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?"

 

[Hadoken7120]

An ASOIAF fic that isn't nsfw is a choice

 

[Simplexity]

Oooooooh A Summer Islander fic!!! Finally!!!!

 

[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.

 

[Poepoe]

The woman moved with the hurried, nervous grace of a doe sensing a wolf in the tall grass. She clutched her dark cloak tight against the chill of the Sarnori night, her soft leather boots making no more sound than a falling leaf on the damp cobblestones. She did not look up, and so she did not see the silvered shape that flitted from shadow to shadow above her, leaping from the low timber roofs to the stone lintels with the heavy, silent lunges of a great cat.

The Summer Islander felt the wine singing in his ears, a warm and rhythmic thrum that made the world feel small and his own strength feel limitless. He followed her past the scented gardens of the high-town and into a secluded grove of trees that wept grey sap into a stagnant pool. There, beneath the twisted white branches, a man waited. He was younger than the lords of the silver domes, dressed in the simple, rugged wool of a master-of-horse, his face etched with a desperate sort of hunger.

The woman threw herself into his arms, her hood falling back to reveal a face of pale, haunting beauty and eyes that were red from weeping.

"Varos is lost to us," she sobbed, her voice a jagged whisper that carried clearly to the man perched in the branches above. "He does not sleep, he does not eat, he only whispers to that gods-forsaken stone in the dark of the cellar. He says the eye is opening, and that the lords of the deep reeds are calling for a tithe."

The lover stroked her hair, his hands trembling.

"Then we fly tonight, my lady. The horses are readied by the western gate. We leave the madness and the jewels to the ghosts."
They did not fly immediately. In the shadow of the weeping trees, they sought a frantic, stolen comfort in each other's arms, their passion fueled by the terror of the manse they had left behind. From his perch, the shark-masked rogue watched with a disinterested, wolfish patience. He checked the edge of his heavy-bladed dagger with a thumb, blending into the gloom of the grove.

When at last they pulled apart, the woman wiping her eyes and pulling her cloak back over her head, she turned to head back toward the manse.
"I must gather the last of the silks," she whispered. "Meet me at the postern gate when the moon hits the apex of the Great Dome."

She hurried back toward the pale stone walls of the manse, unaware of the shadow that had detached itself from the weir-wood tree and was now closing the distance behind her. She reached the small, hidden door she had used to escape and fumbled with a heavy iron key.

The click of the lock was followed immediately by the cold, biting kiss of steel against the side of her throat.

A massive, warm hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream before it could even begin. She felt the crushing weight of silvered mail pressing against her back and smelled the sharp, unmistakable scent of strong wine and sea salt.

"Not a sound, little bird," a voice growled into her ear, a low and melodic sound that made the hair on her neck stand up. "Unless you want your lover to find a corpse waiting for him at the western gate."

The Summer Islander flipped his shark-visor up with his free hand, his white teeth baring in a grin that held no warmth. His dark eyes, clouded with drink but sharp with intent, stared into hers.

"The Star of Ifequevron," he whispered, the blade of his dagger pressing just deep enough to draw a single, bead-like drop of blood. "Lead me to where your husband plays with his new toy, and perhaps you'll live long enough to see your horseman again."

Terrified and trembling, she nodded. She led him through the postern door and into the hushed, opulence of the manse. They moved through corridors of polished marble and tapestries that depicted the ancient wars of the Sarnori, the rogue's boots thudding softly on the thick rugs.

"Down," she choked out, pointing toward a heavy, iron-bound door at the end of a service hall. "The old wine cellar. He had the masons dig it deeper, into the bedrock. He is there now."

The man from the Summer Isles did not hesitate. He led her to a nearby linen closet, his movements efficient and cold. He used a length of silk sash to bind her wrists and ankles, and stuffed a fine lace handkerchief into her mouth to act as a gag. He looked at her for a moment, his head tilting as the wine gave him a sudden, fleeting thought of mercy.
"Stay quiet and stay hidden," he said, his voice softening just a fraction. "If I'm not back in an hour, your lover will come looking. If I am back, you'll be the richest widow in Sarnath."

He shut the door and turned toward the cellar. As he descended the winding stone stairs, the air began to change. The smell of dust and old wine was replaced by a sharp, metallic tang that tasted like copper on his tongue. The walls began to weep a sickly, phosphorescent moisture, and a low, dissonant humming began to vibrate in his very teeth.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and peered around the edge of an arched doorway.

The cellar had been transformed into a nightmare of geometry and gore. Great circles of salt and ash covered the floor, and in the center stood Lord Varos. The courtier was a ruin of a man, his silk robes tattered and his eyes recessed so far into his skull they looked like empty sockets. He held a massive, jagged jewel that pulsed with a rhythmic, emerald light, a light that seemed to swallow the shadows rather than cast them.

In front of Varos, the air itself was tearing open. A shimmering, oily portal hung in the center of the room, and through the translucent film of reality, something was looking back. It was a mass of wet, grey flesh and lidless, pulsating eyes, a thing from the epoch before men, pressing its bulk against the barrier of the world.

The Summer Islander stood in the shadows, his hand going to the hilt of his saber. The wine in his blood felt suddenly very cold.

Standing at the threshold of the abyss, the wine in his veins turning to ice as he watched the impossible unfold.

A shaft of light, thick and viscous like liquid emerald, erupted from the center of the oily portal. It didn't just illuminate the cellar; it roared with a sound like grinding teeth. The beam struck Lord Varos square in the chest, lifting the frail courtier off his feet. The man's tattered silks burned away, but the flesh beneath did not char. It surged. The deep hollows of his eyes filled with bright, predatory life, his greyed skin turning the color of polished ivory, and his withered muscles swelling with a sudden, unnatural vitality. In heartbeats, the dying old man was gone, replaced by a youth of divine, terrifying beauty—a god-king sculpted from stolen light.

"The tithe!" Varos screamed in ecstasy, his voice no longer a rasp but a exaltant golden chime that shook the stone walls. "The gate is open! hahahaha mow i can fina-ggrkkkhh"

The rogue didn't wait for the sermon. With a motion so fluid it seemed born of instinct rather than thought, he reached to his belt. His heavy-bladed dagger left his hand in a silver blur, a streak of cold steel cutting through the emerald haze.

The blade took Varos truly. It buried itself to the hilt in the center of that handsome, rejuvenated forehead.

The golden chime of Varos's voice cut into a wet, gurgling choked sound. His hands flew up, the Star of Ifequevron slipping from his spasmodic grip. The jewel hit the stone floor with a ringing thud and rolled into a dark corner, its rhythmic pulse dying instantly. Without its anchor, the portal shivered. The mass of wet, grey flesh on the other side let out a muffled, subterranean bellow before the tear in reality snapped shut with a vacuum-pop that shattered every wine bottle in the room.

Silence fell, heavy and thick with the smell of ozone.

The Summer Islander exhaled, a cloud of wine-scented breath. "Dead is dead," he grunted, his hand moving to the hilt of his saber. "God-king or no."

But that terrible latent power of abomination and madness had nowhere to go. The sickly emerald energy that had been flowing into Varos was trapped within a corpse that refused to stay cold, it crackled and danced as if an echo of far flung darker corners of reality.

And then a sickening, wet crack echoed in the cellar.

Varos's body, still pinned by the dagger, began to twitch. The ivory skin didn't just sag; it bubbled. The beautiful face split down the center, the dagger falling out as the bone beneath reconstructed itself into something elongated and jagged. His limbs lengthened, snapping at the joints and re-setting at impossible angles. The ivory flesh turned a bruised, mottled purple, and thick, translucent quills sprouted from his spine like the needles of a sea urchin.

The thing that rose from the floor was nearly seven feet tall, a hunched, hairless nightmare with four spindly arms ending in hooked, obsidian talons. Its head was a featureless slab of muscle, save for a vertical, multi-rowed maw that dripped a glowing, corrosive bile.

The rogue felt a cold sweat break across his mahogany brow. He drew his saber, the onyx-capped hilt fitting perfectly into his palm. He kicked a shattered crate out of his way, his boots crunching on glass.

"You were much prettier a moment ago," he growled, flipping the shark-visor down.

The monster didn't growl. It lunged.

It moved with the speed of a snapping whip, its upper talons whistling through the air where the rogue's head had been a second before. The Summer Islander spun, his mail clinking in a frantic rhythm as he rolled across the salt-stained floor. He came up swinging, his saber whistling in a low arc that bit deep into the creature's thigh.

Instead of red blood, a thick, glowing ichor sprayed against his silvered greaves, hissing as it touched the metal. The beast didn't flinch. It backhanded him with a secondary limb, a blow that caught him in the ribs and sent him flying backward into a rack of ancient, rotting casks.

He hit the wood with a bone-jarring impact, the world spinning in a red-and-green blur. The wine in his head was suddenly a liability, making the floor feel like the deck of a ship in a gale. He saw the monster crouching, coiling its powerful, mutated legs for another leap.

"Earthshaker take you," the rogue hissed, spitting a mouthful of blood into the dust. He tightened his grip on the saber, his knuckles turned almost white.

The beast lunged again, a blur of mottled purple and obsidian claws. The Summer Islander didn't meet the charge; he threw himself sideways, the monster's talons splintering the heavy oak casks where his skull had been a heartbeat before. Sour, century-old wine exploded in a dark spray, drenching the rogue and slicking the floor.

He came up from the roll with his saber leading, the steel whistling as it bit into the creature's flank. The monster shrieked—a high, glass-shattering sound—and spun with terrifying centrifugal force. A secondary limb caught the rogue across the chest, the force of the blow denting his silvered mail and lifting him off his feet. He crashed into a stone pillar, the wind driven from his lungs in a ragged gasp.

His head swam. The wine, the blood, and the emerald ozone of the room blurred into a dizzying kaleidoscope. Through the haze, he saw the nightmare-Varos crouching, its multi-rowed maw dripping glowing bile that hissed on the stone. It was preparing for a final, killing spring.

"Too fast for a drunkard, aren't you?" the rogue wheezed, his shark-visor skewed.

He reached out, his hand closing around the neck of a heavy, unbroken clay amphora of oil. As the beast leapt, the Summer Islander didn't swing his sword. He hurled the jug with a strength born of desperation. The clay shattered against the monster's chest, bathing its quills in thick, flammable oil.
In the same motion, the rogue snatched a sputtering wall-sconce from its bracket.

"Burn, you golden fool!"

He jammed the torch into the oil-soaked mess of the creature's torso. A roar of orange flame erupted, the oil catching instantly. The monster became a living pyre, its shrieks turning into wet, gurgling wails as the heat bubbled its mutated ivory flesh. It flailed blindly, its obsidian talons gouging deep furrows into the masonry as it tried to quench the fire.

The rogue didn't watch it burn. He scrambled across the glass-strewn floor, his fingers searching the shadows for the prize. There—near a discarded ritual bowl—the Star of Ifequevron lay. It was dark now, but a faint, rhythmic heat thrummed within its facets, a heartbeat that pulsed against his palm as he snatched it up.

He felt a jolt of raw, stinging electricity bolt up his arm. The wine-haze in his brain vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, crystalline clarity that made his senses scream. He could hear the individual drops of wine dripping from the ceiling; he could see the minute cracks in the beast's burning exoskeleton.
The monster, half-charred and radiating a stench of burnt sugar and rot, made one final, agonizing lunge.

The Summer Islander met it head-on. He stepped into the beast's reach, his saber flashing upward in a perfect, silver arc. The blade caught the creature under its slab-like chin, shearing through bone and mutated muscle until the point erupted from the top of its skull.

The rogue held the position for a heartbeat, the burning weight of the monster pressing against him, before he kicked the corpse away. It slumped into the salt-circles, a heap of smoking, purple ruin.

He stood alone in the ruin of the cellar, his chest heaving, the jewel clutched tight in his left hand. The "Star" felt like a living coal, its power beginning to seep into his marrow, making his thick muscles itch with a sudden, restless vitality.

He looked up toward the stairs. The lady in the closet was still waiting, and the city of Sarnath was still full of silver domes waiting to be toppled. He wiped his blade on a scrap of Varos's ruined silk and sheathed it with a sharp, metallic click.

"An epoch of omens, verily, verily" he muttered.

The rogue took a final, deep draw of the ozone-thick air before turning from the charred ruin of the courtier. He didn't linger; the fire he'd set to the monster was already hungrily licking at the spilled wine and ancient, dry tapestries of the cellar.

He bounded up the stone stairs, his boots light, the heavy intoxication of the tavern replaced by a cold, humming clarity that radiated from the Star of Ifequevron tucked against his ribs. He reached the linen closet and wrenched the door open.

The woman's eyes were wide, reflecting the flickering orange glow growing in the hallway. He didn't say a word, simply drew his dagger and sliced through the silk bonds with a single, fluid motion. He reached into the gloom of the closet, grabbed a heavy iron-bound chest he'd spotted earlier—Varos's personal coffer—and tucked it under one massive arm as if it weighed nothing at all.
"The horseman is waiting," he grunted, pulling her to her feet. "Run, little bird. This cage is about to turn to ash."

"Wait, whats you name, what happened to varos" the woman asked frantically as she got to her feet

The rogue looked straight into her soul and said "Bahjki of the isles pretty one, now run along" he said as he gave a hard slap on her ass that drew a shriek and ran past her out of the closet.

He didn't wait to see if she followed. He moved through the manse like a phantom, snatching a heavy signet ring from a marble side-table and a bundle of vellum scrolls from Varos's private desk. By the time he reached the postern gate, smoke was already billowing from the silver-domed roof, a black plume against the sky of Sarnath.

He didn't stop until some time he reached the edge of the Sarnori plains, where the grass began to swallow the road. There he slowed and tethered Earthshaker to a twisted sentinel tree. The zorse let out a low, vibrating huff, its striped sweaty coat shimmering in the predawn light.

Bahjki leaned against the beast's flank, the heat of the jewel still thrumming against his skin. He unfurled the largest of the vellum scrolls. It wasn't a map or a spell—it was a deed, sealed with the very signet ring now resting in his palm.

"An outpost," he murmured, his shark-grin returning. "On the edge of the Dothraki lands. Resources, steel,Tall Men, and the horselords."

He looked back at the city of Sarnath. A thin line of fire was visible on the horizon, the manse of Lord Varos becoming a funeral pyre for a god-king that never was. He had the gold, he had the jewel, and now, he had a kingdom of dust and wind waiting for a master.

A fit of reckless, drunken whimsy took him—the kind of idea that only a man who has outrun death twice in one night could entertain. He swung himself into Earthshaker's saddle, the large zorse rearing up with a frenzied, thundering energy.

"To the Bone Mountains!" he roared, his voice carrying over the swaying grass. "Let the horselords see what a rogue of the Summer Isles can do with a deed and a cursed stone!"

With a snap of the reins, Earthshaker hammered his hooves into the earth, and Bahjki rode forth, an exile and a slayer, vanishing into the vast, golden sea of the East.