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KoW - Chapter 41
🕑 Added 2025-02-10 20:52:17 +0000 UTCThoros of Myr
“Lord, please light our fire and shield from the darkness, may your flames scour the world and cleanse it of sin and heresy.” The voices of the faithful echoed through their small, makeshift camp. “Warm our souls with your loving hearth, and burn away the evils of the Great Other.”
“”For the night is dark and full of terror.””
Thoros stood up, letting the campfire crackle next to his boots.
He held his right hand with his left, feeling the tremors come. Sweat covered his brow, a headache ringing on his head like a constant bell.
His lips went over his dry lips in an effort to moisten them, and he took large gulps from his water skin once that proved ineffective.
But the thirst didn’t stop, his body craved wine and mead, not water.
‘Perhaps ceasing drinking altogether was a foolish decision, nothing can go wrong with a drink or two, can it?’ Thoros shakes his head off those tempting thoughts. ‘No, drink is what drove me away from the faith, I shall no longer allow its seeds of corruption to burrow into my mind.’
“Thoros.” Anguy puts a hand on his shoulder. “We are close, and we must be quick.”
Thoros blinks and nods, he grabs his sword and his saddlebag.
“I do not understand why we are here.” Anguy comments as they get farther away from the fire. “We should be out there, giving aid to the unfortunate.”
“If Lord Beric tells of visions of the Ghost of High Heart… If he believes that so called old witch has words to be said, then we shall go there, as is our duty to the Lord of Light’s champion.”
Anguy’s face morphs into slight annoyance, Thoros understands his reluctance to believe in the Lord, no one such as him would be able to relate more, but the R’hllor has blessed him with proof, turned a false priest such as himself into a believer once more, and so shall Anguy and all other men like him, as no one but a god can bring the dead back to life.
“Plus, I do not think the commoners have need of our help, the Stark boy and The Red have pacified the Riverlands, there are no Lannister men left to torment.” Thoros echoes with words that appeal more to Anguy sensibilities.
Anguy nods once again, yet his eyes looked almost lost.
Once apace, Thoros spots the small figure of a small boy with a light purple cloak.
“Ned!” Thoros exclaims. “Where is Lord Beric?”
Edric Dayne is Beric Dondarrion’s squire, and most importantly, the Lord of Starfall, the house of knights and chivalry. He was a handsome boy of ten and two(12), with fair white skin and pale blonde hair. He held a torch in one hand, and as he looked back toward them, Thoros notices that his eyes are a blue to dark they might be purple.
“Ser Thoros!” For their circumstances, Edric’s voice was remarkably light and cheery, and he had a quick shy smile to his face. “I uh- Lord Beric is… relieving himself.”
Thoros chuckles at the boy’s embarrassment, yet before he could tease the brat, a man walks out of the shrubbery.
He was a slight man, handsome with red-gold hair, or at least, that is what he was, before his many deaths.
Now, he had pale, corpse-like skin and a gaunt, skeletal appearance, his right eye had been sunken and collapsed, and dry and cracked lips. A long, ropey scar was adorned around his neck from a previous hanging, while his body was littered with sword and spear wounds, that leaked no blood yet didn’t scar either.
He wore a black satin cloak decorated with stars, a breastplate of dull black steel that displays a forked purple lightning bolt, a longsword by his side and a black shield slashed by lightning.
His eye carried a longing that cannot be understated, a melancholy sadness that only deepened once it came across his own squire.
Beric turns to Thoros, his gaze hardening as it came across his. “The men are ready?” His voice was a hoarse and weak thing, it was so ever since his hanging death.
Thoros nods.
“Good, once we meet the witch, we’ll leave.”
“Where?” Anguy asks.
Beric turns to him with a hardened look. “That is what we aim to find out.”
--*
High Heart is known to be a tall hill sacred to the children of the forest, a place where the tree folk would gather and worship the old gods, communing with them through the weirwood trees.
According to song, however, the Andal king Erreg slaughtered the children of the forest, their animals, and their First Men allies at High Heart, after which his men cut down the weirwood grove.
History says that the children of the forest left these lands before the Andals even reached the Riverlands, and that Erreg had simply killed the men and cut down the trees.
Presently, the smallfolk evade the area though to superstitious sightings of the wailing ghosts of the children, haunting any who dare get close.
Once their group reached the crown of the Hill, Thoros couldn’t help but think that there was a truth to those superstitions.
At the summit, their torches illuminated a ring of one and thirty(31), gigantic ash white stumps of the weirwood trees, each one was supposedly a heart tree with faces carved on its surface.
The winds howled on the high altitude, creating a sound akin to the echoing howl of dark wraiths.
The ground was barren, only littered with the dried sap of the weirwoods that resembled crimson bloody scars, and at the middle, at the center of the ring, was a shabby hut that reeked of herbs and incense.
In the distance, a very large camp could be sighted, enough to house thousands of men and women at once, supposedly the camp of the Stark Lord as he makes way to Harrenhall.
Both Thoros and the others approach cautiously, the atmosphere brought a primal sort of fear to their hearts, as if they were watched by a monster from some dark tale told to misbehaving children.
Before anyone could speak or comment, the door of the hut opens slowly, and as they slowly inched back, cold sweat to their brows, their reason for being there shows herself.
The Ghost of High Heart was an old, stooped, tiny little woman no more than three feet. She had white hair, so long and that its tips were stained brown and red from touching the ground, all stooped and wrinkled and leaning on a gnarled black cane.
“Apologies, my lady.” Beric was the first to speak. “We didn’t mean to barge in like so and disrupt your sleep, it wasn’t proper.”
“You overestimate yourself, puppet.” The old woman’s voice was scratchy and raspy. “’Tis the old gods that stir and will not let me sleep.”
Thoros bristles at the mention of her barbaric gods, yet he stills. It is not his place to questions others faith, it is his to show them the light, and the woman’s turn shall come, soon.
“They show you things?” Beric asks. “Portents of the future?”
"Aye." The ghost lets out a breathless chortle. "Cruelties, the gods show me. I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag with a cleaver. I dreamt of an old knight, his heart bound in iron, caging the red within him, wounded by the death of a fish, its flame snuffed by a hollow lion. I dreamt the cage had shattered, and the knight raged against the sky, bearing his grief for the world to see. Wrathful he was, with nothing but red upon him."
"Aye, I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung, on his shoulder a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings, unknowing of the prince who once drank the sea and woke heavy with water in his veins, cursed to drift in waking slumber." The dwarf woman was saying. "I dreamt of that broken prince, unchained at the sight of the setting sun, drifting like wreckage upon the tide. But when he laughed to the dawn, oh, I woke from joy and terror warring in my heart. All this I dreamt, and more. Tell me, who can sleep with such dreams?"
“What about me?” Beric ignores her question completely. “I saw you in the flames, I saw you show me the way to the light, what do your dreams say about me, ghost?” His words were more pleading than questioning, tinged with sorrows. “How do I end my burden.”
“I see, puppet…” Her red eyes, once so glazed and vacant, settled on them with piercing focus, bringing shivers to Thoros’ spine. “I see a conqueror, paving a path through the lands, until he reaches the cursed fortress, where the echoes of the past whisper warnings to deaf ears. Who faces the bringer of death, the summoner of everlasting winter, in a prison of sacred wood, where the victors of the first war laid down their blades and buried their grudges, entombing the truths of the War for the Dawn beneath silence and shadow. It is he who shall stand at the edge of the abyss, and when darkness stretches forth its grasping hand, he shall not falter. Victorious, he shall turn the works of evil upon themselves, and from ruin, he shall raise a bastion of hope.”
“Through him, the shattered legions shall rally. Under his banner, the lost shall find purpose, and the broken shall march once more. Men of the storm and the sun, of the river and the vale, of the mountain and the sea, all shall kneel and rise anew, bound not by crown or coin, but by the fire of a single cause. He shall be more than a king, more than a warrior. A vanguard of mankind, standing unyielding against the tide, the hammer that shatters the ice, the beacon that dares defy the long night.”
Thoros’ breath hitches, he was familiar with those words, he knew the signs they resembled, so he stepped forward.
“Who shall be that man?” His voice was filled with hope, even as he spoke, he glanced at Beric with conviction, certain with his thoughts. “Who is the prince that was promised?”
“The prince? Pfah!” She laughs so loudly it echoes alongside the whistle of the wind. “That prophecy is shattered, its bones ground to dust. The man I speak of is no prince, no heir to a gilded crown.” Her speech falters, her breath hitching as her red eyes widen in sudden awe. Slowly, she lifts a trembling finger past them. “Turn, puppet. Look behind you, and behold the one who will break your chains.”
Then, they hear it—the crunch of a boot on a broken branch. Entranced by the witch’s words, they had never sensed anyone approaching.
Thoros’ breath hitches, and he slowly, almost fearfully, turns around.
The first thing he sees is a wolf, towering as tall as a man and broad as an ox. Beneath its ashen-gray fur, thick muscles ripple, built for rending flesh with ease. Its golden eyes sweep over them, slow and deliberate, measuring their worth as if they were prey awaiting the slaughter.
Next to him, however, was what seemed like a young man.
He was relatively tall, with a lean yet muscular figure, and wore a grey smokey armer adorned with a direwolf’s head at its front, on his back lay a cloak as dark as the night, which Thoros thought to be made of crow feathers until he glimpsed its smooth surface.
His hair was red, strikingly so, almost matching the weirwoods dried sap lit up by their torches, and extended to his shoulders in wavy, almost wild, curls. What was most striking, however, is that above his same-colored short beard, were eyes that almost shined in the darkness, ice blue orbs that seemed as if they could glimpse Thoros’ soul.
Those cold eyes were trained on Beric’s gaunt figure, filled with strong intensity.
“Interesting.” The man’s voice was deep, and so stoic as to be chilling. “You are a dead man walking.”
Comments
Dark B3rry
Thank you for the chapter!
