Lord Eddard had tried to play the father to him from time to time, but to Theon he had always remained the man who’d brought blood and fire to Pyke and taken him from his home. As a boy, he had lived in fear of Stark’s stem face and great dark sword. His lady wife was, if anything, even more distant and suspicious.
As for their children, the younger ones had been mewling babes for most of his years at Winterfell. Only Robb and his baseborn half-brother Jon Snow had been old enough to be worth his notice. The bastard was a sullen boy, quick to sense a slight, jealous of Theon’s high birth and Robb’s regard for him. For Robb himself, Theon did have a certain affection, as for a younger brother…but it would be best not to mention that. In Pyke, it would seem, the old wars were still being fought. That ought not surprise him. The Iron Islands lived in the past; the present was too hard and bitter to be borne. Besides, his father and uncles were old, and the old lords were like that; they took their dusty feuds to the grave, forgetting nothing and forgiving less.
The path they rode wound up and up, into bare and stony hills. Soon they were out of sight of the sea, though the smell of salt still hung sharp in the damp air. They kept a steady plodding pace, past a shepherd’s croft and the abandoned workings of a mine. This new, holy Aeron Greyjoy was not much for talk. They rode in a gloom of silence. Finally Theon could suffer it no longer. “Robb Stark is Lord of Winterfell now,” he said.
Aeron rode on. “One wolf is much like the other.”
“Robb has broken fealty with the Iron Throne and crowned himself King in the North. There’s war.”
“The maester’s ravens fly over salt as soon as rock. This news is old and cold.”
“It means a new day, uncle,” Theon promised.
“Every morning brings a new day, much like the old.”
“In Riverrun, they would tell you different,” he said. “I’ve heard it said that the red comet is a herald of a new age. A messenger from the gods, they say.”
“A sign it is,” the priest agreed, “but from our god, not theirs. A burning brand it is, such as our people carried of old. It is the flame the Drowned God brought from the sea, and it proclaims a rising tide. It is time to hoist our sails and go forth into the world with fire and sword, as he did.”
Theon smiled. “I could not agree more.”
“A man agrees with god as a raindrop with the storm.”
This raindrop will one day be a king, old man. Theon had suffered quite enough of his uncle’s gloom. He put his spurs into his horse and trotted on ahead, smiling.
It was nigh on sunset when they reached the walls of Pyke, a crescent of dark stone that ran from cliff to cliff, with the gatehouse in the center and three square towers to either side. Theon could still make out the scars left by the stones of Robert Baratheon’s catapults. A new south tower had risen from the ruins of the old, its stone a paler shade of grey, and as yet unmarred by patches of lichen. That was where Robert had made his breach, swarming in over the rubble and corpses with his warhammer in hand and Ned Stark at his side. Theon had watched from the safety of the Sea Tower, and sometimes he still saw the torches in his dreams, and heard the dull thunder of the collapse.
The gates stood open to him, the rusted iron portcullis drawn up. The guards atop the battlements watched with strangers’ eyes as Theon Greyjoy came home at last.
Beyond the curtain wall were half a hundred acres of headland hard against the sky and the sea. The stables were here, and the kennels, and a scatter of other outbuildings. Sheep and swine huddled in their pens, and the castle dogs ran free. To the south were the cliffs, and the wide stone bridge to the Great Keep. Theon could hear the crashing of waves as he swung down from his saddle. A stableman came to take his horse. A pair of gaunt children and some serving men stared at him with dull eyes, but there was no sign of his lord father, nor anyone else he recalled from boyhood. A bleak and bitter homecoming, he thought.
The priest had not dismounted. “Will you not stay the night and share our meat and mead, uncle?”
“Bring you, I was told. You are brought. Now I return to our god’s business.” Aeron Greyjoy turned his horse and rode slowly out beneath the muddy spikes of the portcullis.
A bentback old crone in a shapeless grey dress approached him warily. “M’lord,” she said, “I am sent to make you welcome and show you to chambers.”
“By whose bidding?”
“Your lord father, m’lord.”
Theon pulled off his gloves. “So you do know who I am. Why is my father not here to greet me?”
“He awaits you in the Sea Tower, m’lord. When you are rested from your trip.”
And I thought Ned Stark cold. “And who are you?”
“Helya, who keeps this castle for your lord father.”
“Sylas was steward here. They called him Sourmouth.” Even now, Theon could recall the winey stench of the old man’s breath.
“Dead these five years, m’lord.”
“And what of Maester Qalen, where is he?”
“He sleeps in the sea. Wendamyr keeps the ravens now, but he is gone south to Oldtown on some maester’s business.”
It is as if I were a stranger here, Theon thought. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. “Show me to my chambers, woman,” he commanded. Bowing stiffly, she led him across the headland to the bridge. That at least was as he remembered; the ancient stones slick with spray and spotted by lichen and moss, the sea foaming under their feet like some great wild beast, the salt wind clutching at their clothes.
When he had imagined his homecoming, he had always pictured himself returning to the snug bedchamber in the Sea Tower where he’d slept as a child. Instead the old woman led him to the Bloody Keep. The halls were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp. Theon was given a suite of chilly rooms with ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom. He might have been more impressed if he had not known that these were the very chambers that had given the Bloody Keep its name. A thousand years before, the sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so the pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland.
But Theon was a Greyjoy, and Greyjoys were not murdered in Pyke, except once in a great while by their brothers, and his brothers were both mercifully dead. It was not the memories of ancient murders that made him glance about with distaste. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the mattress musty-smelling and sagging, and rushes old and brittle. It had been years since these chambers had last been opened. The damp went bone deep.
“I’ll have a basin of hot water, and a fire in this hearth,” he told the crone. “See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes.”
“Yes, m’lord. As you command.” She fled.
After some time, they brought the hot water he had asked for. It was only tepid, and soon cold, and seawater in the bargain, but it served to wash the dust of the long ride from his face and hair and hands. As bondservants scurried about lighting braziers, Theon stripped off his travel-stained clothing and dressed to meet his father. He chose boots of supple black leather, soft lambswool breeches of silvery-grey, a black velvet doublet with the golden kraken of the Greyjoys embroidered on the breast. Around his throat he fastened a slender gold chain, around his waist a belt of bleached white leather. He hung a dirk at one hip and a longsword at the other, in scabbards striped black-and-gold. Drawing the dirk, he tested its edge with his thumb, pulled a whetstone from his belt pouch, and gave it a few licks. He prided himself on keeping his weapons sharp. “When I return, I shall expect a warm room and clean rushes,” he warned the bondservants as he drew on a pair of black gloves, the silk decorated with a delicate scrollwork tracery in golden thread.
Theon returned to the Great Keep through a covered stone walkway, the echoes of his footsteps mingling with the ceaseless rumble of the sea below. To get to the Sea Tower on its
crooked pillar, he must needs cross three further bridges, each narrower than the one before. The last was made of rope and wood, and the wet salt wind made it sway underfoot like a living thing. Theon’s heart was in his mouth by the time he was halfway across. A long way below, the waves threw up tall plumes of spray as they crashed against the rock. As a boy, he used to run across this bridge, even in the black of night. Boys believe nothing can hurt them, his doubt whispered. Grown men know better.
The door was narrow, made of grey wood studded with iron, and Theon found it barred from the inside. He hammered on it with a fist, and cursed when a splinter snagged the fine silk of his glove. The wood was damp and moldy, the iron studs rusted.
After a moment the door was opened from within by a guard in a black iron breastplate and pothelm. “You are the son?”
“Out of my way, or you’ll learn who I am, to your sorrow.” The man stood aside. Theon climbed the twisting steps to the solar. He found his father seated beside a brazier, beneath a robe of musty sealskins that covered him foot to chin. At the sound of boots on stone, the Lord of the Iron Islands lifted his eyes to behold his last living son. He was smaller than Theon remembered him. And so gaunt. Balon Greyjoy had always been thin, but now he looked as though the gods had put him in a cauldron and boiled every spare ounce of flesh from his bones, until nothing remained but hair and skin. Bone thin and bone hard he was, with a face that might have been chipped from flint. His eyes were flinty too, black and sharp, but the years and the salt winds had turned his hair the grey of a winter sea, flecked with whitecaps. Unbound, it hung past the small of the back.
“Nine years, is it?” Lord Balon said at last.
“Ten,” Theon answered, pulling off his torn gloves.
“A boy they took,” his father said. “What are you now?”
“A man,” Theon answered. “Your blood and your heir.”
Lord Balon grunted. “We shall see.”
“You shall,” Theon promised.
“Ten years, you say. Stark had you as long as I. And now you come as his envoy.”
“Not his,” Theon said. “Lord Eddard is dead, beheaded by the Lannister queen.”
“They are both dead,” Lord Balon said. “Stark, and that Robert who took broke my walls with his stones. Once I vowed I’d live to see them both in their graves, and now I have.” He grimaced. “Yet the cold and the damp still make my joints ache, as when they were alive. So what does it serve?”
“It serves.” Theon moved closer. “I bring a letter—”
“Did Ned Stark dress you like that?” his father interrupted, squinting up from beneath his robe. “Was it his pleasure to garb you in velvets and silks and make you his own sweet daughter?”
Theon felt the blood rising to his face. “I am no man’s daughter. If you mislike my garb, I will change it.”
“You will,” Lord Balon agreed brusquely. Throwing off the fur robe, he pushed himself to his feet. He was not so tall as Theon remembered. “That bauble around your neck—did you buy it with gold or iron?”
Theon touched the gold chain, at a loss for words. He had forgotten. It has been so long…In the Old Way, only women decorated themselves with ornaments bought with coin. A warrior wore only the jewelry he took off the corpses of enemies slain by his own hand. Paying the iron price, it was called:
“You blush red as a maid, Theon,” his father said. “A question was asked. Is it the gold price you paid, or the iron?”
“The gold,” Theon admitted.
His father slid his fingers under the necklace and gave it a yank so hard it was like to take Theon’s head off, had the chain not snapped first. “My daughter has taken an axe for a lover,” Lord Balon said. “I will not have my son bedeck himself like a whore.” He dropped the broken chain onto the brazier, where it slid down among the coals. “It is as I feared. The green lands have made you soft, and the Starks have made you theirs.”
“You’re wrong,” Theon said. “Ned Stark was my gaoler, but my blood is still salt and iron.”
Lord Balon turned away and warmed his boney hands over the brazier. “Yet the Stark pup sends you to me like a well-trained raven, clutching his little message.”
“There is nothing small about the letter I bear,” Theon said, “and the offer he makes is one I suggested to him.”
“This wolf king heeds your counsel, does he?” The notion seemed to amuse Lord Balon.
“He heeds me, yes. I’ve hunted with him, trained with him, shared meat and mead with him, warred at his side. I have earned his trust. He looks on me as an older brother, he—”
“No.” His father jabbed a finger at his face. “Not here, not in Pyke, not in my hearing, you will not name him brother, this son of the man who put your true brothers to the sword. Or have you forgotten Rodrik and Maron, who were your own blood?”
“I forget nothing.” Theon might have reminded his father that Ned Stark had killed neither of his sons, in truth. Rodrik had been slain by Lord Jason Mallister at Seagard, Maron crushed in the collapse of the old south tower…but Stark would have done for them just as quick had the tide of battle chanced to sweep them together. “I remember my brothers very well,” he said instead. Chiefly he remembered Rodrik’s drunken cuffs and Maron’s cruel japes and endless lies. “I remember when my father was a king, too.” He took out the letter Robb had given him, and thrust it forward. “Here. Read it…Your Grace.”
Lord Balon broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. His black eyes flicked back and forth. “So the boy would give me a crown again,” he said, “and all I need do is destroy his enemies.” His thin lips twisted in a smile.
“By now Robb is likely besieging the Golden Tooth,” Theon said. “Once it falls, he’ll be through the hills in a day. Lord Tywin and his host are at Harrenhal, cut off from the west. The Kingslayer is a captive at Riverrun. Only Ser Stafford Lannister and the raw green levies he’s been gathering remain to oppose Robb in the west. Ser Stafford will have no choice but to put himself between Robb’s army and Lannisport…which means the city will be undefended when we descend on it by sea. If the gods are with us, even Casterly Rock itself may fall before the Lannisters so much as realize that we are upon them.”
Lord Balon grunted. “Casterly Rock has never fallen.”
“Until now.” Theon smiled. And how sweet that will be.
His father did not return the smile. “So this is why Robb Stark sends you back to me, after so long? So you might win my consent to this plan of his?”
“It is my plan, not Robb’s,” Theon said proudly. Mine, as the victory will be mine, and in time the crown. “I will lead the attack myself, if it please you. As my reward I would ask that you grant me Casterly Rock for my own seat, once we have taken it from the Lannisters.” With the Rock, he could hold Lannisport and the green lands of the west, and the gold-rich hills that surrounded them. It would mean wealth and power such as House Greyjoy had never known.
“You reward yourself handsomely for a notion and a few lines of scribbling.” His father read the letter again. “The pup says nothing about a reward. Only that you speak for him, and I am to listen, and give him my sails and swords, and in return he will give me a crown.” His flinty eyes lifted to meet his son’s. “He will give me a crown,” he repeated, his voice growing sharp.
“A poor choice of words, what is meant is—”
“What is meant is what is said. The boy will give me a crown. And what is given can be taken away.” Lord Balon tossed the letter onto the brazier, atop the necklace. The parchment curled, blackened, and took flame.
Theon was aghast. “Have you gone mad?”
His father laid a stinging backhand across his cheek. “Mind your tongue. You are not in Winterfell now, and I am not Robb the Boy, that you should speak to me so. I am the Greyjoy, Lord Reaper of Pyke, King of Salt and Rock, Son of the Sea Wind, and no man gives me a crown. I pay the iron price. I will take my crown, as Urron Redhand did five thousand years ago.”
Acknowledgments
The devil is in the details, they say.
A book this size has a lot of devils, any one of which will bite you if you don’t watch out. Fortunately, I know a lot of angels.
Thanks and appreciation, therefore, to all those good folks who so kindly lent me their ears and their expertise (and in some cases their books) so I could get all those little details right—to Sage Walker, Martin Wright, Melinda Snodgrass, Carl Keim, Bruce Baugh, Tim O’Brien, Roger Zelazny, Jane Lindskold, and Laura J. Mixon, and of course to Parris.
And a special thanks to Jennifer Hershey, for labors above and beyond the call…
About the Author
A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin is the author of eight novels, several collections of short stories and numerous screenplays for television dramas and feature films. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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