Martin, R.R. - A Dance with Dragons - A Song of Ice and Fire - Book Five

“Yes, my lady. They are the clothes I was given.” That was one of the lessons he had learned at the Dreadfort: to take what he was given and never ask for more.

Lady Dustin wore black, as ever, though her sleeves were lined with vair. Her gown had a high stiff collar that framed her face. “You know this castle.”

“Once.”

“Somewhere beneath us are the crypts where the old Stark kings sit in darkness. My men have not been able to find the way down into them. They have been through all the undercrofts and cellars, even the dungeons, but …”

“The crypts cannot be accessed from the dungeons, my lady.”

“Can you show me the way down?”

“There’s nothing down there but—”

“—dead Starks? Aye. And all my favorite Starks are dead, as it happens. Do you know the way or not?”

“I do.” He did not like the crypts, had never liked the crypts, but he was no stranger to them.

“Show me. Serjeant, fetch a lantern.”

“My lady will want a warm cloak,” cautioned Theon. “We will need to go outside.”

The snow was coming down heavier than ever when they left the hall, with Lady Dustin wrapped in sable. Huddled in their hooded cloaks, the guards outside were almost indistinguishable from the snowmen. Only their breath fogging the air gave proof that they still lived. Fires burned along the battlements, a vain attempt to drive the gloom away. Their small party found themselves slogging through a smooth, unbroken expanse of white that came halfway up their calves. The tents in the yard were half-buried, sagging under the weight of the accumulation.

The entrance to the crypts was in the oldest section of the castle, near the foot of the First Keep, which had sat unused for hundreds of years. Ramsay had put it to the torch when he sacked Winterfell, and much of what had not burned had collapsed. Only a shell remained, one side open to the elements and filling up with snow. Rubble was strewn all about it: great chunks of shattered masonry, burned beams, broken gargoyles. The falling snow had covered almost all of it, but part of one gargoyle still poked above the drift, its grotesque face snarling sightless at the sky.

This is where they found Bran when he fell . Theon had been out hunting that day, riding with Lord Eddard and King Robert, with no hint of the dire news that awaited them back at the castle. He remembered Robb’s face when they told him. No one had expected the broken boy to live. The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could . It was a strange thought, and stranger still to remember that Bran might still be alive.

“There.” Theon pointed to where a snowbank had crept up the wall of the keep. “Under there. Watch for broken stones.”

It took Lady Dustin’s men the better part of half an hour to uncover the entrance, shoveling through the snow and shifting rubble. When they did, the door was frozen shut. Her serjeant had to go find an axe before he could pull it open, hinges screaming, to reveal stone steps spiraling down into darkness.

“It is a long way down, my lady,” Theon cautioned.

Lady Dustin was undeterred. “Beron, the light.”

The way was narrow and steep, the steps worn in the center by centuries of feet. They went single file—the serjeant with the lantern, then Theon and Lady Dustin, her other man behind them. He had always thought of the crypts as cold, and so they seemed in summer, but now as they descended the air grew warmer. Not warm , never warm, but warmer than above. Down there below the earth, it would seem, the chill was constant, unchanging.

“The bride weeps,” Lady Dustin said, as they made their way down, step by careful step. “Our little Lady Arya.”

Take care now. Take care, take care . He put one hand on the wall. The shifting torchlight made the steps seem to move beneath his feet. “As … as you say, m’lady.”

“Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that.”

He is not my bastard , he wanted to say, but another voice inside him said, He is, he is. Reek belongs to Ramsay, and Ramsay belongs to Reek. You must not forget your name .

“Dressing her in grey and white serves no good if the girl is left to sob. The Freys may not care, but the northmen … they fear the Dreadfort, but they love the Starks.”

“Not you,” said Theon.

“Not me,” the Lady of Barrowton confessed, “but the rest, yes. Old Whoresbane is only here because the Freys hold the Greatjon captive. And do you imagine the Hornwood men have forgotten the Bastard’s last marriage, and how his lady wife was left to starve, chewing her own fingers? What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned’s precious little girl.”

No , he thought. She is not of Lord Eddard’s blood, her name is Jeyne, she is only a steward’s daughter . He did not doubt that Lady Dustin suspected, but even so …

“Lady Arya’s sobs do us more harm than all of Lord Stannis’s swords and spears. If the Bastard means to remain Lord of Winterfell, he had best teach his wife to laugh.”

“My lady,” Theon broke in. “Here we are.”

“The steps go farther down,” observed Lady Dustin.

“There are lower levels. Older. The lowest level is partly collapsed, I hear. I have never been down there.” He pushed the door open and led them out into a long vaulted tunnel, where mighty granite pillars marched two by two into blackness.

Lady Dustin’s serjeant raised the lantern. Shadows slid and shifted. A small light in a great darkness . Theon had never felt comfortable in the crypts. He could feel the stone kings staring down at him with their stone eyes, stone fingers curled around the hilts of rusted longswords. None had any love for ironborn. A familiar sense of dread filled him.

“So many,” Lady Dustin said. “Do you know their names?”

“Once … but that was a long time ago.” Theon pointed. “The ones on this side were Kings in the North. Torrhen was the last.”

“The King Who Knelt.”

“Aye, my lady. After him they were only lords.”

“Until the Young Wolf. Where is Ned Stark’s tomb?”

“At the end. This way, my lady.”

Their footsteps echoed through the vault as they made their way between the rows of pillars. The stone eyes of the dead men seemed to follow them, and the eyes of their stone direwolves as well. The faces stirred faint memories. A few names came back to him, unbidden, whispered in the ghostly voice of Maester Luwin. King Edrick Snowbeard, who had ruled the north for a hundred years. Brandon the Shipwright, who had sailed beyond the sunset. Theon Stark, the Hungry Wolf. My namesake . Lord Beron Stark, who made common cause with Casterly Rock to war against Dagon Greyjoy, Lord of Pyke, in the days when the Seven Kingdoms were ruled in all but name by the bastard sorcerer men called Bloodraven.

“That king is missing his sword,” Lady Dustin observed.

It was true. Theon did not recall which king it was, but the longsword he should have held was gone. Streaks of rust remained to show where it had been. The sight disquieted him. He had always heard that the iron in the sword kept the spirits of the dead locked within their tombs. If a sword was missing …

There are ghosts in Winterfell. And I am one of them .

They walked on. Barbrey Dustin’s face seemed to harden with every step. She likes this place no more than I do . Theon heard himself say, “My lady, why do you hate the Starks?”

She studied him. “For the same reason you love them.”

Theon stumbled. “Love them? I never … I took this castle from them, my lady. I had … had Bran and Rickon put to death, mounted their heads on spikes, I …”