EonweUrion - ASoIaF: He Who Sings the Song of the Earth. Chapter 10. Farewell.

Author's note:Next chapter and image of Vaedar's companions.

The Wall, Castle Black, 88 AC

Vāedar

Leaning forward a little, he glanced down, where a drop of seven hundred feet opened beneath him and ended at the foot of the Wall.

He did not know how long he had spent sitting on the very edge, with his legs hanging over it, staring at the horizon in front of him and at the lands of the North spread out below.

Many hours had probably gone by. The light had changed twice while he sat there. The guards on this stretch had also changed, and neither of them had said a word to him as they passed by. Yet he felt their wary gazes resting on him. How could anyone get used to someone completely oblivious to the freezing cold and icy wind up here?

Although his eyes moved across the woods, the lakes, and the plains in the distance, all the way to the edge of the horizon, his mind was still down in that underground chamber beneath the Nightfort.

Because although he had gained a few answers, they had not only bred more questions. They had turned his understanding of the world somewhat upside down.

He knew the stories that Old Nan used to tell them about the cursed traitor. The Night’s King, who was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, wed an Other woman and brought thirteen years of true terror down upon the Wall and lands around it.

But to hear legends and myths, and to hear the truth from the mouth of somebody who was there and lived through it, are two entirely different things.

*******

That fool provided them with something they could not achieve through any other means. Access to the Wall. Not for all of them, of course, but the fact that She could set foot here was enough. And he made it too for all our effort, our toil and our sacrifice, everything we put into the making of that barrier, to come to nothing.” The specter of the ancient warrior had said it with a pain in his voice that was plainly audible.

“You speak as though you had been there... that is, at the time the Wall was made. I thought the Night’s King was the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch a hundred or two years later?” Vāedar answered, somewhat confused.

Symeon looked at him and began to nod his head, as though to himself.

“You said that many thousands of years have passed. It is understandable that much was forgotten... even in this place, where the memory was meant to be kept.”

He sighed, or intended to, since he was now a half-solid apparition that did not even breathe.

“I was still a child at that time, but yes, I was born during the Long Night, specifically as it was drawing to its end. The Wall did not go up in a month, nor even in a year, but was raised across the last decade of the War of the Dawn, and the first eight Lords Commander fell in that time, and four more in the decade after it, because the Others did not relent, even once the Wall was standing.

The Night’s King was no ordinary man. He was the younger son of the Builder and the brother of the Brandon known later as a Breaker, who later defeated him together with Joramun, the son of Neferion himself, He Who Bound the Night, and the last of the Lords of the Dawn.”

Vāedar raised a hand.

“One moment. Help me to understand this. The Night’s King was Jon Stark, son of Brandon the Builder himself and brother of Brandon the Breaker, and Joramun, the first King-Beyond-the-Wall, was the son of whom? Who was Neferion? Do you mean the Last Hero, or Azor Ahai, and who were these Lords of the Dawn?”

Symeon pressed his lips together, as though in thought, and then said, “Many of those names mean nothing to me, so they must have come into being later. The Builder was not named Brandon either. "Builder" was his title, because his true name, his Singer name, was too long to be used in the ordinary way.”

At that moment Vāedar felt as though he had been struck across the head with the flat of an axe, and he had to ask.

“By Singer, do you mean that small race of forest people, with the great eyes and...”

Symeon nodded his head. “Yes, I think we are speaking of the same people. Those Who Sing the Song of the Earth, as they used to call themselves, although this title should rather belong to the Lords of the Dawn.

'So the Starks really do have magical roots. They come from the fucking Children of the Forest,' he thought, taken aback.

Honestly, he had not expected to find knowledge of this kind here. He had come down that tunnel expecting really nothing. What he had got instead was a genealogy, and it was his own.

“And by the Lords of the Dawn,” the ancient warrior went on, “I mean the Emperors of the Great Empire of the Dawn. Neferion, according to what I learned from Brandon and from Joramun, was the last of those emperors, after he slew his mother’s murderer, his own uncle, called the Bloodstone Emperor, who had forsworn his true name.

However, I am unable to provide any additional information beyond that. The world after the Long Night was in a wretched state, and mankind, and the other races that fought against the Lion of Night, were all but wiped out. Most of the knowledge was lost, and those who remembered took it with them into their graves.”

Vaedar, absorbing this knowledge, began to pace nervously around the chamber, unable to sit still. This knowledge was priceless, and it might turn out that, despite its age, it wasn't useless.

“And are you able to tell me anything more about this Neferion? Or at least more about the Builder, or about Joramun? What became of them?”

Symeon fell silent, as though gathering his thoughts, and after a moment spoke again. But his voice was slightly apologetic now.

“I do not know the details. I know that Neferion, and the remnant of his people who declared for him, laid down their lives together with the Builder to feed the magic of the Wall.

Then came the Night’s King, and I was forcibly and partly changed by the Corpse Queen into something between the wights and the Others, and I was made to stand against my own comrades in that fight.

There was no way to reverse what had been done to me, so Joramun sealed me in this chamber, and I know that he intended to set out east to see what remained of his forebears' inheritance.

Not long after those words Symeon dissolved suddenly into the air, as quickly as he had appeared, and Vāedar was only beginning to ask his questions.

He had stood in that chamber a long while afterwards, saying the man’s name into a room, but nothing answered.

*****

He tried to take in all of this information while his mind worked at understanding every implication that followed from it.

What he had learned had given him several important answers, but it had bred only more questions. Thousands of questions now filled his head. The Great Empire of the Dawn and its Emperors. The Long Night, the Wall, and the manner in which all of it joined together.

But the first step towards defeating an enemy is to understand him. How is a man to learn and use the weaknesses of an enemy that remains unknown to him?

What had he truly known about the Long Night before his second death and his arrival here? What had he known about the Others themselves? Had they always existed? If not, then when did they appear, and how?

What really was the Great Empire of the Dawn, and how was it bound up with the Long Night and Westeros? How were the Others fought in those days? Valyrian steel was made in Valyria, long after the Long Night, so was it only fire and dragonglass? Or perhaps they were fought with magic.

That last one would not leave him alone.

Eight thousand years ago there had been thousands of Singers in the world, along with men who taught them their magic. Now there were few Singers left under one hill. Two Songs between them. One of the five was dying of old age, probably within Vāedar’s lifetime, unless his lifetime turned out to be longer than he had assumed. Maybe there were more on the Isles of Faces, although Brandon claimed there weren't.

So whatever had been done to stop the Others in the first war, nobody now had the tools to do it a second time. That was the shape of the problem.

He clicked his tongue in irritation, frightening two Black brothers patrolling the Wall not far off in the process.

At some point, he sank so deep into his own thoughts that he almost let the Stark come up on him, hearing him only when the man cleared his throat, having stopped a few paces to his left, also looking out at the landscape of Brandon’s Gift spread in front of them.

That was worth noting. Nothing had come near him unheard since his awakening in this time. He couldn't allow himself to become so distracted and lost in thought.

“Do you know where you will go now?” The Stark asked, in a calm tone, but Vāedar could all but feel how the man was burning with curiosity.

He and Horth had been asking him about it for several days, but he had not been able to give them an answer. He had needed time to think it through again.

He had considered going east at once. Taking a ship at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and getting first to Braavos. But no. He ought first to learn what he could in Westeros. Once he went east, he doubted he would return for many years.

“The Isle of Faces, Oldtown, and then King’s Landing. I must go to those three places before I set out east. And most likely in that order,” he answered at last, and Theon only nodded his head.

“If you believe that you will find some answers there, then it makes sense. I pray that you find something, because, as I have learned over these past few weeks, the world is a far more dangerous place, and our future is painted in dark colors," the man answered after a moment.

Then he sighed in frustration. “I would like to help you somehow more than this, but I can only offer my good word.”

Saying it, he reached under the fur at his throat and, after a moment, drew out a signet hanging on a thick chain, with a wolf cut into the face of it, or perhaps a direwolf.

“That is my House's signet. When you show it to my brother at Winterfell, that, along with the letter I will send him by raven, will see to it that he gives you guest rights and his help.”

Vāedar looked at the signet in the man’s outstretched hand and then glanced at his grave face, so like his uncle Ned’s, and nodded his head.

“Thank you. Any help will serve and will make my road south easier. I appreciate it the more since you did not have to do this.”

Theon laughed lightly, shaking his head. “We are family, are we not? Blood is thicker than water. You said yourself that you were once a Stark. And so far everything you have said has turned out to be true.”

Vāedar looked at him again, this time with a certain disbelief, and then sighed. “Well, by my looks I certainly am not. I hardly resemble a man at all.”

Theon shrugged his shoulders and answered, “It is not looks that make a man or woman a Stark. My grandfather’s brother looked more an Umber, after his mother, than he did a Stark. And he was ugly as fuck.”

Then, turning about, he looked out at the lands stretching away on the northern side of the Wall and added, “It is the duty of our House to guard these lands against every danger, and above all against the one from beyond the Wall… And you stand in the first line of that war. You are more a Stark than most of the Lords and Kings of Winter… Mark my words. We protect the North. That is our duty and our privilege.”

Vāedar felt a pleasant warmth spreading inside him at those words.

Did it mean so much to him that somebody who had known him for so short a time had counted him a Stark, when the thing had been denied him his whole life?

Or was it more about the fact that being a Stark meant possessing some humanity, or at least the remains of it? Honestly, he could not answer that question.

Theon had already turned on his heel, however, and was setting off towards the winch cage, saying, “I keep you talking, but I came because Horth wants a word with you before you take the road. He is waiting below and fidgeting like a boy before his first time.”

Vāedar followed him to the cage with a smirk on his lips, and Huginn landed on his shoulder, looking now like a fully grown raven, exactly as his brother did.

Their appearance had changed somewhat. Their eyes were changing to more like his own with every passing day. But Geri and Freki had kept their old eye color.

Because of that, Vāedar had begun to wonder whether the reason was the fact that he looked out of the ravens’ eyes far more often and spent more time in them, frequently scouting the lands around him? Sometimes a dozen times in a day and more.

Muninn was at present coming back from the run to Last Hearth, where Vāedar had sent him earlier, to see how those lands differed from the same ones in his own time.

The difference was visible above all in the New Gift, which, though it had slowly begun to decline under the rule of the Night’s Watch, was still far more settled than in the days of his uncle, when those lands had been outside the control of the North for more than two hundred years.

Inhabited villages, people in the fields, and animals grazing in the poor meadows.

It was not prosperity. Horth’s tallies said as much, at some length. But it was not the empty grey country he had ridden through as he headed to join the Watch either.

The cage went down slowly. Neither of them filled the silence.

When they reached the bottom, Geri and Freki, lying not far from the entrance to the kitchen and crushing the bones of a massive boar they had hunted down along with Vāedar that morning, caught sight of him, sprang up onto their feet, and made for him with their tongues hanging out.

The brothers of the Watch filling the yard watched it with a mixture of amusement and awe. They had grown used to the sight of direwolves in this place by now. But predators of over a ton, standing as high at the shoulder as a grown man, were always going to command a certain respect or fear.

Horth was waiting for them below as well and taking the opportunity to scold some unfortunate man, most likely over some triviality. Catching sight of the cage coming down with the two of them in it, however, he set off in their direction.

“Vāedar, my friend… I see the Stark found you. Good. I was starting to think my balls would freeze off from all the waiting.”

Vāedar shook his head slightly in amusement. “In any case, here I am. Theon said that you wanted a word with me now?”

Horth went serious and then said, "Come. I have something for you. If you are set on setting off on a journey this evening.”

“Aye. I have spent too much time here as it is. I have a great many places still to visit. Most of them on the other side of the world,” Vāedar answered and then followed the Lord Commander with curiosity.

He led him to the forge, where Old Carl was at that moment tempering some blade.

“Carl, bring it,” Umber ordered, at which the old smith passed the blade he was holding into the hands of an apprentice and, muttering a few curses under his nose on the subject of his commander, set off for the back room.

“Carl is a volunteer,” Horth explained. “And a master smith. He had a shop in Oldtown, which after his wife’s death he left to his sons, and then came out here. He makes some of the finest castle-forged steel swords in the realm.”

Vāedar raised an eyebrow at that. He had passed the forge many times before, and seeing Carl had never once thought that the surly-looking old man might hold the skill of that order.

Hearing as well that he had joined the Night’s Watch of his own will, and not out of compulsion or desperation, his opinion of the man rose enormously.

“You will have use for good steel on the road, even in these times of peace,” Umber went on, and then looked at him with curiosity. “Unless you have already mastered that trick of yours?”

“Do you mean this?” Vāedar asked, putting out his hand, in which there crystallized an elegant dagger of ice, about a foot long.

It came out of nothing, or perhaps out of the air or from the coldness around. The light off the forge ran down the edge of it.

“I am not able to make anything larger for now, or at least not without the weapon paying for it. A sword shatters after a single blow,” he explained, while both the apprentices and the Black brothers standing with them looked at his work with admiration, whispering something to one another.

Vāedar certainly caught the word "magic" several times.

Horth laughed lightly. “Fancy trick,” he said, with a note of envy in his voice. “Well, when you do manage it, you will most likely have no need of ordinary weapons. But for now, good steel will not hurt you.”

Then, seeing Carl coming back, holding in his hands a sword hidden in a plain scabbard, he called out, “There it is. Our gift to you. The best steel we have.”

Carl came up to Vāedar at the same moment and held the scabbard and the sword out towards him. “Here, milord. May it serve you well. It gladdens me when my blades come into worthy hands.”

Vāedar took the scabbard, plain but clearly new, oiled, of a dark brown color, without any ornament at all. The hilt of the sword also seemed plain, made for fighting rather than to look fancy.

Vāedar closed his white hand on it and drew the blade out, which came remarkably easily, and looked it over carefully.

A longsword, with a blade of about three and a half feet and the hilt itself about a foot. The blade was as plain as the hilt but perfectly made, better steel than he had ever seen with his own eyes. With the exception of Valyrian steel itself, of course, but that did not even bear comparing.

He looked at Carl and said, “Thank you, Carl. It is an excellent weapon.”

The man smiled slightly, almost invisibly, at the praise, and then said, “And yet not the best you have held, milord?”

Vāedar smiled in answer. “First, please call me simply Vāedar, and as for the sword, of all the swords made of castle-forged steel that I have seen, this is the finest. But there was a time when I owned a blade of Valyrian steel...”

“You need to say nothing more, milord,” the smith answered with a sigh. “Nothing can be a match for the blades of Old Valyria.”

“Aye, those are blades like no others.”

*****

They fed him that evening, and Shieldhall was filled to capacity.

Men came off the duty roster. Men came up from Mole’s Town. Those who found no bench left standing put their backs against the walls. The cooks put out a haunch of the boar the direwolves had hunted down. Somebody produced four barrels of ale and more of mead.

For a place that had drawn steel on him a few weeks earlier, it was a great deal of friendly atmosphere.

He sat at the high table with Horth on his right and Theon on his left and ate a little. He knew that men are unsettled by a guest who eats nothing whatever.

They wanted stories, and he gave them a few. Not the useful ones. He told them how he had killed a snow bear with his bare hands, tearing its jaws in two. How he had killed a shadowcat with a single blow, crushing its skull.

He told them he had seen giants, mammoths several times the size of an ox, and ice spiders their size.

Horth would burst into laughter every now and then, and when he was quite drunk, he tried to leave Shieldhall to find his own snow bear and wrestle it with his bare hands.

Several Black Brothers had to forcefully restrain him until he calmed down.

Old Carl approached, making small talk about swords, which turned into a long discussion about forging weapons, the materials used, Valyrian steel, and where the best blacksmiths were.

Unfortunately for the cooks, the direwolves had been let into the hall, on the grounds that keeping them out would have taken more men than the Watch could spare. They spent most of the evening under the high table devouring as much meat as three dozen Night's Watch brothers.

Bern Forrester, who was terrified of Vaedar that first day, by the middle of the evening he was drunk enough to come and clasp Vāedar’s forearm and tell him that he had known all along there was nothing to fear.

Then the hall thinned slowly out, and then he found himself in the yard with Horth Umber standing in front of him holding a leather tube.

“Take this,” the Lord Commander said. “There is a letter inside for my nephew, Artos Umber, at Last Hearth. He holds the seat. I have told him that you are to be given a roof and meat and whatever else you ask of him, because you are a friend of mine and a friend of the Night’s Watch and therefore a friend of House Umber.”

Vāedar took the tube. It was cased, capped, and waxed at the seam. Made to survive the nasty weather of the North.

“He will not believe a word of it when he sees me.”

“He will believe the seal,” Horth said. “Artos is not a clever man, but he does what his uncle tells him, which in an Umber counts as wisdom.” He scratched at his beard. “And if he gives you trouble, tell him that I said his father used to piss the bed until he was nine. That will settle it.”

Vāedar laughed and was mildly surprised at himself for it.

Horth did not laugh with him. He stood there a moment and then said, in an entirely different voice, “Go and find it. The answers and our salvation. And come back, and I will not care how many years it takes, because I intend to be a very stubborn, long-lived old man.”

He put out his hand. Vāedar took his forearm. Horth took his. The Lord Commander’s grip was the hardest he had felt from any living man.

"Old Gods keeps you, Vaedar.”

“And you, Lord Commander.”

Then the wooden gates swung wide open. He walked out of Castle Black on the southern side with a sword on his hip, a leather tube in his pack, a signet on a chain about his neck, and a destination in mind.

Geri and Freki came out of the dark to meet him at fifty paces and fell in on either side without breaking stride.

Above him, Huginn went up off the gatehouse roof and was gone south into the black. Muninn came in over the Wall a moment later, low, fast, and complaining.

Vāedar looked back only once.

The Wall stood behind him and took up the whole of the sky.

Ahead of him there was no Kingsroad but the old beaten road leading south.

Somewhere down that road there was a hall at Last Hearth. Beyond that, Winterfell, which he had promised himself he would be ready for and honestly was not. Then the Isle of Faces, which even Brandon could not see into.

Then he started walking.