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"From the Wall, Jon Snow sends word to Clay Manderly:"
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Though what I speak may sound incredible, I have judged it to be true.
Beyond the Wall, a great threat has risen. Both Bran Stark and something that takes the form of a black three-eyed raven have come to me with their warning.
The cold winds beyond are not of a single stream, and the time to open the gates has not yet come.
These two sentences I do not fully understand. Yet I beg the one who receives this letter to deliver them faithfully to Clay Manderly.
By my honor as Jon Snow of the Night's Watch, I swear that not a word of this is invention. Clay Manderly must know of it.
There is no time left!
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Clay folded the letter once more, pressing the creases with deliberate care. He leaned back into the high chair of his uncle's study and sat in silence for a long while, his expression unreadable in the wavering candlelight.
At last he reached for a goblet and poured himself a measure of golden wine, chilled so heavily it had nearly frozen in the cask. The liquor burned cold as it slid down his throat, sending a violent shiver through his body.
Only this biting draught could steady his mind enough to think clearly on what he had just read.
Something here was deeply strange.
First and foremost, why send such a message to him?
From Clay's perspective, the choice might seem natural enough. Yet from Jon Snow's side, it made little sense. The two of them were acquaintances, no more than ordinary friends bound by mutual respect, and Jon could not even know that Robb Stark was already dead.
If the letter had been addressed to Bran, to Robb himself, even to Lady Catelyn, Clay could have understood. If it had found its way to Theon Greyjoy, even that might have carried some logic.
But for Jon to name him so directly, to set his words apart for Clay alone, there could be but one explanation.
This was not born of Jon Snow's own will. Something had pressed him, guided him, perhaps even compelled him to write so.
And in the present state of things, that "something" was almost certainly the three-eyed raven.
Working from that assumption, the second puzzle revealed itself. The phrase in the letter, "the cold winds beyond are not of a single stream," gave Clay the faintest glimmer of understanding. He thought he might finally have some inkling of what it was pointing toward.
After all, the System had already made its appearance, though it had been a long time since he had called upon it.
Even so, that alone gave him countless avenues of speculation.
Perhaps the Outland Knights had truly come, or perhaps they had not.
Yet if it was indeed they who now stirred in the darkness, then the situation would grow all the more intriguing.
One storm had barely passed, and already another rose upon its heels. For Clay, there would be no shortage of troubles waiting to occupy his days.
What puzzled him most, however, was the line that followed: the time to open the gates has not yet come.
Gates? What gates? Where were they to be found?
He had turned that sentence over and over in his mind, reading it again and again until the parchment threatened to tear at the crease, yet he remained utterly at a loss.
The raven and the gate… what connection could there possibly be between the two?
The trouble, he admitted, was largely of his own making. From the beginning he had cloaked himself in borrowed authority, brandishing the tiger's skin like a banner, letting the three-eyed raven lead him on, dazzled, half-deceived, and ensnared by that strange being.
There were things the raven had assumed he already knew, truths it had never thought to explain, but in truth he understood nothing of them at all.
And now he was left staring at words that seemed little more than riddles, as cryptic as if spoken by some masked riddler who took delight in sowing confusion.
And then there was the final line: there is no time left.
No time? No time for what? Who or what was counting down the hours?
To be honest, when Clay had first finished reading the letter, he had felt an almost irresistible urge to tear it to pieces right then and there.
Shouldn't riddlers like this be dragged before a military tribunal?
Gathering the scattered pieces of thought, he tried to put the message in order. The three-eyed raven, by some means unknown, had reached Jon Snow and compelled him to carry these words to Clay.
The Outland Knights had come. Something sought to open its gate. And whatever "it" was, it claimed there was no more time.
Clay spoke of it as something greater, for beyond the Wall there was another power at work, a cold god slumbering yet ever watchful.
For all he knew, it was that being who had grown restless, eager to pry open the three-eyed raven's sealed box of secrets, as if cracking open some blind box out of idle curiosity.
So then… was this all a plea for help directed at him?
He calculated quickly. Judging by the timing, whatever had happened must have taken place at least a month earlier.
There were ravens at the Wall, after all, though between delays, mishaps, and countless small obstructions, the message might have been held up. By the time it reached White Harbor, the old gods' magic could have lulled the bird into slumber.
So be it. However messy the details appeared, the broad outline was plain enough.
Clay rose from New Castle and made his way beyond the walls of White Harbor, to the grove of sacred trees that stood outside the Wolf's Den.
There he intended to try something: to touch the heart tree and see whether through it he might reach the three-eyed raven.
The cold god and its army of dead things were certainly no allies of his. For now, the raven would have to be preserved.
He laid his palm flat against the rough bark, letting his own magic seep into the ancient wood, pressing his strength into the very heart of the place where the old gods' power was said to be strongest in all of White Harbor.
In the vision of his magic, the grove shifted before his eyes. It was no longer merely a tangle of roots and branches, but an ocean of grey magic, so dense it seemed on the verge of spilling over, thick enough to drip like heavy water from the air itself.
Yet what had once worked for him, the method by which he had reached into the raven's mind, failed him now.
No flicker of response. No echo across the current.
Clay frowned, brows knitting together.
It felt, strangely enough, as if he were trying to place a call and the line on the other side was busy, the one he sought already tied up with other matters.
"Tch. Troublesome." The muttered words slipped out before he could stop them.
He had no thought of returning to White Harbor simply to sit and oversee famine relief. That was only a plaster on the wound, a temporary balm that healed nothing at its source. The wiser path was to trace the problem back to its beginning and cut it out at the root.
So Clay mounted Gaelithox and urged the dragon forward, soaring swiftly north along the course of the White Knife.
First, a stop at Winterfell. He needed to set Robb Stark down. Who knew if there would be time for such things later.
The farther north the dragon flew, the colder the atmosphere became, and with the falling temperature came a thickening of the old gods' power. It pressed heavier with every mile, saturating the land below.
Clay passed over small villages along the way, and what he saw disturbed him. At least two-thirds of the people lay in unnatural sleep, their chests rising and falling slowly as though caught in a spell. Those who still stood awake drifted like shadows, heavy-eyed, swaying on their feet, ready at any moment to close their eyes and join the rest.
He knew well enough that the dominion of the Old Gods encompassed memory and the power to look backward through time, yet what was this strange phenomenon of collective slumber?
Clay spent half the day astride Gaelithox, flying northward until at last the great shadow of Winterfell rose beneath them.
As he had expected, here the old gods' magic was at its most concentrated, thicker even than in White Harbor.
More precisely, the source lay within Winterfell's Godswood, in the great heart tree, the largest weirwood in the castle grove.
Clay had always known that these trees were more than trees, that they served as the eyes the old gods had nailed into the soil of the North. Yet he had not imagined they possessed this uncanny ability, that their gaze could weave such power across the land.
Once, he had thought the old gods nothing more than passive watchers, ancient beings content to linger in neglect. But now, as he gazed at the pulse of power running through Winterfell, he realized that their watch over the North was nothing less than relentless.
Gaelithox snorted with visible distaste. The dragon disliked this place intensely, for he could no more ignore the dense, suffocating aura of the Old Gods' magic than Clay himself could.
But a command was a command. After a few disgruntled grumbles, the great beast dipped low and settled on the snowy clearing beyond the walls of the castle.
Within Winterfell there were still some souls awake, yet compared to White Harbor, where the Old Gods' power was faint and scattered, the state of things here was far more dire.
The ramparts were utterly deserted. Not a single watchman stood guard, and Clay doubted anyone had even noticed Gaelithox descending out of the sky.
Passing through the gate, he found only one guard in the armor of House Stark, shaped with the likeness of direwolves. The fellow cast him a half-hearted glance, then, as though too weary to care, waved him through with a limp gesture.
Clay saw it clearly. The hand that had just opened the way for him now rose at once to cover the man's mouth as he stifled a cavernous yawn.
Through the eastern gate, the entire Winterfell lay silent as a tomb.
No market stalls bustled with trade. No hammer struck upon an anvil. The ring of steel, the murmur of voices, even the bark of hounds had all vanished into an unnatural hush.
The banners of House Stark, each embroidered with the white direwolf, hung sodden with snow. They drooped in the wind as though the very cloth itself had fallen into a weary slumber.
Clay pressed onward toward the Great Keep.
The streets, empty and desolate, felt less like the heart of the North and more like a ghost town abandoned to time. Only when he reached the gates of the Stark stronghold did he at last encounter two figures. They were soldiers in mail, their heads bowed, their bodies slumped motionless against the cold stone wall.
Both were fast asleep, yet the fact that they still remained upright in their posts told Clay they were not completely lost. They were the sort who could be woken, if given the right push.
And for that, the Axii Sign proved invaluable.
It was a tool designed to lull minds into slumber, but what could send one drifting into dreams could just as well summon one back from them.
A faint shimmer of green light flickered across its runes, flashing for an instant before vanishing. Unlike the heavy, suffocating magic of the Old Gods, this was a foreign power, sharp and intrusive, flowing straight into the soldiers' clouded minds.
"Tell me," Clay asked in a low voice, "are the members of House Stark still inside the castle?"
The soldier stirred, his voice thick and stiff, as though the words were forced from a mouth weighed down by sleep. "They're all here."
"How are they?" Clay pressed.
"Lady Sansa… young Bran… and Lord Rickon all fell asleep at once. Only Lady Catelyn did not."
Catelyn still awake?
Clay's brow furrowed at the thought. Was it because she prayed to the Seven?
But no… that could not be right. The pious followers of the Seven in White Harbor had been put to sleep as well.
Puzzled, he set the thought aside for now and asked again,
"Where is Catelyn?"
"In the… in the chapel…" the soldier mumbled, his words blurred and heavy, as if spoken through a fog.
The chapel?
Realization dawned on Clay. Here in Winterfell, the "chapel" could only mean the small sept that Eddard Stark had built especially for his Tully wife, a place where she might honor the gods she had brought from the south.
Interesting!
Very interesting!
Clay drew a slow breath through his teeth, a quiet hiss slipping out, for the matter was beginning to take on a more curious shape than he had expected.
He stepped forward, striding past the slumbering guards, his boots crunching over the thin crust of snow that had drifted into the yard. His path carried him toward the training grounds, the place where once the Stark children had sparred with blunted swords and bent their heads over embroidery frames.
Now it lay utterly empty. Without careful searching, one would never guess that a living soul remained anywhere nearby.
Clay oriented himself, gauging the direction, then turned his steps toward the sept of the Seven.
No one rose to bar his way. The few guards who still clung to consciousness, fighting against the weight of sleep pressing down on them, recognized his face at once. They knew him for Clay Manderly, and in their weary despair, they had no strength left to resist.
The heavy drowsiness that smothered them stripped away even the instinct to challenge a stranger walking so boldly through their lord's gates.
Clay went on unhindered, his steps carrying him straight to the little chapel. It was a modest structure, simple and rough in its craftsmanship. The septs of the Seven never quite belonged here in the North, and even now, looking upon its unadorned frame, one could feel the faint dissonance, as though the gods of the south had been planted in the wrong soil.
The door stood unlocked. Clay pushed it open and stepped inside.
At once, his eyes fell upon five figures.
Two were awake. Three lay deep in slumber.
They were none other than the children of House Stark: Bran, Rickon, and Sansa.
The three of them were stretched out on the floorboards, breathing evenly, lost in a sleep that seemed impossible to disturb. Yet beneath their small bodies, thick furs and blankets had been spread to soften the hard ground, a sign of care and tenderness.
Around the room, several hearths had been lit, their flames licking gently at the air, filling the cramped space with warmth. For all that winter pressed heavy outside, here within the chapel there was no chill.
Clay's footsteps rang softly in the stillness, and the sound stirred the two who remained awake.
Lady Catelyn Tully, mistress of Winterfell, lifted her head first. Beside her stood Maester Luwin, gray-robed and grave.
Both turned at once, and when their eyes fell upon the newcomer, surprise swept over their faces. For an instant they looked almost disbelieving, as though the sight before them could not be real.
Of course they knew him. Clay had spent long enough in Winterfell in the past that his presence was no mystery to them.
"Clay Manderly," Catelyn breathed, her words halting, her voice unsteady. "You… why have you come back?"
She looked as though she had only just been roused from sleep, her thoughts still clouded, as if she struggled to distinguish dream from waking.
It was Maester Luwin who found his voice first, his mind quicker to steady itself. "My lord Clay," he said, adjusting the heavy chain at his neck, "what has befallen the North… you must already know of it."
One look at Clay told him enough. Whatever strange affliction had swept over Winterfell, it was plain that Clay stood almost untouched by it. Though neither he nor Lady Catelyn yet understood the true nature of the disaster, they both saw at once that this man did not suffer as they did.
Clay had no time for long explanations. He spoke plainly, cutting to the heart of his errand.
"Lady Catelyn," he said, his voice steady, "I have returned to bring back the body of King Robb Stark. I came to deliver him home."
"What… what did you say?"
The words seemed to shatter against her ears. Catelyn froze where she stood, her eyes wide and uncomprehending. Beside her, Maester Luwin's pupils narrowed to pinpoints.
Then, in an instant, Catelyn seized his hand with both of hers. Her grip was fierce, desperate, trembling. "You're lying to me, aren't you? Robb, he… he can't…"
Clay had known this would be her reaction. He let out a long breath, heavy with resignation. "I am sorry, my lady. Robb Stark died from an infection in his wounds. I have brought him back because a Stark should never be laid to rest outside the North."
He gently drew his hand free of her grasp. She stood motionless, as though turned to stone, her mind blank with shock.
Clay glanced once at Maester Luwin, then turned on his heel and walked toward the door.
The maester understood at once and followed. But not before he called out softly, summoning a guard who still looked somewhat awake. "Addam, stay with Lady Catelyn. Watch her closely. Do not let her harm herself."
Leaving those words behind, Luwin stepped out with Clay.
They had not gone far when the sound came. From behind them, through the stone walls of the sept, rose a cry so raw and piercing it seemed to split the air. Catelyn's grief tore loose, a sound of anguish that clawed its way out of her chest, filling the chapel and echoing into the empty courtyards.
Neither man spoke. There was nothing to say. With the North drowning in chaos and the news of Robb Stark's death now laid bare, such a cry was no surprise to either of them.
Together they walked on, out through Winterfell's eastern gate. And there Maester Luwin stopped dead in his tracks.
For looming before him, vast and terrible, was Gaelithox. The dragon's scaled body coiled with menace, its breath steaming in the cold, its very presence suffocating. No one, not even a man as learned as Luwin, could behold such a beast for the first time and remain unmoved.
Clay did not pause. He cared nothing for the maester's stunned reaction.
He dragged forward a stretcher, the weight of it groaning against the frozen ground, until he set it at Luwin's side. Upon it lay Robb Stark, still and pale, wrapped for his final journey.
"Tell Catelyn Tully this," Clay said, his tone even but edged with steel. "I go now to deal with the true source of this calamity. Robb Stark's death was at the hands of the Lannisters, not mine. She must not lay her blame upon me."
And with that, he turned away.
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