A/N: An idea I was playing with last year, fusing Wheel of Time into Game of Thrones with a dab of Dark Tower mostly in the terminology here and there. I wasn't quite successful as a friend pointed out, as Rand is merely standing in for a certain Targaryen(not Danerys), Tam for Jon Connington, and Matrim maaaaybe for Mance. I'll cover the others at the end.


The Blademaster

"There are dangers in the darkness of every man's heart, Rand. Greed, envy, lust, rage. Hatred. Do not look favorably upon the hearts of men to grant you mercy. Your blood is more precious than the vaults of gold every Lannister swears by above their own kin. Your legacy, your inheritance, is greater than all the lives of men that have walked and warred over these shallow lands."

Light-scorn danced its groaning song before the silent night, brooding, awaiting. Tam al'Thor spun it this way and that, Heron mark flashing in moonlight. A languid ease with which he moved belied the strain upon his father's face. Rand watched and listened attentively.

"Robert Baratheon slew your bloodfather, Rhaegar, who had no talent as you yourself, using treachery and terrain to his murderous advantage. You can never trust to another that their word is truth, that their honesty is not false by omission nor ignorance. You can only rely upon yourself, on the Oneness inherent in your dying blood, on the fallen, forgotten symphony that is Saidin which men remember no more than as a fable of great Valyria's foolish pride!"

"I know. I know. I know."

Violet eyes became rings of fading lilac, purer white, deepest silver, as Rand reached deep into himself where a sword hilt lay untouched, unsullied by physical grip, a link between Rand-the-Man and Rand-the-Dragon, Saidin sealed and slumbering, that when drawn forth could know no match in the depths of its abyss, no equal in its heat, no worldly comparison to the riveting force which drove forward the Wheel of Time and circling ka, man and world bound for-evermore.

Iron and gold ore rose before him on threads of Air and Fire. A thought, an imagining, and roaring heat engulfed the metals. Another thread of Air spun tight to hold the gradually softening ores from flying hither and yon, a third lifting up the Heron-stamp, a fourth pulling in Earth and jagged minerals nearby, crushing, grinding until only a powder remained, heating until powder became liquid, and metal and gem soup bled into one another. Rand felt no sweat pouring from his brow though he could feel more so than see the rivulets running down his father's brow. Cool, cold serenity, Oneness, offered Rand-the-Dragon a bliss that Rand-the-Man was still only learning to obtain, let alone master.

More threads of Fire wove together about Earth and Air, scorching, wondrous, dragon-flame in the making, hellfire only beginning, as a shape came into Rand's mind, that of a sword without flaw, that of Light-scorn and Light-falter, Light-consumer and Light-devourer, each wrought with this the One Power, Saidin, each less perfect and each more tolling to exhume from the rugged barrow of his mind embroiled within the abyssal depths. From each of them he drew a link, a marker, a feature perfected in his father's grip, and in this way, this imagining, Lightbringer, the pinnacle of his skills, Rand-the-Dragon envisioned and so Power-wrought.

He heard Tam's breathing grow labored. He felt in his ears Tam's heart shuddering against his ribs. He knew the man he had always known as Tam al'Thor, his father, was dying.

And Rand-the-Dragon could cease his activities no more than Rand-the-Man could hold back the ocean, Oneness or none at all.

"Don't stop!" Tam pleaded around the ragged, arid void that had become his throat. "Don't concern yourself... with... me!"

Rand-the-Dragon looked away from the molten shaping before his silver eyes awash with blackest saa, the dragonfire warring against hellfire in truth now, the taint seeking to corrupt even this masterful environment, this perfection taking place. He looked upon Tam al'Thor's face and watched as faded, scarred skin waxed tight against the folded bone beneath, watched as eyes crinkled up with agony, and in a delicate fit of self-contained rage, Rand-the-Dragon and Rand-the-Man agreed upon a course of action.

Threads of Fire and Air and Earth draped upon Tam's shoulders, twining beneath his arms, capturing those muscles that had been honed to such an edge even at the age of sixty. Tam's salt-dry mouth creaked and the most haunting melody flowed over his hard, shrunken stone of a tongue, a song that both Rand's would carry forth for all their lives, as he tried to protest the distraction, the thought that his adopted son was giving up.

Lightbringer pierced Tam al'Thor's chest. Sinew, muscle, blood and bone; dragonfire roared in outrage of his own mercy. All the threads spun and brought the drying life's blood of the blademaster into that molten, solidifying state, the final cure that all its predecessor's had been lacking.

Grief brought weakness into Rand-the-Dragon's knees. He reached forth and laid his right hand upon the finishing hilt of his one true sword, the other easing Tam's mummifying corpse to the floor, no pain from searing so great as to surmount his heart's destruction. A single thread of Air and Fire carved the sigil of the Dragonfang, House Targaryen's everlasting mark, at the beginning of the blade.

"For you father, Lightbringer I doth claim!"

What followed was a blur of tears blotting out the saa. Saidin heavy relented as Oneness left and Rand-the-Man was all that remained, a youth with the weight of a sunken continent pressing on his spine. Lightbringer quenched in scarlet hung above his head, yellow-red glow radiant to behold.


The Dragon

Cold washed over even his senses within Oneness, the snow clinging to his beard and melting in his overgrown hair. Colder lilac eyes, the same eyes as Rhaegar Targaryen his bloodfather had known from every mirror, observed the blighted wastelands beyond the Wall of the Night's Watch men. Saidin would not come to him, this time. Lightbringer's warmth offered him all of the source that he would ever need this day and night.

"Fancy that, lads, a wildman right up here at our borders. Don't much liken that to a good omen on the expedition ahead, do you?"

Rand turned his eyes upward to the trees, where sat a trio of deserters. Bows thrummed idly. "Do as you will. I hunt Myrddraal this night, a sport your kind has forgotten in eight hundred years."

The first bow twanged readily. Rand watched as the third deserter's face lit up in confusion only a moment midway through his response, settling upon fury at the end, and then the coward drew, notched, fired. It was the languid grace of his late father that Rand drew upon to evade. The shaft buried itself to the ragged tail feather beside his left boot.

"Hold!" the lead traitor jerked the bow from his lessor's hands and studied Rand with half-again as much interest as he'd had originally.

"Tell me, friend, what duty is this that you speak of so drearily? Myrddraal! the name rings my ring-mail something fierce, and chill, colder than this here winter's night!"

Rand bent and plucked the squandered arrow from the ground, fingers pinching beneath the poisoned feathers. Discoloration so faint he could have blamed it upon sunlight bleaching; instinct and the words of his father told him otherwise.

"You would know them as White Walkers. Eldritch. Dead awoken in the pitch of night, clad-" and here the deserter interrupted him, saying, almost sing-songing, "-clad in cloak as black as Night, carved in twilight glimmer rite, flesh of milky sopping white, Myrddraal-Walker, beware yon flight!"

Rand fell silent as the traitor dropped from the treetop on nimble hands and toes, scurrying as would a squirrel across the snow.

"Now there's a whimsy my dear old mum could have recited from heart ere she shriveled up all cold and black 'erself! How come a fine young man as yourself came by these tales, hm?"

"My father taught them to me by bedside long ago. Now stray from my path ere the Myrddraal come at my call."

"An what sort of call might that be, iffen ye don't mind a measly little cloak o' the crows askin' so very, very polite?"

Oneness again enveloped Rand's mind, blackest saa swarming his hazy violet eyes. Radiance gleamed down the length of his sword, bright golden red, scarlet streaks, lancing up into the trees and burning their bows to fiery ashes. Rand looked the deserter straightly in the eyes, the faintest measure of tolerance inclining his head at the iron in that man's spine, and he uttered but one word with the ring of authority that no man since and no man prior had put into tone aloud, "Saidin."

And the wind blew. The snow-leaden branches shivered, dumping their loads upon both men's shoulders. Water ran down Rand's backside where it touched Lightbringer's hilt. Out in the distant hills, shadow coiled where sunlight eclipsed the horizon of the Wall. Some mad beasts yowled and drew silent.

"Matrim, I's for goin' now an let... let th' master be on 'is right'ous way." A speck of iron granted the other deserter some respect. Rand turned and began to pace ahead.

Matrim struck what he believed to be a blow of honor and great reward. He sank his strap-dagger to the hilt in the madman's side.

Rand did not slow nor turn. He reached down and ripped the bloody linen away, revealing layer upon layer of gauze between his cloak, mail, and flesh beneath. "If you walk the frigid coast, you must pay in skin or iron. Do not test my patience further."

Matrim harrumphed. His fingers played over the hilt of his favored tool even as his boots trod a fleet pace to keep up with the stranger.

"Come now kind sir, surely you've-" a flash of light snapped out and twined around the dagger beneath the deserter's fingers, whipping the tool aside and throwing it quivering-hilt deep into another tree some seventy yards away. A shape hitherto blind to their eyes slumped down with a ragged growl.

"Matrim! Blight upon ye, man, lesgo afore ye kill us all!"

"Go if you will! Run back to the sanctuary of the crows' noose!" Matrim stepped quicker so as to avoid falling behind. "I liken my odds most favorably today!" Without breaking tone, "What is that, if I may?" he ventured toward the slump in the snow over yonder. "I'd rather lose m' favored dagger 'n lose m' favored hands, y'see, sir!"

Rand's shoulders bunched up. His fingers clenched. The figure unseen arose dripping molten blood and water. "Shadowhound. The forewalkers of my prey."

"Ah? Them old... old myths, yes." Some of Matrim's eagerness evaporated as the twitching, oozing corpse neared. Rand reached out and grasped the dagger blindly, drawing the edged blade in a sweeping arc up and out of the frontal shoulders, spraying them both in its gore.

"If you desire to meet them so, than enjoy your final moments opposed. I'll see to your second-death myself."

Matrim's eyes swept across the bloody guts clinging to his cape with all the pleasure of a hanged man. "First m' bloody knife, now m' bloody garb," he muttered peevishly, at once put-out and sincerely hurt. Rand's silverel will cracked the slightest at that dent, the pale shadow of a smile cloying at his lips with the desperateness of a drowning sailor man. He threw another wave of Saidin, Oneness, and the faintest smirk drowned, but not before Matrim had caught the glimmer.

"Ah!" he crowed victoriously. "See you now, my lord of dread, you be needing a good smile and a laugh with such a grim business venture underway. I bring laughter to that stoic sense of pride pushing you on this, hm, heroic deed?" he glanced from Rand to his fellow deserters, now in the midst of fleeing toward a good hanging, and asked "It is a heroic deed you are undertaking, yes? Some besotted ideology of good for the greater man?"

Rand's grasp over Oneness began to turn upon itself, as ever in these days nearing the Winter King, Night's own lord and keeper. He held onto it tenaciously only a moment longer and then relented. Again, Lightbringer was all the source that he had need of as now...

"Yes." Rand admitted. "I wield the sword of prophecy. I harness the One Power Split in Twain. I know the names of my forsaken forefathers and the deeds they betook in to cast our world in shadows, ever-cold."

Matrim accepted his dagger back graciously in posture, bowing generously, if only to hide the disgust swelling in his eyes. "A good man's foolish fate is death all the same, you know. Be it madness of your gifts, heart and eyes and hair, or sword and fang and claw. Myrddraal!" he spat the last as would a curse. "I know of these legends, Dragon-born. I know of an ending ye've got in that wiry mind o' ye'rs too, both of 'em good an dark alike, an far be it for a simple gamblin' man as m'self to contradict such a fine young fellow, but ye'r too confident. Too fulla ye'r own self-right'ousness as m' allies had said. Not that I think there's anythin' good an wrong with that, mind, I liken m'self the same, but I's got a good idea of where to draw m'line. Do ye'rself a favor an let this matter ride until ye'r've sorted out th' little matter of whose ruling these mighty lands North and South of the Wall." Matrim sighed and swept a hand through his ruined cloak. "Go home, Dragon-born. Go home and root out th' man whose soured ye'r lands an keeps for as long as ye'r've been alive."

Rand finally stopped walking. "And what? Come back a King to challenge a King? Peasantry doth die and mortal lands go to rot, weeping all the while, as Kings clash and horror wreaks, Power's defile as they erode and twist and shudder the very earth beneath our feet! Do not take me for a fool, you who would break his word of oath as Robert Baratheon at Trident's Sundering!"


A/N: So, Winter King is a mesh of the Dark One and the Great Other, Myrddraal are at once the Fades of WoT and the Others plaguing the land north of the Wall. This was just a test run of the concept to see how far I could play with it before getting serious. If I do go forward it'll be a true blend of Westeros and Randland, another Age, a Dragon Reborn to the Seven Kingdoms or, perhaps, Essos, and the awakening of Saidin for the first time since Valyria was destroyed by the One Power and pride centuries before. Perhaps a return of real Saidar too.