Sansa
When she emerged from her hollow the males had gone. The night sky was void of stars, the moon had shrunk to a silver sliver and the once-agonizing pain in her face had receded to a dull throb. The perfect time to move, Sansa thought. The ice spider's mind was utterly unlike Ramsay's girls, slow and measured instead of dashing after every smell and sound. Lady she is not. Yet when Sansa had first reached out for her direwolf, the seven-legged ice spider was what she'd found. She heard feeble struggling at the bottom of the hollow and neatly pulled up a twitching mess of ranger blacks and frigid web. Benjen Stark's face was the sort of pale only corpses wore, frost had formed across his forehead and cheeks but his grey eyes still flitted this way and that groaning to himself. Just how I'm going to pass the Wall I suppose I'll work out later. Were it so simple as to scale it atop their ice spiders surely the Others would have done so already. She began to drag her captive, causing him to groan as he bounced along the ground. Inwardly Sansa rolled her eyes. It's not like you can hurt, uncle. She wondered just how Jon would react to seeing Uncle Benjen again, no less in the state she'd found him. Well, Jon has less reason than most to fear someone in our uncle's boots. As she cantered through the trees Sansa found the spider making a low whistling sound like a finger on a wine glass. The creature's own base uncertainty enveloped Sansa like a too-tight bodice. She's afraid. She's used to being with others of her kind. Suddenly the thought of trying to calm the creature with petting popped into Sansa's head. Had I a mouth I might have giggled. Perhaps it was odd she felt elated in such circumstances but Sansa's appreciation for the odd had quite grown in recent weeks. Maybe the baby will be waiting for me whenever I get back. If I get back, she thought. Passing through the last of the trees she beheld what could only have been the Wall itself. There was no uncertainty, no sudden apprehension from the spider, Sansa noticed. Closer to the sea she could see the dead men standing on the sand, as if waiting for a ship. Even when she spotted the Other Sansa remained calm. Certainly, the spider doesn't mind them. Still, dumping Uncle Benjen in the sea in full view of the Other seemed unwise. Maybe he can pass for another of the dead men, though. Mercifully Benjen had ceased to struggle or mutter darkly in true northern fashion so she got as close as she dared. The wights didn't so much as look at her, staring resolutely out to sea. Men, women, children. Mostly Free Folk, a Brother of the Watch here and there. Jon told it true, everyone the Others kill rises again, one more in an army that has no number.
There was movement off to her left, yet another mass of walking dead coming out of the Haunted Forest of Old Nan's tales. Sansa froze within the spider. Among the throng was a wight taller than any other, one she knew despite the torn face and gore-stained front. Hodor, she thought, despairing. Aside him stepped a direwolf with blood still frozen in its fur, icy blue eyes staring straight on as they never would in a living wolf. Summer. Someone else came out then, someone with all the time in the world. Small icy horns ringed the thing's head and it carried a funny sort of glaive, shortened to allow for close fighting perhaps. Hodor and Summer did not join the rest of the wights as they reinforced their fellows, remaining with what could only have been the Night King from Jon's account. When she felt no recognition from the spider, no force compelling her to go to him, Sansa inwardly frowned. You're no Howling Wind. Indeed, the Other massing wights on the beach paid the so-called Night King no more mind than he did the dead under his command. Nearer as she'd gotten Sansa recognized him. One of the Others from the hollow hill. Yet there was no sign of Howling Wind. Probably because she's off causing mischief behind my face at Winterfell, Sansa thought grimly. Best get back quick as I can and boot her out. Then her original idea came to mind, one that made her feel cold, truly cold, for the first time in weeks. If she's borrowing me…maybe I can borrow her. Before she tried anything, she left Benjen to work his own way free, stiffly and with purposeful inefficiency. Sansa took a long breath in her mind's eye and reached out from the spider, looking for an emptiness hidden in the trees. At once seven limbs became four and they were clothed instead of bare. That was easy. She wiggled her fingers, toes, feeling five of each on either hand or foot. Then she opened her eyes. It had been obvious that the Others could see just fine in the dark but the detail… Leaving the hollow hill, Sansa could see the needles on hundred-foot trees a hundred feet off. Despite her nerves the body she inhabited was removed from such a petty thing as worry and so her movements were unrushed. So this is the world as the Others see it. Given time to examine the mantle in which she was clad, Sansa recognized it as made from ice spider silk. On her exit from the trees a weak chittering greeted her and she got a look at the spider she had been warging. Sansa couldn't help but worry for the creature. Several of its blue eyes had been punctured and its face was lined with deep angry black lines, the legacy of pouncing on a dragonglass-armed Uncle Benjen. My fault, she thought apologetically. Almost on instinct she raised a hand and from her fingertips came a gentle trickle of water cold enough to cut bone. She used it to rinse the last of the glass from the spider's many wounds. Even free of the lingering pain it seemed as though the injuries were proofed from healing. Formidable the Others may be, but there is no weapon that can harm ordinary men so. Small wonder Jon wants all the dragonglass he can get. Ears that could hear a feather fall alerted Sansa to the approach of Howling Wind's other guard, one perhaps privileged to remain with her instead of stuck minding wights. Through Howling Wind's eyes it's easier to tell them apart. He was older than the other guard, a man among his race where the one minding the wights was yet unproven. The selfsame Other had turned towards her at once when she left the cover of the trees, resolutely ignoring both the wights and the Night King. Fiery lads eager to impress live even in the Land of Always Winter. She passed her elder guard without a word, the Other following at a distance without having to be told. Perhaps silence is out of character for Howling Wind. Yet she was not addressed nor impeded by her white shadow in any fashion. Though the she-Other's eyes saw far, Sansa got closer to the Night King to allay a suspicion. Even to the dimmest man the differences between the night King and Howling Wind's race were immediately apparent. There are White Walkers, imitations of the Others by the Singers meant to keep men in hand, Then there are the Others themselves. For whatever reason it seemed as though the Singers' great miscalculation had thrown in with the race native to the Land of Always Winter. That was ill done. They hardly need the help.
From out of the lip of the bay Sansa spotted several ships and for a moment her heart raced. They had no sails and each looked a proper shambles, barely able to stay afloat. How are they even moving? Then she spotted the mismatched oars sticking out of the sides. Of course, wights don't tire. It stands to reason they'd make ideal oarsmen. Once they got closer the wights on the beach waded out into the freezing water taking Uncle Benjen with them, the great mass of dead enough of a platform for those atop it to clamber up the sides of the ships or pull others onto the decks. In the tumult Sansa lost track of her uncle even with Howling Wind's eyes. Quicker than rowing them out a dozen at a time and certainly more striking, Sansa thought. Yet the younger guard made no move to stay with his countless charges. Once the corpse-ships were full they moved off and Sansa saw another one waiting at the mouth of the bay. It waslonger by far than any ship made by men and a deck higher besides, carved perhaps from a glacier. The ice-ship lingered in her considerable view for only a moment before heading back out to sea, a cold mother to dead ducklings. But where are they going? The Free Cities? All the way across the Shivering Sea to bloody Ib? A voyage to rival the one undertaken by Daenerys Targaryen when she came west…all the ships of Meereen wouldn't matter if battle was joined in a sky-splitting storm, though. To say nothing of a blizzard out at sea. An ice-ship would have no need of sails with an army of wights to move it at the least. Nor need of arming when it could just ram anything in its way. Tearing her gaze away from the sea she found her new friends lingering rather close by. The elder Other had an air of quiet vigilance, an individual familiar with guard duty. The younger looked at her every so often only to look away when his gaze was returned while the Night King's stare never broke. He never so much as blinked. Sansa was wondering how best to handle the situation when a sudden frigid gale blew from the north, tree branches snapping and the trunks groaning with the weight of the wind. Like when she told me her name. Someone is calling her. She fretted a bit on how best to respond when almost accidentally she found herself answering with a gale of her own, carried on a gale of her own. Not flight, she thought. Merely riding the wind. At least her name is fitting. The Haunted Forest passed in a blink and she found herself standing on a mountaintop ringed in great ice sheets. Up from the stone rose other spires of ice with graceful subtle arches linking them to each other. So awed was she by the sight that she missed the movement at first, only to spot it again when she saw something steadily scaling the opposite peak, one untamed by worked ice. White and hairy it was, perhaps nine or ten feet tall, but not one of the gangly brutes she'd spotted before. It reminded her somewhat of a monkey save for its lack of tail. When it turned to survey the dizzying abyss of sky and snow behind it, Sansa beheld a bestial squashed face under a heavy brow but the eyes were not hostile nor the large teeth bared. It peered across the gap at her for a moment, lost interest, and disappeared into the peak's recesses. This is not a world void of life, she surmised. It is a world all its own, hidden by the harshness of a winter that never ends. When she looked south, the Wall had disappeared. Yet I'm not so far north as I might be. She watched the mountains trail away out of sight. This world of white stretches further yet. There was a sound of cracking ice and she watched the tower nearest her open at the base. I suppose that means 'come in'.
Immediately Sansa saw that the interior of the icy spire was void of wights. The Others don't seem keen to have wights milling about where they live. Besides, they couldn't reach these spires anyway. There were Others in the halls of course, going one way or the other and studiously refraining from looking Sansa's way. Is Howling Wind a pariah, as I was in King's Landing? The rooms off the halls were bare of anything that might have provided insight into their occupants' lives or mindsets, much to Sansa's disappointment. This far south, likely this is no more than a battle tent or a quickly built fort. A place to gather far from the wights…and from the Others making do in the Haunted Forest as well. If this is a command tent, perhaps I'll catch sight of what they plan to do! Eventually she found her way up, not a stair but a long path raising slowly off the inside of the spire like a great looping staircase. On reaching the top she found herself in a solar of sorts, a room containing circle of ice raised out of the floor to act as a table while several figures gathered around it. Sansa's trepidation grew when she took them each in turn. One of the Others was clad in plate-ice, another almost eight feet tall and bald but skinny as a spear tapped long fingers down whatever was on the table and still another, a she-Other like Howling Wind, was clad in a splendid spidersilk gown. Her face was hidden by a white veil. Yet another woman had a sort of triple-hook at her belt, a head void of hair and her eyes locked on another section of the table. Sansa drew closer, trying not to make herself too noticeable. Her heart was racing and she was afraid but more she was fascinated. The nobility, or at least the leaders as they were, of the Land of Always Winter! On reaching the table she looked down, not surprised to find Westeros laid out upon it. Movement to her elbow made her want to scream but luckily the body she was borrowing was made of less excitable stuff. At her side was a very short she-Other, no taller than five feet, with several cat-sized ice spiders crawling about her person and countless diminutive ones swarming from her sleeves and out from under her hem, crawling up her dress. Her eyes are strange, Sansa noticed despite the gooseprickles that plagued her mind's eye. They were a bit longer, slimmer, almost slits. She seemed excited to see Sansa, or at least to see Howling Wind, because she alone spoke. The True Tongue was a tongue of nature, not men and so it could not be reconstructed in words of the Common Tongue but Sansa understood regardless. She misses Howling Wind. I suppose they're close friends. Sansa could not remember the last time she'd had a friend. Brienne of Tarth was a sworn shield, that was different. Perhaps Jeyne Poole. Cersei had men take her from my room after Father was arrested. No doubt she's dead now. Her sadness must have reached Howling Wind's face because the spider-binder muttered concernedly and every head in the room snapped to look at Sansa immediately. An older male with windswept hair and a greatsword on his back, an ever ready-looking male archer with a spidersilk-strung bow… Not all of them are soldiers though, she thought, looking to yet another male with his hair bound out of his eyes in a silver ring, nicks and scars uncharacteristic of his race tarnishing the typically perfect face and neck. At least, they don't need weapons to be dangerous. Her for one. The spider-binder may have been fond of Howling Wind but Sansa did not like the look in the dainty she-Other's strange eyes.
Eventually her silence seemed to assure them she was untroubled because they began talking among themselves. The archer and the greatsword-bearer were concerned with wights digging while the scarred man and the bald woman seemed at odds over whether something would work or not. She ran a hand over his grizzled face, her thumb going over the pockmarks tenderly. The very tall Other shared the unsettling look the spider-binder did, but he seemed vested only in the veiled she-Other, talking about 'better ways'. She never replied, only turned her head toward him when he spoke. The True Tongue spoken by Others and heard by Other ears is enchanting, Sansa thought. But for us they seem unconcerned with places where snow doesn't fall. What drives them to try and kill us all? Someone came up behind her and for a moment Sansa saw the ice-plate wearer turn toward the newcomer only to resume staring at the northern half of the table map. Another flurry of True Tongue and in seconds Sansa's heart was pounding. She called me her winter rose. I may fool Howling Wind's friend but her mother is another matter. Resignedly she turned. The woman before her was tall and clad in spidersilk as was typical but that was where the mundane ended. Her hair was done up in an elegant white bun behind her head, her shoulders were clad in an intricate mantle of icicles and more of the same made up the hemp of her dress, making her shimmer like crystal in the sun as she moved. A sash of hand-sized diamond links looped elegantly around her waist, twin finger-length icicles dangling from her ears. No. Those are diamonds too, but the stone, not the shape, Sansa corrected herself numbly. In her hair were more diamonds, tiny stones frozen to a ring of winter roses. A crown. Howling Wind isn't a pariah, she's a princess. The sight of the woman swept any other thoughts from Sansa's mind entirely. Dimly memories of another queen popped up. A blonde hill-ape content to guzzle wine and farrow like a sow. That Cersei Lannister could hope to claim a rank in common with Howling Wind's mother seemed to Sansa so vulgar, so unabideable that she shuddered, gagging behind a delicate hand. When she stilled her stomach and looked back up, the Others looked in turns alarmed and mystified, as if they never had cause to lose their composure. Then Sansa saw her reflection in the wall. Blue eyes, she saw, but not Other-blue like Howling Wind's. Tully-blue like mine. Slowly she took the queen's hand. Eyes full of every affection a second ago were unreadable walls of glass. She is afraid for her daughter. Slowly she backed away from the table and the Lords of the Long Night that surrounded it. Remember, the True Tongue.
"When you've had enough, toss up powder snow." Sansa said. What came out was a whirl of gentle air. Then the room disappeared in a radiant swirl of shimmering ice.
She came to lying on her face, in the dirt and the dark. Every bit of her was sore and when she tried to move she was so stiff she heard something pop. Where did she run me off to? I can only imagine the mischief she's caused… Gingerly she got up, noticing only then that she was quite without clothing. Gods, did she just get up out of a bath and go on her merry way!? Sansa looked around in a mild panic, slowly getting her bearings. I'm in the kennel, where Ramsay died. Why would Howling Wind come here? Then she noticed that the frozen ground had been scraped away, bit by bit, and her fingers ached. I'm not hurt, though. Just tired. She looked in the hole. The girls must have buried whatever was left of Ramsay. In went her hand almost of its own accord. When it came out it clutched a skull, gnawed and pitted with the teeth of a pack of hunting hounds. Sansa looked into its hollow sockets for a long time, quite forgetting her predicament. Hello, husband. A low snuffling behind her advertised the presence of the pack, the big black hound chief among them. With only a look from Sansa they were on their bellies, patiently awaiting her next command. It seems your hounds would rather follow a wolf than a man after all. The black bitch seldom left Sansa's side when she roamed the castle at large and wasn't shy about growling off strangers who got too close. Sansa stood, skull in hand, and walked past the waiting pack. At once they trotted after her. Loyal beasts, indeed. The night was cold and quiet but for the gusts she could hear blowing against the castle wall and around the yard. She felt no chill and her breath made no cloud. Quite alone, Sansa mused that the castle's other inhabitants must be abed or sleepily standing guard elsewhere. Pitch dark but for the torches and I see clear as day. Frost that grew like mold from water seeped into the cracks and spaces between the stones that made up Winterfell…splashes of rust that shone like dried blood…and a gleam of white perched on one of the stone direwolves. Howling Wind's owl stared balefully at her, gliding away on Sansa's approach. No, come back, she called out to it, trying to pass the words into the bird's mind, but it disappeared into the godswood before she could do aught else. The wood was warmer in its way but no less cold all the same. The Seven have little and less place here, Sansa thought. I am with the Old Gods now. A soft hoot caught her attention and on reaching the heart tree, the magnificent weir, Sansa found herself looking transfixed at a white feather fluttering down from the branches, its owner nowhere to be seen. There were raven feathers everywhere as well and Sansa gathered the best of them, long and straight, thinking on the ways of the world. The true ways, the ones that matter, away from torchlight and hymns and warm septs with eyes of glass. On finding a walnut branch, Sansa spent the next several hours snapping its unneeded shoots off to make of it a proper walking stick. So that you may be with me always, husband, and carry me wherever I may go. She then stuck the skull atop the walnut branch. Using strands of her own hair, she tied the feathers, raven and owl both, just underneath it. Enough to be getting on with, she thought, looking at her handiwork. Room though, for more. The sound of leaves crunching under a half dozen hounds' paws did not break her from her reverie, but a woman's voice did.
"Princess Sansa?" it was strong but shaky, measured but meek. Fear, Sansa thought. Looking back toward the entryway to the godswood, she saw Brienne of Tarth staring at her looking equal parts dismayed and confused. Sansa made no move to hide herself nor what she held. Steadfast, but of the south. Stalwart, but of the Seven. Sansa passed her without a word, the hounds in tow.
Wolkan had taken up in Maester Luwin's old chambers, just down the hall from the library. While the hounds sniffed after rats that crawled in the darkness, Sansa rapped on the thick wooden door. The round face that appeared from behind it looked utterly befuddled, likely just woken from sound sleep. When he took in the sight before him his cheeks, pink from cold, went pale.
"You did not have it in you to defy Ramsay, perhaps, but you did not have it in you to desecrate a corpse in your care." Sansa said. Her voice sounded far-off, almost echoing to her ears but if Wolkan heard her thus he gave no sign. There was a deal of blubbering, but his eyes never left her face. As if I would strike him dead were he to look elsewhere. Flesh is flesh, that is all. I learned how sacred flesh is in the tender hands of Ramsay Snow.
"He…ordered me not to waste her. The dogs needed feeding, he said…"
"…and yet, you did not do it."
"I only left her to them until their interest waned, princess. Hungry they may have been but perhaps they had never been at a corpse before, or they…disliked the…" Sansa saw his face go green.
"Once you got her away from them, then, where did you put her?"
"Gods save me, Princess, what does it matter? I put her where I should have in the first place and never mind what Lord Bolton ordered. He slew his own father, you know."
"The hounds have been at her. If I must, I'll have them dig her up. Or you can tell me where she is and save her that indignity."
"She…she was a vicious creature, there's no doubting it, Princess, but she's gone beyond reprisals now. What good would it do to behead or hang a corpse?"
"None. Neither, in fact, would a corpse itself." Despite her words, Wolkan spoke nothing of the location of Myranda's body. After a moment more of silence, him withering before her gaze, she relented. "You are not so timid as your reputation, Wolkan. Nor so skittish. Go back to bed and know you do your order more honor than they are due." she told him, reaching for the black bitch. You tasted her flesh, you and your sisters. Find her. The pack was off like a loosed quarrel and when Sansa caught up with them they were sniffing about outside the gatehouse, paws unable to break the frozen earth. No matter, Sansa thought. Her heart was pounding in her chest. I feel no cold and I see night as day. I wonder… Slowly her arm came up, hand extended and reaching out. Wake, she thought. Open those green eyes, move that supple archer's body Ramsay hated to love. Her fingertips came together. Never tire. Never hunger. Never feel. Never fear. She felt the frozen dirt beneath her feet tremble, heard the muffled crack of stiff limbs. After a quarter of an hour a pale hand robbed of its little finger, no doubt by a gnawing hound, broke through the hard crust of frozen dirt. Sharp nails chipped and cracked by teeth and cold clawed with slow purpose until Sansa caught sight of a green eye peering out of the ground. A woman's head forced itself up next, half her dark hair gone. Even stiff, even molding, even dead a year and more, Myranda still rose from the shallow grave with just a hint of the grace she'd had in life. Immediately her dead chin was taken in Sansa's living fingers. They tore away her cheek. No matter, so long as her eyes remain. Nobody wants a blind archer. The green eyes were glassy and unblinking but neither did they burn the legendary ice-blue. Just as well. I am not an Other, she is not their chattel. There was dim recognition in Myranda's dead eyes but they were void of the viciousness Sansa remembered. She reacted neither to Sansa's bareness nor to the walking stick in her hand, only stumbling out of the hole and working the last of death's hold from her limbs. On the way back to her room, cradling the walnut branch with Myranda plodding behind her, Sansa felt the warmth of living people coming from the Great Hall, the roar of the crowd celebrating the birth of Howland Stark. Bran, she remembered. Meera. A feeling she'd forgotten bled into her heart then. Jon. My family. My pack. The path she found, if she continued down it, would be a path without them. Her hand went to the door to the hall. I need only go in and they will move at once to help me. They'll put Myranda to the torch and the Singers will work out how to break this bond with Howling Wind. But then, how will we know what the Others are up to? Sansa stood on the threshold, frost forming on the door, her tears turning to frigid powder. If they help me, I can't help them.
The Hungry Wolf's alcove was pitch-dark and maddeningly cold besides, but darkness and cold had lost their foreboding for Sansa. She beheld the Other in all his ruined glory, the last of his hair gone and his missing limbs no longer sporting icy replacements. He was motionless but Sansa could hear the beat of his wintery heart, no more than two or three times a minute. A face once beautiful had gone sallow and Sansa knew from experience the sight of a closed mouth missing teeth.
"Look at me." she called to him. Wherever he'd gone behind that near-translucent brow, it was obvious he was beyond her words. She reached for him. Just long enough to speak, not long enough to freeze in the blizzard that raged eternally in his mind. Look at me. His eyes shot open but he moved not a jot. He is not injured, or crippled, she surmised. He was all those things when Bran and Meera first showed him off. This is death, long and slow and painful. His eyes were still the burning blue, but sputtering candles instead of raging bonfires. Still they widened on seeing what she held in each of her hands. Sansa looked in the bucket, seeing the face of someone else staring out of the water within, a grinning skull alongside. A wildling shaman, she thought wonderingly. A woods witch. To her surprise she was neither repulsed nor horrified. I wanted to be of use, she remembered. I wanted to do my part for my Pack and my House. She took her bucket in two hands. On the floor before the Other the dragonglass dust glittered everywhere, but dust was all it was, easily washed away. I will prove nothing by killing a dying enemy. I would know what I can do, what use I am against an Other in its prime. Either I kill him, or he kills me. Sansa leaned back, felt the weight of the water carry the bucket still further back. When I swore my oath, I meant it. I would do anything to keep this family safe. I would do anything to keep this family whole. She swung the bucket forth, water pushing the glittering glass dust to the sides of the crypt- and soaking the Other from head to toe. Sansa heard his deep breath, saw beautiful white hair sail down from his head like a falling curtain. From behind them she saw the eyes flare to icy life. I would do anything…
