It had been weeks since the Stark's second daughter had been taken ill. And still there was nothing to be done for boyish little Arya Underfoot.
Mikhal Luwin (better known to the children as Maester Luwin) knew that the Lady Catelyn had implored each of the seven gods for help, even praying before the shrine of the Stranger that it was not her daughter's time yet, that she was too young for the gods to require her life to end. Just as he also knew that Lord Eddard had spent more and more time in the Godswood seeking the guidance of the Old Gods who remained as silent as the Seven on the matter.
Mikhal could offer no comfort of faith to bolster their spirits. All he could do was what he had been doing: treat the spirited young girl with herbal concoctions and in the meantime send the ravens to consult with the citadel back in Oldtown.
But to his sorrow, it was all to no avail. The last few days he had been reduced to simply easing her pain where he could. As he made his way into her room, the first thing he noticed was the silence in the room. Normally the girl would twitch as though she longed to thrash and sigh as though she longed to moan. The pain and fever robbing her of even the strength to make the full extent of her suffering known.
As he drew to her bed, he saw she was gone, the covers drawn back as if she had awoken to sneak down to the kitchen with Jon Snow yet again.
He looked around frantically, trying to see if perhaps she had fallen off the bed and he merely hadn't seen her with no luck in his search.
He hurried out of her sickroom and made his way to the Lord and Lady's chambers, heedless of the clanking his extensive chain made or the jingling of the materials he stored in his robe sleeves for just about any possible occasion. Without any consideration for their state of decency, he banged on the wooden entrance to their bedroom. Impatient to begin the search, he decided to enter before they could respond.
"My lord, my lady! Young Arya is gone from her bed!" He exclaimed, opening the door without waiting for a response.
"What?!" They exclaimed in unison. He could see Lord Eddard's eyes tighten, another wrinkle being added to many that lined the face of a man old before his time. Lady Catelyn's fiery red hair was disheveled, her blue eyes red from tears she had doubtlessly been shedding in private before he came bearing more bad news.
"I came to check upon her this evening and she was gone." Maester Luwin told them, his fingers nervously gripping and releasing the edges of his robe's sleeves.
As Lord Stark opened his mouth to speak, one of his men ran into the balding Maester from behind. He had evidently been in such a hurry that he'd not noticed him standing there until it was almost too late.
"Fire!" the guard gasped, taking great gulps of air to offset his frantic run to the Lord of Winterfell's chambers. "Fire in the Sept m'lord!"
"Go, help the others put the flames out!" Ned exclaimed angrily, waving a hand to indicate his impatience with the new recruit still being there after having gotten the message to them.
The man kept catching his breath. "The men." He continued, trying to get more news to them. "They think your bastard's inside."
Eddard's face turned pale before he quickly moved to dress himself, Catelyn not a moment behind. Maester Luwin quickly moved toward the courtyard, the much younger guard and somewhat younger Lord and Lady of Winterfell overtaking him in their haste. The four had only made it to the area across the courtyard from the Sept when the heat washed over them like a rolling wave. The guards already present could barely stand approaching to throw water on the fire, some of them visibly overheating in their lightest leather and furred armor. Even so, Mikhal attempted to brave the discomfiting heat of the flames to draw closer. From inside he thought he could hear what sounded like a crow frantically cawing.
Before anyone could react, the flames flared still higher, the following shock of increased heat causing many of the surrounding crowd to lose their footing; Catelyn Stark herself among them.
And then they all heard a girl screaming. Mikhal's heart stopped beating for a moment. What was going on here? Jon was in the Sept, the Sept was burning and a young girl's voice was yelling inside the fire. Simple logic would say that the unspeakable was happening. It would say that he was killing the youngest female Stark.
Lady Catelyn had evidently had the same thought as he.
Heedless of the fire, she tried to rush toward the Sept. "Arya!" Her voice cried frantically, knowing her child's voice as only a loving parent could. "Arya!" She repeated before being restrained by a set of strong arms around her middle. She struggled against the arms, clawing and swiping at the person pulling her away from her daughter's voice even as Lord Stark appeared ready to throw up at the implications of Arya's young voice calling from inside the fire.
"Cat, you must stop!" He yelled, grip tightening despite her efforts.
"Your bastard is killing her Ned! Stop him! Stop him!" She heard herself cry desperately, her tears drying on her face from the heat. Mikhal didn't want to believe it. He had grown to love all the Stark children as a surrogate uncle, though he could never say as much to them without their getting into even more mischief than they already did. He would never have believed Jon capable of harming a hair on Arya's head, let alone condemn her to a particularly cruel and painful death that was entirely too similar to her grandfathers for anyone's comfort.
Before he could think more on this line of thought, something inside the Sept exploded with such force the doors blew open on their own; throwing splinters and sparks chaotically into the air.
As Mikhal's eyes readjusted to the open flames, he saw something that could not possibly be happening. He saw Arya Stark sprinting out of the Sept in her somewhat burned sleeping gown. She was yelling something at them all before zeroing in on her mother and father. She ran faster than the guards who attempted to catch her and get her to safety, faster than the people who surrounded them in the crowd, faster even than Luwin would have thought possible for Arya even before she had contracted her illness.
She was babbling something even as Lady Catelyn pulled her to her to hold on to her in gratitude and relief. Mikhal looked back toward the flames, calling to the nearby guards to keep working to put the fire out.
But his voice was still the third loudest behind the patriarch of the Starks and his youngest girl as Arya continued struggling and shouting. When Luwin finally listened to what she was saying, he was scared for Jon Snow's safety.
Lady Catelyn's face only held a strange combination of horror and concern as her eyes turned to look to the burning building of her southern faith while her daughter was screaming: "Help him help him someone help Jon help Jon please!" in multiple variations over and over while visibly struggling to get back to her bastard sibling.
Her beseeching grey eyes alighted on Lord Eddard, frantically pleading with him.
"Father please! Jon's inside, he needs us he needs us now! Help him please!" She babbled, trying to escape the safety of Lady Catelyn's arms for the danger of the flames. Mikhal's brain told him Jon Snow had more likely been consumed by now. Maester Luwin also knew it was possible that he had survived the blaze. But then why hadn't he emerged if that was the case?
There was a great groaning crack from inside the Sept. Before anyone could react, the roof and the walls began to cave in, the building falling inward on itself in what had seemed minutes but was truly only moments since Arya had left the building sized pyre.
"NOOOOOOOO! JON!" Arya shrieked, kicking her mother and successfully getting her to let go. Before Lady Catelyn could make a move to stop her, Lord Stark had gotten to the young girl and pulled her back even as she fought like a wild animal to try and reach the now surely dead baseborn boy.
Before the gathered crowd's disbelieving eyes, the entire Sept finished collapsing into a burning pile of rubble. One last anguished howl arose from the building before the debris appeared to snuff out the last of the open flames. Then all was silent but for young Arya's sobbing. Mikhal was simply too shocked by all that happened in these rapid moments to take it all in, despite having felt empathetic to Jon Snow and his life's circumstances.
As some guards stiffly began moving toward the remains of the Sept, there was a shifting in the stone before a figure emerged from the rubble, smog erupting from underneath the opening in the cooling debris to obscure them. The soldiers backed off in alarm, some instinctively leveling their weapons at it as it shuffled out of the broken stone and suffocating smoke like a child first learning to walk.
It determinedly made its way toward them, its destination unclear. Arya had ceased screaming and had an unwavering stare fixed upon the figure, her eyes looking as though all her hope in the world rested upon it. And when the figure's identity was revealed in open air, there were was only shocked silence to greet it.
It was Jon Snow. His clothing was entirely gone, his pale skin soot stained and visibly smoking. But in the midst of it all, he impossibly appeared to be stronger, more vital than he had been.
As he came into eyesight of Arya, his own grey eyes lit up with such happiness Mikhal couldn't help but feel his lips curl involuntarily in a more subdued smile. But then the young man abruptly collapsed to his knees, the energy seemingly gone from his body before falling face-first to the ground so bonelessly that Winterfell's resident Maester couldn't help but think he had dropped dead before their eyes.
For a moment there was stillness. And then, there was pandemonium. There was movement and shouting in the yard as the people around them solider and worker alike all calmoured to make their voices heard, their questions and their statements an indistinguishable but almost deafening din in contrast to the usual silence of the northern nights.
Arya at last managed to escape her lord father's grip and had reached Jon's side in scarcely the blink of an eye: shaking him vigorously to try and wake him up and calling for someone to help her, her posture tense as a drawn bowstring. Luwin made his way to Jon's other side before checking the side of his neck for that steady pulsing vein that meant his heart still pumped blood through his prone body.
He grabbed Arya's shaking hand and smiled at her.
"He's alright child." Mikhal said. "Only sleeping for now." He reassured, mostly for her but also to calm his own racing thoughts. Now that he could reflect on what had happened in the Sept, he could think of nothing like it he had ever seen before. And it left only more questions than answers in its wake. Lord Eddard was taking command nearby, ordering everyone to disperse, for some of his men to help Luwin get Jon into the castle while Lady Catelyn slowly made her way over to the two Stark children he was kneeling by.
"Come along Arya." She asked quietly, the minute trembling in her hands Mikhal noticed gone by the time they touched her second daughter's shoulders.
"But I need to stay with Jon!" The willful girl exclaimed, her eyes never wavering from Jon's unconscious face even as the guards managed to get him onto a board to carry him to Luwin's chambers. "He healed me, I have to stay with him until he wakes up!" she continued, rising from her kneeling position to follow her bastard sibling's carried body.
"What you need to do is rest young lady." Mikhal said sternly, right hand alighting on her left shoulder as she attempted to brush past him. "We don't know how or why you've recovered, but-"
She spoke up before he could finish. "I'm telling you it was Jon! In the fire, he breathed and he brought smoke out of me! And when the smoke was gone I was better and he was hurt!" Her eyes betrayed that the irritation in her tone was worry about her favorite sibling's condition being a result of helping her to his eyes.
"Which means that until we are certain he will be alright, we should make certain that his efforts are not undone simply because his patient is too stubborn to let his work settle, shouldn't we?" He asked in return. The girl began to worry her lip, obviously thinking about what he had asked of her.
"For now, we need to see what might be wrong with Jon. And until we know that, tis safer for everyone if he is kept where he can be undisturbed. Much like you were." Mikhal continued. She still looked ready to try making to break away from his hand on her shoulder to follow him.
He went down on his knees so that he was eye level with her, though it somewhat pained him to do so with how hard the ground of Winterfell could be. "I promise you Arya:" he said. "That as soon as Jon is well enough to have visitors, you will be the first I tell after your lord father."
Her grey eyes, so much like Lord Eddard's, gazed into his for a long moment. Her gaze dropped to the ground in reluctant acquiescence. "As you say Maester Luwin." She whispered stiffly. As Mikhal rose again and Lady Catelyn took his place while placing her arms around her healthy young girl, he knew that this wasn't over. But it was the best he knew he would get from her for now. As he hurried to his chambers at a slightly faster walking pace than he was used to, his mind wandered back to the questions that had started arising at the scene of the burning Sept.
How had Jon managed to create a fire so intense that it could collapse the building within the course of a night? Yes, it was possible for him to take a torch to every wooden support in the place, but even if he had, unless the fires had already been burning for hours already through part of a day, it would've taken a fairly long time to eat through enough of them to cause the thing to cave in like that. And for that matter, what material had he been using that could've possibly set the stone alight as well? The only materials he knew of that could burn solid stone so badly were pitch, wildfire and dragonfire. But there was no evidence of pitch being used, it was too far too controlled to be wildfire and well, unless Jon had managed to smuggle a dragon egg into the Sept and then hidden the resulting live dragon somewhere in his posterior, Mikhal very much doubted that it was the third option. And why was Arya convinced that Jon had healed her by bringing her into the fire? If anything, the smoke from the burning wood and the heat combining with the flames alighting the clothes on her skin should've harmed her even worse than she was or even outright killed her from her limited capacity to breathe.
But instead she was here: swifter than the wind and looking as though she had never been sickened in her life, let alone days away from knocking upon the door of the Stranger.
The teachings of the Citadel in Oldtown had prepared him for many things in the forging of his chain, but this…this made him feel as though he was that same awestruck boy leaving the Riverlands behind for using his mind in loyal service to Westeros.
As he reached his chambers, he cautiously opened the door. He felt unsure whether or not Jon would answer any of the questions he asked the boy. Perhaps he should request Lord Eddard speak to the young man first, see if he could coax any answers out of him first so that Mikhal might have a basic idea of what Jon claimed had happened to work with.
He found his medicines within moments, all the while pondering what Jon could have possibly done in there. As he entered the sick chamber, he was struck by the sudden heat in the room. Winterfell was normally a temperate castle due to its construction above the heated underground spring. But the inside of this side-chamber to his own quarters where he'd instructed the men to take Jon was almost as humid as the glasshouse garden where the plants were tended by the servants.
As he continued to Jon's side, he noticed that the room's temperature was hotter the closer he got to the boy's bedside. But he would do his duty and discover the truth. He turned the bastard Stark's head left and right, checking his unconscious physical responses. He opened his left eye to see how his pupils reacted to light. He was startled to find that Jon's pupils had now completely encompassed his normally grey irises so that it seemed his eyes were pitch black. The boy's lips were moving as if he were speaking to someone, only the faintest whispers of sound emerging.
Maester Luwin felt a shiver at the possibility of Jon being trapped within the confines of his own mind. A physical ailment was one thing. But an ailment of the mind…That was a beast of an entirely different nature. Setting his materials down beside him on the table, he squared his shoulders and resolved to have news for the Lord and Lady of Winterfell before morning's dawn.
'Perhaps by then I shall have a better idea of Jon's ailment.' He had thought with cautious optimism.
By the morning's light he had no news for Lord and Lady Stark. As well as even fewer certainty about what could be wrong with the boy than he'd had the night before.
For the first time in a long while Mikhal Luwin knew he was facing something entirely unknown. Something that was not entirely natural. Something other Maesters had been stripped of their office and their chains for attempting to study.
For the first time in a long while, Mikhal Luwin felt cold fear in the pit of his stomach.
Author's Note: My major thanks to all of you who have reviewed, followed and favorited the story thus far! As always: reviews, criticism and questions are all equally welcomed and encouraged.