Lyanna preferred the hard stone of the window seat to the comforts of Bran's featherbed and blankets. Abed, the walls pressed close and the ceiling hung heavy above her; abed, the room was her cell, and Winterfell her prison. Yet outside her window, the wide world still called.
Poor Bran. He could not walk, nor climb nor hunt nor fight with a wooden sword as once he had, but he could still look. He seemed liked to watch the windows begin to glow all over Winterfell as candles and hearth fires were lit behind the diamond-shaped panes of tower and hall, and he loved to listen to the direwolves sing to the stars.
Of late, he said he often dreamed of wolves. They are talking to me, brother to brother, he told Lyanna when the direwolves howled. She could almost understand them . . . not quite, not truly, but almost . . . as if they were singing in a language she had once known and somehow forgotten. The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told her so. "Though it is stronger in some than in others," she warned.
Summer's howls were long and sad, full of grief and longing. Even Visenya, Lyanna's grey direwolf. Shaggydog's were more savage.
Their voices echoed through the yards and halls until the castle rang and it seemed as though some great pack of direwolves haunted Winterfell, instead of only three . . . three where there had once been seven. Do they miss their brothers and sisters too? Lyanna wondered. Are they calling to Grey Wind and Ghost, to Nymeria and Lady's Shade? Do they want them to come home and be a pack together?
"Who can know the mind of a wolf?" Ser Rodrik Cassel said when Bran asked him why they howled. Lyanna's lady mother had named her Lady of Winterfell in her mother's absence, and her duties left her little time for idle questions. She made Lyanna promise to take care of Bran and Rickon.
"It's freedom they're calling for," declared Farlen, who was kennelmaster and had no more love for the direwolves than his hounds did. "They don't like being walled up, and who's to blame them? Wild things belong in the wild, not in a castle."
"They want to hunt," agreed Gage the cook as he tossed cubes of suet in a great kettle of stew. "A wolf smells better'n any man. Like as not, they've caught the scent o' prey."
Maester Luwin did not think so. "Wolves often howl at the moon. These are howling at the comet. See how bright it is, Lyanna? Perchance they think it is the moon."
When Lyanna repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. "Your wolves have more wit than your maester," the wildling woman said. "They know truths the grey man has forgotten." The way she said it made him shiver, and when she asked what the comet meant, she answered, "Blood and fire, lady, and nothing sweet."
Lyanna asked Septon Chayle about the comet while they were sorting through some scrolls snatched from the library fire. "It is the sword that slays the season," he replied, and soon after the white raven came from Oldtown bringing word of autumn, so doubtless he was right.
Though Old Nan did not think so, and she'd lived longer than any of them. "Dragons," she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. "It be dragons, lady," she insisted.
Hodor said only, "Hodor." That was all he ever said.
And still the direwolves howled. The guards on the walls muttered curses, hounds in the kennels barked furiously, horses kicked at their stalls, the Walders shivered by their fire, and even Maester Luwin complained of sleepless nights. Only Lyanna did not mind. Ser Rodrik had confined the wolves to the godswood after Shaggydog bit Little Walder, but the stones of Winterfell played queer tricks with sound, and sometimes it sounded as if they were in the yard right below Lyanna's window. Other times she would have sworn they were up on the curtain walls, loping round like sentries.
She could see the comet hanging above the Guards Hall and the Bell Tower, and farther back the First Keep, squat and round, its gargoyles black shapes against the bruised purple dusk.
Summer had howled the day Bran had fallen, and for long after as he lay broken in his bed; Robb had told him so before he went away to war. Summer had mourned for him, and Shaggydog and Visenya. Grey Wind had joined in his grief. And the night the bloody raven had brought word of their father's death, the wolves had known that too. Lyanna had been in the maester's turret with Rickon and Bran talking of the children of the forest when Summer, Visenya and Shaggydog had drowned out Luwin with their howls.
Who are they mourning now? Had some enemy slain the King in the North, who used to be her brother Robb? Had her bastard brother Jon Snow fallen from the Wall? Had her mother died, or one of her sisters? Or was this something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?
If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song, she thought wistfully. In her wolf dreams, her could race up the sides of mountains, jagged icy mountains taller than any tower. Bran had similar dreams as Lyanna, but Bran's dreams were much different.
Lyanna has Tully's auburn thick hair like her twin brother, Robb. She has blue eyes like his and the Tully's, her father had named her after his sister, she and Robb are near the age of sixteen, Robb was born first before Lyanna.
Her father had died, he had been beheaded by the King's commands for treason, Sansa and Arya are kept in King's Landing as hostages by the hands of Lannisters and the King's. Her mother is gone with Robb who is now the King in the North and both are gone to war. Lyanna had been left to act as Lady of Winterfell and Bran had to stay because there has to be a male Stark to stay in Winterfell. Her bastard half-brother, Jon Snow is serving at Night's Watch at the Wall. Lyanna, Bran and Rickon are remained in Winterfell.
"Oooo," Bran cried tentatively. He cupped his hands around his mouth and lifted his head to the comet. "Ooooooooooooooooooo, ahooooooooooooooo," he howled. it sounded stupid, high and hollow and quavering, a little boy's howl, not a wolf's. Yet Summer gave answer, his deep voice drowning out Bran's thin one, and Shaggydog made it a chorus. Bran haroooed again. They howled together, last of their pack.
"Stop it, Bran" Lyanna pleaded "You'll startle the guards"
The noise brought a guard to his door, Hayhead with the wen on his nose. He peered in, saw Bran howling out the window, and said, "What's this, my prince?"
It made Bran feel queer when they called him prince, though he was Robb's heir, and Robb was King in the North now. He turned his head to howl at the guard. "Oooooooo. Oo-oo-oooooooooooo."
Hayhead screwed up his face. "Now you stop that there."
"Ooo-ooo-Oooooo. Ooo-Ooo-Ooooooooooooooooo."
"It's okay, he does this a lot" Lyanna told the guard who came in.
The guardsman retreated. When he came back, Maester Luwin was with him, all in grey, his chain tight about his neck. "Bran, those beasts make sufficient noise without your help." He crossed the room and put his hand on the boy's brow. "The hour grows late, you ought to be fast asleep."
"I'm talking to the wolves." Bran brushed the hand away.
"Shall I have Hayhead carry you to your bed?" Lyanna asked
"I can get to bed myself." Mikken had hammered a row of iron bars into the wall, so Bran could pull himself about the room with his arms. He hated being carried. Lyanna noticed that. "Anyway, I don't have to sleep if I don't want to."
"All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes." Luwin said.
"When I sleep I turn into a wolf." Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. That made Lyanna to feel fear of sleeping. "Do wolves dream?"
"All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do." Luwin said.
"Do dead men dream?" Bran asked.
"Some say yes, some no," the maester answered. "The dead themselves are silent on the matter."
"Do trees dream?"
"Trees? No . . . "
"They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."
That is why Bran's dreams are different than Lyanna's.
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. "If you would only spend more time with the other children-"
"I hate the other children," Bran said, meaning the Walders. "I commanded you to send them away."
Luwin grew stern. "The Freys are your lady mother's wards, sent here to be fostered at her express command. It is not for you to expel them, nor is it kind. If we turned them out, where would they go?"
"Home. It's their fault you won't let me have Summer."
"The Frey boy did not ask to be attacked," the maester said, "no more than I did."
"That was Shaggydog." Rickon's big black wolf was so wild he even frightened Bran and Lyanna at times. "Summer never bit anyone."
"Summer ripped out a man's throat in this very chamber, or have you forgotten? The truth is, those sweet pups you and your brothers found in the snow have grown into dangerous beasts. The Frey boys are wise to be wary of them."
Lyanna remembered that night when someone tried to murder her brother while he was in coma, but Summer saved him and killed the assassin.
"We should put the Walders in the godswood. They could play lord of the crossing all they want, and Summer could sleep with me again. If I'm the prince, why won't you heed me? I wanted to ride Dancer, but Alebelly wouldn't let me past the gate."
"And rightly so. The wolfswood is full of danger; your last ride should have taught you that. Would you want some outlaw to take you captive and sell you to the Lannisters?"
"Summer would save me," Bran insisted stubbornly. "Princes should be allowed to sail the sea and hunt boar in the wolfswood and joust with lances."
"Bran, child, why do you torment yourself so? One day you may do some of these things, but now you are only a boy of eight."
"I'd sooner be a wolf. Then I could live in the wood and sleep when I wanted, and I could find Arya and Sansa. I'd smell where they were and go save them, and when Robb went to battle I'd fight beside him like Grey Wind. I'd tear out the Kingslayer's throat with my teeth, rip, and then the war would be over and everyone would come back to Winterfell. If I was a wolf . . . " He howled. "Ooo-ooo-oooooooooooo."
"Bran" Lyanna sighed, "You should sleep"
Luwin raised his voice. "A true prince would welcome-"
"AAHOOOOOOO," Bran howled, louder. "AAHOOOOOOOOOOOO."
Lyanna sighed again, she thought Bran was being silly and the dreams had got him into this.
The maester surrendered. "As you will, child." With a look that was part grief and part disgust, he left the bedchamber.
"You want me to leave?" Lyanna asked her brother.
"If you want to" Bran muttered, "I'd like you to join me"
"Join you?" Lyanna was confused.
"Talking to the wolves" Bran said, "Summer, Shaggydog and Visenya"
"You can't talk to wolves, Bran" she told him, "unless you're one of them"
"I understand them in my dreams"
She nearly forgot about Rickon. She sighed again, "I have to go check on Rickon, see if he's sleeping, I'll come back in an hour and I better see you sleeping by then"
Bran frowned and then nodded.
Lyanna left the bedchamber to check on her baby brother, Rickon.