A Game of Thrones: The Story Continues Books 1-5. George R.r. Martin
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him as water lapped around his boots.
Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. “Sweet sister,” he murmured hoarsely. He had deep blue eyes and a mouth made for smiles, but he was not smiling now. He looked worn and tired, battered by battle and haggard from strain. His neck was bandaged where he had taken a wound. Catelyn hugged him fiercely.
“Your grief is mine, Cat,” he said when they broke apart. “When we heard about Lord Eddard … the Lannisters will pay, I swear it, you will have your vengeance.”
“Will that bring Ned back to me?” she said sharply. The wound was still too fresh for softer words. She could not think about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She had to be strong. “All that will keep. I must see Father.”
“He awaits you in his solar,” Edmure said.
“Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady,” her father’s steward explained. When had that good man grown so old and grey? “He instructed me to bring you to him at once.”
“I’ll take her.” Edmure escorted her up the water stair and across the lower bailey, where Petyr Baelish and Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The massive sandstone walls of the keep loomed above them. As they pushed through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she asked, “How bad is he?” dreading the answer even as she said the words.
Edmure’s look was somber. “He will not be with us long, the maesters say. The pain is … constant, and grievous.”
A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother Edmure and her sister Lysa, at the Lannisters, at the maesters, at Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who would take them both away from her. “You should have told me,” she said. “You should have sent word as soon as you knew.”
“He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that he was dying. With the realm so troubled, he feared that if the Lannisters suspected how frail he was …”
“… they might attack?” Catelyn finished, hard. It was your doing, yours, a voice whispered inside her. If you had not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf …
They climbed the spiral stair in silence.
The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord Hoster’s solar was triangular as well, with a stone balcony that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great sandstone ship. From there the lord of the castle could look down on his walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met. They had moved her father’s bed out onto the balcony. “He likes to sit in the sun and watch the rivers,” Edmure explained. “Father, see who I’ve brought. Cat has come to see you …”
Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his youth, portly as he grew older. Now he seemed shrunken, the muscle and meat melted off his bones. Even his face sagged. The last time Catelyn had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown, well streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as snow.
His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure’s voice. “Little cat,” he murmured in a voice thin and wispy and wracked by pain. “My little cat.” A tremulous smile touched his face as his hand groped for hers. “I watched for you …”
“I shall leave you to talk,” her brother said, kissing their lord father gently on the brow before he withdrew.
Catelyn knelt and took her father’s hand in hers. It was a big hand, but fleshless now, the bones moving loosely under the skin, all the strength gone from it. “You should have told me,” she said. “A rider, a raven …”
“Riders are taken, questioned,” he answered. “Ravens are brought down …” A spasm of pain took him, and his fingers clutched hers hard. “The crabs are in my belly … pinching, always pinching. Day and night. They have fierce claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of the poppy … I sleep a lot … but I wanted to be awake to see you, when you came. I was afraid … when the Lannisters took your brother, the camps all around us … I was afraid I would go, before I could see you again … I was afraid …”
“I’m here, Father,” she said. “With Robb, my son. He’ll want to see you too.”
“Your boy,” he whispered. “He had my eyes, I remember …”
“He did, and does. And we’ve brought you Jaime Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free again, Father.”
Lord Hoster smiled. “I saw. Last night, when it began, I told them … had to see. They carried me to the gatehouse … watched from the battlements. Ah, that was beautiful … the torches came in a wave, I could hear the cries floating across the river … sweet cries … when that siege tower went up, gods … would have died then, and glad, if only I could have seen you children first. Was it your boy who did it? Was it your Robb?”
“Yes,” Catelyn said, fiercely proud. “It was Robb … and Brynden. Your brother is here as well, my lord.”
“Him.” Her father’s voice was a faint whisper. “The Blackfish … came back? From the Vale?”
“Yes.”
“And Lysa?” A cool wind moved through his thin white hair. “Gods be good, your sister … did she come as well?”
He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell the truth. “No. I’m sorry …”
“Oh.” His face fell, and some light went out of his eyes. “I’d hoped … I would have liked to see her, before …”
“She’s with her son, in the Eyrie.”
Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. “Lord Robert now, poor Arryn’s gone … I remember … why did she not come with you?”
“She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels safe.” She kissed his wrinkled brow. “Robb will be waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?”
“Your son,” he whispered. “Yes. Cat’s child … he had my eyes, I remember. When he was born. Bring him … yes.”
“And your brother?”
Her father glanced out over the rivers. “Blackfish,” he said. “Has he wed yet? Taken some … girl to wife?”
Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought, sadly. “He has not wed. You know that, Father. Nor will he ever.”
“I told him … commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He knows. My right, to make his match. A good match. A Redwyne. Old House. Sweet girl, pretty … freckles … Bethany, yes. Poor child. Still waiting. Yes. Still …”
“Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago,” Catelyn reminded him. “She has three children by him.”
“Even so,” Lord Hoster muttered. “Even so. Spit on the girl. The Redwynes. Spit on me. His lord, his brother … that Blackfish. I had other offers. Lord Bracken’s girl. Walder Frey … any of three, he said … Has he wed? Anyone? Anyone?”
“No one,” Catelyn said, “yet he has come many leagues to see you, fighting his way back to Riverrun. I would not be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped us.”
“He was ever a warrior,” her father husked. “That he could do. Knight of the Gate, yes.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. “Send him. Later. I’ll sleep now. Too sick to fight. Send him up later, the Blackfish …”
Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there in the shade of his keep, with his rivers flowing beneath. He was asleep before she left the solar.
When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood on the water stairs with wet boots, talking with the captain of Riverrun’s guards. He came to her at once. “Is he—?”
“Dying,” she said. “As we feared.”
Her uncle’s craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his fingers through