A/N: Will merge this with the rest of Jon's POVs when I post the next and last part of this volume.
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“-. 274 AC .-“
That evening, as the Lords and Ladies and Heirs of the North went and attended what
did turn out to be the turning point in his life, Jon Umber thought about how you could fit all the music in the world within the space of a day and get tired of all the songs in a few months. At most. If you were half-deaf. And didn’t remember stark shit between a day and the next.
The night you return, we're having a feast
The songs he knew were lays and ballads. Stories put to rhyme. Those that weren’t plainsongs spawned by them septons and choir boys down south anyway. They got their fair share of southron bards every once in a while that somehow thought they’d get coin for them. Not all them learned to keep their worship lays to themselves either.
The candles will burn, you've conquered the East
He wouldn’t be surprised if them septons paid them to peddle their chants up North where they weren’t wanted.
So get home safe, as you can't be replaced,
Other than that? Love songs, some mockrhymes about the southrons (most of them shit at not coming across as the fakery they were), some mockrhymes about the North when them bards were drunk enough to go honest (those made for
great bar brawls), and big history matters put to verse (dull as dishwater).
The honors you've earned, you fought like a beast,
That left just the big ones that you heard everywhere. The Bear and the Maiden Fair in every alehouse. Brave Danny Flint around every fire. My Lady Wife at every wedding. The Rat Cook, The Dornishman’s Wife, On a Misty Morn. He’d even heard the Rains of Castamere a few times. It was shit.
So let's toast in your name, raise your glass to the moon,
Touting your own horn like that was like a king saying “I am the King.” If people need reminding you’re the king, you’re a shit king. Or a shit butcher as happens.
Shall we dine with the gods, here's a toast, here's a toast to you!
What kind of nutter expects praise for slaughtering the broody hen and her chicks along with the cock? That’s just wasteful! You’d never see a
Stark do something like that!
Painting the map with the blood on your hand,
This song was like nothing he’d ever heard though. It wasn’t some lay or story, it was… the singer talking to her man? Except not really because the man was dead so she was actually talking to his memory?
Expanding the realm, and winning new lands,
It repeated a bunch, but it was short and simple to sing along with and made you picture what’s happening instead of having to think about it. Would be a killer at repasts, especially late at night with people deep in their cups and all sad-like.
Get home safe, cause you can't be replaced,
Sing one of these, get the buggers all sobbing their lungs out their nose, then everyone can go and be all merry-like again once they got it all out.
The night you return, we're having a feast.
Still too dainty for his taste, but that might just be the singer. Not that he’d ever impugn Lady Lyarra’s singing voice – he’d never impugn anything of Lady Stark’s! – but he was more of a low and rumbling kind of man. Maybe he should give it a try later?
The night you return, we're having a feast
The candles will burn the night you return
“Another thing of the Young Lord’s?” Jon asked Maester Luwin as the song ended. “He makes new songs too?”
“Not quite,” Luwin answered as he led his grandfather and him through the Godswood. “The only one I know him to have put to rhyme is ‘Winterfell Fair.’ I’ve no doubt he dreams of many others like he does so much else, but he hasn’t put any to verse, as I understand it. Not beyond what few hymns he sang his siblings when they were small.”
But they’re not small now? “He sings hymns to sprogs? What hymns are those?”
“He calls them stoneballads, at least according to Lady Lyanna. He doesn’t sing them except in private with his siblings. Not even the Lord and Lady have heard them.”
“Oh.” Something Skagosi? Them island wildlings called themselves the Stoneborn, didn’t they?
“They’re quite the source of drama, it turns out. Did you know the Young Lord took to sequestering himself with young Ned in this very godswood the evenings in the week before Ned was sent to foster? All to teach him a stoneballad all his own, as I understand it. Lady Lyanna still hasn’t forgiven him for it.”
So the littlest Starks went from worry to jealousy in as much time as it took a proper lad to run away from the sight of the Maester carrying books. Not that Jon had experience in things like that or anything.
“So unless he has those written down somewhere, he’s not put down anything to rhyme. I’ve lost count of the many tunes he hums when the mood strikes him, but words are rare and unintelligible. He says they’re all in languages we’ve never heard of and he hasn’t the time to translate them. He did work with some of the carvers to create the guitar – the only instrument he’s ever handled in his visions, whatever that means – but he’s shown no remarkable talent for it, despite his perfect pitch. No, if you hear a tune that sounds like nothing you’ve ever encountered, especially on an instrument, it’s most likely the work of Little Benjen.”
Wait, really? So it wasn’t just…
They heard footsteps from behind and turned to see that fancy guard of Lord Brandon’s – Martyn – and his big squire – Walder? – who’d stayed behind to close the gates. Seemed they were the last ones in. Jon wished they’d caught up earlier. He’d not realised quite what it meant that the forest inside Winterfell spanned three whole acres. He’d thought they were lost at a couple of points before the music reached them – even Maester Luwin had seemed a tad nervous. They could have used the two to lead the way.
Now, there was something else on his mind. “… The other Starks are magic too?’ Jon asked in a hushed voice when his Grandfather didn’t react to his glances. Lord Hoarfrost Umber hadn’t said a word since the pledge.
“That remains unclear. Archmaester Marwyn thinks Little Benjen might be tapping into whatever Lord Brandon taps
through him, and the Young Lord agrees. Uses him like a muse, he calls it, whatever muse means.”
Jon tried not to show his discomfort. This wasn’t the south where albinos and people who could talk with animals were smothered in the cradle, but this talk of magic still disturbed him. What did Luwin even mean? Did little Benjen get into Lord Brandon’s head somehow? Did the Young Lord go into his? Wasn’t getting into the minds of other men the reason for all them skinchanger wars where the Starks gone and killed King Warg of Sea Dragon Point? And all his greenseers and Children of the Forest? What about King Marsh? Jon didn’t know anything specific about that part, but there had to be some reason why the crannogmen bore Stark rule so easily. Was it safe for such a small boy to trawl through whatever Lord Brandon saw that had him lacking wits for years? Did the lad even mean it? Did
Lord Brandon even mean it? Or was he just pressing on their heads just by being there? Was Jon being enchanted right now?
He asked Luwin all that just to see if he could.
He could.
The relief was like a spray of snow on his back. Thank Gods that was out of the way!
“You’ve stumbled onto our biggest conundrum thus far.” Luwin was thankfully oblivious to Jon’s inner thoughts. “Untangling this mystery is the main reason Archmaester Marwyn came north with the rest of us.”
Well, good to know the Starks already had the experts looking into it. He never should’ve doubted them!
The darkness of the forest started lifting. Jon assumed they were close to their destination. The Winterfell godswood was proving to have a very dense canopy. He counted ash, chestnut, elm, hawthorn, ironwood, oak, sentinel, and soldier pine as they pressed on. Their thickly tangled crowns were made even thicker by the blanket of snow that had piled on top. It blocked the light almost entirely, unlike the forest floor where Jon still spotted patches of old, packed earth and humus and moss.
Finally, they emerged into the center of the grove. An ancient weirwood stood there, with smooth bark as white as bone, and five-pointed leaves that looked like bloody hands grasping at them through the snow weighing down the boughs. The face carved into the heart tree was old and peaceful and so clean of red sap or blemish of any other kind that Jon couldn’t make out where the bark ended and the frost began. It made the cluster of people at its base stand out almost as strikingly as the pool of black water.
Them other worthies from the meeting were lined up on the outer side of the pool. Jon led his eerily silent grandfather to stand at the end of the line furthest in and frowned at the water. It wasn’t frozen but it wasn’t steaming either. Crouching, he stuck his fingers into it. It was ice cold. Wasn’t Winterfell supposed to be built on a hot spring? This was so cold Jon wondered why it hadn’t turned to ice like every other pool and pond he’d seen on their journey.
Inevitably, though, Jon’s attention was pulled to the people across the water. Lady Lyarra was on the farthest side of the clearing, sat on her palanquin between two of the edge-most roots. Lyanna Stark was on one side of her, knitting blue roses into a crown. Benjen Stark was on the other, slowly plucking at the chords of that strange pear-shaped instrument. Across from the Lady and children, nearest to the rest of them, was Archmaester Marwyn and another, older maester kneeling around a bubbling pot of pewter – no, two of them. Jon almost missed the second one because it was small and didn’t give off any smells or smoke. The big one – Marwyn’s – had a long, serpentine lisle of smoky steam spiralling up and out in their direction.
Jon almost sneezed when it tickled his nostrils. It smelled strongly of earthy roots and spices and leaves and threatened to make his eyes water.
Even the whole magic brew didn’t keep his attention for long though. That honor went to the men right under the Heart Tree’s face. Osrick and Rodrick Stark on one side. Lords Rickard Stark and Brandon Stark on one other. And in the middle of it all, laid back on a bed of moss and branches, was Brandon the Elder, looking like a carved statue with frost grown from his brows and beard as he rested under a blanket of freshly fallen snow.
Jon thought he might be starting to understand why they’d been gathered here.
When Benjen Stark finally ceased plucking chords at a gesture from his father, Brandon the Elder stirred. Watching him move his head was like seeing an old tree try to uproot itself and shake off snow and age. When he spoke, even that sounded like the cracking of dry wood. “Is it time?”
Time for what?
“Just a bit more, granduncle,” Lord Stark murmured, meeting the old man’s grasping hand half-way. “We still need to get the witnesses ready. I hope that’s alright?”
“Parade me as you wish.” The oldest Stark crinkled his eyes. “My king.”
“Only to honor you,” Lord Rickard said, not denying the title. He then gestured to Brandon Stark who’d finally approached from where he’d been… writing something or other in the snow and earth all over the place.
Stark Elder turned his head to look at the boy. “Hello Brandon. I’m Brandon.”
“So is half the North,” the Young Lord said drily. “Hello grandnuncle.”
“… I’ve been dreaming of you, great-grandnephew. Sometimes so vividly… Did we meet in truth before?”
“This is the fifth time.”
“Ah… You still don’t live up to the vision.”
The banter continued but Jon couldn’t keep up with it because that was when Marwyn and the other greycoat came and started handing them steaming mugs of that pungent whatever it was.
“What’s this?” Jon asked when he was the first one served.
“If you refuse, you won’t get an answer. If you accept, you won’t need one. Lord Stark’s orders.”
“Is that so?” Jon glanced at Lord Stark, who actually met his gaze and that of the others expectantly.
Jon drank. Nobody else refused either.
It had a very strong flavour he’d never tasted and it made him lose track of whatever else the Starks talked about out few minutes in because he got too busy gagging and then puking his guts out. And that was his personal hell for the next half an hour. It was like the perfect set-up for one of them big poisoning cockups the Dornish fancied, except nobody stood to avenge it because everyone else was off spilling their guts too. Them two maesters had the gall to lug them around like dodderers all the while. Couldn’t risk them retching in the pool, don’t you know. Fucking cunts, he’d break them over his knee, he would! He would! As soon as… as soon as he could stand back up and… and figure out why he felt so good all of a sudden, wow.
“That would be you expelling the last of the impurities and negative energy. What can come out the top end at least,” said the old maester he didn’t know. Because Jon had apparently rambled that last bit aloud. “The brain is now releasing certain substances that cause pleasure. I am told it is normal after bowel cleansings such as this.”
Jon groaned pitifully, swaying where he’d fallen on all fours. “That why we were told to piss and shit or we wouldn’t be let in?”
“Quite.”
“Great. Go away.”
He went away.
Jon groaned and patted himself all over. Mercifully, he still had all his limbs and was still in his thickest garb, including that new kind of hat with ear flaps made of beaver pelt. He then looked around blearily, finding his grandfather and everyone else doing just as bad as he was. Wow, them mermen puked enough for ten people, didn’t they? Jon climbed to his feet – which took a while – waited to see if he’d fall over – which took another while – then figured he wasn’t drunk so he helped his grandpa up too. Was he always so light? Then they hung off each other on the way back to the pool’s edge, where they thumped their arses down on the tallest, thickest root they could find and waited. Watched the Starks talk about… something or other. Essos, sounded like. How them Company of the Rose sellswords and who knew how many of everyone involved with them had to skedaddle because the whole place was full of cunts.
Also, because one or both of the two main cunts involved were probably Blackfyres. Maybe. Wait, what?
“Wait,” Rodrik Stark squinted from where he knelt at the side of his grandfather. “The One and a Half Cunts are Blackfyres? But why didn’t they help us then?”
Brandon the Elder closed his eyes as if in pain, then looked at Lord Rickard pitiably. “Please forgive my grandson. He’s not a bad lad, he’s just a moron.”
“What!? Piss off, Pop, as if you even considered them!”
“He has a point,” said Osrick Stark from where he stood over the both of them. “What would Blackfyres have to do with this? I thought it was some sort of alliance between the merchants of Pentos and Bravos to eliminate any merchants of northern origin. With the Iron Throne’s decree not to tax northern trade with Essos, a new market has just opened where northmen living in Essos are the favorites. I thought the attack took place to eliminate the monopoly we would have on the new trade route that just opened. If Mopatis or Varys are Blackfyres, they gained nothing from destroying the Kingdom in Exile, even if they did know about us. It’s certainly not their hands that our assets are being divvied up between. They’d have been better served helping us so they’d have the Company of the Rose as a ready army for further weakening the Targaryens.”
“The coordination speaks of much longer-term planning,” Lord Rickard explained. “Such a level of preparation couldn't have happened so quickly or spontaneously. If anything, it reads more like a hasty counter-plan set off by unexpected developments.”
“Your trip South,” Brandon the Elder said lowly from his bed of tree and snow. His air was that of one who’d long since reached this conclusion on his own.
“Some of the broader backing and cooperation required for this escalation would certainly have come from Aerys' boon to the North and White Harbor,” allowed Lord Stark. “It certainly has the Essosi scrambling to take advantage as we speak. How they justified the hostile takeover probably varies as much as the people involved, though, and the coordination could not have been achieved spontaneously. Nor so quickly.”
“Pentos wasn’t gonna let the Braavosi have the prize all to themselves,” Rodrik Stark muttered, stroking his grandfather’s limp hand. “Braavosi trade houses ganged up to prevent the inevitable monopoly of Blue Petal Manor. All the other Free Cities would have gotten in on it just for the chaos.”
“So, what?” Osrick asked skeptically. “Mopatis and Varys felt backed into a corner and just up and decided to throw the dice? I don’t see it. This is already turning out to be as disruptive for Pentos as it is for Braavos and Essos as a whole. What grand plan could they have had that was worth this cockup? I can’t see how this didn’t turn into a ruinous loss for themselves with little to no chance to recoup whatever they invested. And it has to be a lot. Connections, blackmail, information, coin, whatever else. It makes no sense.”
“Unless their grand plan was
specifically designed to destroy the Kingdom in Exile,” Rickard Stark said. “Assume you’re a Blackfyre. Now picture yourself in their position: you are the rightful royal line of Westeros but have been spurned at one time or others by one or all of the Seven Kingdoms, save one. That one kingdom happens to be running an operation no different from what you’ve been driven to do across the sea. An operation that you probably know about since your predecessors uncovered it through whatever means in the past. This Kingdom has never participated in a Blackfyre rebellion. Even better, the southrons let their septons besmirch their good name while assuming they’re perfectly happy with treatment under the Iron Throne. None of that is something easily swallowed by people who've been suffering the same as your dispossessed royal lineage. So what do you do?”
Osrick Stark frowned. “You… wait and see?”
“Notwithstanding the cutthroat mercantile infiltration and espionage methods used by rote,” Rickard Stark nodded. “With every time the North refused to get involved in Targaryen kinstrife, the Blackfyres would have been more comfortable considering the Kingdom in Exile – and through it the North – a powerful potential asset.”
“And then we fought in the Ninepenny War,” said Brandon the younger.
Well, Jon thought.
Shit.
“… Oh,” Orsrik Stark scowled. “And we turned from potential asset to enemy asset in need of subsumation or dismantling.”
Jon felt a chill go through him. If it really were Blackfyres and not just cunts coming together to do cuntish things… How long must the decapitation strike have been in the making? It would’ve worked too, if not for the grey rats doing their own cuntish things back home.
Brandon the Elder, it turned out, felt the same. “… All the rage I have ever felt has risen from my flesh like a steam of disbelief.”
“It’s all conjecture, admittedly,” Lord Stark admitted ruefully. “But you did say they’d made it clear it was personal. Even though your interests had never clashed more than the norm. Nor had you even met.”
“You know…” Jon had to strain to hear Lord Brandon, though thankfully everyone around him was doing their best to be quiet too. “I’m feeling more and more pleased with every passing moment that I live here in the North instead of these
free cities.”
“Free cities that are based on horrible chattel slavery and only have a cursory aquaintance with the concept of honor?” Osrick Stark asked dryly as Jon and everyone tried not to preen too obviously. It was their brain being all woozy, that’s all it was. “Remember that any place that has to call itself ‘free’ more than once is not.”
“Free Cities that can’t even band together to cow the Dothraki and other problems to trade out of a fear of someone else possibly gaining a slight advantage?” Rodrik asked flatly, looking at his increasingly quiet grandfather worriedly. “Also, they want the instability in the near middle space to bring about more slaves being sold. Even though the disruption of civilization and depopulation of the interior is slowly but surely destroying Essos and will bring about an economic collapse the likes of which none of the Free Cities or Dothraki will survive.”
Jon blinked slowly. He hadn’t even thought that far. Maybe the peacock wasn’t such a simpleton after all.
“Free Cities that would rather have pirates cripple large scale trade through the Broken Arm in fear of their rivals being able to set a tax?” Rickard Stark told his son. “Remind me to go over Daemon Targaryen’s conquest of the Stepstones at some point.”
“For all the good it did,” muttered Brandon the Elder, words coming more slowly now. “Not that I’m one to talk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, grandnuncle,” scoffed the Young Lord. “What you brought us will change everything.”
“Hah!” The bark of laughter seemed to drain the man. It took him a time to muster new words. “Tell me honestly boy – how many crops are actually any good.”
“Four.”
This was what
real disbelief felt like, Jon thought on seeing the look on the old man.
“… That’s three more than I hoped,” the man whispered, though it carried all the same to Jon’s ears, somehow. “Four more than I thought...”
“Most crops won’t live outside our glass gardens,” Lord Stark said gently. “And we already have those that will.”
“The sugar beets, soybeans, potatoes and rice, though, they’ll change
everything,” the Young Lord smiled triumphantly. “You are
magnificent, grandnuncle. Thank you.”
The elder Brandon watched his namesake in wonder and laughed softly, then settled on a tired smile. “You’re such a nice boy. I only recognize three of those though.”
The Young Lord frowned. “Right. Potatoes. I meant
earth apples.”
That didn’t go down well with the old Prince at all. “…What.” The old man blinked, affronted. “
What. That swindler’s nonsense wasn’t just cheap swill?”
“… No?” The Young Lord tilted his head uncertainly. “It’s the best crop in the world. I mean, rice is great and all, it keeps forever and we’re lucky we have a bog the size of a country to grow it in. But potatoes still multiply at least fivefold at their worst and they can grow practically anywhere. Do you have the names of who got them? They might be worth a bonus. Best to cultivate such daring people.”
The Elder Brandon looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock and die.
“It’s alright, grandnuncle,” the Young Lord said magnanimously, stroking the old man on the forehead. “Everyone makes mistakes. I forgive you.”
The Godswood of Winterfell rang with tired, free laughter.
Jon watched and listened, feeling something close to awestruck as the Starks casually talked about completely changing their entire way of life as if their self-imposed duty of doing right by them didn’t weigh on them none. As they stood there amidst red leaves and fallen snow that gleamed under the strewed rays of winter’s evening, the men of House Stark looked like Kings of Winter holding court as if their rule had never broken, strong and firm and perfectly reflected in the pool of black water. The shadows of leaves played on the Lords Stark’s faces. The Godswood shimmered languidly in the shade of the evening. And as a breeze wafted midst red leaves and white branches, the Gods of Earth, Stone and Tree seemed to hold their breath.
The fey mood seemed to reach them too, then. “It’s time, isn’t it?” the Elder murmured.
Lord Rickard took the hand that was already held by his son and looked in their direction. “Mage? Are they ready?”
“Aye, Lord,” Marwyn was pouring wooden cups of some clear liquid. “By your leave?”
“Granduncle? Are you ready?”
“Just about…” The old man turned his head to Osrick Stark. “I love you, nephew. And I’m proud of you.”
Osrick Stark looked stricken. “I love you too, uncle. I’m proud to be your blood.”
The Elder turned to Rodrik Stark then, who looked fit to run away like he’d tried earlier that day. “I love you, grandson.”
Rodrik Stark looked about to cry. “I… I love you too, grandfather-“
“But since I won’t get to live long enough to be proud of you too, I’ll have to settle for some last advice.”
Any hint of tears vanished as the lad gaped, shocked. “Grandfather!”
“Now I know you can’t control yourself, so I forgive you in advance for getting yourself disowned and thrown out on your arse.”
“Pop, you complete-“
“
Fortunately our King here is a fair and generous man and likely won’t send you off empty-handed, so I still expect you to marry a good Lady. Better not be some whore though. I don’t have a hope you’ll steer clear of brothels, but at least buy and refurbish one to offer proper quality merchandise. Should give you a fair revenue stream if naught else. But if your wife isn’t highborn, there’ll be hell to pay. You should look for one from a noble but poor house. Offer a good bride price instead of taking a dowry. Buy land, use coin to incite smallfolk to move to your estates, have them clear marginal land, build villages and so on. Loan your liege lords money and ask for prestigious titles as a reward. Employ a mercenary captain as your master-at-arms and have him train a fine force beyond what the garrison and bannermen would provide. After a few generations, all the high-born will forget brothels and cheese-mongering were behind your family's military power, fine titles and honours and great wealth and will be eager to have their sons marry your dowry-laden daughters.”
“Oh fuck you so
much, Pop!”
“Alas, I’ve not a drop of Targaryen in me, so you’ll have to live without.”
“So very
much.”
Lord Rickard shook his head and looked down at his son. “Brandon?”
That halted the mummery quite soundly.
The young lord nodded, taking the hand of the old man in both of his. “I’m ready.”
“WAIT FOR ME!”
Jon winced at the shrill scream. Looking aside, he watched Lady Lyanna hop down and run to the Elder Stark’s resting place.
“A prince should have a crown you know! Even if he’s old!” The Small Lady loftily tucked her crown of blue roses around the man’s resting head. None too gently either. But since Jon could see bloody nicks on her fingers from all the way over there, he was going to forgive her. So long as she actually broke off all of them thorns.
By the bye, wasn’t there
any Stark that felt the cold?
Well, main liners at least. Osrick and Rodrik both wore scarves and gloves.
“Right then.” Lord Stark waited for Lyanna to return to her place under his gimlet eye. Finally, he looked back at the rest of them. “Then if you are done, Mage?”
Marwyn nodded to the old maester to start handing out the mugs. Then he went to stand just behind the Young Lord.
Jon accepted the cup apprehensively. “… This won’t make me puke again, will it?”
“No,” the old maester assured him, smiling kindly. It made Jon’s skin crawl. “This is to help you see.”
“See what?”
“Magic!” called the Young Lord, making Jon flinch and then gape as the boy then produced the sodding
Crown of Winter from a small box that had been buried in the snow all that time. “I could waste my time and effort to make pretty sparkles, but that would just be pandering to skeptics.”
“You’re inventing new words again, son.” Lord Rickard was suspiciously straightfaced as he accepted the Crown, put it on his head, and then pulled a circlet from under his cloak to put on his son’s head in turn. Something the Young Lord didn’t seem to have expected, though that surprise didn’t last long either in the face of his Lord Father’s next words. “The only ‘pander’ that exists is the name for people who arrange sexual liaisons.”
Jon gaped.
“What?” The Young Lord balked, aghast. “Well shit. Forget I said anything.”
Gladly, Jon thought, appalled at the sheer nerve of treating their
moment of fucking crowning so flippantly. He quickly gobbled up the brew just to make sure he didn’t break out babbling.
It tasted like old boot.
Didn’t set him off barfing again though, and none of them other worthies looked greener than usual either by the time the maester got around to them. He guessed that was something?
Now what was it that – oh, Benjen Stark was playing that odd lute again. Pretty nice tune too. Another new one. Bit slow and sad though. And where did the pipe sounds come from? And were those trumpets? But where the hells were the drums-
Looking ahead, Jon saw the Kings of Winter come again, save one. The Young Lord was gone. In his place was an unlined outline cut into the shape of a hooded cloak made of one and one thousand eyes of blue and white fire. Except not really because all Jon saw when his sight lingered was crows being burned inside out. It made him wonder if he could eat some of them crow souls too and grow some new eyes of his own. But then he just felt like a heel when he noticed them eyes were all droopy and sad-like.
The Elder. He barely had any light inside him at all. Everybody else had a whole bunch of them lights all over them from bum to head. Some were stuck really deep in too. But the old man barely had any. Even the blue roses around his head had more light than whatever used to be in him.
The Young Lord’s garb weaved itself open and overlayed the old man, somehow. The two thought together then. For a lifetime between one moment and the next. Of sense and reason and knowledge dreamed into the world from beyond the stars and everything the man did throughout his life that meant something. It was enough to enlighten even the littles sprog with wide eyes full of wonder, but none of it found a point of purchase. The Elder Stark was an old and tired greybeard that just wanted to rest and didn’t care how it would end.
It didn’t sit well with their Starry Prince. At all.
Jon felt rooted under the sudden feeling of
refusal as that outline of a hand rose. Feathers of light and darkness parted to expose a baldric made of shining orbs. Each their own light of worldliness. Each showed a lifetime at a glance. When that outline of a hand touched the orb that glowed brightest, Jon suddenly knew from experience how it felt to kill a bear with your bare hands with your guts spilling out. From somewhere near and behind, there was a gasp-
Then a large hand came down upon the first and stopped everything. Marwyn. Marwyn the Mage. He looked like a boar on two legs, armored in dark steel and a salt-speckled beard so long and red and bright it may well be on fire. He was behind the Young Lord now. His other hand slowly rose as well, pointing away. Pointing at the Heart Tree.
Jon looked at it. It was white as bone with leaves as dark as midnight that still had shadows, somehow. All black and white as if no color was allowed to touch it, even from all the bright lights of all shades and sizes that came out of everyone now. There was something gleaming in one of its eyes. Like a gemstone. Or a tear.
The drop fell into a funnel of feathers and eyes, rolling all the way across the clearing into Lord Brandon’s hand.
Marwyn retreated.
“…Oh.” The Elder stared at the light in the Younger’s hand, awestruck. “…so this is what you meant…”
Brandon Stark dropped the light.
It sunk into the old man and bloomed into a flower, then a river web, then its own star field that filled him and lit up like dawn with a sigh of elation.
The Younger took the Elder’s hand and unravelled around him. The great cloak of feathers unwove itself. The eyes unbraided from runes to flares and then floating fires scattering like stars at midnight. The black sky melted down through the mists above them, then lower until it seeped all the way through the branches. The speckled void overlayed the boughs. The eyes and stars interposed where the leaves once were. And as the night sky swallowed them all, the ground seemed to fall away and they passed up through the firmament on the wings of some grand, mighty music played by voices and instruments that were out of this world. The sky… The firmament was so far-flung. Full of so many things Jon had never cared to think about. No more than the Stark Elder had. He could see the man even now, drinking rapturously from whatever was that revelation, growing more than he was with each star that passed until he shed himself of himself entirely.
“… For this…” An old voice. But not tired. Not anymore. “I think… I might have the strength after all.”
Jon watched, dumbstruck, as the Prince of Winter left his body behind. Shot upwards into some new life, past stars and moons and planets like a star unto himself. Suns adrift, suns made of tree fruit, yellow moons made of old cheese. And everywhere… worlds. Big and small, dead and living, with big men and bigger men and dumb men and dumber men and a young prince with golden hair that bestrode a world all his own while chopping and uprooting baobabs under guidance by a man taller than the world was wide. Grey-haired, long-bearded and jolly-eyed, the First Flint leaned on his axe and brightened when he saw them, pointing them out to the small child and waving happily at his son who stared dumbly at him from two steps behind where Jon watched everything, completely thunderstruck.
Jon’s heart stalled. He heard the chords of peace. He heard the drums of war. He heard pipes and trumpets. The Godswood teetered suddenly as if weighed down by the weight of the world. The sun sunk behind the edge of the sky. Its scattered beams moved and winked out as shadows took their place the more each disappeared from amidst the branches. A distant roar sounded from the far east as if screamed by an angry dragon. The warning howl of a wolf rose to meet it from beyond the edge of the world in the far North. A one-eyed raven soared watchfully high above in the pool of black water. Then, suddenly, the calls of snow shrikes snapped Jon Umber out of his stupor to find that hours had passed and the moon was out in the night sky.
What… but… ugh… Forsooth…
What in yon
fuck just happened?
“He didn’t leave anything behind.” Brandon Stark. Glum. Jon barely heard him despite being just a few feet away.
“He’d already given everything out.” Marwyn the Mage. Thoughtful. Then blithe. “Chin up, Young Master. That just means he can’t be reanimated!”
“Does it really?”
Later, when Jon was sitting down on some big root or other that
didn’t belong to the weirwood, grandfather came to him just as he was beginning to realise he should probably be worried about not remembering how he’d gotten there.
“I’ve been informed that we will no longer practice First Night.”
“Right.” Belatedly, Jon wondered about that raven back in Wintertown that called him a berk. “… We’re… not all that small after all, are we?”
Grandfather didn’t reply immediately.
Even his silence sounded old, Jon thought.
“… We are expected to come together again at some point in the next few years, to talk about further plans. We will bring our maesters so we might streamline the land claims, legal codes, and whatnot for efficient development. This should give us time to assess their loyalty in the meanwhile.”
“Right.” That was just good sense, Jon figured.
“… You will remain in Winterfell when I leave.” Jon blinked, finally looking up at the old man. “You will serve the Lord Heir as his retainer. Attend to him as it pleases him. Learn anything he and the maesters deign to teach you.”
“Oh…” Jon blinked several times, but he was fair sure he wasn’t gonna know if he was alright with that or not until tomorrow.
“The other heirs are staying as well,” said old Lord Umber. He seemed… somehow smaller than he used to. “The Flint as well.”
Jon looked back at Torghen and thought back to the sight of the dead Chieftain waving at him while smiling from ear to ear. “Right.”
“... I’ve been instructed to send your father here as well.”
Jon’s neck almost cracked from how fast he snapped his head to look back at his grandfather.
Lord Hoarfrost Umber looked... Jon didn’t even know what to call it. No words he could think of felt remotely right. His chest tightened at the sight.
“… I don’t have it in me to hope, lad.”
“Oh grandpa.” Jon stood and embraced the old man.
His grandfather hugged him back, arms going almost painfully tight around his midriff as he sunk his face in his shoulder. It was the first time ever that the man let himself lean on someone else, let alone Jon himself. “You’re a fine lad, Jon.” His voice was tight too.
Jon huffed. “A fine lad that done and almost broke guest right,”
“And what do you think I was about to do?”
Jon hugged him tighter.
“You
are a good man, grandson. I know I never say it, but you are.”
“It’s alright, grandpa. I have hope enough for both of us.”
Jon pretended not to hear the sound that came from his grandfather at hearing him say that.
He looked around at the various people still scattered about. The Starks had retired. The Lady Lyarra and the two littlest Starks off to bed. The lords overseeing the entombment of the Elder’s remains in the Crypts. Everyone else was still around though. They were all sitting or loitering in a general state of stunned bewilderment with the occasional haunted or teary eye. All save Torghen Flint, who’d not moved from his spot. He stood as firm as a mountain, rooted in place still staring up through the branches as if he could will the winter gloom to part and lay bare once again the starry sky.
Jon looked up too. There was a white raven flying high above, eerily clear in the grey winter night. Then a second came up from the south and swept it in a mating dance, cheery as a bell.
Spring dawned upon the North to the merry sight of ravens white as snow courting in the sky above Winterfell.