The Eyrie

A castle of white stone atop the Giant's Lance, reached by a goat path and defended by the sky itself.

The fuller tale

The Eyrie sits atop the Giant’s Lance on a perch so sheer that Aegon’s dragons never had to burn it — the Arryns who ruled the Vale as Kings of Mountain and Vale for thousands of years surrendered peacefully once Visenya Targaryen simply flew up to the castle gate on dragonback and asked them to, sparing everyone the pointless exercise of testing whether the mountain could actually be taken by force. That bloodless conquest set the tone for how the Vale has always understood its own defenses: not walls, particularly, but altitude, and a goat path below narrow enough that an army trying to climb it arrives, if it arrives at all, exhausted and single-file.

In Dunk and Egg’s age the castle remains what it was under Visenya — a seat that answers to the crown in name and to its own geography in every practical sense, ruled by House Arryn from white stone halls the sky itself seems to guard better than any garrison could.

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.