A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twentieth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC

Dust swirled down through the tower, glinting palely in the light of the mage lanterns as though possessed of a will of its own. And that will seemingly desired nothing more than to make Jon sneeze at the worst posibile moment and embarrass himself in front of Lord Stark's guests. He hated the idea of holding his nose, it would look stupid. On the other hand if he sneezed on some rare text and it broke and scattered... The boy's hand surreptitiously darted towards his nose while Maester Luwin was pointing out something on a high shelf...

"Ah finally, that's the Old Tongue alright, though I've never seen it written this way before," the Skagosi singer said as he retrieved the text. "Good thing there's a tune for times like this." With that he began chanting in the swift-rising and slow-falling tongue that was supposedly the same as the runes on the standing stones.

"How does that work?" Jon wondered aloud as he tried to see past the lady with the crossbow without getting too close in the crowded confines of the tower.

Though he had not expected to be heard, the young merchant with the foreign name, whose true nature he had some suspicion of from Dany's tales, cleared his throat behind him. "If you want to read along you can use this." he said as he handed Jon a scroll.

As Jon's fingers brushed the parchment he could feel the slight hum of magic woven into the words. The boy had heard about such things from Ser Halys, but never handled one. "Can I, I mean..." Jon was caught between gratitude at the offer and not wanting to explain that he did not have the money to pay back Wisdom Xor for such a thing.

"I have many such scrolls and no true need for them even so, one more pair of eyes looking at the text might catch something others do not," came the soft reply. Though he could not turn around to look Jon could hear the smile in it.

Decision made, he drew forth the scroll and intoned the spell upon it, the the flowing glyphs of High Valyrian familiar from his journeys beyond the waking world. "That's why the letters on the document look strange," the boy said even as the letters of the Old Tongue he was supossed to read revolved into understanding. "The First Men carved their letters into stone before they lay it down on parchment and that is most of the script that came down to us today, but this account is written in a way that's meant for parchment. What did Ser Halys say the Braavosi called it...? Shortarm? No, shorthand I think."

"What's it used for?" Danar asked, eyes still glued to the text and his gaze growing grimmer by the moment.

"Uhm... writing quickly and I guess keeping secrets," Jon replied, not sure why it mattered. The document seemed to just be an account of old legends from Barrowtown written by some Brandon Stark long forgotten by time, such that no one even remembered if he had been the uncle, cousin or brother of a king, or perhaps an even more distant relation. Then he got about one third down the parchment and had to read again to make sure his eyes and the spell upon them were working right.

"Definitely keeping secrets," Danar's lady wife said grimly. "Called them Barrow Kings or Barrow Lords, the Dustins would have done their damnedest to burn this."

So did she take the bones of the Old King from the tall mountain in the lands of summer where the Earth Touched the Sky and grind them to powder fine as chalk, and with them she dyed a cloak of Mourner's White and wore it ever after around her shoulders. Thus was she called the Lady of Dust ever after and from her the Dustins were born and reigned far and wide, but the Cloak of Bone lay heavy upon them and to each one bequeathed the weight of death defiled, until at last the Thirteenth Lord Dustin had a great barrow built and took it with him into the long dark. From that day the power of the First King lay under their feet, not on their shoulders. Some say that's why the Starks conquered the Barrow Kings, I don't hold with it myself, but let the tale be kept in Winterfell against the future should there be some truth in old tales, or the First King arise from his defiled tomb.

"What's the mountain where the 'Earth Touched the Sky'? The Dustins were descended of the First Kings, the Barrow King...." Jon trailed off confused.

"There never was a king of all the First Men until Aegon the dragon fancied the title for his own, and even then it was a lie," Danar recounted. "But a First King... the first to make the crossing and take land in Westeros aye, he must have existed and a mighty wyrd upon his bones for any sorcerer, or as in this case sorceress, bold enough to steal them away..."

"The mountain where the Earth Touched the Sky might be a reference that this king was yet a worshiper of Mother Earth and Father Sky, where the first Lady Dustin kept to the Old Gods," Wisdom Xor said thoughtful and sad all at once. "Likely she did not fear the wrath of dead gods..."

OOC: And here we have it, the defilement at the heart of the mystery, there is indeed a 'First King' buried under the Great Barrow, but he is no friend of House Dustin nor any other in the North.