The horses were left above the reeds.
Torren did not like it. A man without a horse was easier to trap, and a man who left good beasts behind trusted either luck or strangers. He trusted neither. But the skiff would not take them, and the lake waited.
Harrik had shown him a low willow hollow where the animals could be hobbled out of sight. The man had left a little feed there too, enough for one night if the beasts did not fight the ropes. He had said nothing about what would happen if Torren did not return. Men in the Riverlands did not need to say everything to be understood.
Konnan touched the grey horse once before leaving it.
"Will it be stolen?"
"Maybe."
"Will it run?"
"Maybe."
"Then why leave it?"
"Because boats do not carry everything we want."
The boy did not like that answer, but he followed Torren down to the water.
Together they pushed the skiff until mud sucked at their boots and cold water lapped over the toes. Torren climbed in first, testing the boards with his weight. The boat shifted but held. Konnan came after him, one hand on the side, careful now because Torren had told him three times that lake water killed as well as blades.
The mist waited farther out.
At first, the God's Eye behaved like water.
The oars dipped. The skiff moved. Small ripples broke against the hull. Reeds slid past on either side, then thinned behind them. The shore remained close enough to hear frogs and the creak of insects. Far back, where the land rose, Harrenhal's black towers stood like burned fingers against the last light.
Konnan sat in the bow with his hood low and his hands braced on the sides.
"It is quieter than the sea."
"It is a lake."
"It feels larger."
Torren pulled the oars.
"Some quiet things do."
Konnan looked over the side. The water below him had already lost the brown shallowness of shore. It had turned dark. Not black, not yet, but deep enough that a child could imagine anything beneath it.
"Can things live under it?"
"Fish."
"Only fish?"
Torren did not answer.
Konnan stopped leaning so far over.
They rowed until the shore behind them became a line, then a stain, then a guess. The light thinned. Mist came low over the water, not rushing, not rolling, only arriving. It blurred Harrenhal first. The towers softened, then lost their tops, then vanished altogether.
Konnan watched them disappear.
"Now there is no wall."
"No."
"And no road."
"No."
"And no tracks."
Torren pulled the oars evenly.
"That is why you listen."
The boy turned back toward the mist.
For a while, there was only rowing.
The sound grew too clear. Wood in water. Water off wood. Torren's breath. Konnan's cloak shifting when he moved. Somewhere far off, a bird cried once and did not cry again.
Then the lake went still.
Torren felt it through the oars before he saw it. The blades entered the water, but the water did not take them properly. No small wave ran from the stroke. No answering motion tapped the hull. It was like rowing through dark cloth.
Konnan noticed.
"Did we stop?"
"No."
"Then why does it look stopped?"
Torren remembered Harrik's warning.
If the water goes still, do not speak first.
Too late for that, perhaps. But Harrik had meant the other voices.
Torren kept rowing.
The mist closed around them.
It did not feel thick against the skin. It did not wet his face much. It only took distance away. First the world shrank to the length of the skiff. Then to Torren and Konnan. Then even the bow looked too far from the stern.
A voice came from the left.
Not loud.
"Here."
Konnan's head snapped toward it.
Torren stopped rowing.
The word had been in the Old Tongue.
Konnan whispered, "Who is there?"
Torren reached forward and gripped the boy's shoulder.
"Do not answer again."
Konnan swallowed.
The mist gave no shape back.
The voice came a second time, farther away now.
"Here."
It was not Harrik. Not Lysa. Not Savar. Not any man Torren knew. It sounded young, but old under the youth, like someone repeating a word learned from a mouth long dead.
Konnan's shoulder was tense beneath Torren's hand.
"It wants us to turn," the boy said.
"Maybe."
"Do we?"
"No."
Torren took up the oars again.
Signal density increasing.
The voice in his head came weaker than usual. Not softer. Less clean.
Multiple sources. Location uncertain.
Torren kept his face still.
"Are they watching?" he asked inside himself.
The answer stuttered.
Watching—memory—insufficient distinction.
That was not comforting.
The mist thinned for a breath.
Not ahead. Below.
Konnan looked down and went rigid.
Torren saw his own reflection first: hooded, pale where the cloth failed to hide him, eyes red and set deep. Then the reflection changed. The face beneath the water was still his, but older. Not age alone. Root-twisted. Hollow-eyed. A face carved into white bark and filled with blood where the eyes should have been.
He struck the water with an oar.
The face broke.
Konnan drew back hard enough to rock the skiff.
"What was that?"
"Water."
"No."
"Water lies better than men."
Konnan looked at him, afraid and angry because the answer was not enough.
Good, Torren thought. Let him learn that not every fear could be cut open.
Something red drifted past the boat.
A leaf.
Then another.
Weirwood leaves, dark red in the grey water. They floated from nowhere, fresh as if torn from a branch that had never known winter. Konnan reached for one.
Torren's hand closed around his wrist.
"No."
"It is only a leaf."
"Nothing here is only anything."
The boy pulled his hand back.
Torren released him.
After that, Konnan sat with both hands in his lap.
The mist thickened again.
For some time Torren rowed by feel. He kept the strokes even. He did not chase sounds. Twice he heard something like shore water against stones, once to the right and once behind them, though he knew there should be no shore there. Once he heard a woman humming. He did not know the song. Konnan heard it too and pressed his mouth shut until the sound passed.
The boy was learning.
Fear that stopped the feet was a chain. Fear that sharpened the eyes was a tool.
But this place wanted more than sharp eyes. Torren could feel that now. The God's Eye did not resist them like an enemy. It waited like a judge that had already heard most of the case.
Recommendation: silence.
The voice cracked through him.
External cognitive pressure. Do not initiate contact.
Torren almost asked another question.
He did not.
The skiff moved forward.
The mist ahead began to change. Not open. Change. The grey grew darker in places, as if trees stood behind it. The water, which had been too still, loosened around the hull. A small wave touched the boat from the front and passed under them toward the vanished shore.
Konnan saw it.
"The water comes from there."
"Yes."
"Is it pushing us away?"
Torren watched the faint darkness ahead.
"No."
"Then what?"
"Showing that it can."
That answer made Konnan sit straighter.
A bank appeared.
Low earth. Black roots. Stones slick with water. Behind them rose trunks pale enough to catch what little light remained. At first Torren counted five. Then ten. Then the mist moved and there were too many to count.
Weirwoods stood close together beyond the shore.
Their leaves were dark in the dusk, red where they caught the last light and black where they did not. Their trunks were white, bone-white, milk-white, corpse-white. Faces had been cut into many of them. Not all. Enough. Some looked angry. Some looked asleep. Some were too worn to read. Red sap marked old wounds and fresh ones alike.
No bird called.
No wind moved.
The leaves still shifted.
Konnan's voice was small despite himself.
"They have faces."
"Yes."
"All of them?"
Torren let his eyes move from trunk to trunk.
"No."
Then he looked longer.
"Enough."
The skiff touched mud with almost no sound.
Torren waited.
Nothing happened.
He waited longer.
Still nothing.
That was not permission, but it was not refusal.
He stepped out first into shallow water and pulled the boat until it nosed onto the bank. Konnan rose to follow.
"Wait."
The boy froze with one foot on the bench.
Torren remembered Harrik's words.
Pay with respect first. It is cheaper.
He climbed onto the shore, then knelt.
The mud was cold under his knees. He set one hand on the ground and lowered his head, not as a southron would kneel to a lord, but as a man might touch stone before crossing a dangerous ledge.
In the Old Tongue, he said, "I am Torren, son of Harrag, of the mountain clans. I came because I was shown this place."
The trees did not answer.
Torren looked back at Konnan.
"Come."
Konnan stepped from the boat into the water, then onto the shore. He stood too straight, trying not to look afraid. Torren caught the look and did not correct it. Pride could hold a child together until sense arrived.
"Kneel."
Konnan hesitated.
Torren's eyes hardened.
The boy knelt.
"Name yourself."
Konnan looked at the trees.
"I am Konnan," he said in the Old Tongue. "Son of Torren."
Torren waited.
"Of the mountain clans," he added.
A leaf fell.
Only one.
It turned slowly through the still air and landed between them, red side up.
Konnan stared at it.
"Is that answer?"
"Maybe."
"What does it mean?"
Torren stood.
"That we keep walking."
He pulled the skiff higher and tied it to a root that jutted from the bank like a bent finger. He did not trust the knot. He did not trust the root. He did not trust the shore to remain where it was if the island chose otherwise.
They went in under the trees.
The ground was softer than it looked. Old leaves covered mud and root. More than once Konnan stumbled where a root seemed to shift underfoot, though when Torren looked back it lay still. The air smelled of wet bark, earth, and something faintly sweet beneath the rot.
The faces watched.
Torren had stood under many weirwoods. White Crown. High Heart. The grove of twenty trees in the mountains. He knew the old feeling of being seen through bark and red leaves. This was worse.
Not stronger exactly.
More crowded.
At home, the trees were deep wells.
Here, the forest was a lake with no bottom.
Interference increasing.
The voice came thin now.
Network concentration extreme. Identity boundaries unstable. Recommend—
It cut off.
Torren stopped.
Konnan nearly walked into him.
"What?"
"Quiet."
Torren listened.
At first there was nothing. Then a sound moved through the trees, low and distant. Not a horn. Not an animal. Not the roar from his dream. A long wooden breath, as if something vast had shifted in sleep.
Konnan moved closer to him.
Torren did not tell him to step away.
They followed the sound because there was no other path. Or because every path seemed to turn toward it. Torren could not say which, and disliked that he could not say.
The trees opened into a clearing.
At its far side stood a weirwood larger than the others.
Not as large as the one in the dream. Or perhaps dreams made size into fear and memory into height. This tree was great enough. Its roots lifted from the ground in thick white coils. Its face had been carved deep, the mouth open slightly, the eyes red and wet. Old cuts striped the trunk like scars left by centuries of offerings.
Torren stopped at the edge of the clearing.
Konnan whispered, "Father."
"I see it."
The great tree's leaves moved.
No wind touched Torren's face.
Something stood beneath the branches on the other side of the clearing.
At first he thought it was a man in a cloak. Then it shifted, and the shape was wrong. Too still. Too much like trunk and shadow together. Antlers rose from its head, pale in the dark. Or branches. Or both.
Konnan's hand found Torren's cloak and gripped it.
The figure did not step out from the trees.
It seemed the trees had remembered the shape of a man.