Torchlight flickered on the faces of the sextet of men and women as they travelled through the darkness of the northern woods. They knew the flames made them more visible to their opponents ... but flame was also their best defense, and their opponents could find them as easily were they shrouded in darkness.
"Is it much farther, mother?" The young girl was a winter's child, lean and tough, but since the devastation of their village she had seemed emotionally cold as well. The childlike timbre of the question showed a vulnerability not seen for weeks, and it caught at the older woman's heart. "We'll be there soon, Caitlyn," the woman replied, "so says our guide. Azor?"
The man's natural bronze pallor had faded to grey under his endless night-time travels, and his jet-black hair had streaked with grey. "Just three more days, Breeze," he told her, "two if we make good time."
"It's only gotten colder the farther we've walked," one of the other women, Francesca, complained. "I told you we ought to have gone south." Every word from her had been a litany of complaints from the onset of their journey, so much so that Azor had begun to contemplate whether she ever communicated in any other fashion.
"I am sorry, but it was too great a distance," Nissa Nissa said. She was Azor's sister/wife, and had accompanied him from Asshai to the new lands of Westeros. Her hair was still black, blacker that Azor's had ever been, and the startling violet of her eyes sometimes seemed to lend its tint to her hair as well. Her voice was compassionate; she'd seemed to have endless patience with the other woman, though that too was how she communicated. She repeated the strategy that they had all discussed at the onset of the trip, that Francesca had seemed to require interminable repetitions of. "Once we reach the Northron seas, we will rendezvous with an Asshai merchant ship. It's bringing supplies with it we can use, and can provide you passage to someplace safer."
The sixth member of the crew, Ben, held his silence as he listened to Nissa Nissa's placating words. Lord of his holdfast, his heart had fallen to despair as he had seen his people slaughtered. Only the girl Caitlyn remained living of his children, and even with sword drawn he felt unqualified to protect her and the rest. Azor's rescuing the remains of his family and guiding them to some imagined safety, while necessary to keep them alive, only further undermined Ben's leadership role. He ground the muscles of his jaw against each other, wondering whether there was any place safe in this terrible winter.
And so the company continued north, eyes blinded by occasional flurries of snow, joints aching with the cold, skin forgetting what the sensation of warmth was ever like, their one surviving steed grown gaunt as it searched for sporadic outcroppings of weeds or grass to eat.
Even above the wind, however, they heard the voices like the sound of cracking ice, and the snows parted to reveal a host of figures so pale white they seemed to have shaped themselves from the snow itself. They arrived on the backs of ice-white bears or horses whose eyes glowed blue. Francesca cowered next to the horse, and the rest of them drew forth swords or knives, backing into a tight circle.
Azor glanced at his fellow travellers. He glanced at Ben, and the two of them reached a silent agreement. Azor's left hand stroked the horse's neck and he spoke softly into its ear. "The mission's nearly over Westwind, but now it's time for one final run." Ben grabbed Caitlyn by the hips and hoisted her onto the animal's back, and against her screaming objections the two men bound her in place, and Azor sent the animal hurtling south.
Azor screamed, a battle cry that was old when Asshai was young; but even that civilisation was in its infancy when the pale men's was in a state of decadence and decline. Their blades froze in their hands and shattered against the skins of the pale men, whose own swords moved among them with more than human speed and grace.
As ravens circled overhead, the bodies were left to lie in the snow; all save Azor's, whom the undead bears feasted on, devouring his flesh as if it were some sacramental ritual, until all that was left was a rag, a bone, a hank of hair.
Azor had awoken under daylight as bright as a dream of spring. After years of darkness illuminated only by torchlight, it was almost blinding, and he grimaced as colours danced before his eyes. From his side, he heard a gasp, and his name called out in a voice he knew as well as his own.
"Nissa?" He felt a hand groping blindly, seeking his, and he took hold of it, interweaving fingers and bringing it to his heart. "I am here, my love."
"Where … where are we? Did we somehow … did we … win? Or is this the afterlife?"
He remembered the sensation of the Others' sword of bitter ice slicing through his internal organs. "I … " he could not bring himself to say the words. He lifted his torso up into a seated position. As his eyes slowly began to adjust to the blaring sun, he realised that he was on an open porch, on fine silken sheets, and that he and Nissa were unclothed. He rose to his feet and walked to the barrier which surrounded the porch, resting his hands on the rough-hewn stone. With a start at the unfamiliar sensation, he lifted his hands to his eyes against an overwhelming vertigo. The building the porch was on must have been taller than the tallest mountain, as it overlooked a vast and placid landscape. Peering down, he could not even see the base of the building beneath him. In the distance, he could see castles splayed across the gardened fields, some of them stone castles of the type he had become accustomed to in Westeros, some with minarets, others resembling the great city of Asshai, and others in styles he had never imagined. "I think this may be the world beyond death, Nissa."
"Not in the way you mean it," said a man's voice from behind him, "although it is the world beyond your death, Azor Ahai." Azor whirled around with battle-trained reflexes, and Nissa Nissa shouted out her surprise and sought to cover her nakedness.
The man who had entered the room so silently ... unless he had always been there, waiting for them to awaken ... was balding, his white hair falling down to his shoulders. His skin tone had an odd pallor, which Azor could not quite compare to any of the races of men he had known. His features were of an indeterminate age, though his eyes appeared immensely old. He was clad in a long robe. "Who are you then, master of this place?"
"I have borne many names and titles," the man said. "Some call me Myrdh, or the Magus, or Myrrdin ... you may refer to me as R'hllor, bringer of light, heat, and life to the worlds of men."
Nissa Nissa wrapped the silken sheets around her body as a robe, and rose to her feet, approaching the man and kneeling before him. "Sir, if that could be done ... if you would save us for the Others ... "
"It is not for me to save you," R'hllor said, "it is something that is for you to do ... both you and your brother/husband. You are not yet done with the world of the living. Much will be asked of you in order to accomplish this task. I am here merely to give you the means."
"The means," Azor whispered. "You have an army ... "
R'hllor shook his head. "Not that would be any use to you. All you need is a hero's blade, like none that had ever been."
"My lord," Azor said quietly, "where is this sword which will give me this victory?"
R'hllor looked at Nissa Nissa, and then at Azor once again. "You shall forge it."
He took them down long passageways, into a temple which defied comprehension. The walls were strangely contoured, and illuminated with small multicoloured lights which burned coolly without flame. The room seemed filled with odd sounds which resembled invisible birds or insects or musical instruments, but the exact like of which they had never heard. R'hllor stopped at what appeared to be a table built into the wall. He waves his hands over it, and a set of glowing images made of light appeared above the surface of the table. His hands traversed the network of images as if he were a harpist or a sculpture. The images moved and changed, some becoming extinguished, some growing larger or smaller or rotating in response to the guidance of his hands, some new lights appearing. Each change was accompanied by one of the eerie sounds.
Finally, at the far corner of the room, a section of the wall parted into a doorway. R'hllor grunted with satisfaction and the lights above the table winked out like extinguished candleflames. He gestured them to the newly created opening, and from it Azor felt an intense and strangely familiar heat. It led to a forge, identical to the one in which he had apprenticed in his youth in Asshai. "We need a hero to forge a hero's sword. Are you that man?"
Azor did not speak in response, examining each of the tools he had been given, marveling at their perfection. He walked over to the bellows, blowing air into the furnace to stoke the flames.
Nissa Nissa watched for a time, and then glanced up. "And me, sir? Is there a role for me to play in this grand design of yours?"
R'hllor nodded, "Most assuredly. I am going to bring you to my daughter, Roma. She is going to train you in the skills of the mind and soul you are going to need in the long months ahead."
Azor set to work, hammering and shaping the molten steel. He lost track of time, and a month passed of constant sleepless toil, with both his mind and his body sustained by the magics of that other world. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold. After that time he had forged the most perfect sword he had ever shaped ... one past human endurance to create. He went to one of the wells of the realm to draw water redolent with enchantment to temper it, and on contact the sword burst asunder and shattered into a thousand pieces.
It was only then he began to feel his weariness, and it was only Nissa Nissa's gentle hands and words which saved him from despair. She spoke to him of her own studies with Roma, how the girl's gentle tutelage had refined her ability to see events which had not yet taken place, and even taught her to marshal her mental energy aggressively into a form of psychic knife. As she spoke of her developing abilities, Azor sensed her pride but also some deep underlying sadness, which his enquiries could not penetrate.
When he had rested, Azor returned to the temple forge and once more set to work. Nearly half again the time of the first forging was spent in endless labour. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold. When the metal was tempered to fineness beyond his imagining, he ventured into the vast lands of that other world and with net and spear captured a lion. He brought it to the temple and plunged the sword into the beast's red heart in order to temper the blade, but once more the steel shattered and split.
Again he returned to Nissa Nissa's breast, and it was only her gentleness which was able to assuage his great sorrow and woe. "You know what you must do," she whispered to him, and as he looked into her eyes they seemed to shine with coruscating violet energies as if the magic of that other world had settled on her brow like a butterfly upon the face of a flower. He wondered how much was his wife and sister, and how much was R'hllor or Roma speaking through her. But, he supposed, it mattered not on his hero's journey.
Once more he returned to the temple forge, and this time he laboured twice as many days as the last. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold. Finally when the metal glowed white-hot as the sun, enough that even his eyes were pained to look at it, he summoned his sister/wife. "Nissa Nissa," he said to her, "Bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in the world."
She nodded. "Yes, blood of my blood and love of my heart," and her movements bore a dreadful kind of fatalism as she did as she was bid. Salt stung his eyes as he witnessed her perfect breasts, and he thrust the sword between them, piercing through to her living heart. She cried out, and in his anguish he felt that her cry had shattered the moon, through the blood steaming in the flame it appeared as if pieces of the moon fell to the ground in red shards. Her hands rose up to grip the weapon which had impaled her, but they did not burn. Psychic knives from her hands melded with the smoking-hot metal, and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. When he finally withdrew it, the blood which remained on the blade burst into a flame which did not extinguish.
R'hllor's voice could be heard through Azor's sobs, although the man could not tell whether the sound came from elsewhere in the room or in his mind. "Such is the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes."
Brandon Stark thought he knew the winter. When the crisp colours of autumn yielded to the white snows of winter in his father's youth, they had waited for the inevitable warming of spring. It never came. Many of the inhabitants of the northern lands had emigrated to the southron area of Dorne, where the cold was not so bitter, but the Starks and their kin had stayed, learning to live off mushrooms and the rare grains which they could foster, and the cunning use of the animals who still remained; their coats had thickened over the generations, which made them invaluable as trade items for foodstuffs which were not so easily found.
The Starks were one of the most powerful tribes in the land of Westeros, and their influence was felt throughout the sparse lands of the north. Their oral histories took them back ten thousand years to the coming of the First Men to this land.
Brandon Stark thought he knew the winter. But six years ago, when the sun set on the north, it never rose again. A new and terrible era of joyless cold brought new meaning to the word. And then, under the cover of darkness, came the invasion of White Walkers to the lands of men.
They struck mercilessly, devastating village after village which had already been wracked by famine. Though they shied from fire, their skin was so cold that ordinary weapons shattered against them. They intruded even into the deeply forested areas inhabited by the Children of the Forest, the strange original inhabitants of the land prior to the arrival of the First Men, who had allied with humanity against the Walkers.
"Someone's coming," the young woman at Brandon's side announced, pointing through the darkness. As a child of one of his bannermen, he had known her since infancy, and she had always seemed perfectly ordinary, indistinguishable from any of the other girls her age he was acquainted with. She had had her first flowering the year the long night had arrived, and in response to the perils which had bedevilled Westeros, she had risen to the occasion by displaying an intelligence beyond her years and a readiness in battle which would have not shamed his most seasoned fighters. She would stalk her foes as quietly as a cat, thus had earned herself a nickname which played off her own given name.
Brandon narrowed his eyes and peered through the trees off into the distance. His eyes long adjusted to moonlight, he could just spot the flickering of movement through the trees. "What is it, Cat? A survivor from Azor's sortie? Meggan?"
At the mention of her name, another woman joined them, older than the first. She was voluptuous and tall, nearly as tall as he, with blonde hair which swept down to her waist. As much as the other woman often seemed older than her years, this one seemed ever-childlike. But that aspect of her personality could be misleading: she was a wilding and a warg ... a skinchanger, able to cast her mind into the body of animals ... and she could display an instinctive savagery which matched their own. "My ravens told me that they had all been killed by the Walkers. They were sure of it." As she spoke, a raven descended from the air, landing on her shoulder.
"If it is one of them, we'll have to put him to the torch. You know that. I'm sorry."
Cat nodded miserably. "I don't want my parents to come back as one of those undead wights any more than you do."
"Kurt?" Brandon addressed the fourth member of their party.
"I'm here," came a voice from above. Cross-breeding between the First Men and the Children of the Forest was rare; viable pregnancies, and children who lived past infancy, rarer still. As any member of the original inhabitants of the land before the First Men arrived, he had nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots, and large pointed ears. His eyes were big too, great golden cat's eyes. His hands had only three fingers and a thumb, although with fingernails rather than the sharp black claws indicative of the Children of the Forest, and his height and demeanour were the equal of any First Man's. It had taken Brandon some time to adjust to the presence of the wood-dancer.
"Don't get ahead of us," Brandon said. Kurt's tendency towards impulsive heroics had caused the company problems in the past. The other man just laughed, but not in a tone that implied disagreement. The four of them spread out, prepared to surround the entity who had made the long trek from the farther north, the land of the Walkers.
If the man knew of their existence, he did not reveal it, and evinced surprise when the quartet of figures lurched from the surrounding trees, swords drawn. "Stand down," Brandon said.
The figure raised it hands in an appeasing gesture. "Well met, old friend," said a voice familiar to all of them, in an accent common in the Eastern lands but rarely found in Westeros.
Meggan gasped, her eyes widened, and then her face went blank. A flock of ravens swept down from the surrounding trees, harrying at the hood the man wore which protected and concealed his face. He withstood it stoically, until finally his face was revealed. "Feel the warmth of my skin; I'm not a wight," said Azor Ahai.
She burst out crying in sheer relief, and ran to him, pressing her body against his own. Her companions, bemused, watched for a moment and finally sheathed their swords.
"Azor," Brandon said finally, "Meggan saw your corpse. Was she wrong?"
He detached himself from her kiss, though he still held the blonde woman in his arms. "No. Not in the sense we normally think of death."
The story was told, over and over again, and in each retelling Azor felt his own heart cease to ache so much, though he knew there was a wound in it which would never completely heal. Finally, he was brought to Saturnyne, the white-haired matriarch of the First Men, to tell the story one final time.
"A hero's sword … a weapon against the Others," the woman said, and licked her lips. "May I see it?"
Azor rose to his feet and drew Lightbringer from its scabbard. As it was exposed to air, it burst into flame, the heat barely affecting its bearer but Saturnyne could feel it from her throne of stone.
The woman studied the weapon, unmoving. "But did this god of yours mean for you to travel to the North and defeat the Others on your own? There are no further flaming swords with which to arm the men of Westeros, am I correct?"
"That is correct, Your Highness," Azor said as he sheathed Lightbringer, extinguishing it. "But there are other weapons, almost as puissant." He reached into a smaller scabbard and pulled out a blade the size of a man's hand, given him by Roma, which glittered blackly in the torchlight of the throne room. "This is known to the Children of the Forest as dragonglass. It was forged in heat beyond what any human forge can give, and bears its heat within its darkness. The Others can not withstand its touch."
Saturnyne extended a hand, and accepted the gift of the blade. She examined it closely, and wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. "They can supply more of these? Or better yet, proper swords?"
"Dragonglass is too brittle for a proper sword, My Lady, although well suited for an arrowhead or a spear head."
"Even better." She returned the blade to him and nodded. "One of your companions is related to the Children of the Forest, is he not? Have him go among them and request more … daggers, arrowheads, spear tips, whatever they will supply. Then return to me with a tale of victory … if you can do that, the forces of Westeros will be at your disposal. May the Gods be with you."
There is no god but R'hllor, he thought to himself, and I have seen his face. But he only bowed deeply, and said, "As you will, My Lady."
It was weeks later that the small group, accompanied by a archers and spear-throwers, ventured north once again, armed with weapons supplied them by the Children of the Forest. All of them had suffered losses, either though starvation or the depredations of the Others. Brandon in particular felt a sense of almost propriety interest in protecting his people from the terrors they have been subjected to.
As they rode the first night, Meggan sidled her horse over to Azor's, and rode close to him. He smiled at her gently.
She paused for long moments before she inhaled deeply and found the words to speak. "I see that your sister did not return to you," she said, struggling to keep notes of hope or anxiety out of her voice.
"No," he replied, "and she was my wife; you need to call her such."
She averted her eyes. "Those of you from Asshai, marrying your sisters and brothers, I can never understand it." She spoke carefully so that it would not be obvious how hurtful that was to her. "But you said … was your wife?"
He glanced over at her, his eyes flashing the pain that his stoic face belied. He reached for the scabbard which lay next to him, Lightbringer sheathed inside. He held them in his two hands, as if testing their balance. "I carry her with me still," he said. Finally, he returned them to their place. "I can offer you nothing more than that. I am sorry."
She swallowed hard, making sure she did not cry before him. "It is perverse," she said bitterly. "Both of you … all of you." Her eyes suddenly went glassy, and she slumped in her saddle. Azor heard a rustle of ravens overhead, and knew she was flying. He sighed.
It was three days later that they came to a godswood.
"We shall camp here," Brandon said, "and ask the Gods for their help in this mission to free these lands from the darkness, cold, and death that has plagued it." He turned to the eldest of the spearwives. "Michelle, stand watch tonight."
Kurt acted as song leader, guiding the others through the words that had been taught to the First Men by the Children of the Forest, and which most of them only knew phonetically.
Azor stood at a distance from the others as they knelt and chanted before the trees: they had created the idols themselves, carved with stone and metal tools, and then knelt to them. He saw it as apostasy compared to what he had seen, heard, and tasted with his own senses in the other world … compared to his own resurrection from a death in this world.
Afterwards, they had barely managed to slide into their bedding when the watchwoman's ululating voice rent the air. They saw her, spear flashing wildly among an advance guard of wights. Only then did they see the torchlight glittering on the reflective armor of the army of Others which followed them.
"By the gods," Brandon whispered, "there's so many of them." He turned to the others, mind reeling, "Petyr, Scratch, Shrine, Threadgold … lay down a cover of arrows until we're prepared … then make sure a path is cleared to the North."
Brandon, Kurt, Meggan, and Cat drew their own weapons, and Azor drew forth Lightbringer. The flame burned clearly in the darkness.
The Others melted away in the onslaught of arrows, but the dragonglass did not have the same effect on the wights. Lightbringer carved a swathe through them, but he understood his troupe was working at a disadvantage. He drew back, and his sword set the godswood aflame.
Kurt's golden eyes widened in shock … raised as a wood-dancer, he felt the destruction as an almost physical blow. It was only Brandon's grip, cold and firm, on his arm which brought him back to the present.
"We are fighting for the survival of both our peoples," Brandon reminded him fiercely.
Kurt snarled, pointed canines visible, but nodded. He leaped for the treetops, poised there, and worked free a branch long as a fighting staff. Surveying the ground for only a moment, he swung back down one-handed and lit both ends of the impromptu staff aflame. "Fire and blood," he shouted out, swinging down to the centre of the army of wights and moving among them, iridescence in his wake.
The rout of the army of the Other had begun.
Azor Ahai led the forces over the ensuing months, Lightbringer leaving trails of fire in their wake. With the light of Nissa Nissa at its head, the forces of the First Men drove the Others back to the north, into the Lands of Always Winter. But the victory had not come without costs: the numbers of the Children of the Forest were greatly depleted, and they began to disappear from Westeros, passing into the realm of legend.
But the victory also brought with it the Spring, as sunlight once more was seen in the realms of men. The trees, stunted and wan, took longer to bring forth new leaves. Saturnyne had scrupulously stored seeds against this day, and she sent the armies out once more into the lands, disseminating life where once they had disseminated fire and death.
Saturnyne, Brandon, Azor, Meggan, and Cat toured the area, bearing witness to the new world they had created. The queen gathered them together one day at the site of their first victory. They watched the sowers, and spoke of Kurt and his ways, and all the other friends who had died in the war. When the heart tree was replanted, Azor felt a shadow at his back, and a sharp blade slid through the belt which kept Lightbringer attached to his hip. He whirled around, uncomprehending. "Cat?"
There was a nod from Saturnyne, and the sowers, old warriors all, seized Azor by the arms. "What is the meaning of this?" he shouted out, struggling.
"Please … " Meggan leaned forward, reaching for him, but two other men held her back,
"The gods do not look kindly on your apostasy," she told him. "There were many godswoods you set to the torch in your battles, all in the name of your mad R'hllor, and our souls will suffer if we do not make good on your actions." Brandon forced Azor down onto his knees before the heart tree. Saturnyne stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand. She grabbed Azor by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. Azor's life flowed out of him in a red tide.
"We do not need his god," Brandon said, "and no more will his name ever be spoken of in these lands. He will be forgotten."
Saturnyne nodded. "Let it be."
Meggan shrieked, and with strength borne of desperation, broke free of her captors. She leapt towards Saturnyne, who backed away. "Child, do not … " Reflexively, the sickle swept outwards against her attacker, and Meggan fell to the ground, her blood pooling with Azor's. A flock of ravens burst from the trees, darkening the skies.
Brandon shook his head as he saw the dead body of the girl at his feet. Cat leaned into him, weeping for the friend who had been like a sister to her. Brandon kicked some dirt over the blood at his feet.
And above, far to the east, ravens flew east over the Narrow Sea towards other lands. "Azor Ahai," they croaked. "Azor Ahai … Azor Ahai … "