A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Catelyn I

In the godswood Catelyn brings Ned hard news: Jon Arryn is dead of a sudden fever, and King Robert rides north with his court.

The chapter retold

Catelyn Stark, a Tully by birth and no worshipper of the old gods, comes looking for her husband in the godswood where he kneels before the heart tree ÔÇö one of the small daily compromises of a marriage built on alliance rather than shared faith ÔÇö and brings him a raven's message that changes everything: Jon Arryn, Hand of the King and the man who fostered Ned as a boy, is dead of a sudden fever. Worse, hard behind the news rides the reason it matters: King Robert himself is coming to Winterfell, court and all, and a summons like that has never once in Ned's life meant good news.

The scene does double work ÔÇö it establishes the Starks' marriage as a working political partnership with real tenderness inside it, and it plants the fever that will turn out, many chapters on, not to have been natural at all. Catelyn's unease in the godswood, her sense of trespass among gods that aren't hers, mirrors the larger trespass about to happen: a southern king riding north to drag the Starks into a game they never asked to play.

This movement: A Hand's Summons

• A prologue in the haunted forest: Ser Waymar Royce meets the Others, and only a deserter escapes to die at Ned Stark's block.
• Direwolf pups in the summer snows ÔÇö one for each Stark child, and an albino for the bastard.
• Robert comes north with the court to make Ned his Hand; Lysa's letter blames the Lannisters for Jon Arryn.
• Bran climbs, sees the queen and the Kingslayer entwined, and flies. Across the sea, Daenerys is sold to Khal Drogo.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Jon Arryn, Hand of the King ÔÇö Dead of a sudden fever ÔÇö the fever's name was the tears of Lys.