I would like to thank my beta Dr. Holland. It makes all the difference to have somebody interested in the fandom check my insignificant contribution.

I own nothing.

Except my own mistakes :-))

A Hundred Days

xxxxx

The shadowbinder

The blue glow of uncertain dawn stretched into a horizon wrought of ice farther than a red eye could see. In a bright scarlet gown, Lady Melisandre stood on top of the Wall, peering over the edge of the world.

From above, it didn't look that frightening.

Seven hundred feet underneath where the red woman stood, the men were freezing. A tiny black-clad ant could occasionally be seen running between the decrepit crumbling towers of Castle Black. Most had fallen into disuse over the past three turns of the moon, with the cold winds rising. There would be more human bugs in the wormways, she knew. Those long, low tunnels connected the different parts of the main outpost of the Night's Watch under the ground. It was less cold down there, now, at the end of autumn in the North. Both the men of the Night's Watch and the wildlings agreed that the winter was almost upon them. It was the only thing they agreed about. The chill went deep into the bones, unbearable. It was becoming worse day by day, and the nights had already been unspeakably cold for a while. The black wool and boiled leather kept the men alive, but didn't help them feel any warmer.

Lady Melisandre was not cold.

Since the most unfortunate demise of the Lord Commander Jon Snow several months ago, there has been little and less love lost between the two main factions on the Wall. The men of the Seven Kingdoms, the black brothers and King Stannis's men who stayed behind to guard his lady wife, Queen Selyse, and Princess Shireen, his only child and heir, blamed the wildlings, saying they had put mad ideas in Commander Snow's head. They said he went beyond the Wall with his white direwolf, Ghost, on some strange purpose. To save the known world, they said. The Others must have taken them both, for the Lord Commander never returned. That was most certainly the way of it. As it could have been expected, Tormund Giantsbane, the leader of the wildlings since the departure of Mance Rayder, blamed the black brothers, saying they had murdered Jon, a good man, and true-the leader of the Night's Watch and Tormund's friend.

Only a handful of the black brothers knew the truth, and they kept their mouth well shut about it. It didn't take that many knives in the dark to bring the handsome young man down, Melisandre remembered with regret. I warned him though, she thought. He should have listened to me.

She had made an offering of Jon Snow's blood herself, in the haunted forest, accompanied by his murderers, assuring them no one would know who they were. From her mouth, at least. It was as good an oath as any. Her fires showed that the truth would come out anyhow and cost the perpetrators their little lives. She didn't see any use in telling them that, so she stayed quiet.

Jon was still breathing very faintly when they lay him in the snow, blood oozing timidly over the white blankness of the land. The offering would quench the appetites of the Great Other for a while, she knew. He was not just anyone. Jon had king's blood after all. Even if he was only a bastard of a proud northern lord, descendant of the old Kings of Winter. Melisandre pitied him from the bottom of her heart when they heard the wolves howling in the forest. It must feel queer to be feasted upon by one's own sigil, she thought. Well, Jon would be unconscious and he would not know.

The weirwood leaves were strangely quiet that day, not responding to the wind as they should. A patch of leaves close to the ground shone bright red in the gloom, where the tree dared stare at her with large weeping eyes. The old gods had no power over her. Melisandre stared back at the tree, and the shine between the foliage was gone.

She prayed that the servants of the Great Other would not linger, or else the wolves would profane the sacrifice meant for them. As if returning her prayers, the sky turned dark grey and green, promising rain. It might keep the wolves away, she hoped. The beasts, just like people, preferred to stay dry in the ungodly weather. Even R'hllor was not fond of rain; water quenched the fires...

They left Jon Snow for dead and returned to Castle Black in the dark of the night. When they did, Jon's wolf was gone as she had foreseen. The chains could not stop him. That was very well: she wouldn't have to find someone to put him down. Nearly all men were afraid of Ghost, and most of those who weren't were either secretly not on her side, or they were gone with Stannis.

It matters little, she thought back then. Fresh blood of the kings was already sailing back to Westeros over the narrow sea. Many oarsmen would die to see it through. Those who had it would land in the south, the young queen on Dragonstone and the boy king in the Stormlands. All Melisandre needed was a trustworthy herald to lure them north, to the Wall.

As always, the truth was in the flames. Or in the library, when the fires were not that clear. Old Maester Aemon Targaryen, the blood of the dragon kings that Jon had dared send away from her when he was still alive, had left an unfinished book with an account of the Robert's Rebellion and the last years of the power of the House Targaryen. She had read it for inspiration until she could think of a convincing deception, capable of falling on fertile ground. She had read it and then she sent a raven to Mance Rayder in Winterfell, inventing a Targaryen origin for Jon Snow. She didn't even bother to look up the story in her flames, to check if any of it could be true. Ah, the child of poor Prince Rhaegar and Lady Lyanna! The tale of chivalry she weaved could never have happened in the known world. It was too pathetic to be real.

But the best lies had in them a touch of truth. If Jon Snow wanted to protect his little sister so badly that he had sent Mance Rayder and six spearwives to die in Winterfell, it seemed likely that his father, Ned Stark, would also have done anything to protect his younger sister, Lady Lyanna. The former king of the wildlings believed the letter, just as she had hoped, a bard to his core. That much she could see clearly in the tongues of fire. Rayder didn't linger in Winterfell. He immediately headed south, before King Stannis received ill news of Jon...

All men had their uses for the Lord of Light.

It was a shame, in a way. Melisandre had tried so hard to make Jon Snow see the wisdom of believing in R'hllor. He was destined to do great deeds, she had felt it. She had seen it. But now it was all over. At least his wildling friend served the purpose for which Melisandre had spared his life. Mance Rayder would bring north the blood of kings and the fire of dragons she needed to do the will of R'hllor.

The flames never lied.

Alas, the poor, sweet, stubborn man did not know that by the time he would bring the dragons to the Wall to help his wildlings, they would be already forlorn, abandoned to their destiny in the cursed expanse of bough and leaf beyond the Wall. They were to be the fodder for the white walkers, whether they wanted it or not. Mance couldn't know either that Ned Stark's bastard would not be among the living. The life of Jon Snow and the lives of the wildlings were a necessary sacrifice so that R'hllor could protect the Seven Kingdoms. Too many Others had already crossed the Wall, clinging to the shadows of the so called free folk Lord Snow had so imprudently allowed inside. It was going to take years for King Stannis, the last hero, Azor Ahai come again, to hunt them all down and re-establish his rightful rule in every corner of the realm, marking the beginning of the new age. Everything is well, Melisandre mused, contemplating the beauty of the landscape of ice.

Why am I then so afraid?

The cage to bring men up the Wall clanked in her proximity, interrupting the vivid stream of her thoughts and memories. Lord Pomegranate, Bowen Marsh, approached her with caution, bowing with utmost humility.

"Lady Melisandre, the wildlings are ready to depart," he said.

"You have done well," she praised him, closing her eyes. The ruby was pulsating around her neck and welcome warmth seeped into her body from its steady motion.

"Most of them are more than willing to leave the hospitality of the Castle Black," Lord Pomegranate stated the obvious. "Their hero, Lord Snow, is gone. Only the Thenns will stay."

It was most amusing, Melisandre reflected. Since they had murdered him, all the black brothers who did it now respectfully referred to Jon as Lord Snow.

"We have the marriage of Alys Karstark to the Magnar of Thenn to thank for that," she decided to say something self-evident as well. Small talk made men more at ease in her presence, and she still needed Bowen Marsh for a while. The old man smiled, feeling important and flattered in his scarce wisdom, not corresponding to his advancing age.

There were no guards on top of the Wall during daytime. The Night's Watch has become little and less, even with the new wildling recruits who were about to abandon their posts and return to the no man's land where they came from.

Guards are no longer necessary, Melisandre was convinced.

"The flames of R'hllor will watch over the Castle Black as soon as the wildlings go back where they belong," she said. "It will satisfy the hunger of the Great Other. And his terrible pale walking servants will no longer be able to cross it."

Too many had already sneaked in the Seven Kingdoms, like frost on the hair and the garments of the wildlings. They would come to life in the woods beneath the Wall when it was sufficiently cold. Most wandered south, afraid of the wrath of the Lord of Light if they had stayed near the Wall.

"The night is dark and full of terrors," Lord Marsh echoed her unspoken thought. He was the nine hundred and ninety ninth elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and he was shaking with palpable fear. It was not clear what he feared more: the Others, the ghost of Lord Snow, or the Lady Melisandre.

And once the wildlings had left, they would only have to wait. King Stannis would return victorious after taking Winterfell and making it the royal seat for several months. The castle was renewed and fortified against any new enemy that might come from the south. All the northern lords except old Lord Manderly were now sworn to him, and he was going to win the allegiance of the White Harbor soon enough, as the fires had shown.

King Stannis could field enough men to hold the entire north. He was going to vanquish the Great Other, with his flaming sword, Lightbringer, and then he was going to ride south to unite his kingdoms under the fiery banner of R'hllor, Lord of Light.

With an unsure hand, Melisandre rekindled the embers of the fire the night guards had abandoned before dawn. It was still fuming imperceptibly next to the path she walked on, strewn with broken stones. Behind her, under her warm feet, the ice kept melting and a small stream of water trickled slowly, dripping down the Wall towards the lands belonging to the Great Other. For now. Light broadened in the faraway east. The Wall spread further over the lands than the weak dawn of the new day, shorter than the previous one.

She needed to take another look at the future.

Melisandre tried to forget the times when her faith wavered and when all she could see in the fires was snow. Now she understood that as well. It was in its white depths that poor Jon Snow had found his grave. It had snowed that night. And the wolves were so many. Thinking about the injustice of it all almost made her cry. Almost. Just like when she was a little girl in Asshai, very many years ago, much more than her body would show to ignorant onlookers.

The shadow of the fire she revived danced and turned thicker, casting an image on the ice parapet behind it. The fool of Princess Shireen sang in one of the towers, from the top of his lungs, that had once been drowned under the sea. "The shadows come to dance, my lady..." Patchface would not stop roaring. The merciless wind swirled and took the faint sound all the way towards them. "Under the sea, all shadows are green, I know, I know, oh, I know!"

"We can't stop him, my lady," Lord Marsh excused himself. "I know you have asked for it, but short of killing him, there's nothing we can do. And Princess Shireen is very fond of him."

"She should be in Nightfort, with her mother," Melisandre said.

"They are both eager to see His Grace King Stannis come back," Lord Marsh sometimes had an answer for everything.

"Never mind," Melisandre waved her worries away. She stared attentively deeper into the flames, as they slowly picked up, licking the air in tongues of red, orange, and yellow. In time, she would look at the shadow they were casting. With the certainty of knowledge, she smiled.

"We shall have need of the ice cells," she said. "We will be having guests soon."

"The arrangements will be made, lady," Lord Marsh said immediately, bowing again. The man courtesied far too much in Melisandre's opinion.

Only then did she dare look in the darkness created by the light.

The shade of her small fire took a shape of a beast with jagged teeth and a long snout. Sharp spikes adorned its body. The dragon was angry, and hers to command. Soon, the power of R'hllor shall be revealed to all.

The Age of Fire was about to begin.

The greenseer

Floating on his back, the greenseer took great care to avoid one of the logs pretending to drift gently down the stream. Stale water had its uses but his favourite bathing place was not filled by it. He knew that the impertinent log did not fall from a tree. It rather possessed a scaled green and yellow skin and sharp black teeth of a lizard-lion. Black, like dragon's teeth and bones, he thought. He could still try and catch it. Their meat was delicious. He had seen forty name days but his hunting skills had never gone to rust. His net, knife and spear rarely failed him. Food was scarce in a bog, and all of its dwellers learned how to hunt. He should return for his weapons.

Not on this day, he decided.

He was naked and not in a mood to hunt, nor to enjoy the company of a lizard lion for much longer. Flowers would be much better. Soon, he lost the animal, plunging in a maze of river weeds below the surface, growing from the soft treacherous soil which was neither firm land nor a body of water. Afterwards, he left the shallows to dive once again, this time deep, in the middle of the stream, to see if he could still hold his breath as long as in his youth. Satisfied, he popped out on the other side of the current, right where the white and pink water lilies grew, one larger than the other, blossoming in the autumn sun. They smelled of life and of still water. A welcome sight for his watchful eyes, a soft ointment for his hardened senses.

The green of the water was as he liked it, not too warm, and not too cold either. Soon, it would cool down much more. For now it was more pleasant than the air above it, which turned chilly months ago, smelling strongly of autumn and of winter rains.

His dreams were many and different of late, not making much sense. They showed great hosts moving over all the known lands, towers falling, towers melting, an enemy of ice, and an enemy of …fire.

With even strokes, he avoided a tiny islet on his right. There was a nest of wild ducks in a thicket of loose dry branches under a young tree. They didn't want men around when the mother duck was brooding. The tepid water felt wonderful on bare skin and hard working muscle. His limbs flexed in harmonious movement, taking him back up the stream. His swim was ending. It was time.

He was one with the green of the water and the shore was getting nearer.

I had never thought to outlive any of my children, he thought bitterly, remembering the dream he was unfortunate enough to understand. Clear as sunrise, it told that his son would not live to father sons of his own. He would have given anything if it hadn't been green. As always, he knew that it has been.

Grey-green water, colour of his late wife's eyes, bent and rippled under the force of his short wiry arms. His own had always been the colour of moss, like the eyes of their only son. He never told his children before they departed that he had shared more than the eye colour with his boy. And his son was braver than he had ever been. Jojen decided to embrace his gift and go to Winterfell, rather than cower in the marshes, and hide.

The greenseer had done his best to quench his gift, and for about twenty years it was nearly gone. Until an image came unbidden in his sleep, strong as the thunder lightning savaging the bogs, setting the old tree trunks on fire. He saw a young warrior bleeding in the snow, the so-called bastard of his liege and friend, Ned Stark. A red sorceress bent over him, eyes filled with pity. And the greenseer's guts had filled with rebellion, and loathing. It was not fair.

Then, the red eyes of the direwolf shone among the trees. The green shade of a dragon covered the frozen sky and his soul rejoiced. He saw it all, and the red woman did not. Or else, how could she be so calm? Her mistake gave him hope. So when he had woken, he raced over the abandoned courtyards to the heart tree in the middle of the night, and he looked deep. He looked south and he saw two more dragons, one white and one black, one ensnared and one free, flying home over the Narrow Sea. He looked north and he saw a wildling king reading a false letter of the cursed red woman in the godswood of Winterfell... The greenseer whispered to him how, unknowingly, it was all truth what the letter had said, all that, and more... The man donned a dirty white cloak, jumped on a saddle of a heavy brown horse and galloped south. He did not hear the tree with his ears, but he had heard it with his heart.

The greenseer then employed all of his eyes and ears, charging them to watch over the causeway. The men and women of the swamps had patiently waited for the wildling to arrive. They brought him to the greenseer unharmed through the gods-forsaken quicksands of their domain. There, the wildling king learned the entire truth, or as much of it as the greenseer had known for certain in the world where the grass was growing. For some of his dreams the greenseer always kept to himself. Not willing to dishearten or cheat others by the imperfection of his seeing, he carried the burden of half clear hints and incomplete knowledge all alone.

Once, before his children were born, there were seven against three, and only the greenseer now lived to tell the tale of a high tower in Dorne, of a young woman who died and a child who lived to be the young warrior bleeding in the snow.

He had recently seen that woman again in his dreams; older, alive, returning to the north she came from at the forefront of a large host, and holding a hand of a mournful silver-haired man. A man who looked broken, but was mended on the inside. But those visions were too dream-like to believe in. Only the terrible ones have ever come true.

There were seven against three and only one was left living, to mourn and to remember.

The greenseer paddled arms and legs up and down the stream, reluctant to return. His fear and despair ran much deeper than the water. He strayed a bit from his path, cutting through the unmoving stinky ponds where the flies buzzed, and the dark red irises grew, darker than blood spilled. He swam and he swam some more, until he was tired and dizzy, and the only way to go was back.

He relaxed when the castle came into view, shimmering green with the last light of the season. He'd always liked to go swimming very early in the morning. The land the castle stood on was sailing softly with the current, never quite in the same place, but its people could always find it, knowing what they were looking for. No one else could. Not even the Others, whom his eyes and ears had seen hovering south, through the outskirts of the bogs and down the causeway. There were fortunately not so many who somehow crossed the Wall. His guards were smart enough not to let themselves be seen, but they still grew very frightened in their hearts when they had to count the white walkers. All of them were much too young to remember the Long Night, and none of them had the gift to see the terrible past, the ever changing present, and the never certain future.

He floated on his back again to see the castle better. There was no other sight on earth he would ever love more. Tall and graceful, his home spread all over the length of the island, rising from the waterways like a large wobbly hill saturated with greenery. The chant of frogs could be heard in the shallows bordering the muddy stretches of low land. They sang and sang some more, unaware of their peril to be served as a main dish at the last harvest feast.

Made of bark, and leaf, and the smell of living things, the castle rested quietly on its unsteady ground. They steered the floating island here before the winter, to the part of the bog with faster currents which never froze, so that it would always be on the move.

The first fence surrounding the castle was of reed, higher than the tallest of men, planted carefully over the years where it didn't grow by itself. The second one was higher, a long circle of willows, some weeping, and some not. High water grass, similar to reed yet different, green and broadleaved, overgrew the spaces between the trees. The third fence was a wall, made of unmortared stone on the bottom, and of timber on the upper levels. Hardened clay filled the holes between the stones and beams. The masonry and the wood had been skilfully covered with bark and leaf over the ages, so that the castle would not look as if it had been built by human hand. And perchance it was not. It might have been a marvel of nature just as well. The rotting wood, the crumbling clay and the loose stones were replaced at need. But the foundations of the castle were as old as Winterfell, at least as old as the First Men.

Or older.

The iron for the portcullis was brought from the barrowlands a few hundred years ago. Its bars were forged into a curved plant-like pattern. Real vines crept all over it, so that the tendrils of heavy metal appeared to be thick dark brown stems of the grapevine. The legend said that a hundred men and women worked for a hundred days to finish it. One hundred was a sacred number. Yet the knowledge why that was so had been forgotten after the gates had been made. The greenseer wished to know why, and perhaps, one day before all would be over, he would find out.

Inside, behind the gates, there were three courtyards, twelve rounded wooden towers, and a large stony keep. All the pillars in the spacious halls and vaulted porticos were shaped like human figures, small like children, but endowed with wizened, clever eyes. Half had knives and bows, and the other half instruments; a fiddle, drum or woodharp. On rare occasions that they received guests from the south of the Seven Kingdoms, the greenseer would tell them that the figures likely represented the faces of the Seven. They did not. And all those who may have known the meaning of the faces had been lost to time.

It was amazing how many visitors believed him. The men so often saw what they wanted to see and not what was right in front of them, poking into their eyes.

From without, the island looked deceptively small, but on the inside, the castle could easily receive five hundred people while offering them the comfort due to guests. In case of dire need, and without any regard for courtesy, it could house up to two thousand or more, giving them both shelter and food. Part of the crop was set aside for that purpose in summer, in full knowledge that the castle would be overcrowded every winter.

In the innermost of the three courtyards there was the godswood. Its heart tree was a snow white weirwood with few slender limbs and a modest canopy of leaves. The branches needed to be cut every now and then when the tree threatened to overgrow its place. But its trunk was as large as a house and its roots ran deep. The legend said it were the roots of the heart tree itself that held the castle together. They kept the island from separating into smaller pieces of land and drifting apart. The eyes of the heart tree were grave, the maw gaping open so wide that a small man like him could easily fit inside and become one with the faces of the old gods. That was where he went to take his look on the night that he acknowledged his gift again. Within the weirwood, it was suffocatingly hot. Even now when the water was so much warmer than the air, which had turned sharp and bristle, biting the eyes and the skin, as winter drew nearer.

A nest of kingfishers, by a tunnel in the mud on the edge of the firm land, or what passed for it in the bogs, marked the entrance point on the waterfront. One of the birds cried in the nearest tree, its song ringing like harsh sudden laughter. Most of the birds were now gone, though. Flown away to the Summer Isles or further across the sea. They would return come spring.

If spring ever came again.

The reeds bent and separated gently as he swam in through the long narrow passage of water. Still in the distance, he could see the wooden piers. As many as four scores of low longboats were getting ready to depart. They were being manned, cleaned, painted, pushed in or out of water. Two men waited for him there. He could not yet make out their faces from afar. But they held what he had asked for, a set of bright green garments ready at hand, scraped clean like the boats; neither of them used in a very long time. It was the first time in many years he was going to dress in green and admit to his folk what very few among them still remembered, the truth of what he was.

A greenseer like his son after him, a greenseer who refused to look and to see for countless years, ever since he took the hand of his wife in marriage before the heart tree. For the images he had seen before that, just like those he saw now, were too magnificent. In his visions, greatness came mingled with cruelty and grief.

All he had ever wanted was to live like an ordinary man for the rest of his days. Like most men, he was not to have his wish.

In despair, he dived again, to inhale the familiar smell of his home through the veil of water. He slid forward through it, slithering over the sandy bottom like an eel. His eyes were open and he moved through thick yellow and brown curtain of mud his body had lifted, saturated with life. A fish swam by, brown and slippery.

When he finally dared dive out, he saw the castle in all its majesty. No longer a mere glimpse, it towered over him. The weeds whispered, the reeds swayed, the willows wept. The remaining birds kept laughing. The bark and leaf hiding the stone rustled to him. The boats were being fitted with long poles and oars. The mudmen were going to rise, now, at the end of time. Courage woke in his heart, swelling with the joy of home coming.

It was there, and it will always be, even when he would be gone.

The Greywater Watch.