A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

you
see
?”
    â€œTwo are open.” Jojen pointed. “One, two.”
    â€œI only
have
two.”
    â€œYou 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?”
    â€œNo,” said Bran. “I told you, I don’t want—”
    â€œDid 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.”
    â€œWas it Summer?”
    â€œYou be quiet.”
    â€œThe night of the harvest feast, you dreamed you were Summer in the godswood,
didn’t you?”
    â€œStop 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.”
    â€œYou couldn’t have. I was in bed. I was sleeping.”
    â€œYou were in the godswood, all in grey.”
    â€œIt 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.
    â€œDo you fall every night, Bran?” Jojen asked quietly.
    A low rumbling growl rose from Summer’s throat, and there was no play in
it. He stalked forward, all teeth and hot eyes. Meera stepped between the wolf
and her brother, spear in hand. “Keep him back, Bran.”
    â€œJojen is making him angry.”
    Meera shook out her net.
    â€œIt’s your anger, Bran,” her brother said. “Your fear.”
    â€œIt isn’t. I’m not a wolf.” Yet he’d howled with them in the night, and
tasted blood in his wolf dreams.
    â€œPart of you is Summer, and part of Summer is you. You know that,
Bran.”
    Summer rushed forward, but Meera blocked him, jabbing with the three-pronged
spear. The wolf twisted aside, circling, stalking. Meera turned to face him.
“Call him back, Bran.”
    â€œSummer!” Bran shouted. “To me, Summer!” He slapped an open palm down
on the meat of his thigh. His hand tingled, though his dead leg felt
nothing.
    The direwolf lunged again, and again Meera’s spear darted out. Summer dodged,
circled back. The bushes rustled, and a lean black shape came padding from
behind the weirwood, teeth bared. The scent was strong; his brother had smelled
his rage. Bran felt hairs rise on the back of his neck. Meera stood beside her
brother, with wolves to either side. “Bran, call them off.”
    â€œI
can’t
!”
    â€œJojen, up the tree.”
    â€œThere’s no need. Today is not the day I die.”
    â€œDo it!”
she screamed, and her brother scrambled up the trunk of
the weirwood, using the face for his handholds. The direwolves closed. Meera
abandoned spear and net, jumped up, and grabbed the branch above her head.
Shaggy’s jaws snapped shut beneath her ankle as she swung up and over the limb.
Summer sat back on his haunches and howled, while Shaggydog worried the net,
shaking it in his teeth.
    Only then did Bran remember that they were not alone. He cupped hands around
his mouth. “Hodor!” he shouted.
“Hodor! Hodor!”
He was badly
frightened and somehow ashamed. “They won’t hurt Hodor,” he assured his