Contemplation.

Winter had returned to her domain in the Wolfswood by the time Catelyn arrived in the Godswood of Winterfell. Cat swallowed, a gloved hand tracing the thick auburn braid of her hair, reflexively and to stimy her nervousness. Though Winterfell's Godswood had expanded in the intervening centuries, the original core of three acres was as ancient as the Golden Empire of Yi Ti itself. Ten thousand years…She thought. Already ancient, when Bran the builder erected the wall, the ancient ancestors of the Valyrians began their attempts to tame the Dragons.

It was said in the North that every castle had a Godswood and every Godswood a heart tree (and they were starting to make their return in the South.). As she walked across a floor half tiled, half dirt, and all buried in millennia off accumulated dust and mold and dirt, she found herself as isolated and alone in the inner sanctum of Winterfell as she had when she first arrived. The Tullys are of the blood of the First Men just as we are the dragon, more so, yet this place feels so alien.

And the heart trees, those wretched things. The first was an immense and somber thing with a grimaced face carved into its ancient bark and the blood-colored sap that never seemed to cease ebbing from the tree's eyes, nose, and mouth. It always seemed to watch her as the younger heart trees seemed to leer contemptuously. Her children came here to pray more often than they did the Sept, and they seemed to grow lost in its depth. Even Daenerys likes the solace of this place if the bastard was never born. Would this remain the case? I am partially disrespected in my own home. Her Ned was seated on one of the jutting roots that rose like benches out of the earth to coil around rocks and the old bones of the castle and its lichyard where the honored dead that, in life, served the earliest Kings of Winter rested. Ned was cleaning Ice, a relic of the Valyria of old, the Valyria that was. The ancient and unconquerable freehold conquered almost all of Essos, except for the Golden Empire, and had driven the Rhoynar to Dorne. And the name of the blade is older still. A relic from the Kings of Winter. Her lord husband went through a ritual whenever he had to kill someone; he would stand naked in the cold to allow himself to be purified and then come here dressed and contemplative.

It was colder here, and Cat could feel the ancient power of this place penetrate her to her bones. One of the kindest gestures her Ned ever gave her was when he had the Sept built. It was sweet, like so many of the things he did to her and for her, even if his speech was sometimes rough. "Husband…the direwolf."

"She died."

Gods.

"And whelped eight pups in her death throes," Ned added with a troubled sigh. "seven aspect of your one God plus one for the one that is seven as. Five of the children shall get and keep one, even Jon." His tone was terse, and Cat kept her mouth in an even line instead of frowning and lashing out. Rhaella's words rang in her head "You undermine your son and his position by mistrusting the boy." How? There was no house Stark of Winterfell, but for her children, the House Stark of the Barrowlands was half Dustin, and the Snow in the Dreadfort refused to form his own cadet branch for whatever reason. And the Karstarks were not well-loved, for they had risen in rebellion more than five times over the Valyrians and their "foreign influences" in the past. With the last one being during the era of the King who knelt. But he insists on this…Ashara has been dead fifteen years, yet half the North writes ballads about their stolen star and the river daughter who set herself in the Star's place. "What of the other two..." she asked between clenched teeth.

Ned seemed to consider for the moment. "One of them looks as though it were of the reach variation of our shepherd hounds. He's brown and black with very long ears. I've named him Warden and intend to keep him and breed him with our shepherd hounds and armor him should I need to tend to the matter of Mance Rayder with the Watch. He'll stay by my side and be our guardsman," Ned laughed. "Since I cannot ride Winter while my mother lives and hope she lives another three and fifty years. The other, I intend to make a nameday gift to princess Rhaenyra; she was able to tame that great Sothoryi ape that was brought to the capitol as a gift; surely a direwolf will be easy." He said with a light-hearted smile, the anger she seemed to sense at the mention of his bastard fading.

Only for the humor to be replaced by seriousness a moment later, gravity with a twinge of fear fell over his face. "He was not a wilding or a river pirate Cat; he was a black brother. And he…claimed…." Cat wanted to walk over and embrace her Lord husband, the doubt on his face. "I reject crib tales, but he seemed to believe what in what he claimed he saw."

"Madmen often believe their madness is truth. No doubt, Aerys believed much of the horrors he did to have been just." Cat offered and watched as Ned seemed to consider her words before finally relenting and nodding. "Aye, you've the right of it. But what of you? You seem no less troubled than I."

"Did you see Speak with Gendry at length?" Cat asked.

Ned nodded. "Aye, I invited Lord Greystorm to stay with us for a sennight; it might do Robb good to have a young Lord close to his age that is already governing and is proven in battle around him for a time." Apart from Prince Jacaerys anyway, Cat thought. "And it would do Jon good to see how high a bastard might rise. Did you know he was given Overlordship of the Rainwood entire? Even Lord Whitehead of Weeping Town."

Cat blanched, bastard or trueborn for a House so new to be given such a position. Only Robert Baratheon is a lord so well loved as to get away with that and so well feared. The bards still sang songs about the battle of the Trident, where Robert riding Argella brought so much slaughter and fire to the Trident that half the water evaporated and covered the Riverlands with fog for months, a fog that smelled of burnt flesh. Her brother said that it had taken two years for the waters to replenish themselves and Syrax's bones still lined the riverbed along with the remains of Prince Rhaegar. Though perhaps they see him as the right hand of Storm's End, he is nigh as accomplished as his father was at his age, and young Steffon is not far behind. Together they could become another anvil and hammer.

It was still dangerous unless Gendry made impressively strategic marriages for himself and his sons…

Her thoughts returned to the bastard. "The boy doesn't need any more encouragement."

"He does, especially since you've filled his head with notions of joining the watch," Ned responded, his tone dangerously low. Cat scoffed; she'd done no such thing; all she'd done was compare him to a Strong. If the boy took that as some challenges, he ought to have stayed loyal and not gone running to the wall.

Ned rose, sheathing ice, and turned to set it against the heart tree. The blade was enormous, the largest great sword she'd ever seen, and even fifteen years later, it still awed her. "Robb needs him here should there be war with Volantis and Lys again, should anything else occur. He will hold a keep here in the North in his honor."

Cat narrowed her eyes. "Is this a command, my lord?"

"It is."

"From you? Or your mother?"

Ned's eyes darkened, and she recoiled in shame. What have I done? I'm here to bear him ill tidings, not fight him.

"Forgive me, Ned. It has been a trying day, an omen from the Gods in that wounded wolf and.." the space between them and the silence a pair of loadstones about her heart. 'I came because of Gendry; he brought with me two letters and one more disturbing than the next." She swallowed as Ned's hard eyes softened and lit up with concern. "What is it?"

"The Lord Hand is dead."

It hit Ned like a bolt of lightning. Aenar Aetheryon was born in the seventh year of the reign of King Daeron the second. He served as a captain in the royal navy during the final years of his reign and then as the Master of Ships under Aerys, then at the hand of the King after Blood Raven disappeared. He served six kings, four of those as Hand. He was so ancient, yet hale and strong, and many of us thought he might live another twenty years. But it was more than that; Lord Aenar was the voice of the North in Southron affairs. The realm's largest Kingdom's reputation for fairness as an outsider power had primarily been established by his long reign as the second most powerful man in the domain. Bittercane had been his discovery, the abundance of Wargs had been his doing, and so much of the realm's wealth and the North had come from either him or Tywin Lannister.

With his passing, the Targaryen era was truly over.

Aemon Aetheryon had a large shadow to fill, and there was little faith in a boy of six and ten taking the reigns of his great-great grandsire's power base and running it as though Lord Aenar had ever died. He had trained several successors, but he kept outliving them all. But it was not solely an august legacy. For decades stories persisted that Lord Aenar practiced dark magic, that he had the Citadel stormed and put to the sword because it allowed him to fill the order of Maesters with sorcerers and confidence men. In King's Landing, several of Aerys surviving legitimized bastards were found dead, gnawed upon by animals, and suspected traitors were often found half devoured before a trial could be given. And people blamed him for that, the Serpent and the Rainbow being the most famous song about his life, which is only half flattering. It paints him as a demon sorcerer and alchemist in half the verses.

"And what could be worse than this news, wife?" Ned asked, exhausted; the leaves on that most ancient of trees seemed to shudder in the wind, a single blood-red leaf falling onto the cool, clear pool below.

"Lysa Baratheon believes he was murdered."