"Back then, when Robert wanted to wipe out Daenerys completely and Pycelle suggested hiring the Faceless Men, it was me who talked him out of it, saying the price was too high.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have just borrowed from the Iron Bank. It wasn't my money anyway."
Uncle Finger was truly aggrieved.
He had schemed his way across the Seven Kingdoms for decades and manipulated countless people, yet he had never made a move against the Targaryens—well, he never had the chance.
But that woman just had to run her mouth and bring this resurrected ghost right to him.
"All right, it's getting late. You should be on your way."
At that, Lady Stoneheart turned back toward the tall woman guarding the door and said, "Mya, leave this to me. You can go."
"Yes, my lady." Mya bowed, picked up her warhammer, and left the hall.
Mya Stone was a bastard daughter born when Robert and Eddard were still fostered in the Vale, the child of Robert and a woman from the mountains.
She only vaguely remembered what her father looked like and knew she was a bastard—well, with the surname Stone, of course she was a bastard.
But she did not know her father was the king.
Everyone else did.
Because of her unusual parentage, Mya's status in the Vale was also somewhat unique.
When visitors came to the Eyrie, she often served as their guide, leading them up the perilous steps carved into the cliff face.
Because of this, Mya had the chance to meet Catelyn and formed a decent relationship with her.
All fresh food in the Eyrie was brought up by Mya, who drove a mule up from the Vale.
Thus, when Uncle Finger was stuffed into a sack and disguised as a giant pumpkin strapped to her mule, he passed through several checkpoints without arousing the guards' suspicion.
Of course, the reason he was smuggled silently into the Eyrie's great hall had even more to do with the arrival of winter. Most of the servants had been moved to the Gates of the Moon, leaving only a few elderly caretakers behind in the mountain-top castle.
The great hall was completely empty. He could scream himself hoarse and no one would hear him.
Uncle Finger guessed that this ghost before him meant to toss him out the Moon Door, and he complained bitterly, "Fine, let Mya kill me if you must. Why do you have to do it yourself, and in such a cruel way? Whatever I may have done, my love for you was deep and true. Is your heart made of stone, that you feel nothing at all?"
Lady Stoneheart let out a mocking smile. As she unfastened her cloak and removed it, she said, "Your love was so deep and true that you told everyone you took my maidenhead. Today, I will repay that affection and make your dream come true."
Uncle Finger, who had been shouting in despair, suddenly felt a chill down his spine. His eyes widened as he stared at Catelyn's vanishing clothing and stammered in terror, "You… what are you going to do?"
Once she removed her clothes, the hall did not reveal a seductive beauty. Instead, a monster appeared.
Her skin was as pale as curdled milk, devoid of the glow of life. Her once-thick chestnut hair had half fallen out, and the remaining strands were dry as straw, grayish-white like the bones of the dead.
Though revived, her wounds had not healed. Like a bitten apple whose flesh does not grow back, the wounds remained, with dried blood, exposed blue tendons beneath the muscles, and even glimpses of white bone.
She had soaked in the river for days, and fish and insects had gnawed her corpse into pits and hollows.
She looked like a mountain specter draped in human skin, and that skin had been peeled from a woman's corpse long dead and rotted.
Uncle Finger nearly fainted from terror, crying out repeatedly, "No! Catelyn, you're not like this, don't—"
But Lady Stoneheart refused him even that small mercy. She deliberately lifted an oil lamp and revealed her "lovely" body for him to see.
Uncle Finger propped one hand against the ground, desperately trying to crawl backward.
Lady Stoneheart made a harsh rasping sound that might have been laughter and followed him with unhurried steps.
"Catelyn, don't be reckless. Think of Eddard. Think of Sansa. You're the noble lady of Riverrun, the dignified and graceful Lady of Winterfell."
Uncle Finger was completely panicked now. While trying to provoke her with words, he also slid himself toward the Moon Door.
The Eyrie spanned two mountain peaks, and its central keep hung suspended hundreds of meters in the air. Its builders had hollowed out the center of the great hall's floor and installed a door there—the Moon Door.
Jumping through the Moon Door meant falling off a cliff hundreds of meters high.
Uncle Finger would rather kill himself.
But Lady Stoneheart had long left kindness and mercy to R'hllor. She could kill innocent people without hesitation; what mercy would she show the enemy who had destroyed her family?
She grabbed the leg with his shattered knee and dragged him back despite his pig-like shrieks. Then she tore off his clothing and blankets, ignored his violent struggling and begging, forced a large bottle of the forest witch's crude aphrodisiac down his throat, and after a moment, sat down on him with force.
"Oh, no…" Uncle Finger wailed like a dying creature in the wild.
He had no choice but to endure.
He squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed.
Not even the heat below could warm Lady Stoneheart's heart. She looked coldly at his twisted, agonized face and said, "Isn't this what you always wanted?"
"You're Eddard's wife. Don't do this…" Pinned beneath a demon risen from hell, Uncle Finger completely broke down, crying like a frightened child.
"Eddard, Eddard, Eddard…" Lady Stoneheart's dried eyes could no longer shed tears, only oozing foul, dark-red blood. She laughed in despair. "Open your eyes and look at me. With this monstrous face, how can I ever see Eddard again?
My Eddard… ha ha…
He is in the gods' heaven, basking in glory and honeyed wine, while I cannot even go to the Seven Hells. The Seven Hells belong to the Seven. I must go to the hell of a foreign god I never believed in."
"It's you. It's all your fault!" Lady Stoneheart moved violently.
Uncle Finger felt as though he had fallen into a swamp of worms and snakes—cold, slimy, rotting. His body sank deeper and deeper, past his head.
Countless long worms burrowed through his pores into his skin, his muscles, his soul.
He lay on the ground like a corpse, his dull eyes staring upward without focus. He murmured,
"The maesters were right. Ordinary people need a real world without magic, without dragons, without gods."
Seeing him like that, Lady Stoneheart let out a rasping, grotesque laugh, intoxicated by the immense ecstasy of revenge.
But her heart was like a bottomless pit. No matter what pleasure was poured into it, it all drained away into some unknown place.
Only hatred, resentment, and jealousy lingered—filling her completely.
She could never feel joy again. Every second she spent in the mortal world was torment.
"Sigh… I should return to hell. Sansa, farewell. Rickon, I'm sorry. Bran, where are you… Arya, where are you now…"
Lady Stoneheart bent down and tightly embraced Littlefinger's uncle. Their bodies rolled together and tumbled into the Moon Door.
The cold wind howled. The moonlight was bleak. The two corpses, twisted together, smashed into a mess of mingled flesh.
The mountain towered high, as if lifting the crescent moon in the sky.
On the western side, Alyssa's Tears poured down from the mountaintop like the Milky Way descending from the heavens. The torrent crashed into a frigid river that cut across the valley plain.
The waterfall thundered. The water shimmered. Bathed in moonlight, it looked like a silver ribbon falling from the sky.
Not far from the riverbank, on a barren hillside of jagged rocks and patches of black earth dotted with leftover snow, several people crouched beneath a slab of gray rock scarred by the cold wind, chatting quietly.
"Perhaps you still have a mission left to fulfill." Thoros of Myr tightened the fur around his shoulders and spoke in a low voice.
"What does the Lord of Light want me to do?" Lady Stoneheart's lifeless eyes fixed on the crescent moon sharp as a blade overhead as she asked coldly.
She had died.
She had been brought back.
The Brotherhood Without Banners had long known her plan.
They also knew she wanted to die.
After helping her kidnap Littlefinger's uncle, they waited at the foot of the mountain for her to fall from the summit.
In truth, her predecessor, the Lightning Lord, had also longed for death.
He acted recklessly again and again, died seven or eight times, and was resurrected just as many.
But each resurrection took away a piece of his better memories, and the more he returned, the more he suffered.
He could no longer endure it. When he found Catelyn's corpse, he gave her his "kiss of life."
At last, he died. She took his place among the living.
At first, she was grateful for the chance to seek vengeance. But now that the task of revenge had been passed to her children, she yearned for eternal rest, yet could not achieve it.
When the red priest from Myr gathered her torn body and performed the farewell ritual, she lived again.
Well… Thoros wasn't even sure he could revive her. Everything depended on R'hllor's will.
R'hllor did not want her dead.
"Your very existence means you are carrying out the mission granted to you by the Lord of Light," the red priest comforted the "Chosen One."
Lady Stoneheart was the Holy Chosen of the Red God's faith.
"My uncle had a mission too. Can't you bring him back?" said Jaime, the long-haired, unkempt man.
The kidnapping of Littlefinger's uncle had been carried out under his direction.
The proud commander of the Kingsguard was now acting as a bandit.
"He's been dead too long, and his body is in the Great Sept of Baelor," Thoros said, shaking his head.
"The Mother is such a biased whore. Why bring back that bastard High Sparrow but not my uncle? He was one of the few good men in our family!" Jaime pouted.
He cursed the Mother, yet no one rebuked him. Everyone present was a follower of the Red God.
"Let's go. Dawn is coming," said Lem.
The group rose to leave, but Lady Stoneheart suddenly caught sight of a severed head.
A hole had been smashed through it, and white brain matter oozed from the opening, dripping onto Littlefinger's uncle's handsome, unblinking face.
"Bring him back."
"This…" Thoros hesitated. "He is not like you. You were like a log that broke cleanly into pieces after falling.
He is like a pile of cow dung, splattered everywhere when it hit the ground. There's no way to gather enough to make a whole body."
Lady Stoneheart looked left and right, then pointed at a pack of dogs pulling a sled in the distance. "His head is still intact. Attach it to a dog's body. Will that work?"
"I fear not…" Thoros answered, face pale and unsure.
"They stitched my son's head onto the Mountain's body. Are you telling me the great Lord of Light is inferior to some maester?"
Lady Stoneheart's voice was like a hurricane blowing out of a frozen hell.
"I'll try," the red priest said helplessly.
Jaime shivered, his voice trembling. "There's no need for this. You already killed him."
Lady Stoneheart replied coldly, "On the road to hell, I need a companion. Or perhaps you would like to join me?"
Jaime said nothing more and hurried forward to unhitch one of the sled dogs.
"A female dog," Lady Stoneheart added.
Jaime froze for a moment, then worked even faster.
Lem severed the dog's head, and Jaime pressed Littlefinger's uncle's head onto the dog's neck. The blood congealed quickly in the freezing night, fixing the head in place.
"Dark is the long night, peril at every turn. Bright is the day, flourishing with life."
Thoros finished chanting, but the corpse remained a corpse.
"No use," the red priest said helplessly.
"My turn." Lady Stoneheart stepped forward and rasped, "The night is long, and I need a companion. Holy Lord of Light, hear my plea."
Thoros's face contorted. She dared twist the doctrine of the Lord of Light—
"Gah!"
"Is… is this heaven?" The dog's paws twitched, and Littlefinger's uncle opened his eyes in confusion. "Why is heaven so cold?"
Thoros: …
Jaime smothered his terror and shouted at him, "You dog of a man! You sparked civil war across the Seven Kingdoms and murdered my son. You still think you deserve heaven?"
"Woof. Who are you?" Suddenly, Littlefinger's uncle looked down at himself. Seeing what he had become, he let out a wail. "Aoooh—no, merciful Mother, I've fallen into the seven hells and turned into a dog demon!"
(End of chapter)
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