The Ravenry is a castle of the Citadel in Oldtown.
Layout
[edit]The oldest building of the Citadel, the Ravenry is found on the Isle of Ravens within the Honeywine. It is cool and dim inside the the castle's walls, which are covered in purple moss and creeping vines.[1]
An ancient weirwood fills the castle's yard, with the face on the heart tree also covered in moss. Half of its branches appear dead, though ravens like to perch on the branches which still have red leaves. Ravens fill not only the weirwood, but also the yard, windows, and battlements.[1]
There are separate rookeries at the Ravenry, with white ravens in the west tower and black ravens in the north tower, as the two colors quarrel.[1]
Archmaester Walgrave's rooms are below the white rookery in the west tower.[1] Pate's sleeping cell is below Walgrave's chambers, and has a good view of the Honeywine.[1]
Archmaester Marwyn's chambers are below the black rookery in the north tower. Marwyn's chamber door is made of oak and iron, accessible through the north tower's ground level door and up a flight of steps. Marwyn's room is large and round and has a hearth. There are books and scrolls everywhere, strewn across the tables and stacked up on the floor in piles four feet high. Faded tapestries and ragged maps cover the stone walls.[1]
History
[edit]The Ravenry is said to have been the stronghold of a pirate lord who robbed ships on the Honeywine during the Age of Heroes.[1]
The aged Archmaester Walgrave has lost his wits, and is often found weeping in the Library, unable to remember the way back to his chambers. The novice Pate has been assigned to help him, tending the ravens, fetching Walgrave's meals, cleaning his chambers, and dressing him every morning.[2]
Recent Events
[edit]A Feast for Crows
[edit]Archmaester Walgrave's assistant, the novice Pate, steals Walgrave's personal key from the strongbox beneath his bed in the Ravenry. Pate meets his novice and acolyte friends at the Quill and Tankard, where Leo Tyrell tells them that a glass candle is burning in Archmaester Marwyn's chambers. After Pate's friends leave, he gives the archmaester's key to a man calling himself an alchemist in exchange for a golden coin. After Pate bites the coin it turns out to be poisoned, however, and he dies.[2]
When Samwell Tarly arrives at the Citadel, Alleras intercepts him in the Seneschal's Court and brings him to Archmaester Marwyn's chambers in the Ravenry. At the top of the steps, Sam meets his old acquaintance Leo, who is staring into a candle's flame but stops to insult Sam.[1]
Marwyn pulls Sam into his chambers, where the only light comes from a three-foot-tall obsidian candle in the center of the room. After Marwyn hears Samwell's story and Maester Aemon's fate, he decides to leave for Meereen to find Daenerys Targaryen in Aemon's place. Before he departs, Marwyn places Sam in the care of Alleras and commands "Pate" to find a sleeping cell for the newcomer in the Ravenry, where Sam will assist Pate with the ravens. Pate tells Sam there is a room beneath his in the west tower.[1]
Quotes
[edit]Moss and creeping vines covered the walls, Sam saw, and ravens walked its battlements in place of archers. The drawbridge had not been raised in living memory.[1]
—thoughts of Samwell Tarly
The white ravens and the black ones quarrel like Dornishmen and Marchers, so they keep them apart.[1]
—Alleras to Samwell Tarly