Harlaw, He says that Balon meant for her to sit the Seastone Chair.'
'The Drowned God shall decide who sits the Seastone Chair,' the priest said. 'Kneel, that I might bless you.' Lord Merlyn sank to his knees, and Aeron uncorked his skin and poured a stream of seawater on his bald pate. 'Lord God who drowned for us, let Meldred your servant be born again from the sea. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel.' Water ran down Merlyn's fat cheeks to soak his beard and fox-fur mantle, 'What isdead may never die,' Aeron finished, 'but rises again, harder and stronger.' But when Merlyn rose, he told him, 'Stay and listen, that you may spread god's word.'
Three feet from the water's edge the waves broke around a rounded granite boulder. It was there that Aeron Damphair stood, so all his school might see him, and hear the words he had to say. 'We were born from the sea, and to the sea we all return,' he began, as he had a hundred times before. 'The Storm God in his wrath plucked Balon from his castle and cast him down, and now he feasts beneath the waves.' He raised his hands. 'The iron king is dead. Yet a king will come again! For what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger!'
'A king shall rise!'the drowned men cried.
'He shall. He must. But who?' The Damphair listened a moment, but only the waves gave answer. 'Who shall be our king?'
The drowned men began to slam their driftwood cudgels one against the other. 'Damphair!' They cried. 'Damphair King! Aeron King! Give us Damphair!'
Aeron shook his head. 'If a father has two sons and gives to one an axe and to the other a net, which does he intend should be the warrior?'
'The axe is for the warrior,' Rus shouted back, 'the net for a fisher of the seas.'
'Aye,' said Aeron. 'The god took me deep beneath the waves and drowned the worthless thing I was. When he cast me forth again he gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to spread his word, that I might be his prophet and teach his truth to those who have forgotten. I was not made to sit upon the Seastone Chair… no more than Euron Crow's Eye. For I have heard the god, who says, no godless man may sit my Seastone Chair!'
The Merlyn crossed his arms against his chest. 'Is it Asha, then? Or Victarion? Tell us, priest!'
'The Drowned God will tell you, but not here.' Aeron pointed at The Merlyn's fat white face. 'Look not to me, nor to the laws of men, but to the sea. Raise your sails and unship your oars, my lord, and take yourself to Old Wyk. You, and all the captains and the I kings. Go not to Pyke, to bow before the godless, nor to Harlaw to consort with scheming women. Point your prow toward Old Wyk, where stood the Grey King's hall. In the name of the Drowned God I summon you. / summon all of you! Leave your halls and hovels, your castles and your keeps, and return to Nagga's hill to make a kingsmoot!'
The Merlyn gaped at him. 'A kingsmoot? There has not been a true kingsmoot in…'
'… too long a rime!' Aeron cried in anguish. 'Yet in the dawn of days the ironborn chose their own kings, raising up the worthiest amongst them. It is time we returned to theOld Way, for only that shall make us great again. It was a kingsmoot that chose Urras Ironfoot for High King, and placed a driftwood crown upon his brows. Sylas Flatnose, Harrag Hoare, the Old Kraken, the kingsmool raised them all. And from this kingsmoot shall emerge a man to finish the work King Balon has begun, and win us back our freedoms. Go not to Pyke, nor to the Ten Towers of Harlaw, but to Old Wyk, I say again. Seek the hill of Nagga and the bones of the Grey King's hall, for ir that holy place when the moon has drowned and come again we shall make ourselves a worthy king, a godly king.' He raised his bony hands on high again. 'Listen! Listen to the waves! Listen to the god! He is speaking to us, and he says, We shall have no king but from the kingsmoot!'
A roar went up at that, and the drowned men beat their cudgels one against the other. 'A kingsmoot!' They shouted. 'A kingsmoot, a kingsmoot. No king but from the kingsmoot!' And the clamor that they made was so thunderous that surely the Crow's Eye heard the shouts on Pyke, and the vile Storm God in his cloudy hall. And Aeron Damphair knew he had done well.
THE KRAKEN'S DAUGHTER
The hall was loud with drunken Harlaws, distant cousins all. Each lord had hung his banner behind the benches where his men were seated. Too few, thought Asha Greyjoy, looking down from the gallery, too few by far. The benches were three-quarters empty.
Qarl the Maid had said as much, when the Black Wind was approaching from the sea. He had counted the long-ships moored beneath her uncle's castle, and his mouth had tightened. 'They have not come,' he observed, 'or not enough of them.' It was no more than the truth, but Asha had not dared agree with him, out where her crew might hear her. She did not doubt their devotion, their willingness to die for her, but even ironborn will hesitate to throw away their lives for a cause that's plainly hopeless.
Do I have so few Friends as this? Amongst the banners, she saw the silver fish of Botley, the stone tree of the Stonetrees, the black leviathan of Volmark, the nooses of the Myres, The rest were Harlaw scythes. Boremund placed his upon a pale blue field, Hotho's was girdled within an embattled border, and the Knight had quartered his with the gaudy peacock of his mother's House. Even Sigfryd Silverhair showed two scythes coun-terchanged on a field divided bend-wise. Only the Lord Harlaw displayed the silver scythe plain upon a night black field, as it had flown in the dawn of days: Rodrik, called the Reader, Lord of the Ten Towers, Lord of Harlaw, Harlaw of Harlaw… her favorite uncle.
Lord Rodrik's high seat was vacant. Two scythes of beaten silver crossed above it, so huge that even a giant would have difficulty wielding them, but beneath were only empty cushions. Asha was not surprised. The feast was long concluded. Only bones and greasy platters remained upon the trestle tables. The rest was drinking, and her uncle Rodrik had never been partial to the company of quarrelsome drunks.
She turned to Three-Tooth, an old woman of fearful age who had been uncle's steward since she was known as Twelve-Tooth. 'My uncle is with his books?'
'Aye, where else?' The woman was so old that a septon had once said she must have nursed the Crone. That was when the Faith was still tolerated on the isles. Lord Rodrik had kept septons at Ten Towers, not for his soul's sake but for his books. 'With the books, and Botley. He was with him too.'
Botley's standard hung in the hall, a shoal of silver fish upon a pale green field, though Asha had not seen his Swift fin amongst the other longships. 'I had heard my nuncle Crow's Eye had old Sawane Botley drowned.'
'Lord Tristifer Botley, this one is.'
Tris. She wondered what had happened fo Sawane's elder son, Harren. / will find out soon enough, no doubt. This should be awkward. She had not seen Tris Botley since… no, she ought not dwell on it. 'And my lady mother?'
'Abed,' said Three-Tooth, 'in the Widow's Tower.'
Aye, wheree/ se? The widow the tower was named after was her aunt. Lady Gwynesse had come home to mourn after her husband had died offFair Isleduring Balon Greyjoy's first rebellion. 'I will only stay until my grief has passed,' she had told her brother, famously, 'though by rights Ten Towers should be mine, for I am seven years your elder.' Long years had passed since then, but still the widow lingered, grieving, and muttering from time to time that the castle should be hers. And now Lord Rodrik has a second hall-mad widowed sister beneath his roof, Asha reflected. Small wonder if he seeks solace in his books.
Even now, it was hard to credit that frail, sickly Lady Alannys had outlived her husband Lord Balon, who had seemed so hard and strong. When Asha had sailed away to war, she had done so with a heavy heart, fearing that her mother might well die before she could return. Not once had she thought that her father might perish instead. The Drowned God plays savage japes upon us all, but men are crueler still, A sudden storm and a broken rope had sent Balon Greyjoy to his death. Or so they claim.
Asha had last seen her mother when she stopped at Ten Towers to take on fresh water, on her way north to strike at Deepwood Motte. Alannys Harlaw never had the sort of beauty the singers cherished, but her daughter had loved her fierce strong face and the laughter in her eyes. On that last visit, though, she had found Lady Alannys in a window seat huddled beneath a pile of furs, staring out across the sea. Is this my mother, or her ghost? she remembered thinking, as she'd kissed her cheek. Her mother's skin had been parchment thin, her long hair white. Some pride remained in the way she held her head, but her eyes were dim and cloudy, and her mouth had trembled when she asked after Theon. 'Did you bring my baby boy?' she had asked. Theon had been ten years old when he
