The God’s Eye, The Dark Eye, The Heart of Darkness
aGoT Bran III – Excerpts from Bran’s coma vision
He looked east and saw a galley racing across the waters of the Bite.
A Storm was gathering ahead of them, a vast dark roaring lashed by lightning, but somehow they could not see it.
North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.
aDwD Tyrion VIII
Tyrion learns the ship’s destination from Penny:
“Mereen is where we’re going next.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Qarth, you mean. We’re bound for Qarth, by way of New Ghis.
Tyrion learns from Moqorro; that they will be sailing close to the Smoking Sea:
Only the brightest stars were visible, all to the west. A dull red glow lit the sky to the northeast, the color of a blood bruise. Tyrion had never seen a bigger moon. Monstrous, swollen it looked as if it had swallowed the sun and woken with a fever. Its twin, floating on the sea beyond the ship, shimmered red with every wave. “What hour is this?” he asked Moqorro. “That cannot be sunrise unless the east has moved. Why is the sky red?”
“The sky is always red above Valyria, Hugor Hill.”
A cold chill went down his back. “Are we close?”
“Closer than the crew would like,” Moqorro said in his deep voice. “Do you know the stories, in your Sunset Kingdom?”
…
No free man would willingly sign aboard a ship who’s captain spoke openly of his intent to sail into the Smoking sea. “So those are fires of the Fourteen Flames we’re seeing, reflected on the clouds?”
“Fourteen or fourteen thousand. What man dares count them? It is no wise for mortals to look too deeply at those fires, my friend. Those are the fires of god’s own wrath, and no human flame can match them. We are small creatures, men.
“Some smaller than others.” Valyria. It was written that on the day of Doom every hill for five hundred miles had split asunder to fill the air with ash and smoke and fire, blazes too hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed. Great rents had opened in the earth, swallowing palaces, temples, entire towns. Lakes boiled or turn to acid, mountains burst, fiery fountains spewed molten rock a thousand feet into the air, red clouds rained down dragonglass and the black blood of demons, and to the north the ground splintered and collapsed and fell in on itself and an angry sea came rushing in. The proudest city in all the world was gone in an instant, its fabled empire vanished in a day, the Lands of the Long Summer scorched and drowned and blighted.
An empire built on blood and fire. The Valyrian reaped the seed they had sown. “Does our captain mean to test the curse?”
“Our captain would prefer to be fifty leagues farther out to sea, well away fro the accursed shore, but I have commanded him to steer the shortest course. Others seek Daenerys too.”
“Have you seen the others in your fires?” he asked, warily.
“Only their shadows,” Moqorro said. “One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.”
aDwD – Tyrion IX Excerpts - The Bar Sinister
The wind was blowing from the west, swirling and gusting, clutching at the ropes and cloaks like a mischievous child. The Selaesori Qhoran was under way.
But when he clambered up the ladder to the sterncastle and looked off and looked off from the stern, his smile faltered. Blue sky and blue sea here, but off west … I have never seen a sky that color. A thick band of clouds ran along the horizon. “A bar sinister,” he said to Penny, pointing.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“It means some big bastard is creeping up behind us.”
He was surprised to find that Moqorro and two of this fiery fingers had joined them on the sterncastle. It was only midday, and the red priest and his men did not normally emerge until dusk. The priest gave him a solemn nod. “There you see it, Hugor Hill, God’s wroth. “The Lord of Light will not be mocked.”
Tyrion had a bad feeling about this. “The widow said this ship would never reach it’s destination. I took that to mean that once we were out to sea beyond the reach of triarchs, the captain would change course for Meereen. Or perhaps that you would seize the ship with your Fiery Hand and take us to Daenerys. But that isn’t what your high priest saw at all, is it?”
“No.” Moqorro’s deep voice tolled as solemnly as a funeral bell. “This is what he saw.” The red priest lifted his staff, and inclined its head toward the west.
For the better par of three hours they ran before the wind, as the storm grew closer. The western sky went green, then grey, then black. A wall of dark clouds loomed up behind them, churning like a kettle of milk left on the fire too long.
The last storm has been thrilling, intoxicating, a sudden squall that had left him feeling cleansed and refreshed. This one felt different right from the first. The captain sensed it too. He changed course to north by northeast to try and get out of the storm’s path.
It was a futile effort. This storm was too big. The sea around the grew rougher. The wind began to howl. The stinky Steward rose and fell as waves smashed against her hull. Behind the lightning stabbed down from the sky blinding purple bolts that danced across the sea in webs of light. Thunder followed.
The Selaesori Qhoran rolled and shuddered around them.
The hull was creaking, the deck moving…
In the end, they did not drown … though there were times when the prospect of a nice, peaceful drowning had a certain appeal. The storm raged for the rest of that day and well into the night. Wet winds howled around the and waves rose like the fists of drowned giants to smash down on the decks.
Nearby midnight the winds finally died away, and the sea grew calm enough for Tyrion to make his way back up onto deck. What he saw there did not reassure him. The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and colossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning. No rain falling, but the decks were slick and wet underfoot.
Tyrion could hear someone screaming from below, a thin, high voice hysterical with far. He could hear Moqorro too. The red priest stood on the forecastle facing the storm, his staff raised above his head as he boomed a prayer. Amidships, a dozen sailors and two of the fiery fingers were struggling with tangled lines and sodden canvas, but whether they were truing to raise the sail again or pull it down he never knew. Whatever they were doing, it seemed to him a very bad idea. And so it was.
The wind returned as a whispered threat, cold and damp, brushing over his cheek, flapping the west sail, swirling and hugging at Moqorro’s scarlet robes. Some instinct made Tyrion grab hold of the nearest rail, just in time. In the space of three heartbeats the little breeze became a howling gale. Moqorro shouted something, and green flames leapt from the dragon’s maw atop his staff to vanish in the night, Then the rains came, black and blinding, and forecastle and sterncastle both vanished behind a wall of water. Something huge flapped overhead, and Tyrion glanced up in time to see the sail taking wing, with two men still dangling from the lines. Then he hard a crack. Oh, bloody hell, he had time to think, that had to be the mast.
He found a line and pulled on it, fighting toward the hatch to get himself below out of the storm, but a gust of wind knocked his feet from under him and a second slammed him into the rail and there he clung. Rain lashed at his face, blinding him. His mouth was full of blood again. The Ship groaned and growled beneath hi like a constipated fat man straining to shit.
Then the mast burst.
Tyrion never saw it, but he heard it. That cracking sound again and then a scream of tortured wood, and suddenly the air was full of shards and splinters. One missed his eye by half and inch, a second found his neck, a third went through his calf, boots and breeches and all. He screamed. But he held on to the line, held on with a desperate strength he did not know he had. The widow said this ship would never reach her destination, he remembered then he laughed and laughed, wild and hysterical, as thunder boomed and timbers moaned and waves crashed all around him.
By the time the storm abated and the surviving passengers and crew came crawling back on deck, like pale pink worms wriggling to the surface after a rain, the Selaeori Qhoran was a broken thing, floating low in the water and listing ten degrees to port, her hull sprung in half a hundred places, her hold awash in seawater, her mast a splintered ruin no taller than a dwarf. Even her figurehead had not escaped; one of his arms had broken off, the one with all his scrolls. Nine men had been lost, including a mate, two of the fiery fingers, and Moqorro himself.
Did Benerro see this in his fire? Tyrion wondered, when he realized the huge red priest was gone. Did Moqorro?
This hurricane is no ordinary storm even for a hurricane. It has a sinister aspect, the Storm God itself chasing Tyrion and Moqorro across the sea. Chased by some big bastard and a twisted tall thing with one dark eye and ten arms following on a sea of blood; racing to get to Danaerys first. Euron’s dark eye, the blood eye, blood moon concealing a heart of darkness.
What is it that Bran sees north and north and north; beyond the curtain of light with it’s heart of darkness. Is it something like the red eye of Jupiter or the god’s eye? A stationary cyclonic storm that calves off smaller storms; creates atmospheric turbulence and unbalanced weather patterns. It’s curtain wall turbulent with blinding flashes of lighting; purple and blue?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot