They said their goodbyes at first light, when mist lay low among the roots and the Isle breathed like a sleeping beast.
Lyanna stood beneath Grandmother's boughs with Winter at her shoulder. The mare nosed the bark as if to memorize the scent. Maple came forward with a small bundle of plaited cords. Each cord held a bead of weirwood, smoothed by many hands, and a sliver of amber the color of old honey.
"For the long road," Maple said. "Grandmother sings in these. If you lose your path, listen."
Howland bowed with a care that belonged in a hall. Dacey gently tugged the string to sense its durability, then grinned and slipped the cord over her neck. Lyanna did the same. The wood felt warm against her skin. A faint hum rose there, not sound so much as the prickle in the air just before lightning strikes.
Thistle waited a little behind, half-shadowed by root and leaf. He lifted a twig-thin hand. His red eyes held her until the shapes of his words struck like a bell. See true. Move sure. Return.
"I will," Lyanna said in the Old Tongue. Her voice did not shake. "I will come back."
Children watched from the green. A dozen faces, each with their own small differences in leaf and skin and ear. Many would root one day. Some had nowhere yet to do it. Maple had told her that after the Andals came, the woods grew smaller each year. Lyanna swallowed the bitterness that rose at the thought and bent to press her brow to Grandmother's bark. Sap scented her hair. The tree's slow music shivered through bone. For a moment she felt held by something older than even humanity.
They pushed off before the sun cleared the fog. The skiff took the current like a leaf. Howland handled the pole as if he were born with river mud under his nails. Dacey sat at the bow with the eel pots and nets stacked high to break her shape. Lyanna kept low alongside their menagerie of animals and listened to the water slap the planks. Maple's small figure stood at the bank and lifted a hand once. The mist swallowed her.
By noon the God's Eye widened to a slate plain. A line of shore rose out of the gray. Harrentown showed first: wharves like broken teeth, sheds sagging under thatch, smoke pinned low by damp air. Beyond that, the black ribs of Harrenhal stabbed the cloud line. The towers were maimed but still vast. Lyanna had seen them before yet felt smaller anyway.
Howland brought them to a weed-choked spur where eelers tied up. He had knotted his cloak to look like a fisher's wrap. He carried a tally slate streaked with chalk: bream, eels, river crabs. No guard cared to count twice on a day like this. Men eyed the nets and the wet cloaks, not the faces beneath them.
"Head down. Speak only when asked," he said.
They moved with the tide of work. Dacey shouldered a coil of rope and swore about rotten cordage with perfect contempt. Lyanna hunched under a basket and let her hair cling in damp strands. Winter and the marsh-pony waited in a rented lean-to of warped boards and fish-smell. The stableboy took coin and did not meet their eyes.
Harrenhal kept its godswood within the inner ring of walls, where the ground rose and the air lost the stink of fish. Getting there meant crossing courtyards with the right slouch and the right pace. Howland set it. Not too quick, not too slow. He nodded at a cook, cursed at a puddle, scratched at his neck. Dacey rolled a shoulder as if stiff from oars. No one looked twice. It helped that the garrison seemed horribly undermanned.
The old trees waited past a low arch. The weirwood at Harrenhal was not Grandmother, yet kin now that Lyanna knew how to listen. Its face had a unique eerie smile. Even on the whole Isle of Faces one could not find a match for the shit-eating grin. Dry leaves littered the moss like curled hands. In the hush, the castle's noise sounded far away.
Lyanna and Dacey slipped deeper among the trunks. She had hidden the Laughing Tree's armor pieces during the tourney but never had the chance to retrieve them after her floral coronation. Moss grew over the hollow where they had stuffed the bundle between roots. Mice had chewed the wrappings. The steel showed dull but sound when she pulled it free.
Dacey whistled low. "Still fits you," she said, testing a strap. "Weight's right."
Lyanna wiped a gauntlet with the corner of her cloak. The painted shield's grin had flaked to a cracked smile. She ran a thumb over it and felt something harden in her chest. Not pride. Not nostalgia. A steadiness like the first set of feet on winter ice.
They worked in quiet among the roots. Leather creaked. Buckles bit home. The half-armor sat clean under fisher leathers. The painted grin had flaked to a cracked smile, but the weight still felt right in Lyanna's hands.
Leaves lifted though no wind reached this deep. A white raven dropped from a high limb and landed with a neat hop on the moss. It was fully albino: feathered milk-white from crown to tail, eyes red as fresh sap. It tipped its head left, then right, studying them without fear.
"Good," it said in rough Common. The voice had the scrape of bark. "You came back to me."
Dacey's hand went to her stick. "It speaks."
"It wears me," the raven replied, as if correcting a child. "I am a tree. Today I am also a bird. Both are true."
Lyanna straightened with confusion. "A tree? Which tree?"
The raven lifted its breast, proud. "That one." It pointed with its beak at the heart tree, grinning and pale. "I am this face and these roots. I am also the roots that gossip with cousins along the water. Names are a game for men. If you need one, call me Dijkstra."
"Howland," Dacey muttered, "do trees often introduce themselves."
"Not to me," he said, almost reverent. "But I am glad of it."
Dijkstra hopped closer and peered into Lyanna's basket with brazen interest. "You came to fetch your laughing skin. Good. I like a story with costumes." He turned to the heart tree again as if listening, then clicked his beak. "I grow tired of stones and bad songs. This castle sulks. The cooks are dull. I will come with you and see better trouble."
"You would leave your roots," Lyanna said.
"I do not leave," Dijkstra said, and there was a sweet, sappy pride in it. "I ride. A root may reach farther than a road if it remembers enough water. I can wear a bird and still be myself. I can taste salt and smoke and bring them back to the wood. That is adventure. I want it."
"Why us," Dacey asked.
"Because you make secrets fall out of other people," the raven said without a blink. "Because you smell of old vows and new fights. Because you will not sit still. I like when pieces move."
He hopped once, then settled, as if joining a council. Subtlety did not seem to live in him at all. He spoke as if the whole yard should hear.
"If you come, you draw eyes," Howland warned.
"I am eyes," Dijkstra said, delighted. "I watch. I tell. Men call that spying and whispering. I prefer to call it sharing. Sharing is fun, it makes for wonderful pranks."
Lyanna glanced at the shield under her cloak. The amulet at her throat warmed, a small hum under the skin, as if the isle approved. She looked back to the bird. "If you come, you obey two rules. Do not speak when silence keeps us safe. Do not spill a secret that breaks a trust I have made."
The raven considered her with grave red eyes. "I can keep a pocket of quiet if the story grows better later. Yes. And I will not spoil a trust you name. But I will still pluck at threads for fun."
"That is the best offer we will get," Howland sighed.
Dijkstra shook out his pale feathers. Lyanna stepped closer.
"My family," she said. "Tell me first. What has happened in Winterfell's name since I left?"
Dijkstra blinked, red eyes bright. "You do not know?"
Lyanna stepped closer. "Know what?"
"The king killed your father," the raven said. "Wildfire. Chains. He burned Lord Rickard in his own armor while the court watched. Your brother Brandon died with him. Strangled by a noose with a sword just out of reach. He choked while he tried to save your father."
The godswood seemed to tilt. Sound narrowed to the slow drip of sap. Lyanna's mouth opened but no words came out. Cold climbed her spine.
Dacey's hand was on her arm. Howland said her name. The heart tree's face blurred, white into red. The world went soft at the edges.
Lyanna fell.