Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left
hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right.
Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held
stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . .
“Yai!” the girl shouted, the spear darting out. The
wolf slid to the left and leapt before she could draw back the
spear. Meera cast her net, the tangles unfolding in the air before
her. Summer’s leap carried him into it. He dragged it with
him as he slammed into her chest and knocked her over backward. Her
spear went spinning away. The damp grass cushioned her fall but the
breath went out of her in an “Oof.” The wolf crouched
atop her.
Bran hooted. “You lose.”
“She wins,” her brother Jojen said.
“Summer’s snared.”
He was right, Bran saw. Thrashing and growling at the net,
trying to rip free, Summer was only ensnaring himself worse. Nor
could he bite through. “Let him out.”
Laughing, the Reed girl threw her arms around the tangled wolf
and rolled them both. Summer gave a piteous whine, his legs kicking
against the cords that bound them. Meera knelt, undid a twist,
pulled at a corner, tugged deftly here and there, and suddenly the
direwolf was bounding free.
“Summer, to me.” Bran spread his arms.
“Watch,” he said, an instant before the wolf bowled
into him. He clung with all his strength as the wolf dragged him
bumping through the grass. They wrestled and rolled and clung to
each other, one snarling and yapping, the other laughing. In the
end it was Bran sprawled on top, the mud-spattered direwolf under
him. “Good wolf,” he panted. Summer licked him across
the ear.
Meera shook her head. “Does he never grow
angry?”
“Not with me.” Bran grabbed the wolf by his ears and
Summer snapped at him fiercely, but it was all in play.
“Sometimes he tears my garb but he’s never drawn
blood.”
“Your blood, you mean. If he’d gotten past my
net . . . ”
“He wouldn’t hurt you. He knows I like you.”
All of the other lords and knights had departed within a day or two
of the harvest feast, but the Reeds had stayed to become
Bran’s constant companions. Jojen was so solemn that Old Nan
called him “little grandfather,” but Meera reminded
Bran of his sister Arya. She wasn’t scared to get dirty, and
she could run and fight and throw as good as a boy. She was older
than Arya, though; almost sixteen, a woman grown. They were both
older than Bran, even though his ninth name day had finally come
and gone, but they never treated him like a child.
“I wish you were our wards instead of the Walders.”
He began to struggle toward the nearest tree. His dragging and
wriggling was unseemly to watch, but when Meera moved to lift him
he said, “No, don’t help me.” He rolled clumsily
and pushed and squirmed backward, using the strength of his arms,
until he was sitting with his back to the trunk of a tall ash.
“See, I told you.” Summer lay down with his head in
Bran’s lap. “I never knew anyone who fought with a net
before,” he told Meera while he scratched the direwolf
between the ears. “Did your master-at-arms teach you
net-fighting?”
“My father taught me. We have no knights at Greywater. No
master-at-arms, and no maester.”
“Who keeps your ravens?”
She smiled. “Ravens can’t find Greywater Watch, no
more than our enemies can.”
“Why not?”
“Because it moves,” she told him.
Bran had never heard of a moving castle before. He looked at her
uncertainly, but he couldn’t tell whether she was teasing him
or not. “I wish I could see it. Do you think your lord father
would let me come visit when the war is over?”
“You would be most welcome, my prince. Then or
now.”
“Now?” Bran had spent his whole life at Winterfell.
He yearned to see far places. “I could ask Ser Rodrik when he
returns.” The old knight was off east, trying to set to
rights the trouble there. Roose Bolton’s bastard had started
it by seizing Lady Hornwood as she returned from the harvest feast,
marrying her that very night even though he was young enough to be
her son. Then Lord Manderly had taken her castle. To protect the
Hornwood holdings from the Boltons, he had written, but Ser Rodrik
had been almost as angry with him as with the bastard. “Ser
Rodrik might let me go. Maester Luwin never would.”
Sitting cross-legged under the weirwood, Jojen Reed regarded him
solemnly. “It would be good if you left Winterfell,
Bran.”
“It would?”
“Yes. And sooner rather than later.”
“My brother has the greensight,” said Meera.
“He dreams things that haven’t happened, but sometimes
they do.”
“There is no sometimes, Meera.” A look passed
between them; him sad, her defiant.
“Tell me what’s going to happen,” Bran
said.
“I will,” said Jojen, “if you’ll tell me
about your dreams.”
The godswood grew quiet. Bran could hear leaves rustling, and
Hodor’s distant splashing from the hot pools. He thought of
the golden man and the three-eyed crow, remembered the crunch of
bones between his jaws and the coppery taste of blood. “I
don’t have dreams. Maester Luwin gives me sleeping
draughts.”
“Do they help?”
“Sometimes.”
Meera said, “All of Winterfell knows you wake at night
shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and
the guards in their hall.”
“Tell us what frightens you so much,” said
Jojen.
“I don’t want to. Anyway, it’s only dreams.
Maester Luwin says dreams might mean anything or
nothing.”
“My brother dreams as other boys do, and those dreams
might mean anything,” Meera said, “but the green dreams
are different.”
Jojen’s eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he
looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now.
“I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone
chains,” he said. “It was a green dream, so I knew it
was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the
stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them.”
“Did the crow have three eyes?”
Jojen nodded.
Summer raised his head from Bran’s lap, and gazed at the
mudman with his dark golden eyes.
“When I was little I almost died of greywater fever. That
was when the crow came to me.”
“He came to me after I fell,” Bran blurted. “I
was asleep for a long time. He said I had to fly or die, and I woke
up, only I was broken and I couldn’t fly after
all.”
“You can if you want to.” Picking up her net, Meera
shook out the last tangles and began arranging it in loose
folds.
“You are the winged wolf, Bran,” said Jojen.
“I wasn’t sure when we first came, but now I am. The
crow sent us here to break your chains.”
“Is the crow at Greywater?”
“No. The crow is in the north.”
“At the Wall?” Bran had always wanted to see the
Wall. His bastard brother Jon was there now, a man of the
Night’s Watch.
“Beyond the Wall.” Meera Reed hung the net from her
belt. “When Jojen told our lord father what he’d
dreamed, he sent us to Winterfell.”
“How would I break the chains, Jojen?” Bran
asked.
“Open your eye.”
“They are open Can’t you see?”
“Two are open.” Jojen pointed. “One,
two.”
“I only have two.”
“You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will
not open it.” He had a slow soft way of speaking. “With
two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With
two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the
acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become.
With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would
gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall.”
Summer got to his feet. “I don’t need to see so
far.” Bran made a nervous smile. “I’m tired of
talking about crows. Let’s talk about wolves. Or
lizard-lions. Have you ever hunted one, Meera? We don’t have
them here.”
Meera plucked her frog spear out of the bushes. “They live
in the water. In slow streams and deep swamps—”
Her brother interrupted. “Did you dream of a
lizard-lion?”
“No,” said Bran. “I told you, I don’t
want—”
“Did you dream of a wolf?”
He was making Bran angry. “I don’t have to tell you
my dreams. I’m the prince. I’m the Stark in
Winterfell.”
“Was it Summer?”
“You be quiet.”
“The night of the harvest feast, you dreamed you were
Summer in the godswood, didn’t you?”
“Stop it!” Bran shouted. Summer slid toward the
weirwood, his white teeth bared.
Jojen Reed took no mind. “When I touched Summer, I felt
you in him. just as you are in him now.”
“You couldn’t have. I was in bed. I was
sleeping.”
“You were in the godswood, all in grey.”
“It was only a bad
dream . . . ”
Jojen stood. “I felt you. I felt you fall. Is that what
scares you, the falling?” The falling, Bran thought, and the golden man, the queen’s
brother, he scares me too, but mostly the falling. He did not say
it, though. How could he? He had not been able to tell Ser Rodrik
or Maester Luwin, and he could not tell the Reeds either. If he
didn’t talk about it, maybe he would forget. He had never
wanted to remember. It might not even be a true remembering.
“Do you fall every night, Bran?” Joien asked
quietly.
A low rumbling growl rose from Summer’s throat, and there
was no play in it. He stalked forward, all teeth and hot eyes.
Meera stepped between the wolf and her brother, spear in hand.
“Keep him back, Bran.”
“Jojen is making him angry.”
Meera shook out her net.
“It’s your anger, Bran,” her brother said.
“Your fear.”
“It isn’t. I’m not a wolf.” Yet
he’d howled with them in the night, and tasted blood in his
wolf dreams.
“Part of you is Summer, and part of Summer is you. You
know that, Bran.”
Summer rushed forward, but Meera blocked him, jabbing with the
three-pronged spear. The wolf twisted aside, circling, stalking.
Meera turned to face him. “Call him back, Bran.”
“Summer!” Bran shouted. “To me, Summer!”
He slapped an open palm down on the meat of his thigh. His hand
tingled, though his dead leg felt nothing.
The direwolf lunged again, and again Meera’s spear darted
out. Summer dodged, circled back. The bushes rustled, and a lean
black shape came padding from behind the weirwood, teeth bared. The
scent was strong; his brother had smelled his rage. Bran felt hairs
rise on the back of his neck. Meera stood beside her brother, with
wolves to either side. “Bran, call them off.”
“I can’t!”
“Jojen, up the tree.”
“There’s no need. Today is not the day I
die.”
“Do it!” she screamed, and her brother scrambled up
the trunk of the weirwood, using the face for his handholds. The
direwolves closed. Meera abandoned spear and net, jumped up, and
grabbed the branch above her head. Shaggy’s jaws snapped shut
beneath her ankle as she swung up and over the limb. Summer sat
back on his haunches and howled, while Shaggydog worried the net,
shaking it in his teeth.
Only then did Bran remember that they were not alone. He cupped
hands around his mouth. “Hodor!” he shouted.
“Hodor! Hodor!” He was badly frightened and somehow
ashamed. “They won’t hurt Hodor,” he assured his
treed friends.
A few moments passed before they heard a tuneless humming. Hodor
arrived half-dressed and mud-spattered from his visit to the hot
pools, but Bran had never been so glad to see him. “Hodor,
help me. Chase off the wolves. Chase them off.”
Hodor went to it gleefully, waving his arms and stamping his
huge feet, shouting “Hodor, Hodor,” running first at
one wolf and then the other. Shaggydog was the first to flee,
slinking back into the foliage with a final snarl. When Summer had
enough, he came back to Bran and lay down beside him.
No sooner did Meera touch ground than she snatched up her spear
and net again. Jojen never took his eyes off Summer. “We will
talk again,” he promised Bran. It was the wolves, it wasn’t me. He did not understand why
they’d gotten so wild. Maybe Maester Luwin was right to lock
them in the godswood. “Hodor,” he said, “bring me
to Maester Luwin.”
The maester’s turret below the rookery was one of
Bran’s favorite places. Luwin was hopelessly untidy, but his
clutter of books and scrolls and bottles was as familiar and
comforting to Bran as his bald spot and the flapping sleeves of his
loose grey robes. He liked the ravens too.
He found Luwin perched on a high stool, writing. With Ser Rodrik
gone, all of the governance of the castle had fallen on his
shoulders. “My prince,” he said when Hodor entered,
“you’re early for lessons today.” The maester
spent several hours every afternoon tutoring Bran, Rickon, and the
Walder Freys.
“Hodor, stand still.” Bran grasped a wall sconce
with both hands and used it to pull himself up and out of the
basket. He hung for a moment by his arms until Hodor carried him to
a chair. “Meera says her brother has the
greensight.”
Maester Luwin scratched at the side of his nose with his writing
quill. “Does she now?”
He nodded. “You told me that the children of the forest
had the greensight. I remember.”
“Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were
called greenseers.”
“Was it magic?”
“Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At
heart it was only a different sort of knowledge.”
“What was it?”
Luwin set down his quill. “No one truly knows, Bran. The
children are gone from the world, and their wisdom with them. It
had to do with the faces in the trees, we think. The First Men
believed that the greenseers could see through the eyes of the
weirwoods. That was why they cut down the trees whenever they
warred upon the children. Supposedly the greenseers also had power
over the beasts of the wood and the birds in the trees. Even fish.
Does the Reed boy claim such powers?”
“No. I don’t think. But he has dreams that come true
sometimes, Meera says.”
“All of us have dreams that come true sometimes. You
dreamed of your lord father in the crypts before we knew he was
dead, remember?”
“Rickon did too. We dreamed the same dream.”
“Call it greensight, if you
wish . . . but remember as well all those tens
of thousands of dreams that you and Rickon have dreamed that did
not come true. Do you perchance recall what I taught you about the
chain collar that every maester wears?”
Bran thought for a moment, trying to remember. “A maester
forges his chain in the Citadel of Oldtown. It’s a chain
because you swear to serve, and it’s made of different metals
because you serve the realm and the realm has different sorts of
people. Every time you learn something you get another link. Black
iron is for ravenry, silver for healing, gold for sums and numbers.
I don’t remember them all.”
Luwin slid a finger up under his collar and began to turn it,
inch by inch. He had a thick neck for a small man, and the chain
was tight, but a few pulls had it all the way around. “This
is Valyrian steel,” he said when the link of dark grey metal
lay against the apple of his throat. “Only one maester in a
hundred wears such a link. This signifies that I have studied what
the Citadel calls the higher mysteries—magic, for want of a better
word. A fascinating pursuit, but of small use, which is why so few
maesters trouble themselves with it.
“All those who study the higher mysteries try their own
hand at spells, soon or late. I yielded to the temptation too, I
must confess it. Well, I was a boy, and what boy does not secretly
wish to find hidden powers in himself? I got no more for my efforts
than a thousand boys before me, and a thousand since. Sad to say,
magic does not work.”
“Sometimes it does,” Bran protested. “I had
that dream, and Rickon did too. And there are mages and warlocks in
the east . . . ”
“There are men who call themselves mages and
warlocks,” Maester Luwin said. “I had a friend at the
Citadel who could pull a rose out of your ear, but he was no more
magical than I was. Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not
understand. The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands,
and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters?
We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they
seem . . . but in the course of time, mountains
rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the
sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we
think. Everything changes.
“Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but
no longer. What little remains is no more than the wisp of smoke
that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out, and even
that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone.
The dragons are no more, the giants are dead, the children of the
forest forgotten with all their lore.
“No, my prince. Jojen Reed may have had a dream or two
that he believes came true, but he does not have the greensight. No
living man has that power.”
Bran said as much to Meera Reed when she came to him at dusk as
he sat in his window seat watching the lights flicker to life.
“I’m sorry for what happened with the wolves. Summer
shouldn’t have tried to hurt Jojen, but Jojen shouldn’t
have said all that about my dreams. The crow lied when he said I
could fly, and your brother lied too.”
“Or perhaps your maester is wrong.”
“He isn’t. Even my father relied on his
counsel.”
“Your father listened, I have no doubt. But in the end, he
decided for himself. Bran, will you let me tell you about a dream
Jojen dreamed of you and your fosterling brothers?”
“The Walders aren’t my brothers.”
She paid that no heed. “You were sitting at supper, but
instead of a servant, Maester Luwin brought you your food. He
served you the king’s cut off the roast, the meat rare and
bloody, but with a savory smell that made everyone’s mouth
water. The meat he served the Freys was old and grey and dead. Yet
they liked their supper better than you liked yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will, my brother says. When you do, we’ll talk
again.”
Bran was almost afraid to sit to supper that night, but when he
did, it was pigeon pie they set before him. Everyone else was
served the same, and he couldn’t see that anything was wrong
with the food they served the Walders. Maester Luwin has the truth
of it, he told himself. Nothing bad was coming to Winterfell, no
matter what Jojen said. Bran was
relieved . . . but disappointed too. So long as
there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees
could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. “But
there isn’t,” he said aloud in the darkness of his bed.
“There’s no magic, and the stories are just
stories.”
And he would never walk, nor fly, nor be a knight.
Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left
hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right.
Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held
stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . .
“Yai!” the girl shouted, the spear darting out. The
wolf slid to the left and leapt before she could draw back the
spear. Meera cast her net, the tangles unfolding in the air before
her. Summer’s leap carried him into it. He dragged it with
him as he slammed into her chest and knocked her over backward. Her
spear went spinning away. The damp grass cushioned her fall but the
breath went out of her in an “Oof.” The wolf crouched
atop her.
Bran hooted. “You lose.”
“She wins,” her brother Jojen said.
“Summer’s snared.”
He was right, Bran saw. Thrashing and growling at the net,
trying to rip free, Summer was only ensnaring himself worse. Nor
could he bite through. “Let him out.”
Laughing, the Reed girl threw her arms around the tangled wolf
and rolled them both. Summer gave a piteous whine, his legs kicking
against the cords that bound them. Meera knelt, undid a twist,
pulled at a corner, tugged deftly here and there, and suddenly the
direwolf was bounding free.
“Summer, to me.” Bran spread his arms.
“Watch,” he said, an instant before the wolf bowled
into him. He clung with all his strength as the wolf dragged him
bumping through the grass. They wrestled and rolled and clung to
each other, one snarling and yapping, the other laughing. In the
end it was Bran sprawled on top, the mud-spattered direwolf under
him. “Good wolf,” he panted. Summer licked him across
the ear.
Meera shook her head. “Does he never grow
angry?”
“Not with me.” Bran grabbed the wolf by his ears and
Summer snapped at him fiercely, but it was all in play.
“Sometimes he tears my garb but he’s never drawn
blood.”
“Your blood, you mean. If he’d gotten past my
net . . . ”
“He wouldn’t hurt you. He knows I like you.”
All of the other lords and knights had departed within a day or two
of the harvest feast, but the Reeds had stayed to become
Bran’s constant companions. Jojen was so solemn that Old Nan
called him “little grandfather,” but Meera reminded
Bran of his sister Arya. She wasn’t scared to get dirty, and
she could run and fight and throw as good as a boy. She was older
than Arya, though; almost sixteen, a woman grown. They were both
older than Bran, even though his ninth name day had finally come
and gone, but they never treated him like a child.
“I wish you were our wards instead of the Walders.”
He began to struggle toward the nearest tree. His dragging and
wriggling was unseemly to watch, but when Meera moved to lift him
he said, “No, don’t help me.” He rolled clumsily
and pushed and squirmed backward, using the strength of his arms,
until he was sitting with his back to the trunk of a tall ash.
“See, I told you.” Summer lay down with his head in
Bran’s lap. “I never knew anyone who fought with a net
before,” he told Meera while he scratched the direwolf
between the ears. “Did your master-at-arms teach you
net-fighting?”
“My father taught me. We have no knights at Greywater. No
master-at-arms, and no maester.”
“Who keeps your ravens?”
She smiled. “Ravens can’t find Greywater Watch, no
more than our enemies can.”
“Why not?”
“Because it moves,” she told him.
Bran had never heard of a moving castle before. He looked at her
uncertainly, but he couldn’t tell whether she was teasing him
or not. “I wish I could see it. Do you think your lord father
would let me come visit when the war is over?”
“You would be most welcome, my prince. Then or
now.”
“Now?” Bran had spent his whole life at Winterfell.
He yearned to see far places. “I could ask Ser Rodrik when he
returns.” The old knight was off east, trying to set to
rights the trouble there. Roose Bolton’s bastard had started
it by seizing Lady Hornwood as she returned from the harvest feast,
marrying her that very night even though he was young enough to be
her son. Then Lord Manderly had taken her castle. To protect the
Hornwood holdings from the Boltons, he had written, but Ser Rodrik
had been almost as angry with him as with the bastard. “Ser
Rodrik might let me go. Maester Luwin never would.”
Sitting cross-legged under the weirwood, Jojen Reed regarded him
solemnly. “It would be good if you left Winterfell,
Bran.”
“It would?”
“Yes. And sooner rather than later.”
“My brother has the greensight,” said Meera.
“He dreams things that haven’t happened, but sometimes
they do.”
“There is no sometimes, Meera.” A look passed
between them; him sad, her defiant.
“Tell me what’s going to happen,” Bran
said.
“I will,” said Jojen, “if you’ll tell me
about your dreams.”
The godswood grew quiet. Bran could hear leaves rustling, and
Hodor’s distant splashing from the hot pools. He thought of
the golden man and the three-eyed crow, remembered the crunch of
bones between his jaws and the coppery taste of blood. “I
don’t have dreams. Maester Luwin gives me sleeping
draughts.”
“Do they help?”
“Sometimes.”
Meera said, “All of Winterfell knows you wake at night
shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and
the guards in their hall.”
“Tell us what frightens you so much,” said
Jojen.
“I don’t want to. Anyway, it’s only dreams.
Maester Luwin says dreams might mean anything or
nothing.”
“My brother dreams as other boys do, and those dreams
might mean anything,” Meera said, “but the green dreams
are different.”
Jojen’s eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he
looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now.
“I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone
chains,” he said. “It was a green dream, so I knew it
was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the
stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them.”
“Did the crow have three eyes?”
Jojen nodded.
Summer raised his head from Bran’s lap, and gazed at the
mudman with his dark golden eyes.
“When I was little I almost died of greywater fever. That
was when the crow came to me.”
“He came to me after I fell,” Bran blurted. “I
was asleep for a long time. He said I had to fly or die, and I woke
up, only I was broken and I couldn’t fly after
all.”
“You can if you want to.” Picking up her net, Meera
shook out the last tangles and began arranging it in loose
folds.
“You are the winged wolf, Bran,” said Jojen.
“I wasn’t sure when we first came, but now I am. The
crow sent us here to break your chains.”
“Is the crow at Greywater?”
“No. The crow is in the north.”
“At the Wall?” Bran had always wanted to see the
Wall. His bastard brother Jon was there now, a man of the
Night’s Watch.
“Beyond the Wall.” Meera Reed hung the net from her
belt. “When Jojen told our lord father what he’d
dreamed, he sent us to Winterfell.”
“How would I break the chains, Jojen?” Bran
asked.
“Open your eye.”
“They are open Can’t you see?”
“Two are open.” Jojen pointed. “One,
two.”
“I only have two.”
“You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will
not open it.” He had a slow soft way of speaking. “With
two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With
two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the
acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become.
With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would
gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall.”
Summer got to his feet. “I don’t need to see so
far.” Bran made a nervous smile. “I’m tired of
talking about crows. Let’s talk about wolves. Or
lizard-lions. Have you ever hunted one, Meera? We don’t have
them here.”
Meera plucked her frog spear out of the bushes. “They live
in the water. In slow streams and deep swamps—”
Her brother interrupted. “Did you dream of a
lizard-lion?”
“No,” said Bran. “I told you, I don’t
want—”
“Did you dream of a wolf?”
He was making Bran angry. “I don’t have to tell you
my dreams. I’m the prince. I’m the Stark in
Winterfell.”
“Was it Summer?”
“You be quiet.”
“The night of the harvest feast, you dreamed you were
Summer in the godswood, didn’t you?”
“Stop it!” Bran shouted. Summer slid toward the
weirwood, his white teeth bared.
Jojen Reed took no mind. “When I touched Summer, I felt
you in him. just as you are in him now.”
“You couldn’t have. I was in bed. I was
sleeping.”
“You were in the godswood, all in grey.”
“It was only a bad
dream . . . ”
Jojen stood. “I felt you. I felt you fall. Is that what
scares you, the falling?” The falling, Bran thought, and the golden man, the queen’s
brother, he scares me too, but mostly the falling. He did not say
it, though. How could he? He had not been able to tell Ser Rodrik
or Maester Luwin, and he could not tell the Reeds either. If he
didn’t talk about it, maybe he would forget. He had never
wanted to remember. It might not even be a true remembering.
“Do you fall every night, Bran?” Joien asked
quietly.
A low rumbling growl rose from Summer’s throat, and there
was no play in it. He stalked forward, all teeth and hot eyes.
Meera stepped between the wolf and her brother, spear in hand.
“Keep him back, Bran.”
“Jojen is making him angry.”
Meera shook out her net.
“It’s your anger, Bran,” her brother said.
“Your fear.”
“It isn’t. I’m not a wolf.” Yet
he’d howled with them in the night, and tasted blood in his
wolf dreams.
“Part of you is Summer, and part of Summer is you. You
know that, Bran.”
Summer rushed forward, but Meera blocked him, jabbing with the
three-pronged spear. The wolf twisted aside, circling, stalking.
Meera turned to face him. “Call him back, Bran.”
“Summer!” Bran shouted. “To me, Summer!”
He slapped an open palm down on the meat of his thigh. His hand
tingled, though his dead leg felt nothing.
The direwolf lunged again, and again Meera’s spear darted
out. Summer dodged, circled back. The bushes rustled, and a lean
black shape came padding from behind the weirwood, teeth bared. The
scent was strong; his brother had smelled his rage. Bran felt hairs
rise on the back of his neck. Meera stood beside her brother, with
wolves to either side. “Bran, call them off.”
“I can’t!”
“Jojen, up the tree.”
“There’s no need. Today is not the day I
die.”
“Do it!” she screamed, and her brother scrambled up
the trunk of the weirwood, using the face for his handholds. The
direwolves closed. Meera abandoned spear and net, jumped up, and
grabbed the branch above her head. Shaggy’s jaws snapped shut
beneath her ankle as she swung up and over the limb. Summer sat
back on his haunches and howled, while Shaggydog worried the net,
shaking it in his teeth.
Only then did Bran remember that they were not alone. He cupped
hands around his mouth. “Hodor!” he shouted.
“Hodor! Hodor!” He was badly frightened and somehow
ashamed. “They won’t hurt Hodor,” he assured his
treed friends.
A few moments passed before they heard a tuneless humming. Hodor
arrived half-dressed and mud-spattered from his visit to the hot
pools, but Bran had never been so glad to see him. “Hodor,
help me. Chase off the wolves. Chase them off.”
Hodor went to it gleefully, waving his arms and stamping his
huge feet, shouting “Hodor, Hodor,” running first at
one wolf and then the other. Shaggydog was the first to flee,
slinking back into the foliage with a final snarl. When Summer had
enough, he came back to Bran and lay down beside him.
No sooner did Meera touch ground than she snatched up her spear
and net again. Jojen never took his eyes off Summer. “We will
talk again,” he promised Bran. It was the wolves, it wasn’t me. He did not understand why
they’d gotten so wild. Maybe Maester Luwin was right to lock
them in the godswood. “Hodor,” he said, “bring me
to Maester Luwin.”
The maester’s turret below the rookery was one of
Bran’s favorite places. Luwin was hopelessly untidy, but his
clutter of books and scrolls and bottles was as familiar and
comforting to Bran as his bald spot and the flapping sleeves of his
loose grey robes. He liked the ravens too.
He found Luwin perched on a high stool, writing. With Ser Rodrik
gone, all of the governance of the castle had fallen on his
shoulders. “My prince,” he said when Hodor entered,
“you’re early for lessons today.” The maester
spent several hours every afternoon tutoring Bran, Rickon, and the
Walder Freys.
“Hodor, stand still.” Bran grasped a wall sconce
with both hands and used it to pull himself up and out of the
basket. He hung for a moment by his arms until Hodor carried him to
a chair. “Meera says her brother has the
greensight.”
Maester Luwin scratched at the side of his nose with his writing
quill. “Does she now?”
He nodded. “You told me that the children of the forest
had the greensight. I remember.”
“Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were
called greenseers.”
“Was it magic?”
“Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At
heart it was only a different sort of knowledge.”
“What was it?”
Luwin set down his quill. “No one truly knows, Bran. The
children are gone from the world, and their wisdom with them. It
had to do with the faces in the trees, we think. The First Men
believed that the greenseers could see through the eyes of the
weirwoods. That was why they cut down the trees whenever they
warred upon the children. Supposedly the greenseers also had power
over the beasts of the wood and the birds in the trees. Even fish.
Does the Reed boy claim such powers?”
“No. I don’t think. But he has dreams that come true
sometimes, Meera says.”
“All of us have dreams that come true sometimes. You
dreamed of your lord father in the crypts before we knew he was
dead, remember?”
“Rickon did too. We dreamed the same dream.”
“Call it greensight, if you
wish . . . but remember as well all those tens
of thousands of dreams that you and Rickon have dreamed that did
not come true. Do you perchance recall what I taught you about the
chain collar that every maester wears?”
Bran thought for a moment, trying to remember. “A maester
forges his chain in the Citadel of Oldtown. It’s a chain
because you swear to serve, and it’s made of different metals
because you serve the realm and the realm has different sorts of
people. Every time you learn something you get another link. Black
iron is for ravenry, silver for healing, gold for sums and numbers.
I don’t remember them all.”
Luwin slid a finger up under his collar and began to turn it,
inch by inch. He had a thick neck for a small man, and the chain
was tight, but a few pulls had it all the way around. “This
is Valyrian steel,” he said when the link of dark grey metal
lay against the apple of his throat. “Only one maester in a
hundred wears such a link. This signifies that I have studied what
the Citadel calls the higher mysteries—magic, for want of a better
word. A fascinating pursuit, but of small use, which is why so few
maesters trouble themselves with it.
“All those who study the higher mysteries try their own
hand at spells, soon or late. I yielded to the temptation too, I
must confess it. Well, I was a boy, and what boy does not secretly
wish to find hidden powers in himself? I got no more for my efforts
than a thousand boys before me, and a thousand since. Sad to say,
magic does not work.”
“Sometimes it does,” Bran protested. “I had
that dream, and Rickon did too. And there are mages and warlocks in
the east . . . ”
“There are men who call themselves mages and
warlocks,” Maester Luwin said. “I had a friend at the
Citadel who could pull a rose out of your ear, but he was no more
magical than I was. Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not
understand. The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands,
and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters?
We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they
seem . . . but in the course of time, mountains
rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the
sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we
think. Everything changes.
“Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but
no longer. What little remains is no more than the wisp of smoke
that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out, and even
that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone.
The dragons are no more, the giants are dead, the children of the
forest forgotten with all their lore.
“No, my prince. Jojen Reed may have had a dream or two
that he believes came true, but he does not have the greensight. No
living man has that power.”
Bran said as much to Meera Reed when she came to him at dusk as
he sat in his window seat watching the lights flicker to life.
“I’m sorry for what happened with the wolves. Summer
shouldn’t have tried to hurt Jojen, but Jojen shouldn’t
have said all that about my dreams. The crow lied when he said I
could fly, and your brother lied too.”
“Or perhaps your maester is wrong.”
“He isn’t. Even my father relied on his
counsel.”
“Your father listened, I have no doubt. But in the end, he
decided for himself. Bran, will you let me tell you about a dream
Jojen dreamed of you and your fosterling brothers?”
“The Walders aren’t my brothers.”
She paid that no heed. “You were sitting at supper, but
instead of a servant, Maester Luwin brought you your food. He
served you the king’s cut off the roast, the meat rare and
bloody, but with a savory smell that made everyone’s mouth
water. The meat he served the Freys was old and grey and dead. Yet
they liked their supper better than you liked yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will, my brother says. When you do, we’ll talk
again.”
Bran was almost afraid to sit to supper that night, but when he
did, it was pigeon pie they set before him. Everyone else was
served the same, and he couldn’t see that anything was wrong
with the food they served the Walders. Maester Luwin has the truth
of it, he told himself. Nothing bad was coming to Winterfell, no
matter what Jojen said. Bran was
relieved . . . but disappointed too. So long as
there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees
could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. “But
there isn’t,” he said aloud in the darkness of his bed.
“There’s no magic, and the stories are just
stories.”
And he would never walk, nor fly, nor be a knight.