MEERA
"There are dead men in the halls above." Leaf sounded more sorrowful than scared. "Their cold hands grasp at root and branch and tree, bringing with them ice and fear and darkness. The night is very hungry, Meera Howland's daughter. You must come."
Meera leapt to her feet. "What are you talking about? You said this hill was warded, that the ranger would stay to guard the gate. How can it – "
The child of the forest merely gazed back at her with her wide green-and-gold eyes, giving no answer. Then she said again, "Come. We must go under the hill."
Under the hill. There were always stories about the folk who stumbled into faerie circles and were gone a hundred hundred years, who emerged still fresh and youthful to find that everyone they loved was dead and all the world was changed. And the tale of Gendel's children, forever searching in the dark for the way out and never finding it. Meera had tried to make the best of life in this fey barrow; they were warm, they were safe, they always knew that they would be fed, and they had leave to explore where they would, provided they went carefully. Leaf had warned them that not even the children had found the end or the bottom of some of the passages. But the fact remained that the deeper they went in, the longer and more distant the way back became.
Yet now, if Leaf meant to tell her that the children's wards had broken, this was no time to consider such things. With a light touch, Meera roused Hodor; the big stableboy had been curled up snoring on the far side of the fire. He woke, blinked at her worriedly, and said, "Hodor?"
"Get up, hurry. We must go deeper into the cave. There are dead things inside."
Hodor grunted and hauled himself to his feet; Leaf had to duck as his arm swung over her head. Then Meera went to the pile of furs containing her brother, knelt and shook him gently. "Jojen, Jojen, hurry. We're going down under the hill, to Bran and Lord Brynden."
It was a long time until his mossy green eyes opened, and he stared at her wearily. "What is it now?"
"We have to go." Meera beckoned Hodor closer. "Hodor, quickly. Carry him." Jojen was too weak to walk these days, and spent much of his time asleep, plagued by greendreams which he refused to share. What was happening to him? Why was he the only one not healing?
"Why bother?" Jojen murmured, as Hodor scooped him up. "I am doomed nonetheless. Leave me."
"Don't say things like that." Meera trotted across the cave floor, following Leaf, with Hodor and Jojen bringing up the rear. They ducked through into a narrow, lower passage – or rather, Hodor ducked, as Leaf and Meera were small enough to walk upright. Stalactites hung down in fragile forests, and gypsum sparkled faintly in the walls. Once or twice they passed a pool, still and clear as a mirror. Hodor spotted his own reflection and attempted to splash it, barely keeping hold of Jojen as he did. But Leaf turned sharply, said, "Do not touch the water!" and he immediately jerked back, chastened.
Finally, they stepped down into the subterranean hall where Lord Brynden held his court, tangled in his weirwood throne, roots growing around him and through him. The children were gathered around, talking nervously in their olden tongue like leaves and wind and water, but Brynden's one red eye blinked open as Leaf led the humans closer. "Good," he said softly. "Sit. We are still safe here."
Meera did not sit. "Where is Bran?" she asked. "Where is the ranger? What happened?"
The lord of the hill gave her a wry, weary look. "Bran is with the trees. Soon I will be as well. The roots grow strong and deep. They will not suffer this evil to pass unchallenged."
"But the wards," Meera protested. "You said."
"Only one defense, child. All workings are fragile. All sorcery is a dangerous wager. It is a blade with no hilt. The dark is rising."
"Have the wards broken before?"
"They have," Lord Brynden said, with the eclipse of a smile. "Long before my time, or yours, long beyond the memory of any living man – but not the memory of the children."
Meera went cold all over. "The Long Night?"
"I did not say that, child."
"Beyond the memory of any living man. . ." Thoughts were coming to Meera suddenly, pieces of songs and stories, histories and tales and gossip and a growing, freezing certainty. "Lord Brynden," she said impulsively. "If you were a mortal man, how old would you be?"
The eye closed. He appeared somewhat amused. "Younger than the youngest of the children," he said. "I am but a babe myself."
"Please, answer the question."
"Very well." A root snaked around his chest. "I would have counted my one hundred and twenty-fifth name day not long ago."
"One hundred and twenty-five. . ." A brother I loved, a brother I hated, a woman I desired. A royal bastard, a soldier, a sorcerer, Hand of the King, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, a three-eyed crow. A Targaryen. Ice and fire.
"Bloodraven," Meera breathed. "You are Brynden Rivers, Lord Bloodraven, a Great Bastard of Aegon the Unworthy. The brother you loved was Daeron the Good, when you fought for him during the Blackfyre Rebellion. The brother you hated was Aegor Rivers, Bittersteel, who took your eye. And the woman you both desired was Shiera Seastar. You are a dragon. A dragon in a cage of ice."
Brynden lifted two white hands and gave a single, slow clap. "Are all crannogmen as clever as you, Meera Reed?"
"I know the stories. I know the songs."
"So you do." A rustling seemed to sweep through the chamber, a wind where no wind could possibly blow. "There must always be three. Three heads of the dragon. . . Aegon and Visenya and Rhaenys, Balerion and Vhagar and Meraxes. Fire and blood. There is another story you once told, Meera Reed. You will recall it. You sing your own part in this great Song, you know."
"I have told many stories, Lord Brynden."
"Ah," he sighed. "You have. But this one. . . a mystery knight, the Knight of the Laughing Tree, a dragon prince with purple eyes who sang such sad songs, and a wolf maid who was queen of love and beauty. A young lion clad in white. . . a false spring. . . a tourney."
Shock rippled through Meera to her toes. "I told the story of old Lord Whent's tourney at Harrenhal, yes. When Jaime Lannister was named to the Kingsguard and Rhaegar Targaryen won the joust. To my prince."
"And why did you tell him this?"
The question caught her further off guard. "I was surprised that he had never heard it. And I – Bran asked for a story, he likes stories well. And he is a Stark, he should – "
"A Stark, aye," said Bloodraven, "and so, ice. Fire burns trees, even weirwoods. But it cleanses so well as it destroys. Omens of smoke and salt and flame. Each man sees it in his way, each man knows. . . the Prince who was Promised, Azor Ahai, a comet of blood and flame. . . open your eyes, child. Unstop your ears. You are a hunter. You breathe mud and fly through water. You know."
Meera felt suddenly very small, and very young, and very frightened. "What do I know, Lord Brynden?" she heard herself say. "What do I know?"
Another root coiled around Bloodraven's throat. "Summers that last for years, winters for lifetimes. . . it has not always been this way. There was a time when spring and summer and fall and winter would come each in their turn, all in one year, and pass away. What is that story, Meera Reed? Do you know it?"
"No," Meera admitted. "I do not."
"The Others." Bloodraven's eye flared open, transfixing her. "That is what moves in the halls above. That is the remnant and the revenant of What broke the balance. How do you kill them, Meera Reed?"
"With fire," Meera said uncertainly. "With dragonglass."
"Dragonglass." Bloodraven smiled. "But could man face all the count of Others that now wake from the ice? Even with a torch in both hands, every man and woman and child, could mortals bring them down?"
"No," Meera said. "No, they couldn't."
"It is so." A root slithered lovingly into Bloodraven's mouth. "Dragons," he whispered, and then he was gone. Empty, his body slumped in its chair, his spirit fled into the flesh of tree or bird, gone to join the clash above. He was master of many skins, the three-eyed crow.
Confused and unsettled, Meera glanced around. It was only her and a simple-minded giant and her ailing brother, the only things warm and human in this entire place. Ageless eyes stared back at her from every side, eyes of bronze and gold and wheat and umber, leaves and water and stone and snow. Snow. In life, as she recalled, Brynden Rivers had risen to become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, part of the escort that brought his kinsman, Maester Aemon, to the Wall. Surely in that time, a dragon faced with a great vastness of dark and cold, he would have learned much and more about the Others, about a coexistence of fire and ice. A bastard son. Not a Targaryen by name, but by blood. And if one was the offspring of Aegon the Unworthy, one might well choose to distance oneself from that fact anyway.
But Brynden Rivers is dead. Only Bloodraven remains. Meera shuddered. How did he leave the Wall? When? He has no life, he cannot counter a rising tide of death. Only shift into the shapes of others, while his body's shell grows ever more into the trees.
She glanced around again, but there was no sign of her prince. Is that what will happen to Bran? Suddenly she was possessed with an urge to find him, to wake him from his dreams. He becomes a greenseer and casts aside his broken form, even as his teacher does. The power of the old gods goes into him. . . ice and fire, a balance, a greenseer rises. . .
And Jojen fades.
All of a sudden, Meera knew. Knew what Jojen knew, why he had been so sullen and withdrawn, why he grew weaker, why they had all come here, to the barrow under the hill. She whirled and ran to him. "No," she cried. "No, Hodor, put him down, let me look at him. Now. Please, please."
Hodor gently put Jojen on the ground. Her brother gave a small sigh of pain, head lolling to the side, and she put a hand on his cheek and frantically slapped at him. "No, no. Jojen, look at me, look at me."
After an even longer moment than before, his eyes cracked halfway. They were dull and filmy, had trouble focusing on her face. "Leave me be, Meera," he said, pale lips barely moving. "It is too late. It is done. It is over."
"No," she gasped again, horror-struck. She pulled his furs aside – and stared, helpless and sickened, at what they revealed. Jojen's pale, sunken flesh was covered with scars, livid and red, eyes weeping blood. The color of weirwood sap, the very color. Gods – Bran was fed on the sap of weirwoods every day –
Greenseer. Sorcery, a blade without a hilt.
A queer madness took hold of Meera. We must get out of here. Too deep, we have gone too deep, and now our task here – mine and Jojen's – is done. But above us – the trees wake, the roots take hold, and dead men step foot in the halls of flame.
"Hodor?" Hodor sobbed.
Meera opened her mouth, then closed it. She had nothing to say.
At that moment, every child in the cave rose to their feet. Light with no earthly source glittered in their eyes. And they began to sing.
Hodor shrank back and curled into a ball, big hands gripping his knees as he quivered. The song – the chant – was strong and deep, spine-tingling, here and there a voice rising above the others high and clear. They swayed. Roots began to rise and writhe. And Bloodraven on his throne seemed to become larger and more terrible, shining like the moon. The rocks themselves sighed sad regret, and the song burst and swelled in Meera's heart like a breaking wave. A lament.
"Stop," she screamed. "No, no, stop!"
She might as well have told the sun to rise in the west and set in the east, for mountains to turn to dust and blow in the wind like leaves. Shaking, sobbing, she crawled back to Jojen and cradled his face in both hands. "Look at me," she wept. "This is not the day you die."
"Oh, Meera." He smiled. His fingers reached up to touch her cheek, and fell. His eyes remained open, the color of leaves, of moss, of greensight. "Yes. It is."