Nov 14, 2024
GAME OF THRONES 4.01, Two Swords
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GAME OF THRONES 4.01, Two Swords
For once, Tyrion Lannister found himself at a loss for words...
The blind man smiled. He was a tiny thing, wrinkled and hairless, shrunken beneath the weight of a hundred years so his maester’s collar with all its links of many metals hung loose about his throat. “I have been called many things, my lord,” he said, “but kind is seldom one of them.” This time Tyrion himself led the laughter.
“I asked why each link was a different metal. A silver chain would look much finer with his grey robes, I said. Maester Luwin laughed. A maester forges his chain with study, he told me. The different metals are each a different kind of learning, gold for the study of money and accounts, silver for healing, iron for warcraft. And he said there were other meanings as well. The collar is supposed to remind a maester of the realm he serves, isn’t that so? Lords are gold and knights steel, but two links can’t make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and copper and bronze and all the rest, and those are farmers and smiths and merchants and the like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs all sorts of people.”
“And so?”
“The Night’s Watch needs all sorts too. Why else have rangers and stewards and builders? Lord Randyll couldn’t make Sam a warrior, and Ser Alliser won’t either. You can’t hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn’t mean tin is useless. Why shouldn’t Sam be a steward?
...
“He could help you. He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I know Chett can’t read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Sam read every book in his father’s library. He’d be good with the ravens too. Animals seem to like him. Ghost took to him straight off. There’s a lot he could do, besides fighting. The Night’s Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end? Make use of him instead.”
There he is. That laugh. Egg. Egg laughed like that. One of the first things I remember. [...] he was a jolly fellow, like this one. Get him south, Gillyflower. Before it’s too late. (x)
His name was Aemon Targaryen. He came to us from King’s Landing. A maester of the Citadel, chained and sworn, and sworn brother of the Night’s Watch, ever faithful. No man was wiser or gentler or kinder. At the Wall, a dozen lord commanders came and went during his years of service, but he was always there to counsel them. He was the blood of the dragon but now his fire has gone out. And now his watch is ended.
"Allow me to give my lord one last piece of counsel," the old man had said, "the same counsel that I once gave my brother when we parted for the last time. He was three-and-thirty when the Great Council chose him to mount the Iron Throne. A man grown with sons of his own, yet in some ways still a boy. Egg had an innocence to him, a sweetness we all loved. Kill the boy within you, I told him the day I took ship for the Wall. It takes a man to rule. An Aegon, not an Egg. Kill the boy and let the man be born." The old man felt Jon's face. "You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is a crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy of your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born."
