crystal alive with light voices raised in song the tullys kept a gods wood as all the great houses did but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun worship was for the sept for her sake ned had bulkt a mall sept where she might sing to the serven faces of god but the bllod of the first men still flowed in the veins of the starks and his own gods wrer the old ones the nameless faceless gods of the green wood they shared with the vanished children of the forest at the center of the frove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters w were black and cold the heart treee ned called it the weirewoods bark was white as bone it leaves dark red like a thousand bllodstatined hands a face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree it features long and melancholy the deep cut eyes red with dried sao and strrangely watchful they were old those eyes older than winterfell itself they had seen brandon the builder set the first stone if the tales were true they had watched the castle s granite walls rise around them it was said that the children of the forst had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the first men across the narrow sesa in the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thoudsand years ago except on the isle of faces where the green men keot their silent watch up here it was different here every casstle had it godswood and every godswood had its heart tree and every heart tree its face