MELISANDRE

The body was laid out on the table, stripped bare to the waist. Jon Snow's days in the ice had taken all the colours out of him; his hair had darkened to the colour of ink, his flesh paled till it was unnaturally bright, almost shining. There was no death-smell on him. There was no smell on him at all.

"This is not right," said the wildling, Tormund Giantsbane, standing beside the table with a frown. "He died. That should be the end of it."

"You may be right," Val said, "but if Lady Melisandre thinks she can bring Jon back, we must try. He—"

"He will be a wight," Tormund said. "We cannot be led by a wight."

Melisandre spoke now: "He will not be a wight, my lord of Giantsbane. I will not lie to you – if he returns, Lord Snow will be… changed, somewhat. But he will still be the man you knew, beneath it all. He will lead us to victory. I have seen it in the flames."

"You really believe that?" Tormund asked.

"With all my heart."

"Why?"

Melisandre considered a moment, then opted for the truth. "Because if I do not, then there is nothing else to believe in."

"What will you do?" said the wildling princess Val. "I know you said you needed Ghost, but—"

"When Master Tarly returns, I will explain." No, not Master Tarly. Lord Commander Tarly. Though that was not something I saw; the flames never told me that.

Val looked down on the body. Her eyes were wide and blank, as though she were not really seeing. "If he comes back, will he remember who did it?" she asked.

"I do not know," said Melisandre. "Would you prefer it if he did?"

The wildling princess blinked; for a moment, she was a young girl again. "No. If you were killed, and you knew who it was… the betrayal you would feel… and the anger and the hatred… it wouldn't be him."

Tormund Giantsbane rested a huge meaty palm on her shoulder. "You don't have to do this," he said. But Val shrugged him off, fierce again. "We must, Tormund. It may be the only way."

"The girl is right," Melisandre said.

Val rounded on her. "I am no girl."

Oh, but you are. A sweet summer child. The red woman walked across the room, and took the hot wax candle from the windowsill. The snowdrifts were halfway up her window, but through the top third she caught the glint of the moon. It was still snowing. Outside in the yard, men were working through the growing darkness to build a pyre. Melisandre brought the candle back to the table where Lord Snow lay, and placed it down beside him. Together there were four wax candles, and the final candle, which remained unlit, was born of bright black dragonglass. The air was choked in dim red light: the hot, smoky colour of blood.

Just then there was a knock at the door. "Lady Melisandre?" said the voice of Dolorous Edd Tollett. "We're here." At the red woman's nod, her squire Beren opened the door. Edd ushered the boy away, and held it open. In the candlelight, Melisandre saw a huge shadow appear from the room beyond, a thing of hackles, teeth and claws. And then the shape resolved itself, and became a white direwolf, near the size of a small horse. Lord Commander Samwell Tarly followed close behind, looking tremulous.

The beast was unhurried in its approach. Neither fear nor rage showed on its face, and it made no sound save for the creak of its footsteps over the wooden boards. Lord Snow chose his name well. Ghost gazed on her, and she felt mistrust in that gaze. And then the direwolf turned his eyes on his dead master. Was that pity she saw there? Hope? Love?

Love, she thought. It must be. It had been love that was sacrificed when Azor Ahai plunged his forge-hot sword into the chest of his beloved Nissa Nissa, love that filled her scream and made the air rend and weep, love that had forged that steel and made it bleed hot and terrible and red.

"You brought the wolf," she said to Samwell Tarly.

Tarly looked up, wide-eyed, lost. "He came on his own. We could not have brought him if he did not want to be brought."

It was true. Cautiously, Melisandre approached the wolf. She looked into his eyes again, and saw keen intelligence there, now.

"What will you do?" asked Tormund Giantsbane.

"I will wash the body," the red woman said, her gaze never leaving the wolf. "So that the Lord knows our task. Then I will pronounce the words, so that he might join us, and Lord Snow. And then…" She looked up. They all knew.

"We kill the wolf," Val said.

"We sacrifice the wolf," said Melisandre.

"And Lord Snow will rise?"

We can only hope. Without another word, she walked to the body lying prone on its table. The wolf, somehow understanding better than any of them, followed her. Melisandre looked at it again, a little surprised. This is right, she had to remind herself. This is the way. The only way.

Beren passed her the bowl of warmed water, scented with herbs. Slowly she upturned the lip of the bowl over the body and poured the liquid it over the chest, over the dark, mottling-black wound in which the blood had clotted. Then Beren gave her the cloth, and she laid it lightly upon the body. The blood came away in rivulets, in streams, in rivers. Slowly, at first, but then suddenly, as though a dam were breaking in a flood and the tepid water came a-flowing through, washed-pink turning carmine turning scarlet. Around her the onlookers waited in silence. The candles did not so much as move. There was no breeze in the room. Indeed, it seemed as though there was no air.

The wound was not a single gaping sore but many smaller ones: a gathering of weeping eyelets where the knife had been forced in over and over and over. Not all the blood cleared, but Beren kept refilling the scented water from the kettle, and Melisandre kept working it in as a lather, till the blood was running freely, and the rag as she placed it back into the bowl ran matted with old dark stuff.

"Now the words," said Val.

Melisandre nodded, and placed her hands on the pale chest of the corpse. Despite her cleansing ritual, the flesh was cold as ice, and stiff. She imagined that if she cut open the skin to see what was inside, she would find crystals of frost forming, and the blood already frozen. If you peeled back the skin, the arteries and veins would not tear or bleed but would remain fixed in place: a skeleton of frozen muscles and their feeding-tubes, wrapped in man's flesh and inlaid with bones and fibres of dark hair. The eyes stayed closed and blind. The heart, buried deep down in slumber, did not beat.

Thoros of Myr had told her that, after bringing Lord Beric Dondarrion back for the third or fourth time, he had no longer doubted that the Lord would absolve Dondarrion of death, irrespective of the life he had lived beforehand. Melisandre knew that she must believe the same. She had seen Jon Snow, surrounded by soldiers as tall and faceless as sentinel pines, watching the dead across a great field of snow and howling wind. She had seen his living breath with her own two eyes. She had felt his living flesh with her own heart. He must return. He will return. And so believing, no longer with doubts to stall her, to her Lord and Saviour both thus she began:

"Zȳhys ōñoso jehikagon Āeksiot epi, se gīs hen sȳndrorro jemagon. Zȳhys perzys stepagon Āeksio Ōño jorepi, se morghūltas lȳs qēlītsos sikagon. Hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson."

The room still: all alone now. Her and Him: not him, Him. There are two sides in every war. A man is good or a man is evil. A man is right or a man is wrong. A man is living or a man is dead. A man believes in the Lord, and in Light, or he does not. In everything a duality, one or the other, in everything a choice, the Great Choice—

"Is it working?" came the hoarse voice of Samwell Tarly, and the spell was broken. Melisandre looked to the body, felt its cold hard resistance. Nothing. And yet, that nothingness had something within it. Within their contact lay all her hopes and dreams. All her light: all she had.

And she heard the wolf howl, as he so rarely did, and it was no longer all she had but all they had, and their voices rose in jubilant exoneration, and her hands felt warm, even hot, and the bowl of water on the table was too-full now, and it was sloshing teardrops of blood, all over the flagstones, and the wax candles around the body melted rapidly into patterns of bright light, and the glass candle burst into life and gushed forth smoke and sparks, and the door rattled as though possessed in its frame and so did the shutters. And now the glass candle was in her hand, and her eyes moved up and whose should they meet but the direwolf's. And in those red eyes, she saw herself reflected, but beyond that, in the dark irises, she saw her vision: ice and fire, and the prince at the very epicentre, surrounded by darkness, and yet he was the light.

Melisandre met Val's eyes. The wildling princess gave the briefest nod – or maybe that was something she imagined in her rapt madness. And the white wolf came to her like a lamb to his master, and she drew the sharp edge of the burning glass candle across his throat in one swift stroke, and she and Ghost sang as one, his final howl and her first moment of true ecstasy: together, she fire, he ice; singing the song of—

Then the glass candle exploded.

Shards of blazing hot dragonglass flew in every direction. Tormund Giantsbane howled and threw himself headlong on the floor. Dolorous Edd and Beren took cover behind her bed. Val tackled Samwell Tarly sideways, knocking them both to the flags. Melisandre remained there, immobile. The flying glass did not hit her, but ricocheted from the walls and lay on the chamber floor in a thousand pieces. Smoke filled the room.

Melisandre was the first to get to her feet and approach the table. There she found Ghost slumped beside Jon Snow, hot blood pouring over them both. Long seconds passed and she stood there in the smoke, staring down. But by then she already knew.

"Is he—?" she heard Val say.

She put a hand on the body. The body. It was just that.

"No," she said.

Val did not say a word. Her eyes moved from Melisandre to Tormund. Then, by some unspoked agreement, the pair turned away, and together they moved through the door.

Dolorous Edd turned to his lord commander. "Well, shit," he said in a small voice, and then he, too, left the room. Beren followed shortly after; a shard from the candle had struck him and his cut needed to be seen to.

That left her with Samwell Tarly.

"We have to burn him," said the Lord Commander eventually. "It is time to let him rest."

"You're right," said Melisandre flatly.

There was a long pause.

She began: "I thought I saw—"

"You were wrong." Tarly turned slowly towards the door. "We'll be out in the yard in an hour. Until then…" He pointed towards the body, but the hope in his eyes was gone.

"I will," she said curtly.

Samwell Tarly went out. He went down to the Lord Commander's room, and did not speak to anyone. Meanwhile Val was in the library with Gilly's babe, whom they had named Jon Nightborn, and she did not speak to anyone either, but merely nursed the boy at her teat, though by now he was too old for it. And Tormund Giantsbane went out to help the others build a pyre of good green wood in the courtyard.

An hour later Lord Commander Tarly returned to the red woman's chambers. The room was clean; all traces of the glass candle had been cleared away, and the same for the wax and the puddles of blood. Ghost's death wound had been cauterized somehow; there was no more blood. And Jon Snow, back in his Night's Watch blacks buttoned up over his heart, drowning in the sea of his cloak, looked as stately as he ever had. And at peace. And gone. Gone away for ever.

Melisandre looked up at him. "I am so sorry."

"I know." And in his eyes, she knew that he was, too.

"I thought I could—"

"So did I, for a time." Tarly moved back towards the door. In with him came half a dozen stretcher-bearers led by Edd Tollett, to collect the corpses of Jon Snow and Ghost. Corpses, Melisandre thought. That was all they were now. When they had been borne out, Tarly extended an invitation to her. "If you want to watch them—"

"I will watch from here if you do not mind, Lord Commander."

"Of course." Tarly nodded, awkward. He moved to leave, but stopped in the doorway and turned around. "Lord Commander," he mused. "This was never meant to be. But it is, now. All the same… I cannot do this alone. I need help, my lady. And I need your help."

Melisandre did not understand. "Why would you need my help? I failed you." As R'hllor failed me.

"Yes," he said, "but you tried."

"And failed," she repeated. "The Great Choice I saw in the flames… of him standing in the war against the Others… all of it was a lie. I am no priestess of R'hllor, Samwell Tarly. Only a charlatan who plays with powders and potions. An accomplished liar, but a liar nonetheless." Tarly looked like he might continue, but she held up a hand. "Leave me."

And so he did.

Through her snow-encrusted window, Melisandre watched as the Night's Watch and the wildlings conducted their ceremony below. She could not hear what any of them were saying, but she did not have to. She could see their solemn faces, and in their eyes pain, desperation, hunger, and the faintest glimpse of futile hope. She watched as they placed the bodies among the piles of wood. They put Jon Snow and his direwolf Ghost on the biggest pyre, and then the Lord Commander stood in front of his men and intoned a prayer, and though Melisandre heard none of the specifics, she read their murmured reply on their lips: And now their watch has ended.

"And now their watch has ended," she said.

The pyres went up. Red flames, orange flames, yellow flames. Thick, curling smoke, which rose higher and higher and blocked her view altogether. Shortly afterwards there was a sudden squall of snow from along the broken Wall to the east, and the pyres were snuffed out, and the Night's Watch fled inside to wait for it to clear.

Melisandre walked to the door of her chambers and bolted it shut. Then she went back to the windows and closed the shutters, and the curtains too for good measure. She went to her bed, and sat down. It was very cold in the room. Castle Black had always been cold, but until now she had never noticed it. With shaking hands, she lit a fire in the hearth, and squatted by it for a long time, waiting to get warm. When that was done, she stood, walked back to her bed, and very slowly she began to disrobe. As her bright red gown fell off her, it seemed to lose both texture and shape, and became a worn, shapeless rag. Then she reached up to her necklace, inlaid with a single fat ruby. Ordinarily she would have removed her ring after that, but, of course, it was not with her tonight. Come the morrow one of the Night's Watch men would doubtless find it out in the snowy yard, but for now Melisandre was too tired to look for it. Briefly she considered going down to the ice cells again, but she was too tired for that, too. She was too tired for anything. The weight of her years pressed down on her, and every second that passed was another brick added to a mule that was already overladen.

Her womanly curves and strength fell away; her flesh lost its firmness and fell from the bones, wrinkling like ancient paper, her lips lost their full colour and became dry and coarse as sand, hiding toothless gums. The red in her hair did not merely die out, but the strands turned brittle and the locks became tangled knots and there were bald patches here and there. Her youth, like R'hllor, had always been a lie. The Lord Is My Light, she would say to herself, in those days when she had nothing left to comfort her, when she had been a girl alone, or adrift, or forgotten. But now she had not even that. All he showed her were visions of Jon Snow, standing against the army of the dead. But that would not be, she knew. No matter how hard she tried, or had tried. He had lied to her about Lord Snow, about Azor Ahai. Just as he had lied to her about Stannis Baratheon. With Stannis she had doubted, true. But with Jon Snow, she had been foolish enough to believe it. So here she was, at the end of the world, with nothing left to do but die.

And as she climbed into bed and drew the blankets over her against the cold dark night, she was no longer Melisandre of Asshai anymore. She was Melony, Lot Seven, someone's ghost. She was over a hundred years old. And she was afraid of the dark.


Jon Snow is dead. - me, 2017

Well, what did I tell you?

This is usually the bit where I get a little bit smug and smarmy, but here and now, I'll make an exception. Despite the fact that it constitutes a big story moment, this was also a very moving chapter, in a way. I think one of the things that goes underappreciated about Season 6 was the way in which - however briefly - they showed Melisandre's loss of faith. Mel is one of my favourite characters, and we see at the end of this chapter - and will see in subsequent chapters (she isn't dead) how ultimately human she is, and how beautiful that achievement is.

I said in a previous Author's Note that Knights of the Nightingale had certain similarities to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which I think (perhaps an unpopular opinion) was a brilliant film. I'm not really a SW fan (I'll happily defer to the judgement of Gracques on matters like this), but without being spoilery, I really appreciated the way the mythology was overturned, to an extent. This is, I think, what you'll see in this story: the myths and legends falling away at the roadside. If KOTN is about one thing, it is about ordinary men and women, and their blind fight against darkness which goes beyond anything prophecy can offer.

Oh, and Melisandre will be back as a POV, I suspect. But her chapters will be entitled "Melony".