Karstark volunteered to be the first Northerner to descend into the well, followed by Robb Stark, who carefully stepped over the rim and onto the stone steps. After a few steps down, he suddenly turned back as if remembering something.
"Ser Rodrik, keep an eye on Arya. Do not let her come down."
"Yes, my Lord."
"Ah? Why!" The girl stamped her foot. Robb Stark, having taken on the full responsibility of family head, now seemed like a different person, cautious and strict with his younger siblings. She had been well-behaved all along and did not expect that he still had not forgotten about her. "I miss Bran too! I want to go find him!"
"No why. These steps are dangerous. If you slip and fall, who will take responsibility? I will not risk failing to find my brother and end up breaking a sister!"
"I will be careful!" Arya promised quickly, but seeing that Robb had no intention of changing his mind, she turned her pleading gaze to Aegor, hoping he might speak for her. "Master~~"
The heads of House Stark were all present. What right did Aegor, a brother of the Night's Watch, have to interfere in family matters? He shook his head. "Your brother is doing this for your own good. Be obedient."
Fearing that the girl would still not listen, Ser Rodrik put a firm hand on Arya's shoulder and stepped between her and the well. Arya stamped her foot in frustration, tried to shrug him off but failed, and finally turned her head with a huff.
...
The stone steps set into the well's inner wall were less than half a meter wide, with wide gaps and uneven heights, looking quite dangerous. According to Torghen Flint, they had originally been slippery with moss and grime. He had sent men to scrape them clean, so now they could be used.
One after another, the Northerners carefully stepped over the rim and onto the passage that seemed to lead into the depths of the earth. As a half-host, Aegor could not remain above. After most had gone down, he stretched his limbs and stepped in as well.
The steps were narrow, so if someone went up or down, there was no way to pass another. But once on them, they were not as terrifying as they appeared. Whether by design or accident, every so often a stone block jutted slightly from the well wall, forming a shallow recess to grip, making up for the lack of a railing. As long as one hugged the wall and used both hands and feet, it was relatively safe.
The sound of footsteps echoed among the damp stone walls. The light from the hole in the kitchen roof above grew dimmer and dimmer.
Turn by turn, the surroundings darkened and the air grew colder. The stone steps slowly became shorter, and the wide well gradually narrowed. When the four-meter-wide shaft had narrowed to three meters, and the steps were barely a foot in length, torchlight finally revealed the ground at the bottom.
One after another, they reached the bottom. Aegor looked up, and the well mouth above was now a tiny circle of light, like a pale full moon.
A black dot appeared against that "moon," and Arya's voice echoed down. "Robb~ Robb~ Robb, Master~ Master~ Master, are you alright~ alright~ alright?"
"Alright~ alright~ alright, don't come down!" Robb shouted back, then began to inspect the ground.
There was no mud, as they had imagined. The ground was hard, dry, or frozen solid. In the torchlight, three of the walls came into view.
To be precise, there were only three walls.
At the bottom of the well, three sides were ordinary stone. The fourth side opened into a tall and wide tunnel, leading to what Torghen Flint had said might be the largest weirwood in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Indeed, they did not need him to explain. It was impossible to miss. On a pale weirwood trunk, a face taller than a man had been carved.
The face was ancient and pale, more withered than Maester Aemon in his frail state. Its eyes and mouth were closed, its cheeks sunken, its brow deeply furrowed, chin slack... If a person could age for a thousand years without dying, their face would look like this.
"It is truly enormous." Umber took one glance at the carved wooden face and knew that Flint had not been exaggerating. If the small sapling that had broken through the kitchen floor above was just an upper branch of this tree buried beneath, then this heart tree's size could only be described as terrifying.
Looking at the identical white color of the sapling above and the connection in position, it was almost certainly the same tree.
"Huge?" Roose Bolton sneered. "You have the wrong focus, Lord Umber. That face is still dozens of feet away. In this darkness, we should not be able to see it at all. Extinguish the torches."
The order was to the attendants holding the torches. They obeyed, and as the orange-red flames died out, everyone finally understood what Bolton meant.
The pale wood was not reflecting light. It was glowing.
It was like a faint mix of milk and moonlight, too weak to light up the tunnel, but against the total darkness, it stood out as clearly as if drawn in white ink.
"Lord Bolton is indeed observant. He saw its strangeness at once." Flint laughed. "But once you get closer, you will find even more extraordinary things about it."
Everyone was intrigued. After their eyes adjusted, they moved in groups toward the face, intending to examine why the weirwood glowed. But then, something terrifying happened.
The carved face opened its eyes. Pale white eyeballs appeared beneath the lids. At the same time, its lips parted slightly, and a voice came forth.
"Who are you~ are you~ you~ you~ you?"
The echo was deeper than a human voice, but still clear. In this silent, underground space, with all ears listening intently, the unexpected voice startled everyone. Even Aegor, who had known in advance, felt his heart skip a beat. Several people instinctively drew their weapons.
"What in the seven hells is that?" Greatjon Umber stepped back two paces, swallowing hard, resisting the urge to pull his sword.
"It is unclear. But one thing is certain. Whenever someone comes within three feet of that face, it opens its eyes and asks who you are," Torghen Flint said. "We have tried many answers, but it never responds. We suspect it requires some sort of password."
Torghen Flint was poor with words, but he was not without sense. He was right: to receive a reply from the wooden face, a password was required.
Aegor even knew what it was: "I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the Wall. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men."
After a sworn brother of the Night's Watch recited these words, the wooden face, known as the "Black Gate," would open its mouth wide, revealing a hidden passage leading directly to the lands Beyond the Wall.
It was a secret path, a safe crossing of the Wall. More precisely, Aegor guessed it was a backup path left by the greenseer for his chosen successor, for times when the guardian of the successor would refuse to let him travel North.
Thinking further, Aegor suspected that this so-called "password" was just a pretense.
In the original timeline, Bran and his group fled Winterfell and, after a long and difficult journey, reached the abandoned Nightfort. They slept in the kitchen to avoid the snow, and there they "happened" to be saved by Coldhands and met Sam and Gilly, who had climbed up through this very well. From them, they learned the words to open the gate, and so they passed Beyond the Wall to find the greenseer.
Such a convenient coincidence was unreasonable. It had to have been arranged by the greenseer.
But in this timeline, Aegor had prevented the ranging. The sworn brothers who could open the door were still stationed at their castles. And Benjen Stark, turned into Coldhands, could only wait Beyond the Wall. How then had Bran and his companions opened this gate?
The answer was clear even without much thought. The greenseer would have arranged another way.
He had prepared for his successor for too long to allow Bran to arrive here, only to be trapped in front of the Black Gate because he did not know the words or lacked the oath of the Night's Watch.
Whether by sending another guide to replace Sam, whispering the words in Bran's dreams, or simply using magic to open the gate as they approached—for a being who could reach anywhere weirwood grew, such a thing was easy.
---
Aegor knew the password, but he had no intention of saying it. Explaining how he knew would be simple, but what if the gate opened? If Robb Stark decided to march North at once to find his brother, should Aegor follow or not?
"This is... truly a miracle!"
"Buried underground, without sunlight, how does it grow?"
"That is not the point! Why can it glow?"
After making sure the strange tree was not hostile, the Northerners began to discuss the glowing weirwood.
"There is one more thing I need to tell you, my Lords," Torghen said, unfazed by their reactions. "Have you noticed the position of the well compared to this tree?"
They fell silent and turned to look back at the well mouth behind them, then back at the tree. After climbing down dozens of meters, spiraling in darkness, all sense of direction was gone.
Aegor was the first to react. The weirwood sapling above the kitchen had leaned toward the south. If it was part of this buried tree...
"Are we standing on the north side of the well?"
"Lord Aegor is indeed a Ranger. Your sense of direction is excellent. And how far is it from here to the well?"
A dozen meters or so. Why? Aegor narrowed his eyes. The question was not meaningless. After all, the kitchen building stood right against the Wall, less than ten meters from its base.
Then...
"Are we beneath the Wall?" Aegor's body trembled. This was a detail Flint had not mentioned in his letter. If so, then this tree was more than a secret passage.
"Exactly. If this weirwood were growing in the open, it would be at least a hundred feet tall. But it is now buried beneath the Ice Wall. Its massive canopy must have spread entirely inside the Wall." There was pride in Flint's voice, as if he had discovered a great truth. "And think of it this way—why should we say that the Wall is pressing down on the heart tree, and not that the heart tree is holding up the Wall? At least this section of it."
The Northern lords whispered among themselves, while Aegor stood shocked and silent. Torghen Flint himself might not realize what his words implied. But Aegor, who knew much more than those present, thought immediately of an important fact: wights could not enter a weirwood cave where the greenseer dwelled. They would crumble the moment they tried.
And the Free Folk had long said that the White Walkers avoided the Wall. The Night's Watch had discovered in battle that the closer the dead came to the Wall, the weaker they became.
Before, these phenomena had been attributed vaguely to "magic woven into the Wall." Today, Aegor began to suspect the truth: the Wall's magic came from these massive weirwoods beneath it. It was their presence that made the Wall more than just a two-hundred-meter-high wall of ice.
(To be continued.)
***
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