The late-winter gale bit at Brandelwyn Al’Sere’s cloak, spearing the youth with half-a-hundred iced needles. The wheels of his father’s ox cart bit into the frozen wheel ruts running east-west from the Mountains of Mist to Emond’s Field. Bran bore the cold stoically, walking afoot beside his father’s ox, Russet, with a knotted staff in hand. Atop the cart, his sisters, Liia and Lire, fourteen and sixteen, sat beside his white-haired father.<br/><br/>In four summers Marc Al’Sere had lost nearly four stone and his earthy-brown mane had faded to a funeral-shroud white. The Al’Sere patriarchs did little more than mumble incoherently, or stare, listlessly, into empty space. Bran only eighteen but he was a man grown, the proprietor of a hardscrabble farm beside the Mountains of Mist.<br/><br/>“Quite hogging the blankets, Liia, da will catch his death!”<br/><br/>“Burn me, Lire, it’s too cold!”<br/><br/>Bran lifted steel grey eyes from the trail and glared at his sisters, with wolves and bears about, he wasn’t in the mood. Bran’s eyes burned with a heat hot enough to melt snow. He stared at Liia with forge stoking ire. “Lire if Dad catches a chill, I’ll tie you to the Spring Pole and lash. . .” Then the breath slipped from his lungs and froze in midair. The hairs upon his neck stood on end. Something was watching him.<br/><br/>Al’Sere turned to stare down the road and saw a man atop a great black destrier, the thing was tall and cloaked. A wave of hate and murderous rage smashed into Bran with the force of a ballista bolt. Bran stared at the black rider, his face fast becoming a shade paler than the snow atop the distant mountains. He could not break his stare. The rider’s mount made to hoof falls and his cloak did not stir in the late-winter wind.<br/>The sound of chattering teeth and unintelligible mumbling filled the air.<br/><br/>“Bran. . . Bran!!!”<br/><br/>Bran turned to Liia. Both of his sisters were holding his father in their arms while the frail whitebeard shivered and convulsed in their arms. Bran slapped Russet’s flank to hurry him. “We need to get him out of this wind . . .” The ox moved forward at a languid clopping gate, carrying his sisters, father, seven barrels of peach wine and two smaller casks of peach brandy to Edmond’s Field.<br/><br/>Bran turned back toward the road and the black rider was nowhere to be seen. A ghost? An Apparition? This winter was like to make men see things. After a lengthy trudge across the frigged trail they arrived at the WInespring Inn. Bran set his staff upon the seat where his elder sister, Lire, held the reigns.<br/><br/>“Get da inside. Liia, find Master Al’Vere.”<br/><br/>