Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the
Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright
and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across
tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was
spicy with the scent of flowers.
The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a
dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten
thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of
moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of
stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty
oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black
trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense
canopy overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath the soil.
This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods
who lived here had no names.
But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever
he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of
the godswood.
Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the
rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the
Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him.
Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces
of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a
seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The
Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was
only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the
sept.
For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to
the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed
in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the
nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the
vanished children of the forest.
At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a
small pool where the waters were black and cold. “The heart
tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood’s bark was white as
bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A
face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features
long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and
strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than
Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first
stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle’s
granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of
the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn
centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow
sea.
In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out
a thousand years ago, except on the Isle of Faces where the green
men kept their silent watch. Up here it was different. Here every
castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and
every heart tree its face.
Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a
moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he
was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand
years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the
sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to
follow her as she came. “Ned,” she called softly.
He lifted his head to look at her. “Catelyn,” he
said. His voice was distant and formal. “Where are the
children?”
He would always ask her that. “In the kitchen, arguing
about names for the wolf pups.” She spread her cloak on the
forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. She
could feel the eyes watching her, but she did her best to ignore
them. “Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and
gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure.”
“Is he afraid?” Ned asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “He is only
three.”
Ned frowned. “He must learn to face his fears. He will not
be three forever. And winter is coming.”
“Yes,” Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill,
as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble house had its
words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted
of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and
courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark
words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange
people these northerners were.
“The man died well, I’ll give him that,” Ned
said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it
lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a
dark glow. “I was glad for Bran’s sake. You would have
been proud of Bran.”
“I am always proud of Bran,” Catelyn replied,
watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the rippling
deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on
itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for
swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had
been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old
Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as
well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the
day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from
the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.
“He was the fourth this year,” Ned said grimly.
“The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him
so deep that my words could not reach him.” He sighed.
“Ben writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is
down below a thousand. It’s not only desertions. They are
losing men on rangings as well.”
“Is it the wildlings?” she asked.
“Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool
steel length of it. “And it will only grow worse. The day may
come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride
north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and
all.”
“Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn
shudder.
Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing
for us to fear.”
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She
glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes,
watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.
His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old
Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the
forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they
never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.”
“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a
direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him.
“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,”
he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath.
“You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how
little you like this place. What is it, my lady?”
Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous
news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had
cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the blow, so
she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is
dead.”
His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as
she had known it would. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the
Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to
him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys
II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had
raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up
those he had pledged to protect.
And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a
brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at
Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster
Tully.
“Jon . . . ” he said. “Is this news
certain?”
“It was the king’s seal, and the letter is in
Robert’s own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was
taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought
the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in
pain.”
“That is some small mercy, I suppose,” he said. She
could see the grief on his face, but even then he thought first of
her. “Your sister,” he said. “And Jon’s
boy. What word of them?”
“The message said only that they were well, and had
returned to the Eyrie,” Catelyn said. “I wish they had
gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was
ever her husband’s place, not hers. Lord Jon’s memory
will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of
family and friends around her.”
“Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him
Knight of the Gate, I’d heard.”
Catelyn nodded. “Brynden will do what he can for her, and
for the boy. That is some comfort, but still . . . ”
“Go to her,” Ned urged. “Take the children.
Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers
needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her
grief.”
“Would that I could,” Catelyn said. “The
letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek
you out.”
It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the
understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. “Robert is
coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across his
face.
Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the
talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in
its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced
herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith
in signs. “I knew that would please you,” she said.
“We should send word to your brother on the Wall.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Ben will want to
be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest
bird.” Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. “Damnation,
how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than
this? How many in his party, did the message say?”
“I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all
their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the
children travel with them.”
“Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,” he
said. “It is just as well. That will give us more time to
prepare.”
“The queen’s brothers are also in the party,”
she told him.
Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the
queen’s family, Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock
had come late to Robert’s cause, when victory was all but
certain, and he had never forgiven them. “Well, if the price
for Robert’s company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be
it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his
court.”
“Where the king goes, the realm follows,” she
said.
“It will be good to see the children. The youngest was
still sucking at the Lannister woman’s teat the last time I
saw him. He must be, what, five by now?”
“Prince Tommen is seven,” she told him. “The
same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister
woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every
passing year.”
Ned squeezed her hand. “There must be a feast, of course,
with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south
with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them
back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already,
you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.”
Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the
Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood there was a garden, bright
and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across
tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was
spicy with the scent of flowers.
The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a
dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten
thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of
moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of
stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty
oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black
trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense
canopy overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath the soil.
This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods
who lived here had no names.
But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever
he took a man’s life, afterward he would seek the quiet of
the godswood.
Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the
rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the
Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him.
Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces
of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a
seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The
Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was
only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the
sept.
For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to
the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed
in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the
nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the
vanished children of the forest.
At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a
small pool where the waters were black and cold. “The heart
tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood’s bark was white as
bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A
face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features
long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and
strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than
Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first
stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle’s
granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of
the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn
centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow
sea.
In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out
a thousand years ago, except on the Isle of Faces where the green
men kept their silent watch. Up here it was different. Here every
castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and
every heart tree its face.
Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a
moss-covered stone. The greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he
was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand
years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the
sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to
follow her as she came. “Ned,” she called softly.
He lifted his head to look at her. “Catelyn,” he
said. His voice was distant and formal. “Where are the
children?”
He would always ask her that. “In the kitchen, arguing
about names for the wolf pups.” She spread her cloak on the
forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. She
could feel the eyes watching her, but she did her best to ignore
them. “Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and
gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure.”
“Is he afraid?” Ned asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “He is only
three.”
Ned frowned. “He must learn to face his fears. He will not
be three forever. And winter is coming.”
“Yes,” Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill,
as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble house had its
words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted
of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and
courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark
words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange
people these northerners were.
“The man died well, I’ll give him that,” Ned
said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it
lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a
dark glow. “I was glad for Bran’s sake. You would have
been proud of Bran.”
“I am always proud of Bran,” Catelyn replied,
watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the rippling
deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on
itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for
swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had
been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old
Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as
well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the
day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from
the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.
“He was the fourth this year,” Ned said grimly.
“The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him
so deep that my words could not reach him.” He sighed.
“Ben writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is
down below a thousand. It’s not only desertions. They are
losing men on rangings as well.”
“Is it the wildlings?” she asked.
“Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool
steel length of it. “And it will only grow worse. The day may
come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride
north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and
all.”
“Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn
shudder.
Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing
for us to fear.”
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She
glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes,
watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.
His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old
Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the
forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they
never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.”
“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a
direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him.
“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,”
he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath.
“You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how
little you like this place. What is it, my lady?”
Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous
news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had
cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the blow, so
she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is
dead.”
His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as
she had known it would. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the
Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to
him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys
II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had
raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up
those he had pledged to protect.
And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a
brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at
Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster
Tully.
“Jon . . . ” he said. “Is this news
certain?”
“It was the king’s seal, and the letter is in
Robert’s own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was
taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought
the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in
pain.”
“That is some small mercy, I suppose,” he said. She
could see the grief on his face, but even then he thought first of
her. “Your sister,” he said. “And Jon’s
boy. What word of them?”
“The message said only that they were well, and had
returned to the Eyrie,” Catelyn said. “I wish they had
gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was
ever her husband’s place, not hers. Lord Jon’s memory
will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of
family and friends around her.”
“Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him
Knight of the Gate, I’d heard.”
Catelyn nodded. “Brynden will do what he can for her, and
for the boy. That is some comfort, but still . . . ”
“Go to her,” Ned urged. “Take the children.
Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers
needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her
grief.”
“Would that I could,” Catelyn said. “The
letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek
you out.”
It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the
understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. “Robert is
coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across his
face.
Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the
talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in
its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced
herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith
in signs. “I knew that would please you,” she said.
“We should send word to your brother on the Wall.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Ben will want to
be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest
bird.” Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. “Damnation,
how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than
this? How many in his party, did the message say?”
“I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all
their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the
children travel with them.”
“Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,” he
said. “It is just as well. That will give us more time to
prepare.”
“The queen’s brothers are also in the party,”
she told him.
Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the
queen’s family, Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock
had come late to Robert’s cause, when victory was all but
certain, and he had never forgiven them. “Well, if the price
for Robert’s company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be
it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his
court.”
“Where the king goes, the realm follows,” she
said.
“It will be good to see the children. The youngest was
still sucking at the Lannister woman’s teat the last time I
saw him. He must be, what, five by now?”
“Prince Tommen is seven,” she told him. “The
same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister
woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every
passing year.”
Ned squeezed her hand. “There must be a feast, of course,
with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south
with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them
back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already,
you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.”