Chapter 23
Part I
Greenseer's blood spilt upon the Only Gate. And the stone that was holding up the slumping weight of Stannis's back and head suddenly fell away.
The gate was opening.
And as it opened… the entire world turned to fire. An immense weight slammed down upon his spirit, crushing him beneath the mountainous weight of a terrible regard.
He had thought he had known what it was like, to feel the Shadow upon him. He had known nothing. All that time, he had been shielded by the ancient enchantments the Lords of the Deep had woven into the walls of Stygai. He was not being shielded anymore.
Something not-of-this-world fixed its enormous gaze upon Stannis Baratheon; and in that very instant, the rest of the world stopped existing.
There was no past. There was no present. There was no future. He could not say who he was, what he was, where he was, what he had done, what he had been. Its monstrous enormity consumed all thought and all perception.
Even the memory of light was annihilated.
Nothing else existed. Nothing ever had or ever would.
All the world became fire, and darkness, and the night that never ends.
Distantly, as if from very far away, the man heard a voice, raggedly screaming. It was his own.
Far above the sound of screaming, rang a terrible voice of roaring flame; and the world shook from the glee of its black laughter:
YESSSSSSSS. I WIN. AGAIN I WIN.
ALL IS AS PER MY DESIGN, AS IT SHOULD BE.
NOW—COME IN, LITTLE SSSSSTORMCHILD.
THE GATE IS OPEN.
COME ON IN!
The man screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed. He did not think, let alone answer; he could not. All that he could do was scream against the dark, so gigantic and overpowering that it almost snuffed out the feeble light of his soul into nothingness, merely by looking at him.
He was moments away from that—his soul squashed into pulp by the insane spiritual weight of the Shadow-On-The-World—his mind screaming, thoughts fluttering, twisting, last gasps, twitching like a dying fish—when there came a voice:
"Enough. You are unmaking him."
And suddenly it stopped.
The man gasped short, sharp, dagger-like breaths. World-devouring flame still filled his thoughts. It took minutes for it to fade away to the blessed relief of silence. Slowly, painfully slowly, the panic in his mind cleared, allowing space for some semblance of self and reason to return:
He was Stannis of House Baratheon, kinslayer and greenseer. He was in the Shadow Lands. He was at the Only Gate to Stygai. The Only Gate was open.
At that thought, panic and terror nearly again overcame him. The Only Gate was open!
There was still the colossal weight of the Shadow pressing down upon him and everything here. It was of worldlike scale and dominating force. Even if he were unhurt, not his dying self, he would not have been able to stand. But the gaze of the Shadow had receded from him enough that he was, at least, able to be himself again.
Why?
Only then did the fog clear enough for him to realise the wonder of what had just occurred. Someone had spoken to the Shadow. Someone was inside the City of the Dead. Someone alive. Whoever it was who had that voice, the Shadow had listened.
It was then that he felt it: a presence of unfathomable power, possessed of magic so strong it could crush him to nothingness on an idle whim. Euron Greyjoy had been the most powerful sorcerer he had ever felt. This presence dwarfed Euron Greyjoy's. He did not know how he had not sensed it before. No. That was a lie. He knew. Absolutely everything seemed insignificant next to the Shadow, even this.
But the Shadow had listened.
"Greetings, Stormchild," spoke a mighty voice, possessed of power and glory and authority beyond any king of mortal men. "Welcome to Stygai. Welcome to Everlasting Night."
Was it the same voice he had heard before? Stannis could not be sure of it. Before, his mind had been too consumed by all-consuming flame to have space free for listening.
"Who are you?… What are you?" croaked Stannis.
His voice was scratchy, a coarse rasp. His life's blood was still draining from his heart, pierced with Euron's Valyrian steel dagger, onto the cold ground. Stannis could not bring himself to care about the courtesies.
The voice of power took no offence—which was fortunate. If it pleased, it could have killed him with a thought. The voice remained as calm as the still waters of a lake, too vast to be troubled by the paddling of the little children that were mankind.
It said, "I am the First Servant of the Power of Darkness Everlasting—the entity that is the source of the Shadow-On-The-World."
A servant of the Shadow, thought Stannis. A trusted one, clearly, and powerful. Very, very powerful.
It should not have surprised him. Who but a servant of the Shadow would walk in Stygai? It was not for nothing that men called it the City of the Dead.
Strong arms picked up Stannis, cradling his helpless body like a child. The figure was small, but of great strength, more than any man's. It bore his prone body somewhere. Into Stygai, it must have been. Stannis could no longer see, but he could hear the clack of boots on a hard surface, like stone, or whatever the Lords of the Deep would use instead of stone. It certainly was not the noise of treading on soft earth and ghost grass outside.
The City of the Dead. I am inside. Even now Stannis could hardly believe it. I am inside. For the first time in eight-thousand years, someone is inside.
The stench of death was all-pervasive, the hideous scent of rotting corpses. With every step he heard the crunching noises of bones underfoot. From all around, there was a smouldering sound, like burning embers, and the air was filled with choking ash and smoke.
…and magic. Magic everywhere. Everywhere a man could turn, magic blazed in song and sound and fury. Stannis had been in Asshai-by-the-Shadow, in Cursed K'Dath in the Further East, in the very heart of Doomed Valyria, even in Yeen where soul-eaters roamed free. He had thought that he knew places of power. He had not known this. Blazing black magic drowned out his sorcerous senses. Power beyond anything else in the world was thrumming, boiling, churning in every gulp of air.
Stygai was like nowhere else in the world—perhaps because it was not, entirely, in this world to begin with.
This city was a tomb, Stannis realised. A tomb of gargantuan proportions; a tomb the size of a hundred King's Landings; but a tomb nevertheless. A mass grave of twenty-thousand-year-old corpses, unburied, decayed or decaying, littering the streets like trash. They should have been dust by now, but who knew how time worked in a place like this? Nothing else made sense here in Stygai. Space, souls, bodies, water, light, darkness, all were bent to the will of the Shadow. Why not time as well? Many millions of people of an elder race mightier and more magical than men had been left to rot, the uncared-for residue of the greatest catastrophe in all the aeons of history of the earth. And he was being brought through it. To where, he knew not. He had no control over where he was going. Doubtless right to the middle of whatever eldritch nightmare had unfolded here. That would be just his luck.
Then he heard a clang, sharp, shockingly loud, like a funeral bell. Instinctively Stannis knew what it was. The Only Gate had closed.
Stannis shivered. The air in Stygai was as hot as a furnace for molten iron. Stannis was fairly sure that any man not protected by the black magic of the Shadow would have burst into flames from the heat of it. Somehow, upon hearing that bell-like sound, he still felt cold.
"Hail, First Servant, and well met," said Stannis, belatedly remembering his courtesies. He was utterly under another's power. This was not a time or place to risk offence. "Do I take it that you are why the Power of Darkness Everlasting is no longer speaking to me itself?"
"Yes," said the First Servant of the Shadow. "Before, there were the walls of Stygai between you and it. Now there are not. Overwhelming as you found the Dark Power's voice before, it is not a thousandth of how overwhelming you would find it in this place. I had to intervene. If I had not, if the Dark Power were to speak to you here, the first fragment of a syllable would smash your mind to a million screaming shards of thought."
Stannis shivered. "Thank you," he managed to say.
"You are welcome."
They walked on, in silence, save for the sound of bones crunching and decaying corpses squelching underfoot.
Gradually, Stannis realised that he was still alive. He was bemused by this. He should not have been. Euron had stabbed him in the heart with a dagger of dragonbone hilt and Valyrian steel blade. He recalled that.
"Why do I yet live?" Stannis asked of the First Servant. "The wound Euron dealt me was mortal. I knew that as soon as I felt it with my hand. It has been minutes. I should have been dead in seconds." Fearful of the answer, he said, "Is the Dark Power manipulating time?"
"Yes."
The answer came flatly, baldly. Stannis shivered at the casualness of that admission, the ease by which the Shadow overruled the laws of the world.
"But that is not why you live. By the bargain you have struck, the Power of Darkness Everlasting has transformed you. You are no longer like other men. No longer do you live by food and air. You are able to breathe, but you do not need to. You are able to eat, but the finest meal will be as ashes in your mouth. It will provide no sustenance. You do not even need the blood in your veins. You have become a creature of black magic. Black magic alone is what sustains you. As long as there is enough dark power to feed you, your body will be forced to remain alive, no matter how much it wants to die, no matter what else it lacks. And it wants very much to die, right now. That is why you live despite the hole in your chest."
The mighty voice instructed him in cold tones:
"Make no mistake: You are alive because you stand in this city, deep under the Shadow-On-The-World. Nowhere in the world has dark power to match. The moment you set foot outside the Only Gate, you will die."
Stannis absorbed this. He was not doomed to die. He could live, as long as the black magic of Stygai was there to sustain him. An amazing thought. For a few moments he felt hope. It was a pleasant notion, but one ruined and undermined by the price that he would have to pay for it.
It matters little, he decided. "I see no reason to live if I cannot leave this terrible place. I can accomplish nothing here. I cannot defend mankind from the Enemy from within the City of the Dead. Nor can I have a life for myself. I am still able to die, yes?"
"Yes."
"Then I will choose to die."
"If that is your choice," said the First Servant, untroubled. Its mighty voice boomed with ancient serenity. "Do you wish to claim the boons that you have paid for, or would you prefer I strike you down where you stand?"
The great figure did not seem perturbed by this. Stannis felt the gathering power. He saw nothing, but it shone blackly in his sorcerous senses: a storm of thunderbolts and shadow-fire, darker than the sun was bright, and vaster than the windstorm he had called against the Redwynes. The power of the First Servant of the Shadow loomed mountainously higher than every human sorcerer he had ever met, combined.
Sorcerer though he may be, former greenseer, victorious battle commander, Baratheon of Storm's End and brother to a king, he was nothing next to the might of this creature. He was an insect before its indifferent regard. Stannis knew it was telling the truth: it would not hesitate to kill him in an instant, if he gave it that answer.
Stannis laughed—a harsh, cracked sound. "I might as well find out what I can claim, as long as you understand I am not claiming it. Mayhaps there can be something of use that can be sent to the world of men, though I will not be there to wield it."
"As you wish."
For once, there was something that was not indifference in the First Servant's voice.
To Stannis's alarm, it sounded a lot like pity.
"What happened to you?" burst forth from Stannis's lips.
Stannis shut his mouth, terrified. He had felt how powerful the First Servant of the Shadow was. He knew that it was ancient and mighty in the ways of sorcery. He dared not dream of what vengeance it might inflict for that careless slip of lips.
But no retaliation came. When he realised that, he went on, encouraged by its calmness:
"Forgive the impertinence of the question, great one. I can feel that you are powerful, more so than anyone I have ever sensed. I simply wished to ask: How came you to be in this place? Did the Dark Power create you? If it did not, how were you bound into its service?"
And the unspoken remainder of the question:
Is what happened to you going to happen to me?
If even you could not prevent it, how do I have any chance at all?
"The Dark Power happened to me." The voice was no less terrible and mighty; yet also it sounded ancient and sad. "You know—I presume, since you have reached this far—of the fate of those who drink of the river Ash that flows out from this city? What befalls every man who lets a single drop of its cursed water past his lips?"
"I do," said Stannis. "To be Taken."
That word—Taken, Taken, TAKEN—seemed to echo through the lifeless halls of Stygai unto eternity.
"And you know the nature of the Taken? That they were once people; their souls were stripped from their bodies—such as the corpses that litter this place—and now those souls are enslaved by the Dark Power, trapped in the fire and the night that never ends, screaming under its Shadow for all eternity?"
"I know."
"I too suffered that fate," said the First Servant of the Shadow. "But I was never a man. For I was once Gorhyazarr, god and emperor of those known to your race as the Enthroned, the All-Powerful, the Lords of the Deep and the Drowned Gods."
Stannis was struck dumb and silent with awe. Here before him was the lord of the ancient world. Gorhyazarr was the god-of-gods and king-of-kings who had reigned over the world entire for hundreds of thousands of years. The monarch of all things, older than the age of men.
Stannis Baratheon tried to bow. Ruined as he was, wounded near to death, all that he could do was faintly bend his neck. "It is an honour, mighty Gorhyazarr."
A sharp retort: "Do not call me by that name."
"As you wish." He hesitated. "If I may ask you a question—"
"Ask it."
"The ancient carvings in your outposts speak of Onhyilarr, he who led the Others into exile, to the Land of Always Winter. First and mightiest king of the Others, the Sons of Onhyilarr, who honour him to this day and bear his name. They say he was—"
"My son." The First Servant's voice was rich with grief. "My twenty-fourth-born child, and the only one to survive the Calamity. All the others were Taken like I was, when the Power of Darkness Everlasting came."
Stannis paused. He dared not just keep on asking more questions, as if that revelation did not matter. He had known it was folly to provoke the wrath of the First Servant of the Shadow when he had simply felt its power. That folly would be even greater now that he knew it was Gorhyazarr.
"I am sorry," he said. "I cannot imagine—"
"No." The great kingly voice was ice-cold. "You cannot imagine a father's thought at such a fate for his children. So do not speak of it."
Trembling, Stannis accepted, bowing his head. "As you wish, great one."
If Gorhyazarr did not wish for his sympathy, he would not give it. Or rather, he would not say it aloud. Stannis's horror at the thought still curled up, gouged and twisted in his stomach.
What would it be like, to not only be trapped in everlasting torment but to know that all but one of your children are trapped with you?
He had not been lying when he said that he could not imagine. He could not begin to comprehend the horror of it.
But the First Servant wished him not to speak of that; so he moved on.
"How did the Power of Darkness Everlasting come? What happened in the Calamity, and why did it happen?"
"Our folly." It that had once been Gorhyazarr spoke in a snarl of suppressed fury. "Our greatest and wisest seers foresaw a terrible tragedy that was to come upon our people, a cataclysm unrivalled in all the aeons of the world. To stop it, we saw fit to pool our otherworldly might to create a prophetic force beyond any of us—to peer through the Otherworld into the realm of What Is Yet To Come with depth and clarity that one seer alone could not."
The deep and kingly voice boomed like thunder. Every syllable resounded with bitterness and regret.
"The fault was mine. It was not my thought to conceive of such a working of sorcery; but I was god and emperor and progenitor of our race. It was I who gave permission for the great working to take place. I was reluctant. I knew enough of the higher arts to be wary of the risk. Doors can be opened both ways. There is always peril in touching the powers of the Otherworld. The greater the power, the greater the peril."
Stannis murmured the words his master had taught him. "When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks also into you."
"Indeed. And this was a look deeper into the abyss than had ever before been done. I was fearful, even then. I should not have permitted it. But my court sorcerers assured me the risk could be contained. I still do not know whether they were fools who overestimated themselves or liars and cultists of darkness. I suppose I never will.
"It does not matter. Either way, I was deceived.
"The working that we made on that day was beyond any other that the world has ever seen. A hundred-thousand greenseers could not have done it. In doing so—though this was not our will—we attracted the regard of one of the great entities of the Otherworld, one whose attention had already been drawn to us by the mighty otherworldly powers used every day by our civilisation. That power bent its thought towards us. By its will, our working was altered from a reaching-out to a reaching-in. Our peering became a summons. We brought forth that entity to be made manifest within the world.
"We were the mightiest people the world has ever known, or ever will know. We ruled the world, you must understand. Not just a part of it, the land, that you men occupy, and even then, far from all. You do not touch the high mountains or the deep deserts and jungles. And no king has ever ruled all men. We were not like that. We—I—ruled the world entire, all its lands and all its oceans and all its winds. Everywhere was ours. We had no foes. The least and weakest sorcerers of our people were stronger in the higher arts than the greatest of your weakling race. The giants, the children of the forest, men and other races were naught but vassals, pets and prey before us. And yet we fell, at our own hands, when we sought to peer too deep into knowledge of what is to come. By seeking to thwart our doom, we made it. Let that be a lesson to you."
"How was it done? Could it be done again?" asked Stannis. As a greenseer he felt he had to know. Realising his question could be misunderstood, he added with haste: "To avert it, not to repeat it! I will die here; this I know; but I am not the last greenseer. I had a master who taught me. I had hoped to teach another; I suppose he must, now… But you understand. The line of greenseers must be made aware."
"No." The voice of Gorhyazarr was cold as stone. "Of the most terrible folly of my race, the spell that brought the Dark Power into the world that it torments, nothing should be spoken, now or ever. But it matters not. All the world of men together has not a hundredth of a hundredth of the power and knowledge that it would take to perform such a spell."
"You are sure?" Stannis was hesitant to question the lord of the ancient world; but he knew he must. Self-preservation did not matter when the world was at stake. "I have heard tell of men who use some measure of the Shadow's art. They are called shadowbinders…"
"They are nothing." The First Servant's voice rang with contempt. "Weaklings, mice, scurrying for the crumbs of power, pulling at the fringes of the Shadow and thinking that this makes them great. A shadowbinder is to the Shadow-On-The-World as a flea on the skin of an elephant. They know just enough to summon a Taken or two, and, by doing so, enslave their souls forever under the Shadow once they die. Fools. They are nothing and of no significance."
"As you say." Stannis bent his head.
They walked on. The body of the dying man was held in the arms of the First Servant. The thing that had once been Gorhyazarr never stopped nor slowed. The god of gods and king of kings seemed never-tiring.
Still with every step came the deathly sounds of bones crunching underfoot and decaying corpses making a hideous squelch.
Now that he knew (some measure of) what had happened here, that took, to Stannis, a new meaning. They were striding through a city of many millions of corpses. So brisk was the stride, so purposeful. He would have thought it uncaring of the dead beneath the feet, had he not heard the veins of grief in the great kingly voice.
How many times had Gorhyazarr walked these streets, to do so as briskly as this? How many times had he trudged amongst the ruin of his people? Twenty-thousand years… twenty-thousand years… a king, forced to wander the tomb of his people, dead for his mistake, stewing in his horror and his guilt, from now until the end of eternity…
Stannis could not begin to conceive of what Gorhyazarr must be feeling. Horror beyond horror, no doubt. It would be torment beyond any bodily pain that the dark artifice of the Shadow could devise.
The greenseer was drawn from his ruminations by the sudden stop of the footsteps he could feel in his bones and by the boom of that deep, mighty voice. "We have arrived."
"Where have we arrived?"
Stannis could not see anything. He had only been blind for mere hours, and already he hated it.
"The Chamber of the Stars. It was beautiful, once."
The voice of the First Servant of the Shadow was like an open wound, red and raw with blood of grief, unhealed.
"It was the brightest and most wondrous place in our shining City of a Million Lights, Al'Alaniel. It was our place for conclaves of many sorcerers at once to work great workings of the higher arts, for the benefit of our people. And it was the place where we summoned the Dark Power, twenty-thousand years ago."
There was an immense weight to the air, something enormous and unyielding. To his alarm Stannis realised he had not perceived it. The backbreaking force of the Shadow upon his soul had grown greater as the First Servant walked, but so slowly, so incrementally, that he had not noticed until it was too late. Like a frog in a pot of water, slowly heated until it was boiling.
He could hardly breathe. Stannis thought of himself as a formidable man, a sorcerer and a towering warrior with a Valyrian steel blade. But this… this!… he was frozen with terror like a deer before a dragon.
Everywhere around him, world-devouring darkness burned and churned and bubbled—expectant—gleeful.
"Welcome, child, to the heart of darkness. If you would seek the poisoned gifts offered by the Dark Power, seek them here. Seek them now."