Chapter 24 — A Straw Doll for Salvation
Laid neatly across the desk were a few simple materials — a sewing needle, bundles of straw, a strip of linen, a pair of buttons, and a single strand of hair.
Arya's gray eyes blinked furiously as she looked between them, her small hands fidgeting. "Are you sure I can do this?" she asked, voice uncertain.
"I'm sure," Charles replied absently from across the room.
"I've never made one before," she muttered. "I can't even embroider flowers properly. How am I supposed to make a doll?"
"Embroidery and sewing aren't the same thing," he said, glancing back at her over his shoulder. "And if you've done one, you can handle the other. You've learned to sew, haven't you?"
"Septa Mordane said my needlework was worse than Hodor's," Arya mumbled.
"Hodor?" Charles frowned. "Who's that?"
"The big guy who only says 'Hodor.'"
"So… an idiot?"
"He's not an idiot!" Arya snapped, then hesitated. "…He's just… slow."
"Then he's an idiot," Charles muttered under his breath. Out loud, he said with mock reassurance, "If even he can do it, then you definitely can."
"He's not an idiot!" Arya said again, though she finally started sewing, her small fingers awkwardly pushing the needle through the fabric. "But promise me one thing — when it's done, you can't laugh at it."
"I'll probably make something uglier myself," Charles said, distracted. "So I've got no right to laugh."
"You say that, but Robb used to laugh at me every time. Even Sansa—" she started, rambling on as her hands worked.
Their conversation wandered from one subject to another, filling the little inn room with a strange sort of warmth — or at least, the illusion of it.
Because beneath the chatter, both of them carried heavy hearts.
For Arya, her father's capture loomed over everything.
For Charles, uncertainty gnawed at him — about the spell, about time, about the fragile thread on which their plan depended.
The Curse of Agony wasn't truly a curse, not in the traditional sense.
It was closer to a form of sympathetic sorcery — the art of crafting a vessel to inflict harm from afar.
A straw doll.
A voodoo effigy.
To make it work, you needed something that carried a trace of your target's essence — a personal object, bound to them for long enough to retain their "spirit imprint."
Hair was best. But once removed from the body, its energy began to fade — completely useless after twenty-four hours.
In short:
If Jaqen managed to obtain Joffrey's hair, they'd only have one day to act.
If Ned Stark's trial didn't happen within that window, their plan would crumble.
Unless they somehow got another strand.
---
"Why do you want to save my father, anyway?" Arya asked suddenly, breaking the silence. "Did he save your life?"
Charles didn't look up from his parchment as he drew the sigils. "Hard to say. Maybe I saved him. Maybe he helped me. Who knows?"
"Then—"
"I only know him here," Charles interrupted. "And besides… I need my notebook back."
He said it lightly, but his focus never wavered as his quill danced across the page.
In truth, it wasn't just about Ned Stark.
He wanted to see if he could change the story — to prove that fate here wasn't fixed.
He'd already broken Ned out of prison once, only to watch him get recaptured the next day. Maybe that was coincidence.
Or maybe the world itself was correcting him.
If this world followed a written script… was someone — or something — watching?
And what would happen to an outsider who tried to rewrite it?
Either way, he wasn't about to stop now.
He wasn't reckless — just unwilling to let go of the one thing that might link him to real power: the notebook.
The Church's "Purification" magic couldn't help him. He wasn't a believer, and that spell required faith — faith he didn't have, and couldn't fake.
The only path left was through "forbidden" magic — black magic.
And since the Church hadn't noticed his necromancy practice, what harm could one more experiment do?
---
"You done yet?" Arya asked, holding up her crooked little doll. "I think mine's finished."
"Almost there," Charles muttered, still sketching runes.
"Do you really think your spell will work?" she pressed, frowning.
"You'd better pray that it does," he said dryly.
She swallowed, nerves fluttering in her chest.
Charles wasn't exactly calm himself. He'd practiced the glyphs, the chants, the process — but never actually cast the spell.
If it worked, it could save Ned Stark.
If it failed… well, he wasn't sure what would happen.
Still, once the symbols began to take shape — thick lines of black ink forming strange geometric curls — his hesitation faded.
Dozens of sigils now covered the paper, glimmering faintly like something alive. Arya, wide-eyed, hovered beside him, breath caught in her throat.
When Charles finally set his pen down, he noticed her staring.
"What are you looking at? Go finish your part."
"I am finished." She grinned faintly and held up the doll again. "See?"
He blinked. "That's… hideous."
"I've never made one before! Even Sansa couldn't make a prettier one!" Arya huffed, crossing her arms.
Charles smirked. "Doesn't matter. We're not here to win an art contest."
He took the ragged doll from her, wrapped it in the rune-covered paper, and tied it tight with a piece of string.
Then, closing his eyes, he steadied his breath and began the invocation.
"Spirit births all things… Spirit ends all things… Spirit binds all things."
"By the essence of Charles Cranston…"
"I call upon the Mother of All, and request her—"
He abruptly stopped mid-sentence and turned to glare at Arya.
"Could you not stare at me like that?"
"Why?" she asked innocently.
"Because," he said gravely, "a sorcerer's spell fails if someone watches him. It's bad luck."
Arya blinked, suspicious. "Really?"
Charles' tone didn't waver. "Absolutely."
She sighed and turned around — though not before whispering, "You just don't want me to see you mess up."
Charles smirked faintly, hiding his nerves behind the sound of his own heartbeat as the last of the runes began to shimmer like dying embers.
Charles actually felt a strange, inexplicable nervousness tightening in his throat — a subtle kind of stage fright. Of course, that was the kind of thing he'd never admit aloud.
"Strange wizard," Arya muttered under her breath, disappointed. Then, deciding not to interrupt him any further, she ran to the corner of the room, grabbed a gray blanket, and pulled it over herself like a tent.
Only when she disappeared beneath the makeshift cocoon did Charles finally relax.
He drew in a deep breath and began again, his voice low and measured:
"Spirit gives life to all things.
Spirit returns all things.
Spirit extinguishes all things.
By the essence of Charles Cranston,
I call upon the Mother of All —
to build a bridge between souls.
Bind the spirit of Craig to this effigy.
Thus I seal the curse."
A few seconds passed.
Nothing.
The air felt still, expectant — then the faint shimmer of True Sight flickered before his eyes.
[You have attempted to activate Curse of Agony. Casting failed.]
The straw doll lay motionless on the table, tied tightly in its linen wrappings, utterly unchanged.
Charles frowned but wasn't surprised.
Every spell had its rhythm, and this one would likely take several tries.
Under the blanket, Arya was listening closely, ears perked up like a cat's. She heard the pause, but remembering his earlier warning, she didn't dare peek.
Then came the chant again.
The same words. The same rhythm.
Arya frowned. "I don't remember wizards ever saying their spells twice…" she whispered to herself.
In Old Nan's stories, there were witches, greenseers, and the Children of the Forest — but no wizards.
Still, curiosity gnawed at her.
The chanting continued, the same phrases again and again. Soon, she'd memorized every word of it.
And just as she was about to drift into boredom, something changed.
The voice.
The tone.
The sound of the chant shifted — twisting into something alien and hollow.
It no longer sounded human.
It was like the wailing of ghosts echoing through stone halls, like the sighing wind in an abandoned castle corridor — mournful, endless, and cold.
The sound seeped through the room, crawling beneath Arya's blanket and into her bones. Her heartbeat quickened, a rush of icy fear coursing through her veins.
She could almost feel something behind her… creeping closer.
Then, mercifully, the chanting stopped.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Unable to stand it any longer, Arya forgot every warning Charles had given. She threw off the blanket and turned toward him.
And froze.
On the desk, the parchment that had been covered in black runes — the same one wrapped around her hand-stitched doll — was burning.
Not with fire she could see, but with a strange, invisible heat.
The paper curled and blackened, edges folding inward as if consumed by an unseen flame.
But the runes didn't burn away.
Instead, they lifted from the page, glowing faintly in the air — twisting, merging, alive.
The black marks coiled together, linking into a single chain — dark, metallic, and glimmering like iron forged in shadow.
The chain writhed like a serpent, winding around the fat little straw doll before sinking into it completely.
When it was over, the doll looked… different.
Its pale linen skin was now etched with delicate black lines, as though stitched over with hair-thin thread.
Arya swallowed hard. "Is it… supposed to do that?"
Charles leaned back, catching his breath. A small smile touched his lips. "I'd say that's a good sign."
His True Sight had already confirmed it:
[You have successfully cast Curse of Agony.]
"It worked," he murmured.
"So this will save my father?" Arya asked hopefully.
He shook his head. "No. This one's just a test."
Her eyes brightened with a mix of fear and excitement. "Test?"
"Exactly," Charles said, already standing up. "And we have the perfect candidate — that annoying fat innkeeper."
It was poetic, in a way. The man's hair had been the perfect practice material — collected by Arya herself under Charles's direction. She'd done well, and he'd been impressed by her stealth.
Now, it was time to see if her hard work would pay off.
---
But the moment they opened the door, someone was already waiting for them in the hallway — a tall, unsettling figure with hair half white, half red.
Arya jumped back, nearly dropping the doll.
Charles blinked, then exhaled in relief. "You're early. I thought we were meeting at the cobbler's shop?"
"Someone changed his mind," Jaqen H'ghar said with a faint smile.
Charles sighed, rubbing his forehead. "You could've sent a message."
The man tilted his head. "Someone also failed to bring what was promised."
Charles froze. His stomach dropped.
Did he—?
Before he could respond, Jaqen continued in that same calm, melodic tone:
"But someone else — a certain golden-haired queen mother — has the most beautiful curls in all the Seven Kingdoms. Surely… they will do just as well."
Charles blinked, then broke into a slow, incredulous smile.
"Cersei's hair?" he muttered. "That… might actually work."
---