AUTHOR'S NOTE: A shorter chapter before we start the road to Winterfell. Let me know what you guys think! I am especially curious about what you guys think about his ruminations on the nature of the Light.
I appreciate any comments regarding the story or criticism about writing!
Since we've kind of finished this arc, and I see alot of people have voted for new POV's, we might have a small interlude/new POV from the North before our next chapter, just to see what's what.
"It is an unclean thing when holy bells toll and every schemer hears a summons."
The Red Keep, King's Landing, The Crownlands, 298 AC
I was already kneeling in prayer when I heard a knock on my door.
"Milord?" I heard Gardon from outside. "Lord Tywin Lannister has requested your presence, before the Lannister host departs."
I sighed. "One moment, Gardon. I'll be right outside."
Inside my room, I could see the spoils from the Tourney. The goblet sat on my table, quickly becoming another ornament, while my new breast-plate sat polished on a stand, silver and gold catching the morning light in a way that made it look solemn. The King's promised horse was still waiting for me in the stables. One gift at a time, I thought.
I quickly got dressed, donning my usual crimson doublet, belting my dagger and walked outside.
The walk to my uncle's office was a short one, though the Red Keep still carried the ragged after-breath of the tourney. Servants hurried by with linens, silver, and half-heard whispers. Guards stood easier than the day before, laughing low among themselves, while here and there a groom or squire still wore the look of a man who was still seeing yesterday's blows in his head.
When I reached the office, I found my father stepping out.
"Arthas," he said, laying a hand upon my shoulder. "He's expecting you."
"Father," I said, embracing him once more. "I will miss you sorely. I hope business soon brings you back to King's Landing."
"One can only hope," he said, and there was warmth in it, though his eyes remained thoughtful. Then he stepped back and gave me the faintest push toward the door. "Go on, now. It's poor practice to keep your lord waiting."
I straightened and stepped inside the office.
Lord Tywin was seated behind the desk when I entered, one hand resting beside a folded letter, the other upon the arm of his chair. The chamber had already been stripped of almost all the things brought on by his arrival. Chests were bound. Papers were sorted.
He looked up at once.
"Close the door," he said, bidding me inside with his hand.
I did.
For a moment he simply regarded me. Then he said, "Sit."
I sat.
"You fought well yesterday." he said.
From another man, it might have sounded generous. From Tywin Lannister, it was praise enough to mark the hour, I thought.
"My lord is kind." I replied.
"No," he said. "I am accurate." He studied me a moment longer. "Your sword-arm has improved more than the letters suggested. So has the rest of you. Reports of your progress did not do it justice."
That, from him, struck deeper than Robert's roaring. My eyebrows shot up.
"I am glad to have justified the investment," I said carefully.
His mouth shifted by the barest measure. "See that you continue to."
He reached for the folded letter beside him, turned it once between his fingers, then set it back down.
"Your cousin Jaime lost a hundred golden dragons on the joust," he said. "And your cousin the queen very nearly lost an emerald pendant into the same foolish business. The pendant was recovered, which is something. The gold was not."
There was not the slightest sign in his face that any of this amused him.
"Jaime's defeat cost us vanity, coin, and talk," he continued. "Your victory in the melee restored the first, outweighed the second, and improved the third. Taking into account your age, it did rather more than that."
I said nothing.
"The court will remember the boy who beat Bronze Yohn longer than it will remember which fool dropped from the saddle in the fifth tilt," he said. "That is to your credit. And to the House's profit."
"I am glad to have served both." I inclined my head.
"Yes," he said. "You did."
He shifted then, setting the matter of the tourney aside with the same economy he gave to all things once they were finished.
"Now to the uglier part of it." he said, a corner of his mouth twitching downwards slightly.
I said nothing.
"I watched the queen yesterday," he said. "I watched the prince as well. I also watched the king watching you. It is not a favorable arrangement."
"No, my lord." That undersells it, I thought.
"No," he agreed. "And it grows less favorable by the week."
He leaned back a fraction, eyes fixed upon me.
"I asked that Joffrey be fostered away from court before this. The request was refused." he said.
That caught my attention, though I did not show it too much.
"By the queen?" I asked.
"By the king, in the end. By both, in practice." His jaw hardened slightly. "Cersei will not let the boy out of reach, and Robert lacks the patience to do what should have been done years ago."
He let the silence hang.
"I am not blind to the prince's shortcomings," he said at last, more flatly than bitterly. "The boy gives little honor to his House at present. He is vain, ill-governed, too quick to spite, and too used to being indulged. Yet he bears our blood, and he is like to be king. That is a fact more important than his defects, however irritating those defects may be."
I kept my face still.
"At present," he went on, "your position here is complicated by the queen's temper, the prince's resentment, and the king's increasingly open favor. I have already spoken to Cersei. She heard me. That does not mean she will obey me."
I nearly smiled at that, but thought better of it.
"The cleanest solution would be your removal from the king's household," he said. "But Robert will not have it now. Not after the yard. Not after the tourney. He has taken too marked a liking to you, and the more he displays it, the more your presence pricks both mother and son."
He tapped one finger lightly upon the arm of his chair.
"That leaves only management." he said.
"I understand." I replied, pursing my lips slightly.
That snake will be the death of me, I thought.
"Do you?" His voice did not rise, but the question had weight in it. "Then understand this as well: your skill with a blade and hammer has purchased you notice. Notice is not safety. It is exposure."
"I know that, my lord." I said.
"Know it better." he replied, sharply.
I inclined my head.
He went on. "You have been too free with the prince."
That is not wholly wrong, I thought, suppressing a smile.
"He provokes plain speech," I said, shrugging.
"The prince provokes many things," Tywin replied. "That does not make all of them wise. You are to mind your behavior with the queen more carefully from this point forward. Less wit. Less correction. Less visible contempt, however well-earned."
His eyes hardened. "You need not like her. You need only survive her."
That, if anything, sounded more like him.
"I understand." I said, carefully.
"I trust that you do." He was silent for a moment, then added, "Because I have plans for you, Arthas."
There it was, I thought.
He did not elaborate at once. That too, was deliberate. Tywin had always understood the value of making a man lean slightly toward the next word.
"You have shown yourself useful in ways I expected and in a few I did not," he said at last. "Useful men are invested in. They are not squandered on palace spite, nor left to die because a queen cannot master her own irritations."
I held his gaze.
"So," he said, his voice quiet now, "mind yourself. Be respectful where respect costs you little. Be cautious where boldness gains you nothing. And do not die before my intentions for you have had time to ripen."
That was as close as Tywin Lannister came to concern.
I bowed my head. "No, my lord."
"Good."
He rose then, and I did the same.
"You have your father's steadiness," he said. "That may save you."
Then his eyes met mine again. "The rest of you is mine to improve."
He gave the barest nod toward the door.
"I leave for Casterly Rock within the day," he said. "The queen and her children ride west with my household. The distance may grant you a little breathing room. Use it well. You will not have it for long."
"My Lord," I replied.
I bowed and took my leave, his words following me out of the chamber.
The training yard, The Red Keep, King's Landing, The Crownlands, 298 AC
"Come on, Shett." I mocked, taking the thrust on my greatsword. I turned the strike then kicked out with my leg, sending the old knight sprawling. "I remember you boasting of that sword-arm."
I went to him and offered my hand, hauling him back to his feet. He spat once on the ground and wiped his mouth with the back of his gauntlet.
"Aye, Cub. But there's no room left for boasting with you about now," he said, slapping my back. "Not after yesterday. Seven hells, half the castle's still talking of the melee."
I snorted. "Half the castle will gossip over anything that makes a stir."
"Aye, but this ain't no gossip," Donnel said. "You put Bronze Yohn on his ass in front of the king, boy. Men talk about such things till the day they die."
I turned, expecting Santagar to send my next opponent forward, and instead found Ser Barristan Selmy striding toward me through the dust, white armor bright beneath the morning sun. His helm was off, tucked beneath one arm, and there was no shield with him. One of the squires, quick enough to see what that meant, broke for the armory at once.
The yard started to shift around us.
Not because I was standing there. I had been standing there all bloody morning. It was Ser Barristan that did it. Men stopped what they were doing. Squires began drifting closer. A pair of household guards at the far wall turned to look. Even the boys who had been hacking at one another with tourney wasters lowered their blades and started staring.
The muttering followed soon after.
"He's come for the boy."
"After yesterday? Why wouldn't he?"
"That's the one from the melee."
"The cub who put down Royce."
"And Thoros."
"Too fucking young for that."
"Too young, aye. Still did it."
"Gods, Selmy means to test him."
Ser Barristan either did not hear them or chose not to care. His face was calm, but there was something in it that looked near enough to interest.
"Sword!" Ser Barristan called, dragging me out of my reverie.
The squire came hurrying back with a blunted sword and shield in his arms. Barristan refused the shield with a small motion of his hand and took instead a bastard sword fit for one hand or two. Then he inclined his head toward Ser Donnel Shett.
"Ser Barristan," Donnel said, laying a hand over his chest. "Teach the cub some manners, if you please."
Barristan laughed. "I shall endeavour to do rather more than that," he said. "Ser Shett."
Then he turned to me. There was something about the white of his armor, the old ease of the man, and the way he stood with a blade in hand that stirred a memory at once.
"Too high, Arthas" said Uther. "Your hands are climbing. Drop them and let the weight do the work."
We were standing in the old training yard hitting strawmen. I held my greathammer in a two-handed grip while Uther was instructing me in the way one could do the most damage with such a weapon.
"There. Better. A hammer is no court blade, Arthas. Do not fight it. Govern it. Turn the strike at the last instant and pivot with your whole body. Hips, shoulders, back, feet, everything you have. The Light may bless the blow, but it is still your body that must carry it home."
I reset my footing, drew breath, and stepped into the swing as he had taught me. At the last moment I turned the head of the weapon and let my weight follow through. The hammer crashed into the strawman and tore it from its stake, sending it tumbling backward into the dirt.
"Good. Better." Uther grunted, satisfied, coming towards me.
"We would make a paladin of you yet, boy," he said clapping my back, mouth twitching beneath his beard.
"I've taken to watching you in the yard, Young Lion," Ser Barristan said, pulling me back into the morning. "And yesterday gave the whole castle enough to chatter over. I thought it time I take your measure for myself."
I bowed my head. "Ser Barristan."
"The melee has set men talking of your hammer-work," he went on. "I'd see what truth there is in the rest of you. Your sword-arm in particular."
"That's more than fair," I said. "I'd be honored."
Around us, the ring had widened. Tyrek had worked his way near the front and was looking between me and Ser Barristan. I could see him looking between the both of us with an enraptured expression. He caught my eye and made a cheering move. I winked at him.
I finally faced Ser Barristan again. He was standing in a ready guard with a raised eyebrow.
I merely shrugged and prepared myself.
His first couple of strikes were only faints. He was taking my measure, reading how I moved, how I answered, where my weight sat. I let him have some of that while I took his in turn.
The man could move.
There was almost no waste in him. No grand flourish, no show. Every motion fed the next one. He did not fight like young men fought. He fought like a man who had been working the blade so much it had become second to breathing.
On his sixth probe, I took the strike on the flat of my sword and pivoted. My greatsword came around in a tight arc, looking to catch him in the back, but he moved around the strike. His next thrust almost caught me in the shoulder.
I jumped back and reset my stance. Ser Barristan was watching me, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
My body exploded into movement. I came at him with a powerful overhead feint, which I changed at the last minute to a thrust.
The old man twisted in place, letting my thrust glance and flow off his white armor, making a creaking sound as the blunted edge passed along the armor. I pushed past him and turned around into a waist-sweep that he took on his blade, guiding the strike over him.
I knew he had an opening there, but he didn't take it. Instead he let me reset my stance, while nodding.
"Your movement's good," he said. "Very good for a boy your age."
I scoffed. "With respect, Ser Barristan, praise won't help me. You've been going easy."
"Have I?" he said, circling. "Many grown men in this yard would be hard-pressed to stop six probes from me. More would never have touched my armor at all."
His next thrust came in fast. I had time to bring my greatsword around and turn it, before he withdrew the strike and aimed lower. I twisted my body, while lashing out with the sword, making him take a step back.
I followed him, greatsword pointed low, aiming a low slash at his body. He parried, turning my blade, but I anticipated the move. I pivoted tightly and brought the blade around in a sharp arc, almost taking him at the knees.
The strike clipped his left knee, making him stumble.
His gaze sharpened and posture changed.
My next slash came low again, but he turned the blade, this time with a speed that bellied his build. After guiding my momentum, he had enough time to pull his blade and aim a thrust at the inside of my right elbow. The blow convulsed my hand, and the grip on my sword loosened.
My greatsword went flying.
Before I could even curse, he kicked me hard in the side and dumped me in the dust.
The ring around us broke into noise.
Some laughed. Some swore. Somebody shouted, "Still better than half the bloody yard!" and somebody else answered, "Aye, but Selmy's not half the yard, is he?"
"I did promise Ser Shett I would teach you some manners, young Lion," laughed Barristan, approaching me.
I groaned, pushing myself up on one elbow.
"A lesson well learned, Ser," I replied, taking his offered hand. "I'll not be challenging your place in the White Book today."
That won a real laugh from a few of the men watching.
"Nonsense," Ser Barristan said. "I've your measure now, and I find I'm interested. You've got reach, strength, and more patience than most boys who win a melee before the court. If you're willing, I'd have you in the yard with me from time to time."
"It would be an honor," I said, and meant it.
'We would make a knight of you yet, boy" he said, clapping my back.
I smiled at him, feeling tears form at the edge of my eyes. Ser Barristan's eyes widened and he smiled at me oddly.
He glanced around at the ring of men then, at the squires muttering and the guards whispering and the boys still talking about the melee as though it had happened an hour ago instead of yesterday.
"You gave them something worth watching," he said. "That's plain enough. Best make certain you become more than one good day's gossip."
Before I could answer, a runner came stumbling into the yard from the far gate. I could hear bells tolling in the distance. The sounds stirred a memory of…
Bells tolling while I was entering the capital of Lordaeron. Cold sat on my shoulders like a mantle and worked its way inward, radiating from the sword at my hip until it seemed to live in my marrow. Frostmourne hung there in its scabbard, and even sheathed it was never still. I could feel it in me always, an endless quiet corruption, sinking hooks into thought, memory, soul. Beneath the bells I could hear the whispers as well, soft and constant, crowding the edges of my mind like hands at a barred door.
To my sides, my escorts, Falric and Marwyn walked along with stiff, measured paces.
"The Prince!"
"He has returned"
"The Light blesses us!"
"The Light bless you, Prince of Lordaeron!"
They cried down from above as flowers rained from the windows and balconies, white and red rose petals turning slowly through the air.
I lifted one hand and caught a petal in my gauntlet.
It was soft for less than a heartbeat.
Then the cold took it. I felt it stiffen, heard the faint dry creak as my fingers closed. When I opened my hand again, the petal lay broken and rimed with …"
"The Hand is dead, milords," the runner said, sobering me from my thoughts.
No one said a thing. The bells could be heard in the distance, making the scene eerie.
"The Hand of the King is dead?" asked Ser Barristan Selmy.
"Aye, milord. The King bids Ser Barristan Selmy and his Grace's Squires attend him at once" the runner replied, looking ready to bolt.
Ser Barristan nodded. "Then we go."
"Tyrek!" I barked. There was a pause, then Tyrek came running from the far side, still flushed from drinking water.
"What?" he said. "I thought we were taking a break,"
"The Hand is dead," I said.
All the color went out of his face.
"Come on," I told him. "The King wants us."
The Red Keep, King's Landing, The Crownlands, 298 AC
I could still hear the bells tolling as we left the yard behind.
Ser Barristan was moving ahead, white cloak stirring behind him, while me and Tyrek were following close. The Red Keep had changed face at the drop of a coin. Men who had been laughing in the yard stood sober in the passages now. Servants flattened themselves against the walls and lowered their eyes. Doors opened and shut with sudden haste.
Old men die. Blood remains.
Jon Arryn had been an old man, but not one to strike me as sickly or close to death. He had always seemed controlled, stony, like a hawk. I was supposed to meet him tonight, our first meeting after the Tourney. Now, that would never come to pass.
My mind circled back. Cersei.
Did she kill the Lord Hand? The timing stank of it. That was the trouble. It fit too neatly and yet almost too neatly to be believable. Two days after sharp words and accusations? Even for her, that was bold to the point of foolishness. Cersei was vain, proud and spiteful, and much too often ruled by her own resentments, but she was not stupid. If she had truly had Jon Arryn killed, then either she had grown careless beyond reason, or power had finally rotted her brain out.
Tyrek coughed, asking the very question I was contemplating. "Do you think he was murdered?"
Barristan did not even turn his head. "Hold your tongue."
I shot Tyrek a look and raised an eyebrow. He scowled back at me and shrugged.
We turned into the long gallery that led toward the Tower of the Hand. The air still smelled of damp stone, old wax and smoke. Two guard at the stair stopped talking when they saw us and stepped aside at once.
Then a soft voice floated from the mouth of a side passage.
"How swiftly joy gives way to sorrow."
A rotund man stepped into the torchlight with his hands tucked into his sleeves. Varys. His face was was powdered and I could smell perfume riding before him. He looked like he had been standing there for some time, waiting for us.
"Ser Barristan," he said, bowing his head. "My lords. What a grievous day."
Barristan's mouth tightened. "The King has sent for us."
"Of course," Varys murmured. "And rightly. Poor Lord Jon."
His eyes came to me then, soft, damp, unreadable, dead like an eels.
"The castle was loud with your name yesterday, my lord Arthas," he said. "Today it whispers another. Such is the way of these places."
I said nothing, looking at him.
Varys gave a small, sympathetic sigh. "One might almost pity men who come to court thinking merit travels in a straight line. It so rarely does."
Tyrek glanced at me. Barristan's face remained stony.
"The king is waiting," Barristan said.
"Yes, and grief should not be delayed," said Varys. He moved half a step aside, then added in the same soft voice, "Only…if I may be forgiven the liberty, there are moments when being much admired is not the same blessing it was the day before."
I stiffened and looked at him closely.
He smiled faintly, sadly. "A bright flame warms. It also draws eyes. And not every eye is kindly."
"Then a man should learn where to stand." I replied, carefully.
"Or when not to shine too brightly," Varys replied. "Though that lesson is usually learned late, and at cost."
Barristan had had enough. "My lord."
Varys bowed his head at once, as if rebuked. "Forgive me. I would not keep you from His Grace. Lord Jon's passing will grieve the realm. It will also… alter the weather."
That was one way to put it, I thought. Still, the Spider made sense, if only in his ominous way.
As we moved past him, he added, almost gently, "Take care, my lord Arthas."
"Lord Varys," I said, nodding to him once.
The Spider was taking my measure. Or sizing me up for the butcher's block. Neither option was conducive for my well-being.
We left him there in the gallery with the bells still being heard outside the Red Keep, but my mind kept returning to Cersei.
Had she done it?
The Great Sept of Baelor, King's Landing, The Crownlands, 298 AC
"...and may the Father judge him justly," a man intoned, a pale hand spread over Jon Arryn's breast.
They had laid him in the Sept of Baelor, beneath a wash of candlelight and crystal. The entire place smelled of incense, hot wax, damp wool and too many bodies trying to look solemn.
I stood a little back from the bier with Tyrek near my shoulder and watched the whole miserable farce unfold.
Ser Barristan had taken his place closer to the king, white cloak hanging still as milk in the candlelight. Robert stood broad and heavy in mourning black near the bier, rigid with grief and discomfort alike, his jaw working while he breathed through his nose.
Lord Renly stood a little off to one side in dark green and sable, handsome as ever. There was no jest in him now. Grand Maester Pycelle lingered near the foot of the bier, bent beneath his chains and beard, his hands folded into his sleeves, looking grave, though it came out as stupid. Varys stood farther back in soft slippers and darker silk, powdered and perfumed even here, his round face composed into sorrow so perfect it might have been painted on. Littlefinger was there as well, lean and neat and watchful, his mouth almost smiling until he remembered where he stood and thought better of it.
Behind them stood lesser men of the court and household: stewards, knights, a few lordlings, men who had eaten Jon Arryn's bread or bent beneath his rule and now came to look pious over what remained of him. Gold cloaks held the edges of the crowd. A pair of silent sisters moved like ghosts between the candles. All the proper pieces were in place.
All but the missing ones.
The septon at the front was a swollen thing in silk and crystal, wet-lipped and red-cheeked, with hands soft enough to shame a maiden. Every few words he paused to breathe through his pig-mouth or wet his lips, and every pause made me want to strike him. The man looked as though he ate enough in a day to feed ten families in Flea Bottom. Maybe twelve. Yet here he was, speaking of mercy, over a dead lord, while half the city went hungry under the hill.
I let my eyes drift away from him before I did something foolish.
Jon Arryn looked old. That was the first and last truth of him now. Old, drained, narrowed down into stillness. I had seen dead men on roads, in camps, in halls, in fields churned black with blood and in the end, witnessed them rise once more. This was cleaner. Cleaner and worse.
Lysa Arryn was not here.
Stannis Baratheon was not here.
Why was that? I asked myself.
A widow might take her son and flee to her mountain nest. The only tether Lysa Arryn had to King's Landing was her husband, the Lord Hand. Why would she dally once that thread was cut, and put her and her son's life in danger. But Stannis? Brother to the king. Master of ships. The sort of hard, joyless bastard who would sooner choke on courtesy than neglect it. Yet he was gone too. Had left the city not long after Jon Arryn died, if the talk from the servants was worth anything.
The fat septon droned on, breaking me from my thoughts again.
"The Father judge him. The Warrior defend him. The Mother have mercy."
Mercy, indeed, I thought, eyes lifting to the crystal lamps.
That was when the thought took hold of me properly.
The Seven.
I had listened to their prayers for years now. Heard septons name Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, Stranger, each in turn, as if the divine could be portioned like a lord's supper and passed from hand to hand.
Pieces. Masks. A religion cut into household portions so even fools could find the right prayer for the right moment.
But the crystal above Jon Arryn's body caught the candles strangely. One flame. Seven glints.
That made me contemplate it more.
In my own world the Holy Light had never been a man on a throne, nor a mother, nor a smith, nor any single face that could be carved in wood and prayed at. It had been a current. Order. Grace, if earned and answered rightly. Men taught it in different ways, but the bones of it remained: respect, tenacity, compassion. See the life before you. Endure. Serve. Govern strength before you loose it.
Pure light blinded. Broken through crystal, it could be borne.
That thought would not leave me.
What if the Seven were not seven gods at all? What if they were seven mercies? One greater Light passed through the diamond of mortal understanding and split into facets men could look at without burning their eyes out. The Father as justice. The Mother as compassion. The Warrior as tenacity under trial. The Smith as labor and the making whole of broken things. The Maiden as innocence worth defending. The Crone as wisdom enough to use power without becoming its bitch. The Stranger...
The fat septon slobbered on, interrupting my thoughts again. My mouth twitched in spite of myself.
A pig in crystal could still grunt holiness, it seemed.
Farther off, down one of the side aisles, I spotted Septon Hullen watching the room instead of the dead man. When his eyes crossed mine, his mouth tightened as though he had tasted something sour.
I sneered back and looked away.
My gaze returned to Jon Arryn.
Healing had once made sense to me. Not because it was easy, but because it was clean. A wound. A hand. The Light moving through flesh and pain and making order out of chaos. Blood slowed. Bone knit. Fever broke. Breath steadied. That was a mercy I could understand.
Resurrection was a complicated matter.
Not impossible. But more draining. Priests had called men back. Paladins too. Not from rot and old graves and long-gone souls. But the ones on the edge. From the first sip of the black abyss, when they body had not yet wholly forgotten itself. It could be done. I had seen it done. I had done it in turn.
But, could it be done here? I thought.
If I walked up to Jon Arryn now, laid my hand on that cold old chest and reached deeply, would anything answer me back? Would the old engine start? Would breath come back? Eyes open? Voice return? Holy Light enveloping him?
Or had too much gone out of this world for that?
That was the thing. The magic here felt muted. Not gone. Not dead. Muted. Even the warmth I had felt in the arena had been a mere facsimile of the boiling heat I had felt in my old life. In my world you could feel it in the marrow of things if you had the sense for it. Priests, paladins, shamans, mages, all different hands touching different rivers, but they were all going into the same ocean. Here it all felt muffled. Buried under stone, ash, old fear and forgetting.
Maester Creylen had said as much, in his dry way. Men of learning in this world believed magic had thinned. Some traced it to the Doom. Some to the death of dragons. Others, if the older tales were to be believed, to older butcheries still: the weirwoods cut down in the south, the children of the forest hunted and driven off, the old powers bled out of the land one grove at a time. The First Men had maimed the old world. The Andals and their Faith had taken axes to what remained. Then the dragons died, and that seemed to be the last nail in the coffin. Or so the books wanted it. Or so the maesters did.
Maybe they were right. Or maybe they were blind.
Mages in my old world would have laughed at the thought that power could simply vanish. Then again, mages in my old world had spent half their lives pretending arcane catastrophe was an acceptable tuition fee for curiosity. A mage would tell you magic never died. Only changed hands. Or changed price.
That made me uneasy.
Because I had heard of a god in this world who demanded a steeper price.
R'hllor. Lord of Light. A title that should have comforted me but did not.
I had heard enough of his priests from sailors, merchants, and whatever half-drunk bastard in Lannisport wanted to sound smart over a cup of ale. Fire. Visions. Sacrifice. Certainty. Too much of all four. Some of them could heal, if the tales were true. Some could see things in flame. Some could even haul a man back from the dead with a prayer and a kiss.
Was that the same Light?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Their rites stank of blood and theater. Burning men and calling it holiness. Feeding flame and naming it wisdom. That sat ill with me.
Then again, I could not pretend my own Light had ever come to me clean of blood.
We had butchered orcs by the thousands with the Light's name on our lips. Not beasts. Not cattle. Orcs. Thinking creatures. Speaking creatures. Men had penned them in camps across southern Lordaeron like animals after the war, put paladins on the walls, and called it order. I had lived in that world and never thought hard enough about what that meant. The Horde had burned towns and butchered whole families, true enough. But once the fighting was done, we put the survivors behind fences and watched them rot. The camps were cleaner than slaughter, true, but that did not make them clean.
And it had not stopped there.I had cut down human brigands. Human cultists. Human traitors. And in Stratholme…
The square stank of smoke, blood, and spoiled grain.
Our horses were lathered, our men worse: Lordaeron blue and silver muddied, dented, and streaked with black ghoul blood.
A few sat where they had dropped, shields on their knees, too tired to curse.
Then I heard the hoofbeats.
Uther rode in at the head of more battered men, white cloaks grey with dust, warhammer at his side, calm as a wall.
He took in the wounded, the dead, the townsfolk peering from shuttered windows, and then he looked at me.
"Glad you could make it, Uther." I remember sneering.
"Watch your tone with me, boy. You may be the prince, but I'm still your superior as a paladin!" he ground out.
"As if I could forget. Listen, Uther, there's something about the plague you ….
No. No more, I thought, screwing my eyes shut.
I had cut down my own people in the streets while the fires climbed and the blood ran thick between the stones. Men. Women. Children. Grain-fed and plague-marked and doomed, perhaps. Still human when Light's Vengeance shattered them. The Light had not abandoned me for that. It had answered. Or seemed to.
That was the harder truth to swallow.
Perhaps the Light itself was purer than the forms men gave it. Perhaps priests and paladins and red devotees and septons all dragged it through their own fears and doctrines and called the result holy enough. Perhaps the answer was divine and the vessel was the corruption.
The fat septon lifted both hands. Rings flashed. The prayer was ending.
Good, I thought.
When the final blessing was done, Robert stepped forward and laid one hand on the dead man's breast. He stood there only a moment, jaw clenched, then turned sharply and strode away.
Barristan followed. The others as well.
"Come on," Tyrek whispered from my left.
"In a moment." I replied.
He nodded and withdrew.
The crystal lights trembled above Jon Arryn's bier. Candle smoke curled up slow as thought.
Jon Arryn lay still beneath the sevenfold light.
At last I bowed my head, turned from the bier, and followed the king out.
Maegor's Holdfast, The Red Keep, The Crownlands, 298 AC
The crack of King Robert's fist on the oak table tore me out of my thoughts.
"Say something, damn you," the king growled.
I glanced around the room at that.
It was one of the smaller withdrawing chambers off the royal apartments in Maegor's Holdfast, though "small" meant there was room enough to quarter a lesser lord's whole family. The walls were hung in dark red wool that drank the light. Two braziers burned too hot, turning the air thick with smoke and old charcoal. A cup of wine sat near Robert's hand, barely touched.
I raised my eyebrow at that.
Robert stood at the table in mourning black, broad as a bull and about as fit as a pig. The cloth sat badly on him. Grief sat on him worse. His eyes were bloodshot. His beard looked rougher than usual. Sweat matted his forehead, making his hair cling.
Ser Barristan stood to one side, stiff as a pike. Renly was by the hearth in dark green and sable, handsome and strained. Grand Maester Pycelle sat heavy in his chair with his beard spread over his chest like dirty wool, chains glinting in the firelight and a look bordering on senility. Varys, the Spider, stood farther back in plum silk with his hands folded into his sleeves, soft and round and harmless looking in the way only a rotund eunuch could manage. Littlefinger had taken the wall by the shuttered window, one shoulder set against the stone, hand resting near his belt as if he had strolled in a whore-house by chance.
Flesh-peddler, I thought again.
Tyrek and I stood behind them all, close enough to hear.
Robert hit the table again, softer this time. "Seven hells," he said. "Have you all gone stupid?"
"No, Your Grace," Pycelle said at once, bumbling in his imbecility. "We-we only grieve w-with…"
Robert shot him a dark look. "Don't. Don't start with that."
The old man folded in on himself at that.
Robert dragged a hand through his beard and stared at the cups on the table. "Jon would've said something useful by now," he muttered. "Or something dry enough to make me want to hit him. Same thing, mostly."
The room was silent.
The king laughed once. It sounded wrong. "Gods, I can still see him at the Eyrie. Ned all long face and duty, and Jon trying to make a lord of him one bite at a time, while I put an orange square in Dacks's face at breakfast and got the whole hall into a food fight." His mouth twitched. "Jon fined me for it. Made me eat in silence for two days. Said a future lord should know the difference between a table and a battlement."
Renly smiled faintly at that. Barristan did not, but some of the stone left his face.
Robert leaned harder on the table. "He raised me. Him and the old mountain air. Taught me to sit a horse properly, to curse with precision, to hold a hall, to listen to men before deciding which of them to knock on his arse. And when Aerys sent for my head and Ned's besides, Jon did not send us down in chains. He called his banners." He looked up then, "He chose us. Chose us and made a war of it."
Jon Arryn was gone. The king was speaking like a son missing the last man who had ever really fathered him. That was dangerous, I thought. A grieving king with no hand on the tiller. A realm unmoored.
The King shook his head slowly.
"Lord Jon was a good Hand," Barristan said.
Robert looked at him. "A good Hand?" He gave a short, ugly bark of a laugh. "He was ten Hands. He was the only bastard in this city who could tell me no and leave the room with his teeth." His gaze shifted, moving over Renly, Pycelle, Varys, Littlefinger, even us at the back. "He held this realm together with parchment, patience, and old bones. And he even talked me into marrying her."
That got a smile from Littlefinger. Renly looked down at the hearth.
Robert's mouth curled. "Aye. Jon's notion. Bind the lions close, he said. Keep Tywin fed with honors and marriages and he'll stay useful. Might've been his worst piece of counsel." He paused, glancing at me and Tyrek. "Still better than most I've had since."
Pycelle folded his hands. "His lordship ever sought stability, Your Grace."
"Stability," Robert said. "That's a pretty word for swallowing shit."
That almost made me smile. Almost.
Varys lowered his eyes. "The realm will feel Lord Jon's loss keenly."
Renly spoke then, turning towards the King. "Robert," he said, careful as a man crossing the ice, "the realm will also need…"
"Aye," Robert snapped, slapping a meaty hand on the table. "There it is."
He pushed himself upright and started pacing, like a caged animal. "Jon's dead. Dead. And you're all right, damn you. The hole he left is there wether I like it or not."
The bumbling fool Pycelle cleared his throat. "The office of the Hand cannot remain vacant for long, You Grace. Continuity must be…"
"Continuity be fucked, old man." Robert replied, with an icy gaze.
That shut the old man up.
"No. I know who I want," Robert said, planting both hands on the table again.
No one spoke.
"Ned." he said at last.
Everyone in the room sat still. Renly looked up at once. Pycelle blinked. Varys did not move at all. Littlefinger mouth curved for a moment, before he schooled it.
Interesting, I thought.
"He should've come south with me years ago. He's the only hard-headed bastard left I trust not to lick shit off my plate and call it supper." the King said.
Pycelle found his courage again, the bumbling old fool. "Y-your Grace, what about your b-brother, Lord Stannis…"
"Stannis wanted the chain. He was none too shy about it. I refused him. The realm's dour enough without putting him over it," the King ground out.
There was silence after that. I could hear Robert's breath sawing. I glanced around and caught Lord Varys's gaze narrowing, just for a heartbeat, before the eunuch smoothed his face back into sorrow.
So that was Stannis's grievance, I thought. He had expected to be named Hand by right of blood and age, and Robert had looked straight past him. I could see why the slight would fester. Stannis did not strike me as a man who let such things go.
Varys had also noticed that. I felt like him and Littlefinger were playing a game unknown to the rest of us.
Robert dragged a hand through his beard and planted both fists on the table once more. "Jon's gone," he said. "Stannis is Stannis. Renly's a silk cloak with a grin in it, and the rest of you are councillors."
Renly gave him a wounded look. "You do know how to flatter a man in grief, brother."
"If I wanted to flatter you, I'd call you useful." Robert did not even look at him. His eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the table now, already on a road only he could see. "No. I want Ned."
The King was looking around the room now, looking younger and haler after making his choice.
"We ride for Winterfell."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well, here is our interlude from the north. I initially contemplated releasing this before the first Chapter, like in asoiaf, but I thought it wouldn't have landed as a hook. Now that we know Arthas a bit and the situation in King's Landing, I feel like it's a good way to set up the scene for what's to come. I did a quick rewrite of it, but I feel like it works well now.
Although, for the ASOIAF folks, I think you'll have to google a bit after this scene to understand what's happening exactly. For the Warcraft folks, I'm curious what you think and if you recognize anything?
As always, I eagerly await any comments regarding the story and constructive criticism regarding writing!
Also, I post locations and dates for a reason. I use the asoiaf interactive map, btw, even though it has some mistakes, it's still the easiest/most clear to use.
"A hard land breeds hard men, but winter breeds worse."
The Northern Frostfangs, North of Thenn Valley, The True North, 297 AC
POV: Gerrik, son of Gerr
Night was already falling when they made camp.
It was not a real camp, thought Gerrik. Just a small fire scraped together in the frozen ground, ten men in bronze and boiled leather crouched around it.
They had come south out of the higher Frostfangs that morning, after hunting cave folk who had stolen three goats and a girl from a lesser tribe owing tribute into the valley. They had found the bones from the goat, a broken spear and old tracks crossing north towards a stand of dead pines. Nothing else.
Gerrik, son of Gerr, crouched low by the fire and worked grease into the leather binding of his spear. The point was bronze, leaf-shaped and freshly wrought. Good valley bronze, he thought. Better than the patched iron and bone every raider carried beyond the Wall. Better than the bare feet and stone-headed hatchets of those inbred Hornfoots. Much better than the disgusting filth-rags of cave men.
Better than most things north of the Wall, which was the way of Thenn.
Gerrik looked across the fire to Orem and Varn. Both of them looked wrong.
Not weak, thought Gerrik. Just wrong.
Orem had been sweating the entire day. Now, he had a wet shine to his skin, even though the air was biting hard enough to turn fingers black. Varn was swallowing like a man trying not to gag. It reminded Gerrik of fish on land, before they were gutted. When the man turned his head to spit, Gerrik saw the veins in his neck standing out black under the skin.
Gerrik thought about that, then.
This disease, coming down from the Lands of Always Winter, hitting the northern tribes first, going slowly through them. It had a strange feel to it.
If it had been something like belly flux, half the war-band would have been shitting themselves dry by now. If it had been bad meat, all of them would have been pissing from both ends. If it had been camp-fever or lung-rot, it would have run through the settlements like cold through a broken hut. But this plague affected whom it wanted and passed over the rest. Two men in ten. One woman in twelve. A boy dead in three days, while his family slept beside him.
That was the thing that frightened the healers. Aye, it looked disgusting, with the blackened veins and the sweat and the vacant gaze. But no other disease that looked like this didn't also run through your entire tribe in a sennight.
The old women in the valley had boiled roots till the huts stank bitter for miles. The greybeards had smoked pine and yew and muttered to the old gods till their throats went raw. One healer believed it came from foul water. Another one swore it came from breath. A third said it was neither of those, else half of the Thenn would be dead. That was the trouble, Gerrik thought. No one knew what carried it and no one knew why it took one man and passed the next.
And the oddest part was the dead. At the start of it all, they had left the bodies unwatched after they had been claimed, when preparing them for burning. By first light, they were gone without a mark. If they were watched, the corpse would bloat, stink and spoil, only much slower.
Have the old gods turned their faces from us? Has winter come at last to drag us down into the cold dark? he thought.
Hurr, who was old enough to have gone grey in the beard and brow, hacked a strip off the hare wth his belt knife and tossed it towards the fire. "Cave-rats run quicker than they used to," he grumbled, interrupting Gerrik's thoughts. "Old Gods, Gerrik, you look like you just took a swig of piss, man."
Gerrik turned to him and scowled.
"They smell us sooner," said Bren, interrupting the exchange. He was broad-shouldered and bald under a bronze half-helm. "Ten fucking men in the woods and two of them sweating sickness. I'd smell us too."
Varn spat. "Say sweating again and I'll throw you in the fire, cunt,"
"You'll have to stand first," Bren snorted.
That won a few grunts.
Good, Gerrik thought. A man who could still mock was not dead yet.
Toregg, the youngest of them, was cutting willow switches with his knife to spit the hare. "Might've been Hornfoots took the girl," he said. "Cave folk don't like stealing what screams."
"Hornfoots steal anything with legs," Hurr said. "If a man wants to keep what's his, he puts bronze on and grows a spine."
"Or he lives in Thenn," said Bren.
That won even more grunts. And a few agreements.
Always Thenn.
The valley. The hot springs. The bronze forges. The old speech. Magnar's law. Those crow cunts called them free folk because they had no better word for anything north of the Wall. Gerrik spat at that. Free folk? Hornfoots would blacken their soles and flee from snow. Cave men huddled in holes and fought over marrow bones. Ice-river clans ate men when winter got too hard. The Frozen Shore lot rode walrus-bone chariots behind teams of dogs and thought it clever. Thenn was different. Thenn had order. Thenn had law. Thenn had Magnar.
"The crow-singer's at it again," said Orem suddenly.
No one asked who. They all knew.
"Mance?" Bren snorted and tossed a pinecone into the fire. "Let him sing at the cave mouths, then. Songs suit rats."
Toregg grinned. "They say he's calling himself King beyond the Wall."
"Cunts say many things," Hurr said.
"They say he wears a crow's cloak stitched with red silk like some woman's favor," Toregg went on, ignoring Hurr.
"That sounds right enough," replied Bren. "A crow with pretty rags and a cunt's tongue."
Gerrik said nothing, but thought of Mance. He had heard the tale too. Everyone had. A black brother taken in as a boy. A crow raised on the wall. Some called him half-breed, if the stories were true. Half-crow, half-wildling. Then he found a cunt who had mended his torn black cloak with scarlet silk from some shipwreck, who he had liked too much to go back to his vows. Men laughed when they spoke about it. A crow coming down for a cunt.
Bren spat into the fire. "King. Aye. King of what? Hornfoots? Cave-rats? Snow-mad walrus men? Let him come. Let him ask the Magnar for a crown and see if he keeps his ears."
The camp roared with laughter. Even Orem smiled, though he looked even worse than before.
"A southron-raised crow means to rule the real north," Hurr ground out. "That's fool talk."
"The Magnar'll crush him," said Toregg.
"The Magnar crushes what stands before him," Bren replied, banging a fist on his breastplate. "That's why he's Magnar of Thenn."
Always Thenn, agreed Gerrik proudly.
Then he glanced at every man in the camp. The fire painted them all in copper and black. Hard faces. Shaved heads. Bronze collars and scale and rings. Scars adorned their faces and the places where furs and armor didn't cover. Men of the valley. Men who should die before bending to some black-cloaked cunt from the Wall.
"Let him gather Hornfoots," Gerrik said at last. "Let him gather cave men and ice-eaters and every frozen cunt who thinks shouting makes a king. He can have them all. But if he comes into the valley naming himself King over Thenn, we're going to open him from throat to cock and leave what spills for the crew."
That won real laughter around the fire.
Hurr pointed his knife at him. "Finally someone speaks sense."
Orem coughed then. Gerrik turned to him. The man was doubled over, intense spasms wracking his entire frame. At the end, he spat something dark into the pine needles.
The laughter died.
Varn looked at the spit, shivered and looked away quickly.
Bren swore under his breath. "Still got that in you?"
"Still got your mother in me too," Orem rasped.
Brave enough, thought Gerrik. But it did not ease his mind. Not at all.
He rose and turned his head, listening. Something had changed. A little thing, maybe. Easy to miss for some cave-dweller. But he was Thenn.
Always Thenn.
"Gerrik?" Torreg asked, suddenly stiff.
He raised a hand, listening.
The night noises were still there. The sounds of the pine trees, a water far into the distance, then a branch cracked under weight.
The brush to their left rustled.
All ten men moved at once. They had been trained in the valley to always have discipline. Their bronze armour gleamed in the fire. They picked up their spears and held them up. Hurr was on one knee with his axe ready. Bren rose from his crouch slow and wide, with his blade low.
Toregg snatched the horn at his belt, but Gerrik's hand was on his wrist.
"Wait," said Gerrik. Something is wrong, he thought.
The rustling came again.
It didn't sound like deer. Nor shadowcat. Nor wolf. Animals moved with purpose. This had a dragging sound to it, snatching, a wet little sound, like meat being pulled through thorns.
"Cave men? You reckon they followed us?" whispered Toregg.
"Too bold," Hurr muttered, knuckles white around the axe shaft.
Then the first thing came out of the trees on all fours.
For a moment, Gerrik's mind rejected what he saw. It was man-shaped. The limbs were too long. The back was bent wrong. Its skin shone pale where the firelight caught it, tight over bones in places, hanging loose in others. Then the thing reared up and opened its mouth.
The mouth was too wide. Nothing like a man shouting. Wider still. The jaw was straining and splitting, showing black gums and long wet teeth slick with stringing spit. Its fingers ended in hooked nails thick as little knives. The thing shivered and convulsed, moving with a starving frenzy that made Gerrik's skin crawl.
"What the fuck…" Bren began, clutching his blade tighter.
Out of the treeline, more of them came. One was limping, shoulder hanging loose, but still running fast. One's face was half torn away so that you could see the cartilage gleaming wetly beneath the flesh. Another hissed through teeth too long for its mouth and dragged one leg behind it, toes raking furrows in the needles and snow. More spilled out from the pines in jerking motions, each of them pale and foul and wrong.
"Old Gods, save us," Hurr breathed.
"Wood-ghasts," said Toregg, voice gone thin.
"Ugly fucking cunts," another said.
"Shut up," Gerrik snarled. "Kill them."
The first thing exploded into motion and hit Orem before Gerrik's last word had left his mouth.
It slammed into him low and hard, clawing up at his bronze scales with a sound like knives dragged over clay-pots. Orem buried his spear in its chest till it met his hand. A man would have been stopped dead, then and there. The thing clambered farther, spear cutting through its guts, jaw distending, and bit through Orem's cheek to the teeth.
A shrill scream came from him.
Bren crashed into it from the side and chopped down with his bronze sword. The blow hit the neck-bone, dug in half an inch and got stuck. Black blood pumped over his hands. The thing's jaw kept working.
Then the entire place came apart.
One came at Hurr and took an axe to the face so hard that it's bone caved and one eye burst. The thing still had enough in it to rake it's claws down his forearm, exposing flesh, tendon and bone. Another hit Varn in the belly and both went down together in the fire, kicking sparks.
Gerrik exploded into action. He drove his spear into the throat of a thing and felt cartilage give way, then bone, then something worse, soft and slippery. It shrieked in a voice that sounded like wet leather tearing and clawed its way up the shaft anyway.
He swore, let go of the spear, snatched his seax from the waist and stepped in close.
Always Thenn, he thought.
He punched his blade under the things chin. Once. Twice. He smelled rot when the blood came out. Hot carrion. Meat turned sweet and sick.
He gagged.
Something struck his back hard enough to stagger him. He turned and saw Toregg on the ground with a pale thing atop him, its jaws working at the boy's throat. Toregg had both hands in its face, thumbs sunk to the last knuckle into its eyes. The thing only trashed harder, clawing through bronze rings and leat her alike, tearing strips of flesh and skin away with each wrench.
Gerrik stepped up and split its skull with his seax.
Bone burst. Grey-white matter sprayed his wrist and breastplate. Toregg kicked the body off him and made a sound like a child trying not to cry.
"Up, you little cunt!" roared Gerrik, hauling Toregg up to his feet. "Thenn die on their feet!"
On the other side of the fire, Bren had a thing hanging off his shield, claws sunk through the leather cover and into the wood beneath. He smashed the shield edge-first into a pine, crushing the thing's arm flat in a wet crack, then hacked down at its neck. Another one came in low and opened his calf to the bone with one drag of it's claws.
He bellowed and kept swinging.
Always Thenn, Gerrik thought grimly.
In the corner of his eye, he saw another Thenn get bowled over by one of the things, sprawling into the dirt. Before he had a chance, the thing moved like a spider, latching onto him, got both claws under his bronze collar, and tore. Blood jetted black-red over the fire.
Hurr buried his axe in that one's spine. Another leapt on his back before he could wrench it free and drove its fingers into the corner of his jaw. Gerrik saw teeth, cartilage, beard, blood, all come away in one rip.
The sounds were disgusting.
These weren't battle sounds. You couldn't hear any ring of steel or shouts for order. It was only flesh tearing. Choking. Bone cracking. The suck of feet in the blood soaked needles. Guts spilling. Teeth scraping armor, making you shiver.
Turning back to Bren, he saw him kneeling, sword up to the crossguard through the ribs of one. The disgusting thing folded around the blade, stretched his jaws, and vomited black filth all over his hands. Near Bren, another man took one through the gut, but it barely slowed it down. It reached him and hooked his legs, taking him to the ground.
Gerrik lunged to help and felt claws rake his side under the arm. The place where his bronze left a gap. Heat lanced through him. He slipped from the blow and dropped forward, hand flying to the wound. His hand came back red.
Too much fucking blood, he thought.
Turning around, he stabbed blindly. The seax punched through the eye, brain and back of the skull. The thing convulsed on top of him before collapsing.
For half a moment, all he could hear was his own breath sawing.
Then he noticed the dead things pulling back.
The ones that were still moving skittered to the edge of the firelight and turned together towards the trees. Gerrik could see blood dripping from their maws. Thenn blood. One dragged a ruined hand behind it, wrist smashed flat. Another's jaw hung crooked, held on by skin and sinew. They stood there twitching and waiting.
Every Thenn still alive looked the same way.
The fire was making it hard to see into the forest. Gerrik waited. They all waited.
"I split it's head," gurgled Bren from nearby. "...and still it walks."
Gerrik tried to rise and found he could not. His hand went to his side and this time he felt blood pumping through his fingers. One leg went numb. The world was beginning to close around the edge.
A figure stepped into the firelight and all of them went stiff. It's eyes burned blue on that pale face, bright like moonlight on deep ice, wrong in a way he didn't want to think about.
Gerrik felt his guts go colder than the high wind in the Frostfangs. An Other, he thought then. A white shadow. A true one out of the old tales. He had heard such tales all his life, by bad fires in winter huts and on dark roads through the pines, and had laughed at every single one. He didn't laugh now.
The figure raised its hands and the things surged forward again.
Gerrik tried to rise once more but the world had already narrowed to a single point.
He had time for one more thought.
Always. Thenn.
Then the world went dark.