The visitors poured through the castle gates in
a river of gold and silver and polished steel, three hundred
strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and
freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped back
and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag 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 the
crown prince, and that stunted little man behind them was surely
the Imp, Tyrion Lannister.
Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two
knights in the snow-white cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a
stranger to Ned . . . until he vaulted off the back of his warhorse
with a familiar roar, and crushed him in a bone-crunching hug.
“Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face 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 to win a throne, the Lord of
Storm’s End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled
like a maiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall, he towered
over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great
antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant.
He’d had a giant’s strength too, his weapon of choice a
spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days,
the smell 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 had last seen the king nine years
before during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion, when the stag and
the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the
self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had
stood side by side in Greyjoy’s fallen stronghold, where
Robert had accepted the rebel lord’s surrender and Ned had
taken his son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at
least eight stone. A beard as coarse and black as iron wire covered
his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the 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 is yours.”
By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were
coming forward for their mounts. Robert’s queen, Cersei
Lannister, entered on foot with her younger children. The
wheelhouse in which they had ridden, a huge double-decked carriage
of oiled oak and gilded metal pulled by forty heavy draft horses,
was too wide to pass through the castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow
to kiss the queen’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. No other 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. She had said no more than that; Robert
had looked at her, and her twin brother Jaime had taken her quietly
by the arm, and she had said no more.
They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he
scarcely recognized. The winding stone steps 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 Seven Kingdoms, 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’ve never 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, a cold 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 hand on the wall to steady
himself as they descended.
“Late summer snows are common enough,” Ned said.
“I hope they did not trouble you. They are usually
mild.”
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore.
“What will this place be like in winter? I shudder 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. In Highgarden
there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the
eye can see. The fruits are so 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 so
hot you can barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned!
Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with food, the
summerwines so cheap and so good that you can get drunk just
breathing the air. Everyone is fat and drunk and rich.” He
laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump. “And the
girls, Ned!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “I
swear, women lose all modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the
river, right beneath the castle. Even in the streets, it’s
too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in these short
gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but
it’s all the same when they start sweating and the cloth
sticks to their skin, they might as well be naked.” The king
laughed happily.
Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man
who knew how to take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone
could lay at the door of Eddard Stark. Yet Ned could not help but
notice that those pleasures were taking a toll on the king. Robert
was breathing heavily by the time they reached the bottom of the
stairs, his face red in the lantern light as they stepped out into
the darkness of the crypt.
“Your Grace,” Ned said respectfully. He swept the
lantern in a wide semicircle. Shadows moved and lurched. Flickering
light touched the stones underfoot and brushed against a long
procession of granite pillars that marched ahead, two by two, into
the dark. Between the pillars, the dead sat on their stone thrones
against the walls, backs against the sepulchres that contained
their mortal remains. “She is down at the end, with Father
and Brandon.”
He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed
wordlessly, shivering in the subterranean chill. It was always cold
down here. Their footsteps rang off the stones and echoed in the
vault overhead 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
eyes staring out into eternal darkness, while great stone
direwolves curled round their feet. The shifting shadows made the
stone figures seem to stir as the living passed by.
By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap
of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful
spirits in their crypts. The oldest had long ago rusted away to
nothing, leaving only a few red stains where the metal had rested
on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts were free to roam
the castle now. He hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell had
been men hard as the land they ruled. In the centuries before the
Dragonlords came over the sea, they had 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,
waiting for 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. The stonemason had
known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding
tight to the sword across 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 only a few short days before he was to wed
Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him
die. He was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule.
Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing
loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his 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’s face, 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 hoarse 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 the rain to wash her
clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the
king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and
Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she
had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me,
Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint
as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out
of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled
then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her
hold 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 were living flesh. “I vowed 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 ford of the Trident while the
battle crashed around them, Robert with his warhammer and his great
antlered helm, the Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his
breastplate was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all
in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight. The waters of the
Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they
circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a crushing blow
from Robert’s hammer stove in the dragon and the chest
beneath it. When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay
dead in the stream, while men of both armies scrabbled in the
swirling 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 than he
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 spike. 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 about Jon.”
Robert shook his head. “I have never seen a man sicken so
quickly. We gave a tourney on my son’s name day. If you had
seen Jon then, you would have sworn he would live forever. A
fortnight later he was dead. The sickness was like a fire in his
gut. It burned right through him.” He paused beside a pillar,
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 her grief?”
Robert’s mouth gave a bitter twist. “Not well, in
truth,” he admitted. “I think losing Jon has driven the
woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy back to the Eyrie. Against my
wishes. I had hoped to foster him with Tywin Lannister at Casterly
Rock. Jon had no brothers, no other sons. Was I supposed to leave
him to be raised by women?”
Ned would sooner entrust a child to a pit viper 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 the husband,” 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 had never taken a
ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored. The Lannisters are a
great and noble House. She refused to even hear of it. Then she
left in the dead of night, without so much as a by-your-leave.
Cersei was furious.” He sighed deeply. “The boy is my
namesake, did you know that? Robert Arryn. I am sworn to protect
him. How can I do that if his mother steals him away?”
“I will take him as ward, if you wish,” Ned said.
“Lysa should consent to that. She and Catelyn were close as
girls, and she would be welcome here as well.”
“A generous offer, my friend,” the king said,
“but too late. Lord Tywin has already given his consent.
Fostering the boy elsewhere would be a grievous affront to
him.”
“I have more concern for my nephew’s welfare than I
do for Lannister pride,” Ned declared.
“That is because you do not sleep with a Lannister.”
Robert laughed, the sound rattling among the tombs and bouncing
from the vaulted ceiling. His smile was a flash of white teeth in
the thicket of the huge black beard. “Ah, Ned,” he
said, “you are still too serious.” He put a massive arm
around Ned’s shoulders. “I had planned to wait a few
days to speak to you, but I see now there’s no need for it.
Come, walk with me.”
They started back down between the pillars. Blind stone eyes
seemed to follow them as they passed. The king kept his arm around
Ned’s shoulder. “You must have wondered why I finally
came north to Winterfell, after so long.”
Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice.
“For the joy of my company, surely,” he said lightly.
“And there is the Wall. You need to see it, Your Grace, to
walk along its battlements and talk to those who man it. The
Night’s Watch is a shadow of what it once was. Benjen
says—”
“No doubt I will hear what your brother says soon
enough,” Robert said. “The Wall has stood for what,
eight thousand years? It can keep a few days more. I have more
pressing concerns. These are difficult times. I need good men about
me. Men like Jon Arryn. He served as Lord of the Eyrie, as Warden
of the East, as the Hand of the King. He will not be easy to
replace.”
“His son . . . ” Ned began.
“His son will succeed to the Eyrie and all its
incomes,” Robert said brusquely. “No more.”
That took Ned by surprise. He stopped, startled, and turned to
look at his king. The words came unbidden. “The Arryns have
always been Wardens of the East. The title goes with the
domain.”
“Perhaps when he comes of age, the honor can be restored
to him,” Robert said. “I have this year to think of,
and next. A six-year-old boy is no war leader, Ned.”
“In peace, the title is only an honor. Let the boy keep
it. For his father’s sake if not his own. Surely you owe Jon
that much for his service.”
The king was not pleased. He took his arm from around
Ned’s shoulders. “Jon’s service was the duty he
owed his liege lord. I am not ungrateful, Ned. You of all men ought
to know that. But the son is not the father. A mere boy cannot hold
the east.” Then his tone softened. “Enough of this.
There is a more important office to discuss, and I would not argue
with you.” Robert grasped Ned by the elbow. “I have
need of you, Ned.”
“I am yours to command, Your Grace. Always.” They
were words he had to say, and so he said them, apprehensive about
what might come next.
Robert scarcely seemed to hear him. “Those years we spent
in the Eyrie . . . gods, those were good years. I want you at my
side again, Ned. I want you down in King’s Landing, not up
here at the end of the world where you are no damned use to
anybody.” Robert looked off into the darkness, for a moment
as melancholy as a Stark. “I swear to you, sitting a throne
is a thousand times harder than winning one. Laws are a tedious
business and counting coppers is worse. And the people . . . there
is no end of them. I sit on that damnable iron chair and listen to
them complain until my mind is numb and my ass is raw. They all
want something, money or land or justice. The lies they tell . . . and my lords and ladies are no better. I am surrounded by
flatterers and fools. It can drive a man to madness, Ned. Half of
them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the other half
can’t find it. There are nights I wish we had lost at the
Trident. Ah, no, not truly, but . . .
“I understand,” Ned said softly.
Robert looked at him. “I think you do. If so, you are the
only one, my old friend.” He smiled. “Lord Eddard
Stark, I would name you the Hand of the King.”
Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what
other reason could Robert have had for coming so far? The Hand of
the King was the second-most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. He
spoke with the king’s voice, commanded the king’s
armies, drafted the king’s laws. At times he even sat upon
the Iron Throne to dispense king’s justice, when the king was
absent, or sick, or otherwise indisposed. Robert was offering him a
responsibility as large as the realm itself.
It was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Your Grace,” he said. “I am not worthy of the
honor.”
Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. “If I wanted
to honor you, I’d let you retire. I am planning to make you
run the kingdom and fight the wars while I eat and drink and wench
myself into an early grave.” He slapped his gut and grinned.
“You know the saying, about the king and his Hand?”
Ned knew the saying. “What the king dreams,” he
said, “the Hand builds.”
“I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a
choicer way to put it. The king eats, they say, and the Hand takes
the shit.” He threw back his head and roared his laughter.
The echoes rang through the darkness, and all around them the dead
of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.
Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one
knee, his eyes upraised. “Damn it, Ned,” the king
complained. “You might at least humor me with a
smile.”
“They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a
man’s laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to
death,” Ned said evenly. “Perhaps that is why the
Starks have so little humor.”
“Come south with me, and I’ll teach you how to laugh
again,” the king promised. “You helped me win this
damnable throne, now help me hold it. We were meant to rule
together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound
by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a
son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our
houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.”
This offer did surprise him. “Sansa is only
eleven.”
Robert waved an impatient hand. “Old enough for betrothal.
The marriage can wait a few years.” The king smiled.
“Now stand up and say yes, curse you.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Your
Grace,” Ned answered. He hesitated. “These honors are
all so unexpected. May I have some time to consider? I need to tell
my wife . . . ”
“Yes, yes, of course, tell Catelyn, sleep on it if you
must.” The king reached down, clasped Ned by the hand, and
pulled him roughly to his feet. “Just don’t keep me
waiting too long. I am not the most patient of men.”
For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of
foreboding. This was his place, here in the north. He looked at the
stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence
of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all
listening, he knew. And winter was coming.
The visitors poured through the castle gates in
a river of gold and silver and polished steel, three hundred
strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and
freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped back
and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag 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 the
crown prince, and that stunted little man behind them was surely
the Imp, Tyrion Lannister.
Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two
knights in the snow-white cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a
stranger to Ned . . . until he vaulted off the back of his warhorse
with a familiar roar, and crushed him in a bone-crunching hug.
“Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face 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 to win a throne, the Lord of
Storm’s End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled
like a maiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall, he towered
over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great
antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant.
He’d had a giant’s strength too, his weapon of choice a
spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days,
the smell 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 had last seen the king nine years
before during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion, when the stag and
the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the
self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had
stood side by side in Greyjoy’s fallen stronghold, where
Robert had accepted the rebel lord’s surrender and Ned had
taken his son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at
least eight stone. A beard as coarse and black as iron wire covered
his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the 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 is yours.”
By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were
coming forward for their mounts. Robert’s queen, Cersei
Lannister, entered on foot with her younger children. The
wheelhouse in which they had ridden, a huge double-decked carriage
of oiled oak and gilded metal pulled by forty heavy draft horses,
was too wide to pass through the castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow
to kiss the queen’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. No other 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. She had said no more than that; Robert
had looked at her, and her twin brother Jaime had taken her quietly
by the arm, and she had said no more.
They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he
scarcely recognized. The winding stone steps 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 Seven Kingdoms, 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’ve never 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, a cold 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 hand on the wall to steady
himself as they descended.
“Late summer snows are common enough,” Ned said.
“I hope they did not trouble you. They are usually
mild.”
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore.
“What will this place be like in winter? I shudder 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. In Highgarden
there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the
eye can see. The fruits are so 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 so
hot you can barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned!
Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with food, the
summerwines so cheap and so good that you can get drunk just
breathing the air. Everyone is fat and drunk and rich.” He
laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump. “And the
girls, Ned!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “I
swear, women lose all modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the
river, right beneath the castle. Even in the streets, it’s
too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in these short
gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but
it’s all the same when they start sweating and the cloth
sticks to their skin, they might as well be naked.” The king
laughed happily.
Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man
who knew how to take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone
could lay at the door of Eddard Stark. Yet Ned could not help but
notice that those pleasures were taking a toll on the king. Robert
was breathing heavily by the time they reached the bottom of the
stairs, his face red in the lantern light as they stepped out into
the darkness of the crypt.
“Your Grace,” Ned said respectfully. He swept the
lantern in a wide semicircle. Shadows moved and lurched. Flickering
light touched the stones underfoot and brushed against a long
procession of granite pillars that marched ahead, two by two, into
the dark. Between the pillars, the dead sat on their stone thrones
against the walls, backs against the sepulchres that contained
their mortal remains. “She is down at the end, with Father
and Brandon.”
He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed
wordlessly, shivering in the subterranean chill. It was always cold
down here. Their footsteps rang off the stones and echoed in the
vault overhead 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
eyes staring out into eternal darkness, while great stone
direwolves curled round their feet. The shifting shadows made the
stone figures seem to stir as the living passed by.
By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap
of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful
spirits in their crypts. The oldest had long ago rusted away to
nothing, leaving only a few red stains where the metal had rested
on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts were free to roam
the castle now. He hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell had
been men hard as the land they ruled. In the centuries before the
Dragonlords came over the sea, they had 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,
waiting for 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. The stonemason had
known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding
tight to the sword across 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 only a few short days before he was to wed
Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him
die. He was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule.
Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing
loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his 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’s face, 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 hoarse 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 the rain to wash her
clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the
king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and
Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she
had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me,
Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint
as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out
of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled
then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her
hold 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 were living flesh. “I vowed 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 ford of the Trident while the
battle crashed around them, Robert with his warhammer and his great
antlered helm, the Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his
breastplate was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all
in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight. The waters of the
Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they
circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a crushing blow
from Robert’s hammer stove in the dragon and the chest
beneath it. When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay
dead in the stream, while men of both armies scrabbled in the
swirling 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 than he
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 spike. 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 about Jon.”
Robert shook his head. “I have never seen a man sicken so
quickly. We gave a tourney on my son’s name day. If you had
seen Jon then, you would have sworn he would live forever. A
fortnight later he was dead. The sickness was like a fire in his
gut. It burned right through him.” He paused beside a pillar,
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 her grief?”
Robert’s mouth gave a bitter twist. “Not well, in
truth,” he admitted. “I think losing Jon has driven the
woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy back to the Eyrie. Against my
wishes. I had hoped to foster him with Tywin Lannister at Casterly
Rock. Jon had no brothers, no other sons. Was I supposed to leave
him to be raised by women?”
Ned would sooner entrust a child to a pit viper 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 the husband,” 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 had never taken a
ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored. The Lannisters are a
great and noble House. She refused to even hear of it. Then she
left in the dead of night, without so much as a by-your-leave.
Cersei was furious.” He sighed deeply. “The boy is my
namesake, did you know that? Robert Arryn. I am sworn to protect
him. How can I do that if his mother steals him away?”
“I will take him as ward, if you wish,” Ned said.
“Lysa should consent to that. She and Catelyn were close as
girls, and she would be welcome here as well.”
“A generous offer, my friend,” the king said,
“but too late. Lord Tywin has already given his consent.
Fostering the boy elsewhere would be a grievous affront to
him.”
“I have more concern for my nephew’s welfare than I
do for Lannister pride,” Ned declared.
“That is because you do not sleep with a Lannister.”
Robert laughed, the sound rattling among the tombs and bouncing
from the vaulted ceiling. His smile was a flash of white teeth in
the thicket of the huge black beard. “Ah, Ned,” he
said, “you are still too serious.” He put a massive arm
around Ned’s shoulders. “I had planned to wait a few
days to speak to you, but I see now there’s no need for it.
Come, walk with me.”
They started back down between the pillars. Blind stone eyes
seemed to follow them as they passed. The king kept his arm around
Ned’s shoulder. “You must have wondered why I finally
came north to Winterfell, after so long.”
Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice.
“For the joy of my company, surely,” he said lightly.
“And there is the Wall. You need to see it, Your Grace, to
walk along its battlements and talk to those who man it. The
Night’s Watch is a shadow of what it once was. Benjen
says—”
“No doubt I will hear what your brother says soon
enough,” Robert said. “The Wall has stood for what,
eight thousand years? It can keep a few days more. I have more
pressing concerns. These are difficult times. I need good men about
me. Men like Jon Arryn. He served as Lord of the Eyrie, as Warden
of the East, as the Hand of the King. He will not be easy to
replace.”
“His son . . . ” Ned began.
“His son will succeed to the Eyrie and all its
incomes,” Robert said brusquely. “No more.”
That took Ned by surprise. He stopped, startled, and turned to
look at his king. The words came unbidden. “The Arryns have
always been Wardens of the East. The title goes with the
domain.”
“Perhaps when he comes of age, the honor can be restored
to him,” Robert said. “I have this year to think of,
and next. A six-year-old boy is no war leader, Ned.”
“In peace, the title is only an honor. Let the boy keep
it. For his father’s sake if not his own. Surely you owe Jon
that much for his service.”
The king was not pleased. He took his arm from around
Ned’s shoulders. “Jon’s service was the duty he
owed his liege lord. I am not ungrateful, Ned. You of all men ought
to know that. But the son is not the father. A mere boy cannot hold
the east.” Then his tone softened. “Enough of this.
There is a more important office to discuss, and I would not argue
with you.” Robert grasped Ned by the elbow. “I have
need of you, Ned.”
“I am yours to command, Your Grace. Always.” They
were words he had to say, and so he said them, apprehensive about
what might come next.
Robert scarcely seemed to hear him. “Those years we spent
in the Eyrie . . . gods, those were good years. I want you at my
side again, Ned. I want you down in King’s Landing, not up
here at the end of the world where you are no damned use to
anybody.” Robert looked off into the darkness, for a moment
as melancholy as a Stark. “I swear to you, sitting a throne
is a thousand times harder than winning one. Laws are a tedious
business and counting coppers is worse. And the people . . . there
is no end of them. I sit on that damnable iron chair and listen to
them complain until my mind is numb and my ass is raw. They all
want something, money or land or justice. The lies they tell . . . and my lords and ladies are no better. I am surrounded by
flatterers and fools. It can drive a man to madness, Ned. Half of
them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the other half
can’t find it. There are nights I wish we had lost at the
Trident. Ah, no, not truly, but . . .
“I understand,” Ned said softly.
Robert looked at him. “I think you do. If so, you are the
only one, my old friend.” He smiled. “Lord Eddard
Stark, I would name you the Hand of the King.”
Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what
other reason could Robert have had for coming so far? The Hand of
the King was the second-most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. He
spoke with the king’s voice, commanded the king’s
armies, drafted the king’s laws. At times he even sat upon
the Iron Throne to dispense king’s justice, when the king was
absent, or sick, or otherwise indisposed. Robert was offering him a
responsibility as large as the realm itself.
It was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Your Grace,” he said. “I am not worthy of the
honor.”
Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. “If I wanted
to honor you, I’d let you retire. I am planning to make you
run the kingdom and fight the wars while I eat and drink and wench
myself into an early grave.” He slapped his gut and grinned.
“You know the saying, about the king and his Hand?”
Ned knew the saying. “What the king dreams,” he
said, “the Hand builds.”
“I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a
choicer way to put it. The king eats, they say, and the Hand takes
the shit.” He threw back his head and roared his laughter.
The echoes rang through the darkness, and all around them the dead
of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.
Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one
knee, his eyes upraised. “Damn it, Ned,” the king
complained. “You might at least humor me with a
smile.”
“They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a
man’s laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to
death,” Ned said evenly. “Perhaps that is why the
Starks have so little humor.”
“Come south with me, and I’ll teach you how to laugh
again,” the king promised. “You helped me win this
damnable throne, now help me hold it. We were meant to rule
together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound
by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a
son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our
houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.”
This offer did surprise him. “Sansa is only
eleven.”
Robert waved an impatient hand. “Old enough for betrothal.
The marriage can wait a few years.” The king smiled.
“Now stand up and say yes, curse you.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Your
Grace,” Ned answered. He hesitated. “These honors are
all so unexpected. May I have some time to consider? I need to tell
my wife . . . ”
“Yes, yes, of course, tell Catelyn, sleep on it if you
must.” The king reached down, clasped Ned by the hand, and
pulled him roughly to his feet. “Just don’t keep me
waiting too long. I am not the most patient of men.”
For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of
foreboding. This was his place, here in the north. He looked at the
stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence
of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all
listening, he knew. And winter was coming.