Again, thank you all for the reviews! Is there a way to respond to people or do I just message everyone one by one?
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His stomach grumbled like some cornered beast on a hunt as the smell of hot stew filled his chambers. Sansa had brought the bowl some time earlier, when the fire in his hearth had burned brighter than it did now. Bran's sister had taken to spending time in his chambers as the snows fell outside.
Sansa's visits reminded him of the times that Bran's mother, Lady Catelyn, would wait on him when he had fallen ill as a boy. Her visits were frequent and often brought with them some wooden bowl of Old Innis' winter stew or a fresh load of warm baked bread.
"You need to eat, Bran," she had insisted as she offered him the bowl that just now sat beside him, vapor rising off the greasy surface. "I've only seen you take a meal once during this storm," concern colored her tone. Her blue eyes, the same sky-blue shade as Bran's, shone with a rare tenderness she reserved for family alone. He had simply nodded in acceptance and taken the bowl from her. Sansa had known what that meant.
Of course, Arya was his most frequent guest, but he quite enjoyed her company. She would come early in the mornings, well before half the castle had risen. He was always awake to greet her. It had become a little game of sorts; the first he had played in many years. She would find purchase on the edge of his bed while badgering him with questions and requests, most of which were some variation of using his sight to spy on those Lannister men who had ridden north.
Once, she had entered his chambers later in the evening, presumably after supper in the hall. He had thought her diminished in some way, not her normal self. She had asked him to use his sight, but not on any southern enemy. "Please, just this once," she had asked, her voice strained and raspy as she whispered. "I just want to know… where he's been, what he did since I last saw him,"
"I can't."
That was his response then as it had been near every time someone asked him to see. For he had other visitors too, now. Word of his sight had spread throughout the keep and tales of 'the Stark boy's' abilities seemed to grow with each telling. Indeed, some of the Stark smallfolk had even found excuses to visit his chambers.
A guardsman had entered past midday of the storm's second day, stumbling upon Bran's chambers whilst 'making his rounds'. Unfortunately for the young sentry, the Three-Eyed Raven was not altogether willing to use his sight to find out if that fat Umber man was cheating at dice.
Another time, an older serving woman had begged him to find her son, bringing a sweet roll from the kitchens as some sort of bribe. "Bonal were his name, m'lord. But we called him Bones, we did, for he looked it. Skin and bones and a bit o'brown hair a top his head," she had described her son with a longing ache in her voice. "He marched south with King Robb some years ago, m'lord, but I know he's alive, somewhere south. I can feel it," her voice quavered with age and emotion. She had paused then and, after some hesitation, placed a withered hand on Bran's own. "Could you… can you see him? Can you find him?" He had sighed and shaken his head no, much to the old crone's quiet despair. She had left the roll on his table.
His stomach growled again, fiercer this time. These days, he ate as much as he slept, which was to say almost nothing and not at all. His own teacher had been sustained by that great weirwood, but Bran's body still required physical sustenance. He reached to the table beside him and grasped the edge of the bowl. The stew was still warm. He took the silver spoon beside it and began to slowly guide bits of overcooked meat and soggy winter yams to his mouth.
The taste woke something within him. Bran hated stew… He remembered with a feeling of mild disgust as he slowly ate from the bowl. Bran hated a great deal after he fell. The boy whom Jaime Lannister had cast from that tower had suffered a slow death. He had lost his legs first, then his father and family, then himself. He lived still within the Three-Eyed Raven, making himself known in conversations with his sisters or the Stark smallfolk; but the Bran Stark who had once called this room home was gone.
He had seen his fall in a vision. It had been a curious accident during a time when he could not truly direct his sight. He had half expected himself to hate Jaime Lannister when he saw the man once again within Winterfell's walls. Bran certainly hated him. He could feel the boy's anger making his heart beat rapidly, like a man trapped beneath a sheet of ice, pounding at the walls, fighting to be free.
There was much else he wanted to see; so much he wanted to know. There is no time, he knew. His task grew harder every day as he drew closer. When his teacher showed him how to open his eyes and truly see the world around him, it had proven easy and wonderous. Though he could not always control what he saw, he had always found it easy enough to reach out through the trees and see.
Then, after the Wall had fallen, it grew more difficult. Day by day, he felt the other's presence pushing against his mind. It took more time to see what he needed to see. It felt like he was straining his arm to reach some object that was just beyond his grasp. Only beside the heart tree did he have the strength to see. That's where I need to go.
If only the snows had not been so deep. He had been trapped inside these walls for days. On the morrow it would clear, he knew that. He had reached out to the west, from whence the storm had come, and seen clear skies and fields of fresh fallen snow beyond the white curtains that surrounding Winterfell. On the morrow he would venture out to the godswood and resume his task. I need to know…
His dreams were troubled that night. They were troubled every night now. As he slept, he saw what he had seen before: stars. Thousands upon thousands of stars, more than he had ever seen even on the clearest night. They hung in the black sky above him, but around him too, specks of light swirling about the air. They shone a cold, icy blue, the same hue of the Wall at twilight.
He moved among them, his feet pressing silently against the snow. He could touch them, he realized, and he did. Reaching out, he ran his fingers through the wisps of cold blue light that danced about him. One by one they turned from blue to white then back to blue, flashing between the two colors. A thousand thousand points of light began to move about him, rolling in waves against each other in some discordant dance. Blues crashed against whites and white and blues, merging some into brighter stars while others were torn asunder in the collisions.
The world spun with the stars and a pale, full moon rose overhead. But no, it was full at one moment and new and black the next. In the blink of an eye it passed through a fortnight's phase, shining brightly all the while. White light filled his vision, though from the moon or the stars he could not say. Then the scene gave way to a mighty, silent flash of pure light. White. It was all white. He shut his eyes, desperate to escape the blinding light… and he woke.
Pale sunlight shone through his windows and another bowl of stew sat at his bedside along with a cup of cool, clean water. The storm is over. I must return to the godswood. He had been away too long. Much might have changed since he had last seen.
He heard footsteps in the hall and cried out for aid. The footfalls were heavy and loud as they hurried toward his chamber door. He looked up to see Samwell Tarly, scrolls in hand, standing beyond the threshold with a concerned look on his face.
"What is it, Bran?" he cocked his head as he asked the question. "Can I fetch you something?"
"I must to return to the godswood," he repeated his thought aloud. "Might I ask you to accompany me?"
"Oh, well, of course," the large man shuffled his feet as he gave an awkward answer, "it's only, well…" he raised his hands at his sides and turned his palms over, gesturing at his own girth. "I'll find someone to help us. Gilly!" he shouted the name. Another pair of footsteps echoed from the hall and he saw the wildling girl appear beside Sam in the doorway, her straw haired son sitting in her arms. "Might you keep an eye on Bran whilst I find a guard or two?"
She looked at Sam apprehensively before nodding and stepping into the room. "M'lord," she had mumbled into her cloak as she found a place to stand in the sunlit corner of the room closest to the windows. He tried to offer her a reassuring smile.
"How fares young Sam?" he asked politely, inclining his head to her son. Her eyes brightened at mention of the boy.
"Well enough, my lord. He enjoys his time with big Sam and has been spending more days with the other free folk," her words were nervous but sweet as she talked of her son.
"And you?" He was not a lord, not anymore. The more time he spent in his own mind the more difficult even basic conversations became. Even so, he remembered his lord's courtesies.
"Sam has set me reading an entire book!" she never shouted in her sudden excitement, before putting a hurried hand to her mouth and settling down again, "Beyond the Wall, it's titled. It's a history of the free folk from, well, since there were free folk," she explained.
"That's good," he tried to smile again. Their conversation withered then, as he stared off into the yard and she excused herself to tend to the weakening fire in his hearth. Samwell returned a moment later with two burly guards in tow. They helped him dress and make his way into the great rolling chair.
A few moments later they had him on level with the rest of the yard. Sam dismissed the guards and told Gilly to wait as he grasped the wooden handles and began to push the chair across the frozen earth to the godswood archway. The going was easier than he had expected it to be. Servants and sentries had cleared away snow from the footpaths, though elsewhere Winterfell's walls peaked out from massive mounds of snow.
A warm breeze caressed his face as they entered the godswood. The snow had fallen heavy here too, but the relative warmth of the soft earth had melted most of it by now, leaving only patches of thin ice and dirty snow behind. Sam wheeled him to the base of the great weirwood at the center of the grove and, nodding, turned to rejoin Gilly in the keep.
The Three-Eyed Raven felt stronger here. He drew a deep breath, taking in the scents of the black pools and moist rot and mossy earth. He drank in the sight of the heart tree before him, its white branches like a hundred boney fingers grasping at the blue and grey sky. His own pales fingers reached out and touched the bark.
His eyes flashed white and he felt himself pulled through his own body and into the tree, into the earth, and beyond. Darkness overtook him. For a single heartbeat, or hour, or year, he stared into a black void. Focus… the familiar, boyish voice whispered inside him. Focus and see.
The Three-Eyed Raven reached out, far to the north and into the past. He flew over the hills on a raven's black wing, the sun and moon spinning overhead. The earth and sky swirled around him. Summer storms raged over the Wolfswood, thunderbolts crackled as they struck and split trees in bouts of blueish white fire. Snows fell heavy on the hills, burying the landscape in white. The Wall loomed across the horizon, shrinking lower into the earth even as he flew toward it.
As he crossed beyond, the massive structure melted away. The lands below him were green and fertile. The trees looked young. He blinked, once, twice, and found himself among them, deep in some forest far to the north. Green, snow-capped mountains rose up between the thick trunks of broadleafs and looming soldier pines. Green reigned above him in a thick canopy and green covered the ground below him.
He turned and beheld a shock of white against the dim forest where a grove of small weirwoods grew in an uneven crescent. Blood red eyes stared across the clearing and met his blue ones. They seemed different than the eyes of Winterfell's heart tree. The carved faces looked clean and fresh cut. Above him, crimson leaves stretched over half the groves, battling the greens for control of the canopy. Soft, golden light fell over the wood. The Three-Eyed Raven felt at peace.
A twig snapped behind him. He spun on his heel to saw a group of men emerge from the underbrush. They whispered in some guttural tongue, the syllables of their words as thick as the mud clumped on their boots. They were ten in total, ranging in size from a skinny boy of an age with Bran to a burly, broad chested bear of a man. Each wore an assortment of leathers and light summer furs that covered only parts of their bodies. Their bare arms and shoulders were covered in swirling images painted on in blue woad. Half the group had half their faces dyed in the same fashion as their arms.
The largest of them had burnished copper disks sewn into his own chest piece. The metal glittered in the dappled light of the grove. A large, bronze sickle hung at his side. The man stepped into the center of the clearing and looked around, inhaling deeply and taking in the scents of the forest. He looked at the grove of growing weirwoods and grunted at the group.
Another man stepped forward, gripping a small bronze axe in his right hand. His pale skin was unblemished, clear of markings and dye. He wore a sash of dyed woolen cloth from hip to shoulder, bracers of some fine brown fur, and grey leather breeches. The Three-Eye Raven looked at his face, recognizing something in the man's sad, brown eyes. His nose was long and sharp, almost hooked. His short, curly hair and trimmed beard were the color of overripe barley.
He stepped across the grove and toward the white trees. As one, the group followed him. "First Men…" he wondered aloud as he gazed upon the group. The ancient wind carried his words into the past, pushing a whispering breeze among the trees. Ten men froze where they stood. He could see the sudden fear in their eyes as they formed a circle facing outwards, grasping at spears and swords and axes.
A moment passed in silence. Then another. Finally, their muscles relaxed and breathing slowed. The youngest lad even let out a nervous laugh as the tight formation fell apart and they again faced the trees. The Three-Eyed Raven kept his gaze on the man with the axe. There was something about him, something familiar. I must know…
The man moved toward the closest weirwood and, grasping the wooden grip with both hands, raised his axe behind his right shoulder. He moved to swing the bronze blade against the bark, but froze mid stroke, his arms trembling but still as stone. His eyes flashed with fear for a moment, the turned white.
And then the boy who had been Bran Stark was not in the grove, but in a small village beside a low, blue-grey river filled with reeds and singing white birds. He looked through eyes that were not his own, seeing a small boy with barley colored hair running across a small garden toward his waiting arms. His eyes flashed again, and this time he was in the throes of love atop a woman with green eyes and hair the color of a dying fire. Then again, faster this time, the images flashed before him like lightning in a midnight storm. A fire set to clear the land. A stone hoe against rocky earth. An attack from those creatures in the woods beyond their lands; the beasts by their side. A call to arms from their chieftain. A journey into the wild lands of the North beside nine others from the lands around his own.
His eyes flashed white again and he was back in the young weirwood grove, looking at the man whose mind and memories he had just invaded. Fear shone plain in his brown eyes as the nine other warriors looked on in confusion and moved to help their panicked comrade.
The wind blew again, whispering silent threats as it rustled the red and green leaves of the grove. The Three-Eyed Raven heard them before the men did, the soft sounds of light, padded feet against old leaves and soft moss. Though there were only five, they surrounded the grove.
The men recognized the wind's warning to late. The Children of the Forest opened with a salvo of obsidian tipped arrows launched from small recurve bows made of fresh green wood. The shafts bounced off of the hardened leather some of the men wore but otherwise found purchase in unarmored areas. Another wave of arrows followed before the men collected themselves and reformed a ragged circle in the groves center.
"Taom!" the massive man shouted a command to his comrades. The men moved closer together, tightening their defensive circle. Those with shields tried to shelter the others from the arrows falling from the dark underbrush beyond.
Ten pairs of eyes shot upward as the forest canopy came alive with a hundred cries of Taom, Taom, Taom. A black cloud burst from the trees and swirled overhead. Ravens, the Three-Eyed Raven saw then. They echoed the man's words as one as they flew overhead. Another volley of arrows fell upon the group, but the warriors caught the shafts on their shields. The ravens began to swoop downward, their sharp talons clawing at the scalps and shoulders of the men.
Golden eyes flashed behind a thin brown trunk. He had seen them. So did one of the men, the skinny boy who had been laughing a moment before. He broke from his companions and rushed toward the edge of the clearing to fight his attacker. Another pair of eyes flashed in the dense underbrush and a shadow leapt from the thicket. Yellow fangs flashed as a great direwolf leapt from the trees and ripped the boy's throat from his neck in one terrible motion.
Blood dripping from its great jaws, the great beast turned to the rest of the men circled tightly in the center. Half of them turned to face the wolf with weapons at the ready while the other four batted at the ravens with spears and swords. He saw the man with the bronze axe move to flank the wolf.
The beast lunged again, snapped at the sword hand of the biggest man. Two screams rent the air as the massive man fell to the mossy earth, blood pouring from the red ruins of his arm. The direwolf cried out as well as the other man stepped forward and buried his axe in the creature's spine.
The human's cohesion dissolved then as chaos fell upon the grove. Two more wolves, smaller beasts than their fallen cousin, emerged snarling from behind the weirwoods. Two Children emerged beside them clutching long spears with sharp points of obsidian woven into the wood itself. Taom, taom, taom, the ravens continued to call overhead, filling the forest with harsh noise and making orders between the men impossible to understand.
The three other Children emerged from the opposite side, short black daggers clutched in their small hands. As one they fell upon the terrified group of warriors. Bronze and obsidian and bone flash as men screamed in agony and beasts howled in rage. Though they fought savagely, one by one, the men were overcome. One short but muscled man with his arms painted entirely blue dodged a wolf's lunge and charged forward, driving his sharp bronze spear tip into the exposed gut of one of the Children. Its companions called out in an otherworldly, mournful song as the small green figure collapsed.
Another two wolves emerged from the deep of the wood and joined the fray, but by then it was already decided. Soon, nine men lay dead upon the ground, their blood turning the dirt into crimson mud. One by one, the Children dragged the corpses to the base of the various weirwoods. One by one, they sang out some strange melody to the trees as they drew black daggers across the men's throats and let the rest of their blood nourish the roots of their gods.
Only the brown eyed man remained alive to see the fate of his friends. He was surrounded on three sides by armed Children and the remaining wolves. The Three-Eyed Raven watched as the Children took him prisoner, binding his arms behind him with thin, twisting green roots. Wolves pacing beside them, they marched off into the deep of the wood, leaving him alone. The man turned once more to look at the nine corpses and, for a heartbeat, his angry brown eyes met the seer's blue ones.
The Three-Eyed Raven turned to behold the carnage the ambushers had left in their wake. His blue eyes met the blood red ones of the closest weirwood. White light flashed in the grove, though he could not tell if it was he or the tree that caused it. But no, he was not in the grove anymore. The weirwood as which he stared as older, its bark aged and gnarled. He was back in Winterfell.
He slumped back in his rolling chair pondering what he had scene in the visions, though deeper in his memory he already knew. That was him… before.
"Bran?" the shout stirred him from his thoughts before they could settle. He sensed four presences entering the godswood. Craning his neck about his chair, he saw Jon, Daenerys and the great white direwolf Ghost approaching his own position. "Bran," Jon said warmly as his grey eyes settled on his cousin, "we've a question for you."
"Jon, Daenerys," he inclined his head toward the pair. He had not seen them together since their last conversation on this very spot, some time before the storm buried the keep in a fresh layer of snow and ice.
"We need you to, well, try to see," Jon attempted an explanation of his request.
He sighed softly as he looked at the pair. "I told you earlier… it's not what it was. It grows harder with each passing day."
And he had told him earlier, when Jon had sat beside him in his chambers and urged him to try. Bran had reached out into the world with his mind; casting his consciousness out upon the North in search of one hundred thousand dead men. North was all he knew. North and east. He tried to go further, to see, but pain there was always pain. The moment he glimpsed a blue eyes corpse, some unseen forced drove a jagged, icy dagger into his mind, shattering his thoughts and blinding him with pain. He had told Jon then as he told him now: "I cannot see."
Daenerys stepped forward then, standing in front of Jon and adopting a regal but kindly tone. "Perhaps we can be of some assistance, then? Whatever you need, you have only to ask, Bran," she gave him a curious gaze.
He laughed softly, his mirth sounding like the rustling of leaves in the wind. "Thank you, but I don't think it works like that," he tried to explain. I cannot have these distractions. I must see. I must learn.
The queen sighed and Jon stepped forward again. "Are you certain, then? You can't see the dead like you did before?" When he shook his head, Jon looked back at his lover. Concern shown in her eyes.
"Scouts it is, then," Jon muttered into the moss and mud. He looked at Daenerys, waiting for her to join him at his side as if this was the outcome they had been expecting. The silver queen looked from Jon to Bran and back again.
"I would have a word in private with Bran," she said to Jon, "I shall join you in the yard shortly." He watched her smile at Jon, her violet eyes radiating a rare warmth. Jon nodded and walked off toward the archway, Ghost padding along at his side.
Daenerys looked at him again and spoke. "I know this sounds, well, foolish, but I was wondering… your visions," she paused as if preparing herself for the sheer ridiculousness of her impending question, "can you see the future as well?" Her eyes shone with a quiet hope.
"In a fashion, I suppose," he said as he considered her query. "They're more dreams than visions, and strange besides. Like listening to a language when you don't know the words."
"Oh… I see," she sounded crestfallen. "And these dreams, do they always come when you're asleep? Or have you seen, well, things before you as clear as I am now?"
Odd… he thought as he considered her words. "Always during sleep," he answered simply. He heard her sigh as she released a pent up breath.
"Well, thank you Bran," she said, sounding disappointed.
"Did you have a vision?" he blurted out the question as she was turning to follow Jon back to the castle yard. "A vision of the future?"
Daenerys' eyes widened as she looked at him again. He could see sadness and hope filling her with equal measure.
"I… I don't know what I saw," she admitted. "It was some time ago. A dream," she shook her head slightly, "nothing more."
"There's always more," he responded. Daenerys looked confused and at a loss for a response. She forced a smile and turned away to walk back toward the keep. Bran remained beside the heart tree. There was always more to see.