My lady, you should have sent word of your
coming,” Ser Donnel Waynwood told her as their horses climbed
the pass. “We would have sent an escort. The high road is not
as safe as it once was, for a party as small as yours.”
“We learned that to our sorrow, Ser Donnel,” Catelyn
said. Sometimes she felt as though her heart had turned to stone;
six brave men had died to bring her this far, and she could not
even find it in her to weep for them. Even their names were fading.
“The clansmen harried us day and night. We lost three men in
the first attack, and two more in the second, and Lannister’s
serving man died of a fever when his wounds festered. When we heard
your men approaching, I thought us doomed for certain.” They
had drawn up for a last desperate fight, blades in hand and backs
to the rock. The dwarf had been whetting the edge of his axe and
making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner the riders
carried before them, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue
and white. Catelyn had never seen a more welcome sight.
“The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died,”
Ser Donnel said. He was a stocky youth of twenty years, earnest and
homely, with a wide nose and a shock of thick brown hair. “If
it were up to me, I would take a hundred men into the mountains,
root them out of their fastnesses, and teach them some sharp
lessons, but your sister has forbidden it. She would not even
permit her knights to fight in the Hand’s tourney. She wants
all our swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale . . . against
what, no one is certain. Shadows, some say.” He looked at her
anxiously, as if he had suddenly remembered who she was. “I
hope I have not spoken out of turn, my lady. I meant no
offense.”
“Frank talk does not offend me, Ser Donnel.” Catelyn
knew what her sister feared. Not shadows, Lannisters, she thought
to herself, glancing back to where the dwarf rode beside Bronn. The
two of them had grown thick as thieves since Chiggen had died. The
little man was more cunning than she liked. When they had entered
the mountains, he had been her captive, bound and helpless. What
was he now? Her captive still, yet he rode along with a dirk
through his belt and an axe strapped to his saddle, wearing the
shadowskin cloak he’d won dicing with the singer and the
chainmail hauberk he’d taken off Chiggen’s corpse. Two
score men flanked the dwarf and the rest of her ragged band,
knights and men-at-arms in service to her sister Lysa and Jon
Arryn’s young son, and yet Tyrion betrayed no hint of fear.
Could I be wrong? Catelyn wondered, not for the first time. Could
he be innocent after all, of Bran and Jon Arryn and all the rest?
And if he was, what did that make her? Six men had died to bring
him here.
Resolute, she pushed her doubts away. “When we reach your
keep, I would take it kindly if you could send for Maester Colemon
at once. Ser Rodrik is feverish from his wounds.” More than
once she had feared the gallant old knight would not survive the
journey. Toward the end he could scarcely sit his horse, and Bronn
had urged her to leave him to his fate, but Catelyn would not hear
of it. They had tied him in the saddle instead, and she had
commanded Marillion the singer to watch over him.
Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. “The Lady Lysa
has commanded the maester to remain at the Eyrie at all times, to
care for Lord Robert,” he said. “We have a septon at
the gate who tends to our wounded. He can see to your man’s
hurts.”
Catelyn had more faith in a maester’s learning than a
septon’s prayers. She was about to say as much when she saw
the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone of
the mountains on either side of them. Where the pass shrank to a
narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to ride abreast, twin
watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered bridge
of weathered grey stone that arched above the road. Silent faces
watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When
they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them.
His horse and his armor were grey, but his cloak was the rippling
blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish, wrought in gold
and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. “Who
would pass the Bloody Gate?” he called.
“Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her
companions,” the young knight answered.
The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. “I thought the
lady looked familiar. You are far from home, little Cat.”
“And you, Uncle,” she said, smiling despite all she
had been through. Hearing that hoarse, smoky voice again took her
back twenty years, to the days of her childhood.
“My home is at my back,” he said gruffly.
“Your home is in my heart,” Catelyn told him.
“Take off your helm. I would look on your face
again.”
“The years have not improved it, I fear,” Brynden
Tully said, but when he lifted off the helm, Catelyn saw that he
lied. His features were lined and weathered, and time had stolen
the auburn from his hair and left him only grey, but the smile was
the same, and the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars, and the
laughter in his deep blue eyes. “Did Lysa know you were
coming?”
“There was no time to send word ahead,” Catelyn told
him. The others were coming up behind her. “I fear we ride
before the storm, Uncle.”
“May we enter the Vale?” Ser Donnel asked. The
Waynwoods were ever ones for ceremony.
“In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender
of the Vale, True Warden of the East, I bid you enter freely, and
charge you to keep his peace,” Ser Brynden replied.
“Come.”
And so she rode behind him, beneath the shadow of the Bloody
Gate where a dozen armies had dashed themselves to pieces in the
Age of Heroes. On the far side of the stoneworks, the mountains
opened up suddenly upon a vista of green fields, blue sky, and
snowcapped mountains that took her breath away. The Vale of Arryn
bathed in the morning light.
It stretched before them to the misty cast, a tranquil land of
rich black soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and hundreds of small
lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by
its sheltering peaks. Wheat and corn and barley grew high in its
fields, and even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger nor the
fruit any sweeter than here. They stood at the western end of the
valley, where the high road crested the last pass and began its
winding descent to the bottomlands two miles below. The Vale was
narrow here, no more than a half day’s ride across, and the
northern mountains seemed so close that Catelyn could almost reach out and touch them. Looming over them
all was the jagged peak called the Giant’s Lance, a mountain
that even mountains looked up to, its head lost in icy mists three
and a half miles above the valley floor. Over its massive western
shoulder flowed the ghost torrent of Alyssa’s Tears. Even
from this distance, Catelyn could make out the shining silver
thread, bright against the dark stone.
When her uncle saw that she had stopped, he moved his horse
closer and pointed. “It’s there, beside Alyssa’s
Tears. All you can see from here is a flash of white every now and
then, if you look hard and the sun hits the walls just
right.” Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into
the belly of the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and
look down on the clouds. “How long a ride?” she
asked.
“We can be at the mountain by evenfall,” Uncle
Brynden said, “but the climb will take another
day.”
Ser Rodrik Cassel spoke up from behind. “My lady,”
he said, “I fear I can go no farther today.” His face
sagged beneath his ragged, newgrown whiskers, and he looked so
weary Catelyn feared he might fall off his horse.
“Nor should you,” she said. “You have done all
I could have asked of you, and a hundred times more. My uncle will
see me the rest of the way to the Eyrie. Lannister must come with
me, but there is no reason that you and the others should not rest
here and recover your strength.”
“We should be honored to have them to guest,” Ser
Donnel said with the grave courtesy of the young. Beside Ser
Rodrik, only Bronn, Ser Willis Wode, and Marillion the singer
remained of the party that had ridden with her from the inn by the
crossroads.
“My lady,” Marillion said, riding forward. “I
beg you allow me to accompany you to the Eyrie, to see the end of
the tale as I saw its beginnings.” The boy sounded haggard,
yet strangely determined; he had a fevered shine to his eyes.
Catelyn had never asked the singer to ride with them; that
choice he had made himself, and how he had come to survive the
journey when so many braver men lay dead and unburied behind them,
she could never say. Yet here he was, with a scruff of beard that
made him look almost a man. Perhaps she owed him something for
having come this far. “Very well,” she told him.
“I’ll come as well,” Bronn announced.
She liked that less well. Without Bronn she would never have
reached the Vale, she knew; the sellsword was as fierce a fighter
as she had ever seen, and his sword had helped cut them through to
safety. Yet for all that, Catelyn misliked the man. Courage he had, and
strength, but there was no kindness in him, and little loyalty. And
she had seen him riding beside Lannister far too often, talking in
low voices and laughing at some private joke. She would have
preferred to separate him from the dwarf here and now, but having
agreed that Marillion might continue to the Eyrie, she could see no
gracious way to deny that same right to Bronn. “As you
wish,” she said, although she noted that he had not actually
asked her permission.
Ser Willis Wode remained with Ser Rodrik, a soft-spoken septon
fussing over their wounds. Their horses were left behind as well,
poor ragged things. Ser Donnel promised to send birds ahead to the
Eyrie and the Gates of the Moon with the word of their coming.
Fresh mounts were brought forth from the stables, surefooted
mountain stock with shaggy coats, and within the hour they set
forth once again. Catelyn rode beside her uncle as they began the
descent to the valley floor. Behind came Bronn, Tyrion Lannister,
Marillion, and six of Brynden’s men.
Not until they were a third of the way down the mountain path,
well out of earshot of the others, did Brynden Tully turn to her
and say, “So, child. Tell me about this storm of
yours.”
“I have not been a child in many years, Uncle,”
Catelyn said, but she told him nonetheless. It took longer than she
would have believed to tell it all, Lysa’s letter and
Bran’s fall, the assassin’s dagger and Littlefinger and
her chance meeting with Tyrion Lannister in the crossroads inn.
Her uncle listened silently, heavy brows shadowing his eyes as
his frown grew deeper. Brynden Tully had always known how to listen . . . to anyone but her father. He was Lord Hoster’s brother,
younger by five years, but the two of them had been at war as far
back as Catelyn could remember. During one of their louder
quarrels, when Catelyn was eight, Lord Hoster had called Brynden
“the black goat of the Tully flock.” Laughing, Brynden
had pointed out that the sigil of their house was a leaping trout,
so he ought to be a black fish rather than a black goat, and from
that day forward he had taken it as his personal emblem.
The war had not ended until the day she and Lysa had been wed.
It was at their wedding feast that Brynden told his brother he was
leaving Riverrun to serve Lysa and her new husband, the Lord of the
Eyrie. Lord Hoster had not spoken his brother’s name since,
from what Edmure told her in his infrequent letters.
Nonetheless, during all those years of Catelyn’s girlhood,
it had been Brynden the Blackfish to whom Lord Hoster’s
children had run with their tears and their tales, when Father was
too busy and Mother too ill. Catelyn, Lysa, Edmure . . . and yes,
even Petyr Baelish, their father’s ward . . . he had listened
to them all patiently, as he listened now, laughing at their
triumphs and sympathizing with their childish misfortunes.
When she was done, her uncle remained silent for a long time, as
his horse negotiated the steep, rocky trail. “Your father
must be told,” he said at last. “If the Lannisters
should march, Winterfell is remote and the Vale walled up behind
its mountains, but Riverrun lies right in their path.”
“I’d had the same fear,” Catelyn admitted.
“I shall ask Maester Colemon to send a bird when we reach the
Eyrie.” She had other messages to send as well; the commands
that Ned had given her for his bannermen, to ready the defenses of
the north. “What is the mood in the Vale?” she
asked.
“Angry,” Brynden Tully admitted. “Lord Jon was
much loved, and the insult was keenly felt when the king named
Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had held for near three
hundred years. Lysa has commanded us to call her son the True
Warden of the East, but no one is fooled. Nor is your sister alone
in wondering at the manner of the Hand’s death. None dare say
Jon was murdered, not openly, but suspicion casts a long
shadow.” He gave Catelyn a look, his mouth tight. “And
there is the boy.”
“The boy? What of him?” She ducked her head as they
passed under a low overhang of rock, and around a sharp turn.
Her uncle’s voice was troubled. “Lord Robert,”
he sighed. “Six years old, sickly, and prone to weep if you
take his dolls away. Jon Arryn’s trueborn heir, by all the
gods, yet there are some who say he is too weak to sit his
father’s seat, Nestor Royce has been high steward these past
fourteen years, while Lord Jon served in King’s Landing, and
many whisper that he should rule until the boy comes of age. Others
believe that Lysa must marry again, and soon. Already the suitors
gather like crows on a battlefield. The Eyrie is full of
them.”
“I might have expected that,” Catelyn said. Small
wonder there; Lysa was still young, and the kingdom of Mountain and
Vale made a handsome wedding gift. “Will Lysa take another
husband?”
“She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits
her,” Brynden Tully said, “but she has already rejected
Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this
time she will choose her lord husband.”
“You of all people can scarce fault her for
that.”
Ser Brynden snorted. “Nor do I, but . . . it seems to me
Lysa is only playing at courtship. She enjoys the sport, but I
believe your sister intends to rule herself until her boy is old
enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in truth as well as name.”
“A woman can rule as wisely as a man,” Catelyn
said.
“The right woman can,” her uncle said with a
sideways glance. “Make no mistake, Cat. Lysa is not
you.” He hesitated a moment. “If truth be told, I fear
you may not find your sister as helpful as you would
like.”
She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“The Lysa who came back from King’s Landing is not
the same girl who went south when her husband was named Hand. Those
years were hard for her. You must know. Lord Arryn was a dutiful
husband, but their marriage was made from politics, not
passion.”
“As was my own.”
“They began the same, but your ending has been happier
than your sister’s. Two babes stillborn, twice as many
miscarriages, Lord Arryn’s death . . . Catelyn, the gods gave
Lysa only the one child, and he is all your sister lives for now,
poor boy. Small wonder she fled rather than see him handed over to
the Lannisters. Your sister is afraid, child, and the Lannisters
are what she fears most. She ran to the Vale, stealing away from
the Red Keep like a thief in the night, and all to snatch her son
out of the lion’s mouth . . . and now you have brought the
lion to her door.”
“In chains,” Catelyn said. A crevasse yawned on her
right, falling away into darkness. She reined up her horse and
picked her way along step by careful step.
“Oh?” Her uncle glanced back, to where Tyrion
Lannister was making his slow descent behind them. “I see an
axe on his saddle, a dirk at his belt, and a sellsword that trails
after him like a hungry shadow. Where are the chains, sweet
one?”
Catelyn shifted uneasily in her seat. “The dwarf is here,
and not by choice. Chains or no, he is my prisoner. Lysa will want
him to answer for his crimes no less than I. It was her own lord
husband the Lannisters murdered, and her own letter that first
warned us against them.”
Brynden Blackfish gave her a weary smile. “I hope you are
right, child,” he sighed, in tones that said she was
wrong.
The sun was well to the west by the time the slope began to
flatten beneath the hooves of their horses. The road widened and
grew straight, and for the first time Catelyn noticed wildflowers
and grasses growing. Once they reached the valley floor, the going
was faster and they made good time, cantering through verdant
greenwoods and sleepy little hamlets, past orchards and golden
wheat fields, splashing across a dozen sunlit streams. Her uncle
sent a standard-bearer ahead of them, a double banner flying from
his staff; the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn on high, and below it
his own black fish. Farm wagons and merchants’ carts and
riders from lesser houses moved aside to let them pass.
Even so, it was full dark before they reached the stout castle
that stood at the foot of the Giant’s Lance. Torches
flickered atop its ramparts, and the horned moon danced upon the
dark waters of its moat. The drawbridge was up and the portcullis
down, but Catelyn saw lights burning in the gatehouse and spilling
from the windows of the square towers beyond.
“The Gates of the Moon,” her uncle said as the party
drew rein. His standard-bearer rode to the edge of the moat to hail
the men in the gatehouse. “Lord Nestor’s seat. He
should be expecting us. Look up.”
Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw
was stone and trees, the looming mass of the great mountain
shrouded in night, as black as a starless sky. Then she noticed the
glow of distant fires well above them; a tower keep, built upon the
steep side of the mountain, its lights like orange eyes staring
down from above. Above that was another, higher and more distant,
and still higher a third, no more than a flickering spark in the
sky. And finally, up where the falcons soared, a flash of white in
the moonlight. Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the
pale towers, so far above.
“The Eyrie,” she heard Marillion murmur, awed.
The sharp voice of Tyrion Lannister broke in. “The Arryns
must not be overfond of company. If you’re planning to make
us climb that mountain in the dark, I’d rather you kill me
here.”
“We’ll spend the night here and make the ascent on
the morrow,” Brynden told him.
“I can scarcely wait,” the dwarf replied. “How
do we get up there? I’ve no experience at riding
goats.”
“Mules,” Brynden said, smiling.
“There are steps carved into the mountain,” Catelyn
said. Ned had told her about them when he talked of his youth here
with Robert Baratheon and Jon Arryn.
Her uncle nodded. “It is too dark to see them, but the
steps are there. Too steep and narrow for horses, but mules can
manage them most of the way. The path is guarded by three
waycastles, Stone and Snow and Sky. The mules will take us as far
up as Sky.”
Tyrion Lannister glanced up doubtfully. “And beyond
that?”
Brynden smiled. “Beyond that, the path is too steep even
for mules. We ascend on foot the rest of the way. Or perchance
you’d prefer to ride a basket. The Eyrie clings to the
mountain directly above Sky, and in its cellars are six great
winches with long iron chains to draw supplies up from below. If
you prefer, my lord of Lannister, I can arrange for you to ride up
with the bread and beer and apples.”
The dwarf gave a bark of laughter. “Would that I were a
pumpkin,” he said. “Alas, my lord father would no doubt
be most chagrined if his son of Lannister went to his fate like a
load of turnips. If you ascend on foot, I fear I must do the same.
We Lannisters do have a certain pride.”
“Pride?” Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy
manner made her angry. “Arrogance, some might call it.
Arrogance and avarice and lust for power.”
“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion
Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my
sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I,
however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for
you?” He grinned.
The drawbridge came creaking down before she could reply, and
they heard the sound of oiled chains as the portcullis was drawn
up. Men-at-arms carried burning brands out to light their way, and
her uncle led them across the moat. Lord Nestor Royce, High Steward
of the Vale and Keeper of the Gates of the Moon, was waiting in the
yard to greet them, surrounded by his knights. “Lady
Stark,” he said, bowing. He was a massive, barrel-chested
man, and his bow was clumsy.
Catelyn dismounted to stand before him. “Lord
Nestor,” she said. She knew the man only by reputation;
Bronze Yohn’s cousin, from a lesser branch of House Royce,
yet still a formidable lord in his own right. “We have had a
long and tiring journey. I would beg the hospitality of your roof
tonight, if I might.”
“My roof is yours, my lady,” Lord Nestor returned
gruffly, “but your sister the Lady Lysa has sent down word
from the Eyrie. She wishes to see you at once. The rest of your
party will be housed here and sent up at first light.”
Her uncle swung off his horse. “What madness is
this?” he said bluntly. Brynden Tully had never been a man to
blunt the edge of his words. “A night ascent, with the moon
not even full? Even Lysa should know that’s an invitation to
a broken neck.”
“The mules know the way, Ser Brynden.” A wiry girl
of seventeen or eighteen years stepped up beside Lord Nestor. Her
dark hair was cropped short and straight around her head, and she
wore riding leathers and a light shirt of silvered ringmail. She
bowed to Catelyn, more gracefully than her lord. “I promise
you, my lady, no harm will come to you. It would be my honor to
take you up. I’ve made the dark climb a hundred times. Mychel
says my father must have been a goat.”
She sounded so cocky that Catelyn had to smile. “Do you
have a name, child?”
“Mya Stone, if it please you, my lady,” the girl
said.
It did not please her; it was an effort for Catelyn to keep the
smile on her face. Stone was a bastard’s name in the Vale, as
Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the
Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born
with no names of their own. Catelyn had nothing against this girl,
but suddenly she could not help but think of Ned’s bastard on
the Wall, and the thought made her angry and guilty, both at once.
She struggled to find words for a reply.
Lord Nestor filled the silence. “Mya’s a clever
girl, and if she vows she will bring you safely to the Lady Lysa, I
believe her. She has not failed me yet.”
“Then I put myself in your hands, Mya Stone,”
Catelyn said. “Lord Nestor, I charge you to keep a close
guard on my prisoner.”
“And I charge you to bring the prisoner a cup of wine and
a nicely crisped capon, before he dies of hunger,” Lannister
said. “A girl would be pleasant as well, but I suppose
that’s too much to ask of you.” The sellsword Bronn
laughed aloud.
Lord Nestor ignored the banter. “As you say, my lady, so
it will be done.” Only then did he look at the dwarf.
“See our lord of Lannister to a tower cell, and bring him
meat and mead.”
Catelyn took her leave of her uncle and the others as Tyrion
Lannister was led off, then followed the bastard girl through the
castle. Two mules were waiting in the upper bailey, saddled and
ready. Mya helped her mount one while a guardsman in a sky-blue
cloak opened the narrow postern gate. Beyond was dense forest of
pine and spruce, and the mountain like a black wall, but the steps
were there, chiseled deep into the rock, ascending into the sky.
“Some people find it easier if they close their eyes,”
Mya said as she led the mules through the gate into the dark wood.
“When they get frightened or dizzy, sometimes they hold on to
the mule too tight. They don’t like that.”
“I was born a Tully and wed to a Stark,” Catelyn
said. “I do not frighten easily. Do you plan to light a
torch?” The steps were black as pitch.
The girl made a face. “Torches just blind you. On a clear
night like this, the moon and the stars are enough. Mychel says I
have the eyes of the owl.” She mounted and urged her mule up
the first step. Catelyn’s animal followed of its own
accord.
“You mentioned Mychel before,” Catelyn said. The
mules set the pace, slow but steady. She was perfectly content with
that.
“Mychel’s my love,” Mya explained.
“Mychel Redfort. He’s squire to Ser Lyn Corbray.
We’re to wed as soon as he becomes a knight, next year or the
year after.”
She sounded so like Sansa, so happy and innocent with her
dreams. Catelyn smiled, but the smile was tinged with sadness. The
Redforts were an old name in the Vale, she knew, with the blood of
the First Men in their veins. His love she might be, but no Redfort
would ever wed a bastard. His family would arrange a more suitable
match for him, to a Corbray or a Waynwood or a Royce, or perhaps a
daughter of some greater house outside the Vale. If Mychel Redfort
laid with this girl at all, it would be on the wrong side of the
sheet.
The ascent was easier than Catelyn had dared hope. The trees
pressed close, leaning over the path to make a rustling green roof
that shut out even the moon, so it seemed as though they were
moving up a long black tunnel. But the mules were surefooted and
tireless, and Mya Stone did indeed seem blessed with night-eyes.
They plodded upward, winding their way back and forth across the
face of the mountain as the steps twisted and turned. A thick layer
of fallen needles carpeted the path, so the shoes of their mules
made only the softest sound on the rock. The quiet soothed her, and
the gentle rocking motion set Catelyn to swaying in her saddle.
Before long she was fighting sleep.
Perhaps she did doze for a moment, for suddenly a massive
ironbound gate was looming before them. “Stone,” Mya
announced cheerily, dismounting. Iron spikes were set along the
tops of formidable stone walls, and two fat round towers overtopped
the keep. The gate swung open at Mya’s shout. Inside, the
portly knight who commanded the waycastle greeted Mya by name and
offered them skewers of charred meat and onions still hot from the
spit. Catelyn had not realized how hungry she was. She ate standing
in the yard, as stablehands moved their saddles to fresh mules. The
hot juices ran down her chin and dripped onto her cloak, but she
was too famished to care.
Then it was up onto a new mule and out again into the starlight.
The second part of the ascent seemed more treacherous to Catelyn.
The trail was steeper, the steps more worn, and here and there
littered with pebbles and broken stone. Mya had to dismount a
half-dozen times to move fallen rocks from their path. “You
don’t want your mule to break a leg up here,” she said.
Catelyn was forced to agree. She could feel the altitude more now.
The trees were sparser up here, and the wind blew more vigorously,
sharp gusts that tugged at her clothing and pushed her hair into
her eyes. From time to time the steps doubled back on themselves,
and she could see Stone below them, and the Gates of the Moon
farther down, its torches no brighter than candles.
Snow was smaller than Stone, a single fortified tower and a
timber keep and stable hidden behind a low wall of unmortared rock.
Yet it nestled against the Giant’s Lance in such a way as to
command the entire stone stair above the lower waycastle. An enemy
intent on the Eyrie would have to fight his way from Stone step by
step, while rocks and arrows rained down from Snow above. The
commander, an anxious young knight with a pockmarked face, offered
bread and cheese and the chance to warm themselves before his fire,
but Mya declined. “We ought to keep going, my lady,”
she said. “If it please you.” Catelyn nodded.
Again they were given fresh mules. Hers was white. Mya smiled
when she saw him. “Whitey’s a good one, my lady. Sure
of foot, even on ice, but you need to be careful. He’ll kick
if he doesn’t like you.”
The white mule seemed to like Catelyn; there was no kicking,
thank the gods. There was no ice either, and she was grateful for
that as well. “My mother says that hundreds of years ago,
this was where the snow began,” Mya told her. “It was
always white above here, and the ice never melted.” She
shrugged. “I can’t remember ever seeing snow this far
down the mountain, but maybe it was that way once, in the olden
times.” So young, Catelyn thought, trying to remember if she had ever
been like that. The girl had lived half her life in summer, and
that was all she knew. Winter is coming, child, she wanted to tell
her. The words were on her lips; she almost said them. Perhaps she
was becoming a Stark at last.
Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them
like a wolf in the waste, then falling off to nothing as if to lure
them into complacency. The stars seemed brighter up here, so close
that she could almost touch them, and the horned moon was huge in
the clear black sky. As they climbed, Catelyn found it was better
to look up than down. The steps were cracked and broken from
centuries of freeze and thaw and the tread of countless mules, and
even in the dark the heights put her heart in her throat. When they
came to a high saddle between two spires of rock, Mya dismounted.
“It’s best to lead the mules over,” she said.
“The wind can be a little scary here, my lady.”
Catelyn climbed stiffly from the shadows and looked at the path
ahead; twenty feet long and close to three feet wide, but with a
precipitous drop to either side. She could hear the wind shrieking.
Mya stepped lightly out, her mule following as calmly as if they
were crossing a bailey. It was her turn. Yet no sooner had she
taken her first step than fear caught Catelyn in its jaws. She
could feel the emptiness, the vast black gulfs of air that yawned
around her. She stopped, trembling, afraid to move. The wind
screamed at her and wrenched at her cloak, trying to pull her over
the edge. Catelyn edged her foot backward, the most timid of steps,
but the mule was behind her, and she could not retreat. I am going
to die here, she thought. She could feel cold sweat trickling down
her back.
“Lady Stark,” Mya called across the gulf. The girl
sounded a thousand leagues away. “Are you well?”
Catelyn Tully Stark swallowed what remained of her pride.
“I . . . I cannot do this, child,” she called out.
“Yes you can,” the bastard girl said. “I know
you can. Look how wide the path is.”
“I don’t want to look.” The world seemed to be
spinning around her, mountain and sky and mules, whirling like a
child’s top. Catelyn closed her eyes to steady her ragged
breathing.
“I’ll come back for you,” Mya said.
“Don’t move, my lady.”
Moving was about the last thing Catelyn was about to do. She
listened to the skirling of the wind and the scuffling sound of
leather on stone. Then Mya was there, taking her gently by the arm.
“Keep your eyes closed if you like. Let go of the rope now,
Whitey will take care of himself. Very good, my lady. I’ll
lead you over, it’s easy, you’ll see. Give me a step
now. That’s it, move your foot, just slide it forward. See.
Now another. Easy. You could run across. Another one, go on.
Yes.” And so, foot by foot, step by step, the bastard girl
led Catelyn across, blind and trembling, while the white mule
followed placidly behind them.
The waycastle called Sky was no more than a high,
crescent-shaped wall of unmortared stone raised against the side of
the mountain, but even the topless towers of Valyria could not have
looked more beautiful to Catelyn Stark. Here at last the snow crown
began; Sky’s weathered stones were rimed with frost, and long
spears of ice hung from the slopes above.
Dawn was breaking in the east as Mya Stone hallooed for the
guards, and the gates opened before them. Inside the walls there
was only a series of ramps and a great tumble of boulders and
stones of all sizes. No doubt it would be the easiest thing in the
world to begin an avalanche from here. A mouth yawned in the rock
face in front of them. “The stables and barracks are in
there,” Mya said. “The last part is inside the
mountain. It can be a little dark, but at least you’re out of
the wind. This is as far as the mules can go. Past here, well,
it’s a sort of chimney, more like a stone ladder than proper
steps, but it’s not too bad. Another hour and we’ll be
there.”
Catelyn looked up. Directly overhead, pale in the dawn light,
she could see the foundations of the Eyrie. It could not be more
than six hundred feet above them. From below it looked like a small
white honeycomb. She remembered what her uncle had said of baskets
and winches. “The Lannisters may have their pride,” she
told Mya, “but the Tullys are born with better sense. I have
ridden all day and the best part of a night. Tell them to lower a
basket. I shall ride with the turnips.”
The sun was well above the mountains by the time Catelyn Stark
finally reached the Eyrie. A stocky, silver-haired man in a
sky-blue cloak and hammered moon-and-falcon breastplate helped her
from the basket; Ser Vardis Egen, captain of Jon Arryn’s
household guard. Beside him stood Maester Colemon, thin and
nervous, with too little hair and too much neck. “Lady
Stark,” Ser Vardis said, “the pleasure is as great as
it is unanticipated.” Maester Colemon bobbed his head in
agreement. “Indeed it is, my lady, indeed it is. I have sent
word to your sister. She left orders to be awakened the instant you
arrived.”
“I hope she had a good night’s rest,” Catelyn
said with a certain bite in her tone that seemed to go
unnoticed.
The men escorted her from the winch room up a spiral stair. The
Eyrie was a small castle by the standards of the great houses;
seven slender white towers bunched as tightly as arrows in a quiver
on a shoulder of the great mountain. It had no need of stables nor
smithys nor kennels, but Ned said its granary was as large as
Winterfell’s, and its towers could house five hundred men.
Yet it seemed strangely deserted to Catelyn as she passed through
it, its pale stone halls echoing and empty.
Lysa was waiting alone in her solar, still clad in her bed
robes. Her long auburn hair tumbled unbound across bare white
shoulders and down her back. A maid stood behind her, brushing out
the night’s tangles, but when Catelyn entered, her sister
rose to her feet, smiling. “Cat,” she said. “Oh,
Cat, how good it is to see you. My sweet sister.” She ran
across the chamber and wrapped her sister in her arms. “How
long it has been,” Lysa murmured against her. “Oh, how
very very long.”
It had been five years, in truth; five cruel years, for Lysa.
They had taken their toll. Her sister was two years the younger,
yet she looked older now. Shorter than Catelyn, Lysa had grown
thick of body, pale and puffy of face. She had the blue eyes of the
Tullys, but hers were pale and watery, never still. Her small mouth
had turned petulant. As Catelyn held her, she remembered the slender, high-breasted girl
who’d waited beside her that day in the sept at Riverrun. How
lovely and full of hope she had been. All that remained of her
sister’s beauty was the great fall of thick auburn hair that
cascaded to her waist.
“You look well,” Catelyn lied, “but . . . tired.”
Her sister broke the embrace. “Tired. Yes. Oh, yes.”
She seemed to notice the others then; her maid, Maester Colemon,
Ser Vardis. “Leave us,” she told them. “I wish to
speak to my sister alone.” She held Catelyn’s hand as
they withdrew . . .
. . . and dropped it the instant the door closed. Catelyn saw
her face change. It was as if the sun had gone behind a cloud.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Lysa snapped at
her. “To bring him here, without a word of permission,
without so much as a warning, to drag us into your quarrels with
the Lannisters . . . ”
“My quarrels?” Catelyn could scarce believe what she
was hearing. A great fire burned in the hearth, but there was no
trace of warmth in Lysa’s voice. “They were your
quarrels first, sister. It was you who sent me that cursed letter,
you who wrote that the Lannisters had murdered your
husband.”
“To warn you, so you could stay away from them! I never
meant to fight them! Gods, Cat, do you know what you’ve
done?”
“Mother?” a small voice said. Lysa whirled, her
heavy robe swirling around her. Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie,
stood in the doorway, clutching a ragged cloth doll and looking at
them with large eyes. He was a painfully thin child, small for his
age and sickly all his days, and from time to time he trembled. The
shaking sickness, the maesters called it. “I heard
voices.”
Small wonder, Catelyn thought; Lysa had almost been shouting.
Still, her sister looked daggers at her. “This is your aunt
Catelyn, baby. My sister, Lady Stark. Do you remember?”
The boy glanced at her blankly. “I think so,” he
said, blinking, though he had been less than a year old the last
time Catelyn had seen him.
Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, “Come to
Mother, my sweet one.” She straightened his bedclothes and
fussed with his fine brown hair. “Isn’t he beautiful?
And strong too, don’t you believe the things you hear. Jon
knew. The seed is strong, he told me. His last words. He kept
saying Robert’s name, and he grabbed my arm so hard he left
marks. Tell them, the seed is strong. His seed. He wanted everyone
to know what a good strong boy my baby was going to be.”
“Lysa,” Catelyn said, “if you’re right
about the Lannisters, all the more reason we must act quickly.
We—”
“Not in front of the baby,” Lysa said. “He has
a delicate temper, don’t you, sweet one?”
“The boy is Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the
Vale,” Catelyn reminded her, “and these are no times
for delicacy. Ned thinks it may come to war.”
“Quiet!” Lysa snapped at her. “You’re
scaring the boy.” Little Robert took a quick peek over his
shoulder at Catelyn and began to tremble. His doll fell to the
rushes, and he pressed himself against his mother.
“Don’t be afraid, my sweet baby,” Lysa whispered.
“Mother’s here, nothing will hurt you.” She
opened her robe and drew out a pale, heavy breast, tipped with red.
The boy grabbed for it eagerly, buried his face against her chest,
and began to suck. Lysa stroked his hair.
Catelyn was at a loss for words. Jon Arryn’s son, she
thought incredulously. She remembered her own baby, three-year-old
Rickon, half the age of this boy and five times as fierce. Small
wonder the lords of the Vale were restive. For the first time she
understood why the king had tried to take the child away from his
mother to foster with the Lannisters . . .
“We’re safe here,” Lysa was saying. Whether to
her or to the boy, Catelyn was not sure.
“Don’t be a fool,” Catelyn said, the anger
rising in her. “No one is safe. If you think hiding here will
make the Lannisters forget you, you are sadly mistaken.”
Lysa covered her boy’s ear with her hand. “Even if
they could bring an army through the mountains and past the Bloody
Gate, the Eyrie is impregnable. You saw for yourself. No enemy
could ever reach us up here.”
Catelyn wanted to slap her. Uncle Brynden had tried to warn her,
she realized. “No castle is impregnable.”
“This one is,” Lysa insisted. “Everyone says
so. The only thing is, what am I to do with this Imp you have
brought me?”
“Is he a bad man?” the Lord of the Eyrie asked, his
mother’s breast popping from his mouth, the nipple wet and
red.
“A very bad man,” Lysa told him as she covered
herself, “but Mother won’t let him harm my little
baby.”
“Make him fly,” Robert said eagerly.
Lysa stroked her son’s hair. “Perhaps we
will,” she murmured. “Perhaps that is just what we will
do.”
My lady, you should have sent word of your
coming,” Ser Donnel Waynwood told her as their horses climbed
the pass. “We would have sent an escort. The high road is not
as safe as it once was, for a party as small as yours.”
“We learned that to our sorrow, Ser Donnel,” Catelyn
said. Sometimes she felt as though her heart had turned to stone;
six brave men had died to bring her this far, and she could not
even find it in her to weep for them. Even their names were fading.
“The clansmen harried us day and night. We lost three men in
the first attack, and two more in the second, and Lannister’s
serving man died of a fever when his wounds festered. When we heard
your men approaching, I thought us doomed for certain.” They
had drawn up for a last desperate fight, blades in hand and backs
to the rock. The dwarf had been whetting the edge of his axe and
making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner the riders
carried before them, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue
and white. Catelyn had never seen a more welcome sight.
“The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died,”
Ser Donnel said. He was a stocky youth of twenty years, earnest and
homely, with a wide nose and a shock of thick brown hair. “If
it were up to me, I would take a hundred men into the mountains,
root them out of their fastnesses, and teach them some sharp
lessons, but your sister has forbidden it. She would not even
permit her knights to fight in the Hand’s tourney. She wants
all our swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale . . . against
what, no one is certain. Shadows, some say.” He looked at her
anxiously, as if he had suddenly remembered who she was. “I
hope I have not spoken out of turn, my lady. I meant no
offense.”
“Frank talk does not offend me, Ser Donnel.” Catelyn
knew what her sister feared. Not shadows, Lannisters, she thought
to herself, glancing back to where the dwarf rode beside Bronn. The
two of them had grown thick as thieves since Chiggen had died. The
little man was more cunning than she liked. When they had entered
the mountains, he had been her captive, bound and helpless. What
was he now? Her captive still, yet he rode along with a dirk
through his belt and an axe strapped to his saddle, wearing the
shadowskin cloak he’d won dicing with the singer and the
chainmail hauberk he’d taken off Chiggen’s corpse. Two
score men flanked the dwarf and the rest of her ragged band,
knights and men-at-arms in service to her sister Lysa and Jon
Arryn’s young son, and yet Tyrion betrayed no hint of fear.
Could I be wrong? Catelyn wondered, not for the first time. Could
he be innocent after all, of Bran and Jon Arryn and all the rest?
And if he was, what did that make her? Six men had died to bring
him here.
Resolute, she pushed her doubts away. “When we reach your
keep, I would take it kindly if you could send for Maester Colemon
at once. Ser Rodrik is feverish from his wounds.” More than
once she had feared the gallant old knight would not survive the
journey. Toward the end he could scarcely sit his horse, and Bronn
had urged her to leave him to his fate, but Catelyn would not hear
of it. They had tied him in the saddle instead, and she had
commanded Marillion the singer to watch over him.
Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. “The Lady Lysa
has commanded the maester to remain at the Eyrie at all times, to
care for Lord Robert,” he said. “We have a septon at
the gate who tends to our wounded. He can see to your man’s
hurts.”
Catelyn had more faith in a maester’s learning than a
septon’s prayers. She was about to say as much when she saw
the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone of
the mountains on either side of them. Where the pass shrank to a
narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to ride abreast, twin
watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered bridge
of weathered grey stone that arched above the road. Silent faces
watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When
they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them.
His horse and his armor were grey, but his cloak was the rippling
blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish, wrought in gold
and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. “Who
would pass the Bloody Gate?” he called.
“Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her
companions,” the young knight answered.
The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. “I thought the
lady looked familiar. You are far from home, little Cat.”
“And you, Uncle,” she said, smiling despite all she
had been through. Hearing that hoarse, smoky voice again took her
back twenty years, to the days of her childhood.
“My home is at my back,” he said gruffly.
“Your home is in my heart,” Catelyn told him.
“Take off your helm. I would look on your face
again.”
“The years have not improved it, I fear,” Brynden
Tully said, but when he lifted off the helm, Catelyn saw that he
lied. His features were lined and weathered, and time had stolen
the auburn from his hair and left him only grey, but the smile was
the same, and the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars, and the
laughter in his deep blue eyes. “Did Lysa know you were
coming?”
“There was no time to send word ahead,” Catelyn told
him. The others were coming up behind her. “I fear we ride
before the storm, Uncle.”
“May we enter the Vale?” Ser Donnel asked. The
Waynwoods were ever ones for ceremony.
“In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender
of the Vale, True Warden of the East, I bid you enter freely, and
charge you to keep his peace,” Ser Brynden replied.
“Come.”
And so she rode behind him, beneath the shadow of the Bloody
Gate where a dozen armies had dashed themselves to pieces in the
Age of Heroes. On the far side of the stoneworks, the mountains
opened up suddenly upon a vista of green fields, blue sky, and
snowcapped mountains that took her breath away. The Vale of Arryn
bathed in the morning light.
It stretched before them to the misty cast, a tranquil land of
rich black soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and hundreds of small
lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by
its sheltering peaks. Wheat and corn and barley grew high in its
fields, and even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger nor the
fruit any sweeter than here. They stood at the western end of the
valley, where the high road crested the last pass and began its
winding descent to the bottomlands two miles below. The Vale was
narrow here, no more than a half day’s ride across, and the
northern mountains seemed so close that Catelyn could almost reach out and touch them. Looming over them
all was the jagged peak called the Giant’s Lance, a mountain
that even mountains looked up to, its head lost in icy mists three
and a half miles above the valley floor. Over its massive western
shoulder flowed the ghost torrent of Alyssa’s Tears. Even
from this distance, Catelyn could make out the shining silver
thread, bright against the dark stone.
When her uncle saw that she had stopped, he moved his horse
closer and pointed. “It’s there, beside Alyssa’s
Tears. All you can see from here is a flash of white every now and
then, if you look hard and the sun hits the walls just
right.” Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into
the belly of the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and
look down on the clouds. “How long a ride?” she
asked.
“We can be at the mountain by evenfall,” Uncle
Brynden said, “but the climb will take another
day.”
Ser Rodrik Cassel spoke up from behind. “My lady,”
he said, “I fear I can go no farther today.” His face
sagged beneath his ragged, newgrown whiskers, and he looked so
weary Catelyn feared he might fall off his horse.
“Nor should you,” she said. “You have done all
I could have asked of you, and a hundred times more. My uncle will
see me the rest of the way to the Eyrie. Lannister must come with
me, but there is no reason that you and the others should not rest
here and recover your strength.”
“We should be honored to have them to guest,” Ser
Donnel said with the grave courtesy of the young. Beside Ser
Rodrik, only Bronn, Ser Willis Wode, and Marillion the singer
remained of the party that had ridden with her from the inn by the
crossroads.
“My lady,” Marillion said, riding forward. “I
beg you allow me to accompany you to the Eyrie, to see the end of
the tale as I saw its beginnings.” The boy sounded haggard,
yet strangely determined; he had a fevered shine to his eyes.
Catelyn had never asked the singer to ride with them; that
choice he had made himself, and how he had come to survive the
journey when so many braver men lay dead and unburied behind them,
she could never say. Yet here he was, with a scruff of beard that
made him look almost a man. Perhaps she owed him something for
having come this far. “Very well,” she told him.
“I’ll come as well,” Bronn announced.
She liked that less well. Without Bronn she would never have
reached the Vale, she knew; the sellsword was as fierce a fighter
as she had ever seen, and his sword had helped cut them through to
safety. Yet for all that, Catelyn misliked the man. Courage he had, and
strength, but there was no kindness in him, and little loyalty. And
she had seen him riding beside Lannister far too often, talking in
low voices and laughing at some private joke. She would have
preferred to separate him from the dwarf here and now, but having
agreed that Marillion might continue to the Eyrie, she could see no
gracious way to deny that same right to Bronn. “As you
wish,” she said, although she noted that he had not actually
asked her permission.
Ser Willis Wode remained with Ser Rodrik, a soft-spoken septon
fussing over their wounds. Their horses were left behind as well,
poor ragged things. Ser Donnel promised to send birds ahead to the
Eyrie and the Gates of the Moon with the word of their coming.
Fresh mounts were brought forth from the stables, surefooted
mountain stock with shaggy coats, and within the hour they set
forth once again. Catelyn rode beside her uncle as they began the
descent to the valley floor. Behind came Bronn, Tyrion Lannister,
Marillion, and six of Brynden’s men.
Not until they were a third of the way down the mountain path,
well out of earshot of the others, did Brynden Tully turn to her
and say, “So, child. Tell me about this storm of
yours.”
“I have not been a child in many years, Uncle,”
Catelyn said, but she told him nonetheless. It took longer than she
would have believed to tell it all, Lysa’s letter and
Bran’s fall, the assassin’s dagger and Littlefinger and
her chance meeting with Tyrion Lannister in the crossroads inn.
Her uncle listened silently, heavy brows shadowing his eyes as
his frown grew deeper. Brynden Tully had always known how to listen . . . to anyone but her father. He was Lord Hoster’s brother,
younger by five years, but the two of them had been at war as far
back as Catelyn could remember. During one of their louder
quarrels, when Catelyn was eight, Lord Hoster had called Brynden
“the black goat of the Tully flock.” Laughing, Brynden
had pointed out that the sigil of their house was a leaping trout,
so he ought to be a black fish rather than a black goat, and from
that day forward he had taken it as his personal emblem.
The war had not ended until the day she and Lysa had been wed.
It was at their wedding feast that Brynden told his brother he was
leaving Riverrun to serve Lysa and her new husband, the Lord of the
Eyrie. Lord Hoster had not spoken his brother’s name since,
from what Edmure told her in his infrequent letters.
Nonetheless, during all those years of Catelyn’s girlhood,
it had been Brynden the Blackfish to whom Lord Hoster’s
children had run with their tears and their tales, when Father was
too busy and Mother too ill. Catelyn, Lysa, Edmure . . . and yes,
even Petyr Baelish, their father’s ward . . . he had listened
to them all patiently, as he listened now, laughing at their
triumphs and sympathizing with their childish misfortunes.
When she was done, her uncle remained silent for a long time, as
his horse negotiated the steep, rocky trail. “Your father
must be told,” he said at last. “If the Lannisters
should march, Winterfell is remote and the Vale walled up behind
its mountains, but Riverrun lies right in their path.”
“I’d had the same fear,” Catelyn admitted.
“I shall ask Maester Colemon to send a bird when we reach the
Eyrie.” She had other messages to send as well; the commands
that Ned had given her for his bannermen, to ready the defenses of
the north. “What is the mood in the Vale?” she
asked.
“Angry,” Brynden Tully admitted. “Lord Jon was
much loved, and the insult was keenly felt when the king named
Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had held for near three
hundred years. Lysa has commanded us to call her son the True
Warden of the East, but no one is fooled. Nor is your sister alone
in wondering at the manner of the Hand’s death. None dare say
Jon was murdered, not openly, but suspicion casts a long
shadow.” He gave Catelyn a look, his mouth tight. “And
there is the boy.”
“The boy? What of him?” She ducked her head as they
passed under a low overhang of rock, and around a sharp turn.
Her uncle’s voice was troubled. “Lord Robert,”
he sighed. “Six years old, sickly, and prone to weep if you
take his dolls away. Jon Arryn’s trueborn heir, by all the
gods, yet there are some who say he is too weak to sit his
father’s seat, Nestor Royce has been high steward these past
fourteen years, while Lord Jon served in King’s Landing, and
many whisper that he should rule until the boy comes of age. Others
believe that Lysa must marry again, and soon. Already the suitors
gather like crows on a battlefield. The Eyrie is full of
them.”
“I might have expected that,” Catelyn said. Small
wonder there; Lysa was still young, and the kingdom of Mountain and
Vale made a handsome wedding gift. “Will Lysa take another
husband?”
“She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits
her,” Brynden Tully said, “but she has already rejected
Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this
time she will choose her lord husband.”
“You of all people can scarce fault her for
that.”
Ser Brynden snorted. “Nor do I, but . . . it seems to me
Lysa is only playing at courtship. She enjoys the sport, but I
believe your sister intends to rule herself until her boy is old
enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in truth as well as name.”
“A woman can rule as wisely as a man,” Catelyn
said.
“The right woman can,” her uncle said with a
sideways glance. “Make no mistake, Cat. Lysa is not
you.” He hesitated a moment. “If truth be told, I fear
you may not find your sister as helpful as you would
like.”
She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“The Lysa who came back from King’s Landing is not
the same girl who went south when her husband was named Hand. Those
years were hard for her. You must know. Lord Arryn was a dutiful
husband, but their marriage was made from politics, not
passion.”
“As was my own.”
“They began the same, but your ending has been happier
than your sister’s. Two babes stillborn, twice as many
miscarriages, Lord Arryn’s death . . . Catelyn, the gods gave
Lysa only the one child, and he is all your sister lives for now,
poor boy. Small wonder she fled rather than see him handed over to
the Lannisters. Your sister is afraid, child, and the Lannisters
are what she fears most. She ran to the Vale, stealing away from
the Red Keep like a thief in the night, and all to snatch her son
out of the lion’s mouth . . . and now you have brought the
lion to her door.”
“In chains,” Catelyn said. A crevasse yawned on her
right, falling away into darkness. She reined up her horse and
picked her way along step by careful step.
“Oh?” Her uncle glanced back, to where Tyrion
Lannister was making his slow descent behind them. “I see an
axe on his saddle, a dirk at his belt, and a sellsword that trails
after him like a hungry shadow. Where are the chains, sweet
one?”
Catelyn shifted uneasily in her seat. “The dwarf is here,
and not by choice. Chains or no, he is my prisoner. Lysa will want
him to answer for his crimes no less than I. It was her own lord
husband the Lannisters murdered, and her own letter that first
warned us against them.”
Brynden Blackfish gave her a weary smile. “I hope you are
right, child,” he sighed, in tones that said she was
wrong.
The sun was well to the west by the time the slope began to
flatten beneath the hooves of their horses. The road widened and
grew straight, and for the first time Catelyn noticed wildflowers
and grasses growing. Once they reached the valley floor, the going
was faster and they made good time, cantering through verdant
greenwoods and sleepy little hamlets, past orchards and golden
wheat fields, splashing across a dozen sunlit streams. Her uncle
sent a standard-bearer ahead of them, a double banner flying from
his staff; the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn on high, and below it
his own black fish. Farm wagons and merchants’ carts and
riders from lesser houses moved aside to let them pass.
Even so, it was full dark before they reached the stout castle
that stood at the foot of the Giant’s Lance. Torches
flickered atop its ramparts, and the horned moon danced upon the
dark waters of its moat. The drawbridge was up and the portcullis
down, but Catelyn saw lights burning in the gatehouse and spilling
from the windows of the square towers beyond.
“The Gates of the Moon,” her uncle said as the party
drew rein. His standard-bearer rode to the edge of the moat to hail
the men in the gatehouse. “Lord Nestor’s seat. He
should be expecting us. Look up.”
Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw
was stone and trees, the looming mass of the great mountain
shrouded in night, as black as a starless sky. Then she noticed the
glow of distant fires well above them; a tower keep, built upon the
steep side of the mountain, its lights like orange eyes staring
down from above. Above that was another, higher and more distant,
and still higher a third, no more than a flickering spark in the
sky. And finally, up where the falcons soared, a flash of white in
the moonlight. Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the
pale towers, so far above.
“The Eyrie,” she heard Marillion murmur, awed.
The sharp voice of Tyrion Lannister broke in. “The Arryns
must not be overfond of company. If you’re planning to make
us climb that mountain in the dark, I’d rather you kill me
here.”
“We’ll spend the night here and make the ascent on
the morrow,” Brynden told him.
“I can scarcely wait,” the dwarf replied. “How
do we get up there? I’ve no experience at riding
goats.”
“Mules,” Brynden said, smiling.
“There are steps carved into the mountain,” Catelyn
said. Ned had told her about them when he talked of his youth here
with Robert Baratheon and Jon Arryn.
Her uncle nodded. “It is too dark to see them, but the
steps are there. Too steep and narrow for horses, but mules can
manage them most of the way. The path is guarded by three
waycastles, Stone and Snow and Sky. The mules will take us as far
up as Sky.”
Tyrion Lannister glanced up doubtfully. “And beyond
that?”
Brynden smiled. “Beyond that, the path is too steep even
for mules. We ascend on foot the rest of the way. Or perchance
you’d prefer to ride a basket. The Eyrie clings to the
mountain directly above Sky, and in its cellars are six great
winches with long iron chains to draw supplies up from below. If
you prefer, my lord of Lannister, I can arrange for you to ride up
with the bread and beer and apples.”
The dwarf gave a bark of laughter. “Would that I were a
pumpkin,” he said. “Alas, my lord father would no doubt
be most chagrined if his son of Lannister went to his fate like a
load of turnips. If you ascend on foot, I fear I must do the same.
We Lannisters do have a certain pride.”
“Pride?” Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy
manner made her angry. “Arrogance, some might call it.
Arrogance and avarice and lust for power.”
“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion
Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of avarice, and my
sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I,
however, am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for
you?” He grinned.
The drawbridge came creaking down before she could reply, and
they heard the sound of oiled chains as the portcullis was drawn
up. Men-at-arms carried burning brands out to light their way, and
her uncle led them across the moat. Lord Nestor Royce, High Steward
of the Vale and Keeper of the Gates of the Moon, was waiting in the
yard to greet them, surrounded by his knights. “Lady
Stark,” he said, bowing. He was a massive, barrel-chested
man, and his bow was clumsy.
Catelyn dismounted to stand before him. “Lord
Nestor,” she said. She knew the man only by reputation;
Bronze Yohn’s cousin, from a lesser branch of House Royce,
yet still a formidable lord in his own right. “We have had a
long and tiring journey. I would beg the hospitality of your roof
tonight, if I might.”
“My roof is yours, my lady,” Lord Nestor returned
gruffly, “but your sister the Lady Lysa has sent down word
from the Eyrie. She wishes to see you at once. The rest of your
party will be housed here and sent up at first light.”
Her uncle swung off his horse. “What madness is
this?” he said bluntly. Brynden Tully had never been a man to
blunt the edge of his words. “A night ascent, with the moon
not even full? Even Lysa should know that’s an invitation to
a broken neck.”
“The mules know the way, Ser Brynden.” A wiry girl
of seventeen or eighteen years stepped up beside Lord Nestor. Her
dark hair was cropped short and straight around her head, and she
wore riding leathers and a light shirt of silvered ringmail. She
bowed to Catelyn, more gracefully than her lord. “I promise
you, my lady, no harm will come to you. It would be my honor to
take you up. I’ve made the dark climb a hundred times. Mychel
says my father must have been a goat.”
She sounded so cocky that Catelyn had to smile. “Do you
have a name, child?”
“Mya Stone, if it please you, my lady,” the girl
said.
It did not please her; it was an effort for Catelyn to keep the
smile on her face. Stone was a bastard’s name in the Vale, as
Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the
Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born
with no names of their own. Catelyn had nothing against this girl,
but suddenly she could not help but think of Ned’s bastard on
the Wall, and the thought made her angry and guilty, both at once.
She struggled to find words for a reply.
Lord Nestor filled the silence. “Mya’s a clever
girl, and if she vows she will bring you safely to the Lady Lysa, I
believe her. She has not failed me yet.”
“Then I put myself in your hands, Mya Stone,”
Catelyn said. “Lord Nestor, I charge you to keep a close
guard on my prisoner.”
“And I charge you to bring the prisoner a cup of wine and
a nicely crisped capon, before he dies of hunger,” Lannister
said. “A girl would be pleasant as well, but I suppose
that’s too much to ask of you.” The sellsword Bronn
laughed aloud.
Lord Nestor ignored the banter. “As you say, my lady, so
it will be done.” Only then did he look at the dwarf.
“See our lord of Lannister to a tower cell, and bring him
meat and mead.”
Catelyn took her leave of her uncle and the others as Tyrion
Lannister was led off, then followed the bastard girl through the
castle. Two mules were waiting in the upper bailey, saddled and
ready. Mya helped her mount one while a guardsman in a sky-blue
cloak opened the narrow postern gate. Beyond was dense forest of
pine and spruce, and the mountain like a black wall, but the steps
were there, chiseled deep into the rock, ascending into the sky.
“Some people find it easier if they close their eyes,”
Mya said as she led the mules through the gate into the dark wood.
“When they get frightened or dizzy, sometimes they hold on to
the mule too tight. They don’t like that.”
“I was born a Tully and wed to a Stark,” Catelyn
said. “I do not frighten easily. Do you plan to light a
torch?” The steps were black as pitch.
The girl made a face. “Torches just blind you. On a clear
night like this, the moon and the stars are enough. Mychel says I
have the eyes of the owl.” She mounted and urged her mule up
the first step. Catelyn’s animal followed of its own
accord.
“You mentioned Mychel before,” Catelyn said. The
mules set the pace, slow but steady. She was perfectly content with
that.
“Mychel’s my love,” Mya explained.
“Mychel Redfort. He’s squire to Ser Lyn Corbray.
We’re to wed as soon as he becomes a knight, next year or the
year after.”
She sounded so like Sansa, so happy and innocent with her
dreams. Catelyn smiled, but the smile was tinged with sadness. The
Redforts were an old name in the Vale, she knew, with the blood of
the First Men in their veins. His love she might be, but no Redfort
would ever wed a bastard. His family would arrange a more suitable
match for him, to a Corbray or a Waynwood or a Royce, or perhaps a
daughter of some greater house outside the Vale. If Mychel Redfort
laid with this girl at all, it would be on the wrong side of the
sheet.
The ascent was easier than Catelyn had dared hope. The trees
pressed close, leaning over the path to make a rustling green roof
that shut out even the moon, so it seemed as though they were
moving up a long black tunnel. But the mules were surefooted and
tireless, and Mya Stone did indeed seem blessed with night-eyes.
They plodded upward, winding their way back and forth across the
face of the mountain as the steps twisted and turned. A thick layer
of fallen needles carpeted the path, so the shoes of their mules
made only the softest sound on the rock. The quiet soothed her, and
the gentle rocking motion set Catelyn to swaying in her saddle.
Before long she was fighting sleep.
Perhaps she did doze for a moment, for suddenly a massive
ironbound gate was looming before them. “Stone,” Mya
announced cheerily, dismounting. Iron spikes were set along the
tops of formidable stone walls, and two fat round towers overtopped
the keep. The gate swung open at Mya’s shout. Inside, the
portly knight who commanded the waycastle greeted Mya by name and
offered them skewers of charred meat and onions still hot from the
spit. Catelyn had not realized how hungry she was. She ate standing
in the yard, as stablehands moved their saddles to fresh mules. The
hot juices ran down her chin and dripped onto her cloak, but she
was too famished to care.
Then it was up onto a new mule and out again into the starlight.
The second part of the ascent seemed more treacherous to Catelyn.
The trail was steeper, the steps more worn, and here and there
littered with pebbles and broken stone. Mya had to dismount a
half-dozen times to move fallen rocks from their path. “You
don’t want your mule to break a leg up here,” she said.
Catelyn was forced to agree. She could feel the altitude more now.
The trees were sparser up here, and the wind blew more vigorously,
sharp gusts that tugged at her clothing and pushed her hair into
her eyes. From time to time the steps doubled back on themselves,
and she could see Stone below them, and the Gates of the Moon
farther down, its torches no brighter than candles.
Snow was smaller than Stone, a single fortified tower and a
timber keep and stable hidden behind a low wall of unmortared rock.
Yet it nestled against the Giant’s Lance in such a way as to
command the entire stone stair above the lower waycastle. An enemy
intent on the Eyrie would have to fight his way from Stone step by
step, while rocks and arrows rained down from Snow above. The
commander, an anxious young knight with a pockmarked face, offered
bread and cheese and the chance to warm themselves before his fire,
but Mya declined. “We ought to keep going, my lady,”
she said. “If it please you.” Catelyn nodded.
Again they were given fresh mules. Hers was white. Mya smiled
when she saw him. “Whitey’s a good one, my lady. Sure
of foot, even on ice, but you need to be careful. He’ll kick
if he doesn’t like you.”
The white mule seemed to like Catelyn; there was no kicking,
thank the gods. There was no ice either, and she was grateful for
that as well. “My mother says that hundreds of years ago,
this was where the snow began,” Mya told her. “It was
always white above here, and the ice never melted.” She
shrugged. “I can’t remember ever seeing snow this far
down the mountain, but maybe it was that way once, in the olden
times.” So young, Catelyn thought, trying to remember if she had ever
been like that. The girl had lived half her life in summer, and
that was all she knew. Winter is coming, child, she wanted to tell
her. The words were on her lips; she almost said them. Perhaps she
was becoming a Stark at last.
Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them
like a wolf in the waste, then falling off to nothing as if to lure
them into complacency. The stars seemed brighter up here, so close
that she could almost touch them, and the horned moon was huge in
the clear black sky. As they climbed, Catelyn found it was better
to look up than down. The steps were cracked and broken from
centuries of freeze and thaw and the tread of countless mules, and
even in the dark the heights put her heart in her throat. When they
came to a high saddle between two spires of rock, Mya dismounted.
“It’s best to lead the mules over,” she said.
“The wind can be a little scary here, my lady.”
Catelyn climbed stiffly from the shadows and looked at the path
ahead; twenty feet long and close to three feet wide, but with a
precipitous drop to either side. She could hear the wind shrieking.
Mya stepped lightly out, her mule following as calmly as if they
were crossing a bailey. It was her turn. Yet no sooner had she
taken her first step than fear caught Catelyn in its jaws. She
could feel the emptiness, the vast black gulfs of air that yawned
around her. She stopped, trembling, afraid to move. The wind
screamed at her and wrenched at her cloak, trying to pull her over
the edge. Catelyn edged her foot backward, the most timid of steps,
but the mule was behind her, and she could not retreat. I am going
to die here, she thought. She could feel cold sweat trickling down
her back.
“Lady Stark,” Mya called across the gulf. The girl
sounded a thousand leagues away. “Are you well?”
Catelyn Tully Stark swallowed what remained of her pride.
“I . . . I cannot do this, child,” she called out.
“Yes you can,” the bastard girl said. “I know
you can. Look how wide the path is.”
“I don’t want to look.” The world seemed to be
spinning around her, mountain and sky and mules, whirling like a
child’s top. Catelyn closed her eyes to steady her ragged
breathing.
“I’ll come back for you,” Mya said.
“Don’t move, my lady.”
Moving was about the last thing Catelyn was about to do. She
listened to the skirling of the wind and the scuffling sound of
leather on stone. Then Mya was there, taking her gently by the arm.
“Keep your eyes closed if you like. Let go of the rope now,
Whitey will take care of himself. Very good, my lady. I’ll
lead you over, it’s easy, you’ll see. Give me a step
now. That’s it, move your foot, just slide it forward. See.
Now another. Easy. You could run across. Another one, go on.
Yes.” And so, foot by foot, step by step, the bastard girl
led Catelyn across, blind and trembling, while the white mule
followed placidly behind them.
The waycastle called Sky was no more than a high,
crescent-shaped wall of unmortared stone raised against the side of
the mountain, but even the topless towers of Valyria could not have
looked more beautiful to Catelyn Stark. Here at last the snow crown
began; Sky’s weathered stones were rimed with frost, and long
spears of ice hung from the slopes above.
Dawn was breaking in the east as Mya Stone hallooed for the
guards, and the gates opened before them. Inside the walls there
was only a series of ramps and a great tumble of boulders and
stones of all sizes. No doubt it would be the easiest thing in the
world to begin an avalanche from here. A mouth yawned in the rock
face in front of them. “The stables and barracks are in
there,” Mya said. “The last part is inside the
mountain. It can be a little dark, but at least you’re out of
the wind. This is as far as the mules can go. Past here, well,
it’s a sort of chimney, more like a stone ladder than proper
steps, but it’s not too bad. Another hour and we’ll be
there.”
Catelyn looked up. Directly overhead, pale in the dawn light,
she could see the foundations of the Eyrie. It could not be more
than six hundred feet above them. From below it looked like a small
white honeycomb. She remembered what her uncle had said of baskets
and winches. “The Lannisters may have their pride,” she
told Mya, “but the Tullys are born with better sense. I have
ridden all day and the best part of a night. Tell them to lower a
basket. I shall ride with the turnips.”
The sun was well above the mountains by the time Catelyn Stark
finally reached the Eyrie. A stocky, silver-haired man in a
sky-blue cloak and hammered moon-and-falcon breastplate helped her
from the basket; Ser Vardis Egen, captain of Jon Arryn’s
household guard. Beside him stood Maester Colemon, thin and
nervous, with too little hair and too much neck. “Lady
Stark,” Ser Vardis said, “the pleasure is as great as
it is unanticipated.” Maester Colemon bobbed his head in
agreement. “Indeed it is, my lady, indeed it is. I have sent
word to your sister. She left orders to be awakened the instant you
arrived.”
“I hope she had a good night’s rest,” Catelyn
said with a certain bite in her tone that seemed to go
unnoticed.
The men escorted her from the winch room up a spiral stair. The
Eyrie was a small castle by the standards of the great houses;
seven slender white towers bunched as tightly as arrows in a quiver
on a shoulder of the great mountain. It had no need of stables nor
smithys nor kennels, but Ned said its granary was as large as
Winterfell’s, and its towers could house five hundred men.
Yet it seemed strangely deserted to Catelyn as she passed through
it, its pale stone halls echoing and empty.
Lysa was waiting alone in her solar, still clad in her bed
robes. Her long auburn hair tumbled unbound across bare white
shoulders and down her back. A maid stood behind her, brushing out
the night’s tangles, but when Catelyn entered, her sister
rose to her feet, smiling. “Cat,” she said. “Oh,
Cat, how good it is to see you. My sweet sister.” She ran
across the chamber and wrapped her sister in her arms. “How
long it has been,” Lysa murmured against her. “Oh, how
very very long.”
It had been five years, in truth; five cruel years, for Lysa.
They had taken their toll. Her sister was two years the younger,
yet she looked older now. Shorter than Catelyn, Lysa had grown
thick of body, pale and puffy of face. She had the blue eyes of the
Tullys, but hers were pale and watery, never still. Her small mouth
had turned petulant. As Catelyn held her, she remembered the slender, high-breasted girl
who’d waited beside her that day in the sept at Riverrun. How
lovely and full of hope she had been. All that remained of her
sister’s beauty was the great fall of thick auburn hair that
cascaded to her waist.
“You look well,” Catelyn lied, “but . . . tired.”
Her sister broke the embrace. “Tired. Yes. Oh, yes.”
She seemed to notice the others then; her maid, Maester Colemon,
Ser Vardis. “Leave us,” she told them. “I wish to
speak to my sister alone.” She held Catelyn’s hand as
they withdrew . . .
. . . and dropped it the instant the door closed. Catelyn saw
her face change. It was as if the sun had gone behind a cloud.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Lysa snapped at
her. “To bring him here, without a word of permission,
without so much as a warning, to drag us into your quarrels with
the Lannisters . . . ”
“My quarrels?” Catelyn could scarce believe what she
was hearing. A great fire burned in the hearth, but there was no
trace of warmth in Lysa’s voice. “They were your
quarrels first, sister. It was you who sent me that cursed letter,
you who wrote that the Lannisters had murdered your
husband.”
“To warn you, so you could stay away from them! I never
meant to fight them! Gods, Cat, do you know what you’ve
done?”
“Mother?” a small voice said. Lysa whirled, her
heavy robe swirling around her. Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie,
stood in the doorway, clutching a ragged cloth doll and looking at
them with large eyes. He was a painfully thin child, small for his
age and sickly all his days, and from time to time he trembled. The
shaking sickness, the maesters called it. “I heard
voices.”
Small wonder, Catelyn thought; Lysa had almost been shouting.
Still, her sister looked daggers at her. “This is your aunt
Catelyn, baby. My sister, Lady Stark. Do you remember?”
The boy glanced at her blankly. “I think so,” he
said, blinking, though he had been less than a year old the last
time Catelyn had seen him.
Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, “Come to
Mother, my sweet one.” She straightened his bedclothes and
fussed with his fine brown hair. “Isn’t he beautiful?
And strong too, don’t you believe the things you hear. Jon
knew. The seed is strong, he told me. His last words. He kept
saying Robert’s name, and he grabbed my arm so hard he left
marks. Tell them, the seed is strong. His seed. He wanted everyone
to know what a good strong boy my baby was going to be.”
“Lysa,” Catelyn said, “if you’re right
about the Lannisters, all the more reason we must act quickly.
We—”
“Not in front of the baby,” Lysa said. “He has
a delicate temper, don’t you, sweet one?”
“The boy is Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the
Vale,” Catelyn reminded her, “and these are no times
for delicacy. Ned thinks it may come to war.”
“Quiet!” Lysa snapped at her. “You’re
scaring the boy.” Little Robert took a quick peek over his
shoulder at Catelyn and began to tremble. His doll fell to the
rushes, and he pressed himself against his mother.
“Don’t be afraid, my sweet baby,” Lysa whispered.
“Mother’s here, nothing will hurt you.” She
opened her robe and drew out a pale, heavy breast, tipped with red.
The boy grabbed for it eagerly, buried his face against her chest,
and began to suck. Lysa stroked his hair.
Catelyn was at a loss for words. Jon Arryn’s son, she
thought incredulously. She remembered her own baby, three-year-old
Rickon, half the age of this boy and five times as fierce. Small
wonder the lords of the Vale were restive. For the first time she
understood why the king had tried to take the child away from his
mother to foster with the Lannisters . . .
“We’re safe here,” Lysa was saying. Whether to
her or to the boy, Catelyn was not sure.
“Don’t be a fool,” Catelyn said, the anger
rising in her. “No one is safe. If you think hiding here will
make the Lannisters forget you, you are sadly mistaken.”
Lysa covered her boy’s ear with her hand. “Even if
they could bring an army through the mountains and past the Bloody
Gate, the Eyrie is impregnable. You saw for yourself. No enemy
could ever reach us up here.”
Catelyn wanted to slap her. Uncle Brynden had tried to warn her,
she realized. “No castle is impregnable.”
“This one is,” Lysa insisted. “Everyone says
so. The only thing is, what am I to do with this Imp you have
brought me?”
“Is he a bad man?” the Lord of the Eyrie asked, his
mother’s breast popping from his mouth, the nipple wet and
red.
“A very bad man,” Lysa told him as she covered
herself, “but Mother won’t let him harm my little
baby.”
“Make him fly,” Robert said eagerly.
Lysa stroked her son’s hair. “Perhaps we
will,” she murmured. “Perhaps that is just what we will
do.”