Bran
To say that there was a lot going on didn't do the situation the least bit of justice. Here and there wights still staggered around, only falling once the living had completely overwhelmed them. Not just living men, either. Direwolves were in abundance, dashing up and down the winter town's streets or yelping excitedly at all the smells they had never encountered in the wild. The green dragon was impossible to miss as well, but as he'd landed clear on the other side of Winterfell he was soon not Bran's concern. Summer could not be asked to remain at Bran's side when there were wild siblings to greet and so he'd bounded off into the night, adding his voice to the Call. Through the wolf, Bran caught a few glimpses of what must have been unicorns here and there, groaning warily at the presence of those they went in fear of. One of the wild brothers came near, black of fur and green of eye, alone among the Pack in refraining from joining the tumult. Shaggydog, wolf and man knew together, Summer sniffing gently. Only, Shaggydog was half a pup when last we saw him. The Shaggydog that had returned to Winterfell was wantonly wild and when his green gaze found a man, Summer could see his brother would think no more of tearing one down than a deer or hare. But we had heard he'd been killed, Bran thought, he and Rickon both. Then again, it would not be the first time some poor common lad had died for the sake of showing the world a dead Rickon Stark. Trying to find Jon in such a mess would be foolish of a fool, so Bran resolved to wait until the northmen and the wildlings had collected themselves.
"So many have come," he told his princess, still abed, "more people than I could have believed existed in all the world."
"Winterfell is a big place, Bran, but the world is bigger still."
"Bully for the world. I've had your poor self drag me through my fill of it, nowadays I'm rather glad we can while the days away without you having to pull me leagues and miles."
"That's a word for it, whiling. I've never heard someone say whiling's how princes are made, though." Meera smirked, Bran's ears reddening.
"While this." he said, going to her and brushing the tip of her nose with his own before it was their lips that met. He slipped a hand beneath her fur to caress her belly, only to find her giggling at his tickling touch.
"Too early, Bran. I'm free to prance about a while yet before I go all wretchedly round and swollen-footed." The noise from the streets below made Howland flop over, turning his head toward the sound. Bran marveled at the world he'd been born into. More has happened in Winterfell in his scant year of life than has in the previous century. He carried their son to the window for him to peek down at all that went on below, Howland's grey eyes wide and wondering though he made not a sound.
A knock made Howland's head turn, Bran handing him back to Meera as he moved to the door. "Yes?" he asked.
"Brandon Stark." Branch's voice sounded from without. "You are required in the godswood." Bran opened the door, surprised to see Branch absent of his characteristic dourness. That must mean he's elated.
"Is it the dragon?" "Dragons, now, Brandon Stark. Content to sleep a precious bit longer, so let them sleep I will. It is a lion I speak of." A lion? There had been some such creature, yes, with long curved teeth in the company of a Skagosi shaman…but there were direwolves to run with and so Summer's attention had not long lingered. He slipped out, closing the door behind him.
"Causing trouble?"
"Come and see for yourself." Branch replied. Ever mysterious. Bran followed him into the crypts past who knew how many centuries of Stark history into the grotto. Several of the Singers were gathered around one of the younger-looking weirwoods, its leaves smaller but redder than its fellows. Branch said something in the True Tongue, the others of his kind calling to the tree as, it seemed, he'd bid.
"I do have an infant son to mind and a pregnant wife to dote on." Bran said.
"Patience, Brandon Stark." Branch replied. Then the branches above them shook and a sandy-haired youth was among them, appearing seemingly from nowhere. His eyes widened on seeing the lot of them, starting so badly he nearly fell out of the tree.
"Seven save me!" he cried.
"It's not the Seven at work just now. Who are you?" Bran asked.
"Who are you?" the youth asked in reply, fumbling with something in the red leaves. A bow, Bran knew on hearing the wood bend.
"Brandon Stark of Winterfell."
"Winterfell?" The boy's skittish tone evened. Finally he seemed to get his bearings, looking around with wide eyes. "What in seven hells…?" "Take a moment if you must." Branch said, sounding happier indeed than Bran had come to expect him able. "I didn't bloody fall asleep in no Winterfell. That's what the lot of us are about, isn't it? Get to Winterfell, milord said."
"Where did you fall asleep then? Which lord?" Bran asked, beginning to get a sense of what was going on. He sleeps still, Bran thought, the Singers have met with fortune at last. How hard or easy getting through to another godswood through Winterfell's own grotto, Bran had no idea, but they seemed to have managed it. Thanks to this lad who seems to like sleeping in trees. It wasn't greenseeing, not by half, but it seemed enough to stir the trees wherever he was. The lad shook himself.
"Casterly Rock, aren't I? Don't much take to beds, though, guess it comes from living in the woods. The Stone Garden, now, nice strong trees with nobody to poke me out of one. Even warm after a fashion." Stone Garden?
"And your lord?" The lad bit his lip.
"Ser Jaime Lannister. T'were him who has the lot of us holed up in the Rock, readying for the voyage north." The things I do for love. Bran shuddered, shaking off the sudden chill.
"When you wake, go and find him. Bring him to wherever it is you are." Somehow the Singers had put aside the need even for ravens, and Bran did not intend on letting a potentially crucial advantage slip through his fingers.
The lad didn't fade from view or anything, no mystical wisps of light, he was just gone. He must have woken.
"Will you be able to tell when he returns to the godswood?" Bran asked.
"Yes. There are Singers in the trees as we speak, waiting for someone come to this Stone Garden, as he called it." His slight distaste for the name men had given Casterly Rock's own godswood was not lost on Bran. He had not long to wait, for several people simply appeared into being in the grotto without so much as a whimsical pop.
"Fuck me fucked!" Bran heard a coarse voice cry, falling down.
"Stark." Quite another voice was talking over the first, one that had lingered at the corner of Bran's mind since he'd fallen from the broken tower.
"I'm here, Ser Jaime."
"What's going on?"
"The Children of the Forest figured out how to get Winterfell's godswood…connected, I suppose, to Casterly Rock's. Thank your tree-sleeper, his catnap in a weirwood's branches must have kicked things off on your end." To Bran's mild satisfaction, Jaime Lannister did not seem to know what to make of that. "Are you safe at Casterly Rock?"
"For now. We're working on getting those left behind at Deep Den here safely, then we'll be on our way to you."
"Where do you intend to land?"
"Theon Greyjoy seems to think the Rills a good spot. I don't know the first thing about the north's western coast-"
"He's thinking the way a seafarer would think. The Rills puts you hundreds of miles from here, and that's before the Others leap on you. Better to press on across Blazewater Bay and up the Saltspear to where it meets the Fever and disembark there." Bran's stomach knotted at the thought of Theon.
"Well and good, but in my experience the Others will freeze a body of water if they can get away with it, the better with which to bring their dead men to bear." Lannister replied, picking up on Bran's refusal to stray from the topic at hand.
"They well might have frozen the river. Even if the shores teem with dead, though, we'll deal with it."
"How?"
"Two of the dragons have reached Winterfell."
"That follows. A few western lords saw the third tearing for the selfsame horizon in the days after the capital fell to the dragon queen." Bran had no answer for that. "Besides, there's no way to be certain they'll do whatever you plan when the time comes." Perhaps if they're shown what to do…
"When do you intend to set sail?"
"Not longer than a few days after the last of Deep Den's garrison shows up. The voyage to your cold shores will be a struggle in itself. I should hope when we arrive, the Others aren't ready and waiting." Bran bit his lip.
"Well, the giants they brought with them are old hands at tempests and freezing gales both. I suppose we'll have to keep their attention so that there's no storms rendering the skies above the barrowlands' shores impassable for a dragon." Bran caught a glimpse of a bearded man peeking out from behind a tree, regarding the nearest Singer suspiciously.
"Is Tyrion there?" Lannister's question took Bran's eyes off the mumbling man.
"Yes, he introduced the arrivals from White Harbor. The dragon queen it seems took a detour to Skagos with…with the King in the North hoping to find a dragon."
"A detour?"
"There were no soft folk among them, nor the folk they found on Skagos. It must have been a long dash from the eastern coast, but no doubt the dragon's presence made things easier." Or possible in the first place. That seemed to captivate Jaime Lannister.
"The north should be teeming with dead men, monsters, and who knows what else. How could your brother hope to cover that much ground between the coast and Winterfell?" Bran shrugged.
"Maybe the Others didn't expect to get bashed in the flank." Lannister's eyebrows furrowed.
"They're tough, wily, and don't give a rat's ass about banners or borders. They don't well adjust course, though." It was Bran's turn to frown, Lannister's words drawing over a Singer or two. "That might be why they brought the big lads. Unpredictable and stormy, like to lash out in all directions at once. The Others proper, though, they commit in one direction and hit whatever they're pointing at as hard as they can. Plenty hard and more to do the job, for certain, but if something happens mid-effort they don't seem to be able to retake the initiative. Like some bastard shoving a dragon in their ear."
"Time is on their side, westerman. They can afford to be deliberate." Branch replied from beside Bran.
"In years, maybe. Decades, even centuries. Not moments, though. Something happens from one moment to the next, and its like they can't react coherently right away. Like an icicle, or looking at the big picture, a glacier. Moving in one direction fearsome-hard, but moment to moment, man to man, they've got a tougher time."
"An Other will dice up a dozen knights in a few fluid breaths." Bran told him.
"Sure, an Other on his own. Reflexes and all that. But not in a strategic vein. A single Other turning to face a threat, I think, is more able than a whole company or detachment, whatever it is. Instead of a blizzard running amok in one direction, it's a few flakes flying this way and that." Bran knew nothing of warcraft, grand tactics, the campaign trail. I know digging in, though, he thought. Fortifying a position, making any assault a costly proposition even with dead men, worth nothing. He'd seen Howland Reed at his heart's beloved art, and in planning the defense of Winterfell, Howland Reed had wrought a masterpiece.
"Keep an eye on those banks if you can." Lannister went on. "I daresay I'll be able to reach you at least once more, if only to tell you when it is we're leaving."
"We'll need to do it through something inconspicuous. A raven, an owl…" Bran's stomach knotted all over again on thinking of owls, one in particular. Where does she fit in all this? "If, when the time comes, you get no answer, don't loiter about waiting for someone in Winterfell to pop up. When you're ready to sail, sail. It will be for us to ensure whatever waits for you is not as the Others might will it." Bran said. Jaime Lannister nodded, then turned to his right.
"Go flirt with my aunt some more, Ser Dewys. Ser Addam, I think Tyrion's stashed cask of fine Arbor gold might still be under the third suit of chain in the armory. Go and fetch it, then meet me in the solar in ten minutes."
"Right, that's our cue to fuck the fuck right off, lads. Time for a piss, methinks." the coarse man said briskly, walking behind another tree and failing to emerge form the other side. He must be alone.
"I heard of Tommen's passing. I'm sorry, Ser Jaime."
"I fell twice as far as he did. Just my luck I had water beneath men, I suppose. You might think the broken tower high, but I've made a life out of falls far the longer, far the harder." He raised his right arm and for the first time, Bran saw it ended in a useless stump. "D'you know, I had a steel hand made, and it was a splendid thing for cracking Freys' jaws. Some few days I miss it more than my real one." He lowered his arm. "I heard I'd crippled you, but from what I can see, being flung from that window did no more than knock you on your Stark arse for a few weeks."
"You heard it true. I was crippled, for a good long while, with legs I might have had lopped off for all the good they did me. One thing followed another, and it came to pass the break inside was undone. I have a son of my own, now. Another is on the way."
"Cersei would have done better to match you and Myrcella. Joffrey could have always been for Margaery, who cares, it wasn't the Reach that stood the test of time, eh?" He sniffed, blinking hard. "Well, at least the gods saw fit to give her a few good years in Dorne. Better living than in the capital under her mother's eye, of that I'm certain. At least until a certain upjumped whore poisoned her."
"You've been hard-used by the road, Ser Jaime." Bran said. "There are still miles to walk, cold and dark, but the end is there."
"So you say, Stark, but I'll believe it when the cold winds fall and the snows melt." He shook himself. "Until that day comes, I'll keep my healthy cynicism close to heart. I'll see you just before we leave." Then he was gone as well, leaving Bran alone in the grotto with the Singers of the Song of Earth.
"He has precious little left in him." Branch observed.
"He'll endure. He's the infamous Kingslayer, didn't you know? And if Meera could drag me all around the north and beyond the bloody Wall as well, Jaime Lannister can be troubled to fight a few battles more." Branch was not convinced.
"Your race runs the gamut from weak to strong, Brandon Stark, and precious few are strong as your princess."
Despite his familiarity with it, the chill bit into Bran as sharp as ever. He spent his first moments outside the crypts catching his breath, hands around himself. A snuffling from somewhere in the worsening wind told him at least one direwolf was about, Bran content to let them be until a pair came forward.
"Summer!" he shouted, scratching the scruff of the wolf's neck while his brother sniffed Bran, green eyes squinting. "Hello, Shaggydog." Bran said, remembering how he'd felt on hearing Rickon's name for the black wolf for the first time. I wonder if his name much means a thing to him anymore. Arya had told him her suspicions the night she'd come home, but Bran had known better than to believe them until he saw his brother in the flesh. When last I saw Rickon he was still half a baby, off to Last Hearth in Osha's care. The maester, Wolkan, had told Bran of her death and it had saddened him terribly. No doubt Rickon would remember Osha. Would he remember Mother? Remember his siblings, or Father's face if he looked upon it in the crypts? The next face he saw near made Bran scream aloud. Robb, he thought, until he saw Father in the young man's face. His coloring was Tully, all Tully, but there was a hardness about him that Robb at his steeliest could not hope to match. And he's clad in rags. Blue Tully eyes searched Bran's own uncertainly, flicking down to the legs that stood straight and true. He remembers Bran the Broken. Bran the Boy, not Prince Brandon Stark of Winterfell. "It's me, Rickon." At the sound of the name, the young man snorted. Bran despaired. A name is just a word, and words of any tongue have no place in the life of the Pack. Shaggydog was little more at ease, alternating between sniffing Summer as if to check he was still there and growling incessantly at the looming stone walls of Winterfell. Lady could be here as well, for all we'd know. "Come on, you need to see Mother." Rickon's eyes narrowed. "Mother." Bran tried to reach for him, to show him Catelyn Stark as she was when they were young…and as she was now. But her face kept going long and dour, her red Tully hair going brown and mousy. Osha, Bran knew instantly. "Rickon, Osha isn't here-" That was all Rickon needed to hear, dashing off into the wind with Shaggydog hot on his heels. Damn it, Bran thought sourly. On the way back to the Great Keep the green dragon passed near overhead, the winds for a moment replaced by a sweltering gust, which made several of the dragon queen's nearby horselords cheer. They paid Bran no mind until they saw Summer shadowing him closely, one of the screamers nudging his fellow until a dozen of them were looking his way. Their tongue was naught but harsh clanging to him, yet Bran had a feeling he knew what they were talking about all the same.
"Wolf." One of them grunted at last, though Bran suspected to get his attention more than anything else. He went over with some trepidation, even whole and hale not so tall and strapping as the Dothraki.
"No Common Tongue?" Bran asked, unsurprised when all he got was a wall of stony copper faces. A sharp rebuke in a woman's voice made the lot of them look away from Bran, looking almost abashed as a woman with their coloring approached, still snapping at them. Like them, he saw when she drew still closer, but not quite of them. At least, by birth. When Summer turned to sniff her, she halted with a squeak. No Common Tongue form her either, he thought. Bugger. The next person to turn up, though, spoke the tongue of Westeros (well, below the Wall) without missing a beat.
"Prince Brandon." Daenerys Targaryen said, smiling at him.
All that would come to mind were the tales, the endless tales surrounding Father's sister Lyanna and this dragon queen's elder brother. This moment may have meant something to Father had he lived to see it. To Bran though, 'Lyanna' was just a word, really. A half-formed idea, no more real than 'Rhaegar'.
"Welcome to Winterfell, Your Grace." He finally got out when her smile became an uncertain line. Summer found no fault with her, content to sniff cursorily before losing interest.
"Is the king with you?"
"He's off looking for Ghost." The line wilted further. "Sitting in the godswood where none will bother him."
"Oh. I, uh, haven't seen him in some time. To be sure, I wasn't even conscious the last time we were together. It will be quite something to show Jon I can walk, to say nothing of my son." Daenerys' eyes widened a bit, the dourness threatening to roll over her lovely face breaking like a ray of sunlight through grey clouds. "As for Jon, he'll be fine. Warging is-"
"-something even northmen don't hold with both hands, as it were. He did it more than seldom in the time I kept his company, though Ghost it seems had no intention of sharing secrets with his broodier half."
"You know warging?" Bran asked, surprised. Daenerys blushed.
"Jon explained…and I suppose a little experience never hurt, either." Her voice went low, so that Bran had to hear with Summer's ears over the crowd, the direwolf keeping away anyone who lingered too long to stare. "We have a child of our own still to come, no doubt how I keep spotting Drogon traipsing through a lush green jungle on the other side of the world." Lannister mentioned something about the third dragon, last seen headed due west. Straight into the Sunset Sea. Evidently, this Drogon had done what no ship could. When he told Daenerys of the godswood and the infamous Kingslayer, he expected a bit of flintiness. When there was none forthcoming, Daenerys made note of it. "Aerys was not my sire, Prince Brandon. I have Queen Rhaella to thank for giving me life, yes, but it was a man ever devoted ot her in ways Aerys never would be who helped her bring me into the world." Bran swallowed.
"Well, you must understand if I offer you my heartfelt congratulations instead of condolences, Your Grace."
"Indeed, I do, and most welcome they are. He's here in Winterfell, actually, with the rest of his small house. One day I shall meet them, when he can summon the strength." She sniffled, most unexpectedly. "His life has been one of self-denial, privation, and grief. What small comfort I may bring him, I will. It is the least part of what I owe him." Bran had never expected to cross paths with a Targaryen, and if he had, he couldn't imagine it going any differently than it was. Well, maybe that's because she's not a Targaryen, he mused. Her talk of grief brought another man to mind as well, his princess' own father.
"I fear grief is not in short supply among the northern lords, Your Grace. From my brother Robb's campaigns to the Red Wedding to the Boltons' betrayal, everyone has experienced loss to some degree. But for what it's worth, your words are northern, in speech and spirit. Jon, it seems, has rubbed off on you."
"Gods, I hope not." she laughed.
"I haven't the hair or face for brooding. Jon looks intense and mysterious when he does it, all dark hair and grey eyes…I would just look silly."
Bran pondered that. Meera was seldom melancholy, but occasionally she could become withdrawn and introspective. And it did become her. Intense and mysterious, he supposed. Meanwhile, the Mother of Dragons turned out to speak Dothraki as well as her screamers, a deal of it going back and forth before she addressed Bran again.
"They ask if you're as wild as your brothers." she said, looking almost embarrassed. "Also, why you and Rickon look so little like Jon."
"Sansa, Rickon and I take after our mother. Robb, too. Only Jon and Arya got the Stark face, sometimes to my lady mother's very great grief." After translating, Daenerys made an inquiry herself.
"Have you met my Hand? He's quite the remarkable fellow."
"Tyrion Lannister. I have, Your Grace. He drew up the saddle that allowed me to ride a horse when I was crippled. I don't much need it now, of course, but I've had Maester Wolkan copy his drawings several times to be provided to the southern lords. No sense letting a bit of brilliance go to waste."
"No sense indeed. It certainly sounds like something Tyrion would do." Bran watched her purple eyes go wide, the Dothraki crying out suddenly and the other woman screaming aloud as the sense of someone coming up behind him made Bran turn. One of the younger among the Singers stood in the snowy street, staring at Bran. Oh, bother. I hope they didn't send one up that doesn't speak the Common Tongue. That fear proved unfounded as the seedling spoke.
"Brandon Stark, we've been able to keep the grotto and the Stone Garden connected…but we've had no such luck finding any others."
"Don't exhaust yourselves doing it, then. Just make sure the two are paired as best as can be done." The Singer nodded and seemed to just vanish, though Bran knew it was a trick all among his kind were capable off. "Singers of the Song of Earth, or more usually called-"
"The Ifequevron, or so the Dothraki name them." Daenerys said, swallowing nervously.
"The Dothraki know about them?" Bran asked, more than a bit surprised.
"After a fashion, I suppose. Ornela pointed them out to me, painted on the walls of a deep cavern beneath the castle on Dragonstone." She indicated the woman beside her, who still looked rather rattled. At last she spoke through the queen. "Was it the only one?"
"By no means, there are a good many. Not as many as in their prime, but perhaps luck will shine on them if the Others are driven off. How does Essos know of the Singers of the Song of Earth?"
"On the Great Grass Sea, they're known as the Ifequevron, or Those Who Walk in the Woods. They even left a city behind of sorts, Vaes Leisi. The City of Ghosts." Ornela had craned her neck by then, keen to catch another glimpse. "She says also that the Dothraki dared not trespass in the Kingdom of the Ifequevron, attacking the Ibbenese settlements on the northern coasts of Essos only when the last whispers of golden-eyed woods walkers had become stories of stories."
"Well, in my experience, they were right to steer clear. They look like children, harmless after a fashion, but I rather suspect they've been warring with the Others rather further back than just the Long Night…and any people so formidable are not to be provoked." When Daenerys finished translating his words, Bran saw the fierce, muscled screamers pale, muttering fearfully.
"Shall I show you to the godswood, Your Grace?"
"That would be lovely. It would be sweet to be near Viserion, lazy rake that he is." Bran blinked.
"Lord Tyrion made some little mention of that the night the White Harbor complement arrived…"
"I daresay he was too tired to bring up what an utter nightmare travelling through the Neck was, and that with the crannogmen making it easy as could be managed. Pouring rains, clouds of every biting winged insect, poisonous plants, snakes, spiders…"
"…and lizard-lions." Bran finished for her.
"Yes, but they were too preoccupied to much come after us. The riverlands' waterways were choked with bulls, following food and the swollen banks…and no doubt kicked out of their stretches of bog. When we came upon Viserion, he had made an old lodge his lair, and had to have half a hundred cows lounging around him, a harem no man could hope to match. The black cow he'd paired with, a monster in her own right, turned out to be the daughter of one of Dragonstone's wild dragons. They even had issue, adorable little cream-colored things. I embarrassed myself mightily when I saw one for the first time, Jon teases me most awfully about it when he wants to stoke me." It was a full three steps before the queen realized she'd left Bran behind, the chill in his bones wholly removed from the snows and whipping winds. A white bull, wondrous to behold. "My prince?"
"I suppose it's no surprise Viserion took a liking to the Neck then, if he's not the first dragon to romp there."
"A pity I could find not a thing about it I liked. Well, at least he'll be happy when the war ends."
"How do you mean, Your Grace?"
"It's become eminently obvious to me that the dragons can handle their own lives. Jon had to scratch the sky to tease Rhaegal from Skane's airless razored peaks…and Drogon's gone to ground in a timeless ruined city that could swallow King's Landing in a single gulp." "He'll not come back to you?" She turned pink. "He, ah, took rather a liking to one of the creatures that dwelled there. Truly a monster out of the world's earliest days…a god-lizard, if you like. She could make the jungle shake with a single stamp of her massive foot. A place I'm quite content to see through Drogon's eyes, and get no closer to than this little street."
He was seated on a moss-caked stone, cleaning his sword in the godswood's pool. Father, Bran thought, his heart skipping it seemed a full minute's worth of beats. When Jon looked up at them, Bran's legs felt like to give. Jon had him in a hug at once, of course, though Bran's own arms could only stiffly bend around his brother's back.
"What happened to you? I'd heard in my first weeks at the Wall that you were crippled-" he stopped speaking when he realized Bran's state. Feeling as though each finger was heavy as an earthen block, Bran's hands found the sides of Jon's face. A face I know, and not from memories of Father. The same brow, the same mouth, the same chin. The eyes, the eyes… All the face before him lacked was the nose, a ghost of a shade of a flea's fingernail longer in his mind. Jon's hands covered Bran's. No, Bran thought, pleaded, even as Jon's face fell into the long Stark pall he knew he himself would never wear. "I look like him," Jon said finally, tears in his eyes, "but I am not him, Brandon."
"Arya looks like him." Bran choked out, heart beating his ribs sore. The words would not come in his mind, far from reaching his tongue.
"Your Graces. My prince." Howland Reed's voice might have sounded from across the Narrow Sea, or the jungle city on the other side of the world, or the far side of the moon. Bran let his hands fall from Jon's face, standing to face the man who had never once left Father's side in all those frantic days of Robert's Rebellion.
"Jojen once told me that when he told you about my father, it was the first time in his life he'd seen you cry." That man was crying now, green eyes glinting the olive cheeks below them. "I know now my father carried a burden so heavy it wore into him, into his hair and face and bearing and being. I know, too, why you cried when you heard of his passing. Leaving you alone in the world with something to bear unaided." He walked to him, standing taller than the man even slight of build as he was. "What truth is so terrible it can lay even Howland Reed low?" Just when Bran thought the man would sooner turn to stone than speak, he gasped.
"It is a weight," he whispered, "so great and so heavy."
"Be free of it, then, my lord." Bran put his hands to the man's shoulders. "Be free, in sight of the gods."
"On your father's soul, never did I wish to be free of it, my prince. Never." He had to take a moment to get the words out. "Your father's death was a blow painful beyond words. The weight we shared…I alone had not the strength to carry." He shut his eyes tight, touched his forehead to Bran's arm. "But for my lady, I would long ago have been overborne." He began to sob. Then someone was gently taking him from Bran's arms, someone with a flawless curtain of black hair and eyes so dark they might have been black. But they aren't, Bran saw. Lady Jyana's eyes were a hallowed, haunting violet, visible at last so close and so clear. Her garb was crannog, but whatever glamor had been worked to let her pass for one born in the Neck had faded. A glamor of words, Bran thought. Howland Reed's word is law in the Neck, and as he named her Jyana Reed, so Jyana Reed she was. As heartbreaking as it was to listen to Howland's sobs, Bran could not envision a man and woman who more looked as though they belonged with one another.
"The little crannogman and the maid with laughing purple eyes." Bran said, the Reeds turning to look at him. "Meera told me the story, once." Well, the first part. "She never told me what happened afterward, though."
"War, my prince." Lady Jyana replied, as her husband comported himself. "A great rebellion that saw dragons slain, stars fall, stags crowned…and dragons born."
Jon's approach with the dragon queen beside him reminded Bran he was not alone with the Reeds in the godswood. He stared at Lady Jyana for a long time, as if her face was one he longed all his life to know.
"Before I parted ways with my father for the last time, he told me when next we saw each other, we'd talk about my mother." The look Lady Reed gave Jon was one so full of longing Bran could only avert his eyes. "He never stopped loving her, of that I'm certain."
"As am I, Your Grace." Jon seemed to have lost the power to speak. Daenerys came up beside him.
"Lady Reed?" she asked, kindly and warmly.
"Yes, Your Grace?"
"Are you Jon's mother?" Who else would Father go to such lengths to protect? Bran thought. "If counting all the stars in heaven would make it so, I would do it. If drinking seas and eating mountains would have it be, all the world would go dry, be laid low." she whispered. "But my thirst must go unquenched, my hunger unsatisfied."
"Then who in the name of all the gods is? How can the bastard son of a Stark and the trueborn daughter of a Reed share a face?" Bran asked, feeling utterly lost.
"They can't." Bran and Jon both turned to Daenerys, but she had eyes only for the lord and lady before her. "They can't. Am I right?" The best kind of riddle, Bran thought dizzily. One without an answer. At last, Howland Reed seemed able to stand under his own power.
"My love." he whispered, running a tender hand down her flawless ivory cheek. "Go." And she was gone. "Jon Snow." Howland said, turning to him. For all he'd been through, Jon in that moment looked like nothing so much as a boy compared to the man before him. "It's truth you hunger for. I can see it in your eyes. But truth is terrible, and cannot be recaptured once freed."
"Not a hunger, my lord. A need." Jon said. He sounded prepared, ready, determined for whatever was about to come. Howland held a hand out to him. "Then take my hand, Your Grace, and find the truth you seek." At once Jon made to do so, but Bran's voice stopped him at the last moment.
"Jon." He looked to Bran, who shook his head. "No."
"I have to, Bran. I can't go on, not another moment, without knowing." Howland looked to his son-by-law in turn, and held out his other hand. Resignedly, Bran moved toward them, putting one hand in Jon's.
"To speak of it is too painful, Your Grace. I must needs show you." With that, Bran slipped the hand that remained into Howland's. And now it begins, Bran thought, as the stars began to flicker, pop, spin and dance overhead while the weirwoods, witness to every triumph and tragedy, reached for them. No, my prince, Howland Reed's voice echoed in his mind. Or was it Father's? Now it ends.
