Chapter 20
Part II
The corpselike figure stood there still as a statue, for a few moments more. All of the men were staring. Then it shook. The blinding blue light dimmed to nothing, revealing dark eyes on a shuddering gaunt face. The corpselike figure of Stannis Baratheon turned from demonic to frail. He trembled like a leaf in the wind.
A sellsword sergeant realised what was going to happen, about two seconds before it did. He was there to catch Ser Stannis Baratheon as he fell. Stannis slumped on the sergeant's shoulder with his whole weight. The sergeant swore, and lifted him. Justin realised the effort that must have taken, in the prince's state. Gods be good, he doesn't even have the strength to stand.
"My prince!" Justin called, rushing to his side. "Are you well?"
"I am… alive," said the prince, trembling. Well, thought Justin, that answers the question. "Not me. Not… important. How… is Marro?" With effort, Stannis lifted up his head to look for him. Then it collapsed limply back on his shoulder. He gasped in pain.
"He lost an arm in the battle," said Alequo. "He's with the surgeons now."
"Take me to him."
It was not a question.
Unhesitating, the men carrying the prince moved to obey. They walked Stannis unsteadily over to the surgeons. Stannis hissed with pain with every step. The Black Captains exchanged glances. Justin wished to order the men not to move Stannis around, for it was plain he was in need of rest. He imagined his fellow captains felt the same, but all of them knew their hope for a fruitless one. In the commander's absence they might rule, but now that he was back, that meant nothing. Not a man in all the company would take their orders against his.
"Marro," Stannis breathed as he was brought to the wagon serving as a sickbed. "How fare you?"
"I'll live," Marro said, affecting calm, though his voice was high and cracked. A surgeon was smearing poultices on his stump of a right arm to go beneath the bandages. The wound was badly bleeding.
"Marro—I am sorry—I, I, I awoke as soon as I could—if there is aught I can do, anything—"
"There isn't." Marro meant it to spare him, perhaps, but Stannis flinched as if he had been struck.
"I am sorry," he said again, helplessly.
Marro did not reply for a long while, leaving the surgeon to put bandages over the stump. "You're alive," he said at last. "I'm glad of that."
"Marro—" Stannis cut himself off.
They met eyes, then, short slight Braavosi and towering Stormlander: dark grey on dark blue. Something voiceless passed between them. It could not be put into words.
"I owe you my life," the prince said after a long pause. "I—I thank you."
"Get us out of this damnfool quest alive," Marro said. "That's the only thanks that would mean anything."
Stannis's thin lips tightened. "I will," he said. "You will come out of this alive. I swear it."
At the time, Justin thought nothing of it. In later days, he would consider with care the prince's choice of words and curse himself for a fool.
The prince stumbled on his feet, then. He would have fallen but for the men at his sides rushing to steady him.
"My prince!" cried Richard Horpe. "How can we help you?"
"Food. Now," said Stannis. "Do not let me go to sleep. I must gorge myself enough for ten men, else I'll likely die in my sleep from the effort I have just made."
"You can deem it done." Orders were shouted out. Dried stale bread was brought in a hurry, beside some waterskins, and some men began turning salt meat over the fire.
For some minutes, little else was done. Surgeons tended to the wounded, among them Marro Namerin, while Stannis gulped water and wolfed down several men's rations' worth of food. Gaunt as he was, moons after his ordeal of starvation when he had been locked in a tomb by Euron Crow's Eye, he still looked more like a living skeleton than a man. The deep wound he had carved in his own belly and chest—the price for the wind that had thrust aside the fire of the ancient dragon—was still angry red, barely scabbed over. His skin, clinging tight to the bone, was almost bloodless white.
When the prince paused in his ravenous hunger, the Black Captains felt free to speak. "Why so hungry, commander?" said Bozyno Vunel, as often stating the obvious.
"I paid a price," Stannis said. He looked sick, but did not throw up as the food went down towards his belly.
"Price?"
"For witchlight. All power has its price. Witchlight takes its power… life… one who calls it. 'Tis as if I ran a hundred miles…. I called much of it, right then… and I was in no fit state to fuel it, weary as I am."
"We are most grateful that you did burn the shadows, my prince," offered Justin.
Stannis just nodded his head.
"I didn't know shadows can burn," he admitted.
"All things burn. It is oft the only way."
"Can you do it again if they come again?" said Alequo. Justin scowled at him for the harsh question. Soon after his exhausting effort, the last thing the prince needed was to be told that he would have to do it again.
"Yes. I called witchlight now… I was starved, weary… cut deep, scarce healed… and barely awake from days of slumber… Alequo, how many days has it been?"
"Weeks, not days," said Alequo. "Three."
"Three weeks." Stannis drew in a deep breath. He looked so angry he might have sworn a hundred vile curse-words if he were not so tired. "If I can do it now… now of all times… I can do it any time." His voice twisted with grim humour. "I can't think of how I'd… how I could… be worse… unless I was already dead."
"That's good to hear," said Bozyno, and Justin silently agreed. Knives and swords may be of some use against these shadow-creatures—Marro had proven that—but meagre, when they could be cut through by the shadows' weapons with such ease. The cold light called forth by the prince was the only true defence they had.
They paused for a time while Stannis ate. The Black Captains cast glances at each other. None of them wanted to be the one to ask the question. All of them knew it needed to be asked.
For a moment Justin feared he would have to be the one, but fortunately Bozyno Vunel, blunt-spoken as always, took the burden from him. "Why didn't we know?" he said.
The prince's dark blue eyes fell upon him. "Know what?"
"About those shadows," Bozyno said. "You know what they are. Don't you?"
"I know," admitted Stannis.
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"You did not… need to know," said Stannis.
"What shit," Bozyno retorted, and Justin whirled around, stunned, to look at the tall Pentoshi. It was no small thing to swear at the commander. "Commander, men are dead. Loyal men, dead, because they didn't know what they were facing. Those men trusted you. Those men followed you into this godsforsaken hell. If we're good enough to die for you, we're good enough to be told the truth."
"Very well," Stannis said, "I erred… I know. Though you… you will not thank me… to bear… burden of such truths. They are called the Taken."
"What d'you mean? Who took them? Shadowbinders?"
"No. Shadowbinders are… feeble fools… pretenders on the edges of power." Stannis's rasping voice rang with contempt. "Shadowbinders might… control… one or two. But they do not make them. The Taken were taken by Everlasting Night."
Stannis halted for a moment, coughing blood. A few chunks of half-chewed meat spilt from his mouth. Still he did not stop eating. He tore at his food like a starving wolf.
"You know I told you… I told not to drink the waters of the Ash, nor to eat of the ghost grass that grows here," Stannis went on, eating as he spoke. "This is why. All… everything… all in this land is tainted by the Shadow. Consume of it… it will consume you. Curse you to dwell… dwell in torment… torment in the night that never ends, forever. Unto the world's ending."
Justin held back his stomach from retching, sick at the very thought. He signed the star sigil of the Seven with shaking hands.
"Poor bastards," Richard Horpe muttered. "But why would they attack us? We can't stop them suffering."
"We cannot," said Stannis, closing his eyes. "Argh! my chest… We… yes. We cannot. But the Taken's minds… I know… they believe… believe if they take living souls… bring them to the Shadow… bring enough… the souls will take their place. Tormented in the dark. And they… they will be free. Their torment will end."
"Free to die?" said Alequo. "Everything they do, that's what they want? To die?"
Stannis said, "Yes."
Again Justin fought the urge to retch. He could not imagine being in such agony as to covet death so desperately.
"Then why did they fight us?" he asked. "They could have just asked. We could have killed them as a favour, if they wanted. They didn't have to hurt us."
"We cannot kill them. Even my witchlight only gave them pain," Stannis said. "They cannot die, for they are not living. Not dead, either… Their bodies are long gone. Men… some were men, some were other than men, but all are gone. All are only Taken now. They are wrought of spirit… soul-stuff, Shadow-stuff… They have no true bodies. Slay one of the Taken and its soul-stuff, Shadow-stuff… It goes back to the Shadow. It will re-form out of the Shadow, as long as their souls endure. And their souls always endure."
"Always endure," Justin murmured. "You said the Taken believe if a Taken brings enough souls to the Shadow, his torment will end and pass on to those souls. 'They believe,' you said. Will it?"
"No." Stannis made a strangled noise from his throat that could have been a snort or a bitter laugh. "Their torment never ends. The promise is a lie."
The captains were quiet at that.
"Horror as it is, we should still have known," Justin said softly. He kept his voice calm, so as not to provoke the commander, though inside he was bubbling with frustration. "You knew they were there, you knew we might have to face them. Why didn't you tell us?"
"Because you should never have had to face them without me. I knew the Taken would not dare to assail me, were I awake. They know what I am. They fear the light that I can call against them. But weary as I was, I was too deeply aslumber, on the brink of death. Our battle—the battle with the dragon—was an ordeal I failed to foresee. Men are dead because of it. The fault is mine."
That was not a reason, Justin thought. It was an excuse. Mayhaps we would not face them in the end, but why not tell us anyway, to be safe? Why keep us ignorant except in direst need? Why is his first thought always to keep these things secret? Stannis had given no answer to that.
Justin held in his anger. He did not think Stannis would respond well to being pushed on it here and now. He would speak of it later, when Stannis was rested and the two of them were alone.
"It pleases me you see it for a mistake, commander," he said carefully, treading on eggshells. "You can start to set it right by telling us more now. Anything else we need to know, we should be told right here."
The other captains voiced assent.
"Very well," Stannis said, closing his eyes.
Justin said, "First, are there any other monsters we need to know about, that might face us?"
"No. We face only the Taken," said Stannis. "None but men are mad enough to come here, this far into the Shadow. Where we walk, nothing living will dare to follow. Not even dragons."
Justin did not like the sound of that. He went on asking anyway.
"What's the thing in the heart of the Shadow? What are we and Greyjoy looking for?"
"The Only Gate," Stannis said at once. "It is the one and only entrance to dread Stygai, the City of the Dead, the source that casts the Shadow on our world. It is said… said that whosoever comes before the Only Gate… and pays the price… may claim two boons from the power within: a boon of strength and a boon of knowledge. What Euron wants is to bring forth the end of the world; I do believe I've told you that before. What I want is to stop him."
The Black Captains traded astonished glances. In ten years, Justin did not think he had ever heard Stannis answer questions about sorcerous things this clearly.
"You've always said the City of the Dead was at the middle of the Shadow. But now you say it's something more. Why does Stygai cast the Shadow? Who made it?" While Stannis was being so uncharacteristically forthcoming, he wanted to learn everything he could.
The prince hesitated. "The tale is a long one. Are you sure you wish to hear it?"
"I'm sure."
"Then Stygai was not built by the hands of men," Stannis said. "There were other races in this world, long before us, and there will be others after us. All the thousands of years of the age of men are but one leaf on the great tree of history. Realms and kingdoms, wars and empires older than time, millennia forgotten, whole civilisations washed away like tears in the rain. Only the greenseers remember. It is a humbling thing, for a man to see so clearly his own insignificance, and that of mankind. Mayhaps that explains something of Euron." The way Stannis spoke was as if his mind were far away. "The race that built Stygai—and Asshai too, and everything else in what we now call the Shadow Lands—were the greatest of them all."
Justin listened, entranced. He heard Richard Horpe say, "Who are they?"
"They have many names," the prince said. "All across the world they are remembered in legend by all the peoples of mankind, truths long ago clouded into myths by millennia of telling and retelling. The Qimqi, the Fahr'ut, the Az Vhoriam, the Kangteng, the Dagon Xarin. The Enthroned, the All-Powerful, the Takers of Sacrifice, the Drowned Gods." He shrugged. "I know them as the Lords of the Deep, the name I was taught. It is as good a name as any other.
"The Lords of the Deep were creatures of the sea, but they came to rule the land and air as well. All the legends agree that they fed on men, who lived in terror of them. They fed on other races too, for they were ancient for hundreds of thousands of years before the first men lived and breathed. The dawn of our race was as apelike beasts, cringing in their shadow.
"At the height of their power, the whole world was their dominion. Long I have been delving into the works they left behind, seeking lost secrets and forbidden lore. The things they built can be found in every part of the world, all abandoned by their kind. The Dark Mazes of Lorath, still unmapped in their cavernous deeps; the foul idol of the Basilisk Isles, plague-spawning and accursed; on the Braaavosian shore, the Temple of the Pharakienat that I myself delved into; in Westeros, the foundations of the Hightower of Oldtown, forbidden to the cityfolk, and wisely so, for they are evil utterly; in the Shivering Sea, the Drowned City of the Thousand Islands, long since lost beneath the waves, and truly that is a blessing for mankind; in the Further East, dread K'Dath, city of horror older and crueller than mankind; and in Sothoryos the cursed city of Yeen, its ruins filled with soul-eaters and worse. All are built of the same oily black stone.
"But most of those, for all their infamy in these days, were mere outposts to the Lords of the Deep. They thought on a grander scale than we men. Of those I named, only K'Dath, Yeen and Asshai did they call cities, and those were vaster than the vastest cities of mankind. The heart of their dominion was the seas; but the heart outside the seas was here, in what is now the Shadow Lands. And the greatest of all their land-cities was what they called Al'Alaniel, the City of a Million Lights. These days, men call it Stygai, the City of the Dead, the heart of Everlasting Night.
"I have no words to describe what I have seen of their glory. Man's language has no words fit to speak of the beauty of Al'Alaniel at dawn, its walls of rainbow stone rippling with every colour of light. Nor the sights and sounds of tens of millions of people in a single city. Nor the arcane wonder of the magics they used every day, fuelled by countless sacrifices of races like ours, younger and weaker than themselves. For uncounted thousands of years they lived and ruled this world, until…
"Until something. No-one can tell you what. That, not even a greenseer can see. A greenseer's soul wanders the winds of all of space and time, except there and then. Gaze too close to the Shadow and your soul will be Taken. But one day, a black day twenty-thousand years ago, the Shadow came forth in Al'Alaniel. The Lords of the Deep were destroyed utterly. A civilisation hundreds of thousands of years old, obliterated in a day. For thousands of miles the hungering darkness spread across the land, consuming all that it touched, turning life to death or worse. Wherever that darkness came, to this very day it has never ended. It was the dusk that gave birth to Night Everlasting.
"It was a day of fire and darkness such as the world has never seen, and never will see again. Next to that day, the end of Old Ghis was as a spark; the Doom of Valyria, a candle. There is no other catastrophe that compares. In every way that matters, it was the end of the world.
"Of the Lords of the Deep, none at Stygai were spared the Calamity. Nor were the folk of their many lesser cities in every part of the earth, above and below the waters. Nor were their towns, nor their villages, nor even the tiniest outposts. All the places they had built, everywhere in the world, were joined together by their sorcery; and so all were touched, tainted, by the Shadow. Every block of their rainbow mage-wrought stone turned to oily black, drinking in the light.
"It would be many thousands of years for the younger races—such as the giants and the children of the forest—to refill the world they left behind. Those younger races fought. They all lost, for a crueller, yet-younger race emerged in the lands of the river Sarne and slew them. That race, once weak and inconsequential, spread from the Sarne across the continents to rule nigh all of the world. Thus, long after the downfall of the Lords of the Deep, came the dawning of the age of men.
"The race of men wander through the world they left behind like ants in a ruined castle, our sights and minds too small to even begin to understand the greatness of the wonders around us, built by those so much greater than ourselves.
"Those of the Lords of the Deep who survived were those who abandoned every city, every village, every house of their civilisation. They fled in all directions to the far corners of the world. Many of the old myths of fey and mighty powers of the world are rooted in them, those sad survivors of a happier age. But the greatest part of their number followed Onhyilarr, son of Gorhyazarr who was god and king of their race. Onhyilarr led the remnants of his people west, away from the heart of their old empire. The Lords of the Deep were masters of all powers that the world has ever known, greater by far than the mightiest sorcerers of mankind. By their custom they wielded the powers of the deep sea more than any other. But Onhyilarr turned away from the sorceries that had failed to protect his people from the Calamity, and toward those that he deemed best-placed to oppose it: the powers of the cold and the light, to stand against fire and darkness. He led his people on an epic journey fleeing to the far side of the world from Stygai where his father had fallen.
"He did not survive to see its end. He was slain in battle, at the place of the tomb you saw—the tomb that Euron Crow's Eye trapped me in. But when he fell, those Lords of the Deep who followed him took upon themselves the name 'the Sons of Onhyilarr' in his honour. Ever since, they have kept true to the path he laid out for the survival of their people. They bided their time growing stronger, so that one day they will be able to march into Stygai and destroy the force that ended their civilisation. With that purpose, they finished the journey he began, to the far north in the far west continent, the land known in these days as the Land of Always Winter. And without their Shadow-tainted homes, they built an edifice that mortal men, thousands of years later, would come to call the Tower of Wailing."
"The Tower of Wailing doesn't belong to the Lords of the Deep," said Richard Horpe, bemused. "All the grandma's tales say that's the greatest fortress of the…" His jaw dropped. "Oh. Oh. Oh."
"Oh yes," Stannis said. "Today the Sons of Onhyilarr are still alive, though men do not know them by that name. We have come to know them as the Enemy, or Others."
He fell to silence.
"In Volantis," Bozyno said finally, after long contemplation, "you said 'power comes with purpose'. With the power of a greenseer, you said, everything you do is to protect mankind from the Enemy."
"Yes."
"If I understood you right," said Bozyno, "you're saying the Enemy are the survivors of an all-powerful elder race that ruled over men as easily as men rule over cattle."
Stannis said, "Yes."
Bozyno said, "Then how the fuck are we supposed to stand a chance?"
Justin thought he would like to know that too. It was a good question.
Stannis spoke the answer in a voice both curt and cold. "We don't," he said. "That is why they must not get past the Wall. They made it themselves. Nothing else can contain them like it can. If it falls, the world of men is as good as lost."