“It’s the curse of Harrenhal.”
“All three eldest sons dead.”
“A great tragedy.”
“What is to become of House Whent with only its fourth son to aid an ailing father?”
“The decline of the house.”
Stevvin sat on the floor of his room, back against the cold stone wall that had been his eldest brother’s room. The room was, as every room in Harrenhal, several times the size of any other room he had ever stayed in outside of Harrenhal. He had grown up in these dark and drafty halls, was comfortable in the wide expanses that seemed to so discomfit visitors, but sitting there in his brother’s room, he could not overcome the sheer magnitude of the emptiness the room seemed to hold. He was still dressed in the fine clothes in which he had finally laid his brothers and his mother to their final rest.
Seven days. For seven days, he had attended prayers three times a day, not only his personal prayers, but helping his father do the same, using that time to speak and condole with their many tenants, servants, and subjects who came to pray. All that before watching those four bodies be lowered into the ground, the septon’s words flowing over him emptily. He should have wanted to change and rest, but he had refused the servants’ help, and after standing in that room for a while, just slumped to the floor, resting his elbow on one knee, as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, in the silence, in the dark, in that big and somehow ever-growing emptiness. He had not once shed a tear throughout the proceedings to send his family off and he did not now. There were some types of grief, he was coming to realize, that could not simply be released from one’s chest through tears. How meaningless those tears would be if they came and went and the grief remained anyways.
Stevvin opened his mouth, and for the first time since his brothers and mother had left on that disastrous journey, began to sing. A song an idle musician had taught him once, in a quiet tavern by a road he’d once traveled.
“I once heard the sound of a fair lady singing,
To her lord whose heart had been led far astray.
I knew from her timbre the song was familiar,
And never her words will fade from my mind.
“The road is long and lonely, my Lord.
Does your head not call for a bed?
My fire will warm you, my arms will adore you.
If only your wandering comes to an end.””
The notes were simple and repetitive, and Stevvin let them flow from his mouth in his soft baritone, to fill up the space with his memories. He sang for a while, verse after verse of the fair lady’s story, the musician laying out her pain for all to see, but right before the last verse, he paused, finding his voice catching in his throat, until he let the last melody free.
“Rain never comes on the world that is thirsty,
The sun never shines in the night.
“But come, my darling, home to my comfort,
Even if you aren’t coming alone.””