Leviathan

“No.” Quellon watched as the drowned priest grabbed his acolyte and chanted at him. In a moment, the Drowned God would either take the man’s soul to his watery halls, or a new servant would walk the land.

Either way, Quellon was impassive. If tradition continued, all was well.

“Captains drown themselves. Lords drown themselves when they take their father’s seat. It is a choice.”

Quellon paused.

“Soon, you will see why.”

It was rumored, but few Greenlanders seemed to believe such nebulous ideas. Yet, without hesitation, the priest took his new son and shoved him by his throat beneath the waves. There was a struggle—always, there was a struggle. Arms reached out, legs kicked up.

“He is having visions,” explained Quellon, as the limbs began to go quiet. “He is seeing his life as the Drowned God sees it. Every man sees something different.”

A minute later and the acolyte was still. His priest pulled him from the water and dragged the corpse to the sands. Off to Quellon’s left, watching from afar, were the other drowned priest gathered today. None of them was the Damphair—their spiritual leader. That did not make the clubs they carried any less volatile, or the seaweed in their hair any less enchanted.

“Now we will see if he can be brought back, or if he will go to the Drowned God’s home.”

Quellon looked to Aerys. His good eye was sharper than a starving wolf’s own when it came to watching his prey. What reaction would the royal blood have to the traditions of the Ironborn?

To the eyes of Greenlanders, the acolyte was dead.

Quellon walked forward. He did not need to tell Aerys to follow—the young prince would do so all his own.

Striding across the beach, the prayers of the Drowned Man grew loud. “And what is dead may never die, but instead rises harder and stronger.” The age priest than pressed his hands deep into the boy’s chest.

This close, Quellon saw pale white skin and blue lips. The boy’s eyes were closed. He looked as if water was leaking from his pours, his fingernails, his ears—a drowned man in true.

The acolyte’s eyes shot open as the Lord Reaver’s shadow eclipsed the body. They were bloodshot, the pupils dilated down to pinpricks, and with a great heave of his chest water erupted from his mouth and nose. What was once a corpse twitched and seized on the ground. Quellon was distantly reminded of a fish flopping on deck.

Perhaps after returning from the Drowned Court, all Ironborn were just fish out of water. That thought was acknowledged only by the barest of eye twitches.

“You did good,” Quellon said.

The newly anointed Drowned Man looked at him wide-eyed and attempted to speak. Water and weak groans slipped out.

Quellon turned to Aerys. “If I had my way, you too would be drowned before you left. We Iron Islanders have long since waited for a Targaryen to finally respect our customs.”

The excuses were unasked for. Quellon looked away from Aerys mid-sentence to watch the Drowned Men in the distance approaching. What they did when they arrived was for their business only—the Lord Reaver had no need to relive these moments, and they would teach Aerys little.

Quellon walked away from the Drowned Men, heading in the opposite direction as the approaching posse. To his right, the waves kissed the shore with weightless touches, just enough to turn the beige sand grey. Seagulls circled overhead and the smell of fish, salt, and foam filled the air.

It was a beautiful day by Ironborn standards. But for anyone else, the humid air and the grey sky above did little to prove it.

“Have you ever killed a man before?” The question was sudden. That was intended.

Quellon nodded as he listened. “I was of a similar age.”

The massive mountain of a man looked at the ocean sprawling out beside him. The other islands weren’t visible. Westeros itself might as well have been a mythical place, not unlike what existed across the Sunset Sea.

“It was on a ship. One of my older brother’s ships, Balon.” Quellon slowed his step and looked down to Aerys. “We were boarded by pirates from the Basilisk Isles. Foreign men with foreign ways and foreign weapons. We were near massacred to a man.”

It was difficult to know if the Lord Reaver was speaking as his title, or as a man to another, or as a father to a son. All three identities merged and separated haphazardly in Quellon’s mind. He let his good eye get lost in the beach before him.

“I don’t remember who the first person I killed was. I would swing my axe and some men would get back up while others lay there. One man, however, I do remember killing.” Quellon’s head lowered. “An arrow to my heart was stopped by a book I was carrying. Histories of Western Seas, if I remember, by Archmaester Gallen.

“I charged the man down that shot me and lopped his arm off. Then I carved his throat out.”

Quellon paused.

“I disliked nor enjoyed it. But back then, I mistook the joy of knowing that I had made this man regret his foolishness for the joy of taking his life.”

Quellon ignored the praise. It wasn’t hollow, but it was the praise a teenager gave to a man who wasn’t proud of his life. Stereotypically, the Ironborn were constantly searching for the next woman to rape and the next warrior to axe. In reality, they were a people doomed to cold, valueless islands. They lusted for the heat of the south and the exoticism of the far east. And in that lust, they oft went mad.

“The Iron Price is not something to be taken lightly,” Quellon said. It is the manifestation of our need, Quellon thought.

Reaching into his robes, the Lord Reaver produced an astonishment of gold and jade. It was a YiTish trinket, shaped like a star burst with jade at the center and two arms of gold. When the light caught it, it became a sun all its own.

“This was bought with the Iron Price,” Quellon said. “I killed a pirate and ripped it off his fingers. Because I wanted it, and he wanted me dead. The blood that I shed that day, that was the Iron price I paid for this.”

Hiding it away, Quellon looked at the docks ahead. A ship was currently being prepared. “The remainder of your months here will be spent at sea. You will not be taking any of your belongings with you.”

Aerys Targaryen did not understand the horror waiting for him. He had not seen the things only grey sailors had seen; cities underneath the waves that disappeared with a turn of the moon, or mermaids pulling pirates underwater to drown and consume them. To have silver-hair and gemstone eyes was to be a storm, a flash of lightning, a bird hunting its next meal and never descending to the lowly earth.

Quellon Greyjoy intended to change this. After all, Aerys Targaryen was no dragon but a man, frail and pink. And on the high seas, eventually all men drowned.

---

1 Week Later

Legend’s End cut through the waters of the Summer Sea as an arrow released from the bow that was the Iron Islands. Hot winds leapt from wave to ship. They peeled the shirts from the Ironborn regardless of gender or experience.

For a week now things had been hard. Constant squalls battered the ship. Even Quellon had been forced to lend his hands more than once.

The Lord Reaver nnow stood at the prow. He wore loose robes of white and grey, his hair a mane about his shoulders. In the distance, he watched the brewing storm. Dark it was. Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder served as heralds for the wrathful god’s anger.

There were pirates under that storm. Quellon could not see them, but he knew they were there.

“Bring me Aerys,” he said. A young sailor beside him nodded and went to fetch the boy.