supposed to have said when she laid eyes on it, if the tales are true). Every attempt to
rebuild or resettle Yeen has ended in disaster. xi
This minor image of an ancient ruin that stands contrary to man and nature borrows from
the Cthuhlu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, especially the latter. The same
page tells us that the Brindled Men on Sothyros "worship dark gods with obscene rites". Yeen
would make an excellent setting for a Conan story.
There is a similar echo to this description of the island of Leng:
There are queer ruins in the depth's of the island's [Leng's] jungle: massive buildings,
long fallen, and so overgrown that rubble remains above the surface... but underground,
we are told, endless labyrinths of tunnels lead to vast chambers, and carved steps
descend hundreds of feet into the earth. No man can say who might have build these
cities, or when. They remain perhaps the only remnant of some vanished people. xii
These are two of numerous examples of structures existing in the World of Ice and Fire
without their present inhabitants knowing how or why they exist. The Wall holds such mystery:
Northern legend attributes it to Brandon the Builder, and we have no more than that, other than
the intuition that one does not build a magic wall of ice to keep out wildlings. Martin's universe
is one of mystery, of ancient knowledge that present characters are unlikely to understand. The
Master's voice in The World of Ice and Fire constantly discounts the ancient legends, seeking
evidence-based understanding of the world, assuming that the ancient past was like the present,
and so shall be the future. Given Martin's storytelling habits, this seems to have been set up to be
subverted. The Others are real; the dragons are real; Melisandre's blood-magic is real - why not
the gods?
And what Gods they are...
It was mariners from the Golden Empire who opened up Leng to trade, yet even then the
island remained a perilous place for outsiders, for the Empress of Long was known to
have congress with the Old Ones, gods who lived deep below the ruins of subterranean
cities, and from time to time the Old Ones told her to put all the strangers on the island to
death. This is known to have happened at least four times in the island's history if
Colloqo Votar's Jade Compendium can be believed. xiii
This is another obvious Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos reference, and not the only one. Some
fans have speculated that the Drowned God of the Ironborn is directly Cthulhu-like, given his
watery domain, but there are more direct allusions.
Today Yin is once more the capital of Yi Ti. There the seventeenth azure emperor Bu Gai
sits in splendor in a palace larger than King's Landing. Yet far to the east, well beyond