Chapter 20
Part IV
Justin Massey was sleeping peacefully when a hard hand shook him awake.
At once he woke, spun his legs into a kick, punched the figure shaking him in the nose with one hand, and reached for a weapon with the other. He was not a Black Captain of the Swords of the Storm for nothing, after all.
His fist met cold iron and stopped dead, and his feet stopped too, but the force of his kick was still felt. The figure staggered back, cursing. Dagger clutched in hand, Justin paused. He recognised that voice.
"Commander?" he said, incredulous. Why on earth would Stannis be waking him in the middle of the night?
"Massey," came the commander's deep voice, coldly.
"You've my apologies," Justin said. He scrambled to his feet, which were still hurting from kicking a man in armour. He did not fail to notice that Stannis was clad in full plate armour, a giant in black iron. "What is it, commander? Are we under attack?"
"No," said Stannis. "Be not afraid, it is nothing such. 'Tis only that I wished to speak with you."
"So you did come!" said Justin, delighted. It had been several days since he had asked Stannis to speak, the two of them alone. When the prince kept putting it off to later, he had feared he meant not to speak at all.
"What?" The prince sounded bewildered. "Ah. That. Yes, well, why not? It may as well be done now. It cannot be later." This last, with a certain rueful tone.
A queer choice of words, but Justin paid it little heed. He had long wished to speak with the commander about this.
"I have an idea of the real reason why you didn't warn us about the Taken," Justin said carefully. He knew he was treading on eggshells with the choice of what to speak about, but he felt it was a needful thing.
"That? Yes. Do go on," the prince said.
Justin had had several ideas for how this parley might go. The prince might be calm, or at least faking calm. Or the prince might be furious and defensive. He had not at all expected that the prince would be distracted, barely paying heed. Justin felt a twinge of annoyance.
"I think you still don't know you have men on your side," Justin said.
"Of course I know that." Stannis didn't sound angry. He sounded honestly bemused.
"With the greatest respect, my prince, I don't think you do," Justin said. "You have loyal men. We would follow you anywhere. To be frank, only someone who would follow you anywhere would follow you here, the closest thing to the seven hells on earth. And yet your instinct is to treat us like we might betray you at any instant. Tell us nothing. Keep all things to yourself. You have a thousand men by your side and yet you always seek to work alone."
Now, at last, he had Stannis's full heed. The prince's eyes were fixed upon him.
"That isn't reasonable," Justin went on. "It isn't founded in fact. We've never betrayed you. We've never given you reason to think we're going to betray you. I think it's just a habit by now. You tell people nothing, you trust people with nothing, you work alone because you're used to working alone."
Stannis was staring at him like a wounded deer facing the huntsman's bow. He still said nothing.
"Why are you so used to working alone?" asked Justin. "It's not because of your time as a sellsword. Sellsword life doesn't make habits like that. Sellswords work together, serving in the free companies. No man can fight an army. We don't trust other companies but we have to trust each other at least a little bit. And it's not because of your time in Robert's Rebellion. Back then you were a captain of your brother's hosts. You were a leader of men. Vunel and Nudoon and Namerin think it's because of your upbringing in the Seven Kingdoms. They don't know any better. But I do. I'm of a lordly family from the Seven Kingdoms too, and I know that is not the way highborn boys are raised, over there. We aren't taught to be so lonely and untrusting." He drew in breath. "It's older than that, isn't it?"
"It is," Stannis admitted. "I have long grown used to trusting no-one, bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. I am alone in this. It is the way of things."
"The way of being a greenseer?" said Justin.
"Yes."
"You never speak of how you got your power. Why is that?" Justin was aware, now, that he was treading on dangerous ground. He trod very carefully. He spoke as if asking a cripple how he lost his arms: "What happened to you?"
"My master happened to me." Stannis's tone did not hint at anger; or rather, it did, but at anger like a great bonfire that had long ago gone cold. Mighty, once, but past. He sounded not so much angry as sad. "My childhood was not like other boys'. You are right of that much. No-one could be told. No-one could be trusted. No-one could be allowed to know." He shrugged. "If I am too used to working alone, that will be why. As a child I was always told the burden of saving the world from the Enemy would be mine, and I must walk that road alone."
Justin wondered how deep-rooted this failing was. "Since when?" he asked. "Four-and-ten? Eight-and-ten?" He had no way to know when sorcerers started their training.
"Six," said Stannis.
"Ah," said Justin, "I was almost right."
"No. Not six-and-ten. The first time, I was six years old."
There was a long, sad silence.
"That is monstrous," Justin said finally.
"That is the way of greenseers," said Stannis.
"Then the way of greenseers is monstrous," Justin snapped. "You were a child. Not a man grown, nowhere near it. Seven hells, you weren't even a squire, allowed only to polish a knight's plate for him. True men don't put that kind of weight on the shoulders of a boy, not even in dire need. If a boy holds a lordship, he gets a regent. Children are meant to run and play, not—not—not be told to hide everything, trust no-one, the whole world is on your back."
Justin was outraged on Stannis's behalf, all the more so since Stannis himself seemed to see no wrong in what had been done to him. For a moment he saw behind the imposing man armoured in black iron to the small scared lonely child underneath.
"Do not pity me," the prince said.
"You deserve pity! Do you not see how wrong it was, what was done to you?" Justin cried, exasperated at Stannis's lack of reaction. "You had your whole life taken away from you."
"You are kinder to me than I deserve," said Stannis. "Pity is for men other than me. I deserve none."
"Why?" asked Justin.
Stannis gave him no answer.
"I don't understand why you didn't abandon all of this sorcery as soon as you were old enough to think of defying your master. It has done nothing but hurt you," Justin said. "This 'master' broke your life."
"He did. Yet I deserved the breaking. And I must go on. I may be broken, but as my lord father liked to say, there is a tool for every task and a task for every tool. Even a broken tool like me." Stannis grimaced. "And this tool has one task more."
"What task is that?" said Justin, dreading the answer.
"Tell the men to go back to the ships," Stannis said. "I cannot ask them to go further. They cannot fight the Taken when they can't even see them; it is a death-sentence. I will go on to the Only Gate alone."
"That is madness. It would be your end," said Justin.
"Yes," Stannis admitted. "But I know that. I have always known."
A cold chill crept up Justin's spine. "Commander, what are you talking about?"
"I have often told you that a greenseer stands beyond space and time," Stannis said. "Have you ever thought of what that means? I know much of my own future. I have seen my path ahead of me, known many of the battles I would face. To be a greenseer grants me many visions. And clearest of all those visions were just before the Great Northern War broke out between the Pact of Four and Braavos, when I was visiting the Temple of the Pharakienat on the Braavosian shore. There, a power showed me glimpse of what was yet to come. The first glimpse was a pale child on a pale horse, and that one came true mere minutes after I saw it, when Urynis came to fetch me for Handtaker."
"So one vision came true," said Justin. "That doesn't mean they all will."
"The others have come true too, one after the next, chronicling my life. All of them have come true, except one. The last vision was a great gate taller than ten men, wrought of oily black stone. Those were visions from the Temple, granted by a higher power, but my visions as a greenseer all end the same way. I have seen much of my life, but never further than that gate. The gate. The Only Gate, it must be." Stannis trembled. "Thus I have always known that I will live to reach the Only Gate. From then on, I see nothing. My sight of myself shows only darkness."
"Our whole quest for the Only Gate. The quest to stop Euron. All this time," Justin said softly, "you've been walking to your death."
"Yes," Stannis said. He didn't look afraid. Perhaps he had been contemplating his death for so long that he no longer had much fear of it. "It is a better death than I deserve, a man like me. At least I can die for a good cause. Die like a good man."
"My prince…"
Justin could not find the words to speak. He felt utterly wretched, like the lowest soul ever spat out by the gods onto this earth. Weeks ago, straight before the dragon attacked, he had been contemplating leaving the Swords of the Storm. He had thought he was serving in a sellsword company, when in fact he was serving a sorcerer-prince who made his choices not for the sake of the company but for the sake of his secret unknowable goals as a greenseer against the Enemy. He did not wish to keep serving Stannis if it meant keeping heading to dangerous places like this, where he might lose his life.
Stannis Baratheon hated himself. That was plain as day to Justin now. Beneath the façade of icy arrogance, the prince thought himself a vile, unworthy sort. Yet Stannis was prepared to give up his life to save the world from Euron Greyjoy and the Enemy. Justin Massey was not so prepared. What did that make him?
It seemed that, as far as Stannis was concerned, their parley was over. The prince left the tent. Justin scurried to follow. He found the prince outside, ordering sentries to the tents of the other Black Captains. They were all gathering together.
"My captains," Stannis said. "Hear my words and heed them well. From this day forth, I appoint Justin Massey as acting commander of the Swords of the Storm. He will lead you, until and unless I return."
Justin was at once elated and dismayed. He finally had what he had sought for so long. The prince was granting him power and showing trust in him above all others.
He was getting everything that he had ever wanted, and he had never wanted it like this.
"Return?" said Bozyno Vunel, eyes narrowing. "You're leaving?"
"I am," said the prince. "I cannot ask you and the men to stay with me any further. You cannot defend yourselves as I can. The peril to you is too great. The last of the journey, I will undertake alone."
"Fighting these Taken is hard," Richard Horpe acknowledged. "We can do it, though. Commander, I really don't think—"
"Marro is dead!"
Stannis flung the words like a spear. All of the captains stopped dead.
"Marro died tonight," hissed Stannis. "He saved my life, and he died. I killed him myself. I had to, to stop him from being Taken. It was just a wound that did it. An arm-wound, not infected—the sort that wouldn't kill anyone. Do you understand now? I cannot let you stay here. The Taken may kill you, but that's the kinder fate. The true risk is to be wounded and suffer a fate endlessly worse. I… I am not a good man. I know that. But I am not bad enough to let you stay so close to the City of the Dead. I am already damned for letting you come as close as this."
"If you insist you'll go alone," said Justin, knowing the prince would indeed insist, "we'll come and fetch you if you don't come back in—how long is it from here to Stygai?"
"Not long. Wait for me for ten days," Stannis answered. "Not on land. Not here, so close to the city. Go back to the ships we left anchored on the river Ash, where no beast or demon will dare tread to reach you."
"To be sure I understand—we start heading back now; then we wait ten days; then we come and get you?"
"No. You wait the ten days, and then you go. Leave this godsforsaken place. Cut mementoes from the dragon to bring with you. Go forth to Yin, to the Emperor of Yi-Ti. Thence to the slavelords of the Ghiscari cities. Go to Qarth, to Volantis, to the cities of the far west, to the Sunset Kingdoms beyond. Tell every emperor, every magister, every archon, all the men we've ever fought for, of the peril the realms of men will face. Tell them all that I have told you of the ways the Enemy and the restless dead can be fought."
Justin said softly, "Then what of you?"
"Do not look for me," said Stannis. "I… will have done my duty."
The words fell heavy as hammer-blows.
"Then farewell, my prince," Justin said. "Until we meet again."
Stannis's lips twisted. "We will not meet again. But I thank you for the kindness of your thought."
He spun on his heel and strode off into the everlasting dark, alone.
Alone, the greenseer stumbled through the night. The pale blue gleam of witchlight guided his path before him—not the brilliant flare he had used to banish the Taken from a camp of a thousand men, but a much dimmer glow, sufficient for just himself. Dozens of them had attacked him, eager for his soul, only to flee wailing from the cold light of his eyes. This close to Stygai, no man-made fire could stay glowing. Sorcerous light was the only way. It tired him, worse than the fact he had not slept for a fortnight. Every instant of sustaining the ice-blue glow was stealing his life away. But he hardly expected that to matter now.
Alone, the sorcerer struggled onward. This close to Stygai, the Shadow blazed blacker than the sun was bright, all-present and all-consuming. To a greenseer, the weight of its presence was like a physical force crushing him onto his knees. The great wound he had torn in himself from shoulder to belly, the legacy of his battle against the dragon, still pained him. He had not recovered from it half as well as he had hoped. Still it sent twinges of agony coursing through him, forcing him to shudder and scream and stop. But never stop for long.
He was in a race, he knew, and the world could not afford for him to lose.
Alone, the stormchild stepped the last steps of the pilgrimage into hell-on-earth. He knew what he would face when he found it. Worse, he knew what he was already facing, what power he was contending with every time he took another step further into the Shadow-On-The-World. Every instinct screamed against this course. It took every ounce of his will to put one foot in front of the other, to step on. And yet he stepped on.
Then he stopped stepping.
There was darkness before him. A darkness darker than darkness, darker than a starless sky, blacker than the blackest void, darker than absolute absence of light. So black it drank in the very idea of light and made it unthinkable. He lifted a hand towards that thing of ancient darkness, taller than ten men; and he felt, beyond it, a darkness even more ancient fix its eyeless gaze upon the feeble spark of soul-light that dared stand beyond its walls. His witchlight almost went out from its regard; the effort of sustaining it slammed into him like a knife in his chest. He let out a muffled scream. The force of that gaze threw him at once onto his knees.
Then, with a tremor of terror and elation, he realised he had sensed something on the other side of the walls.
The Only Gate. It had to be.
Then he felt a surge of magic from behind him. It started small, on the edge of perception, yet soon swelled greater than anything he had ever felt before, so great that he had no idea how he could have failed to sense the slightest trace of it until this moment.
To one who was not a sorcerer, what he perceived cannot be understood. It was like a starving man scenting a banquet and a rotting corpse; the taste at once of the sweetest honey and bitter ashes; the touch of soft silk and jagged iron at the same time; the bugle of a thousand trumpets and the roar of the dragon plunging from the sky. How could he possibly have missed it until this? It was as if he had been standing in a starless night and then the sun rose, blinding, half an inch from his eyeball.
Stannis turned around. He did not need to. He already knew.
The man at the gate was slender and handsome. Neat dark hair crowned a pale high-cheekboned face, gorgeous as a maiden's dream, except for the eyes—mismatched, for one was black as rot beside the other's sparkling blue.
Stannis spat, "Greyjoy."
"So you came. Good; I am tired of waiting." Euron Greyjoy tilted his head in a mocking bow. "Well done, child, you've played your part. Now… this city is mine."