ng, said the Stark words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners were.“The man died well, I’ll give him that,” Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow. “I was glad for Bran’s sake. You would have been proud of Bran.”“I am always proud of Bran,” Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.“He was the fourth this year,” Ned said grimly. “The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him.” He sighed. “Ben writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is down below a thousand. It’s not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well.”“Is it the wildlings?” she asked.“Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. “And it will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all.”“Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn shudder.Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.”“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.”“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him.“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,” he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath. “You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my lady?”Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead.”His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as she had known it would. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect.And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully.“Jon?.?.?.?” he said. “Is this news certain?”“It was the king’s seal, and the letter is in Robert’s own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in pain.”“That is some small mercy, I suppose,” he said. She could see the grief on his face, but even then he thought first of her. “Your sister,” he said. “And Jon’s boy. What word of them?”“The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie,” Catelyn said. “I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever her husband’s place, not hers. Lord Jon’s memory will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of family and friends around her.”“Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate, I’d heard.”Catelyn nodded. “Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is some comfort, but still?.?.?.?”“Go to her,” Ned urged. “Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her grief.”“Would that I could,” Catelyn said. “The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek you out.”It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. “Robert is coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across his face.Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. “I knew that would please you,” she said. “We should send word to your brother on the Wall.”“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest bird.” Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. “Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than this? How many in his party, did the message say?”“I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them.”“Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,” he said. “It is just as well. That will give us more time to prepare.”“The queen’s brothers are also in the party,” she told him.Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen’s family, Catelyn knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert’s cause, when victory was all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. “Well, if the price for Robert’s company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court.”“Where the king goes, the realm follows,” she said.“It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman’s teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?”“Prince Tommen is seven,” she told him. “The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year.”Ned squeezed her hand. “There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.”3．DAENERYSHer brother held the gown up for her inspection. “This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress the fabric.”Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. “Is it really mine?”“A gift from the Magister Illyrio,” Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in a high mood tonight. “The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess.”A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. “Why does he give us so much?” she asked. “What does he want from us?” For nigh on half a year, they had lived in the magister’s house, eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the free city of Pentos.“Illyrio is no fool,” Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous hands and a feverish look in his pale lilac eyes. “The magister knows that I will not forget my friends when I come into my throne.”Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he’d never had a friend he wouldn’t cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”Her brother hung the gown beside the door. “Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort nificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. “Our land,” he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. “Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.”And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother’s womb.Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword.She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper’s brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast.She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometimes “My Lady,” and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one.At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called her brother “the beggar king.” Dany did not want to know what they called her.“We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back.” Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.There came a soft knock on her door. “Come,” Dany said, turning away from the window. Illyrio’s servants entered, bowed, and set about their business. They were slaves, a gift from one of the magister’s many Dothraki friends. There was no slavery in the free city of Pentos. Nonetheless, they were slaves. The old woman, small and grey as a mouse, never said a word, but the girl made up for it. She was Illyrio’s favorite, a fair-haired, blue-eyed wench of sixteen who chattered constantly as she worked.They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.”The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the snags, all in silence. The girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was. “Drogo is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver.” There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age. For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the前兩天，

近年來，老年大學火爆，入學之難絲毫不亞于“入托難”。為了就讀老年大學，老人們“搶”名額，甚至主動當起了“留級生”。

老年大學“一座難求”的背后是老年人的“精神空巢”，他們渴望被關注和充實自我。

“只讀書不畢業”成了普遍現象

位于江蘇南京的金陵老年大學，設置了9個系、90多個專業、240多門課，有320多個班級，每學期1.3萬多人次就學，入學名額一號難求。

“報名必須靠搶，不然肯定上不了�！痹谠撔Ｓ⒄Z口語班就學的一位老人告訴記者，越來越多的老人走出國門，口語班非�；鸨��！安粌H有英語角、英語沙龍，還有河海大學的留學生每個月來學校進行口語交流，所以大家都搶著上�！�

金陵老年大學副校長王玉珍告訴記者，每年招生時節，學校周邊的小賓館全部住滿。學校需要提前把教室門、空調全部打開，方便沒有訂到賓館的老人在教室等待。很多老年人半夜就開始排隊，今年學校嘗試網絡報名，不到一分鐘時間所有課程全部搶光�！安粫�上網的老人有意見，說選不上課。有子女在國外的，憑借時差為老人選到了課。”

由于課程豐富，且在書畫和文史研究方面師資雄厚，依托當地的專家形成了專業研究院，有部分學員從外省趕到金陵老年大學學習。一位山東的老太太為了入學書畫系，在南京租房專門學習已有幾年時間。

一邊是學員進不來，另一邊是學員不想畢業。在老年大學里學習十幾年仍未畢業的不在少數，對很多老年人來說，在這里學習已經成為生活的快樂源泉。“只讀書不畢業”成了普遍現象。

金陵老年大學的電鋼琴課堂

《江蘇省2018老年人口信息和老齡事業發展狀況報告》顯示，約有385萬60歲至89歲老年人有學習需求。

晚年生活的精神支柱

金陵老年大學的一位老人，得知自己在英語經典歌曲演唱班的考試沒有通過進而無法進行下一階段的學習后，哭成了淚人。沒有老伴沒有孩子，英語經典歌曲演唱班成了老人生活里的唯一期待。

“期待”二字，道出了很多老年人對精神生活的渴求。隨著家庭結構小型化，獨居、夫妻相依為命的老年人越來越多，精神慰藉需求越來越難以從子女處得到滿足。尤其老年人退休后，社交圈會快速萎縮。

每周的電子琴和書法課，是年逾八旬的趙志勇最期待的。上課前一天，他就早早地把書包收拾好�！按�在家里很悶的，沒人說話。去學校大家一起說說講講，能充實自己的生活�！�

很多老人不愿將晚年生活“捆綁”在家庭尤其是子女的家庭生活上，他們有著實現自我價值的渴求。江蘇省老齡辦副主任劉育林和老人聊天時發現，很多人哭訴在家里帶孫子、圍著灶臺轉，看上去忙叨叨的，其實心里空落落的。

“養教結合是積極應對人口老齡化的一項重要舉措，老年大學成為老年人精神養老、健康生活的有益選項�！眲⒂�林說。

剛退休不久的廖美云如今終于有時間發展自己的興趣愛好。她表示，時間30%留給家庭，60%留給自己的愛好，剩下的留給社交。“雖然也步入了老年行列，但我們有自己的活法。前段時間老年大學舉辦文藝匯演，我們合唱團的表演得到大家一致好評。被人認可的感覺真好！”

對失能半失能老人來說，醫療是養老的剛需；對健康老人而言，進入老年大學已成為養老生活的一種方式。

“閃光的老年”

需要更完備的老年教育體系

“外面的人想進來，里面的人不想出去。”老年人旺盛的學習需求和學習資源供給不平衡，是目前最現實的問題。王玉珍認為需形成完善的老年教育體系：分層次、分類別。搞好社區辦學，發展普及性、基礎性老年教育，讓更多老人可以就近入學，不要舍近求遠；市級老年大學則有側重地發展“優勢學科”，解決有學習基礎老人的“深造”需求�！敖窈髴�形成市、區、社區等聯動的老年教育聯盟�！�

針對不愿畢業的“留級生”，專家建議可通過在老年大學內設置社團的形式，給這些學員一個活動、學習的出口。如設置攝影校友會，讓學校里已經學習多年的學員加入其中，由社團定期組織采風、講座等活動。既為想進來的新同學騰挪空間，也為“擔心離開學校后孤寂”的老學員提供新的活動平臺。

在課程設置上，隨著更多“50、60”后邁入老年階段，其自身文化水平及當下社會的發展對學校的課程設置提出了更高的要求。“十幾年前我們學校的電腦課很熱門，現在智能手機普及了，電腦課也隨之萎縮�！蓖跤裾浣榻B，隨之而來的是英語類課程，滿足老人出國游玩、探望孩子時交流的需求；形象設計班，滿足老人對服裝選擇、色彩搭配、妝容修飾的需要；衛生保健類課程，滿足老人對養生的需求等。

質量高、收費低，是公辦老年大學火爆的重要原因。當前市場上的優質民辦老年教育機構為數不多，可以由政府出臺宏觀政策，積極支持社會力量辦學�？刹扇」�辦民營的方式，基礎設施建設由政府負責，辦學質量上由公立老年大學指導等，促進老年教育供給矛盾的解決。

“參與社會的渠道變窄了，這也是導致更多老年人加入老年大學的原因�！眲⒂�林表示，今后在基層社會治理方面可以充分發揮退休老人的重要作用，讓他們減少孤獨感，增加被需要感，從這一層面出發緩解老年大學的“入學難”。

最美不過夕陽紅

提高老年人的生活質量

實現“閃光老年”

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