Andrew
Winterfell was full of ghosts for Andrew Stark.
This was not the castle he remembered from the summer of his youth. This place was scarred and broken, more pain than comfort, a haunt of crows and mists. The great double curtain wall and the castle inside the walls still stood, but there was something missing from it. Something which had been there once but not now. Andrew knew exactly what it was. For years he had dreamed about taking Winterfell back and standing in his home once again, but now that he is here he doesn't want to walk in. Too much pain. He has not even visited his parents' room. When he was a little boy he had loved to stay in that room and go to sleep with his parents, listening to his mother's song. Without them even that room is not so fond for him anymore.
A few towers in the first keep had collapsed in his battle with the dragon. The thatch and timber had been consumed by dragonfire, in whole or in part. Under the glass panes of the Glass Garden his mother's roses had frozen and withered, the fruits and vegetables that would have fed the castle during the winter were dead and black. Andrew wondered what did he miss the most? The people who died, the unbroken towers, granite untouched by dragonfire. . . mother's love and father's care? It was them he missed the most, Eddard Stark and Ashara Dayne. He would've happily lived anywhere with his father and mother but without them even Winterfell felt like a ruin.
Plumes of grey smoke snaked up from the rebuilt kitchens and reroofed barracks keep. The battlements and crenellations were crowned with snow. All the color had been leached from Winterfell until only grey and white remained. The Stark colors. Andrew did not know whether he ought to find that ominous or reassuring. Even the sky was grey. Grey and grey and greyer. The whole world grey, everywhere you look.
All about the yard, Winterfell was crawling with people doing dozens of works. None was standing idle except for Andrew Stark. Everytime they chance to see him they bowed and muttered a happy 'Your Grace.'
They had raised the Stark direwolf above the walls of Winterfell as the wind came howling from the north. It was a comforting sight to see the Stark banner flapping in the wind. It had taken the lives of many good men to get that banner to stream proudly from the top again. Ser Rodrik and the others, he had them buried in the old licheyard where they might rest peacefully.
The corpse of the dragon had been burned and the bones all collected in a sack. He would return them to Jaehaerys, the prince had earned them at least. He had cut off the head, that might serve him though. I made myself the Dragonslayer, he thought, and from that came all of this. He might even have made himself a kinslayer but for her.
Andrew kept his eyes downcast as he crossed the yard, weaving between the people. I played in this yard, learned to swing a sword in this yard, he thought, remembering warm summer days playing with his father and mother, sparring under the watchful eyes of old Ser Rodrik. That was back when he was whole, when he still knew how to laugh and smile.
As he passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Andrew put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. Ghost came loping across the yard. He felt warm and happy in the presence of the white wolf. It comforted him to think that part of his family was still with him in the form of Ghost.
It was warmer in the godswood. Andrew Stark was no stranger to this godswood. He had played here as a boy, skipping stones across the cold black pool beneath the weirwood, hiding his treasures in the bole of an ancient oak, climbing up the great weirwood in the center. Once he learned to swim, he had bathed in the hot springs after many a days playing in the yard. In amongst these chestnuts and elms and soldier pines he had found secret places where he could hide. The first prayer he ever said had been here, before the brooding face of the weirwood. His parents used to spend many nights here and he would accompany them whenever he could.
Andrew made his way through the dense stands of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the still pool beside the heart tree. He stopped under the thick white branches of the weirwood and its red leaves. A faint breeze blew past him, the dark red leaves brushing against his face.
Across the godswood, beneath the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was thick with moss. Andrew had soaked in the pools for hours long and loved the bubbles which rose from the murky green depths to break upon the surface. Today he did not find that interest though.
Ghost lapped at the water and settled down at Andrew's side. He rubbed the wolf under the jaw, and for a moment him and the wolf both felt at peace. Andrew had always liked the godswood, Even the heart tree and the quietness no longer scared him the way it used to the littlee boy. The deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he took comfort from that now. The gods were looking over him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First Men and the children of the forest, his father's gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the trees helped him think.
Andrew found himself wondering if he should say a prayer. Will the old gods hear me if I do? They were his father's gods. Once they were his gods too but he had lost his faith in gods ever since that day at Starfall. And that night in Braavos didn't help as well. I loved a maid sweet as summer but Winter is coming.
"Andrew," a voice seemed to whisper.
His head snapped up. "Father. Are you here?" All he could see were the trees and the fog that covered them. The voice had been as faint as rustling leaves, as stron as steel. A god's voice, or a ghost's.
Suddenly he did not want to be here.
Once outside the godswood the cold descended on him like a ravening wolf and caught him in its teeth. He lowered his head into the wind and made for the Great Hall, and then he remembered one more place he wished to see. A Stark place.
He crossed the Guest House and reached the Glass Gardens. When his father ruled Winterfell, the Glass Gardens had been the loveliest place in the entire castle. Queen Ashara herself took care of the garden and there were a dozen colors of roses stretched out to the ends. Andrew would come here with his mother everyday to pluck roses for her. Vynce the man at the gardens would give him berries everytime he visits. It was only a ruin now. There were no roses or flowers to light up the garden.
Vynce was fitting some of the removed glass panes back in its place. "Your Grace," he bowed his head when he saw Andrew. "I would give you berries if only we had some."
Andrew chuckled. "I need some flowers. Roses would be the best."
"Of course, Your Grace," Vynce said and moved to the left corner where some plants were still alive, half concealed from the sun. The twilight blooms, the rarest of all the flowers, had been Queen Ashara Dayne's favorite. The rare violet rose blooms only in the twilight and would glow in twilight. It had a sweet fruity scent which would swoon a maiden's mind in a sniff. He had thought to take some of the roses but there were no twilight blooms to be seen. There were some winter roses though. That would do. His mother loved roses no matter what color they were.
"We've not used the gardens for years now, Your Grace," Vynce said as he plucked the roses, "but I've been taking care of these flowers in honor of your mother. Brilliant woman she was. Had a mind for gardening and everything else, of course."
Andrew touched one blue petal of the rose. That was true, he thought. The north had thrived under his mother as the Queen in the North. She ruled the north as much as his father did. Queen Ashara the Benevolent, she was called by the people of the north and she deserved that name to the very end.
"We never got your... their bones from the south, my lord," Vynce said. "The dragons forbid us to speak the Stark name. But the north remembers, Your Grace. We remember the Stark name."
He picked up more roses and secured them gingerly in his other hand. When Vynce had removed half of the flowers from the plants, he bound them with a plume of pale blue silk and gave it to him. "Here you go, Your Grace."
"Thank you," Andrew said. He got the winter roses in hand and walked out of the gardens. Ghost followed him out silently.
The door to the crypts was frozen shut. He had to pull it open, hinges screaming, to reveal stone steps spiraling down into darkness.
He got a torch and stepped down the spiral steps to the cold vault under the earth. Ghost followed behind him red eyes shining in the dark.
Andrew could not recall the last time he had been in the crypts. It had been before, for certain. When he was little, he used to come down here with father to meet grandfather and uncle.
Then the vault always seemed so dark and scary. Now it didn't scare him so. Ghost stalked out in the echoing gloom, then stopped, lifted his head, and sniffed the chill dead air. He bared his teeth and crept backward, eyes glowing red in the light of his torch. It's just death, Andrew thought. I've seen more of them in my life.
He could feel the stone kings staring down at him with their stone eyes, stone fingers curled around the hilts of rusted longswords.
They were the Kings of Winter and the Kings in the North for thousands of years, all the grim folk who sat here. Andrew lifted the torch high so the light shone on the stone faces. Some were hairy and bearded, shaggy men fierce as the wolves that crouched by their feet. Others were shaved clean, their features gaunt and sharp-edged as the iron longswords across their laps. He strode briskly down the vault, past the procession of stone pillars and the endless carved figures. A tongue of flame trailed back from the upraised torch as he went.
The vault was cavernous, longer than Winterfell itself, and his mother had told him once that there were other levels underneath, vaults even deeper and darker where the older kings were buried. It would not do to lose the light. Ghost followed him hesitantly from the steps, always stopping and sniffing the air for any future dangers.
He looked at the passing faces and the tales came back to him. The maester had told him the stories, and Old Nan had made them come alive. He remembered Jon Stark. When the sea raiders landed in the east, he had driven them out and built the castle at White Harbor. Jon's son was Rickard Stark, not his father's father but another Rickard who took the Neck away from the Marsh King and married his daughter. He found Theon Stark by the thin look and the long hair and skinny beard. People called him the 'Hungry Wolf,' because he was always at war. The tall one with the dreamy face was a Brandon... Brandon the Shipwright. He had loved the sea. His tomb was only an empty hole because he had sailed beyond the Sunset Sea and his body was lost to the sea. Andrew wondered if his father's tomb is as empty as Brandon's. He hoped not. His son's tomb stood next. Brandon the Burner, he had put the torch to all his father's ships in grief. There stood King Edrick Snowbeard, who had ruled the north for a hundred years. There's Rodrik Stark, who had won Bear Island in a wrestling match and gave it to the Mormonts. And then there was Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. He had been the last King in the North and the first Lord of Winterfell, after he yielded to Aegon the Conqueror, until his father declared independence from the Targaryens. He was almost at the end now, and Andrew felt a sadness creeping over him. In the end far away from the ancient kings sat his grandfather, Lord Rickard, who was burned by Mad King Aerys. His uncle Brandon stood in a tomb beside him. He was not supposed to have statue. Statues had been only for the lords and the kings, but his father had loved his brother so much that he had it done.
Next to them, two tombs were closely grouped together as if they were trying to stay together all the way to eternity. That was where he halted. He put the torch in a sconce mounted up on the wall. The statues loomed above him. He remembered them well enough to make out at every features. His father was to his left- long-faced, bearded, solemn. He had the same stone eyes as the rest, but his looked sad. A stone likeness of his bronze and iron crown was set atop his brow.
His mother stood beside him as she had always been. Even in stone her features were smooth and lively. She was lovely even in this cold, dark place. He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, tenderly as if it was flesh and not stone.
Andrew placed the pale blue roses at her feet. He gazed up at them in silence not knowing what to say or do. Memories came back to him sweet as mother's milk. He remembered the good days from the past where he ran around happily with them. It made him happy to think about and then sad.
Andrew sank against them, tears running past his cheeks. "I miss you both," he whispered to them. He saw something move out of the corner of his eye. Andrew brushed of the tears in his sleeve and stepped back from the statues. Had he heard a noise? Was there someone here? Ghost came shooting from the dimness behind him. He bared his white teeth, blood red eyes watching the blackness of the vault.
"Who goes there?" Andrew called.
"It's me, my lord," Maester Walys stepped in the light of his torch, breathless and panting for air. "Lost the light on the way."
"Maester Walys?" Andrew asked.
"I knew you would be here, Your Grace," the grey man said. "I had to see you."
Andrew turned back to his parents.
"We never got their bones, Your Grace," the maester told him, "but we had their statues set up here anyway. You were supposed to be with them but we never had the chance to do it after Jaehaerys came. I suppose that's good now that you're here. . . alive." He took out something from the sleeves of his robes. It took some time for Andrew to see it in the flickering light.
In his hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords. Andrew knew it at once he saw it. "Father's crown?"
"Yes," Walys told him. "Your father gave it to me when you went south. He told me that it has no reason to be in the south. Ever since then I've kept it safe waiting for someone to wear it. Now it is yours, Your Grace." Andrew took the crown in his hands, his fingers stroking the blades testing their sharpness. They were still very sharp. His father had the right of it. It was the crown of the north and it belonged in the north.
It was the crown of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.
Andrew gazed at the crown in his hands in silence. He had seen the crown on his father's head many times before. It had made a glorified sight. He did not know if he was fit to wear the crown after all he had done.
"You should come see the castle, my lord," Maester Walys said breaking the silence of the crypts. "We've prepared your father's chambers for you."
They belong to my father, not to me, he wanted to say. "I'll be there," he said instead.
There was one thing he had to do before visiting his parents' room.
He had given his chief captive a large room in Winterfell to act as his cell. The first thing Andrew had done after claiming Winterfell was to remove the Targaryen prince from the chambers of his father. He had not entered the room himself but has ordered the men to clear Jaehaerys' things from there. Wick and Denton stood guard at the door where his cousin was locked away. Andrew asked Wick to open the door. When the door opened with an audible creak, Andrew slipped inside and asked Wick to close the door behind him. A half eaten black bread and crumbs of often biscuits were still left on the plate given to him. A skin of wine lay uncorked on the table beside his bed. The faint odor of wine greeted him.
In one corner of the room a heap of furs was piled up against the makeshift bed.
The furs stirred as the door was closed behind him. Some of the furs had gone ragged and patched together. An arm emerged, then a face—pale silver hair, tangled and matted and browned with dirt, two fierce eyes, a nose, a mouth. Dirt caked the prisoner's hair, wet with sweat. "Stark." His voice croaked, echoing around them in the closed room. "Have you come to kill me?"
Is that why I came here? he wondered. Somehow he think not.
"You are my prisoner. My father never condoned the murders of prisoners unlike yours." Andrew let that hang for a moment, then said, "I came here to see you."
Jaehaerys Targaryen's lips skinned back from his teeth. "Why did you want to see me?" Though he was only a boy, he had been a strong prince when he went into the captivity. Andrew hoped that his time in the cell would've changed him a bit.
Andrew sat himself on the chair near the table. "I'm sending you to the Wall."
His cousin looked as if he did not believe it. "You can't. My father is king."
"Not for long."
Jaehaerys pushed himself to his feet and kicked aside the furs clinging to his ankles. "You're a fool to believe it. You can't face the might of House Targaryen."
"Say that to your dragon," Andrew told him.
Jaehaerys's hands closed into fists. There was a sudden uncertainty in the dragon prince's face then.
When he was silent, Andrew continued. "Everyday you are here it is dangerous for you," he told Jaehaerys. "The people expect me to cut off your head and send it to your father. There were complains of some nasty business with dragons. I can't allow you to walk away just like that after this."
"So you are sending me to the Wall," Jaehaerys said. "To join the Night's Watch."
"It is a better offer than the one your father gave mine," he said.
Jaehaerys slumped his shoulders in defeat. The prince didn't even try to look at his face.
Andrew took the wooden wolf toy from his jacket and threw it at Jaehaerys' foot. The toy landed with a thump and came to rest hitting Jaehaerys' foot. The prince eyed at the wolf and then looked up to face him.
"That is the first toy I ever remember holding." he told Jaehaerys. "It was a gift from my uncle Arthur. He brought it for me the second time he visited me. Eight years have passed since I left it here and now, this is the only thing left in this castle that belonged to me eight years ago. You can't even stand any presence that reminds me now, can you?"
Jaehaerys did not dare to look up from the wolf, lying abandoned near his legs. He wondered what the prince was thinking. It had been hard for him to fight against his own family, to fight against the ones whom he believed as family once. He wondered if it had been hard for his cousin as well or if Jaehaerys Targaryen was still thinking for a way to kill him.
"Once I may have even thought of you as brothers," Andrew continued. "Now I realise how stupid I had been to even think that."
"Why did you leave my alive?"Jaehaerys asked after a paused silence.
It was hard to think about it. To think about her and everything. Was this how hard for my father when he was forced to fight his sister's family? It only made him sad to dwell in the past. He straightened himself. "Trust me, had I been the boy I was I would've loped off your head the first moment I got," Andrew said to him. "But someone once told me that, killing is not always the only solution. And you're only alive because of her."
He doubted if he had made the right decision by sparing him. Perhaps I should make his head a gift for Rhaegar and Lyanna as the others say and be done with it, Andrew thought, but something inside told him otherwise. He is only a boy and had nothing to do with the sins of his father. Andrew wondered what his father would do, how his mother would handle this, how his uncle might deal with this. But Eddard Stark and Ashara Dayne were dead, so was Uncle Arthur and the others.
"Anyway enough of that," Andrew said. "When a man takes the black, his crimes are wiped away. Take the black and join the Night's Watch and none could call you guilty."
Jaehaerys thought about it for a moment and looked up at him. " What about my men?"
"They will be given the freedom to choose their fate," said Andrew. "They can either go with you to the Wall or they can go back to your father."
"When do I leave?"
"Today," he told Jaehaerys. "The northern lords will be coming here soon enough. It is not good for you if you're still here when they come. Gather your belongings as soon as you can, come to the yard."
He got up from the chair and turned to leave. "Andrew." Andrew was at the door when Jaehaerys called him, by his name. He looked over his shoulder to see him standing beside the wolf. "My father will never go down without a fight."
Andrew looked at him quietly. "I don't want him to," he said after a moment.
By evening the yard was packed to see the Targaryen prince leave. Andrew stood with Maester Walys and Desmond. Jaehaerys was flanked by his remaining men, all huddled up waiting for judgement.
"Jaehaerys Targaryen," Andrew called, "for the crimes you've committed against House Stark and the north, I'm sending you to the Wall."
There was a sudden murmur in the crowd. Andrew ignored it and looked to the Targaryen guards. "You all can join your prince to serve with him in the Wall or you can go back to King's Landing."
The dark cloaks looked at each other's faces and stood quietly. After a deep quietness has passed through the yard, one of the guards stepped forward. "Your Grace," the man went to one knee before him. "I wish to join my prince to take the black."
"You would do no such thing, Gwayne," Jaehaerys told the man from behind. "This is my sword to bear, my cup to drink from. You'll take the others and leave."
Gwayne looked back at his prince. "The men know there way back as well as I do, my prince."
"Go back, Gwayne. Its an order."
"For once I wish to see how it is to disobey your order, my prince," Gwayne said.
"Is there anything I can say to change your mind?" Jaehaerys asked his loyal man.
"I don't think so."
With that he knew Gwayne would join Jaehaerys wherever he went. He was astonished by the loyalty of the man. Not everyone would join the Night's Watch and share the black cloak for another man's sentence. "Very well then," Andrew looked at his cousin. "I believe I have something of yours."
Wick rolled a wooden cart to Jaehaerys. The cart was nearly filled with the bones of the dragon. The bones rattled when the cart came to rest. The black bones were dark and shining in the evening light. Jaehaerys' hand ghosted over the bones as if he was imagining touching his dragon, alive and well. He gave one last wistful look at them black bones and turned to his men.
"Gerrick, take them back to Dragonstone, will you?" When Gerrick nodded he could see a faint smile dancing at the lips of his cousin. "If that's all we are ready to leave." Jaehaerys looked at him waiting for his orders.
Andrew nodded and the gates were opened for them. Two parties parted to the opposite ways as they passed through the gates, one turning south and the other, small party, turned north.
Andrew watched them go from the top of the gatehouse. The Stark direwolf flapped very much near him that he could hear the sound of the banner swaying from the pole. In the crenellations, they had raised a pike for a good twenty feet above the surface. Even from down here he could make out the long, sharp teeth and the hole where an eye of the dragon had been once.
He stood there with the dragon head, gazing into the air for a long time after both the parties have vanished from sight. He had sent his own men with letters bearing his own seal and sign to escort them safely to their destinations. Andrew hoped that they come back safe.
As the stars started to light up the sky, Andrew Stark walked down the steps and made for the Great Keep. The day has already given too much of the painful memories and he was ready to face the last of it.
The lord's chambers had been completely changed by the Targaryens. He did not remember the room as it had been in his father's days. All the furnishings were new, brought up from the south. The canopy bed had a feather mattress and drapes of blood-red velvet instead of the old grey. Andrew pulled the red clothes down and replaced them with the grey he got from Poole.
His father's chair was still there though, carved of black oak with a grey leather seat. The table he once remembered seeing had been filled with papers but now the only things it held were plates and flagons of wine. There was nothing in this castle which belonged from his childhood. There was nothing left there that had belonged to his parents.
He found an old dusty chest in one corner of the room. Andrew crossed the room and wiped the dust off the chest. The box was stoutly made and bound with iron, and it had no lock.
Inside, Andrew found the paintings of his father and mother done by a myrish painter when he was still a baby. The painting were dusted, seemingly forgotten for years but they were not marred by time. Beneath the paintings, a fur-trimmed cloak and a lilac velvet gown were bundled up together.
He draped the cloak over his shoulders. The cloak fit him perfectly. Andrew found the presence of the cloak soothing. He pressed the gown against his chest. The smell of roses was still heavy in it. The velvet fabric was warm, as warm as his mother's kisses. He felt loved and happy with his father's cloak and his mother's gown around him.
Andrew hung both the paintings behind his bed and stood back. Both Eddard Stark and Ashara Dayne were happy in the paintings. He wished they were happy even now. He pushed back the sheets covering his bed and draped his father's cloak and mother's gown over them. When he finally slipped into them, he fell asleep with the fragrance and warmth of his mother and the comfort of his father around him, with them watching over him as he had once gone to sleep eight years before.