WINTERFELL – THE NORTH
Brienne insisted on following Sansa Stark to the cell holding the priestess of R'hllor. The damp inherent to Winterfell's crypts was gradually freezing as Winter set in. Thin layers of ice covered the stone like glass, trapping spores and fans of delicate yellow moss. Dead, the plants created amber splatters as if someone had murdered the sun while the great stone beast moaned around them like a leaking shipwreck upon the beach. In Tarth Brienne remembered castles that stood as the cliffs, unfeeling against the salt. Abandoned, they crumbled into the landscape, returning to their natural form in perfect silence. Not Winterfell. Aeons could perish and the last star fall into the sea but this cesspit of festering magic did not know how to die.
She had served Lords and Ladies before – even an uncrowned king but Sansa had a sharpness within her ways usually reserved for swords. Slowly, Brienne had met the people who played master to the young wolf. Lady Stark had learned cruelty from Joeffry. Violence from Ramsay. Revenge from her watchful Hound. Futility from Robb. Justice from Lady's death. Jealousy from her mother and worst of all, power at Baelish's soft touch. Did she learn to love from her husband, Ander Royce? Brienne had her doubts. If anything, Sansa cut a withdrawn figure. The Lady was a mirror, shattered on the ground with pieces of her soul lost between the cracks of the North where each lesson given had also taken part of her away. She had become a monster of duty like her father but lacked his unshakeable honour.
"To your left, My Lady," Brienne instructed, when Sansa hesitated at a crossroads inside the crypts. The place was a maze that ended in collapsed tunnels and rooms lined with coffins. Nameless statues guarded unfinished vaults and in the older, flooded depths the bones of Northern kings poked through soft earth along with the white roots that imprisoned them.
When they reached the holding cell, Sansa waited for Brienne to unlock the door, which she did against her better judgement. Brienne had no time for the zealots who coerced people into setting their faces alight. To her, they were agents of evil that inspired violence like the worst of the realm's kings or the purple-lipped whisperers of the East. And the screams… They echoed against the ice long after the body died. Sometimes she could hear them when there was no sound at all like a bell ringing with a breath of wind in an empty city.
"She calls herself, 'Kinvara'..." Brienne added, as the priestess emerged from the darkness. Kinvara's robes swelled as impenetrable layers of black velvet and red stitching. Her dress was lined with rabbit fur that peeked along every seam. Concealed beneath the structure, a corset plated with steel. The woman was not fool enough to rely on the gods for protection.
Their torches spat and flared like dragons greeting their mother. The Sparrows of King's Landing forged power with empty words but these prophets of the Far East were different. Their magic grew with Winter. Varys had warned the lords through his little birds that all sorcery shared the same heartbeat. Brienne could see it now – fire and ice, the sun and the moon – Winter and Summer all locked in step orbiting the realm. The Braavosi had a point about their coin spinning in the air, not yet decided on how it might land. Was there a coin above every head – including her own? Did the gods enjoy chaos...
Peace – or madness.
"Not too close," Brienne warned, as the priestess took liberties with the shadows between the torchlight.
Sansa cut an equally unnerving silhouette. These long nights were changing her into a creature that monsters feared. "Five Northern men are dead. I walked over their ash where it sticks to the snow. Murdered by words. Nightmares preached from the castle wall to scare children… Except it is the men, not the children who flee to their doom. Men lulled into a fantasy of fire from your lips."
Kinvara twisted those lips into a wry smile, as if violence amused her. "The Lord of Light did not command these soldiers to die."
"You frightened them into the grave."
"They heard the truth." Her voice was steady and soft. A flower with venom in its nectar. "The gods are going to war and not everyone wants to play. We are no longer wagering thrones."
Sansa remained unmoved. It was Baelish's words that snaked through her thoughts, entwined with her own – impossible to unpick and always shedding feathers. "Everything is about a throne," Sansa countered, darker again, "from Fleabottom to the dreams of your gods. I am sure that you believe as the other priests and priestesses do, that we are mindless tools for R'hllor in his eternal battle against Winter. You see my Northern men are sacrifices, purchasing heat for your flame. I have seen blood magic, I know what it can do and I know what it costs... We heard Princess Shireen's screams from Winterfell's walls and then watched the battlefield wilt from snow to mud and make no difference to the blades. You cherish the innocent and then your virtuous sisters burn them alive as gifts. Yes, I have met monsters like you before. My knight here," Sansa nodded at Brienne but kept her eyes on the priestess, "has advised me to keep you locked in this cell for the duration of the battle. Wise council. But I know something about the gods and their petty wars that you do not."
It was unclear if Kinvara believed the Stark. She swayed closer, silent with eyes like pits drinking in the flame.
"Without us wielding their swords, the gods are impotent prisoners, trapped in their dreams. In Volantis, all your kin are slaves to the fire. It is the same with King's Landing, knelt over their books hissing empty prayers. In the North we are free."
"Free? And yet you have your white trees. Mothers sing old songs to dying children. Your stories are written on the rocks in a language you cannot read. Prisoners of ignorance. Winter is coming. But there is hope for you as is there is hope for all..."
Sansa may as well have been the rock itself. Cold and unmoved by the priestess. "We saw the face of our gods long ago. Look again." She implored the priestess, stepping close enough to feel the heat in the air surrounding Kinvara. Sansa no longer mistook magic for divinity. "We burned our godly trees to shut their eyes. In the North we go to our deaths while the old gods sleep. We pray and cry and beg the darkness. It cannot hear us and good thing too, nothing righteous ever came of granting tearful wishes."
"You are a cold thing."
"If we fight the god of Winter on the snows outside Winterfell, it is not in the name of R'hllor." Then, Sansa stepped aside, allowing Kinvara to leave her captivity.
Brienne protested, blocking the priestess's path immediately. "My Lady, what are you doing?"
"As I said," Lady Stark replied, drawling the words in an echo of Baelish. "In the North we are free. Let her preach. Those that light the nights might buy us a measure of warmth, who knows but they'd never hold a sword to death and so they are no good to me."
Brienne allowed Kinvara to pass with eyes drowned in horror. She could not help but feel as though a piece of death itself were slipping through the bars.
In the late afternoon a pitiful, watery sun fell onto the blades of the Western ranges. Talk of gods and fire knit the air inside Winterfell. Hundreds knelt at the burned corpse of the white tree leaving trinkets in the smouldering husk along with their tears. On the ice field outside the walls another great pyre was lit and in the glow Kinvara drew a crowd. They warmed their frozen faces as she spoke of two great evils and when it was dark enough, her light became the only detail in the night. That was until Sansa leaned out the tower window and tilted her face to the sky. A billion fires greeted her. An endless river of flame. Whose gods were they? She wondered.
"Ser Davos Seaworth is a friend of yours..."
"I barely know him," Brienne replied, from the corner of the tower. Frost covered exposed pieces of her armour while her cheeks were red raw and scarred with broken blood vessels. Her breath lingered in the air with no breeze to disturb it.
"Where did they go?" Sansa's eyes hunted the evening.
"South, if they're smart."
"There are few enough people I trust. The more that leave..." She didn't finish that thought.
"I know that you are fond of her but Lyanna Mormont took Robert's heir. Even if you could forgive her the crime against your gods there are not many Lords who'd allow the rest to go unpunished."
"Is that what they are saying downstairs? My husband and my brother's friends want me to send horses out after our oldest Northern ally and her stowaway Baratheon? The same Lady whose army guards our castle from death?" Sansa turned from the window, draping herself against it instead. With the moonlight behind, she was barely more than a shadow bound by sinew and fur. "You've seen kings, Brienne. Gendry is no king."
Brienne encroached. The metal layers of her armour stuck, clashing harshly against each other. "Something has changed. This passivity. Has Royce-"
"-we're going to die here." Sansa interrupted, before Brienne could overstep her position. She did not know how to be a knight any more than Sansa understood being a Lady. "The castle is indefensible against the dead. I – I think I always knew. My father used to say that five hundred men could hold Winterfell against ten thousand. I can't decide if that was a lie to quiet the fears of his children or the distant memory of an old battle. Either way, I accept Clegane's assessment of our position. The dead will scale our broken walls in moments as surely as a fire takes the forest. But what to do?"
A frown deepened the scars on Brienne's forehead. "The same thing any conquered castle does – run."
"Run where? Death will find us. Winterfell is the largest hold in the North. The Iron Islands will fall as quickly as Bear Island and no matter how far South we go, Winter will follow. With every step it takes more soldiers add to the ranks. We all heard the stories when we were small. Snows so deep castles vanished in white crypts. Rivers that became veins of ice and an ocean stilled mid-strike with its waves curled and still. Can you imagine it? Walking out into the Narrow Sea – driving sleds in place of ships..." Sansa fell quiet again. "He'd know what to do."
Brienne was not sure if she should reach for Sansa's arm. She kept everyone at a distance – everyone except Lord Baelish. "Who?" Brienne asked, worried that her thoughts had returned to the conspirator.
"My father."
Screams filled the air as another Northern man ran shrieking across the ice with his limbs aflame. The heat ravaged his flesh, melting it from the bone until his knees caved and he tumbled into the powder as a blackened, shaking mess.
DEEPWOOD MOTTE – THE WOLFSWOOD
The cliffs towered over the narrow strip of beach which itself comprised a vicious mess of sharp rock, seaweed and hunks of ice that lay along the tide line pushing higher as the ocean crept forward. Westerly winds howled as a constant gale, knocking some of the Bear Island survivors onto their knees as they picked their way through the grey hell that gave way constantly underfoot. Eventually they congregated in a sea cave seeking shelter but the savagery of the frigid water had turned their skin as white as death. One collapsed and died right there at their feet.
Jorah Mormont was the last to arrive. He did not emerge from the water but rather slid from Viserion's back as the dragon crawled out of the waves with its golden spines dripping like the fires of the earth. The dragon shook the sea from his body, shedding it as the flames scorned the morning mist and then angled its enormous head toward the frightened survivors.
"Do not even think it..." Jorah stared deep into one of Viserion's eyes. The dragon blinked back like a scorned dog warned off a bone. He waited another moment in the dragon's embrace. Fire rumbled in its belly becoming an odd purr against Jorah's hands where they stroked Viserion's neck.
He left the dragon at the water's edge and approached the foot of the cliffs to search for a way up. Un-scalable... To the right the vertical surface loomed even higher until the beach vanished entirely replaced with rough currents and deep, icy water. It swelled into rapids that routinely snatched bergs and smashed them to bits against the cliffs. Jorah knew the land that lay to the North. Eventually it evened out into tidal swamps but his people would either drown with the tide or freeze to death long before they made it out of danger. That left him with the cliffs.
Viserion dug his snout into the rocks, pushing them around in search of a half-buried seal corpse. He was an enormous creature. Nose to tail he measured half a dozen metres off Drogon while his girth was slender with the definition of lean muscles visible beneath his scales. When it came to Viserion's wings, they were unusually broad giving him a bat-like shadow in the sky. At full stretch Jorah guessed that they'd just about bridge the height of the cliff if only he could find a way to calm the dragon enough to allow his kin to climb the wings like a ladder made of leather and bone…
Jorah squashed his body into the shelf of rock but he managed to wedge his boots in and take hold of an overhang beside Viserion's head. His foot dangled over the edge, resting gently on the dragon's head near the curved ridge of scale above his eye. Numb to the horrors in the smoke, Jorah sang songs from the Dothraki Sea. Viserion's eyelids were heavy and half-closed as he drifted off with Jorah's mournful notes into the memories of its past hunting crickets and snakes through the shifting grass.
The Bears climbed the creature carefully, pulling themselves up using Viserion's spines and scales, from wing-tip to wing-tip. At the top of the cliff, the dragon's wide black claws dug in to the dirt and caught the trunk of a pine, fatally spearing it. One of the survivors placed his hand reverently on a claw only to marvel at the warmth beneath the polished surface. Fire bound into flesh.
At the top of the cliff, Jorah found himself leaning against the wounded tree with the wind at his back and a crowd of his shivering kin in front. The Wolfswood was dense and overrun with weed. There was no possibility that Viserion could follow them through the darkness so he would have to leave the creature hunting the shoreline, unguarded.
For a while, everyone took up a seat overlooking The Bay of Ice to watch their island burn. They could not tear their eyes from the horror. There was nothing more human than indulging hell. Even Jorah shook his head. Dorin's ruined corpse stuck in his mind – eyes blue and empty. In the end it was enough to take Jorah to his knees, openly weeping. Someone embraced him. He did not know who.
They started a fire and then the Bears picked each other up and clustered close to the flames. Weapons were counted. Prayers were offered to the water. When the last wound was wrapped they faced the Wolfswood.
Dread. That was all Jorah could muster as the forest thinned.
Deepwood Motte's wooden walls stuck out from the mud. The Glover House was notorious for its humble construction. Amounting to barely more than a reclaimed hill, the holdfast cascaded down the rise in a series of walled settlements, none of which were divided by anything more than collapsing lines of roughly cut pine. It was not their fault. The volcanic stone in the Wolfswood was brittle, flaking into shards at the touch of a hammer and as a House they were too poor to import granite from the Stormlands. Instead the Glovers used the forest to create a vast village that merged with the landscape. The oldest buildings had been reconquered by the woods with thick sheets of lichen falling in veils that from a distance looked like the webs of strange spiders. Logs were laid over the muddy streets and over time these sank or rotted. New trees were placed on top creating an uneven set of paths through the village that were forever treacherous. The smell of shit and decomposition reminded Jorah of battlefields a week after a war. At least the cold kept the stench down.
Aside from a blackened corner on the outer wall, it was exactly as Jorah remembered it. She was there, living in every mournful cut of wood. The horizontal mark of mud on the wall made all of Deepwood Motte look like a jetty lingering at low tide. Perhaps it was. Waiting for the rain or the snow or the ash. And she was there, creeping as a ghost in the window of the castle.
Jorah closed his eyes to the memory of Mayrel Glover. Their ten sad years of marriage was a chapter he left closed in his heart but their three unborn children – Jorah knew very well that he felt their souls in the dragons raised from the funeral pyre. It was wrong of him to think these things and he'd certainly never tell Daenerys of the restless souls he found in their reptilian eyes.
The Mormonts were well cared for, carted off to different houses in the village where friends and trading partners did their best to patch the agony. Their story travelled like wildfire. Bear Island was gone. It set a fog of terror over the village who could smell the dead in the smoke as evening started to press at the edges of the sky. A great fog spilled from the Northern reaches, across the forest and down the cliffs until it settled over bay. Many packed wagons in the street, preparing to leave as if there were a fire in the forest while others wailed in the street for lost friends.
Jorah was taken to the castle where he shed his armour and allowed the women to wash out his wounds. As they stripped him, their eyes paused on the tattoos that covered his body like a dense, haphazard book but none of them were brave enough to ask after their origin. A huge cut under his ribs gaped, raw and bloody and there were more tip-wounds from stray blades than he could count. Jorah prodded at them curiously but the women batted his hands away with scorn. They did their best but with every pierce of the bone needle all Jorah could think about was the brief snap of pain.
Quaithe's magic had gone and he did not understand why.
Dressed in Glover colours, Jorah waited by the fire in the main hall. Here he could see evidence of recent fighting. A last stand had been made. No doubt the mark of Asha and her Ironborn raiding party who had taken the Keep with very little fuss and occupied it until Stannis Baratheon and is marauders decided to liberateDeepwood Motte to fill their ranks with loyal Northerners before warring with the Boltons. Useless as a castle, it was the weakest piece on the board of kings and yet somehow it endured as its neighbours burned.
"So it is you..." A woman's voice echoed gently from the other side of the hall.
Jorah found Lady Glover to be a pale and thin figure with silver hair to her waist braided through pieces of polished amber. A lifetime had passed between them and yet the threads of family lingered, unbreakable. He bowed his head respectfully at the woman who was once his sister in-law.
"The men said as much but I called them liars. Jorah Mormont is fled to the edge of the world to live out his days in dust and blood. That is what they promised, is it not, the maesters and their ravens? A punishment fit for your crime."
"It is, My Lady." He replied, his stomach in knots.
"I remain your sister in the eyes of the Old Gods, call me 'Sybelle'..." Her quiet but stern tone commanded. "I heard the rest of your story," she added, refusing to approach as if there was something in Jorah that she feared. "All true, they say. An old, disgraced knight in tow behind a Targaryen warlord, ravaging city after city."
"That's not-"
"-and three dragons… If it is not bad enough that this unholy queen has death between her thighs, you ride them as well – a Northern Lord at the head of a dragon. Your father should have run you through when he had the chance. He wanted you to atone for your mistakes, not add to them tenfold. Thank the gods he is dead and gone. Thank the gods my sister is with him."
Jorah suffered her rage obediently. Even if he did not deserve it for the crimes she listed, he'd earned it long ago.
"What this Queen of yours did in the East, we can only speculate but the stories of her Westerosi conquest reached us well in advance of you. Are they accurate? First she leaves King's Landing half-scorched and ruined and then moves on to Horn Hill – a whole House and all the children save a worthless runway of the Night's Watch. She killed them to prove a point. Every last one. The Baratheons and the Lannisters were not perfect but by god neither of them had the nerve to wipe an ancient House from the world..." Her breath shook in an unplanned pause. Sybelle's skin was spread thin across her chest, sinking between the gaps in her ribs. In the wrong light, it left her hollow. Was it a monster she spoke to now because Jorah still looked like her brother in-law... "I heard what happened to Bear Island – is it true?"
"...It is."
A fear she'd been holding escaped. "Your people are of course most welcome in our homes but as for you, Ser Jorah Mormont – you I should lock outside the gates and leave as a feast for the wolves."
He was prepared to do as she commanded – already reaching for Dawn which he had left leaning against the wall by the fire. It seemed to like it there, in the shadow of the flames.
"For her sake, you will stay," Sybelle's voice dropped. "She loved you – she died for you – I'll not dishonour her now. May my gods forgive me."
Jorah allowed his sword to fall against the wall. He almost wished that she'd scream at him – someone should. There was plenty of truth to be found in her accusations and innumerable souls following him through the world. The burning of Horn Hill played heaviest of all. While there might have been a perfectly defensible argument for the action even a seasoned warrior accustomed to slaughter rested uneasily with what happened that day. He had not seen it. For that, Jorah thanked the gods. It was easier to forgive Daenerys her violence when it was kept out of sight like his own kills rotting on the battle field away from the tables of Lords and Ladies. And what of the cursed Meereenese diseased and burning under gallons of boat oil? He could hear the soft thud of their bodies piling up and up along the city's walls, creating dead and smouldering ramps. Were they there now – turning to bone in the desert sand?
"An army of corpses led by a single general destroyed Bear Island," Jorah replied carefully. "They conjured Winter from nothing, turned the bay to ice and then marched on the island within hours. Wildfire. A priestess of R'hllor. Ironborn fighters and men of The Watch – none of it was enough to stop them. Only the Queen's dragon. Sybelle, that's why the dragons are here. They are the only force powerful enough to push the dead back into their frozen hell. It is a necessary evil."
She shook her head and moved deeper into the room, approaching the fire where he stood. There was a sallowness to her eyes and bones prominent in her cheeks. "You don't see it, do you?" Sybelle Glover reached for his arm. She was only five years older than him but sorrow had added decades. "The dragon did not save your home. It's in ruins. It will not save Westeros either. You might be another bloody prophetic old Mormont like your father but we'll be among the dead before the night is through." Her hands slipped from his arm. "That is the will of the gods. We are in the cycle of death and so we shall die. This is how the wheel turns. We see the sky but for a moment… The rest is darkness."
Jorah looked more carefully at Sybelle and was stuck with a grim realisation. "Where are your children? Erena and Gawen… The heirs of House Glover."
"Under the godtree," she whispered. "Sharing a crib."
"Sybelle..."
"They were always tiny things. I nearly lost them more times than I can count. Weak boned, the maester said. Do you believe that we are governed by our birth? The Citadel does. My children were born to die and I was destined to live. How dare the world make such presumptions. Do you believe it?"
"I do not know what I believe." Jorah confessed. "I know only what I see."
"And what is that, old Bear?"
"That the world is a cruel whore of a thing with the gods robbing our coin at the door and again as we leave, unsatisfied."
"Is that the filth you learned in the depraved streets of the black city? The rumours are that you prayed in the temples of Asshai and follow their cursed gods. Your dragon queen has borrowed diseased magic and brought it to Westeros along with her cut throats, savages and malformed warlords. Even if you win this war against Death, what then do you do with the demons that helped you win?"
"...what happened to your children?" Jorah pressed, ignoring her accusation.
Her gaze switched to the windows sitting shoulder height along the hall that had been boarded up against the cold like a line of coffins reminding her of the Glover bones laying across the North, spent in Stark wars. "They caught a sickness while in captivity on the Iron Islands. That wreck of a castle is a crypt built upon the waves full of wrath. It is no wonder nothing but malice ever comes from their kind. Rapists and reivers, even their throne was stolen from the sea. Balon tried to convert my children to his god. He took my little ones down to the beach and held their heads under the water until they drowned. I saw them die twice. Once on the rocks and again in my arms. Asha kept us in her tower to keep her leering brethren away but there was hardly enough warmth to melt the frost off the walls. She only helped us for fear of what my husband would do to Theon if we died. Those people have no souls. They gave them to the sea."
"Theon is dead. Asha too. They died in front of Bear Island rather than let it fall to the marching dead. If we're going to survive, we'll have to forget the past, Sybelle. All of us and all the blood we spilled. It does us no good now."
Jorah took Sybelle in his arms but it was like embracing a statue in the crypts.
Jorah walked the tiny Godswood inside the Glover village without a lantern. Tonight he preferred the darkness, having seen enough fire to last him several lifetimes. The Glover Weirwood was a stunted thing, barely more than a bush that had turned wild. Its thick roots betrayed its age, surging out of the mud as though it were trying to break free and crawl across the earth. A great octopus, Jorah imagined, trying to bury itself in the sand. Hints of its roots poked out all through the Godswood and climbed along the wooden fence at the far side where planks had rotted away. There were holes large enough for wolves to push through but tonight the world was quiet except for Viserion's occasional cry. He was circling the Wolfswood and when he flew across the face of the moon, Jorah could see silver light peek through his torn wings.
He did as his father had taught him and placed a rock on the ground between the roots. There was a pile laid there already in mourning of the dead children. It was an ancient ritual about rebuilding the world with the souls of the dead. The First Men had practised it before the Andals came with their gods. The North was littered with curious stone piles. The largest marked the burial places of unknown kings and heroes. Bear Island had one so immense that it had spilled over the cliff and into the water and been lost to sea.
"Robett Glover is in Winterfell with what remains of his army," said Jorah. Sybelle was seated on the roots of the Weirwood with her back resting between the eyes of the hideous, twisted face. "I hear it was his loyalty that turned the battle against the Boltons. I implore you now, on his behalf, you must leave this place at once. The Wall no longer protects the North and the Queen's army will not be enough to hold the line."
"I'll never leave my children." She closed her eyes. There was a piece of paper rumpled in her hand, read and re-read. "But you are right. My people cannot stay here. Take them with you, Mormont. They'll follow you if you ask. All they do is talk of the knight who rides a dragon. They don't see you as I do..."
"With clarity." Jorah said, coldly of himself.
"Before you leave, I have a secret."
Jorah sat himself onto the Weirwood root beside her. The moonlight was so bright that he could see every imperfection in the wood. The Glovers had given him thick wolf furs patched together which draped around him. He kept the hood over his head and his face in shadow with only his whiskers catching the silver light.
"After Stannis liberated us from the Ironborn, I ransomed seven prisoners to a banker in Braavos. Robett would not approve so I did not tell him. His army was furnished and he never asked how, nor will he."
"Your husband won't hear it from me." Jorah assured her.
"It was a considerable sum of money. The rest I used to purchase information."
"Who from?"
"Who knows the depraved oceans of our realm?"
"Varys..."
"Baelish." She shuffled forward and for a moment some of the life returned to her eyes. The moon caught her blue rims which shone with the depth of lonely bergs. "When Galbart was head of this House he led a flank of Robb's army against the Lannisters. It was largely scouts and outriders but there were a few thousand good men there. Starks, Glovers, Karstarks – Mormonts..." Sybelle allowed the knight a moment. "Robb's plan was to outflank Tywin and Jaime – to take the ruin of Moat Cailin from Victarion then march South. Galbart sent the ravens. He told all the world that he and his army would be at The Twins for the wedding celebrations as part of the battle rouse and the world believed it. With the shock of Robb's slaughter and his army, it was easy enough to believe that Galbart was among them. The Lannisters owned the North. No one counted the bodies. Can you imagine what Tywin would have done, fresh from victory, if he heard that part of the Stark army had survived?"
"Slaughtered them in short order."
"Galbart swore his army to silence, disguised them as refugees from the ruined cities and took them directly West to the abandoned Manderly castle at Flint's Finger before continuing down the coast to the Seaguard – the original rendezvous point. Baelish was there when they arrived and folded our army into the Seaguard where they would be safe. The Seaguard swore loyalty to the Lannisters but in private, kept the Northern army within its walls. A phantom."
Jorah did not understand. "Why would Littlefinger help Robb Stark's army? Tywin would have had his head if he found out."
"His interests have always been in the North..." Sybelle replied. "If it were not for him the Bolton's would hold Winterfell and my husband likely dead. Baelish is one of the world's worst men but by the gods we owe him a debt that can't be paid."
The idea of being indebted to Littlefinger made Jorah's stomach turn. He did not mention that he'd come within a heartbeat of slitting the bird's throat in the snow. "This is your secret… Galbart Glover is alive along with a Northern army?"
"Lord Jason Mallister too."
Jorah's eyebrow lofted slightly at the mention of the lord. He'd fought him once at the tourney of Lannisport and set the amethyst-clad noble on his arse.
"With Galbart's help they killed the Frey in charge of the Seaguard and reclaimed his seat." This time she sighed, the words heavy in her chest. "You have been away from Westeros too long, Jorah or you would have guessed the last of my news but it is gone from you, isn't it? You weep for your lost home but the realm… All the faces in your past… They're dust in your eyes." Her words did not move him and Sybelle knew that his heart was forged in the Eastern deserts. "This part of Robb's army was led by three – Galbart, Jason and … and Maege. She's alive Jorah. The Lady of Bear Island and true heir to your House."
He stood at once and squared off against his sister in-law. Jorah wrapped his hand around her slender upper arm and dragged her off the tree.
"I am not gone mad..." She countered, before he could challenge her. "My husband is not lord of this House any more than Lyanna is lady of hers. Fly that ugly great beast of yours South if you need proof – or trust me. Do you even remember what that is, I wonder? Or has love cut out your eyes..."
His grip softened but it only served to allow Sybelle to collapse forward against his chest. She did not have the strength to fight him.
"I do trust you," he breathed, as a shiver ran through the ugly Weirwood.
"There is one last thing," Sybelle said, this time mumbling the words against his chest. She handed him the crumpled note that had come on a raven. "Lyanna writes from Winterfell. Here, read it for yourself."
Jorah took the note from her. His face softened at the untidy scrawl of his young kin.
'Burn the trees – for gods' sake. They're watching.'
Jorah wrapped his arms and thus his furs right around Sybelle until she all but vanished into his form. He looked again to the bone tree and remembered his visions. Always the same. White trees and dead cities.
CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL
The ground dropped. Daenerys felt it from Drogon's back with nearly two tonnes of flesh and scale between her and the earth. The entire sheet of ice covering the ground in front of The Wall shifted forwards and shattered as if it were nothing but a wandering berg bobbing across the Shivering Sea. All around the ground tore apart. Up here – down there – rifts opening to endless darkness. Each crack a pounding scream.
Drogon lost his footing. Enormous hooked claws screeched along a freshly formed piece of ice that had fallen to the side revealing the bedrock many metres below. He used his wings to steady himself, stretching them out to grab hold of trees which in turn were being uprooted with vicious bursts of splinters striking the air in a hail of arrows. The disfigured roots were all but dead as they were left hanging in the air like greasy, tangled hair on Fleabottom hags.
The explosion followed. In a beacon of light, Castle Black was consumed. It started beneath the ground, roaring through the tunnels and rooms dug under the ice, incinerating the subterranean world along with all the undead bones that had woken in the dark. Each collapsing room became a crack in the great wall of ice that all of a sudden loomed as large as death. Before Daenerys' heart could beat again, a green sun birthed into the world – appearing from nowhere to devour as a raging orb of uncontrolled wrath.
Within the depths of her eyes, the emerald storm surged. She could feel its heat arcing out into the air where it burned the bark straight off the surviving forest and turned whatever was left into glowing cinder. Daenerys' clothes split apart with the force of the shock wave – torn from her shoulders then scorched until their remains were the colour of pitch. Drogon howled at the melee but she couldn't hear him above the carnage.
She reached out toward the ball of green fire that was now twice as high as the castle had been. Streamers of wreckage, rock and ice were thrown from its soul. Never in her life had Daenerys imagined a thing of such power. For all her magic there was nothing to measure against the forces of the world. Nothing. She was an insect in the sand slipping down an endless dune. Finally, she understood. As all Castle Black's secrets and unfinished stories died together in the light, the truth was left behind as a featureless surface, smooth and dead like river stones washed clean by a glacial stream…
Drogon's scales shifted into amber as the nightmare intensified. The unstable heat came in waves until the force of the explosion turned inward and dragged the light back into nothing. Then, for the first time, Daenerys saw the desecrated innards of the fort, twisted and congealed with less form than a candle left to ruin. It was red and then black as the meltwater fused its final horror.
That's when she heard the thud – thud – thud of rocks the size of carts smashing into the ice around her. It was a black rain that peppered craters across the landscape for miles. They were accompanied by a hail of smaller rubble whose danger Daenerys realised too late. Pieces struck the ground around her – then Drogon who hissed and snarled at the assault. Scales were chipped away, flying off leaving bloody patches. At first they angered the dragon but soon his shrieks turned to wails of pain. He flapped his wings and swung his enormous tail – lifted his legs and threw his head back in an almighty stream of fire.
It was clear that he wanted to take off but the constant bombardment of rocks and thickening plume of ash confused him. She remembered the fall of King's Landing, how the chaos had proved the greatest weakness of her children. It was the same here. Drogon could not think and either refused or could not hear her desperate commands.
An enormous piece of castle the size of the old Harpy statue smacked into the ice at the dragon's feet sending the beast into the air, thrown by a sudden vault of ice. Daenerys was tossed from her perch. Her stomach dropped and her arms reached out, desperately grasping at the air but she had no wings with which to fly.
She seemed to fall forever.
Drogon landed somewhere to her left but he was little more than a blur at the edge of her vision. No. What Daenerys saw was the sky above – endless and divine streaked with projectiles leaving trails of smoke across the canvas like a thousand stars falling to earth.
Instead of snow, she hit an angled piece of ice hip-first. Her left forearm snapped immediately. She heard it rather than felt the bone force through her flesh. Then her head impacted the unyielding surface.
There she lay.
Lifeless.
A bloody patch seeped into the white around her half-stripped body.
The wreckage gave way to soft flakes of ash which fell on her naked skin. Behind the ruins of Castle Black, more cracks were forming in the ice. They sprang from nothing and ripped across the surface as lightning shredded the sky. Beneath where they intersected, entire segments of ice shivered and came away, collapsing as if a river had suddenly broken through from the other side. Perhaps that's what The Wall had always been – the gates of a dam holding back the snow…
HORN HILL – THE REACH
There were moments in the afternoon at Horn Hill when Darkstar could fool himself into believing he was home in Dorne.
The sunlight came over to bake the stone. Inside the walled gardens vine leaves scratched together in a strange whisper. Sand lifted from the ground and danced in the air. Innumerable birds hopped along the terraces picking bugs from the shadows. Then there was the stink of freshly butchered meat coming from the kitchens which overlooked a gap in the wall beyond which the valley lazed out. The scorched fields, previously black were now thick with new growth. The fruit trees were dead but from their stubs sprouted soft curls of life although it was the vegetables that clawed up, ravenously devouring their second chances of life, feasting off the ash of the dead. That said, it was the native river grass long banished by determined farmers that went to war. It grew from every corner, several feet high in most places. Silver one side, green the other it shivered like a nest of snakes whenever the wind blew. Darkstar enjoyed the sound of it on the air – the mimic of sand...
Violence and life were the mastery of Dorne. It did not suit Westeros half so well. Its people were not invigorated by war, they were demoralised by it made worse by the Queen's desire to turn Horn Hill into a refugee camp for King's Landing. The people hiding inside the walls had no connection to The Reach but they were continuously confronted by the bloody reality of dragons as they lived in the empty homes of the Tarly House. The pyre made for all the bodies had been so large that weeks later it continued to smoulder in the field like some evil pushed up from the fires under the world. A throne of bones some called it. Darkstar wondered if the Dragon Queen had the nerve to sit.
And then there was the Wildling. He always found her looking North. With Highgarden a pale spirit to the left, it was the blue and grey scramble of mountains in the distant Westerlands that held Gilly's attention.
Darkstar sat down on the enormous stone blocks beside her. They were well-worn beasts that looked as though they'd been set in the ground long before the castle. A remnant of some forgotten lord felled in a battle no one can remember.
"A Golden Hand for your thoughts?"
Gilly did not turn to him. She had been listening to the Dane approach for some time. His footsteps had scratched toward her, caught by idle diversions along the way. "Sometimes I forget tha' it's Winter." Gilly admitted. "It's warm 'ere – almost too hot. I'm not used ter feeling the sun on my skin. At home, my father kept us inside chained to the wall or guarded by 'is dogs. When we were allowed out it was always into deep snow ter cut firewood or fix the traps. That's all I remember, the cold. Then – when Sam brought me South – I forgot it almost at once. How strange is that?" She asked. "It was as if I'd been born in the sun. We should not forget things so easily. Even his face, yer know… My father. I don't remember what he looked like. Most of my sisters too. They are fading. Even my two boys tha' I lost – they're gone."
"If we remembered everything and everyone with perfect clarity, we would die of sorrow." Darkstar replied. Arianne Martell was fading too. Soon there'd only be the space she left in his heart.
This time, Gilly looked at him. "That is true." She paused, surveying his features with as much scrutiny as the landscape. "You have such strange eyes."
"Most people do not like them." He admitted. "They call me, 'reptile' in the Dornish cities because they are the mirror of the old dragon lords."
"I only know one Targaryen," Gilly shrugged, "and you are nothin' like her."
"Well, I do not know many Freefolk either but you do not resemble the creatures in their stories."
"I am not really Freefolk though, am I? I'm the daughter o' a Crow born in the North but not of the North. One of my maids called me a 'cruel abomination'. Not – not in a savage way I believe she felt sorry fer me, more than anythin'. Wildlings people understand but not my father. The stories have spread. Everyone knows he gave gifts to the Whitewalkers. They look at me an' – and they wonder… It's my family that this ice king has woven his magic through. My brothers – my children. What does that make me?"
"You are not one of them, Gilly. You are a Southern Lord's Lady. This castle is yours. Your children will rule for a thousand years, long after this Winter has finished. What's the matter?"
"Sam..." She breathed.
"I have not seen him for several weeks."
"He keeps himself shut away in his father's room. I hear him – talking to himself – sending ravens. He speaks to shadows and scratches open his wrists with quills. Once, I found him writing in his own blood. I don't know what ter do."
"Wait. He lost more than I can imagine. Be patient with him."
"I try. I do. I hear what the envoys from Highgarden say – that he has gone mad. I think they're right. You say that I am Lady of Horn Hill but I can no sooner take this castle with me than you can carry the waves of the Torrentine."
Darkstar reached for her hand which had been trembling on her knee, fussing with the uncomfortable silk of her pale blue gown. His gentle touch and the brush of warmth allowed Gilly's resolve to crumble. An arm wrapped around her shoulders as she leaned into him and closed her eyes. He held her carefully, rocking slightly from side to side.
"Give this world a chance..." He breathed, against her hair. "If you don't like the Seven Kingdoms, there's a whole world out there beyond the Narrow Sea."
"Have you seen this world?"
"No." Darkstar confessed, pulling her closer. "But I have read some of its stories. There's a place for everyone."
"Stay a while longer," Gilly asked softly, when Darkstar began to shift away. "Tell me some of these stories."
He did. When he ran out of stories he started on the songs. Most were sad – sung of The Sorrows, the still waters of the Rhoyne and the sunken city of Chroyane guarded by cursed men made of stone. Gilly tilted her head to look into his eyes as he told her of the jade obelisks poking out from the water and marble staircases that twisted toward buildings that no longer existed. They were left hanging over the tangle of swamp. Cliffs to nowhere while the golden floors of the Palace of Love lay shattered beneath the water, reflecting filtered light onto the mist which itself shifted through warm pastels in the afternoon.
Gilly could see herself wading through the melancholy swamps. When the story came of Prince Garin, Gilly found herself weeping. Darkstar's words were so vivid that she imagined the prince hanging in his golden cage while the Valyrians and Volantians tormented him over the death of his men. Then the waters of the Rhoyne rose in fury to drown the conquers and bury the bodies of its fallen in the mud. She wondered if it was the tears of their strange turtle-god that cursed everything the river touched…
Gilly caught Darkstar's hand as he wiped away the tears dripping off her cheeks. He dipped his head, dislodging the silver streak in his hair which fell across his face like a scar. Neither of them uttered a word as his lips grazed her knuckles with the taste of salt.
CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL
Alliser Thorne doubled over behind the out small, outer building as the explosion destroyed Castle Black. His sword slipped from his hands. He reached up, clutching his head in a desperate attempt to protect his ears from the pounding air. It felt as though the gods themselves were breaking into the realm of the living. It was unbearable. Commanding. The force of the noise so loud that his chest rattled like a cage of bones.
The thick snow drift that had collected behind the barn transformed into a river under the extreme heat. It gushed around him in a ravenous torrent, taking his feet from under him. He was washed away from the protection of the building as the water started to boil. Thorne's fur and leather gave him some reprieve under the green glow of the flames but its heat was oppressive. Thorne tried to duck his head under the surface as the river dragged him along the uneven ground but he was continuously bounced above the water which took him towards another crumbling out-building and crashed him into it, pinning him there. He coughed and struggled against the surge forcing on his chest. He saw that it was being fed from a massive section of The Wall that was melting – ancient water pouring down like waterfalls circling the mouth of a continental river in the East.
Thorne was caught between drowning and being crushed alive. He turned his head to the side, gulping for mouthfuls of water and air. The world was poisoned by the green light. His men were all dead. Obliterated, drowned or buried.
In front of him, the first building that he'd been washed away from started to shift from the foundations. Like a door loose on its hinges, he could see one side of it start to spin. The water sensed the weakness and curled around the injury – gnawing at the threads of iron holding it in place.
"Shit..." He cursed, realising that he'd be sandwiched between the two if it broke free. Thorne reached to his left, fumbling desperately for something to grab hold of. He found the edge of a window and used it to pull himself against the flow of water which bombarded him relentlessly. If anything, the water was rising. He could hear the death of huge pieces of The Wall tumbling down into the explosion. A hole had been melted into the ice like the socket of a giant's eye.
The explosion vanished without warning along with the deafening roar. It was replaced with a shrieking dragon and whiz of rocks sailing over head before thundering into the ground. Then there was the water and the growl of ice crumbling into the ground. One chaos replaced another.
Terrified, he could do nothing but watch a wave of meltwater rise up and come directly for him. It loomed above the building in front, almost twice its height. Thorne scrambled against the current, trying to move far enough along the building that he could either hide behind it or even allow himself to be washed away. Anything was better than being caught between a pair of colliding stone monsters.
The wave struck the building in front and lifted it off the ground. Thorne watched it float like a Northern fishing boat, cast adrift on the waves. The awkward structure swung around and several bodies face down, washed out through its windows.
He wasn't going to make it. Thorne panicked, flailing his arms around. The building swooped closer, following an inevitable rapid path. He wasn't sure if it would hit him flat on or at an angle – which would be better? How fast would he die… It was not as he'd imagined his end.
His lips spilled profanity as the righteous might whisper prayers.
Most would close their eyes and wait for death but Thorne was a hard bastard. He was going to take every last second from life. Fuck the gods. The water around him began to swell. Fuck those dreaming whores and their pointless machinations. A shadow tracked over his face as the building moved within metres. Fuck these games!
With scant feet to spare between his body and the building, the water trapped along with him suddenly rose – squeezed up by the crash. It kept on rising, higher and faster until he found himself spat out onto the roof at the moment of impact. Free of the glacial flow, Thorne lay stunned. He gripped his chest with his hand to feel his heart racing about. Then, he laughed...
It did not take long for the waters to drop. They had funnelled into two main rivers, both of which filtered down and vanished beneath the striking cracks ice sheet. Toward the remains of Castle Black, the scene was breathtaking. There was no ice or snow left on the ground anywhere near the explosion. That had been melted away and stripped back to the bedrock which was black as midnight. Instead of smooth rock, it was folded over itself as though it had been poured over the landscape from a smith's cauldron. The surviving parts of the settlement were left marooned awkwardly on the surface. Only the oldest stone buildings – dripping and shining from the water – had stone foundations built directly onto the bedrock. Castle Black was the same. Even ruined, Thorne could tell that it had been constructed on the rock, not the ice, which seemed to suggest that some of these buildings had been placed here in an age without ice.
Asshai, Thorne thought. It looked like a scene from mankind's nightmares.
The dragon wailed again. Thorne saw it marooned on a particularly mangled section of ice that had been left untouched by the water. It had been thrown into the forest and was trying to tear its wings off the branches. Its pained cries cut through the world. A dragon's song. Although Thorne knew that it would devour him if he were to approach, he could not help but be overwhelmed by a great sadness watching a thing of such beauty and power struggle.
The two watchmen on top of the wall lay in a tangle, discarded and sliding along the grove cut into the top of The Wall as if it were a road. The deformation from the explosion underneath had set the entire crest on a lean. One of the bodies clipped his head on the side and startled back to consciousness. He saw, to his horror, that he was part of a dead tide of bodies and war channelled inevitably down toward a sunken section of The Wall above where Castle Black had been. All he could see were corpses, the descent and finally – an edge to nothing.
"F-f-f-f-uck's sake!" He beat his fist onto his mate's chest, waking him to a similar state of terror.
In front, the bodies dropped off the edge and vanished into the fall.
"What happened?" The other Crow ask, bewildered. One minute they'd been pouring oil over the edge and then – and then nothing.
"...the hell does that matter? Get a hold of somethin'! That – grab it – yes that!"
Barely awake, the Crow pawed wildly at a hook of rusted metal protruding from the ice. He caught in both hands and then groaned as his mate clutched onto his waste and his arms took both of their weight. The angle of the fall wasn't extreme but with nothing but ice at their feet it was impossible to fight the tide.
"They're dead… All of 'em..."
The other Crow clawed up his mate's body to also grip the iron protrusion which was used to attach the giant anchors to The Wall. He could still see part of the chain buried in ice, laying in wait for hundreds of years. "This whole thing is gonna collapse… Can you feel it?" The world around them was creaking, moaning and splintering with thunder claps and deep shudders like the fatal wounds on a dying animal. "We have got to get out of here."
"No shit!" He pushed his arm through the enormous hook of metal, getting a better grip. "Open to suggestions that don't involve falling a thousand feet. What… No. No way… Fuck, you're serious."
"An' what's your idea, then – eh?"
Another clash of ice and The Wall took on a more severe angle. The river of bodies picked up speed forcing the Crows to climb up onto the ledge putting them uncomfortably close to the drop overlooking the Haunted Forest. "I knew yer were gonna get me killed..." The Night's Watchman replied, watching a piece of Castle Black sail overhead and vanish into The Lands of Always Winter. His friend removed a dagger from his belt and started chipping away at the ice beside the chain. Through gritted teeth, he did the same until they freed a taunt piece of rope holding the weight of the anchor. "If I come back as one of 'em dead things," he added, looking the Brother in the eye, "I want yer to know that I'm gonna kill yer first."
The man's smile widened revealing several bloody teeth. "I'll already be dead, you idiot – now hurry up before this bitch takes us to the grave."
HORN HILL – THE REACH
Ink splattered out from the fractures in the tip of the quill. It had been on the verge of death for hours. A maester of the Citadel would have put it to rest but Lord Sam Tarly dipped it back into the glass well again and again and again. Its demise was sudden. The nib cracked and under the pressure of his hand, collapsed in on itself and bled black over the page, erasing its last words with darkness. The violence startled Sam, who stared dumbly at the pool of ink running toward the edge of the page, following the natural curve of the parchment.
He had always wanted to be a maester burrowed deep within the Citadel's libraries. That's what he had told himself as his brother was sent into the field to spar with his father. It was the realm's stories that fascinated him – not the feel of mud on his legs or the race of Spring air against his face full-gallop on a horse. How many of his desires were fabrications, he wondered… Most of them. All? Being Lord of Horn Hill was never meant nor expected of him but did he ever think of his brother with an air of envy? Never?
"All men want power," his father's voice undercut the afternoon air, "even a runt like you."
Calmly, Sam unwound the tip of his quill, removing the silver ring and the broken nib. The regal yellow feather he laid on the desk while he opened a drawer and fetched another nib. His father was dead. Sam had watched his body burn and blow away yet here he was, lingering in the shadows of the room with the same sharp eyes and cruel tongue that he'd possessed in life.
"What good is power," Sam replied, avoiding the accusation as he dropped the new pale cream nib into the ring and then began to wind it back onto the feather, "in the middle of Winter? The way I see it," he added, blotting away the puddle of ink with a cloth, "there are more important things than – than who sits in which castle." The ink had left a stain on the page but there was nothing Sam could do about it. This wasn't going to be one of the embroidered books spread open on a pedestal – no – he was writing an account of the battle – preserving a piece of history while the page was still unfolding. The finery would come later, with someone else's hand.
"If you think that the game stops while the war rages, you are more stupid than I thought." His dead father sneered. "You always wanted what belonged to your brother and now that you possess his inheritance you are sickened by the pleasure it brings. Hold on to that, boy – it is the only honest thing about you."
He should not have spoken to the vision. Sam had read about imbalances of the mind. When men saw things that were not real, the worst thing to do was speak with them. Some said it was the gods playing tricks, others that the brain itself could break beyond repair if the lunatic thoughts were embraced. So, he reasoned to ignore his father and returned to writing.
Sam's account of the burning of Horn Hill was bitterly accurate. His peers in the Citadel went out of their way to glorify the battlefield. How else, they had postured, were men to ride toward death if they knew the truth of it? It was a fair point, if your purpose was to uphold the necessary mechanisms of the realm but that was not what Sam was doing in this moment. What happened at Horn Hill was the death of a House. He was not here to lie in fact, Sam did not care if no one read his words. They needed to exist. Preserved. Locked behind the wire cage with the other forbidden texts. Put on public display and read in every street. Twisted into the endless bone forests of the North. Sam was lancing the wound in his heart.
"Do you write of the melting flesh – how it poured off the bones. Lips – open – screaming. The kicking legs of a horse without its head and the ground so thick with bodies that not even the dragonfire could set them alight… You weren't there, boy. She kept you from it for a reason. You weren't made for blood."
"I bloody am!" Sam snapped, turning in his chair. His father's ghost was that of a young man. He was tall, slender and wearing armour flecked with pieces of flesh from battle. A scratch across his eye bled in what would later be a distinctive scar that Sam remembered as a pale line.
"Prove it." It was not the first time the Randyll relic had conspired against the Queen. Sam would always hiss a protest. Defend the Queen. Ramble about the dead and fragments of prophecy. His father's reply was always the same as it had been in life. "Fear is no reason to support the Dragon Queen..."
Every time they warred with words, Sam slipped a little deeper. He could have stopped it. He could have tried… Sam forcibly returned his attention to the book. The nib scratched loudly as he described the flap of leather wings upon the smoke-stained air.
This is how things went on between them. Sam, shouting in an empty room and nibs crushing into their inky graves. All of it circling the same, sad truth – he was a boy ruled by fear.
Gilly pushed open the oak door disturbing a sigh of dust. She'd come alone, bringing Sam a bottle of pear cider in the hopes he'd cheer a little. He'd liked it well enough in Old Town but her husband's wayward writing barely paused. The sight of the page stuck her breath in the back of her throat. Sam was fastidious with his scrawl but the pages spread open were filled with barely illegible text that trailed drunkenly off the page. There were frequent drops of ink and smudges that mirrored the stained base of his hand.
"Why don't you come down an' have something ter eat, eh?" Gilly asked, as lightly as she dared.
He dipped the quill afresh and kept writing.
"Or a walk. The weather is fair – time away from all this dust would do you good." Gilly held the ceramic jug of cider in her hands. The room was like a crypt with Randyll's things left untouched except for the desk and open window. There were black feathers scattered across the room from Sam's frequent visitors. He preferred the company of crows. Their whispers were answered and set back into the wind. Whatever the realm wanted, Sam did. He refused nothing and asked nothing.
"Morality is not a construct that the realm is familiar with..." Sam snapped over his shoulder. His words missed Gilly, instead aimed at an abandoned corner of the room. "What makes you right and her wrong? She came here to save us!"
"She came to sit her silver arse upon the throne. It is built on death, fire and blood. That is their way."
"Then why isn't she sitting on it now? King's Landing is hers but she walked away – she chose to go North."
"Who are you talking to?" Asked Gilly, quietly walking up to Sam's desk. She touched his shoulder and felt him flinch.
"No one..." He softened. His eyes kept his father in check, holding the ghost to its corner of the room. "I'm not hungry – or thirsty..." Sam added, when he heard Gilly set the jug onto the desk. "I have work to do."
Her hand moved up to stroke his hair tenderly, tucking it behind his ear. He'd let it grow long, locked away in this room. His beard too, had grown unruly. Sam looked more like a heathenous Crow now than his years spent at The Wall.
"I'm not." Sam added firmly, when Gilly's fingers trailed down his neck. "Leave it if you must."
"I don't recognise you..." She whispered, removing her hand. It hovered over his skin as if he were made of glass. "You don't sleep. You don't eat. You talk to yourself…"
"I am working. I must finish this." He insisted.
"Look at the page, Sam. Go on – look at it..."
Sam only agreed when his dead father nodded. His quill slipped from his fingertips when he saw the mess on the parchment. For hours he had been writing incomprehensible hysteria. The act of preserving his House had kept him calm but seeing this – what – what had he achieved?
His father's ghost laughed.
Sam slammed his fist onto the page with such force that the jug of cider leaped off the table and shattered on the ground.
"Leave it!" He snapped, as Gilly bent to collect the pieces. The book, quill and glass inkwell followed – violently knocked from their perch by a swipe of Sam's arms.
"Sam – Sam – no..." Gilly tried to stop him, as he set about destroying his father's desk.
There was nothing she could do as Sam pushed every item from the desk until he came to a small statue of a three dragons wrapped around each other. He had never noticed it hidden between his father's things but now it was the last trinket on the pine surface. A relic of the conquest.
"Sam this is not helping. There are thousands of people living in the castle that need you to-"
"Not my people. My people are dead, Gilly. All of them. I betrayed them. Me. Do you hear – me and no one else."
She had never seen his brown eyes reach such depths. They were black like the oval pits of a reptile. "You were saving the realm." She whispered. Gilly lunged for Sam, snatching the dragon statue away before he could grab it. She held it out of his reach because it was the only way to get his attention. "My family is dead too – remember? If you think your father was a monster remember mine."
"The Wildling whore has a point there, boy..." Randyll's voice was cut by laughter. "She's more a man than you. Maybe her bastard should carry the family name or did you already give that too?"
"Give that to me." Sam held out his hand for the dragon idle.
Gilly shook her head, stepping aside to put the table between them. "No. Not until you wake up from this – this madness."
"I am not mad," he replied, growling as he used to when his brother taunted him. "Finally I see things clearly. Maybe for the first time in my life. My father was right, Gilly. He was a miserable, ruthless son of a bitch-"
"Careful, boy..."
"-who couldn't bring himself to love his own child but he was protecting what his people. That's what Lords do. Another conquering dragon isn't going to save us from Winter."
"Jon Snow says different – gods, Sam – you said as much yourself. We need her dragons and dragons only answer to their mother."
"That is not true. Mormont rides them."
"Treason..." Gilly breathed, at the same time as Randyll's ghost – only he whispered it through grinning lips.
"And who says that it's treason? She calls herself queen but who has bowed? None of the people sheltering inside these walls. What power does she really have – except to destroy? That's not power, that's fear. My father was right. Daenerys Targaryen is no different to the corpse king." Sam held out his hand, demanding the dragon statue from her. He wanted to smash it into pieces.
Gilly shook her head, too shocked by what she'd heard to find tears. "These aren't your words..."
Sam stalked around the table – Gilly mirrored him, keeping her distance. Her husband looked taller but that was only because his robes hung loosely where he'd lost weight from his frame. The round, cheerful face that she loved had unnatural shadows where ridges of bone had appeared. She watched him bend down and retrieve his unfinished book from the ground. Then he brandished it at her, with ink dripping from the pages.
"These are my words. Listen to me, Gilly. Gilly – Gilly please." He begged, as she began to back away from the table, trembling. Sam remembered the same look in his own eyes when his father had been in one of his rages. It only inflamed his temper further. "I have no idea what is 'right' any more – or what I should do. Jon was always better at these things. He has an instinct about them. Snow could face down an army of – forgive me – mostly savages and find a way to save them. That's what leaders do. They find ways through that people like us – people like me – can't see."
"Sam it was Jon who told you to trust Daenerys."
Sam slammed the book shut and hugged it to his chest. Unintelligible words dribbled from his lips while his eyes flicked back and forwards between Gilly and the corner of the room. "The – the dragon queen must die," he finally stammered, swaying slightly on his feet, "or the war will last for a thousand years. That's what we'll do. We'll kill her."
Gilly set the dragon ornament on the stone windowsill and carefully approached Sam. She was desperately sad for him. He had seen too much death. The guilt of it was suffocating him one raven at a time. A sister of hers had died this way, shivering to death in the snow muttering curses at the gods after seven of her children had been given over to Winter. People could be broken without need of a sword.
"Sam..." Gilly placed her hands softly upon the book, pressing enough so that he could feel her weight through the leather and parchment. "Come outside with me. For an hour – a moment, even."
He seemed tempted even if he could not bring his eyes to focus on her. There were too many voices hissing at him. His brother polished the family sword, sitting in one of the high-backed chairs while his mother lingered on the wall beside the window – her head tilted, looking out over the lurid green fields. "No. I – I – I have to write it." His mind had wandered out of treason and back to the book.
"Of course you must write it," Gilly assured him, this time allowing her hands to grasp lightly at the book, "after you've had some air."
His grip tightened against hers. "No."
"I shall even light the candles for you," Gilly promised. "You can write all night. After..." She tried to disarm him of it once again but found his grip that of ice. Gilly stepped backwards and he pursued, the pair of them held together by their hold on the story. "Do it for me," she implored him. "For Little Sam. He has not seen you in so long."
Another step closer. Sam found himself being led by Gilly out of the darkness and towards the afternoon light streaming through the window. The first time it cut across his face he flinched, turning his head to the side. "I need to do this, Gilly."
"You will – you will..." She managed a smile as she felt him drawn towards her. The light was warm and inviting against her back. He tried to resist but her hold on the book strengthened, as if letting go of the bindings would mean letting go of him.
They came to the window together. Gilly risked sliding one of her hands from the book to Sam's hand, rubbing his soft skin in calming circles as she had done the whole way from Castle Black to Oldtown. He had been afraid then too but they had overcome it.
Sam closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating on her touch. There was something familiar about it – warm even as if she were stirring a piece of his heart that continued to beat despite the disease that had withered the rest of his soul. Then he felt the book slipping from his hands. She was taking it from him. Divesting him of the threads of repatriation that kept Sam dangled in the twilight between the living and the dead.
"No!" Sam shouted, opening his eyes. He grasped for the book but Gilly was too fast, giving it a sharp tug leaving him with empty air. "No – no – no!" Sam followed her as she backed herself right up to the window ledge. As he grabbed for the book, Gilly stretched out her arm and dangled it outside the tower, threatening to drop it.
"Look a' yourself. It has driven you mad."
"I am not mad – it is the realm that is mad." Sam retaliated.
"You ar' squabbling over a book like a child that has lost his toy while thousands o' people wait downstairs, desperate ter look upon the face of a leader. That's you Sam. You were born fer this."
"Give me the book..." His eyes were on his ghostly mother, reclined beside the window. She was a young woman, like the phantom of his father. There was an eerie liveliness in the apparitions – more real than his wife bargaining with empty promises.
Gilly released her grip.
The book fell out of her hands like a dead weight dragging a sailor to the depths. The second it vanished, Sam's face collapsed into horror.
"No!" Sam screamed. He launched himself at the window – leaning dangerously over the sill in pursuit but it was long gone, laying on the pavement at the bottom of the tower. Its bindings had split in two. He could see its pieces separated and pages strewn between them. A few continued to wander over the stone with the wind.
"It's killing you," Gilly insisted. Her hand rubbed his back, feeling his spine for the first time through his clothes. He looked like a Lord – it did not suit him.
Sam pulled back from both the window and Gilly. The ghost of his mother took his place, leaning against the barrier of stone as she had done in her final moments. Mouth open, Sam watched as her pale form climbed up onto the mournful grey barrier of stone. Her sandals shuffled like the wind while her glass eyes fixated on the battlefield. He knew what her last moments were – a view of oblivion at his hand.
He couldn't take it – couldn't breathe. "No..." This time murmured beneath his breath. Sam grabbed onto her robes in an attempt to keep his mother from the fall. She fought against him but he kept taking fist-fulls of fabric. It tore in his grasp. "Wait, please… I'm sor-"
Then she was gone too.
An empty window sill and his father's ghostly laughter fading into nothing.
A chill ran across his shoulders, clenching his bones together. The apparitions had taken pieces of his flesh with them in their journey to the evening tide. Punishing him. Deservedly. He'd see them again in the dark places beneath the realm where all things reunited in agony.
Shrieks from below shook Sam from his reverie.
He looked again at the window and realised that he was standing alone in the room. "Gilly?" Sam turned around but nothing moved except the last of the ink dripping off the desk into an ever growing puddle.
