All Dwarves Are Not Created Equal (X)

Luwin thought to what he'd seen in the Glass Candle. If what Qyburn said applied to everything that came through another person's mind, did that vision come through in portents and symbols Luwin understood, or those of the other party works by? The one that remotely ignited the candle through… soul sacrifice? What were those weirwood tears even supposed to be?

He slept poorly that night, but at least it made it easy to keep the fire going. Not that they needed it with so many warm bodies packed so close together. His dreams were brief and fleeting. The only one he could recall was a glimpse of Rickard Stark using that unusual hand drill to dig holes into the weirwood trunks at High Heart all the way into the ground. Luwin wasn't sure that wasn't just his tired mind conjuring memories though. Lord Rickard and his men had spent the better part of their first day there doing that. Drilling holes through the middle of the bone-white stumps and then digging through them into the ground below with those strange scissor-shovels they called postholers. And every time they were done, they'd drop new weirwood seeds inside and cover them with the same soil and wood chips they'd dug up.

Luwin wondered how many times others must have tried to replant those trees only for nothing to come of it. He wondered if those tools had been made just for that reason. By that child of the forest or whatever it was.

The call-up was startling when it finally came. Luwin didn't waste time on the morning meditation or exercises or even helping with the cooking. He rose, left the hut before anyone else more than rubbed at their eyes and rushed straight for Marwyn's, crawling inside without even bothering to call a warning. "Master Marwyn!"

Marwyn was mid-way through tying the straps on his jerkin and gave startled "Oof!" when Luwin all but plowed into him.

"You're alive!" Luwin didn't even try to stand up and hugged him around the middle. "I'm so glad."

"For Others' sake," Marwyn grunted, hugging him back to steady him. "You left home far too young, I swear. Soon as you're back I expect you to squeeze your parents for every hug and headpat you're owed, you hear me boy?"

"Yes, master," Luwin mumbled into the man's belly, eyes moist from sheer relief. "Anything you want."

"Want! Want! Want!"

Luwin flinched and looked wildly for the source of the call. He found it in the form of a familiar white raven. It was looking at him from a new perch right behind where the maester stood.

"Ignore it."

Luwin allowed himself to be guided to a nearby stool but found that he couldn't, in fact, ignore anything. "Master, what happened?"

"Lord Stark's turned exactingly thorough in questioning the dreams and visions we've been having." The archmaester peeled a sourleaf off a bale, shoved it in his mouth, and began to chew it as he always did. "He'd been calling on me for various things already, but now he's right persnickety. Not entirely uninformed on portents and symbols either. Unwilling to trust me to mind my own business as of today too, can you imagine? This here bird's gonna be spending most of its time with me from now on, to keep an eye on me."

"You said you'd murder Lord Stark's servant and you got a pet," Luwin said flatly. "That's it?"

"What, being watched at all times isn't enough? I literally went and said I was ready and willing to murder on behalf of him and his, all out of the goodness of my heart. Any other highborn would've been won over right there. Instead, Lord Stark's turned all suspicious and wary of my noble intentions! Had the nerve to say I've no business questioning who he trusts or not. Bah! Withholding information on whoever or whatever's been working magic on his supposed behalf does not stand him in good stead. I'd not've let it go if I were on my own. He'd be mad to think I'd even consider it when I have you all to look after too. Oh, he feels protective towards this unknown asset? Well so am I towards mine, don't you know. I'm not sworn to him, most of you still aren't either by his own decision, and I'd bet on my judgement being better than his any day of the year!"

And he just goes and says so? Luwin looked uncomfortably between Marwyn and the bird watching them.

"Don't get your bunghole in a pucker. Lord Stark doesn't skinchange as much as you'd think. If I were a lesser man I'd maybe fret over the suspicion that he might be watching. As is, though, this here bunch of feathers is just a mildly useful drain on my supply of corn."

"Corn! Corn! Corn!"

"Gotta say, though," Marwyn reached into a pouch and held out a handful of kernels for the bird to eat. "It's quite the thing to have the Warden of the North himself eating from the palm of my hand."

The raven ate and ate the corn and did not reply.

"So…" Luwin tried not to show how light-headed he was becoming from the strange… non-resolution to everything. "Where does it leave us exactly?"

"Since Stark won't tell me anything about his pet sorcerer or whatever it is, I've decided to follow your judgment and defer judgment until we actually know something."

Luwin hoped he didn't fail too badly at hiding how honoured he was that-

"Don't push it down, boy. When you deserve to feel proud, feel proud."

Oh…

"Work on that more."

"Right." The well-meaning rebuke only made Luwin feel embarrassed all over again though. "I can do that."

"And I'm the God-King of Ib. You're eons away from that sort of occult comprehension. We'll work on it together."

The occult was about pride? How had he not come across this in all his studies? "Right," Luwin mumbled, not knowing what else to do but repeat himself. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "So what now?"

"Now we get ready for the road, what else?"

"Wait, so we just go on as normal?"

"Unfortunately," Marwyn grunted, finishing kitting up and starting to pack the rest of his things. "Blasted highborn even had the nerve to change the terms of our private deal. Said he doesn't trust me not to pull a runner once I get my end fulfilled. The nerve! I may not go out of my way looking for devils, but I'd never step out of my path to let one go by! Feh." Marwyn spat a gob of red phlegm aside. It looked like a blood splatter on the white snow.

"… I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Bribery," Marwyn said dryly. "Worry over you greenhorns aside, Stark didn't get me to come along just on the merit of his frosty personality. He somehow knew or guessed enough about me to make the deal personal."

Luwin still had no idea what Marwyn was talking about but he was done admitting ignorance for one day.

"Half the roof of my mouth is one huge, pus-filled carbuncle," Marwyn said, easily reading him as usual, to Luwin's dismay. "Can barely move my tongue without smacking into it. You think I chew sourleaf because I like looking like a sothoryi blood drinker? It's fucking painful is what it is. Sometimes I tap it, but that only works when it's really swollen up and it needs to be a fairly thick pin to do anything, which hurts like the Stranger's own buggering. I believe you can see the problem?"

Somehow, the notion that Marwyn suffered from such a common ailment was the hardest thing to believe out of everything.

"Not that this dentistry Stark talked about is likely to be any gentler. Those tools look like something out of a Bolton's randy fantasies, I swear."

Wait, what? "… What's this about House Bolton? What do you know about them?"

"Lad, I was out traveling for eight years and change. You think I didn't walk about my backyard before I went off east? I'd never have gotten such a bug up my arse about firewater if I hadn't visited the North. The Boltons realized long ago that coating their blades in booze makes their victims last longer before they caught the pus. A lot of things go into properly flaying a person, especially if you want to keep them alive more than their screams last. Not that I got to see or try for myself of course."

"… That you can talk so blithely about this is absolutely horrifying."

"And the world is better off for their passing, yes, yes. Don't give me that look, boy! People paid in soul-crushing agony so we'd learn that dipping your knife in strong drink works something like Myrish fire, just not as well. Not until I perfected my firewater, which is actually better and I'll have a grand old time throwing it in Myr's face once I market it, seeing as that's an option now. Ghoulish as some customs may be, you shouldn't dismiss a potential avenue of progress just because the ones who stumbled upon it were sick fucks deserving to die in a fire. You may as well not extract arrowheads or amputate limbs or sew wounds shut because the ones who first figured out the make of the body got hanged as necromancers. Did you ever ask Qyburn how he earned his first link of Valyrian?"

Luwin desperately tried to keep up with every change in topic. "Should I have? All it takes is studying the known records and theory about magical practices, no?"

"That's what I do with young and idealistic children whose sense of wonder wouldn't survive the real world. Qyburn was almost fifty when he got the bug. Ask him why, and then ask him how he started on the path. It's nothing like you believe."

Was anything like he believed in this mad world? "I'll remember to ask him."

"Good. Well, that's me ready," Marwyn said, having finished packing his things. "I'm going to take apart this hut now. Unless there's anything else that can't wait, you should go break your fast and pack up as well." Marwyn then began punching holes in the walls. It was its own form of training, supposedly.

"Well… there is one thing."

"Go on then."

"The answer is yes."

Marwyn blinked and stopped with his arm elbow-deep in snow.

"You asked me if I still want to learn of the higher mysteries. The answer is yes. I want to learn everything you can teach me."

"Denied."

Understandable, he'll just wish him a nice day and-wait, no it wasn't! "What? But why?"

"The paths occult are walked with will, boy, not emotion. If you think I'll mistake this emotional decision for conviction you've got another thing coming."

Luwin sputtered and spluttered and whined and argued until the hut was in ruins around them.

"Enough," Marwyn bit, spitting another gob of red.

Luwin shut up. Marwyn had never lost patience with him before. Ever.

"Were this Asshai, your attitude would get you enslaved and turned into cattle for the Houses of the Shadowbinders. You're lucky I'm not actually an evil man and I believe enthusiasm like yours is to be cherished. But I will not accept that answer until I know you choice wasn't made under duress."

Luwin felt his frustration fill his insides all over again. "Master, look," Luwin said, pushing down his bubbling anger before it made him say things he'll regret. "I know I've not lived up to your standards. Or anyone's really. I fell in with the wrong crowd. I needed you to rescue me from them. I haven't done shit on this journey. I didn't set out to learn anything about our party. I didn't offer to be camp healer. It didn't occur to me that I should look after the others, Hother and Mullin had to sort everyone else out instead. I'm one of the older acolytes in this mess and one of the most educated besides, but it didn't occur to me that I should assume any responsibility. I'm ready to stop being that person. Please," Luwin pled. "Believe me."

"I do, lad," Marwyn sighed, trying to shoo the white raven off with little success. "But as nice as that is, self-awareness is just half of what you need.

"I've found my center."

Marwyn stopped in surprise.

Luwin was surprised at blurting that out too. But he was even more proud at finally scoring a victory, no matter how small. "I've found it. It only took Lord Stark's exercises to do it. I feel a warmth in my chest, a vibration up and down my spine and a glimmer of something behind my eyes when I breathe to a stop like he showed us. When I just stand still and focus inward."

"Do you really?" Marwyn murmured, though his eyes were hooded with something far different than whatever Luwin had hoped to see. "If that's true, then I'm only more convinced of my decision."

"What? Why?" Luwin demanded. "What do you want from me?"

"Clarity and Will, Luwin." Marwyn said as if the conversation was over, turning to kick around the blocky piles of snow his hut had once been. "Not emotion. Not even conviction. Will. If you ever reach the point where I need more than four words to destroy your entire system of beliefs, then I'll consider it."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I cannot work spells."

The world scattered into its components pieces suddenly, then it abruptly snapped back into place and none of the pieces seemed to fit anymore despite being unchanged.

Marwyn turned to him with the gravest, darkest stare Luwin had ever seen. "Self-awareness is just one puzzle piece of several before you can make any claim of clarity. Awareness of the world. Awareness of others. Awareness of other's lack of awareness of themselves. You're still so very dependent on the spoken word too, for all of this. As prone to losing your composure and questioning your own beliefs as you've always been. Would you like me to throw out some more mind-twisters? Parenting is emotionally manipulating your children so they don't grow up to be savages, convicts or corpses. Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go fuck himself so elegantly that he packs for the trip. Artists use lies to tell the truth while Septons use the truth to tell lies. The Iron Throne can't find its arse without mistaking one for the other, but it still stands today because the difference between brilliance and insanity is success. I could go on and on and on, but what's the point? Any one of these statements is enough to get you bogged down in a downward spiral of arguments and counter-arguments, none of which you'd need to make without that sudden onset of self-doubt. Perfect for a Shadowbinder's Vessel or a sorcerer's slave. Not so much for someone who wants to be themselves for themselves."

Luwin heard the words and the sense in the words and knew they held a message that should make sense to someone who heard the words in that order. But whatever the purpose in that speech… it went completely over his head. His ability to care about it had completely left him, along with his ability to care about everything else after those four words that preceded it. "You're a fraud?"

Marwyn's wan smile was that of someone holding back the brittle mien of disappointment in a student they'd put their hopes in.

Luwin immediately wished he could take his words back. "Master, I…"

"Ask me an honest question and I'll give you an honest answer," Marwyn said, walking to his satchel and digging through it. "If you don't want an honest answer, let me know and tell me what kind of answer you want."

Luwin tried to find words for… something. But he couldn't. He found himself unable to even form a thought, let alone articulate something as complicated as a question.

Their meeting ended unceremoniously, with Marwyn walking over and shoving something in Luwin's arms that almost made him fall off his feet. It was a dark bag of… something deceptively heavy.

"People seldom care what others think. They only want to know what happens to them," Marwyn said, sending him on his way with a gaze that was as heavy as it was unreadable. "You are not exceptional enough to be different."

Luwin left in a daze.

It was only when his feet took him to the firepit without any conscious direction that he learned what he was given. Not through any curiosity of his own, but because of everyone else's. All the acolytes and guards and everyone partaking of the morning meal save Marwyn and Qyburn and Lord Stark himself, wherever they were. Guard Captain Rus was standing to the side with a plate in hand and barking orders. Guardsman Tom played his lute as badly as usual. Ryben was making ribald jokes. Hother corralled Luwin in his usual manner, only to stop in surprise after divesting him of his burden. The moment the tall Northman looked inside marked the end of fireside chatter and saw everyone staring in disbelief at the long, long, long length of chain that grew to take up the entire surface of the hastily cleared serving table.

Three links in mining and the same in ravenry. Four each in warcraft, jewelcraft and architecture and engineering. Five silver for healing. Five platinum in natural sciences. Five again in smithing. Six bronze in astronomy. Six copper in history. Six antimony links for wild lore and survival. Another six in mathematics and economics. Then there were seven in alchemy made of white gold and a full ten of zinc for languages. That was one link more than Luwin thought you could go. High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari, Dothraki, Lhazareen, Summer Tongue, Ibbenese, Rhoynar, Old Tongue, the man must know them all and maybe the Spell Langauge of Asshai, but even then it was just nine. And it couldn't be explained through regional variation because you didn't earn a link until you could at least get by in all sub-dialects.

"Lads," Harmune said, sounding ill. "My humours are about to go into extreme imbalance." The boy rushed out of their huddle and puked everything he'd just had for breakfast.

"Watch it!" snarled guardsman Rys, barely avoiding his boots getting soiled, but he didn't do more than that. He was astounded too.

"Spank me rosy," Ryben mumbled, for once ignoring the drama around him. "Old bastard must have gone and learned every language known to man until the world ran out of tongues. What, did he give himself a link in Trade Talk just to round up the number? How old is our oh so venerable Archmaester again?"

"Forty," Luwin said flatly.

"We're fucking chumps!" Hother said, squatting down on a stump disgustedly.

They really were. How many links a year did Marwyn earn? Because he'd obviously never stopped! And he'd even been out traveling for the past eight years, how much did his practical experience account for out of them? And how did he keep all that knowledge in order? Hells, did he retain even half of it? Seventy-four links! And that didn't even count the individual links in every other topic taught at the citadel, which were all there as expected of his post. Luwin wondered if even those accurately reflected the man's aptitudes and skills. He refused to believe that lone link of lead in diplomatic acumen was anything but deceptive.

When the last of their party finally assembled for their departure, there was not one eye that didn't stare at Marwyn when the man came to retrieve his chain.

"I trust you've all had enough of an eyeful?" the squat man grunted as he stuffed the bag into his satchel. The valyrian steel rod on his back and the mask hanging from his belt glinted tauntingly in the morning sun. How many Valyrian steel links did Marwyn once have before he replaced them with those symbols of office? And how did he get them? Were they already there? Did he make them himself? "Don't break your brains thinking too much about it. You're better off asking yourselves why the hells we Archmaesters lock ourselves in our towers instead of going out and using all we know for something that's actually useful. Pinnacles of the exceptional, hah! The pinnacle wastes of space in the entire world if you ask me."

Luwin watched the shine of the smoky metal, then looked from rod and mask to the ring on Marwyn's finger. The Archmaester liked to twist it when his hands weren't otherwise busy, Luwin thought suddenly. He wondered if there was more than an idle tic to read into it. Wondered if he was mad to dwell on something so minor now.

He wondered why Marwyn suddenly decided to reveal the make of his chain, assuming it wasn't just as a slap in Luwin's face for so abruptly assuming the worst of him.

"Now you all listen to me," the Archmaester said to the acolytes as if Lord Stark and his guards weren't all within hearing distance. The white raven on his shoulder mirrored the way his gaze roamed over them. "No matter how this turns out, I'll take care of you boys." The man let his gaze linger half a moment longer on Tybald and Rhodry. Which would have been fine and likely passed without anyone else noticing if the two in question had been half as discrete as they were observant. "Alright?"

"I don't want your pity," Rhodry said.

"Then you're a fool," Marwyn flatly replied as if Rhodry hadn't just screamed out that he was in a more vulnerable position than anyone else. "Pity is good and right. It shows there's something wrong in the world that should be mended. It shows that you've earned the compassion of another thinking being. Pity rules the lives of millions. It's why you're still alive. It's why I'm still alive."

Rhodry looked like he wanted to say something else but Mullin's hand on his head stopped him. For his part, Luwin wondered if Marwyn was referring to the prior night or something older.

"I'm glad that's settled," Marwyn said as if he hadn't just set them up for a potential future conflict of loyalty between Lord Stark and himself. It was so easy to assume the worst of the man now, Luwin thought bitterly. "We'll be in our new home soon. I wanted to make sure you knew to call on me when you need to. You've been relying on Luwin to act as spokesperson a tad much." Translation: Luwin is not fit to be your spokesperson anymore. He hoped he was wrong to take it that way, but… "And Mama Umber will be there for you when I'm busy."

Marwyn, it seemed, was so very much not upset over their disastrous conversation that he freely japed with the others.

"Fuck you, Maester," Hother muttered.

"Now that's no way to be rising in my esteem."

"Rising? Esteem!?" Hother thundered like a man who'd just had all his expectations upturned. "You wanna see how well I can raise my case, esteemed Archmaester?"

"Umber, dear, I do get off on power but you don't have near enough to be getting on with."

Luwin boggled. So shameless! Not that it was completely outside his usual behaviour, but if Marwyn was like this now, what kind of creature would he be once he got rid of those bad teeth and gum sores that pained him so badly?

Their departure was one of flustered faces, outraged squawks and embarrassed sputtering that only Luwin was too out of sorts to indulge in.