A Game of Thrones - Winter Chills | AGameOfThrones-WinterChills / The Kingsroad: Evan browse

"Come," said the woman, and she moved forward, gesturing to Kenrith and his escorts to follow her. The man waited ntil they had moved away along a track into the marsh, and then smiled up at Evan.

Evan followed the girl with his eyes once she had turned away, a slightly mistrustful expression writ on his face, but he said nothing. Donnell's look of apprehension was much more pronounced, and Evan simply met his gaze until they were out of sight in the marsh.

"I shall show you where you can store your weapons. We will guard them together."

He started off, taking another track away from the road. As he moved into the marcsh he paused, looking back over his shoulder. "I knew you would come. That is why you must take the crow road."

The horse seemed uneasy, either from the encroaching storm, the uneven marsh trail, or the eerie presence of the crannogman - most likely a combination of the three. Evan nudged it along behind, the weapons slung over its rump clanking rhythmically and offsetting the rustling of the storm winds in the trees. Evan ducked low in the saddle to avoid a hanging branch, and quirked an eyebrow at the crannogman's statement. "I must take the crow road to ensure you don't know where I'm travelling to? Surely you don't mean that." He gave a little half-smile. "Perhaps we should make introductions. They call me Evan Tamm."

"Names can be deceptive," responded the other. "They also call you the Northern Blade. Some have said your name is Snow." He turned and looked at Evan fully. "Names can be deceptive."

The smile was gone from Evan's face now, and he reined in the horse, suddenly aware that the crannogman had green eyes too, just like the girl. Maybe they all had green eyes. He met that viridian gaze steadily, fighting the urge to look away. "Deceptive," he repeated, chewing on the inside of his lip.

A pause, and then the crannogman nodded. "They call me Darron Farsight - but that is deceptive too. The green dreams don't come with the clarity of a still lake that shows your face truly. They are splashes of water thrown in your face. Or a deep, green pool where you may drown. And while you dream, it is hard to tell the difference."

He started to walk again. "I knew you would come, and that you would be the one to take the crow road. Your dreams await you."

He pointed ahead to what looked like a low hump of woven reed. Only as they came closer did Evan see it was actually a dwelling, the entrance angled so that it was at least half underground. The horse snorted unhappily.

Evan paused in the saddle, and looked up at the greying sky, the first fat droplets of rain already starting to come down, making little craters in the mud. He dismounted gracefully and started removing the harness. "You do not mean the Kingsroad," he said flatly. "Where does this crow road lead?" Even as he asked, he knew it would be a futile question - such answers were not easily given. "Roads have a beginning and an end - the crow road must start somewhere, and it must end somewhere."

"Yes," said Darron. "You have walked the part of the road that mortal men can walk, for today. The rest of the road - the crow must journey towards you, if it wills."

The horse was unsaddled now, and Evan slung the harness over a shoulder, tossing the large pile of swords, maces, and other such weapons of war into a corner of the reed dwelling's entrance. "Lead on," he said simply.

There was an area of the dwelling where the horse could be stabled - and then there was another area for human habitation - a circular area of beaten earth around a central fire sunk into the earth, with a clay oven built over it. There was a smell of baking bread from the oven, and a meaty smell from a pot set to one side. Darron at once set about organising the food - fresh coarse bread served with a stew with a slightly strange flavour - if Evan was called upon to eat frogs, at least they were unrecognizable in this form. Even as Darron was serving this, he was scattering some herbs from a small pot to one side. While they were eating, the scent seemed invogorating, but once the meal was over and Darron took the dishes away, Evan found himself becoming surprisingly sleepy.

He dropped the hunk of bread he was absently chewing on with a start, looking down in it with widening eyes. Clumsily, Evan lurched to his feet, already unable to feel his hands and feet. "What have you fed me, you filthy little..." His face was growing numb too, as it did when he was too heavily in his cups, and he laboured to put one foot in front of the other.

Darron simply looked at him with equanimity, his head cocked to one side in the manner of a beast, curious without making any judgement. Evan's mouth worked soundlessly, and he swept the herbal pot from the table clumsily, sending it and the low wooden table crashing to the sod floor. His dimming mind tried to guess how far it was to his mace, and he turned his head with agonising slowness - the pile of weapons was still by the door, a lifetime away. He turned back to Darron, and those green eyes seemed to blaze, brighter than the fire, glowing until they filled his swimming vision. Evan reached out, trying to grab the smaller crannogman, but his eyes failed him, and he slumped to his knees, every breath a struggle, the fight going out of him. Again, he struggled to rise, but his fingers simply dug furrows in the floor, and then even they relaxed. Darron bent over him, resting one hand on his shoulder, an almost pitying note in his voice.

"Rest now," said Darron. "If the crow wills it, you will dream."

He led Evan to a low bed, the base made of woven reeds, a mattress of duck feathers, and surprisingly comfortable.

Evan's eyes were already closed when he hit the bed, the last of his resistance ebbing away. "Pray I don't wake, crannogman," he tried to say, but he had no idea if any sound came from his mouth before darkness claimed him.

It was darkness he was spinning down into, falling, always falling. But there was something beating at his face - soft, insistent.

The beating of black wings came to him, slow and rhythmic, but growing more insistent, a throbbing pulse in his ears as the green darkness enveloped him. He tried to struggle against it, but it was like moving through mud, as it simply absorbed his strength and flowed around him. The wings were beating louder now, and Evan realised that they were not just wingbeats, but heartbeats - his own heart, pounding in his ears, and he tried to remember the last time he'd taken a breath.

The green darkness was mud now, not just mud, but water, the thick, dank water of the marsh. Evan fought to hold his breath, the foul, stagnant water already filling his mouth and nostrils, and he tried to force himself upwards, desperate to break the surface. His limbs swung slowly, heavily, and after a couple of strokes, he went limp - in the darkness, he had no idea which direction the surface was anyway. Panic started to swell within him - was this actually a dream? Or was it just his dying mind interpreting his own death, as he succumbed to the crannogman's poisons? /This is the crow dream/, he told himself, trying to convince himself of the fact. /I cannot die in the crow dream./ He flailed helplessly in the swamp water, blind and deaf, his mind as lost as he was. /This is not real. I am Evan Tamm, sleeping in the reed bed. I am not drowning. I am Evan Tamm./

~Names can be deceptive.~ Darron's words came back to him, as if from a long way off, and there was no voice he could put to them - it certainly was not Darron's voice he heard, nor any other human's.

He felt a calm spread through him at the words, though, and he realised that they were true - names were not only deceptive, but mutable, here in the crow dream. /Here, I do not have to be Evan Tamm./ He reached out with one hand, feeling the caress of reeds and swamp weed, slick against his skin. /Here, I am.../

He became the eel, slippery and slimy, darting through the murk with an unerring sense of direction. There were others, above and below, and all around, swimming powerfully with the current, and fish as well, trout and perch and pike, the green water around him a busy roadway full of flashing silver bodies. He felt the eel's dim snatches of thought along his own, the primal urges of hunger and mating - for a brief instant they flared red and bright in his mind, seizing his emotions, then, just as quick, they were gone, vanished into the green gloom as the eel's small mind noticed something else. He knew it was just a dream, but the implications of what he was seeing gnawed at the part of Evan's mind that remained human. He was a child of the North - he knew the legends. /Skinchanger,/ he thought, remembering the childhood tales of the children of the forest and the ancient wildling men who learned their lore. Then the animal instincts of the eel swept him away again, and he was the eel, rushing downriver and only dimly aware of his destination.

The water cleared eventually, and he knew somehow that he was far to the south, in the Riverland area where he had travelled so recently. /So far,/ he thought. /So far from home, yet I came here, and further still./ He tried to remember why he had come so far, struggling to bring back human memories to the animal mind of the eel. Nothing - just flashes, brief ghostly images in his mind's eye. A long, muddy road that seemed to stretch forever into the distance, a kindly older woman with tears in her eyes. His memories wriggled away, like the fish around him, but even so, Evan suddenly felt the water pressing around him again, a suffocating, cloying sensation, and he swam, writhing, to the surface, seeking the air and the feel of grass under his feet, the sun on his face.

He became the lion, powerful and proud, prowling through the forests and hills of the Riverlands and the mountains of the west. The part of his mind that remained human was momentarily puzzled - there were no lions in Westeros, not since before the days of the First Men. *This is the crow dream,* he heard, as if from a long way off. *You cannot only see with two eyes here.* Then voices and human speech were gone, and all he felt was the ripple of muscles under his coat and the power in his limbs, the scent of prey on the wind and the roars of the other lions in his hunting party. And there were others, now - cutting through the undergrowth like ghosts, ahead and around, and bounding from the trees towards the village in the valley below. The low huts and wooden palisade of the village seemed to huddle like deer in the grass, and the lions fell upon them like the predators they were, leaping the walls, crashing through the buildings and rampaging in the muddy streets. The sensations roared through him, but he felt them all as if from a great distance, strangely detached. He tasted the blood in his mouth, heard the screams of terror and death rattles, and felt the tearing of flesh under his claws, but even as he felt bloodlust surge through the lion, it did not impact on the part of his mind that remained human.

He paused in the middle of the bloody scene, looking around at the carnage. The wooden gate of the palisade still held, just barely, but as Evan watched, a giant lion, larger than the rest and glowing like burnished gold, battered it down with one strike of its paw, rushing inside. He turned away, and saw another lion, near the edge of the trees, scratch at itself and shuck its skin like a snake. Beneath the tawny fur of the lion, its skin was grey and black, and with another wriggle, the lion left its fur behind, and bounded off into the forest wearing the skin of a boar. That seemed odd to him, but then the words came back to him. *You cannot see with only two eyes here,* they said, and he turned his head to see where they came from. On his powerful shoulder, a crow perched, and as they looked at each other, the crow's third eye opened, golden where its other two were black. *You have seen enough here,* it said, and the voice clearly belonged to it now, croaking and harsh. *It is time to go home.*

/How will I go home?/ he asked, and the crow did not respond, but dug its talons deep into the fur of his shoulder in response. Agony flared briefly, but then it seemed to detach itself, as so many of these sensations had, and he looked with nothing more than morbid curiosity as the crow stripped the fur from his shoulder and flank in long, bloody ribbons.

He became the crow, swift and silent, flying high above the mountains and rivers, soaring on the air currents with the beating of black wings. Ahead, he saw the white-capped mountains of the North, and further still, so distant that they seemed merely a hazy mirage, the crags beyond the Wall. The green sea that was the marshes of the Neck flew by beneath, so fast, and soon he was beyond that and soaring over the wolfwood and the harsh terrain of the North.

The blue expanse of a lake stretched out below, and he looked down to see if he could see the crow he was reflected there. For a moment, he saw a black dot against the grey sky, but then his eyes were drawn to the shore, where two figures stood on a barren strip of small rocks. One, the woman, was dark, and held a naked sword before her, point resting on the ground. The one with her stood just behind and beside her, and he was a man, fair, a bright speck of shining gold against the stony shore. And then the dark woman on the shore looked up, and stared straight at him, and beautiful as she was, he felt his head swimming to meet her gaze even across such a distance. He blinked, and then noticed that the man and woman were not on the shore at all, but only reflected in the grey mirror of the lake, as if they were but spectres, frozen reflections that could somehow still see him from whatever limbo they stood in.

He turned for the Wall then, just a thin black line at the limit of his vision, but then he felt himself turn back, towards the east, as if the crow whose skin he wore would not let him direct himself for the moment. Instead, he started to descend, and a walled castle became visible below, pennons still flying high in the last of the summer breezes. /Holdfast,/ he thought, and indeed, the oaken staff of the Hardys flew from every battlement. Slowly now, he circled the highest towers, around the largest of the flags, and Evan watched the oaken staff on the flag blur, and change slowly to a sword that burned with black, living flames. He wondered about that, but then he was landing on one of the highest balconies, his talons gripping the rail, his wings folding to his sides.

Two women stood on the balcony next to him, but they paid him little notice, just a cursory glance. He turned to regard them, cocking his head to the side in the manner of birds, recalling that it was similar to the manner Darron and Wendla had looked at him. One of the girls was angelic, fair as only an artist's rendition could be fair, and the other, while less flawless, was no less beautiful, her face alive and animated. They seemed to be deep in conversation about something, though he could not hear, as if they were a great distance away, or their words were being snatched away by the wind. He wondered who they were, and hopped a little closer along the rail. He suddenly felt the irrational urge to flap, caw, anything to attract attention to himself, but then the crow's voice broke into his consciousness again.

~It is time,~ it croaked, and a spot on his forehead ached a little, where he had seen the crow's third eye. *Time to go home.*

The morning after the storm dawned cold and grey in the marsh, but the air was clean and crisp, the cloying marsh scents washed away for the moment by the downpour. Evan struggled out of the reed bed, but his head was surprisingly clear, despite his difficult dreams. At the firepit, Darron was scraping the pots from the night before, and did not seem to have noticed his guest rise. For a moment, Evan rubbed his eyes, the memories of the dream still afire in his mind, then, without a word, he went to the weapons he had left in the doorway and hefted his mace.

At his approach, Darron turned, without surprise, and regarded him with equanimity. For a long moment they stared at each other, eye to eye, a tableau frozen in time, barely an arm's reach separating them. Darron had not moved from the floor where he sat, but after a time, he returned to the pot, saying nothing.

Evan broke the silence, the sound of his voice almost unnaturally harsh in the quiet hut. "You drugged me without my knowledge, crannogman, despite your offer of hospitality. I have not forgotten that."

Darron shrugged, still not looking up. "I saw you on the crow road, and I knew you would have the crow dream. What must be must be. The green dreams do not lie."

"What must be must be," Evan repeated, the mace still loosely gripped in his hand. His eyes burned into the top of the crannogman's head. "Did your green dreams also show you what I would do, after you gave me this vision?"

Darron looked up at him then, his green eyes unafraid. "If they had, they would be showing the truth, showing what will come to pass. And so there would be little use in resisting what must be. No matter what."

Evan nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line. "No matter what," he agreed.

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