A Game of Witches

by thauliturgy

Jocelyn Snow is sent to serve the old gods. It's a common enough fate for a highborn bastard in the North. But powers thought lost are stirring in the deep places, and dangers are rising with them. When the Starks get caught up in the game of thrones, Jocelyn will have to decide what price she is willing to pay to protect her family.

9. The King's Visit: Aemon

Part II: The King's Visit

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Aemon Costayne's earliest memories were of language, and of war.

His Father, though a Reachman, had married a Dornish woman, and what was more unusual, had actually encouraged her to teach their children Dornish language and customs alongside the Common Tongue. Aemon's childhood was filled with the usual songs and games other children across the Reach learned: come into my castle, mayhaps, stories of the Oakheart and of Hugor of the Hill. But it was also filled with the lilting music of Dorne, of songs about Mother Rhoyne, of tales of Nymeria, of the laments of the Orphans of the Greenblood. Aemon's father would laugh, and take his wife into his arms with love in his eyes, and whisper "uhibuk" to her while Aemon and his brother and sisters protested in embarrassment.

Then the Stormlands rebelled, and soon the whole Realm was at war. Both Father and Uncle Tommen, the Lord of Three Towers, answered the summons from Highgarden and joined the host besieging Storm's End. They left the care of Three Towers to Ser Owen Costayne, a distant cousin and a brute of a man prone to yelling at servants and children, and swinging his fists if the yelling didn't produce a swift enough response.

Bereft of her husband, the relative powerlessness of Aemon's mother, being both Dornish and not the mother of the heir, made itself known. Aemon hadn't realized how much leeway Lord Costayne's fondness for his younger brother had granted them all, until it was taken away. Nor had he quite appreciated how much Aunt Talla, the Lady Costayne, disliked her goodsister.

Aemon spent much of that year hiding.

It was during one of those attempts at hiding that his mother came upon him wedged between two rafters. His older brother had taken the rafters closer to the wall, and his three sisters had suspended themselves each in their own ceiling perch, all of them hoping that nobody would look up and spot them.

Mother smiled, and asked if these were her children or Lord Lyonel's red scorpions. Aemon wasn't sure what that meant, but he understood the gentleness and promise of safety in his mother's voice as she led them down from the rafters and into her chambers to soothe them with song and story.

As they commiserated about the brutal reign of Ser Owen in Three Towers, and shared their hopes that the war would end soon so that father could come home, Mother got a mischievous look in her eye. "You know," she told young Aemon in a conspiratorial whisper, "Ser Owen certainly likes to march around the castle minfakhing his orders."

Minfakh was the Dornish word for a bellow—the device a smith would use at the forge. But while "bellow", in the Common Tongue, could also mean to yell loudly, in Dornish minfakh could also mean to fart.

Aemon had laughed first, and then his siblings joined in as they each realized the pun in turn. They laughed longer and harder than the wordplay truly deserved, but it had been such a long time since they had laughed so unreservedly. And for the rest of the war, whenever Ser Owen would start to yell, Mother would wink at Aemon from where Ser Owen couldn't see her, and mime a smith pumping the bellows. It made Aemon feel as though they had some hope through that terrible year, some spark of joyful defiance that he and his mother shared that no brutal castellan could take away from them.

When Aemon came of an age to learn a trade, the elder Costaynes were delighted to learn that the second son of their Lord's younger brother actually wanted to go to the Citadel. And Aemon truly did. He might have preferred to travel and experience the world's languages and cultures first hand, but the coffers of Three Towers were not so full as to accommodate that, at least not for Aemon. And at the Citadel he would be able to study anything, anything at all.

Oldtown was more than Aemon could have imagined. The real Oldtown. Aemon had gone twice with Uncle Tommen to the Hightower for the annual gathering of the Lords sworn to Lord Hightower, but Aunt Talla preferred to make the journey entirely in an enclosed carriage, so Aemon had never seen any of the city outside of halls of the castle.

As a novice of the Citadel, though, Aemon had much more freedom to explore, and he soon discovered that the part of the city he liked best was the Docks; specifically the row of inns and public houses set slightly back from the docks themselves, where sailors and merchants from all over the known world and beyond would gather. The more outlandish tales Aemon avoided: seasoned bards with songs of Yi Ti and Asshai, or of adventures in the jungles of Sothoryos. Such stories were always popular, but Aemon suspected that they were no more truthful than the children's tales of Garth Greenhand and Florys the Fox he'd be told in his nursery. In quieter taverns, tucked behind alleyway doors in warehouse basements, Aemon found what he was looking for. He would watch, rapturous, as a group of Stormlanders from the south coast of Shipbreaker bay performed a thunderdance, stomping, shouting, and clapping in time to a driving rhythm. Aemon took furious notes; if he wasn't mistaken, the words he caught being shouted made reference to praise for the Storm God, which suggested that the Stormlanders had been doing this dance since before the storm kings converted to the Faith of the Seven.

Another night Aemon listened to a poet from the Mountains of the Moon, who told, in rhyme, the epic tale of Torgold Tollet and the Battle of the Seven Stars. The poet sang for three hours without faltering or looking at a piece of parchment, all the while pulling a bow back and forth across a strange stringed instrument he held between his legs.

Once Aemon even met two sisters, whose only common language with the other sailors was a broken Ibbenese. The sisters stood, facing each other, so close their noses almost touched, and made a series of noises in their throats—grunts, Aemon would have called them, except that no grunt had ever sounded so musical. After perhaps a third of an hour, one of the sisters raised her hands in triumph, while the other held her head in mock shame before they embraced each other and grabbed more drinks. From this Aemon concluded that the singing had been some kind of contest, though he couldn't tell what the rules for winning were. He asked the sisters where they came from, but the only answer he could make out was that they lived on "the ice."

Night after night Aemon would head to the docks, and once the loose collection of proprietors of these song and story basements realized he was willing to bring along a keg of ale or two (Aemon's stipend from Three Towers wasn't much, but it was quite a bit more than a sailor's pay) he always had a warm welcome and a chance to take notes from the sailors and dockhands who gave their amateur performances.

The Citadel itself, however, proved a disappointment. The maesters preferred to focus on "more practical" things—crops, animal husbandry, healing, warfare. Especially warfare. One of Aemon's fellow acolytes earned separate links in siege engines (sprung), siege engines (unsprung), defensive earthworks, defensive wooden fortifications, defensive stone fortifications, tunnels and undermining, and bridge construction. This acolyte even earned a link in defensive positions against aerial threats—in other words, dragons. Nevermind that dragons hadn't been seen in a century and a half, the Archmaesters were still handing out links of scorched iron for their apprentices' (purely theoretical) mastery of the subject.

But for studies of the cultures of Westeros? For the pages and pages of notes and analysis Aemon put together, recording the songs and tales and traditions and tracing the connections between them all? For that there were no links. Aemon earned one link in mastery of Westerosi languages, one link in Essosian languages, both of phosphor bronze, and… that was it.

The other acolytes were unimpressed, even when Aemon tried to explain that, on top of all the work he didn't earn a link for, the single link in Essosian languages required learning the Braavosi, Pentoshi, and Volanteen dialects of Valyrian, both high and vulgar Ghiscari, and Dothraki—at least, one dialect of Dothraki, which Aemon suspected was actually akin to a trade tongue used to negotiate between tribes that would each have their own version of the language—all to a fluency which would allow him to carry on a conversation, negotiate a trade agreement, or translate a work of literature. Nobody cared. Aemon had just barely come of age and he had already been branded a failure, one of the "eternal acolytes" that the Archmaesters kept around because they needed somebody to write down their notes and fetch scrolls from the archives.

Aemon was on the verge of quitting the Citadel altogether—he'd been seriously considering becoming a singer, turning his notes into songs suitable for the lordly castles of the realm and traveling about performing them—when Archmaester Theobald summoned him.

"We've had a raven," the Archmaester said, looking strangely uncertain, "from Lord Arryn, in the Capital. The Hand of the King."

Aemon smiled politely. They were sitting in the Archmaester's office, a room that would have been spacious had it not been filled with scrolls, parchments, inkwells fresh and discarded, pieces of metal and glass formed into strange shapes for some experiment now abandoned, cages for ravens, cages for other creatures, a tall set of shelves filled with beakers filled with strange liquids, and a large orrery hanging above them from the tall ceiling. As it was, Aemon sat on the only available surface in the room, perched on the edge of a bench that also held several stacks of letters waiting for the Archmaester's attention.

"He wants— well, he wants someone who has studied languages, and culture."

The Archmaester looked completely befuddled, and Aemon was torn between understanding—it was a surprising message—and bitterness, that the Archmaester would be so very shocked that someone in a position of importance would value such a thing.

"You're the only one who's even attempted the links for years." The Archmaester sighed, rather more dramatically than Aemon thought the situation called for. "He wants you."

The trip from Oldtown to King's Landing was the most glorious month of Aemon's life.

Finally, finally, he was getting recognition for the years of hard work and study. He would be Aide-de-Camp of Letters to the King—at least, one of the Aides-de-Camp of Letters to the King. Aemon understood there were half a dozen of them, along with many other aides for other tasks. Archmaester Theobald expected that, at the very least, Aemon would be elevated to Lord of a minor house, likely starting a new branch of the Costaynes in one of the many fiefs still unoccupied a decade and more after the war. Aemon had a mind to seek out old Ser Owen just to make the man bow and obey. And the look on Uncle Tommen's face when he found out…

The feeling of triumph lasted through the arrival at King's Landing. Aemon met with stewards in service of the Royal Chamberlain, got fitted for garments suitable for a lower ranking man who waited on the King, and was shown his apartments. From the apologetic tone the steward took, Aemon inferred that these were less desirable apartments for nobles in the city, but compared to the acolyte's lodgings at the Citadel they were the height of luxury.

Aemon's triumph survived just long enough to be killed unceremoniously by the first audience with the King. He waited in line with the other aides, petitioners, and city nobles who had business with the King that day, missing lunch and most of his afternoon before it came to his turn.

"The new aide-de-camp, you Grace," was how Lord Arryn had introduced him.

"The smooth tongue?" the King had asked. At Lord Arryn's nod, he went on. "Excellent. We've been putting off the Brasvosi for weeks. You," the King said, pointing at Aemon, "can go tell them to take their 'reamortization' and shove it up their asses."

With that, the King called for more ale, and Aemon was ushered from his presence.

"So… I should…" stammered Aemon.

"You have a meeting with the Braavosi representatives later today," confirmed the nameless steward who had escorted him from the King's solar. "To present the King's position."

"I see," was all that Aemon could think to say at the time.

"Look on the bright side," quipped the young Master of Coin. Aemon hadn't noticed him in the hall before, and then realized that was because he hadn't been in the hall before; Lord Baelish simply swept past the queue on his way to speak with the King. "The worst that could happen is the Braavosi call in all their loans and the Kingdoms starve this winter."

Aemon spluttered something he couldn't remember later, and Lord Baelish simply patted him on the shoulder before striding into the King's solar.

The next moon left Aemon wishing that he'd simply accepted being an eternal acolyte. The King was constantly tossing out the most ignorant, offensive statements imaginable—at one point Aemon wondered whether he had been set up in some sort of huge, elaborate jest for purposes unknown, for how else could Robert unerringly pick out the absolute worst thing to say in every situation and then say it?—and then he would send Aemon out to deliver the message.

Aemon had some idea of how the royal court worked from his time at the Citadel, but he was caught out by the sheer number of tasks that needed to be done to fulfill even the least significant of the King's commands. Aemon would be told to deal with a minor holdfast near Pinkmaiden who wished to build a bridge across the river on their land. At first Aemon had no idea why this was even in front of the King, but after an afternoon spent looking into it, he realized that the river started in the Westerlands and flowed into the Riverlands, making the question of whether the bridge would impede river traffic one for the Crown to answer.

Then, after an evening spent waiting for an audience with the Master of Laws, Lord Renly (or more accurately, the clerk Lord Renly's steward had deputized to deal with holdfasts outside of the Crownlands with less than fifty hides of land) decreed that the issue was only a question for the crown if the river was navigable into the Westerlands. (The clerk helpfully explained to Aemon that the situation would, of course, be different if the holdfast were seeking to build irrigation works or a water wheel, since then the mere fact that the water flowed through the Westerlands would be enough to satisfy the criteria for the Crown's involvement).

That sent Aemon off to find the Master of Surveys, which, he learned several hours after sunset, was a position that hadn't been filled in years.

Eventually Aemon was able to track down a surveyor of rivers with notes on the correct region, knock on the surveyor's door until he got out of bed, and confirm that the river in question was not navigable further upstream than the border with the Westerlands, and thus the issue should be remanded to Riverrun.

Aemon wrote this all out in both the Common Tongue and the rural dialect of the western Riverlands, finishing just as the sun began to rise, and placed the document in front of the King at breakfast. The King took one glance at it, set on it his seal and a small, unintended smudge of bacon grease, and Aemon could mark one task done out of a dozen he had been expected to attend to the previous day.

And at least a task such as that had a clear answer. Aemon was constantly standing in front of people he'd never met, trying to turn the King's vague comments into words that would please them without committing the crown to anything that Lord Arryn hadn't specifically approved, and there wasn't enough time in the day to learn what he needed to know about each party. He quickly lost track of the number of times he'd been struck, either by some noble upset with the King's words or the King himself, upset that Aemon hadn't simply made his problems disappear.

Aemon's second moon in the capital was much like the first, and his third much like the second.

Slowly, he learned. He learned which courtiers were well meaning but ignorant, which would lead him astray simply for the cruel pleasure of watching him founder, and which were genuinely helpful. He learned the quickest ways about the Red Keep and the surrounding neighborhood, and that as his face became familiar to the Royal Guardsmen he could simply nod to them as he walked by rather than stopping each time to present his seal.

He learned about the unofficial but very formalized system of bribes that went on between the different officers of the Crown. Ordinary requests made to the clerks and stewards of the Small Council members and the other royally-appointed Masters would be seen and responded to… eventually. But if the request needed a reply urgently, then somebody expected to be paid for the immediate attention.

Aemon learned that he was expected to participate in this system in his own role. At first he resisted the idea; it sounded like the type of corruption depicted in the popular mummer's shows of the Targaryen reign, which the smallfolk seemed to think justified their overthrow as much or more as the Mad King's infamous executions. But he came to realize that there was no way out: he couldn't get his own work done if he could never bribe the other officers of the Crown, and he couldn't use the money of the King's office for that either, so he needed a supplemental source of income. After a while he could even accept the small sacks of coin without grimacing.

He learned to avoid the Queen's ladies whenever possible. The Queen generally stayed out of the King's business, instead spending her time managing her ladies, the households of Prince Tommen, Princess Marcella, and Prince Joffrey (at least until the Crown Prince was sent to foster at Casterly Rock), and the many social events which Aemon was, thankfully, not invited to.

But when the Queen did get involved it immediately set off a race, because the Queen would speak to the King just as soon as he could no longer put her off, and the King much preferred to have whatever the issue was dealt with by that time so that he could shrug and say there was nothing to be done. If the issue wasn't dealt with then the King would actually need to explain his thinking and defend his decisions to the Queen, and being forced into this most hated of activities would leave him wroth with the aides who failed to prevent it.

Even worse than the Queen was the High Septon. Aemon learned that no cost was too great to avoid getting between His Grace and His Holiness. The two got along as poorly as could be expected, given their respective families, and Aemon for one devoutly hoped that the ever-present rumors of the High Seat of the Seven moving back to its ancient home in Oldtown would one day prove true.

Aemon even saw Archmaester Theobald's prediction of his station come true, and was raised to a minor Lordship with incomes from three blocks of Gulltown which he had never seen. Sadly, old Ser Owen died several months before this happened and so Aemon's vague dreams of revenge were left unfulfilled. At least becoming a minor Lord cut down dramatically on the number of people who could cuff him upside the head in anger, though obviously the King himself continued to have that privilege.

Aemon learned, and went about the King's business, until one day a new aide-de-camp approached him, stammering, with some minor crisis that he had been unable to resolve on his own. Aemon calmed the boy and guided him through the people he'd need to approach, and how best to approach him.

"Thank you," stammered the boy. "I was scared to admit to Lord Arryn that I couldn't handle it here. But they said—the other aides—they said that you know what you're doing."

Aemon sent the boy on his way, but the words stuck with him. I know what I'm doing , he thought. Huh. When did that happen?He thought back over the time, and realized that it was four years, almost to the day, since he had arrived in King's Landing.

That week, Lord Arryn took sick.

And then he died, and he died without making a single plan for what would come next. Even on his last day, even as the fever burned through him and his arms were covered with leeches, Lord Arryn waved away any concerns about the future. "Just make a note and leave it in my solar," he said, in a voice barely audible, "and I'll deal with it as soon as I've recovered, I assure you."

Lord Arryn died that night, and suddenly the entire Royal Household—dozens upon dozens of aides-de-camp, stewards, steadholders, squires, pages, clothiers, armorers, people Aemon barely knew existed even now—was looking to the King for guidance.

The King responded by going hunting.

By the time he returned, Aemon had lost track of when he had last slept. The aides-de-camp had collectively come to an agreement to keep the business of government running, but without a single voice to make decisions even doing the bare minimum took twice as long as before. And nobody wanted to be that single voice: without the protection of the appointment as Hand (and a Lord Paramountcy), anyone who made a decision the King later decided he didn't like risked being strung up for treason.

The King called his household together in the Throne Room that evening.

"There's one man left I trust to name as Hand," he had begun without preamble, "and that's Ned Stark. And it's about time I saw the North. The King should know his realm! Been to all the other bloody kingdoms often enough.

"Send a raven to your father," he added to the Queen. "Joff can meet up with us on the way. It's high time he came back to the capital."

From the look on the Queen's face, he hadn't discussed any of this with her before making his announcement.

But the King had decided and the order had been given, so the household packed up for the long trip north. The combined chorus of the aides-de-camp was enough to convince King Robert that they could not actually leave the very next morning, so Aemon was given just enough time to search out Ser Wendel Manderly, the ranking Northman in the Capital, and hammer out a proposal the King could make for Lord Stark's Handship that might be acceptable to the Northerners. It amounted to a long list of titles, lands, gold, fosterage agreements, and squireships that would trade hands to compensate the likely list of people who would be accompanying Lord Stark south. Even with the delay, so great was the King's haste to be on the road that Aemon barely made it back to the Red Keep in time to claim a spot on one of the wains before it began to roll through the city towards the Gate of the Gods and hence the Kingsroad.

If Aemon thought that the travel would be a respite from his usuals duties, he was quickly disabused of the notion. The work of the Crown continued, although now it happened by raven and quill.

The Master of Travel (a position which had not existed the day before they left the capital) insisted on ten miles a day, and more whenever the caravan could manage it. When the party did stop, builders would work to erect tents for sleeping and other business, and Aemon and the other Aides-de-Camp of Letters would organize all the messages that came in by rider and raven throughout the day. The King would hold court, such as it was, and then Aemon and his fellows would work by candlelight to send messages back to the Small Council and others in the Capital, and generally turn His Grace's words into decrees that, hopefully, could not be willfully misinterpreted by distant readers.

Come morning light, as the builders packed up the tents and the equerries readied the carriages, the messages written during the night were sent out from the giant wheeled rookery, larger even than the Queen's carriage, and the caravan would lurch into motion. Aemon would try to get some sleep in one of the wains as he was able to. At one point, conscious of the price of candles, the quartermaster suggested letters be written during daylight, but the quality of writing done on the bumpy roads was so poor that the idea was quickly abandoned.

It was bad enough when the weather was fair, but shortly into the journey low clouds rolled in, and for the better part of a week they traveled through rain, light but unceasing, until Aemon was sure he would never be fully dry again.

The one reprieve came when the caravan reached Lord Harroway's Town and the Blue Fork of the Trident—by which point the skies had mercifully cleared. Here the entourage was loaded onto river barges. Aemon was impressed by the cleverness of the workmanship; the Royal carriages and wains were all constructed in a way that allowed them to easily be detached from their wheels and undercarriages, and the giant cranes at Lord Harroway's Town lifted them onto specially built barges that connected in the same spots the undercarriages had. The result was less than a day spent moving the entire party from road to river.

The broad flow of the Trident as the river wound its way north sped their journey considerably, even after a singularly unpleasant stop at the Twins, where Lord Frey had to be reminded, yet again, that he did not have the crown's permission to block river traffic, and was informed that from that point on a small detachment of Royal Guards, paid for by Lord Frey, would be stationed there to make sure he remembered.

Unlike the wains, the barges were smooth enough for Aemon to write his letters during the day. The King and a group of handpicked knights rode alongside the river, meeting up with the barges in the evenings. The long rides cured much of King Robert's restlessness, and left him in a much better mood to deal with petitions after dinner, and the Queen seemed content to stay in the royal carriage. For the first time since Lord Arryn took sick, Aemon actually felt like he might be starting to catch up on sleep.

The caravan stopped at the Lake of Bones to rejoin the horses and wheels. Past the Lake of Bones, the waters of the Trident emptied into the Neck, and while the reed boats of the Crannogmen and the longships of the Ironborn could navigate the shifting marshland between the lake and Blazewater Bay, the heavy river barges were likely to get hopelessly stuck in such an attempt.

They spent several nights on the southern shore, the agreed-upon border between the lands owing fealty to Greywater Watch to the north and those owing fealty to the Twins to the south. Aemon, whose childhood had been filled with the sound of the waves crashing up against the bluffs below Three Towers, found the lake eerily calm. The still surface stretched off endlessly in the distance, off towards a horizon that was never quite visible, even when the sky above was clear. Despite the convenience of the barges, Aemon was glad they were returning to the road; a part of him was sure that if they tested those unnaturally calm waters they would join the namesake bones that lurked just under the surface.

The royal caravan's pause gave time for Prince Joffrey, accompanied by much of the Crown Prince's household, to join them.

The Prince's arrival spurred a new set of whispers among the Royal Household. Those who had been in the service longest painted a disturbing picture: from the bullying of a young child, through small animals disfigured or cut open, until—in the years before the Prince left for his fosterage—the injuries to servants, who were unwilling to speak of the cause, or simply vanished from the capital altogether.

Aemon did not observe any of this first hand. He had never been close to any of the Prince's household, even when Joffrey had lived in King's Landing. From what little he could see, Prince Joffrey had emerged from several years at Casterly Rock a well-spoken and intelligent young man, and Aemon heard the King mention several times how well his goodfather had matured the boy. But Aemon also knew, from growing up a second son of a second son, that many people put on a different face to those they needed to impress. So he kept his distance from the young Prince, which in truth as a minor part of the Royal Household was not difficult.

Its complement now complete, the caravan continued north, moving slowly up the causeway of the Neck as the weeks since they left King's Landing became months. They passed Moat Cailin. The fortress was largely abandoned in this age of peace, but the stone sculptures that rose up out of the bog on either side of the causeway—snarling wolves and rearing bears, ax-wielding northmen atop charging elks, shieldmaidens with bows and spears that seemed an instant from launching forth—still gave Aemon a shiver. Standing on the narrow road between these towering figures, it was not hard to remember that, before the dragons came, the armored might of the south had thrown itself against this fortress for a thousand years and more, and for a thousand years and more had been thrown back. The sculptures had a rough quality, carved of a stone Aemon didn't recognize, but by the skill of the long-dead sculptor the figures seemed alive, paused only for a moment between one motion and the next. In the damp air rising up from the marshland, Aemon could almost see the blood of those southern knights dripping off their blades.

Their party was met by northern riders at Moat Cailin, but they were not for defense. An honor guard assembled by Lord Stark from the Holds of the North welcomed them to the land with much ceremony

They were two score skutilsveinr, which Aemon regularly had to remind the rest of the caravan, including and especially the King, were not "knights—oh, you know what I mean, northern knights."

It was true that the skutilsveinr played a similar role in the North as knights did in the South, but there were important differences. For one thing, the skutilsveinr were much more independent than a knight was, and Northern Lords were expected to consult with them before issuing marching orders, rather than simply calling the banners. For another, while battleground knighthoods did happen, though less so in the past decade of peace, a Southern squire could be knighted based solely on tournament skill and devotion to the principles of knighthood. But the only way a man became skutilsveinr was by killing his Lord's enemies in battle.

Despite traveling as part of the company, for the most part the skutilsveinr kept to themselves, ranging far ahead of the column to give ample warning of potential threats, and also to identify places in the road where the wagons were likely to struggle. The latter in particular had become common; the Neck was sparsely populated, and travel and commerce between the North and the Riverlands more commonly went by ship, so the Kingsroad here was rarely used and in poor repair.

Eventually, though, they made it into what Aemon thought of as the start of the North proper; wide fields and gently rolling hills, with crisp days and cool nights that were a marked difference from the summer heat that had baked the capital before they had left. Here the road was in better repair, and they passed small market towns regularly—though none, of course, were big enough to host the hundreds of people now traveling with the King, and the builders continued to erect their giant tents each evening.

Occasionally large burial mounds could be seen from the road. Aemon had read of these in the archives at the Citadel. Supposedly they contained kings and chieftains from thousands of years ago—before even the establishment House Stark and the founding of Winterfell. The records in the Citadel were scant, however—suspiciously so, given that the burial mounds appeared to be common, and easily accessible from the primary road.

When he asked one of the skutilsveinr—Hallis Mollen, if he'd gotten the name correct—if he could visit one of the mounds to pay his respects to the honored dead, however, the big man shook his head.

"There's cold things in those," he intoned in Northern, " and they have no love for the living."

Aemon considered sneaking away from the caravan in the evening to explore on his own—he wanted to be respectful, of course, but the chance to be the first southerner to see inside a northern burial mound was tempting—but by the end of the day a thick fog had fallen over the caravan, and even the short walk off the road to the nearest burial mounds would have risked going astray. Aemon very much did not want to find himself lost in the endless fields of the North come morning.

The fog stayed with them for several days. It made the world seem strange; the caravan plodded forwards, none able to see more than a few feet in front of them. If not for the road beneath the wheels, Aemon might have believed his wain to be alone and adrift, as if they had wandered back to the Lake of Bones and were now floating in its still waters.

The mists did queer things to the sounds around them, as well. Men would call out from one part of the caravan to another, but often the listeners could not say from which direction the call came. More than once they were slowed by the confusion, as a builder tried to follow a steward's directions and walked off completely the wrong way into the mist.

Aemon was glad when they finally entered more wooded land, even though the fog still followed them. The trees—tall pines and spruces, broken up by the occasional stand of oak or maple—had an eerie appearance, standing up out of the fog, and the branches looked like the hands of ghosts reaching towards the road to snare travelers. But at the very least they provided a sense of distance, and progress as they slowly moved forward, and something about the forest seemed to help everyone place where sounds were coming from.

The Forest of Wolves, the Northerners called it—at least, that was the closest translation into the Common Tongue. It certainly lived up to its namesake: every night the caravan was kept away by the howling of wolves, some near and some far, until the angry and sleep-deprived King ordered a halt, and for a hunt to be organized, simply to get a quiet night.

Aemon, of course, was dispatched to ask the skutilsveinr if they would join the King's hunt. The group he spoke to looked at each other with tight faces after Aemon relayed the King's request. They seemed to be silently arguing about who would answer.

Finally Lord Cassel stepped forward. "We would be honored to hunt with the King ," he said. " But our oaths to the Chosen of the Wolf were to keep his safety above all else. We cannot risk that the excitement of the hunt might distract us from that sacred duty."

Aemon might have asked them what danger to the King they were expecting a week's march from Winterfell, but he had learned at the very start of his service in the Royal Household that asking such questions was not his role. The King's words had been delivered, the response heard, and now Aemon turned back to speak again with the King.

The look on the King's face was ugly when he heard the reply, but it quickly smoothed over into a resigned pout. "We've hunters enough among the Southerners, I suppose," was all he said on the matter. A nod to the Master of Hunts, and soon the horns were blowing and the hunt began.

But when the hunters set out into the misty forest, any trace of wolf seemed to melt away, and by the end of the day nobody returned with anything larger than a hare. Nobody except Prince Joffrey, who rode back into camp with an enormous wolf bitch slung over the back of his horse, but would only smirk enigmatically when asked how he had brought the beast down.

Two of the hunters did not come back at all. Aemon hadn't caught their names, only that they had gone out together and failed to report to the Master of Hunts after supper. Another day was lost searching for them, but it was a difficult task. The hunters had, by design, moved through the forest with little to mark their passage, and the dense woods held many ravines hidden from view by tree and bush. In the end, the Master of Hunts had to admit that hunts are sometimes dangerous, and while it seemed unlikely for two experienced hunters to both fall prey to the same ill chance, he could not rule it out. And if that was the case, the party could search the ground here for a month without uncovering the bodies.

So they continued onwards. The trees grew taller, the shorter pines and maples giving way to towering firs that made the Kingsroad feel like a riverbed at the bottom of a canyon. One of the builders—a Redwyne, second cousin to the current heir, if Aemon recalled correctly—practically had fits of excitement.

"Do you know what they'd pay in the Arbor for a mast like this?" the Redwyne had said, to anyone who would listen. "And they're just standing there, next to the road! They could be cut and on the way in days!"

Aemon could see, though he suspected the Redwyne in his excitement could not, the dark looks that those skutilsveinr who spoke the common tongue gave him at his words. They fingered their well-used weapons, and Aemon resolved to have nothing at all to do with any lumber enterprise that might be embarked upon.

The last of the fog was blown away by a cold wind in the night. Aemon was glad to see the forest looking much less ominous come the dawn; in the clear light and stripped of fog it was similar enough to the Kingswood to be comfortable. He was less glad about the patches of summer snow that had blown in with the cold.

That morning the caravan approached the Little Knife. Crowds lined the road on the far side of the bridge, heedless of wet ground that soon turned to icy mud. Enough people were gathered that Aemon guessed most of Wintertown must have come out. He supposed that he shouldn't have been surprised: the last King to visit the North had been… Jaehaerys, maybe? Before all but the oldest here had been born, certainly. And the trip being what it was, who could say when the next opportunity to see a King would come about?

The King rode down the center of the road, waving to the crowds from his destrier. He cut an imposing figure; the caravan had halted far enough away to avoid prying eyes, and the Chamberlain had worked with the royal armorers and clothiers to dress the King to flatter him as much as possible.

King Robert wore plate armor from neck to foot, all enameled black with golden stags worked into the plates, as well as two rearing from the vambraces. Large golden antlers erupted from the pauldrons and rose into the air above the King's head, framing his head, which had been groomed and oiled.

The cut of the armor made him look like a different person; the armorers had expanded the shoulders significantly to make it appear as though King Robert was simply a giant of a man, and not a large man with a larger belly.

All told, the effect was striking, and surrounded by the knights of the Kingsguard and the 1st Royal Cavalry, in matching plate and horse, the King truly looked the part of the first knight of the realm.

The King smiled and waved, and the crowd cheered and shouted.

The Prince passed as well, on a graceful white mare, golden hair above golden armor, and the Queen's carriage rode down the Kingsroad as she waved and smiled graciously to the crowds.

Of the King's household, perhaps only Aemon noticed that the chanting crowd was not all praises for the King. It took him some time to pick the words out from the general hubbub, but once he did he realized how many people were shouting the same word, over and over again:

Heahfædland! Heahfædland! Heahfædland!

Aemon translated the term in his head: land of the old gods.

The procession moved up the Kingsroad past Wintertown, until the King's party turned into a field opposite the Wolf Gate of Winterfell. By the time the King arrived the builders had already been hard at work for some time.

They had set up in a depression to the west of the castle, where the land fell away from the road towards the forest in the distance. It was a spot not visible from Wintertown, so long as the Kingsroad itself was kept clear, and even as he passed the castle walls themselves, Aemon could see that the guards manning the battlements were stepping down, out of sight into the castle.

In the center of the small depression rose the makeshift building that, by agreement between Lord Stark's men and the King's, no Northerner could see. It was clever: thin wooden struts stiffening and stabilizing seven primary beams, with canvas stretched between them to make walls. It had all been carried with them since King's Landing. There were even pieces of leather that had been scrapped as thin as possible and dyed, so that when stretched in the holes in the canvas panels and illuminated by the afternoon sun they served as a passable replacement for stained glass windows. And, of course, seven statues, painted wood rather than bronze and gold leaf, but no less beautiful for that.

In a matter of hours, the royal builders had constructed the first sept built north of Moat Cailin in centuries.

The King was hurried inside even while the builders were still adding the finishing touches. The Northern priesthood could not condone calling on the blessings of the Seven in the heart of the North—Aemon knew, even if the member of the Most Devout who had traveled north with them from the capital did not, that the most literal translation of the term in Northern for the Seven Who Are One would be "the seven great demons". But the High Septon had absolutely refused to countenance a trip of this magnitude without asking the Seven's blessing on the proceedings.

The compromise reached was that the blessing would happen in a quickly-constructed sept, which no Northerner would see, and thus their priesthood could pretend never happened. The sept would be taken down before the guards resumed their post, and so propriety would be served. The King, after the blessing, would enter Winterfell and receive the blessings of the old gods (he was, after all, the King of the Andals and the First Men) while the septons assisted the builders in packing away the holy relics in the field outside Winterfell, ensuring that they in turn would not observe their King receiving any heathen blessings.

Aemon stood outside of the canvas sept—it was a small space, and once the King, Queen, their children, and the septons were included there was little room for anyone other than the very highest ranking members of the Royal Household.

But he could imagine the proceedings easily enough. The King and his family would turn to face each panel in sequence—Father, Mother, Warrior, Crone, Smith, Maiden. His Holiness the Most Devout would offer a prayer for blessing to each, and the King would be anointed with blessed oil. Aemon didn't envy the participants inside. He found the scented fumes that came from the censer the septon would be waving through the air as he prayed for blessing often gave him a headache even in the household sept in King's Landing, and from what he could tell this canvas sept had no openings for airflow. At least it would be a shortened service.

At last, the King and his family emerged from the sept. Immediately the builders began disassembling it, as officers of the Chief Marshal and the Aides-de-Camp of Ceremony directed the Royal Household into position for their formal reception into Winterfell. Soon they were ordered, with four of the Kingsguard, the eight highest ranking knights in the company, and a score of men-at-arms on foot to escort the crier to the Wolf Gate of Winterfell to announce the King.

The parade and ceremony had taken up the bulk of the day, and it was now approaching evening. The snow that had blown in overnight had mostly melted, but patches remained here and there, and the sun, low in the sky, lit them up like jewels in the grass. Scattered clouds filled the horizon, breaking up the sunlight into beams that shot across the sky and lit up the slight haze in the air.

Aemon looked and saw, on the rise above where the Royal Household gathered, five figures that must be the Stark children. They stood tall, their position on the rise making them seem to tower over even the King, and their shadows stretched endlessly across the ground to the forest in the distance. They wore leather and furs, not nearly so finely worked as the King's golden stags, but rugged and durable. The figure in the center stood tallest, and a greatsword was strapped to his back.

Beside each child stood a wolf, even larger than the bitch Prince Joffrey had killed in the Forest of Wolves. Aemon swallowed nervously. He could see no trainers, no houndsmen, no collars or restraints to hold the wolves in check. And yet they sat, calmly, looking down on Aemon with eyes that showed far too much intelligence.

The clouds on the horizon shifted again, and a beam of light fell upon the Stark children. The hilt of the greatsword glinted over the eldest's shoulder in a gleam of hard iron. The Starks' breath left trails of mist that wrapped around them, and one of the wolves ducked its head as if sniffing the air for the scent of prey.

Looking up at them, framed by the enormous, snow-dusted castle behind them, Aemon felt for a moment as if he could still hear the Wintertown crowds chanting, screaming.

Heahfædland.