A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Eddard X
Milk of the poppy dreams: the tower of joy, three white cloaks, and ÔÇ£promise me, NedÔÇØ; he wakes to Robert restoring the badge and riding to hunt.
The chapter retold
Bedridden and fevered from his shattered leg, dosed with milk of the poppy against the pain, Ned drifts through dreams of the Tower of Joy ÔÇö the fight at the end of Robert's Rebellion where he found three of the Mad King's finest knights of the Kingsguard waiting for him, and where, dying, one of them extracted a promise from Ned that the book still refuses to name outright. He wakes from the dream to find Robert at his bedside, guilt-ridden over Ned's injury and the political fallout of Tyrion's imprisonment, restoring the Hand's badge Ned had thrown down and declaring he means to go hunting to clear his head.
The Tower of Joy dream is one of the book's most carefully rationed pieces of information ÔÇö repeated in fragments across multiple books before its full meaning becomes clear, it is the closest thing the story gives, this early, to a direct hint about the secret Ned has carried since before the novel began. That he surfaces from it straight into ordinary political business, badge restored and a king riding off to hunt as if nothing has changed, is the book's quiet way of showing how thoroughly Ned's private grief stays sealed off from the public man conducting the realm's business around it.
This movement: The Eyrie and the Heart
- In the Eyrie's sky cells Tyrion confesses to everything but the crime ÔÇö and buys a trial by combat. Bronn fights; Ser Vardis falls.
- Robert orders Daenerys killed; Ned throws down the Hand's badge; Jaime's men kill Jory in the street.
- In Vaes Dothrak, Dany eats the stallion's heart; Viserys draws steel in the sacred city and is crowned in gold.
- Robert, dying breaths away from a boar, restores the badge and rides to hunt.