A Feast for Dragons

expanse of white that came
halfway up their calves. The tents in the yard were half-buried, sagging under
the weight of the accumulation.
    The entrance to the crypts was in the oldest section of the
castle, near the foot of the First Keep, which had sat unused for hundreds of
years. Ramsay had put it to the torch when he sacked Winterfell, and much of
what had not burned had collapsed. Only a shell remained, one side open to the
elements and filling up with snow. Rubble was strewn all about it: great chunks
of shattered masonry, burned beams, broken gargoyles. The falling snow had
covered almost all of it, but part of one gargoyle still poked above the drift,
its grotesque face snarling sightless at the sky.
    This is where they found Bran when he fell
.
Theon had been out hunting that day, riding with Lord Eddard and King Robert,
with no hint of the dire news that awaited them back at the castle. He
remembered Robb’s face when they told him. No one had expected the broken boy
to live.
The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could
. It
was a strange thought, and stranger still to remember that Bran might still be
alive.
    “There.” Theon pointed to where a snowbank had crept up the
wall of the keep. “Under there. Watch for broken stones.”
    It took Lady Dustin’s men the better part of half an hour to
uncover the entrance, shoveling through the snow and shifting rubble. When they
did, the door was frozen shut. Her serjeant had to go find an axe before he
could pull it open, hinges screaming, to reveal stone steps spiraling down into
darkness.
    “It is a long way down, my lady,” Theon cautioned.
    Lady Dustin was undeterred. “Beron, the light.”
    The way was narrow and steep, the steps worn in the center
by centuries of feet. They went single file—the serjeant with the lantern, then
Theon and Lady Dustin, her other man behind them. He had always thought of the
crypts as cold, and so they seemed in summer, but now as they descended the air
grew warmer. Not
warm
, never warm, but warmer than above. Down
there below the earth, it would seem, the chill was constant, unchanging.
    “The bride weeps,” Lady Dustin said, as they made their way
down, step by careful step. “Our little Lady Arya.”
    Take care now. Take care, take care
. He put
one hand on the wall. The shifting torchlight made the steps seem to move
beneath his feet. “As … as you say, m’lady.”
    “Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that.”
    He is not my bastard
, he wanted to say, but
another voice inside him said,
He is, he is. Reek belongs to Ramsay, and
Ramsay belongs to Reek. You must not forget your name
.
    “Dressing her in grey and white serves no good if the girl
is left to sob. The Freys may not care, but the northmen … they fear
the Dreadfort, but they love the Starks.”
    “Not you,” said Theon.
    “Not me,” the Lady of Barrowton confessed, “but the rest,
yes. Old Whoresbane is only here because the Freys hold the Greatjon captive.
And do you imagine the Hornwood men have forgotten the Bastard’s last marriage,
and how his lady wife was left to starve, chewing her own fingers? What do you
think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant
Ned’s precious little girl.”
    No
, he thought.
She is not of Lord
Eddard’s blood, her name is Jeyne, she is only a steward’s daughter
.
He did not doubt that Lady Dustin suspected, but even so …
    “Lady Arya’s sobs do us more harm than all of Lord Stannis’s
swords and spears. If the Bastard means to remain Lord of Winterfell, he had
best teach his wife to laugh.”
    “My lady,” Theon broke in. “Here we are.”
    “The steps go farther down,” observed Lady Dustin.
    “There are lower levels. Older. The lowest level is partly
collapsed, I hear. I have never been down there.” He pushed the door open and
led them out into a long vaulted tunnel, where mighty granite pillars marched
two by two into blackness.
    Lady Dustin’s serjeant raised the lantern. Shadows slid and
shifted.
A small light in a great darkness
. Theon had never
felt comfortable in the crypts. He could feel the stone kings staring down at
him with their stone eyes, stone fingers curled around the hilts of rusted longswords.
None had any love for ironborn. A familiar sense of dread filled him.
    “So many,” Lady Dustin said. “Do you know their names?”
    “Once … but that was a long time ago.” Theon
pointed. “The ones on this side were