A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire 2)

The Summer Islander promised he would do so, and kissed her lightly on the fingers as he took his leave. Jhiqui showed him out, while Ser Jorah Mormont remained.

"Khaleesi," the knight said when they were alone, "I should not speak so freely of your plans, if I were you. This man will spread the tale wherever he goes now."

"Let him," she said. "Let the whole world know my purpose. The Usurper is dead, what does it matter?"

"Not every sailor's tale is true," Ser Jorah cautioned, "and even if Robert be truly dead, his son rules in his place. This changes nothing, truly."

"This changes everything." Dany rose abruptly. Screeching, her dragons uncoiled and spread their wings. Drogon flapped and clawed up to the lintel over the archway. The others skittered across the floor, wingtips scrabbling on the marble. "Before, the Seven Kingdoms were like my Drogo's khalasar, a hundred thousand made as one by his strength. Now they fly to pieces, even as the khalasar did after my khal lay dead."

"The high lords have always fought. Tell me who's won and I'll tell you what it means. Khaleesi, the Seven Kingdoms are not going to fall into your hands like so many ripe peaches. You will need a fleet, gold, armies, alliances - "

"All this I know." She took his hands in hers and looked up into his dark suspicious eyes. Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen? "I am not the frightened girl you met in Pentos. I have counted only fifteen name days, true . . . but I am as old as the crones in the dosh khaleen and as young as my dragons, Jorah. I have borne a child, burned a khal, and crossed the red waste and the Dothraki sea. Mine is the blood of the dragon."

"As was your brother's," he said stubbornly.

"I am not Viserys."

"No," he admitted. "There is more of Rhaegar in you, I think, but even Rhaegar could be slain. Robert proved that on the Trident, with no more than a warhammer. Even dragons can die."

"Dragons die." She stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on an unshaven cheek. "But so do dragonslayers."

Chapter Twenty-eight

BRAN

Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right. Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . .

"Yai!" the girl shouted, the spear darting out. The wolf slid to the left and leapt before she could draw back the spear. Meera cast her net, the tangles unfolding in the air before her. Summer's leap carried him into it. He dragged it with him as he slammed into her chest and knocked her over backward. Her spear went spinning away. The damp grass cushioned her fall but the breath went out of her in an "Oof." The wolf crouched atop her.

Bran hooted. "You lose."

"She wins," her brother Jojen said. "Summer's snared."

He was right, Bran saw. Thrashing and growling at the net, trying to rip free, Summer was only ensnaring himself worse. Nor could he bite through. "Let him out."

Laughing, the Reed girl threw her arms around the tangled wolf and rolled them both. Summer gave a piteous whine, his legs kicking against the cords that bound them. Meera knelt, undid a twist, pulled at a corner, tugged deftly here and there, and suddenly the direwolf was bounding free.

"Summer, to me." Bran spread his arms. "Watch," he said, an instant before the wolf bowled into him. He clung with all his strength as the wolf dragged him bumping through the grass. They wrestled and rolled and clung to each other, one snarling and yapping, the other laughing. In the end it was Bran sprawled on top, the mud-spattered direwolf under him. "Good wolf," he panted. Summer licked him across the ear.

Meera shook her head. "Does he never grow angry?"

"Not with me." Bran grabbed the wolf by his ears and Summer snapped at him fiercely, but it was all in play. "Sometimes he tears my garb but he's never drawn blood."

"Your blood, you mean. If he'd gotten past my net . . . "

"He wouldn't hurt you. He knows I like you." All of the other lords and knights had departed within a day or two of the harvest feast, but the Reeds had stayed to become Bran's constant companions. Jojen was so solemn that Old Nan called him "little grandfather," but Meera reminded Bran of his sister Arya. She wasn't scared to get dirty, and she could run and fight and throw as good as a boy. She was older than Arya, though; almost sixteen, a woman grown. They were both older than Bran, even though his ninth name day had finally come and gone, but they never treated him like a child.

"I wish you were our wards instead of the Walders." He began to struggle toward the nearest tree. His dragging and wriggling was unseemly to watch, but when Meera moved to lift him he said, "No, don't help me." He rolled clumsily and pushed and squirmed backward, using the strength of his arms, until he was sitting with his back to the trunk of a tall ash. "See, I told you." Summer lay down with his head in Bran's lap. "I never knew anyone who fought with a net before," he told Meera while he scratched the direwolf between the ears. "Did your master-at-arms teach you net-fighting?"

"My father taught me. We have no knights at Greywater. No master-at-arms, and no maester."

"Who keeps your ravens?"

She smiled. "Ravens can't find Greywater Watch, no more than our enemies can."

"Why not?"

"Because it moves," she told him.

Bran had never heard of a moving castle before. He looked at her uncertainly, but he couldn't tell whether she was teasing him or not. "I wish I could see it. Do you think your lord father would let me come visit when the war is over?"

"You would be most welcome, my prince. Then or now."

"Now?" Bran had spent his whole life at Winterfell. He yearned to see far places. "I could ask Ser Rodrik when he returns." The old knight was off east, trying to set to rights the trouble there. Roose Bolton's bastard had started it by seizing Lady Hornwood as she returned from the harvest feast, marrying her that very night even though he was young enough to be her son. Then Lord Manderly had taken her castle. To protect the Hornwood holdings from the Boltons, he had written, but Ser Rodrik had been almost as angry with him as with the bastard. "Ser Rodrik might let me go. Maester Luwin never would."

Sitting cross-legged under the weirwood, Jojen Reed regarded him solemnly. "It would be good if you left Winterfell, Bran."

"It would?"

"Yes. And sooner rather than later."

"My brother has the greensight," said Meera. "He dreams things that haven't happened, but sometimes they do."

"There is no sometimes, Meera." A look passed between them; him sad, her defiant.

"Tell me what's going to happen," Bran said.

"I will," said Jojen, "if you'll tell me about your dreams."

The godswood grew quiet. Bran could hear leaves rustling, and Hodor's distant splashing from the hot pools. He thought of the golden man and the three-eyed crow, remembered the crunch of bones between his jaws and the coppery taste of blood. "I don't have dreams. Maester Luwin gives me sleeping draughts."

"Do they help?"

"Sometimes."

Meera said, "All of Winterfell knows you wake at night shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and the guards in their hall."

"Tell us what frightens you so much," said Jojen.

"I don't want to. Anyway, it's only dreams. Maester Luwin says dreams might mean anything or nothing."

"My brother dreams as other boys do, and those dreams might mean anything," Meera said, "but the green dreams are different."

Jojen's eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now. "I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains," he said. "It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them."

"Did the crow have three eyes?"

Jojen nodded.

Summer raised his head from Bran's lap, and gazed at the mudman with his dark golden eyes.

"When I was little I almost died of greywater fever. That was when the crow came to me."

"He came to me after I fell," Bran blurted. "I was asleep for a long time. He said I had to fly or die, and I woke up, only I was broken and I couldn't fly after all."

"You can if you want to." Picking up her net, Meera shook out the last tangles and began arranging it in loose folds.

"You are the winged wolf, Bran," said Jojen. "I wasn't sure when we first came, but now I am. The crow sent us here to break your chains."

"Is the crow at Greywater?"

"No. The crow is in the north."

"At the Wall?" Bran had always wanted to see the Wall. His bastard brother Jon was there now, a man of the Night's Watch.

"Beyond the Wall." Meera Reed hung the net from her belt. "When Jojen told our lord father what he'd dreamed, he sent us to Winterfell."

"How would I break the chains, Jojen?" Bran asked.

"Open your eye."

"They are open Can't you see?"

"Two are open." Jojen pointed. "One, two."

"I only have two."

"You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will not open it." He had a slow soft way of speaking. "With two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall."

Summer got to his feet. "I don't need to see so far." Bran made a nervous smile. "I'm tired of talking about crows. Let's talk about wolves. Or lizard-lions. Have you ever hunted one, Meera? We don't have them here."

Meera plucked her frog spear out of the bushes. "They live in the water. In slow streams and deep swamps - "

Her brother interrupted. "Did you dream of a lizard-lion?"

"No," said Bran. "I told you, I don't want - "

"Did you dream of a wolf?"

He was making Bran angry. "I don't have to tell you my dreams. I'm the prince. I'm the Stark in Winterfell."

"Was it Summer?"

"You be quiet."

"The night of the harvest feast, you dreamed you were Summer in the godswood, didn't you?"

"Stop it!" Bran shouted. Summer slid toward the weirwood, his white teeth bared.

Jojen Reed took no mind. "When I touched Summer, I felt you in him. just as you are in him now."

"You couldn't have. I was in bed. I was sleeping."

"You were in the godswood, all in grey."

"It was only a bad dream . . . "

Jojen stood. "I felt you. I felt you fall. Is that what scares you, the falling?"

The falling, Bran thought, and the golden man, the queen's brother, he scares me too, but mostly the falling. He did not say it, though. How could he? He had not been able to tell Ser Rodrik or Maester Luwin, and he could not tell the Reeds either. If he didn't talk about it, maybe he would forget. He had never wanted to remember. It might not even be a true remembering.