The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was no window, no bed, not even a slop bucket. Heremembered walls of pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey door of splintered wood,four inches thick and studded with iron. He had seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shovedhim inside. Once the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He had aswell been blind.

Or dead. Buried with his king. “Ah, Robert,” he murmured as his groping hand touched a coldstone wall, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had shared in thecrypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes. The king eats, Robert hadsaid, and the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, NedStark thought, and the Hand is buried.

The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He remembered the oldstories about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons who labored on his castle, so theymight never reveal its secrets.

He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer,Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run when hewas needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. “Fool,” he cried to the darkness, “thrice-damnedblind fool.”

Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight,but there was mockery in her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” shewhispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had paid the price of his folly with their life’s blood.

When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Evennow, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.

When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For howlong he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closedhis eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not knowwhich was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbingdreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and hiswaking thoughts were worse than nightmares. The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles.

He wondered where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see her again.

Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his shattered leg, an itch beneaththe plaster. When he touched his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was hisbreathing. After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a voice. He made plans to keep himselfsane, built castles of hope in the dark. Robert’s brothers were out in the world, raising armies atDragonstone and Storm’s End. Alyn and Harwin would return to King’s Landing with the rest of hishousehold guard once they had dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north when the wordreached her, and the lords of river and mountain and Vale would join her.

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flowerof his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sittinghis horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear asmountain lakes. “Look at us, Ned,” Robert said. “Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and mekilled by a pig. We won a throne together …”

I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you, hid the truth. I let themkill you.

The king heard him. “You stiff-necked fool,” he muttered, “too proud to listen. Can you eat pride,Stark? Will honor shield your children?” Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, andhe reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning,mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing.

Ned was half-asleep when the footsteps came down the hall. At first he thought he dreamt them; ithad been so long since he had heard anything but the sound of his own voice. Ned was feverish bythen, his leg a dull agony, his lips parched and cracked. When the heavy wooden door creaked open,the sudden light was painful to his eyes.

A gaoler thrust a jug at him. The clay was cool and beaded with moisture. Ned grasped it with bothhands and gulped eagerly. Water ran from his mouth and dripped down through his beard. He drankuntil he thought he would be sick. “How long …?” he asked weakly when he could drink no more.

The gaoler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat’s face and frayed beard, clad in a mail shirt and aleather half cape. “No talking,” he said as he wrenched the jug from Ned’s hands.

“Please,” Ned said, “my daughters …” The door crashed shut. He blinked as the light vanished,lowered his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw. It no longer stank of urine and shit. It nolonger smelled at all.

He could no longer tell the difference between waking and sleeping. The memory came creepingupon him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring, and he was eighteenagain, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. He could see the deep green of the grass, andsmell the pollen on the wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine. He rememberedBrandon’s laughter, and Robert’s berserk valor in the melee, the way he laughed as he unhorsed menleft and right. He remembered Jaime Lannister, a golden youth in scaled white armor, kneeling on thegrass in front of the king’s pavilion and making his vows to protect and defend King Aerys.

Afterward, Ser Os well Whent helped Jaime to his feet, and the White Bull himself, Lord CommanderSer Gerold Hightower, fastened the snowy cloak of the Kingsguard about his shoulders. All six WhiteSwords were there to welcome their newest brother.

Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar Targaryen. The crown prince wore thearmor he would die in: gleaming black plate with the three-headed dragon of his House wrought inrubies on the breast. A plume of scarlet silk streamed behind him when he rode, and it seemed nolance could touch him. Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid SerArthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.

Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field after unhorsingSer Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion’s crown. Ned remembered the moment when allthe smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornishprincess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crownof winter roses, blue as frost.

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals thethorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood rundown his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.

Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winterroses.

“Gods save me,” Ned wept. “I am going mad.”

The gods did not deign to answer.

Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another day had passed. At first he wouldbeg the man for some word of his daughters and the world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were hisonly replies. Later, when the stomach cramps began, he begged for food instead. It made no matter;he was not fed. Perhaps the Lannisters meant for him to starve to death. “No,” he told himself. IfCersei had wanted him dead, he would have been cut down in the throne room with his men. Shewanted him alive. Weak, desperate, yet alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill him or theImp’s life would be forfeit as well.

From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the door creaked open, Ned put a hand tothe damp wall and pushed himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made him squint. “Food,” hecroaked.

“Wine,” a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter, though hewore the same leather half cape and spiked steel cap. “Drink, Lord Eddard.” He thrust a wineskininto Ned’s hands.

The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it. “Varys?” he saidgroggily when it came. He touched the man’s face. “I’m not … not dreaming this. You’re here.” Theeunuch’s plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the coarse hair with hisfingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. “Howdid you … what sort of magician are you?”

“A thirsty one,” Varys said. “Drink, my lord.”

Ned’s hands fumbled at the skin. “Is this the same poison they gave Robert?”

“You wrong me,” Varys said sadly. “Truly, no one loves a eunuch. Give me the skin.” He drank,a trickle of red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth. “Not the equal of the vintage you offeredme the night of the tourney, but no more poisonous than most,” he concluded, wiping his lips. “Here.”

Ned tried a swallow. “Dregs.” He felt as though he were about to bring the wine back up.

“All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords and eunuchs alike. Your hour hascome, my lord.”

“My daughters …”

“The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled,” Varys told him. “I have not been able to find her.

Nor have the Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new king loves her not. Your older girl is stillbetrothed to Joffrey. Cersei keeps her close. She came to court a few days ago to plead t............