Castle Black | 278 AC
The journey east was swift, with no long stops. Without Craster's caravan, the horses set an aggressive pace over the hard-packed snow.
Two days later, the timber and stone structure of Castle Black appeared against the colossal wall of ice.
We entered the main courtyard at a slow walk. The clatter of horseshoes on stone drew the attention of the guards on watch. A dozen men stopped what they were doing, their eyes fixed on our formation, on the dark skin of Belzakar and Morghaz, and on the sheer size of Fenrir and Hela, who were already growing rapidly alongside my mount.
Three rangers with spears blocked the path near the stables.
"Arthur Snow," I called out, dismounting from Sleipnir. "I am here to see the Lord Commander."
The guards hesitated for a second, eyeing the giant wolf, but stepped aside. One of them jogged ahead to alert the command.
Qorgyle met us at the base of the main staircase, his hands resting on his belt and his face etched with deep wrinkles tight against the cold. He assessed the entire group before locking eyes with me.
"Arthur Snow," Qorgyle greeted, his voice rough. "What brings you and these beasts back to my yard?"
"The work I set out to do in the forest is done," I replied, stopping before the step. "I am only passing through. Has the caravan I dispatched from Winterfell arrived?"
The tension in the Lord Commander's shoulders eased a fraction.
"It arrived before the last new moon," Qorgyle answered, dropping his hands from his belt. "The steel, the gold, and the armor are already in our armories. The food filled the old cellar. And the rangers are emptying your barrels of Icefyre and Frostspirit faster than I'd like to admit."
"The intention was exactly to keep the blood warm," I said, resting my hands on my belt.
"And how did you cross to this side of the Wall on your return?" Qorgyle pointed his chin toward the south gate, his dark eyes narrowing beneath thick brows. "I received no raven from Eastwatch about your party. Nor did I see you scale the ice."
"The North is vast and keeps old paths, Lord Commander." I maintained a neutral tone and a direct gaze. "I am only here to fulfill a promise I made to Maester Aemon before marching. Where is he?"
Qorgyle stared at me for a long moment, his jaw tight at the evasion. Then he gestured toward the rookery tower with his hand.
"In his chambers. As always."
Aemon's chambers smelled of old parchment, melted wax, and bitter herbs. The old maester sat in a high-backed chair near the hearth, his bony hands resting on his knees. His milky, blind eyes stared at the fire.
"The wind coming through the crack has shifted," Aemon said, his frail voice dragging through the quiet room. "Who is there?"
"I promised I would return, Maester." I placed the wooden box on the reading desk. The dull thud made Aemon turn his face in my direction. "I brought the instruments."
Aemon extended a trembling hand and felt the air until he found the edge of the desk.
"My eyes died many years ago, boy. The darkness has already settled." His fingertips touched the closed wood.
"The darkness is only on the surface, Maester. It is an opaque fabric over the eye's natural lens." I unlatched the metal lock. The gleam of silver caught the firelight. "The glass lenses and the tools have arrived. I am going to give you your light back."
The old maester fell silent. The crackling of wood turning to embers was the only sound in the room.
"Many men with heavy maester's chains around their necks studied blindness at the Citadel," Aemon said. "None of them spoke of cutting the eye of a living man."
"I don't wear the Citadel's chains," I replied, lifting the scalpel from the box. "I will have water boiled and milk of the poppy prepared. We do this at first light."
"What will you need?" asked Aemon, drawing his hands back to his lap.
"I have most of the items already," I said, setting the silk thread next to the forceps. "I only require a clean room and access to your herbal stock."
"There is an adjacent room where I treat the wounded." Aemon pointed weakly toward the side door. "You may use it. My entire stock is yours."
"I will begin the preparations," I announced, picking the box back up. "Rest. Tomorrow, you will see again."
I went to the next room. I scrubbed away as much dirt as I could, hauled up a barrel of Frostspirit from our stock, and rubbed the pure alcohol across the floor, the nearby walls, and the cot where Aemon would lie. The caustic smell flooded the floor.
I finished hours later and went to sleep. On the way, I found Kevin teaching shooting stances to some raw recruits in the yard.
"Kevin," I called. He lowered his bow and walked toward me. "I'm going to need your help tomorrow. I'll be operating on the maester and I need another pair of steady hands to assist. You have the best stability in the group."
"I'm in," Kevin replied, a crooked smile forming on his dirty face. "It's not every day you get to see someone perform a surgery."
"Get some rest. We start with the first rays of the sun."
The sun had barely risen when I entered the room. The air was thick with the strong smell of Frostspirit, alcohol, and lamp smoke. The Wall's freezing temperature helped suppress any rot in the air, but I still took a vodka-soaked rag and wiped down the side table, the reinforced chair, and the metal instruments one last time.
The blades gleamed under the yellow light. Small. Thin.
The door creaked behind me. Kevin walked in, adjusting his leather gloves. His eyes swept the table and locked onto the tiny scalpel.
"Seven hells..." the archer muttered. "You're actually going to cut his eye."
"I'm going to make a minimal incision in the cornea," I corrected, dipping the forceps into the alcohol. "If my hand slips a millimeter, he'll never see anything again."
Kevin blew air out of his nose. "Great way to start the morning."
Shortly after, Clydas helped Maester Aemon into the room. The old man walked slowly, tapping the floor with his wooden cane.
"It smells like a tavern floor in here," Aemon grumbled, wrinkling his nose.
"Better a tavern than an infection," I said, pulling the reinforced chair into the center of the light.
Clydas seated the old man in the chair. I secured two thick leather straps behind his head and across his chest, locking them to the wood.
"Are you truly going to tie me down?" Aemon asked, his fingers gripping the armrests with sudden force.
"I intend to return your vision, not let a flinch drive your face into my blade," I replied, buckling the last strap.
Kevin cleared his throat quietly behind me.
I took a clean cloth and soaked it in Frostspirit. I wiped Aemon's face with quick strokes, focusing around the eyelids. The old man gritted his teeth.
"Does it burn?" I asked, pressing near his eyebrow.
"Like fire," he hissed.
"Perfect." I handed another soaked rag to Kevin. "Scrub your hands. Between the fingers and up the wrists."
Kevin stared at the cloth reeking of hard liquor. "You really believe wasting good alcohol like this works?"
"Yes," I affirmed.
He didn't argue. We scrubbed our hands until the skin pulled tight from dryness.
I picked up a small cup of warm wine mixed with milk of the poppy.
"Drink," I ordered, pressing the rim against his lips.
Aemon swallowed the bitter liquid in one go. We waited for his shoulders to sag and his breathing to level out. His chest rose and fell heavily.
I pulled the needles from the box.
Kevin raised an eyebrow. "And those?"
"Muscle relaxation," I answered, separating the finest metal.
I pressed my fingers against Aemon's slack neck, found the rigid points, and inserted the first needle beneath his jaw. The maester let out a long sigh. The second went behind his ear. The third near his wrist. I twisted the metal carefully. The old man's body went completely limp against the leather straps.
"Is he out?" Kevin whispered, leaning forward.
"His body stopped fighting the pain. His mind is still there."
Clydas watched from the corner of the room, his face pale. He swallowed hard, nodded, and hurried out, closing the door behind him.
I picked up the scalpel. I passed the blade over the lamp's flame for two seconds and wiped it with alcohol.
"Raise the light," I instructed Kevin, positioning myself in front of the patient. "When I tell you, lock his skull with both hands."
The archer nodded. The irony vanished from his face.
The yellow light hit Aemon's left eye head-on, reflecting off the thick, white cataract.
"Hold," I warned.
Kevin's hands clamped down on the sides of the maester's face with the strength of stone.
I took a deep breath, forced the air out, and held it.
The tip of the steel touched the cornea. I made a tiny lateral incision. A minuscule bead of fluid leaked from the corner of the eye. I wiped it instantly with the sterile cloth. Aemon let out a hollow groan from the back of his throat, his fingers squeezing the chair's wood until his knuckles turned white.
"Steady," I murmured to Kevin, steadying my hand.
I swapped the scalpel for the silver hook. The curved instrument entered through the tiny slit. The opaque lens looked like a disc of milky ice blocking the pupil. The goal was to push it down, couching the cataract into the vitreous chamber, out of the line of sight.
Kevin held the lamp completely paralyzed. I felt the mechanical resistance of the hardened tissue. I pressed slowly. Sweat stung the corner of my eye, but I didn't blink. The film yielded. The white fog slipped toward the bottom of the eye, revealing the dark, unobstructed pupil behind it.
I withdrew the hook with care. I let the air out through my nose. I picked up the metal syringe and irrigated the incision with cold, boiled water mixed with diluted Frostspirit. The left eye was red and swollen, but the milky white was gone.
"Did you get it?" Kevin asked, his voice sounding a pitch higher than normal.
"The obstacle dropped," I answered, wiping the old man's eyelids with cotton. "He'll see light and shapes again. Now let's do the right one."
I repeated the process on the other eye. Aemon's right eye offered more resistance. The cataract was wedged deeper. I forced the hook with extreme care while the old man moaned under the effect of the poppy. Kevin pressed harder against the skull, gripping the wood. I felt the film finally give way and the fog slide out of the center of vision.
I let my breath out slowly. I took the boiled silk thread and the finest needle. I closed the two incisions. Stitch by stitch. Minuscule and precise.
Aemon barely reacted now, buried deep in the exhaustion of pain. I wiped away the residual blood and tied a clean cotton bandage around the maester's head, covering both eyes.
I stepped back from the chair. The relief released the tension in my shoulders. My hands were stiff and my back ached.
Kevin slowly let go of Aemon's head and lowered the lamp.
"Seven hells..." he breathed, rubbing his own face. "I thought you were going to tear his eye out at one point."
"The surgery was the manual part. Now we need to make sure he doesn't die of infection." I paused, putting away the dirty metal. "And then I'll need to finish the glasses."
The recovery exacted its toll. Operating on both eyes in the same session had left the maester's aged body exhausted and drained.
During the first seven days, Aemon remained plunged in darkness beneath the bandages of boiled cotton.
I isolated the infirmary room from the rest of Castle Black. I nailed thick woolen cloths over the window cracks, blocking the biting wind and the white light of day. The oak door remained locked from the inside. The caustic smell of Frostspirit permeated the wood and stone of the room.
Three times a day, I boiled water, dried my hands and wrists in pure alcohol, and swapped the bandages. The process required scraping the dry secretion built up on his eyelashes and checking the tiny dark stitches on the cornea. Swelling and redness took over the sagging skin of his face.
"I feel as if live coals were shoved beneath my eyelids," the old maester murmured, his voice trembling with exhaustion, while I ran the wet linen over him.
"Excellent," I replied, without stopping the movement of my fingers over his face. "It means the tissue is alive and reacting."
Kevin dragged a bench into the corridor on the other side of the door. The weirwood bow rested on his lap the entire time.
"If anyone with muddy boots sneezes in this hallway, he's going to lose a leg," Kevin said, extending his arm to block the path of Clydas and a young steward who tried to bring firewood.
On the third day, Aemon's right eye swelled to double its size. A strong line of heat radiated up the old man's temple. I irrigated the cornea all through the night, dripping continuous drops of cold water with extremely diluted alcohol and willow bark extract. I sat on the wooden bench, my back to the dead hearth, rubbing ice on my own neck to force my eyes to stay open.
The rigid swelling on Aemon's face receded just before dawn. The fever broke.
The seventh night marked the removal of the bandages.
The room was steeped in a heavy silence. The dry firewood crackled low in the hearth. Kevin leaned his shoulder against the cold stone beside the doorframe, his arms crossed and his tongue locked.
I stopped beside the cot. Aemon sat with his back straight against the wooden headboard. His bony hands gripped the wool of the blanket.
"The swelling has subsided," I announced, standing before him.
Aemon let out a rasping laugh. "I haven't seen beyond my eyelids for decades, boy. Just do it."
I untied the cotton knot at the base of his nape. The bandage fell onto his lap. Aemon locked his jaw, keeping his eyelids clamped tightly together. I picked up the silver-rimmed glasses I had hammered myself in the forge. I fitted the structure over his prominent nose and hooked the arms behind his pale ears. The thick lenses settled in front of his swollen face.
"Open them slowly. The light will strike hard."
The sparse, purplish eyelids rose by millimeters. The yellow light of the fire invaded the black pupils. Aemon jerked his neck backward with a jolt, shrinking his shoulders.
"Blink," I ordered.
He obeyed. The accumulated water ran down the corners of his face. His eyeballs moved in their sockets, groping the blurry space and seeking the metrics of the room. The old maester's body froze.
The flames of the hearth reflected in the curvature of the tempered glass. Aemon turned his face directly toward the fire. The pupils dilated as they captured the flare crackling on the logs and the orange glow staining the chimney soot.
The old man's breathing lost its rhythm. His chest rose and fell with unexpected violence. Thick tears overflowed, washing the burst vessels in the white background of the eye and running down the silver frame. He raised his right hand to the level of his nose. The long fingers, twisted by decades and marked by dark spots, trembled loose in the air. Aemon stared fixedly at his own nails.
A choked wheeze burst from his throat.
His face turned toward me. The glass lenses focused on my posture, my dark cloak, and the hard line carved into my face.
"Egg..." Aemon murmured. Tears cut through the furrows of his cheeks uncontrollably. "I thought I saw my brother."
I stood still, keeping my hands at my sides, while that man's vision settled into the present time.
Aemon wiped his nose with the back of his hand and diverted his moist eyes to the corner. He focused on Kevin leaning against the stone wall.
"And you must be Kevin," Aemon said. A crooked smile made room for the first time among the wrinkles on his face. "You are uglier than your words suggested."
Kevin threw his head back with a loud laugh, pushing his weight off the wall and stomping his boot against the wooden floor.
The laughter echoed against the ceiling, but the old maester's hands did not stop trembling. He turned his neck slowly, his reddened, magnified eyes behind the silver rims mapping the dark ceiling beams, the scratched floorboards, and the thin smoke rising through the stone chimney.