Chapter 8
Part II
It was a scorching day of Essosi summer, scarce diminished by the cold ocean wind that hissed in his ears. Fathomless dark waters, foaming and writhing under the glare of the sun, lay to the north; on every other side, as far as the eye could see, were vast stretches of sand and pebbles and shingles, grey and grim and unending.
Two figures, small against the immensity of that landscape, were riding eastward on sand-bred mules, needed to withstand the jagged rock beneath their feet. One was a young woman, short and dark-haired and dark-eyed, with olive complexion, dressed in the thin, white, loose-fitting clothes common among these folk. She was small and slim, too slim, and had only a pouch at her belt. The other was paler, yet with even darker hair, short-cropped and as black as every one of his garments, in spite of the heat. He was broad-shouldered and heavily-built, his belt had a scabbard hanging from it and he bore a bow coloured like burnt gold.
"Here it is," said the woman in white, pointing with a finger. Her companion's gaze followed. Eastward went those eyes, as dark a shade of blue as the wind-whipped ocean, and he espied something equally grey, rising very slightly over the lip of the horizon.
"We shall see," the man in black said. "I must go closer."
The woman in white spurred her mule without complaint. Forward and eastward they rode, away from the afternoon sun, which cast long shadows ahead of them. She led him, picking skilfully away from the most treacherous patches of the rock. The man in black went after her.
In time they drew nearer, and found what they sought. Ten rough grey pillars rose out of the sand. Atop them was a roof wrought of blocks of the same uneven stone, scarcely a few feet over the sand. Most of what lay underneath had been swallowed up long ago. This little that remained was what the woman in white had seen.
The man in black crouched in front of it, and his eyes stayed there for a long while. Finally, without looking up, he asked her, "What do you know of this place?"
"Not much," the woman in white told him. "There are a few old ruins like this in these lands, though I reckon this one is the biggest. These people, they lived here before what we did. Did you know that? The ruins were there when our forefathers landed here, as escaped slaves from Valyria. By then all the old grey buildings were already empty." She shrugged. "Some folk say they were all slain by the Valyrians." She spat at the name.
"Not the Valyrians," the man in black said. "I've felt it. These were old when Valyria was young."
There was another silence.
The man in black turned, and he pressed a few iron coins in her hand. "This should suffice for your mother," he said. "You have done what I asked of you. Go."
The woman in white stood her ground. "Beggin' your pardon, but I want a look too. I came all this way, an' I showed you here when you asked. You want to see what's inside; well, why don't I get to?"
The man's deep voice rose, and he put a hand on the hilt of his sword. "I will not ask again." He drew it forth. "Go."
She fled.
Once he had satisfied himself that the woman in white was gone, the man in black sheathed his sword. He turned back to a particular point of the ruin between two pillars, not visibly different from any other pair of pillars, and began to dig. He had naught but his hands, and the pile of sand and small rocks was high about the building. Much of it had to be moved, far enough that it would not just slide back in.
It was many hours' work. He set himself at it without complaint. Others came to help him, foxes and small sea-birds and his mule, working placidly together to shift more of the sand from this seemingly immoveable place. He ate some salted beef and slept upon the sand, and when the sun rose again it saw him back at work, beginning before dawn.
It was past sunset on that second day when the man caught a glimpse of something that was not grey stone. His thin lips twitched into a smile. It is there. It was there as he had known that it would be. It was there as he had seen it being set in place six-thousand years ago.
It was the top of a wooden door.
Satisfied with that, he ate some more salt-beef and went to sleep again, and on the third day he awoke and shifted more of the sand, digging deeper. When the door was roughly half-uncovered, and he stood in what was like a great pit amidst all the sand and pebbles and shingles, he laid a hand gently upon the top of the door. He felt the power that infused it, the power that guarded it from outsiders, the power that sustained it, the power that warded off the threat of decay and the encroaching sand; and he knew it was less than his.
He stood behind a pillar and spoke a word in High Valyrian.
There was a hideous screech. The door exploded into a thousand splinters that rotted away in moments; that was smothered by a wave of sand and shingle that flowed like water through the opening, collapsing into the building with the clatter of small shifting rocks.
The man in black emerged from behind the pillar; he had clung to it as hard as he could, to avoid losing his footing and being swept away and struck and killed by the impact as the sand beneath his feet rushed in. The level of surrounding sand had dramatically shrunken. And there was a hole where had once been a door.
He smiled.
Treading carefully, not trusting the treacherous sand beneath his feet, Ser Stannis Baratheon crawled up to the hole and slid through. He slid over a mound of sand and shingle, built up over the millennia, finally allowed in by his own deeds. Inside it was pitch-dark, so he struck flint, setting alight a little lantern he had brought with him. He was glad that he had thought of it this time. In his experience, such places usually were.
It was a temple.
The pillars helped to support the great weight of the roof, but they were outside him now; there was a wooden wall, preserved by old magics. Inside it, there were carvings. Stannis gazed at them, fascinated. There were men fighting and hunting, women weaving and gathering water, children playing, all working the soil, chieftains ruling, animals being eaten or sacrificed, and stranger things, men with the heads of beasts and beasts with the heads of men, gods no doubt, interacting in all sorts of ways with people and with each other…
It could have been the work of a lifetime to understand it. Stannis was not here for that. He traced his fingers over the drawings and found no mighty magic in them. He proceeded to the altar for the sacrifices, made of rough-hewn stone—no, he realised, not even hewn, merely dragged stone; these people had not known how to cut it—and he felt the echo of pain, a thousand bulls and children dragged upon it and their throats cut in the search for divine favour… but nothing more.
He went past it, uncaring, holding up his lantern and squinting to see, for he could not see far. This could not be what he had felt, what he had dreamt of. There was power here, and he had come to find it.
A while's walk from the entrance, following the wall, he felt a corner. That is too early, he thought, remembering how big the ruined temple had been from above. A moment later: There must be another room.
On the opposite side of the room from the entrance, Stannis found another door. He pressed a hand to it. There was magic, no doubt of it, magic meant to protect it from trespassers like himself.
No matter.
He drew himself up, took several steps back and uttered a word of command.
The temple door shuddered under the blow, and held.
Surprised, Stannis spoke again. Nothing happened. He spoke again, more sharply. Nothing. Again, infusing his voice with strength. Nothing. He threw himself at it and struck it with all his weight, and then tried hacking at it instead. Nothing sufficed. It was unyielding. The enchantment on the door was too strong.
I will not permit a door to hold me, thought the greenseer. Not when I have come so close. A pause, and a resolve: The price must be paid.
He took four steps further back and drew his sword forth all the way. He laid a finger upon it, thought, then moved his hand away. He drew back his sleeve, touched the point of his sword, and slashed from elbow almost to the wrist.
Stannis howled with pain, crying out as the blood poured forth from him. His legs convulsed beneath him; he nearly fell. The agony attacked him like hungry wolves tearing at his flesh, marauding and merciless.
Nonetheless, he staggered and kept upright, and pressed his bleeding arm to the side of the blade; and it burst into pale fire, white as snow, burning against the dark. It was so bright it hurt to look at it, bright like the stars, bright like the sun. To spare his eyes he cast them away from the flaming sword.
It was a magic long known to the Valyrians. Anogroperzys, they called it. Bloodfire. Like all magics that could accomplish much, it was power born of sacrifice. For an ordinary man, the spilling of blood might merely light a flame… but he was spilling greenseer's blood, and that made it something more.
The three-eyed crow had taught him years ago that there was power in king's blood, but not for any man who called himself a king. Self-proclamation was not enough, else sorcerers would make great use of any fool who named himself a king and could be harvested. The true cause was that there was power in the old lines, for many of them were distantly descended from sorcerers in the Age of Heroes. That was an echo of an echo, a mere shade of what true sorcerer's blood could unleash. There was power in king's blood… but king's blood was to greenseer's blood as a leaf to a tree.
Gritting his teeth, eyes watering, fighting the rush of pain, Stannis advanced, bearing the sword like a torch, holding it far away from him. Bright burnt the bloodfire, bright and white and overpowering. Already, in that instant of that brief first touch, his left arm was now burnt as well as wounded. Drop by drop, the castle-forged steel of his sword had started melting, scarcely able to contain the bloodfire blaze. It would hence be useless as a sword. For now, though, it was good enough.
He smote the temple door a single time; and the old enchantment screamed and shrivelled up before the bloodfire into nothingness. For long ages it had stood pristine and utterly untouched by time. Without that enchantment, as if burdened by the weight of all those ages at once, the old wood crumbled into dust.
Stannis stepped through the hole where there had been a door.
His mouth dropped open.
All around him was an artifice of utterly different kind to what he had seen in the rest of the temple. The rest of the temple was wrought of rough grey rocks dragged into place. This was smooth, superbly smooth, and it was blacker than midnight, so black, so perfectly drinking the light that even the bloodfire looked very slightly dimmed. In its pale glow Stannis beheld the smooth passages too low for a man, built for something shorter. The stone was damp to the touch, but not with water. It was like slime, sticky and slippery.
The temple was not wholly built by that ancient long-dead civilisation. They had built it around something much, much older.
Holding aloft the sword, Stannis strode into this remnant of something that he had never seen. This was the power he had felt; it must be. To one who was not a sorcerer it could not truly be described. He felt it like fire in his bones. The very air around him sang with sorcery, bright as the light of the full moon, clear as the ring of a bell, strong as the scent of a banquet.
No wonder it had been worshipped. To anyone who could sense it, it must feel like the touch of the gods.
Awed, keeping his head down so that he could walk, Stannis meandered through the black-stone passages. While his left arm seethed with agony, his fingers trailed along the walls, tracing the patterns they found there. He drank in the sensation of power around him, and felt giddy. It was as if he were drunk on strongwine, so enraptured was he, so exhilarated.
Yet as he moved and his head cleared as he became more accustomed, he perceived that all of this magic was old, old, old, older than anything that he had ever felt before. The people who had made this must have been mighty indeed, but where were they? Why had they gone away?
Head bowed, he kept walking through the dark stone, moving towards the place where the power felt strongest. It was not a long walk. This little settlement could not have been anything more than a small village, an outpost even—which made him wonder what it would be like to be in a larger dwelling of theirs. Disappointingly, he saw no distinction from the rest. There was the same low ceiling, the same slimy sensation, the same close-in walls, the same patterns…
The same patterns.
For the first time Stannis looked closely at the walls, blacker than the wings of a crow but lit by the white fury of the bloodfire. There were inscriptions there, he realised; he had not perceived them as such, for the writing was in no script he recognised, but that was what they were. The script was of triangles and ellipses and rectangles and circles, loops and arcs and shapes for which he knew no name; it was nothing like any form of writing he had heard of, but it was writing.
He touched it with the tips of his fingers as the pain of his wound burnt in his left arm. He traced the shapes, as fascinated by the shapes as he was frustrated by his inability to comprehend them. He kept tracing along the wall, feeling as he went. He did not know their meaning, yet somehow it seemed to him that sometimes the words meant something comforting, sometimes they meant something grand, sometimes they were proud, or angry, or restful, or eager, or reluctant, or afraid…
Afraid?
Even as he had that thought, his fingers slipped onto the next shape along.
It struck his thoughts like the charge of a thousand thousand knights. He did not move; but he felt as if he had been lifted up and blown by the force of it. A voice swept through his mind, a great howl long and low and rumbling, like a tremble in the bones of the world.
SSSSSSSTORM-BORN, it roared. SSSSSSSTORM-REARED, SSSSSSSTORM-FEEDER, SSSSSSSTORM-CALLER… HERE YOU SSSSSSSTAND WASSSSSSSTING YOUR LIFE AWAY, IN THRALL FOR COIN TO A MEANINGLESSSSSSSSSS MORTAL. HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU THAT YOU WERE MEANT FOR SSSSSSSOMETHING MORE?
He struggled for control. He struggled to stand still. He struggled even to understand the great voice that swept away his thoughts and left in its wake only ruin.
"You do not tell me my destiny," Stannis growled. "No old greenseer does, and no ancient enchantment either. Only I decide what I am meant for."
IT IS NOT YOUR DESTINY, the great voice thundered. IT CAN BE YOUR CHOICE.
"What do you want from me?"
ONLY THAT YOU COME TO ME, SSSSSSSTORMCHILD.
"I am not a child."
That amused the great voice. ALL MEN ARE CHILDREN TO ME.
Stannis struggled to understand. "Why would I come to you?" he demanded.
WHY DID YOU COME HERE? asked the terrible voice of the abyss. YOU WANTED POWER. POWER TO DESSSSSSSTROY YOUR ANCIENT ENEMY AND TO MAKE YOURSSSSSSSELF THE SSSSSSSAVIOUR YOU WISH YOU WERE. IT CAN BE YOURS, YOU KNOW, SSSSSSSTORMCHILD. YOU WILL GAIN POWER WHEN YOU COME TO ME.
"Why should I believe that?"
YOU WILL SSSSSSSSEE.
The world transformed before his eyes. He saw a pale child on a pale horse; an army charging towards a man, and a man charging towards an army; a young girl running with an eagle on her shoulder; a man cradling a boy's bloodstained body, weeping in the rain…
YOU WILL SSSSSSSSEE, roared the voice vaster than the world. YOU WILL SSSSSSSSEE…
A lean hook-nosed man with a murderous smile at the top of a tall tower; black banners, pure unadorned black, waving in the wind; a black-sailed ship upon a river in a sea of grass; a great gate taller than ten men, wrought of smooth black stone…
YOU WILL SSSSSSSSEE…
It ended. Abruptly Stannis could feel his left arm again, screaming with the pain of its wound. His right hand held a sword that shone with pale fire. His left hand's fingers were touching some symbols on the wall of an abandoned outpost enclosed in a long-forgotten temple millennia ago.
He withdrew his fingers with a flinch, far too late. Shaken beyond words, he turned and walked away.
He emerged from the black stone tunnels, then from the ancient temple that some forgotten people of mankind had built around them long after they were made. He pushed his way through the heap of sand and shingle, which the wind had shifted slightly so that some of it once again covered the entrance, and emerged into the waking world. He blinked, and shielded his eyes. It was morning.
"There!" A voice he knew: Urynis, a boy who served as one of Handtaker's messengers. The boy rode up to him. "The commander said—my gods."
He was staring. Stannis did not notice this at first, for he too was staring at Urynis, as if the boy were strange to see, though they had seen each other countless times before. Blinking in the glare, for a moment Stannis wondered why; then he recalled that he had not extinguished the bloodfire. That was careless, certainly. He had had other things on his mind.
At a thought, the pale blaze vanished. His wounded arm still howled at him. He took a glance at the wrecked sword and cast it aside, then looked up at Urynis. "What did the commander say?"
"He said you told him you'd be here," the messenger-boy babbled. "I couldn't find you for days, Captain, I feared… well. He commands you to come back to the city as quickly as you can. If need be, I'm to give you my horse."
Stannis scarcely listened. He was gazing only at Urynis, who had the silver hair of the Valyrians, common in much of Essos, and was expertly controlling a white mare too large for him. He had just realised why the sight had seemed strange.
A pale child on a pale horse…
Is it all going to come true so soon?
The boy was still talking. "Norvos and Qohor have allied with Lorath and they sent an envoy saying the Braavosi should give back what they took from Norvos in the war. Even Pentos joined in; the commander didn't think they'd have the balls for it. The Sealord means to reject those terms. There's going to be a war."
"Very well," Stannis murmured, his face indecipherable. "I suppose now it begins."