The visitors poured through the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and
polished steel, threehundred strong, a pride of bannermen and knights1,
of sworn swords and freeriders. Over their heads adozen golden banners whipped
back and forth2 in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crownedstag of Baratheon.
Ned knew many of the riders. There came Ser Jaime Lannister with hair as bright
as beaten gold,and there Sandor Clegane with his terrible burned face.
The tall boy beside him could only be thecrown prince, and that stunted
little man behind them was surely the Imp4, Tyrion Lannister.
Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in
the snow-white cloaks of theKingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned …
until he vaulted5 off the back of his warhorse with afamiliar roar,
and crushed him in a bone-crunching hug.
“Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozenface of yours.”
The king looked him over top to bottom, and laughed. “You have not changed at all.”
Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past,
when they had ridden forth towin a throne, the Lord of Storm’s End had been clean-shaven,
clear-eyed, and muscled like amaiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall,
he towered over lesser6 men, and when he donned his armorand the
great antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant.
He’d had a giant’s strengthtoo, his weapon of choice a spiked7 iron
warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days, thesmell of
leather and blood had clung to him like perfume.
Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to
match his height. Ned hadlast seen the king nine years before during Balon
Greyjoy’s rebellion, when the stag and the direwolfhad joined to end the
pretensions9 of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands.
Since the night theyhad stood side by side in Greyjoy’s fallen stronghold,
where Robert had accepted the rebel lord’ssurrender and Ned had taken his son
Theon as hostage and ward10, the king had gained at least eightstone.
A beard as coarse and black as iron wire covered his jaw11 to hide his
double chin and the sag12 ofthe royal jowls, but nothing could hide his
stomach or the dark circles under his eyes.
Yet Robert was Ned’s king now, and not just a friend, so he said only,
“Your Grace. Winterfell isyours.”
By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms13
were coming forward for their mounts.
Robert’s queen, Cersei Lannister, entered on foot with her younger children.
The wheelhouse inwhich they had ridden, a huge double-decked carriage of
oiled oak and gilded14 metal pulled by fortyheavy draft horses, was too wide
to pass through the castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow to kiss thequeen’s ring,
while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long-lost sister. Then the children had been
brought forward, introduced, and approved of by both sides.
No sooner had those formalities of greeting been completed
than the king had said to his host,
“Take me down to your crypt, Eddard. I would pay my respects.”
Ned loved him for that, for remembering her still after all these years.
He called for a lantern. Noother words were needed. The queen had begun to protest.
They had been riding since dawn,everyone was tired and cold, surely they
should refresh themselves first. The dead would wait. Shehad said no more than that;
Robert had looked at her, and her twin brother Jaime had taken her quietlyby the arm,
and she had said no more.
They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he scarcely recognized.
The winding16 stonesteps were narrow. Ned went first with the lantern.
“I was starting to think we would never reachWinterfell,” Robert complained as they
descended. “In the south, the way they talk about my SevenKingdoms, a man forgets
that your part is as big as the other six combined.”
“I trust you enjoyed the journey, Your Grace?”
Robert snorted. “Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent inn north of the
Neck. I’venever seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all your people?”
“Likely they were too shy to come out,” Ned jested. He could feel the chill coming up the
stairs, acold breath from deep within the earth. “Kings are a rare sight in the north.”
Robert snorted. “More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!” The king
put one handon the wall to steady himself as they descended.
“Late summer snows are common enough,” Ned said. “I hope they did not trouble you.
They areusually mild.”
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore. “What will this place be like in winter?
Ishudder to think.”
“The winters are hard,” Ned admitted. “But the Starks will endure. We always have.”
“You need to come south,” Robert told him. “You need a taste of summer before it flees.
InHighgarden there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the eye can
see. The fruits areso ripe they explode in your mouth—melons, peaches, fireplums,
you’ve never tasted such sweetness.
You’ll see, I brought you some. Even at Storm’s End, with that good wind off the bay,
the days are sohot you can barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned!
Flowers everywhere, the marketsbursting with food, the summerwines so cheap
and so good that you can get drunk just breathing theair. Everyone is fat and drunk and
rich.” He laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump19.
“And the girls, Ned!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “I swear, women lose all
modesty20 in theheat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle.
Even in the streets, it’s too damn hot forwool or fur, so they go around in these
short gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, butit’s all the same
when they start sweating and the cloth sticks to their skin, they might as well
benaked.” The king laughed happily.
Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew
how to take hispleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of
Eddard Stark18. Yet Ned could nothelp but notice that those pleasures were taking
a toll21 on the king. Robert was breathing heavily by thetime they reached the bottom of
the stairs, his face red in the lantern light as they stepped out into
thedarkness of the crypt.
“Your Grace,” Ned said respectfully. He swept the lantern in a wide semicircle.
Shadows movedand lurched. Flickering22 light touched the stones underfoot and
brushed against a long procession ofgranite pillars that marched ahead, two by two,
into the dark. Between the pillars, the dead sat on theirstone thrones against the walls,
backs against the sepulchres that contained their mortal remains23.
“Sheis down at the end, with Father and Brandon.”
He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed wordlessly, shivering in
the subterraneanchill. It was always cold down here. Their footsteps rang off the
stones and echoed in the vaultoverhead as they walked among the dead of House Stark.
The Lords of Winterfell watched them pass.
Their likenesses were carved into the stones that sealed the tombs. In long rows
they sat, blind eyesstaring out into eternal darkness, while great stone direwolves
curled round their feet. The shiftingshadows made the stone figures seem to
stir as the living passed by.
By accient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had
been Lord ofWinterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The oldest had
long ago rusted25 away tonothing, leaving only a few red stains where the metal
had rested on stone. Ned wondered if thatmeant those ghosts were free to
roam the castle now. He hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell hadbeen men
hard as the land they ruled. In the centuries before the Dragonlords came over the sea,
theyhad sworn allegiance to no man, styling themselves the Kings in the North.
Ned stopped at last and lifted the oil lantern. The crypt continued on into darkness
ahead of them,but beyond this point the tombs were empty and unsealed; black holes
waiting for their dead, waitingfor him and his children. Ned did not like to think on
that. “Here,” he told his king.
Robert nodded silently, knelt, and bowed his head.
There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father, had a long,
stern face. Thestonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity,
stone fingers holding tight to the swordacross his lap, but in life all swords had
failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were hischildren.
Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King
Aerys Targaryen onlya few short days before he was to wed24 Catelyn Tully of Riverrun.
His father had been forced to watchhim die. He was the true heir,
the eldest26, born to rule.
Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness.
Ned had loved her with allhis heart. Robert had loved her even more.
She was to have been his bride.
“She was more beautiful than that,” the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on
Lyanna’sface, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he rose, made awkward by his
weight. “Ah, damn it,Ned, did you have to bury her in a place like this?”
His voice was hoarse27 with remembered grief.
“She deserved more than darkness …”
“She was a Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said quietly. “This is her place.”
“She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and
clouds above her and therain to wash her clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home,
to restbeside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she
had cried, in a roomthat smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever
had taken her strength and her voice hadbeen faint as a whisper, but when he gave
her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Nedremembered the way she
had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up herhold on life,
the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing.
They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman,
Howland Reed,had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it.
“I bring her flowers when I can,” he said.
“Lyanna was … fond of flowers.”
The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as gently
as if it wereliving flesh. “I vowed29 to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her.”
“You did,” Ned reminded him.
“Only once,” Robert said bitterly.
They had come together at the ford30 of the Trident while the battle crashed
around them, Robertwith his warhammer and his great antlered helm, the
Targaryen prince armored all in black. On hisbreastplate was the three-headed
dragon of his House, wrought31 all in rubies32 that flashed like fire in thesunlight.
The waters of the Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they circled
andclashed, again and again, until at last a crushing blow from
Robert’s hammer stove in the dragon andthe chest beneath it. When
Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream,
whilemen of both armies scrabbled in the swirling33 waters for rubies
knocked free of his armor.
“In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand
deaths will still be less thanhe deserves.”
There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, “We should return,
Your Grace.
Your wife will be waiting.”
“The Others take my wife,” Robert muttered sourly, but he started back the
way they had come,his footsteps falling heavily. “And if I hear ‘Your Grace’ once more,
I’ll have your head on a spike8.
We are more to each other than that.”
“I had not forgotten,” Ned replied quietly. When the king did not answer,
he said, “Tell me aboutJon.”
Robert shook his head. “I have never seen a man sicken so quickly.
We gave a tourney on my son’sname day. If you had seen Jon then, you would have sworn
he would live forever. A fortnight later hewas dead. The sickness was like a fire
in his gut. It burned right through him.” He paused beside apillar, before the
tomb of a long-dead Stark. “I loved that old man.”
“We both did.” Ned paused a moment. “Catelyn fears for her sister.
How does Lysa bear hergrief?”
Robert’s mouth gave a bitter twist. “Not well, in truth,” he admitted.
“I think losing Jon has driventhe woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy
back to the Eyrie. Against my wishes. I had hoped tofoster him with Tywin
Lannister at Casterly Rock. Jon had no brothers, no other sons. Was I supposedto
leave him to be raised by women?”
Ned would sooner entrust35 a child to a pit viper36 than to Lord Tywin,
but he left his doubts unspoken.
Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
“The wife has lost thehusband,” he said carefully. “Perhaps the mother
feared to lose the son. The boy is very young.”
“Six, and sickly, and Lord of the Eyrie, gods have mercy,” the king swore.
“Lord Tywin hadnever taken a ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored.
The Lannisters are a great and nobleHouse. She refused to even hear of it.
Then she left in the dead of night, without so much as a bydnever taken a ward before.
Lysa ought to have been honored. The Lannisters are a great and nobleHouse.
She refused to even hear of it. Then she left in the dead of night, without so much
as a byyour-leave. Cersei was furious.” He sighed deeply.
“The boy is my namesake, did you know that?