With the war all but won and Storm's End relieved, Lord Eddard Stark rode south into Dorne with six companions to seek his lost sister Lyanna, whom Prince Rhaegar had carried away the year before. He found her at a lonely watchtower in the foothills of the Red Mountains that the prince had called the tower of joy, and there he found also three of the Kingsguard set to guard the place: the Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower, called the White Bull, Ser Oswell Whent, and Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, reckoned the finest blade in the Seven Kingdoms. That these three knights had kept their post in the deep south while their king was murdered and his heirs slaughtered has long troubled the maesters, and hints at what treasure the tower truly held.
Words were exchanged, and then swords. Ser Arthur bore the pale greatsword Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star, and the fight that followed was a bloody one. When it ended, all three Kingsguard lay dead, but of Ned's seven only he and the crannogman Howland Reed of Greywater Watch still stood; among the fallen companions was Lord Willam Dustin of Barrowton, whose widow Barbrey would nurse her grudge against the Starks for long years after. Ned laid his dead in cairns beneath the tower, carried Ser Arthur's sword home to Starfall out of respect, and climbed the steps to find his sister in a bed of blood. Lyanna died in his arms, having drawn from him a promise that he carried to his grave.