THE RUINS OF HARRENHAL – THE CROWNLANDS
With the winds came the snow, driving the Queen's party back into the misery of Harrenhal. The cold had become their prison, chaining them to the unkind corpse of a long dead dragon's fury. It was said that at night, men could hear the flap of black wings brush the castle walls. The soul of the beast was bound to the ruins which it encircled, even in death.
Even so, the Unsullied, Tyrion, Jaime, bulk of the Dothraki horselords, and common stragglers who had joined them along the way, refused to leave the protection of the fortress. They huddled together beneath the malformed eaves and kept their eyes off the melted remains of gargoyles that jutted out of the stone like screaming phantoms.
Several older horses were killed and put on the fire with scrappy local game – mostly water birds unable to fly out of thick, foreboding canopy of the swamp. Tyrion's stomach turned despite his hunger. It was impossible to think of food when he knew so many of Harrenhal's rooms were full of rotting corpses, strung up by his father. The bones and flesh dripped with melted snow. He could hear it in his fragmented bouts of nightmarish sleep. Endless screaming. Red eyes in the shadows. Water splashing onto the floor like the rap of claws.
Jaime kicked him with a sodden boot.
"Urgh – what?"
"You are mewling like a dying animal." Jaime replied, folding himself into a scrap of fur one of the Dothraki had gifted. His beard covered most of his face, betraying his advancing age with two distinct grey stripes dividing it on both sides. The fine lines which had once accentuated his handsome features cut deeper, creating slight overhangs where dirt collected. Only his eyes remained young and sharp. "You'll bring the bloody wolves. Or worse. One of these bald-headed bastards will put a skewer through you and serve you with the ravens."
"No. My cock's too valuable to waste as idle meat. Apparently this little piece of flesh could buy a small ship if the situation calls for it." Tyrion straightened up. His bones grated together beneath his skin. "How long have we been here?"
"Couple of days." Jaime tilted his head backwards to find a crack of light. Through a gap in the stone, he glimpsed the bleak afternoon. The sun hid beneath a white glare of thick cloud which had coiled itself around the castle – low and wet where it lapped against the black facade. Sometimes he tried to touch it, marvelling as the fog wrapped around his wrist like incense.
"Clearing up?"
"Doesn't look like it. After the first storm broke there was another right behind it. And another. They are coming down in waves off the ridges in the Northwest. Two foot of snow outside fell this morning. The Dothraki are shovelling it away from the stables. The Storm God might as well be shitting blocks of ice. Still, the last Winter was worse than this. Remember we when spent a full month camped out with father crushing one of those upstart lords?"
"No."
"Oh, that's right. You brought three wagons of wine – one full of whores that father made you share with the other men to teach you a lesson."
"Exactly." Tyrion rubbed his hands together vigorously.
It wasn't so much the cold, that bothered Tyrion. He had endured sharper temperatures during his time with the Night's Watch. No, it was the soggy nature of the half-way point. The sodden grounds that lay at the throat of Westeros were a breeding ground where disease and life flourished in equal parts. Men were more likely to lose a limb from the bite of some strange insect than watch it turn black and rot from the ice.
"We can't stay here." Tyrion insisted, standing up. He fretted, circling the small, private room that they had found for themselves. "We could try it again. Push out along the King's Road. Use the shadow of the forest until -"
"Until? Until we reach the open marshes of the Riverlands and lose half the army. What do you want me to do, little brother, pray to the Storm God? Those old cunts haven't answered a Lannister prayer in their whole immortal lives."
"The Queen commanded us to bring reinforcements to the North. They're no good to anyone shivering in no man's land, getting weaker. That Tyrell runt doesn't want them in the Capital. These men from the East, the cold doesn't suit them… The Dothraki do alright, I guess. There are long Winters on the grasslands toward the Grey Waste. But the Unsullied? They are men of the tropical islands and the deserts. Worse, they don't tell anyone when they're unwell until they drop dead. Old Mormont used to say that there was nothing more dangerous than a man who refuses to ask for help."
"That was probably meant to be a joke." Jaime pointed out, then replied, "Father used to kill the weak ones, if memory serves. Not directly, of course, that was never his way. I would watch him walk the ranks. Recruit soldiers to a special command. Give those poor bastards meaningless titles and then send them, grinning, to the front of the battle to be slaughtered as a distraction."
"Smart man."
"What?"
Tyrion shrugged. "Those men would have died anyway. This way their lives were to best advantage – and they died with a smile on their lips and a full belly of wine."
Jaime eyed his brother. People always remarked how similar Cersei had been to her father but really, it was Tyrion who held up the mirror to Tywin. No doubt that was why he'd killed him, in the end. His brother obviously did not like the cute of his reflection. "Have any of the ravens come back from Lord Snow? Lady Sansa? The Wall?"
Tyrion shook his head. "No. The ravens won't fly in this squall. What we need to do is find out how long this white hell is going to last and how many of the Queen's forces are still alive."
"And how are you going to do that, sprout wings?"
"Not quite."
Several of Harrenhal's immense towers remained standing. Even leaning dangerously, they loomed over the landscape like pieces of some violent, sickly mountain thrust up against the landscape. Tyrion and Jaime were shadowed by a small company of Unsullied, who evidently had orders never to allow the Lannister brothers out of their sight. They rarely spoke, unless to ask about the strange sounds coming from the thick swamp that surrounded the ruins.
Jaime had gone pale at the sight of hot geysers rising up around the lake, boiling with columns of steam that had killed off the pines around the banks.
"Those are new," he explained, stepping back when one of them threw gallons of scalding water into the air with a sharp hiss. "There was frost all over this place when I first got here. Now look at it. Hotter than a dragon's arse in there."
The whole place was so hot that they were shedding clothes and sweating into their beards. Even as the snow fell thick above, the flakes melted long before they touched the ground around the exposed towers turning the terrain into muck. The rest of the ruins were further away and remained capped in swiftly forming ice. Jaime was suspicious.
"We need to get out of this place." Tyrion muttered, then held out his arms. "We're in the throat of Balerion's massacre. Imagine, brother, what Harrenhal must have looked like with its walls turned to glowing slag, dripping off its foundations as if it were the surface of the great star. They say that is what the Southern reaches of the world looks like. Pools of white hot rock. Liquid fire flowing across the ground as burning rivers. Mountains that never sleep."
"I've been here for weeks, Tyrion. I swam those waters. Look at the surface." The dark water was covered in the silver corpses of cooked fish. "Whatever is going on here, it has nothing to do with a war that ended hundreds of years ago. If this is magic, it's brand new."
"If it's magic?" Tyrion queried. "You know of something else that can stir fire from a swamp?"
"Not exactly but Qyburn was dabbling in things he shouldn't. He already brought that big bloody bastard back from the dead – what else could he do? Maybe he's right and magic is all just – just a trick. Something anyone can learn."
"Spend a little more time around the Dragon Queen, brother, and you may feel differently. I'd wager my left ball that Robert Baratheon himself would bend the knee after watching that girl walk into a funeral pyre with her husband and come out with three living dragons. Daenerys is not a witch – she's a god."
"You are wrong, Tyrion. Robert would have killed her twice as fast."
To get a lay of the land and find passage through the storm, they needed to get up high. They agreed to climb the Widow's Tower because it looked the least likely to crumble underfoot despite the savage cracks splintering around its girth. Even so, only one of the Unsullied came with them. The rest of the men spread around the base of the tower in their usual rigid guard.
When they reached the top, Tyrion covered his face with his arm and choked back the contents of his stomach. Jaime stared at the corpse at the centre of the tower, framed by the thick white fog which sat just beyond the edge of the stone wall. The white abyss covered the landscape making it feel as if they were standing on a river stone, stranded above the clouds. It reminded them of Lannisport in the Winter when the sea fogs claimed the world except for their father's Keep which jutted out like the last, damaged tooth in a broken jaw.
"Poor bastard," Jaime said, of Qyburn's body. "Though I dare say the old man got what he deserved. He might have done a bit of good but he was a seriously evil shit when the occasion called and our sister was never short of excuses to call on his malicious talents." Subconsciously, Jaime touched his wooden hand.
"He did not do this to himself." Tyrion recovered. "Look at these markings." He circled the corpse, kneeling down to inspect the river stones and dragonglass beads. "Poor bastard has been half eaten by something. They took their time."
"Are you going to say it or shall I?" There was no response from Tyrion, so Jaime continued. "This is a ritual. A sacrifice. When I left Qyburn, he was obsessed with the magic of the North. He was convinced that the secrets to life were contained in the old ways. That's why he came to the God's Eye."
"He was seeking the last of the Children."
Jaime nodded. "To learn. By the looks of this mess," he bent down and picked up one of the glass beads. "He found them."
"The Children of the Forest are not necromancers."
"Aren't they?" Jaime challenged. "Their magic is wrapped up in those ice demons and the white trees that watch over the realm. Those bone-fingered monsters don't die unless they are slain. They raised Death itself with their mutterings."
They both turned to the edge of the castle wall where streamers of steam pushed up through the otherwise thick cloud cover below. If anything, the angry vents were intensifying, puffing out through some hot throat in the rock that had lain dormant for millennia. "This heat…" Tyrion offered softly. "You remember the stories about the power of the Children?"
"Severing whole continents? I know you don't believe that. Wasn't it you who spent our miserable Summers telling me about the geography of the world and how myth was used to explain the natural phenomena?"
"That was before I met a dragon." Tyrion admitted. "Think about it. This place is warmer than it was before. Qyburn doesn't have a drop of royal blood in him. Maybe these hot springs are the most the Children were able to get out of an ordinary man."
"Presuming the Children are still alive. This could be the work of a woodswitch."
Tyrion shook his head.
"What?" Jaime took a step toward his brother. "Those years in the East have aged you."
Tyrion scoffed. Jaime wasn't wrong about that. "If what you say is true, Qyburn thought that if he could understand magic, it could be harnessed and controlled, but from what I've seen of magic it refuses to be deciphered. Those given it by birth feel their way through its power. It is tied to their emotion – to their soul, not to their mind."
"Is that your observation of the Targaryen girl?"
"Most certainly." Tyrion replied, seriously. "She is a tinder box. We cannot win the war against the dead without her and yet, if we win it with her, there's every chance she'll destroy the realm when her purpose lacks direction. Fire and Ice. They are a pair – a partnership contrived by the gods. The Targaryen girl has waking nightmares where she walks through the burning ruins of our world. That Mormont keeps her contained."
"That is wonderful and all, little brother, but we have more pressing issues – like the look of that weather going all the way to the end of the fucking realm."
Jaime was right. The white storm clouds thickened in the North, sitting heavy on the landscape with no crack or imperfection as far as they could see. Only the South was clear but even then, the front was advancing on the land behind them like a mouth swallowing the world. Usually storms had blue veins running under their bulges, but not this one. It had simply turned the heavens white.
"This army isn't going anywhere near the North." Jaime leaned on the wall. It cracked beneath his weight. Tyrion tugged him back from the edge.
"We cannot go back to King's Landing." Tyrion insisted. "Even if the Tyrells could feed the army, which they can't, Dorthraki and civilised people don't mix. That's why Daenerys ordered the army our of King's Landing in the first place."
"You don't want them fucking any daughters of influential nobles…"
"Or the influential nobles." Tyrion added wryly.
"If the Queen fails in the North, which may have already happened, and the army of the dead is moving South, King's Landing is a terrible position to make a stand. The borders are too wide. The choke points are impossible to hold. No. If you want to stop a Southern army there has only ever been one way to do it – at the Neck."
"There is no where to hold an army this size at the Neck in conditions like this."
"We can camp at the Seaguard. Use the Eyrie as our Eastern flank and hope that any fleeing armies have sense enough to take up defensive positions. Snow might be a bastard, but he's not an idiot. If he loses Winterfell and survives, he'll be looking for somewhere to defend and that really could only be the Eyrie where his sister's husband holds power."
"So, you intend to base the realm's most important military plan on an educated guess… What about us? The weather is still too shit to march in."
"Take the Western road through the forest," Jaime swivelled and pointed out the way. "It'll be better protected than the open roads North. At least we might hear something via the sea routes if the ships are coming through. We'll have to do this the old way and send runners out. Before we go, have the men hunt and stockpile as many provisions as they can carry. There may not be much worth eating further North."
"And what about him?" Tyrion nodded at the corpse at their feet.
"Leave it. I might not know as much about magic as you, little brother, but I know not to touch things I don't understand."
"There is – uh – someone here," Tyrion was careful, hesitant, "who knows about magic."
Jaime shot him a dark look. "I'd sooner open the city vats to an alcoholic."
"Quaithe is from the East, from Asshai itself. What if she has seen this before?"
"Her soul is cut to pieces. Besides, has she spoken to anyone since leaving King's Landing? No? The Dothraki live among witches and not even they will go near her. Only the Unsullied. The sooner we make her someone else's responsibility, the better."
Runners were sent to the Eyrie, King's Landing, Seaguard, Winterfell, The Twins, Eastwatch, and Westwatch. Lives were precious and the men had instructions to turn around and come back if the path became impossible. The information they learned en-route was just as important. There was plenty of food in the forests around Harrenhal and, with the waters heating up every day, the men wished to rest before bracing the freezing journey. Neither Lannister could think of a reason to refuse the request and so the army dug in to the tortured mess of rock.
Soon, snow fell as rain and The God's Eye became a black stain on an otherwise pristine, white oblivion.
Tyrion did not listen to his brother and instead made his way through the ruins to a room of empty prison cells where the Eastern witch had set up camp, far away from the others. Quaithe had hung red strips of silk on the inside of the cage bars, shielding her from view. They were closed, bound together with a new chain and a lock brought with them rather than the old broken pieces that were still sitting on the stone.
He was not sure what to do. Did you knock on cage bars? How did one approach a priestess of Asshai? It was not reverence that made him hesitate, but rather, fear.
A hand slid through a gap in the silk, twisted the lock and allowed the cage door to open. Tyrion figured that this was the closest he would get to an invitation and ducked inside, carefully picking his way between the silk. Quaithe had already returned to the cushions on the floor, as if she had not moved at all. There were lamps quivering in the wind, each set against the wall where they were partnered by a sad halo of light. A campfire thrived on the floor beneath the window, kept alive be coals and pieces of Weirwood piled up against the back wall by the Unsullied. The white smoke was sucked out through the bars, keeping the small space warm and clean.
"A cage is an interesting choice of accommodation." Tyrion offered, if only for something to say. He did not see her move but she must have, for the metal segments on her mask shimmered with a slight metallic whisper. That is how they remained for many minutes – Tyrion staring dumbly at the ancient creature and Quaithe observing the middle-aged Lannister dwarf. People often said more in silence than they released.
"Tell me," she finally purred, from beneath her plated mask, "do you sleep?"
"After a fashion," Tyrion replied, risking encroaching further into the room so that he could dry himself by the fire. Harrenhal leaked incessantly, even in its depths and so he was forever damp and uncomfortable, certain that his skin was rotting away beneath his clothes. "Do you?"
"Much more soundly now that I may lock the world away."
Tyrion was left unsettled. She wasn't wrong. The men complained of strange noises coming from the thick swamp. The explosions of boiling water. Pained shrieks of birds. Chattering of voices. The moan of the wind… Though he could not see it, Quaithe had smiled. He reminded her of a pirate she had known long ago.
"I have such terrible dreams of these forests," she admitted. "The faces of the trees are screaming." Not only the faces carved by the Children – her long dead lovers haunted these woods. Dead and yet strung out among the branches. Their memory lived in the red leaves.
"Now?" Tyrion could not hear them.
Quaithe touched the side of her head. "Here… This is not a place where we should linger. These lands were poisoned long before the Targaryens set their dragon upon this beast of a castle. What is it that you say in the West? A curse. That is what hangs down around us in the air and it will stick to anything that lingers to lick its wounds."
Tyrion wished he'd finished off the wine before coming to see her. Sobriety painted an odd mix of frailty and disappointment around the sorceress. She was strange to look at, yes, but he had seen more frightening things in the depths of Baelish's whore houses.
"Many people have warned me about you." Tyrion admitted. "I think they are afraid. At least, of the idea of you."
"Come closer. I am an old woman who has heard many stories about the Lannister imp. Even in Asshai, you are known to the shadowy creatures that stand along the poisoned rivers in the eternal dark."
"W-what do they say?" Tyrion's curiosity finally got the better of him. He could think of a great many unpleasant things that strangers might say of him. There were stories that he had been born with a tale and arse covered in scale – that his tongue was forked and eyes drawn into slits.
"That you hold your drink like a maid, and know too little to be of use."
Tyrion – tossed his head back in honest laughter. It went on for some time. "I suppose you think me an idiot, then?"
"Knowledge is not what we know, it is what we seek to know." Without warning, Quaithe snatched Tyrion's wrist in the tight grasp of her long, bony fingers. Her claws drew blood. "I heard many things of you, Lannister." Her voice had dropped to smoke, as if she were a whole other person made entirely of shadow. "And yet I have never seen you in my dreams. Not in the wars to come. Not in the battles that lay behind us. Nothing. It is as if the trees themselves are blind to the small lion."
When she let him go, Tyrion had to wrap a length of cloth around his wrist to stop the blood.
"What does that mean – if – if you can't see me?" Tyrion asked, certain that he could still feel every single one of her nails biting into his skin.
She shook her head, all of her metal plates covering her face smashing together like the scales of a dragon. Quaithe did not know what it meant. There were people in the world invisible to her – just like there were places that her glass candles could not see. Rooms that had gone dark. Pieces of the world that were collapsing.
"Have you seen something – here, I mean. In the forest?"
"No. My dreams are a personal torment, lives long gone. What resides in the woods now is something new. We cannot stay here, Lannister. The same creep on my skin from the jungles of the East is with me now. Your caravan is being hunted."
That, Tyrion realised, was why the witch chose to sleep in a cage like a bird keeping itself safe from the cat.
"Why did you come to the West?"
"It is where I was born," Quaithe replied, softly. "It is where I must die."
"What of Asshai?"
She tilted her head, looking anywhere but the imp. "Dead cities cannot die. They linger, at the edge of eternity – a nest of bones and smoke."
"I want to see it, before I die."
Quaithe shook her head, all of her metal plates chiming together. "No, you do not."
Days passed by without incident and Quaithe's warning faded from Tyrion's mind. Perhaps his brother was right and she really was a mad old hag, delusional from her life spent among monsters at the corner of the world. Nearly a week finished before the first of their runners returned from the Seaguard with an agreement to allow the army shelter around the city. The rebellious city refused to declare themselves expressly for the Dragon Queen but with the endless snow melting into a torrent of water at their feet with the swamp now a steam house, no one was prepared to argue with the city. Not even the Unsullied.
Two runners returned from the North together. Neither Winterfell nor anything beyond it could be reached. They had been pushed back by howling winds and thick snow drifts large enough to come half way up the pines. All of it loose powder that swallowed living things. If anything was alive up that way, it was sulking behind thick walls. That only left the Eyrie with the runner choosing the coastal road, heading directly East. They decided to wait one more week.
Men in the camp at Harrenhal had taken to cutting wood without their shirts. The heat coming out of the waters was scalding. More of the trees died every day, revealing the blood-red canopies of the Weirwoods deeper inside the swamp which had been suffocated for centuries. They, at least, thrived on the heat. The Unsullied called the woods, 'Blood Sky' while the Dothraki arranged stones in the image of their horse god.
Tyrion stepped out of the room being used for butchering game and straight into a scuffle that had broken out in the mud surrounding the most heavily used parts of the castle. Fifty men where brawling, hitting each other with fists while others grabbed at their waists, trying to pull them off each other. Tyrion shouted at them in several languages, ordering them to stop. Normally Unsullied obeyed immediately, but it was the usually stoic soldiers who Tyrion found at the centre of the fight and the unruly Dothraki who were attempting to calm them.
When the fighting stopped, Tyrion approached three Unsullied on their knees sobbing uncontrollably. There were no tears in their wide, white eyes – only heaving chests and gasped words that were muddled with foreign prayers.
"What is this?" Tyrion asked, of the senior Dothraki warlord who seemed to be in control of his senses.
"Demons," the Dothraki replied. "This one says he has seen the face of god in the forest. That god has devoured his men. That Death lives with us. The rest I cannot translate."
"...and what does he say?" Tyrion pointed at another man who was cowered, laying in the mud.
"That there are bodies strung up in the wood."
Tyrion organised a party of Dothraki led by the quiet Unsullied, who had been picked up off the ground and forced to lead them into the forest where the men had been hunting water fowl. The imp stooped to pick up a spear from the mud. Wet slop ran down its shaft. He used it to poke into the thick swamp bushes, parting them. The Dothraki, who were used to all manner of cursed depravity, stayed at his side.
Even the horselords gasped when they stumbled into a clearing framed by a trio of ancient Weirwood. Their trunks rose out of the shallow, steaming pools in proud, ivory pillars. Their virginal bark was coated in a layer of sweat while high above, their branches grew into each other, forming a single tree. Nothing grew beneath them. Clear water lay all around their bases covering layers of red leaves whose colour had been preserved. They were as jewels. Rubies laying under the surface.
No one was looking at the water.
Impaled on their hook-like branches were thirteen Unsullied men. Their bodies had been stripped naked – chests opened and rib cages pried apart so that their bones looked like hands reaching out in supplication to the gods.
"...where are their heads?" whispered Tyrion. There was no answer.
"My lord."
Tyrion followed one of the Dothraki through the swamp, carefully stepping over the Weirwood roots which crossed the ground, arching up out of the water and mud like pale, blind serpents. The reverse side of the three entwined trees had been painted with blood. White on one face. Red on the other. From this side, the scene was even more morbid with the decaying corpses slowly cooking in the heat suspended by bloody branches. Beneath the blood, Tyrion could see new faces carved into the trees – except these ones were smiling.
"Should we cut them down?"
"No." Tyrion raised his hand in alarm. "No… How long before the men are ready to leave?"
"Two days, my lord."
"Tell them they have one."
Inside the ruins, Jaime had assumed the role of his father – barking orders and hustling the men who strapped the wagons down with tarp to protect their contents from what they expected to be terrible weather. The few bloody faces from the men who were fighting were back to their senses.
Tyrion kept watch, leaning against one of the ugly walls as the sun set on them for what he prayed was the last day in this black hell. Night came, but the work carried on. Stories of the bodies in the trees had spread across language barriers. Fear motivated every set of hands. Even the horses behaved, allowing themselves to be led around without making a sound.
"Where's the witch?" Jaime asked, taking a moment to stand beside his brother.
"She won't come out of her cell."
"We can leave in four hours."
"At night?"
He nodded. "The only thing keeping the men here is the thought of starving on the plains. These Dothraki are tough bastards. No wonder Robert was terrified of them crossing the Narrow Sea under the command of a Dragon."
Tyrion managed a smirk. "He was right though, wasn't he?"
"It was his most vexing trait. I wonder what he'd advise us to do…?" Jaime turned his head sharply, seeing something out of the corner of his eye. He shifted, leaning into the darkness, trying to pick out the edge of the swamp behind the torches.
"What is it?"
"Don't know."
One of the Unsullied guards patrolling the castle ruins had seen it too. Sword out, the man left his post, advancing toward the movement, but careful to remain inside the halos of light caused by the fires and torches they kept burning. Jaime immediately called two more Dothraki over to join the soldier, but after a while there was nothing more to be seen and everyone returned to their duty. Even Jaime wandered off to the caravan of wagons.
As the end of the promised hour drew near, Tyrion decided to talk once more with Quaithe. The air was wet and the fog created a dense ceiling over their world. The firelight reflected off its underside with enough force to illuminate most of their camp as enthusiastically as moonlight.
When Tyrion passed across one of the hundreds of gaping openings in the castle, tiny hands reached out from the darkness and grabbed at his flesh. He was taken by the arm. Leg. Waist. Neck. Every part of him snatched. Then he vanished.
Blackness overwhelmed Tyrion. He struggled furiously, watching as the arched halo of light got smaller and smaller. At least a dozen creatures forced him deeper into the building. He knew that these were the Children of the Forest. Their small, bony hands were cutting into him while their chattering voices sounded like birds snapping their beaks at each other. He thought he caught glimpses of their red eyes, but his world had become a frantic mirage of darkness and pain as they brutally pulled him down a set of stairs.
He and Jaime had made a fatal mistake. In clinging to the castle ruins as their sanctuary against the forest, they had failed to properly search its depths. The Children of the Forest were living inside the corpse of Harrenhal – festering amongst the buildings roots which comprised dozens of tunnels and cellars safe from the world of men.
Tyrion lost track of how many stairs he was half-thrown, half-pulled down. His legs were bleeding and bruised from smashing against the stone. He could feel hot, wet blood on his face and the rank stench of their foul breath against his throat. All his jokes about the magic of his cock rang in his ears, thumping in terror now that he was literally in the hands of vicious creatures, obsessed with what lurked in his blood.
'Oh shit – oh shit – oh shit!' The words circled his mind as he could not speak them with his lips. Far beneath the ground, the Children tossed Tyrion several metres down into an open vault. He hit the ground shoulder-first – then with his hip. His mouth fell open in a groan before he released that there was a small amount of light down here, coming from cracks in the castle floor where gas leaked out of the soggy ground beneath. It had been lit and escaped as trembling streamers of flame – all blue and white.
He rolled onto his back, aching and retching – unable to catch his breath. Around him, three metre sheer black granite walls formed a barren prison and atop them, the shuffling bodies of red-eyed savages. Whether it was shock or fear, his body began to tremble uncontrollably. There was no trial. No justice. No reprieve. Tyrion could not talk his way out of their bloodthirsty desire. He thought of the corpse of Qyburn and imagined himself in the same open grave.
Then it struck him. In what he assumed to be his last minutes, Tyrion fixated on the corpses in the trees. Thirteen bodies. Thirteen Whitewalkers. Thirteen Lord Commanders at The Wall when the dead first walked the world. Were they tributes? Were The Children protecting themselves from the Winter?
Tyrion turned his head and coughed blood onto the black tiles. There were gaps between them through which he could hear his blood dripping into somewhere below – even deeper.
