THE QUEEN BEYOND THE WALL

Story the Fifth: The Little Greenseer

The Riverlands are a wilder and more wooded region than the Reach, but nevertheless dotted with villages and keeps worth visiting. Passing by the Gods' Eye and watching the black ruins of Harrenhal mirrored in the tranquil lake against the evening twilight makes the Maid of Tarth think of the finity of greatness. How many times did she, as a child, ever hear the tale of the Ironborn king who spent his life on raising a fortress that he thought never would fall! Nowadays, the empty walls branded by dragonfire serve as a prison for the Lannisters' enemies, and a curse hangs over the fallen keep, dark and veiled by the evening fog. She encamps near the ruins on her own, in a run-down outpost of the long-gone Ironborn.
The Riverlands were once a land of war, every confluence a battlefield made immortal by history and folktale alike. Like the Reach, this is another region she long time dreamed to visit. The Trident is a wider river than the Mander, and, from a window in the Inn at the Crossroads, the Maid even sees barges sailing down the stream to Riverrun and further on towards the Bay of Crabs.
She would, next day, have gladly crossed the Trident at the Confluence Ford (which another timeline might have named the Ruby Ford), but a whim of her youthful spirit soon leads to complications for her. Instead of crossing at the Confluence Ford to follow the Kingsroad, the Maid has decided to follow the Red Fork and then cross all three of the Forks one by one at their sources. The reason why? She longs to visit Fairmarket, a quaint village and marketplace by the Blue Fork, just like any other in the Riverlands... on whose outskirts a great battle once spelled defeat and the fall of an empire for the Stormland army against an invading Ironborn host. More precisely, she wishes to ride across the battlefield of yore, now turned into a peaceful meadow for cattle pasture.
The innkeeper, Masha Heddle, a slightly overweight good woman in her forties, warns Brienne not to try that route. She gives the maiden but three words of caution, as many as the Forks that join at the confluence: "Beware the Freys". Yet Brienne has already saddled her steed and galloped away along the Red Fork: her youthful heart, in its enthusiasm, does not heed the wise advice of her elders.
Along the River Road does she ride, up to the border with the Westerlands, to cross the Red Fork at the open field where herds of Riverland Red cattle quietly graze, and the sept tower of Fairmarket rises like an only eminence. While riding across these meadows and crossing the Blue Fork, Brienne can only think of her countrymen who sleep in an eternal trance beneath covers of tall grass and modest wildflowers. Spending the night at Fairmarket Inn, she surprises the locals by revealing that she is a Stormlander. The whole community has looked at her like a local celebrity, though in a much more modest way than the courtiers of the Reach.
The next day, as she follows the course of the Green Fork, the third tributary, she can only think of the defeat that the Stormlanders faced on the battlefield, and of the downfall of her region's golden days. Perchance a Tarth ancestor is earthed in these ripe meadows, having left a widowed lady and fatherless children to mourn the fallen hero. Only the Warrior knows, and the Stranger as well.
Brienne has spent the night in the ruins of Oldstones, at the source of the Blue Fork, and, the next morning, she quenches her thirst in one of the rills, and then crosses the confluences of the many rills that join to make up this river. This day, she will have more treacherous waters to cross...
In the middle of the slightly swampy, fertile lowlands, twin keeps, with a lone tower in their midst, stretch across the Green Fork across a massive bridge of gray granite. The river, swollen with the recent rains, flows surging impetuously, so that the twin castles prove the only crossing across the rapids. Brienne has no other choice than to cross at this stone bridge. She is completely unaware of which consequences her decision may have.
To make things even worse, dark storm clouds cross the skies, concealing the sun, and a violent downpour forces Brienne to seek shelter at the twin keeps. The guards at the gate of the western one welcome her in, their blue doublets decorated with a silver crest that displays the twin keeps:
"Welcome, dear stranger, to the Twins, the seat of House Frey."
That evening, the Maid knows no words to thank the elderly Lord Frey, whose immense family she is surprised to be introduced to, for a pot of warm soup and a nice soft bed, in which she is snuggled up until way after daybreak. After having broken her fast on a few fried freshwater fish and some good ale, she takes to her steed and gallops across the granite bridge, not heeding old Lord Walder Frey's words that she should pay her toll. Indeed, she has offered them her breastplate and her canteen, but the Lord of the Crossing has also demanded Oathkeeper, and she needs her blade more than anything else to save her friend. So she's departed with all of her valuables, fending off squires in blue Frey livery, to the other side of the Green Fork and onto the Kingsroad. A small army of Frey men is still on her heels, and she cannot rest by day nor at night, always fleeing, until her mare is sinking in the swamps of the Neck, with a weary rider on her back, completely surrounded by soldiers in silver and blue.
"Now we've got you!", the leader, a scar-faced and ill-shaven sellsword, says. "Pay the price, or else, shame will fall upon..." He staggers and he falls, the middle prong of a trident-like frog spear thrust in between his shoulder blades. The other soldiers grow defiant: "You frog eaters!" The crannogmaiden who had thrust her spear into the officer's back lunges at the other Frey sellswords, as a tall and sturdy young man with a dark-haired child on his back also attacks the detachment, and a cream-coloured wolf the size of a pony bites the same soldiers, who are subsequently scared enough to retreat southward.
Then, the crannogmaiden offers the Maid of Tarth her spear to lean on and shows her out of the quicksand. The young crannogmaiden is about the same age as Brienne, but more slender and shorter, narrow-shouldered and darker of skin, with long dark brown hair. Her large green eyes sparkle with defiance.
"Reed. Meera Reed. Fear not. We shall be friends and travel together. We need a warrior like you on our side. I suppose you are a veteran knight?"
"I have fought in a tourney recently. By the way... my name's Brienne, and I come from Tarth, in the Stormlands."
"Pleased to meet you, Brienne. But first, let's introduce my fellowship, shan't we? Meet my younger brother Jojen." A crannoglad about Edric's age, dark and green-eyed like Meera, waves his hands from a treetop. "Our companions. Bran Stark of Winterfell, and Hodor. He can't say any other word."
"Hodor!", the large young man says, with a smile on his face. Now Brienne is completely sure that the little boy is Bran, as Jojen points downwards to the pony-sized wolf:
"And Summer, our pet direwolf". The Maid is impressed by the appearance of a beast of legend. "In these fens, nothing is ordinary." She had hitherto thought that direwolves did not exist, and that crannogfolk breathed underwater with gills, their hands and feet webbed like those of frogs. Now that she sees that these people have lungs and limbs just like hers, she is prepared for anything she may encounter on her quest.
"I'm sorry that your horse sank into the marsh", Jojen apologizes in a calm and kindly tone. "You can try to ride Summer instead." Not wanting to walk through the treacherous swamp like her guides do, she agrees and strokes the fur on the surprisingly friendly direwolf's warm back. Summer is, after all, a steed as trusty as any other.
The little band has now marched together until not long before sunset. They are now in the very heart of the Neck fens. Large green logs bask in the misty marsh sunshine, displaying ominous chartreuse eyes. From the swampy ground and shallow lagoons rise islands of reeds, on which villages of modest reed huts dot the now foggy landscape. The people of the little band stick together not to part ways, get lost in the fog or sink into the quicksand. The Maid of Tarth clings to Summer's fur as strongly as she can.
"Hodor!" Hodor loudly shouts.
"Our crannogs", Meera says. "Thank the gods we have make it in time! At dusk, the lizard-lions start prowling the fens for their prey... Teeth like daggers. You wouldn't like to come across one."
They are now inside a little hut on a crannog, a hut that Meera usually shares with her brother, and now with the young Stormlander as well. The crannoglad is listening to Brienne's story attentively, while his sister has ventured to the edge of the crannog to catch frogs and fish with her spear. The evening twilight filters, red and warm, through the reed walls of the thatched hut.
Brienne has told Jojen her whole story so far, and he has listened attentively, making clever remarks at every turn in spite of being an illiterate young crannoglad. This boy is more mature than Edric, in fact, he is too mature for his age. Reserved and poised Jojen reminds Brienne of a character in a tale she once heard: "a youth in appearance, yet an elder in wisdom."
Soon, Meera enters, her reed belt laden with green frogs that they will have to eat raw, in the style of crannogfolk. At first, Brienne disagrees, but watching the siblings and not wanting to starve or to be uncourteous, she finally joins in. The raw frogs taste bland, neither too good nor too bad. Then, after supper, all three prepare to lie down on their bed of reeds. Meera will sleep with her spear, standing guard should enemies attack.
"Tell me more", the crannoglad says. "About Jaime, and the Stormlands, and the other places and people you have seen".
Inside the hut it's warm and moist, and, suddenly, Jojen falls unconscious on the bed of reeds, falling suddenly asleep. Before going to bed themselves, Meera tells Brienne that her little brother is a greenseer: a person whose dreams foretell things to come, and they never fail. Ever since he came down with a lethal fever as a child, Jojen has had this strange gift.
Upon taking off her breastplate, Brienne reveals to her crannogmaiden host that she is a woman, which surprises Meera, but does not seem to faze her, since both of them are warriors.
The Maid reflects on all the strange things she has encountered this day: crannogfolk, a direwolf, a greenseer, and even Hodor. This night, she dreams of being in the Reach once more, getting married to Jaime where Renly and Margaery should be.
The next day, while breaking their fast on raw frogs speared by Meera, the young boy tells the other two who occupy the hut about the dream he had last night. In it, Brienne ventured into an ice cave during a snowstorm. The winds and sleet dashed wildly about her, until, in the end, she managed to enter and find, at the end of the cave, a golden light which was fading away, but grew stronger in her presence and enveloped her.
The Stormlander listens to Jojen attentively, since the crannoglad is giving the account of his dream in the same solemn tone that a septon would use during a religious service. She interprets the green dream as a vision of her reunion with Jaime Lannister. So it is, but the lad warns her that the task will be full of hardships.
"Anyway... hardships have I endured from Tarth to these fens!"
"We're also heading up north", Meera tells the female knight. "North of the Wall, past the outposts of the Night's Watch. We will need their aid to open the gate. So will you."
"If that should be a problem... I believe Jaime has enlisted."
"Not I", the young greenseer calmly replies. "I had a dream about three or four moon-turns ago. A dream in which a white whirlwind of snow carried a young man up in the air, above the Wall and across it. His hair was like beaten gold, and there was a golden lion on his scarlet doublet, just like your missing friend Jaime."
The Maid has never seen before so young a body with so old a head. And thus, she is fully convinced of all the things that the little greenseer says. Her golden-haired friend having gone further than the Wall...
So he is beyond the Wall, still wearing the Lannister colours... That is definitely a fate worse than taking the black! Does that mean that Jaime has become a wight? Can live people become wights, and can these become human again? How will they get past the border and into the unknown wastes? The little band comprised of a direwolf, a crippled boy and his Hodor, a Stormland knight, a crannoglad, and a crannogmaiden set off along the Kingsroad early that morning.
During a pause in the trek, the little Stark boy confirms Brienne's suspicions:
"I have seen Jaime Lannister. A good-looking yet pale and harsh young man with hair as bright as the summer sun, dressed in gold and scarlet, was soaring above my head, his face buried in the arms of the Night's Queen, as I climbed up a ruined tower of Winterfell to feed our crows some corn. Then, he pushed me off the tower wall as he, with a piercing glare and a sharp voice, said: 'The things I do for love.' Ever since, my legs cannot carry me, yet Hodor has been my way of moving, and Summer as well when I warg into him."
The freckled maiden shudders as she hears these words. Has Jaime grown so cold that he would gladly shove a child off a great height just to have some privacy? For a while, with her head buried in her hands, she thinks of that, yet her hunch that she will somehow make him regain his reason banishes such frightful news from her consciousness.
In the evening of the same day, while spending the night in the holdfast ruins of Moat Cailin, in the courtyard between the three towers, Brienne decides that she should offer her aid to the Night's Watch, having been able to pass for a young man so far during her trek across Westeros. The plan is accepted by the rest of the fellowship.
The Kingsroad now winds through the endless wastes of the North: hilly plains dotted with barrows give way to vast pinewood forests dark as night, half-frozen lakes, and harsh granite hills, in which a hamlet or a holdfast is always a welcome sight. But the Maid of Tarth and her companions most often encamp around a fire by a lake, in which Meera spears fish for supper and for breakfast. When they encamp, it's always by a lake, from which a few perches speared through the broken ice, roasted over the campfire, are better than nothing at all. The North is vast, and cold, and dire: ostensibly hostile, yet beautiful in its pristine harshness. Every day, the air gets colder, the night gets longer, and the wolfskins that Meera packed in the crannog come finally to good use, as the live wolfskin called Summer does.
Bran tells the Maid that his stepbrother is Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. She wonders what he may be like. The fellowship's trek is now growing long.
For two days, they encamp by the Long Lake, the largest one in the North. On the third, it starts to snow at dusk, and they cross a frozen river to reach the half-wooden fortress on its other shore. Here, at Last Hearth, the Umbers give the Maid and her fellows a hearty welcome, with a good warm supper the like of which Brienne had not had since she slept at the Twins.
On the very next day, the maiden, the crannogfolk, and their followers wake up and break their fast as heartily as they had had supper: with mulled wine and roast salmon. The Umbers also give them bearskins to wrap themselves in against the colder winter weather. The young people leave Last Hearth to find a calm and beautiful forest covered in deep snow. Summer gallops as fast as he can with Brienne on his back, as an Umber freerider drives the other members of the fellowship, in a large wooden sleigh, towards the Wall.
Around nightfall, Brienne and her friends can see the lights of Castle Black shining like warm stars in the distance. And, behind the outpost, they behold the great ice Wall that stretches as far as they can see, so high it can reach the sky, dyed in various warm colours by the evening twilight.