It is only another empty castle,” Meera Reed said
as she gazed across the desolation of rubble, ruins, and weeds. No, thought Bran, it is the Nightfort, and this is the end of
the world. In the mountains, all he could think of was reaching the
Wall and finding the three-eyed crow, but now that they were here
he was filled with fears. The dream he’d
had . . . the dream Summer had
had . . . No, I mustn’t think about that
dream. He had not even told the Reeds, though Meera at least seemed
to sense that something was wrong. If he never talked of it maybe
he could forget he ever dreamed it, and then it wouldn’t have
happened and Robb and Grey Wind would still
be . . .
“Hodor.” Hodor shifted his weight, and Bran with it.
He was tired. They had been walking for hours. At least he’s
not afraid. Bran was scared of this place, and almost as scared of
admitting it to the Reeds. I’m a prince of the north, a Stark
of Winterfell, almost a man grown, I have to be as brave as
Robb.
Jojen gazed up at him with his dark green eyes.
“There’s nothing here to hurt us, Your
Grace.”
Bran wasn’t so certain. The Nightfort had figured in some
of Old Nan’s scariest stories. It was here that Night’s
King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man.
This was where the Rat Cook had served the Andal king his
prince-and-bacon pie, where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their
watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered.
This was the castle where King Sherrit had called down his curse on
the Andals of old, where the ’prentice boys had faced the
thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the hellhounds fighting. Mad Axe had once
walked these yards and climbed these towers, butchering his
brothers in the dark.
All that had happened hundreds and thousands of years ago, to be
sure, and some maybe never happened at all. Maester Luwin always
said that Old Nan’s stories shouldn’t be swallowed
whole. But once his uncle came to see Father, and Bran asked about
the Nightfort. Benjen Stark never said the tales were true, but he
never said they weren’t; he only shrugged and said, “We
left the Nightfort two hundred years ago,” as if that was an
answer.
Bran forced himself to look around. The morning was cold but
bright, the sun shining down from a hard blue sky, but he did not
like the noises. The wind made a nervous whistling sound as it
shivered through the broken towers, the keeps groaned and settled,
and he could hear rats scrabbling under the floor of the great
hall. The Rat Cook’s children running from their father. The
yards were small forests where spindly trees rubbed their bare
branches together and dead leaves scuttled like roaches across
patches of old snow. There were trees growing where the stables had
been, and a twisted white weirwood pushing up through the gaping
hole in the roof of the domed kitchen. Even Summer was not at ease
here. Bran slipped inside his skin, just for an instant, to get the
smell of the place. He did not like that either.
And there was no way through.
Bran had told them there wouldn’t be. He had told them and
told them, but Jojen Reed had insisted on seeing for himself. He
had had a green dream, he said, and his green dreams did not lie.
They don’t open any gates either, thought Bran.
The gate the Nightfort guarded had been sealed since the day the
black brothers had loaded up their mules and garrons and departed
for Deep Lake; its iron portcullis lowered, the chains that raised
it carried off, the tunnel packed with stone and rubble all frozen
together until they were as impenetrable as the Wall itself.
“We should have followed Jon,” Bran said when he saw
it. He thought of his bastard brother often, since the night that
Summer had watched him ride off through the storm. “We should
have found the kingsroad and gone to Castle Black.”
“We dare not, my prince,” Jojen said.
“I’ve told you why.”
“But there are wildlings. They killed some man and they
wanted to kill Jon too. Jojen, there were a hundred of
them.”
“So you said. We are four. You helped your brother, if
that was him in truth, but it almost cost you Summer.”
“I know,” said Bran miserably. The direwolf had
killed three of them, maybe more, but there had been too many. When
they formed a tight ring around the tall earless man, he had tried
to slip away through the rain, but one of their arrows had come
flashing after him, and the sudden stab of pain had driven Bran out
of the wolf’s skin and back into his own. After the storm
finally died, they had huddled in the dark without a fire, talking
in whispers if they talked at all, listening to Hodor’s heavy
breathing and wondering if the wildlings might try and cross the
lake in the morning. Bran had reached out for Summer time and time
again, but the pain he found drove him back, the way a red-hot
kettle makes you pull your hand back even when you mean to grab it.
Only Hodor slept that night, muttering “Hodor, hodor,”
as he tossed and turned. Bran was terrified that Summer was off
dying in the darkness. Please, you old gods, he prayed, you took
Winterfell, and my father, and my legs, please don’t take
Summer too. And watch over Jon Snow too, and make the wildlings go
away.
No weirwoods grew on that stony island in the lake, yet somehow
the old gods must have heard. The wildlings took their sweet time
about departing the next morning, stripping the bodies of their
dead and the old man they’d killed, even pulling a few fish
from the lake, and there was a scary moment when three of them
found the causeway and started to walk
out . . . but the path turned and they
didn’t, and two of them nearly drowned before the others
pulled them out. The tall bald man yelled at them, his words
echoing across the water in some tongue that even Jojen did not
know, and a little while later they gathered up their shields and
spears and marched off north by east, the same way Jon had gone.
Bran wanted to leave too, to look for Summer, but the Reeds said
no. “We will stay another night,” said Jojen,
“put some leagues between us and the wildlings. You
don’t want to meet them again, do you?” Late that
afternoon Summer returned from wherever he’d been hiding,
dragging his back leg. He ate parts of the bodies in the inn,
driving off the crows, then swam out to the island. Meera had drawn
the broken arrow from his leg and rubbed the wound with the juice
of some plants she found growing around the base of the tower. The
direwolf was still limping, but a little less each day, it seemed
to Bran. The gods had heard.
“Maybe we should try another castle,” Meera said to
her brother. “Maybe we could get through the gate somewhere
else. I could go scout if you wanted, I’d make better time by
myself.”
Bran shook his head. “If you go east there’s Deep
Lake, then Queensgate. West is Icemark. But they’ll be the
same, only smaller. All the gates are sealed except the ones at
Castle Black, Eastwatch, and the Shadow Tower.”
Hodor said, “Hodor,” to that, and the Reeds
exchanged a look. “At least I should climb to the top of the
Wall,” Meera decided. “Maybe I’ll see something
up there.”
“What could you hope to see?” Jojen asked.
“Something,” said Meera, and for once she was
adamant. It should be me. Bran raised his head to look up at the Wall,
and imagined himself climbing inch by inch, squirming his fingers
into cracks in the ice and kicking footholds with his toes. That
made him smile in spite of everything, the dreams and the wildlings
and Jon and everything. He had climbed the walls of Winterfell when
he was little, and all the towers too, but none of them had been so
high, and they were only stone. The Wall could look like stone, all
grey and pitted, but then the clouds would break and the sun would
hit it differently, and all at once it would transform, and stand
there white and blue and glittering. It was the end of the world,
Old Nan always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and
ghouls, but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong. I
want to stand on top with Meera, Bran thought. I want to stand on
top and see.
But he was a broken boy with useless legs, so all he could do
was watch from below as Meera went up in his stead.
She wasn’t really climbing, the way he used to climb. She
was only walking up some steps that the Night’s Watch had
hewn hundreds and thousands of years ago. He remembered Maester
Luwin saying the Nightfort was the only castle where the steps had
been cut from the ice of the Wall itself. Or maybe it had been
Uncle Benjen. The newer castles had wooden steps, or stone ones, or
long ramps of earth and gravel. Ice is too treacherous. It was his
uncle who’d told him that. He said that the outer surface of
the Wall wept icy tears sometimes, though the core inside stayed
frozen hard as rock. The steps must have melted and refrozen a
thousand times since the last black brothers left the castle, and
every time they did they shrunk a little and got smoother and
rounder and more treacherous.
And smaller. It’s almost like the Wall was swallowing them
back into itself. Meera Reed was very surefooted, but even so she
was going slowly, moving from nub to nub. In two places where the
steps were hardly there at all she got down on all fours. It will
be worse when she comes down, Bran thought, watching. Even so, he
wished it was him up there. When she reached the top, crawling up
the icy knobs that were all that remained of the highest steps,
Meera vanished from his sight.
“When will she come down?” Bran asked Jojen.
“When she is ready. She will want to have a good
look . . . at the Wall and what’s beyond.
We should do the same down here.”
“Hodor?” said Hodor, doubtfully.
“We might find something,” Jojen insisted. Or something might find us. Bran couldn’t say it, though;
he did not want Jojen to think he was craven.
So they went exploring, Jojen Reed leading, Bran in his basket
on Hodor’s back, Summer padding by their side. Once the
direwolf bolted through a dark door and returned a moment later
with a grey rat between his teeth. The Rat Cook, Bran thought, but
it was the wrong color, and only as big as a cat. The Rat Cook was
white, and almost as huge as a sow . . .
There were a lot of dark doors in the Nightfort, and a lot of
rats. Bran could hear them scurrying through the vaults and
cellars, and the maze of pitch-black tunnels that connected them.
Jojen wanted to go poking around down there, but Hodor said
“Hodor” to that, and Bran said “No.” There
were worse things than rats down in the dark beneath the
Nightfort.
“This seems an old place,” Jojen said as they walked
down a gallery where the sunlight fell in dusty shafts through
empty windows.
“Twice as old as Castle Black,” Bran said,
remembering. “It was the first castle on the Wall, and the
largest.” But it had also been the first abandoned, all the
way back in the time of the Old King. Even then it had been
three-quarters empty and too costly to maintain. Good Queen
Alysanne had suggested that the Watch replace it with a smaller,
newer castle at a spot only seven miles east, where the Wall curved
along the shore of a beautiful green lake. Deep Lake had been paid
for by the queen’s jewels and built by the men the Old King
had sent north, and the black brothers had abandoned the Nightfort
to the rats.
That was two centuries past, though. Now Deep Lake stood as
empty as the castle it had replaced, and the
Nightfort . . .
“There are ghosts here,” Bran said. Hodor had heard
all the stories before, but Jojen might not have. “Old
ghosts, from before the Old King, even before Aegon the Dragon,
seventy-nine deserters who went south to be outlaws. One was Lord
Ryswell’s youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands
they sought shelter at his castle, but Lord Ryswell took them
captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had
holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them
and sealed them up alive in the ice. They have spears and horns and
they all face north. The seventy-nine sentinels, they’re
called. They left their posts in life, so in death their watch goes
on forever. Years later, when Lord Ryswell was old and dying, he
had himself carried to the Nightfort so he could take the black and
stand beside his son. He’d sent him back to the Wall for
honor’s sake, but he loved him still, so he came to share his
watch.”
They spent half the day poking through the castle. Some of the
towers had fallen down and others looked unsafe, but they climbed
the bell tower (the bells were gone) and the rookery (the birds
were gone). Beneath the brewhouse they found a vault of huge oaken
casks that boomed hollowly when Hodor knocked on them. They found a
library (the shelves and bins had collapsed, the books were gone,
and rats were everywhere). They found a dank and dim-lit dungeon with cells enough to hold
five hundred captives, but when Bran grabbed hold of one of the
rusted bars it broke off in his hand. Only one crumbling wall
remained of the great hall, the bathhouse seemed to be sinking into
the ground, and a huge thornbush had conquered the practice yard
outside the armory where black brothers had once labored with spear
and shield and sword. The armory and the forge still stood,
however, though cobwebs, rats, and dust had taken the places of
blades, bellows, and anvil. Sometimes Summer would hear sounds that
Bran seemed deaf to, or bare his teeth at nothing, the fur on the
back of his neck bristling . . . but the Rat
Cook never put in an appearance, nor the seventy-nine sentinels,
nor Mad Axe. Bran was much relieved. Maybe it is only a ruined
empty castle.
By the time Meera returned, the sun was only a sword’s
breath above the western hills. “What did you see?” her
brother Jojen asked her.
“I saw the haunted forest,” she said in a wistful
tone. “Hills rising wild as far as the eye can see, covered
with trees that no axe has ever touched. I saw the sunlight
glinting off a lake, and clouds sweeping in from the west. I saw
patches of old snow, and icicles long as pikes. I even saw an eagle
circling. I think he saw me too. I waved at him.”
“Did you see a way down?” asked Jojen.
She shook her head. “No. It’s a sheer drop, and the
ice is so smooth . . . I might be able to make the descent if I had a good rope and an
axe to chop out handholds,
but . . . ”
“ . . . but not us,” Jojen
finished.
“No,” his sister agreed. “Are you sure this is
the place you saw in your dream? Maybe we have the wrong
castle.”
“No. This is the castle. There is a gate here.” Yes, thought Bran, but it’s blocked by stone and ice.
As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and
the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling
through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another
of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had
been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said;
a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in
him,” she would add, “for all men must know
fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop
the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars.
Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though
her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave
his soul as well.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen
and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn
Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled,
Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of
Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the
Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been
sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had
been destroyed, his very name forbidden.
“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would always
end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint,
or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them
who ruled Bear island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was
a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down.” She
always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it.
“He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his
name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very
room.” No, Bran thought, but he walked in this castle, where
we’ll sleep tonight. He did not like that notion very much at
all. Night’s King was only a man by light of day, Old Nan
would always say, but the night was his to rule. And it’s
getting dark.
The Reeds decided that they would sleep in the kitchens, a stone
octagon with a broken dome. It looked to offer better shelter than
most of the other buildings, even though a crooked weirwood had
burst up through the slate floor beside the huge central well,
stretching slantwise toward the hole in the roof, its bone-white
branches reaching for the sun. It was a queer kind of tree,
skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and
faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with
him here, at least.
That was the only thing he liked about the kitchens, though. The
roof was mostly there, so they’d be dry if it rained again,
but he didn’t think they would ever get warm here. You could
feel the cold seeping up through the slate floor. Bran did not like
the shadows either, or the huge brick ovens that surrounded them
like open mouths, or the rusted meat hooks, or the scars and stains
he saw in the butcher’s block along one wall. That was where
the Rat Cook chopped the prince to pieces, he knew, and he baked
the pie in one of these ovens.
The well was the thing he liked the least, though. It was a good
twelve feet across, all stone, with steps built into its side,
circling down and down into darkness. The walls were damp and
covered with niter, but none of them could see the water at the
bottom, not even Meera with her sharp hunter’s eyes.
“Maybe it doesn’t have a bottom,” Bran said
uncertainly.
Hodor peered over the knee-high lip of the well and said,
“HODOR!” The word echoed down the well,
“Hodorhodorhodorhodor,” fainter and fainter,
“hodorhodorhodorhodor,” until it was less than a
whisper. Hodor looked startled. Then he laughed, and bent to scoop
a broken piece of slate off the floor.
“Hodor, don’t!” said Bran, but too late. Hodor
tossed the slate over the edge. “You shouldn’t have
done that. You don’t know what’s down there. You might
have hurt something, or . . . or woken
something up.”
Hodor looked at him innocently. “Hodor?”
Far, far, far below, they heard the sound as the stone found
water. It wasn’t a splash, not truly. It was more a gulp, as
if whatever was below had opened a quivering gelid mouth to swallow
Hodor’s stone. Faint echoes traveled up the well, and for a
moment Bran thought he heard something moving, thrashing about in
the water. “Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” he
said uneasily.
“By the well?” asked Meera. “Or in the
Nightfort?”
“Yes,” said Bran.
She laughed, and sent Hodor out to gather wood. Summer went too.
It was almost dark by then, and the direwolf wanted to hunt.
Hodor returned alone with both arms full of deadwood and broken
branches. Jojen Reed took his flint and knife and set about
lighting a fire while Meera boned the fish she’d caught at
the last stream they’d crossed. Bran wondered how many years
had passed since there had last been a supper cooked in the
kitchens of the Nightfort. He wondered who had cooked it too,
though maybe it was better not to know.
When the flames were blazing nicely Meera put the fish on. At
least it’s not a meat pie. The Rat Cook had cooked the son of
the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots
of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine.
Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a
second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a
monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed
the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his
hunger was not sated. “It was not for murder that the gods
cursed him,” Old Nan said, “nor for serving the Andal
king his son in a pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew
a guest beneath his roof, and that the gods cannot
forgive.”
“We should sleep,” Jojen said solemnly, after they
were full. The fire was burning low. He stirred it with a stick.
“Perhaps I’ll have another green dream to show us the
way.”
Hodor was already curled up and snoring lightly. From time to
time he thrashed beneath his cloak, and whimpered something that
might have been “Hodor.” Bran wriggled closer to the
fire. The warmth felt good, and the soft crackling of flames
soothed him, but sleep would not come. Outside the wind was sending
armies of dead leaves marching across the courtyards to scratch
faintly at the doors and windows. The sounds made him think of Old
Nan’s stories. He could almost hear the ghostly sentinels
calling to each other atop the Wall and winding their ghostly
warhorns. Pale moonlight slanted down through the hole in the dome,
painting the branches of the weirwood as they strained up toward
the roof. It looked as if the tree was trying to catch the moon and
drag it down into the well. Old gods, Bran prayed, if you hear me,
don’t send a dream tonight. Or if you do, make it a good
dream. The gods made no answer.
Bran made himself close his eyes. Maybe he even slept some, or
maybe he was just drowsing, floating the way you do when you are
half awake and half asleep, trying not to think about Mad Axe or
the Rat Cook or the thing that came in the night.
Then he heard the noise.
His eyes opened. What was that? He held his breath. Did I dream
it? Was I having a stupid nightmare? He didn’t want to wake
Meera and Jojen for a bad dream,
but . . . there . . . a
soft scuffling sound, far off . . . Leaves,
it’s leaves rattling off the walls outside and rustling
together . . . or the wind, it could be the
wind . . . The sound wasn’t coming from
outside, though. Bran felt the hairs on his arm start to rise. The
sound’s inside, it’s in here with us, and it’s
getting louder. He pushed himself up onto an elbow, listening.
There was wind, and blowing leaves as well, but this was something
else. Footsteps. Someone was coming this way. Something was coming
this way.
It wasn’t the sentinels, he knew. The sentinels never left
the Wall. But there might be other ghosts in the Nightfort, ones
even more terrible. He remembered what Old Nan had said of Mad Axe,
how he took his boots off and prowled the castle halls barefoot in
the dark, with never a sound to tell you where he was except for
the drops of blood that fell from his axe and his elbows and the
end of his wet red beard. Or maybe it wasn’t Mad Axe at all,
maybe it was the thing that came in the night. The ’prentice
boys all saw it, Old Nan said, but afterward when they told their
Lord Commander every description had been different. And three died
within the year, and the fourth went mad, and a hundred years later
when the thing had come again, the ’prentice boys were seen
shambling along behind it, all in chains.
That was only a story, though. He was just scaring himself.
There was no thing that comes in the night, Maester Luwin had said
so. If there had ever been such a thing, it was gone from the world
now, like giants and dragons. It’s nothing, Bran thought.
But the sounds were louder now. It’s coming from the well, he realized. That made him even
more afraid. Something was coming up from under the ground, coming
up out of the dark. Hodor woke it up. He woke it up with that
stupid piece of slate, and now it’s coming. It was hard to
hear over Hodor’s snores and the thumping of his own heart.
Was that the sound blood made dripping from an axe? Or was it the
faint, far-off rattling of ghostly chains? Bran listened harder.
Footsteps. It was definitely footsteps, each one a little louder
than the one before. He couldn’t tell how many, though. The
well made the sounds echo. He didn’t hear any dripping, or
chains either, but there was something
else . . . a high thin whimpering sound, like
someone in pain, and heavy muffled breathing. But the footsteps
were loudest. The footsteps were coming closer.
Bran was too frightened to shout. The fire had burned down to a
few faint embers and his friends were all asleep. He almost slipped
his skin and reached out for his wolf, but Summer might be miles
away. He couldn’t leave his friends helpless in the dark to
face whatever was coming up out of the well. I told them not to
come here, he thought miserably. I told them there were ghosts. I
told them that we should go to Castle Black.
The footfalls sounded heavy to Bran, slow, ponderous, scraping
against the stone. It must be huge. Mad Axe had been a big man in
Old Nan’s story, and the thing that came in the night had
been monstrous. Back in Winterfell, Sansa had told him that the
demons of the dark couldn’t touch him if he hid beneath his
blanket. He almost did that now, before he remembered that he was a
prince, and almost a man grown.
Bran wriggled across the floor, dragging his dead legs behind
him until he could reach out and touch Meera on the foot. She woke
at once. He had never known anyone to wake as quick as Meera Reed,
or to be so alert so fast. Bran pressed a finger to his mouth so
she’d know not to speak. She heard the sound at once, he
could see that on her face; the echoing footfalls, the faint
whimpering, the heavy breathing.
Meera rose to her feet without a word and reclaimed her weapons.
With her three-pronged frog spear in her right hand and the folds
of her net dangling from her left, she slipped barefoot toward the
well. Jojen dozed on, oblivious, while Hodor muttered and thrashed
in restless sleep. She kept to the shadows as she moved, stepped
around the shaft of moonlight as quiet as a cat. Bran was watching
her all the while, and even he could barely see the faint sheen of
her spear. I can’t let her fight the thing alone, he thought.
Summer was far away, but . . .
. . . he slipped his skin, and reached for
Hodor.
It was not like sliding into Summer. That was so easy now
that Bran hardly thought about it. This was harder, like trying to
pull a left boot on your right foot. It fit all wrong, and the boot
was scared too, the boot didn’t know what was happening, the
boot was pushing the foot away. He tasted vomit in the back of
Hodor’s throat, and that was almost enough to make him flee.
Instead he squirmed and shoved, sat up, gathered his legs under him—his huge strong legs—and rose. I’m standing. He took a
step. I’m walking. It was such a strange feeling that he
almost fell. He could see himself on the cold stone floor, a little
broken thing, but he wasn’t broken now. He grabbed
Hodor’s longsword. The breathing was as loud as a
blacksmith’s bellows.
From the well came a wail, a piercing creech that went through
him like a knife. A huge black shape heaved itself up into the
darkness and lurched toward the moonlight, and the fear rose up in
Bran so thick that before he could even think of drawing
Hodor’s sword the way he’d meant to, he found himself
back on the floor again with Hodor roaring “Hodor
hodor HODOR,” the way he had in the lake tower whenever the
lightning flashed. But the thing that came in the night was
screaming too, and thrashing wildly in the folds of Meera’s
net. Bran saw her spear dart out of the darkness to snap at it, and
the thing staggered and fell, struggling with the net. The wailing
was still coming from the well, even louder now. On the floor the
black thing flopped and fought, screeching, “No, no,
don’t, please,
DON’T . . . ”
Meera stood over him, the moonlight shining silver off the
prongs of her frog spear. “Who are you?” she
demanded.
“I’m SAM,” the black thing sobbed. “Sam,
Sam, I’m Sam, let me out, you stabbed
me . . . ” He rolled through the puddle
of moonlight, flailing and flopping in the tangles of Meera’s
net. Hodor was still shouting, “Hodor hodor hodor.”
It
was Jojen who fed the sticks to the fire and blew on them until the
flames leapt up crackling. Then there was light, and Bran saw the
pale thin-faced girl by the lip of the well, all bundled up in furs
and skins beneath an enormous black cloak, trying to shush the
screaming baby in her arms. The thing on the floor was pushing an
arm through the net to reach his knife, but the loops
wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t any monster beast, or even
Mad Axe drenched in gore; only a big fat man dressed up in black
wool, black fur, black leather, and black mail. “He’s a
black brother,” said Bran. “Meera, he’s from the
Night’s Watch.”
“Hodor?” Hodor squatted down on his haunches to peer
at the man in the net. “Hodor,” he said again,
hooting.
“The Night’s Watch, yes.” The fat man was
still breathing like a bellows. “I’m a brother of the
Watch.” He had one cord under his chins, forcing his head up,
and others digging deep into his cheeks. “I’m a crow,
please. Let me out of this.”
Bran was suddenly uncertain. “Are you the three-eyed
crow?” He can’t be the three-eyed crow.
“I don’t think so.” The fat man rolled his
eyes, but there were only two of them. “I’m only Sam.
Samwell Tarly. Let me out, it’s hurting me.” He began
to struggle again.
Meera made a disgusted sound. “Stop flopping around. If
you tear my net I’ll throw you back down the well. Just lie
still and I’ll untangle you.”
“Who are you?” Jojen asked the girl with the
baby.
“Gilly,” she said. “For the gillyflower.
He’s Sam. We never meant to scare you.” She rocked her
baby and murmured at it, and finally it stopped crying.
Meera was untangling the fat brother. Jojen went to the well and
peered down. “Where did you come from?”
“From Craster’s,” the girl said. “Are
you the one?”
Jojen turned to look at her. “The one?”
“He said that Sam wasn’t the one,” she
explained. “There was someone else, he said. The one he was
sent to find.”
“Who said?” Bran demanded.
“Coldhands,” Gilly answered softly.
Meera peeled back one end of her net, and the fat man managed to
sit up. He was shaking, Bran saw, and still struggling to catch his
breath. “He said there would be people,” he huffed.
“People in the castle. I didn’t know you’d be
right at the top of the steps, though. I didn’t know
you’d throw a net on me or stab me in the stomach.” He
touched his belly with a black-gloved hand. “Am I bleeding? I
can’t see.”
“It was just a poke to get you off your feet,” said
Meera. “Here, let me have a look.” She went to one
knee, and felt around his navel. “You’re wearing mail.
I never got near your skin.”
“Well, it hurt all the same,” Sam complained.
“Are you really a brother of the Night’s
Watch?” Bran asked.
The fat man’s chins jiggled when he nodded. His skin
looked pale and saggy. “Only a steward. I took care of Lord
Mormont’s ravens.” For a moment he looked like he was
going to cry. “I lost them at the Fist, though. It was my
fault. I got us lost too. I couldn’t even find the Wall.
It’s a hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high and I
couldn’t find it!”
“Well, you’ve found it now,” said Meera.
“Lift your rump off the ground, I want my net
back.”
“How did you get through the Wall?” Jojen demanded
as Sam struggled to his feet. “Does the well lead to an
underground river, is that where you came from? You’re not
even wet . . . ”
“There’s a gate,” said fat Sam. “A
hidden gate, as old as the Wall itself. The Black Gate, he called
it.”
The Reeds exchanged a look. “We’ll find this gate at
the bottom of the well?” asked Jojen.
Sam shook his head. “You won’t. I have to take
you.”
“Why?” Meera demanded. “If there’s a
gate . . . ”
“You won’t find it. If you did it wouldn’t
open. Not for you. It’s the Black Gate.” Sam plucked at
the faded black wool of his sleeve. “Only a man of the
Night’s Watch can open it, he said. A Sworn Brother who has
said his words.”
“He said.” Jojen frowned.
“This . . . Coldhands?”
“That wasn’t his true name,” said Gilly,
rocking. “We only called him that, Sam and me. His hands were
cold as ice, but he saved us from the dead men, him and his ravens,
and he brought us here on his elk.”
“His elk?” said Bran, wonderstruck.
“His elk?” said Meera, startled.
“His ravens?” said Jojen.
“Hodor?” said Hodor.
“Was he green?” Bran wanted to know. “Did he
have antlers?”
The fat man was confused. “The elk?”
“Coldhands,” said Bran impatiently. “The green
men ride on elks, Old Nan used to say. Sometimes they have antlers
too.”
“He wasn’t a green man. He wore blacks, like a
brother of the Watch, but he was pale as a wight, with hands so
cold that at first I was afraid. The wights have blue eyes, though,
and they don’t have tongues, or they’ve forgotten how
to use them.” The fat man turned to Jojen. “He’ll
be waiting. We should go. Do you have anything warmer to wear? The
Black Gate is cold, and the other side of the Wall is even colder.
You—”
“Why didn’t he come with you?” Meera gestured
toward Gilly and her babe. “They came with you, why not him?
Why didn’t you bring him through this Black Gate
too?”
“He . . . he can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The Wall. The Wall is more than just ice and stone, he
said. There are spells woven into it . . . old
ones, and strong. He cannot pass beyond the Wall.”
It grew very quiet in the castle kitchen then. Bran could hear
the soft crackle of the flames, the wind stirring the leaves in the
night, the creak of the skinny weirwood reaching for the moon.
Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls,
he remembered Old Nan saying, but they cannot pass so long as the
Wall stands strong. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy.
You needn’t fear. There are no monsters here.
“I am not the one you were told to bring,” Jojen
Reed told fat Sam in his stained and baggy blacks. “He
is.”
“Oh.” Sam looked down at him uncertainly. It might
have been just then that he realized Bran was crippled. “I
don’t . . . I’m not strong enough
to carry you, I . . . ”
“Hodor can carry me.” Bran pointed at his basket.
“I ride in that, up on his back.”
Sam was staring at him. “You’re Jon Snow’s
brother. The one who fell . . . ”
“No,” said Jojen. “That boy is
dead.”
“Don’t tell,” Bran warned.
“Please.”
Sam looked confused for a moment, but finally he said,
“I . . . I can keep a secret. Gilly
too.” When he looked at her, the girl nodded. “Jon . . . Jon was my brother too. He was the
best friend I ever had, but he went off with Qhorin Halfhand to
scout the Frostfangs and never came back. We were waiting for him
on the Fist
when . . . when . . . ”
“Jon’s here,” Bran said. “Summer saw
him. He was with some wildlings, but they killed a man and Jon took
his horse and escaped. I bet he went to Castle Black.”
Sam turned big eyes on Meera. “You’re certain it was
Jon? You saw him?”
“I’m Meera,” Meera said with a smile.
“Summer is . . . ”
A shadow detached itself from the broken dome above and leapt
down through the moonlight. Even with his injured leg, the wolf
landed as light and quiet as a snowfall. The girl Gilly made a
frightened sound and clutched her babe so hard against her that it
began to cry again.
“He won’t hurt you,” Bran said.
“That’s Summer.”
“Jon said you all had wolves.” Sam pulled off a
glove. “I know Ghost.” He held out a shaky hand, the
fingers white and soft and fat as little sausages. Summer padded
closer, sniffed them, and gave the hand a lick.
That was when Bran made up his mind. “We’ll go with
you.”
“All of you?” Sam seemed surprised by that.
Meera ruffled Bran’s hair. “He’s our
prince.”
Summer circled the well, sniffing. He paused by the top step and
looked back at Bran. He wants to go.
“Will Gilly be safe if I leave her here till I come
back?” Sam asked them.
“She should be,” said Meera. “She’s
welcome to our fire.”
Jojen said, “The castle is empty.”
Gilly looked around. “Craster used to tell us tales of
castles, but I never knew they’d be so big.” It’s only the kitchens. Bran wondered what she’d
think when she saw Winterfell, if she ever did.
It took them a few minutes to gather their things and hoist Bran
into his wicker seat on Hodor’s back. By the time they were
ready to go, Gilly sat nursing her babe by the fire.
“You’ll come back for me,” she said to Sam.
“As soon as I can,” he promised, “then
we’ll go somewhere warm.” When he heard that, part of
Bran wondered what he was doing. Will I ever go someplace warm
again?
“I’ll go first, I know the way.” Sam hesitated
at the top. “There’s just so many steps,” he
sighed, before he started down. Jojen followed, then Summer, then
Hodor with Bran riding on his back. Meera took the rear, with her
spear and net in hand.
It was a long way down. The top of the well was bathed in
moonlight, but it grew smaller and dimmer every time they went
around. Their footsteps echoed off the damp stones, and the water
sounds grew louder. “Should we have brought torches?”
Jojen asked.
“Your eyes will adjust,” said Sam. “Keep one
hand on the wall and you won’t fall.”
The well grew darker and colder with every turn. When Bran
finally lifted his head around to look back up the shaft, the top
of the well was no bigger than a half-moon. “Hodor,”
Hodor whispered, “Hodorhodorhodorhodorhodorhodor,” the
well whispered back. The water sounds were close, but when Bran
peered down he saw only blackness.
A turn or two later Sam stopped suddenly. He was a quarter of
the way around the well from Bran and Hodor and six feet farther
down, yet Bran could barely see him. He could see the door, though.
The Black Gate, Sam had called it, but it wasn’t black at
all.
It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it.
A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it
scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even
Sam standing right before it. The face was old and pale, wrinkled
and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes;
its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a
man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow
older, his face might come to look like that.
The door opened its eyes.
They were white too, and blind. “Who are you?” the
door asked, and the well whispered,
“Who-who-who-who-who-who-who.”
“I am the sword in the darkness,” Samwell Tarly
said. “I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns
against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that
wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of
men.”
“Then pass,” the door said. Its lips opened, wide
and wider and wider still, until nothing at all remained but a
great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. Sam stepped aside and
waved Jojen through ahead of him. Summer followed, sniffing as he
went, and then it was Bran’s turn. Hodor ducked, but not low
enough. The door’s upper lip brushed softly against the top
of Bran’s head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran
slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a
tear.
It is only another empty castle,” Meera Reed said
as she gazed across the desolation of rubble, ruins, and weeds. No, thought Bran, it is the Nightfort, and this is the end of
the world. In the mountains, all he could think of was reaching the
Wall and finding the three-eyed crow, but now that they were here
he was filled with fears. The dream he’d
had . . . the dream Summer had
had . . . No, I mustn’t think about that
dream. He had not even told the Reeds, though Meera at least seemed
to sense that something was wrong. If he never talked of it maybe
he could forget he ever dreamed it, and then it wouldn’t have
happened and Robb and Grey Wind would still
be . . .
“Hodor.” Hodor shifted his weight, and Bran with it.
He was tired. They had been walking for hours. At least he’s
not afraid. Bran was scared of this place, and almost as scared of
admitting it to the Reeds. I’m a prince of the north, a Stark
of Winterfell, almost a man grown, I have to be as brave as
Robb.
Jojen gazed up at him with his dark green eyes.
“There’s nothing here to hurt us, Your
Grace.”
Bran wasn’t so certain. The Nightfort had figured in some
of Old Nan’s scariest stories. It was here that Night’s
King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man.
This was where the Rat Cook had served the Andal king his
prince-and-bacon pie, where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their
watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered.
This was the castle where King Sherrit had called down his curse on
the Andals of old, where the ’prentice boys had faced the
thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the hellhounds fighting. Mad Axe had once
walked these yards and climbed these towers, butchering his
brothers in the dark.
All that had happened hundreds and thousands of years ago, to be
sure, and some maybe never happened at all. Maester Luwin always
said that Old Nan’s stories shouldn’t be swallowed
whole. But once his uncle came to see Father, and Bran asked about
the Nightfort. Benjen Stark never said the tales were true, but he
never said they weren’t; he only shrugged and said, “We
left the Nightfort two hundred years ago,” as if that was an
answer.
Bran forced himself to look around. The morning was cold but
bright, the sun shining down from a hard blue sky, but he did not
like the noises. The wind made a nervous whistling sound as it
shivered through the broken towers, the keeps groaned and settled,
and he could hear rats scrabbling under the floor of the great
hall. The Rat Cook’s children running from their father. The
yards were small forests where spindly trees rubbed their bare
branches together and dead leaves scuttled like roaches across
patches of old snow. There were trees growing where the stables had
been, and a twisted white weirwood pushing up through the gaping
hole in the roof of the domed kitchen. Even Summer was not at ease
here. Bran slipped inside his skin, just for an instant, to get the
smell of the place. He did not like that either.
And there was no way through.
Bran had told them there wouldn’t be. He had told them and
told them, but Jojen Reed had insisted on seeing for himself. He
had had a green dream, he said, and his green dreams did not lie.
They don’t open any gates either, thought Bran.
The gate the Nightfort guarded had been sealed since the day the
black brothers had loaded up their mules and garrons and departed
for Deep Lake; its iron portcullis lowered, the chains that raised
it carried off, the tunnel packed with stone and rubble all frozen
together until they were as impenetrable as the Wall itself.
“We should have followed Jon,” Bran said when he saw
it. He thought of his bastard brother often, since the night that
Summer had watched him ride off through the storm. “We should
have found the kingsroad and gone to Castle Black.”
“We dare not, my prince,” Jojen said.
“I’ve told you why.”
“But there are wildlings. They killed some man and they
wanted to kill Jon too. Jojen, there were a hundred of
them.”
“So you said. We are four. You helped your brother, if
that was him in truth, but it almost cost you Summer.”
“I know,” said Bran miserably. The direwolf had
killed three of them, maybe more, but there had been too many. When
they formed a tight ring around the tall earless man, he had tried
to slip away through the rain, but one of their arrows had come
flashing after him, and the sudden stab of pain had driven Bran out
of the wolf’s skin and back into his own. After the storm
finally died, they had huddled in the dark without a fire, talking
in whispers if they talked at all, listening to Hodor’s heavy
breathing and wondering if the wildlings might try and cross the
lake in the morning. Bran had reached out for Summer time and time
again, but the pain he found drove him back, the way a red-hot
kettle makes you pull your hand back even when you mean to grab it.
Only Hodor slept that night, muttering “Hodor, hodor,”
as he tossed and turned. Bran was terrified that Summer was off
dying in the darkness. Please, you old gods, he prayed, you took
Winterfell, and my father, and my legs, please don’t take
Summer too. And watch over Jon Snow too, and make the wildlings go
away.
No weirwoods grew on that stony island in the lake, yet somehow
the old gods must have heard. The wildlings took their sweet time
about departing the next morning, stripping the bodies of their
dead and the old man they’d killed, even pulling a few fish
from the lake, and there was a scary moment when three of them
found the causeway and started to walk
out . . . but the path turned and they
didn’t, and two of them nearly drowned before the others
pulled them out. The tall bald man yelled at them, his words
echoing across the water in some tongue that even Jojen did not
know, and a little while later they gathered up their shields and
spears and marched off north by east, the same way Jon had gone.
Bran wanted to leave too, to look for Summer, but the Reeds said
no. “We will stay another night,” said Jojen,
“put some leagues between us and the wildlings. You
don’t want to meet them again, do you?” Late that
afternoon Summer returned from wherever he’d been hiding,
dragging his back leg. He ate parts of the bodies in the inn,
driving off the crows, then swam out to the island. Meera had drawn
the broken arrow from his leg and rubbed the wound with the juice
of some plants she found growing around the base of the tower. The
direwolf was still limping, but a little less each day, it seemed
to Bran. The gods had heard.
“Maybe we should try another castle,” Meera said to
her brother. “Maybe we could get through the gate somewhere
else. I could go scout if you wanted, I’d make better time by
myself.”
Bran shook his head. “If you go east there’s Deep
Lake, then Queensgate. West is Icemark. But they’ll be the
same, only smaller. All the gates are sealed except the ones at
Castle Black, Eastwatch, and the Shadow Tower.”
Hodor said, “Hodor,” to that, and the Reeds
exchanged a look. “At least I should climb to the top of the
Wall,” Meera decided. “Maybe I’ll see something
up there.”
“What could you hope to see?” Jojen asked.
“Something,” said Meera, and for once she was
adamant. It should be me. Bran raised his head to look up at the Wall,
and imagined himself climbing inch by inch, squirming his fingers
into cracks in the ice and kicking footholds with his toes. That
made him smile in spite of everything, the dreams and the wildlings
and Jon and everything. He had climbed the walls of Winterfell when
he was little, and all the towers too, but none of them had been so
high, and they were only stone. The Wall could look like stone, all
grey and pitted, but then the clouds would break and the sun would
hit it differently, and all at once it would transform, and stand
there white and blue and glittering. It was the end of the world,
Old Nan always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and
ghouls, but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong. I
want to stand on top with Meera, Bran thought. I want to stand on
top and see.
But he was a broken boy with useless legs, so all he could do
was watch from below as Meera went up in his stead.
She wasn’t really climbing, the way he used to climb. She
was only walking up some steps that the Night’s Watch had
hewn hundreds and thousands of years ago. He remembered Maester
Luwin saying the Nightfort was the only castle where the steps had
been cut from the ice of the Wall itself. Or maybe it had been
Uncle Benjen. The newer castles had wooden steps, or stone ones, or
long ramps of earth and gravel. Ice is too treacherous. It was his
uncle who’d told him that. He said that the outer surface of
the Wall wept icy tears sometimes, though the core inside stayed
frozen hard as rock. The steps must have melted and refrozen a
thousand times since the last black brothers left the castle, and
every time they did they shrunk a little and got smoother and
rounder and more treacherous.
And smaller. It’s almost like the Wall was swallowing them
back into itself. Meera Reed was very surefooted, but even so she
was going slowly, moving from nub to nub. In two places where the
steps were hardly there at all she got down on all fours. It will
be worse when she comes down, Bran thought, watching. Even so, he
wished it was him up there. When she reached the top, crawling up
the icy knobs that were all that remained of the highest steps,
Meera vanished from his sight.
“When will she come down?” Bran asked Jojen.
“When she is ready. She will want to have a good
look . . . at the Wall and what’s beyond.
We should do the same down here.”
“Hodor?” said Hodor, doubtfully.
“We might find something,” Jojen insisted. Or something might find us. Bran couldn’t say it, though;
he did not want Jojen to think he was craven.
So they went exploring, Jojen Reed leading, Bran in his basket
on Hodor’s back, Summer padding by their side. Once the
direwolf bolted through a dark door and returned a moment later
with a grey rat between his teeth. The Rat Cook, Bran thought, but
it was the wrong color, and only as big as a cat. The Rat Cook was
white, and almost as huge as a sow . . .
There were a lot of dark doors in the Nightfort, and a lot of
rats. Bran could hear them scurrying through the vaults and
cellars, and the maze of pitch-black tunnels that connected them.
Jojen wanted to go poking around down there, but Hodor said
“Hodor” to that, and Bran said “No.” There
were worse things than rats down in the dark beneath the
Nightfort.
“This seems an old place,” Jojen said as they walked
down a gallery where the sunlight fell in dusty shafts through
empty windows.
“Twice as old as Castle Black,” Bran said,
remembering. “It was the first castle on the Wall, and the
largest.” But it had also been the first abandoned, all the
way back in the time of the Old King. Even then it had been
three-quarters empty and too costly to maintain. Good Queen
Alysanne had suggested that the Watch replace it with a smaller,
newer castle at a spot only seven miles east, where the Wall curved
along the shore of a beautiful green lake. Deep Lake had been paid
for by the queen’s jewels and built by the men the Old King
had sent north, and the black brothers had abandoned the Nightfort
to the rats.
That was two centuries past, though. Now Deep Lake stood as
empty as the castle it had replaced, and the
Nightfort . . .
“There are ghosts here,” Bran said. Hodor had heard
all the stories before, but Jojen might not have. “Old
ghosts, from before the Old King, even before Aegon the Dragon,
seventy-nine deserters who went south to be outlaws. One was Lord
Ryswell’s youngest son, so when they reached the barrowlands
they sought shelter at his castle, but Lord Ryswell took them
captive and returned them to the Nightfort. The Lord Commander had
holes hewn in the top of the Wall and he put the deserters in them
and sealed them up alive in the ice. They have spears and horns and
they all face north. The seventy-nine sentinels, they’re
called. They left their posts in life, so in death their watch goes
on forever. Years later, when Lord Ryswell was old and dying, he
had himself carried to the Nightfort so he could take the black and
stand beside his son. He’d sent him back to the Wall for
honor’s sake, but he loved him still, so he came to share his
watch.”
They spent half the day poking through the castle. Some of the
towers had fallen down and others looked unsafe, but they climbed
the bell tower (the bells were gone) and the rookery (the birds
were gone). Beneath the brewhouse they found a vault of huge oaken
casks that boomed hollowly when Hodor knocked on them. They found a
library (the shelves and bins had collapsed, the books were gone,
and rats were everywhere). They found a dank and dim-lit dungeon with cells enough to hold
five hundred captives, but when Bran grabbed hold of one of the
rusted bars it broke off in his hand. Only one crumbling wall
remained of the great hall, the bathhouse seemed to be sinking into
the ground, and a huge thornbush had conquered the practice yard
outside the armory where black brothers had once labored with spear
and shield and sword. The armory and the forge still stood,
however, though cobwebs, rats, and dust had taken the places of
blades, bellows, and anvil. Sometimes Summer would hear sounds that
Bran seemed deaf to, or bare his teeth at nothing, the fur on the
back of his neck bristling . . . but the Rat
Cook never put in an appearance, nor the seventy-nine sentinels,
nor Mad Axe. Bran was much relieved. Maybe it is only a ruined
empty castle.
By the time Meera returned, the sun was only a sword’s
breath above the western hills. “What did you see?” her
brother Jojen asked her.
“I saw the haunted forest,” she said in a wistful
tone. “Hills rising wild as far as the eye can see, covered
with trees that no axe has ever touched. I saw the sunlight
glinting off a lake, and clouds sweeping in from the west. I saw
patches of old snow, and icicles long as pikes. I even saw an eagle
circling. I think he saw me too. I waved at him.”
“Did you see a way down?” asked Jojen.
She shook her head. “No. It’s a sheer drop, and the
ice is so smooth . . . I might be able to make the descent if I had a good rope and an
axe to chop out handholds,
but . . . ”
“ . . . but not us,” Jojen
finished.
“No,” his sister agreed. “Are you sure this is
the place you saw in your dream? Maybe we have the wrong
castle.”
“No. This is the castle. There is a gate here.” Yes, thought Bran, but it’s blocked by stone and ice.
As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and
the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling
through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another
of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had
been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said;
a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in
him,” she would add, “for all men must know
fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop
the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars.
Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though
her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave
his soul as well.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen
and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn
Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled,
Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of
Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the
Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been
sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had
been destroyed, his very name forbidden.
“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would always
end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint,
or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them
who ruled Bear island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was
a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down.” She
always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it.
“He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his
name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very
room.” No, Bran thought, but he walked in this castle, where
we’ll sleep tonight. He did not like that notion very much at
all. Night’s King was only a man by light of day, Old Nan
would always say, but the night was his to rule. And it’s
getting dark.
The Reeds decided that they would sleep in the kitchens, a stone
octagon with a broken dome. It looked to offer better shelter than
most of the other buildings, even though a crooked weirwood had
burst up through the slate floor beside the huge central well,
stretching slantwise toward the hole in the roof, its bone-white
branches reaching for the sun. It was a queer kind of tree,
skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and
faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with
him here, at least.
That was the only thing he liked about the kitchens, though. The
roof was mostly there, so they’d be dry if it rained again,
but he didn’t think they would ever get warm here. You could
feel the cold seeping up through the slate floor. Bran did not like
the shadows either, or the huge brick ovens that surrounded them
like open mouths, or the rusted meat hooks, or the scars and stains
he saw in the butcher’s block along one wall. That was where
the Rat Cook chopped the prince to pieces, he knew, and he baked
the pie in one of these ovens.
The well was the thing he liked the least, though. It was a good
twelve feet across, all stone, with steps built into its side,
circling down and down into darkness. The walls were damp and
covered with niter, but none of them could see the water at the
bottom, not even Meera with her sharp hunter’s eyes.
“Maybe it doesn’t have a bottom,” Bran said
uncertainly.
Hodor peered over the knee-high lip of the well and said,
“HODOR!” The word echoed down the well,
“Hodorhodorhodorhodor,” fainter and fainter,
“hodorhodorhodorhodor,” until it was less than a
whisper. Hodor looked startled. Then he laughed, and bent to scoop
a broken piece of slate off the floor.
“Hodor, don’t!” said Bran, but too late. Hodor
tossed the slate over the edge. “You shouldn’t have
done that. You don’t know what’s down there. You might
have hurt something, or . . . or woken
something up.”
Hodor looked at him innocently. “Hodor?”
Far, far, far below, they heard the sound as the stone found
water. It wasn’t a splash, not truly. It was more a gulp, as
if whatever was below had opened a quivering gelid mouth to swallow
Hodor’s stone. Faint echoes traveled up the well, and for a
moment Bran thought he heard something moving, thrashing about in
the water. “Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” he
said uneasily.
“By the well?” asked Meera. “Or in the
Nightfort?”
“Yes,” said Bran.
She laughed, and sent Hodor out to gather wood. Summer went too.
It was almost dark by then, and the direwolf wanted to hunt.
Hodor returned alone with both arms full of deadwood and broken
branches. Jojen Reed took his flint and knife and set about
lighting a fire while Meera boned the fish she’d caught at
the last stream they’d crossed. Bran wondered how many years
had passed since there had last been a supper cooked in the
kitchens of the Nightfort. He wondered who had cooked it too,
though maybe it was better not to know.
When the flames were blazing nicely Meera put the fish on. At
least it’s not a meat pie. The Rat Cook had cooked the son of
the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots
of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine.
Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a
second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a
monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed
the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his
hunger was not sated. “It was not for murder that the gods
cursed him,” Old Nan said, “nor for serving the Andal
king his son in a pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew
a guest beneath his roof, and that the gods cannot
forgive.”
“We should sleep,” Jojen said solemnly, after they
were full. The fire was burning low. He stirred it with a stick.
“Perhaps I’ll have another green dream to show us the
way.”
Hodor was already curled up and snoring lightly. From time to
time he thrashed beneath his cloak, and whimpered something that
might have been “Hodor.” Bran wriggled closer to the
fire. The warmth felt good, and the soft crackling of flames
soothed him, but sleep would not come. Outside the wind was sending
armies of dead leaves marching across the courtyards to scratch
faintly at the doors and windows. The sounds made him think of Old
Nan’s stories. He could almost hear the ghostly sentinels
calling to each other atop the Wall and winding their ghostly
warhorns. Pale moonlight slanted down through the hole in the dome,
painting the branches of the weirwood as they strained up toward
the roof. It looked as if the tree was trying to catch the moon and
drag it down into the well. Old gods, Bran prayed, if you hear me,
don’t send a dream tonight. Or if you do, make it a good
dream. The gods made no answer.
Bran made himself close his eyes. Maybe he even slept some, or
maybe he was just drowsing, floating the way you do when you are
half awake and half asleep, trying not to think about Mad Axe or
the Rat Cook or the thing that came in the night.
Then he heard the noise.
His eyes opened. What was that? He held his breath. Did I dream
it? Was I having a stupid nightmare? He didn’t want to wake
Meera and Jojen for a bad dream,
but . . . there . . . a
soft scuffling sound, far off . . . Leaves,
it’s leaves rattling off the walls outside and rustling
together . . . or the wind, it could be the
wind . . . The sound wasn’t coming from
outside, though. Bran felt the hairs on his arm start to rise. The
sound’s inside, it’s in here with us, and it’s
getting louder. He pushed himself up onto an elbow, listening.
There was wind, and blowing leaves as well, but this was something
else. Footsteps. Someone was coming this way. Something was coming
this way.
It wasn’t the sentinels, he knew. The sentinels never left
the Wall. But there might be other ghosts in the Nightfort, ones
even more terrible. He remembered what Old Nan had said of Mad Axe,
how he took his boots off and prowled the castle halls barefoot in
the dark, with never a sound to tell you where he was except for
the drops of blood that fell from his axe and his elbows and the
end of his wet red beard. Or maybe it wasn’t Mad Axe at all,
maybe it was the thing that came in the night. The ’prentice
boys all saw it, Old Nan said, but afterward when they told their
Lord Commander every description had been different. And three died
within the year, and the fourth went mad, and a hundred years later
when the thing had come again, the ’prentice boys were seen
shambling along behind it, all in chains.
That was only a story, though. He was just scaring himself.
There was no thing that comes in the night, Maester Luwin had said
so. If there had ever been such a thing, it was gone from the world
now, like giants and dragons. It’s nothing, Bran thought.
But the sounds were louder now. It’s coming from the well, he realized. That made him even
more afraid. Something was coming up from under the ground, coming
up out of the dark. Hodor woke it up. He woke it up with that
stupid piece of slate, and now it’s coming. It was hard to
hear over Hodor’s snores and the thumping of his own heart.
Was that the sound blood made dripping from an axe? Or was it the
faint, far-off rattling of ghostly chains? Bran listened harder.
Footsteps. It was definitely footsteps, each one a little louder
than the one before. He couldn’t tell how many, though. The
well made the sounds echo. He didn’t hear any dripping, or
chains either, but there was something
else . . . a high thin whimpering sound, like
someone in pain, and heavy muffled breathing. But the footsteps
were loudest. The footsteps were coming closer.
Bran was too frightened to shout. The fire had burned down to a
few faint embers and his friends were all asleep. He almost slipped
his skin and reached out for his wolf, but Summer might be miles
away. He couldn’t leave his friends helpless in the dark to
face whatever was coming up out of the well. I told them not to
come here, he thought miserably. I told them there were ghosts. I
told them that we should go to Castle Black.
The footfalls sounded heavy to Bran, slow, ponderous, scraping
against the stone. It must be huge. Mad Axe had been a big man in
Old Nan’s story, and the thing that came in the night had
been monstrous. Back in Winterfell, Sansa had told him that the
demons of the dark couldn’t touch him if he hid beneath his
blanket. He almost did that now, before he remembered that he was a
prince, and almost a man grown.
Bran wriggled across the floor, dragging his dead legs behind
him until he could reach out and touch Meera on the foot. She woke
at once. He had never known anyone to wake as quick as Meera Reed,
or to be so alert so fast. Bran pressed a finger to his mouth so
she’d know not to speak. She heard the sound at once, he
could see that on her face; the echoing footfalls, the faint
whimpering, the heavy breathing.
Meera rose to her feet without a word and reclaimed her weapons.
With her three-pronged frog spear in her right hand and the folds
of her net dangling from her left, she slipped barefoot toward the
well. Jojen dozed on, oblivious, while Hodor muttered and thrashed
in restless sleep. She kept to the shadows as she moved, stepped
around the shaft of moonlight as quiet as a cat. Bran was watching
her all the while, and even he could barely see the faint sheen of
her spear. I can’t let her fight the thing alone, he thought.
Summer was far away, but . . .
. . . he slipped his skin, and reached for
Hodor.
It was not like sliding into Summer. That was so easy now
that Bran hardly thought about it. This was harder, like trying to
pull a left boot on your right foot. It fit all wrong, and the boot
was scared too, the boot didn’t know what was happening, the
boot was pushing the foot away. He tasted vomit in the back of
Hodor’s throat, and that was almost enough to make him flee.
Instead he squirmed and shoved, sat up, gathered his legs under him—his huge strong legs—and rose. I’m standing. He took a
step. I’m walking. It was such a strange feeling that he
almost fell. He could see himself on the cold stone floor, a little
broken thing, but he wasn’t broken now. He grabbed
Hodor’s longsword. The breathing was as loud as a
blacksmith’s bellows.
From the well came a wail, a piercing creech that went through
him like a knife. A huge black shape heaved itself up into the
darkness and lurched toward the moonlight, and the fear rose up in
Bran so thick that before he could even think of drawing
Hodor’s sword the way he’d meant to, he found himself
back on the floor again with Hodor roaring “Hodor
hodor HODOR,” the way he had in the lake tower whenever the
lightning flashed. But the thing that came in the night was
screaming too, and thrashing wildly in the folds of Meera’s
net. Bran saw her spear dart out of the darkness to snap at it, and
the thing staggered and fell, struggling with the net. The wailing
was still coming from the well, even louder now. On the floor the
black thing flopped and fought, screeching, “No, no,
don’t, please,
DON’T . . . ”
Meera stood over him, the moonlight shining silver off the
prongs of her frog spear. “Who are you?” she
demanded.
“I’m SAM,” the black thing sobbed. “Sam,
Sam, I’m Sam, let me out, you stabbed
me . . . ” He rolled through the puddle
of moonlight, flailing and flopping in the tangles of Meera’s
net. Hodor was still shouting, “Hodor hodor hodor.”
It
was Jojen who fed the sticks to the fire and blew on them until the
flames leapt up crackling. Then there was light, and Bran saw the
pale thin-faced girl by the lip of the well, all bundled up in furs
and skins beneath an enormous black cloak, trying to shush the
screaming baby in her arms. The thing on the floor was pushing an
arm through the net to reach his knife, but the loops
wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t any monster beast, or even
Mad Axe drenched in gore; only a big fat man dressed up in black
wool, black fur, black leather, and black mail. “He’s a
black brother,” said Bran. “Meera, he’s from the
Night’s Watch.”
“Hodor?” Hodor squatted down on his haunches to peer
at the man in the net. “Hodor,” he said again,
hooting.
“The Night’s Watch, yes.” The fat man was
still breathing like a bellows. “I’m a brother of the
Watch.” He had one cord under his chins, forcing his head up,
and others digging deep into his cheeks. “I’m a crow,
please. Let me out of this.”
Bran was suddenly uncertain. “Are you the three-eyed
crow?” He can’t be the three-eyed crow.
“I don’t think so.” The fat man rolled his
eyes, but there were only two of them. “I’m only Sam.
Samwell Tarly. Let me out, it’s hurting me.” He began
to struggle again.
Meera made a disgusted sound. “Stop flopping around. If
you tear my net I’ll throw you back down the well. Just lie
still and I’ll untangle you.”
“Who are you?” Jojen asked the girl with the
baby.
“Gilly,” she said. “For the gillyflower.
He’s Sam. We never meant to scare you.” She rocked her
baby and murmured at it, and finally it stopped crying.
Meera was untangling the fat brother. Jojen went to the well and
peered down. “Where did you come from?”
“From Craster’s,” the girl said. “Are
you the one?”
Jojen turned to look at her. “The one?”
“He said that Sam wasn’t the one,” she
explained. “There was someone else, he said. The one he was
sent to find.”
“Who said?” Bran demanded.
“Coldhands,” Gilly answered softly.
Meera peeled back one end of her net, and the fat man managed to
sit up. He was shaking, Bran saw, and still struggling to catch his
breath. “He said there would be people,” he huffed.
“People in the castle. I didn’t know you’d be
right at the top of the steps, though. I didn’t know
you’d throw a net on me or stab me in the stomach.” He
touched his belly with a black-gloved hand. “Am I bleeding? I
can’t see.”
“It was just a poke to get you off your feet,” said
Meera. “Here, let me have a look.” She went to one
knee, and felt around his navel. “You’re wearing mail.
I never got near your skin.”
“Well, it hurt all the same,” Sam complained.
“Are you really a brother of the Night’s
Watch?” Bran asked.
The fat man’s chins jiggled when he nodded. His skin
looked pale and saggy. “Only a steward. I took care of Lord
Mormont’s ravens.” For a moment he looked like he was
going to cry. “I lost them at the Fist, though. It was my
fault. I got us lost too. I couldn’t even find the Wall.
It’s a hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high and I
couldn’t find it!”
“Well, you’ve found it now,” said Meera.
“Lift your rump off the ground, I want my net
back.”
“How did you get through the Wall?” Jojen demanded
as Sam struggled to his feet. “Does the well lead to an
underground river, is that where you came from? You’re not
even wet . . . ”
“There’s a gate,” said fat Sam. “A
hidden gate, as old as the Wall itself. The Black Gate, he called
it.”
The Reeds exchanged a look. “We’ll find this gate at
the bottom of the well?” asked Jojen.
Sam shook his head. “You won’t. I have to take
you.”
“Why?” Meera demanded. “If there’s a
gate . . . ”
“You won’t find it. If you did it wouldn’t
open. Not for you. It’s the Black Gate.” Sam plucked at
the faded black wool of his sleeve. “Only a man of the
Night’s Watch can open it, he said. A Sworn Brother who has
said his words.”
“He said.” Jojen frowned.
“This . . . Coldhands?”
“That wasn’t his true name,” said Gilly,
rocking. “We only called him that, Sam and me. His hands were
cold as ice, but he saved us from the dead men, him and his ravens,
and he brought us here on his elk.”
“His elk?” said Bran, wonderstruck.
“His elk?” said Meera, startled.
“His ravens?” said Jojen.
“Hodor?” said Hodor.
“Was he green?” Bran wanted to know. “Did he
have antlers?”
The fat man was confused. “The elk?”
“Coldhands,” said Bran impatiently. “The green
men ride on elks, Old Nan used to say. Sometimes they have antlers
too.”
“He wasn’t a green man. He wore blacks, like a
brother of the Watch, but he was pale as a wight, with hands so
cold that at first I was afraid. The wights have blue eyes, though,
and they don’t have tongues, or they’ve forgotten how
to use them.” The fat man turned to Jojen. “He’ll
be waiting. We should go. Do you have anything warmer to wear? The
Black Gate is cold, and the other side of the Wall is even colder.
You—”
“Why didn’t he come with you?” Meera gestured
toward Gilly and her babe. “They came with you, why not him?
Why didn’t you bring him through this Black Gate
too?”
“He . . . he can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The Wall. The Wall is more than just ice and stone, he
said. There are spells woven into it . . . old
ones, and strong. He cannot pass beyond the Wall.”
It grew very quiet in the castle kitchen then. Bran could hear
the soft crackle of the flames, the wind stirring the leaves in the
night, the creak of the skinny weirwood reaching for the moon.
Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls,
he remembered Old Nan saying, but they cannot pass so long as the
Wall stands strong. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy.
You needn’t fear. There are no monsters here.
“I am not the one you were told to bring,” Jojen
Reed told fat Sam in his stained and baggy blacks. “He
is.”
“Oh.” Sam looked down at him uncertainly. It might
have been just then that he realized Bran was crippled. “I
don’t . . . I’m not strong enough
to carry you, I . . . ”
“Hodor can carry me.” Bran pointed at his basket.
“I ride in that, up on his back.”
Sam was staring at him. “You’re Jon Snow’s
brother. The one who fell . . . ”
“No,” said Jojen. “That boy is
dead.”
“Don’t tell,” Bran warned.
“Please.”
Sam looked confused for a moment, but finally he said,
“I . . . I can keep a secret. Gilly
too.” When he looked at her, the girl nodded. “Jon . . . Jon was my brother too. He was the
best friend I ever had, but he went off with Qhorin Halfhand to
scout the Frostfangs and never came back. We were waiting for him
on the Fist
when . . . when . . . ”
“Jon’s here,” Bran said. “Summer saw
him. He was with some wildlings, but they killed a man and Jon took
his horse and escaped. I bet he went to Castle Black.”
Sam turned big eyes on Meera. “You’re certain it was
Jon? You saw him?”
“I’m Meera,” Meera said with a smile.
“Summer is . . . ”
A shadow detached itself from the broken dome above and leapt
down through the moonlight. Even with his injured leg, the wolf
landed as light and quiet as a snowfall. The girl Gilly made a
frightened sound and clutched her babe so hard against her that it
began to cry again.
“He won’t hurt you,” Bran said.
“That’s Summer.”
“Jon said you all had wolves.” Sam pulled off a
glove. “I know Ghost.” He held out a shaky hand, the
fingers white and soft and fat as little sausages. Summer padded
closer, sniffed them, and gave the hand a lick.
That was when Bran made up his mind. “We’ll go with
you.”
“All of you?” Sam seemed surprised by that.
Meera ruffled Bran’s hair. “He’s our
prince.”
Summer circled the well, sniffing. He paused by the top step and
looked back at Bran. He wants to go.
“Will Gilly be safe if I leave her here till I come
back?” Sam asked them.
“She should be,” said Meera. “She’s
welcome to our fire.”
Jojen said, “The castle is empty.”
Gilly looked around. “Craster used to tell us tales of
castles, but I never knew they’d be so big.” It’s only the kitchens. Bran wondered what she’d
think when she saw Winterfell, if she ever did.
It took them a few minutes to gather their things and hoist Bran
into his wicker seat on Hodor’s back. By the time they were
ready to go, Gilly sat nursing her babe by the fire.
“You’ll come back for me,” she said to Sam.
“As soon as I can,” he promised, “then
we’ll go somewhere warm.” When he heard that, part of
Bran wondered what he was doing. Will I ever go someplace warm
again?
“I’ll go first, I know the way.” Sam hesitated
at the top. “There’s just so many steps,” he
sighed, before he started down. Jojen followed, then Summer, then
Hodor with Bran riding on his back. Meera took the rear, with her
spear and net in hand.
It was a long way down. The top of the well was bathed in
moonlight, but it grew smaller and dimmer every time they went
around. Their footsteps echoed off the damp stones, and the water
sounds grew louder. “Should we have brought torches?”
Jojen asked.
“Your eyes will adjust,” said Sam. “Keep one
hand on the wall and you won’t fall.”
The well grew darker and colder with every turn. When Bran
finally lifted his head around to look back up the shaft, the top
of the well was no bigger than a half-moon. “Hodor,”
Hodor whispered, “Hodorhodorhodorhodorhodorhodor,” the
well whispered back. The water sounds were close, but when Bran
peered down he saw only blackness.
A turn or two later Sam stopped suddenly. He was a quarter of
the way around the well from Bran and Hodor and six feet farther
down, yet Bran could barely see him. He could see the door, though.
The Black Gate, Sam had called it, but it wasn’t black at
all.
It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it.
A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it
scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even
Sam standing right before it. The face was old and pale, wrinkled
and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes;
its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a
man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow
older, his face might come to look like that.
The door opened its eyes.
They were white too, and blind. “Who are you?” the
door asked, and the well whispered,
“Who-who-who-who-who-who-who.”
“I am the sword in the darkness,” Samwell Tarly
said. “I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns
against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that
wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of
men.”
“Then pass,” the door said. Its lips opened, wide
and wider and wider still, until nothing at all remained but a
great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. Sam stepped aside and
waved Jojen through ahead of him. Summer followed, sniffing as he
went, and then it was Bran’s turn. Hodor ducked, but not low
enough. The door’s upper lip brushed softly against the top
of Bran’s head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran
slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a
tear.