Chapter 347: The All-Seeing Eye
Egger swallowed hard.
Bran had just repeated, word for word, the private whisper Roose Bolton had shared with him that night at Deepwood Motte. To be honest... even with mental preparation, it was still a bit chilling. It wasn't entirely a bad thing, however; at least now he didn't need to act—his shocked expression was genuine.
Of course, it was only shock. He hadn't actually conspired with the Old Leech to overthrow the Starks, so he had no reason to feel guilty. Whether it was that cryptic phrase Opportunity favors the prepared or the subsequent thanks for taking care of the Starks, Bran was doing the same thing: proving to Egger that he could see everything.
Egger didn't need proof. He knew Bran's capabilities better than anyone on earth besides the Greenseer himself.
"Very well, then..." The Lord Commander of the Night's Watch swallowed again, feigning a nervous but convinced gravity. "Please tell me, Young Lord Bran, where are the White Walkers now, and what plot are they hatching?"
"We will discuss that in a moment. Before we do, we must settle a personal matter."
The boy sat up straight in his chair, a hint of earnestness appearing on his expressionless face. Seeing this, Egger instinctively straightened his back, pulling away from the chair's rest. His muscles tensed, and his hand moved toward his waist.
Reason told him that if a Greenseer wanted to deal with him, they wouldn't use a method as foolish as a face-to-face brawl, but a soldier's instinct was hard to suppress.
"I do not know where you came from, who sent you, or what your purpose is. Though I am very interested in studying the method and principles of your sudden appearance, now is not the time. I would like to believe you are a hero sent by the Heavens to save humanity, but unfortunately, in some people's stories, I am the Heavens—and no one knows better than I that there are no gods in this world. Regarding you, there is only one thing I can be certain of: for reasons you likely cannot explain to me either, you seem to know many things you shouldn't, possessing knowledge far beyond the scope of this world." Bran spoke in a voice that was still youthful, yet his words were weary and ancient. "So, mysterious, wise, and learned Lord Commander, why not ponder this question: If I drive Brandon Stark's broken body, possess all of Brandon Stark's memories and emotional leanings, and love his parents, siblings, and close friends just as he did before becoming a Greenseer... do I still count as Brandon Stark?"
The conversation had suddenly jumped from battlefield intelligence to philosophical meditation! Egger was indeed doubting whether the person before him was still Bran, but the Greenseer didn't have the power to read minds, did he?
Wait... this was absurd. Thinking about how to deal with the army of the dead was taxing enough; he should leave this kind of mental gymnastics to the idle! Egger quickly decided not to be led by the nose, but a flash of insight struck him a moment later. He realized the subtext: the Greenseer wasn't actually asking him to solve the problem; he was issuing a reminder, or perhaps a warning—Egger had no way to prove he wasn't Bran. In fact, to a certain extent, he was Bran.
Between the old Greenseer and Brandon Stark, was it a matter of the former occupying the latter's body, or the latter gaining the former's memories, or a bit of both? Who could say for sure? The important thing now was not to analyze the nature of the Greenseer's succession, but to utilize his abilities and win this War of Ice and Fire first!
Seeing a trace of surprise flicker through the Lord Commander's contemplative expression, the boy's lips quirked into a faint, not-quite-brilliant smile. Talking to smart people certainly saved a lot of trouble.
"I do not require your answer. I only wish for you to understand: I am also on the side of the living—which is to say, the side of the Night's Watch. I can be trusted."
the speed of this conversation had completely exceeded Egger's expectations. He worked hard to mask his inner turmoil. He had originally intended to play dumb and hide his identity as a traveler, but the other party had been utterly blunt, cutting straight to the heart of his identity and intentions, speaking plainly and openly.
Bran's move bypassed all of Egger's predictions. For a moment, he didn't know how to respond, so he merely hummed in agreement, nodded, and continued to stare at the boy, waiting for him to continue. Though the previous philosophical knot had been cut, whether the current Bran could be trusted remained to be seen; words were cheap. Egger hadn't climbed from a lowly traveler to his current position by relying on passion and naivety alone.
"You can consider it at your leisure once you return. For now, let us continue our previous topic." Speaking those words and forcing that smile seemed to have exhausted the boy's energy. He slumped back into his chair, returning to his previous listless state and sickly tone. "The wildlings' skinchangers... they are all under your control now. You should have some understanding of them, shouldn't you?"
Hah, the channel changed fast. Fortunately, Egger's mind wasn't slow, and he kept pace. "I know a bit. What I know is that skinchangers have a certain talent; they can control animals through magic to perform tasks like scouting, hauling, or attacking."
"That covers the gist of it." Bran looked at him flatly. "You asked me where the White Walkers are now; I have been concerned with that as well. Once, it was easy to satisfy that curiosity: they were scattered across every part of the Haunted Forest and the Land of Always Winter, each searching their assigned territory for usable remains, attacking and killing the living to bolster the wight army. That is one of the reasons they delayed their attack on the Wall after waking. But no matter how large the Lands Beyond the Wall are, they have an end. After they gathered together, things became troublesome."
The boy sighed like an old man, then maintained a look of hesitation for a long while as if recovering his strength before speaking again. "This brings us to how I perceive the world. I can see everything, but that is not the same as 'directly knowing' everything. If I want to learn the truth of a matter, I must either know exactly when and where it occurred and then use magic to trace it back with my mind, or I must be like a skinchanger—controlling a creature to watch the person or thing I wish to track without ever leaving them. But after the White Walkers finished their preparations, gathered, and began moving south, I discovered there is a special existence among them who plays the role of 'Commander' or 'King'—the Night King of legend. He has the ability to counter my surveillance. Whether I approach by skinchanging into a living creature or attempt to spy out of thin air through magic, he discovers and interrupts me immediately. Not only that, but the Night King can use an inconceivable method to follow my perception back to my body and spirit, causing damage that is difficult to repair. After suffering several such setbacks, I can now only tell you the general direction of the White Walkers; I no longer dare to attempt a precise location easily."
Regarding the principles of the Greenseer's omniscience, Egger had actually made his own deductions long ago:
The space-time system formed by the magical weirwood trees was like a surveillance network spread across every place they grew, recording everything that happened in their field of vision, past and present, into a massive archive. The Greenseer's ability was to use their mind to go deep into this network and retrieve surveillance records to gain knowledge of the past and the present.
However, no matter how absolute this magical talent seemed, the Greenseer's brain—the physiological limit of a human—was still there. They were like a lonely worker left alone in a control center, facing a wall of monitors flooded with an astronomical amount of information, yet only able to select and browse a tiny fraction of it. If a Greenseer wanted to know and investigate something, they could get to the bottom of it completely, but if it was a person or thing they had never encountered or heard of, they wouldn't know where to start.
The power of all-sight was indeed powerful to the extreme, but it was also heavily limited: the Greenseer had to first know or have a strong enough connection to an event to follow the thread and explore further. For example, if Egger hadn't tried to stop little Bran's fall at the base of Winterfell's First Keep three years ago, or if he hadn't returned to the Gift and taken control of the Night's Watch through a series of maneuvers and reforms to become the supreme commander of the living... then the Greenseer would likely never have thought—not even until the end of the world—to look into the origin and life of an ordinary man of the Night's Watch, and thus discover that he appeared out of thin air with a mysterious identity.
The weirwoods were the medium across time and space, but they lacked the information-processing power of a supercomputer from a movie. To a Greenseer, the world was like a massive strategy game without a mini-map; although wards were placed across the whole map and everything was recorded, the player could only ever see the small portion currently framed on the screen. If the Greenseer wanted to deal with the White Walkers and the dead, he had to focus his energy on the Wall and the lands to its north. He had no mental capacity to turn his head and peek at others—especially an ally—to see if someone like Egger, the traveler, was plotting against him.
Egger was certainly wary of the Bran who might no longer be Bran, but the Greenseer was equally wary of this mysterious and unpredictable outsider. Yet now was not the time for mutual suspicion and defense. The final battle was at hand. If a catastrophe occurred because of insignificant details, who would bear the blame?
Just like Ser Denys Mallister—prioritizing the big picture was the reason Bran, or rather the new Greenseer, was in this room today, discussing matters of the occult openly with Egger to gain mutual trust!
Egger nodded as if casually, though his mind was spinning rapidly. Even a passing remark from such a supernatural being could reveal a massive amount of information. Bran's explanation at least confirmed the deduction he had already made—the Greenseer's power was not direct omniscience, but conditional all-sight.
Since the guess and the explanation did not contradict each other, he instinctively believed what Bran said. Even if there was a mix of truth and lies, and though he didn't always act on instinct, faced with a Stark who possessed abilities he couldn't understand and held a special status—someone he couldn't easily move against—he wouldn't show his doubts to his face even if he had them. "Very well, Lord Greenseer. At least you can still make a general judgment, which is better than we can do. I wonder if it's convenient for you to estimate now: where are the White Walkers, and what are they doing?"
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