Chapter 64: The Wolf in the Serpent's Den and the Shadow King's Grim Chronicle (The Game Begins: Part 3)
The royal procession's departure from Winterfell, with Lord Eddard Stark reluctantly riding south to assume the Handship, marked the true commencement of the deadly game Aelyx Velaryon had long anticipated. While King Robert Baratheon and his court made their ponderous journey towards King's Landing, Aelyx, from his eternal sanctuary within Mount Skatus, became a silent, omniscient spectator, his consciousness a web of intelligence spun across the Seven Kingdoms. His son, Lord Lyulph Volmark, had returned to Skagos after bidding farewell to his Stark liege, leaving his own son, Ser Artos Volmark, and twenty elite, magically-aware Skagosi guards as Eddard's discreet protectors and Aelyx's direct eyes and ears in the viper's nest of the capital.
Eddard Stark's arrival in King's Landing was, as Aelyx had foreseen, a jarring transition from the stark honor of the North to the perfumed corruption of the southern court. Artos Volmark's initial reports, relayed through magically secured channels that bypassed Varys's little birds and Littlefinger's spies, painted a vivid picture: a city teeming with poverty and ostentatious wealth, its air thick with intrigue; a Red Keep filled with whispers, shifting loyalties, and the suffocating influence of House Lannister.
Ned Stark, a man of unbending integrity, immediately set about his duties as Hand with a grim determination to uncover the truth behind Jon Arryn's death and to cleanse the Augean stables of King Robert's misrule. He found a Small Council composed of men whose motivations were as labyrinthine as the Red Keep's secret passages.
"Lord Petyr Baelish, 'Littlefinger,'" Aelyx mused to Lyanna, as Artos's detailed psychological profiles arrived. "Master of Coin. A man of low birth, immense ambition, and a genius for sowing chaos from which he alone seems to profit. He befriends Lord Stark, offering aid and whispers, yet every smile, every gesture, is a calculated move in his own inscrutable game. He is a creature of pure, self-serving intellect, unburdened by loyalty or honor. Dangerous."
"And Lord Varys, the Spider," Lyanna added, her brow furrowed as she reviewed another report. "The Master of Whisperers. A eunuch from the Free Cities, his network of informants legendary. He, too, offers Lord Stark counsel, professing loyalty to the realm. Yet his true motives remain veiled. He plays a game even deeper than Littlefinger's, its ultimate purpose shrouded in shadow." Aelyx nodded; Varys, with his rumored Essosi connections and his long-term perspective, was a player whose depths he was still plumbing.
Grand Maester Pycelle, Aelyx knew from his agents, was wholly a creature of House Lannister, his chain of office a gilded leash. Renly Baratheon, the King's younger brother, Master of Laws, was charming, handsome, but more interested in tourneys and his own advancement than in the hard work of governance. Only Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, seemed a man of true, uncomplicated honor, a relic of a bygone era.
Eddard Stark's first major challenge was the Crown's crippling debt. King Robert's ceaseless feasts, hunts, and tourneys had bankrupted the treasury, with House Lannister being the principal creditor. Ned, appalled by the extravagance and the fiscal irresponsibility, clashed frequently with Robert, attempting to instill a sense of Northern prudence, much to the King's irritation and the Small Council's amusement or consternation.
"He seeks to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble, while the captain calls for more wine," Aelyx commented, analyzing Ned's futile efforts to curb Robert's spending. "His honor demands he try, but he cannot comprehend the sheer scale of southern decadence or the entrenched nature of its corruption."
Meanwhile, Ned began his quiet investigation into Jon Arryn's death. He learned that the former Hand had been reading a weighty tome on the lineages of the great houses, and had been visiting Robert's numerous bastards scattered throughout the city. Artos Volmark, following Aelyx's subtle instructions, ensured that certain avenues of inquiry were discreetly opened to Ned. One of Aelyx's Emissaries, a "humble scribe" within the archives of the Red Keep, "accidentally" allowed Ned's men to "discover" a copy of the same lineage book Jon Arryn had been studying, its margins containing a few of Arryn's cryptic notes. Aelyx wanted Ned to find this specific truth; the bastardy of Cersei's children was the key to unraveling Lannister power.
As Ned delved deeper, his unease grew. He saw the golden hair of Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, so unlike Robert's black Baratheon locks. He noted the whispers, the knowing glances. The truth, monstrous and treasonous, began to coalesce in his honorable mind.
Aelyx, through Artos, watched this dawning comprehension with grim satisfaction. "He sees it now," Aelyx relayed to his immortal council. "The golden cage built on a lie. This knowledge will be his undoing, but it is a truth that must be brought to light if the realm is to have any hope of cleansing itself, however slim that hope may be."
The dangers surrounding Ned Stark multiplied with each step he took closer to the precipice. Queen Cersei, her green eyes like chips of frozen emerald, watched him with a cold, simmering fury. Littlefinger offered him cryptic warnings and misleading advice, playing both sides against the middle. Varys whispered secrets, some true, some false, his motives always ambiguous.
Aelyx felt a strange, almost paternalistic (though entirely unsentimental) concern for Eddard Stark. The Lord of Winterfell was, in many ways, the embodiment of the Northern strength and honor that Aelyx relied upon as Skagos's public shield. His fall would destabilize the North, potentially drawing Skagos into unwanted conflicts or exposing it to new pressures. Yet, Aelyx knew he could not intervene directly. To reveal his hand, to unleash Skagosi magic in King's Landing to save one mortal man, however noble, would be to sacrifice centuries of secrecy, to invite the full, combined wrath of Westeros upon his hidden kingdom. His primary duty was to his own eternal dynasty.
He did, however, authorize Artos Volmark and his Skagosi guards to subtly enhance Ned's personal security. They became Ned's ever-present shadows, their Northern taciturnity masking their heightened senses and readiness. They foiled two minor, deniable "accidents" that might have befallen the Hand – a loose stone on a dark stairwell, a "runaway" cart in a crowded street – their interventions so swift and discreet that Ned himself was likely unaware of the dangers averted. Aelyx also had his Emissaries in King's Landing attempt to feed anonymous warnings to Ned, or to members of his household perceived as more receptive, hinting at specific plots, though these were often dismissed by Ned as mere court intrigue or fear-mongering. Ned's honor made him blind to the true depths of southern treachery.
The situation escalated dramatically when news arrived from the North: Catelyn Stark, acting on Littlefinger's poisonous insinuation that Tyrion Lannister had attempted to assassinate Bran, had seized the Imp in the Riverlands and was taking him to the Eyrie to stand trial before her sister, Lysa Arryn.
"Littlefinger plays his chaotic game with masterful cruelty," Aelyx observed, when Artos relayed Ned's horrified reaction to this news. "He has set Stark against Lannister with a single, well-placed lie. This will provoke Jaime Lannister, and by extension, Lord Tywin. Eddard Stark's position has just become infinitely more perilous."
As predicted, Ser Jaime Lannister, enraged by Tyrion's abduction, confronted Ned Stark in the streets of King's Landing. A brutal skirmish erupted between Lannister guards and Ned's Stark household men. Ned himself fought bravely, but his leg was grievously injured when his horse fell upon him. Several of his men were slain. Ser Artos Volmark and his Skagosi guards, though outnumbered, fought with a disciplined fury that stunned the Lannister men, forming a protective ring around their fallen lord, their Valyrian-steel-edged Skagosi blades (their true composition unknown to the southerners) taking a heavy toll. They managed to extract Ned and retreat to the Tower of the Hand, but the lines had been irrevocably drawn. Blood had been spilled in the streets of the capital.
King Robert, upon returning from a hunt (a hunt Aelyx's agents reported had been subtly orchestrated by Cersei to ensure his absence during Jaime's planned confrontation with Ned), was furious – more at the disruption to his peace and the injury to his friend than at the Lannisters' aggression. He ordered Ned to make peace with Jaime, a command Ned, in his pain and outrage, found difficult to swallow. Robert then announced his intention to go on another great hunt, leaving Ned, still recovering from his injury, to manage the increasingly volatile affairs of state.
"Robert abdicates his kingship daily," Aelyx commented with contempt. "He seeks solace in the bottom of a wine cup and the thrill of the hunt, while his Hand, his friend, bleeds in his service and his kingdom slides towards civil war. He is a king in name only."
With Robert gone, Ned Stark, confined to his chambers but his mind sharp as ever, pressed on with his investigation. He finally confronted Queen Cersei with his knowledge: her children were not Robert's, but Jaime's. He urged her to flee King's Landing with them before Robert returned, to spare them the King's inevitable, terrible wrath.
Cersei, her beauty a cold, regal mask, did not deny it. She merely warned Ned, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."
Aelyx, receiving Artos's breathless report of this confrontation, knew that Eddard Stark had just sealed his fate. "He has shown his hand to the lioness," Aelyx murmured. "He has offered her mercy, an honorable man's gesture. She will repay it with treachery and death. He underestimates her ruthlessness, her desperation to protect her children and her power."
As King Robert lay dying from a mortal wound sustained on his hunt – a boar goring that Aelyx's agents reported was no accident, but rather facilitated by Cersei ensuring Robert was plied with unusually strong wine and given a faulty spear – Eddard Stark made his final, fatal miscalculations. He planned to reveal the truth of Joffrey's parentage and support Stannis Baratheon's claim to the throne, as Robert's true heir. He naively sought the support of Littlefinger, trusting the Master of Coin's promises to secure the City Watch.
"He walks into the spider's web and the mockingbird's snare," Aelyx stated grimly. The seers, Lyra and Daenys, their faces etched with sorrow, confirmed the inevitable. Visions of Ned Stark in chains, of a jeering crowd, of a gleaming Valyrian steel sword, filled their minds.
When King Robert finally died, Eddard Stark moved to secure the succession for Stannis. But Littlefinger betrayed him, the City Watch turning against him. He was arrested, accused of treason, and thrown into the black cells of the Red Keep. Ser Artos Volmark and his Skagosi guards, outnumbered and outmaneuvered in the chaos of the coup, fought valiantly to protect him, but were eventually overwhelmed. Several Skagosi were slain, Artos himself gravely wounded but managing to fight his way clear with a handful of survivors, vanishing into the anonymity of Flea Bottom, from where he sent a desperate, final message to Skagos before going to ground.
Aelyx received the news of Ned's fall and Artos's predicament with a cold, terrible calm. The game had reached its first bloody checkmate. Eddard Stark, the honorable wolf, was trapped. The Lannisters, with Joffrey now on the throne, held King's Landing. The realm was poised to explode into open war.
"So falls the honorable man," Aelyx said to Lyanna, his voice devoid of any discernible emotion save perhaps a profound, weary cynicism. "His integrity was his shield, and his undoing. The North will rise in fury. The pieces are now scattered across the board in a new, more chaotic configuration."
He immediately issued new orders. Lord Lyulph Volmark was to publicly declare Skagos's outrage at the unlawful imprisonment of their liege lord's Hand, and pledge full support to Robb Stark, Ned's heir, who would undoubtedly call the Northern banners. Skagosi gold and resources would flow to Winterfell without limit. The Volmark fleet would secure Northern waters. Privately, Aelyx tasked Tibbit with a new, urgent mission: locate and extract Ser Artos Volmark and his surviving guards from King's Landing. No Volmark blood, especially one privy to even the outer layers of Skagos's secrets, could be allowed to fall into Lannister hands.
The game that had begun with a royal summons to Winterfell had now escalated into open treason and impending civil war. Aelyx Velaryon, the eternal watcher, had foreseen much of it. But even he could not predict every move, every betrayal, in the mortals' desperate, bloody dance for power. His primary concern, as always, was Skagos, his hidden dynasty, his immortal legacy. The fall of Eddard Stark was a tragedy for the North, a political earthquake for Westeros. For Aelyx, it was another grim data point, another lesson in the eternal, brutal calculus of power, and another adjustment in his centuries-long, silent war for the future.