Chapter 195

Harrenhal stood in the Riverlands, upon the north shore of the Gods Eye. It was the greatest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, and there was none to match it. In his day Harren Hoare the Black, King of the Isles and the Rivers, had spent the strength of two kingdoms and forty years of labour to raise that vast keep. On the day it was finished Harren had boasted that the castle would never be taken.

Whether the gods heard that mortal pride and chose to teach him a lesson, none could say. One day after Harrenhal was complete, Aegon the Conqueror came down from the sky upon Balerion the Black Dread. Dragonflame turned the great towers into candles burning in the night. Molten stone ran down their sides like streams. Harren the Black, his sons, his bannermen and his soldiers were all burned alive within the towers.

It was in one of those same towers that Ser Kevan now found Tywin Lannister.