JON
In the shattered, starving silence after the echoes of the blast had faded, all he could hear was the absence of his own heartbeat.
His hand dropped to his side. The horn, a great crack scoring it even as he watched, fell into the snow, smoking. The grasping weirwood branches overhead made it look as if the face of the moon had been shattered like a dropped plate. It was only then that he realized he was on his knees, that his smallclothes were soaked with blood – his wounds must have broken open with the force of putting that thing to his lips. Longclaw lay a few feet away, half-buried in the drifts.
"Bran?" Jon croaked. The ground trembled beneath him, like the thunder of a far-off avalanche, and when he tried to stand, he fell again. "Bran!"
No answer. But the trees continued to quiver, the roots beginning to slither and untangle, and it suddenly occurred to Jon that there was one other person he could try to reach, had to try to reach. The one to whom he'd given the Horn of Dawn, all unknowing. Which Sam had then taken south to Oldtown – and which had been subsequently been stolen by the mysterious face-changing thief. Need to tell him. Need him to know. It was far too much to hope that Sam would somehow put the pieces together, not only identify the thief and find out where he'd taken the horn, but bring it back north as well. If it was not for Jon, it would still be on the Fist of the First Men where the ranger had hidden it with the cache of dragonglass, waiting to be sounded after the Horn of Winter had spoken its piece. But no.
Jon was already out of time. The rumbles and roars were growing louder, and the weirwoods swayed and moaned. But he had been able to see the Citadel, after Bran had told him to go into the trees before. If enough mad luck remained to him, he might just be able to reach Sam in that way now.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Jon jumped.
It hadn't been easy the first time, and that had been under Bran's direction and protection. Almost as if he had only been able to do it because his brother – no, not his brother, yes his brother, he could not think about that right now – had opened the way for him. It was only the greenseers who were able to enter the weirwoods and learn the secrets they knew, and Jon was no greenseer, merely riding the coattails of one. The sheer brutal pain of this was all the proof he needed, and he clawed blindly through the tangled darkness of the roots. Everything was screaming, howling and tearing at him, as he tried to shrug on the bark skin he had worn long enough to catch a glimpse of the thief stealing the Horn of Dawn from that locked room in the Citadel. There must be a weirwood there. . . He would know it when he touched it. If he could enter it. . . if it made any difference. . .
"SAM!" he roared into the ravening dark. "SAM!"
For long moments more, there was nothing but the keening wind and the clashing void. Then he opened a tree's eyes and stared, impossibly, at his friend, standing pale and stunned only a few yards away – but in a vine-clad courtyard on a cool pleasant night in Oldtown. Thousands and thousands of leagues from here.
"Sam," Jon groaned. "There are two horns. The Horn of Winter and the Horn of Dawn. The Night's Watch oath told us that all along." He could feel himself being torn out of the tree's consciousness, and knew he would not be able to enter it again once he lost it. "One horn to bring the Wall down. One horn to bring the dawn. I have one. I need the other. The horn! The one I gave to you!"
Still Sam remained rooted in place, staring. "Jon," he said weakly. "Jon, I can't understand you."
Jon wrestled against the wood with all his might. "Horn!" he screamed. "Horn!"
"Horn?" Sam repeated. "What horn? The horn you gave me? I don't have it anymore, I left it behind when I became a novice – why? What is it? Why?"
"Find it. Ice and fire. There are always two!" He was being torn apart. "Stolen!"
That was it. A roaring blackness came surging up and knocked Jon broadside, clean out of the Citadel and back the trackless distance to where he lay now, in the grove beyond the Wall. The sky was turning an unearthly color. Red sky in morning, sailor's warning.
At his feet, Longclaw was hissing and burning, a thin tongue of flame licking up the Valyrian steel. And as Jon moved to pick it up with his black cold hands, he thought he saw bronze eyes and green scales reflected in it. He remembered after Ghost's death, when his spirit, uncaged in any body, had briefly woken in the flesh of a –
Above him, ravens were taking flight. Bran, they screamed. Bran. But even as Jon opened his mouth to ask for his brother again, he turned to the south – and saw.
The ancient spells burst from the Wall, burning. The ice collapsed and rendered and screamed, thundering down and exploding. The weirwoods shook and the ground bucked, and the monstrous spectacle was almost beautiful. Redness seared from the sky like flaming meteors, and Jon Snow knew that it was now or never. I am with you, said a voice that was Bran's but not Bran's. It was much older and colder and wiser than Bran's had ever been, the echoes of a thousand other voices resounding behind it. It is time. Wake up, Jon. Wake up or die.
Promise me, Ned, cried the woman with blue roses in her hair.
And then suddenly, Jon could see or hear nothing but that screaming emptiness. He had a sensation as if he was rising, and a burning pain. Longclaw remained clutched tightly in his unhands, light still flickering dimly along the blade. And then wind blasted his face, and shards of broken ice, and he staggered and gagged, and he opened his eyes and saw.
He stood exactly where he had been before, but now in the real world, not his mind. The Wall was still coming down, booming and breaking. But Jon saw now what had not existed in his dream: the thousands upon thousands of wights and Others that Bran had told him of. Remembered that if he had not sounded the Horn of Winter, he himself could not have crossed back, that he was not necessarily alive even now. The dead cannot pass the Wall.
Ashes sifted down, pocking the snow with sizzling embers. Ravens soared, silhouetted against the scarlet glare, and Others burned like matchsticks as the force of the Wall's destruction enveloped them. Yet for some reason, though he was as much ice as they were, Jon did not fear the flame. Promise me, Ned! the woman screamed.
Fire cannot kill a dragon. Jon could not process the weight of it, the depth of the deception, his every thought and belief of his own identity crumpled and scorched away with the rest. And then from the snows, shaped from stone and bone and soil, they rose. And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth.
Master them! Bran shouted. You are the Hornblower now. They are yours. Master them!
Jon raised Longclaw with both hands. It was still rippling reflections of the firestorm that had destroyed the Wall, but at that moment, a fork of lightning flashed incandescently down from the heavens and scored a direct hit; if Jon had been alive, it would have killed him all over again. It crackled and seared down the sword, burning off the leather and exploding the ruby eyes in the carved direwolf pommel. And the giants, beating their chests with their boulder-sized fists, roared in echo of the thunder.
Jon picked the broken Horn of Winter from the ground and slung it on his belt. Then he stepped to the front of the throng of giants, and began to run.
Wights blundered past him, burning. Silken shimmers in the air and pools of liquid blue crystal on the ground showed where Others had done likewise – but not all of them. Jon could see a whole pack directly ahead. He had just enough time to actually be glad that he was not alive, and then they hit.
The pale milkglass blades of the Others clanged and slid and screeched and hissed off the burning steel of Longclaw. Jon ducked and shoved and slashed and spun, unearthly cold hands grasping for him, blue eye burning to all sides, as his blows sluiced white-hot sparks in the air. He was not immortal, nothing was. But he had almost reached what had been, not long ago, the gate under the Wall. Castle Black lay just on the other side. If there was still a Castle Black.
Jon intended to find out. With the giants still dismembering Others at his back, he took a running start and hurtled up the vast, tumbled blocks of ice. He had to take care of his footing on the abyssal cracks, his black fingers scraping up shards. Still a fire seemed to linger in their lucent depths, and it was then that he understood how he had battled his way through the Others and not fallen, why his touch was as inimical to them as his blade. Dragonglass. My hands are made of dragonglass.
He climbed as hard as he could. Had to sling Longclaw across his back so he could grasp better. At least he could see well; the sky was so bright that it looked like dawn. But it wasn't, and might not be ever again. Find the stolen Horn, Sam. Find it.
Jon pushed off and leapt the final few feet to the ground. Castle Black was in utter chaos. Whether from Melisandre's spells and shadows, Bran's ravens and trees and whispers, some combination of both, or something else entirely, it had managed to mostly survive the Wall's collapse, but this was by no means a universal fate. Half of the towers were ablaze, wights were everywhere, and slabs of broken ice kept thundering down, crushing living and dead alike beneath. Screaming like Jon had never heard it, women's screaming, sounded from the King's Tower.
Val. Jon whirled. And Queen Selyse and her daughter and ladies too. Not that he had any personal liking for Stannis' prickly, haughty wife, but no man or woman deserved the fate which now faced them all. He drew Longclaw again, and charged.
Everyone was too preoccupied with saving their own skin to pay Jon the slightest bit of heed. Even the blaze of his sword attracted no second looks; everything else was burning too. Grunting and hacking, he cut his way through the swarming press of wights at the door and pelted up the stairs beyond, following the screaming. He thought he heard a baby wailing as well. It must be Gilly's son; he'd sent Mance's away. Where are you, Rayder? You owe me Arya's life. You owe it to me.
Jon crashed through one last door and into the room beyond, a chamber he at once recognized as Val's. The fire was out, blood soaked the rushes, and wights closed in from all sides, blank eyes staring. There was already a body on the floor, short and stout, and then two women on their knees. One was Val beyond a doubt. And the other looked briefly, horrifyingly familiar – Arya?
No matter. Jon swung Longclaw in a searing arc. Undead flesh hit the floor with ripe thumps, and an awful smell of ichor choked the room.
Val jumped to her feet, wild-eyed. She was wearing a black cloak, breeches, and boots, and was as disheveled as if she too had been fighting atop the Wall – knowing what he knew of wildling women, Jon did not doubt it. She thinks me some new devilry. "What," Val shouted. "Who are – what's going – "
Then she caught sight of his face beneath the hood, his glass hands and flaming sword. And screamed loudly enough that if it was necessary to wake the dead, she certainly would have done so.
Jon just got Longclaw out of the way in time as Val, completely undone as he had never seen the icily cool, composed wildling princess – then again, it was likely that she had never seen anything like this either – flung herself into his arms. Sobbing, she kissed him on the mouth once and then again, and clung to him with a strangler's grasp for several extremely jumbled moments, before she was joined by the girl who looked so hauntingly like Arya. "My lord," the girl shrieked hysterically, "my lord, it's me, it's Jeyne, Jeyne Poole, we were at Winterfell together, I was Sansa's friend, don't hurt me, you saved us, you saved us, please don't hurt me, don't hurt me!" Her voice was almost animalistic in its terror.
"I won't hurt you," Jon said rather stupidly, interrupted halfway through as Val kissed him again. But there was still screaming from upstairs, and he couldn't attend to it with both of them attached to him like barnacles. He detached them as gently as he was capable of, and made a break for it.
It was definitely Selyse screaming. Jon accelerated. Not that Stannis was coming back for her, not if half of what the Bastard of Bolton had claimed in his letter was true, but she was still his guest, under his roof. He vaulted up the last few steps, passed a pair of queen's men with their heads turned all the way around to stare at the ceiling even though they were lying on their stomachs, and flew through the broken door.
Selyse was on her knees, hair tumbling out from beneath its stern coif, screaming and struggling and trying to pull that lackwit fool with the tattooed face off the small figure he was hunched over. A wight was burning in the middle of the room, and a disembodied arm was slithering across the floor toward the queen, but neither was responsible for the wet slurping, crunching sound that Jon heard. He slashed the arm with Longclaw to be sure; the noise did not stop, though the limb did. Then he realized that the small figure was Princess Shireen, and that the fool was eating her face.
Revulsion almost stopped Jon cold. That creature is dangerous, he remembered Melisandre saying. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood. The poor mad thing must have cracked entirely when the dead broke down the door, but Jon could not feel pity for more than an instant. He wrestled Selyse out of the way and swung, and Patchface's patchface went rolling away across the floor, scraps of grey flesh clutched in its teeth.
Shireen was still alive, but barely. Her diseased cheek and part of her throat had been ripped away, and her blood spattered the rushes. The child is unclean! Anyone who came into this room now was at risk of contracting greyscale, and Selyse, clamoring frantically over her daughter, might well have already been infected. I should burn them both. What little remained of the Watch had not survived the Wall falling and the end of all things just to succumb to the grey plague instead.
But while Jon was still hesitating, Selyse crawled toward him and clutched his legs with her bloody hands, gasping. "Ser. . . brave ser. . . you have my gratitude, my eternal gratitude. . . you'll be a lord, I swear it, a lord. . ."
"Let go of me." Jon did not think that he himself could catch the disease, but everyone around him could. "Now, Your Grace. Now."
Selyse recognized his voice. She looked up. Stared. Blanched. And collapsed backwards in a dead faint. For which, all things considered, Jon could not entirely blame her, but he stepped over her and knelt next to Shireen. Selyse had already touched him, after all; it was too late to avoid exposure entirely. The girl was slipping away in pain and fear, but when she looked up and saw his face, she smiled. "Lord Snow," she whispered shyly. "It's you. You saved me."
"Yes, my lady." There was nothing he could do for her, Jon saw that at one glance. Wordlessly, he took her little hand in his black one.
Shireen shivered. "That's cold." Her skin was as white as chalk, her eyelashes fluttering. "Why are your hands so cold, Lord Snow?"
"My name is Snow, after all," he teased gently. Except it's not. "Don't worry, my lady. You'll soon be warm."
"Will I?" The trust in those blue eyes almost broke his heart. "I. . . I miss Dragonstone. It's always warm there. And we played. Me and Edric. In the garden." Her breath was coming shorter and shorter. "And sometimes with Devan too. It was light there. And good. And Patches didn't hurt me. Not now. He didn't mean to. Under the sea. . . I'll have a gown of silver weed. . . and the rain falls up. . ."
"Yes," Jon said, barely keeping his voice calm. "It does."
Shireen smiled at him. "I'm glad you were here, Lord Snow. I'm glad."
"So am I, my lady." It felt as if Marsh's knife had plunged into his gut again, and torn.
Shireen smiled once more. Then she removed her hand from his grasp, folded them on her chest as if saying her prayers before bed, and closed her eyes. And so, neatly and quietly as if she was in fact merely going to sleep, she died.
Jon remained crouched beside her for several moments, motionless with grief. Yet Selyse was starting to stir, and she did not need to see this, not now. He got to his feet, lifted the queen, and carried her down the steps beyond. Fool. You should be burning her. But he was not Melisandre.
The eerie quiet rang in his ears. He left Selyse in an unobtrusive corner, glanced around for any wights he'd missed, but that seemed to be all for the moment. He knew better than to pray that it was over. He knew that it had only begun.
As if he was still in his dream, Jon emerged from the King's Tower into the courtyard. The sky remained lit up in reds and golds and oranges, swirling like a dancer's skirt. That was the only light. The only sound was the crackling of the flames.
Melisandre herself was kneeling a few feet away from him, by a fallen body. She was not eating its face, however, but closing its eyes – an unholy blue light was just fading from them, and to judge from the smoking shadow blade beside her, she'd had to kill him herself. Again, that is. So many corpses, and all of them will rise. Jon knew this one. It was Devan Seaworth, Melisandre's young squire, who had been so devoted to her. He hoped the boy was running in the garden with Shireen even now.
At the sound of Jon's approach, Melisandre looked up. When she saw him, she remained on her knees and bowed her head. "My lord," she said, her rich voice only a whisper. "My king."
"Your king is gone." Jon came to a halt, resting the smoking point of Longclaw in the frozen mud. "And you killed Ghost."
"For you, do you not see?" Melisandre was spellbound, entranced. "Only death can pay for life, and you would have remained trapped in the wolf's body forever if I had not. I see now. I see perfectly why R'hllor brought me to the Wall. I see why my flames and foretellings were wrong. All along, I was certain, certain, that Stannis Baratheon was Azor Ahai reborn. . . but no, Lord Snow. It is you."
"I care not what you call me," Jon said. "The Wall falling destroyed the hordes of Others before our gates, but more beyond count will come. And I myself destroyed the very thing that kept them back. Tell me, my lady, if you know so much of this, what do we need?" He would not tell her what he already knew about the Horn of Dawn. Time to find out once and for all if she was anything more than a fortunate charlatan.
"Lightbringer," Melisandre said. Her eyes flicked to Longclaw, which was still glowing faintly, but the steel was beginning to turn back to steel. "That one served for a time, but Azor Ahai must wield Azor Ahai's weapon."
"And where is it? With Stannis?"
"No," Melisandre said, red eyes still fixed on his. She raised one graceful hand to her throat and touched the ruby that winked there, and it went dark as suddenly as if she'd quenched its flame. "Stannis has fought for the Lord's cause admirably enough, but now I am at an end with him. I only serve you from this moment on. My king."
Jon turned away. "I am no king."
"But you are." He felt Melisandre's warmth at his back, his own coldness. "Rhaegar Targaryen's son."
"No. Eddard Stark was my father, no matter whose seed made me." He turned back, suddenly furious. "Did you see that all along?"
"No, Your Grace. I erred in that."
"You erred in everything."
"Because my conviction was faulty, as I said. The fires did not lie. I asked them to show me Azor Ahai, and all they showed was. . . snow." She smiled. "It was only tonight that I saw the dragon wake."
I saw a dragon too, Jon Snow thought, remembering the reflection in his sword. But he was a Stark, a Stark. Winterfell was his home, Robb and Bran and Rickon his brothers, Arya and Sansa his sisters. And Lord Eddard. . . why did you not tell me? Why did you not tell even Lady Catelyn, so she might have known that you never dishonored her? Jon was still too numb to appreciate all the details, but he did know that if Robert Baratheon had had even an inkling that a child of Rhaegar's was still alive – a child with Lyanna Stark, Robert's own adored fiancée – he would not have hesitated the briefest moment in putting him to death. I see no babes, the new-made king was supposed to have said, when Lord Tywin Lannister presented him with the corpses of Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon. Only dragonspawn.
Dragonspawn. It went through Jon like a knife. "Where is Lightbringer?" he repeated. "Where?"
Melisandre's eyes remained on his. "I do not know."
"Stannis never had it. Did he." Jon remembered something someone had said once, perhaps Maester Aemon, of how Lightbringer truly burned, and Stannis' sword only shone. "And you lied to everyone."
"I did not," Melisandre said. "Your sword there had some of the power when it was needed, after all. I thought to do the same for Stannis when I burned the Seven."
"You failed." Jon glanced around at the ruin of Wall and Watch. The Horn of Winter was still on his belt, but the Horn of Dawn was the gods only knew where, wherever the thief in the Citadel had taken it. We need Lightbringer, and we need the Horn of Dawn. And fire. True fire. He remembered how during the first Battle for the Wall, against Mance and the wildlings, he'd ludicrously wished for a dragon or three. Knowing what he knew now, though. . .
No. It was still impossible. And they had neither the sword nor the horn they needed to win this battle, and dawn was not breaking.
Jon turned grudgingly back to Melisandre. He was about to ask her something else when the door of the armory cracked open. And Bowen Marsh, who had been valiantly hiding out the battle within, took one step out.
"Greetings, my lord," Jon said. "The Others are burned for now, but the war has only just begun. I hope you'll be of more use then."
Marsh stared. And stared. His eyes almost burst out of his head, while his face went a color livid enough to put even a pomegranate to shame. Then it all hit and thus proved to be entirely too much. Choking, he toppled into the snow, quite literally stone-dead of shock.
Another brother down. Jon glanced around. Too many corpses, he thought again, and while most were wildlings, far too many were wearing black. He thought he saw Satin; his squire was clearly dead as well, neck broken.
Another spasm of grief grasped Jon's heart. No. No use grieving now. The rest of them, and the Seven Kingdoms as well, will die as well if we cannot fight, if we cannot find Lightbringer and the other Horn in time. Still no light, no dawn. And Jon Snow, or Jon Stark, or Jon Targaryen, or any of the names which he was no longer sure belonged to him, knew suddenly that there would not be. In the ruin, the Wall in pieces and Castle Black burning, a grey menace infiltrating the King's Tower, wights waiting to rise, and the full fury of the Others not yet even unleashed, Jon wondered if he would ever see the sun again, or live, or breathe.
Melisandre read the look on his face. "Yes, my king," she said softly. "It is here. It is now. The Long Night has begun."