All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (XI)

"-. 274 AC .-"

They put away their skis once they reached the Neck. Instead, they were met by a group of crannogmen who escorted them through the region on foot. Well, on snow shoes at least, though their escorts didn't seem to need them, being so small and slight that the snow supported their weight even without that help. They looked like soundless shadows in their oilskin cloaks as they moved amidst the dense thickets. Seeing them at work, Luwin could understand why some people thought they were kin to the Children of the Forest. Especially the youngest among them, the son of their head guide who was just ten years old. Not that it was true of course. Even if Men and Children could interbreed, which all credible sources agreed they couldn't, the blood wold have thinned so much since the Age of Heroes as to make the point moot.

At first it was less a marshland and more a boggy forest, with trees that looked half-drowned in frozen water and covered in pale fungus that glittered in the frost. The more they moved north, though, the more the foliage changed to shrubbery and slurry marsh. Luwin had passed through the region many years before, when he first travelled to the Citadel, but age and learning made it easy now to understand why the Neck could just as easily be called the Strangler. The black bog of the Neck divided the North from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. To the west was the large forest and a peninsula containing Flint's Finger, the Flint Cliffs, and Cape Kraken, while to the east was the Bite, the long bay of eastern Westeros dividing the North from the Vale of Arryn. North of the Neck were the Barrowlands, where ancient kings up to the very First King of the First Men were said to be entombed. And to the south were the Twins, Seagard, and the Cape of Eagles in the Riverlands. The Green Fork of the Trident originated in the Neck as well.

They didn't have to worry overmuch about some of the natural hazards, unlike any other seasons that got really troublesome for various reasons. They didn't get harassed by midges and bloodflies or any other stinging flies, for one. They didn't need to fear the bog waters that much either, since they'd have to break through the ice before they could drown or sink into the quicksands. But slipping on the ice was its own killer, and the place still held lizard-lions, snakes and dozens of varieties of huge plant life. They ranged from mild irritants like poison kisses, to not so mild predators that could melt the flesh off your bones. Not all of the beasts and plants hibernated or withered in cold times either, they were told. Not the whole way through. It all was quite important because they did not always stick to the Kingsroad. Or, really, the increasingly narrow causeway, as it was called there. The swamp had invaded it with every springmelt and summer floods since the Kingsroad was first built. The Reeds of Greywater Watch did what they could to maintain it, but nature did as nature willed.

Luwin imagined it was a mirror of the same process that saw a coniferous forest be steadily overrun by marshlands after the Children's failed bid to recreate the hammer of the waters, thousands of years before. On being asked, their guide confirmed it, and the small man's even smaller son regaled them with an in-depth lecture on the hows and whys. Quite confidently too. Despite his young age, Howland Reed already seemed to know everything about the deathtrap they unfortunately had no choice but to wade through. It explained why Lord Stark didn't mind him playing pathfinder, despite the strange face he'd made upon the boy's introduction.

Their progress slowed dramatically compared to their journey up to that point, but no one grumbled, especially after guardsman Bors told them what he went through after he wandered after a wisp during watch one night, on the way south. Which, the tiny crannog boy explained, was just the flash of swamp gas escaping through the bog and momentarily igniting.

"It's all the flint stones scattered about," little Howland told them. "They get knocked together by the burst. Long as you're not in the middle of it when they go off, you'll be fine."

"Yes," Lord Stark said with the air of one indulging an inside joke. "Mind you don't get gaslighted."

That was a strange word. Fitting as any other though, Luwin supposed.

They spent a whole day at Moat Cailin, which Luwin mostly slept away. Then they resumed their trek, slow and steady until they finally left the marshes and their guides behind, only then resuming their previous speed. Luwin tried to keep himself busy. Things with Marwyn were still awkward since he refused to teach him more of the Mysteries, even though the man never said Luwin couldn't go to him for anything else. He'd normally have sought out new books to read or maesters to study under. But Oldtown's libraries and lecture halls were far behind him now, and he'd grown as familiar as he was likely to get with his fellow acolytes. He approached Qyburn once, briefly, about him sharing some of his knowledge on health and healing. Instead, he found out how Qyburn earned his first Valyrian steel link.

"Once, at the Citadel, I came into an empty room and saw an empty chair," Qyburn told him with a strange look. "Yet I knew a woman had been there, only a moment before. The cushion was dented where she'd sat, the cloth was still warm, and her scent lingered in the air. If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life?" Qyburn spread his hands. "The archmaesters did not like my thinking, but Marwyn did, and he invited me to partake of a certain brew he'd developed. Well, two really. One made from some sort of leaf, the other made of some ground crystal mixed into a brew as thick as oil but colorless as water. I've no words for the journey my soul undertook, and I didn't quite get my answer as to what we leave behind when we die. Not the first time at least. What I did, however, was see into the world of things that are too small to see."

Qyburn had come out of a magical vision as an adherent of Maester German's much derided theory that disease was caused by tiny creatures invisible to the naked eye.

"I'll keep my heretical views for when I can prove them, I think," Qyburn told him wryly. "Wouldn't want to sabotage my already flimsy odds of making the seven, you understand."

Luwin ended up seeking out the members of their escort instead. And so he learned that Guardsman Tom was a terrible musician plucking at a lute that wasn't his at all. It actually belonged to guardsman Rys, who'd lost some bet or other to lend him his instrument and teach him how to play it. It had not gone well at all. He found out that Guard Captain Rus was Rys' older sibling and was possessed of a work ethic exceeded only by his sense of irony, which was responsible for Rys agreeing to that bet in the first place.

Luwin also got around to watching a training session from start to finish. It was during one of their rare, longer stops in the Barrowlands. It ended up turning into a chain of sparring matches where Mullin beat all but the most seasoned baker's dozen in Stark's retinue. In a row. One after another. At their own weapons. Without any rest in between.

"Others' tits," Bors muttered when Mullin's exhaustion finally got him to falter against one of the veterans of the War of the Ninepenny Kings. A big guard with dark hair and salty beard called Lyndon, armed with a mace. "Is he having us on, trying to be a maester? How'd he make it so long down south without getting knighted?"

"I honestly don't know." Mullin had never said where he came from. Hother had once mentioned that he used to have a Stormlander accent when he first arrived in Oldtown, but Mullin never offered information or answers when asked. Luwin didn't get the impression that there was any grand tale or tragedy behind it though.

Lord Stark had started giving Mullin some very peculiar looks too, but he was a fair bit off from actually interpreting the man's expressions reliably. The Lord began calling on Mullin more and more often too. Called him to ski at his side just behind the biggest, burliest four men-at-arms that always had the head of the column. Luwin wondered if the lord meant to poach him for his guard force, but he doubted it. The odds of anyone establishing an institution capable of successfully competing with the Citadel were ultimately very slim. Having just a dozen or so people to start with, only two of whom were fully qualified, only cut those odds even further. None of them could be spared from the effort, no matter how talented they were at their hobby.

Well, unless Mullin suddenly decided to switch to a martial path in life, but he'd made no sounds of such a thing.

It was shaping up to be a fairly dull end to their journey, which only deprived Luwin of distractions from his anxieties. He incited horror stories around the campfire to get some form of release. Alas, that started working rather too well by the end of their long dash across the Barrowlands. Particularly when they began trading dark rumours about cults and religions and Wendamyr shared with them the darker things he'd heard about the Church of Starry Wisdom. 'Docksite temple sacrifices' took an all new, sinister cant then.

Lord Stark happened to be supping with the rest of them at the time, which he'd been doing a lot more of since Moat Cailin for some reason, always with someone new sat to his right. The man inquired into the history of the cult, and answering somehow ended up being Luwin's job after Marwyn mentioned the information was probably freshest in his mind. Technically true, he'd gained his Valyriain steel link quite recently, to say nothing of his copper ones. Luwin was already regretting his grand distraction plan, but it wasn't like he could refuse Lord Stark's order, even if it wasn't phrased as one.

"In the beginning, the priestly scribes of Yin declare, all the land between the Bones and the freezing desert called the Grey Waste, from the Shivering Sea to the Jade Sea, including even the great and holy isle of Leng, formed a single realm ruled by the God-on-Earth, the only begotten son of the Lion of Night and Maiden-Made-of-Light, who travelled about his domains in a palanquin carved from a single pearl and carried by a hundred queens, his wives. For ten thousand years the Great Empire of the Dawn flourished in peace and plenty under the God-on-Earth, until at last he ascended to the stars to join his forebears.

"Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries... yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth.

"When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world.

"In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men.

"How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior—known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser—arose to give courage to the race of men and lead the virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer that the darkness was put to rout, and light and love returned once more to the world."

When he was done speaking, Luwin dearly hoped no one would mock him for regurgitating a book's contents like Marwyn had openly derided everyone up to his peers for doing. Fortunately, he got his wish. Not so fortunately, their party spiralled into a discussion about history and myth and forgotten stories that probably shouldn't have been forgotten at all, even if they were dark and sinister. The mass human sacrifice by the Children of the Forest to the weirwood trees in olden days, before the Pact and even the Hammer of the Waters that sunk the Arm of Dorne into the Narrow Sea. Garth Greenhand and the darker tales where he demanded blood sacrifice in exchange for good harvest. Nagga the sea dragon and the demon tree Ygg of Ironborn myth that gorged on human flesh before being slain by the Grey King. The mysterious race of men known as the mazemakers, who inhabited the isle of Lorath in ancient days but vanished long before the dawn of true history, leaving no trace of themselves save for their bones and the mazes they built. The Deep Ones and the sinister Old Ones they worshipped, whose oily, discordant echoes even now lingered in the great underground cities of Leng, whispered by statues of a faceless emperor with one eye shaped like a shining trapezohedron. The cult's most holy relic, Wendamyr claimed. If it was true, it had been lost long ago.

They were but archaeological mysteries twisted by myths of savage times into stories to scare children, but even so they filled Luwin with an inexplicable sense of foreboding that persisted all the way to Castle Cerwyn. The manner of their arrival neither dispelled it nor did it provide closure. It did, however, give him something extra to worry about.

They reached Cerwyn near midnight. They were fighting exhaustion well before then, all of them from the biggest guardsman to the smallest dog pulling the sleds. Lord Stark decided to push on rather than make a final stop so close to the keep. There was no pageantry when they arrived. There was no Lord waiting in the middle of the yard to welcome them. The castle spotters only saw them when they were almost at the gates due to the blizzard that kicked off. But their party was still ushered into the great hall as soon as the grooms took charge of the dogs. The great doors had long been barred, but a side entrance was open – they'd caught the last of the day shift just as the servants were leaving for bed, and Lord Stark decided that would serve well enough. Luwin was among the last to enter, having lagged behind everyone except the rear guard on the last stretch. Skiing uphill never got easy, even when you went zig and zag, especially when your legs already felt about to come off. Still, he made it, and he welcomed the warmth, with its light, its lingering smells of food and wine, and the reed pipes playing near the far end, next to the lord' platform. Squeezing around for a better look, Luwin was just in time to see Lord Stark gesture for them not to interrupt or disturb. Luwin was too dumbstruck to attempt such things regardless. Not by the sight of the Lord and his wife sitting with their back at the entrance. Not by the sight of their son playing a most curious set of reed pipes across the firepit from them. Or the unknown woman sitting nearby and watching the man with hooded bedroom eyes. Luwin wasn't even taken aback by the small boy next to the singer, even though he was covered in a grey cloak with white fur lining made for a man full grown. To have such a tiny anklebiter making notes on paper whenever the lordling hit a false note should have at least surprised him, but it didn't. No, it was the girl.

Ambinata in siraxta

Cailon areuedons in nemesi

Satiion branon tosagiíet uo moudas

The young girl singing in Old Tongue to the reedy tunes. Of flying spears, great fires, destiny and dark wings that beckoned in forlornness, leading sign in the sky, flock of ravens looming under the clouds.

Exete 'os brane exete 'os

Etic laxsci 'os aidu laxsci 'os

Etic toage gariíon toage

Etic uregepe tunceton

Luwin heard the words and knew the words and could even make a good guess at what they were supposed to convey in translation, but he didn't care because all his wits had been shaken by the sight of her.

He knew that girl.

Luwin stood there staring until the girl's latest skipping twirl left her facing them and she stumbled to a halt with a squeal. "Papa!"

The boy shot out of his chair like a spinning meteor, swung his father's great cloak above him like the Lion of Night's own shroud, then swept it wide to catch his sister's feet on its hem just so.

Lyanna Stark faceplanted in the middle of Castle Cerwyn's Great Hall.

"Ha!" Benjen Stark crowed. "I told you so! I told you he'd be here tonight, but noooo, big sister always knows best! Well I was right!"

"I'll murder you!"

"Gasp!" Benjen Stark 'gasped' and threw the Stark cloak in her face like a funeral shroud, then jumped over her when she went under. "Dad, save me!"

"Get back here you little insect!"

The little wolf pup with his little grey eyes laughed at his shrieking his sister from where he bounced around his father's feet in his shadow.

Lord Rickard Stark lost his composure for the first time in Luwin's memory, bursting into laughter and kneeling down to embrace his two children. Luwin had eyes for none of it. The scene stabbed at him with the worst pang of homesickness he'd ever felt in in his life. He wanted to go home, back to the Citadel with its winding roads and sphinxes and towering bookshelves and observatories. But even that was ultimately secondary. His mind's eye turned backwards, to memory and fancy that had just proven to have been less fanciful than he ever thought.

He recognized the boy's laughter. He recognized the girls' face.

He'd not even set foot in Winterfell and he was already dreaming Starks.