Wednesday, February 1, 2017

ASOIAF: Are there secret passages beneath the Wall?

There is a secret passageway under the Nightfort(secret because it’s been forgotten by everybody over the centuries) that is used by Sam, who delivers Gilly and her baby to the South side of the Wall, and takes Bran and his companions to the Northside, to deliver him into the hands of Coldhands, who guides them to the Three-Eyed Crow. (Bloodraven.)
It is covered by a weirwood door which has been carved into the shape of a gnarled old face. It appparently only lets true members of the Watch pass, if they recite an ancient version of their oath. The mouth opens wide.
art by Kerry Barnett
Whether there are other passageways under other castles at the wall or not, it is not recorded.
Except for the cave system of legend found by the Kings-Beyond-the-Wall, Gendel and Gorne, of course.
art by Pierre Etienne-Travers
In this legend, as told to Jon Snow by Ygritte, the two brethren co-kings led their entire people through a system of caverns under the Wall (a route known as Gorne’s Way). However, according to legend, when the Wildlings emerged from the cave mouth south of the Wall(the whereabouts of which is unknown) the King in the North was waiting for them and slew many of them and the rest fled back into the caves. Where they were lost. According to legend, their descendants, Gorne’s Children, still wander the caverns under the earth, searching for a way back to the surface. All of this happened three thousand years before the story.
This has led some to speculate that their may be a maze of caverrns all over Westeros, which would explain how the Children of the Forest at times emerged from caverns under the hills even as far south as the Riverlands and the Stormlands during the Andal invasion.
But they haven’t really been used in the series proper yet. But Gorne’s Way and the cavernous passages under Westeros may be yet another of Chekhov’s guns, hanging on the wall, just waiting to go off in the next books.

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