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Started reading
April 12, 2023
he has given me the wind.”
“Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can ride out to meet her when she comes. Wouldn’t that surprise her, to see you ahorse?” Even in the dark room, Bran could feel his brother’s smile. “And afterward, we’ll ride north to see the Wall. We won’t even tell Jon we’re coming, we’ll just be there one day, you and me. It will be an adventure.”
Did you teach him wisdom as well as valor, Ned? she wondered. Did you teach him how to kneel?
We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
“You know what it is, boy,” Osha said, not unkindly. She put her hand on his head.
Maester Luwin looked up at them numbly, a small grey man with blood on the sleeve of his grey wool robe and tears in his bright grey eyes. “My lords,” he said to the sons, in a voice gone hoarse and shrunken, “we … we shall need to find a stonecarver who knew his likeness well …”
Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem so terrible to her.
She woke murmuring, “Please, please, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, please don’t,” but there was no one to hear.
“I don’t want to marry you,” Sansa wailed. “You chopped off my father’s head!”
“My lady,” he said, bowing, as if he had not beaten her bloody only three hours past.
A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”
If life was worthless, what was death?
He was no true Stark, had never been one … but he could die like one. Let them say that Eddard Stark had fathered four sons, not three.
Aemon told me you’d go. I told him you’d be back. I know my men … and my boys too.
Jon Snow straightened himself and took a long deep breath. Forgive me, Father. Robb, Arya, Bran … forgive me, I cannot help you. He has the truth of it. This is my place. “I am … yours, my lord. Your man. I swear it. I will not run again.”
He is his father’s son as much as mine, I must remember. Oh, gods, Ned …
“Why shouldn’t we rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead!” He pointed at Robb with the blade. “There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to, m’lords,” he thundered. “The King in the North!”
Catelyn watched them rise and draw their blades, bending their knees and shouting the old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than three hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven Kingdoms one … yet now were heard again, ringing from the timbers of her father’s hall: “The King in the North!” “The King in the North!” “THE KING IN THE NORTH!”
Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail. She could not have asked for a stronger sign.
Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder. Only death can pay for life.
The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.
“I am sorry for your loss as well, Joffrey,” the dwarf said. “What loss?” “Your royal father? A large fierce man with a black beard; you’ll recall him if you try. He was king before you.”
Catelyn was finding that kings do not listen half so attentively as sons.
And I don’t fear Jaime Lannister. I defeated him once, I’ll defeat him again if I must, only …” He pushed a fall of hair out of his eyes and gave a shake of the head. “I might have been able to trade the Kingslayer for Father, but …” “… but not for the girls?” Her voice was icy quiet. “Girls are not important enough, are they?”
Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors.”
but even as she was feeling sorry for him she was killing him, shouting, “Winterfell! Winterfell!” while Hot Pie screamed “Hot Pie!” beside her as he hacked at the man’s scrawny neck.
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
The longer he lived, the more Tyrion realized that nothing was simple and little was true.
“My mother’s a lady, and my sister, but I never was.”
He’s probably thinking that he shouldn’t be letting m’lady go stealing food. Arya just knew he was going to be stupid now.
I am Joffrey’s regent, not you, and I say that Myrcella will not be shipped off to this Dornishman the way I was shipped to Robert Baratheon.”
Cersei sniffed. “I should have been born a man. I would have no need of any of you then.
He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them.
Bran, will you let me tell you about a dream Jojen dreamed of you and your fosterling brothers?” “The Walders aren’t my brothers.” She paid that no heed. “You were sitting at supper, but instead of a servant, Maester Luwin brought you your food. He served you the king’s cut off the roast, the meat rare and bloody, but with a savory smell that made everyone’s mouth water. The meat he served the Freys was old and grey and dead. Yet they liked their supper better than you liked yours.” “I don’t understand.” “You will, my brother says. When you do, we’ll talk again.”
Tyrion heard the sound of music drifting over the rooftops. It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine. Remembered notes filled his head, and for a moment he could almost hear Tysha as she’d sung to him half a lifetime ago.
It wasn’t Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She had killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate.
For all her Targaryen blood, Dany had not the least idea of how to train a dragon.
Tyrion looked down upon the farewells from the high deck of King Robert’s Hammer, a great war galley of four hundred oars. Rob’s Hammer, as her oarsmen called her, would form the main strength of Myrcella’s escort. Lionstar, Bold Wind, and Lady Lyanna would sail with her as well.
The flames do not lie, Davos.” Yet they require me to make them true, he thought. It had been a long time since Davos Seaworth felt so sad.
Sansa backed away from the window, retreating toward the safety of her bed. I’ll go to sleep, she told herself, and when I wake it will be a new day, and the sky will be blue again. The fighting will be done and someone will tell me whether I’m to live or die. “Lady,” she whimpered softly, wondering if she would meet her wolf again when she was dead.
“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.
Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I’m not dead either.
for Phyllis who made me put the dragons in
Snow would ruin everything he’d worked for, all his careful plans.
Samwell Tarly stood shaking, his face the same color as the snow that swirled down all around them. “Three,” he squeaked to Chett, “that was three, I heard three. They never blow three. Not for hundreds and thousands of years. Three means—” “—Others.” Chett made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob, and suddenly his smallclothes were wet, and he could feel the piss running down his leg, see steam rising off the front of his breeches.
“Varys?” Tyrion slipped inside. “Are you there?” A single candle lit the gloom, spicing the air with the scent of jasmine. “My lord.” A woman sidled into the light; plump, soft, matronly, with a round pink moon of a face and heavy dark curls. Tyrion recoiled. “Is something amiss?” she asked. Varys, he realized with annoyance. “For one horrid moment I thought you’d brought me Lollys instead of Shae. Where is she?”
In his chainmail shirt with a sword in his hand, Gendry looked almost a man grown, and dangerous. Hot Pie looked like Hot Pie.
The north is hard and cold, and has no mercy, Ned had told her when she first came to Winterfell a thousand years ago.
“I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more.
