Castle Black

Castle Black has no walls of its own. To the south, east and west it lies open, and to the north it has the Wall, which is defence enough. It is a scatter of stone towers and timber keeps at the foot of the ice, near the middle of the Wall’s length, where the kingsroad ends.

The Lord Commander keeps his tower here. The King’s Tower stands ready for a king who has not come in more than a hundred years. Hardin’s Tower leans, and its battlements drop stones into the yard below. Birds nest in the rafters of the timber common hall, and beneath everything run the tunnels the brothers call wormways, which carry them about when snow buries the yards.

A cage on a chain is winched up the face of the ice for men and stores, and a great wooden stair climbs beside it in switchbacks. A tunnel runs through the Wall itself, barred by three iron gates and an outer door of oak. There is a small sept and no godswood; a brother who keeps the old gods says his words beyond the Wall, before a ring of nine weirwoods.