Second Daughters
Chapter Two
The Other Stark
RIVERRUN 283 AL
ERYNA STARK
That night Cat found her in the Godswood at the hour of the Wolf.
During the daylight hours, the sacred grove at Riverrun was more garden than Godswood. Tall redwoods grew in abundance and tendrils of wispy sunlight would wink at you through green and gold leaves, dappling tufts of spring green grass and cotton haired dandelions.
You could imagine stumbling across Jenny of Oldstones weaving flowers in her hair, or chancing upon beautiful Jonquil and her faithful Florian. There were rabbits, and hedgehogs, and all manner of lesser animals, plashing and playing in the small silver streams that stretched through gnarled roots like glass rivers.
At night though, it became a forest like any other, the ground soft and wet; the mud kissing your shoes with dark, damp lips, gulping at your feet while owls shrieked and the shadows shifted, the wind singing through the leaves.
It reminded her more of a true Godswood then. Cat and her family prayed in a Sept, to a God with seven faces and seven names. Worship for them was lighting candles before gilded idols with names like 'Mother' and 'Father' and 'Maiden.' They sang hymns and read from books like the Seven Pointed Star.
Eryna's Gods had no books, and no names. No songs were sung and no candles were lit. Worship did not take place in a marble building with stained glass windows and rainbow crystals. Worship was kneeling on the dirt in front of a Weirwood tree.
The Old Gods. The Gods of the First Men. And in the North, they had never bowed to the New Faith of the Andals. In the south they had burned the sacred Weirwood trees and anointed themselves with sweet scented oils.
That had troubled Eryna, the thought of the Gods being unable to see you. How can the Gods see you, if they've got no eyes?
There was a weirwood tree in the Tully's godswood though. It was a sapling compared to the Weirwood of Winterfell, and the face, blood-red against the bone-bark was not right either. Its face is feeble. Sad. The face on the Weirwood at Winterfell had been braver.
Eryna had carved more faces on other trees as well, so the Weirwood would not be lonely. She had carved a face onto the oldest, most bloated and twisted redwood she could find. Its mouth had been lop-sided and it had looked more like one of Edmure's scribbles.
She had prayed to it nevertheless, though its eyes had mocked her until she had forced to find another, and then after that another too. She was now surrounded by slanted grins and mismatched eyes. It mattered not, she kept on praying. To of all of them in turn.
When Cat found her, she was kneeling under the Weirwood, its pale bark glowing like moonstones in the dark, all the others faces having received their due.
"You…you must be cold…"
Eryna hesitated, her clammy hands slippery with dew and drizzle. She had not expected Cat, who so seldom came to trouble her prayers, especially now she had little Robb to contend with.
She did not turn. It was safer to stare at the face. The bark gleamed like ivory as it caught the silver trickles of moonlight and occasionally the face seemed to smile, if you tilted your head in the right way, and squinted until your eyes became misted.
"I'm not cold, not at all," said Eryna, watching, waiting. Go now, she wanted to beg. Let that be it.
But Cat did not go. Eryna could feel her lingering, could feel her watching and waiting. Go. Yet her good-sister did not leave. She could hear the nervous twitches of breath, the soft sigh before the deep breath. No. Please go.
"Eryna…there was…there was a raven…"
Dark wings, dark words. Eryna closed her eyes, and squeezed them, hard, until the pinpricks of colour behind her lids swirled and danced for her. She would not hear this. She would not listen.
There was a hand on her shoulder, she realised. She felt her insides turn to water as Cat knelt next to her. Eryna wanted to slap her away but she remained frozen, her cramped legs aching as Cat's hand roamed, clean, warm fingers wrapping around her shivering ones, the smell of rosemary clinging to her long auburn hair.
"It's from your brother, Lord Eddard," began Cat, and later Eryna would recall how strange it was, that Cat had borne her brother a son, but was still unable to address him as anything other than Lord Eddard.
"I am so sorry," murmured Cat, but Eryna shook her head. Her body curled in on itself, she could feel her lips brush the mud-soaked blades of grass. No, all of her seemed to scream, to wail. Yes, some timid voice whispered.
"Oh Eryna…" and she found herself being embraced fully, tender hands brushing her coarse dark hair.
Eryna shook her head, hugging herself tightly, as though trying to keep her insides from leaking out of her ribs. I should be crying. They would expect her to weep. It was a requirement really. But Eryna had cried all her tears for Brandon and Father, she wasn't sure there was anything left now
A bitter humour filled her instead. She could hear the tree's laughing again. They sounded like Lyanna. Are you still laughing at me Lya? Had it all been one of her japes? Had it all been for nothing?
"I need…I need…"
Eryna didn't know what she needed anymore. Something was squeezing her chest, shuddering fingers wrapping themselves tightly around her heart and strangling it. She couldn't think anymore. She didn't want to think anymore.
I want my home. But she had been at Riverrun for so long, she was starting to wonder if Winterfell had been a dream after all.
"Eryna…breathe…sweetling…"
Cat coddled her as though she were a child. Eryna swallowed and slowly, unbent herself, peering up at the pathetic face on the tree. I prayed. She wanted to claw that face. She wanted to peel it back and make it cry bloody tears. If I had been at Winterfell…
"You…we should go inside…Eryna…"
"No," protested Eryna, her voice coming out sharp and cold, like Ice. "No. I must…I have to stay here…"
Her fingers dug into the earth, she could feel the moist soil cake her nails. She was trembling, she realised, though she didn't feel at all cold. 'Soft skinned southerners get cold,' Lya had taunted her once, snowflakes melting in her dark hair as she moulded another snowball to throw.
'I'm not soft!' Eryna had yelped, flinging herself at her sister. Who had one that day? She struggled to remember now but suddenly it seemed vitally important. There had been so many days spent tackling each other to the ground and wrestling like the boys did.
I want my father. But father was gone and Maester Walys had been dead and buried for near three years. Where was Brandon? Where was Father? Where was Lya? Why had she not been with them? She should have been with Lya. Damn her. Damn Lyanna to hell.
"Eryna…" called Cat, her voice weighed down with worry. "You look pale. Do you want me to fetch for Rowena?"
Eryna Stark shook her head once more, her eyes once again meeting the damp, wretched stare of the Weirwood's face.
Later she would remember someone screaming
OoOoOoOooOoOoOoOO
She couldn't remember the long walk from the Godswood to her chambers. She could remember Cat stripping her of her clothes, of how her dress had stuck to her like a sweaty second skin, and how servants had scuttled about like drab mice, careful not to look and careful not to speak, as they poured water into a copper tub.
The water had hissed as it swallowed her pale, sticky skin, and tendrils of steam had risen, meandering like gauzy grey worms in the air, before dissipating into nothing. Few words had been spoken, though the water felt too hot, licking against her raw puckered skin, pale flecks drifting in the water.
Eryna emerged quietly, and allowed a handmaid to guide her through to her chambers. On a silver tray, a glass had been laid out for her. Sweetsleep. Eryna might have preferred Arbor gold. The letter was there also but she did not have the stomach to read it. Someone had left a copy of The Seven Pointed Star next to her bed. She wondered if it was meant kindly or as a joke.
Her pulsating fingers brushed the starched cover, glossing over the enamelled Seven Pointed Star, emblazoned in chaste white. Would that a book could hold the answer to everything. Idly, she toyed with the pages and ended up glancing over a fragment from the Mother's Book.
The Mother is the font of mercy, and looks down on us all as Her children.
There was a drawing too, of a woman nursing a babe, her golden head bowed in prayer. Eryna considered it, wondering why the Mother didn't bleed tears as red as Weirwood sap. There was no greater crime than kinslaying, and what was a mother to do, if one son killed another?
Eryna had never known her own mother. Lady Stark had died of a fever not a week after she had birthed Eryna and Benjen. Eryna had asked often of her, and had imagined a woman like sister, but older and kinder. Your mother had a gentle heart, her Father had told her once. Eryna had been thrilled when Brandon had told her that she looked more like her mother than Lyanna.
When Eryna had told that to Lyanna once, in one of their quarrels, Lyanna had pointed out that the reason they all didn't have a mother was because of her.
I saw nothing. She closed her eyes but all she could see was the faces she'd carved into the tree's laughing at her.
There was a knock at the oaken door and then the steel hinges squealed as it was dragged open. Rowena Arryn crossed the threshold, a tumbler of what looked suspiciously like wine carried in her arms, accompanied by a goblet, inscribed with the Tully trout.
"Red, from the Reach," she stated, placing the flagon down on the redwood table next to Eryna's bed. She poured wine into the goblet and then proffered it to Eryna, politely pretending not to notice the white linen wrapped around her left hand.
Eryna accepted it readily, the taste of bitter wine burning away the ache rising in her throat. Wine was not a substance with which Eryna could claim any familiarity. Before Harrenhal she had only ever been permitted one cup at feasts, though Lya had often attempted to sneak them more.
No. I will not think of Lya. Yet the image of her sister reared up in her head, snowflakes melting in her long dark hair. Brandon. Lya. Father. Eryna finished the goblet and banged it down on the table, nearly knocking the glass of sweetsleep flying across the floor.
"You need to rest…" said Rowena quietly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.
"Will rest bring me peace?"
"No," admitted Rowena, her face drawn and pinched. She had a pretty face, Rowena, all apple cheeks, dimples and chestnut eyes.
Elbert had not been as handsome as his sister, but Eryna had admired his eyes, the exact shape and shade as Rowena's.
"What do I do now?"
The question left her lips without leave of her brain. It sounded pathetic, the whimpering of a child. Rowena shook her head and patted the blankets. Eryna wandered over, feeling older than the Seven's Crone as she allowed Rowena to see her into bed, until the two of them curled up under the quilts, Rowena's mop of red curls tickling Eryna's chin.
"You'll go home," said Rowena softly, whispering as though someone may hear them. "Ned will return soon and you'll go home to Winterfell."
With what is left of my family in a box. There had been no way of making sure her father and Brandon's bones would reach Winterfell safely before. The three of them would return together now.
At least they would not be alone.
"And then what?"
"I don't know…" sighed Rowena, her warm fingers caressing Eryna's cheek.
"We should have been sisters, you and I."
Uttering the words now, felt to Eryna, like a sort of treason, but they made Rowena smile, a little, her pale lips twitching.
Father had promised me a match as grand as Lyanna's. He had whispered to her of Elbert Arryn, heir to the Vale. He had been of an age with Brandon, and at Harrenhal, his kisses had tasted of stale ale and onions.
"Perhaps," said Rowena, snaking an arm around her waist. "I always wanted a sister you know." And Eryna did know, because they had treaded this conversation half a hundred times in the past year. "Elbert made for a terrible sister and my cousins were ghastly."
"Lord Whent had a daughter," reminded Eryna. She could vaguely recall the daughter of Harrenhal, but she remembered her brother's being unhorsed, of Osmund swearing worse than Bran as he tumbled from his steed, falling against Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard.
"Shella," said Rowena, "She was sweet. About your age I think? Osmund was fond of her."
Osmund Whent, the heir to Harrenhal, had been Rowena's second betrothed. He had fallen at the battle of Summerhall and his younger brothers Osric and Orland had rode out to avenge him and after they had been killed, young Ornest had gone to the Trident.
Had he lived or had he died? Eryna couldn't remember. Only one death at the Trident had interested her and the tidings of it had made all the faces in the Godswood smile for her.
"Harrenhal must be a lonely place," said Eryna, remembering the mighty fortress, the most impregnable stronghold in all the Seven Kingdoms, cursed by dragons and haunted by the ghosts of every soul who had ever came to claim it as their own.
"Very lonely. Poor Lady Orla, Gods give her peace," murmured Rowena, shivering under the quilts.
Poor Lady Orla indeed. She had started the war with four healthy sons and now she might not even have one. More ghosts for Harrenhal to claim.
"Tell me about Harrenhal," she asked, twisting one of Rowena's curls around her pinkie.
"Would you not prefer something happier?" asked Rowena, rolling her eyes.
Eryna shook her head. "The happy stories are always less likely to be true."
"If you say so, though I think your grim Northern tales have about as much truth in them as our sweet southern ones. Pass me more wine my dear, and I'll spin you a story. The bloodier, the better I suppose?"
"Doesn't have to be bloody to be scary. The Night King's Queen had ice, instead of blood, in her veins," remembered Eryna, slipping out of the coverlets to fetch the flagon.
"What's so scary about ice? Ice melts," dismissed Rowena, shifting back on the pillows as Eryna crept back into the bed.
They shared the wine between them, drinking straight from the flagon, while Rowena weaved her story, of curses and corpses, of Mad Lady Lothston, who had feasted on the flesh of children and commanded a legion of giant, bloodsucking bats with teeth as sharp as Valyrian steel.
Rowena's stories reminded her of Brandon's – enormous tales, bold and vivid, like a child's drawing, or scarlet ink against a page of white. They lacked conviction though, blazing like wildfire, until they were snuffed out in a puff of uncertain smoke.
Brandon had embellish all his prose with daring escapades and villainous butchery; he could take one of Old Nan's tales and stretch it into a saga filled with heroes and damsels, that would last for nights and nights until he forgot what the story was even about. He had liked the scary ones too, and all of Lyanna's brave and star-crossed lovers used to meet the most grisly ends imaginable, all for the sake of rousing her temper.
"Do you think there are such things as ghosts?" Eryna probed, once the wine was finished and her friend was too drowsy to tell her a lie.
"Hope not," mumbled Rowena, rolling over and taking most of the bed-sheets with her.
"I hope they do," said Eryna, pressing her face into her friend's back. Rowena smelled of lavender oil and wine; slightly sour but soothing. There was something comfortingly solid about Rowena; if the Stark's had ice in their veins, then the Arryn's had rock, implacable and immoveable.
"Why would you want that?" she muttered, her voice lazy and heavy, her arm reaching behind her to pat Eryna on the ribs.
"I wouldn't mind seeing Bran again. Even if he was a ghost. I wouldn't care," said Eryna, and she could feel the wine burning back up her throat.
To go back to Winterfell; to find Brandon galloping upon Ser Dunk, a madman's grin upon his face; to see her Father standing atop the bridge between the armoury and the Great Keep, sword strapped to his side; to find Lyanna plucking roses in the Glass Gardens, a crown of winter petals atop her dark head.
Her sister was gone and her crown would have wilted long ago. The petals were already withering, drying up like old parchment. She couldn't stand to think of her now. To think of all of them. Ned was half a stranger to her. It was her twin she missed the most, she had not seen Benjen for more than a year.
"Oh Ery…"
Rowena kissed her gently on the cheek, and soon after fell asleep, the sound of her soft snores filling the bed chamber. Lya had snored too, though she'd always denied it. Lya. Lya. Lya, it sounds like, liar, liar, liar.
Eryna closed her eyes and fought the urge to smash the empty wine flagon on the floor, just to hear the sound of something smashing, just to imagine it was Robert's war-hammer slamming into Rhaegar's breast-plate, knocking blood-red rubies into the mud, cracking his rib cage, ripping apart his bones like plucking legs from a spider.
Lyanna should have lived to see that. Her sister should have lived to see justice done and to be rescued by her dear Robert.
It would have been an ending worthy of one of her songs, thought Eryna, and she could feel the blood humming under her skin, a tiny heartbeat under finger pads. Lya had always been so fond of music.
The next OC, Eryna Stark. I think Benjen is supposed to be about two years younger than Lyanna. His date of birth is never explicitly given, so I'm assuming about 269AL, making him about 12-14 during Harrenhal and RR.
Elbert Arryn was the heir to the Eyrie, so I'm assuming he would have been a good option as a husband, if Rickard Stark was wishing to strengthen ties with Southern houses.
Feel free to let me know what you think :)