Thank you so much to DrHolland for beta reading this and pointing out the unclear details of the plot. Thank you to TopShelfCrazy for offering her support and checking this chapter.
If anything is unclear plot wise ask. I will answer.
Any feedback is love.
Thank you for reading.
xx
The Greenseer
Joramun...
The name came from a past so ancient that none among the living could remember it.
Yet the heart tree now whispered that name faintly as the greenseer readied his pack, labouring under the alert gazes of the child-like sculptures, in the innermost courtyard of his beloved castle. The wind was sweet and quiet, murmuring together with the red leaves, humming a song too old to be recalled in its entirety.
Joramun woke giants from the earth…
The greenseer was about to leave his home with the aging singer from the riverlands and the late Lady Catelyn's red priest. He would have preferred the sharp-witted company of the northern bard, Mance Rayder, to the sweet-tongued Tom of Sevenstreams. But the path of the last King-beyond-the-Wall, who was his own singer and his own fool, now lay north and northwest, and even farther west, in search of a lost truth.
If the way to go west was not found, many lives would be lost; the young, the old, and those not yet born. And with every single loss, the days would grow shorter, and the nights darker still… Every life had to be preserved now, that of the innocent and the criminal alike.
The greenseer's own path led in a different direction. His destiny would first take him south, though never as far as the red mountains of Dorne, and the cairns under the fallen tower, where he never wished to return.
He would walk for thirty, he would walk for fifty, he would walk for a hundred days until he did what needed be done. In penance there might be accomplishment. In humiliation there could be victory. Or the realm of men would suffer a thunderous defeat; a new doom in which the pain he endured until the end of everything would lose all meaning and importance.
No road was safe any more. The bridge at the Twins was broken, the fords of the Trident a ruin, and the Green Fork too short; the boats of his people would not take him to his destination. Cold winds blew over Westeros. The minor servants of the Night's King were able to cross the Wall in small numbers, due to careless spoiling of magic, thousands of years old, that should have been left in peace, undisturbed.
The red god, the god of fire, the new enemy of the old gods, was more greedy than the Seven-who-are-one had ever been, when they arrived to conquer Westeros. His lady servant forced the free folk of the far north to sacrifice twigs of the weirwoods to him… Little did she know how angry the old gods could become, just as angry as their people. They mourned for being betrayed and burned by their own, and they allowed the cold, dead shadows of the night to cling to the robes of the poor who had been forced to cast the tree-branch fingers into the flames.
Invisible, the monsters fooled the ancient magic of the Wall. The people unknowingly carried them through the ice, believing they were running away from them. Yet the magic was still too strong for the white shadows to stay near Castle Black. So they wandered south as mists, only to take form and shape whenever and wherever the cold became unendurable in the night…
And the priestess of the hungry god did not see, or rather, refused to see how it was she who disturbed the old magical protection. The woman pursued a daring goal of her own, despite that her mortal soul was filled with fear. The greenseer sensed it over the long leagues between the Greywater Watch and the Wall, as though she were standing in front of him like an open scroll.
My lady, he thought, what is it you want?
He knew beyond doubt it must have been a great heart's desire which brought the skilled Asshai'i shadowbinder to Westeros and made her stay there, pretending to be a faithful servant of Lord Stannis. Yet, as always, the greenseer could see many things, but not all; and the deepest secrets of the sorceress remained her own.
Danger lurked on all roads South. It came from the fearful noblemen, the hungry smallfolk, the wild animals and the blue mists… There was only one possibility left.
The greenseer had always belonged to the old gods. He had never betrayed them, and they possessed ways of travel which were barred to ordinary men. Not even the Asshai'i with their forward-galloping poisonous powders could match their speed. If the gods took him where he needed to go, the white walkers would never catch up with him, or not until he chose to face them, one day; as his only son might have done by now and perished in his endeavour.
Howland could never see the exact moment of Jojen's death. No matter how hard he tried, he could not glimpse it. But he knew beyond doubt that he might have passed away… or would do so soon enough… in order to never father children of his own. His heart begged him to head north and use his gift to save his son if there was still time.
Yet he could never forget the simple truth; only one greenseer was born among thousands of men… Howland could never bring himself to heed only the wishes of his own heart; he needed to act upon what sight was given him for the good of all; as far as he could interpret what the gods allowed him to see. He would never know the entire future, but the others saw even less and were forced to exist in uncertainty and darkness. He could not abandon them to such fate.
A duty to that one possible future, which still held some light, was now his, and his alone. He would mourn for his son and head south.
He prayed to his gods whose weeping, bleeding eyes had been closed for so very long. Open your eyes and see, I beg you. Allow me to take my companions with me, unscathed and unharmed. The old song will have to be sung again very soon, if we can still remember the words.
Joramun blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth…
Today, the greenseer wished he could view the past and not only the uncertain future. He longed to contemplate exactly what Joramun had done and why…
He pushed his head inside the maw of the tree to better hear its rough, hollow voice.
Joramun…
He tensed, struggling to understand. He listened attentively to the great weirwood, whose giant roots had kept his home from drifting apart and being swallowed by the bogs for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
The answers he sought were buried in history… The Long Night has come and gone before… What he would have given to be able to look that far back and see! But he could not. The old gods were purposefully closing their eyes every time he tried, perhaps in fear of remembering.
"Lord Reed." Thoros, the red priest, addressed him from behind with quaint respect, sounding baffled.
The greenseer supposed that being caught with his head inside a tree appeared as an inadequate method of seeing the future, if one was used to gazing into fires… He instantly re-emerged, determined to think about Joramun later. Tom accompanied Thoros and they both seemed ready to depart. Or as ready as they can be.
There was one last thing the greenseer needed to check before risking the journey.
"Thoros, once of Myr, now of nowhere," Howland asked very seriously, "have you ever been to Asshai?"
"No," Thoros said what the greenseer needed to hear.
Tom shook his head though the question was not directed to him. "Why?" he asked, with an insatiable curiosity of a song-maker.
"The red woman on the Wall has been," Reed said. "She bows to the same god as you, but her use of magic and the many powders hidden in her robes do not sit very well with the trees. That kind of magic bothers their roots, which are always resting. I wouldn't wish us to end up in the fabled Yi Ti because you had some such fickle substance in your pockets."
Thoros turned his pockets inside out as did Tom o' Sevens. They were empty and had holes in them.
"Why should we trust you?" Tom asked, holding his harp in front of his body, as another man would hold a sword, in sign of both defence and defiance.
"Either you do or you don't," the greenseer would not waste time on their lack of faith. "Or you can take it up with my ancestors when I am gone."
The portico statues of the children opened their mouths, showing sharp teeth. They hissed at Thoros and Tom, gripping scythes, sounding drums.
"This is devilry," Tom proclaimed.
"No less a devilry than bringing dead to life," Howland Reed protested in a flat, cold tone of extreme honour his late friend Ned Stark would be proud to hear him use. You wanted me to act a lord, my friend. Here I am, doing my best. Though I fear I will always be a different lord than you were...
"If there is to be life, there has to be death," he tried to explain to them, but their faces remained shadowed in grey, unaccepting of the simple truth. "Everlasting life is the same as never-ending death. It is no life. My ancestors will gladly teach you when I am gone."
Tom scratched his head in disbelief and ignorance, but the flame of understanding was lit in Thoros' eyes. It was ungodly what he did with Lord Beric Dondarrion and later with Lady Catelyn Stark… Yet the gods allowed it where they could have prevented it. The greenseer frequently wondered why.
"I am with you, lord," Thoros said. "For as long as the light of R'hllor burns inside me."
The greenseer helped the red priest into the tree, and between them they pushed the singer inside as well.
"Farewell," the greenseer saluted the statues, "I now know for certain who you are and who we are. You haven't completely disappeared in the bogs and the woods, not in the Neck at the very least, have you? You must have formed bonds of love and families with the First Men in the past ages of this world… And this castle had to reject not one, but two unknowing descendants of giants for me to realise what I should have always known about my blood."
Rejection was a matter of speech and it could amount to serious bodily injury. The castle palpably hated Sandor Clegane, but as long as he was with his wife, it never harmed him for some reason; and he was with her all the time since he landed in the Greywater Watch with the king and his dragon. A sensible man.
Would that I could do the same.
The Greatjon Umber had no wife and had been less fortunate. A boat accepted him well enough at the Twins. But during the welcome feast in the castle, he became so sick of a simple meal that he spent the remainder of his stay retching in his bed. No one else was ill from the food. And every night, the tall northern lord screamed with nightmares, unsheathed his sword and advanced on invisible creatures wielding bronze knives and scythes. As a consequence of his suffering, one night he ran his head through a wooden castle wall, and left Greywater with a bandage over his left eye.
"We, the crannogmen and women are the astrayed descendants of the children the forest!" Reed proclaimed the truth to the statues. "More is the pity that the ancient hatred between the two elder races had to resurface before I could see it without a shade of doubt…"
"I thank you for not breaking the sacred guest right by murdering any of our guests, despite your misgivings… I would hate the House Reed to treat visitors like the House Frey, merely for remembering the blood spilled between the children and the giants in their wars in Dawn Age…"
"Keep your scythes sharp and your woodharps tuned, oh you forefathers and foremothers of mine!"
Many of the children statues represented ladies, looking as dangerous as their men. Howland remembered his wife with longing. Our gods remain silent about what comes next. Are you seeing me now, my love? Is our son already with you? Did he die to save Meera, his sister?
The children of the Andals speak of seven heavens… Is there a heaven for us who offer our prayers to the trees?
Or is there nothing at all?
The winter day was too beautiful by far to give in to sadness. Instead, he finished his farewells.
"I shall return here to sing one last song of the earth," he told the statues in their ancient, marvelously carved porticos. "Keep the watch for me until then."
He knew that they would. The children never betrayed their own as men did, and he wondered idly if the giants were the same in that regard. The elder races…
Lord Howland Reed entered the maw of the weirwood tree, and its cruel red lips closed around the little crannogman, swallowing him. The tumble that followed was long and painful. The only thing he could do was breathe and keep faith, as the foggy images of the world stumbled by him; past, present and future pressed together.
Joramun.
The first new child, the gods may have whispered, before they were silent.
The lord of the crannogs kept falling, fearing to miss his destination. Yet for as much as he wondered if his journey had been a mistake, he remained hopelessly eager to reach the other side. He could not hear Thoros nor Tom scream so they must have been safely on their way, maybe they had reached the place already and were waiting for him.
I will walk for a hundred days, the greenseer vowed stubbornly. And in the end, there shall be light.
The Shadowbinder
Joramun…
The name came from the past, but the future king of the Seven Kingdoms would wear it proudly. The fire told it true this time, more than ever. More so than when it erroneously predicted the gory death of Bowen Marsh and the other would-be murderers of Jon Snow in the abysmally hot, black-toothed jaws of the dragon.
Jon's father, a foul raper in stories Stannis believed in, and a proud, troubled man in truth, spared them… reining in his beast. Rhaegar had known exactly who harmed his son and no one had ever told him. How? Why didn't he kill them as he well should have done?
Moreover, the presence of a being from an elder race countered Melisandre's sorcery and rendered it useless, when she tried to subdue the dragon to her will. She had whispered the required incantation with urgent secrecy, in the old dragon-binding speech preserved through time in the far-reaching memory of Asshai. Yet there was someone present who shielded the dragon from it by having a different nature, impassive and unaffected by magic. The occurrence could not be easily explained. There were only people left in Castle Black. There were no wildlings, no giants, nor their mammoths.
No horrible white trees were allowed to grow very near the main outpost of the Night's Watch either. Melisandre had seen to that, sending queen's men to finish the burnings the wildlings were forced to start. She'd only allowed them to hide behind the Wall when they sacrificed a branch of their false gods to the Lord of Light. There was still one or another oak or elm left, with a sneering face carved on it, but she wasn't afraid of those.
A face cut in the tree bark was nothing. But a face shaped in blood could only be the work of the Great Other and his insatiable, blood-thirsty servants. For as much as the red dye was merely tree sap, Melisandre could never shake the notion it was blood from her fervent mind.
Jon's father brought only one man with him, a lowly retainer, despised and mocked by Stannis and his loyal knights, though rather large and imposing of stature, now that she thought back on it… Could it be? Could he have the blood of the giants? The ancient scrolls declared that giants and the sharp-toothed, extinguished children of the white trees could not breed with men. Yet if those writings were wrong, the solution to her problem was almost too simple... The dragon and his rider were merely fortunate to have brought one such abomination with them.
Next time it won't avail them.
She could sense the dragon's fear of her, and her heart rejoiced… The shadows Melisandre could bring to life on the Wall were stronger than the black dragon; the largest one alive, and still growing as rapidly as hair did this winter...
She had studied for long years in order to achieve perfection, believing she would need her powers to wake the dragon from the cold stone. And now she'd come so close to dominating the beast in which the blessed fire was made flesh.
It doesn't matter, she told herself, fed up with useless, secondary questions about what exactly thwarted her in the past. She had to be certain about the future where it concerned the matters closest to her most intimate plans and wishes.
The future altered slightly with every deed of men, just as the life-giving fire constantly flickered and shifted shapes and colours in the wind. Only R'hllor knew every change before it occurred, but she, his servant, she had to look.
She possessed one certainty; the great chain of important events in time would unfold as the one true God intended, and the greatest one of all was to be a song…
A song of ice and fire….
This chant would bring into Melisandre's capable hands the greatest desire of her heart; Balerion the Black Dread reborn, a dragon destined to be even greater than his famous ancestor... The new world order… There could be no doubt about that. The Age of Fire…
Joramun…
Joramun…
Joramun…
The name was vested with some importance which escaped her. Stannis will have a male heir after all… That much is clear as spring water. Thinking of it with a cold, impartial head, it was almost better than the dour king deserved after everything he agreed to do at her behest. He could have said no when we did for his younger brother Renly. He must have known. And he never said a word. He only kept complaining for days about Renly offering him a peach.
And the falsely modest, suspicious young man, who thought he could become a true leader without her aid, he'd be remembered as no more than the over-zealous Lord Commander of the Watch, never more than… Jon Snow…
Melisandre snorted with subtle derision. It was such an ordinary destiny.
The fires had changed completely from those showing a grand fate in which Jon would be one of the heroes in the fight against the Great Other. Now he stood in a shadow not of one, but of two ladies. One had thunder in her voice, and another a thin sword at her hip. And Jon remained a tacit, humble bastard in his heart, for as much as he was son of kings and now well aware of his dual heritage. Quaintly, he appeared to have almost no king's blood left in his veins…
Lady Melisandre was done thinking for the day. Jon Snow was no longer her concern, and the correct destiny often needed to be helped.
She strolled with purpose out of her chambers in the King's Tower of Castle Black. Soft, red satins and heavy velvets swayed behind her on the icy floor. She touched the ruby on her neck for reassurance; the cold could still not reach her body. But it will, the small voice said in her, when the Long Night falls. She would not dwell on that, not today.
Her ears were wide open, in order to avoid the tinkling fool, Patchface, the carrier of ill luck. Death was on him, and he should have stayed under the sea with his stupid songs. No wonder he drooled over Princess Shireen, equally stained by death's agile fingers, which marked their prey before taking it.
Melisandre intended to avoid tainted beings and live for a very, very long time. Her vengeance was nigh. She just needed to be patient a little bit longer.
Melony, a painful voice rang from her past. She would not heed it. And not only today; not ever.
Stannis first needed to retake what was his by rights if she was to fulfil her destiny.
Melisandre banged on a heavy wooden door strengthened with iron studs. Lord Marsh opened it instantly, bowing to her in fear. The brave men of the Night's Watch were so afraid of her by now that she could leave behind the useless guards Stannis had given her in the past. I have no more need for those trappings of power… The great unease she caused was very good; fewer people would dare murder her, as they did with Jon.
"My lady," Marsh squeaked with subservience, "anything you wish for shall be done."
"Bring me the rebel princess."
Old Pomegranate made such a confused face that she felt obliged to clarify. "Not the wildling one who left us, my lord, the one from the Iron Islands. And the young man, Botley, who is in love with her, and who has never taken another woman to his bed. Leave Qarl, the lady's lover, and Theon, her half-dead younger brother deep under the ice, and make sure she sees them there."
"Yes, my lady, at once, my lady."
Lady Melisandre rekindled the fire in the Lord Commander's hearth while she was waiting, and soon became ensconced in the flames.
Stannis, she thought, you owe me more than just gratitude. You owe me everything. Her king's destiny looked better with every wisp of new smoke rising to the air.
A lean, long-legged, fearless woman with shortly cropped black hair was walked in, with her handsome, tall, dishevelled suitor in tow. Both wore fetters on their wrists.
"Unchain them," she commanded Marsh and two of his minions at the door. "Leave us alone when it is done."
"But-"
"The Lord of Light will keep me safe, as you well know... As he had kept you safe from dragonfire." The last part was an outright lie, but Marsh didn't need to know it. At least he left, instantly, spurred on by the inconvenient truths he'd rather forget.
"I have need of you, Lady Greyjoy," Melisandre said simply when she was alone with Stannis' prized prisoners. Well, the young man had a choice. He could have left with the emissary of the Iron Bank, Tycho Nestoris, instead of lingering around as an unofficial hostage because of the woman he desired. "You will return to Winterfell and deliver a present to the commander of the guard of honour from across the narrow sea. They are called the Unsullied. Can you do that for me?"
"I could, to be sure," the lady said mockingly. "But why I would I?" she asked rudely, as if she hadn't been a hostage, at the mercy of R'hllor.
"To save yourself from feeding the nightfires tonight," Melisandre said with quiet menace in her voice.
Asha Greyjoy first blew out some air, masking a sigh to look as a snort, and then shrugged. "It seems I am destined to burn. If I burn sooner, the waiting will be less painful. I've been living with this prospect in mind since Stannis captured me."
The priestess of R'hllor sighed in return, sinking daintily into Lord Marsh's armchair, with armrests shaped like bear's heads. Lady Asha was afraid of being burned alive, that much was certain, but the threat to her person was not enough to make her bend, just as Melisandre expected.
"Then I shall not harm you," she promised the ironborn lady, "I shall flay alive and then burn your little brother Theon, who already has the appearance of a tortured old man. And you will be my honoured guest the entire time. Why, you might even start the fire."
Lady Greyjoy hesitated, and the red priestess felt victorious. How easy it is to manipulate people with some trappings of power at your disposal.
"Winterfell is far," Asha said flatly. "How am I to travel there in winter? Fly?"
That would be a very good way, Melisandre thought, but I don't think any dragon would accept to carry you.
She reached deep into one of the many inner pockets of her long red robes, and retrieved a bag of sweet-smelling pink powder with smooth elegance. She sniffed it. The blossom of nightshade, devoid of its essence. Not a poison, but equally potent for different uses.
"You'll go with the help of this," she said curtly. "But first things first."
Melisandre handed Lady Asha a simple whip, wildling-made, with three threadbare, elastic twigs hung from a handle made of shadowcat bone. Lord Marsh found it among the treasures poor wildlings ceded to the Night's Watch in payment of their passage through the Wall. Somehow, the valuables were never returned to them when they departed back where they came from. Good riddance to you and to the shadows you were carrying. I let you in and you cheated me.
The rustic tool was probably used to coerce sheep or goats to follow a good direction in the empty pastures behind the Wall. In Astapor, the Good Masters would use an ornate whip of dragonbone and leather, adorned with gold, but a well-placed enchantment made this whip invaluable. "This is the present for the commander of the Unsullied in Winterfell."
"That's all?" Lady Asha was suspicious, rightfully so. "I just have to give this twig to chase cattle to the commander of some foreign army, and you will spare Theon?"
"Yes," Melisandre said sweetly. Of course not. But why should I tell you everything?
"What's in it for me?" the iron lady was not quite done. "Will I be free to go?"
"You will be a hostage again, but your situation may improve." How to sway her further? "I may… I may speak to King Stannis against his wishes to marry you to one of his knights."
"Oh, but he can't," Asha said, matching Melisandre's sweetness word by word. "His Grace is most respectful of laws. And my nuncle Euron already married me to a hundred years old man. I am not widowed yet. May I give you my answer on the morrow?"
No, Mel thought. It has to be done before Rhaegar's queen returns to Winterfell. She has to walk into a trap.
"You can tell me as you watch the kindling of the nightfires," she offered, feigning indifference. "Before we flay Theon and tie him to the stake."
Lady Asha stormed out of the door, and her unfortunate suitor followed. However, she did take the whip with her. Melisandre yawned and waited for Lord Marsh to return.
"She won't run far," March observed. "My and the king's men are everywhere."
"She'll come around," Melisandre agreed. Some promises could keep people on a chain better than fetters.
"Err… My lady, we all ought to thank you for not telling the king… I mean Usurper Rhaegar about how we rightfully attacked his son, when he betrayed his sacred vows and wanted to ride to Winterfell commanding a horde of godless wildlings..."
"It was a pleasure," Melisandre took his gratitude and credit for something that was not of her doing. Rhaegar spared them, and it still eluded her why he did so. It even angered her. Had the dragon been unleashed, he would have become more vulnerable, and she would have already enslaved him. No disturbance of magic would have helped.
But it pleased R'hllor in his wisdom to make his triumph even greater… Asha had to leave tonight, before Stannis reforged the sword and defeated the Night's King.
Melisandre wouldn't be in Westeros to see her king's final victory, or so she hoped. He can't say I didn't do as he asked. He is Azor Ahai reborn, and he will be the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms thanks to me.
On her way out of the Lord Marsh's quarters, Melisandre thought she heard the jingling of little bells behind the heavy door, but when she looked closer, she was alone.
She hurried to the courtyard. On the spiral stairs she ran into His Grace, who looked perfectly charming this morning with his cropped black-blue beard. Most untimely. She could not stomach Stannis every day, just like she was sometimes really angry with Jon Snow, and the two men were so much alike in her opinion.
"Your Grace," she bowed and almost smiled.
"How long shall I fast now?"
"Why, for a hundred days, that is what Azor Ahai did. In my great love and admiration for you, I thought you a greater hero than him. The fires suggested that the true hero of this time might be victorious in lesser number of attempts in forging his sword. But the destiny is sometimes harsh, and it cannot be hurried. This is the final step."
"I hope for both of our sakes you are right" he said crassly and walked away, on some urgent king's business, no doubt.
Stannis could be so rude at times. It was a pity they couldn't engage in making little shadows; his bluntness and coarseness in bed had always brought her great joy. It would save her king the fasting and the prayers if they could. He was never one for expressions of faith. But he had aged so much every time that Melisandre did not want to tempt fate. She still needed Stannis.
A large shadow could most definitely defeat the Great Other, but no man had so much virility in him to engender one of sufficient magnitude... Well… The truth was, since she saw Rhaegar Targaryen in his righteous anger, she kept wondering how he was in bed and how strong a shadow they could birth together… His eyes were molten fire...
Maybe Jon's father would visit again before walking into his death. The prospect was oddly appealing. The fires were very unclear about the manner and the meaning of Rhaegar's passing. He hadn't been afraid of her... But he must have noticed her beauty. All men did.
The short day kept being eventful. She would never make it to that funeral. Davos Seaworth waited for her at the door leading to the courtyard. She wondered if he was stalking her for hours, or perhaps ever since Lightbringer had burned out again.
"Will you make him kill his queen?" Davos was even more discourteous than Stannis today. Seaworth was more loyal than a dog, but uniquely unpleasant in his honesty. Melisandre was wounded. Truly, she deserved a bit more respect after she kept his son Devan away from any harm, honouring his father's unwavering faith with the king. Even now, Devan remained in Nightfort, safe from any followers of the Great Other.
"I mean," Davos stuttered, recognising the outrage on her heart-shaped face, finding his hard-learned courtesies. "Azor Ahai defeated the enemy only after he tempered his sword in the heart of his wife, Nissa Nissa, did he not?"
"Yes, he did," the wise woman in Melisandre answered truthfully, "but that would not help His Grace to forge his sword."
"Then?" Davos insisted.
Selyse would never make the required cry of anguish and ecstasy as Nissa Nissa did. Truth be told, Melisandre had not yet thought about the final sacrifice required, but she was bound to find one in time. She still had a hundred days to think and gaze into her fires to decide what was best. And she had more than two hundred days before the Night's King returned to Castle Black. She hoped to be far, far away by that time.
She escaped from Davos' clutches without a second reply. Her feet scurried like mad under her vividly red robes, until she finally emerged at the site in the middle of the Castle Black's yard destined for fires, conveniently away from all wooden structures. As if any would catch flame in this weather without my help…
The day had become so short that the nightfires could be started two or three hours after each dawn, to breathe semblance of life into the grey sunset and the cold night belonging to the Great Other.
This evening, a special pyre was being built for the fallen monster; the once faithful brother of the Night's Watch who somehow ended up serving his sworn enemy.
The body of a ranger who became the Other lay peacefully on the bed of dry wood soaked with resin. This is not as in the books. They should rise as wights, not as his servants. She should think on how that was happening.
Selyse ran into Melisandre with hot tears on her face, wetting the homely furs she wore over her shoulders. The true taste of the war of winter was too much for her. She should have stayed in Nightfort with her daughter.
"Lord of Light, help us," she implored, eyeing the dead ranger with distrust as if he was going to stand up at any moment. "The night is dark and full of terrors."
Melisandre fervently returned and repeated the queen's prayer. The former child slave left in the red temple would be nothing without R'hllor. She was, and she would remain her God's preferred instrument of revenge.
Lady Asha was not to be seen.
Loudly, the red priestess commanded "Bring the turncloak, Theon Greyjoy, and lay him next to the dead ranger."
Some black brothers hurried to obey, and the ironborn lady immediately stepped out of the shadow of a crumbling wooden tower. Her would-be lover was not far, hair more bushy than before. A lovers' quarrel in the snow… How dreadful.
"I'll go," Asha announced. The whip was attached to her belt, on the place where she might normally carry an axe.
Melisandre was not surprised.
"On one condition."
That was surprising.
"Tris is not going with me."
It took her a while to understand Botley's given name could be shortened into Tris.
"Good," Mel said, suppressing the urge to laugh. "Tris… come stand next to me."
The young man unwillingly did as he was told, giving a hurt look to his lady. Asha must have pitied him. Melisandre would do the same. A real man would not conform himself, or not so meekly.
The pyre started burning merrily with its dead human fuel. Sparks exploded from oiled wood, echoing the steady sound of Selyse's crying. Asha stood gingerly in front of it, trying her best not to appear nervous when Melisandre showered her face and shoulders, first with ashes, and then with blossom of nightshade from her robes.
"Don't be afraid," the sorceress counselled her victim when she was done. The kraken woman would travel faster if she stayed moderately calm while Melisandre performed her trick.
Asha's eyes became white from fear when Melisandre made the ashes go ablaze in orange tongues of fire and spoke the words in the ululating drawl of Asshai. The light of the Lord would further speed up the travel. Tristifer Botley changed his mind, just as the fires said he would. He ran forward and gallantly embraced his unwilling lady, uncaring that the flames caught him as well.
In a whirling blaze, they were gone.
Ah, young lovers, Melisandre thought with a sudden surge of longing in her body.
Maybe she should seek out Stannis that night and not make it too tiresome for him. There need be no fruit of our union. It had been a while since she allowed herself the pleasure of flesh, the most potent and palpable manifestation of the life and warmth given by the Lord, who was the heat in the loins of men.
A hundred days was a long time to wait, but it was still nothing in comparison with the long years of her life which had passed until now. She needed to feel alive, to quench the strange fear growing in her soul. Yes, there was powerful, ancient magic on the Wall, but hers was proven stronger. Stannis defeated the servant of the Great Other with the help of her singing, and she had almost taken the black dragon as her own.
At the dwindling nightfire, Selyse continued beseeching the mercy of the Lord of Light, thanking him for her husband's victory, praying for another one. The more time passed, Melisandre found it more and more difficult to tolerate the horrendous woman she befriended to better establish herself in the king's household.
"I see it," Selyse spoke out of turn, with wide, homely eyes, filled with tremulous revelation and blind devotion, "I will give my husband an heir, I see it now."
Melisandre looked as well. Joramun, the fire whispered. It could even be as Selyse said. She would think about it later.
Then, one of the frightened crows came running and spoiled everything.
Melony…. voices called and laughed.
"Forgive me, Your Grace, my lady, but my lads are builders, not rangers," the first builder, Othell Yarwick complained as if Melisandre hadn't learned what builders were in all her time on the Wall, and that he was the head of that ancient and most insignificant order. Selyse stared forward, ignoring the tidings.
"I understand," Melisandre said placidly, but she was wrong. Yarwick brought news beyond her comprehension and what the fires showed.
"The prisoner is gone," the crow stuttered. "The lad who looks like an old man. And the Lady Arya Stark, the one he saved from Winterfell."
"Gone where?" the words escaped Melisandre, and she couldn't help notice how Selyse stared her down, woken from her reverie about heirs, surprised to catch the infallible priestess with faulty knowledge.
"It seems that… They climbed on the Wall and ran west… I sent a man after them, but the footsteps end on the place where the wood is almost touching the Wall… If I didn't know better, I would say they jumped… But their bodies are nowhere to be seen."
Melisandre supposed the corpses must have simply walked away. It wouldn't be unheard of in the times as they were. And for as much as the haunted forest crept to the Wall in many places, the jump was still too high for anyone to survive it. The trick the boy pulled in Winterfell to save false Arya Stark wouldn't save him here. The inconvenience reminded her she had yet to tell Stannis that the lady Theon Greyjoy saved was not Arya Stark.
Little Lord Rickon had looked at her, squinted, and offered a good day to Jeyne, when Melisandre took the frail ghost-like girl with her to his ice cell on purpose.
Stupid kraken. Let him be the fodder for the Great Other if he so wishes… It made no matter. The gates were closed, the wildlings and the mists inhabiting their tatters were gone, the only servant of the Great Other who dared materialise in Castle Black was defeated. She tried hard to ignore the fact she had no idea why the monster turned into a black brother after his death, and into one whose last known whereabouts were beyond the Wall, so he couldn't have come in as fog clinging to the poor wildlings..
Melisandre was immensely relieved. If I didn't send Asha away now, she would know I have no advantage over her… Somehow she didn't think the iron lady would accept to be her puppet for the life of her lover or Botley. But she did have a weakness for her little wizened brother who had suffered horrendously for his unspeakable crimes…
Melisandre sighed with satisfaction. Women, sisters, mothers… They were all the same. Even when they pretended to defy men in their own realm as Lady Greyjoy.
"There is more." Yarwick now positively looked as if he were going to fall into the ground, or through ice for that matter.
What? Stannis fled the field? That would be something to see… Perhaps one day he will flee... from his wife.
"L… young l…. Lord Stark. He is gone as well, into thin air, without a trace. There is only maidenly ice around his cell. The door is open and the princess's fool is in it, singing and standing on his arms… something about shadows gone awry or away..."
Melisandre's fear returned in earnest. Have I been wrong again? I have to check the flames immediately. I must not misread them this time… I must not… Lord of Light, give me strength! Open my eyes! I only ever wished to serve you in your eternal struggle against the Great Other in which you shall always prevail. Every time in history it comes to pass.
It was only half a lie. She served R'hllor as honestly as she had served herself. No more and no less. A mortal could only do as much. She deserved a dragon for her efforts. She would never have such opportunity again.
"See that as little people as possible know about this," she instructed Yarwick in a prudent tone. "And inform the king."
"His Grace is above us all," she said with faked subservience as she turned and bowed gently to his nagging wife. Nothing like a little flattering to make the shrew forget my lapse in knowledge. "King Stannis is the chosen warrior of light. He will know what to do."