Chapter 2

"You understand, Robert," his lord father said, "the weight of that responsibility?"

Robert's head bobbed up and down. "Yes, Father. I'll do you proud, I swear."

His father smiled. "That, I will see when I return. Be well, and be mindful of those matters I have warned you of, especially Lord Penrose's damn fool petition. I expect he'll try to present it again in my absence." He turned to Stannis. "Put your heart into your training and heed what your brother tells you."

Stannis bowed his head. "Yes, Father."

His lord father gave him a nod and turned to walk to the docks.

His lady mother lingered, seeing something in his face. To a burst of protest from Robert, she clasped both her elder sons to her chest. "Never fear. I know we've not been away so long before, but it will be over before you know it. Volantis is far from here but it's no den of barbarians. We'll be quite safe. And in the meantime you'll have each other."

Stannis wanted to speak to her, to tell her not to go, to tell her that his brother Robert was nothing like having her at home. He would have done so, even with Robert right here to listen… but he dared not face her quiet disappointment. He was silent.

His mother studied his face for moments longer. "Take care of your little brother."

"I will," Stannis promised, thinking of little Renly, whose first nameday had been a fortnight ago, as Robert gave his own louder assurances. He watched his lady mother turn her back on him and walk away.

Lord Steffon and Lady Cassana Baratheon boarded their ship. They stood there on the deck, his lord father tall and broad with a mane of hair as black as coal, his lady mother short and round and lovely-gowned and kindly-eyed. His mother's head was resting on his father's shoulder. Their arms were intertwined. The wind blew soft and steady, and the Windproud was borne away.

He might have stayed there longing till the day of their homecoming, but Maester Cressen and the guards escorted him and his brother back into the castle as soon as the ship had left its dock. Robert chattered for a while about meaningless things, talking simply to talk, as if that could fill the yawning abyss of absence. Stannis let him. At last, Robert tried, "Would you like to go into the woods and bag a hart?"

Stannis looked up. "I've never much liked hunting deer. You speak so frequently and fondly of every little thing that ever happened in the Eyrie, I'd have thought you might remember."

Robert flushed. "How was I supposed to know?" he complained, lip curling. "It has been a long time."

"It has," Stannis agreed, inclining his head, and thought, Too long. Lord Jon and Ned Stark have made you like a stranger to us. "If I may be excused?"

With an irritable wave of a hand, Robert allowed it, and Stannis retreated to his own chambers. He locked himself in his innermost chamber, once, twice, thrice, to be certain that he would not be disturbed, and then in an instant he was a thousand miles away.

The wind was cold against his feathers as he dived towards a distant speck. It swelled and swelled in his sight, racing towards him… tried to run… failed. He plucked it up with his claws and beat his wings with vigour, and with that sudden straining impulse he was swooping up and away.

An instant—and a thousand earthy smells assailed his sensitive nose. There was snow all over the ground, but he could still smell what lay underneath. He padded forward on soft paws, quiet, purposeful, following a faint trail of scent that might lead him to prey that could be eaten to make milk for the young ones.

Another instant—and he was bigger and stronger, strong enough to bear the heavy weight upon him. He walked wearily down a familiar dirt-path, knowing every inch of it but still carrying on. There was something tight around his neck. The sooner he came, the sooner he could stop, and sleep, and have an apple.

Another instant—and he was Stannis Baratheon, second son of the Lord and Lady of Storm's End, standing upright. It pleased him to notice that. He had touched their thoughts lightly, seeing what they saw without fighting against their minds and taking control; for if he had taken control, he would not know how to act and live their lives as they could. It was not as if he were exclusively an eagle or a fox or a horse. He had been many things. He had to be so delicate that he was only partly there, and the fact that his man's body had not fallen was the proof of it. He had not lost control of his man's self as he dwelt in beasts. His thoughts had been in both places. No mere skinchanger, he had been told, could consciously shift between the minds of multiple beasts a thousand miles away with such delicacy… but he was not a skinchanger. He was something more.

From the day he slipped into the form of Robert's falcon, Stannis had known that his dreams were real. Thenceforth he had listened attentively to whatever the three-eyed crow had to tell him. He had been taught many things in the four years since—to direct the winds, such as to guide the sails of a ship or make an arrow's shot fly further and harder and truer than ought to be possible; to weave glamours with the power to deceive the human eye; to receive dreams and to command them, to create them and send them to others—but his favourite of all was skinchanging. All power required sacrifice, the crow had told him. With skinchanging the sacrifice was that the shift of thoughts went both ways. Spend time as a beast, his mind influencing its, and its mind would influence his, making him more eaglelike or foxlike or horselike. Use it too much, especially if it were too much with a single beast, and it would alter his nature to be like its own. It was his favourite because that was mild compared to the price that other magics demanded.

He further practised what had been taught to him, despite the price, and then he went to bed, and slept, and permitted himself to dream.

He dreamt that he was walking in a howling gale in some snowy place in the far north. He was well accustomed to it by now. He had been here so many times that he could navigate it in his sleep. He was not at all surprised to see a black shape hovering in front of his face.

"Greetings, crow," Stannis said. "What is your name?"

You know I'll not tell you that. The voice that he associated with the crow was only thoughts inserted to his head, he knew, not any sort of physical sound coming from a mouth, but somehow it was flavoured with amusement. Yet you ask every time. You are a persistent little boy, aren't you?

"I've seen four-and-ten namedays!"

I'm so sorry, said the crow, you're veritably ancient, I confess it. I take it your day's working has gone well.

"Yes."

Good. Now I may tell you what I dared not tell before: you will soon be ready to proceed with your training.

"Ready for what?"

Ready to use the eyes of the heart-trees.

That notion delighted Stannis. Of all the workings that the crow had spoken of, none had so captured his imagination as the heart-trees, whereby a greenseer could see through eyes carved into white weirwood, all over Westeros, to look at things that were past and things that were happening now and even to catch glimpses of things yet to come. Other men of might—First Men skinchangers, Qartheen warlocks, aeromancers of Asshai—could do the other things that he could do, he had been told, but using the power of the heart-trees was what made a greenseer a greenseer.

There was just one difficulty. "I thought you said you couldn't teach me that until I was with you," said Stannis. "You said I would need to take the black, then disappear ranging beyond the Wall, and I would have to come and find you here." He gestured around him. "What's changed?"

What has changed? I thought you knew better than to think of the world in such linear terms. No true greenseer's actions are determined solely by the past. It is what will change. You'll soon be free to go to the Wall. The crow's three eyes were dark and gleaming. Tell me, Stannis Baratheon: do you always want to know more than you know, no matter what it is that you may learn? Such knowledge is a terrible burden, and in this case it isn't necessary for you to bear it.

"I've no need of tricks," said Stannis. "If you didn't want me to know, you wouldn't have raised the subject. This test of yours is hardly subtle. Tell me and be done with it."

This is no trick. I tell you because I do not know which you will resent less: not being told now, and discovering it then, or being told and discovering it now. Would you curse me for leaving you ignorant or curse me for the knowledge?

Stannis said, "I want to know."

I thought you would say that, the crow said. Very well. Your mother and father will not forbid you from taking the black because they'll not return from Volantis alive.

The words felt like a punch to the stomach. Stannis blurted out, "You're lying."

There was only sadness in the crow's voice. If you feel you need to believe that.

His heart thumped in his chest. Tears stung at his eyes. Mother… He croaked, "How?"

A storm. They will reach Volantis, and they will sail away, and they will be struck by a storm within sight of Storm's End in Shipbreaker Bay, and their ship will be broken.

"A storm," Stannis murmured. "You told me once that you summoned a storm, when you were younger, to stop an army from crossing the sea to aid your enemies. Is this… I mean… Will this be your doing?"

No. I would not. I am not so cruel as you believe of me. But it will happen, nonetheless.

He thought of his mother's smile. He thought of the last hug she had given him.

"No."

You can't stop it; it will happen no matter what you do. All you will cause yourself is grief, the crow said urgently. A greenseer can see what is yet to come but not change it… Stannis! Listen to me, Stannis…

But the dream sent by the crow was dissolving all around him, snow and trees blending into a pale mist and thence to nothing. He was master of his own mind, no mere thrall of the crow, and he would be master of his own destiny.

After a succession of meaningless magicless dreams, Stannis Baratheon awoke.

He told no-one of his intent, and practised magics. Not skinchanging; that would be of no use to him here. Other magics. He skinchanged into rats and dogs and cats around the castle, and birds from outside, and brought them to his chambers. They served as his sacrifices. He had to cut their throats, and with their blood upon his hands he called upon the wild winds and through the blood that he had spilt he forced them to serve him. At first he summoned simple gusts with small dead mice, but he needed more, much more. He had grown proficient in his years studying under the three-eyed crow, and with his power he would thwart the storm and steer his mother and father home.

Sometimes Robert summoned him to dine together, and he did not refuse his elder brother, but he took no pleasure in it. He had no wish to listen to his brother babble on about everything he had seen and done with Ned Stark in his time away, nor to listen to Robert's awkward, clueless questions about his own life. His elder brother was only here because their lord father was away and he had to act as Lord of Storm's End, no matter that he was inattentive. This period—only a few turns of the moon—was the longest time in which Robert had dwelt continuously at Storm's End since his departure to the Eyrie years ago. Soon he would be gone again, back to the Eyrie which he so plainly preferred, and then Stannis would be without him. Stannis had no trust in Robert's attempted closeness and wished he would stop trying. It was obvious to Stannis that he meant none of it.

In time, Robert understood his tone and stopped inviting him. He dined alone thenceforth, while Robert laughed with lickspittles calling themselves friends and little Renly was tended to in the nursery. He liked it better that way, when his brother did not pretend to hold affection that clearly did not exist.

On the day the Windproud drew near enough to Storm's End to be almost in sight, Stannis knew at once. For weeks Stannis had delved into the thoughts of seagulls, ever-so-lightly, ever-so-briefly, once in every hour of every day, so that he would know when the time had come that his lady mother and lord father were near home. Moons before, when he first learnt of the crow's prediction for his mother and father, he had summoned the birds he had formed bonds with to the woods around Storm's End. From the length and breadth of Westeros, all across the Seven Kingdoms, they had come, the several birds whose skins he had often worn, some of them for years. He had kept them in the woods for a while, feeding them at his window.

Now, one by one he made them come to his window, his companions, knowing him, trusting him, and he cut their throats.

It pained him piteously to do it. He knew them well. How could he not? He had been them. He had walked on their legs, flown on their wings, warmed their eggs, lived in their lives. He understood, to an extent, how they thought and felt and acted. Each and every one of them he was strongly attached to. It would have been easier to slay any beast of the woods, for he could easily find one and force it to come to him… easier, but poorer by far in effect. That was the cruelty of it. He needed to hurt himself; he needed his own pain. Many times the three-eyed crow had told him about what it meant, in sorcery, to pay a price: Sacrifice is never easy, Stannis. Or it is no true sacrifice.

Once his grisly work was done, Stannis rushed up to the balcony at the top of the single gigantic tower of Storm's End. Robert was already there. "It's them, Stannis, look, it's them!" Robert was saying, pointing excitedly. Stannis did not listen. Before he even started to run upstairs, he was at work.

Above the sea, above Storm's End, the wind was streaming. It had been a southerly wind, quite fierce, but Stannis reached out and tried to hold it with his thought. It was like wrestling a whale. The air howled against him, a titanic natural force, a power of the world.

He put his own power against it and tried to make them match.

Robert, blissfully unaware, was going on about all the things he wanted to tell his lord father. Stannis gripped the railing so tightly that his nails were carving lines into his palms.

I bind you! By blood and suffering I bind you!

Any fool could talk to the wind. To rule it was another matter. He had flown with his companions long and far, knew the nature and the value of their lives, and now that was no more. He drowned himself in his own hate of what he himself had done, embracing it, exulting in his agony, letting it swell to fill his mind and fill the world.

He sought to pull the wind around.

It fought back. The winds of the world were vast and tempestuous. They stirred seas and shook nations. They were fully in contact now, the wind over Storm's End and the boy whose magic was attempting to impose order upon it, and he had known no greater struggle. If he could keep a distance, it would have been awe-inspiring, mighty forces striving for control over the sky. As it was, all that he felt was pain. A mindless force far larger than himself sought to break him for his defiance, and if he succumbed it would crush his thoughts like an ant beneath a boot and leave him as a mindless husk of a man. He fought it. He was dimly aware of Robert chattering beside him. It mattered nothing. He placed his will against the world and did not move…

…and the world bent to his will.

He flew, and all the land and sea for miles around were spread beneath him. There was nothing to touch with his fingers, nor any hard ground holding him up, nor even an updraft under his wings; it was as though he were falling freely. The strongest sensation he could feel was birds passing through; they felt like tiny fingers lightly tickling his skin. A flex, an exertion of will, and a great current of air came flooding westward. For the first time in his life, Storm's End seemed small.

Somehow, in some insignificant part of his vastness, he could hear a voice shouting. He reached out to one of the absurdly tiny mortal forms at the top of Storm's End and possessed it. Moving it felt like moving a skinchanged beast, save that this one had no native mind to contend with. "Don't worry, Robert," he said with a wide smile. "They'll be with us soon." He only just retained enough presence of mind not to shout at his elder brother: Don't you see? Don't you see?!

As his eyes could see, the sudden easterly wind had filled the sails of the Windproud. Steady and strong, it bore them over the water towards Storm's End. His mother and father's ship was pulled over the surface of the water, sailcloth flaring, growing larger, coming close…

The wind shifted.

He felt the impact of it jar his bones, if he had had bones. The sheer force of it was tremendous. Curiously there was no pain, nothing to indicate resistance to his magic. The wind was moving, but not against him.

Then he understood; it was continuing to be pulled around.

Again the wind shifted. The change came sooner this time. Then again, then again even sooner than that, and then again… turning and turning and turning, around and around and around…

Stop! he called to it, to himself. Stop now! Be still! He brought to the fore his memories of his companions' sacrifice and focused on them, let them swell, let them grow, and sent forth the blood and mess and mental pain and terrible finality to control what he had wrought.

But he was not the master now. The wind kept moving, pulling, turning, not against him, not even in spite of him but utterly ignoring his effort of will. His hold had not been broken. He was the wind. And yet he was not the master of himself. He felt as though he were running at great pace despite urging his muscles to be still. It was like nothing he had felt before. Stop! Stop! he commanded, but it did not stop. How? How was it going so wrong, when he did not feel a resistance force working against him?

And then he understood. He had cast his working and assumed his place in the sky, but his sacrifice had not been enough to bind the magic he himself had unleashed, to control what he himself had become.

The air was circling now, and he felt the sea stir at his touch. Cold air rubbed shoulders with hot, and he knew because he was both of them. Thunder rumbled, knives of lightning flashed like daggers falling from the sky, and the waves grew higher, higher, higher, ever higher…

Distantly he was aware of a voice screaming, a voice which did not sound like Robert's. "No, no, no…"

Carried up and down, the ship was swaying violently. The waves were too tall. He knew what had made them so. How could he not? He felt every touch of the water being roused by the wind as if it were brushing against his belly. High winds howled their challenge and the sea tossed and turned like a trembling tortured beast beneath the slash-strokes of his fingers.

He conceived a thought. Out. Out. I must go out. Mayhaps that will stop him. He thought of himself, of what it felt like to have arms and legs and feet and hands. Did he even remember? Had the world always been like this? He could not focus on it. The sensation was too strong. He was higher than the Hightower, more enormous than a mountain, and at his touch the sea was screaming.

The Windproud was lifted by a great wave, foundered, and turned upside down.

"Mother!"

The storm still raged outside Storm's End. Gradually Stannis came to notice that there were no sparks of lightning passing through him, and no waters writhing underneath. He was in one place, only one place: standing on a balcony in Storm's End, sobbing, clutching his brother in a tearful tight embrace.

He was free, back in his man's form again, where he belonged, but what did that matter? He could not bring himself to care, when he would never again see his lady mother's smile.

He stayed with his brother Robert, weeping together, for a time. He knew not how long. The next that he would remember, he was being led to his chambers by Maester Cressen.

For the first time since that dread moment, he found coherent words. "I'm sorry."

"Hush," soothed Maester Cressen, running wrinkled fingers through hair as black as Stannis's sin, "hush, boy. I'm so sorry for what you must endure. Ofttimes the gods are cruel."

"It wasn't the gods' fault," Stannis sobbed, "it was mine… I was bad, the worst, no man more accursed… sorry, maester… I wish what you told me wasn't a lie… I wish I couldn't, couldn't… I wish I was nothing… I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry…"

"It wasn't your fault," Maester Cressen told him firmly. He held the maester's hand tight, wanting to believe. "Stannis, some things no man can control. Men can be mighty, and men can be wise, but even the mightiest wisest kings do not command the waves. They are natural forces and they answer only to the gods. It is not for us to reason why. All that we can do is scream against the storm."

There are no gods, thought Stannis. Any just god would have stopped me. What is attributed to gods was done by a man. There is only power, and those too mad to refuse to seek it.

He thought to say more, but he looked up at the old man's kindly face and could not bear to tell him. I wish you were telling the truth, maester. I wish I could believe that.

That night, Stannis lay awake in his bed, his every thought consumed by thoughts of the Windproud foundering. He was guilty, he knew. He had done it. He had felt the wooden hull as solidly as if it were being scooped in his own hand. He and Robert had to grow up without a mother and a father now. Gods, so did little Renly, who had never had the chance to know them. He had taken them away from him. Was there any more monstrous sin? Everything good and beautiful had perished in Shipbreaker Bay, and he had done it himself, through his sorcery.

He almost wished to die—why should such a miserable creature as himself live?—but then it occurred to him how Robert would feel. Robert would not know why, unless Stannis told him, and that would only cause Robert more misery. He is my brother. I can't do that to him. Not after I have already done this.

He could never undo what he had done to his family, Stannis decided, but he could begin in some measure to atone for it. He would dedicate himself unceasingly to serving his family. He would do for them as best he could. The maester had lied to him, but it would be a better world if the maester's words had been true, so he would try to act as if they were. Still wet with rainwater, shivering, staring at the ceiling in his bedchamber, he vowed, "Never again. Never again."

That night, for the first time since he had been told the dreadful truth of what he would do to his mother and father, Stannis did not use the skill the crow had taught him to command his dreams. And so he dreamt of the snowy wooded hill beyond the Wall, the place where he had dreamt a thousand times before of the three-eyed crow, the last greenseer, his teacher in sorcery.

You see what has come of not heeding my teachings, said the crow, sharp claws cutting his shoulder. You cannot make prophecy fail by refusing it. Fate is not so easily denied.

Stannis opened his mouth, an angry retort on his lips, to tell the crow that if the crow had not prophesied their deaths to him then he would not have caused those deaths. Then he closed it. He should not take part in such talk. Such speech was not for him now.

He said, "No."

No? In your arrogance you believed your knowledge to be greater than it is, and so you made a terrible mistake. Do you fail to understand this?

"I understand," said Stannis. "Your lessons have done more ill than good, by far. I choose not to be the monster you helped me to become. I should never have tried to be a greenseer, and I never will again."

You fool, you are needed, and I'll not let you throw it all away because of one mistake. Yes, you're a kinslayer, from a certain point of view. Your duty matters more than that. I've shown you what lies in the heart of winter. You know what is coming. A greenseer must help to stop it. Do you think there are many like you?

"No, but I am not the one you need. Find someone better."

There is no-one else!

"No-one?" said Stannis, arching an eyebrow. "In all the world, no-one? I don't believe that."

One man in a thousand is born a skinchanger, the three-eyed crow said, and one skinchanger in a thousand is born a greenseer. And it is not obvious to me who I should seek. The best I can do is to send dreams to one who lies near death—they must be near death—and try to open their third eye as I opened yours. Of the dreamers who experience this, most lack the potential to be greenseers, or the strength of will to reach past the material world; most of them die, instead of flying. Few are blessed with your gift, and fewer still can be awakened to it.

"When you sent me that dream," Stannis said, "I wish I died."

There was silence for a long while.

The world needs you, the crow said at last.

"My family needs me," said Stannis. "I owe my life to them for what I've done. I can't be what you want me to be for the world. I cannot. I tried, and all it led me to was ruin. Send dreams to me as long as you want, but it will be of no use. I'll not stop you. I'll not use what you taught me. I'll not be what you want me to be."

I have no-one else.

"You'll find someone else. Some witless fool of a boy who thinks he knows what he's saying when he says he wants power. The world has no lack of them." Stannis laughed bitterly. "Take heart. I doubt you can make as much of a mess of him as you've made of me."