Brandon Stark travelled far and wide. At times he had to wish hard, imagine every flake of snow before the picture materialized. Sometimes they appeared on mere whims.
He saw the first Archmaesters of Oldtown, poring over their books like sages. He saw Brandon the Builder and the construction of the mammoth wall of ice, magic and stone. He saw hot bubbles of the frothing Smoking Sea, the wizards of Braavos with no name nor face, the dragons of Valyria and wyverns of Sothoryos.
Bran had stopped trying to break loose of the weirwood’s magic. He would learn to harness it, like the Three-Eyed Raven, but that would come with time and temperance, and when he would master that, he suspected, time would have lost all sense to him.
He fought with himself against peeking into the future. He did not want to see if White Walkers would rise from the ice again, or if there would be another dance with dragons. But once, curiosity prevailed, and Bran chose to look ahead.
The woman had firm breasts and auburn hair. She looked straight at him with soft green eyes, sad and desperate. Sansa, Bran realized too late, as the godswood of Winterfell materialized around him. For the first time in a while, Bran tried hard to break the shackles of magic, to tell her it was all right, to fix her aghast face, but all he could do was stare. The sight made Bran sad, and the tree wept with him.
He plunged back into the past.
The man had the hair of shining silver. He was tall, and his eyes a dark indigo. “Aegon Targaryen,” he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. “What better name for a king?”
The woman looked weak but happy. Bran recognized her as the same woman who bled at the Tower of Joy. “Will you make a song for him, husband?” Lyanna asked.
“He has a song,” replied Rhaegar Targaryen. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”
*
Comments