“She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night.”

“I need to sleep, but fear to dream.”

“All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes.”“When I sleep I turn into a wolf.” Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. “Do wolves dream?”“All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do.”“Do dead men dream?” Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father’s likeness in granite.“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.”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.”

“When I sleep I turn into a wolf. Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. Do wolves dreams?”

“She had killed him with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate.”

“I must not sleep. If he slept, he might dream.”

“Asha Greyjoy did not intend to be taken alive. She would die as she had lived, with an axe in her hand and a laugh upon her lips.”