[quote] What has happened to the glen and the knightly home? Are the ruins of fire built upon, or left as they were?[/quote]
The wood swelled around it like an infected wound, over the course of a sweltering summer. By the time Uther reassigned the former title and lands of the Alder Knight (to the Knight of the Red Adder, if you can believe it), the manor was little more than burnt stone and charred wood wrapped in root and branch. The Knight of the Red Adder made three attempts to clear out the wood before abandoning it as condemned ground.

(The third involved fire. That was a [i]mistake.[/i] One of the peasant laborers threw himself on the bonfire and smothered it with his wet smock, and saved their lives, or at the very least their wits. The trees were [i]leaning.[/i] The trees were [i]muttering.[/i] The trees have learned [i]hate[/i].)

[quote]What of the glen?[/quote]
Withered. The grass is brown. The trees are bare and creaking. One tore up from the soil, roots and all, and now lies with its head in the Thames. Biting insects swirl around the banks.

It is much like any other place one might stumble into while riding, now. A wasteland. A place where the world has gone brittle and dry and dead and callous.

Here there is fear in a handful of dust.

[quote]What secrets do your father's folk still protect?[/quote]
The same they always have. The changing of forms and shapes. The languages of beast and bird and rain and wind. The knowing of where Bran’s head is buried. The way to walk the road to Perbast, where cats go by night.