telepathy in ASOIAF explained

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

I recently posted the final part of my grand theory on the COTF and BR, and included in that post was a lengthy section explaining how the mechanics of telepathy work in ASOIAF. Since the grand theory is super long and does not focus exclusively on telepathy, I made this separate thread just to discuss it. Some of it is a tiny bit out of context, but don't worry about it. Or you can take like 10 hours to read my entire grand theory first. 

 

Telepathy Explained

The mechanics of telepathy in ASOIAF can be difficult to decipher, but luckily we have some other stories written by GRRM to help give us insight. Let’s start with the basics. Obviously the first explicit example of telepathy in the story is when we see the Stark children begin to bond with their direwolves and have wolf dreams. Later this knowledge or warging is expanded so that we are now aware of general skinchanging of animals, dragon riding, and Bran’s creepy ability to skinchange Hodor. So one big component of telepathy in the story is skinchanging/dragon riding. Skinchanging is a big part of GRRM’s Thousand Worlds universe. Particularly, an enemy of mankind called the Hrangan Minds utilized telepathy to control various slave races of creatures and wage war against humans.

Jojen Reed introduces us to the second big component of telepathy, prophetic dreams. It seems that certain people can receive prophetic dreams, including at least Bran and Jojen. And it seems that a weakened physical/mental state can trigger the onset of these visions, like Bran in his coma or Jojen with his near-fatal Greywater fever. And the concept of sending dreams to manipulate characters has been used by GRRM before, particularly in the story And Seven Times Never Kill Man, in which men are tricked into burning their winter food supply and killing their children, which is essentially what the War of the 5 Kings was in ASOIAF. Additionally, a common characteristic of characters who receive dreams or spend time skinchanging is that they tend to forego eating, namely Bran, Melisandre, Lancel, and Maester Aemon. And if that’s true, it implies that Baelor the Blessed, who died of fasting and is generally thought to have been a bit crazy, was likely receiving many powerful visions as well.

Third, we are introduced to the general concept that telepathic abilities can be trained and/or amplified, particularly by darkness and trauma. The best example of this so far is probably Arya’s training in the House of Black and White. Arya is made blind, intermittently attacked by an unknown silent assailant, and surrounded by cats. Finally, after suffering a good deal of frustration, Arya is able to skinchange into a cat while awake and identify her assailant as the Kindly Man. Similarly, Bran is able to train his warg powers while in the darkness of the WF crypts, and he takes full control of Hodor for the first time when they are attacked by wights and in mortal danger. Additionally, it may simply be the fact that Bran is crippled that makes him powerful enough to skinchange Hodor. And just to drive this point home, we are explicitly told in TWOIAF that the priests of Boash back in the day wore eyeless hoods, because: only in darkness, they believed, would their third eye open, allowing them to see the "higher truths" of creation that lay concealed behind the world's illusions.

Fourth, we are introduced to the concept that drugs can affect telepathic abilities, namely sweetsleep for dampening telepathy, and shade of the evening and weirwood paste for enhancing it. This concept has been used by GRRM before, particularly in the story Nightflyers.

Fifth, we are introduced to the concept that dead telepaths can send their consciousness into something else when Varamyr dies and goes into first the weirnet, and then his wolf. Presumably, many COTF may be living second lives inside the weirnet and the animals of the woods. More specifically, it is implied that the dead COTF skinchangers actually jump from animal to animal over time. The reason I think this is because BR tells Bran that there are COTF inside 100% of the ravens around their cave. Given the scarcity of skinchangers (purportedly 1:1000) and the relative youth of these ravens, that must mean the COTF skinchangers are forever trading in dead ravens for new ones in order to live basically infinite “second lives”. Because if the COTF only got to live a single “second life” inside a single raven, there should really be zero ravens with COTF inside them. And considering that Varamyr’s blood went into the weirnet when he died, and that there are tons of COTF bones lying around the cave around weirwood roots, it seems that the weirnet is facilitating the process by providing a sort of permanent storage vessel for the souls of the COTF. This whole process may sound weird, but keep in mind that in Nightflyers, telepaths were actually able to basically download their consciousnesses into an advanced computer upon death, so really anything could happen. It’s GRRM.

Now, one aspect of telepathy that has not yet been made explicit in ASOIAF is telekinesis, or teke as GRRM calls it in his sci-fi work. It may be that whatever force is animating the wights is doing so with teke. We have examples of wights moving around without brains, like Othor’s severed arm clawing at Jon during their fight and a headless bear decapitating Thoren Smallwood. So it appears that this is not some kind of skinchanging similar to what we have seen, as the wights are dead and presumably lack consciousness, especially if headless. Additionally, the wights are clumsy, while reanimated people like Coldhands and Beric appear fully coordinated and conscious. This last detail in particular makes me think that teke is the likely explanation for how the wights move around, because it reminds me of another clumsy corpse from Nightflyers. Additionally, we learned in Nightflyers that gravity fundamentally suppresses teke abilities for some unexplained reason. Being in free fall or being in space greatly enhances teke abilities. The major implication of this for ASOIAF is that it may explain why Bran didn't die from his fall. The combination of being in momentary free fall coupled with facing death may have pushed Bran's mind over the edge and unlocked his teke abilities for the first time.

The last significant aspect of telepathy, and one that hasn’t yet been made explicit in ASOIAF, is the concept that telepathy is intrinsically linked to our emotions and to love. Specifically, in Nightflyers, it is stated explicitly that having sex with someone is the most potent method of forming a telepathic bond with them.

For the purposes of explaining the Master Plan of the Old Gods, the most important aspect of telepathy to focus on is the concept that darkness and trauma can unlock, amplify, and train telepathic abilities. And I also want to point out, since Red Priests play a significant role in the story, that staring into flames for hours on end is basically the same thing as being in darkness. Have you ever tried staring at a fire for a long time? It blinds you. If you don’t want to take my word for it, just listen to my good friend, Ser Davos Seaworth:

The guards will huddle close to those torches. A little warmth, a little light, they're a comfort on a night like this. Yet that will blind them, so they will not see us pass.

And here is another Davos quote:

He lifted his eyes to stare up at the torch. He looked for a long time, never blinking, watching the flames shift and shimmer. He tried to see beyond them, to peer through the fiery curtain and glimpse whatever lived back there... but there was nothing, only fire, and after a time his eyes began to water. God-blind and tired, Davos curled up on the straw and gave himself to sleep.

If staring into flames is effectively the same as wearing an eyeless hood, then Mel’s visions (as well as those of Thoros, Moqorro, and Benerro) may actually be from the Old Gods, and fire may have no special magical properties other than facilitating temporary blindness. So while most readers assume that Mel is using some sort of “fire magic” and that greenseers use some totally different type of magic, I really don’t see any functional difference between Mel staring into flames and Bran being in the crypts.

Anyways, I already mentioned the training of Bran, Jojen, and Arya, but there is a notably long list of characters who may have undergone some telepathic training/enhancement in order to influence their actions, primarily through powerful dreams/visions:

• Dany was given shade of the evening and trapped in darkness with a group of powerful telepaths.
• Ned had his leg badly broken and was later trapped in darkness in the black cells with little food or water.
• Doran Martell has gout and is crippled in a manner sort of similar to Bran. And it appears he is at least able to receive communications from Marwyn via glass candle.
• Bloodraven lost use of an eye, as did the whore Yna and probably Euron as well.
• Varys was given a potion that paralyzed him and had his genitals removed (and heard a voice speak from the flames).
• Similarly, the Unsullied have all had their genitals burned on the altar of their Great Goddess who’s name only they know, not to mention all the other traumatic things Unsullied go through in their training. Considering they have all received a universally high degree of telepathic training and will hypothetically obey their Great Goddess should she call upon them, the Unsullied are prime candidates for being enslaved by the horn Dragonbinder at the beginning of TWOW.
• Theon has also had a few body parts removed, ostensibly including his penis, and his actions are definitely central to shit going down in the North.
• Jaime had his hand cut off and almost died.
• Tyrion had his nose cut off and almost died.
• Little Finger was terribly wounded in his duel against Brandon.
• Mance Rayder was mauled by a shadowcat.
• Harlon Greyjoy was suffering from greyscale, couldn’t speak, was trapped in a windowless tower, and telepathically called out to Euron (who was likely blinded in one eye by that same greyscale epidemic) begging for death.
• Euron’s crew of mutes have all had their tongues removed, in what appears to be a successful attempt by Euron to replicate his experience with Harlon. And then Aeron Damphair is tortured and kept in darkness by Euron to unlock his telepathic abilities, which will presumably be utilized in the upcoming naval battle to protect Euron’s ship from the krakens that Euron will summon to destroy the enemy fleet.
• And speaking of mutes, Wex might be carrying out the marching orders of the Old Gods. He is certainly central to negotiations between factions in the North.
• The Mad King was kidnapped and tortured at Duskendale. We don’t know the exact details of his torture, but we do know he descended fully into madness after this episode.
• Jon was stabbed and reached out to Ghost as he died.
• Robb was shot by crossbow fire and reached out to Grey Wind as he died.
• Beric, Catelyn, and Coldhands all died and were somehow reanimated. Additionally, it may be that their blood was absorbed into the weirnet (like Varamyr) and that this was a necessary step in their reanimation (though that doesn’t really help explain wtf is  going on with UnGregor).
• Patchface also died and came back somehow and now recites prophetic nonsense to people.
• Maggy the Frog seems to also be a reanimated corpse based on Cersei’s description, and death may have helped her to receive visions of the future.

Finally, I would like to point out an interesting parallel that GRRM has made. You know that feeling you get when you are reading a super good book and you basically block out everything else going on around you and just fall into the page? I think GRRM considers that in itself to be another method of telepathic connection, the only difference being that it’s a one way connection. The reason I think this is because we get a description of Sam and his time spent in the library at Castle Black:

Sam did not know how long it had been since last he’d slept, but scarce an inch remained of the fat tallow candle he’d lit when starting on the ragged bundle of loose pages that he’d found tied up in twine. He was beastly tired, but it was hard to stop. One more book, he had told himself, then I’ll stop. One more folio, just one more. One more page, then I’ll go up and rest and get a bite to eat. But there was always another page after that one, and another after that, and another book waiting underneath the pile. I’ll just take a quick peek to see what this one is about, he’d think, and before he knew he would be halfway through it. He had not eaten since that bowl of bean-and-bacon soup with Pyp and Grenn.

So again we see the same symptoms of losing sense of time, not sleeping, and not eating. A good book is effectively like a good telepathic connection. And along those lines, a library is comparable to the weirnet. In fact, you could make the case that the collection of human knowledge at the citadel may rival, or in a sense may even be a competitor to, the collection of COTF knowledge in the weirnet. The real difference is that the humans who accumulate that knowledge all die eventually, while the greenseers of the COTF may all be very much alive. And on a more interesting meta level, you could interpret this info to mean that GRRM himself is the ultimate puppet master telepath in ASOIAF, and that he is trying to manipulate all the readers into thinking certain things with his awesome telepathic powers.

[Lord Wraith]

Interesting and I like the parallels to previous Martin works. Now would you say that a dragonriders connection with their dragon is similar to that of a Warg and their animal/s? Or is that something else completely?

[Damon_Tor]

17 minutes ago, Lord Wraith said:

Interesting and I like the parallels to previous Martin works. Now would you say that a dragonriders connection with their dragon is similar to that of a Warg and their animal/s? Or is that something else completely?

It's been argued that it's not limited to dragons: that "low-grade warging" occurs between horses and riders as well. Some point to Lyanna Stark as an example of this, and use it to explain how she was able to succeed as a jouster despite a relative lack of strength and training. If so, this would be the most likely form of telepathic talent found in Dothraki bloodlines, particularly in very skilled riders like Drogo.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

20 hours ago, Lord Wraith said:

Interesting and I like the parallels to previous Martin works. Now would you say that a dragonriders connection with their dragon is similar to that of a Warg and their animal/s? Or is that something else completely?

I think they are very similar. In fact I think B+A=J, and that Jon's warg skills come from Ashara. And if that turns out to be true, then it implies the genes are possibly interchangeable, at least to an extent. I don't know why dragons cannot be fully skinchanged in the same manner as other creatures. The only explanation I can think of is that fire has something to do with it. Here is a quote from ADWD Sam III:

Yet even so the wight's grip did not loosen. Sam's last thoughts were for the mother who had loved him and the father he had failed. The longhall was spinning around him when he saw the wisp of smoke rising from between Paul's broken teeth. Then the dead man's face burst into flame, and the hands were gone.

Sam sucked in air, and rolled feebly away. The wight was burning, hoarfrost dripping from his beard as the flesh beneath blackened. Sam heard the raven shriek, but Paul himself made no sound. When his mouth opened, only flames came out. And his eyes . . . It's gone, the blue glow is gone.

So it may be that in a similar manner to the way gravity affects teke abilities, fire can affect a telepathic connection. In which case maybe the dragon's consciousness can be inside the mind of the dragon rider but not the other way around, unlike animals that are not fire made flesh.

I have no confidence in that, just some super speculation . It may also be the case that we just have yet to witness full dragon skinchanging. I still believe deep down in my heart that Bran will skinchange an ice dragon . But that would be a cold dragon, so still in line with my fire idea.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

20 hours ago, Damon_Tor said:

It's been argued that it's not limited to dragons: that "low-grade warging" occurs between horses and riders as well. Some point to Lyanna Stark as an example of this, and use it to explain how she was able to succeed as a jouster despite a relative lack of strength and training. If so, this would be the most likely form of telepathic talent found in Dothraki bloodlines, particularly in very skilled riders like Drogo.

Just to back up your point about the Dothraki, I will point out that Lyanna and Brandon are described as "centaurs", and the legend of centaurs originated from the various nomadic horse cultures that the Dothraki are based on. So yeah, it's definitely possible that someone like Drogo has telepathic abilities that help make him a better rider. Additionally, Dothraki culture would provide an inherent amount of training to telepaths. When the Stark children got their direwolves, that's when they really began their telepathic training. I think the same thing would happen to telepathic Dothraki children who start riding horses at a very young age.

[ravenous reader]

Post taken from closed thread:

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Aaah, because the contact [telepathic contact between Dany and Viserys] would have been established before he got the gold poured on his head (when he was begging for Dany to save him), and then the taste of molten gold would have probably been the last thing Dany experienced before the contact was cut off.

You have an answer for everything, don't you..?    (although, I must say, your argument surrounding Robb's 'kingly traps' snaring hares left right and center with his dazzling disingenuousness takes the cake...LOL!)

If, however, there was enough time before the 'conduit' or channel was closed for Viserys to make telepathic contact with Dany, then there was also enough time for Viserys to reach out and bond with 'his dragon'  (the embryo in the egg) -- the one that will do in his second life what he couldn't do in his first -- Viserion!  Viserys in this moment bonding with Viserion-to-be would also not preclude the dragon functioning as the link facilitating the simultaneous telepathic connection in turn between Viserys and Dany.  As an analogy, think of the telepathic connection established between Jon and Bran over distance, which relies on the bond between their wolves as 'middlemen' or the 'telephone switchboard operators' of yore (as long as they are on the same side of the Wall, which functions as a magical ward disrupting the telepathic communication signal -- why should that be, by the way..?).  Bran describes it as reaching for Summer who is connected to Ghost and thereby to Jon.  In the same way, Viserys might have reached for Viserion who is connected to Drogon and thereby to Dany.

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But if this is really what happened (or even if not), then I have a million questions for GRRM about the specifics. Are souls contained in blood? In marrow? Do brains have something to do with it, like I think they must? Can a soul be copied, or "split"? Where does a soul go when a person dies, into the nearest suitable "conduit"? Does it stay in the corpse unless something is done with it? What happens when you burn a body? Are souls absorbed into the fire-net? Are the stars the fire-net? The Dothraki believe their souls go into the stars when they are burned, and electromagnetic energy seems to be a conduit for telepathic communication based on the fact that telepathic control can change the color of eyes like with the blue-eyed wights (and the Jaenshi in And Seven Times Never Kill Man), and electromagnetic energy can travel through space. Are the Dothraki actually correct? And, you know, most planets with life (like Earth) will eventually be consumed by their expanding suns. And then everything on the planet living and dead would be consumed by a star's fire. Will this eventually happen to Planetos? Would the weirnet just be absorbed into the sun?

And are soul physics the same in asoiaf as they are in the 1,000 worlds? Did Jesus's soul (when the volcryn was flying nearby Old Earth and enhancing) go into the Holy Grail and then get transferred back into his dead body 3 days later or something?

Unfortunately, I don't have answers to most of your questions, which will probably be dismissed by many out there as 'tinfoil' or 'fanfic.'  Disparagement notwithstanding, they are good and valid questions to pose.

I haven't read Nightflyers, only a review (prompted by the ship stripped off Blacktyde along with the sable coat by Euron which was named 'Nightflyer,' as a nod by GRRM to his own work, and a metaphor for one person appropriating the greenseeing/skinchanging power/host from another) from which I took that GRRM is thoroughly beguiled by science fiction and finds it difficult to resist the urge to travel to the stars (an impression on which I in part based my 'Deep Impact Drogon' theory), and that he has a perverse bent which he enjoys indulging, as far as all those disturbingly kinky and incestuous 'bodysnatching' goings-on aboard the spacecraft! 

What does GRRM imagine the 'Holy Grail' conduit to be in that context?

I love your idea of the 'fire-net' -- I think the 'weirnet' is the firenet!  Trapped fire.  'Waking a dragon from stone' then is about a being of fire hatching from a tree prison, as we see here:

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A Clash of Kings - Bran VII

He padded over dry needles and brown leaves, to the edge of the wood where the pines grew thin. Beyond the open fields he could see the great piles of man-rock stark against the swirling flames. The wind blew hot and rich with the smell of blood and burnt meat, so strong he began to slaver.

Yet as one smell drew them onward, others warned them back. He sniffed at the drifting smoke. Men, many men, many horses, and fire, fire, fire. No smell was more dangerous, not even the hard cold smell of iron, the stuff of man-claws and hardskin. The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the stars.

All through the night the fires crackled, and once there was a great roar and a crash that made the earth jump under his feet. Dogs barked and whined and horses screamed in terror. Howls shuddered through the night; the howls of the man-pack, wails of fear and wild shouts, laughter and screams. No beast was as noisy as man. He pricked up his ears and listened, and his brother growled at every sound. They prowled under the trees as a piney wind blew ashes and embers through the sky. In time the flames began to dwindle, and then they were gone. The sun rose grey and smoky that morning.

Winterfell is a 'stone tree,' stone prison, or stone egg, we might say.  Burning it releases a 'winged snake'.  The 'great roar and crash that made the earth jump under his feet' is the sound of the dragon -- whatever that is in the Winterfell context -- hatching.  Given that Bran is the one who in this moment has been liberated from Winterfell by the sacking and burning, I think Bran might be this dragon, symbolically at least.  How do you understand the 'winged snake'?

On 5/28/2017 at 2:25 AM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

Just to back up your point about the Dothraki, I will point out that Lyanna and Brandon are described as "centaurs", and the legend of centaurs originated from the various nomadic horse cultures that the Dothraki are based on. So yeah, it's definitely possible that someone like Drogo has telepathic abilities that help make him a better rider. Additionally, Dothraki culture would provide an inherent amount of training to telepaths. When the Stark children got their direwolves, that's when they really began their telepathic training. I think the same thing would happen to telepathic Dothraki children who start riding horses at a very young age.

If Drogo had telepathic abilities, that might explain why his soul was able to bond with a dragon.  A dragon is basically a 'fiery steed', so whenever we see that motif, a red horse or burning horse, it's symbolically referencing a dragon.  I also think Lyanna whom Lady Dustin refers to as 'half a horse' may have bonded in the moment of her death with the 'red horse' Ned took with him to the tower of joy.  Symbolically, the bonded host animal functions as a psychopomp, ferrying the soul across the life-death boundary.  Poetically, this particular horse may have taken Lyanna 'home', via way of the great northern barrow.

On 5/28/2017 at 2:19 AM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

 I don't know why dragons cannot be fully skinchanged in the same manner as other creatures. The only explanation I can think of is that fire has something to do with it. Here is a quote from ADWD Sam III:

Yet even so the wight's grip did not loosen. Sam's last thoughts were for the mother who had loved him and the father he had failed. The longhall was spinning around him when he saw the wisp of smoke rising from between Paul's broken teeth. Then the dead man's face burst into flame, and the hands were gone.

Sam sucked in air, and rolled feebly away. The wight was burning, hoarfrost dripping from his beard as the flesh beneath blackened. Sam heard the raven shriek, but Paul himself made no sound. When his mouth opened, only flames came out. And his eyes . . . It's gone, the blue glow is gone.

So it may be that in a similar manner to the way gravity affects teke abilities, fire can affect a telepathic connection. In which case maybe the dragon's consciousness can be inside the mind of the dragon rider but not the other way around, unlike animals that are not fire made flesh.

I have no confidence in that, just some super speculation . It may also be the case that we just have yet to witness full dragon skinchanging. I still believe deep down in my heart that Bran will skinchange an ice dragon . But that would be a cold dragon, so still in line with my fire idea.

I agree it shouldn't be possible to skinchange a dragon.  That's like all the tales in mythology of mortals succumbing in the presence of a god revealing himself unfiltered to them, which usually results in fatal immolation.  Given that a dragon is 'fire made flesh,' skinchanging a dragon would therefore translate as being burnt alive, which tends to evict the skinchanger from the host body, for which we have ample precedent in the cases of the burning eagle (causing excruciating pain, disrupting the telepathic connection, and driving Orell mad for a while) and the burning of the Storms End godswood, also initiated by Melisandre, which it's suggested by Davos's vision evicted a host of greenseers/singers from the trees -- represented by the disembodied voices he hears:

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A Storm of Swords - Davos I

His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest, groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones with them. Stannis could never understand why he'd kept the bones. "To remind me of my king's justice," he whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone. The fire took my luck as well as my sons. In his dreams the river was still aflame and demons danced upon the waters with fiery whips in their hands, while men blackened and burned beneath the lash. "Mother, have mercy," Davos prayed. "Save me, gentle Mother, save us all. My luck is gone, and my sons." He was weeping freely now, salt tears streaming down his cheeks. "The fire took it all . . . the fire . . ."

Perhaps it was only wind blowing against the rock, or the sound of the sea on the shore, but for an instant Davos Seaworth heard her answer. "You called the fire," she whispered, her voice as faint as the sound of waves in a seashell, sad and soft. "You burned us . . . burned us . . . burrrrned usssssss."

"It was her!" Davos cried. "Mother, don't forsake us. It was her who burned you, the red woman, Melisandre, her!" He could see her; the heart-shaped face, the red eyes, the long coppery hair, her red gowns moving like flames as she walked, a swirl of silk and satin. She had come from Asshai in the east, she had come to Dragonstone and won Selsye and her queen's men for her alien god, and then the king, Stannis Baratheon himself. He had gone so far as to put the fiery heart on his banners, the fiery heart of R'hllor, Lord of Light and God of Flame and Shadow. At Melisandre's urging, he had dragged the Seven from their sept at Dragonstone and burned them before the castle gates, and later he had burned the godswood at Storm's End as well, even the heart tree, a huge white weirwood with a solemn face.

I also think Bran will skinchange a dragon.  However, as you point out, a wighted ice dragon makes more sense.  Bran is already practising skinchanging an ice giant, when he skinchanges Hodor, who is similarly described as an ice dragon, with 'one eye frozen':

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran I

Swaying in his wicker basket on Hodor's back, the boy hunched down, ducking his head as the big stableboy passed beneath the limb of an oak. The snow was falling again, wet and heavy. Hodor walked with one eye frozen shut, his thick brown beard a tangle of hoarfrost, icicles drooping from the ends of his bushy mustache. One gloved hand still clutched the rusty iron longsword he had taken from the crypts below Winterfell, and from time to time he would lash out at a branch, knocking loose a spray of snow. "Hod-d-d-dor," he would mutter, his teeth chattering.

The sound was strangely reassuring. On their journey from Winterfell to the Wall, Bran and his companions had made the miles shorter by talking and telling tales, but it was different here. Even Hodor felt it. His hodors came less often than they had south of the Wall. There was a stillness to this wood like nothing Bran had ever known before. Before the snows began, the north wind would swirl around them and clouds of dead brown leaves would kick up from the ground with a faint small rustling sound that reminded him of roaches scurrying in a cupboard, but now all the leaves were buried under a blanket of white. From time to time a raven would fly overhead, big black wings slapping against the cold air. Elsewise the world was silent.

I think this will be Drogon after Dany dies or loses control of him in another way.  I've speculated there's an analogy in the Prologue between the three Night's Watch brothers and the three dragon brothers, with Gared, Will, and Waymar corresponding to Viserion (the eldest), Rhaegal (the wild card), and Drogon (the youngest, yet leader of the trio).  If this parallel holds, then Viserion like Gared will die after crossing into Westeros; Rhaegal will betray Dany, perhaps resulting in Drogon's death (like Will the treacherous far-eyes); and Drogo like Waymar will come again to take revenge on his brother:

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when the sun rises in the west...then he will return... [mountains blowing in the air like leaves represents the fall of the Wall]

Perhaps the ensuing 'dance of dragons' will constitute a greenseer war between Euron controlling Rhaegal somehow vs. the Bran-wighted Drogon combo!  I think Bran's and Drogon's journey will end together when they go on their last flight of no return into space -- saving the world in the process and restoring the seasons, at the price of extinguishing magic from the world (Drogon the last dragon plus Bran the last greenseer).  I also think Dany's soul will go along with them for the ride -- and that she will finally get to open that red door and pass through.

[The Fattest Leech]

 

@40 Thousand Skeletons I am going to put this here so we can discuss the details from Nightflyers. This entire Nightflyers story is loaded with ASOIAF pretext and you can go virtually page by page and pick themes out. This particular story fits Royd as Jon (90%, Bran 5%, Rhaegar 5%) at the wall with Bowen Marsh and the wildlings, and Melantha Jhirl as Val<<<--- yes, the common argument is Val cannot be of any importance because she came in halfway through the series, which is a junk argument in and of itself, but also since George has set this pairing up way back in the dinosaur days of 1980.

The enormous black ship is called the Nightflyer- which is basically Drogon. The 'mother' of the ship is a combo of Mad King Aerys, Danaerys, Melisandre, and maybe a little Bloodraven. The mother/ship watches people with her red eye and reacts to them psionically and weird stuff happens throughout the entire story. There is so much to explain, but reading the book is way better :

 

“I will begin the tale with my mother,” Royd replied. “The Nightflyer was her ship originally, custom-built to her design in the Newholme spaceyards. My mother was a freetrader, a notably successful one. She was born trash on a world called Vess, which is a very long way from here, although perhaps some of you have heard of it. She worked her way up, position by position, until she won her own command. She soon made a fortune through a willingness to accept the unusual consignment, fly off the major trade routes, take her cargo a month or a year or two years beyond where it was customarily transferred. Such practices are riskier but more profitable than flying the mail runs. My mother did not worry about how often she and her crews returned home. Her ships were her home. She forgot about Vess as soon as she left it, and seldom visited the same world twice if she could avoid it.”

• Ok, when we enter at this point in the story it sounds a little like Varys' backstory.
• Yup, Newholme sounds like Hardhome

“Adventurous,” Melantha Jhirl said.

“No,” said Royd. “Sociopathic. My mother did not like people, you see. Not at all. Her crews had no love for her, nor she for them. Her one great dream was to free herself from the necessity of crew altogether. When she grew rich enough, she had it done. The Nightflyer was the result. After she boarded it at Newholme, she never touched a human being again, or walked a planet’s surface. She did all her business from the compartments that are now mine, by viewscreen or lasercom. You would call her insane. You would be right.” The ghost smiled faintly. “She did have an interesting life, though, even after her isolation. The worlds she saw, Karoly! The things she might have told you would break your heart, but you’ll never hear them. She destroyed most of her records for fear that other people might get some use or pleasure from her experiences after her death. She was like that.”

• Ok, now we get some mad king/Targaryen madness in here. Fear of the unknown and isolation.
• Mother used a viewscreen, something many of the charlatan witches of a few of George's story use. Most are some sort of tv/computer screen because these are sci-fi stories, but when you change the story furniture from sci-fi to fantasy, that tv screen becomes Melisandre's flames. Charlatan.
• Also, Royd is often referred to as the 'ghost', or even 'spectre'.

“And you?” asked Alys Northwind.

“She must have touched at least one other human being,” Lindran put in, with a smile.

“I should not call her my mother,” Royd said. “I am her cross-sex clone. After thirty years of flying this ship alone, she was bored. I was to be her companion and lover. She could shape me to be a perfect diversion. She had no patience with children, however, and no desire to raise me herself. After she had done the cloning, I was sealed in a nurturant tank, an embryo linked into her computer. It was my teacher. Before birth and after. I had no birth, really. Long after the time a normal child would have been born, I remained in the tank, growing, learning, on slow-time, blind and dreaming and living through tubes. I was to be released when I had attained the age of puberty, at which time she guessed I would be fit company.”

• another common theme of George's, incest is never successful in his stories. It always fails or causes some sort of downfall/destruction, etc. *NOTE* NO incest was ever actually had in this story. I am not sure what reviews some people are watching about this story, but it never happens.
• also, this plays with George's sci-fi love of genetic manipulation, which is what incest is when you change the story furniture to fantasy. Incest in ASOIAF is about "creating" something thought to be superior, but ends up as a method of female control and the downfall of a dynasty.
• also, the talk Ygritte has with Jon about bedding Longspear, and her reaction to that shows that Jon is gong to resist incest. To strengthen the clan, you steal from afar. George also carried that theme over from Royd to Jon.

“How horrible,” Karoly d’Branin said. “Royd, my friend, I did not know.”

“I’m sorry, captain,” Melantha Jhirl said. “You were robbed of your childhood.”

• Thanks Catelyn!

“I never missed it,” Royd said. “Nor her. Her plans were all futile, you see. She died a few months after the cloning, when I was still a fetus in the tank. She had programmed the ship for such an eventuality, however. It dropped out of drive and shut down, drifted in interstellar space for eleven standard years while the computer made me—” He stopped, smiling. “I was going to say while the computer made me a human being. Well, while the computer made me whatever I am, then. That was how I inherited the Nightflyer. When I was born, it took me some months to acquaint myself with the operation of the ship and my own origins.”

• Ok. More Jon stuff. To summarize no matter the theory, Jon's mother dies when he was born. Whether literally or figuratively, Jon grew up without a mother and thinks she is dead.

“Fascinating,” said Karoly d’Branin.

• Shut Up Karoly! It is not fascinating... it is sad, damn it!

“Yes,” said the linguist Lindran, “but it doesn’t explain why you keep yourself in isolation.”

“Ah, but it does,” Melantha Jhirl said. “Captain, perhaps you should explain further for the less-improved models?”

• Ok, without going in to too much detail at this moment, but Melantha is considered an improved model because she is a combination of two good people that created something better and stronger and longer lived (all more improved) and always thinks two steps ahead of everyone else. This is Val and this is why everyone remarks at how she is a "princess", how she looks good for bearing children, but most importantly, why Jon trusts her and why he trusts her with the task to lead the wildlings back to the wall. Plus, earlier in the story Melantha and Royd have some serious flirting going on. Like, blush-worthy flirting.
• again, this goes back to that Jon and Ygritte scene about to strengthen the clan you steal from afar. See the theme here

“My mother hated planets,” Royd said. “She hated stinks and dirt and bacteria, the irregularity of the weather, the sight of other people. She engineered for us a flawless environment, as sterile as she could possibly make it. She disliked gravity as well. She was accustomed to weightlessness from years of service on ancient freetraders that could not afford gravity grids, and she preferred it. These were the conditions under which I was born and raised. “My body has no immune systems, no natural resistance to anything. Contact with any of you would probably kill me, and would certainly make me very sick. My muscles are feeble, in a sense atrophied. The gravity the Nightflyer is now generating is for your comfort, not mine. To me it is agony. At this moment the real me is seated in a floating chair that supports my weight. I still hurt, and my internal organs may be suffering damage. It is one reason why I do not often take on passengers.”

• More Targ madness
• ok, the gravity. 40k Skeletons, correct me if my tired eyes have it wrong, but this is the only reason I can remember in the story for the gravity being necessary. Am I forgetting something? It does not seem to have an affect on Royd, or the mothership, other than comfort... but maybe it is for the personal control??? Fill me in, here.

“You share your mother’s opinion of the run of humanity?” asked Marij-Black.

“I do not. I like people. I accept what I am, but I did not choose it. I experience human life in the only way I can, vicariously. I am a voracious consumer of books, tapes, holoplays, fictions and drama and histories of all sorts. I have experimented with dreamdust. And infrequently, when I dare, I carry passengers. At those times, I drink in as much of their lives as I can.”

• Jon goes through the same emotions about being a bastard, and only able to watch his brothers mock play with Tommen and Joffrey at WInterfell, and how Jon has to eat at the other table most of the time. Jon is an observer and as he matures he makes decisions based on compassion and evidence.
• See, look, Jon loves the free folk like he should. George did say Jon was the most noble character in the series. Awww.
• Ahem, young man... dreamdust????

“If you kept your ship under weightlessness at all times, you could take on more riders,” suggested Lommie Thorne.

“True,” Royd said politely. “I have found, however, that most planet-born are as uncomfortable weightless as I am under gravity. A shipmaster who does not have artificial gravity, or elects not to use it, attracts few riders. The exceptions often spend much of the voyage sick or drugged. No. I could also mingle with my passengers, I know, if I kept to my chair and wore a sealed environ-wear suit. I have done so. I find it lessens my participation instead of increasing it. I become a freak, a maimed thing, one who must be treated differently and kept at a distance...[and there is a lot more]

• Ok, clearly a theme with a bunch of "riders" being in the giant flying space dragon, Nightflyer.
• So, maybe, IF Bran is using telepathy this way, maybe this means no one can change into Bran, but since he has "mastered" gravity by flying, and flying, and not breaking his bones in the fall, and by occupying Hodor, maybe that is what George was working out a bazillion years ago in Nightflyers???
• What does that mean when Bran reaches out to Meera and she rejects the advance?

Ok, thanks for your time

P.S.

For any of you that may remember my theory that Bran is already turning into a tree, this story, actually the next scene in this same story, has a clue sticking in it

 

[The Fattest Leech]

@40 Thousand Skeletons I updated the post above to see if this is what you were referring to, and to give a few clues out of 100 that show the foreshadowing I mentioned in the other thread. I would love to talk more about Nightlfyers in accordance with that theme I mentioned, but it is entirely off topic for this thread

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

On 6/22/2017 at 11:22 PM, The Fattest Leech said:

@40 Thousand Skeletons I updated the post above to see if this is what you were referring to, and to give a few clues out of 100 that show the foreshadowing I mentioned in the other thread. I would love to talk more about Nightlfyers in accordance with that theme I mentioned, but it is entirely off topic for this thread

I'm going to write a longer reply when I'm back at my computer but for now, this is the beginning of the important conversation about gravity. The stuff you referenced was Royd's disingenuous excuse from before he told anyone about his mother.

Quote

Melantha Jhirl swore. “Of course she hated gravity! Telekinesis under weightlessness is—”

“Yes,” Royd finished. “Keeping the Nightflyer under gravity tortures me, but it limits Mother.”

They go into a bit of detail about how gravity suppresses teke. And later, the other characters reflect on the fact that Volcryn avoid gravity wells and travel via teke.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

On 6/22/2017 at 2:59 PM, ravenous reader said:

You have an answer for everything, don't you..?    (although, I must say, your argument surrounding Robb's 'kingly traps' snaring hares left right and center with his dazzling disingenuousness takes the cake...LOL!)

If, however, there was enough time before the 'conduit' or channel was closed for Viserys to make telepathic contact with Dany, then there was also enough time for Viserys to reach out and bond with 'his dragon'  (the embryo in the egg) -- the one that will do in his second life what he couldn't do in his first -- Viserion!  Viserys in this moment bonding with Viserion-to-be would also not preclude the dragon functioning as the link facilitating the simultaneous telepathic connection in turn between Viserys and Dany.  As an analogy, think of the telepathic connection established between Jon and Bran over distance, which relies on the bond between their wolves as 'middlemen' or the 'telephone switchboard operators' of yore (as long as they are on the same side of the Wall, which functions as a magical ward disrupting the telepathic communication signal -- why should that be, by the way..?).  Bran describes it as reaching for Summer who is connected to Ghost and thereby to Jon.  In the same way, Viserys might have reached for Viserion who is connected to Drogon and thereby to Dany.

LOL, Of course I have answers for everything . But really, I do spend objectively too much time thinking about asoiaf.

That is true. All very good observations . The only reason I think Viserys may be trapped is because it is so similar to the GC and I think trapping one's "soul" - and therefore their knowledge - may be the specific purpose of Bittersteel's ritual, as a direct method of combating the abilities of Bloodraven. Bittersteel may have suspected or known that in death BR would somehow be able to telepathically obtain all his knowledge, and so he commanded that his skull was to be dipped in gold to prevent this.

But I also think it would make a huge amount of sense for the souls of Drogo, Rhaegal, and Viserion to have gone into their respective dragon couterparts. Mayhaps both are true. Maybe the "primary" Viserys, the one he would consider to be "himself", is trapped inside his skull (wherever that is) but some part of him was imprinted into Viserion. Tough to say.

Heretical thought, mayhaps someone wanted Viserys' knowledge trapped inside his head.  IDK why anyone would want this though...

On 6/22/2017 at 2:59 PM, ravenous reader said:

Unfortunately, I don't have answers to most of your questions, which will probably be dismissed by many out there as 'tinfoil' or 'fanfic.'  Disparagement notwithstanding, they are good and valid questions to pose.

I haven't read Nightflyers, only a review (prompted by the ship stripped off Blacktyde along with the sable coat by Euron which was named 'Nightflyer,' as a nod by GRRM to his own work, and a metaphor for one person appropriating the greenseeing/skinchanging power/host from another) from which I took that GRRM is thoroughly beguiled by science fiction and finds it difficult to resist the urge to travel to the stars (an impression on which I in part based my 'Deep Impact Drogon' theory), and that he has a perverse bent which he enjoys indulging, as far as all those disturbingly kinky and incestuous 'bodysnatching' goings-on aboard the spacecraft! 

What does GRRM imagine the 'Holy Grail' conduit to be in that context?

GRRM only mentions Jesus briefly. It is, in fact, the opening line of Nightflyers:

Quote

When Jesus of Nazareth hung dying on his cross, the volcryn passed within a year of his agony, headed outward.

"Within a year" seems to mean within a lightyear in this context. Anyways, the implication (once you read the rest of the story) is that the volcryn, simply by being in proximity to Earth, enhanced the telepathic abilities of Jesus to allow for his miracles and resurrection. I was just spit-balling, that if blood acts as a conduit for the soul, then maybe the Holy Grail was "real" in the 1,000 worlds universe and had some sort of sci-fi connection to the resurrection of Jesus. Like, if Jon ends up going into Ghost and then reanimating his own dead body, mayhaps the Holy Grail was Jesus's "Ghost". Because the Holy Grail was used to catch Jesus's blood at his crucifixion (in case you weren't familiar with the legend ). 

On 6/22/2017 at 2:59 PM, ravenous reader said:

I love your idea of the 'fire-net' -- I think the 'weirnet' is the firenet!  Trapped fire.  'Waking a dragon from stone' then is about a being of fire hatching from a tree prison, as we see here:

Winterfell is a 'stone tree,' stone prison, or stone egg, we might say.  Burning it releases a 'winged snake'.  The 'great roar and crash that made the earth jump under his feet' is the sound of the dragon -- whatever that is in the Winterfell context -- hatching.  Given that Bran is the one who in this moment has been liberated from Winterfell by the sacking and burning, I think Bran might be this dragon, symbolically at least.  How do you understand the 'winged snake'?

The winged snake is a doozy. I think the great roar was literally the roof of the great hall finally crashing down. I'm not sure if it has symbolic meaning, but the use of the word roar is eye-catching in the context of a dragon appearing.

But most significantly for the sake of this thread, Summer is blinded by smoke and ash when he sees the winged snake in the sky:

Quote

The smoke and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then the snake was gone.

So it seems that, similar to Bran being in darkness, Summer's telepathic abilities were enhanced by his temporary blindness and he saw, in his mind, a vision of a winged snake (which is almost certainly a dragon being described in wolf-speak). And then when he gets angry and bares his teeth, the telepathic connection is broken. So the important question is, who has Summer/Bran formed a temporary connection with that is showing them the vision of a dragon breathing fire?

My best guess is the weirnet was in the act of "hatching" Bran, the "dragon", by burning WF. It is similar in many ways to Dany coming out of the pyre. So basically, I agree with your symbolic interpretation, but I also think that the symbolic vision was very real and was seen via a telepathic link enabled by Summer's blindness.

But that is super duper speculative, and I have always wished for a more solid answer to the winged snake mystery.

On 6/22/2017 at 2:59 PM, ravenous reader said:

If Drogo had telepathic abilities, that might explain why his soul was able to bond with a dragon.  A dragon is basically a 'fiery steed', so whenever we see that motif, a red horse or burning horse, it's symbolically referencing a dragon.  I also think Lyanna whom Lady Dustin refers to as 'half a horse' may have bonded in the moment of her death with the 'red horse' Ned took with him to the tower of joy.  Symbolically, the bonded host animal functions as a psychopomp, ferrying the soul across the life-death boundary.  Poetically, this particular horse may have taken Lyanna 'home', via way of the great northern barrow.

Yes, Drogo being a trained telepath would definitely enhance his post-life Drogon-bond. And OMG I never thought about Lyanna bonding to that horse, that is a spectacular thought.  

 

[The Fattest Leech]

On 6/25/2017 at 6:52 PM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

I'm going to write a longer reply when I'm back at my computer but for now, this is the beginning of the important conversation about gravity. The stuff you referenced was Royd's disingenuous excuse from before he told anyone about his mother.

They go into a bit of detail about how gravity suppresses teke. And later, the other characters reflect on the fact that Volcryn avoid gravity wells and travel via teke.

Oh yes, I did forget the convo's about the Volcryn itself avoiding gravity wells. Thanks! 

---

“The propulsion system, d’Branin. Don’t you feel? The pulses? They are threatening to rip off the top of my skull. Can’t you guess what is driving your damned volcryn across the galaxy? And why they avoid gravity wells? Can’t you guess how it is moving?”

“No,” d’Branin said, but even as he denied it a dawn of comprehension broke across his face, and he looked away from his companion, back at the swelling immensity of the volcryn, its lights moving, its veils a-ripple as it came on and on, across light years, light centuries, across eons.

When he looked back at her, he mouthed only a single word: “Teke,” he said.

She nodded.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

So I am going to summarize how gravity plays a role in Nighflyers obviously with ABOUNDING SPOILERS FOR NIGHTFLYERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

First, as @The Fattest Leech referenced, Royd has a bullshit excuse that he keeps the gravity on for the comfort of his passengers, when in reality it is to keep his mother - who died but her mind was "downloaded" into the computer controlling the Nightflyer (the ship) - under control. Royd's mother had extremely powerful teke abilities that were kept mostly in check by gravity.

Then Royd's mother kills a couple of people and damages the ship in the process. In order to go out and repair the ship, Royd is forced to disable gravity. Then Royd's mother uses the opportunity to kill a bunch of people, in classic GRRM style.

The next gruesome death is Rojan Christopheris. Earlier in the story, Royd's mother exploded Thale Lasamer's head, and they moved the body, but nobody got around to cleaning up the remains of his exploded head. And now, those remains were floating around. While everyone else was still outside, Christopheris made his way back into the ship trying to be a sneaky bastard and cut his way into Royd's section of the ship. 

As he is working with his laser, Royd's mother uses her teke to make Thale's eyeball stay eerily still in the zero-gravity environment and stare at Christopheris. This understandably scares the shit out of him, and he grabs the eye and throws it across the room. The motion causes him to tumble across the room and let go of his laser, which Royd's mother than uses to burn through his neck. Classic George.  

Royd's mother then lures more people into the ship with recordings of other people's voices calling for help, and she subsequently uses the corpse of Christopheris to kill Lindran with the laser. And then she uses Lindran's corpse to kill Dannel with a knife. Notably, as far as level of contol/undead coordination is concerned, this is the description of Dannel's death:

Quote

With languid grace, her hand came out from behind her back. The knife flashed up in a killing arc, and that was when Dannel finally noticed the hole burned in her suit, still smoking, just between her breasts.

So it seems quite physically coordinated, in contrast with the clumsiness of the wights in asoiaf.

The other 2 characters are lured off by the volcryn (because one has gone fucking insane basically) to their doom, and the last people alive on the Nightflyer for the final sequence of gravity-related events are Royd and Melantha.

They enter the ship with their work sled and a crazy action sequence ensues demonstrating the extent of Royd's mother's abilities in a gravity-free environment:

Quote

“When the inner door opens it will begin,” Royd told her evenly. “The permanent furnishings are either built-in or welded or bolted into place, but the things that your team brought on board are not. Mother will use those things as weapons. And beware of doors, airlocks, any equipment tied into the Nightflyer’s computer. Need I warn you not to unseal your suit?”

“Hardly,” she replied.

Royd lowered the sled a little, and its grapplers made a metallic sound as they touched against the floor of the chamber.

The inner door hissed open, and Royd applied his thrusters.

Inside Dannel and Lindran waited, swimming in a haze of blood. Dannel had been slit from crotch to throat and his intestines moved like a nest of pale, angry snakes. Lindran still held the knife. They swam closer, moving with a grace they had never possessed in life.

Royd lifted his foremost grapplers and smashed them to the side as he surged forward. Dannel caromed off a bulkhead, leaving a wide wet mark where he struck, and more of his guts came sliding out. Lindran lost control of the knife. Royd accelerated past them, driving up the corridor through the cloud of blood.

“I’ll watch behind,” Melantha said. She turned and put her back to his. Already the two corpses were safely behind them. The knife was floating uselessly in the air. She started to tell Royd that they were all right, when the blade abruptly shifted and came after them, gripped by some invisible force.

“Swerve!” she cried.

The sled shot wildly to one side. The knife missed by a full meter, and glanced ringingly off a bulkhead.

But it did not drop. It came at them again.

The lounge loomed ahead. Dark.

“The door is too narrow,” Royd said. “We will have to abandon—” As he spoke, they hit; he wedged the sled squarely into the doorframe, and the sudden impact jarred them loose.

For a moment Melantha floated clumsily in the corridor, her head whirling, trying to sort up from down. The knife slashed at her, opening her suit and her shoulder clear through to the bone. She felt sharp pain and the warm flush of bleeding. “Damn,” she shrieked. The knife came around again, spraying droplets of blood.

Melantha’s hand darted out and caught it.

She muttered something under her breath and wrenched the blade free of the hand that had been gripping it.

Royd had regained the controls of his sled and seemed intent on some manipulation. Beyond him, in the dimness of the lounge, Melantha glimpsed a dark semi-human form rise into view.

“Royd!” she warned. The thing activated its small laser. The pencil beam caught Royd square in the chest.

He touched his own firing stud. The sled’s heavy-duty laser came alive, a shaft of sudden brilliance. It cindered Christopheris’ weapon and burned off his right arm and part of his chest. The beam hung in the air, throbbing, and smoked against the far bulkhead.

Royd made some adjustments and began cutting a hole. “We’ll be through in five minutes or less,” he said curtly.

“Are you all right?” Melantha asked.

“I’m uninjured,” he replied. “My suit is better armored than yours, and his laser was a low-powered toy.”

Melantha turned her attention back to the corridor.

The linguists were pulling themselves towards her, one on each side of the passage, to come at her from two directions at once. She flexed her muscles. Her shoulder stabbed and screamed. Otherwise she felt strong, almost reckless. “The corpses are coming after us again,” she told Royd. “I’m going to take them.”

“Is that wise?” he asked. “There are two of them.”

“I’m an improved model,” Melantha said, “and they’re dead.” She kicked herself free of the sled and sailed towards Dannel in a high, graceful trajectory. He raised his hands to block her. She slapped them aside, bent one arm back and heard it snap, and drove her knife deep into his throat before she realized what a useless gesture that was. Blood oozed from his neck in a spreading cloud, but he continued to flail at her. His teeth snapped grotesquely.

Melantha withdrew her blade, seized him, and with all her considerable strength threw him bodily down the corridor. He tumbled, spinning wildly, and vanished into the haze of his own blood.

Melantha flew in the opposite direction, revolving lazily.

Lindran’s hands caught her from behind.

Nails scrabbled against her faceplate until they began to bleed, leaving red streaks on the plastic. Melantha whirled to face her attacker, grabbed a thrashing arm, and flung the woman down the passageway to crash into her struggling companion. The reaction sent her spinning like a top. She spread her arms and stopped herself, dizzy, gulping.

“I’m through,” Royd announced.

Melantha turned to see. A smoking meter-square opening had been cut through one wall of the lounge. Royd killed the laser, gripped both sides of the doorframe, and pushed himself towards it.

A piercing blast of sound drilled through her head. She doubled over in agony. Her tongue flicked out and clicked off the comm; then there was blessed silence.

In the lounge it was raining. Kitchen utensils, glasses and plates, pieces of human bodies all lashed violently across the room, and glanced harmessly off Royd’s armored form. Melantha—eager to follow—drew back helplessly. That rain of death would cut her to pieces in her lighter, thinner vacuum suit. Royd reached the far wall and vanished into the secret control section of the ship. She was alone.

The Nightflyer lurched, and sudden acceleration provided a brief semblance of gravity. Melantha was thrown to one side. Her injured shoulder smashed painfully against the sled.

All up and down the corridor doors were opening.

Dannel and Lindran were moving towards her once again.

Gravity returned; in a flicker, the universe became almost normal.

Melantha fell to the deck, landed easily and rolled, and was on her feet cat-quick.

The objects that had been floating ominously through the open doors along the corridor all came clattering down.

The blood was transformed from a fine mist to a slick covering on the corridor floor.

The two corpses dropped heavily from the air, and lay still.

Royd spoke to her from the communicators built into the walls. “I made it,” he said.

“I noticed,” she replied. “I’m at the main control console. I have restored the gravity with a manual override, and I’m cutting off as many computer functions as possible. We’re still not safe, though. Mother will try to find a way around me. I’m countermanding her by sheer force, as it were. I cannot afford to overlook anything, and if my attention should lapse, even for a moment … Melantha, was your suit breached?”

“Yes. Cut at the shoulder.”

“Change into another one. Immediately. I think the counterprogramming I’m doing will keep the locks sealed, but I can’t take any chances.”

Melantha was already running down the corridor, towards the cargo hold where the suits and equipment were stored.

“When you have changed,” Royd continued, “dump the corpses into the mass conversion unit. You’ll find the appropriate hatch near the driveroom airlock, just to the left of the lock controls. Convert any other loose objects that are not indispensable as well; scientific instruments, books, tapes, tableware—”

“Knives,” suggested Melantha.

“By all means.”

“Is teke still a threat, captain?”

“Mother is vastly weaker in a gravity field,” Royd said. “She has to fight it. Even boosted by the Nightflyer’s power, she can only move one object at a time, and she has only a fraction of the lifting force she wields under weightless conditions. But the power is still there, remember. Also, it is possible she will find a way to circumvent me and cut out the gravity again. From here I can restore it in an instant, but I don’t want any likely weapons lying around even for that brief period of time.”

Melantha reached the cargo area. She stripped off her vacuum suit and slipped into another one in record time, wincing at the pain in her shoulder. It was bleeding badly, but she had to ignore it. She gathered up the discarded suit and a double armful of instruments and dumped them into the conversion chamber. Afterwards she turned her attention to the bodies. Dannel was no problem. Lindran crawled down the corridor after her as she pushed him through, and thrashed weakly when it was her own turn, a grim reminder that the Nightflyer’s powers were not all gone. Melantha easily overcame her feeble struggles and forced her through.

Christopheris’ burned, ruined body writhed in her grasp and snapped its teeth at her, but Melantha had no real trouble with it. While she was cleaning out the lounge, a kitchen knife came spinning at her head. It came slowly, though, and Melantha just batted it aside, then picked it up and added it to the pile for conversion. She was working through the cabins, carrying Agatha Marij-Black’s abandoned drugs and injection gun under her arm, when she heard Royd cry out. A moment later a force like a giant invisible hand wrapped itself around her chest and squeezed and pulled her, struggling, to the floor.

Pinned to the floor, hurting, Melantha Jhirl risked opening her suit’s comm. She had to talk to Royd. “Are you there?” she asked. “What’s happen … happening?” The pressure was awful, and it was growing steadily worse. She could barely move.

The answer was pained and slow in coming. “… outwitted … me,” Royd’s voice managed. “… hurts to … talk.”

“Royd—”

“… she … teked … the … dial … up … two … gees … three … higher … right … on … the … board … all … I … have to … to do … turn it … back … back … let me.”

Silence. Then, finally, when Melantha was near despair, Royd’s voice again. One word:

“… can’t …”

Melantha’s chest felt as if it were supporting ten times her own weight. She could imagine the agony Royd must be in; Royd, for whom even one gravity was painful and it seemed to be for him. “Why would … she turn up the … the gravity … it … weakens her too … yes?”

“… yes … but … in a … a time … hour … minute … my … my heart … will burst … and … and then … you alone … she … will … kill gravity … kill you.…”

Painfully Melantha reached out her arm and dragged herself half a length down the corridor. “Royd … hold on … I’m coming.…” She dragged herself forward again. Agatha’s drug kit was still under her arm, impossibly heavy. She eased it down and started to shove it aside. It felt as if it weighed a hundred kilos. She reconsidered. Instead she opened its lid.

The ampules were all neatly labeled. She glanced over them quickly, searching for adrenaline or synthastim, anything that might give her the strength she needed to reach Royd. She found several stimulants, selected the strongest, and was loading it into the injection gun with awkward, agonized slowness when her eyes chanced on the supply of esperon.

Melantha did not know why she hesitated. Esperon was only one of a half-dozen psionic drugs in the kit, none of which could do her any good, but something about seeing it bothered her, reminded her of something she could not quite lay her finger on. She was trying to sort it out when she heard the noise.

“Royd,” she said, “your mother … could she move … she couldn’t move anything … teke it … in this high a gravity … could she?”

“Maybe,” he answered, “… if … concentrate … all her … power … hard … maybe possible … why?”

“Because,” Melantha Jhirl said grimly, “because something … someone … is cycling through the airlock.”

Melantha Jhirl struggled to lift the injection gun and press it against an artery. It gave a single loud hiss, and the drug flooded her system. She lay back and gathered her strength and tried to think. Esperon, esperon, why was that important? It had killed Lasamer, made him a victim of his own latent abilities, multiplied his power and his vulnerability. Psi. It all came back to psi.

The inner door of the airlock opened. The headless corpse came through.

It moved with jerks, unnatural shufflings, never lifting its legs from the floor. It sagged as it moved, half-crushed by the weight upon it. Each shuffle was crude and sudden; some grim force was literally yanking one leg forward, then the next. It moved in slow motion, arms stiff by its sides.

But it moved.

Melantha summoned her own reserves and began to squirm away from it, never taking her eyes off its advance.

Her thoughts went round and round, searching for the piece out of place, the solution to the chess problem, finding nothing.

The corpse was moving faster than she was. Clearly, visibly, it was gaining.

Melantha tried to stand. She got to her knees with a grunt, her heart pounding. Then one knee. She tried to force herself up, to lift the impossible burden on her shoulders as if she were lifting weights. She was strong, she told herself. She was the improved model.

But when she put all her weight on one leg, her muscles would not hold her. She had fallen from a building. She heard a sharp snap, and a stab of agony flashed up her arm, her good arm, the arm she had tried to use to break her fall. The pain in her shoulder was terrible and intense. She blinked back tears and choked on her own scream.

The corpse was halfway up the corridor. It must be walking on two broken legs, she realized. It didn’t care. A force greater than tendons and bone and muscle was holding it up.

“Melantha … heard you … are … you … Melantha?”

“Quiet,” she snarled at Royd. She had no breath to waste on talk.

Now she used all the disciplines she had ever learned, willed away the pain. She kicked feebly, her boots scraping for purchase, and she pulled herself forward with her unbroken arm, ignoring the fire in her shoulder.

The corpse came on and on.

She dragged herself across the threshold of the lounge, worming her way under the crashed sled, hoping it would delay the cadaver. The thing that had been Thale Lasamer was a meter behind her.

In the darkness, in the lounge, where it had all begun, Melantha Jhirl ran out of strength.

Her body shuddered and she collapsed on the damp carpet, and she knew that she could go no farther. On the far side of the door, the corpse stood stiffly. The sled began to shake. Then, with the scrape of metal against metal, it slid backward, moving in tiny sudden increments, jerking itself free and out of the way.

Psi. Melantha wanted to curse it, and cry. Vainly she wished for a psi power of her own, a weapon to blast apart the teke-driven corpse that stalked her. She was improved, she thought despairingly, but not improved enough. Her parents had given her all the genetic gifts they could arrange, but psi was beyond them. The genes were astronomically rare, recessive, and—

—and suddenly it came to her.

“Royd,” she said, putting all of her remaining will into her words. She was weeping, wet, frightened. “The dial … teke it. Royd, teke it!”

His reply was faint, troubled. “… can’t … I don’t … Mother … only … her … not me … no … Mother …”

“Not Mother,” she said, desperate. “You always … say … Mother. I forgot … forgot. Not your mother … listen … you’re a clone … same genes … you have it too … power.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Never … must be … sex-linked.”

“No! It isn’t. I know … Promethean, Royd … don’t tell a Promethean … about genes … turn it!”

The sled jumped a third of a meter, and listed to the side. A path was clear. The corpse came forward.

“… trying,” Royd said. “Nothing … I can’t!”

“She cured you,” Melantha said bitterly. “Better than … she … was cured … prenatal … but it’s only … suppressed … you can!”

“I … don’t … know … how.”

The corpse stood above her. Stopped. Its pale-fleshed hands trembled, spasmed, jerked upward. Long painted fingernails. Made claws. Began to rise.

Melantha swore. “Royd!”

“… sorry …”

She wept and shook and made a futile fist.

And all at once the gravity was gone. Far, far away, she heard Royd cry out and then fall silent.

The corpse bobbed awkwardly into the air, its hands hanging limply before it. Melantha, reeling in the weightlessness, was suddenly violently sick. She ripped off the helmet, collapsed it, and pushed away from her own nausea, trying to ready herself for the Nightflyer ’s furious assault.

But the body of Thale Lasamer floated dead and still, and nothing else moved in the darkened lounge. Finally Melantha recovered, and she moved to the corpse, weakly, and pushed it, a small and tentative shove. It sailed across the room.

“Royd?” she said uncertainly.

There was no answer.

She pulled herself through the hole into the control chamber.

And found Royd Eris suspended in his armored suit. She shook him, but he did not stir. Trembling, Melantha Jhirl studied his suit, and then began to dismantle it. She touched him. “Royd,” she said, “here. Feel, Royd, here, I’m here, feel it.” His suit came apart easily, and she flung the pieces of it away. “Royd, Royd.”

Dead. Dead. His heart had given out. She punched it, pummeled it, tried to pound it into new life. It did not beat. Dead. Dead.

Melantha Jhirl moved back from him, blinded by her own tears, edged into the console, glanced down.

Dead. Dead.

But the dial on the gravity grid was set on zero.

“Melantha,” said a mellow voice from the walls.

So finally, Royd uses his teke to save the life of someone he fell in love with, Melantha. He dies in the process and downloads himself into the computer alongside his mother. They fight for control of the Nightflyer and generally speaking, moral of the story is, gravity suppresses teke. And when Bran fell from the tower, that wasn't exactly a gravity-free environment, but GRRM did also use the term "free fall" right at the beginning of Nightflyers.

Quote

Melantha Jhirl, the only one among them who did not seem clumsy and ill at ease in free fall, paused briefly to look at the dappled globe of Avalon below, a stately vastness in jade and amber. She smiled and moved swiftly down the tube, passing her companions with an easy grace. They had boarded starships before, all of them, but never like this. Most ships docked

Also, the climax of the story obviously brings up the topic of rare, telepathic genes, and of sex-linked telepathic genes. I personally subscribe to the theory that telepathic abilities in asoiaf are X chromosome linked, and GRRM at a minimum alluded to this idea in that bolded passage toward the end of Nightflyers.