A man of the summer isles

[Poepoe]

In that fateful year, before the haughtiness of the sons of Valyria would bring about a great cataclysm and send red wave upon wave of war crashing on the known world, many manifold signs and portents in the heavens and on the earth announced a great shifting of the world's axis.

Contemporary chroniclers in Sarnath relate that, beginning with springtime, myriads of locusts swarmed from the East, destroying the grain and the tall grass. In the autumn prior, the sky had turned the color of a bruised plum; soon after, in Qarth, a vision of a weeping dragon and a molten city was seen over the Hall of the Thousand Thrones by a warlock who became catatonic shortly thereafter.

In the southern provinces of the Sarnori plains, many farmers bore witness to calves being born with two heads. The rivers churned as if they did not know their own banks. The waters of the Sarnori plains were not merely boundaries, but the very veins of a dying giant. The River Sarne, that king of northern waters, swelled until it resembled a moving sea, carrying with it the shattered trunks of sentinel trees from the Hinterlands.

It was a season of omens, where the reflection of the fiery red stars in the water seemed like bloodstains that no current could wash away. Along the shores were nestled the silver-domed cities of the Sarnori, like islands in a sea of green, but in the deep reeds no man dwelt; only the restless spirits of the Ifequevron were said to linger there.

The waters were a treacherous realm where the Sarnori barges permitted the Ibbenese to trade their oil. As night came down upon the Three Lakes, so too came the hour of ghosts. Fishermen in skin-boats related that the shades of the Rhoynar—long dead and scattered—used to rise from the deeps and sing dirges for the world that was passing. It was said, too, that the shades of drowned charioteers coursed across the surface of the Lake of Hope, begging for a dry grave.

Rainfalls were frequent. The steppe was drenched and became an immense slough. The sun was so warm-yet wonder of wonders!—in the Red waste, a ghostly green fleece covered the plains, flickering into existence moment to moment. Since such an order of things appeared altogether unnatural, all men in Essos who were looking for unusual events turned their eyes this way and that, for a new and terrible danger began to stir.

At that time, there was nothing unusual in the grasslands—no struggles there beyond those of ordinary occurrence. The marches were of this character at that period: the last traces of settled life ended at the walls of the Sathar and Gornarth. From there to the Bone Mountains, there was nothing but steppe after steppe, hemmed in by the great rivers. In the lower country, near the ruins of Old Ghis, the life of the harpies was seething in the colonial cities of Astapor and Mereen, but in the open central plains, no man dwelt permanently; only along the shores of the Sarne were nestled little fields.

The land belonged in name to the High king of sarnor, but it was an empty land in which the nomadic horsemen grazed their herds; but since the Sarnori charioteers prevented this frequently, the field of pasture was a field of battle too. How many struggles were fought in that region, no man could know. The eagles and ravens alone possessed the lore, and whoever from a distance beheld the whirl of birds circling over one place knew that corpses of Tall Men or horselords were lying beneath.

Men were hunted in the grass as wolves. The armed herdsman guarded his flock, the warrior sought adventure, and the Ibbenese whaler sought trade on the coast. The steppe was both empty and filled, quiet and terrible; wild by reason of its plains, but wild, too, from the spirit of men who dreamed of days they would no longer fear the shadow of a dragon.

Into this epoch a man rides forth: a man of the Summer Isles—an exile, a slayer, a rogue, a brigand, a cutthroat, a rake. A man on the thundering hooves of a large, frenzied zorse named Earthshaker, riding towards the city of Sarnath.

The air in the Gilded wheel was a thick, choking fog of wine, oil, incense, roasting meat, and sweating bodies. Here, on the edge of Sarnath's low-town where the silver domes give way to timber and back alleys, the stakes were high and the tempers higher. the barkeep was swabbing the counter, keeping a wary eye on a table of Ibbenese sailors who were one insult away from a gut-splitting, when the heavy oak doors groaned on their hinges.

In the doorway stood a menacing figure. He was a tall, powerfully built man, the steel trap fuse of his thick muscles apparent in the rolling waves of vitality eminating off him. The light of the whale-oil lamps danced off his suit of silvered mail that shimmered like a fish's scales. It was a fine, supple weave of steel that hung to his knees, moving with the fluid grace of silk. At his hip swung a long, wickedly curved saber, its hilt capped with an onyx stone as black as a demon's heart, matched by a heavy-bladed dagger at the other side of his wide belt.

Across his broad shoulders was slung a bow of rare goldenwood, a weapon of the Summer seas that could send a shaft through a Sarnori buckler at a hundred paces. He wore vambraces and greaves of polished steel over blue buckskin pants that looked soft as a maiden's cheek, and a vibrant yellow sash—the color of a desert sun—was knotted tight about his middle. But it was the helm that held the room's gaze: a pointed silver cask with a visor wrought in the snarling likeness of a Great White shark, cold and merciless.

He stood there for a heartbeat, his blazing black eyes roaming the whole room with an irresistible gaze. Then, with a light brown leather gloved hand, he flipped the shark-visor upward.

The face beneath was darker than even that of a Sarnori lord. He was a son of the Summer Isles, of that there could be no doubt, his skin the deep, rich hue of polished mahogany, looking no more than five and twenty. He looked about in a hungry and lustful fashion. A wide, shark like grin split his face, showing teeth that seemed almost too white and too sharp for a common man.

He didn't walk; he swaggered, his mail clinking a rhythmic, deadly song as he moved toward the high stakes table in the corner. The gamblers there, all them to a man hard eyed and old hands at ferocity drew back unconsciously as he approached. With a casual flick of his powerful wrist, he unslung a heavy leather purse from his belt.

It hit the table with a dull, ringing thud, the unmistakable sound of pure gold. He leaned over the table, his eyes dancing with a wild, wolfish light.

"In?" he asked, his voice a low, melodic growl that carried the scent of far off seas. "Or are you lot just playing at being men of fortune?"

 

[Poepoe]

The heavy leather purse hit the scarred wood of the table with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil. Gold coins shifted inside, a muffled ringing that cut through the low roar of the Gilded Wheel. The man from the Summer Isles leaned forward, his silvered mail catching the flickering amber light of the oil lamps. He smelled of sea salt, expensive wine, and the raw, musk scent of a man who had ridden a zorse across a thousand miles of dust and grass.

"In?" he asked again, his voice like the slow grind of stones underwater.

The gamblers at the table were a motley collection of Sarnori merchants in silk and Ibbenese whalers with thick, braided beards. They looked at the purse, then up at the silver shark-mask pushed back to reveal a face of dark mahogany and eyes that danced with a wild, drunken light. A merchant with a thin mustache and trembling fingers pushed a stack of silver coins toward the center.

"The game is High-Low, stranger," the merchant muttered, his eyes darting to the onyx-capped saber at the man's hip. "Three dice, highest total takes the pot, but the low-man pays the house tax."

The Summer Islander let out a booming laugh that shook the cups of sour red wine on the table. He reached out and grabbed the dice cup, shaking it with a violent, rhythmic energy that seemed to vibrate in his very bones. His movements were loose and swaying, the sign of a man deep in his cups, yet there was no fumbling in his grip. His fingers were steady as iron.
He slammed the cup down. The dice rattled and died.
Three sixes stared back at the room.

"Fortune is a fickle mistress," the man roared, baring teeth that were startlingly white against his dark skin. "But tonight, she seems to like the smell of a rogue."

He swept the silver into his lap with a casual, powerful motion. For the next hour, the table became a vortex of gold and greed. He played with a reckless, terrifying abandon. He bet entire handfuls of gold on a single roll, lost them with a shrug and a joke, and then won them back threefold on the next toss. His laughter was the loudest thing in the tavern, a predatory sound that made the Ibbenese sailors tighten their grip on their knives. He was genuinely drunk, swaying in his seat and shouting for more wine, yet he never missed a beat of the game.

When the pile of coin in front of him reached a height that made the barkeep nervous, the man stood up and slammed his fist onto the table.
"Wine for everyone!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the timber beams. "To Sarnath, the city of silver domes and golden fools! Drink until your bellies ache, for tomorrow we may all be ghosts!"

The tavern erupted in a cheer that drowned out the rain outside. As the barkeep scrambled to fill flagons, the mood in the room shifted from tense suspicion to a blurred, drunken camaraderie. The man slumped back into his chair, a fresh goblet of heavy Sarnori wine in his hand, and began to listen. He wasn't subtle about it, leaning his head back and closing his eyes as if falling asleep, but his ears were tuned to the murmurs around him.

A disgruntled guard in a stained leather jerkin sat to his left, nursing a drink paid for by the stranger's gold. The guard leaned over to a companion, his voice thick with bitterness.

"The High King's court is rotting from the inside," the guard spat. "Lord Varos spends more on his private experiments than he does on the wall patrols. They say he brought a jewel out of the Hinterlands, a stone the size of a man's fist that glows with a sickly green light. He calls it the Star of Ifequevron. He sits in that silver manse of his, whispering to the air while we rot in the mud for a pittance."

At the mention of the jewel, the Summer Islander's eyes snapped open. The drunken haze didn't disappear, but a sharp, cold twinkle ignited deep within his black pupils. He knew that name. He remembered the old songs sung on the sun-drenched piers of Tall Trees Town, songs of a stone that could bridge the gap between the world of men and the things that dwelt in the deep reeds.

He sat up, draining his wine in one long, messy gulp. He didn't say a word. He simply stood, cinched his belt tight, and flipped the silver shark-visor down over his face. The laughing rogue was gone, replaced by a cold, metallic predator. He swaggered toward the door, his mail clinking a deadly song.
The night air was cold and wet, the "bruised plum" sky of the evening now turned to a pitch-black void. He stood in the alleyway behind the Gilded Wheel, the alcohol humming in his blood and making the world tilt slightly. He looked up at the distant, shimmering domes of the high-town.

"A glowing rock," he whispered to the shadows, his shark-grin hidden behind the silver steel. "And a lord who talks to the air. It would be a crime to leave him to his solitude."

He began to move, not with the heavy tread of a soldier, but with the fluid, silent grace of a leopard. He navigated the back alleys and timber-rot of the low-town until the walls of Lord Varos's manse loomed over him like a mountain of pale stone. It was a sheer, imposing surface, but to his wine-soaked brain, it looked like a challenge.

He spat on his gloved hands, looked at the high balcony above, and began to climb. He didn't use a rope or a hook. He simply found the narrowest cracks in the masonry, his thick muscles bunching and rolling under his mail as he hauled his heavy frame upward with a strength that defied the gravity of his intoxication. He was halfway up, his fingers dug into a decorative molding, when he saw a flicker of movement below.
A woman, draped in a dark cloak, was slipping out of a side postern door. She moved with a desperate, hurried grace, looking back over her shoulder at the silent manse.

The man on the wall went still, his silvered mail blending into the grey stone. The twinkle in his eyes returned. The jewel could wait a moment. The lady of the house was going somewhere, and where there was a secret lady, there was usually a secret door.
He pushed off the wall and dropped silently into the shadows of a nearby garden, a silver shark following a trail of silk and scandal.