A Clash of Kings — Bran V

While Winterfell's strength is away, Bran opens his third eye: the wolf dreams are not dreams, Jojen says, and the sea is very near now.

The chapter retold

With Winterfell’s strength drawn away chasing sieges elsewhere, Bran opens his third eye properly for the first time, guided by Jojen’s patient insistence that the wolf-dreams are not dreams at all but something closer to a gift he was born with and has been afraid to use. The sensation of running as Summer, seeing through his direwolf’s eyes while his own body lies still in bed, stops feeling like an escape and starts feeling like a second, truer self.

Jojen’s warning underneath the lesson is the chapter’s real weight: the sea is very near now, he says again, and Bran — however far his gift has grown — still has no power to stop whatever is actually coming. The ironborn fleet, unnamed and unseen, is closing on a castle that has just sent away most of the men who might have defended it.

This movement: The Kraken in the Godswood

• Theon takes Winterfell with thirty men while its strength bleeds south; Ser Rodrik's rescue is betrayed by Reek.
• Bran and Rickon vanish; two miller's boys hang tarred above the gate in their place.
• A bread riot nearly eats the court; the High Septon is torn apart in the streets.
• In Qarth, the warlocks invite Dany to the House of the Undying; she walks out through fire with Drogon screaming.