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490 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2006
"[The soldiers] were all working... when a strange sound halted them.... It started as an agni[z]ed cry — as if someone, or something, was in mortal anguish — and then rose steadily in pitch and volume to a wild ululation....
[They] waited, hardly daring to breathe. After a moment the eerie sound rose again, closer this time, growing in force, rising and rising....
'Christ have mercy!' cried a footman. He flung out a hand and pointed across the clearing.
The soldiers turned as one to see an indistinct shape moving in the shadows beneath the trees.... Straining into the darkness, they saw a form emerge from the forest gloom —... the shape of a monstrous creature: big as a man, but with the head and wings of a bird, and a round skull-like face that ended in an extravagantly long, pointed black beak.
Like a fallen angel risen from the pit, this baleful presence stood watching them from across the clearing...."
"'What do you want from me?' [Bran asked].
'What do I want?' she threw back at him. 'Only this — I want you to be the man you were born to be.'
'How do you know what I was born to be?'
'You were born to be a king,' [she] said simply. 'You were born to lead your people.'"