"-. 273 AC .-"
Once upon a time, an old man went hunting for cold in the mountains. It was slow and painful and a relief as he walked, staggered, stumbled, crawled and lay down in the snow. As he died, he was glad he'd made it far enough that his little ones wouldn't stumble over his corpse. And when his breath shuddered its last gasp, the old man's last thought was to wonder if maybe he shouldn't have gone quite so far afield. Was there even a godface near enough to take him on?
There wasn't. He'd go the same way as every other hunter and fighter and fisherman and peasant that died out of gods' sight. Whatever it was. He didn't want to find out. He was about to find out.
Then he didn't.
Death came down from above, knelt at his side and overlayed him entire, somehow. It spoke for a lifetime between one moment and the next. Of sense and reason and knowledge dreamed into the world from beyond the stars and everything the man did throughout his life that meant something. It was enough to enlighten even the poorest slave that never saw the sun, but none of it found any point of purchase. He was a simple man who led his life as well as he could and just wanted to go meet his gods.
He'd often imagined that death would be disappointing, not disappointed.
But death saw the man's wish fulfilled all the same. Picked him up off the ground and strode off amidst tree and stone and stream. There was no second thought for the flesh and bone and frozen blood left behind. Not from death, nor from the man himself as he rested content in its right hand like an iridescent egg made of every hue known to man and beast and everything in between. Death didn't go down the man's path, though. Instead, it made its way to the edge of the woods before taking flight once more. Soared over the distant lands like a bird until it descended again. Landed in front of the ancient face that had beheld for thousands of years unbroken the place where winter fell.
With the snow-white trunk of the weirwood behind it, he could finally see it now. Death. What it looked like. An unlined outline cut into the shape of a boy wearing a hooded cloak made of one and one thousand eyes borne each by crow feathers. They blazed with blue and white fire and enfolded him entirely like a panoply of interlocking runes that gazed and blinked every which way. They saw everything and acknowledged everything. From the fever that strangled the neck of warlords all the way to the top most edge of the world. From the cool and curious western ocean to the eastern red dawn which they looked away and past with a contempt wilfully blind.
Death gave the soul to the tree. The mouth swallowed it. The right eye glowed and wept its price right back. It looked like another soul, except smaller and paler and lacking any shades of colour at all besides the blueish green of sea water. Or perhaps the pines of silver fir.
Death flew again then, up and southwards all the way to the end of the marshes. There it seemed to stop, except it didn't. It seemed to stretch forward, eyes and flame and smokemist and itself unspooling like a spiral the further south it went. It flew and spun and drew a path between sunbeams, dodging the usurpation that fell upon the land like blood-red sunrays from the east. Thinner and thinner it grew, all save for the blue-green bead of light inside death's grasp. Thinner and thinner it grew the further it extended beyond the neck of the world where even the highest mysteries had fallen fallow. Then it swooped past the tallest tower into the not so tallest tower and a very familiar room where an even more familiar figure paced back and forth. A figure that was worried and stressed and undecided and angry. A figure that death ignored in favour of alighting next to the obsidian rod near the wall.
Death fed the not-soul to the glass candle. The newest claim disclaimed all prior claims. The candle came alight. The squat man spun to face it, astounded and then appalled when he saw past death to where he lay gazing from the other side. A distant roar sounded from the other side of the world as if screamed by an angry dragon. Then a one-eyed raven plunged through window and flame into his face screaming Luwin, Luwin, Lu-
"-win, Luwin, LUWIN!"
Luwin flinched awake to find himself starving and parched and being shaken by the shoulder where he lay on the ground in near total darkness. The guttural, grunting voice forced reality onto him like nothing else did. The light of the glass candle winked out between blinks. Even so the dark didn't return. Not entirely. There was light coming from behind now, as if the door-
"Luwin, lad, are you with me? Say something, damn you!"
"M…Ma-"
"No, stop. Stop, lad. Never mind." A pair of enormous arms hoisted him off the from under his knees and shoulders before his surroundings started to stomp past him with astounding swiftness, to the tune of a positively debauched cursing streak. Not for the first time, Luwin felt vindicated in shunning the Trade Talk and all its breeding grounds. Or he would have, if he had the strength left for what few wits it would have taken to do even that much. As it was, he didn't have enough to spare even for the life-upending experience he'd just been carried out of. He felt weak, his heart beat ahead of his body, his breath was shallow, his eyes struggled to adjust to the light, and then his head started pounding from the rattling pace on top of everything else.
By the time they finally reached whatever destination he didn't have eyes to look and guess at, his savior's diatribe had crossed over into every language known to man and finally settled into a veritable deluge of the foulest cursing known to sailors. Even so, Luwin's wits hadn't recovered. What few he could spare ran in circles around the reality that his master in the higher mysteries had a very hard ale-belly. Almost as hard as his thick chest.
All of that was blown away by the feeling of the stair climb ending, the bed beneath him, and the replacement of his line of sight with a very familiar beetled brow. Then a cool glass of water pressed against his lips. He drank greedily.
"Slowly, slowly lad! You've been in there for – how many days were you in there for? Oh who am I kidding, you never miss an appointment!" Archmaester Marwyn had always looked more a mastiff than a maester, but now he sounded just about ready to bite like one too. "I said go slow! … Alright. I'm going to feed you now. You're in luck, I like my breakfast soft and quick, now say ah – don't you make that face at me boy! Open up!"
Not willing to try his luck so soon after almost starving to death in the dark, Luwin did as ordered.
"Thank whatever gods aren't too up their own arse, you're not a lackwit yet."
The porridge was warm and sweet with honey. The spoonfulls were big and generous. They didn't miss their mark or dribble in a mess. Despite his ungraceful frame and murderous rage coming off in waves, the Master of Mysteries had very steady hands.
When he was done, Marwyn fed Luwin a second glass of water, then a third. He even let him hold it alone that time. His hands shook and he nearly dropped it, but he managed in the end. Marwyn then sat on the edge of the bed – Marwyn's own bed, Luwin realized, in the bedroom he'd never been allowed in before – and went about checking his health.
"Tell me," the archmaester demanded as his enormous right hand grabbed his face and pulled one eyelid low to check his sight while waving a finger before his eyes. "Who did this to you? Who put you in there? Who gave you that test without my input?"
In all honesty, Luwin had no idea what 'this' even was, really. He was just taking the traditional maester's trial, like any other acolyte prepared to take his vows and become a maester. He was placed in a completely dark room with one of the Citadel's glass candles. He was supposed to stay in that room for the night in darkness, unless he managed to light the candle somehow. Which he apparently did? Or death did, or whatever that thing had been? Except not on the first night. Or even second or third. It was all supposed to be a lesson about truth and learning. Luwin hadn't planned to take it for another year or two. But then he was told in no uncertain terms that only avowed maesters got access to the full depth of the Citadel's knowledge and he'd be wasted if he waffled anymore. So when Archmaesters Perestan, Norren and Ryam all urged him to take it within hours of each other-
"You don't say," Marwyn interrupted him with a cold glare. "Are you sure there wasn't also a Vaellyn and Walgrave in there somewhere?" Luwin had to suddenly reassure himself that the enormous hand around his neck was just checking his blood flow instead of preparing to snap him like a twig. "I suppose you were also a good boy who obeyed your elders when told to pretend like I suddenly don't exist. 'Leave spells and prayers to priests and septons and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in' or thereabouts, I'm sure. How close am I?"
Luwin gaped. That was what Maester Ryam had said almost word for word.
"Ah, but what else could you do?" Marwyn went on derisively as he used his Laennec tube to listen in on Luwin's internal sounds. "After all, I'm not like other maesters. I keep the company of whores and hedge wizards, talk with hairy Ibbenese and pitch-black Summer Islanders in their own tongues, and sacrifice to queer gods at the little sailors' temples down by the wharves. Isn't that what people say about me? They say a lot besides, that I often spend time in the undercity's rat pits and black brothels, consorting with mummers, singers, sellswords, even beggars. Why, I even once killed a man with my fists! Well, let me set you straight now, my lad, all of that's true." Marwyn turned his head and spat a gob of red phlegm onto the floor. "Never mind that you knew all this already when you first came to me. Never mind that you believed it before but still wanted to learn what I had to teach you. Never mind all the lectures and private lessons you yourself cajoled out of me despite all this. Never mind that I'd yet to rule one way or another your understanding of the higher mysteries."
"… Maester, I'm sorry."
"Bah! Oh Mirri, how you've spoiled me." Marwyn reached into a pouch at his waist for more sourleaf to chew on. "I'm not angry at you, fool boy. You're young and stupid and if I thought you wouldn't break at the slightest breeze, I'd smack you over the head for it myself! But you haven't had some great tragedy destroy your entire lifetime of beliefs. You can still grow learned and wise without some big trauma rendering you unfit to advise anything smarter than the pigs. Or you could have, except that you just spent four days starving and almost dying of thirst in the dark. I can only hope it doesn't leave lasting scars."
Luwin dropped his head and watched blankly as the archmaester washed and bandaged the thick, bloody scrapes and scabs that had formed on his hands and knuckles after pounding on the doors for so long. For such large, rough-looking hands, they were impossibly gentle. Marwyn was no less careful in pinching and prodding his toes in case he'd broken them from kicking the same doors. He wondered if his last student ever suffered anything like this. Did this Mirri suffer some great tragedy, whoever she was? Wherever she might be now? Was that when his gruff and sharp-tongued teacher learned gentleness? Or had he always had it? It certainly felt like a skill honed over the course of a lifetime. Luwin himself had not one but three silver links of his own, but he didn't think his hands were half as steady or tender as this.
Finally, the Archmaester of Mysteries gathered his tools in their case and rose to carry the empty bowl to the dumbwench. He tossed the healer's kit onto his desk as he passed it by, restoring that small bit of the room's general state of disorderliness. The bedroom was in as much chaos as the rest of the man's chamber, Luwin belatedly noted.
Watching him, Luwin couldn't help but take in his appearance and wonder how his life had come to this point. Archmaester Marwyn had a head that was too big for his body, and the way it thrust forward from his shoulders, together with that slab of jaw, made him look as if he were about to tear off someone's head. Though short and squat, he was heavy in the chest and shoulders, with a round, rock-hard ale belly straining at the laces of the leather jerkin he wore in place of robes. Bristly white hair sprouted from his ears and nostrils. Luwin still hadn't met anyone with bigger hands either, and he knew Hother Umber. If not for the chain of many metals that went around in more loops than actually fit above Marwyn's jerkin around his bull's neck, one would easily think he were a dockside thug instead of a maester, let alone one of the foremost minds in the world.
When the dumbwench creaked down and away, there was no more avoiding the snark in the room. As if by unspoken agreement, both of them looked at the glass candle. It stood on the desk in the alcove to the right and behind the door. Luwin imagined it was put there so no one could peek in and spot it. Marwyn went out to his wider chambers to lock and bar the door, came back in and locked and barred this door too. Then he stomped over to the desk, sat in the chair in front of it and stared at the glass candle. Stared at it for a long time. Even now it burned where it stood, as if to mock every last of Luwin's hopes that the thirst and starvation and everything else had been only a dream.
But he didn't need magic to know that much, did he? All he had to do was look down at the dried piss on his robe. He wondered how rarely Marwyn used his own bed, if he didn't make any noise about dumping on it something as soiled as himself. He wondered if anyone would be by to clean up the testing chamber. Would the future aspirants have the smell of his shit to gird themselves against when they took their turn? Besides whatever rubbish they were supposed to take with them from a lesson in complete and inescapable failure. Luwin didn't voice any of those questions aloud though. Instead he laid quietly, wondering if he was only imagining the flickers of people and images in the blue-white flames.
It was almost noon when the glass candle winked out.
"Leave me with my bunghole puckered, why don't you?" Marwyn grunted, getting up from his chair. He stood there a while longer, looking at the obsidian candle and its razor-sharp edges for a time. He shook himself soon after, though, and spat another gob of red phlegm on the floor. Then he turned to Luwin again, at last. "Do not become like me, lad. Never allow yourself to reach the point where you can stare the miraculous in the face and only complain afterwards that it didn't last long enough."
Marwyn went to the door and began unlocking the bars and bolts.
"Wait! Are you going? Should I be going or-?"
"No. It's too dangerous for you out there right now. Wouldn't want you to lose your head for knowing the wrong people. Stay here and try not to break anything."
Luwin stared at Marwyn, shocked. "Why would anyone want to kill me?"
Marwyn gave a ghastly sneer, the juice of the sourleaf running red between his teeth. Then he scoffed, grabbed his rod and put on his valyrian steel-wrought mask. "No one wanted to kill you. That bunch of holier-than-barth dotards wanted you chained and ready. They sought to prey on you like they'd been preyed on. Make you the same, self-deluded fool like the rest of their useless kind. Teach you to think like them instead of how to think for yourself. But then those ravens came that turned the Citadel upside down and they all just forgot about you." Luwin had no idea what he was talking about. "They'll be lucky if Hightower or Stark already got to them, because if I get my hands on them I'll string them by their toes, cut them open while they're still alive, sell their brains to the dumbest swindlers of Ragpicker's Wynd and roast their balls and feed them to the rats! They can look down their nose all they want. They can pretend wisdom instead of ignorance all they want. They can badmouth me however they like. But clip my students' wings? No."
Luwin imagined that was all supposed to be reassuring, but all he could think about was that none of that denied or explained why he was at risk of being murdered now. What happened to rile the Hightower? Trees' tears, just what did House Stark have to do with anything!?
Marwyn tossed him something and left him alone then. Locked him in behind four sets of locks. Left him to lie uselessly in bed with just the view out the window for company and his newest possession to turn over in his tired mind.
He stared at it. The thing in his hands now. A link in a chain. A link made of valyrian steel. He stared at it for hours.
Then he stared out the window too. Oldtown was the same labyrinth of wynds, crisscrossing alleys, narrow crookback streets, and markets, but the crowds... weren't. What few people were outside seemed skittish. Where they'd have walked was instead a veritable army of guards and soldiers wearing Hightower tabards. Which there always were, but not wearing their livery. That it was a message was obvious. What the message was, less so. The return message he could guess at even less. He just knew it had been out there for a while. There was a black spot among the forest of tabards with flaming towers. The Quill and Tankard. The island inn seemed to have been overtaken by grey and black and a small army of hounds almost overnight, scattered amidst direwolf banners he could actually distinguish if he squinted, so large they were. And beyond all men and buildings high and low, all the way to the docks that only this and few other chambers of the Citadel were high enough to see, a ship drew into port with sails bearing a merman banner.
On any other day, the fresh additions to the view wouldn't have bothered him. Oldtown was still a picture of snow-white roofs and slippery cobbles half-way frosted that hundreds of feet still tromped upon all the same. The winter sky was overcast, but the sunlight seeping through them like milk still reflected brightly off the snow. Further down the Honeywine and beyond the Starry Sept, The Hightower rose mighty and bright until its beacon almost touched the clouds.
Somehow, though, the familiarity of the view didn't manage to reassure him.