The Gods Eye

A vast round lake in the heart of the Riverlands, overlooked by the melted towers of Harrenhal. At its center lies the Isle of Faces, where the children of the forest and the First Men swore the Pact that ended their war — the weirwoods there still wear their carved faces, tended, the tales say, by the last green men.

The fuller tale

The Gods Eye is the great round lake at the heart of the riverlands, wide as an inland sea and calm in a way the country around it has never managed. Harrenhal’s melted towers stand on its northern shore — pride and punishment reflected daily in the water — and at its center lies the island no boat visits, which is the lake’s real business. The smallfolk fish its margins and keep their voices down; the Gods Eye is the rare place in Westeros that even armies instinctively go around.

The story uses the lake as holy ground hiding in a war zone: Arya’s Harrenhal chapters unfold on its shore, and the island out in the haze — the Isle of Faces, where the oldest peace in the world was sworn — sits through all of it like a held thought. In a saga where the old powers survive at the map’s far edges, the Gods Eye is the exception: the deep past, dead center, patient.

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

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