Lord Rickard’s meeting didn’t involve who Luwin thought it did. In fact, the better part of it wasn’t even a proper meeting at all, beyond three people happening to be in the Lord’s Suite sitting room at the same time. As soon as he got in and greeted the man and the Lady Lyarra, Lord Rickard motioned for Luwin to sit across from them at the tea table and gave him a stack of documents to read.
“I’ve already reviewed these several times over,” Lord Rickard told him. “But I want a second opinion from the closest thing I have to someone uninvolved.”
Being the Maester of Winterfell and still qualifying as ‘uninvolved’ came with its familiar sting, but Luwin kept his feelings to himself as he accepted the papers. He could feel Lady Stark’s gaze on him as he began reading, but that soon became a distant concern to the contents of the documents. He read them quickly, and then increasingly slowly as the contents piled up.
When he was done, Luwin’s first thought was that it was a good thing Lord Stark shared this with him piecemeal and let him digest the information in his own time. And in advance. He was even grateful that Lord Rickard’s writing could most charitably be termed ‘dry as a winter drought.’ Luwin didn’t want to imagine how he’d have reacted if he’d been blindsided with all of this, especially all at once. He did not react well to being blindsided.
His second thought was that he needed to read everything again, so he did. He read everything again very carefully. When he was done, his conclusion had only firmed in his mind. “This is out of character.”
Across from him, Lord Stark reacted someway that Luwin still couldn’t read into.
The Lady reacted much more tellingly. “Oh just go and say it, my son is a wastrel. A nymphet. A no good rake!”
Yes, that did sound precisely like what Luwin’s reaction would have been if he’d been blindsided by this. “With all due respect, My Lady, once or twice a week is less intimacy than you enjoyed during the worst of your husband’s dolor.” Lady Lyarra gaped at his audacity. “In fact, even if your son had a proper lover or three hidden somewhere in addition to these women, he still wouldn’t have bedded more than twice a week on average, given the time frames involved.” Which was really rather tame for a man newly grown, especially a noble raised in a city his family literally owned where he was spoiled for options-
“Maester,” the Lady sputtered. “Did you somehow miss the size of that list?”
All but a very small handful of the women on it were whores so they didn’t count. “Yes, that’s why I said it’s out of character.” Luwin kept his thoughts to himself about what the average lordling got up to. And how often. And lacking Lord Brandon’s refusal to take advantage of his status for anything but repaying bad faith in kind. “I thought Lord Brandon meant to stay chaste until his wedding night?”
“He did,” said Lord Stark.
“So why this? And why not sooner?” Really, the more Luwin pondered it the less sense it made. Brandon Stark lived chaste just fine until half-way through his sixteenth year, then he suddenly couldn’t keep to one bed, then he stopped completely a bit over six months later just before the Karstark fiasco. “If this was youthful rebellion, he’d be rebelling against some edict of yours, not his own. If he were naturally weak to the calls of flesh, he’d have faltered years ago. He certainly wouldn’t have managed to stay celibate in the last seven months, army or no army.” Brandon Stark had been sent off to train as a soldier under Malyn Hornwood, whose reports had all been glowing. The Young Lord didn’t seem to have resumed his womanising ways in the weeks since returning either. “And if it was something as simple as him craving companionship, he wouldn’t settle for mere whores.” Though Brandon Stark going out of his way to marry them off, and even pay dowries after bedding them just once, was the sort of confusing benevolence that
was in character. “I’d certainly expect him to have revisited at least
one bed, perhaps among the other women he’s acquainted with, few as they are.” The women he’d saved in some manner or other, not all of whom he’d bedded if Luwin was any judge.
The Maester was beginning to match names to some that had come up during court. There was a veteran’s daughter that had given up on marriage to care for her addled father, even as her freeloader uncle drank away the war annuity Lord Brandon himself arranged (the man had just ‘won’ a good-paying job smashing slag into cement at the other end of the North). There was the wife of the late Master of Crofter’s Keep, the man who’d died in a drunken duel against an ‘unknown’ traveller (he’d been beating the woman and occasionally their children, but kept getting away with it because he always stayed within the Rule of Six). Then there was the wife of some woodsman that Steward Poole had hired recently (this was the one Luwin wasn’t sure about, Lord Brandon claimed he didn’t cuckold loyal men, and it was doubtful the Young Lord would arrange all those deliveries of lemons and watermelons if he’d decided to break his own code for whatever reason).
“So I’m not just seeing things,” Lord Stark murmured at length.
“I dare say not,” Luwin replied, feeling strangely anxious after passing this test, though he knew that wasn’t how it was intended. “If not for Master Marwyn’s vigilance and… well, Lord Brandon’s approach to bad faith remaining so very consistent throughout all this, I might suspect he’d been replaced.”
“Approach to bad faith,” Lady Stark scoffed. “I hope you don’t expect me to ever rejoice over
that.”
Luwin figured he couldn’t hold that against Lady Lyarra, even if he personally thought that public humiliation was too light a punishment for serial adulterers. Especially one that kept feeding her husband droughts that made it hard to perform and then mocked him for it to all his ‘friends’ she was cheating on him with. Luwin might never admit it openly, but he had been relieved to learn about that story, as it showed him he himself hadn’t been singled out.
Luwin supposed Lady Stark was also thinking about the Karstark wedding, but Lord Brandon had come out of that smelling like roses despite the mess splattering a hundred times wider. It all concluded in an objective net benefit all around in fact. Lord Karstark now knew better than to waylay his liege’s Progresses with surprise weddings. He and his brother Arnolf learned better than to coach their daughters and nieces to try and get dishonored as a way to trade upwards. And almost every lord and lordling worth knowing had ‘coincidentally’ arrived to see the drama boil over, because the location for the ‘bachelor party’ Lord Brandon threw for the groom just happened to coincide with the spot where Arnolf Karstark was instructing the bride on how to fornicate her way into a Stark marriage.
The end had not been pretty.
For the elder Karstark men at least. Lord Brandon had since gone out of his way to speak kindly of the girl, which went a long way to salvaging her honor. The Lord and Lady Stark had been very lenient as well, exceedingly so in Luwin’s opinion, to let it go with just the public disgrace and aborted wedding. Some days the Maester still wondered how the two endured their doubts over whether that ruling had truly been the right one. Luwin himself took months to stop dreading that Hornwood’s next raven would bring word that Rickard Karstark had only joined the army so he could kill Lord Brandon in revenge. It really did appear that the Karstark heir was angrier at his family than House Stark though, if only on his cousin’s behalf. Or perhaps he’d been instructed to play nice and spare himself the tarring that his House endured, until he could take over for his disgraced father and uncle that had so effectively alienated all their peers and vassals in one ill-thought swipe.
“What most worries me,” Lord Stark finally said. “Is that Brandon has been avoiding this topic.”
“He wouldn’t be able to if you weren’t so soft on him, husband.”
“And what’s your excuse, woman?”
“Don’t you lay this on me, you’re the one who always has him doing something instead of leaving time for his poor mother.”
Perhaps their son meant to figure this out without bothering people who lacked any insight he didn’t already possess, but Luwin wasn’t about to tell that to a pair of worried parents that also happened to hold the right of pit and gallows. “Perhaps he is embarrassed.”
“That’ll be the day,” scoffed the disappointed mother. “My firstborn son, showing anything approaching shame. Hah! He’s literally frolicking in a fetid swamp of social diseases, do you see him showing any embarrassment over that?”
Luwin had a perfect answer but uttering anything approaching praise would surely-
“What was that?” She demanded. “Don’t think I missed that look, Maester, you’re nowhere as discreet as all that.”
“My lady…”
“Spit it out.”
“Once you start seeing auras it’s literally impossible
not to know who’s sick and where.” That stopped her short and then some, though he honestly couldn’t see why. ‘I can see it in your aura’ wouldn’t be such an effective charlatan trick if it wasn’t based in fact. “It’s why we’ve been able to make such headway with our medicines. It’s why we’ve been able to treat you as well as we have, in fact.” Also, Qyburn and his apprentices were regularly called on by the respective establishments to do health checks. There was a reason they were envied so far and wide.
Lady Stark stared, then cradled her forehead. “Magical clap vision. Unbelievable.”
Detection of
every spot of illness, but Luwin kept his mouth shut rather than blurt out what he really thought about this. He knew very well how easily people latched onto the silliest things in defiance of all common sense, especially when they thought they had a bone to pick with someone. He also knew they tended to lash out even harder when they were proven wrong, but he’d be lying if he claimed he didn’t expect better here.
Luwin gathered the papers back into a stack and hoped he wouldn’t have to wait too long for the awkwardness to pass.
“Luwin,” Lord Stark said. “Bring me Marwyn.”
Luwin nodded and left to do as bid. He briefly wondered why Lord Stark didn’t just skinchange a raven for it, before deciding the man probably wanted some time alone with his wife. He left the room, closed the door behind him and set off down the one and only corridor that provided access to the Lord’s suite (notwithstanding the pipe passages and secret escape tunnel). He nodded to the two guards as he passed – they were stationed half-way down the corridor rather than outside the door, as was often the case for private meetings – but did not tarry otherwise.
When he was out in the main hallway, a glance with his third eye pinpointed Master Marwyn’s presence. His veil of normalcy in the unseen world was as everyman-seeming as usual, but Luwin had learned to recognise it. The Mage was actually just a few doors away, in his personal quarters adjacent to those of Lord Brandon. The Young Lord himself seemed to have settled in for a midday nap. Unusual. His own veil seemed oddly smudged in places, which was even more unusual, particularly since that hadn’t been the case back in the yard.
Worried now, Luwin strode quickly to Marwyn’s door and knocked. He got no verbal reply, but the attention from inside briefly focused on him. Luwin imagined this was how an ant felt just before it realised how hot that beam of sunlight focused through a lens actually was. The feeling receded quickly, thankfully, save for a nudge from one mind to another. ‘Come in’ it felt.
He entered.
Marwyn was getting ready to prepare soul wine, if the crystals and scents were any indication. Now Luwin was very worried, the Mage hardly needed potions anymore unless he was preparing to do a really deep and lengthy delving. “Master Marwyn.”
“Luwin.”
“Lord Stark wants to see you.”
“Can it wait a few hours? A day maybe?”
Marwyn usually wasn’t so unabashed either, about him
not answering to Lord Stark. Technically. “No. He needs you now.”
“What about? I don’t want to be rude but I’m about to be very busy on his son’s behalf.”
Luwin hadn’t been ordered to silence when someone was already in the know, so he pointedly glanced at the wall and back. “Matters of inconsistent behaviour.”
“…Ah.” Marwyn paused for a long moment, then closed his eyes. With his third eye, Luwin saw when the Mage’s mind nudged Brandon Stark. The reply came slowly – perhaps Lord Brandon was already quite drowsy – and there was an uncharacteristic air of hesitance to it, but whatever it was made Marwyn sigh and start repacking all his ingredients and tools. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready. Maybe it’s for the best if we do it this way.”
It was related then. Luwin had already suspected, but knowing he was right didn’t sit well for once.
Soon, he was re-entering Lord Stark’s sitting room with Marwyn one step behind.
“Mage,” Lord Stark spoke the moment the door closed behind them. “Is my son dying?”
What?
“No.”
“Is that so?” The Lord asked while Luwin still reeled from the question that had come out of nowhere. “Was there any point where he was dying?”
“No.”
“Was there any point where he
believed to be dying?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Because there aren’t many other reasons I can think of for the changes in his behaviour of the past year and change. And most of the others aren’t nearly as flattering.”
“Your son is not anticipating death.” Marwyn’s astral eyes were already half-way done reading the reports on the table like the most wispy, lidless hovering stalks. “He is, however, anticipating no small amount of pain. Followed by a few weeks or months of being too soul-weary to do much of anything without being cajoled into it. I understand you know the feeling well.”
Luwin fell into his chair, struck silent in confusion. What was Marwyn talking about?
“I have encouraged patience and to share the burden of knowing with you, as you are his neverending source of strength,” Marwyn continued as if anyone but him even knew what he was talking about. “But patience he is nearly out of, and he has decided you needn’t be weighed with the worry over a foregone conclusion, now that he is a man grown and fully responsible for himself.”
“Mage, stop.” Lord Stark ordered, wiping his mouth from nerves. The bronze rings in his beard gleamed strikingly even compared to his signet. “You seem to have skipped several steps in this conversation. Start from the beginning.”
Marwyn glanced between the other man and the papers. “Are you planning to confront your son about this?”
“I plan to summon him right after we’re done here.”
“I strongly advise you to wait until at least tomorrow. He has decided to take today off from his worries. Which is to say, he has blocked most relevant memories and
all related negative feelings from his waking mind, against my better judgment. He is not fit to have any serious conversation.”
“He did what?” Luwin balked alongside the lady herself.
Lord Stark was not short on disbelief either. “He can do that?”
“Very poorly.” Marwyn grumbled. “Your son has many talents, but compartmentalisation is not among them. That’s without even getting into the uncanny valley that one inevitably travels down when taking refuge in the bliss of ignorance. Were you to speak to him now, ‘brazen gall’ would be just the start of your problems. At best he might crack some truly terrible jokes. At worst he might act like this is all a dream, one he
isn’t self-aware in. The first time he tried something like this, he turned into a mess with his memories crossed between what was real, what could have been real, and what he’d previously speculated about the two aforementioned. His ability to imagine entire scenarios in moments works against him. I am reasonably confident that he managed without letting that sort of self-delusion slip past him this time, but I’ll freely admit I am never satisfied with just ‘reasonably.’”
As the Lord and Lady stared in helpless incomprehension, Luwin tried to wrap his mind around all of that. Somehow, he succeeded. Unfortunately, it didn’t help in any way. “But he seemed so normal earlier!”
That snapped the Starks out of their bewilderment. “Explain.”
Luwin relayed the brief meeting in the yard, right after the Alchemist’s departure.
“You should
definitely wait for tomorrow,” Marwyn told the Lord. “Confirmation that there are people who already possess the secret to our minestarters? In the
South? He should be pacing back and forth right now, grousing about secret societies, stubborn world narratives, and how the Yi-Tish must all be laughing at us to the sound of fireworks.”
That did sound more like him.
“Mage, take a seat.”
Marwyn pulled a stool to sit next to Luwin.
Lord Stark sat forward and clasped his hands together. “Tell me what you know.”
Marwyn took a few moments to decide how to answer. The fact he even
needed that time was enough to make Luwin feel outright alarmed- “There are forces at work in this world. Some pass themselves as good, some as cruel, most are mere mummery, some are more, many are less, some are not human at all, there are even things that may be deemed gods or demons depending on your sense of scale. Scores of books have been written about how superior they are or aren’t to everything and everyone else. In power, wants, tenets. What these writings omit, however, is what they almost invariably have in common – how they deal with failure.”
“Poorly.”
“Indeed. In this case, failure to destroy a man’s work.”
Lord Stark’s face began to retreat behind that icy veil that never failed to be intimidating. “If you can’t destroy a man’s work, destroy the man.”
“Just so,” Marwyn nodded. “There are varied ways to do this. I doubt I need to list them.”
“Kill him. Cheat him. Steal from him.” Lord Stark’s cold tone didn’t change as he listed everything that was tried and still being tried against House Stark and the North, since even before their recent climb in power. Not just in Westeros, but beyond as well. “Give his work to a rival and discredit him as a charlatan. Trick him into committing a terrible crime or other. Frame him if that doesn’t work. Paint him as a corrupt degenerate.”
“Gaslight him into thinking he is any of the aforementioned, to use one of the Young Master’s own sayings.” Despite the tone, Marwyn didn’t look amused in the slightest. “The good news is that these have all failed.”
“So far.”
“So far.”
“And the bad news is worse.”
“I’m afraid so. You see, given sufficiently unfortunate circumstances, you don’t need to stop at slandering someone as a corrupt degenerate. You can go and make him one outright.”
Mind magic, Luwin thought. Soul magic. Spiritual warfare.
Lord Stark’s hands clenched tighter, but he still had his words, unlike his Lady wife. “Is that’s what’s happening?”
“It’s what I’m most strongly inclined to believe is being attempted. We’re lucky your son is so kindly inclined and works on a different frame of reference that he’s managed to turn evil to the service of good. But evil turned to the service of good is still evil, whether it’s being done by you or
to you.”
“The Three-Eyed Crow is trying to make my son a degenerate.”
The damning words were like a ship being struck by an iceberg. You could see, hear and feel the world breaking around you, but there was no hope or courage left to put it into words even though you weren’t sinking under the waves just yet.
“Or the Faceless Men.” Marwyn had no such trouble. “The Warlocks of Qarth. The Red Priests of Volantis. The Black Mages of Qohor. Asshai-by-the-Shadow. The Norvosi, even, they still have enough knowledge of black magic that they have reasons besides amusement to mate women with wolves, or whatever else.”
Well now Luwin felt like the conversation was turning a tad overdramatic. The worst Lord Brandon had done was sleep around for a while, and not even all that frequently, before stopping completely. In fact, there were plenty of other things he could have got up to in and out of bed, in twos or threes or however many women or men, and still not be anywhere near deserving of such unflattering epithets. Especially when everyone was left so much better off in the wake of his passing. Either Ryben and ‘Boeryn’ had desensitized Luwin more than he thought, or everyone else was overreacting.
The irony of what his own reaction would have been under different circumstances was not lost on him.
Luwin looked at Lord Stark’s face. He still couldn’t reliably read him, but it was the Lady that spoke this time. “Do so many truly hate us so much? Why would so many hate Bran so? How would they even know to hate him?”
“Perhaps they don’t,” Marwyn said in what passed for him as a gentle voice. “But their feelings ultimately matter little. Your son’s mark on the world is already indelible, but it threatens
all the things that are ‘known to be so.’ Even if they do not act from malice aforethought, there is greed and curiosity aplenty to birth rivals. That’s not even counting whatever parties can see beyond the flesh.” Marwyn turned to Lord Rickard then. “Truthfully, what you’ve been doing with the trees is more ambitious and blatant than anything your son has done. If your ongoing mystical ritual hasn’t drawn the eyes of every power from here to K’Dath, I’ll eat my staff. More importantly, your claim isn’t complete yet, and there are those who would slip past it even if it were. It’s why I haven’t entirely ruled out even this Brynden Rivers that still seems to be alive up there, despite how thoroughly the Wall cuts off spells. I understand he used to be able to use Winterfell’s own Heart Tree as a mouthpiece? The Doom of Valyria may have destroyed the occult paradigm of times past, but there are cogs and gears that still stumble forward, and not all are as impotent as some.”
Lord Rickard’s face curled in a snarl. “You don’t need to say anything more.”
Maryn nodded, but he did say more. “It ultimately depends on whose hands your son’s missing half ended up in.”
Luwin thought of the long cut bisecting Lord Brandon that still refused to heal.
Lady Lyarra covered her face and Lord Rickard’s hands became fists. “He was so proud of himself.
I was so proud of him.”
“It was pride wholly deserved,” Marwyn murmured. “Putting one’s mind back together is a rare and worthy accomplishment. But ultimately,
continuity of mind was just the consolation prize that
you won him. His true trial he lost.”
He and pretty much everyone else who ever lived, Luwin thought. Before Marwyn really started teaching him, Luwin had thought magic was a matter of rare potential. He soon found out that was not the case. There were certain gifts that passed down the bloodline and were possible to manifest and master spontaneously – visions, skinchanging, what have you. But magic itself was a power inborn to everyone. Marwyn had given a whole lecture on the strange and amazing feats that even the most brainless animals could accomplish just by ‘living in tune with nature’ before telling him that humans had the same natural aptitude. Natural
tendency even, to live the whole fullness of life in the moment. In tune with nature.
All layers of nature. But as the child grew and his mind became stuffed and weighed with thoughts and concerns of physical life and its many toils, when regrets over the past and worries of the future began to displace the present, they were steadily taught to ignore, mistrust or resent their dreams and fancies. Their daydreams. Their ‘imaginary’ friends.
Some lasted past that, living their flesh and spiritual lives as if they were equally real. Some were so in tune with all parts of their nature that they ‘couldn’t’ realize they were dreaming because it
wasn’t a dream to them. It was one, continuous second life, reprised every time they closed their eyes and emerged into the light at the end of the tunnel. Double living. Parallel incarnation. It was a strange, wondrous state of being, where you could accomplish everything you could imagine, but your self-centred, narrow frame of reference prevented you from doing or interacting with everything you
couldn’t imagine. Including, most critically, everything from outside yourself.
The world was a cruel place, though, and it liked its ironies. The children that lasted longest fared the worst in the end. The moment their innocence was broken, whether by knowledge, trauma or ill done to or by them, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by all the thoughts, feelings, complete experiences and foreign wills whirling throughout the ‘outside’ they now
could fathom. Those that succumbed young enough could usually get away with a period of night terrors, which either scared them or wounded their spirits to the point where they became blind and deaf to anything outside the bounds of convention. Luwin was one of the few that hadn’t been completely crippled, which was why he’d been able to start down the occult path again as an adult. Those that lasted longer…
The longer you lasted, the more you had to lose. Feelings, experiences, all your childhood dreams, your memories.
And if you were bright enough to attract the attention of those that actively sought out those like you…
There was a reason so many mystics were broken in the head or outright went insane before dying ignominiously in a ditch somewhere. Why the mad made the most sense in their rare moments of lucidity, even if regular folk never noticed.
The dark side of understanding. Revelation perverted against its purpose.
Luwin sympathised with Lord Brandon, he really did, but it was Lyanna and Benjen he was really afraid for.
“That’s it?” Lady Stark demanded when the silence stretched on too long. “That’s it, that’s how this ends? ‘It’s magic’? Don’t think I’ll let that go so easily, don’t any of you-how did you let it come to this?” The lady’s angry eyes turned on Marwyn. “Shouldn’t you have spotted this? Or maybe you did but didn’t do anything about it? What have you even been teaching him if this can happen right under your nose?”
“It is precisely because of my teachings that we cottoned on to this at all,” Marwyn calmly replied.
“Stop taking me for a fool, damn you!” Lady Stark erupted. “I don’t need to be a maegi to read what goes unsaid. You think you can just shirk your responsibility for this? What do you have him doing? What does he do to choose his lovers? How does he always find and pick out this… this
type he has? Does he spy on all of them? Learning their deepest, darkest secrets before he even meets them face to face? Will you sit there and claim that’s just more evil done
to him? Playing spymaster before his first shorthairs was already bad enough, but now I have to sit here wondering how often my own son… invades the dreams of others to get his jollies?!”
Well. Things had gotten awkward all over again, and not for the right reasons. Either Lord Brandon was cagier about the occult than Luwin had come to believe, or Lady Lyarra wasn’t wrong to say she didn’t get enough time with her firstborn. Luwin never imagined she wouldn’t know about this after so many years of being mother to a literal wizard. And he couldn’t even bring it up. How did one go about correcting someone’s ignorance when pointing out said ignorance was the last thing you wanted?
Everyone was looking at him. “Er…”
“I said,” Lady Stark said because she’d apparently said something. “Enlighten me, Maester.”
Gods, he really couldn’t keep any thoughts off his face, could he? Some maester he was. “It’s empathy.” Luwin cleared his throat in an attempt to stall while he got his thoughts in order. “Empathy is not just passive, my Lady. It’s projective. Do you ever wonder why prey can sense predators without seeing them? People as well, the five senses may be enough to live by and even pierce illusions if we hone them well enough, but there are things they don’t account for. Do you ever wonder how we know when we are being watched? How instinct operates even absent of stimuli? People’s minds aren’t closed. Some of the feelings and ideas people get aren’t their own, thoughts even. Energy flows where attention goes. Every thought and feeling we have is openly conveyed. Loudly.”
“Learning to see and control your own emanations is the
second occult fundamental,” Marwyn picked up when he saw the Lady was listening. “The first is building up a defence and learning to sort out and block everyone else’s.”
And in so doing being blessed and cursed with the ability of always knowing what everyone around you
really thinks and feels. On the one hand, knowing when someone’s lying to you is very useful. On the other hand, you get to know first-hand how often and naturally everyone lies, even just for the sake of courtesy,
and know exactly how they really feel while they are talking to you, the dark thoughts that so often scream from just behind a smile. It was no small thing that Brandon Stark had persevered in his relationships with people, especially his family, during that time when he was always-aware of how much people lied during regular interaction, but hadn’t yet mastered the ability to block and redirect the intruding thoughts and feelings of everyone else. Not without shutting himself off from everything completely, which would have defeated the purpose and even deadened his own empathy.
This was why Luwin wasn’t in a hurry to reach that stage. The all too common reason why mystics preferred the company of their fellows, and when lacking that option became hermits.
Or monsters.
“With dreams, this is only magnified,” Luwin said when he realised the Lord and Lady expected him to continue. It struck Luwin in that moment that they, or at least the Lady, considered him more trustworthy and worth listening to than the Master Mage in their midst. Somehow. Despite him possessing no relevant knowledge that hadn’t come from Marwyn to begin with. This long-yearned endorsement of his position as confidant tasted sour, but that, at least, he managed to conceal. “It is why people are at their most suggestible in that half-aware state just before drifting off. Dreams are neither contained nor discreet. They are big, loud, colourful and detailed bubbles of wish and imagination, and you never know if they’ll merge or burst when two or more of them get knocked together. Some dreamers don’t even bother with that and just ride the eddies of thought and emotion, drifting from dream to dream, or pulling others into theirs without knowing what they’re doing.”
“The challenge of dreamwalking lies not in
invading the dreams of others,” Marwyn concluded. “It lies in mastering yourself enough that you don’t succumb to their force. And even then, the only way you can entirely avoid knowing what’s in them is if you shut
yourself away completely, defeating the purpose. The occult is a very difficult path not because it is hard to get what you want, but because you get too much shoved into your face of what you don’t want.” Marwyn turned from the Lady to Lord Rickard again. “Incidentally, this is also why the Ritual of the Fisher King will not turn away unfriendly eyes. No more than marking a border will prevent people from looking across it. Your claim does well to ward off entry, but the eyes of the soul see far, and it’s not just the eyes of flesh that can have far-eyes made for them.”
“Always another answer,” The Lady said bitterly. “Always some new bit of fell wisdom to throw at me. Just let me vent my anger, damn you!”
“You are angrier at him than for him, that is my only misgiving.” Marwyn was unmoved. “I agree that he should have been more open with you, but do not mistake discretion for inaction. Steps are already being taken to address this matter, but the cut was not clean, and in any case soul surgery is not to be rushed, especially when it is your own self that is being messed with.”
“Steps!? You’re taking ‘steps’? My son is becoming debauched in front of my eyes but I should sit back and relax because you’re taking ‘steps’! What good is that if we don’t even know anything!?” The moment she hit on the crux of the matter, Lady Lyarra sagged on herself. “Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t
you say anything?”
“Until recently, because we could not confirm there was a problem. Everything came from within him, and we only realised the inconsistency of his urges and thought patterns in hindsight. He is also cursed with knowing exactly what he’d have been like absent of his past life recollection. For my part, I honestly expected much more dramatic deviance to result from all those uninsulated mindmelds with the dying that he did as a boy. After the more likely possibility became apparent, he judged it pointless to worry you with things you had neither blame in, nor the ability to help with.” As always, Marwyn’s candour was a bitter drought. “I did not wholly agree, if only because of the emotional support he deprived himself of. I advised transparency. Alas, he stood by his choice.”
“And you just obeyed him?”
“I will to my lord be true and faithful, and love all which he loves, and shun all which he shuns, and never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do ought of what is loathful to him.”
Quoting the vow of fealty that he gave alongside that sword all that time ago should have been a solemn moment, but Luwin couldn’t control himself. He snorted.
The reactions of the other three made him quail inside.
“Something funny, Maester?”
Paradoxically, the Lady’s renewed anger made Luwin braver. “Just more people acting out of character, my lady.” He eyed Marwyn. Pointedly, because there were certain answers he’d long since craved too. “Humble, loyal, obedient. Whatever happened to ‘I can at most be one of those things’?”
“I am a grown man perfectly capable of changing my mind.” Marwyn, in contrast, was not joking at all. “I’m not just his servant or teacher, Luwin, I’m his healer. I need to be reliable, trustworthy and as nonthreatening as possible.”
That wasn’t how Qyburn went about it, but Luwin supposed it was different when your patient wasn’t a stranger but instead your sworn liege lord who held the decision over life and death while his mind and soul were being actively messed with. Notwithstanding all the time
before this mess. Whenever it actually started, precisely.
“I told you,” Lady Lyarra turned on her husband then. “I told you something like this would happen. I warned you! But did you listen? Of course not, you just tell me to trust him, that he’s good and kind and dutiful and loyal and he knows what he’s doing, he’ll come forward if something’s wrong! No matter what he does, you still act as if he can’t do no wrong, you still act like we should take him at his word!”
“I do take him at his word.”
“Damn you, Rickard, that’s the problem!”
“What do you want from me, woman?”
“I want you to stop, damn you! And stop him too. He does too much, he goes around us too much, every time you just let him do what he wants until something happens, and you never put your foot down when it’s something bad that comes of it. Even this army tour was basically a reward! Stop giving him more and more leeway every time he does something preposterous! Our son is not perfect, no matter what you think!” Her voice trembled as she said the words no mother ever wanted. “Stop always believing the best of him.”
Did he though? Lord Brandon always came to his father before trying something, and he never gainsaid being refused, did he? Then again, Lord Rickard had refused him less and less as the years went by until-
“I can’t.”
Luwin jolted in place.
Lord Stark’s icy mien had cracked straight through. “I can’t.” The man stared down at nothing, his voice rough. “He saved me.”
Lady Lyarra looked utterly stricken, then all the fight went out of her. “Like Ned saved me…”
Luwin looked down and tried to make himself as small as possible. For all his misgivings about being kept at arm’s length, he felt like he was witnessing something not meant for his eyes and ears.
Lord Stark ended the meeting soon after. There was a point where he looked like he was about to say something else, bring up something important, but he changed his mind and dismissed them.
It left Luwin feeling adrift.
Thankfully not for long, though. His schedule was no less full than usual just because he happened to be reeling from for world-shattering revelations. He suspected that life would not long let him keep this new standard for what qualified as world-shifting, but he decided to spend a while living in the present instead of worrying about the past or future. He had lessons with the youngest Starks next, and the two children were always a pleasant distraction, even if he didn’t quite appreciate them
becoming distracted instead of paying attention to him.
Today was supposed to be economics and financial management, but Luwin decided to give himself a break from the stress, seeing as his nerves of steel were quite frayed right now. This made the children very happy (of course), even after he told them they were still his for the appointed time. He had them write stories. However much they could put down of whatever struck their fancy. He let them throw ideas and questions at each other while he took a seat outside their line of sight and looked for something relaxing to do.
He ended up going over the latest drafts for the
Winds of Winter, Special Edition that Wyman Manderly would be taking with him down to Oldtown for the Hightower wedding. Unsurprisingly, it would be lacking in updates about current developments. Notably, there were none of the news on the North’s resources and means of production. Those sections were instead replaced by news from Essos, the Farmer’s Almanac, and ‘How To’ summaries involving whatever inventions were already known far and wide – crop rotation, iron tools, northern glass and lenses, the trip hammer (but not the drop hammer), safety equipment, cures and treatments (and their proper administration), and contact information for the various makers and vendors (how ever so devious). ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ was put on hold as well, in favour of an expanded edition of the Thesaurus. Medrick had managed to finish piecing together the story of Maris the Maid and Uthor Hightower, as passed down orally through generations. It was neatly presented side by side in Old Tongue, Common and High Valyrian (Ryben’s contribution). Not a small feat when translating verse. Luwin wasn’t entirely sure it was the best idea to include everything from the tragedy of Argoth Stone-Skin, but it was definitely a better option than the Red Wedding. He spent some time doing the crosswords after that, there were Old Tongue and Valyrian versions of that now too, how wonderful.
Checking on the children’s assignments, he found more or less what he expected. Lyanna had gone from writing to drawing the rogue prince of her dreams. She’d been doing this increasingly often since flowering, instead of the older doodles of her parents, siblings, Torrhen Stark, and the grumpy old griffin-rider that kept corralling her in ‘Wonderland’. She’d been clever about it this time though, taking very literally Luwin’s past admonishments to keep within the spirit of the assignment. Which is to say, she’d made sure to describe this dream prince of hers in words
first. Very melodramatically too.
‘His hair was black as a midnight sea, with never a whitecap to be seen, his face was smooth and pale beneath his neat dark beard, and his eyes were blue as a summer sky.’ Luwin was tempted to read it aloud just so the girl could hear exactly how she sounded with her own ears, but he’d learned his lesson about giving Benjen stones to throw.
Speaking of Benjen, he seemed to have started a historical anecdote about Artys Arryn only to meander off into musical notation half-way through the first page. Everything from then on was notes and staves in more layers than even bards bothered with. It was the sort of musical composition that Luwin had come to both anticipate and dread from Benjen Stark, so lofty and complex that you really had to strain your mind to imagine in sound. There were drums, trumpets, woodwinds, bowstrings, vocals, both alone and all at once. Luwin tried to imagine the ensemble but failed as badly as always. He simply lacked whatever frame of reference Benjen had dreamed up, and Luwin doubted there was anyone not in the same predicament. Even the individual tunes were very pleasing though, if rather somber. And the choir… The verse was in Valyrian for some reason, but the meaning was fitting for the theme.
Luwin graded the children for spelling and grammar, told Lyanna to mind that she doesn’t get so besotted with Prince Charming that she forgets about everyone else in her story, suggested to Benjen an alternative wording that made the choir flow better, then sent them off to play.
He watched them go to the imagined shrieks of his very late Citadel masters screaming in horror from the leavings of whatever rats and worms they were spread among now. The mental picture made Luwin smirk guiltily, but oh well. He wasn’t here to force the children into a mould, he was here to cultivate their inborn talents. It wasn’t like they’d fallen behind on the fundamentals.
Checking his schedule, he found that he had the rest of the afternoon free. He considered going to visit with Marwyn, perhaps to resume his study of the glass candle. He was close to learning how to make them, he was sure of it. But a glance in that direction showed the Mage deep in meditation, and the only reason he could see even that much was because Marwyn had allowed him access through his wards, otherwise he wouldn’t see inside his rooms at all.
Luwin sighed and looked at Benjen’s song again.
‘Ecce nunc dies Patris, Ecce nunc dies Matris, Regnat nos, salvat nos. Behold, now is the day of the Father, Behold, now is the day of the Mother, He rules us, he saves us.’ The strangest thing was that Luwin didn’t get the impression the song would go on to include the other five aspects.
He spent the rest of the afternoon sounding out the various tunes until he fell asleep in his chair.
He snapped awake near midnight, sweating and gasping from the shock of being blasted out of the dream he was having by a wave of towering rage. Towering rage mixed with mortification, of all the things. A look past flesh and walls saw the aftermath disturbing the mood and sleep of everyone in the castle and a fair bit beyond it. Without even needing to wonder, Luwin aimed his gaze at Lord Brandon’s quarters. The Young Lord’s wards were gone and his veil of normalcy was shattered. They were reforming as Luwin watched, but not quickly, and the sight of all those flaming eyes glaring in all directions was not particularly merciful on Luwin’s anxiety.
The Maester hesitated in place, not knowing what to do. Should he do anything?
Brandon Stark swept out of bedroom, hall and keep altogether, on his way to the Godswood. Marwyn rose from his delving, left his room and made for Lord Stark’s chambers. Lord Stark and his wife were already up and dressed by the time he got there. Then the three left together, and Alban landed on Luwin’s windowsill and began pecking at the glass.
Well. That answered that.
Luwin changed into warmer clothes, pulled on his boots, slipped into his cloak, and went to get all the answers he never asked for.
By the end of it, he was proven right: everyone was overreacting.
He just hadn’t considered who ‘everyone’ might include that he didn’t account for, or what else they were overreacting to.
Brandon Stark was in front of the weirwood when they got there, staring at its solemn face.
Luwin studied him quietly. Though his crow feather cloak covered him completely, it fell open when he crossed his arms. What moonboeams made it through the canopy were bright enough that he could even make out some color, if faintly. A dark green doublet embroidered in bronze like a tree, the branches flowing down and round his sleeves and seemingly held fast at the end by the dara knot sewn into the outer hem of his sleeves.
“For years I’ve thought of barging through this thing.” Brandon Stark mused damningly. “Now that it’s turning out I’m a living, breathing backdoor for soul fuckery, I’m gaining an all-new appreciation for our forebears’ wisdom, even if that’s not the reason they don’t want me in the Underworld.”
No one said anything. Not for the first time, Luwin wondered what it meant that Brandon Stark was barred from the Greendream when Lyanna Stark seemed to spend all her sleeping time there.
“Marwyn.” Lord Brandon turned his back on the Heart Tree to look down into the black pool. His trousers were the same as his vest, Luwin saw, the bronze stitching traveling down his legs like deep, flourishing roots of a tree. “The surgery. We’re doing it tonight.”
“Son,” Lord Stark spoke instead, approaching until he was just out of reach. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t feel there was anything to say. I still don’t. I just feel like me. I didn’t think that missing part of me was even still alive, let alone being used for… whatever this is. It’s also a bit clichéd, I mean really, if someone was going to corrupt me, why choose lust? Just because it’s the easiest? There are so many actual defining characteristics to poke at. It makes more sense that this is just how the dice fell. I would hardly be the first man that can’t get rid of the distraction just by taking himself in hand.” Luwin had fallen behind to watch from across the pool, so he saw when Lord Brandon’s face twisted into an odd, lacklustre smile. “Turns out you shouldn’t always trust your feelings.”
“Marwyn made it sound like you’ve known this for a while.”
“Marwyn knew, maybe.” the Young Lord glanced fondly at the short man. “He always thinks better of me than I do.
I haven’t been convinced about this being a foreign influence until, well, now. Don’t ask.”
Lord Stark made an aborted move to close the distance. “What did you think it could have been?”
“Oh I don’t know, the wolfsblood? The Stark bloodline has a whole bunch of weird genetics that show up randomly, and they only get stronger when there’s a Blackwood or Flint involved.”
Lady Stark was the daughter of Arya Flint and looked fit to explode in affronted outrage, but she instead took a deep breath and went to stand next to her husband. “Bran, I want to believe you’re a good and worthy son, I do, but you’re not making it easy with all this blame-shifting.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?” Brandon Stark didn’t turn around. “Mother, filial love isn’t the only thing I feel strongly, and I won’t apologise for thinking of myself every once in a while, not when I go out of my way to leave everyone else better off than before I came along.” The Lady was speechless at being rebuked so soundly, even after her husband wrapped a comforting arm around her. “Do you want to know what I’d be like if I’d been born normal? I’d have twice the notches under my belt, bastards all over the place, and would be bloodying my sword up Barbrey Ryswell all over the Dustin lands as we speak despite being betrothed to another woman.”
Luwin would never stoop so low as to lie that he didn’t wish he could know the future, but he was man enough to admit he probably wouldn’t be able to handle the knowledge all that well.
“Don’t misunderstand your mother, son. She’s only worried that you’re letting your view of what’s acceptable be skewed by what could have been.”
“I can see why she’d feel that. I’m afraid I can’t pretend embarrassment or shame just to make you two feel better though.”
“You’re not?” the Lady asked, affronted. “You still don’t feel the slightest shame?”
“Why should I?” Brandon Stark asked under the eyes of the Gods. “I was discreet, I didn’t father bastards, my partners have all been consenting adults, and I never dishonoured anyone.”
“You won’t mind if I ask about some of them then,” Lord Stark asked in an obvious bid to pre-empt his wife from speaking her mind about
that.
“Go ahead.”
“The veteran’s daughter.”
“She’d set aside all thoughts of a life of her own in favour of taking care of her addled father. She was tired and depressed. I made her feel beautiful again. Also, I only arranged for the annuity as a surprise afterwards, so you don’t need to worry about me taking advantage. Thanks for solving the uncle problem by the way, it was pretty much what I would have done.”
“I should hope so,” Lord Rickard grumbled. He led his wife to sit on one of the roots and looked at the Tree, perhaps so he didn’t have to keep talking at his son’s back. “One drunken duel was more than enough. It’s something I’d have expected from Rodrik, not you.”
“I wasn’t the drunken party, and I won’t apologise for giving the late Master Crofter what he asked for. What happened after that between the widow and I left no confused feelings in the aftermath. She is entirely focused on her children now.”
“Gods, tell me this isn’t really what I’m hearing.” Lady Lyarra had had enough. “What next, are you going to paint your whoring like some gallant feat too?”
“Mother, I’m sorry to say but I prefer my partners a bit older than teens. That’s definitely all me. I won’t apologise for investing what resources I needed towards learning how to handle myself.”
“Handle yourself?”
“Many a good man was brought low by the femme fatale, but I’ve the dubious honor of only having eyes for the women who
make these women. Given the circumstances, I figured I may as well arm myself.”
“Oh Gods, you’re serious.”
“If it makes you feel better, mother, I’ve since had my trial by fire on that front so you don’t need to worry about me seeking validation.”
Lady Stark put her face in her hands. “I’m going to slap you.”
“I have to ask why. I’m rather mild by this world’s standards, I hope you realise.”
Luwin could almost imagine the Lady’s teeth grinding.
“Mother.” Lord Brandon sounded serious all of a sudden even though he didn’t turn from his contemplation of the deep water. “These were my feelings then, and they are my feelings now. It didn’t feel foreign then, and it doesn’t feel foreign now. Even with hindsight suggesting that something doesn’t fit in all this, I only feel like me.
Marwyn says that whatever the missing part of me is up to, it’s spilling over despite the separation. He says my instincts are not what they should be in some ways, and too much in others.
He says. Not me. I don’t feel like anything is wrong. I
feel like I should tell him to take his soul surgery and shove it, even though intellectually I agree with him. Do you understand?”
“This is why we killed the direwolves.”
There was not one jaw in that entire three-acre forest that didn’t drop at hearing what Lord Rickard Stark had just thrown out there.
Lord Stark turned away from the tree to face them again. “Son, I was going to summon you for a talk today. Can you guess why?”
Brandon Stark blinked rapidly, straining to catch up to the sudden shift in topic. “I have some guesses, but I don’t think they count.”
“I wanted to talk to you first, but now I’m thinking I should have just opened with this instead.” Lord Stark approached and laid his hands on his son’s shoulders. “A raven from Lord Commander Qorgyle arrived this morning. The Rangers witnessed a clash between Giantsbane and Thenn, the biggest yet. Thenn had a direwolf with him. A direwolf whose fur was split in perfect halves from haunch to shoulder, one black, one white.”
Lord Stark gazed down at his son. Everyone stared at Lord Rickard as if they’d never seen a creature like him before. Lord Brandon, Marwyn, Lady Lyarra, Luwin himself were just…
When the silence broke, it was Marwyn that did it, speaking for the first time since coming down there. “Oh, you are a devious one.”
Lord Stark sighed, rubbing his son’s arms up and down. “Wolves are prized skinchanging companions because their behaviour is most like that of man, and so the degree to which they change their bonded is the smallest. Direwolves are the same, but larger, stronger, and most importantly, they have a skinchanging gift of their own. It lets them bond with a human even if the latter lacks the gift himself. Used to be we still cultivated the connection properly. Gained control of the wolf dreams and then went beyond that to skinchanging proper. It allowed for many benefits, but the most important one faded from concern and memory in the centuries after the greenseer wars: a properly developed bond ensures you are the
only other mind in the head of the animal. As time passed without other wargs or greenseers to challenge us, we stopped being concerned about this, until we didn’t even bother putting in our half of the work at all. The direwolves didn’t mind. The miscreants who were now free to mess with the direwolves’ minds, and through them
ours, most definitely didn’t mind either.”
Brandon Stark was staring at his father, riveted. “They started putting thoughts in our head.”
“They did more than that. They distracted us. They spied on us. They used them to lead us astray, even into the hands of our enemies. They manipulated the connection, flooding our minds with the direwolf’s emotions and wild impulses in the worst ways. We’d sit down and lose track of time, only to find out someone had just been murdered in the room next door. We’d black out during spars or arguments, and then come to our senses to find out we’d beaten family and friends to death in a blind rage. Other times they were subtle, using the wolves as a conduit to slip their own thoughts into our minds when they wanted us to make a decision that suited them. They even started guiding direwolves to whelp near Winterfell, then skinchanged other beasts to kill the parents while they were weak and divided. When we went hunting, the ‘Gods’ would ‘bless us’ with the orphaned pups. The pups would then bond with our children when they were too young, turning them feral. And of course, there is a reason we look at one of our own who can’t keep to one bed and call it the wolfsblood.”
Brandon Stark’s face had closed entirely. “So that’s how they’re doing it.”
Lord Rickard sighed and stepped away. “I think I owe you an apology, son.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I might be the reason this is happening to you.” Wait, what? “I started the Ritual of the Fisher King to bar intruding influences from our lands. I didn’t account for how it might backfire when the bad blood of ages was forcefully concentrated in fewer and fewer holdouts. What that concentrated spite and power might be used for.”
It was times like this that made Luwin seriously wonder if the occult was really worth it.
“The timing fits,” Marwyn said grimly. “This started just after the Fisher King ritual achieved its watershed moment. Whatever malcontent ghosts were scattered all over the Trees in the North before, there’s only one holdout left where they still have contested claim. Keeping a link open like Rivers used to have is certainly within their means.”
Brandon Stark’s voice was wooden now. “The Wolf’s Den.”
“Fodder and fuel for the Greystark ghosts,” growled his father. “I was waiting for the rest of the Trees to turn before marshalling the ritual against them once and for all, but now it seems my wait only served to harm you. I am so sorry, my son.”
Brandon Stark looked at his father vacantly for a while, then he started laughing. It was a hitching, ugly thing as muddled and confused as the mess itself.
Luwin didn’t know how long it lasted.
When it was over, though, the Young Lord’s voice sounded a little bit lighter, and a little more brittle. “You’ll always come charging to the rescue just in the nick of time, won’t you?”
Lord Stark did not reply.
“Luwin,” Marwyn said. “I’ll need your precision for this.”
“-. 278 AC .-“
Dawn caught up to Luwin on the Great Keep’s steps. He wanted to stop thinking, but he had too many thoughts in his head. He wanted to sleep, but he wasn’t sleepy enough. His spirit had laboured all night, but his body had rested in the meanwhile. So he kept walking, up the stairs, down the corridors, up more stairs, down more corridors, further and further in. He did not go to his turret. He did not go to the institute. He did not seek out company. He went instead to Marwyn’s quarters, where he thought that he might finally turn a fond distraction into something actually useful. The Mage had stayed behind in the Godswood with their patient, but Luwin had a standing invitation to make himself at home.
The surgery had made Luwin feel like he was being asked to do a job he’d barely even begun training for, but in the end it had been a success. For want of a better word. It hadn’t been particularly power-intensive, but it had certainly required precision and patience of a sort that Luwin didn’t think he had in him. Now that it was done, though, the Maester was left with just his unanswered questions for company.
Now what? What would the convalescence be like? How long will it last? The cut was fading at least, and what part of the Young Lord was once cold to the touch now gave a healthy warmth. Marwyn was hopeful that his spirit would finally mend, grow a replacement to what it had been without for so long. Luwin hoped for some ears and a nose, seeing as eyes there already were plenty.
What Luwin wanted to know was what the outside repercussions would be. What did it mean that the direwolf had chosen the Thenn Chief as companion? Was it sapient? How sapient? If it was, should they look favourably on the Thenn as King-Beyond-the-Wall pretender? Should they do the opposite, considering the circumstances? Was the Thenn in any way responsible for this? Lord Stark had sent a raven back to the Lord Commander the moment the news came, asking him to arrange a meeting with the man, but that didn’t really help anyone right now.
Who had done all this? Was it just the resentful dead in the weirwoods? Was it the Three-Eyed-Crow? Was it Bloodraven? Was it someone else? Was it some of them collaborating? All of them? None of them? And with the connection severed, what would happen with the wolf? Would it go on as it was? Become its own soul? Degrade back into an animal mind like all other dead skinchangers that jumped into their beast for their second life? What did that mean for the future of the Thenn and his sworn clans? The future of the war beyond the Wall? Should they interfere? Did they want to?
Who even
was behind it, really? Blaming it all on Bloodraven was too easy, especially as he and the Three-Eyed Crow were not the same entity. Luwin also doubted it was just the mad, faded ghosts of the past. Then again, the way the story ended for everyone who tried to hold the Wolf’s Den for any amount of time rather resembled the curse of Harrenhall when you got down to it. When Lord Stark went there and finally completed his ritual, would the holdouts just fade from the world? Or would they just go somewhere else? If so, where? What would happen then?
Luwin closed the door behind him and entered the side-room. Approached the davenport where the glass candle stood. He sat down on the chair and looked at it, considering. Thinking of how done he was with not having any real answers. He always complained internally about not being able to do his job properly, because of prejudice that he’d had no hand in. But this was a good reminder that prejudice was often completely justified. And he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to bridge the gap, had he? He’d been waiting and reacting. He hadn’t shown much initiative outside his orders, had he?
“Luwin, you’re here because you’ve been showing an uncanny talent for precision, and patience,” Marwyn had told him.
“Power can be built up, but not that sort of focus. I favour him over you, I won’t deny that, but that’s because he needs my supervision. You no longer do.”
“I don’t know a hundredth of what you do,” Luwin had replied.
“That’s knowledge, not guidance. It can be built up too.”
Knowledge… Knowledge he lacked. Knowledge like the answers to all these questions. Knowledge like what had finally convinced Lord Brandon that something was wrong.
Today. He never said what it was, did he?
Luwin closed his two eyes and looked beyond the flesh and walls with the third. Lord Stark, Lady Lyarra and Marwyn were still in the Godswood, clustered around the fourth soul laid down on the ground. Brandon Stark’s veil was completely gone, but for once he didn’t need it. His feathered cloak was wrapped tight around him, and all his flaming eyes may as well be gone for all the light they gave. They looked like they were shut, one and all, cringing in pain.
The sight was dismal, but still better than the hollow feeling that had almost made Luwin faint when that… that stump had finally been ripped out. It felt like his soul had been torn through, and someone had taken a spork to the insides of his chest, raking and clawing and scraping every which way. Lord Brandon was still feeling that right now, and who knew how long that would last?
The most frustrating thing was that the surgery was itself sufficiently traumatic to account for any changes in behaviour that would emerge after this. They’ll never know how much of this was Brandon Stark being himself, and how much was a foreign influence. There would be no closure to what should have gone by as a mere passing phase of youth, and a mild one at that. The only consolation was that they caught the problem
before all the other scenarios Lord Stark laid out had a chance to happen, though Luwin sincerely doubted anything so overt would have actually gotten through. Hopefully that knowledge would act as a decent salve, if only for a while.
Luwin looked at the glass candle. That means of divination that had nothing to do with weirwoods and was most remarkable for how it burned a path clear through all the muck of the unseen world.
He didn’t need to cut his palm on the sharp edges anymore. He could light the candle even without the blood price now.
Then, on wings of will, his third eye dove into the flame.
Time to earn their answers some
precision.