A Cold God, Chapter 22

The journey took nearly three months.

Not for lack of speed, nor want of supplies. Queen Lysara’s realm was rich with grain and salt meat, more than should have been possible given the size of her holdings. Yet the pace was slow because she made it so. She stopped at every village, every hamlet, every scattered city along the route to Highgarden. Not once did she pass through without ceremony. She moved like the sun through the sky—bright, deliberate, always seen.

At each stop she gave gifts. Sacks of barley, wheels of hard cheese, smoked meats wrapped in wax cloth. The people gathered like moths to a lamp. They cheered and bowed and called blessings down upon her. Some wept. Most sang. She moved among them like she had all the time in the world.

Her retinue followed in silence and strength. The warriors of House Stark, somber men in gray cloaks and wolf pelts. The Berserkers of House Mormont, bare-chested and painted with old symbols, their eyes sharp as blades. The Strongmen of House Umber, massive figures who carried tree trunks for sport and pulled carts when oxen failed. It was a host made of pride and muscle and steel.

We kept our distance.

Myself and the three who came with me. Not hunters. Not warriors. Storytellers. Nwada, Gir, and Thar. They walked light and spoke less, their eyes always watching, always listening. They were not tall, nor young. Their skin was weathered, their voices quiet. But their minds were sharp. They remembered what others forgot. They knew the bones of the world, the shape of old names.

Among the People, they were called keepers. The ones who held the tribe’s memory in their mouths and spoke it when needed. They knew how to speak to chiefs and to spirits, to strangers and to enemies. They could twist a word in ten ways and make it land soft.

That was why I brought them.

This was not a hunt. Not a war. No prey to track. No blood to spill.

This was a journey into the courts of power. And for that, I needed voices, not blades.

Queen Lysara kept her distance.

Not rudely. Not openly. But always just far enough. Her guards would flank her path when we came near, and her gaze, when it found me, never lingered. She addressed me with the formality of a monarch to a peer, and never once faltered in courtesy. But I saw it. Felt it. The tension beneath the words. The way the air shifted when I passed.

Still, she treated the keepers with respect. Nwada, Gir, and Thar were spoken to as equals, even welcomed into her circle during the evening gatherings. Her nobles and knights called me the Night’s King. A title not given lightly. I had not chosen it, but I did not cast it away. There was use in fear. In dread. These were tools I would need, in time.

At night, her people sat around great fires. Long logs stacked high, the flames crackling and casting light against armor and polished leather. Songs were sung, meat was passed, and stories told. The keepers sat with them. Not quite one of them, not quite apart. They shared the old tales—stories of stars that bled fire, of beasts that walked on two legs and drank the wind. The Northerners listened. Cautious. Curious. The firelight softened some of that suspicion, but it never left entirely.

Word of what I had done had reached them. The stillborn child. The breath I gave him. They spoke of it in hushed tones, as if saying it too loudly might draw me near. They knew only part of it. That the child lived. Not what he had become. They thought me capable of bringing the dead back to life. Close, but not quite. 

Most days I walked alone. I wandered the edges of the host, my steps slow, the ground hard beneath me. I reached further inward. Listened to the frost. Followed the quiet stirrings of what I was becoming. The void behind my thoughts stretched wider now, clearer, the cold more familiar. On occasion, Queen Lysara would try to speak to me, her little human form forced to look up to my Icewalker form just to meet my gaze. She’d ask me questions and my opinions on little matters of no real consequence, such as my opinion on which birds were most colorful. 

In truth, I enjoyed the little conversations of no importance, though I was forced to summon and use one of my reanimated Greenskins to answer for me as a single word from my Icewalker form would’ve ripped her apart. 

And then, at long last, Highgarden rose before us.

It came slow out of the haze that hung above the southern hills, a sprawl of stone and green spread wide across the earth. The road curved toward it in long, gentle slopes. Its towers rose like fingers from the rolling land, layered in ivy, stone pale with age, but unbroken. Moss crept along their bases and flowered vines clung to the joints of the walls, as though the stone itself had bloomed.

Great banners hung from the ramparts. Green and gold. White and crimson. Others too, lesser known, sigils from across the realm. They shifted in the breeze, heavy with thread and dye, flapping like the wings of birds too proud to fly. The air carried the scent of turned earth and blossom, a sweetness foreign to the lands I had known.

The fields around the stronghold were alive with color—meadows spread wide in every direction, bursting with wildflowers and crops already waist-high. Campfires dotted the low hills like stars fallen to the ground. There were tents of silk and leather, pavilions ringed with guards, and long banners staked into the dirt. Kings had come. Lords and lesser men too. Their voices rose in the distance, a low hum of talking and haggling and arguing beneath the sound of horses and hammers and iron on iron.

The walls of Highgarden were thick and careful. Old stones, mortared and patched, but tended with care. Not the mark of ruin or fear. The mark of pride. It had the look of a place that had never feared true winter. No black ice on the roads. No hungry wolves. No fields sown with frost.

Beyond the walls, the town spilled outward. Roofs of thatch and red tile. Streets paved in flat stones and worn with years. The people were loud and full of life. Faces sun-kissed and strong-limbed. Vendors called from their carts, dogs barked in alleyways, children ran with sticks clacking against stone.

It was the kind of place that had never known hunger. Never buried its dead beneath frozen earth. Never walked through snow that buried the roofbeam. A warm place. A bright place.

I watched it from the ridge for a long while. Of all the castles we’d passed by on our way here, this one had to be the grandest. Winterfell, Queen Lysara’s seat, was a grim and dour place by comparison, though that was probably due to the lack of resources on her part. 

I stared at it a moment longer. 

And then we descended.

The road curved down through the outer fields and into the bones of the town. Dust rose with each step, kicked up by hooves and boots and wheels. The sun hung low behind the towers, casting long shadows that stretched out across the path like reaching arms.

Eyes turned toward me. Dozens at first. Then hundreds. Faces looked up from carts and windows, from behind barrels and across cobbled lanes. Some stood still, slack-jawed, others pointed. Then came the panic.

It started small—a gasp, a dropped basket, a mother clutching her child. Then came the shouting. The running. Men and women backing away with wide eyes. A child screamed and vanished behind a stall. Somewhere, a horse reared and snapped its reins, bolting through a line of tethered wagons.

Voices called me a monster. A spirit. A demon from the snows beyond the world.

I did not flinch.

The Icewalker’s form towered over the crowd. Even without the unnatural pallor of the skin or the flickering sheen of frost across shoulders and hair, I would have stood half a head above the tallest man. But with them—skin like white stone, eyes that caught the light and threw it back cold and blue—I did not look like a man at all.

The cloak I wore stirred in the breeze, stiff with ice at the hem. My breath left no mist. My steps made no sound but the faint crunch of dirt hardening beneath me.

I walked as I always did. And they scattered like birds before a storm.

Behind me, Nwada, Gir, and Thar moved in silence. Their steps were steady. Their faces unreadable. They had seen this before. They knew the shape of fear in men’s eyes, the way it spread like fire through dry grass. They did not try to speak to the crowd. No words would have mattered. Not yet.

The murmurs had become shouting. The shouting became movement.

Steel glinted in the sun.

Men broke from the outer camps, warriors in cloaks and mail, some still half-armed, others dragging blades from sheathes as they ran. They came down from the ridges, across the field, from behind wagons and from beside tents. More than a dozen banners in the air, more than a dozen houses in motion. They were afraid. That was plain. They had seen what I was and drawn the only conclusion they could—better to strike now, before words were spoken, before lines were drawn.

Queen Lysara’s host held.

Her warriors fell into place like a door slamming shut. Stark shields interlocked, the bear-marked Mormonts falling in behind, the Umber strongmen planting their feet like trees. Spears leveled. Eyes narrowed. The ground held.

I watched it all unfold.

They were nearly a thousand. Nobles’ men, house retinues, free swords paid in gold and promises. They surrounded us in a crescent, blades drawn, bows half-raised. I could have killed them. All of them. I knew that with a certainty that came from the void itself. I would not even need to try. Not truly. A breath. A word. A gesture.

But I did not move.

Because it would not be a clean death. Not only warriors. There were too many camps too close. Too many innocents in range. Cooks. Pages. Children. I would not spill their blood. Not here. Not now. And besides, there was something in this that amused me. The panic. The gall.

Queen Lysara stepped forward from behind the shield line. Her voice rang out clear above the chaos.

“What is the meaning of this?” she said. “The Night’s King is an ally of the North, and he shall be treated with the respect and dignity afforded to any ruler! Lay down your weapons!”

The crowd did not part, but it faltered. The line of drawn steel did not break, but it leaned. The wind caught her cloak and the sun caught her crown. 

The horns bellowed.

Sharp and low, they cut through the murmurs like axes through old wood. Banners rose with them, cloth and color whipping in the breeze. House sigils flared wide in the light—wolves, suns, lions, thorns, and towers.

And with them came voices. Shouting. Commands barked in a dozen tongues. The ring of steel on steel as swords were drawn and spears leveled. The lords and kings of Westeros had come to speak of unity, but their hands trembled on the hilts of war. At the first sign of fear, they turned to what they knew best. They formed ranks. They raised shields.

The irony of it was quiet. Bitter. They had come to Highgarden to stand as one against a threat beyond their shores. But the sight of something they did not understand—something that did not kneel—had undone them. The pact frayed before it had even been spoken.

Then the wizards came.

Not many. A dozen, perhaps. Maybe fewer.

They stepped into the clearing like shadows peeled from the stones. Men, but not fully. Tall and draped in robes of deep red and grey and gold, the fabric cut long and stiff, dragging across the earth without catching. Their faces were hidden beneath cowls, but power moved with them. Heavy. Coiled. Their staves clacked against the ground in rhythm, the sound like knuckles knocking on old doors.

Tomes hung from thick chains at their sides, bound in hide and iron. Runes shimmered across the covers, symbols that hurt to look at too long. Dust rose where they walked. The air grew still.

Queen Lysara turned her head slightly and spoke over her shoulder. 

“Court Wizards,” she said. “Each realm has one. Like my own.”

Her eyes flicked to me.

“Like Malathax.”