[TV/BOOK] *SPOILERS* Game of Thrones Discussion - Page 219

Lyanna had never very much faith in the gods, old or new. She always felt a little strange, kneeling before the heart tree, her father’s and brothers’ heads bowed so devoutly, talking to something that wasn’t there.

But she was pious enough and understood that her place in the world was to marry the man her father had chosen for her and be happy to have his sons. Her father was a kind man after all, and she was sure he wouldn’t choose anyone horrible or cruel. But as she grew older and it became clear that the man she would marry would be Robert Baratheon, she didn’t know how to feel.

Robert was not cruel or horrible. He was handsome and strong and honorable and Ned loved him dearly. But he was boisterous and flirtatious and Lyanna was not fool enough to think she was the only woman in his life. It made her angry. She didn’t want to be a silly girl who thought love was like she heard it in the songs, but did not want a husband who would give bastards to other women.

But she was a good girl. Everyone said. She learned to curtsy and sew and walk with a long and flowing gown. But she also went riding, fast and hard, the only place she ever felt free. Freedom was like a foreign word to her. She was encumbered by her family’s expectations and it seemed that there was no way to both make herself and her family happy.

She loved her father and her brothers and her family’s legacy and name and her home and the fierce grey direwolf emblazoned on their flags. She wanted to be what they wanted, to make them proud and happy. And if that meant marrying Robert Baratheon, then a part of Lyanna that she cherished as much as her home and family would die, and Lyanna did not know what was more tragic.



“I want you,” Rhaegar said to her.

It made her ache, every time he said it. It made her flush and hot and light with joy and heavy with guilt and uncertainty.

“I want every part of you, forever” he said calmly, but she could see the burning in his eyes. “But only if you want the same of me.”

Lyanna wanted to scream. This man was all she ever longed for and he was the worst possible option. If she thought the gods cared, she would curse them to all the seven hells and beyond. But Lyanna was a lady and she didn’t do either.

He was willing to give up everything for her. His wife and children and the seven kingdoms. At least that’s what he said. Lyanna sometimes thought she was being a stupid little girl, believing what he said. But he said it so firmly and he did not say it to anyone else. Being wanted and desired above all others, and excluding all others, was so intoxicating.

Lyanna saw the Princess Ellia. She was dark and beautiful but so meek. She bowed her head and curtsied at the lords and ladies, a faint smile tweaking her lovely mouth, but when they passed by her, her expression fell into one of defeated ambivalence. As if a fire that had once filled her with life has gone out. Lyanna wanted to cry. She felt responsible but also terrified that she would become like Ellia, sad and broken and empty.

She wants to pray for guidance, but it feels useless. Kneeling before a heart tree or even the seven new gods would do nothing to ease her pain. It would only make her feel more overpowered and weak.

Lyanna met Rhaegar in the shade of the forest, just before dawn.

“Come with me, please.”

His eyes looked like pools of wet ink in the gloom. Her heart was threatening to break out of her chest. It was agony to leave, but it was death to stay. Death of her heart and her passion and everything she treasured about herself. Agony was something, a feeling beyond numbness and defeat.

If you don’t do this, you will regret it forever, she said to herself, hating and treasuring the words as she stood there, frozen.

But one touch of his hand was the fire that melted her. His pale fingers, ghostly blue in the half-light, touched her hand like it was a precious artifact made of the finest crystal. She wanted him so badly it made her feel ill.

“I need a cloak,” she said, shivering in the pre-dawn chill.

“I’ll be your cloak,” he said with a smile and from any other lips, Lyanna would have laughed at such a trite comment. But she was drunk on his smile and his touch and she went with him, her heart aching.



Lyanna looked back at the girl who ran away and felt anger and pity. How foolish she had been, living in the moment, not a thought to the consequences, only thinking about herself, not the rest of the world, as if that hadn’t mattered at all.

“I think I’m dying,” she said out loud, to the empty tower. The Kingsguard was out there, somewhere, but they don’t comfort her. There had been a maester, but they sent him away.

Lyanna could barely walk the length of her room. That was not normal, she knew, and she felt so weak, so tired, that she thought she was half-dead already.

Weakness had been her fear, to be reduced to nothing, to have children and nothing else and be happy with it. Should she have been happy, then? She was with child and weak and certain to die from the birthing.

The faster I run from something, the quicker it comes to claim me, she thought bitterly.

Her child would die too, she was certain of it. In fact, she hoped so. Rhaegar had sent the Kingsguard to watch over her, not for her own sake, but for the child inside her. And he had gone off to die, most likely. Rhaegar was a great warrior but she remembered Robert’s legendary strength and his massive warhammer and thought she knew who would persevere.

“I loved you,” she said angrily to the stone wall. “I gave you everything. Now I hope you die.”

When the birthing pains stole over her, Lyanna lay in bed screaming until her throat was torn and raw, but she couldn’t stop the pain. Her bed was blood soaked and damp with sweat and she felt so, so cold. Arthur Dayne was there beside her, letting her crush his hand in her clutch, but that was all he could do for her.

Kill me, she wanted to scream, just kill me now and get it over with. But she couldn’t gather enough strength to speak.

In the throes of her agony, she barely registered the shouts and sounds of clashing swords outside her door. When Arthur left her side, she didn’t notice, only clenched the bed sheets and screamed to the gods to send a sword directly into her heart and put an end to it. She didn’t know or care who was winning or who the combatants were. She only wanted death.

When the fighting was done and smell of blood and death reeked in the tower room, Lyanna did not recognize the figure beside her, at first. When she looked into his face, she thought she was looking at herself. The grey eyes and the dark hair and pain, the terrible wrenching agony plain on his face.

“Lyanna…” he wept and she struggled to speak.

“Ned… Ned… Oh, Ned.”

She was crying, suddenly, in a way she hadn’t before. Crying with grief and love instead of pain. Her brother was clumsy from weariness and battle fatigue and when he knelt beside her, his elbow knocked over the vase of winter roses that had sat beside her beside and died many weeks before. The pretty blue buds had crisped and turned a dull, tired purple. Petals scattered over her bed and the stone floor.

Ned knew nothing about midwifery but, there beside him was another familiar face. Howland was exceedingly gentle as he parted her thighs and coached her breathing with a tender voice. But his hands shook slightly and he could not keep the tremble from his voice.

The pain intensified, but Ned stroked her hair and whispered kind words as Howland reached inside her and handled the babe with practiced ease. When it was out of her at last, Lyanna wept brokenly, great heaving sobs that tore out of her like a dagger through lace.

As Howland cut the cord with his knife, Lyanna hoped it wouldn’t cry. She hoped it was cold and dead so she wouldn’t have to bear the burden of its life. But as Howland tenderly patted its shiny, slimy back a fresh wail rent the air. It was alive and screaming and to Lyanna’s eyes, a red, twisted, ugly thing.

Lyanna’s breathing was broken and ragged. Howland laid the creature on her breast and she refused to look at it. It was the product of all her mistakes and all the death she had reaped and she hated it. She let it sit there, screaming and squirming.

“Lyanna…” Ned whispered, taking the babe gently in his hands, hands so big that they near engulfed its tiny body. “A boy. You have a boy.”

Lyanna looked, hating herself for doing it, and the baby’s tiny bawling face was scrunched up in screams. She wanted to hate him, she wanted to hate him so badly it broke her heart all over again, but once he was a he and not an it she couldn’t do it. As if responding to her feelings, the babe ceased screaming and opened his eyes only a slit, a confused, blurry appraisal of the world. He looked at her she looked at him and saw her own grey eyes in his little pink face.

“Oh gods…” she wailed, “Ned, you have to promise me, please, promise me. Keep him safe, you must. Promise me…”

She kept whispering it, unable to stop, the world going dark around her. She could hear Ned crying her name and begging Howland to help, but he was weeping too. Ned was gripping her hand, but she could barely feel it anymore. She was so cold.

Gradually, the pain lessened. It was so good to not be in pain. Dimly she heard her name cried over and over again like a prayer. She was pulling away from it, sinking deeper into the comforting depths of sleep.



Lyanna perceived light again. Just when everything had turned utterly black, the world came back to her. There was Ned, weeping, holding her body and shaking it, begging her to wake up. Howland was there, holding her baby and crying silently, his tears splashing on her babe’s rosy cheeks.

It was so strange to see her body and not be inside it. But she was not in any pain and she felt curiously distant from her body and her brother’s grief. The tower room looked strangely dull and colorless and though a wash of grey light had fallen over it.

“Lyanna,” came a voice, low and unfamiliar.

Lyanna took in the speaker. It seemed vaguely man shaped, but it was so nondescript that she couldn’t be sure. It was like looking at a person’s face and then immediately forgetting it. She could not hold a picture of it in her mind, even as she was looking right at it.

“Who are you?” she asked the thing.

“I’m your death,” it said to her. “And it’s time to go now.”

“I did not expect death to look like you,” she told it as she followed it out the door.

“Few do,” it said.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the land of the dead. I’ve been with you your entire life, Lyanna, and now we must go.”

Lyanna did not object. Even as they descended the staircase, it seemed to become less and less like a staircase. In fact, without really knowing how she got there, Lyanna and her death were walking through an open tract of land, grey and featureless, toward a collection of derelict and ragged looking houses in the distance.

“My lady, is that you?” she heard behind her.

Lyanna turned to see Ser Arthur Dayne. So he was dead too. He was a grey and indistinct version of his living self, but she knew him.

“Hello, ser. I’m very sorry to see you here.”

“So am I,” he said mournfully. “But I suppose it hardly matters now.”

Lyanna silently agreed. Life seemed like a distant memory. She could see many more dead souls following their deaths to the shabby little town. She recognized other members of the Kingsguard and she was amazed that her brother and Howland Reed had cut through all them and survived. There were hundreds more she didn’t recognize, men and women and children, of all ages and cultures and classes, some dressed so strangely she couldn’t believe it and some that did not look like people at all.

Lyanna felt strange, seeing them all congregating to the same place. It seemed it didn’t matter if you were highborn or lowborn, a peasant or a king, heathen or martyr, worshipper of the old gods or the new or the savage gods from across the sea. Everyone went to the same place.

It made Lyanna sad, even though she had distained the gods for much of her life. People found so much comfort in prayer and the promises of eternal happiness in the afterlife and all they would get was this sad, grey and broken world.

The town was not empty as she thought, and she saw faces, living faces, in the broken and neglected shacks, but she had no need for the world of the living. Her death beckoned her on.

Presently, they came upon a riverbank. The town behind them was shrouded in mist and the river disappeared into a grey and formless void. It was very still and the little ripples on the broken stones on its bank were brown and filthy. It was a sad, ugly bank on a sad and ugly world. She was all alone there, with her death.

“Wait here, for the boatman. He will take you on,” it told her.

Lyanna felt a sob in her throat. She wanted her death to stay. She was so alone here.

“Goodbye, Lyanna,” it said, before she could speak. And it was gone.

She did not want to be here, on this lonely shore. She had spent her last moments of life longing for death and now she was here and regretting it. That seemed to be the general pattern of her life and it was too much to see it persist into death. She thought of her babe, alive without her, and nearly sobbed. But a ghost could not sob.

In the distance, she heard the hollow sound of water hitting the side of a boat. From out of the cloying mist, she saw the boatman who would take her beyond. She had never seen anything so old and broken. It was as though he had been there since the beginning of the world. And, she thought, he probably had been.

Lyanna had spent her whole life longing for things she could never have and now her death stretched out before her in an endless grey nothingness. If this was the punishment for her reckless and selfish desires, then Lyanna could not bear to feel that burden. But bear it she must, because there were no other options.



There was no sleep in the land of the dead. Time didn’t exist either, every moment felt exactly the same as the last. This world was vast and limitless, filled with milling, aimless souls of every person who had ever died. Lyanna was not the only one who had died for love.

As she lay in a sleepless stupor, unable to fall into blissful unconsciousness, the harpies came. Those vicious foul things would scream through the skies, bloodcurdling shrieks that rent the still air. But they could also whisper.

“Stupid girl. Foolish, selfish girl. Your brother and father are dead. Dead because of you. Your father burned alive and your brother strangled by his own strength. And your lover, too. Dead in a stinking pool of mud, his chest caved in by your betrothed’s hand. All your doing.”

All the terrible things she had ever thought, all the cruel words she had hurled at herself, came back to her from the hateful mouths of the harpies. Lyanna could not sob or scream or cry and she was an insubstantial form too weak to touch anything.

Brandon and her father and Rhaegar were there, they must be, but she never saw them. The world was too vast and every day, every moment, more souls poured in from life. She was certain she could spend eternity there and never see them. And for every moment of that eternity, the harpies would torment her with her guilt.



Ghosts rarely spoke to each other. Their speech was low and barely audible and there wasn’t anything to say. So when they did begin to talk to each other, it was clear that something extraordinary was happening.

Lyanna walked with the other ghosts, over the vast and featureless landscape, all huddled together earnestly, desperate to catch a glimpse of the living children. She may have walked for days, weeks, but she did not perceive time. Although she was very far away, she could sense the children standing there, so beautifully and wonderfully alive, talking about life. The ghosts whispered back the stories, those true, magnificent stories that sounded like a dream to Lyanna but they were so good to hear. She wanted to be closer, to feel them, to bask in their presence, but the press of ghosts eager for the balm of their company was too vast.

Then came the long march into the mountain. The way was long and the line of souls that followed was immense. Lyanna walked with them because she could do nothing else. She had run away once before and it had destroyed her. Now she could walk the long, winding path up and up and find something, anything, but this. She had thought she understood absolutes when she stood with Rhaegar in the cold dawn, telling him she needed a cloak. She thought she understood what it meant to be dead and empty and sad. Now, her only option was walking and putting all her hope in these children, because without them, she truly had nothing.



The journey was long. From the stories passed down the line of ghosts, it was also treacherous. But when Lyanna had passed by the great abyss leading to absolute nothingness, there was a window to the living world, exactly as promised. It seemed too wonderful to be real.

Lyanna had resented promises. Rhaegar had promised her many things, all of which turned to ash. Now she stepped into a wide and shimmering field. The golden tracks of grass heaved and whispered with wind, flowing out and up toward a purple, twilit sky speckled with tranquil pink stars. A thin sliver of soft grey cloud cradled the orange sun, sinking toward the horizon, staining the fields gold. It was more beautiful than anything Lyanna had ever seen.

The souls poured out around her and she knew they all felt the same thing. Lyanna allowed her flimsy, insubstantial form break apart in the soft wind, the most glorious relief she had ever felt, gentle as a mother’s kiss.

She was part of the fields and the wind and flowers and the sky. She drifted, without time or care, her essence wandering through every corner of every world. She found parts of herself that she had left behind, her fire and her passion and her resolve. All those wonderful things that she thought had been broken. They had only floated away from her for a while.

She felt Brandon and Ned and Rhaegar and her father and her mother. She felt their love and their sadness and every wonderful, human feeling poured into her from every side. It was not sad that they were dead because they were part of everything. They fell with the rain and drifted with the snow and danced with the wind.

Lyanna wandered over all things. She knew when she was in her own world, the place where she had lived and died. And in the cold, frozen parts of the world where men despaired and abandoned all hope, she found her son. He was a man grown, or he thought he was, and he sat before his books and papers with his brow furrowed. She felt his heart stretched taut, his anxiety rising in a lump in his throat, and found the curve of his cheek, the warm living skin and the grey eyes she had given him.

Gently, like an infinitesimal fleck of snow, she settled on a single eyelash. He blinked; his mind in turmoil, his thoughts black and ugly. Lyanna melded with him like the sweetest kiss, chaste and loving. Jon Snow shook his head to clear his muddled thoughts and went back to his papers.