The hunt left at dawn. The king wanted wild boar
at the feast tonight. Prince Joffrey rode with his father, so Robb
had been allowed to join the hunters as well. Uncle Benjen, Jory,
Theon Greyjoy, Ser Rodrik, and even the queen’s funny little
brother had all ridden out with them. It was the last hunt, after
all. On the morrow they left for the south.
Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. But
Rickon was only a baby and the girls were only girls and Jon and
his wolf were nowhere to be found. Bran did not look for him very
hard. He thought Jon was angry at him. Jon seemed to be angry at
everyone these days. Bran did not know why. He was going with Uncle
Ben to the Wall, to join the Night’s Watch. That was almost
as good as going south with the king. Robb was the one they were
leaving behind, not Jon.
For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to
ride the kingsroad on a horse of his own, not a pony but a real
horse. His father would be the Hand of the King, and they were
going to live in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle
the Dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there were ghosts there,
and dungeons where terrible things had been done, and dragon heads
on the walls. It gave Bran a shiver just to think of it, but he was
not afraid. How could he be afraid? His father would be with him, and the king with all his knights
and sworn swords.
Bran was going to be a knight himself someday, one of the
Kingsguard. Old Nan said they were the finest swords in all the
realm. There were only seven of them, and they wore white armor and
had no wives or children, but lived only to serve the king. Bran
knew all the stories. Their names were like music to him. Serwyn of
the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight.
The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one
another’s swords hundreds of years ago, when brother fought
sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons. The
White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the
Morning. Barristan the Bold.
Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had
watched them with fascination, never quite daring to speak to them.
Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had
droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust. Ser Jaime Lannister
looked more like the knights in the stories, and he was of the
Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and
shouldn’t count anymore. The greatest living knight was Ser
Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the Lord Commander of the
Kingsguard. Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan
when they reached King’s Landing, and Bran had been marking
the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world he had only
dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine.
Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost.
Winterfell had been the only home he had ever known. His father had
told him that he ought to say his farewells today, and he had
tried. After the hunt had ridden out, he wandered through the
castle with his wolf at his side, intending to visit the ones who
would be left behind, Old Nan and Gage the cook, Mikken in his
smithy, Hodor the stableboy who smiled so much and took care of his
pony and never said anything but “Hodor,” the man in
the glass gardens who gave him a blackberry when he came to visit . . .
But it was no good. He had gone to the stable first, and seen
his pony there in its stall, except it wasn’t his pony
anymore, he was getting a real horse and leaving the pony behind,
and all of a sudden Bran just wanted to sit down and cry. He turned
and ran off before Hodor and the other stableboys could see the
tears in his eyes. That was the end of his farewells. Instead Bran
spent the morning alone in the godswood, trying to teach his wolf
to fetch a stick, and failing. The wolfling was smarter than any of
the hounds in his father’s kennel and Bran would have sworn
he understood every word that was said to him, but he showed very
little interest in chasing sticks.
He was still trying to decide on a name. Robb was calling his
Grey Wind, because he ran so fast. Sansa had named hers Lady, and
Arya named hers after some old witch queen in the songs, and little
Rickon called his Shaggydog, which Bran thought was a pretty stupid
name for a direwolf. Jon’s wolf, the white one, was Ghost.
Bran wished he had thought of that first, even though his wolf
wasn’t white. He had tried a hundred names in the last
fortnight, but none of them sounded right.
Finally he got tired of the stick game and decided to go
climbing. He hadn’t been up to the broken tower for weeks
with everything that had happened, and this might be his last
chance.
He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to
avoid the pool where the heart tree grew. The heart tree had always
frightened him; trees ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves
that looked like hands. His wolf came sprinting at his heels.
“You stay here,” he told him at the base of the
sentinel tree near the armory wall. “Lie down. That’s
right. Now stay—”
The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears,
then turned away, jumped, grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself
up. He was halfway up the tree, moving easily from limb to limb,
when the wolf got to his feet and began to howl.
Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him
through slitted yellow eyes. A strange chill went through him. He
began to climb again. Once more the wolf howled.
“Quiet,” he yelled. “Sit down. Stay. You’re
worse than Mother.” The howling chased him all the way up the
tree, until finally he jumped off onto the armory roof and out of
sight.
The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran’s second home. His
mother often said that Bran could climb before he could walk. Bran
could not remember when he first learned to walk, but he could not
remember when he started to climb either, so he supposed it must be
true.
To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and
towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions.
In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so
that you couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on. The
place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree,
Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and
thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.
When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky,
Bran could see all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it
looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head
while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch
for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded
over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood
and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the
glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels,
the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing
well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way
even Robb would never know.
It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too. The builders had
not even leveled the earth; there were hills and valleys behind the
walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that went from the
fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the
rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get inside the
inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all the
way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the stone, and
then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred
feet of wall looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn’t know
that, Bran was convinced.
His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall
and kill himself. He told her that he wouldn’t, but she never
believed him. Once she made him promise that he would stay on the
ground. He had managed to keep that promise for almost a fortnight,
miserable every day, until one night he had gone out the window of
his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep.
He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord
Eddard ordered him to the godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were
posted to see that Bran remained there alone all night to reflect
on his disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen.
They finally found him fast asleep in the upper branches of the
tallest sentinel in the grove.
As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh.
“You’re not my son,” he told Bran when they
fetched him down, “you’re a squirrel. So be it. If you
must climb, then climb, but try not to let your mother see
you.”
Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really
fooled her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to
others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed
too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the
crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were
crows’ nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went
but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he
climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None
of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out
his eyes.
Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him
in Bran’s clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard
below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if he fell. That
had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and
said, “I’m not made of clay. And anyhow, I never
fall.”
Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw
him on the roofs, and try to haul him down. That was the best time
of all. It was like playing a game with his brothers, except that
Bran always won. None of the guards could climb half so well as
Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they never saw him anyway.
People never looked up. That was another thing he liked about
climbing; it was almost like being invisible.
He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by
stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices
between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he
climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two.
He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He
liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a
winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower,
the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones,
the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory.
Bran knew them all.
Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go,
and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else
ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran’s secret
place.
His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a
watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred
years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had
set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward,
and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent
ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they
always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and
rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the
structure now except for Bran and the crows.
He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the
side of the tower itself, but the stones were loose, the mortar
that held them together long gone to ash, and Bran never liked to
put his full weight on them.
The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall
sentinel, and cross over the armory and the guards hall, leaping
roof to roof, barefoot so the guards wouldn’t hear you
overhead. That brought you up to the blind side of the First Keep,
the oldest part of the castle, a squat round fortress that was
taller than it looked. Only rats and spiders lived there now but
the old stones still made for good climbing. You could go straight
up to where the gargoyles leaned out blindly over empty space, and
swing from gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the
north side. From there, if you really stretched, you could reach
out and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it leaned
close. The last part was the scramble up the blackened stones to
the eyrie, no more than ten feet, and then the crows would come
round to see if you’d brought any corn.
Bran was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long
practice when he heard the voices. He was so startled he almost
lost his grip. The First Keep had been empty all his life.
“I do not like it,” a woman was saying. There was a
row of windows beneath him, and the voice was drifting out of the
last window on this side. “You should be the Hand.”
“Gods forbid,” a man’s voice replied lazily.
“It’s not an honor I’d want. There’s far
too much work involved.”
Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. They might
glimpse his feet if he tried to swing by.
“Don’t you see the danger this puts us in?”
the woman said. “Robert loves the man like a
brother.”
“Robert can barely stomach his brothers. Not that I blame
him. Stannis would be enough to give anyone indigestion.”
“Don’t play the fool. Stannis and Renly are one
thing, and Eddard Stark is quite another. Robert will listen to
Stark. Damn them both. I should have insisted that he name you, but
I was certain Stark would refuse him.”
“We ought to count ourselves fortunate,” the man
said. “The king might as easily have named one of his
brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us. Give me honorable
enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more
easily by night.”
They were talking about Father, Bran realized. He wanted to hear
more. A few more feet . . . but they would see him if he swung out
in front of the window.
“We will have to watch him carefully,” the woman
said.
“I would sooner watch you,” the man said. He sounded
bored. “Come back here.”
“Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that
happened south of the Neck,” the woman said. “Never. I
tell you, he means to move against us. Why else would he leave the
seat of his power?”
“A hundred reasons. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his
name large across the book of history, to get away from his wife,
or both. Perhaps he just wants to be warm for once in his
life.”
“His wife is Lady Arryn’s sister. It’s a
wonder Lysa was not here to greet us with her
accusations.”
Bran looked down. There was a narrow ledge beneath the window,
only a few inches wide. He tried to lower himself toward it. Too
far. He would never reach.
“You fret too much. Lysa Arryn is a frightened
cow.”
“That frightened cow shared Jon Arryn’s
bed.”
“If she knew anything, she would have gone to Robert
before she fled King’s Landing.”
“When he had already agreed to foster that weakling son of
hers at Casterly Rock? I think not. She knew the boy’s life
would be hostage to her silence. She may grow bolder now that
he’s safe atop the Eyrie.”
“Mothers.” The man made the word sound like a curse.
“I think birthing does something to your minds. You are all
mad.” He laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Let Lady
Arryn grow as bold as she likes. Whatever she knows, whatever she
thinks she knows, she has no proof.” He paused a moment.
“Or does she?”
“Do you think the king will require proof?” the
woman said. “I tell you, he loves me not.”
“And whose fault is that, sweet sister?”
Bran studied the ledge. He could drop down. It was too narrow to
land on, but if he could catch hold as he fell past, pull himself
up . . . except that might make a noise, draw them to the window.
He was not sure what he was hearing, but he knew it was not meant
for his ears.
“You are as blind as Robert,” the woman was
saying.
“If you mean I see the same thing, yes,” the man
said. “I see a man who would sooner die than betray his
king.”
“He betrayed one already, or have you forgotten?”
the woman said. “Oh, I don’t deny he’s loyal to
Robert, that’s obvious. What happens when Robert dies and
Joff takes the throne? And the sooner that comes to pass, the safer
we’ll all be. My husband grows more restless every day.
Having Stark beside him will only make him worse. He’s still
in love with the sister, the insipid little dead sixteen-year-old.
How long till he decides to put me aside for some new
Lyanna?”
Bran was suddenly very frightened. He wanted nothing so much as
to go back the way he had come, to find his brothers. Only what
would he tell them? He had to get closer, Bran realized. He had to
see who was talking.
The man sighed. “You should think less about the future
and more about the pleasures at hand.”
“Stop that!” the woman said. Bran heard the sudden
slap of flesh on flesh, then the man’s laughter.
Bran pulled himself up, climbed over the gargoyle, crawled out
onto the roof. This was the easy way. He moved across the roof to
the next gargoyle, right above the window of the room where they
were talking.
“All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister,”
the man said. “Come here and be quiet.”
Bran sat astride the gargoyle, tightened his legs around it, and
swung himself around, upside down. He hung by his legs and slowly
stretched his head down toward the window. The world looked strange
upside down. A courtyard swam dizzily below him, its stones still
wet with melted snow.
Bran looked in the window.
Inside the room, a man and a woman were wrestling. They were
both naked. Bran could not tell who they were. The man’s back
was to him, and his body screened the woman from view as he pushed
her up against a wall.
There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He
watched, wide-eyed and frightened, his breath tight in his throat.
The man had a hand down between her legs, and he must have been
hurting her there, because the woman started to moan, low in her
throat. “Stop it,” she said, “stop it, stop it.
Oh, please . . . ” But her voice was low and weak, and she did
not push him away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his
tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast.
Bran saw her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open,
moaning. Her golden hair swung from side to side as her head moved
back and forth, but still he recognized the queen.
He must have made a noise. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she was
staring right at him. She screamed.
Everything happened at once then. ‘ The woman pushed the
man away wildly, shouting and pointing. Bran tried to pull himself
up, bending double as he reached for the gargoyle. He was in too
much of a hurry. His hand scraped uselessly across smooth stone,
and in his panic his legs slipped, and suddenly he was failing.
There was an instant of vertigo, a sickening lurch as the window
flashed past. He shot out a hand, grabbed for the ledge, lost it,
caught it again with his other hand. He swung against the building,
hard. The impact took the breath out of him. Bran dangled,
one-handed, panting.
Faces appeared in the window above him.
The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They
looked as much alike as reflections in a mirror.
“He saw us,” the woman said shrilly.
“So he did,” the man said.
Bran’s fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with
his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man
reached down. “Take my hand,” he said. “Before
you fall.”
Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The
man yanked him up to the ledge. “What are you doing?”
the woman demanded.
The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the
sill. “How old are you, boy?”
“Seven,” Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers
had dug deep gouges in the man’s forearm. He let go
sheepishly.
The man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for
love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.
Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air.
There was nothing to grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet
him.
Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled
the broken tower, waiting for corn.
The hunt left at dawn. The king wanted wild boar
at the feast tonight. Prince Joffrey rode with his father, so Robb
had been allowed to join the hunters as well. Uncle Benjen, Jory,
Theon Greyjoy, Ser Rodrik, and even the queen’s funny little
brother had all ridden out with them. It was the last hunt, after
all. On the morrow they left for the south.
Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. But
Rickon was only a baby and the girls were only girls and Jon and
his wolf were nowhere to be found. Bran did not look for him very
hard. He thought Jon was angry at him. Jon seemed to be angry at
everyone these days. Bran did not know why. He was going with Uncle
Ben to the Wall, to join the Night’s Watch. That was almost
as good as going south with the king. Robb was the one they were
leaving behind, not Jon.
For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to
ride the kingsroad on a horse of his own, not a pony but a real
horse. His father would be the Hand of the King, and they were
going to live in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle
the Dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there were ghosts there,
and dungeons where terrible things had been done, and dragon heads
on the walls. It gave Bran a shiver just to think of it, but he was
not afraid. How could he be afraid? His father would be with him, and the king with all his knights
and sworn swords.
Bran was going to be a knight himself someday, one of the
Kingsguard. Old Nan said they were the finest swords in all the
realm. There were only seven of them, and they wore white armor and
had no wives or children, but lived only to serve the king. Bran
knew all the stories. Their names were like music to him. Serwyn of
the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight.
The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one
another’s swords hundreds of years ago, when brother fought
sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons. The
White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the
Morning. Barristan the Bold.
Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had
watched them with fascination, never quite daring to speak to them.
Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had
droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust. Ser Jaime Lannister
looked more like the knights in the stories, and he was of the
Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and
shouldn’t count anymore. The greatest living knight was Ser
Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the Lord Commander of the
Kingsguard. Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan
when they reached King’s Landing, and Bran had been marking
the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world he had only
dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine.
Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost.
Winterfell had been the only home he had ever known. His father had
told him that he ought to say his farewells today, and he had
tried. After the hunt had ridden out, he wandered through the
castle with his wolf at his side, intending to visit the ones who
would be left behind, Old Nan and Gage the cook, Mikken in his
smithy, Hodor the stableboy who smiled so much and took care of his
pony and never said anything but “Hodor,” the man in
the glass gardens who gave him a blackberry when he came to visit . . .
But it was no good. He had gone to the stable first, and seen
his pony there in its stall, except it wasn’t his pony
anymore, he was getting a real horse and leaving the pony behind,
and all of a sudden Bran just wanted to sit down and cry. He turned
and ran off before Hodor and the other stableboys could see the
tears in his eyes. That was the end of his farewells. Instead Bran
spent the morning alone in the godswood, trying to teach his wolf
to fetch a stick, and failing. The wolfling was smarter than any of
the hounds in his father’s kennel and Bran would have sworn
he understood every word that was said to him, but he showed very
little interest in chasing sticks.
He was still trying to decide on a name. Robb was calling his
Grey Wind, because he ran so fast. Sansa had named hers Lady, and
Arya named hers after some old witch queen in the songs, and little
Rickon called his Shaggydog, which Bran thought was a pretty stupid
name for a direwolf. Jon’s wolf, the white one, was Ghost.
Bran wished he had thought of that first, even though his wolf
wasn’t white. He had tried a hundred names in the last
fortnight, but none of them sounded right.
Finally he got tired of the stick game and decided to go
climbing. He hadn’t been up to the broken tower for weeks
with everything that had happened, and this might be his last
chance.
He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to
avoid the pool where the heart tree grew. The heart tree had always
frightened him; trees ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves
that looked like hands. His wolf came sprinting at his heels.
“You stay here,” he told him at the base of the
sentinel tree near the armory wall. “Lie down. That’s
right. Now stay—”
The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears,
then turned away, jumped, grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself
up. He was halfway up the tree, moving easily from limb to limb,
when the wolf got to his feet and began to howl.
Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him
through slitted yellow eyes. A strange chill went through him. He
began to climb again. Once more the wolf howled.
“Quiet,” he yelled. “Sit down. Stay. You’re
worse than Mother.” The howling chased him all the way up the
tree, until finally he jumped off onto the armory roof and out of
sight.
The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran’s second home. His
mother often said that Bran could climb before he could walk. Bran
could not remember when he first learned to walk, but he could not
remember when he started to climb either, so he supposed it must be
true.
To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and
towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions.
In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so
that you couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on. The
place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree,
Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and
thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.
When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky,
Bran could see all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it
looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head
while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch
for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded
over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood
and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the
glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels,
the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing
well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way
even Robb would never know.
It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too. The builders had
not even leveled the earth; there were hills and valleys behind the
walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that went from the
fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the
rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get inside the
inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all the
way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the stone, and
then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred
feet of wall looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn’t know
that, Bran was convinced.
His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall
and kill himself. He told her that he wouldn’t, but she never
believed him. Once she made him promise that he would stay on the
ground. He had managed to keep that promise for almost a fortnight,
miserable every day, until one night he had gone out the window of
his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep.
He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord
Eddard ordered him to the godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were
posted to see that Bran remained there alone all night to reflect
on his disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen.
They finally found him fast asleep in the upper branches of the
tallest sentinel in the grove.
As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh.
“You’re not my son,” he told Bran when they
fetched him down, “you’re a squirrel. So be it. If you
must climb, then climb, but try not to let your mother see
you.”
Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really
fooled her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to
others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed
too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the
crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were
crows’ nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went
but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he
climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None
of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out
his eyes.
Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him
in Bran’s clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard
below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if he fell. That
had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and
said, “I’m not made of clay. And anyhow, I never
fall.”
Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw
him on the roofs, and try to haul him down. That was the best time
of all. It was like playing a game with his brothers, except that
Bran always won. None of the guards could climb half so well as
Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they never saw him anyway.
People never looked up. That was another thing he liked about
climbing; it was almost like being invisible.
He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by
stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices
between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he
climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two.
He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He
liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a
winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower,
the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones,
the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory.
Bran knew them all.
Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go,
and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else
ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran’s secret
place.
His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a
watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred
years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had
set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward,
and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent
ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they
always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and
rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the
structure now except for Bran and the crows.
He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the
side of the tower itself, but the stones were loose, the mortar
that held them together long gone to ash, and Bran never liked to
put his full weight on them.
The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall
sentinel, and cross over the armory and the guards hall, leaping
roof to roof, barefoot so the guards wouldn’t hear you
overhead. That brought you up to the blind side of the First Keep,
the oldest part of the castle, a squat round fortress that was
taller than it looked. Only rats and spiders lived there now but
the old stones still made for good climbing. You could go straight
up to where the gargoyles leaned out blindly over empty space, and
swing from gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the
north side. From there, if you really stretched, you could reach
out and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it leaned
close. The last part was the scramble up the blackened stones to
the eyrie, no more than ten feet, and then the crows would come
round to see if you’d brought any corn.
Bran was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long
practice when he heard the voices. He was so startled he almost
lost his grip. The First Keep had been empty all his life.
“I do not like it,” a woman was saying. There was a
row of windows beneath him, and the voice was drifting out of the
last window on this side. “You should be the Hand.”
“Gods forbid,” a man’s voice replied lazily.
“It’s not an honor I’d want. There’s far
too much work involved.”
Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. They might
glimpse his feet if he tried to swing by.
“Don’t you see the danger this puts us in?”
the woman said. “Robert loves the man like a
brother.”
“Robert can barely stomach his brothers. Not that I blame
him. Stannis would be enough to give anyone indigestion.”
“Don’t play the fool. Stannis and Renly are one
thing, and Eddard Stark is quite another. Robert will listen to
Stark. Damn them both. I should have insisted that he name you, but
I was certain Stark would refuse him.”
“We ought to count ourselves fortunate,” the man
said. “The king might as easily have named one of his
brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us. Give me honorable
enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more
easily by night.”
They were talking about Father, Bran realized. He wanted to hear
more. A few more feet . . . but they would see him if he swung out
in front of the window.
“We will have to watch him carefully,” the woman
said.
“I would sooner watch you,” the man said. He sounded
bored. “Come back here.”
“Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that
happened south of the Neck,” the woman said. “Never. I
tell you, he means to move against us. Why else would he leave the
seat of his power?”
“A hundred reasons. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his
name large across the book of history, to get away from his wife,
or both. Perhaps he just wants to be warm for once in his
life.”
“His wife is Lady Arryn’s sister. It’s a
wonder Lysa was not here to greet us with her
accusations.”
Bran looked down. There was a narrow ledge beneath the window,
only a few inches wide. He tried to lower himself toward it. Too
far. He would never reach.
“You fret too much. Lysa Arryn is a frightened
cow.”
“That frightened cow shared Jon Arryn’s
bed.”
“If she knew anything, she would have gone to Robert
before she fled King’s Landing.”
“When he had already agreed to foster that weakling son of
hers at Casterly Rock? I think not. She knew the boy’s life
would be hostage to her silence. She may grow bolder now that
he’s safe atop the Eyrie.”
“Mothers.” The man made the word sound like a curse.
“I think birthing does something to your minds. You are all
mad.” He laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Let Lady
Arryn grow as bold as she likes. Whatever she knows, whatever she
thinks she knows, she has no proof.” He paused a moment.
“Or does she?”
“Do you think the king will require proof?” the
woman said. “I tell you, he loves me not.”
“And whose fault is that, sweet sister?”
Bran studied the ledge. He could drop down. It was too narrow to
land on, but if he could catch hold as he fell past, pull himself
up . . . except that might make a noise, draw them to the window.
He was not sure what he was hearing, but he knew it was not meant
for his ears.
“You are as blind as Robert,” the woman was
saying.
“If you mean I see the same thing, yes,” the man
said. “I see a man who would sooner die than betray his
king.”
“He betrayed one already, or have you forgotten?”
the woman said. “Oh, I don’t deny he’s loyal to
Robert, that’s obvious. What happens when Robert dies and
Joff takes the throne? And the sooner that comes to pass, the safer
we’ll all be. My husband grows more restless every day.
Having Stark beside him will only make him worse. He’s still
in love with the sister, the insipid little dead sixteen-year-old.
How long till he decides to put me aside for some new
Lyanna?”
Bran was suddenly very frightened. He wanted nothing so much as
to go back the way he had come, to find his brothers. Only what
would he tell them? He had to get closer, Bran realized. He had to
see who was talking.
The man sighed. “You should think less about the future
and more about the pleasures at hand.”
“Stop that!” the woman said. Bran heard the sudden
slap of flesh on flesh, then the man’s laughter.
Bran pulled himself up, climbed over the gargoyle, crawled out
onto the roof. This was the easy way. He moved across the roof to
the next gargoyle, right above the window of the room where they
were talking.
“All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister,”
the man said. “Come here and be quiet.”
Bran sat astride the gargoyle, tightened his legs around it, and
swung himself around, upside down. He hung by his legs and slowly
stretched his head down toward the window. The world looked strange
upside down. A courtyard swam dizzily below him, its stones still
wet with melted snow.
Bran looked in the window.
Inside the room, a man and a woman were wrestling. They were
both naked. Bran could not tell who they were. The man’s back
was to him, and his body screened the woman from view as he pushed
her up against a wall.
There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He
watched, wide-eyed and frightened, his breath tight in his throat.
The man had a hand down between her legs, and he must have been
hurting her there, because the woman started to moan, low in her
throat. “Stop it,” she said, “stop it, stop it.
Oh, please . . . ” But her voice was low and weak, and she did
not push him away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his
tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast.
Bran saw her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open,
moaning. Her golden hair swung from side to side as her head moved
back and forth, but still he recognized the queen.
He must have made a noise. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she was
staring right at him. She screamed.
Everything happened at once then. ‘ The woman pushed the
man away wildly, shouting and pointing. Bran tried to pull himself
up, bending double as he reached for the gargoyle. He was in too
much of a hurry. His hand scraped uselessly across smooth stone,
and in his panic his legs slipped, and suddenly he was failing.
There was an instant of vertigo, a sickening lurch as the window
flashed past. He shot out a hand, grabbed for the ledge, lost it,
caught it again with his other hand. He swung against the building,
hard. The impact took the breath out of him. Bran dangled,
one-handed, panting.
Faces appeared in the window above him.
The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They
looked as much alike as reflections in a mirror.
“He saw us,” the woman said shrilly.
“So he did,” the man said.
Bran’s fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with
his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding stone. The man
reached down. “Take my hand,” he said. “Before
you fall.”
Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The
man yanked him up to the ledge. “What are you doing?”
the woman demanded.
The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the
sill. “How old are you, boy?”
“Seven,” Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers
had dug deep gouges in the man’s forearm. He let go
sheepishly.
The man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for
love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.
Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air.
There was nothing to grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet
him.
Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled
the broken tower, waiting for corn.