The Tower of Joy

Streaks of purple and red stained the darkening sky as the sun made its downwards voyage across the heavens. A light breeze whispered down from the mountains that circled above the valley, stirring up dust and sand to billow about the foot of a red-bricked spire. Weathered but sturdy, it looked from a distance to be another mountain, sprung naturally from the ground rather than wrought by the hands of men. Those hands that raised it had named it the Tower of Joy. None could remember why it had earned the name.

Whatever the reason, it had served well as an old retreat of the Lords of Starfall. Despite lack of use, their pride demanded it be kept clean and well maintained; the lower quarters even housed a handful of servants, a pair of families that had dwelt in the confines of this tower for generations. The rooms, though modest, were comfortable enough for man and wife to live without complaint. There was game in the hills to eat if you were patient enough, and freshwater from a nearby stream to wash and drink. A man could ride for days around without seeing another living soul. A village lay five miles west, with the nearest castle another ten. 

A tall man in a loose fitting linen shirt was stood at the foot of the tower, gazing upwards intently towards the clouds. Hair of burnished silver hung danced with the wind about his ears and whipped against his face, though he did not flinch, or even blink.
For a time he watched the sky grow dark, the last vestiges of daylight sinking behind puffs of cloud.
As night descended and the air grew cold, the spell was broken. He disappeared into the tower, the wind hammering the doors shut behind him.

Within the red brick walls, he was met by a dour man clad in all white. Though he had foregone his plate and mail for silk and linen, a heavy woollen cloak still billowed about his shoulders, clasped about his throat by a brooch in the likeness of a three headed dragon.

"She's sleeping, Your Grace." The dark haired knight announced, in answer to a wordless question. The other nodded wearily. In the candlelight he looked shadowed and drawn, pale face a death mask hewn from clay, eyes black as midnight.
He paused for a long moment, and the whitecloak stood to unblinking attention as Prince Rhaegar's midnight eyes stared into nothing. 

"Bring me Arthur." He simply said, then slunk into a wooden chair as if it had defeated him. "I shall not sleep this night. The sky mourns the dead, and their souls whisper on the wind."

The knight departed with a wordless bow. His wearied expression changed. Gently, he leant down to pick up the silver-chased harp that balanced delicately against the table. Music came easily to him when solemn, and the sounds of a soft lament soon echoed in the darkness. 

The Prince seemed to pay Dayne no mind at first, though upon his approach the music died. Reluctantly, he set aside the harp, gently propping it back where he had found it against the table. Those midnight eyes were inscrutable in the darkness.

"You know it is not bandits or knaves that concerns me." His voice seemed to grow harder as he spoke, iron cooling into the blade that cuts. There was a long pause as a servant came to stoke the logs in the hearth. Sparks flickered greedily as the flames pulled them inwards, devouring them. Rhaegar seemed to wince as he drew his eyes away.

"I cannot... Tell her, Arthur. I cannot." He wrung his hands around a slip of paper borne to him by Ser Oswell not three days past. Dark wings, dark words. A raven to Starfall had brought news of fire, death, and rebellion. Of Starks burned alive and strangled to death. Of Robert Baratheon, roaring for his missing bride.

The Prince turned to look at his friend directly. In the firelight, Dayne would see the edges of his eyes were damp and reddened. 

"I do not fear death. But I know that if I return, I will not see her again. I have seen it, Arthur."

Rhaegar laughed, though he might well have been weeping. A hopelessness had set into his eyes, the violet glare having glazed over into a kind of fatalistic malaise. Though the night was cold, he looked as if gripped by fever.

”It would be no easier coming from my lips. Valiant princes do not bring slain fathers and murdered brothers to a woman’s door.”

The Prince threw the crumpled letter into the flames, and warmed his hand against the blaze. Staring into the flames brought him little comfort. 

”You do not understand. I will not return. Every night I dream of my own death. Each night is different, but the dream ends the same. My body, rent and broken.”

For a moment he looked to go on as if there was something else, something darker. But he did not. He sunk his head into his hands, gripping clumps of hair between his fingers.

”Seven Hells, I left my own children. My own blood, with a madman…”

Elia. Another regret, that he had dishonoured her so publicly. Their marriage had been political, and they knew it even in their tender moments. A barrier had lain between them, invisible and unbreakable. As a father he has been distant, withdrawn. He would set that to rights first, if he lived. Nothing mattered more than the children; the two already born, and the one he was yet to have.

Rhaegar smiled falsely at the words of comfort. The crackling of the flame grew quiet, the fire having eaten its fill.

”You are a good man, my old friend.” He stood wearily. Blinking back tiredness, he took a cloth and a basin of water, and began to wipe the sweat and dirt from his unblemished face. The Prince shaved daily, having never worn a beard of any kind; it was known by his friends that he considered hair upon the face to be unsightly.

”You have always done your duty. It is time I do mine.” He dabbed at his face with a towel. When he looked back at Arthur, it was with a touch of his old determination.

”Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.” It was an effort to repeat the maxim, forcing every word out as if the effort alone inflicted greatt pain. He made his voice firm. ”I will tell her the news upon the morrow. My father will find me soon, and the time for hiding is done.”

Rhaegar then turned then to Whent, who had slipped back into the Tower, silent as a shadow on the wall.

”I have one more duty to ask of you both. That you remain here and guard what is most precious to me. Blood of my blood, growing in my lady’s womb. That should the worst come to pass, they are kept safe.”

The Prince turned back to Dayne, glaring at him now with a fiendish intensity. ”The child most of all. Above all else.” To say as much broke his heart.

With oaths sworn, Rhaegar bid his friend sleep. As he himself surrendered to the dark, an unseen hand touched his mind again.

-

The next morning, the Prince and his bride rose early and rode off into the mountains, insisting firmly that even the Kingsguard were to remain behind. They were to go hunting, Lyanna had claimed, grinning wolfishly as she clutched her bow and fastened a bundle of makeshift arrows to her saddlebag. A few of the servants held expressions that spoke of protest, but held their tongues. The small bump over her stomach was well hidden by loose fitting silks. Despite the sun, she let her black hair run free, giggling with anticipation. Rhaegar smiled sadly at her as they rode off together into the distance. Soon their shapes disappeared behind the hills, clouded by dust.

It was not until the sun’s setting that the pair returned, two solemn shadows ill-lit by moonlight. Nothing passed between them but a dreadful silence as they ascended the Tower’s stairs.

As the days following the Prince’s departure turned to weeks, with little word reaching them from the outside world, Ser Oswell Whent developed an increasingly nervous energy. Though outwardly his visage and demeanor remained calm and controlled, agitated pacing turned to brief forays around the base of the tower and halfway down the path that amounted to the path which served as causeway to the isolated tower, and eventually he developed a habit of spending several hours at both the beginning and end of his days at sword practice, sweat staining his tunic as he worked his blade through form after form, locked in combat with foes unseen. It was after one such practice session, the pre-dawn glow having given way to full daylight, that he sought out his fellow kingsguard.

Panting slightly, and stripping away his tunic to let the sun dry the sweat from his skin, the younger knight approached the Sword of the Morning. Though they took watches in shifts, it seemed to him that the venerable warrior hardly needed the scant few hours of rest he took, never seeming to suffer the ill effects that lesser men might from lack of sleep. Indeed, at times he seemed more a statue, some carving of an implacable warrior from ages past, come to life to serve than a mortal man. One of the few men in this or any age to truly live up to his reputation. Thus, there was little doubt what council he would return to Oswell’s words, but as much out of a simple need to converse as any true ire, he spoke anyway. “How much longer will it last, do you think? This waiting that is. It suits me little to linger here, by our princes word or otherwise, when the man to whom we have sworn rides to battle against traitors who would wish his death. What is our calling, if not to be at his side in this?”

Lyanna groaned as the child sickness came again, retching horribly as yellow bile spewed into a bucket. She collapsed back onto the onto the bed, exhausted and feverish, smallclothes stained with sweat. Her belly had swollen monstrously, so much so that it hurt to even move.

A woman twice her age peered over her, moon faced and wrinkled. Her sour breath and rotten teeth reminded Lyanna of Old Nan. Soon enough she was barking commands to the other woman in the room, a wide eyed nursemaid named Wylla that Ser Arthur had brought over from Starfall to help with the birthing. Wide-hipped Wylla waddled over to her with a cloth and water to dab gently at the corners of her mouth and the end of her chin.

They washed and changed as one would a child, pulling clothes off her and changing the sheets around where she lay in surrender, too exhausted to resist. She had dreamed of Brandon again, racing her through the Rills with Barbrey Ryswell. A crown of winter roses graced her brow, and he had laughed when she told them she would be Queen. His hands were an icy blue, she remembered, and his dark eyes had bulged from his head as if they were about to burst. Her scream had awoken the nursemaids, and she shuddered as the vision entered her thoughts unbidden once again. 

A water-skin was offered, and she squeezed greedily, gasping for breath between draughts. That seemed to bring her to life, grey eyes staring wildly around her as she recalled where exactly she was. Wylla tried to offer a reassuring smile and some soothing words of comfort. The nursemaid had borne a child of her own recently, a squalling red thing that cried and whined unless a teat was in its mouth. The elder woman, Brella, was full of wizened disdain for her narrow hips and slender frame. Woman should wear some fat on them for childbirth, she insisted. Lyanna had hated her at first. The jailor that loomed at her bedside to force broth down her throat had been an easy target for her anger. She had screamed and clawed until she was spent, exhaustion and grief overtaking her.

Now the jailor was her own body, this baby in her belly, the child of the Dragon. Sometimes she hated it, hated the child in her belly, hated the man who had put it there and ridden away. But hate gave way to longing at the desire to see him again, the desire to see their child in her arms when she felt a kick in her womb.

Lyanna propped herself up on her elbows and slid her legs from the bed. With a groan, she forced herself to stand, waving away the fretting of her nursemaids.

”I would see my guardsmen today.” She announced haughtily, eyes as bright and fierce as winter snow. ”Send them up to me, if you would.” With a grunt she made her way over to a stool, clad in naught but a loose fitting shift of silk that clung her swollen belly.