[The Vale of Arryn, Nearing the Eyrie, 3rd Moon, 299AC]
The road to the Eyrie had always been hard, but Ned remembered it differently.
As a boy, he had climbed it with burning legs and short breath, with Robert Baratheon laughing too loudly somewhere behind him and Jon Arryn ahead of them both, tired yet smiling all the same. Back then, the Vale had seemed a place above the world, set apart from the quarrels of lesser men, protected by height and rock and the sharp cold air of the mountains.
Now it felt smaller.
Not weaker, exactly. The Vale was not weak, any fool who looked upon the Bloody Gate or the high passes and thought them easy would die quickly for the mistake. But it had always felt set aside from the world's problems.
The path narrowed as they climbed, turning from road to cut stone and packed dirt, winding along cliffs where one wrong step would send horse and rider tumbling into a long fall. The wind came hard against them, tugging at cloaks and banners.
Tundra walked beside Ned's horse, calm and watchful, her silver-grey coat shifting in the wind, her yellow eyes fixed ahead. She never strayed far from him. Sometimes she paced just ahead, sometimes just behind, but always close enough that Ned could feel the unease she stirred in men who were not used to direwolves.
The Valemen tried not to stare at her.
And yet, they failed.
The Greatjon noticed and laughed.
"Your wolf has them more frightened than thirty screaming moon clansmen," he said, loud enough for the men ahead to hear.
Ned did not look back. "Then perhaps they are wise," he said with a low chuckle
"Wise?" Greatjon snorted. "Aye, if fear passes for wisdom."
Lord Artos Stark rode near Ned's other side, as silent as he had been for most of the climb. The Lord of High Hill had the look of a man who was never fully at rest, his eyes always moving, weighing the ground, the guards, the turns in the road, the faces of the men waiting ahead.
Lord Yohn Royce rode with them as well, heavy in bronze and fur, his horse sure-footed beneath him. Lord Horton Redfort rode beside him, thinner, older, but sharp-eyed and attentive.
"The Eyrie has been quiet too long," Horton said after a stretch of silence. "Quiet can look like strength from far off, but too much of it becomes something else, something weak."
"Fear," Artos said.
Horton glanced at him. "Aye, that's the word."
Yohn's face remained hard as the stone around them. "Lady Lysa calls it caution."
The Greatjon grunted. "Caution is what a man calls fear when he wants to dress it in fancy clothes."
Ned turned slightly in the saddle. "As true as you may be, Greatjon, mind your tongue when we reach her hall."
The Greatjon gave him a look. "I always mind my tongue, Ned."
Artos made a low sound that might have been a laugh.
Ned smiled despite himself, not being able to help but laugh
Yohn did not. "You will need patience in her hall. More than you expect."
"I had met Lysa when she was young, during Cat and my wedding," Ned said.
"Aye, but she is not that girl anymore," Horton replied quietly.
Ned took that in without answering. Time and grief had a way of changing people.
"Littlefinger has her ear," Yohn said after a moment.
That made Ned look at him.
Yohn kept his eyes on the path ahead. "You knew?"
"Well, Alaric had his suspicions back in King's Landing after having intercepted a letter from her to Baelish. I thought nothing of it, but now, I too, hold my own suspicions," Ned said.
"Suspect more," Horton said. "Petyr Baelish has not been in the Vale in body, not recently, but ravens fly where men cannot, and Lady Lysa reads his words as if they were pages from the Seven Pointed Star. He counsels caution, delay, even, but most of all, isolation. He tells her the Vale is safest when it does not move."
Artos's mouth tightened. "Convenient counsel."
"Aye," Yohn said. "Too convenient."
Ned looked ahead, toward the pale towers that waited above them. "And the boy, Robert?"
Horton's expression hardened, not in disdain, but worry. "She keeps him close. Too close at that. He is a sickly boy, yes, but she has made his weakness her whole world. Every question becomes Robert. Every danger becomes Robert. Every lord who counsels action is, in her mind, asking her to place her son's throat beneath a sword."
The Greatjon muttered, "Then she should raise him to hold one."
Ned shot him a look.
The Greatjon shrugged, unrepentant, taking a deep drink from his water-skin.
They climbed on.
At the final waycastle, a captain in Arryn colors met them with a stiff face and nervous eyes. His gaze went first to Ned, then to Yohn and Horton, then to Tundra. It stayed on the direwolf too long.
"My lords," he said, bowing. "Lady Arryn has agreed to receive Lord Stark, Lord Royce, and Lord Redfort. The others are to wait below."
"No," Ned said.
The captain blinked. "My lord?"
"They came with me," Ned said. "They come with me."
The captain swallowed. "Lady Arryn was specific."
Yohn stepped forward before Ned could answer. "Then return to her and tell her Lord Royce was specific as well."
The man paled slightly.
Horton added, "And tell her that sending Eddard Stark away from the Eyrie's hall after summoning him up the mountain would be discourteous enough to be remembered."
The captain hesitated, caught between orders and the men before him.
The Greatjon leaned down from his saddle. "Or you could stop standing there looking like a goat before slaughter and open the way."
That remark did little to help, but it ended the matter all the same.
The captain quickly turned and gave the order.
They were led upward.
The final ascent to the Eyrie was always the worst, a series of paths and narrow approaches that made every man aware of how far he stood above the ground. Ned endured it in silence.
When they finally reached the Eyrie proper, the air was colder and thinner still, and the castle rose around them in pale stone and clean lines. It was beautiful, Ned could admit that. Beautiful and cold. It had always seemed too delicate to him, too far from the earth, too removed from mud, blood, smoke, and all the things that made men understand what ruling truly cost.
They were taken through bright corridors where servants lowered their eyes and guards watched too closely. Tundra's claws clicked softly on the stone floor, and more than one man stepped back as she passed.
The hall was waiting.
And within was Lysa Arryn.
She sat beneath the falcon banners with Robert Arryn beside her, the boy thin and pale, half-hidden in the folds of her gown, though he was too old to be clinging to her so. Lysa's fingers rested in his hair, stroking it again and again with a nervous tenderness that made Ned uneasy. Sweetrobin, as she had called him even when he was smaller, leaned against her side and stared at Tundra with wide eyes.
"Mother," the boy whispered, loud enough to carry. "The wolf is looking at me."
Lysa's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"She will not come near you, sweetling," she said quickly, then looked at Ned with a sharp gaze. "Won't she?"
Ned bowed his head. "Tundra stays with me."
"She is a beast."
"She is mine," he replied, already tiring of the women
"She frightens my son."
"She frightens many men," Greatjon said from behind Ned. "The boy will live."
Lysa's eyes flashed. "I did not invite you to speak, Lord Oaf."
The Greatjon grinned. "No, but I came all this way, it would be rude to say nothing."
Ned did not turn, but his voice hardened. "Greatjon."
The big man fell silent, though not happily.
Lysa looked back at Ned, her face pale, her eyes sharper than he remembered. She had been pretty once, soft and high-spirited, quick to laugh when they were all young. That woman was gone. In her place sat someone wound tight by grief, fear, and whispers.
"Ned Stark," she said. "You come to my Castle with armed men, a wolf, and with lords who have already decided what they want from me, and still you claim this is not pressure."
"It is not pressure, my lady," Ned said. "But rather, urgency, if you will."
"Urgency," she repeated, tasting the word with suspicion. "That is what men call pressure when they want a woman to obey quickly."
Yohn stepped forward. "No one here asks obedience, my lady."
Lysa turned on him. "No? You stand beside him, bronze and stern, and expect me not to see where your loyalties lie, Lord Royce?"
"My loyalties lie with the Vale," Yohn said.
"My son is the Vale," Lysa snapped, pulling Robert closer. "Or have you forgotten that?"
No one answered at once.
Sweetrobin whimpered softly. "Mother, I don't like them."
"I know, sweetling," she said, softening at once as she bent to kiss his hair. "I know. They won't hurt you."
Ned watched them and felt something twist in his chest. The boy was Lord of the Eyrie in name, heir to Jon Arryn's seat, and yet he looked less like a lord and more like a frightened child being taught that every raised voice was a dagger.
Ned stepped forward one pace.
"I came because Jon would have listened," he said.
Lysa froze.
That seemed to have struck a nerve.
"Do not speak to me of my late lord-husband," she said.
"I must."
"You must do nothing," she spat
"I owe him too much to do otherwise."
Her mouth trembled, but whether from grief or anger, Ned could not tell.
"He is dead," she said. "Dead because he went south. Dead because he served a foolish, drunk of a king, and played their games. I will not send my son into the same pit."
"No one asks you to send Robert south," Ned said.
"You ask for Vale swords."
"Aye, that I do."
"Swords held by my son's bannermen. Swords that protect his mountains. Swords that belong here."
"They belong where their oaths take them," Horton said.
Lysa gave him a cutting look. "You too, Lord Redfort? I thought better of you."
Horton did not flinch. "I thought better of all of us, my lady. That is why I stand here."
A murmur ran through the gathered Vale knights and household men. Lysa heard it and hated it. Ned saw that too.
She rose suddenly, pulling Robert up with her. The boy stumbled, then clutched at her sleeve.
"You all speak as if war is a matter of honor and banners," she said. "You speak of oaths, and duty, and dead men who cannot answer for what they would have done. But I know what war takes. I know what men lose. I know what mothers bury."
Ned's voice was quiet. "So do I."
That silenced some of the room.
Lysa looked at him, and for a moment, there was something human in her face, something beyond paranoia.
Then it hardened again.
"Do you?" she asked. "You still have sons."
Ned said nothing, simply staring at the women, deciding how much more he could push before she snapped.
Artos stepped forward then, his voice low and cold.
"The Lannisters will not leave the Vale alone forever. If Tywin recovers, if Joffrey tightens his grip on King's Landing, if the lions survive this war with their strength intact, they will remember who aided them, who opposed them, and who sat safe in the mountains pretending silence was an apt choice."
Lysa's eyes narrowed. "And if your northern king wins?"
"Then the Vale will have chosen a friend," Artos said.
"A king," she said sharply, turning toward Ned. "Say it plainly. A king. Your nephew tears away half the realm and crowns himself, and you ask me to call that friendship."
Ned answered before Artos could.
"Alaric did not crown himself. His lords chose him."
"Lords can be fools," Lysa said.
"They can," Ned agreed, thinking of the women in front of him. "But they can also see what others refuse to."
Her face tightened.
Ned continued, keeping his voice even. "The North has broken from the Iron Throne. That cannot be undone by pretending otherwise. The Riverlands are ravaged. Tywin is at Harrenhal, very weakened but not entirely beaten. Renly gathers strength. Stannis presses his claim with a foreign god at his back. King's Landing is ruled by a boy who does not understand mercy and a court that does not understand restraint. This war will reach every corner of the realm before it ends."
"Not here," she said.
"Yes," Ned said. "Here too."
Robert Arryn began to whine, tugging at her sleeve. "Mother, make them go. I want them to go. I don't like the wolf."
Tundra had not moved. She stood beside Ned, still as carved bone, her yellow eyes fixed not on the boy but on Lysa.
Lysa stroked Robert's hair again and again. "Hush, sweetrobin. Hush. Mother will keep you safe."
Yohn took a step forward. "My lady, keeping him safe does not mean hiding him from every hard choice."
Her head snapped toward him. "Do not tell me how to mother my son, or do you forget yourself, my lord?"
"I speak as your bannerman," Yohn said. "And as one who would see Robert inherit more than a high tower and frightened men."
That was a dangerous thing to say, none could deny Lord Royce's courage.
Lysa's lips parted, and for a heartbeat, Ned thought she might order Yohn seized, though whether her guards would obey was another matter. Horton must have thought the same, because his hand moved slightly toward his belt before stilling.
Then Lysa laughed.
It was not a pleasant sound.
"Petyr warned me," she said.
The name settled over the hall like a bad smell.
Ned's eyes narrowed.
Yohn's face turned to stone.
Horton looked away briefly, jaw tight.
"Petyr warned me that proud lords would come cloaked in honor and speak of duty while reaching for my son's power," Lysa continued. "He said the wolves would not be content with the North. He said they would want the Vale too, and the Riverlands, and whatever else they could frighten men into giving them."
Ned's voice hardened. "Petyr Baelish says many things."
"He is my friend."
"He is no friend to the Vale."
"You know nothing of him," she snapped.
"I know enough."
Her face flushed. "You know what Catelyn told you. You know what men say because they never bothered to see him truly. Petyr understands what others do not. He understands danger. He understands how quickly men turn."
Greatjon muttered, "He understands coin and lies well enough."
Lysa heard him. "Silence!"
The Greatjon took one step forward, his voice booming. "I am not one of your singers to be shushed, woman!"
Several guards shifted.
Ned raised a hand. "Enough."
The Greatjon stopped, but his face looked as if he was about to throw a blade through her heart, and Ned wasn't quite sure he wouldn't if prodded more.
Ned looked back at Lysa. "This is not about Petyr."
"It is about my son," she said.
"No," Ned said. "It is about the Vale."
Her mouth tightened.
"And Robert is the Vale," she said again.
Yohn spoke before Ned could. "Robert is its lord. He is not every knight, every field, every holdfast, every road, every village, every fisher on the coast, every shepherd under the mountains. The Vale is more than one boy, my lady, even if that boy is precious to us all."
Robert began to cry then, softly at first, then louder, his thin face twisting as he clung to Lysa's skirts.
"You're frightening him!" Lysa shouted.
"No," Horton said quietly. "You are, your shrill voice and shrieks have no doubt startled him."
Lysa stared at him, eyes wide with madness.
Horton looked tired, but he did not back down. "He hears danger in every word because you have taught him to. He sees enemies in every hall because you have surrounded him with fear. I say this with no cruelty, my lady. I have sons and grandsons. I know what it is to fear for blood. But if you teach a boy that safety is the only virtue, you do not make him safe. You make him helpless."
The hall went silent.
Even Robert's crying softened into hiccuping breaths.
Lysa looked as though Horton had slapped her.
Ned almost pitied her.
Well, Almost.
Then she lifted her chin. "You will not lecture me in my own hall."
"No," Horton said. "I only provide counsel. There is a difference."
Yohn nodded. "And I counsel the same. The Vale must act."
Voices rose then, not loud, but enough. A few Vale knights murmured agreement. Others muttered caution. Ned heard names, fragments, fears. Gulltown. The mountain clans. The Lannisters. The North. The boy lord. Littlefinger.
Lysa heard them too, and her face changed as she realized the hall was not wholly hers.
Ned stepped into the opening.
"I am not asking you to hand the Vale to Alaric," he said. "I am asking you to recognize that the Vale cannot remain untouched by a war that has already taken Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon, Jaime Lannister, and thousands more. I am asking you to stand with old allies before newer enemies decide your neutrality is weakness. I am asking you to help end this before your son inherits a realm broken beyond repair."
"He will inherit the Vale," she said.
"And what kind of Vale?" Ned asked. "One respected for standing when it mattered? Or one remembered for hiding while others bled?"
Her eyes filled with tears then, but they did not fall.
"You make it sound so simple."
"It is not simple in truth, but important all the same."
"Then stop speaking as if it is."
Ned softened his voice. "Lysa, I know fear. I know what it is to look at children and wonder what war will take from them. But hiding from the war will not spare them if the war comes anyway."
She looked down at Robert, still clutching her.
"My sweetrobin is all I have left," she whispered.
Ned said nothing for a moment. When he did speak, it was quieter.
"Then give him a Vale strong enough to stand when you are gone."
Lysa sat back down slowly, pulling Robert against her again. She looked smaller now, but no less dangerous. Fear did not make a person harmless, sometimes it just made them worse.
"What do you want?" she asked.
It was the first real question she had asked.
Ned answered carefully.
"Men," he said. "Not all. I know you will not empty the Vale. But enough to matter. Enough to show the realm that the Vale has not forgotten Jon Arryn's blood. Enough to make Tywin Lannister understand he faces more than wolves."
Yohn added, "The knights of Runestone will ride."
Horton nodded. "The Redforts as well."
Lysa's eyes flashed. "You presume my leave."
Yohn met her gaze. "We ask it."
"And if I refuse?"
The hall went still again.
Ned did not answer. He did not have to.
That was the danger now. Everyone felt it. If she refused outright, the Vale might split. Not today, perhaps not openly, but the crack would be there.
Lysa knew it too.
Her breathing grew shallow. She looked toward the side of the hall, toward one of her ladies, then toward the maester, then back to Ned. Searching, perhaps, for someone to give her certainty.
There was none to be had in this situation
At last, she said, "I will send no army of the Vale today."
The Greatjon growled.
Ned held up a hand before he could speak, his words no doubt being less than flowery.
Lysa continued, voice tight. "But I will call my lords to council. All of them. They will come to the Eyrie and speak. I will hear them."
Yohn's face did not change, but Ned saw the small shift in his shoulders.
Horton closed his eyes briefly, as if thanking whatever gods he thought might be listening.
Ned bowed his head. "That is enough for now."
"It is all you will have," Lysa said.
"For now," Ned repeated.
She looked at him sharply.
Robert tugged at her sleeve again. "Mother, can they go now?"
Lysa looked down at him and softened at once. "Yes, sweetrobin. Soon."
Ned bowed again, lower this time, not to flatter her, but to end the exchange before it turned worse.
"My lady."
He turned and walked from the hall, Tundra at his side.
The others followed.
No one spoke until they were out of the chamber and the doors had closed behind them.
Then Greatjon exploded.
"Seven hells and all the old gods, that woman would hide under her bed while the world burned outside the window!"
"Quiet," Ned said.
"I was quiet in there."
"You were not, Jon, you were as loud and belligerent as a damned giant."
"Well, I was quieter than I wished to be," he said, trailing off, like a scolded child
Artos looked back toward the closed doors. "She is more dangerous than I expected."
Horton nodded grimly. "Because she is frightened."
Yohn's expression was hard. "And because Baelish has been feeding into that fear."
Ned turned to him. "Can she be moved?"
Yohn was silent for a long moment.
"Yes," he said at last. "But not by her fear alone. We need the lords. We need voices enough that she cannot pretend this only benefits the North."
"Then gather them," Ned said.
"We will," Horton replied. "But understand this, Eddard. Some will come because they remember Jon. Some because they hate the Lannisters. Some because they fear being left behind. And some will come only to see which way the wind blows."
Nodding his head in acknowledgement, Ned soon left for his quarters, Tundra at his side.
They walked down the pale corridor together, Tundra's claws clicking softly on the stone, her body close enough to brush Ned's leg. He set a hand briefly against her neck as they went.
The Vale had not joined them.
Not yet.
But Lysa had not shut the door either, and in a place ruled by fear, that was more than Ned had expected to win in one day.
Outside, the mountain wind struck cold against his face.
Ned looked out over the vast drop below, over the clouds drifting beneath the Eyrie's high walls, and thought again of Jon Arryn, of the man who had raised him, taught him, and trusted him.
"What would you have done?" he murmured.
No answer came.
Only the wind.
And beside him, Tundra lifted her head, staring out into the white distance as if she had noticed something far beyond the mountains.