Chapter 18

Cold winds bore them beyond Volantene shores. The prince led them on a madman's path, not south-and-east but east, straight through the Smoking Sea, where ash rained from the sky, rocks bubbled from the sea and dragons battled monsters worse than dragons. No sane sailor would come so close, but the Swords of the Storm had been inside Valyria itself, in the molten heart of ruin. Mere nearness held little fear for them now.

The folk of fishing villages on the Ghiscari gulf were stunned and terrified to see eleven ships of black sails come gliding out of the Smoking Sea whence none could sail, stained by ash and scorched by fire but unharmed and undaunted. Yet Slaver's Bay held no interest to the iron will that drove them onward. So onward they went, ever onward. Their first stop since Volantis was at New Ghis, lingering a day alone, for resupply of food and freshwater. Then it was back to the far open sea.

The winds blew fierce as a gale, so hard and so fast that any seasoned sailor who had not lost his wits would have quaked and anchored his ship rather than dare to raise sail. When rocks were ahead, they barely slowed; the winds turned, pulled them aside, around, then back again. Voyages that should have been turns of the moon took weeks; those that should have been half a year took turns of the moon.

There was no time for subtlety. The sellsword commander with crossbows and maps was nowhere to be seen. In his place stood, revealed, the lord of the storm, bloody-handed, dripping with gore. All day long he would stand at the prow unmoving, staring at the horizon, speechless as the oaken figureheads, long coal-black cloak trailing and snapping in the wind. Every day he took anew one of the captive sellswords from their last war, some fool foolish enough to let himself be taken alive, and plucked out his heart at the prow to appease the air gods. Pretence to the newer men that he worked by worldly ways had been cast aside. Haste counted, now, above everything.

No pirate was mad enough to trouble the black sails. They followed a straight line to the Straits of Qarth, passed through without paying toll, then took the Jade Sea into the Further East. Even so, it took a moon's turn and a half more to reach the glittering city of Yin, seat of the God-Emperor of Yi-Ti wherefrom he reigned in splendour over the oldest realm of men in the world.

The voyage could have been an epic tale in itself, Justin thought, and perhaps one day it would be, for there were a thousand cultures in these seas and lands, a thousand cities dead and living that they passed. They met men of every colour, men of strange clothes, strange ways, strange tongues, worshipping strange gods, riding strange beasts, buying and selling strange riches. In other times they would have paid heed to such. The Swords of the Storm had fought on battlefields by the Jade Sea and the Summer Sea, on the dragonroads of Slaver's Bay and along the riverroads of the Rhoyne's daughters, in the ice-bays of Ibben and the fetid jungles of Sothoryos, in the Golden Empire of Yi-Ti and the wastelands of the horselords, and more—all the realms of men, excepting only the Sunset Kingdoms of the uttermost west. But not today. Their purpose now lay further than Qarth, further than Yi-Ti, further than Great Moraq, further than Leng. Further than even they had ever been before.

As they sailed, the sun even at noonday dimmed to a dusky gloom.

The twilit spires of Asshai-by-the-Shadow rose out of the blue horizon like the fingers of a hungry god, come to steal the stars from the sky. Their sheer scale defied comprehension. When he saw them first Justin thought they must have been soon to reach land. He was wrong. They were still dozens and dozens of miles away. As they approached the towers grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger: distant pinnacles of midnight stone, with holes for windows long since gone with the passing of ages, yet still standing strong, impossibly narrow and impossibly high.

As they approached, for the first time in days the lonely windblown figure at the prow spoke to his captains. "Nudoon, Horpe," Stannis said once he had called them to his ship, "you will buy more stocks of food and freshwater. Only those that will not soon perish. You know why."

"It will be done," the two captains said, bowing.

"Massey, Vunel, Marro." Marro Namerin, Justin noted with envy, was still the only one the prince would speak to by first name. "You will be with me. I must go to the house of Li Xinong."

Justin dimly remembered the name. It must have been years. "That old warlock in Yi-Ti, the Emperor's man, who fought with us against the Bol Qo Rebellion?" said Vunel. "Why?"

"Because he and I found something that will be of use to me to guide us in the Shadow Lands," said Stannis. "It was after the fall of Trader Town. The usurper was on the run. We were pursuing Bol Qo eastward, past the Five Forts, into the Grey Waste, before he turned south for fear of Cursed K'Dath and made for Jinqi where we slew him. You'll remember Li and I disappeared one night."

"You did."

"That night, we found an empty rock amidst the wastes there, north of the Shadow Lands," Stannis confided in them for the first time. "It was wrought in a way I have never seen before. Li worked a working that did not break the spell—for that was beyond our power—but suspended it long enough for us to enter and leave. Therein we found a tomb: the oldest I had ever found. Well, the second-oldest, now. What we found inside was of much interest, but we had no time, for Bol Qo's army moved too fast. We dared not linger. But on that night, we promised each other that if the both of us survived, he would re-enter the tomb, write down what he found, and bring it back for both of us to learn from it."

"Then why did you never tell us before?" asked Marro.

"Because the tomb belonged to a man known in the East as Azor Ahai," the prince said, and all of the Black Captains drew in breath. "And in the Further East as the Bloodstone Emperor."

"The—what? They're the same?" Justin spluttered. "But Azor Ahai was a hero in Eastern myth, he saved the world, the Bloodstone Emperor nearly ended it. The myths—"

"Myths change," Stannis said sharply. "Ask yourself: what do you know, and what do you only think you know? Mortal tales twist in the passing of time, from one generation to another. True parts are forgotten and storytellers fill the gaps with their own devising. But a greenseer sees."

"But—"

"We've no time for this. Behold, the shore draws near. Marro, you and Vunel and Massey are with me."

The eleven ships of the Swords of the Storm docked under one of the mile-tall towers, resting in its gigantic shadow. Without a word, Prince Stannis leapt ashore. Calling their cohorts of men, Justin and the other Black Captains hurried to follow. Back on their own ships, they oversaw a thousand sellswords disembarking at the furthest outpost of the mortal world, the city at the edge of civilisation.

Outer Asshai was a city in perpetual gloom that shrouded the sun in the sky. Yet it was at least a city of people. Thousands of men and women manned shops and market-stalls in the array of houses by the harbour, selling known goods like gold, silver, jewels and spices, enchanted armour and weapons, and strange trinkets like amulets, rings and bracelets. Justin had seen their type in countless cities before. He doubted that most of them were actually enchanted, though mayhaps more of them here than anywhere else. But Stannis had no interest in those. With quick confident steps he strode out of the harbour, heading inland, delving a maze of back-alleys that led deeper into the city. And there things were altogether different.

Justin was no novice to crimes of sorcery. He had been there in Qohor, the so-called City of Sorcerers, when the Swords of the Storm took sword against the obscene cult of the Black Goat, tore their temples down and put their holy city to the torch. Some of the things he had seen in that place still gave him nightmares: the altars of sacrifice; the children writhing on pikes; the twisted creations, half living half dead, half man half beast, or both; worst yet, the real secret of the making of Valyrian steel. Yet even he was shocked at this. In Qohor, for all its fanciful names, only a small number of folk were sorcerers, and the high priesthood of the Black Goat were ever careful to conceal from their worshippers the full truth of their villainy. Here women and men were commonplace who dealt in otherworldly things. It was broad daylight, and there was no limit to their numbers, nor to their depravity.

Bloodmages and firemages strolled through the streets, heading between their temples. Alchemists wrought terrible fires and killing-smokes that occasionally burst above the dark stone houses. Demon-summoners talked openly with bodiless voices that screeched from pits of flame. Waterworkers dealt in strange experiments with the murky waters of the river Ash, shrinking back with sudden terror whenever it splashed at them. Folk in the bone-white robes of the necromancers wandered the streets with the shuffling corpses of the reanimated dead. And everyone shrank back and made way before the shadowbinders, cowled and draped, seeming faceless and genderless and scarcely belonging to mankind at all.

Once they saw a group of demon-summoners holding down a man and woman chained in bonds of iron and dragging them to a pentacle where cowled men were chanting and burning incense. The man and woman were weeping, begging for help, and in the centre of the pentacle lurked a sinister violet glow…

A young Sword of the Storm in Justin's cohort stepped forward, sword in hand. Harshly Justin pulled him back with a gauntleted hand. "Don't interfere," he hissed. "This place is as it is. We're on the prince's business."

And so they went on, under the shadow of the towers, in an eerie ever-deepening silence. They encountered bloodmages more often than children. Indeed, strange to say, Justin saw no children at all. Some people here looked to be ordinary men—chiefly guards, escorting the loftier sorcerers, and whores flaunting their favours on the streets—but Justin guessed at least a quarter of the men and women here were workers of otherworldly arts. Every house they saw—some squat, some short, some tall—was of the same make: well rounded; no edges or corners, only curves; of ceilings too low for mankind; deep black, not glittering crystalline black like the dragon-wrought walls of Volantis but black as coal, drinking in the light; and wrought of the same queer, liquid-smooth stone as the towers that lorded above them.

Not just that. The same sort of stone as Justin had seen under the trapdoor of the tomb Stannis had so long been trapped in, Justin realised. The same stone as he had seen in many other places the prince had led them to, all across the world.

He knew not what to make of that.

For all the wonder and terror of Asshai-by-the-Shadow, there was something queer about it too, something unsettling in a different way to the obvious horrors. It took Justin a while to realise what it meant. The outer city, the small part of it that lay right next to the harbour, had been full of people. Further in, there were still people: foul, cruel people, but people. As far in as here, they were… gone.

Asshai-by-the-Shadow stretched for leagues around. It was as vast as Volantis. It could have swallowed up King's Landing like a minnow in a whale. It should have been home to men in the hundreds of thousands, no, thousands of thousands. Yet here, in far inner Asshai, there were sixty empty houses for each filled one. Even the bloodmages were few and far between. That was why it was so gods-be-damned quiet.

"This city is dead," he murmured.

The prince overheard. "No, abandoned. Do not invoke that which is more terrible than you know," he said. "The City of the Dead lies at the end of our journey. This is only the beginning."

Stannis led them through the streets of Asshai-by-the-Shadow as if he knew them, as if he had sojourned here a hundred times before. Silent as the grave, he trod the shadowed streets. His iron-toed feet clanked clanked on the glistening eerily smooth stone that stood in place of cobbles, and so did hundreds of feet behind him, though they were lost like children in the maze he led.

They rounded a corner, then, and a man stood in their path, draped in red, with hundreds of others armoured behind him.

They tensed. The Swords of the Storm stepped in front of their commander, drew swords, raised shields, loaded crossbows, lifted pikes. In seconds they stood ready to kill. The men in red did likewise. Yet neither loosed first.

Across the street, there was a loaded silence.

"Thief and despoiler," said the man in red robes. He sounded relaxed, confident. "We meet again."

"Qohorik." The commander's deep voice rumbled with scorn. "Who are you again?"

"I have the honour to be Monobho Parit, Archon-In-Exile and High Priest of the Black Goat of Qohor," the man announced.

"I am the storm." No doubt. No hesitation. Only certainty, as deep as the bones of the earth. "But I think you already knew."

Ignoring the talk, Justin stood with his men, hands aching, clenching a crossbow. His standard-bearer bore a black banner without sign or sigil high above their heads. His cohort of men followed that banner closely; it showed them where to look for him. The moment he loosed, all of them would loose.

"Qohor knows of you, yes," Parit was saying with a snarl. "And Qohor will be your doom, for what you did."

"When I came into your city," Stannis said, "my intent was only to seize the gatehouse, to open it, force a surrender."

Is he trying to calm them down? thought Justin, flummoxed. He very much doubted this was going to work. We should just kill them and have done with it.

"I did more," Stannis went on, "because of what I saw inside. Even for one such as I…" He paused. Justin thought of the temple, the infant screams, the gigantic shape outlined in pale light, the smokelike surface that wobbled and shimmered like a hole in the world. Blood on the altar, blood on the floor… "Your city deserved to burn."

"Liar!" spat Parit, and the men behind him tensed their grip on their swords. Justin did likewise, waiting, just waiting for the outbreak of murder they all knew was coming soon. His eye was flickering over the street, weighing up buildings, alleyways, escape-paths, angles. "It is virtue to offer the god what is dear to us. It is virtue to sacrifice."

"No. You did it too much for that," Stannis said, and for a crazed moment Justin could have sworn the commander sounded tired, even sympathising. "Sacrifice is never easy, Qohorik. Or it is no true sacrifice."

"You sacrificed nothing!" A shrill shriek of rage. "I have sacrificed my life in my devotion to my people. When you sacked Qohor, I swore I would be strong enough to avenge her. I gathered to me others who survived the Burning, studied the world's dark and mysterious places, taught myself secrets of fire and blood… all for this moment. Urrathon Nightwalker of Qarth told me you would come here, and he was right, down to the day, down to the hour. And now I have you at my mercy."

"Well done," Stannis said then. "You have caught me. The question is: do you want your vengeance, or do you want to put it down to a spear thrust in the heat of chance?"

"What do you mean?" Parit said, suspicious.

"You want the satisfaction of killing me yourself, I would presume."

"Yes."

"Then I propose single combat," said Stannis. "Let us spill no more blood than is needed. Whichever of us wins, the other's men will walk away. We will settle our quarrel ourselves."

What is he doing?

Stannis gestured. The Swords of the Storm shifted aside, clearing a path. Their commander stepped out from among them, a whole head taller than most full-grown men, armoured all in black iron. On his back rested a goldenheart bow, at his hip a Valyrian steel sword. He was touching neither.

Monobho Parit was whispering with his men, til Stannis said, "Unless, of course, you are too afraid."

The jibe worked as doubtless intended. The Archon-In-Exile squared his shoulders. "I fear no-one. I am more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

"Then you accept?"

"Accepted."

Parit raised both hands at once; and they burst afire. Several Swords of the Storm shrieked with surprise. The Qohorik sorcerer strode forward, taking long confident steps, without a fear in the world.

Sickly green light issued forth from the Qohorik sorcerer. He looked more like a spectre than a man. Meanwhile, Stannis stood unarmed, silent, still as a statue.

Parit approached. Giant spheres of green flame danced in his hands, and his voice spoke booming like a hundred voices. "I stand for Qohor that you burnt. I stand for the men, the women, the children you murdered. I stand for our ancestors whom you dishonoured. I stand for our people, for our city dead and yet reborn. And you, you despoiler, you coward, you brute, will meet—our—vengeance!"

Both hands held spheres of green flame, larger than men's heads. The heat could be felt from fifty yards away. Even standing on the same street as him felt like diving in a furnace.

The sorcerer raised one hand, moved it back, threw it forward to hurl, and—

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

The street turned cold. The fireballs went out in an instant. And the sorcerer's hand that he had thrown forward was clutching his own throat.

Stannis spoke very softly. "I think not."

Parit spluttered. He tried to pull back his arm. His own grip was unrelenting. His free arm batted at the other one wildly, dealing heavy blows. No matter how hard he hit himself, he would not let go.

"It was unwise to approach me when you knew not what you are facing," the commander said. He was not angry. His voice was calm, conversational, like a master guildsman lecturing his student. "Birds and beasts are my usual tool, for they have not the wit to grasp that my thoughts in their minds are not their own. Conquering the mind of a man is no easy thing for e'en the best of skinchangers, and for those like me who are beyond skinchangers. But you, you are vulnerable. I wonder: do you know why?"

The sorcerer sank to both knees, his breath juddering and coughing. A thin whistle of air escaped his lips, high and shrill. He fought to pull his arm down, wrestled with himself. He could not. His own grip on his throat was unrelenting.

"I thought not," said the commander. No-one interrupted. His voice held every man out of the hundreds of silent watchers in its spell. "For most men, it cannot be done. Their minds are closed. But for Moonsingers, skinchangers, Faceless Men, waterworkers, necromancers, firemages, those of powers like mine… You are no common man, are you? You've opened your mind to powers that are not of this world, so that your thoughts may pull them into this world and wield them. You should have known that is a road, and every road can be walked both ways. When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks also into you."

The sorcerer fell to the ground. His chest thumped, his heart beating much too fast. His nails tore at the arm that choked him. He writhed about on the floor, he thrashed, he struggled, he ripped and bit at himself. He wept, wailed, screamed as best his airless throat could, voicelessly begged the gods for succour. None of it availed him. His own arm, cut and bit and bleeding, would not let go of his throat.

"Only one question remains to us," Stannis breathed, soft, soft as silk in a whisper. "Let us see whether your strength of will can exceed mine."

The struggles faded, halted, slowed, stopped. Last of all, the arm clutching the throat went slack.

Monobho Parit was dead.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Nobody spoke. Parit's men and Stannis's stood in mute disbelief, utter incomprehension. All of them stared at the corpse of the sorcerer, slain without steel or fire, killed by his own hand, murdered by sheer force of will without a weapon laid upon him.

Then the prince looked up, and the hundreds of Qohoriks jumped and quailed before his gaze. "I say this and I will say this only once," he said. "Get out of my way."

They ran as fast as their feet could carry them.

The Swords of the Storm gathered back around Stannis. At a steady, cautious pace, they marched in full ranks down the street, wary of crossbows. None came. 'Qohor-In-Exile' had fled every which way, not stayed to loose crossbows. Their walk to the end of the road was uneventful.

"Here."

They obeyed, entering the house Stannis had pointed to. The leading Swords of the Storm knocked. They opened the door.

A terrible reek came forth upon them.

"Ugh!" Justin coughed at the most disgusting smell he had ever had the misfortune to find, though he had smelt the carrion of a hundred battlefields. He thought to quip, but saw the look on Stannis's face and thought better of it.

They entered the squat black-stone house. The smell was coming from a reeking green-brown-black puddle on the floor. It smelt worse than a dead man, worse than a man dead for months reeking on a battlefield and half-eaten by crows. Justin only realised what he was looking at when he made out the faint impression of bones. He had never seen a corpse so rotted, including those in centuries-old tombs. Even the bones were near wholly rotted away.

"Why does Li have a man dead a thousand years in his house?" asked a Sword of the Storm.

"No," said another, "look at the—"

All of them had the same thought at once. Look at the head.

For there was a head face-down a few feet away from the rotten puddle. Not just a skull, a whole head. The bone was still there and the skin was still there too. It did not look thousands of years old. It looked like it had been dead for only a matter of days. A sellsword picked it up. The face was contorted in an expression of absolute agony.

"Dear gods," Justin muttered, and several of the soldiers made gestures to ward off evil. "Mother have mercy. They did this while he was still alive."

And he recognised that face.

Stannis would recognise it too, surely. He was not looking at it, though. Justin's eyes followed the commander's. Under the head that the sellsword had just picked up, some symbols were written in blood… no, not symbols, letters. Westerosi letters.

T O O

L A T E