Davos's expression shifted several times. In the end, he lowered his eyes, hiding the outrage and killing intent in his heart, and quietly asked,
"You have not spoken on Daenerys's behalf for nearly half a year. We thought you hesitated because the coalition was too powerful. Now it seems there is something else behind it?"
"I was wrong. I misunderstood the revelation the Lord of Light gave me." Benerro wiped his face and said in despair,"She is not the savior, but I spent years proclaiming that she was. The wood has already been carved. Even if I want to change it, I cannot undo it!"
Davos's plump face twisted.
"Then who is the savior?" he asked numbly.
"I do not know."
"The Long Night has already come, and you do not know?" Davos raised his voice.
"Perhaps it is Westeros's Stannis Baratheon," the tattooed High Priest said hesitantly.
"Stannis?" Davos gradually recalled the "obscure little figure" from memory.
"The kinslayer who used blood magic to kill his own brother?" His Excellency the Triarch said unhappily,"What is the Lord of Light doing? How can a kinslayer be a savior? I would rather Daenerys be the savior!"
Well, there was the saying that a king may lack the virtue to match his throne, and a savior was more exalted than a king, so he ought to meet even greater moral demands.
"Did Azor Ahai not also kill his own wife? Without the resolve to slay all that must be slain, how can one become the savior?" the tattooed man retorted, his face flushed.
"Killing one's wife is different from killing one's kin. Forget it." Davos shook his head."Choosing the savior is the Lord of Light's business. We do not care. But what do you intend to do about the sun and the mob outside?"
"The sun has gone out. It may not return for ten or twenty years. There is nothing I can do about that," Benerro said, shaking his head.
"Ten, twenty years…" Davos's face turned deathly pale. Terror shone in his eyes, and his fat body swayed unsteadily.
"The last Long Night lasted an entire generation. From birth to starvation, that generation never saw the sun, and believed the world was meant to be frigid and dark."
"I… I thought it was just a legend. Legends exaggerate," Davos said weakly, gripping the armrests of his chair.
"A generation…" He forced himself upright and said solemnly,"Your Excellency High Priest, I need you to buy me time."
"Time for what?" Benerro asked in confusion.
"I need time to gather every scrap of food and every piece of cold-weather supplies in the markets," Davos said coldly.
"And then?" Benerro asked, his voice trembling.
"And then I will seal the Black Walls."
"And the people and slaves of Volantis?"
"Can the Lord of Light feed them?" Davos countered.
Benerro shook his head with difficulty.
"If even the Lord of Light cannot help them, what am I supposed to do?" Davos spread his hands helplessly.
"But—"
"No buts!" Davos waved a thick hand, leaned close to Benerro's ear, and whispered,"Remember, hardship makes the people crave a narcotic called hope. In hope, the most devout faith is born.
But when faith fails to fulfill that hope, hope turns into the deepest despair, and faith becomes a curse.
You should understand that trying to save everyone is the same as forcing everyone to die.
Based on your results, I will grant the Red Priests quotas to enter the Black Walls."
Davos stepped back two paces, stared at the High Priest with interest, and asked with a smile,"Well?"
Benerro's tattooed face was covered in beads of sweat. The muscles in his cheeks twitched, and his normally still blue eyes churned with waves of panic.
"Let me think," he whispered, barely louder than a fly.
"There is no time. Listen and look!" Davos pointed toward the window.The cries of a hundred thousand believers surged like a tsunami, wave after wave, as if they would drown the grand Temple of the Red God.
"I cannot lie to the faithful," Benerro pleaded.
Davos laughed."Do not worry. You do not need to lie. Someone else will serve as the funnel for their anger."
"Who?" Benerro let out a quiet breath of relief and regained some composure.
"Fat Thossym of District XC has been very active lately. I think he can replace General Elios, who died in the Bay of Grief," Davos said lightly.
Fat Thossym had once been Tiger Cloak infantry — slave soldiers. Later, he married into the Thossym merchant family. When the Ghiscari coalition besieged Astapor, he was captured by the Dragon Queen, then became Astapor's super VIP business partner, from which he rose to fortune.
Recently, Fat Thossym had grown dissatisfied with mere wealth. His ambitions rose higher: to become a Triarch and move his family inside the Black Walls.
Elios was one of the three Triarchs chosen after the Dragon Queen burned the Black Walls' high tower, and commander of the coalition fleet's Second Fleet. He had sunk with it into the sea.
Thus, a vacancy had appeared among the Three Triarchs, and Fat Thossym saw an opening.
He even joined the Tiger Party, which favored aggressive policies toward Slaver's Bay.
"Yes, the sky is a bit darker and the temperature has dropped a little, but this is not the end of the world! The Long Night is nonsense and a ridiculous lie."
Fat Thossym accepted Davos's deal. After receiving assurances that he could become the next Triarch, he immediately addressed the crowds on the streets as a candidate — just like countless predecessors had done.
"Everyone, stay calm. There is no need to rush to buy supplies. We all know the 'winter is coming' talk from the North. Winter cannot leave Volantis completely untouched.
I promise that tomorrow will be a bright, sunny day. Even if tomorrow remains cloudy, the day after, or the day after that. The sun will shine again."
The slogan "Tomorrow will be a sunny day" barely soothed the panic in the hearts of the people, and Volantis temporarily regained calm.
In places unseen by common eyes, large amounts of supplies were hauled into the Black Walls.Inside the Walls, nobles shed silk and velvet, donned ancient family armor, and gradually replaced the original guards — the Tiger Cloaks.
At the same time, as Valantis's garrison force, the Tiger Cloaks were put aboard seagoing ships by the triarchs under the pretext that "the Battle of Meereen has ended in a great victory for the allied forces, and the Tiger Cloaks are needed in Meereen to maintain order," and were sent to Slaver's Bay. At this point, the triarchs of Valantis still did not know the outcome of the decisive battle at Meereen. They merely wanted to dispatch the unreliable Tiger Cloaks to the front lines as cannon fodder.
The Black Wall, an oval city wall forged from Valyrian fused stone, stood sixty meters high and was wide enough for twenty-four fine horses to gallop abreast without colliding.
Apart from dragons, no one had ever conquered the Black Wall.
What happened in Valantis was no isolated case. The same scenes played out in turn in Lys, Pentos, Myr, Braavos, and even among the cities of the Jade Sea and the barbarian lands of the Far East.
The methods differed, but the essence was the same. Before the common people could react, they gathered everything that could be gathered, sealed the towering castle gates, lived their quiet little lives in peace, and waited calmly for the next Azor Ahai to end the Long Night.
The advantages of the upper classes were not limited to their control over social resources.
In modern society, some say that information is money, and that is true. With the most timely and accurate information, even an idiot could instantly turn into a Buffett.
In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, with the Long Night already upon them, information meant a chance to survive.
Well, not necessarily.
Even if ordinary people obtained accurate information, they lacked the financial, material, and human resources to defy fate.
If winter lasted a bit longer, commoners would still starve to death.
A winter lasting three years and a Long Night lasting twenty years made little difference to ordinary people. They either froze to death or starved to death.
Likewise, a three-year long winter and a Long Night spanning a generation did affect the great nobles. Fine, there was an impact. They could no longer indulge in luxury, could not hunt, could not attend tourneys, and they had to learn skills they had never needed before, such as living frugally.
But no matter what, the lives and bloodlines of the nobles were not threatened.
Seen this way, the Long Night did not seem all that terrifying.
Those who should not die always end up dying, while those who deserve to die always manage to live. What difference is there between a Long Night and a long winter?
Sigh. Such a world truly inspires despair.
However, in Westeros, someone was cheering with delight over the disappearance of the sun in the sky.
"It's finally here. Wahahaha, the Long Night is finally here!" After getting a definitive answer from Euron, Cersei's ecstasy was written all over her face.
In other city-states, after the sun vanished before everyone's eyes, most extraordinary individuals could infer what had happened by sensing the tides of magic.
But Westeros was a wasteland of supernatural power. More than ninety-nine percent of the people did not even notice any change in the sun and merely thought it was another cloudy day.
The sun rose in the east, yet Westeros was known as the "land of the setting sun." When the sun went out, it was about ten in the morning in Meereen, while Westeros was just before dawn.
Thus, when the people of Westeros woke up, they only felt that the day seemed particularly gloomy.
Of course, the fact that more than ninety-nine percent of people noticed nothing unusual did not mean that no one knew.
For example, Euron knew.
The Alchemists' Guild knew.
The Seven were no longer just seven wooden statues. Even the High Septons knew.
They had even received complete confirmation from the Mother herself.
Yes, the Mother Dany took the time to send every believer with one hundred devotion points a text message saying, "The Long Night has arrived."
After all, with the Long Night descending, it would be unreasonable for the Mother to make no gesture at all.
Once the Faith knew, Euron "helplessly" took four Sons of the Storm and went to inform Emperor Cersei of the matter.
Emperor Cersei wore a great cloak trimmed with pure white fox fur. The pristine white pelt only accentuated the rosy glow of her cheeks and the smoothness of her skin.
She strode to the balcony in a few steps, pointed at the barefoot Sparrows in gray sackcloth outside the Red Keep who were shouting "Whore Queen," and curled her lips into a vicious smile. "Those Sparrows come to the Red Keep every few days to stage a protest. It's infuriating. There ought to be a Long Night to freeze them all to death and starve them."
"And Daenerys," Cersei's smile deepened, "who knows whether that little bitch is dead yet. If she hasn't already died at the hands of the allied forces, hurry up and send her to guard the Wall and fight the White Walkers. Didn't she come up with some 'united front against the Others' ages ago?"
"If she doesn't go die, who will?Hahaha."
Cersei threw her head back and laughed.
The gloom of being locked in the tower by the old septa these past days vanished in an instant.
"Queen Cersei, mind your language!" a knight in iron armor with a seven-pointed star emblazoned on his chest shouted angrily.
"You dare shout at me?" Cersei's eyes widened. Flames of fury gathered in her sockets, as if they would transform in the next moment into two fire dragons that would soar forth and reduce the insolent, penniless knight to ashes.
"Guards, drag this fellow who's shouting at the queen out!" Cersei shouted.
No one answered.
(End of chapter)
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