High Heart

A high bald hill ringed by weirwood stumps, holy to the children of the forest ÔÇö and said to be haunted still.

The fuller tale

High Heart is a bald green hill that rises above the riverlands like a held breath, ringed at its crown by thirty-one weirwood stumps ÔÇö a great grove of the children of the forest, felled in some old Andal zealotry, its roots still knotted through the hill. The smallfolk will not sleep there; the outlaws of the war do, precisely because the smallfolkÔÇÖs dread keeps it empty, and because on High Heart, the old stories say, no harm can come to those who rest among the stumps. Whether that is protection or merely reputation, the hill has never volunteered.

The Brotherhood without Banners makes the hill its waystation, and the story uses it as an oracle chamber: a place where dreams run true, where the warÔÇÖs next horrors are spoken aloud before they happen by a voice that asks only songs in payment. Arya passes over High Heart on her long road, and like everyone who does, leaves knowing slightly more than is comfortable. In a saga where the old magic survives mostly in the far north, High Heart is its southern ember ÔÇö a reminder that the riverlands were holy ground long before they were a battlefield.

The page and the screen

High HeartÔÇÖs resident is a books-only figure: the Ghost of High Heart, a tiny ancient dwarf woman with red eyes who trades prophetic dreams to the Brotherhood for songs and wine ÔÇö and who foretells the Red Wedding, among other griefs, chapters before it falls. She takes one look at Arya and calls her a dark heart, and asks the Brotherhood to take the child away. The show cut the hill and its ghost entirely, folding the BrotherhoodÔÇÖs mysticism into Thoros and the flames.

The fallen of this place ÔÇö if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground ÔÇö or none the maesters have set down.