Weirwood
A weirwood is white to the heart, smooth pale bark over pale wood. Its leaves are blood red and five-pointed, and its sap runs red too. Left alone a weirwood lives forever, and its wood does not rot, so the little that is ever cut is prized above any timber in Westeros.
The children of the forest carved faces in the weirwoods in the Dawn Age. When the First Men came they cut many down with bronze axes, afraid the children could watch them through the carved eyes. After the Pact the First Men carved faces of their own. Sap gathers in the eyes, so the faces seem to weep.
The Andals took the axe to the weirwoods of the south, and few are left there now. In the North nearly every godswood has one at its heart. Beyond the Wall, half a league from Castle Black, a ring of nine stands where brothers of the Watch who keep the old gods go to say their vows.
Read next
The Heart Tree
The pale weirwood at the centre of the godswood, with a long, grave face cut into the trunk above a dark pool.
The Old Gods
The nameless gods of stone, stream and tree, first kept by the children of the forest and still kept in the North.
The Godswood
Three acres of the old forest, never cut, kept inside the walls because the castle was raised around them.
The Nightfort
The first and largest castle on the Wall, abandoned two hundred years ago and left to the stories told about it.
In the journey: The Godswood