Flaming red hearts—the sigil of the Red God R'hllor—snapped and streamed all across the island. The device was known in every Free City, so Drogo was certain the figure standing atop Dragonstone's grandest tower could only be Melisandre, the Red Priestess of the Lord of Light.
From all he had gathered of the great game, he knew the woman wore a red-gold choker at her throat, set with a great ruby.
The witchfire gleam it cast outshone any common jewel; even at such a distance, Drogo found it dazzling, like a blood-red moon hung upon her neck. It was no ordinary stone.
Drogo cared little for Stannis himself. It was Melisandre he feared.
Davos, gloomy, followed on from Drogo's words. "Lady Melisandre is not our master. We follow the will of King Stannis."
Hearing that, Drogo was all the more certain: the one he'd pointed to was the Red Priestess, a shadowbinder out of Asshai.
He came down slowly from the sterncastle to the deck and called out with scorn, voice carrying over the water. "A little isle of Dragonstone, and newly taken Storm's End that you cannot truly hold—and you dare style yourself king? With troubles at home unquelled, yet you reach for more? What sort of king is Stannis?"
At that Davos's banked anger broke. "Khal Drogo, do not grow too bold," he warned sharply. "This is Westeros, not your Dothraki Sea!"
Again that contempt for "savages." Drogo's face went to ice. "Blood of my blood," he said coldly, "have the khalasar's ships sheer off. Bring up the Unsullied fleet."
Dragonstone was all rock and razor ridges; once battle was joined, riders would be hamstrung by the ground, but the Unsullied—finest foot in the world—would fare little hindered.
"As you will, blood of my blood."
The bloodrider gave the order, and the hornmen sounded a special battle call.
Woooo—ooo—
Words barely spoken and war near to breaking—Davos's face showed fury and dismay in equal measure. He was no tongue-fighter; against Drogo's hard will he found no purchase.
At the mention of her, Davos near hopped with rage. "Cursed witch! Cursed Lord of Light! But for her, His Grace would not be so bound hand and foot—nor let these horse-lords strut and roar!"
The Onion Knight had come up from Flea Bottom in King's Landing. In his early years he shipped with the smuggler Roro Uhoris aboard the Little Cat o' Pebbleton. From the Eastwatch men of the Night's Watch, he had first learned of the order and the Wall.
Though Uhoris's execution by the Watch for selling weapons to wildlings had seared Davos's memory, he afterward did not scruple to trade with the black brothers. In those days he served silver first.
As a notorious smuggler he would steal into harbors by night in a black-sailed boat, risking all for coin.
During Robert Baratheon's rebellion, after Storm's End had been ringed and starved near a year, Davos ran the Redwyne blockade in a small boat laden with onions and salt fish.
That food kept Stannis Baratheon's garrison alive until relief arrived. For that, Stannis knighted him and granted good lands on Cape Wrath.
Yet in the same justice, Stannis lopped the first joint from every finger of Davos's left hand, to answer for his years of smuggling.
Davos counted the sentence fair—and honored Stannis for wielding the blade himself.
In gratitude for a new life, he strung those fingerbones in a leather pouch around his neck, his luck, to win his house a better fate.
Later, Davos helped Stannis win over Salladhor Saan, "Prince of the Narrow Sea," and with a mighty fleet bearing an army they sailed to the Blackwater, near to taking King's Landing and the Iron Throne for his king.
But Stannis's host broke before the terror of wildfire and the Lannister counterstroke. Davos lost not only his luck-bones that day, but three trueborn sons.
And all of it, he deemed, rooted in Melisandre's goading—the shadowbinder from Asshai who turned Stannis from the Seven to the Red God, and changed his banners besides: one now a golden field with a long, sharp tongue of flame sketching a burning red heart; the other like beaten gold, stitched with a black crowned stag.
With Stannis sworn to R'hllor for the power the red woman promised, his followers split in twain.
On one side stood the King's men, clinging to the Seven with Davos at their head. On the other the Queen's men, the Florents of Queen Selyse's lead, who bent the knee to the Lord of Light.
Beaten in war, Stannis could no longer vie with other kings; worse, strife gnawed him from within.
Thus Davos—utterly loyal to Stannis—nursed a deadly hate for Melisandre and longed to see the witch undone.
But will was not enough. Melisandre was no mere priestess; she was a true sorceress, a binder of shadows who made the dark itself do murder.
Like all red priests, she sought visions of past, present, and what might be in the leaping flames—but that was only one of her arts.
Stannis himself had watched a shadow, his very shape, be brought forth—and Ser Cortnay Penrose, castellan of Storm's End, who scorned to yield, die of it.
And the sudden, unearthly death of Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and Lord Paramount of the Stormlands—Davos held that, too, to be the work of a shadow.
More dread yet: Melisandre had asked Stannis for Robert Baratheon's bastard, Edric Storm. King's blood, she said, held strange powers; his sacrifice could wake the stone dragons of Dragonstone.
Stannis refused her that—but did permit her to cast into the fire three leeches swollen with the boy's blood.
While she worked that black rite, Melisandre named three false kings: Balon Greyjoy, King of the Isles; Robb Stark, King in the North; and Joffrey Baratheon upon the Iron Throne.
Soon after, all three were dead.
Their ends were queer enough—and Davos was certain the red woman's sorcery had a hand in each.
With such a woman, how could he not be afraid?
Time and again he schemed to kill the witch, and failed; he even lost the Hand's chain for it.
Yet for Stannis, beguiled as he was, Davos would try again—even if he must die as Maester Cressen died, at Dragonstone, by Melisandre's hand.
Salladhor Saan shot the Onion Knight a glare, then, shipmates in the same peril, was forced to speak in Davos's support.
"Khal Drogo has ridden the Dothraki Sea for years," the pirate-prince cried. "Even beyond the grass, he has swept all before him. His fame is shouted in every harbor. In far Lys we have thundered his name!"
Drogo disliked tall tales and had long since sickened of flattery. His face did not change. "And what of it?"
Salladhor's smile turned oily. "Great Khal, you have come to Westeros for the Iron Chair of King's Landing—none can doubt it. King Stannis can help you reach your heart's desire."
As he said it, the Lysene's eyes slid to Daenerys at Drogo's side, all grace and peril in one.
Drogo snorted. "Oh? And an ambitious man will gladly raise a foreigner to the Iron Throne? I think rather he means to murder me here and now."
Salladhor faltered, then recovered with a smuggler's silken tongue. "You are misled, great Khal. You have three dragons, a giant, the swiftest horsemen and the sternest foot in the world. Who under heaven can stand against you? King Stannis is not a man blind to the hour."
Just then a woman's chant welled from the heights of Dragonstone.
Clear and ringing rose her tone:
"R'hllor, lead us from the dark.
O true Lord, fill our hearts with flame,
that we may hail Your shining light.
You are the light within our eyes,
the fire within our hearts,
the heat within our bellies.
By day Your light is the sun that warms us;
by night Your light is the stars that guard us…"
As she sang, the firepiles on every tower leapt higher. The flames roared up, doubling and redoubling, clawing at the sky.
Hearing the clamor and beholding Dragonstone's strange answers, Drogo's face hardened once more. He answered the pirate-prince like winter.
"You would not dare. She would."
He brought his fingers together like a blade again—and pointed straight at Melisandre.
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