The Breaker of the Oceans, Chapter 26

“Huh? My father’s getting married again?” Hela muttered, the edge of her voice barely audible over the creak of the Doom’s rigging.

She stood by the lantern light with the message in hand, a slip of parchment sealed in crimson wax, the imprint of the kraken pressed deep. The words were few, but they bore weight. A new union. Valon Greyjoy, the Golden Kraken, Lord Reaver of Pyke and richest man in Westeros by any tongue worth its salt, was to be wed. His bride, none other than Tyla Lannister, youngest sister of Lord Tymond.

“The wedding’s in five months and, apparently, the entirety of the Royal Family, including King Viserys, Queen Alicent, and all their children will be there as well.” Hela raised a brow and let out a short exhale through her nose. “Sounds like quite the party.” 

She turned her gaze to the man still kneeling before her.

The messenger was lean and bent at the spine, his cloak stiff with salt. The sand of long travel clung to his boots and beard. His face was lined with windburn. Soren Alson, watching from the shadows beyond the mast, figured the man must have crossed every cursed mile of the Shadow Lands to reach them. Few reached Asshai on purpose. Fewer still left it again.

Hela tossed him a small pouch. It struck the deck near his feet and the clink of gold rang against the silence. 

“Drink something that isn’t mud,” she said. Then she waved him off without another word.

The man bowed low, took the pouch without counting, and vanished below deck where the crew might feed him, or ignore him, or let him collapse in sleep.

Soren followed her to the rail. The air was thick with ash and fog. Beyond the Doom’s side, the black waters of the harbor rolled slow and still. Asshai did not gleam in the dark. It crouched against the coast like a carcass, its towers and domes draped in moss and silence. The city did not move. The city did not breathe. It merely watched.

The other Einherjar were scattered through the decks. Some sparred by torchlight. Others lounged beneath the stars with their blades across their laps, always within reach. No man on the Doom ever sheathed his sword for long. But none stirred now. The crew knew the voice of parchment and the weight of silence that followed it.

Soren came to stand beside her, arms folded. 

“So,” he said. “Shall we return to Westeros for the wedding, my lady?”

Her eyes did not move from the sea.

“Not until I can figure out how to hatch that damn egg.”

It was not a complaint. It was a vow.

Below deck, sealed in a chamber of obsidian and reinforced oak, suspended within a cradle of twisted Valyrian steel wires, hung the egg. It did not rest on any surface. It was held in the air by the cradle, far from any wood or cloth it might burn through. When it had first stirred, the planks of the cabin floor had blackened beneath it. One man, foolish enough to touch it, bore a burn down to the bone. He had not touched it again.

The egg pulsed now and then. Heat shimmered around it, though no fire touched it. Its shell, crimson veined with gold, gave off a low hum when the ship was quiet. The sound reminded Soren of wind whistling through stone teeth.

It did not hatch. It almost seemed like it didn’t want to. A few of his fellow Einherjar wondered if there was naught in it but liquid fire and dark magic. Still, the Lady Reaper refused to leave it behind.

Soren leaned his elbows on the rail. “Might be it’s waiting, my lady.”

“For what?”

“A storm. A death. A name. Maybe a pool of blood to simmer in. Who knows? I don’t think even the Targaryens know what causes dragons to hatch.”

“That is true,” Hela shrugged. “They hatch when they feel like it–or a Targaryen babe bonds with one that’s already hatched or grown.” 

The egg was one of the reasons she came all the way to Asshai, ahead of the Stormrider’s second voyage. The Shadowbinders here were said to hold knowledge–ancient knowledge–regarding the hatching of eggs, but–thus far–none of them knew anything helpful and most of them were deadly afraid of the Red Scourge, though Soren could not fault them for their fear of Hela Greyjoy, whose shadow stretched from the Iron Islands all the way to the edge of Essos, feared by witches and warlocks and demons and wizards.

And so, here they were, in the famed city of darkness and not a single step closer to hatching the egg.

Hela said nothing.

The wind turned, slow and without sound. The fog shifted like a living thing drawing breath, and for a moment the horizon cleared. The towers of Asshai rose higher in the dark. Lean and crooked and wrong. One near the center caught the moonlight and threw it back green, not in firelight or lantern-glow, but something fouler. Nothing moved within. No smoke. No sound. No birds upon its ledges. Soren stared at it and did not blink.

It was like the tower he’d seen once in Qarth. The warlocks had gathered there in silence, draped in layered robes of nightshade and dusk. They had bowed before her. Had whispered in tongues as brittle and dry as old skin. She had not answered. They had left bowls of ash, figures carved in stone, things shaped like things no man had names for, and vanished into the fog without even the creak of sandals.

The deck groaned underfoot. The sails hung slack. Far off, the sea made no sound. A gull cried once and was quiet.

Soren straightened. The words came out steady, rehearsed maybe. “If I may say, my lady, your father still choosing to marry again means he’s marrying for love—for no prospect could ever entice a man of his wealth and power.”

“Love?” she said.

The green came then. A sharp flicker behind her eyes like lightning behind glass. The Einherjar behind him stepped back as one. Leather and mail creaked. One of them made the sign they used against spirits.

Soren did not move.

She stared at him. Or through him. The green flash passed. Her jaw tensed and released. Then she turned. No curse. No blow. No tree ripped from its roots and hurled into the sea, no man ripped limb from limb or flayed alive. She simply turned and stepped away and laid her weight against the mast.

Her eyes fixed on something far. Her breath shallow. Her shoulders still.

The tower behind them gleamed again. That sickly light, pale and pulsing.

The wind died. The fog closed again.

“Odin married for love too.”

Soren blinked. The name came like it always did. Unbidden. Heavy. It hung there between them. A word that meant nothing and yet made the air colder when it was said.

He had heard it before. Once on the stormcoast near Lys, when the Lady had stood unmoving as thunder rolled over the cliffs. Once again in Yi Ti, beneath the lantern-boughs, when the traders spoke of the parenting of gods and she had gone silent. Each time it was spoken, it came like the end of a thought, not the start. No explanation followed. No tale.

Lord Valon had confessed once that he did not know the name either. Had never known. But he had heard her say it. Twice, maybe. Lord Yarrek had said the same. The name was not of the Iron Isles. Not of the First Men. Not Rhoynar. Not Valyrian. It belonged nowhere. And yet it lived in her mouth like something old and buried that refused to rot.

Every Einherjar aboard had heard it, too. Spoken not in rage or grief, but in that same low tone. As though she were answering someone only she could hear.

The name did not match her. Not the way she fought. Not the way she stood. But it lingered. And it dug.

So Soren drew breath. The deck shifted beneath him. The ropes clinked. He spoke. “My lady. You’ve said that name more than once. Forgive me, but… who is Odin?”

She looked at him then. Just her eyes. The rest of her did not move. Her mouth opened like she might speak, then closed. Her jaw tensed once. She turned from him, hand curling against the mast, knuckles pale. Then she shook her head.

“No one you need concern yourself with,” she said. A beat passed. She looked up at the sky as if expecting something–or someone. And then she turned away. “I hope.”

The wind rose and fell again. The sails groaned. The tower in the dark gleamed faint and sickly. Behind them, the fog pulled tighter round the ship. The Lady Reaper forced a smile. “Whatever the case, I am happy for my father and, perhaps, it would be very important to him that I attended his wedding.” 

“However,” she said, the words slow and even, “the Doom won’t take more than three months to reach Westeros. Less, even. We’ve no trade goods slowing us down.”

The sails creaked above them. A gull wheeled once and vanished into the dark. No other ships in sight. Only the sea and the city ahead.

Soren tilted his head. “Have you another adventure in mind, my lady?”

She turned. The green was back in her eyes now. Bright as lantern-flame. Dangerous.

“You mentioned a pool of blood,” she said. “To try and hatch the egg.”

She smiled. Not wide. Just enough.

“That’s something we’ve not tried.”

A silence passed. The wind shifted. The fog behind them rolled low over the water.

“This city,” she said, glancing toward the black towers. “Asshai. It happens to be full of Shadowbinders.”

She turned back to him, the grin still faint on her lips, the green in her eyes burning steadier now.

“I believe their blood should do the trick. Don’t you agree?”

Soren’s teeth showed. His shoulders rolled back and settled low. The men around them—Einherjar, each one pulled from a hundred battles, killers forged in salt and fire—turned toward one another and grinned. No laughter. Just the bare gleam of teeth in shadowed faces. Wolves, all of them. And they were hungry.

“We’ll find every last one in this blasted city,” she said. “And see if your theory holds.”

The masts groaned. The sea whispered against the hull. The fog swallowed sound. The ship slid forward, slow and steady. The city loomed before them now. Towers like broken fingers, black and wet with mist. No lights in the windows. No guards on the dock. No word of welcome.

“Prepare your weapons,” she said. “Gather your wits.”

The gangplank dropped with a hollow thud. Hela stepped first onto the stones. Her boots struck the dock with no echo. The city swallowed sound.

Behind her came the Einherjar. Clad in midnight armor. Greaves and pauldrons the color of coal. Axes and blades sheathed in dark leather. Helmets low, visors shut. Some bore chains. Others bore spears. They moved without chant or war cry. Like shadows marching.

No one had ever taken Asshai by storm. Not in all the years the world had turned. Not by sword, nor fire, nor siege. But they came just the same. Into the alleys and tunnels and sunken halls. Through crooked doors and broken domes. Where the old things whispered and the walls were slick with oils no rain had ever made.

The screams began with the first door kicked in. A warlock dragged by his throat into the street. Then two more. Then a dozen. The Red Priests screamed into their flames. The Shadowbinders died silent, their masks shattering under axe blows. Scribes with black tongues were put to the sword. Their scrolls burned in piles. Sorcerers begged. The Einherjar did not answer.

It lasted through the night.

By dawn the gutters ran red. Smoke curled from old towers. Doors swung open to silence. And still they worked.

The last of them—a tall thing with silvered skin and no mouth—was pulled from the depths of a ruined hall. It thrashed. Soren drove a blade through its neck. Its blood was thick and tar-dark. They dragged it to the pit where the others had bled.

And when the sun broke the horizon, low and colorless over the eastern peaks, she came.

Hela.

Boots slick with ash. Cloak torn. Cuts across her arms that steamed where the wind touched them.

She carried the egg.

It pulsed with heat. Black and shot through with red veins of fire. Smoke curled from its surface.

She did not speak. She stepped forward. Knelt. Lowered the egg with both hands into the pit of blood. Her palms sizzled. She did not flinch.

The blood hissed. The egg drank. The ground trembled.

No one moved.

And then, a crack.