BRAN
The darkness under the hill was a pure and perfect darkness, as if no such darkness had existed before and never would again. It was inky like a stain, crawled into your lungs and breathed for you, made it hard to hold onto even the memory of light. Whenever he opened his eyes in his own body, he would always put his hand in front of his face and try to see it, but he never could. Sometimes it made him wonder if he had woken at all, or if his spirit was still up there in the trees, roaming on the cold winds and the red leaves and the falling snow. It was getting harder and harder to tell.
When he'd woken this time, however, it hadn't been gentle. It had been forceful as a blow, pummeling him from sky and moon and stone and stars and cold, cold, cold, down into the nest of roots where he practiced his skinchanging. The air was warm and still and earthy. He could hear running water. It was hard to think about winter, or time at all. In Old Nan's stories, people always went into faerie hills and emerged two hundred years later. And in Meera's, too. Maybe it had been two hundred years out there, and everyone was dead. He hadn't been able to reach Summer for a while now, his last memory of blue eyes and cold hands and dead men fighting in the snow, wards breaking, guttering out. And the ranger – something about the ranger. But Bran couldn't remember what.
Thinking about Meera made Bran want to see her. He rolled over and pulled himself across the dirt floor with his arms, then monkeyed up the weirwood roots, wondering where the children were. It is very quiet. They did not keep hours like mortal men, could go for days without sleep, and besides, day and night were very alike underground. So where did they all go?
A faint prick of unease shivered down Bran's spine. "Hodor?" he called. "Meera? Jojen? Leaf?"
No answer.
"Hodor!" It was too far to crawl up to the high chamber by himself, and he didn't like that there was nobody nearby. It made him feel small and scared. Bran the broken. "Hodor!"
" – odor, odor, odor. . ." the cave sighed back at him.
Bran cast about until he spotted a glimmer of light, far at the end of the tunnel. He considered warging into Hodor's body and walking him down to fetch him, but Lord Brynden had told him not to do that anymore. "Hodor is not a skin you can wear as it suits you, like a raven or a wolf or a weirwood," he had said. "He is a man. If you do that too often, it is called possession, and you begin to disregard whether or not the sentient soul wishes you there."
"But Hodor knows me," Bran had objected. "I wouldn't hurt him."
"Be that as it may, you are not to do it again, and if I find out that you have, I will be wroth." The three-eyed crow only had one real eye, but it was red and piercing as a flame. "You are a skinchanger, Bran, not a demon. Do you understand me?"
Grumbling, Bran had no choice but to accept Lord Brynden's judgment. He still didn't think it was very fair. Maybe Hodor was scared, but by now he'd learned to go away inside and hide until Bran was gone, and he never used Hodor for anything except to go exploring with Meera and Jojen. When Jojen wanted to go, that was. These days, he was so listless and uninterested that Meera even had a hard time waking him up to eat.
Thinking of them, Bran crawled faster. He hauled himself up, panting from the exertion, and thought he could make out two forms silhouetted against the uncertain, witchy glow. One of them was Hodor beyond all doubt – there was no one else even close to that size, especially among the children. Annoyed that the stableboy hadn't come to help him, Bran called again, "Hodor!"
Hodor's head lifted slowly. He appeared confused. "Hodor?"
"It's me." Bran waved at him. "Hodor, come get me."
Still Hodor did not move. He looked at the other, motionless form, and it was only then that Bran recognized Meera. She was huddled on the floor, clutching something that looked like a bundle of rags.
Bran's heart lurched. "Meera?"
She looked up at him even more slowly. Her eyes were red, her face was pale. At last, in a voice dull and heavy with grief, she said, "Hodor. Go get him."
"Hodor," Hodor puffed, getting to his feet and trudging to the end of the tunnel to retrieve Bran. He scooped him up and carried him back, then set him gently down next to Meera. "Hodor."
"Meera?" Bran wished more fervently than ever that he was big and tall and strong, and could hold her in his arms and comfort her. She looked so sad. "What – what's wrong?"
Meera didn't answer. She only used her chin to indicate what she was cradling against her.
Bran's breath caught in his throat. What he had taken for a bundle of leaves or rags was neither. It was Jojen. The younger Reed's green eyes stared open and sightlessly at the ceiling of the cave, head lolling. His skin was cold and waxy to the touch, his limbs heavy. To judge from the way his body had begun to stiffen into the shape of his sister's embrace, he had been dead for a while.
"Jojen?" Bran felt like he had been hit. It wasn't really real, this wasn't happening. Choking back tears, he said, "Why?"
Again Meera did not answer, absently stroking Jojen's untidy hair. Then in a dreamy voice, she said, "I resented him so much, when we were little. I was the firstborn, son and daughter both to our parents, and they taught me how to string a bow and spear frogs and weave a net and paddle a skinboat before I was old enough to walk. They sang me to sleep to the sounds of the marsh every night, and told me all the stories. Then Jojen arrived, sickly and so early that nobody thought he'd live. Everyone wanted to care for him, to know how he fared, to brew potions and simples to make him strong. Crannogmen are a tightly knit folk. The bonds of blood alone are not what make us kin. But to me, it seemed as if I had become an utter outsider." She looked up at Bran with a quivery, heartbroken smile. "I was three," she said, as if that explained it.
"Hodor," Hodor said sadly.
There was a horrible big lump in Bran's throat. "Meera. . . I'm really, really sorry."
She sighed, looking down at Jojen again. "When he was three, he caught the grey fever. Everyone thought he would die for certain this time, and my mother sat with him day and night. I sat outside, and nobody thought to look for me. Especially when he woke, and said he had dreamed dreams that were green."
Water dripped steadily, far away in the cave.
"I was so jealous," Meera said, anguished. "Your Old Nan called him 'little grandfather,' and it was so even back then. Grown men would ask him what it was he had seen, listen gravely to his answers. I nearly died with wanting it, until our father told me that my gifts were different, but no less precious. And as Jojen grew up, I began seeing him less as an usurper and more as flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. He struggled with his fate as much as I did mine. And now. . . and now he's met it." With that, her hoarse voice gave out. She lowered her head and began to sob.
Bran was dumbstruck. This was Meera, Meera whom he had never seen cry before, brave clever cheerful Meera whom he loved, and all he could do was scooch up next to her and timidly put his hand on hers. She clutched it with both of hers, her slender body wracked with weeping, loose tendrils of hair falling in her face. She seemed to be trying to say something else, but couldn't get the words out.
"Hodor," Hodor said, teary-eyed. "Hooooodoooooorr." He gave a sympathetic howl.
"Hodor, be quiet, no hodoring." Bran's own voice sounded cracked and whispery. He awkwardly patted Meera's head with his free hand, hoping it would help. It hurt him to see her hurting this way. I could slip into her skin, comfort her that way, my mind and hers – but then he remembered Lord Brynden's admonition. I don't want to go into Meera's body if she doesn't want me to be there. But he still didn't understand. "Why?" he asked again. "Why did Jojen die?"
"For you, prince of the green," said a soft voice behind them. "He died for you."
All of them jumped a foot, particularly Hodor, who let out a "HODOR!" loud enough to wake the dead. But Jojen didn't sit up. Instead when they looked around, they saw Lord Brynden himself, standing above them. His long white hair hung loose, his hands looked more like roots than fingers, and one branch still draped across his chest, almost in it. Leaves showed through the tatters of his black robe.
Bran swallowed. The three-eyed crow frightened him a little – well, more than a little. But he had to look strong in front of Meera. "What – what do you mean?"
"For you," Brynden said again. He sat down on a boulder, more roots slithering out and tangling around his feet. "Ice and fire, Brandon Stark. One against the other. There must always be a balance. For you to become the greenseer that you were born to be, Jojen Reed had to die. The strength, the sight, the power, the blood that was in him has gone into you. The old tales all know it, in whatever mystery they embrace. Only death can pay for life."
Meera gave a muffled sob. Bran tried to put his arm around her. "But Jojen was my friend!" he cried. "I didn't ever want to do that – to take it away from him! It's not fair!"
Brynden smiled bitterly. "Fair?" he repeated. 'What do you know about that, summer child?"
"I'm not really a child. I'm almost a man grown."
"You are younger than the youngest of any gleam in any child's eye. The children of the forest, Brandon Stark. Jojen knew the end that awaited him, you may be certain. Why else do you think he came along?"
"But he. . ." Bran faltered. "He never. . . told us."
"Should he have?"
Bran was quiet. He didn't know what to say. I never asked Jojen to die for me. And then he thought back to that paste with the stuff in it that looked like blood, which the children had told him was only weirwood sap. But it was blood too. Jojen's blood. He had been eating away his friend's waning life, day by day. It almost made him want to be sick.
"He wanted to go home," Meera said. "To Greywater Watch. Lord Bloodraven, if our part here is done, I want to go."
The three-eyed crow gazed down at her with something that might have been pity, or might not. "The way is closed, Meera Reed. The wards are broken. The dark rises. The dead men are coming."
Bran stiffened. "Where's the ranger? Coldhands?"
"The ranger is dead, child."
"He was dead before."
"So he was," Lord Brynden agreed, with a faint, mirthless smile. "He died some time ago. But now he has done that which the children charged him to do. He has found the horn. He has found the dragonglass. And he saved you and your wolf from the Others – because of his sacrifice, Summer was able to get away and make south. What must be done from here is the province of the living."
"Who was he?" Bran asked. "Why were his hands black?"
"There are questions and questions, summer child."
"He said he was once in the Night's Watch."
"And so he was." Lord Brynden considered Bran closely. Then at last he said, "Come. There are things you should know."
Bran was excited at the thought, but he didn't want to leave Meera by herself. "Can't you just tell me?"
That appeared to entertain the tree-man. "Brandon Stark," he said, "in the days to come, there will be times and places to merely tell. But you are a skinchanger. Come."
"Hodor," Bran said reluctantly. "Take me with Lord Brynden."
"Hodor." The big stableboy smeared his tears away with his big furry hand, lifted Bran up, and ducked down the passage after Brynden, who did not seem to walk so much as glide. Bran craned over his shoulder, but could only see Meera sitting as still as a statue, head bowed over the body of her brother.
"Will you let them go home sometime?" he asked the three-eyed crow. "When the fighting is over?"
Lord Brynden did not answer. Instead he raised a gaunt, graceful hand, and beckoned for Hodor to put Bran down in a writhing knot of weirwood roots. Hodor did so, and departed with something that looked like relief.
"Now," said Lord Brynden. Bran wondered why Meera had called him Bloodraven. "You will remember what I have taught you, how to see what the trees have seen. I suggest that you ask them your questions."
Bran was puzzled. "What should I ask?"
Lord Brynden gave him an enigmatic smile. "Whatever it is you wish."
This didn't sound very helpful to Bran, but he was eager to prove that he had grasped the essential point of the exercise. So he closed his eyes and reached for the roots and then. . .
. . . he was in the trees. Everything was formless and shapeless and dark, and he only could catch glimpses of distant faces and places, rustling and shaded through a veil of blood-red leaves. Again he thought he saw his lord father, and maybe his lady mother as well. And there was Winterfell as it had looked before the Greyjoys took it, and those children he had seen earlier whom he did not know, and many others. The faces in the trees, the watchers on the walls. But he had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for.
"Show me what Lord Brynden meant," he whispered. "Show me what the ranger did. Show me what's happening."
For a moment more, the darkness lingered. Bran held his breath, hoping to see the mysterious black-cloaked man who had escorted them so far north on his elk. Something about a horn, Lord Brynden had said, and dragonglass. Mayhaps more snow, or what was taking place outside the hill. Or Summer; he wanted to see Summer. But when the image grew clear at last, it was in a vast grove of weirwoods that Bran did not recognize. It seemed to be a small island. It lay in a lake green and clear as emeralds, and sunlight daggered through the white branches. On the distant shore stood a vast black castle, with five towers that slumped and tottered and rolled, yet still were the most massive edifice known to man. Harrenhal. But why on earth was he seeing Harrenhal?
The faint gauze that edged the scene made Bran think that it had happened a long time ago. Confused, he tried to push it away and find something more useful, but it remained. And then he noticed a beautiful young woman, fourteen or fifteen, walking among the trees. She had long dark hair and grey eyes, and wore a white dress and blue roses in her hair. I know her, he thought, but from where?
The young woman reached a clearing and sat down before the largest of the trees. She seemed to be speaking, but Bran could not make out the words. He watched her from one side, slightly to the right and behind her, and thus it was that he caught sight of the other intruder before she did.
A jolt went through him to his useless legs, far away back in his own body. He had never seen a Targaryen, as they had all been killed or exiled by the time he was born, but he had no doubt that this was one. The man was tall, clean of limb and fine of feature, with streaming silver hair and sad purple eyes, dressed in black and crimson with a three-headed dragon worked in onyx and garnet upon his tabard. He stood with one hand on the bole of a tree, watching the woman, and when his mouth moved, Bran heard the words he spoke. "Lady Lyanna. Your pardons."
Startled, the young woman leapt up in a whirl of skirts, fumbling for the knife that hung in a fashionable baldric by her side. Then she saw who it was, and dipped a flustered half-curtsy. "Your Grace. I – I did not know that you were here."
"So I see," said the man, with a flickering smile. "You needn't worry, you can put that knife away. Though after hearing what you did to those squires, I should mind my manners nonetheless."
The young woman bristled. "Howland Reed is my father's vassal. The louts had no cause to torment him as they did."
"True enough, and he seems to have repaid the favor in kind." The sunlight threw shimmering icy shadows from the man's hair. He had a way of remaining very still, intent, almost unblinking. "I was hoping to speak to you more, my lady."
The young woman loosened her hold on her knife, but did not relinquish it entirely. After a moment she said, "Your Grace, I am honored, but the entire realm is already talking, and I desire not to be known as the slut who tore Prince Rhaegar away from his good and gentle lady. You should have crowned your own wife the queen of love and beauty. Not me."
"A tourney champion has a duty to choose the fairest maid." He took another step. "Elia has a goodly heart, as you say, but she is frail and unwell. No longer a sun to shine out above all others."
"You speak as befits a poet," the young woman said. "Fair maids this and shining suns that. You are nothing if not a dreamer, Your Grace, but we should not be having this conversation at all. I am betrothed to Robert Baratheon. I do not intend to dishonor him."
The man smiled faintly. "I see they call you the she-wolf with good reason. It has been a long time since anyone, lord or lady, spoke me so frankly."
"I do not intend to apologize for it."
"No, it is welcome. No one can speak openly in the Red Keep any more, under the shadow of my father's madness." His eyes were deep wells of violet, still trained on her. "You bewitch me quite. Come closer. I neither bite nor breathe fire."
The young woman remained where she was. "If Your Grace held regard for me, Your Grace would have more care of my reputation."
He smiled again. "My lady, I apologize. You must think me terribly ill-mannered. But. . . there is no way to say this other than bluntly. I need your help."
That took the young woman aback. "What? How?"
"There is a prophecy. The song of ice and fire, and the prince who was promised. A dragon with three heads. Elia is with child, and a comet was seen in the sky on the day I believe the babe was conceived. The maesters say it will be a boy, but. . . Elia is already frail, and was bedridden for a year after giving birth to Rhaenys. If she lives through this one, it will be a miracle."
The young woman had been edging closer to him, almost unconsciously, but at this the spell was broken. She turned away, disgusted. "Your wife is ill and pregnant, and you disgrace her in this way for hopes of – of what?"
"Lady Lyanna. Please, hear me out before you say more." His voice was low and urgent. "My father and mother were wed after a woods witch, Jenny of Oldstones' confidante, predicted that the Prince who was Promised would be born of their line. Even if this child is borne to term, and lives, he will still be – "
"A boy. Your own trueborn son, heir to the Iron Throne. And you have a small brother too, if I recall."
"Viserys is but a child, and. . . I should not say this of my own flesh and blood, but he is too much our father's son. It must be me."
The young woman looked at him with slitted eyes. "You think quite highly of yourself, don't you?"
"Please." The prince spread his hands helplessly. "I know how utterly distasteful it sounds. But the song is of ice and fire. Elia is a Martell, and Dorne is the last thing to ice. I am a Targaryen, fire made flesh, and you – "
"No!" The girl drew herself up in a rage. "I don't know what you're asking of me, and I don't care! I am not a prize for you to win, a whore for you to have as you like! Is it Rhaegar the Unworthy you wish to be remembered as? Go and dream and plot and brood of prophecies somewhere else, and leave me out of it!"
That stung his own pride. In a few swift strides he had crossed the godswood to her, and had both of her wrists in his hands – not fiercely, but very firmly. "My lady," he said. "The dragon has three heads."
"I don't care how many bloody heads it has! At this rate, it might be better for it to have none! There's more than three Targaryens, and I don't care if it's ice or fire or rain or piss! Your songs are pretty and sad, and no one could accuse you of less than an absolute devotion to duty, but you have no fathom of what you're asking of me. I don't care what you read in some book! Let go of me!"
He let her go, but remained watching her. "My father would have your tongue out for those words," he said softly. "Fortunately, in this holy place, he's not like to hear."
She threw him a withering look. "Is that supposed to frighten me? We all know what your father is, and if that is what the Targaryens have become, I have no wish to attach myself to you in whatever way you seem under the delusion that I might. Fare-you-very-well, Your Grace. I intend never to see you again."
With that, she turned on her heel with a flounce, storming out of the wood down to the shore. And as she did, man and woman and trees and isle and lake and castle all began to fade out and grow dark, and dark, and darker, and darker, until they were gone in the distance of many long years. All that remained was a crimson glow the very color of blood.
The darkness under the hill, Bran thought, finally aware of himself again. He was confounded and upset and confused, not understanding what he had just seen or why it mattered. He remembered Meera's tale of the tourney at Harrenhal, and the wolf maid and the dragon prince with purple eyes, and the crannogmen who'd jousted as a mystery knight – Howland Reed, the young woman had said something about Howland Reed, and he was Meera's father – but what did that have to do with –
He opened his carven eyes, and lashing snow stung his face.
He stood as one of hundreds of trees, in a circle of weirwoods almost as vast as the one that had covered the island in the lake by Harrenhal. But this was not Harrenhal, or even the south. Far in the distance, a vast wall of ice scraped the heavens. It was barely visible through the night and the snow, and the thousands upon thousands of white shadows who thronged on it, blue eyes burning with fey and malevolent light. There was no end to their numbers.
Others. Bran's stomach shrank and his heart seized up. And not just Others but wights as well, slow shambling creatures, trailing black blood and entrails. The dead men are assaulting the Wall. Jon, his brother Jon was there, he had to find a way to warn him, but the weirwood grove stood too many miles distant.
But before he could find words or a tongue, the scene dipped out and changed. The snow and the Others vanished, and within the circle of weirwoods, there was a man cloaked in black whose face he could not see, frantically digging a hole. A plain dirty horn, banded in bronze and carved with old runes, lay on the ground next to him, and as Bran peered closer, he saw with another shock that the man was not wearing gloves. It's Coldhands. What is the horn and why is he hiding it in the weirwood grove?
The ranger finished his hole and buried the horn in it. He touched it as if it might poison him if he held it too long. His hands glistened blackly in the cold queer light, a bruised lilac and deep gold, but there seemed to be a flame deep in their heart.
Dragonglass, Bran thought, with no way to explain how or why he knew. His hands are made of dragonglass. The children of the forest gave them to him, when they woke him from his first death. That's why he could keep the Others away – for a time. But Lord Brynden said he's dead now for good, that his duty has been discharged. That he saved Summer. But –
He stared at the scene, just as uncomprehendingly as before. Watched the ranger glance back longingly at the Wall, just visible in the deepening sunset. Watched him walk out of the grove to where his great elk waited, breath steaming. But none showed from the ranger's nose and mouth. He is already dead.
It made a cold slimy chill go down Bran's back. Suddenly he didn't know if he wanted to find out anything more, willed himself to return to his own body and leave the trees. It was harder every time. Maybe I'll get branches growing through me too. Maybe that's why I'm here. Maybe I'm supposed to take Lord Brynden's place. He didn't want to. Like the Reeds, he wanted to go home. He wanted to see his brother Jon again, and Rickon, and his sisters Arya and Sansa if they were even still alive. He knew that his lady mother and Robb were dead, murdered by the Freys at the Twins, and of course his lord father had died long ago. I want to be a Stark, he thought urgently. I want to see Winterfell again. I'm not dead, I'm not.
And then he was falling. A golden man stood very far away at the top of a broken tower. "The things I do for love," he murmured, and ravens rose up and wheeled, screaming for corn. A wolf howled.
Summer, Bran thought, and then he hit the ground and woke up again in his own body. But the darkness was different this time. Even more complete, unending, and cold. Lord Brynden was nowhere in sight. He was alone again. There was one frozen, unbalanced moment where all the world seemed to shiver and fold in half, and then – from not very far away, in fact from very near at hand – high and sharp and desperate, he heard Meera start to scream.