The Logistics of Good Living (ASOIAF, Brandon Stark SI)

ATP

Well-known member
Did Bloodraven died,or only get injured ?
Now - what about welcoming Giants,and maybe even Children ? They certainly would be useful.
 
Chapter 3: Pay for Divided Loyalties Is Utter Shit

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
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Chapter 3: Pay for Divided Loyalties Is Utter Shit

“-. 273 AC .-“​

Most days, Martyn Cassel understood well enough why his brother laid everything down for the Young Lord. On some of them, he even figured he caught a glimpse of whatever it was that made Rodrik do that when the boy was just five name days old. It was never enough to relieve his misgivings. Much as he hated to think about it, his brother had vastly overstepped his authority and been derelict in his sworn duty. Still, it was what it was, and the Fair had just taken a spot at the outmost top of the knight’s regard.

But then there were times when his charge went and did something so out of nowehere that the knight was hard-pressed not to dream about a simpler life where their family had never been ennobled at all.

“Martyn’s known about Rodrik all along!” Brandon Stark blurted on seeing him, when he and Lord Stark finally emerged from his chambers the morning after. “I told him before I would let mother take him on. I thought it would change his mind about wanting to take up where Rodrik left off but, well… Shit, I can’t believe I forgot about that! I even told him I’d tell you, but I forgot. For five years. Fuck.”

Rickard Stark came to a dead stop and looked between them both with visible disbelief. Then he pointed the way he came. “… Inside. Both of you. Now.”

They went.

Once in Lord Brandon’s rooms, Rickard Stark glared at them both. “This. Is not. Acceptable.”

“This is my fault,” the Young Lord groaned, his face sunk into both hands dramatically. “I’m sorry, father, I’m an idiot.”

Lord Rickard Stark pinched his nosebridge with all the stress of a man suffering every last opposite problem that came with fatherhood. “Son. Five name days you was an idiot. You are not.” Dropping his hand, the Lord then glared at Martyn outright. “But you. I don’t know what you are. Completely disinterested in doing right by the brother whose wishes you claim to be holding up? Did you never even once follow up on my son’s guarantees? Or are you such a fool that it never occurred to you that perhaps wisdom would dictate not indulging the judgment of a stripling not even half grown. To say nothing of the tragedy of errors that had resulted from it already!” Lord Stark’s countenance turned frighteningly cold then. “Or perhaps you kept silent out of spite in a bid to pretend you still had grounds for your misgivings against me. Have I been entrusting my son’s safety to a man with divided loyalties all this time?”

“Mr Lord!” Martyn Cassel took a knee, drew his sword and offered it up by the blade. “I swear to you my vows are true. My loyalty has ever been to House Stark and the Young Lord.”

“But not me.”

“You are House Stark, now and until your death.”

Martyn didn’t know how long he knelt there, feeling like a sword’s edge was pressing down the back of his neck. The worst part was that he wasn’t sure what all had led to this, exactly. At first he’d assumed the discussion had happened without the Lords deeming him worth following up with. When he eventually realized otherwise, he just… thought the Young Lord was putting it off because of everything else he had going on. Like he didn’t think it was all that important anymore. Martyn himself had eventually come to think the same.

“Gods, you Cassels really are all fools. Get up.”

Martyn Cassel obeyed, re-sheathed his blade and tried not to show the dread he felt within.

Rickard Stark showed no such restraint in his affront. Or his disappointment. “You have kept critical things from me. Seemingly with no malice aforethought, but this speaks even more in your disfavour.” The Lord sighed and rubbed shortly at his temple. “It’s things like this that have me convinced knighthood is a shit institution. It’s like the oaths you swear completely drain your brains out through your ears. Why my forebears ever let that Andal tripe seep into the North is beyond me. Especially when we already have masters.”

Martyn Cassel was hard-pressed not to gape at the sudden forthright turn that his stern and unreadable lord had suddenly taken. Admittedly, he had just witnessed Lord Stark become ten times as sanguine as he used to be over a single day just from spending time with his heir. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to have undone any of the Lord’s increasingly harrowing skill at making you feel like an utter imbecile.

“Well? Do you have nothing to say in your defence?”

“… My loyalty and service are and always have been yours, My Lord.”

“How unfortunate that I cannot believe you, seeing as you have such a keen secret-keeping ability but completely lack the judgment to know when to keep them and from whom.” Least of all me rang like death bells over the sound of the hearth fire.

That… that stung. Having his loyalty questioned would have been bad enough. To be told he was not untrustworthy but just too incompetent to uphold his oaths made to a worthy lord…

“I haven’t the time nor patience to resolve this matter at this moment. Until I do, your service to my heir is suspended. You may reprise your post in the guard rotation, but that is all. Dismissed.”

Martyn nodded stiffly and spared his lords of his presence as quickly as decorum allowed. He had much to think about.

The days that followed gave Cassel a lot of time to do just that. He tried to explain himself. To himself. In hindsight. Then in spite of it. He told himself it was because it wasn’t the place of a knight to speak out of turn. It didn’t work. He had been working on the belief that his job was merely to protect and serve. Follow. Obey. It was exclusively the place of those above him to judge matters. All matters. That was why he served and why they ruled. In the end, his conclusions didn’t change.

Save maybe with regards to the particulars of Lord Rickard’s words to him. The knight blamed the Maester for it. Lord Rickard had been nowhere near as backhanded as all that before that southron came along.

Then again, maybe it was just stress. Gods knew the Young Lord tested everyone’s wits even when he wasn’t having an off day. Even indirectly. Like when his Lord Father now called on him at feasts to ‘give his opinion’ on this or that matter. As if he were learning as much as sharing what was being discussed. As Martyn sat near the doors with the other guards on such occasions, the knight imagined he should feel affronted on his charge’s behalf. But the Young Lord seemed to appreciate it. Especially when certain visitors had their own children ask the questions as a way to avoid displaying their own ignorance.

Specifically, Lord Robard Cerwyn. And his son too. And their men. They ended up staying in Winterfell for a whole sennight while the locals taught them all about the new games and dishes and contraptions and traditions. All of whom seemed to have started breeding. Carvers and fishermen begat game peddlers, farmers and artisans conceived new recipes, hunters and stonemasons devised new ways of snow and ice building, there were even a bunch of youngsters working on a gigantic snowman that was hollow inside. A mite titan of Winterfell, mad as it might sound. Amidst it all, the children of everyone had turned the retrieval of the sky lamps into an impromptu scavenger hunt. One that the newcomers – and Winterfell’s own guards once the younger Starks found out – got roped into as soon as Lord Cerwyn’s fire scare was allayed on account of ‘hot air goes up’, don’t you know. There was something in there about ‘air funnels’ and ‘currents’ and how hot air going up sucked in everything from around it, but only after it goes and expands. The talk honestly went over Martyn’s head. Alas that the same couldn’t be said about certain other parties on the other end of that conversation. Like Medger Cerwyn, whose thinly veiled annoyance at being lumped in with the anklebiters gave way to bemused deference far too quickly for Martyn Cassel’s taste. He could easily have lived his whole life without knowing exactly why it took so little time to smell a fart.

It was a mixed blessing that Martyn only learned most else second-hand, busy as he was teaching skiing to the entire Winterfell guard. On Lord Stark’s orders, which were also delivered second-hand through the keep’s steward. Master Annard Poole had given no hint that anything ill had been said about him, but it still cut him. The knight dedicated himself to the task in an attempt to bury his dismay at being kept at such arm’s length. Even then it was slow going, but he managed to get a dozen of the men near enough to his level by the time the visiting Lord and his retinue were to leave. It would allow him to delegate and get it done by the end of the moonturn even if he resumed his prior duties.

Thankfully, he wasn’t outright barred from contact with his charge in the meanwhile. In fact, there was even one development that opened entirely new opportunities.

“Ooof!” Went Medger Cerwyn as he kissed the ground for the third and final time. “Unh! Agh… What do they feed you guards in Winterfell? Fuck!”

“Cheese and porridge.” With the occasional side of sweets and meat on special occasions. None of which was as important as protecting his charge. The visiting noble didn’t really think he’d let the Young Lord fall into the hands of a substandard teacher, did he? Or that Lord Rickard would entrust his heir’s martial training to someone who wasn’t worthy? Two out of three indeed!

Medger Cerwyn picked himself up, wincing all the while. “I’ll get you next time.”

After a year or three to train up first, maybe. Even if he did, though, Martyn wasn’t worried. Whether or not he beat him, the man would still have to basically come first in what had become Winterfell’s unofficial master-at-arms competition. The previous one had died to the same wasting sickness as the older Stark generation, and Lord Rickard didn’t rush to replace him. Instead, he began training the guards himself. One on one, then in pairs, then in threes and droves. He beat them black and blue and made them eat dust, then he took to drilling them for hours every other day. Later, he started assigning training partners, teams and even held random melees with the ones who landed strikes on him. The only man who ever managed it reliably without a team of two backing him up – at least– had been Rodrik. But even he’d never scored clean points more than once every few days.

Since the Fair, though, the Lord had cut some of his drilling time in the yard in favour of training Lord Brandon. Which was about three years overdue in Martyn’s opinion, even with his knowledge of why. And it showed. The Young Lord’s scattered mind never seemed to make an appearance once he had a weapon in hand – wooden or not – but he showed no special fighting talent. Seemed like they were finally finding out where the Young Lord wasn’t preposterously gifted. Somehow, though, Martyn had never really entertained the notion that it would be in this. Might be why the Maester spent so much time watching from his tower when Lord Brandon was out there. Maybe he shared everyone’s disbelief. But it was true.

“He really is only just starting, isn’t he?” Lord Robard Cerwyn grunted from where he stood next to the bench where his son had just sat down. “Let’s pray time is all that was lost to this mysterious sickness.”

Martyn stayed quiet as he waited for the rest of his blood to settle. Obvious as the attempt was to fish for information, it wasn’t his place to speak unless called upon. Even when he would have liked to. Like now. Because that old saying about ‘like father like son’ in this case could also well be true. Lord Rickard himself had been just a tad above average when he first took lordship. Even though he’d served in a war. But so many years never lapsing from this routine had made him an utter terror in the ring. Even when he wasn’t using his favoured weapon. And it wasn’t like Lord Brandon was going out of his way to prove anything. Especially since they hadn’t begun to figure out his favoured weapon either. Which may or may not have something to do with how very visibly perplexed and offended the Young Lord seemed to now be turning with every form and practice swing that his father-

“Workout high is real!?” Lord Brandon shrieked all of a sudden and wait, what? “Are you serious? A lifetime and a half and this is the first time I get one? This is a croc of dog shit!”

Needless to say, the Lords Cerwyn were taken aback. So was everyone else. Even Lord Rickard, going by how high his eyebrows climbed. “Do you have something you wish to say, my son?” The Lord of Winterfell’s voice had seldom been so flat.

“Oh I heave reams of curse words lining up,” Lord Brandon spat disgustedly, getting back in the beginner stance. “But they’re not worthy of you so they can suck it. Baelished by my own damned brain, I swear. One more.”

“And how is this worthy of me? Or you for that matter? One set is the least of what you still have in you.”

“No,” Lord Brandon said. “One more hour. And however long even afterwards. I want to see how long this lasts.”

Now Martyn was as surprised as everyone else. And when the Young Lord managed to power through three times as long as he did at that age, Martyn could admit to being taken aback as well. The general astonishment of everyone else may or may not have had something to do with two of the actual decent fighters losing spars to young Walder of all people. They got their own back and then some once they snapped out of their stupor, but still!

At least the Young Lord was left a sweaty, trembling mess barely able to stand by the end – and he’d certainly feel it for many days even with stretches. But as he heaved for breath and sweat dripped off his face despite the cold, Brandon Stark looked absolutely exhilarated. If this was any indication of the endurance he could build up to…

“Well now,” Lord Robard Cerwyn said as he pointedly looked between his own son and the wobbly-legged heir of his liege lord. “If only we all could consistently show this kind of dedication.”

Medger Cerwyn flushed with a mix of embarrassment and determination, and Martyn Cassel pointedly didn’t think about what it meant that he and those above him thought the same damn way.

The next morn, after Lord Cerwyn and his retinue left with a promise to hold a fair of their own in a moonturn’s time – to which House Stark would be invited and given the place of highest honor of course – the knight was finally summoned into Lord Rickard’s presence once again.

“Seeing as you are so good at keeping secrets but lack the judgment to know from whom not to keep them or what all to do with them, I will be deciding from now on what confidences you get to keep. The matter of your divided loyalties would normally make even this impossible, but since it involves my heir – whom I do trust – I am willing to handle things through him while you use this last opportunity to resolve whatever this is. But there is a condition: you will swear your sword directly to him. I trust that is a reasonable way to settle this matter. If you refuse, neither you nor your family will directly serve House Stark any longer. Decide now.”

Martyn Cassel imagined it could have felt shameful. Perhaps humiliating. At the very least discomfiting, if nothing else. But as he knelt and swore his new oaths, he only felt relief.

Well, that and a glimmer of amusement at Lord Brandon wearing a permanent grimace of pain courtesy of how far he’d pushed himself.

Said amusement vanished like the wind not a day later, however, upon a message from Lord Stark that he escort Lord Brandon to the Heart Tree after the mid-day meal. Then the relief also gave way to outright disquiet on arrival.

Lord Stark was waiting for them, back turned and hands clasped behind him. The sword Ice stood erect to his left, driven tip-first into the earth. A wide, covered bowl of wood sat next to it, white and old and weathered.

“For years I’ve thought of chopping down this thing.”

Lord Brandon practically stumbled and Martyn came to a halt as well. The world seemed to waver sinisterly at the impossible claim.

“Ever since you fell. I was convinced the Gods were what hurt you. That this Tree was what hurt you. But now you say it’s what will save you.”

The Young Lord hesitated, then forced down all the pain he still felt since the yard and walked to stand next to his father. Lord Stark briefly laid a hand on his son’s head the moment he was in reach, but just as soon withdrew. He did not look away from the face of the weirwood. And as they stood there amidst red leaves and fallen snow that gleamed under strewed sunrays, they looked like Kings of Winter come again newly ordained, strong and firm and perfectly reflected in the pool of black water.

“…Father?”

“What do you know about the Pact of Ice and Fire?”

It didn’t take seeing his face to know Lord Brandon had been blindsided, but he rallied quickly. “It was the alliance arranged between Houses Stark and Targaryen when Prince Jacaerys flew to Winterfell on behalf of Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance of Dragons.”

“That’s what Cregan demanded of Prince Jacaerys, yes. Jacaerys secretly married Lord Cregan Stark's bastard sister Sara Snow. Then it was agreed that a firstborn Targaryen princess would marry into the main branch of House Stark. At the time, that meant the firstborn daughter of Jacaerys would marry Cregan's heir. It would have served House Stark well, but I didn’t summon you here for that particular jar of worms. Can you tell me what all doesn’t fit in this picture that septons and maesters love to pretend not to deride?”

The Young Lord thought about an answer. He thought for quite some time. “I guess not.”

“It’s in the name, my son. Targaryens have ever been in bed with their own drama, but we are not like that. And yet it was Lord Cregan himself who gave it the name it has. Do you know why? The answer lies in the words by which Torrhen turned back the dragons. The answer lies in the words by which all Northern Lords swear fealty to House Stark. The answer is that Cregan was just the latest in our line who thought the Pact’s words might not have to remain so starkly empty. Empty as they’ve been since the Pact’s first and only lasting embodiment was broken six thousand years ago and we were left forsworn.”

Martyn Cassel felt rooted to his spot even as he thought the faintest breeze would blow him away. Where once there was relief in his continued duty, now there began entirely new dread.

“The Storm Kings defeated the Andals and even forced those who settled their lands to swear fealty, yet House Durrandon converted to the Seven despite their victory. The Gardener kings and Hightowers were among the first to welcome the invaders with open arms afterwards. And yet no great misfortune or divine retribution descended on them despite what this would have meant under the Pact. Despite the Andals’ crimes against the forests and the Children, with whom the Reach had been closely allied until the generation immediately preceding the Three Sages. Indeed, The Gardeners and Hightowers kept their lands and their power. Even expanded them and their wealth almost constantly until the Targaryens came swooping in. What does that tell you?”

Lord Brandon slowly turned to look up at his father even as Rickard Stark never broke his stare with the face on the tree. “… You said we were left forsworn.”

“Oh yes, and it happened much earlier than those times, nearly at the beginning of the Andal migration.” Rickard Stark’s voice was flat and heavy with six thousand years of disdain and recrimination. “The legend of King Tristifer IV Mudd is wholly true as written, up to and including the entirely unchallenged and untroubled alliance of seven different Andal kings and their respective hosts. Precisely the sort of conspiracy that greenseers were supposed to see and undermine from its inception. Even a bloody skinchanger could have done it, what with the Andals so very conveniently suborning our own maesters’ ravens to coordinate. And yet not only did that not occur, but Tristifer wasn’t even warned about the seven-fold assault until the very end. How very convenient for the invaders, wasn’t it? What an end to the Pact that must have been. The Pact that had seen Westeros survive and thrive through the Long Night and over four thousand years!”

… Secret keeper, Martyn thought faintly.

Rickard Stark finally turned from the tree to his son, but his voice only grew harsher with scorn and ill will borne of old. “It was the Children of the Forest who broke the Pact, my son. Not the First Men. Not us. The reasons are lost to time. They could have been as serious as a mass plague that drove them to insanity. Or it could have been as petty as to begrudge Mudd’s ‘failure’ to break the Andals despite winning nine and ninety battles for our side almost unaided. In the end it matters not. They are the ones disgraced. They are the oathbreakers.”

The shadows of leaves played on the Lords Stark’s faces. The Godswood gleamed grimly in the sun and snow. And as a breeze wafted midst red leaves and white branches, the Gods of Earth, Stone and Tree seemed to whisper TRUTH.

“… Father,” said the Young Lord, realizing… realizing something that skittered at the edge of Martyn’s thoughts like some terrible damnation that- “Why did the Children of the Forest retreat beyond the wall?

“It does sound poetic, doesn’t it?” The lord’s voice was as stark as his name. “The most disgraced of our friends, gone to wallow with the most disgraced of our enemies. Or perhaps the Children of Summer set themselves in league with the Fell Ones of Winter once no longer strong. But life is no song or story. Your answer is in front of you. You know it already.”

“… They were oathbreakers…” Brandon Stark murmured. “And they were treated like oathbreakers. Weren’t they?”

“The Isle of Faces is as much a refuge as a prison these days. There were all too few oathkeepers among the Children and Green Men. The Red Kings sought to sell the North to the Andals, so we broke their power and slew the oathbreakers who’d sought refuge with them. The Crannogmen didn’t inherit the Neck from the Children, they took it in our name. That and much more took place over the many centuries. It was a long, drawn-out enmity. Terrible and unrelenting. ‘Oathbreakers are damned in the eyes of the gods’ it would be said. ‘Punishment must fit the crime,’ they said. There has never been a shortage of men willing to become instruments of divine damnation. More so upon those they see as cowards and traitors. Likewise, there are always those who would climb chaos like a ladder to seize what they consider greatness for themselves.” The lord’s voice changed then. Grim rather than spiteful. Somber more than cruel. “It was our House’s burden to pull our people back out of the depths of hatred, blood rites, barbarism and cannibalism they sometimes descended in. We didn’t always carry it well, but we carried it all the same. On the whole, I’d say we did well more than we didn’t by the end. The Direwolves came to us all by themselves. The North united under us, we who upheld the oaths broken even by the gods’ emissaries. And men both North and South built a world with no place for the Children in it.”

The deathly quiet of an upturned lifetime of beliefs descended upon the glade as Rickard Stark moved to his sword. The man turned to face his son, knelt down, picked up the bowl and removed the sheet of linen on top before setting it on the ground between them. There was a knife sticking out of it, but the white paste inside didn’t tell Martyn anything, and yet Lord Brandon was left speechless at the sight.

“It turns out there are certain books that Starks of the main line are supposed to transcribe every generation, to ensure that the knowledge inside is not lost to time. They’ve been left to rot since before Cregan’s time. I can only assume the knowledge of them was lost during that whole succession debacle against his power-hungry uncle. I almost didn’t find them. I didn’t even know to look for them. Turns out it’s enough that I searched for anything, though, now that I recognize what’s in front of me.” Lord Stark’s voice grew soft then, his eyes weighed with something Martyn couldn’t fathom. “In truth they are just stories and legends that ancient Starks gathered and wrote down. But recent events have me believing some of the things between the lines. I doubt I understood well enough everything implied there, especially the parts in the Old Tongue. But one thing sticks out. Men and Children cannot interbreed, and yet somehow we’ve taken their powers unto ourselves. I don’t know by what means. Right of Oath. Right of Blood, Right of Conquest. All three. Or perhaps none. I don’t know. My eyes can’t see clearly enough. But all this is probably clear as day to yours. Isn’t it?”

The Young Lord stared at the white paste as if spellbound. “I… don’t think I understand as much as you think I do.”

“Don’t you?” Lord Stark echoed, warm and loving. “When magic comes again to stand right in front of me? When, more than any rite wreaked in the past, it is in whole already mine. Don’t you really?” The man held out an arm entreatingly while his other reached down to grab the knife.

Martyn Cassel jerked where he stood and a noose seemed to strangle him at the sight of his Young Lord walking towards the man holding the knife-

“Cassel.”

Breath seemed to stick in the Knight’s throat at being addressed so suddenly. “Y-yes My Lord?”

“Do not interfere.” Said the man who’d just finished talking about barbarism, hatred, blood rites and cannibalism- “You may see to it we don’t fall into the black pool or otherwise injure ourselves unduly, but that is all.”

“I…”

Rickard Stark spread his son’s hand and raised the knife… but it never came down. The tip hovered there above the pale smooth skin until Lord Brandon gently pried it from him. The older man gave no resistance, and Martyn couldn’t grasp the depth of feeling that passed between the two before the Young Lord grit his teeth and sliced his palm himself.

All breath seemed to leave Martyn’s lungs in a gust. He didn’t kill him. Lord Rickard didn’t kill him. He never meant to kill him. Or eat him. What was he thinking, of course Lord Rickard wasn’t going to kill his son and eat him, the Lord adored him-

Rickard Stark nodded tightly and wrapped his son’s hand closed inside his, blood pooling in. “Who comes before the Old Gods this day?”

“I am Brandon of House Stark.” The words started with a waver, but they steadied and flowed as the Young Lord decided what to say. If it really was him who decided anything. “Winter’s heir, trueborn and noble. I come… to heed and be heeded. Who heeds me?”

“I am Rickard of House Stark.” The Lord slashed his own palm open then clenched his fist. “Lord of the North. King of Winter. Steward of Vows Ancient and New.” Their hands clasped together above the vessel then, father and son letting their lifeblood mix and flow and drip into the wooden dish as they spoke as one. “To Winterfell we pledge our faith, the faith of First Men and Green Men and the Children true. Hearth and harvest I promise you, my own. Our swords and spears and arrows I ever will command in service of our peace and kinship. We shall grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail. I swear it by earth and water. I swear it by bronze and iron. We Swear It by Ice and Fire.”

Martyn’s heart stalled. The Godswood teetered suddenly as if weighed down by the weight of the world. The two lords’ eyes seemed to mist over with white fog. The sun flew across the sky. Its scattered beams moved and winked out as shadows took their place the more each disappeared from amidst the branches. A brother slain seemed to stand protectively above the son and father in the pool of black water. Then, suddenly, the calls of snow shrikes snapped the knight out of his stupor to find that hours had passed and the moon was out in the night sky.

He could see it through the leaves where he lay. He’d faltered and stumbled. Fallen down onto the ground. He barely remembered it happen. It was vague and distant, like a dream.

“Accursed oathbreakers, you’d worm your way even into the Greendream if you could. Begone, Begone, Begone From My Demesne!”

A gleam of rippling steel was all Martyn glimpsed before his left eye seemed to burst inside his skull. The agony faded in the same instant, but as he flinched and rolled through the snow, clutching his face, it felt like the pain bled out more than anything else. Seeped away like the red sap that poured out of the face on the weirwood, once Lord Rickard wrenched his sword out of its left-most eye. The eyes and mouth all seemed to bleed despite that it’d only been stabbed once.

Madness. It had to be. Blasphemy, his mind wanted to scream. But even as crows called out in triumph at the edge of his hearing, the red sap seemed to wash away along with the dried up streaks that used to be there since the ancient days, leaving the face stark clean.

Lord Rickard Stark beheld the Heart Tree for a time. It looked serene now, somehow. Almost at peace. Then he turned away, sat down next to the pool, covered the bowl back up – the shape of a weirwood seemed to have drawn itself up in the blood – and tucked his sleeping son next to his side under his cloak of bear fur. Then he quietly cleaned Ice of the sap and polished it with a white cloth while waiting for the Young Lord to wake up. Of pain or even traces of injury on either of their hands, there was no sign.

Later that night, after the Godswood was finally left behind with its new peace and quiet, Martyn stood vigil outside the Crypts while the Lords Stark descended in its depths and didn’t emerge for hours. After that, he trailed after them all the way to the Lord’s Solar, feeling less like a guard and more like an unprepared initiate into some high mysteries as he watched Lord Rickard set down three tomes before his heir. Rights, author unknown. Rites, also unknown. And The Self and Its Parts, by Brandon Snow.

A sennight after, the Stark in Winterfell rode out of home and hearth, his heir at his front and the Crown of Winter on his brow. Martyn and his best skiers were called as honour guard. They rode the kingsroad North for a day. Skied east for another. Then Lord Rickard had them build snow huts and set up a camp in the middle of nowhere while he and his son went on alone. Six days they waited there while winds grew biting and murders of crows hounded their days and nights. A distant sky lamp raised once in the morning and at eve was their only sign that the two Lords were still alive. Then a thundersnow broke out on the eve of the seventh, loud and furious and almost red inside when lightning burned the sky. It lasted through the night. It would have buried them alive. Did bury them alive, but the snow huts kept them safe and the air lasted long enough that they dug themselves out with no man lost.

They didn’t wait for the lamp to rise. They skied with all haste on. Then they trudged. First on bear paws and then without them when the snow seemed to inexplicably thin out and stop entirely. No one seemed to care, at least at first. Martyn himself didn’t. Not as long as they found them. But they certainly did care by the time they did. They cared very strongly.

Lord Rickard sat with Ice over his knees, quiet and eyes closed as if denying right of guest to some fell thing. Facing him knelt Lord Brandon, steady and content and settled amidst papers filled with drawings and words, each in a different tongue. He was drawing something even now. The leaf of paper was set on the bottom of the upturned bowl of paste and blood, now emptied out. What had been their snow hut was spread in a field around them, uneven in span and shape but not in height. It was level and immaculate and if Martyn was a betting man, he’d wager all his coin on what it would likely look like from above. He knew a raven when he saw one. A raven in flight. An island of white in the sea of deep black surrounding it on all sides for a hundred yards. A sea of crows. Crows to the last struck dead.

Martyn didn’t speak. Wouldn’t have. But he wasn’t alone.

“My lords, what…”

“Crows don’t do well when you glare, turns out. Now when you have more eyes. A thousand eyes and one.”

All of which told Martyn and the rest of them absolutely nothing.

“I don’t suppose you saw any extra eyes on any of the crows you passed by?” asked the Young Lord, not looking up.

“…We didn’t check,” Martyn said, completely lost. “We… could do that now?”

“Please do. You can do it to all of them while you gather their wing and tail feathers. I’m thinking a cloak. A big one for when I grow up. Yes, that will be just perfect.”

It was confusing, ghoulish work that lasted the rest of the morning, but they did their job as quickly as they could. They found no third or extra eyes on any of them.

“Lovely,” the Young Lord grumbled. “Well, I’ll get him next time.”

“No you won’t.” Lord Rickard finally spoke, startling everyone. “You seem to have no issue putting things on paper anymore at least. Does this mean this has done what you needed?”

Lord Brandon looked concerned but nodded confidently despite that. “Yes. More and better than I’d hoped even.”

“Good. Because there won’t be a next time.” The man finally stood up, sheathed his sword and sent everyone but Martyn away to burn the crows’ remains. Then he had him set up a tent to give them privacy. To his surprise, he was invited inside once he was done. There, Lord Rickard turned to his son again. “Strip to your waist.”

Lord Brandon looked as thrown as Martyn felt, but did as ordered. Then they were both equally shocked at the long scar that stretched from navel shoulder, front to back. The skin below the cut was pale as well, paler than the rest. And when ordered by Lord Rickard, Martyn reached out to touch Lord Brandon’s arm. His skin was cold to the touch.

“This happened on day three. You lurched and thrashed violently for half the day. I all but roasted your right side over the fire for the rest of it, then I buried you in the snow naked when you started to burn up. Not that either did much good.” The amount of control Lord Rickard was forcing upon his voice… Martyn couldn’t even imagine it. “Do you recall any of what you dreamed that would have caused this?”

“… No.” Lord Brandon had seemed almost jubilant up to then but now he almost looked afraid.

“That’s that then,” Lord Stark said, and Martyn finally thought to look more closely at his face. He looked exhausted. “Until and unless that changes, you will not do this again.”

They gathered what all could be gathered and left, quiet and thoughtful and wary on the part of the guards Martyn had brought with him. Questions and thoughts spun in his mind, about what all Lord Stark intended by letting even this much slip out. He never failed, though, to circle back to one, big fact.

Secrets, Martyn thought grimly as Lord Brandon called a halt to their party on the second day back, so they could dig through the scraps from an old limestone quarry. Secret keeper. Him and him alone. If even a word of what he knew got out, his life would be forfeit, his family disgraced and his entire House would be attained.

Somehow, though, as he watched his charge grouse and rant and wax poetically about heat and lye and how he’d just need one year to make a fortune from scraps, Martyn Cassel didn’t feel all that worried about the future.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
So,they fought Bloodraven only,or children,too ?
And why children are treated as traitors ? they die fighting for Riverlands and Stormlands.
 
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Abhishekm

Well-known member
Nice chapter, nice story overall actually. Never seen one where the Children were the Oathbreakers. Makes a sort of sense honestly all things considered. Like everything you write for that matter does too. Thats a rare thing and a good one. Hoping for more.
 
Chapter 4: The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (I)

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
A/N: Starting this off with a bit of a character piece. Then it's back to your irregularly scheduled uplift, sponsored by Wikihow.
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Lyarra_Stark.jpg


Chapter 4: The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome

(I)


“-. 273 AC .-“​

“Are they back yet?”

“Not yet,” Lyarra Stark told her daughter.

What about now?”

“No,” the Lady of Winterfell answered with ease of long practice.

“…How about now?”

“Still no.” Very long practice. “Now come here and let me check that embroidery.”

“I think I messed up the inlay,” her daughter grumbled, passing the handkerchief on. “This pattern’s hard!”

“Wait till you start on weaving,” the woman said, inspecting her work. “But you’re right. You’ll have to redo that last petal. Now, do you think you can tease the threads back?”

“Of course!” Lyanna Stark said loftily, before deflating. “… I’ll probably pull too hard and mess up again.”

“Well we can’t have that.” Especially since this was supposed to be a personal gift to Lord Cerwyn, one of three that Lyanna was making. “Here, I’ll do it this time. Watch closely, dear.”

Her daughter indeed watched very closely. She worked diligently even afterwards, up until Lyarra called a halt to their sewing time for the day. Only then did she run off to badger Ned about sword practice.

Not for the first time, Lyarra pondered the differences in her daughter. Before Brandon’s make-believe games, Lyanna had been far too wild to sit down and learn the womanly skills for more than half an hour. At best. But then she fell in love with those living stories and became extremely thorough in milking every opportunity to squeeze past a bad roll of the dice. Learning to sew in order to beat Brandon in game figurines was just one of many rounds in their ‘perpetual contest of passive-aggressive one-upmanship’ as Brandon called it. Though truth be told, Ned was probably more deserving of praise for Lyanna’s growth – he’d taken very well to managing his ‘party members’ even outside game time.

None of which Lyanna appreciated, even as she failed to catch onto either brother’s particular approach to motivating her.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though, as was made clear at least once a day. Often during dinner. Which was to say, her Ned was perhaps getting too used to deliberately provoking his sister. Usually by not humouring her, which Lya always took as a personal affront. How her daughter could find so much to bristle over when Ned said and did so little to her personally, Lyarra didn’t know. It wouldn’t have been such a bother to child-rear away if it weren’t so effective in getting Lyanna to acquire useful skills. Case in point, Ned’s ‘goading’ was the only reason the girl was so determined to sew a perfect blue rose on not one but three handkerchiefs for their soon-to-be-hosts.

“Don’t worry, brother mine,” Ned had reassured Benjen at dinner. “You’re still too young for people to expect personal gifts. No one will be offended for at least another year or two.”

“I’ll make it up to them when I’m big!” Benjen vowed, bless his innocent soul. “Like Lya!”

Lyanna had, of course, been sitting right there.

If you feed a moose, the Flint told her once, it’ll become rapacious and attack the next man that’s got no food to offer.

For all her sudden diligence, her daughter didn’t seem to realise she was less a moose and more a small, harmless puppy.

Didn’t mean Lyarra wouldn’t take what opportunities the Gods gave her though. She’d give it another one or two moons to tend Lyanna’s leanings. If she managed to impress on her daughter the usefulness of womanly arts in having a good life, maybe she could even bring on a governess to teach her further. Teach her everything Lyarra herself never learned. Much as she hated to admit it, Lyarra Stark had been as wild has her daughter when young, only she’d never gotten over it until it was too late. After her parents’ deaths when she was a child, she was fostered with the Flints in the mountains. Her mother’s family. It had done well to ground her in archery, horseback riding, hunting and woodsmanship, even swinging an axe now and again. But while decent, she never actually excelled despite her thoughts to the contrary. Later, when she was wedded and realised how short she was in certain areas – marriage did not mean she could get away with just popping out a child every other year, unlike what she’d loudly bewailed for so long – she’d hoped her mother-in-law would teach her what she lacked. Stature, comportment, dancing, accounting, household management, making preserves for winter times. She’d been shoddy in almost everything when Rickard wrapped her in his cloak. But the sickness took Marna Locke along with everyone else before she could pass on what Lyarra needed. Lyarra dearly hoped to spare Lyanna going through what she had after the sickness outbreak. Was still going through even today. As for the rest, well…

What use were weapons or riding or woodsmanship when your husband was so much better in all of them? Especially when someone always has to stay behind at home? Never mind everyone else’s expectations.

You should stop thinking like a man, her aunt had tried to impress on her so many times. Marriage is a union, not a competition. A house divided against itself only ends in tears or worse.

Fortunately, these days she did well enough for herself when it came to organising. That included family outings. A good thing, seeing as she’d had to take over all travel plans for their trip to the Cerwyns. It helped that it was a good distraction from her worries over her husband and son. She hoped they were well, wherever they had gone. She wanted to believe they’d finally bridged their estrangement. Public displays of unity only did so much, especially when they kept so very silent in private when asked what they’d been doing. Together.

Finally.

She thought she’d been handling it well. Then she jolted awake in the middle of the night on the tenth day after their departure.

If it’d been a dream or nightmare, she couldn’t remember it. She turned over and curled into the covers trying to get back to sleep, but it didn’t come. She rose and pulled on a nightgown, then went to poke and prod at the hearth. It didn’t help. She paced the entire length of her bedroom, the moonbeams tween the cracks in the blinds her only light to see by. The moonlight always reflected off the snowy rooftops through the master bedroom windows in the winter months. Usually she was enamored with them, and the way they slid and climbed the walls. Reflected off the smoky vanity mirror. Played on glistening skin and hair while she and her man were making love. Tonight it only summoned up memories of want and need she had no way to indulge. It made her angry. Hadn’t she already lost enough rest, unable to drift off until damn well near morn due to worry about her menfolk for four whole nights and days after they left?

Coming to a stop near the desk, she briefly considered lighting the lantern to read for an hour or two. But her mind just conjured up an image of Brandon muttering about low light and tired eyes and going blind before his time. She couldn’t even dismiss it as fanciful ramblings since it was one of his more recent ones. Although just how copper and saltwater were supposed to solve the problem, she had no idea. She went and opened the window instead. Stood and shivered as the chilly wind washed over her. Gazed out of it. The one facing north. Then she turned, put on her slippers, threw on a coat and left the room in a haste.

She knew those clouds and those rumbles, but she’d seldom seen or heard them during winter times.

Soon after, she emerged on top of the Great Keep from where she could see everything around Winterfell for leagues and leagues. When the weather was clear at least, and it most definitely was now. No fog, few clouds and the moon bright in the sky. As she’d guessed, there was a mighty thunderstorm roaring and flashing far to the northeast. What she hadn’t expected was for someone to beat her there.

Her Ned stood at the farthest crenel.

She’d been right in suspecting him to be anxious at his father and brother’s absence, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. Going treasure hunting in his Lord Father’s rooms was something she’d have expected from Lyanna or Benjen, not him. But her eyes didn’t deceive her – he was wrapped in one of Rickard’s cloaks. It unfolded behind him like a sea of black atop the snow.

Everyone said parents weren’t supposed to play favorites, but the more time passed the more she thought everyone was a lying sack of horse dung. She loved Lyanna like a mother loved her only daughter. She cherished Benjen like any mother would her youngest. She depended on Brandon probably too much, after all these years of being the only one he could always depend on. But Ned, Ned was her favorite. Her little quiet wolf. He could have been ugly instead of fine, brash instead of calm, loud enough to shake the rafters and none of it would have changed anything. When Brandon took sick and only seemed to get worse, when even her strong husband broke after that last straw, when Lyarra was set to weep and waste her days away at the side of her firstborn’s deathbed, Ned was the one who’d saved her.

Watching him, her mind travelled back to earlier times. She and Rickard had begun their marriage with the all too serious worry that House Stark could very well end if they did not have heirs, and quickly. Or at least the main line. Once they got an heir and a spare, though, Rickard proved to be a fair bit more ambitious than he’d made it seem since the wasting took his parents. Rickard’s visit to King’s Landing didn’t do much besides give their oh so great king crazy ideas – a second Wall? Madness! But it also seemed to have planted a seed in Rickard’s mind about southern ties and fostering their sons. One that steadily grew over that year. Fostering. In the south. But then Brandon took with that terrible fever and things only seemed to get worse after that, and those seeds withered and died without even a sprout. To her eternal shame, a quiet part of Lyarra was glad for it. Had things been different, Ned may well have been sent off to Steffon Baratheon or Jon Arryn by now.

Walking over, she was surprised to hear Ned humming. There was something even more surprising though. “Oh my, your voice is sounding a bit high, is someone coming down with a chi-YAH!” Lyarra Stark shrieked and jumped back, hand going to her chest in fright as a second head popped out of Ned’s throat. “G-gods! What-Benjen!?”

Her baby boy proceeded to laugh at the poor mother he’d just scared out of half her life.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ned said for both of them. His fingers could barely be seen beneath Ben’s chin as he held their father’s cloak around them both. “Lyanna’s a log as usual, but Benjen was off plundering.”

“So you came up here?”

“I wanna see the eyes!” Ben piped up before deflating. “But there’s just clouds!”

“And thunder,” Ned chided.

“But I wanted to see the lightning!”

Eyes? Lightning? Who?

Benjen proceeded to tumble his way through one of his most bizarre fancies yet. Usually Lyarra found them endearing. Even funny sometimes. There was nothing like Benjen napping his way from a dream straight into a daydream to scrape the muck off her mind after hours of drudgery. This one was fairly nonsensical even for him though. She couldn’t even piece it together in her own mind after he was done. Something about birds, a murder and Rickard baking a Brandon pie while the boy shot lightning from his eyes at every last crow he could see. There might even have been something in there about a half-blind raven swooping after one of the crows who’d stolen its eye for some reason, but she wasn’t sure. Even Benjen couldn’t decide if it was the crow or the sky who’d done it. Apparently.

Oh well. At least it wasn’t one of his heart-to-Heart-Tree war tales. Why that dead brother of Cassel’s figured into Benjen’s fancies so often, Lyarra had no idea. Her youngest had barely been born when the man decided to spit on every last shred of fealty and responsibility and – no. No. She wouldn’t go down that road. Not right now. “What was that you were humming?” she asked instead.

Benjen proceeded to hum it all over again. It was a surprisingly slow and low drone. Well, for a child whose voice was still years off from breaking. “Bran’s sick of it!” He crowed after a few loops. “But he dreams about it. It makes the castles move! They sa-spra-spou-“

“Sprout,” Ned said.

“Sprout! Sprout right out the ground!”

Well, her children certainly weren’t lacking in imagination.

They watched the distant thunderstorm until frost nipped at her toes and she cajoled them back inside. Ned went willingly. Benjen not so much, but he went all the same. She tucked them in and kissed them goodnight. She also went to her sleeping daughter to do the same. She didn’t stir. When Lyarra was once again alone, she found that sleep no longer eluded her. She slept uninterrupted for the rest of the night. She dreamed of summer, winter, and birds flying and falling up and down into a red-hot sky, trailed by black feathers that fell and drifted in the wind.

Lyarra had no words for her relief when the second sennight passed and the away party returned. They looked harassed and exhausted and confounded at having had to carry quarry scrap all the way home, but they had no wounds on them or a man lost. Unlike their departure, though, it was Brandon who was the animated one, for all that she barely had time to embrace him before her other children pulled him away. And Rickard was so spent that she was amazed he managed to get through the rest of the evening instead of collapsing like he did when he finally reached their bed.

She was going to keep her peace despite how much she wanted answers, but for once her husband pre-empted her.

“Our son is a seer,” her lord husband grumbled as he clambered into bed next to her. He couldn’t even hold his eyes open. “He sees so many things. Knows so many things. Dreams so many things. Imagines so much. Whole worlds exist in his mind. Stories. Memories. I don’t even know where to start. Whenever I think I’ve finally grasped him, it’s lost in the heat of a red sky. That’s how the crow escaped.”

… What. “… Husband, what-?”

“He’s been haunted his whole life. Haunted by a crow with one too many eyes.” Rickard embraced her, his once strong arms as feeble as his apparent belief that anything he said explained anything. “He’s been spied on too. Him and the rest of us. Fucking Targaryens and their bastards, the maggots’ll burrow under your skin the moment you turn your back. Brynden fucking Rivers.” What-? “Bloody oathbreakers, not one generation without our house tripping over the worst of them. What is this world, when the worst kind of traitor is the only one in this madness not out to make a cock-up somehow? Fucking Bloodraven. Every rumor about him was true, he’s a fucking greenseer. And he’s been warding the fucking crow away from our son, not that he knew it. Bah! Maybe I shouldn’t’ve banished him until after this mess was over, but fuck him. I rule this land. I have no patience for smug shitstains pulling strings behind my back. The raven was enough defence for the two of us anyway.”

Rickard drifted into silence then… But no, no! She couldn’t just leave things at that. Lyarra kneaded her fingers through his hair. Firmly. “Husband.”

The man blinked tiredly, barely seeing her, then his eyes fluttered closed again. But he managed to scrounge up some last words. “A one-eyed raven guards him. Us. A raven I’m haunted by. The crow runs from it. I don’t know what they mean. Neither does Brandon. What they are. Dreams and portents. Grumpkins and snarks.”

Rickard Stark finally drifted off and Lyarra Stark suddenly experienced the very uncharacteristic urge to push her man off the bed and see how he liked having his life thrown upside down. He hadn’t even told her if whatever ailed Brandon was finally fixed or not!

She didn’t. Instead, she moulded herself to him, moved one of his hands between her breasts and slipped hers around him, twining one of her legs with his too. Then she waited. Watched him through the night, her thoughts too many and jumbled to let her more than drowse on and off. And when he moved, she moved against him every time. Her patience paid off half-way through the hour of the owl. Her husband roused from sleep to use the privy. And when he returned, she was there with all her frustration and impatience and hands gone a-wandering and her demands.

Lord Rickard of House Stark never did suffer anyone’s demands well, and she was no exception.

She severely underestimated her husband though, exhausted beyond belief or not. By the time the snarling wolf was done putting her in her proper place, she herself was too tired, tender and sore in all the right places to react the way she should have once she finally got Rickard to give some ‘explanations.’ None of which she appreciated. ‘Our son needed to dream himself up a second brain’ indeed. Because it’s not like something tried to stop it and caused a thunderstorm that all but buried them alive and nearly killed them all! And did she mention that Brandon was literally sliced in half at some point? That he had a huge scar from navel to shoulder now? But don’t you worry, wife, he’s perfectly fine now!

“If he weren’t so hopeless without me I’d think he were a god made flesh come from the stars,” Rickard murmured as sleep finally reclaimed him. “But then I remember that he broke his own mind just by thinking too hard. He can’t even blame the tree for that one. Or Rivers. He can’t even lay it all on the crow. Fucking crows…”

Gods, what did she ever do to be cursed so?

Lyarra glared sullenly at him, but when she tried to speak and only moaned as a result of Rickard’s enduring connection, she gave it up as a bad job. She’d talk to Brandon at some point instead. Maybe he’d make more sense. Gods, she was seriously hoping for Brandon to make sense now.

That morning she couldn’t move a muscle under the stare of the one-eyed raven on the windowsill. It was black and large enough to enshroud a full-grown man even as it fit the window somehow. Its feathers smoked as if it’d flown too high near to the sun. Then it opened its beak and made a sound like rat-tat-tat and she crashed awake with a gasp to something pecking at the window.

Rickard didn’t move at all from where he lay, despite him being the lighter sleeper between them. Grunting from the lingering soreness, she left the bed, put on her slippers and braved the morning chill to open the blinds. There was a bird pecking at the smoky glass. A raven, by the shape and size. She opened the window and tried to shoo it away, but that’s as far as she got.

The raven sidestepped her swing, blinked two perfectly fine eyes at her, hopped over her arm and flew all the way to the foot of the bed.

Lyarra Stark barely had time to spin around, hand at her breast in sudden fright as her dream resurfaced, before her mind caught up to her eyes.

Rickard Stark sat up in bed and held out an arm for the bird to gingerly hop on, opening eyes misted over with white fog. They cleared soon after, but the bird did not flee his touch. And the familiar steel grey of her husband’s sight would never erase what had just happened.

“I’m a skinchanger,” her man said idly, stroking the raven’s tufts once and twice as he assimilated this great and new and monumental truth into his life. Then he flicked his arm and the bird flew back out and away. “Right. Back to work.”

Rickard Stark stood from the bed, pulled on his clothes, gave his wife a kiss as he passed her by and went to work.

Lyarra stared flatly after him, then she called for her maids to help her ready herself so that at least one of them could get around to catching up on everything that wasn’t just more work.
 
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Chapter 4: The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (II)

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
A/N: In answer to what various readers of this have asked by now, the "uplift" information available to the SI includes, thanks to his perfected dream recall, everything I learned, heard or glimpsed up to the moment Chapter 1 of this story was first posted. It does NOT include things I became aware of afterwards, even from reader feedback. So that's 'Yes' for paper, concrete and, say, glass and ceramics (my father was manager at a glass making plant while my mother worked in a china and bauble factory), but 'No" for things like pykrete or the Chinese wheelbarrow.

I did spend a lot of time on WikiHow though. And it's not impossible that other people might come up with (or import) certain things if it makes sense in context.

Now back to the story.
================
“-. 273 AC .-“

To Lyarra Stark’s chagrin, Brandon made no more sense than her husband did. She tried to feel mollified by their admission that they themselves didn’t understand things any better than she did now. It even worked, somewhat. But only when she didn’t think about the horrifying sight of that long, purple scar bisecting her firstborn son straight through. It didn’t even look like a scar, more like an unnaturally thick cut that had fused but not scabbed over. And didn’t look like it would. That he was cold to the touch on every part of his body below it didn’t make her feel any better, never mind Brandon’s reassurances that it didn’t hurt or impede him any. Lyarra would not apologise for giving herself a day to cling to and fuss over and dote on her firstborn.

Then she threw herself back into keeping the household in order while assembling their baggage train. They had a lot to put in place if they wanted to put on the proper appearance to the Cerwyns. Unlike the South where you were judged based on the lavishness of your court and how generous your table, in the North guests were expected to bring as much as they were likely to consume. That meant food and drink, if not gifts. It was a mixed blessing that things moved at such a frenetic pace. It let her keep her mind of things.

Not all things though. In fact, there were several developments that would stay with her. And possibly go down in history.

The first was right on the day after her menfolk’s return from what was now being called Crow’s End among the guards. Rickard sent for young Walder, then took him, her, Brandon and Martyn Cassel to the lichyard. There, he led the way amidst the many headstones spotted with lichen to the small side entrance into the disused First Keep. The one that opened into the ancient servant quarters where Old Nan had taken residence ‘because who better to tend to the departed servants of the Winter Kings?’ Lyarra didn’t think the old woman had ever actually explained what she meant by that, but-

“Alysanne Stark.” Old Nan yelped and pricked herself on the spindle. “Daughter of Berron Stark and Lorra Royce. Would you have me go to my grave without ever knowing my grand-aunt?”

The only one that sputtered worse than Lyarra Stark at that revelation was the old woman herself. How did Rickard know that? Wait, she had a secret grand-aunt living under her roof this whole time!?

“What, really?” Brandon said, amazed. Then something closer to astonishment stole over his face. “Wait, you’re Dunk’s sweetheart!?”

Now it was Rickard’s turn to be surprised. Not that the rest of them were much better.

A deluge of confessions, protestations and frankly preposterous histrionics ensued. One that Rickard stomped on by way of a flabbergasted Walder – Duncan the Tall’s grandson! – assigned as Cassel’s squire while the Lord Paramount of the North publicly marched Old Nan into the Great Keep on pain of never being allowed to tell stories again. Lyarra promptly followed that by making her Lyanna’s governess. Many half-hearted griping followed about toothless, shrunken and wrinkled unsuitability. Her grand-aunt doth protest too much, Lyarra fumed. Wasn’t she the only one of the Stark widows in her generation that didn’t cause a succession crisis? And what about old uncle Edwyle? Or Willam and Donnor before him? Did they know? Did they allow it? What even was all this? Where was the elder wisdom? Where was the common sense? Gods!

Her daughter decried her terrible fate up until the Maester showed himself to be just as scandalised. “I advise against this, My Lord! My Lady! You can’t mean for the young lady to be led astray by old wives’ tales!” Then Lyanna was suddenly overjoyed at the development, gloating up, down and sideways that she’d now have ‘old story lady’ all to herself. Although she might have done it just to make Benjen wail in dismay. Lyarra could never be sure with her daughter.

The second big thing that happened was Lyanna’s exceedingly dolorous tantrum mid-way through the third sennight. Or, rather, what happened in the lead-in to it. And around it. And Gods knew how else.

Rickard rose from bed at the hour of the finch and went to the Godswood. He didn’t say why, but didn’t say anything against her accompanying him either. So she went with him. They found Brandon standing statue-still on the biggest root that sunk into the black pool, staring down into the depths. What followed confirmed Lyarra’s suspicions that her husband and son dreamed far different dreams than hers or anyone else’s.

“You’ve been dreamwalking all this time,” Rickard said, stopping just outside reaching distance of their son. “But only now you look to your own?”

“I like to fly,” Brandon said, not looking away from the reflection-less water. “And if I drift too low, I get distracted.”

“By?”

“People are dying everywhere. All the time.” Lyara shivered, and it wasn’t just from the cold. “Their dreams aren’t too bright, but they’re loud. And they leave things behind. Especially if there isn’t a weirwood conveniently nearby to ferry them off. Maybe that’s why magic’s built on blood and murder. A fresh kill means everything on the other side is immediately available for… whatever.”

“Hmm,” Rickard hummed, as if he weren’t at all rattled by hearing such things from his son of ten name days. Sometimes, Lyarra seriously wondered how her husband could even move with so much ice in his veins. “Where have you flown?”

“The Wall. The Barrowlands. The Neck. Moat Cailin. Bunch of other places.”

“The south?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Don’t.” Lyarra blinked in surprise. Brandon did as well, finally looking up from the black depths.

“I am not pleased you’ve been flying anywhere at all, mind,” Rickard said flatly. “I hope I won’t have to remind you daily of what it’s already done to you.” Brandon had the grace to look abashed. “I’ll not ignore that this is my oversight, and that you’ve lived up to your word on everything up to now.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“But you should have kept me informed, if not consulted with me on your nightly activities. As you did not, I find that my trust in your judgment has sharply decreased.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed,” said the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. “I realise I’m not any sort of seer, but absence of shared experience is not absence of understanding. Or wisdom. Or authority. That snobbery belongs to Maesters, fools and madmen, not you.”

“...”

“Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Outside the family, I’ll be deciding from now on where you fly and who you dream with until further notice. And in case your dreaming self can’t help taking all leave of his senses, let me make one thing clear right here: don’t even look at King’s Landing. I’ll know just from the look on your face if you get too close to that pit.”

Brandon made a face as if he could guess the reason behind that last order. Lyarra was absolutely certain he didn’t though. Not by a long shot. Doubted he did. Hoped he didn’t. The sort of filth that made up that cesspool of a city, maybe he could conceive of it. But the sheer malice that southrons showed one another stretched the edges of Lyarra’s own disbelief. And the depravities inflicted by septons on girls and boys no older than Brandon and the rest of her children, Gods, those were the worst. Lyarra couldn’t stomach thinking about them for more than a second, and she’d only learned of them second-hand.

Her husband’s voice pulled her out of her dark thoughts. “I hope we won’t need to have this talk again. Now is there anything else I should perhaps be informed of, my son?”

“… I’m not sure?” Brandon said uncertainly. Lyarra didn’t know if she should be proud, suspicious or alarmed at her son’s easy compliance with her husband’s commands. “I guess sometimes it feels like I’m still dreaming even when I’m awake, except at the same time not? Almost like I’m skinchanging, but without actually doing it? Even when I am doing it too. Like I’m doing it twice, but not really?”

Lyarra stared blankly at her son. For that matter, so did her husband.

Brandon scowled at them both. “Well, you asked! I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“…Alright then, we’ll have to wait and see,” Rickard said eventually, then held an arm out. “Come now. The night may be for dreaming, but we still have to find our worth in the waking world.”

Brandon made far too strange a face at Rickard’s choice of words, but hopped off the roots and let himself be walked out of the Godswood and back to the Great Keep.

It wasn’t until the mid-day meal that Lyarra realised she’d forgotten to ask just why Brandon had gone to the Godswood at all. She also got an all-new reason to be glad their family supped lunch in private.

“So Lyanna,” her eldest son said idly as he spread butter over a slice of bread. Slowly. With shaky, exhausted hands. “When are you going to introduce us to your friend?”

“Eh?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’d’ve gone with a rabbit myself, but as far as ponies go it’s pretty much perfect. Young, strong, hearty and with the cleanest, whitest coat of hair I’ve ever seen dreamed in my life.”

Lyanna Stark froze.

“I mean, I would feel better if you’d be at least a bit hesitant to ride it all the way down a bottomless watery abyss, but you’re probably old hand at that at this point, right?”

The girl gaped at her older brother, shocked.

“You might want to look up every once in a while, though. Might help to know when you’re being watched and-”

“Shut up!” Lyanna threw her bowl of honeyed porridge at Brandon’s face. “Shut up, shut up, shut UP!” She wailed when Brandon ducked under the table just in time. “That’s none of your business!”

“Lya, what-?“

“You’ve already got everything! Mom, Dad, everyone likes you and you get to do anything you want! What about us, huh? What if I want to do what I want, huh? I’ve got stuff I like too, and you can’t have it! It’s my wonderland.” Lyanna Stark then fled the room in tears.

Lyarra Stark stared after her daughter in open-mouthed shock. And she was far from the only one.

“Er…” Brandon slowly peered over the edge of the table. “That didn’t go any way I expected.”

“You don’t say,” Rickard said, just as bewildered. Not that anyone could see it but her.

“I request permission to finally delve the Greendream, Father.”

“Granted. Clearly something must be done if you are not, in fact, the first in your generation to do so.”

Lyarra Stark seriously considered the fringe benefits of a cast-iron skillet.

“So that’s why she didn’t see the lightning!” Benjen cried in a sudden revelation that escaped Lyarra entirely. It fairly staggered everyone else too. “But how’d she miss the eyes?”

Brandon looked oddly at his brother. “How indeed.” He gave Benjen a very intense stare then. “Do I want to know what your dreams are like?”

“How should I know?” Benjen said with childish confusion. “I never know what you’re thinking, and I follow you around all the time!”

No he didn’t.

“No you don’t,” Brandon said slowly. “Unless we’re talking about different things here.”

“Or the same one,” Rickard said lowly, rising to go sit next to Benjen instead. “Son, why don’t you tell us about your dreams for a change, hmm?”

“You want to know about my dreams?” Benjen asked, amazed.

“Ned, you too.”

“Alright? I don’t think I’ll have much to tell though. I don’t dream much at all.”

“Right,” Lyarra said briskly, standing up and smoothing down her dress. “While you three do that, I’ll go attend to my daughter.” And maybe one of her family will finally make some sense.

She didn’t. All she got from Lyanna’s blubbering diatribe was that her daughter was as quick to miss her brother as she was to resent him for suddenly commanding all of their father’s attention. Never mind that she never used to seek Rickard out all that much in the first place. Lyarra swallowed her pride and went to Brandon for answers again. And when he didn’t make much more sense than Lyanna did – he just ended up rambling about some girl called Alice and a land of wonders or other – she went to her husband. She really should have done that from the start.

“She doesn’t have the greensight, I don’t think,” Rickard told her that same day in the Godswood as he shook the snow off his naked body. Brandon’s madness was catching after all, Lyarra thought crossly. “We do have both greenseers and wargs in our ancestry. But that doesn’t mean normal dreams can’t drift down the right paths. Especially with a Heart Tree so close that’s as ancient as ours. Doubly so now that I’ve cleared it of miscreants, so to speak. There’s weight to old things. Maybe it has its own pull, at least on those with open minds. And the young have the most open mind of all. Although I think Lyanna might be a tad too single-minded, if she’s really wandering into the Greendream without realising it. The opposite of little Ben. He doesn’t seem to be self-aware while in his dreams, but he remembers them easily. Now, at least.”

The Greendream. The Flint had talked to her of it once. The world where faithful first men went to rest with the Gods after death. And where the unfaithful met their final end. Those executed in sight of a Heart Tree at least. She’d never given much thought to how that world twined with this one. And for good reason, because really! Dreams! She’d reached the point where she fretted for hours at a time over dreams. This was it. This was her life now.

Lady Lyarra of House Stark decided then and there that she hated mysteries. Doubly so after her husband himself admitted even he was mainly assuming and guessing at that point. For a dark moment, she wanted to be angry at him. Resent him. Blame him for all the confusion in her life. But being petty was a quick way to end up dead in the mountains, and she wasn’t about to forget that lesson just because she lived in a castle now. She just wished she could throw aside her envy and jealousy the same way.

Then came and went the time when she should have gotten her moonblood and she had something completely different to fret over.

“How late are you, My Lady?” Maester Walys asked her when she went to him in his tower.

“A sennight now.”

“Any pains?”

“No more than usual.”

“Have you bled otherwise?”

“No.”

“I see. So far I see nothing out of the ordinary, at least not for you, my Lady. Nonetheless, I would like to keep a close hand on this. Please see me as soon as you return from your journey.”

“You won’t tell anyone else, I hope? Either it’s nothing, or it’s something and I want it to be surprise.”

“My Lady, as always when it doesn’t run counter to my patient’s health, my lips are sealed.”

She did her best not to hope. Or worry. Or jump to conclusions and otherwise behave such that it would give her away. It was easier than it had been the past few years, which was a mixed blessing. Ever since she had Benjen, her times had been fickle. So had her moonpains. And not always in the same way either.

She soon had her mind taken off that as well. The day prior to their departure, Brandon asked to see them in their chambers early in the morning. Fortunately, he wasn’t so early that he interrupted their personal time. They got dressed quickly and sat next to each other on the edge of their bed to receive him.

“I bring gifts!” Her son grandly proclaimed. He accepted a satchel from his guard – a large one – and waited for Martyn Cassel to bring Rickard’s chair over before he dismissed him and climbed on it. Then he pulled out and gave them each a box. They were solid, pretty things made of varnished redwood, hinged at the back and closed at the front with one of those new ratcheting clasps her son loved so much. “Behold, the grooming kit!”

They each opened their box to reveal a truncated interior padded with cotton wool lined with black velvet. They were entirely filled with items, many of which she was unfamiliar with. Seeing one of those horsehair toothbrushes her son prayed to so often wasn’t all that startling, nor were the scissors, but the jar next to them was a surprise, filled with what he called toothpaste.

“Don’t tell anyone but it’s just sea salt mixed with water and oil from lemon crust,” Brandon said. “Mint works too though, if we ever want to trade it.”

There was a lot more in the case. Scented soap that smelled like blue roses, a hair comb, a hair brush, twenty leather hair ties. From there things stopped being so familiar. Even the ones that seemed obvious in hindsight. The nail clipper proved its weight in gold immediately, once Rickard proved his usual prompt self in testing it. Clip, clip, clip went the wolf’s rough claws. The safety pins also seemed terribly useful. Lyarra Stark seriously wondered why no one had come up with them before. There was even what looked like a small collapsible rake but which her son cheekily introduced as an extendable backscratcher.

“Now everyone will have to scratch mine back!”

Then there were the things her son thought were only suited for a woman, as opposed to those meant for a man. The headband was nothing she’d never seen before, but she couldn’t say the same about the pincers or the tiny pair of scissors, let alone the nail file. The explanation for the first two made her blush. The last left her scandalised. A sharpening stone for her nails! Madness! The snap hair clips, though, she might have called the cleverest of everything if not for the last thing. A second jar to go with the first.

“Hair wash?”

“Aye. It’s made of water, soap, lavender oil, rosemary oil, chamomile oil and beer.”

How did her son come up with these things?

Brandon smiled wryly, reading the thoughts on her face. “I only dreamed up the recipe. The men and women who worked on it are the ones who deserve the praises. Incidentally, they’ve also begged to keep it a trade secret.” He looked at his father then. “We might want to come up with an invention record of some sort before guilds start seeping up from the south to choke us all.”

“You don’t say,” Rickard said dryly, inspecting his own gift. “When did you even have time for all this? There’s barely any time in the day when you’re out of my sight.”

Brandon snorted. “I didn’t do shit. I just wrote and sketched a few papers. Martyn’s the one who went and made everything happen. I’m told he had to push and prod and soothe the egos of a lot of jealous craftsmen for this, so please criticise thoroughly.”

“So that’s why he came asking about boundaries of confidence. It wasn’t about his leeway, it was about yours.” Rickard examined what had to be the strangest razor ever dreamed up. It looked like a tiny flat shovelhead with the handle sticking out the broad side rather than the edge. There were spare blades too. Astonishingly thin. Lyarra couldn’t guess how they were supposed to be mounted in. Rickard eventually put it down and moved to something else. “What’s this?” he asked, indicating one of three jars, rather than two.

“Soap and olive oil plus extract of cloves kept at a low boil in water. Otherwise known as shaving cream.” Brandon made a strangely conflicted face then. “To be honest, I’d rather you didn’t use it.”

“Oh?”

“… Your beard is the best.”

Lyarra had to cover her laughter.

“Is that so?” Rickard asked, enjoying his son’s embarrassment. “And here I’d thought this was for our soon to be hosts.”

“Oh no, theirs are back in my room and the cases aren’t half as fancy. These are all for you. Anyway,” Brandon hastily changed the subject. “This should hopefully suit you better.” Brandon leaned it to grab a small bottle of green glass and held it in the window light. “Almond and rosemary oils. The best mix of all the ones immediately available, I’ve been assured. I call it beard polish. May I?”

Rickard peered at his son for a long moment but nodded slowly and leaned close.

Brandon uncorked the bottle, poured a small amount in his hand and set about carefully kneading it through his father’s beard, pulling and tugging and straightening it for several minutes. Lyarra kept silent so as not to distract them. Rickard had once tried to use some Essosi import, but it tasted foul and rubbed off too easily on everything – especially her – so he soon gave up on the idea. Now, as she watched his face literally transform before her eyes, she found herself hoping this wouldn’t end the same.

Once he was done, Brandon wiped his hands on a cloth. “What do you plan to wear today?”

Rickard’s eyebrows flew upwards but he told him.

Nodding, her son then reached into the case and picked out what turned out to be hair clasps. There were twenty in total, five each of bronze, iron, steel and wood carved with their house crest at the front. He chose three of the first and used them to anchor Rickard’s now well-groomed beard in three wide queues, the longest in the middle. Lyarra could already see all five or more of the rest find their own places in that tableau, if her husband ever decided to let his beard grow further. Which, she thought upon seeing the intense gaze he’d locked on Brandon, was probably a given now.

“Where did you get the bottle?”

Brandon started.

Rickard’s gaze sharpened and he did one of the things he disliked the most. He repeated himself. “Where did you get the bottle, son?”

“… I suppose this is the time to mention the North has glassblowers as of yesterday?”

Lyarra Stark suddenly experienced the strange urge to facepalm. She didn’t. She at least was enough a lady not to lapse that far. It was a very close thing though.

Her husband, on the other hand, pinched his nosebridge, took a deep breath, stood up, picked Brandon off the chair, set him on the floor, knelt down and embraced him. Tight. Long. Long enough for the snow shrikes outside to trill the last chimes of their dawn chorus.

Eventually, Rickard let go but didn’t pull back. He instead laid his hands on his son’s shoulders and let his brow rest on his. Brandon… didn’t stiffen or shrink in embarrassment like Ned might have. He didn’t preen like Benjen would have. He didn’t gloat either, like Lyanna would have done. Instead he… eased. Loosened. Relaxed into a deep, fervent sort of contentment that Lyarra had seldom ever seen, and never so heartfelt.

Watching them, she couldn’t help but feel a jealous pang. Seven years she stood by her son through every hardship and frenzy and fit of madness while Rickard shunned them both. And now the man swoops in and fixes everything in a single moonturn. Did Rickard even know his son now? What did dreams count for, really? Did he know what he liked to eat? To drink? Did he know that he’d mused on and off about an obstacle course to run each day in the mornings? Or that Brandon’s favourite way to have fun was skulking around in that quiet way of his and peer around corners from half-way up to the ground, scaring every scullery maid that passed by? Surely not!

She had a favourite, Lyarra Stark thought wanly. And now it seemed she knew what her punishment was for it. Her son also had a favourite. He had a favourite and it wasn’t her.

“I’m proud of you, son.” Rickard said, as if he hadn’t already won every last drop of his son’s undying awe and admiration and love and devotion and - “But if Myrish assassins come after you in a few years, I will be very upset.” What’s this, now? “Or are you going to claim you somehow don’t also know the secret to clear glassblowing?”

“Oh Myr’s whole schtick is such bullshit!” Brandon burst out of nowehere, backing off and throwing his hands in the air. “Glass is literally just sand, ash and lime! You just mix them up and melt them in a kiln. Martyn barely finished listing the ingredients before working mixes were being thrown around by five different people, to hear him say it. And the best one didn’t even come from a builder or smith or even a jeweller. It was a farmer. You know, the one whose wife randomly came up with a pressure cooker while we were working with her smith brother on the aluminium smelter? Half the night spent walking back the old dream lane for the details, wasted. And there’s no clear glass blowing, it’s all in the materials. I don’t know all the finicky ingredients if you want glass clear and smooth enough for mirrors or lenses, but that’s just if you’re working with shit sand and ash to begin with, and even Walys should be able to figure those out!” Brandon then went on a long, ranting spiel about monopolies, iron impurities, the Free Cities scamming everyone on glass tinting, and how Dorne was either fucking with the rest of the world or filled with nothing but morons if they didn’t have their own glass production after so much time in the sand. “The worst thing is I can’t even hold it against the Myrish,” Brandon finally said. Growled, almost. “If you’ve got a valuable product, of course you’ll want to make it a trade secret!”

“Well now,” Rickard said once Brandon finally wound down, nonplussed. “You seem to have strong feelings about this.”

“You think!?”

“Do not snap at me, son.”

Unless it suits your father to let you divulge every last one of your latest and greatest accomplishments, Lyarra thought crossly.

Her son seemed to remember whose presence he was in, though, finally. He took a few of his strange, staggered deep breaths to master himself. “Right. I’m sorry, Father. I apologise.”

“Forgiven. Now is there anything else you’d like to share that you might be harbouring strong feelings about?”

“… I don’t know, the hair wash maybe? There’s an ingredient the tradesmen could only get from olive oil – a cook figured it out actually – and we barely import enough of that for special occasions. I don’t suppose you have contacts across the sea that can ask about alternatives? Say a bean that only grows in Yi Ti, maybe? Your jar’s made with cedar instead of lavender by the way, apparently.”

“That I can do, though it will have to wait until spring for obvious reasons.”

Brandon, who’d resumed the pacing he’d devolved into mid-way through his tirade, stopped and looked at his father in surprise. “Wait, really?”

“You have my permission to visit the dreams of the Company of the Rose sometime,” Rickard said dryly. “We also rule half the continent, son, and have a legion of traders. I really shouldn’t have to explain this. Anything else?”

“… I suppose there’s two things.” Brandon went to the satchel and pulled out… four copper plaques. Two had the direwolf sigil of their house emblazoned. The other two did not. “I thought to put the names of the makers on the lid.” Rickard accepted one and Lyarra took the other to inspect more closely. It had a pair of names cast with an odd symbol in between. Luwys & Hus. Below them was written ‘Made in Winterfell’. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s rather sweet,” Lyarra said. And she meant it.

“… I think you’ve started something significant,” Rickard eventually agreed after thinking on his answer. “We’ll honour the makers.”

“Great!” To their surprise, Brandon then produced the thinnest and sharpest chisel she’d ever seen, which he then used to fasten the plaques on the spot with nails that, rather than being beaten in, instead spun and sunk into the wood on twisting treads.

Rickard stared at their son, picked up one of the “I call them screws!” to inspect, stared at it for far too long a time while turning it between his fingers, then leaned back and literally looked to the heavens for strength. Considering that was the opposite direction of where their Gods made their place, nothing else need be said on the matter.

“Oh come on, Dad! It’s not like it’s anything new,” Brandon groused. “It’s what we use in fruit presses. It’s not my fault no one bothered to make them small before. I bet everyone in the Free Cities is laughing at us. I don’t even want to think about Yi Ti.”

“Never mind,” Rickard grunted. “Just get whatever’s left out of the way before I change my mind.”

“Fine,” Brandon huffed. “Maybe we should just rip it off like a scab. Fair warning though, it might just be the biggest decision of your lives. I know bringing it up at all is going to be the biggest decision of mine.”

Lyarra suddenly felt deeply concerned about what was about to follow. The feeling only increased as Brandon took a deep breath and had to physically, visibly resolve himself to –

“Should I put a razor and shaving cream in the woman kit too?”

For a terrible moment, Lady Lyarra of House Stark couldn’t understand what she’d just heard. Then she did. “Wha-! Well I never!”

“Yeow!” Brandon barely ducked out of the way of the pillow she threw at him to hide behind his father. “Sanctuary!”

“Think that was funny, do you!?” The woman hissed. She lunched around her husband. And when that failed, she grabbed her pillow from the floor and threw it again. Rickard managed to lean away in time, but Brandon had long since jumped on the bed to hide behind him again. “Come here you-you… you miscreant!”

“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Brandon howled. Then he lunged across the room, threw her pillow back in her face – the outrage! – and dashed out the door laughing like the devil she’d spent years trying to convince herself he wasn’t. In vain, as it now turned out. “You’ll never take me alive!”

“You won’t escape me you little monster!” She hollered after him in the most un-lady like display of her married life. “I’ll get you back for this, mark my words!”

A truly alien sound appeared then. One she’d only ever heard once in the past seven years, back at the fair. Her husband. Laughing. More freely, loudly and uproariously than ever before. And he didn’t stop until he was good and ready, the brute. Because why should he care about her feelings? He was only her husband. Lyarra huffed, tossed her hair, turned away from him, went to her vanity and proceeded to make herself ready for the day while pretending her husband didn’t exist.

She didn’t last a minute. Once she heard him start picking things out of his newest gift, she shifted in her seat despite herself to watch his reflection. Then she gave it up as a bad job and turned enough to watch him properly.

Rickard took out the items he’d chosen, closely handled them for a minute or two each as if to memorise their feel, then he took off the beard clasps his son had so affectionately put in. After that, he went to their wash basin, washed his face with the scented soap, brushed his teeth with a generous serving of paste, and spent an equal amount of time cleaning every nook and cranny of his mouth he could reach. The foam made an ugly spectacle of him, and it ruined whatever grooming hadn’t already washed away with the water. But Rickard cleaned himself off once more, faithfully oiled his beard all over again, and then found a way to secure it with not three but all five of the bronze clasps he’d been given. Even without his crown, he looked like the King of Winter come again.

Then he turned around, strode to her, pulled her out of her seat and gave her the longest, fiercest, stormiest, fieriest, most toe-curling kiss Lyarra Stark had ever received in her life. The skin on his face felt smooth as marble, his beard was like steel wire wrapped up in silk, his tongue tasted like ice straight from the sea, and his breath was akin to the coolest wind beating down from the mountaintops.

When he pulled away she was left light-headed, and all her attempts to say anything ended in moans and whimpers, damn him.

“Was that to your liking, wife?”

“You’re the worst,” Lyarra gasped. Plaintively. “You know it was.”

“Good.” Rickard abruptly let go of her, walked away, sat on his chair and gazed expectantly as her mind failed its first few tries to catch up what he then said. “Now live up to your man’s example, woman.”

When she finally did, she gaped at him, affronted. “Well I never!” She was lost for words as well, it seemed.

Her husband crossed his arms and beheld her, completely unimpressed.

So just to be petty, she turned her nose at him and stormed out of the room in her nightrobe. She’ll just get her maids and prepare for the day in her old chambers, let’s see him posture then!

She would never find the words to describe the torture that she went through that whole day. When she ordered the servants not to serve Brandon anything but bland porridge, Rickard summoned him for an errand with promises of jerky and mulled wine to go. When she went down to the cellars to check for some of that new maple syrup, her husband and son didn’t even seem to notice her pointed dismissal of them both as she passed the training yard. When dinner came and Brandon goggled at Benjen’s humming of something or other instead of showing even a token fear at her gimlet eye, she felt fit to tie him up and shave all his hair off. And whenever her eyes strayed to her husband, Rickard was already watching her. Always. Waited until she turned to meet his eyes and then smirked at her.

Curse this fate, curse her man, and curse the Gods for landing her in the only marriage in the world where the woman was the more wanton one.

That night she bathed in blue roses, washed her hair in lavender, cleaned her mouth with lemon salt, spent far too long tending to her hands, and then surrendered to the longest, hardest, most ardent night of lovemaking of her entire life. Then the morning came and she did it all over again.

The snowstorm that welcomed them once they emerged from their chambers threatened to ruin it all. It thinned and stopped completely before even noon came, but she didn’t need to ride out to know all roads would be snowed in. But her husband had been working on projects of his own too. Most importantly, a sledhouse. It forced them to leave most of their retinue and supplies behind, but what few sled dogs they had proved sufficient to bear them hence. The Cerwyns were very surprised that afternoon when they arrived, pulled forth by hounds and bracketed by Winterfell’s ski detachment.

Then they attended the fair and learned a common lumberjack had stumbled upon a find that outdid every one of her son’s combined.

Brandon’s madness had already caught outside Winterfell, Lyarra thought testily.

She should have expected it really.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
Great chapter.What about railroads made from wood for wagons pulled by horses ? i read,that they could take 10 times more stuff then on normal road.
And it seems,that next Stark is on schedule.
 

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
Great chapter.What about railroads made from wood for wagons pulled by horses ? i read,that they could take 10 times more stuff then on normal road.
And it seems,that next Stark is on schedule.
With everything else in the oven, mass production of steel will probably be available by the time railroads become worthwhile investments. They're certainly being kept in mind though.
 
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Reactions: ATP
Chapter 4: The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (III)

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to @CmirDarthanna.

One more section from Lyarra's POV after this one I think, then Walys and then I can pick up the pace a bit.

==========================

"-. 273 AC .-"​
Castle Cerwyn was a fortress located half a day’s ride to the southwest of Winterfell on the northern bank of the Wolfsriver, the western branch of the White Knife that flowed eastward from Crofter’s Village. The castle wasn’t nearly as large as Winterfell would have been, even had Bran the Builder not insisted on building it around a three-acre forest. But it still had two walls of thirty and forty feet in height, eight towers fifty feet tall each, and a keep big enough to comfortably house their family, servants and garrison, while also leaving room enough for visiting peers and their retinues. Being practical folk, older Cerwyn generations had even set aside apartments in their keep that were every bit the equal of the Lord’s chambers, so that the hosts wouldn’t need to upend themselves every time their liege came down for a visit. Alas, the current Cerwyn generation had, very understandably in Lyarra’s opinion, assumed their liege wouldn’t make it to the fair. Which they had probably considered a blessing, considering the sight that met them on arrival.

When their sledhouse crested from the north, men were well into the task of dismantling what tents hadn’t completely been blown apart. Along with what stalls and flagpoles hadn’t been totalled by winter’s fury. The only things that hadn’t broken down were the few handful of snow huts they skid by on their way to the gatehouse. Things weren’t much better in Angler’s Den, the village set along the Kingsroad to the east of the Keep – alleys were snowed over, fences were askew and even roofs were damaged here and there, all the way to where the village stopped at the river bank proper.

However quick in passing on, the snowstorm had struck Cerwyn as badly as it had Winterfell.

“My Lord and Lady, we were certain you wouldn’t make it,” Lord Robard said as he knelt before them. “Cerwyn is yours. Had we known you’d brave the snows, we’d have redoubled our preparations instead.”

“Rise. It is no matter.” Rickard said. “The fault for not sending a raven is mine. And greetings to you also, Lady Sera. Your son is not here?”

“Welcome to our home, and he is not far, My Lord.”

“He is overseeing the clean-up efforts to the south of the village,” Robard answered as he motioned for bread and salt. “I have, of course, already sent out orders that fair preparations be resumed immediately. Unfortunately, the new Winterfell Wonders will likely be in very short supply even so. Kites, airplanes and sky lamps in particular I am ashamed to say. What wood pulping vats we’d managed to set up were among the worst hit.”

They talked on the way into the castle, with Lord Robard proving fairly reluctant to expound beyond that one admission. He didn’t want to seem as if he was complaining, Lyarra assumed. And perhaps he was wary of sounding as if he minded their presence, when he was the one who invited them to begin with.

“I see,” Rickard said eventually. “It can’t be helped. I will go with you and you will tell me about the expenses on the way. I will cover half the losses.”

“You are most generous, My Lord.” Robard seemed torn between joy that the fair would go on – with the accompanying rise in smallfolk happiness and spending, some of whom had come from other villages – and embarrassment that he needed his liege to come and save the day.

Lyarra left them to it and excused herself to go get settled in with the children, except Brandon whom Rickard was resolved to have nearby even now. She didn’t catch sight of them again until the evening feast, when Lady Sera personally led her, Ned, Lyanna and Benjen to their seats in the Great Hall. They sat left of Rickard. Her husband was already at the center of the table with Robard on his right when they arrived. The Stark guards had already mixed with the Cerwyn guard force among the lower tables as well.

Lyarra Stark relished the chance to indulge in a feast without having to worry about anything remotely related to responsibility. Trusting her children to behave themselves – Rickard and Brandon were on the opposite end of the table so the little ones couldn’t fight for their attention as they usually did – she availed herself of the foodstuffs. Fresh-baked bread, venison stew and beef-and-bacon pie were followed by cod cakes and buns with raisins, dried apples, and pine nuts. She briefly considered trying some of the honeyed chicken as well, but she decided against it when she saw the last dish. It was the spiced roast that Brandon had dreamed up a few years ago. Lyarra hadn’t expected Lord Robard to have kept it in mind among so many other things he’d been bombarded with during his visit, but she was glad for it. It had rather spoiled her when it came to poultry. It consisted of heavily salted and spiced chicken soaked in sunflower oil and set in a baking pan affixed with a thin wooden bottom. The pan would then be covered with a holed lid made of tin and left to cook inside an oven for three to five hours, suspended a palm’s width above the embers. Her son had come up with it after his rather amusing reaction to the honeyed chicken aforementioned. Which was to say, he couldn’t stand it. Or anything resembling sweet meat.

Lyara immediately served herself two drumsticks and a breast and took a bite for taste. As she expected, the cooks had held back on the salt and spices, underestimating the softening effect the meat’s own steam would have on the flavour. Still, they’d done well enough with the pepper powder and hadn’t taken the pan too early off the fire, so it was better than fine. They had been very generous with the garlic as well. Very generous indeed.

Her pleasant fugue of feeding and talking of womanly things – Lady Sera had been very intrigued by their gifts and was a font of questions and appreciation about the many utensils – was abruptly shattered by Lyanna launching a clump of wheat cream from her spoon at Medger Cerwyn’s face.

The mix of ground wheat, butter and honey came to an abrupt stop against Brandon’s trencher. “What’s this?” Brandon said, turning from his conversation. “Is Lyanna Stark being a brat once more? Say it ain’t so!”

“I knew it!” Lyanna crowed in triumph. “You do have eyes in the back of your head!”

“And in front,” Brandon said. “And above, below, to the left, to the right and everything in between. Everywhere. All the time.” Brandon gave the trencher to a nearby servant to pass to the smallfolk outside. “My eyes are always there. Invisible. Watching you.”

“Well poo!” Lyanna sniffed. “Don’t talk about boring stuff then!”

“I’m so sorry my concerns are not to your taste, my lady,” Medger said, not sounding sorry at all. “What might my lady prefer, seeing as she hates romance?”

“I do not!” Lyanna balked, affronted.

“Ignore her,” Brandon told the man. “She’s just delusional.”

“I am not!”

“Sit down daughter,” Lyarra commanded, pushing the girl back on the bench. “Here, have some honeyed milk and leave the men to their mannish talk.”

“But mom, he actually wants to be married! To a lady!

“And that’s terrible,” Lyarra said woodenly.

“Don’t tell me, tell them!”

“Lyanna,” Ned said. “You have a stain on your dress.”

“What? Where?”

Saved by girlish hypocrisy, Lyarra thought. She smiled fondly at Ned and turned back to Lady Sera, though their prior topic had been very effectively thwarted. So she inquired after whatever matter was driving Brandon to so intently interrogate his increasingly bemused older peer. It turned out to be a betrothal. Or, rather, the drama surrounding one. Specifically, Medger’s suit towards one Taelya Forrester, the daughter of Lord Thorren Forrester. Being the second child and not a spare for Gregor, her father had apparently decided to let her have some say in her prospects. Which was to say, she got her pick from the list of young men he considered eligible for her.

“That was two years ago,” Lady Sera concluded. “Since then, the pool has been whittled down to our Medger, who dearly wants the lady in question, and Galbart Glover, whom the lady herself wants on account of his musical skill. Only he’s pursuing his own suit for a different lady entirely, Sybelle Locke of Oldcastle.”

Oh to be young and daft.

“Don’t you all poke at just me,” Medger tossed in from his spot. “I’m not the one that made the initial overtures.”

“Indeed,” Robard acknowledged. “But I keep telling you, son, a man is not meant to chase after women. He puts himself on display and lets the ladies come to him!”

Medger made a face but didn’t reply, as if he was too tired of a long recurring argument.

“But I thought he didn’t get the chance to?” Brandon asked Lord Robard instead. “Parents are the one that set these things up, right? He didn’t do anything. Couldn’t do anything.”

Robard seemed torn between annoyance at being questioned by a boy of ten name days, and the need to be courteous to his future liege lord. “At the beginning perhaps, which couldn’t be helped, but since then things have-“

“-Changed so that I’ll have to drop my suit,” Medger cut his father off with a finality Lyarra hadn’t expected.

Lord Robard seemed taken aback as well, as if this were the first time he heard of this. “Now son, I didn’t mean you should give up.”

“I’m not,” Medger said, picking at a bit of cheese. “I’m man enough to know when something’s out of my hands. And it is. It’s all in Galbart’s now, assuming he can get his head out of his arse enough to notice her.”

“If she’ll only settle for you as sloppy seconds, maybe she doesn’t deserve you.”

Medger was quite thoroughly astonished by that defence of his character on Brandon’s part. Of the rest, Lyarra wasn’t sure who was more aghast at what her firstborn had just said. The only one who didn’t outwardly react in any way was her husband.

Brandon ignored the poorly hidden eavesdropping of everyone in the hall. “Lady Sera. You said Lady Taelya is interested in Galbart Glover for his skill at music.”

Lady Cerwyn pursed her lips, but answered once she noticed Rickard looking expectantly in her direction. “… Just so. He is not a particularly gifted singer, but he can at least hold a tune, and he does play the fiddle as well.”

“Well there you go,” Brandon said, turning to Medger again. “Sing for her.”

The young man snorted and began serving himself some cod cake. “That’ll be the day. I can’t sing for shit.”

“Bullshit,” Brandon said. “Everyone can sing.”

“If everyone could sing, everyone would be a bard.”

“Perfect pitch is the least of what a bard needs. Eddard!”

“I’m here, brother.”

“Tell me the bard’s prerequisites.”

“A bard needs to be passionate enough to focus on music above everything else, wealthy or lucky enough to afford life-long lessons and instruments, he needs exceptional memory to remember his songs, he needs the charisma to persuade bandits and thieves to let him play along instead of robbing him, and most of all, he needs to be that tiniest bit mad. Mad enough to think he can make his entire living off songs to begin with.”

The entire hall seemed to have fallen quiet. Even the minstrel in the corner.

“Beware,” Lyanna intoned, wanting to prove she was just as good as her siblings at Brandon’s games of fancy. “Beware the Bard Prince and the Minstrel King. Charming or not, they’re probably insane.” Then she looked at Benjen and they both burst into childish laughter.

The feast seemed to pick up again but the normal attention paid by everyone in the hall to those at the main table had shifted target.

“Medger,” Brandon called suddenly. “The Bear and the Maiden Fair. The first trine. Sing it for me.”

“What-?“

“Now.”

Medger Cerwyn gaped at the small boy, affronted, but then closed his mouth, scowled and obeyed. Just like that, he obeyed.

A bear there was, a bear, a bear!
All black and brown, and covered with hair.
The bear! The bear!”


Lyarra forced herself not to grimace. It… wasn’t the worst rendition she’d ever heard, but that was all the good she could say about it. Few seemed to differ with her on that opinion.

Brandon just nodded thoughtfully though, then said. “Benjen! Same song, trine one.”

Lyarra turned to her youngest son, astounded.

A bear there was, a bear, a bear!
All black and brown, and covered with hair.
The bear! The bear!


Lyarra Stark stared at her youngest, scandalised. Then she turned to glare at Brandon. How could he? How could he teach his small brother such a ribald song? The nerve of her children!

Then Brandon took over and sung the second and third strophes all by himself.

Oh come they said, oh come to the fair!
The fair? Said he, but I'm a bear!
All black and brown, and covered with hair!

And down the road from here to there.
From here! To there!
Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear!
They danced and spun, all the way to the fair!
The fair! The fair!


As usual, his rendition was flawless and only failed to achieve perfection because of his high, childlike voice.

“Medger,” Brandon said in the ensuing silence. “Third stanza. Go.”

The man blinked and seemed about to say something or other, but whatever he saw on Brandon’s face stopped him. Instead he leaned back and did as ordered again. With a lot more focus and care too.

And down the road from here to there.
From here! To there!
Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear!
They danced and spun, all the way to the fair!
The fair! The fair!


Lyarra’s affront had to be put aside by surprise again. That… that had almost sounded acceptable.

“Just as I thought,” Brandon said, nodding to himself and ignoring the glances exchanged by people around him. “You’re not tone deaf at all. You can sing just fine, so long as you have a reference point. You just need practice.”

“… You really are a well-meaning boy, aren’t you little lord,” Medger’s tone was as fond as it was wan. “But it’s not as easy as you make it sound. Unless you meant I should drag a bard everywhere I go so I have someone to start me off? May as well just let’em sing for me at that point.”

“That’s not…” Brandon grimaced, then he leaned forward with his elbows on the table and rested his mouth on his clasped fingers, closing his eyes. “Let me think.”

They let him think, and he sat there thinking quietly while they ate and talked and ate and talked some more until near the very end of the feast.

“Lord Cerwyn. Father.” Brandon only spoke up when the last leftovers of the dessert were being carried off. “I would like to suggest a new contest.”

“Later,” Rickard said, breaking off his quiet talk of business with Lord Cerwyn to answer his son as if he were expecting that all along. “When we’re in private. We wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

They retired in private, Brandon sketched out the challenge for his newest crafting contest and that was the last Lyarra heard about it for the two days until the fair proper. Though she did learn through Lady Sera that Rickard had ended up suggesting a second contest after some time watching Medger work on the wood pulp clean-up. Which, it turned out, was going extremely poorly. To the point where they had decided to cut off the entire area. They’d expected to have to grind and sweep around snow and sawdust. Instead, the wood pulp and water had frozen solid. Very solid.

“It’s one, uneven, slippery mess and they’ve barely been able to chip at it. It doesn’t seem to crack at all, unlike normal ice. So far they’ve tried mining picks, hammers, sledgehammers, warhammers, spears, swords and even Ice.” It took a moment for her to realize Rickard was referring to his sword. “I actually felt the effort on the last one. Robard decided they’d try hot water after we leave, if they bother at all. Might just be better to set up vats somewhere else and let spring sort out the mess when it comes.”

“And you want people to do that again. During the fair?”

“After what Brandon showed us we can do with measly snow?” Rickard shook his head. “I can’t even imagine what we could do with something stronger. I just wish I’d have thought of it myself. As it is, it took one of Medger’s workers to point out the obvious.”

Thus did come the day of the fair, catered with various foods, supplied with some kites and streamers, and attended by many people generally indulging in everything Lyarra had participated in at home, if on a smaller scale. They’d not built a snow hall, but the central tent had firepits enough to warm by, whenever the chill got to them. The contests weren’t unusual either, but the people were enthusiastic. Lord Robard even took advantage of the nearby Godswood to oversee a few weddings for the smallfolk, one of whom was actually between the winners of the men’s and women’s contests. For all her protests that she’d never be a lady, Lyanna ate up the romance like honeycakes. The Lady Stark also thanked the Gods the Cerwyns seemed free of the madness that made her husband and son think it a good idea to make a public competition out of testing siege weapons. Really, contributing a little gold and maple syrup to the event wasn’t close to enough of a recompense for this display of good sense.

Robard didn’t entirely agree with her on it. “This maple syrup makes me envious, My Lady. Such a clever find. Alas that we have so few of those trees on our lands. We’ve barely scrounged enough for one cauldron. Come to think of it though, House Whitehill has a lot of maples, don’t they? Maybe with this they’ll stop resenting the Forresters so much.”

Lady Sera was not as complimentary. “Please. Why should the Forresters apologise for figuring out coppicing when they didn’t? If the Whitehills blame them to this day for them exhausting their own ironwood supply, I doubt anything will make them see sense.”

“Come now, wife. By this time next year we may be married into their rivalry. Don’t go ruining all my hopes at once.”

That would be trouble come spring, Lyarra thought before turning back to her children. Ned and Benjen were rather dismayed at the lack of explosions, but only until their guards were roped into giving skiing lessons and rides on a few hastily assembled dog sleds. The only thing left to do was to find out if Brandon’s contest yielded whatever it was he wanted. Lyarra had seen him on one of the few times he went to this or that craftsman to test whatever those odd, two-pronged forks were supposed to be. But she couldn’t guess what he was doing, bumping them against table edges and then putting them next to his ear. Just what he was listening for in copper or iron, she had no idea.

That was when the bits and blocks of ice and wood pulp came out and all of that was forgotten. Because it turned out neither she nor Rickard nor Brandon or even that peasant that started it all had grasped the enormity of what they had on their hands. And she wasn’t just talking about the fact that you could apparently make something strong as a rock, just as tough and ten times as light out of water and saw dust.

“Hey father,” Medger Cerwyn said as he stared at the crystalline drum of… whatever it was called. Was it called anything? If they’d only just come up with it then- “Wasn’t that thing two thirds the size when starting out?”

“Indeed it was,” Lord Robard said.

“Hey father,” Brandon said next, staring at the same, smallest chunk out of all that had been put forward by the contestants. “Wasn’t that thing shining crystal blue until the clouds came out?”

“Indeed it was,” Rickard said.

“Hey mother,” Lyanna barged into the discussion as she always did. “Wasn’t that thing glowing pink and purple this morning?”

“Indeed it was,” Lyarra said before she could check herself.

“Lord Cerwyn,” Rickard interjected before anyone could say anything else in front of hundreds of curious smallfolk. “Have you ever played Gwent?”

They used the pretext to retreat to the main tent and away from the inquiring gazes of the crowd. Rickard even went and laid out the cards and began teaching Robard the rules. Lyarra took that time to distract all but one of her children with sweet treats. All the while, nobody said a word.

“Father,” Brandon eventually uttered a few games later, when events caught up to all of them and even Lord Robard proved unable to focus on the play anymore. “Our best farmland is south of the Wall, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Farmland that used to be covered in forests until the Long Night, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Forests which were full of weirwoods.”

“I dare say so.”

“And there aren’t any stories that actually say where they all went during the Pact, are there?”

“No,” Rickard said, setting the cards down. “No there are not.”

“Come to think of it, stories are kind of vague on how House Stark claimed the crown of Winter. Aren’t they?”

“That they are, my son.”

Nobody said a word for quite a while.

“… My Lord Stark. Father,” Medger finally said, throat dry. “With your permission, I-“

“Go. Bring the man here.”

Medger Cerwyn went and returned with the object as well as the man who’d started all this. He turned out to be a large, burly lumberjack. He was also as white as chalk and incapable of standing upright once he was in their sight. ”M’lords, I swear I didn’t-!“

“That thing you made,” Rickard said curtly. “What is it made of?”

“M’lord, I swear I-“

“Answer the question.”

“It were just deadwood, m’lord, I swear! I respect the gods I do, I didn’t desecrate no God tree!”

“Peace, goodman,” Lord Stark said. “You stand accused of nothing. Yet. Now tell me what you did. Every last step.”

He did. And when he was done, they had him sit on a stump near the back of the tent while they decided what to do with that information.

Ice and wood pulp. Six parts ice and one part wood pulp, Lyarra thought faintly. Didn’t matter what kind of pulp or sawdust. As long as the mix was right, you got a frozen material that was as strong as stone and just as tough. Apparently. It could also probably be repaired with just seawater, considering the way certain people up north maintained a certain something eerily similar which only ever seemed pale grey or dull white due to blown dirt. In reality, it shone blue and crystalline in sunlight, glimmered palely in moonlight, and glowed pink and purple at dawn.

Lyarra Stark stared at the slowly, too slowly melting chunk of not-ice. It sparkled from the melting in the light from the firepit with rivulets of water. It looked like it was weeping.

Ice and wood pulp, Lyarra Stark thought. Ice and Weirwood pulp.

Suddenly Rickard nodded sharply and rose from his seat. “Brandon. Bring my sword.” Her son was surprised but obeyed as he should. Rickard spent the short time to his return quietly conferring with Lord Robard. Then he led them, the now terrified lumberjack and a steadily increasing trail of fair goes to the Godswood where several weddings had just been carried out.

“Varr, son of Narr. Kneel.”

“My lord, please-!” The man choked on his words when Medger squeezed his shoulder and pushed him forward.

“Don’t talk. Just do as you’re told.”

The man seemed fit to run for the hills, but the next moment he just seemed to break entirely. He got to his knees as ordered, bowing his head. Really, Lyarra thought waspishly. It was as if he’d somehow missed there wasn’t a block nearby for what he feared was about to happen!

Rickard motioned for their son to approach, slowly pulled his immense sword out of the scabbard, lifted it high in the air, then brought it down to just above the man’s right shoulder. “For re-discovering the secret which Brandon the Builder used to build the Wall –“ the gathered people all gasped and then shut up as if struck dead and dumb “- I hereby elevate you to your own Masterly House.” The sword rose and settled again above the stupefied man’s other shoulder. “I name you Varr, first of your name of House Winterstone, and charge you with the protection and guidance of your territory and smallfolk in and around Silverpine Tower. Do you accept this honor?”

“I… I…” Rickard waited patiently, his arm not wavering even once as his sword hovered just an inch above the man’s shoulder. “I… I accept?” But Rickard only waited further, so the man finally seemed to get a hold of himself, took a deep breath and said more firmly than he probably felt. “I accept, m’lord.”

“Good. You will now swear your oaths. Repeat after me.”
 

Tryglaw

Well-known member
I just remembered,that russians in 18th century was making big clocks entirely from wood.Including entire works of a clock.
Interesting,what else could be made from wood till SI start mass producing steel.

There's a wooden floor manufacturer in Poland that has a clock, really big, made of wood in their guest area of HQ.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Great chapter.
And i love scientific explanation of how Wall was builded.Could they built homes and castles that way now ?
I think,that only walls of castles and cities - living in building made from it would be probably impossible in summer.

P.S i love singing lessons, and how SI aborted any future chances for Lyanna running with Minstrel Prince.Maybe he become author of patriotic northern songs,too ? propaganda is important.
 

CmirDarthanna

Well-known member
Would the ash work as Magic Fertilizer?

The sap as Paint, Stains and Dyes? Will it make wood as strong as steel, impervious to fire and cold? Fabrics that cannot be cut, burnt or torn? Will ships now be free from rot and barnacles?
 

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
Would the ash work as Magic Fertilizer?

The sap as Paint, Stains and Dyes? Will it make wood as strong as steel, impervious to fire and cold? Fabrics that cannot be cut, burnt or torn? Will ships now be free from rot and barnacles?
Putting a lot on the backs of a single type of tree, don't you think? Specially since those trees are holy and even Brandon would be beheaded for going Andal on them.
There's a wooden floor manufacturer in Poland that has a clock, really big, made of wood in their guest area of HQ.
How does that even work? Don't they need a whole bunch of springs?
 

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