After leaving his father’s study, Jon spent the entire walk thinking over their conversation.
What he had seen in the dream had felt far too real.
Combined with what he had read in the book, it had given him a theory.
He touched his chest.
Ever since waking from that dream, that inexplicable sense of being called had lingered around him.
Lost in thought, Jon soon arrived at Maester Luwin’s quarters.
When he saw Jon come in, Robb, seated on a stool, waved at him cheerfully.
“Hurry up, Jon.
Where did you go this morning?”
Jon pulled himself from his thoughts.
“I went to the library to look for some books.”
“What books?
Tell me,” Robb asked curiously.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside the door, interrupting their conversation.
Maester Luwin entered with a book in his arms.
“Gentlemen, I’m pleased to see you both arrived on time.”
With those words of praise, the Maester began the day’s lesson.
“Yesterday, we covered the history of the Seven Kingdoms.
Today, we shall continue.”
The moment Robb, seated at the small table, heard what the lesson would be about, his little face fell.
“Heraldry again…”
“We are studying the histories of noble houses, learning words in the Common Tongue, and, along the way, becoming familiar with the coats of arms of the nobility of the Seven Kingdoms.”
Maester Luwin turned to a page near the back of the book.
After carefully smoothing a slight crease in the parchment, he began his lesson in earnest.
“A silver seahorse on a sea-green field.”
“House Velaryon of Driftmark.”
“The house motto.”
“The Old, the True, the Brave.”
“Their history.”
“House Velaryon traces its origins to the ancient Valyrian Freehold.
Like House Targaryen, they are said to possess Valyrian blood.
They came to Westeros very early, settled on Driftmark, and became allies of House Targaryen.”
“More than a hundred years ago, the house produced a legendary figure, Corlys Velaryon, known as ‘the Sea Snake.’ His fleet sailed to the eastern reaches of the Known World and returned with immense wealth.”
Maester Luwin was still in the prime of his life, broad and straight-backed beneath a thick wolf-skin coat.
Whenever he spoke, his gray-brown eyes seemed to shine with intelligence.
Each time he turned a page, the Maester would explain its contents first, then have Jon and Robb repeat what he had just taught them.
Jon did not consider himself particularly clever, but his memory was extraordinarily sharp today.
Maester Luwin’s satisfaction became more evident with every answer.
“I truly ought to suggest that Lord Eddard send you to Oldtown to study.
Yes, I should.
If he were here, boy, I would tell him that you were born to be a Maester!”
At the suggestion that Jon might be sent to the Citadel, Robb immediately grew anxious.
Though only four years old, he already understood many things.
Apparently afraid that Jon might be sent away, he kept shaking his head at him.
Jon had no interest whatsoever in becoming a Maester, much less spending the rest of his life at the Citadel.
So he said nothing.
Instead, he pointed at the book and changed the subject, indicating a dead brown stag hanging beneath a crossbar.
“Does House Hunt have a feud with House Baratheon?” the child asked in his clear, youthful voice, plainly puzzled.
“Why would you think that?” Maester Luwin asked in surprise.
Then he glanced at the coat of arms, understood what Jon meant, and chuckled.
“It is only a coincidence.
Besides, the Baratheon stag is black, not brown.”
Jon gave a small “oh.” The purple eyes from the previous night surfaced in his mind again, and he suddenly asked, “What about the black dragon and the red dragon?”
“The black dragon and the red dragon?”
“A three-headed dragon.
One black, one red.
I know the red one is the crest of House Targaryen.
What house does the black one belong to?”
The question made the old Maester pause.
“A three-headed black dragon?”
“Yes.
A three-headed black dragon on a red field.”
“That is the sigil of House Blackfyre.
It was derived from the royal sigil of House Targaryen, but with the colors reversed.
The last Blackfyre, however, died in the Stepstones many years ago.
Ser Barristan the Bold of the Kingsguard slew him with his own hand.”
After saying this, the old Maester gave Jon a curious look.
“That is not something widely known.
Where did you see that coat of arms?”
“I saw it in one of the books in our family library,” Jon answered honestly.
Maester Luwin turned to Robb.
“House Lannister.
Their words?”
At the familiar name, Robb’s eyes lit up, and he immediately blurted, “The Lannisters always pay their…”
Halfway through the sentence, he suddenly remembered something and stopped short.
He blinked, then pretended nothing had happened and changed his answer.
“Hear me roar?”
Maester Luwin looked at him, a trace of helplessness on his face.
“It seems you remember that very well.”
Robb immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
“At the Citadel, many apprentice Maesters have fallen into the same trap.
They are always eager to seek deeper knowledge in books, yet cannot be bothered to remember the simplest common facts.”
…
Meanwhile, several miles beyond Winterfell, out on the wilderness.
Benjen Stark pulled his heavy black bearskin hood tighter around his head and galloped north through a white wind that cut like knives.
Several knights sworn to House Stark followed silently behind him, while three hardy packhorses brought up the rear.
Their backs were laden with freshly frozen game and specially prepared smokeless coal.
The heavy loads swayed constantly as the horses pressed onward.
Hooves broke through the frozen earth, leaving a ragged trail of prints that the driving snow soon buried completely.
After more than ten days of hard travel, they stopped to rest.
Benjen left the knights behind to wait in a hunter’s cabin, then continued onward alone with the three packhorses.
By then, he had reached the outskirts of the abandoned New Gift.
Nothing remained ahead but a vast, desolate wilderness stretching beyond sight.
Four years earlier, when his elder brother Eddard had returned to The North carrying Jon, still wrapped in swaddling clothes, along with the young dragon, the two brothers had immediately realized there was a problem.
Winterfell was an enormous castle filled with far too many eyes and ears.
There was simply no way to raise a dragon there.
Dragons were creatures of fire and destruction.
Their breath carried the sharp reek of sulfur, and as one grew larger, concealing its existence would become almost impossible.
If word ever leaked out and Robert Baratheon or anyone else learned of it, the entire House Stark would be torn apart.
Winterfell could not hide the dragon, but sending it Beyond the Wall would leave it to freeze to death in the endless blizzards.
In the end, Benjen mentioned a hidden place he had discovered during one of his expeditions.
It was an ancient wonder buried deep beneath the frozen earth of the Far North.
Gorne’s Way.
According to the yellowed old parchments of The North and the legends told among the wildlings, three thousand years ago there had been two brothers who were Kings-Beyond-the-Wall, Gorne and Gendel.
They led an army of tens of thousands of wildlings.
Rather than attempt to cross the seven-hundred-foot Wall, they used their sense of the earth to discover a sprawling underground labyrinth of lava tunnels that stretched for thousands of miles.
Their army followed those hidden passages in silence through the deep caverns beneath the Wall, eventually emerging from a secret exit into The North and throwing the entire realm into turmoil.
Over the thousands of years since, countless wildlings had lost their way inside those tunnels, leaving behind nothing but white bones scattered among the cracks in the stone.
But for a young dragon, the fierce heat rising from the churning lava deep below made it an ideal lair.