“My lady, you should have sent word of your coming,” Ser Donnel Waynwood told her as theirhorses climbed the pass. “We would have sent an escort. The high road is not as safe as it once was,for a party as small as yours.”

“We learned that to our sorrow, Ser Donnel,” Catelyn said. Sometimes she felt as though her hearthad turned to stone; six brave men had died to bring her this far, and she could not even find it in herto weep for them. Even their names were fading. “The clansmen harried us day and night. We lostthree men in the first attack, and two more in the second, and Lannister’s serving man died of a feverwhen his wounds festered. When we heard your men approaching, I thought us doomed for certain.”

They had drawn up for a last desperate fight, blades in hand and backs to the rock. The dwarf hadbeen whetting the edge of his axe and making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner theriders carried before them, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue and white. Catelyn hadnever seen a more welcome sight.

“The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died,” Ser Donnel said. He was a stocky youth oftwenty years, earnest and homely, with a wide nose and a shock of thick brown hair. “If it were up tome, I would take a hundred men into the mountains, root them out of their fastnesses, and teach themsome sharp lessons, but your sister has forbidden it. She would not even permit her knights to fight inthe Hand’s tourney. She wants all our swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale … against what,no one is certain. Shadows, some say.” He looked at her anxiously, as if he had suddenly rememberedwho she was. “I hope I have not spoken out of turn, my lady. I meant no offense.”

“Frank talk does not offend me, Ser Donnel.” Catelyn knew what her sister feared. Not shadows,Lannisters, she thought to herself, glancing back to where the dwarf rode beside Bronn. The two ofthem had grown thick as thieves since Chiggen had died. The little man was more cunning than sheliked. When they had entered the mountains, he had been her captive, bound and helpless. What washe now? Her captive still, yet he rode along with a dirk through his belt and an axe strapped to hissaddle, wearing the shadowskin cloak he’d won dicing with the singer and the chainmail hauberk he’dtaken off Chiggen’s corpse. Two score men flanked the dwarf and the rest of her ragged band, knightsand men-at-arms in service to her sister Lysa and Jon Arryn’s young son, and yet Tyrion betrayed nohint of fear. Could I be wrong? Catelyn wondered, not for the first time. Could he be innocent afterall, of Bran and Jon Arryn and all the rest? And if he was, what did that make her? Six men had diedto bring him here.

Resolute, she pushed her doubts away. “When we reach your keep, I would take it kindly if youcould send for Maester Colemon at once. Ser Rodrik is feverish from his wounds.” More than onceshe had feared the gallant old knight would not survive the journey. Toward the end he could scarcelysit his horse, and Bronn had urged her to leave him to his fate, but Catelyn would not hear of it. Theyhad tied him in the saddle instead, and she had commanded Marillion the singer to watch over him.

Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. “The Lady Lysa has commanded the maester to remain atthe Eyrie at all times, to care for Lord Robert,” he said. “We have a septon at the gate who tends toour wounded. He can see to your man’s hurts.”

Catelyn had more faith in a maester’s learning than a septon’s prayers. She was about to say asmuch when she saw the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone of the mountains oneither side of them. Where the pass shrank to a narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to rideabreast, twin watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered bridge of weathered greystone that arched above the road. Silent faces watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, andbridge. When they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and hisarmor were grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish,wrought in gold and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. “Who would pass the BloodyGate?” he called.

dbridge. When they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and hisarmor were grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish,wrought in gold and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. “Who would pass the BloodyGate?” he called.

“Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her companions,” the young knightanswered.

The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. “I thought the lady looked familiar. You are far from home,little Cat.”

“And you, Uncle,” she said, smiling despite all she had been through. Hearing that hoarse, smokyvoice again took her back twenty years, to the days of her childhood.

“My home is at my back,” he said gruffly.

“Your home is in my heart,” Catelyn told him. “Take off your helm. I would look on your faceagain.”

“The years have not improved it, I fear,” Brynden Tully said, but when he lifted off the helm,Catelyn saw that he lied. His features were lined and weathered, and time had stolen the auburn fromhis hair and left him only grey, but the smile was the same, and the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars,and the laughter in his deep blue eyes. “Did Lysa know you were coming?”

“There was no time to send word ahead,” Catelyn told him. The others were coming up behindher. “I fear we ride before the storm, Uncle.”

“May we enter the Vale?” Ser Donnel asked. The Waynwoods were ever ones for ceremony.

“In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, True Warden of the East, Ibid you enter freely, and charge you to keep his peace,” Ser Brynden replied. “Come.”

And so she rode behind him, beneath the shadow of the Bloody Gate where a dozen armies haddashed themselves to pieces in the Age of Heroes. On the far side of the stoneworks, the mountainsopened up suddenly upon a vista of green fields, blue sky, and snowcapped mountains that took herbreath away. The Vale of Arryn bathed in the morning light.

It stretched before them to the misty east, a tranquil land of rich black soil, wide slow-movingrivers, and hundreds of small lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by itssheltering peaks. Wheat and corn and barley grew high in its fields, and even in Highgarden thepumpkins were no larger nor the fruit any sweeter than here. They stood at the western end of thevalley, where the high road crested the last pass and began its winding descent to the bottomlands twomiles below. The Vale was narrow here, no more than a half day’s ride across, and the northernmountains seemed so close that Catelyn could almost reach out and touch them. Looming over themall was the jagged peak called the Giant’s Lance, a mountain that even mountains looked up to, itshead lost in icy mists three and a half miles above the valley floor. Over its massive western shoulderflowed the ghost torrent of Alyssa’s Tears. Even from this distance, Catelyn could make out theshining silver thread, bright against the dark stone.

When her uncle saw that she had stopped, he moved his horse closer and pointed. “It’s there, besideAlyssa’s Tears. All you can see from here is a flash of white every now and then, if you look hard andthe sun hits the walls just right.”

Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so high you canstand on the parapets and look down on the clouds. “How long a ride?” she asked.

“We can be at the mountain by evenfall,” Uncle Brynden said, “but the climb will take anotherday.”

Ser Rodrik Cassel spoke up from behind. “My lady,” he said, “I fear I can go no farther today.” Hisface sagged beneath his ragged, new-grown whiskers, and he looked so weary Catelyn feared hemight fall off his horse.

“Nor should you,” she said. “You have done all I could have asked of you, and a hundred timesmore. My uncle will see me the rest of the way to the Eyrie. Lannister must come with me, but thereis no reason that you and the others should not rest here and recover your strength.”

“We should be honored to have them to guest,” Ser Donnel said with the grave courtesy of theyoung. Beside Ser Rodrik, only Bronn, Ser Willis Wode, and Marillion the singer remained of theparty that had ridden with her from the inn by the crossroads.

“My lady,” Marillion said, riding forward. “I beg you allow me to accompany you to the Eyrie, tosee the end of the tale as I saw its beginnings.” The boy sounded haggard, yet strangely determined;he had a fevered shine to his eyes.

Catelyn had never asked the singer to ride with them; that choice he had made himself, and how hehad come to survive the journey when so many braver men lay dead and unburied behind them, shecould never say. Yet here he was, with a scruff of beard that made him look almost a man. Perhapsshe owed him something for having come this far. “Very well,” she told him.

“I’ll come as well,” Bronn announced.

She liked that less well. Without Bronn she would never have reached the Vale, she knew; thesellsword was as fierce a fighter as she had ever seen, and his sword had helped cut them through tosafety. Yet for all that, Catelyn misliked the man. Courage he had, and strength, but there was nokindness in him, and little loyalty. And she had seen him riding beside Lannister far too often, talkingin low voices and laughing at some private joke. She would have preferred to separate him from thedwarf here and now, but having agreed that Marillion might continue to the Eyrie, she could see nogracious way to deny that same right to Bronn. “As you wish,” she said, although she noted that hehad not actually asked her permission.

Ser Willis Wode remained with Ser Rodrik, a soft-spoken septon fussing over their wounds. Theirhorses were left behind as well, poor ragged things. Ser Donnel promised to send birds ahead to theEyrie and the Gates of the Moon with the word of their coming. Fresh mounts were brought forthfrom the stables, surefooted mountain stock with shaggy coats, and within the hour they set forth onceagain. Catelyn rode beside her uncle as they began the descent to the valley floor. Behind cameBronn, Tyrion Lannister, Marillion, and six of Brynden’s men.

Not until they were a third of the way down the mountain path, well out of earshot of the others,did Brynden Tully turn to her and say, “So, child. Tell me about this storm of yours.”

“I have not been a child in many years, Uncle,” Catelyn said, but she told him nonetheless. It tooklonger than she would have believed to tell it all, Lysa’s letter and Bran’s fall, the assassin’s daggerand Littlefinger and her chance meeting with Tyrion Lannister in the crossroads inn.

Her uncle listened silently, heavy brows shadowing his eyes as his frown grew deeper. BryndenTully had always known how to listen … to anyone but her father. He was Lord Hoster’s brother,younger by five years, but the two of them had been at war as far back as Catelyn could remember.

During one of their louder quarrels, when Catelyn was eight, Lord Hoster had called Brynden “theblack goat of the Tully flock.” Laughing, Brynden had pointed out that the sigil of their house was aleaping trout, so he ought to be a black fish rather than a black goat, and from that day forward he hadtaken it as his personal emblem.

The war had not ended until the day she and Lysa had been wed. It was at their wedding feast thatBrynden told his brother he was leaving Riverrun to serve Lysa and her new husband, the Lord of theEyrie. Lord Hoster had not spoken his brother’s name since, from what Edmure told her in hisinfrequent letters.

Nonetheless, during all those years of Catelyn’s girlhood, it had been Brynden the Blackfish towhom Lord Hoster’s children had run with their tears and their tales, when Father was too busy andMother too ill. Catelyn, Lysa, Edmure … and yes, even Petyr Baelish, their father’s ward … he hadlistened to them all patiently, as he listened now, laughing at their triumphs and sympathizing withtheir childish misfortunes.

When she was done, her uncle remained silent for a long time, as his horse negotiated the steep,rocky trail. “Your father must be told,” he said at last. “If the Lannisters should march, Winterfell isremote and the Vale walled up behind its mountains, but Riverrun lies right in their path.”

“I’d had the same fear,” Catelyn admitted. “I shall ask Maester Colemon to send a bird when wereach the Eyrie.” She had other messages to send as well; the commands that Ned had given her forhis bannermen, to ready the defenses of the north. “What is the mood in the Vale?” she asked.

“Angry,” Brynden Tully admitted. “Lord Jon was much loved, and the insult was keenly feltwhen the king named Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had held for near three hundred years.

Lysa has commanded us to call her son the True Warden of the East, but no one is fooled. Nor is yoursister alone in wondering at the manner of the Hand’s death. None dare say Jon was murdered, notopenly, but suspicion casts a long shadow.” He gave Catelyn a look, his mouth tight. “And there is theboy.”

“The boy? What of him?” She ducked her head as they passed under a low overhang of rock, andaround a sharp turn.

daround a sharp turn.

Her uncle’s voice was troubled. “Lord Robert,” he sighed. “Six years old, sickly, and prone to weepif you take his dolls away. Jon Arryn’s trueborn heir, by all the gods, yet there are some who say he istoo weak to sit his father’s seat. Nestor Royce has been high steward these past fourteen years, whileLord Jon served in King’s Landing, and many whisper that he should rule until the boy comes of age.

Others believe that Lysa must marry again, and soon. Already the suitors gather like crows on abattlefield. The Eyrie is full of them.”

“I might have expected that,” Catelyn said. Small wonder there; Lysa was still young, and thekingdom of Mountain and Vale made a handsome wedding gift. “Will Lysa take another husband?”

“She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits her,” Brynden Tully said, “but she has alreadyrejected Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this time she will choose herlord husband.”

“You of all people can scarce fault her for that.”

Ser Brynden snorted. “Nor do I, but … it seems to me Lysa is only playing at courtship. She enjoysthe sport, but I believe your sister intends to rule herself until her boy is old enough to be Lord of theEyrie in truth as well as name.”

“A woman can rule as wisely as a man,” Catelyn said.

“The right woman can,” her uncle said with a sideways glance. “Make no mistake, Cat. Lysa isnot you.” He hesitated a moment. “If truth be told, I fear you may not find your sister as … helpful asyou would like.”

She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“The Lysa who came back from King’s Landing is not the same girl who went south when herhusband was named Hand. Those years were hard for her. You must know. Lord Arryn was a dutifulhusband, but their marriage was made from politics, not passion.”

“As was my own.”

“They began the same, but your ending has been happier than your sister’s. Two babes stillborn,twice as many miscarriages, Lord Arryn’s death … Catelyn, the gods gave Lysa only the one child,and he is all your sister lives for now, poor boy. Small wonder she fled rather than see him handedover to the Lannisters. Your sister is afraid, child, and the Lannisters are what she fears most. She ranto the Vale, stealing away from the Red Keep like a thief in the night, and all to snatch her son out ofthe lion’s mouth … and now you have brought the lion to her door.”

“In chains,” Catelyn said. A crevasse yawned on her right, falling away into darkness. She reinedup her horse and picked her way along step by careful step.

“Oh?” Her uncle glanced back, to where Tyrion Lannister was making his slow descent behindthem. “I see an axe on his saddle, a dirk at his belt, and a sellsword that trails after him like a hungryshadow. Where are the chains, sweet one?”

Catelyn shifted uneasily in her seat. “The dwarf is here, and not by choice. Chains or no, he is myprisoner. Lysa will want him to answer for his crimes no less than I. It was her own lord husband theLannisters murdered, and her own letter that first warned us against them.”

Brynden Blackfish gave her a weary smile. “I hope you are right, child,” he sighed, in tones thatsaid she was wrong.

The sun was well to the west by the time the slope began to flatten beneath the hooves of theirhorses. The road widened and grew straight, and for the first time Catelyn noticed wildflowers andgrasses growing. Once they reached the valley floor, the going was faster and they made good time,cantering through verdant greenwoods and sleepy little hamlets, past orchards and golden wheatfields, splashing across a dozen sunlit streams. Her uncle sent a standard-bearer ahead of them, adouble banner flying from his staff; the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn on high, and below it hisown black fish. Farm wagons and merchants’ carts and riders from lesser houses moved aside to letthem pass.

Even so, it was full dark before they reached the stout castle that stood at the foot of the Giant’sLance. Torches flickered atop its ramparts, and the horned moon danced upon the dark waters of itsmoat. The drawbridge was up and the portcullis down, but Catelyn saw lights burning in thegatehouse and spilling from the windows of the square towers beyond.

“The Gates of the Moon,” her uncle said as the party drew rein. His standard-bearer rode to theedge of the moat to hail the men in the gatehouse. “Lord Nestor’s seat. He should be expecting us.

Look up.”

r’s seat. He should be expecting us.

Look up.”

Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw was stone and trees, the loomingmass of the great mountain shrouded in night, as black as a starless sky. Then she noticed the glow ofdistant fires well above them; a tower keep, built upon the steep side of the mountain, its lights likeorange eyes staring down from above. Above that was another, higher and more distant, and stillhigher a third, no more than a flickering spark in the sky. And finally, up where the falcons soared, aflash of white in the moonlight. Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the pale towers, sofar above.

“The Eyrie,” she heard Marillion murmur, awed.

The sharp voice of Tyrion Lannister broke in. “The Arryns must not be overfond of company. Ifyou’re planning to make us climb that mountain in the dark, I’d rather you kill me here.”

“We’ll spend the night here and make the ascent on the morrow,” Brynden told him.

“I can scarcely wait,” the dwarf replied. “How do we get up there? I’ve no experience at ridinggoats.”

“Mules,” Brynden said, smiling.

“There are steps carved into the mountain,” Catelyn said. Ned had told her about them when hetalked of his youth here with Robert Baratheon and Jon Arryn.

Her uncle nodded. “It is too dark to see them, but the steps are there. Too steep and narrow forhorses, but mules can manage them most of the way. The path is guarded by three waycastles, Stoneand Snow and Sky. The mules will take us as far up as Sky.”

Tyrion Lannister glanced up doubtfully. “And beyond that?”

Brynden smiled. “Beyond that, the path is too steep even for mules. We ascend on foot the rest ofthe way. Or perchance you’d prefer to ride a basket. The Eyrie clings to the mountain directly aboveSky, and in its cellars are six great winches with long iron chains to draw supplies up from below. Ifyou prefer, my lord of Lannister, I can arrange for you to ride up with the bread and beer and apples.”

The dwarf gave a bark of laughter. “Would that I were a pumpkin,” he said. “Alas, my lord fatherwould no doubt be most chagrined if his son of Lannister went to his fate like a load of turnips. If youascend on foot, I fear I must do th............