A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)

by George R.R. Martin

Renly never cast that shadow. Death came in that door, and blew the life out of him as swift as the wind snuffed out his candles.

but the rainbow cloak was too sodden with blood to burn.

There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord Commander’s chambers. It smells like death.

The fingers curled around the drinking horn were heavy with rings, gold and silver and bronze, set with chunks of sapphire and garnet and dragonglass. He had paid the iron price for every one, Theon knew.

Like a scar, a visual that speaks of a warriors greatness

“The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot.”

“I am not made to be a mother. I need to fight.”

The silent sisters do not speak to the living, Catelyn remembered dully, but some say they can talk to the dead.

“The blood of the dragon does not weep,” she said testily.

to sip the wine of wisdom from a dead man’s skull.”

Trust would get you killed.

“If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil.”

There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.”

Panting, she squatted and spread her legs. Blood ran down her thighs, black as ink. Her cry might have been agony or ecstasy or both. And Davos saw the crown of the child’s head push its way out of her. Two arms wriggled free, grasping, black fingers coiling around Melisandre’s straining thighs, pushing, until the whole of the shadow slid out into the world and rose taller than Davos, tall as the tunnel, towering above the boat. He had only an instant to look at it before it was gone, twisting between the bars of the portcullis and racing across the surface of the water, but that instant was long enough. He knew that shadow. As he knew the man who’d cast it.

Its interesting that this supposedly evil thing was birthed by the woman. What is george R R martin trying to say here?

“I’m certain of nothing but winter and battle,”

may be. Stannis burnt the godswood at Storm’s End as an offering to the Lord of Light. If he’d offend the old gods, why should he spare the new? Tell them that. Tell them that any man who thinks to give aid to the usurper betrays the gods as well as his rightful king.”

I am served by fools. “Try and imagine it was you up here, Urzen. It’s dark and cold. You have been walking sentry for hours, looking forward to the end of your watch. Then you hear a noise and move toward the gate, and suddenly you see eyes at the top of the stair, glowing green and gold in the torchlight. Two shadows come rushing toward you faster than you can believe. You catch a glimpse of teeth, start to level your spear, and they slam into you and open your belly, tearing through leather as if it were cheesecloth.” He gave Urzen a hard shove. “And now you’re down on your back, your guts are spilling out, and one of them has his teeth around your neck.” Theon grabbed the man’s scrawny throat, tightened his fingers, and smiled. “Tell me, at what moment during all of this do you stop to blow your fucking horn?” He shoved Urzen away roughly, sending him stumbling back against a merlon.

Visually delicious

Theon knew; ages past, certain of their lords had gone so far as to cloak themselves in the skins of dead enemies.

Mercy, thought Theon as Luwin dropped back. There’s a bloody trap. Too much and they call you weak, too little and you’re monstrous.

Men would fight for the honor of protecting them. The whole bloody north would rally around them.

“Running water don’t hold no scents, m’lord.”

“Mercy was for this morning,” said Theon. It is better to be feared than laughed at. “Before they made me angry.”

Chapter ending cliff

The sky was cloudless, the jagged mountains rising black on black until the very top, where their cold crowns of snow and ice shone palely in the moonlight.

When word o’ that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter’s night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means ‘deceiver’ in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak.

She could feel the fear in her tummy, twisting and pinching, worse every day.

Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.”

I am become a sour woman, Catelyn thought. I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.

Robb must fight the Greyjoys now as well as the Lannisters, and for what? For a gold hat and an iron chair?

Fact

Septa Mordane used to tell them that the Warrior and the Mother were only two faces of the same great god.

At sea, heavy steel was as like to cost a man his life as to save it, he believed. Ser Imry and the other highborn captains did not share his view; they glittered as they paced their decks.

“Ramming speed!” Davos shouted. The drumbeats blurred into a long fevered hammering, and Black Betha flew, the water turning white as milk as it parted for her prow.