good evening and always walk with the shadows . I sit hear re reading the books and paying close attention to the stories old nan use to tell. I have a feeling like I always did that they hold more knowledge as to whats to come then they let on .
Old Nan's stories
Book 1
Game of Thrones
The first Bran's chapter, he
is going to see the execution.
He [Bran] remembered the hearth tales Old
Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and
slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole
girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished
horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire
terrible half-human children.
The same chapter, Bran talks to Eddard.
“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry
off women and sell them to the Others.”
His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been
telling you stories again."
The same chapter, Catelyn talks to Eddard.
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She
glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes,
watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts. His smile was
gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories.”
The second Bran's chapter,
right before he sees Jaime and Cersei.
His father would be the Hand of the King, and they
were going to live in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle
the Dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there were ghosts there, and
dungeons where terrible things had been done, and dragon heads on the
walls.
Same chapter, further on.
Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy
who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how
afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes.
The fourth Bran's chapter,
he is paralyzed.
“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly,
remembering the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I can’t even
run.”
“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from
the chair where she sat doing her needlework. “I know a story about
a crow."
“I hate your stupid stories.”
The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. “My
stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and
after me, before you too.”
[...]
“I know a story about a boy who hated stories,”
Old Nan said.
[...]
“I could tell you the story about Brandon the
Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always your favorite.”
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the
Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the
story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other
Brandons had liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if
he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and
sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by
the Mad King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother
had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person
in her head.
“That’s not my favorite,” he said. “My
favorites were the scary ones.”
“Oh, my sweet summer child,” Old Nan said
quietly, “what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my
little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind
comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the
sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born
and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and
hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.”
“You mean the Others,” Bran said querulously.
“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “Thousands and
thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and
endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a
generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the
swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather
than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their
cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up
at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, “So, child. This is the
sort of story you like?”
“Well,” Bran said reluctantly, “yes, only...
Old Nan nodded. “In that darkness, the Others
came for the first time,” she said as her needles went click click
click. “They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and
fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in
its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled
heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and
leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay
their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in
them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their
dead servants on the flesh of human children.”
Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a
whisper, and Bran found himself leaning forward to listen.
“Now these were the days before the Andals came,
and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities
of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the
kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the
children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the
woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow
hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death
filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children,
in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies
of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a
horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he
despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret
cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even
his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried
to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came
silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders
big as hounds-”
The door opened with a bang, and Bran’s heart
leapt up into his mouth in sudden fear, but it was only Maester
Luwin, with Hodor looming in the stairway behind him.
The same chapter, Yoren tells that Benjen is
missing.
All Bran could think of was Old Nan’s story of
the Others and the last hero, hounded through the white woods by dead
men and spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he
remembered how that story ended. “The children will help him,” he
blurted, “the children of the forest!”
The fifth Eddard's chapter
“Dark wings, dark words,” Ned murmured. It was
a proverb Old Nan had taught him as a boy.
The third Arya's chapter.
Huge stones had been set into the curving walls as
steps, circling down and down, dark as the steps to hell that Old Nan
used to tell them of.
The same chapter, further on, Arya talks to
Eddard.
“A wizard,” said Ned, unsmiling. “Did he
have a long white beard and tall pointed hat speckled with stars?”
“No! It wasn’t like Old Nan’s stories. He
didn’t look like a wizard, but the fat one said he was.”
The third Sansa's chapter.
When the Knight of Flowers had spoken up, she’d
been sure she was about to see one of Old Nan’s stories come to
life.
The seventh Jon's chapter, two frozen
bodies are brought to the Wall.
Unbidden, he thought back on the tales that Old
Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could
almost hear her voice again, and the click-click-click of her
needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say,
dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they
hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living
creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities and
kingdoms of men allfell before them, as they moved south on pale dead
horses, leading hosts of the slain. They fed their dead servants on
the flesh of human children...
The sixth Bran's chapter, Bran is
talking to Robb.
"Lord Roose never says a word, he only looks
at me, and all I can think of is that room they have in the
Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their enemies.”
“That’s just one of Old Nan’s stories,”
Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice. “Isn’t it?”
The fifth Arya's chapter.
Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who stowed
away on trading galleys and sailed off into all kinds of adventures.
The seventh Bran's chapter.
“There was a knight once who couldn’t see,”
Bran said stubbornly, as Ser Rodrik went on below. “Old Nan told me
about him. He had a long staff with blades at both ends and he could
spin it in his hands and chop two men at once.”
“Symeon Star-Eyes,” Luwin said as he marked
numbers in a book. “When he lost his eyes, he put star sapphires in
the empty sockets, or so the singers claim. Bran, that is only a
story, like the tales of Florian the Fool. A fable from the Age of
Heroes.”
The same chapter, further on, in the crypts.
He looked at the passing faces and the tales came
back to him. The maester had told him the stories, and Old Nan had
made them come alive. “That one is Jon Stark. When the sea raiders
landed in the east, he drove them out and built the castle at White
Harbor. His son was Rickard Stark, not my father’s father but
another Rickard, he took the Neck away from the Marsh King and
married his daughter. Theon Stark’s the real thin one with the long
hair and the skinny beard. They called him the ‘Hungry Wolf,’
because he was always at war. That’s a Brandon, the tall one with
the dreamy face, he was Brandon the Shipwright, because he loved the
sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the Sunset Sea
and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he
put the torch to all his father’s ships in grief. There’s Rodrik
Stark, who won Bear Island in a wrestling match and gave it to the
Mormonts. And that’s Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. He was the
last King in the North and the first Lord of Winterfell, after he
yielded to Aegon the Conqueror. Oh, there, he’s Cregan Stark. He
fought with Prince Aemon once, and the Dragonknight said he’d never
faced a finer swordsman.” They were almost at the end now, and Bran
felt a sadness creeping over him. “And there’s my grandfather,
Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna
and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another
Brandon, my father’s brother.
They’re not supposed to have statues, that’s
only for the lords and the kings, but my father loved them so much he
had them done.”
The same chapter, further on.
“Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the
trees, that they could fly like birds and swim like fish and talk to
the animals,” Bran said. “She says that they made music so
beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just to hear it.”
“And all this they did with magic,” Maester
Luwin said, distracted.
I know some of it is not really relevant (wizards
and knights and galleys), but I have listed all of it just in case.
Book 2
Clash of Kings
Chapter 4, Bran
Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so.
“Though it is stronger in some than in others,” she warned.
Chapter 6, Jon
“Aerion the Monstrous?” Jon knew that name.
“The Prince Who Thought He Was a Dragon” was one of Old Nan’s
more gruesome tales. His little brother Bran had loved it.
Chapter 7, Catelyn
And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the
very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come
ashore at King’s Landing. Catelyn could remember hearing Old Nan
tell the story to her own children, back at Winterfell. “And King
Harren learned that thick walls and high towers are small use
against dragons,” the tale always ended. “For dragons fly.”
Harren and all his line had perished in the fires that engulfed his
monstrous fortress, and every house that held Harrenhal since had
come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and
cursed.
Chapter 9, Arya
She remembered a story Old Nan had told once,
about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very
brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped . . . but no
sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank
his hot red blood.
Chapter 14, Arya
Arya was remembering the stories Old Nan used to
tell of Harrenhal. Evil King Harren had walled himself up inside, so
Aegon unleashed his dragons and turned the castle into a pyre. Nan
said that fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers.
Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead
in the morning, all burnt up.
Chapter 23, Jon
Jon remembered Old Nan’s tales of the savage
folk who drank blood from human skulls.
The same chapter, further on
“Wildlings have invaded the realm before.”
Jon had heard the tales from Old Nan and Maester Luwin both, back at
Winterfell. “Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my
grandfather’s grandfather, and before him there was a king named
Bael the Bard.”
“Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord
and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun,
who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth. Each man
of them broke his strength on the Wall, or was broken by the power
of Winterfell on the far side . . . but the Night’s Watch is only
a shadow of what we were, and who remains to oppose the wildlings
besides us?"
Chapter 26, Arya
She remembered Old Nan’s stories of the castle
built on fear. Harren the Black had mixed human blood in the mortar,
Nan used to say, dropping her voice so the children would need to
lean close to hear, but Aegon’s dragons had roasted Harren and all
his sons within their great walls of stone.
Chapter 30, Arya
Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived
beyond the Wall.
Chapter 33, Catelyn
Storm’s End emerged like a dream of stone while
wisps of pale mist raced across the field, flying from the sun on
wings of wind. Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once,
spirits returning to their graves.
Chapter 35, Bran
Old Nan told scary stories of beastlings and
shapechangers sometimes. In the stories they were always evil.
Chapter 46, Bran
Torrhen’s Square was under attack by some
monstrous war chief named Dagmer Cleftjaw. Old Nan said he couldn’t
be killed, that once a foe had cut his head in two with an axe, but
Dagmer was so fierce he’d just pushed the two halves back together
and held them until they healed up.
Chapter 47, Arya
In Old Nan’s stories about men who were given
magic wishes by a grumkin, you had to be especially careful with the
third wish, because it was the last.
Chapter 64, Arya
I’d just fly away, fly up past the moon and the
shining stars, and see all the things in Old Nan’s stories,
dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos.
Book
3
Storm
of Swords
Jon, p.142 (out of 788)
In Old Nan’s stories, giants were
outsized men who lived in colossal castles, fought with huge swords,
and walked about in boots a boy could hide in.
The same chapter, further on
Old Nan used to tell stories about
knights and their ladies who would sleep in a single bed with a
blade between them for honor’s sake.
Bran, p. 232
“There’s people,” Bran told
her. “The Umbers are mostly east of the kingsroad, but they graze
their sheep in the high meadows in summer. There are Wulls west of
the mountains along the Bay of Ice, Harclays back behind us in the
hills, and Knotts and Liddles and Norreys and even some Flints up
here in the high places.” His father’s mother’s mother had
been a Flint of the mountains. Old Nan once said that it was her
blood in him that made Bran such a fool for climbing before his
fall. She had died years and years and years before he was born,
though, even before his father had been born.
The same chapter, futher on,
Meera is telling the story about the knight of the Laughing tree.
“Maybe he came from the Isle of
Faces,” said Bran. “Was he green?” In Old Nan’s stories, the
guardians had dark green skin and leaves instead of hair. Sometimes
they had antlers too, but Bran didn’t see how the mystery knight
could have worn a helm if he had antlers. “I bet the old gods sent
him.”
Bran, p. 377
“They were afraid of the
wildlings,” said Bran. “Wildlings come over the Wall or through
the mountains, to raid and steal and carry off women. If they catch
you, they make your skull into a cup to drink blood, Old Nan used to
say. The Night’s Watch isn’t so strong as it was in Brandon’s
day or Queen Alysanne’s, so more get through.
The same chapter, further on
“There’s a causeway. A stone
causeway, hidden under the water. We could walk out.” They could,
anyway; he would have to ride on Hodor’s back, but at least he’d
stay dry that way.
The Reeds exchanged a look. “How
do you know that?” asked Jojen. “Have you been here before, my
prince?”
“No. Old Nan told me. The holdfast
has a golden crown, see?” He pointed across the lake. You could
see patches of flaking gold paint up around the crenellations.
“Queen Alysanne slept there, so they painted the merlons gold in
her honor.”
The same chapter, further on
“There are abandoned castles along the Wall,
I’ve heard,” Jojen answered. “Fortresses built by the Night’s
Watch but now left empty. One of them may give us our way through.”
The ghost castles, Old Nan had called them.
Jon, p. 389
"This is Queenscrown.”
Across the lake, the tower was black again, a dim
shape dimly seen. “A queen lived there?” asked Ygritte.
“A queen stayed there for a night.” Old Nan
had told him the story, but Maester Luwin had confirmed most of it.
“Alysanne, the wife of King Jaehaerys the Conciliator. He’s
called the Old King because he reigned so long, but he was young
when he first came to the Iron Throne. In those days, it was his
wont to travel all over the realm. When he came to Winterfell, he
brought his queen, six dragons, and half his court. The king had
matters to discuss with his Warden of the North, and Alysanne grew
bored, so she mounted her dragon Silverwing and flew north to see
the Wall. This village was one of the places where she stopped.
Afterward the smallfolk painted the top of their holdfast to look
like the golden crown she’d worn when she spent the night among
them.”
“I have never seen a dragon.”
“No one has. The last dragons died a hundred
years ago or more. But this was before that.”
“Queen Alysanne, you say?”
“Good Queen Alysanne, they called her later.
One of the castles on the Wall was named for her as well.
Queensgate. Before her visit they called it Snowgate.”
Bran, p. 515
The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan’s
scariest stories. It was here that Night’s King had reigned,
before his name was wiped from the memory of man. This was where the
Rat Cook had served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where
the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young
Danny Flint had been raped and murdered. This was the castle where
King Sherrit had called down his curse on the Andals of old, where
the ‘prentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night,
where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the hellhounds fighting. Mad
Axe had once walked these yards and climbed these towers, butchering
his brothers in the dark.
All that had happened hundreds and thousands of
years ago, to be sure, and some maybe never happened at all.
The same chapter, further on.
The Wall could look like stone, all grey and
pitted, but then the clouds would break and the sun would hit it
differently, and all at once it would transform, and stand there
white and blue and glittering. It was the end of the world, Old Nan
always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and ghouls,
but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong.
The same chapter, further on
The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another
of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the
thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who
knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add,
“for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman
glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes
like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and
loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his
seed to her he gave his soul as well.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and
proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange
sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen
years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till
finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had
joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was
found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s
King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.
“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would
always end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber,
Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from
them who ruled Bear island before the ironmen came. He never was. He
was a Stark, the brother of the
man who brought him down.” She always pinched
Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. “He was a Stark
of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon.
Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”
[...]
Night’s King was only a man by
light of day, Old Nan would always say, but the night was his to
rule.
The same chapter, further on
The Rat Cook had cooked the son of
the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots of
pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine.
Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a
second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a
monstrous white rat who could only cat his own young. He had roamed
the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his
hunger was not sated. “It was not for murder that the gods cursed
him,” Old Nan said, “nor for serving the Andal king his son in a
pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew a guest beneath his
roof, and that the gods cannot forgive.”
The same chapter, furthe on
Outside the wind was sending armies
of dead leaves marching across the courtyards to scratch faintly at
the doors and windows. The sounds made him think of Old Nan’s
stories. He could almost hear the ghostly sentinels calling to each
other atop the Wall and winding their ghostly warhorns.
The same chapter, further on
He remembered what Old Nan had said
of Mad Axe, how he took his boots off and prowled the castle halls
barefoot in the dark, with never a sound to tell you where he was
except for the drops of blood that fell from his axe and his elbows
and the end of his wet red beard. Or
maybe it wasn’t Mad Axe at all, maybe it was the thing that came
in the night. The ‘prentice boys all saw it, Old Nan said, but
afterward when they told their Lord Commander every description had
been different. And three died within the year, and the fourth went
mad, and a hundred years later when the thing had come again, the
‘prentice boys were seen shambling along behind it, all in chains.
[...]
Mad Axe had been a big man in Old
Nan’s story, and the thing that came in the night had been
monstrous.
The same chapter, further on,
they meet Sam
“Was he green?” Bran wanted to
know. “Did he have antlers?”
The fat man was confused. “The
elk?”
“Coldhands,” said Bran
impatiently. “The green men ride on elks, Old Nan used to say.
Sometimes they have antlers too.”
The same chapter, further on
Beyond the gates the monsters live,
and the giants and the ghouls, he remembered Old Nan saying, but
they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong.
Sansa, p. 567
In Old Nan’s stories the grumkins
crafted magic things that could make a wish come true.
Book 4
Feast for Crows
Arya, p. 71 (out of 588)
The Titan of Braavos. Old Nan had told them
stories of the Titan back in Winterfell. He was a giant as tall as a
mountain, and whenever Braavos stood in danger he would wake with
fire in his eyes, his rocky limbs grinding and groaning as he waded
out into the sea to smash the enemies. “The Braavosi feed him on
the juicy pink flesh of little highborn girls,” Nan would end.
Arya, p. 258
She remembered a tale she had heard from Old Nan,
about how sometimes during a long
winter men who’d lived beyond their years would
announce that they were going hunting. And their daughters would
weep and their sons would turn their faces to the fire, she could
hear Old Nan saying, but no one would stop them, or ask what game
they meant to hunt, with the snows so deep and the cold wind
howling.
Book 5
Dance with Dragons
Bran, p. 73 (out of 916)
Bran found himself remembering the tales Old Nan
had told him when he was a babe. Beyond
the Wall the monsters live, the giants and the
ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk, she
would say, tucking him in beneath his scratchy
woolen blanket, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall
stands strong and the men of the Night’s Watch
are true.
Bran, p. 399
“Someone else was in the raven,” he told Lord
Brynden, once
he had returned to his own skin. “Some girl. I
felt her.”
“A woman, of those who sing the song of earth,”
his teacher said. “Long dead, yet a part of her
remains, just as a part of you would remain in
Summer if your boy’s flesh were to die upon the morrow.
A shadow on the soul. She will not harm you.”
“Do all the birds have singers in them?”
“All,” Lord Brynden said. “It was the
singers who taught the First Men to send messages by
raven … but in those days, the birds would
speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and
so now they write the messages on parchment and
tie them round the feet of birds who have never
shared their skin.”
Old Nan had told him the same story once, Bran
remembered.
Jon, p. 408
The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the
ice dragon in the tales Old Nan had told when Jon was a boy.
Jon, p. 455
Wun Wun was very little like the giants in Old
Nan’s tales, those huge savage creatures who mixed blood into
their morning porridge and devoured whole bulls, hair and hide and
horns.
Arya, p. 526
Old Nan had told her tales of Hardhome, back at
Winterfell
when she had still been Arya Stark. “After the
big battle where the King-Beyond-the-Wall was killed, the
wildlings ran away, and this woods witch said
that if they went to Hardhome, ships would come and
carry them away to someplace warm. But no ships
came, except these two Lyseni pirates, Goodheart
and Elephant, that had been driven north by a
storm. They dropped anchor off Hardhome to make
repairs, and saw the wildlings, but there were
thousands and they didn’t have room for all of them, so
they said they’d just take the women and the
children. The wildlings had nothing to eat, so the men sent
out their wives and daughters, but as soon as the
ships were out to sea, the Lyseni drove them below
and roped them up. They meant to sell them all in
Lys. Only then they ran into another storm and the
ships were parted. The Goodheart was so damaged
her captain had no choice but to put in here, but the
Elephant may have made it back to Lys. The Lyseni
at Pynto’s think that she’ll return with more ships.
The price of slaves is rising, they said, and
there are thousands more women and children at
Hardhome.”
Jon, p. 563
The snowfall was light today, a thin scattering
of flakes dancing in the air, but the wind was
blowing from the east along the Wall, cold as the
breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan used to
tell.
Theon, p. 585
Theon would have laughed if he had dared. He
remembered tales Old Nan had told them
of storms that raged for forty days and forty
nights, for a year, for ten years … storms that buried castles
and cities and whole kingdoms under a hundred
feet of snow.
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