Maester Aemon entered the room with Lynn supporting him.
Though his blind eyes could see nothing, they turned unerringly toward the fireplace.
He could feel its heat, as warm as his heart was at that moment.
There, an ice-blue Dragon Egg lay quietly amid the roaring flames.
"Lynn."
Maester Aemon's voice carried the rasp of age, but more than that, an excitement he could barely contain.
"I can feel it."
"It's... calling to me."
Lynn's heart gave a jolt.
Aemon was a Targaryen, with the blood of the True Dragon. It was hardly strange that he had a special connection to the Dragon Egg.
But his late-night visit surely wasn't just to "feel" it.
"Maester, what brings you here so late?"
Lynn asked without betraying anything, though wariness had already begun to stir within him.
Maester Aemon did not answer.
He merely stretched out a trembling hand, feeling his way toward the Dragon Egg.
Lynn instinctively moved to stop him.
But when he saw the devotion and longing on the old man's wrinkled face, he stopped.
Maester Aemon's fingertips finally touched the scorching shell.
At that very instant, a violent shudder ran through the old man's body!
An invisible connection seemed to reach across time, forming between him and the Dragon Egg.
Maester Aemon's lips trembled, and two streams of cloudy tears rolled from his blind eyes.
"The prophecy... the prophecy was true..."
He abruptly turned his head, "looking" at Lynn with those hollow eyes, his voice filled with an almost fanatical resolve.
"I can hatch it."
Lynn's pupils suddenly contracted.
Hatch it?
Of course he wanted this Dragon Egg to hatch!
He dreamed of it!
Lynn knew better than anyone what having a dragon meant.
It would be the ultimate weapon, enough to overturn all of Westeros and truly