment. He'd take the dragon to New Ghis and remind them that they were nothing but the descendants of a people who had been cowed by dragons lesser than his.
Wherever he chose to go would be his.
Of course, he needed to figure out where the last Targaryens were, and find the fire dragon said to have hatched in Westeros. He wasn't sure if it could be bound to the Dragonbinder as well, but even if it couldn't be his, he'd capture it. If it would answer to the Targaryens, he'd take them into his ranks and they would fly the dragon on his orders.
If they resisted—well, the ice dragon would eventually get larger than any fire dragon ever had. He'd slaughter them all if they refused to submit.
Euron grinned savagely as he set his eyes on the Iron Islands for the first time in fourteen years. He knew that Balon was still in charge of their House, but it would be such a shame if something were to happen to his dear little brother…
Even with a dragon at his command, there was nothing quite like plotting a good, old-fashioned murder.
Balon was dead. It had been almost comically easy to have someone push his brother off of a bridge.
Euron was the Head of his House now, and proclaimed himself to be the King of the Isles and the North. The Ironborn remembered the Old Way, and it was popular amongst many of them. With Balon gone, Euron found it simple enough to oust Victarion from the position and put his dead brother's daughter in her place. Asha Greyjoy was a rebellious little thing—she'd even managed to flee before his men could capture her the night he seized power.
Well, he'd keep an eye out for her, but it was no skin off his back if he never saw the little cunt ever again.
His plans were already in-motion. The Iron Fleet was being built up to its full strength for the first time since the last failed Greyjoy rebellion. Before long, they'd be raiding the coastline of Westeros to seize the supplies they'd need for a much larger-scale invasion of the North. Eddard Stark wouldn't know what hit him.
And Euron had already seen to it that the Dragonbinder had sounded at the Kingsmoot when he crowned himself. He could feel the ice dragon flying to Westeros from the White Wastes. It would take time to get to the Iron Islands, but it would get here soon enough.
Once his most powerful weapon was here, he'd be more secure in his position.
Then his conquest of Westeros would begin—a conquest the like of which had not been seen since the days of Aegon Targaryen himself.
Dragonstone was full of old magic. She could feel the echoes of the spells cast by the Targaryen Dragon Lords even hundreds of years after their deaths.
Melisandre stood on the cliffs overlooking the seas to the west, towards the mainland. Although she'd stopped by Dragonstone on her voyage to Westeros, this was not to be her place to stay. The visions she'd seen in the flames had told her as much.
Stannis Baratheon was an interesting man, but he was not the Chosen One of her Lord. Melisandre had known that long before she arrived in these foreign lands. His desire to be King of Westeros, backed by his younger brother against Robert Baratheon's heir Joffrey, was of no interest to the Red Woman.
The Dragon King and Queen—they were the ones she needed to meet. She had seen their faces in the flames, seen them riding a white dragon into battle.
She would sail for the mainland today, and she would go North to find the young Targaryens. They had to be warned. Had to be prepared for what lay ahead.
Melisandre remembered the vision that had finally driven her from Volantis to seek the King and Queen out for herself—the most wondrous and terrible vision she had ever been privileged to see by the will of the Lord of Light.
A dance of dragons.
A Dance of Ice and Fire.
Notes:
I hope this answers some of the questions you all had, as to how Euron claimed the ice dragon. There are undoubtedly more questions to be answered, and they will be answered in time. But I can't very well give you guys ALL the answers immediately, now can I? ;)
As ever, please review and thanks for reading!