Chapter 296: The Black Gate and the Weirwood
Lord Karstark volunteered to be the first Northern noble to descend the well, with Robb Stark following shortly after, cautiously stepping over the rim and onto the stone slabs. After descending a few paces, he suddenly remembered something and turned back. "Ser Rodrik, watch over Arya. Do not let her come down."
"As you command, my lord."
"What? Why!" The girl jumped in frustration. Robb Stark, having shouldered the heavy responsibilities of a family patriarch, seemed like a different person—strictly cautious when it came to his younger siblings. She hadn't expected that even after being so well-behaved, he still wouldn't forget to restrain her. "I miss Bran too! I want to go find him!"
"There is no 'why.' These steps are difficult to navigate; if your foot slips and you fall, who will be responsible? I don't want to fail at finding one brother only to break a sister in the process!"
"I'll be careful!" Arya promised quickly, but seeing that Robb had no intention of changing his mind, she turned a pleading gaze toward Egger, hoping he might speak up for her. "Master~~"
With the head of the Stark household right there, what right did a man of the Night's Watch have to interfere in the Stark family's discipline? Egger shook his head. "Your brother is doing this for your own good. Behave."
Fearful that the young lady might still disobey, Ser Rodrik placed a hand on Arya's shoulder and stepped between her and the great well. The girl stamped her foot in annoyance and shrugged her shoulders, failing to shake him off, then turned away with a huff.
The stone slabs protruding from the well wall were less than half a meter long, with significant gaps and vertical drops between them; they truly looked dangerous. According to Torghen Flint, they were originally quite slippery, but he had ordered his men to clear a layer of moss and grime from the surface of every single stone on the staircase to bring it to its current state.
One by one, the Northern lords cautiously navigated the rim and stepped onto this passage that seemed to lead to the underworld. As a host of sorts, Egger could hardly stay above and wait; once most had descended, he stretched his limbs to warm up and stepped in without hesitation.
The staircase was so narrow that if someone was above or below, it was impossible to pass them in the opposite direction. However, once moving, one found it wasn't as terrifying as it looked. Whether by design or due to rough construction, there were recesses in the well wall at regular intervals, perfectly compensating for the spiral stairs' lack of handrails by giving the hands a place to grip. As long as one stayed close to the stone wall and used both hands and feet, the safety was quite guaranteed.
The sound of their footsteps echoed between the damp stones. The light leaking from the hole in the ancient kitchen roof gradually receded, soon becoming a dim blur high above.
With every rotation, the surroundings grew darker and the air more chilling. While the stone slabs forming the stairs gradually shortened at an imperceptible rate, the circumference of the well also tightened by a similar margin. Finally, when the four-meter-wide well had constricted to roughly three meters and the steps beneath their feet were barely the length of a single foot, the light of the torches illuminated the dark ground at the bottom.
The group reached the bottom one after another. Egger looked up; the mouth of the well had become a distant speck of light, like a full moon in the sky.
A black dot appeared at the edge of that "moon," and Arya's voice drifted down, carried by the constant reflections off the well walls: "Robb~ Robb~ Robb, Master~ Master~ Master, are you all alright~ alright~ alright???"
"We're fine~ fine~ fine, don't you dare come down!" Robb called back to report their safety and began to survey the scene at the bottom.
Beneath their feet was not the mud they had imagined; whether dried out or frozen, the ground was quite solid. Under the light of the two torches brought down, only three of the four walls were illuminated.
To be precise, there had only ever been three walls.
At the very bottom of this great well, three sides were ordinary well walls, while the other side opened into a remarkably wide and high tunnel leading to—as Torghen Flint had said—what might be the largest heart tree in the Seven Kingdoms.
Indeed, even without Old Flint needing to introduce it, everyone saw it immediately. It was far too prominent to ignore: upon the pale-white weirwood was a face larger than a man.
The face was pale, ancient, and deeply wrinkled, looking even more moribund than the weakened Maester Aemon: the mouth and eyes were both drooping and tightly shut, the cheeks sunken, the forehead withered, and the jaw slack... if a man were to age forever without dying and live for a thousand years, his face would likely look like this.
"It truly is massive." Earl Umber took one look at the wooden face from a distance and realized the Flint chief had not been exaggerating. If this wooden face was indeed carved into the main trunk of a weirwood partially buried underground, and that small sapling pushing through the stone floor of the kitchen above was merely a tip of one of its branches... then the scale of this heart tree was nothing short of terrifying.
And considering it shared the same pale-white color and subtle spatial connection with the sapling in the kitchen, this was highly probable.
"Massive?" Roose Bolton grunted. "Your focus is misplaced, Lord Umber. That face is still dozens of feet away from us; in this pitch-black pit, we shouldn't be able to see it from so far away. Extinguish the torches."
The last sentence was directed at the two attendants holding the torches. They obeyed, and as the orange glow of the fire vanished, the group instantly understood what the Lord of the Dreadfort meant by misplaced focus.
The whiteness of the wood did not come from reflecting torchlight; it was emitting its own!
It was a hue like a mixture of milk and moonlight—a brightness so faint and weak that, aside from the door itself, it failed to illuminate anything else in the passage. Yet, against the black background, it appeared so clearly discernible that it couldn't possibly be an illusion.
"Lord Bolton is indeed meticulous, noticing its extraordinary nature at a glance." Old Flint chuckled. "But if you all step closer to it, you'll discover even more of its remarkable qualities."
It must be said that the group's interest was piqued. After standing at the bottom for a few seconds to adjust to the darkness, they walked toward the large face together, intending to study why the wood was glowing. But just then, something utterly terrifying occurred.
The wooden face opened its eyes—still white pupils beneath the lids—and at the same time, the lips moved slightly, and a voice drifted out.
"Who are you~ are you~ are~ are~ are?"
Because they were some distance from the vertical, hard stone well walls, the echo of the wooden face was much lower than that of the people shouting down from above, yet it remained clear enough for everyone to hear. In this dark underground, with everyone's eyes wide and ears perked, this unexpected event startled everyone; even Egger, who was mentally prepared, felt his heart skip a beat... for a moment, some even drew their weapons.
"What in the hell is this?" Greatjon Umber stepped back two paces and swallowed hard, suppressing the urge to draw his sword.
"Unclear. But what is certain is that whenever someone approaches within three feet of this face, it does this—opens its eyes and asks who you are," Chief Flint replied. "We've tried all sorts of answers but got no response. We suspect it requires some kind of password or something similar to trigger the next step."
Torghen Flint was clumsy with words, but his mind was sharp—or perhaps a wise man or counselor within the Flint clan had guessed the truth. He was right: to get a response from this wooden face required a password... and Egger even knew the content: "I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. 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."
Once a sworn brother of the Night's Watch recited these lines, the wooden face known as the "Black Gate" would open its giant mouth, slowly revealing a passage leading directly to the other side—beyond the Wall.
This was a secret path, a safe passage for people to quietly cross the Wall... or more accurately, if Egger had to guess, it was a back door prepared by the Greenseer for his successor. It was designed specifically for someone like Bran: whose guardians would never allow him to go north beyond the Wall.
Thinking deeper, Egger could even boldly speculate that the so-called password was merely a facade.
In the original timeline, Bran and his party escaped from Winterfell, reached the deserted Nightfort after an arduous journey, and happened to encounter Sam and Gilly—who had been saved by the wight-turned-Coldhands, Benjen Stark—climbing up into the well through this secret passage. Indirectly learning the password from them, Bran was able to successfully reach the lands beyond the Wall to continue his journey to find the Greenseer.
Such an incredible coincidence was simply illogical. Thinking carefully, it had to be the Greenseer's arrangement.
So the question arose: in this timeline, the Great Ranging had not occurred because of Egger's strenuous discouragement. All the sworn brothers capable of opening the door were safely in the forts along the Wall... and the wight-ified Benjen Stark was forced to wait on the other side, unable to cross the Wall to meet them. How did Bran's party pass through this wooden door to the north?
One could guess with their toes that the Greenseer would naturally take measures to solve this problem.
He had spent so long preparing for this successor; how could he watch Bran's party arrive at Nightfort only to be stranded before the Black Gate—simply because they didn't know the password or weren't Night's Watchmen themselves?
Whether it was sending someone else to fill Sam's role, telling Jojen or even Bran the password through dreams, or directly using magic to open the door when they reached it... for a transcendent being whose perception and power reached as far as any weirwood existed, it was all child's play.
Egger knew the password, but he had no intention of revealing it. It would be simple enough to fabricate a reason for knowing the opening command, but if the door actually opened... and Robb Stark had a sudden impulse to lead men north to find his brother, would Egger accompany them or not?
"This... is a miracle!"
"Buried underground without sunlight—how does it grow?"
"That's not even the point! We should ask why it glows!"
The Northerners waited a few seconds, moving closer and further a few times to confirm there was no danger, before surrounding this unprecedented weirwood and discussing it animatedly.
"There is one more detail I must tell the lords." Torghen was not at all surprised by the Northern lords' loss of composure; when he and the warriors of his clan first found this tree, they were no more calm than these guests. "Have you all noticed the positional relationship between the well and this tree?"
The group stopped their discussion and looked back at the bottom of the great well they had just descended, then back at the giant face on the weirwood. None could answer. After descending dozens of meters down a spiral staircase, turning more than a dozen times in the pitch-black underground, everyone had lost their sense of direction.
After a moment of hesitation, Egger was the first to realize: the weirwood sapling on the kitchen floor grew leaning toward the south. If it truly was part of this subterranean giant tree...
"Are we currently to the north of the bottom of the well?"
"Lord Egger lives up to his ranger roots; your sense of direction is indeed excellent. Now look again: how far are we from the bottom of the well?"
About a dozen meters. Why? Egger narrowed his eyes. The man clearly wouldn't ask a meaningless question... without much mental effort, he realized the significance of "direction" and "distance": the building used as a kitchen by the ancient Night's Watch was right up against the Wall, less than ten meters from the foot of the ice.
In that case...
"Are we beneath the Wall right now?" Egger's body jolted. This was a detail Flint hadn't mentioned in his letter. If true, then this tree was likely more than just a secret passage!
"Exactly! If this weirwood grew on the surface, it would have to be over a hundred feet tall. But since it is now pressed under the ice wall, then... wouldn't its originally massive crown grow entirely inside the Wall?" There was a hint of smugness in Old Flint's voice, as if he was proud to have discovered this first. "But think of it the other way: why is it that the 'Wall is pressing down on this heart tree,' and not—'it is propping up the Wall'? At least this section?"
The Northern lords whispered among themselves, while Egger was entirely shocked into silence. Torghen Flint likely didn't even know what his speculation implied... but as a transmigrator and a Night's Watchman, Egger possessed more information than the people before him. Egger almost instantly thought of a memorable key point from the original plot: the wights were unable to break into the heart tree where the Greenseer lived; those who entered by force would immediately fall apart back into corpses or bone fragments.
Coincidentally, intelligence provided by the wildlings showed that the Others and the dead they controlled disliked approaching the Wall. And during the Night's Watch's actual combat experience with these enemies of the living, they had noticed one thing: the closer they got to the Wall, the weaker they became.
In the past, the Night's Watch had explained this series of phenomena with the vague phrase magic is woven into the Wall. But today, Egger felt he might have discovered the truth: the Wall's magic might come from this one, or multiple, super-sized weirwoods existing beneath it... It was their presence that made the Wall more than just a two-hundred-meter-high wall of ice!
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