Chapter 22
Part I
"Very well." Euron laughed from his perch on the wight-dragon's head, safe, unthreatened, high above the earth. He gave a mocking bow. "I grant my permission. If you are so eager to die, then die."
The giant undead dragon lunged at Stannis.
For something so huge, it moved terrifyingly fast. This beast dwarfed Balerion the Black Dread. Yet quick as a striking snake it sprang forth, propelling itself off the ground with a single bound of its two mighty legs. Those legs lashed forward—the same legs that had crushed a great ship, the Stormborne, to tinder just by stepping on it. If those legs' great claws hit Stannis, he would not be merely slashed. He would be obliterated.
Stannis dived frantically out of the way. He did it as a running jump, hurling himself with all his strength. It was barely enough. The air shrieked as the edge of the dragon's claw passed within inches of his flesh.
As he fell, mid-leap, both arms and both feet off the ground, Stannis twisted in mid-air and slashed out with his sword. The blade—Valyrian steel, burning blindingly white with bloodfire—went straight through a yard of dragonbone as if it were ripe cheese under a hot knife.
But he was fighting a monster that could put King's Landing in its shadow. The dragon's talons could carve open a house like a man carves a chicken. All that Stannis's desperate stroke cut from the claw was the tip of the tip. He doubted it had even noticed.
Then, finally, Stannis hit the ground. The impact jarred his bones. His battered body whined from the abuse. The old, cruel, barely healed wound that bit him from shoulder to belly burst back open. It had only just scabbed over from the last time he had fought this beast, back when it was alive, before its reanimation by the fell sorcery of the Others—the vile powers of the cold and the light that were coursing through Euron. As for the great gash on his arm, the source of this bloodfire, it had never closed. It was still gushing out blood.
The wight-dragon flew past him, carried by the speed and force of its leap. It landed with a boom that shook the earth. Stannis, meanwhile, stumbled to his feet. His wounds pained him piteously. He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth. It took everything he had not to let himself scream.
The gigantic wight-dragon turned back around to him. Its head—a monstrous head which could have swallowed a mammoth without bothering to chew it—dangled uselessly, hewn and half-severed from its neck by the axes of the Swords of the Storm. Its scales, huge things harder than steel and half the height of a man, were blood-red. So were its leathery wings, shredded and pierced by the Swords of the Storm's arrows. Likewise blood-red was everything about it, except the eyes: a glowing, icy blue.
It had been nightmare enough to kill a living dragon. How could he kill one that was dead already? How did that even work?
Grimly, iron in resolve, Stannis hefted his sword, bright with bloodfire, to keep trying anyway.
SSSSSSSTORMCHILD.
A fist that could close around a mountain; darkness that could drown an ocean; a cloud of smoke that would cover the whole world; a charge like thunder of a thousand thousand knights; primordial fire roaring up from below the earth. All these words were words that tried, and failed, to describe the magnitude of the voice that spoke, then, to Stannis Baratheon.
Stannis groaned. He bit back a curse. Not only did he have the impossible task of defeating Euron Crow's Eye, fallen greenseer with the icy deathly powers of the Enemy at his disposal and an undead dragon. He had to do it while resisting a terrible entity of otherworldly darkness that had already ruined the world at least twice before and probably wanted his soul.
"Quiet," Stannis grunted to the terrible entity of otherworldly darkness. "If you haven't noticed, I am busy. Greyjoy would bring your enemies past the Wall, let them conquer the world, let them destroy you. If you wish not for that fate, let me fight."
THE CHILDREN OF ICE IN THEIR ARROGANCE AND FOLLY THINK TOO HIGHLY OF THEMSSSSELVES. THEY DELUDE THEMSSSSSELVES THAT THEY HAVE ANY CHANCE AT REVENGE. THEY ARE THE REMNANTSSSSS OF THE LOSSSSST CIVILISATION WHOSE FULL SSSSSSTRENGTH I OVERCAME IN AN INSSSSSSSTANT. THE DETRITUSSSSS OF A WINDSSSSTORM, TELLING ITSSSSSELF IT CAN FIGHT THE WINDSSSSSTORM BACK.
THEY ARE NOT, NOR HAVE THEY EVER BEEN, A THREAT TO ME.
Stannis flinched as the great and terrible voice screamed, more deafening than a clap of thunder, through his thoughts.
THEIR PAWN IS VERY MUCH A THREAT TO YOU, HOWEVER. HE WILL KILL YOU, SSSTORMCHILD. YOU KNOW HE WILL. UNLESSSSSSS YOU COME TO ME.
The wight-dragon struck again. It dove at Stannis—he was easy to see, marked out from all around him by his brilliant white bloodfire in the pitch-black gloom of the Shadow Lands. Claws that would have pulverised him, squashed him like an ant under foot of an elephant, went reaching for his flesh.
Stannis ran for his life, then threw himself away in the opposite direction to the way he came. It was just enough to save his life. This time he had no chance to cut off a piece back. He was at the wrong angle. All he managed was a nick in the side of one colossal claw.
He hit the ground hard, rolling on the mound of earth.
Euron was cackling. "You cannot play this child's game forever, little brother of mine!"
And Stannis whispered, "Never."
SSSSSSSO WILFUL.
Thankfully, the great voice of the dark power in Stygai did not sound offended. Stannis did not think he would survive its wrath if it were. Rather, it was darkly amused.
I CAN HELP YOU WITH THAT WILL, SSSSSTORMCHILD. YOUR WILL IS SSSSSSTRONG, BUT A SSSSSTRONG WILL IS VALUELESSSSSS WITHOUT THE SSSSSTRENGTH TO IMPOSE IT ON OTHERS. I CAN GIVE YOU THAT SSSSSSTRENGTH.
Stannis barked a laugh: a humourless sound, hoarse and rasping. "Oh yes, I am sure you can. As you did Azor Ahai. All it would cost is that I drown the world in your darkness and sell to you my soul. I do not mean to be a new Bloodstone Emperor. I am no fool, Shadow. I will not be your instrument."
YOU BELIEVE I AM THE SHADOW?
Angered, the great voice stormed through his thoughts like an avalanche of fire and darkness, sweeping aside mountains like toys.
I AM NOT. WHAT MORTALS CALL THE SHADOW-ON-THE-WORLD IS MERELY THE EFFECT UPON YOUR FEEBLE, FRAGILE LITTLE WORLD FROM MY EXISSSSSTENCE WITHIN IT.
IT IS NOT ME. IT IS THE GROUND, THE FABRIC OF YOUR REALITY, CRACKING UNDER MY FEET.
EVEN NOW I TREAD CAREFULLY IN YOUR MIND, ELSSSSE I WOULD BREAK IT. YOUR FEEBLE MORTAL MIND CANNOT BEGIN TO UNDERSSSSSTAND THE FULL MAJESSSSTY OF ME.
Stannis could think of nothing else while the ancient darkness raged at him. The all-consuming power of its voice devoured all. Stannis's mind was well-defended. But here, near Stygai, the heart of its power, the Shadow contemptuously easily swept aside the shields of his thoughts.
It allowed him to think again and get up to his feet, just in time. The dragon was striking again. Only luck saved Stannis: in his last dodge he had landed near the top of a great mound of soil, created when Euron's undead dragon had burst forth from where it had been buried under the earth. Stannis fell down the hill, rolling and jolting with pain. He came to a halt at the bottom. He would not manage that again.
The younger greenseer gathered his thoughts as best he could. "I am sorry, great one," he gasped. He hated it. He also knew he dared not risk provocation. The whole world was at stake; and he could not fight Euron's dragon and fight the power of darkness at the same time.
Truth be told, he could barely do the one. He was not doing much fighting the wight-dragon at the moment. How did one even fight a thing like that? Stannis himself did not know. He was just trying to survive.
VERY GOOD. Just like that, the howling voice of the abyss was back to calmness. It did not care that it had almost murdered him mere seconds ago.
Atop the dragon, Euron Greyjoy was still laughing.
Stannis briefly contemplated shooting him with an arrow or throwing his sword at him. He soon discarded the thought. Euron could do everything Stannis could, Stannis had to remind himself. He was not used to it. The same control over winds which meant that Stannis never missed an arrow meant that Euron would easily deflect the blow.
I AM GENEROUSSSSS TO THOSE I FAVOUR, STORMCHILD.
I OFFER YOU THE POWER TO VANQUISH YOUR FOES. KILL YOUR RIVAL GREENSEER. DESSSSSTROY HIS DRAGON. POWER TO THROW DOWN THE LORDS OF DEATH AND WINTER AND SEIZE THEIR COLD THRONES FOR YOURSSSSSSELF.
POWER TO HUMILIATE THE BROTHER WHO BETRAYED YOU AND BANISHED YOU, RETAKE SSSSSSSSTORM'S END AND REIGN AS KING OVER WESSSSSSSTEROS.
CHILD, YOU CAN HAVE EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED.
YOU ONLY NEED REACH OUT AND TAKE IT.
The last words—TAKE IT!—shrieked and echoed in his mind's ear.
Stannis struggled to gather his thoughts as he leapt away from another strike by the wight-dragon. This time, his Valyrian steel sword ablaze with bloodfire slashed a scoring blow a dozen yards long down the dragon's flank as it sped past.
It was a mighty blow. Against any other opponent it would have been mortal. A knight in full plate armour would have his plate half-melted from an instant of that heat. Against the dragon, the wound simply was not deep enough to do it any serious harm. Stannis's reach was not long enough. He was only a man. His foe was something more.
The bloodfire burning sword had not felled the dragon. It did let the dragon spot him. The brilliant white glow of the sorcerous flame made him easy to see and pounce at. But what could he do? Extinguish it and he would be helpless prey, entirely unarmed. And it would not make him invisible. There was no natural light here, this deep in the Shadow Lands—no sun, no moon, no stars—but Euron could conjure a witchlight easily enough.
"How can I take it when I know not its price?" This, Stannis felt, was more diplomatic than what he wanted to do, which was to say a screaming "no" while running a thousand miles away. "Power always comes with sacrifice. If the power is great, the sacrifice is great also."
TRUE.
The voice of the enormous burning darkness did not even pretend to deny it.
"If I take the power you offer, will I be Taken?"
Death was one thing. Stannis did not fear it. To be Taken—to have your soul wandering forever, wretched and in everlasting agony under the Shadow-On-The-World—was something else entirely.
Thoughts of the Taken brought thoughts of Marro—his dearest friend, Marro Namerin, who had placed himself between Stannis and damned souls of darkness whom he could not see, let alone fight—and what Stannis had been forced to do to him. Marro. Poor, loyal Marro. He did not deserve an end like that. Marro had been dying of a Taken's wound; he had been about to be Taken. He had begged it of Stannis. So Stannis had acted first.
The memory of Marro's blood on Stannis's blade still made him flinch. That wound was raw. Hatred bubbled in the greenseer's stomach.
YOU WILL NOT BE TAKEN… NOT FOR THIS.
"Is the sacrifice one of power, matter or soul?"
THE SACRIFICE TOUCHES POWER AND MATTER.
Stannis smelt a rat. "You did not say it does not touch soul."
CLEVER CHILD. The terrible voice laughed. It was like a hundred thunderstorms screeching and cackling. VERY WELL THEN. KNOW THIS: IT WILL TOUCH NO SOUL BUT YOUR OWN.
The dragon, from where it had leapt past him, narrowed its eyes at Stannis. It lunged again. Stannis had no way to jump aside. In desperation he carved a furrow into the earth with his burning blade. The bloodfire would have cut through solid steel. Soft soil gave way with ease. He could not dodge aside from the blow, so he ducked under. The dragon's claws slashed over his head.
It also meant he was now in a hole in the ground: easy prey for the dragon.
"This game is ceasing to be entertaining," Euron Greyjoy called. The older and more powerful greenseer sounded bored. "Kill him."
The dragon closed in.
What could he do? If the dragon slew him here, Euron would open the Only Gate. He would claim the boons. He would gain the Horn of Joramun. He would tear down the Wall. He would welcome the Enemy into the world of men.
If it was to save the world, his companions, his loyal men from damnation, his reticence would be justified. But if it were only to save himself, and the world needed saving…
"Yes."
And power flooded through him in a torrent. It was lava in his veins. Stannis screamed. It was agony and ecstasy at once. There was joy of life revitalised; and there was the dulling touch of death, too. Something disappearing. Something was lost that he perhaps had not even known he had.
The pain of his old wounds was swept away. Not just the gashed arm. All of them. Boyhood scars. The old wounds of a hundred battles. The marks of a hundred sacrifices he had inflicted. Even the great and terrible blow from shoulder to belly where he had cut himself, the sacrifice for the powerful magic of wind that he had used to save the Swords of the Storm from the fiery breath of this same dragon. The wounds were still there, one and all; but the pain fled, banished by the bubbling black magic that blazed fire-like through his veins.
His hunger, also, fled. Weakness fled with it. His body was still a corpselike skeletal nightmare like a victim of famine; but no longer was he beset by exhaustion. Quite the opposite. He felt brimming with power, ready to battle all the armies of the world and throw them down and trample them under the stag banners of House Baratheon.
The white light of the bloodfire died at once. The heat of it did not. This had been some of the hottest bloodfire Stannis had ever conjured, for he had spared no expense in the depth of wound he had inflicted to draw blood from himself, knowing he was going to die anyway. Yet somehow it grew even hotter. Immediately every inch of Stannis's body was soaked with sweat. Despite all of that sweat cooling him down, he still felt like he had a fever, just from being near. It was a miracle his hand did not catch fire. Magic, it must be. Otherwise he should have been burnt to ash by now.
The sorcerous fire on his Valyrian steel blade had not gone out, he understood. The brilliant white flames had grown fiercer, deepened in fury and intensity, and turned as black as starless night.
So had the sword itself. It was no longer the grey of Valyrian steel. It was a black so deep, so dark, so absolute that it seized hold of all light that dared to come near and devoured it.
There were no mirrors here at the black gate of Stygai in the heart of the Shadow Lands. If there had been, Stannis would have seen his Baratheon blue eyes turn black as a rotten corpse. A soft, constant gloom exuded from him—faint, not enough to truly hide his presence, but enough to make him look like he stood half in shadow even at noon on a summer's day.
Somehow, Stannis knew that he would never again be able to cast magics calling light into this world. Only the powers of the dark remained to him. And he also knew the once-unnamed blade in his hand would not return to the smoke-grey of Valyrian steel. It would remain as it was: the Shadow-sword, a weapon of otherworldly darkness, a blade borne out of Everlasting Night.
The Shadow was possessive. It marked those it claimed as its own. And Stannis knew better than to think this mark was revocable. From this day forth, Stannis would be revealed to all men's eyes as a man who had struck bargain most foul at the doorstep of damnation, at the City of the Dead where the Shadow lies.
Perched atop the wight-dragon, Euron's laughter went abruptly quiet.
No longer was Stannis Baratheon lit up for his foe by the blaze of his fiery sword, bright against the perpetual night of the sunless Shadow Lands. The undead dragon could not see him. The cold glowing light of its dead blue eyes was too weak to pierce the veil of darkness that surrounded Stannis Baratheon—especially here, so deep in the Shadow Lands, right at the black gate of Stygai, close to the Shadow's source.
Something in the air rejoiced as the flames turned black, as their firelight guttered out into nothing. The brief, short-lasting light—an insult to this place of Everlasting Night where the stars, the moon and even the noon-day sun were suffocated by the Shadow—was dead and gone, as it should be.
Once more, the darkness of the Shadow Lands was absolute.
Under cover of the night that never ends, Stannis cut his way out of his pit with calm strokes of the Shadow-sword and took up a new position, where Euron and his dead dragon would not know of him.
Euron was swift to respond. The pawn of the lords of ice and light called light into his eyes. It erupted with immense potency. The witchlight Stannis had made to thwart the Taken was nothing in comparison—outshone like a bonfire to the sun. If Stannis would not provide light to see him by, Euron would make his own; and this was a light vastly more powerful. It filled the area with eerie, malevolent radiance, enough to see gleaming stalks of ghost grass leagues away.
There was nothing warm in that light. It was no light of life or fire. It was witchlight, brilliant-bright, pale blue and cold as a corpse.
To stand against it, Stannis called on darkness. It answered, eager to heed his call. Stannis's power was not more than Euron's; but the power of darkness was strong here at the doorstep of Stygai, the dread city at the heart of the Shadow-On-The-World—stronger than anywhere else except inside Stygai itself. For an environment Stannis could not have hoped for better. So deep was the twisting of reality by the Shadow in this place that it felt like the world itself was on his side. Darkness battled light and won. Stannis's dark magic swallowed Euron's light almost utterly. One moment the witchlight shone like a cold cruel sun for leagues; the next, it was a sphere of light around Euron and the dragon. Strong in the bubble of space it ruled. Not strong enough to reveal where to find Stannis.
Furthermore Stannis cloaked his presence, the miasma of otherworldly power that surrounded any sorcerer of note, so that Euron could not reach out and sense him that way. He pulled his soul tight into his skin, tighter than a greenseer's wandering self, tighter even than an ordinary man's. It would not just be impossible to sense that this man was a sorcerer. It would be impossible to sense that a man was here at all. Euron Greyjoy had cloaked himself thus before. That was how Stannis could not feel the magic that was in him. It pleased Stannis to turn that blade around.
Euron, a shining figure of pale light sitting on the head of the undead dragon, looked around in frustration. Stannis smiled, hid cloaked by his darkness, circled his dragon foe, and waited.
"You fool," Euron murmured; and though he spoke in a whisper, his sorcery made his voice loud as a battle commander's yell. "What have you done?"
Stannis laughed. Even Stannis himself heard the crazed, hysterical sound in it.
"You think it is only you who can strike bargains with powers more than man?" he taunted. "Think again, Greyjoy."
Stannis had been mastering winds for years. It was easy work to cast his voice around him, so it seemed to come from everywhere. Euron could not tell his place from his voice.
"Do you know what you have done to yourself?"
"No," said Stannis honestly, almost with glee. "And I do not care."
That shocked Euron, he could tell. Uncharacteristically, the Crow's Eye had no sharp-witted retort.
Stannis understood, now, what he must do. Euron Greyjoy had been studying sorcery since before Stannis had been born. Blood magic, not youth, was the reason for Greyjoy's youthful appearance. He knew every sorcerous secret that Stannis knew and more. Stannis would never beat him in a contest that way.
No, Euron knew everything that mattered about sorcery. But there was something about Stannis that Euron did not know. Stannis knew he was already a sorcerer and a kinslayer. He had been before the death of Renly. He had been since the day he murdered his lord father and lady mother on the Windproud. Since then, he had deemed himself a damned soul. He had pledged his life to the wellbeing of his family, the Baratheon family, because he knew that he could never make up for the terrible sin he had committed against them.
If this were damnation, he welcomed it. He knew he deserved it.
As long as the cost was only to himself, no price was too high.
"Whatever the sacrifice," said Stannis Baratheon, "I will make it, and gladly, to see you where you belong: dead in a ditch."
After that, they both had had enough of talking.
Euron snarled a command. Light erupted; and this time it was not from Euron. From the mouth of the dead dragon came a torrent of ice, bright and white and glittering. The dragon paced around in a circle, turning its mutilated neck. Stannis understood: it could not see him, so it was breathing its icy breath in all directions.
One blast of that icy breath, from a dragon of this size, would murder hundreds of men perhaps even faster than the fiery breath of a dragon like Vhagar, Meraxes and Balerion. Whole armies would be slaughtered with the frostbite.
Stannis was undaunted. When the dragon's icy breath rushed at him, swift as a river, forceful as an avalanche, he simply lifted the Shadow-sword. There was a hiss of steam. The ice boiled instantly. It could not withstand the heat of the black magical flames that writhed and danced around the Valyrian steel blade.
Euron reacted instantly. The moment Stannis deflected the wight-dragon's killing breath, he shrieked an order, and it turned and ran at him. Stannis ran out of the way at his fastest sprint. He was only just in time to avoid an enormous claw that gouged a massive, manse-sized hole in the earth right where he had just been standing.
Cursing, Stannis realised his mistake. Euron had known the ice breath would not kill him. He had not meant it to. He had meant it to find him. And now it had.
With an earth-shaking roar, the dragon trampled the earth, lifting up its clawed feet and stamping at the ground, over and over. It did not know exactly where Stannis was. It did not need to, if it could crush him underfoot—him and the whole area. Meanwhile, it shrieked and issued blasts of ice breath in all directions, in case Stannis tried to flee on foot to escape the area it was stamping.
It had not killed him, yet. That was not to say it could not kill him. Any thump of its feet would do it. It did not need its claws for that. The weight alone would crush him to a smear on the dirt. He had dodged so far. His luck would not last forever.
He could not kill it. How was it even possible for one man to kill a creature of this size? No-one ever had, as far as was known to Stannis. And he could not run, lest he expose himself to the wight-dragon's ice breath and thus to detection.
He needed a plan. Between throwing himself frantically aside from the stomping feet of the dragon, Stannis thought of one. It was far from perfect. He had no time to improve it. It would have to be good enough.
One moment, when the undead dragon stomped near him, Stannis ran as fast as he could towards the dragon. Before its leg lifted back off the ground, he hurled himself at it, black blade in hand. The Shadow-sword worked wonders. Dragonscale was harder than steel; but the blackened blade of Valyrian steel, burning with bloodfire, cut straight through and sunk deep into the dragon's leg's soft flesh. Then Stannis grabbed the edge of the kiteshield-sized scale with his other hand—the wight-dragon's body was deathly cold; the black sword was hot as a furnace; between them it was just about bearable—and clung on for dear life.
The dragon shrieked with rage. The leg rose, then fell. Stomped, stomped, stomped again.
It had not noticed.
Stannis heaved a sigh of relief. His wager had paid off. Living men would lose feeling in their hands and feet when they got too cold. The wight-dragon's body was so cold that its breath of fire had turned to ice. He had gambled his life on the idea that it would not be able to feel the pain and feel him. He had been right.
The reanimated dead, brought to foul semblance of life by the magic of the Others, had advantages over the living. They did not feel pain; they did not sleep; they did not tire, no matter how many battles they fought; they required no sustenance; wounds that would be mortal to the living did not concern them; even if they were chopped in half, both halves would keep fighting. But they also had weaknesses that the living did not.
Foot by foot, grinding his teeth from pain and effort, Stannis climbed his way up the leg of the dragon. He had to exchange the Shadow-sword from one hand to another, often. This was a needful thing. The bloodfire was still burning. Whatever hand was holding the black sword was feverishly hot, so hot that Stannis's hand would surely have burst into flame if not for the black magic that protected him. Whatever hand was not would shriek with pain from touching ice-cold scales. The wight-dragon was freezing. If Stannis touched it too often with the same hand, without the Shadow-sword in it, the hand would get frostbite; the flesh would blacken; and Stannis, who needed both hands to hold on, would fall off his fragile place on the leg of the dragon. That fall, from this high, would be certain death.
Over and over, the Shadow-sword stabbed forth, piercing dragonscale and cold dead flesh. Holes and smoking, sizzling marks were left wherever it had been. Every thrust, Stannis lived in fear that Euron would look down and discover him. If the Crow's Eye attacked him here and now, when both his hands were clinging to the body of the dragon, Stannis could do little to resist. But he did not. The bulk of the dragon's body concealed him from the Crow's Eye; and the traitorous greenseer did not think to look for Stannis on the body of his pawn.
As he mounted up the wight-dragon's leg, at last Stannis got a close look at Euron Crow's Eye. Euron did not look well. His body, already corpse-pale, had turned even paler, white like snow, white like bone. His skin had gone translucent. Stannis could glimpse the red and white of underlying muscle and bone. The angry red lines on his skin were getting thicker and darker.
The power Euron was wielding to bring this dead dragon a foul semblance of life was not his own. It was the power of the Enemy, the Others, the Sons of Onhyilarr, scions of a lost civilisation that had been ancient for hundreds of thousands of years before the birth of men. Their magics of ice, light and undeath were great. They had lent Euron some measure of their strength, as a pawn to accomplish their purpose. But he was not one of them. Euron was a man. The body of a man was not meant to channel power like this.
Stannis wondered if his own body looked likewise ruined and soon to die, as twisted by the power of the Shadow as Euron's was by the power of the Others. Stannis found he did not care about the answer. He was just abstractly curious. There was a giddy freedom in that lack of caring.
No, Stannis Baratheon was not afraid to die. He was afraid to fail. He could not fail here; must not fail; could not allow himself to be human and flawed. If Euron triumphed here, it would be the end of the world of men. He had to stop him. He only hoped his hasty plan was up to the task.
Grim-faced, clinging to the frosty edges of cold dead scales, driving the burning black sword through scale and flesh, Stannis drove himself along the back of the dead dragon.
At last, when he was near what he thought to be the centre, he started digging down. Steel-like scales gave way before the Shadow-sword, melting through them as it slashed. Dragon-flesh sizzled like pork from the heat of the black tongues of bloodfire that danced hungrily around the Valyrian steel blade. Mayhaps Euron should have smelt and heard the sizzling. But the sound was nothing next to the noise of the dragon's stomps; and the smell of cooked meat was dwarfed by the stench of death from the city-sized corpse of the dragon.
Stannis climbed down, shoving away chunks of charred flesh, almost suffocating from the walls of meat that pressed in around him. Until he reached it: the dragon's cold, dead, no-longer-beating heart.
There, in the heart of the wight-dragon, he abandoned the mask of his presence in the higher arts. He felt more than heard Euron's shriek of rage and realisation. He had no time to worry. Retaliation would come or it would not. He reached out with his self, with all that he was, and did perhaps the maddest, most reckless thing he had ever done in a lifetime: he deliberately touched his soul to the Shadow-On-The-World, hoping it would not consume him.
Shadow bring me darkness, he thought. Bring me more. Bring me more. Bring me MORE.
It was as if the entire world had turned to Everlasting Night.
Stannis Baratheon, a sorcerer, a soul touched by foul bargain with the Shadow, had called upon its darkness. And the darkness answered.
His black eyes deepened, deep as doorways into the void between the stars; and the night came streaming through. What words could speak of it? What words could describe the opposite of the sun bursting to light?
The bloodfire on the Shadow-sword flared. The hungry tongues of black flame were eager to devour, as always, and they were strengthened by the nearness of a power elementally alike to them. But that was nothing. The bloodfire—fierce though it may be, a power that had carved through dragonscale—was a small working of sorcery, next to this.
As much sorcerous power as Stannis could, he channelled into the black cloud that roared out from his eyes. It was screaming life, it was stifling death; it was raging fire, it was black sludge; it was war, it was peace; it was wrath, it was serenity; it was pain, it was pleasure; sweet and sour; it was high emotion, it was cold plotting malevolence.
It was overwhelming every part of him, mind, body and soul. Stannis could not have said what it was. All he truly knew was that it was much. Too much.
Stannis ground his teeth and kept pulling in more, anyway.
There, in the heart of the wight-dragon, an inferno of fire and darkness screamed into the world in a thousand volcanic nightfalls.
At last, when his body physically could not stand it, he let go. Stannis Baratheon slumped boneless against the fleshy walls of the wight-dragon's heart. He was utterly spent.
He felt the gargantuan shudder when the dragon's corpse hit the ground. The soft fleshy walls of that heart, and a little sorcery, protected him from the impact. For that was what it was, now; a corpse in truth. The white magic holding it together in a cold mockery of life was gone—blasted and banished by the black magic Stannis had summoned here in the heart of it.
He had summoned that, using himself as its gateway. Nothing else was good enough. The Shadow-sword was a formidable tool, but it was just a tool; a weapon, hardly touched by the Shadow. A tiny fragment of what he had just unleashed upon himself would have burnt it out. He was a soul, a self that could extend beyond himself, a greenseer.
He would rather have used anything else. Euron, ideally. Himself was all that he had.
There, suffocating, deep in the sizzling flesh in the heart of a dead dragon, Stannis coughed and gasped for breath. He was still holding the Shadow-sword. He dared not let go of it. He would need it against Euron soon. Never in his life had he wielded so much magic as he had done, just then. Every part of his body ached and tingled with the aftershocks of dark power. Too much power, channelled through too small and weak a pipe to carry it all. Now the pipe was cracked and bursting.
Whatever reinvigorating power the Shadow had granted him in return for their bargain was spent, and more than spent. He felt more exhausted than he had before he started. He allowed the bloodfire on the Shadow-sword go out. It was too painful to maintain it. Since the Shadow had lent strength to his bloodfire and turned it black as night, being in its presence was like standing in a furnace. It had been useful against the wight-dragon. Euron, not so. Stannis—tall, broad, powerfully built—was by far a greater warrior than Euron. He could kill him with the Valyrian steel sword alone. Fire would not aid him.
It was a marvellous gift that the dark force in Stygai had granted him: the power to call flames that burnt fiercely yet gave no light to tell of their presence. He wondered what the Shadow demanded in return for it. His soul had not been Taken, so the Shadow had said, if that were true. Often, powerful entities were obliged to speak true when bargaining. Hopefully the Shadow was. Stannis was not certain. Taken, hopefully not. Had his soul, he, been changed somehow? He was not sure. He thought he would have sensed such a thing. Or mayhaps not. It was a strange bargain, this: one where he knew neither what he had bought, nor what he had paid for it.
Normally, that would have meant the bargain was tilted against him, in the other's favour. Stannis did not care.
He was soon to die. Stannis knew this as he knew the sun rises in the east, immovably.
He just had to make sure Euron died first.
Stannis lay there, trembling from the power that had travelled through him more than from the impact of the dragon's corpse upon the earth. Get up, Stannis told himself. Get up. End this. His will did not fail him. His body did. Time after time, he tried to thrust himself to his feet. His limbs would not let him. He did not have the strength to stand.
The many wounds he had taken over years and years of battles and sacrifices; worst of all, the great gaping wound he had dealt to himself, to save the Swords of the Storm from the fire of the mother dragon; the blood loss of his injuries; the moons of starvation he had suffered in the Tomb of Onhyilarr when Euron held him there, from which he still had not fully recovered, hence his skeletal figure; and now this, the hurricane of dark power he had compressed and channelled through himself… added together, it was too much. It had overcome him. Every man's body had a breaking point. Stannis had reached his.
I do not care, he told himself. One more foe. One man to slay. Duty. My duty. Power comes with duty, always. This is the duty for the power I was born with.
Stop Euron Greyjoy. End him. End this. Then I can die. Then I can rest.
Void-black eyes opened. Slowly, racked by tremors, feeble muscles clenched, faintly, then with confidence. Stannis forced himself to rise to his feet.
Death came second. Duty first.