A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)

by George R.R. Martin

He had seen little of the dwarf since their journey ended. As the queen’s own brother, Tyrion Lannister had been an honored guest of the Night’s Watch. The Lord Commander had given him rooms in the King’s Tower—so-called, though no king had visited it for a hundred years—and Lannister dined at Mormont’s own table and spent his days riding the Wall and...

“Oh, I learn things everywhere I go.” The little man gestured up at the Wall with a gnarled black walking stick. “As I was saying … why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man i...

He cocked his head and looked at Jon with his curious mismatched eyes. “You do want to know what’s on the other side, don’t you?” “It’s nothing special,” Jon said. He wanted to ride with Benjen Stark on his rangings, deep into the mysteries of the haunted forest, wanted to fight Mance Rayder’s wildlings and ward the realm against the Others, but it was better not to speak of the things you wanted. “The rangers say it’s just woods and mountains and frozen lakes, with lots of snow and...

“Don’t call me Lord Snow.” The dwarf lifted an eyebrow. “Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see that their words can cut you, and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.” He gestured with his stick. “Come, walk with me. They’ll be serving some vile stew in the common hall by now, and I could do with a bowl of something hot.” Jo...

“I don’t see your wolf,” Lannister said as they walked. “I chain him up in the old stables when we’re training. They board all the horses in the east stables now, so no one bothers him. The rest of the time he stays with me. My sleeping cell is in Hardin’s Tower.” “That’s the one with the broken battlement, no? Shattered stone in the yard below, and a lean to it like our noble king Robert after a long night’s drinking? I thought all those buildings had been abandoned.” Jon shrugged. “No one cares where you sleep. Most of the old keeps are empty, you can pick any cell you want.” Once Castle Black had housed five thousand fighting men with all their horses and servants and weapons. Now it was home to a tenth that number, and parts of it were falling into ruin. Tyrion Lannister’s laughter steamed in the cold air. “I’ll be sure to tell your father to arrest more stonemasons, before your tower collapses.” Jon could taste the mockery there, but there was no denying the truth.

The Watch had built nineteen great strongholds along the Wall, but only three were still occupied: Eastwatch on its grey windswept shore, the Shadow Tower hard by the mountains where the Wall ended, and Castle Black between them, at the end of the kingsroad. The other keeps, long deserted, were lonely, haunted places, where cold winds whistled through black windows and the spirits of the dead manned the parapets.

“The talk is, your uncle is too long away.” Jon remembered the wish he’d wished in his anger, the vision of Benjen Stark dead in the snow, and he looked away quickly. The dwarf had a way of sensing things, and Jon did not want him to see the guilt in his eyes. “He said he’d be back by my name day,” he admitted. His name day had come and gone, unremarked, a fortnight past.

“They were looking for Ser Waymar Royce, his father is bannerman to Lord Arryn. Uncle Benjen said they might search as far as the Shadow Tower. That’s all the way up in the mountains.”

“I hear that a good many rangers have vanished of late,” Lannister said as they mounted the steps to the common hall. He grinned and pulled open the door. “...

Jon eyed them thoughtfully for a moment. Then he chose a spot at the far end of the hall, well away from the other diners. Tyrion Lannister sat across from him, sniffing at the stew suspiciously. “Barley, onion, carrot,” he muttered. “Someone should tell the cooks that turnip isn’t a meat.” “It’s mutton stew.”

“Is it my uncle?” he blurted. “Is he returned safe?” “The Lord Commander is not accustomed to waiting,” was Ser Alliser’s reply. “And I am not accustomed to having my commands questioned by bastards.” Tyrion Lannister swung off the bench and rose. “Stop it, Thorne. You’re frightening the boy.” “Keep out of matters that don’t concern you, Lannister. You have no place here.” “I have a place at court, though,” the dwarf said, smiling. “A word in the right ear, and you’ll die a sour old man before you get another boy to train. Now tell Snow why the Old Bear needs to see him. Is there news of his uncle?” “No,” Ser Alliser said. “This is another matter entirely. A bird arrived this morning from Winterfell, with a message that concerns his brother.” He corrected himself. “His half brother.”

“Bran,” Jon breathed, scrambling to his feet. “Something’s happened to Bran.” Tyrion Lannister laid a hand on his arm. “Jon,” he said. “I am truly sorry.” Jon scarcely heard him. He brushed off Tyrion’s hand and strode across the hall.

Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, was a gruff old man with an immense bald head and a shaggy grey beard. He had a raven on his arm, and he was feeding it kernels of corn.

“Corn,” it muttered in a raucous voice. “Corn, corn.”

the letters seemed to blur and run as he tried to read them. He realized he was crying. And then, through the tears, he found the sense in the words, and raised his head. “He woke up,” he said. “The gods gave him back.” “Crippled,” Mormont said. “I’m sorry, boy. Read the rest of the letter.” He looked at the words, but they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Bran was going to live.

“My brother is going to live,”

The raven flew to his shoulder, crying,...

He ran back to the common hall, where he found Tyrion Lannister just finishing his meal. He grabbed the little man under the arms, hoisted him up in the air, and spun him around in a circle. “Bran is going to live!” he whooped. Lannister looked startled. Jon put him down and thrust the paper into his hands. “Here, read it,” he said.

Grenn edged backward and put up his hands. “Stay away from me now, you bastard.” Jon smiled at him. “I’m sorry about your wrist. Robb used the same move on me once, only with a wooden blade. It hurt like seven hells, but yours must be worse. Look, if you want, I can show you how to defend that.” Alliser Thorne overheard him. “Lord Snow wants to take my place now.” He sneered. “I’d have an easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will training this aurochs.” “I’ll take that wager, Ser Alliser,” Jon said. “I’d love to see Ghost juggle.” Jon heard Grenn suck in his breath, shocked. Silence fell. Then Tyrion Lannister guffawed. Three of the black brothers joined in from a nearby table. The laughter spread up and down the benches, until even the cooks joined in. The birds stirred in the rafters, and finally even Grenn began to chuckle. Ser Alliser never took his eyes from Jon. As the laughter rolled around him, his face darkened, and his sword hand curled into a fist. “That was a grievous error, Lord Snow,” he said at last in the acid tones of an enemy.

the towering bronze doors of the Red Keep

sore, tired, hungry, and irritable. He was still ahorse, dreaming of a long hot soak, a roast fowl, and a featherbed, when the king’s steward told him that Grand Maester Pycelle had convened an urgent meeting of the small council.

The honor of the Hand’s presence was requested as soon as it was convenient. “It will be convenient on the morrow,” Ned snapped as he dismounted. The steward bowed very low. “I shall give the councillors your regrets, my lord.” “No, damn it,” Ned said. It would not do to offend the council before he had even begun. “I w...

“We have given you Lord Arryn’s former chambers in the Tower of the Hand, if it please you. I shall h...

Ned saw Vayon Poole, his own steward, and called out. “It seems the council has urgent need of me. See that my daughters find their bedchambers, and tell Jory to keep them there. Arya is not to go exploring.”

Ned turned back to the royal steward. “My wagons are still straggling through the city. I shall need appropriate garments.” “It will be my great pleasure,” the steward said.

The chamber was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of rushes, and in one corner a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paints on a carved screen from the Summer Isles. The walls were hung with tapestries from Norvos and Qohor and Lys, and a pair of Valyrian sphinxes flanked the door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering in black marble faces.

The councillor Ned liked least, the eunuch Varys,

accost...

His hand left powder stains on Ned’s sleeve, and he smelled as foul and sweet as flowers on a grave.

He disentangled himself from the eunuch’s grip

Lord Renly stood by the screen, talking quietly with a short man who could only be Littlefinger. Renly had been a boy of eight when Robert won the throne, but he had grown into a man so like his brother that Ned found it disconcerting. Whenever he saw him, it was as if the years had slipped away and Robert stood before him, fresh from his victory on the Trident.

“Though much better dressed,” Littlefinger quipped. “Lord Renly spends more on clothing than half the ladies of the court.” It was true enough. Lord Renly was in dark green velvet, with a dozen golden stags embroidered on his doublet. A cloth-of-gold half cape was draped casually across one shoulder, fastened with an emerald brooch. “There are worse crimes,” Renly said with a laugh. “The way you dress, for one.”

“I should have thought that heat ill suits you Starks,” Littlefinger said. “Here in the south, they say you are all made of ice, and melt when you ride below the Neck.” “I do not plan on melting soon, Lord Baelish. You may count on it.”

“Maester Pycelle,

Grand Maester smil...

“Well enough for a man of my years, my lord,” he replied, “yet I do tire easily, I fear.” Wispy strands of white hair fringed the broad bald dome of his forehead above a kindly face. His maester’s collar was no simple metal choker such as Luwin wore, but two dozen heavy chains wound together into a ponderous metal necklace that covered him from throat to breast. The links were forged of every metal known to man: black iron and red gold, bright copper and dull lead, steel and tin and pale silver, brass and bronze and platinum. Garnets and amethysts and black pearls adorned the metal-work, and here and there an emerald or ...

He remembered what Robert had told him in the crypts below Winterfell. I am surrounded by flatterers and fools, the king had insisted. Ned looked down the council table and wondered which were the flatterers and which the fools. He thought he knew already.

“Lord Stannis took himself to Dragonstone not long after the king went north,” Varys said, “and our gallant Ser Barristan no doubt rides beside the king as he makes his way through the city, as befits the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.”

“What Lord Varys means is that all this business of coin and crops and justice bores my royal brother to tears,” Lord Renly said, “so it falls to us to govern the realm. He does send us a command from time to time.” He drew a tightly rolled paper from his sleeve and laid it on the table. “This morning he commanded me to ride ahead with all haste and ask Grand Maester Pycelle to convene this council at once. He has an urgent task for us.” Littlefinger smiled and handed the paper to Ned. It bore the royal seal. Ned broke the wax with his thumb and flattened the letter to consider the king’s urgent command, reading the words with mounting disbelief. Was there no end to Robert’s folly? And to do this in his name, that was salt in the wound. “Gods be good,” he swore. “What Lord Eddard means to say,” Lord Renly announced, “is that His Grace instructs us to stage a great tournament in honor of his appointment as the Hand of the King.” “How much?” asked Littlefinger, mildly. Ned read the answer off the letter. “Forty thousand golden dragons to the champion. Twenty thousand to the man who comes second, another twenty to the winner of the melee, and ten thousand to the victor of the archery competition.” “Ninety thousand gold pieces,” Littlefinger sighed. “And we must not neglect the other costs. Robert will want a prodigious feast. That means cooks, carpenters, serving girls, singers, jugglers, fools …” “Fools we have in plenty,” Lord Renly said. Grand Maester Pycelle looked to Lit...

Robert had hardly been seen; the talk was he was traveling in the huge wheelhouse, drunk as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he would still be here too soon for Ned’s liking. He had only to look at Sansa’s face to feel the rage twisting inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher’s boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.

He crossed the outer yard, passed under a portcullis into the inner bailey, and was walking toward what he thought was the Tower of the Hand when Littlefinger appeared in front of him. “You’re going the wrong way, Stark. Come with me.” Hesitantly, Ned followed. Littlefinger led him into a tower, down a stair, across a small sunken courtyard, and along a deserted corridor where empty suits of armor stood sentinel along the walls. They were relics of the Targaryens, black steel with dragon scales cresting their helms, now dusty and forgotten. “This is not the way to my chambers,” Ned said. “Did I say it was? I’m leading you to the dungeons to slit your throat and seal your corpse up behind a wall,” Littlefinger replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We have no time for this, Stark. Your wife awaits.” “What game are you playing, Littlefinger? Catelyn is at Winterfell, hundreds of leagues from here.”

“Oh?” Littlefinger’s grey-green eyes glittered with amusement. “Then it appears someone has managed ...

At the foot of the steps was a heavy door of oak and iron. Petyr Baelish lifted the crossbar and gestured Ned through. They stepped out into the ruddy glow of dusk, on a rocky bluff high above the river. “We’re outside the castle,” Ned said. “You are a hard man to fool, Stark,” Littlefinger said with a smirk. “Was it the sun that gave it away, or the sky?

Follow me. There are niches cut in the rock. Try not to fall to your death, Catelyn would never understand.” With that, he was over the side of the cliff, descending as quick as a monkey. Ned studied the rocky face of the bluff for a moment, then followed more slowly. The niches were there, as Littlefinger had promised, shallow cuts that would be invisible from below, unless you knew just where to look for them. The river was a long, dizzying distance below. Ned kept his face pressed to the rock and tried not to look down any more often than he had to. When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water’s edge, Littlefinger was lazing against a rock and eating an apple. He was almost down to the core. “You are growing old and slow, Stark,” he said, flipping the apple casually into the rushing water. “No matter, we ride the rest of the way.” He had two horses waiting. Ned mounted up and trotted behind him, down the trail and into the city.

It was the final insult. “Brandon was too kind to you,” Ned said as he slammed the small man back against a wall and shoved his dagger up under the little pointed chin beard.

“Would that it were, Stark,” Littlefinger said. “Follow me, and try to look a shade more lecherous and a shade less like the King’s Hand. It would not do to have you recognized. Perhaps you could fondle a breast or two, just in passing.”

Inside, Catelyn was waiting. She cried out when she saw him, ran to him, and embraced him fiercely. “My lady,” Ned whispered in wonderment. “Oh, very good,” said Littlefinger, closing the door. “You recognized her.”

“Petyr has been bringing me reports. He told me of your troubles with Arya and the young prince. How are my girls?” “Both in mourning, and full of anger,” he told her. “Cat, I do not understand. What are you doing in King’s Landing? What’s happened?” Ned asked his wife. “Is it Bran? Is he …” Dead was the word that came to his lips, but he could not say it. “It is Bran, but not as you think,” Catelyn said. Ned was lost. “Then how? Why are you here, my love? What is this place?” “Just what it appears,” Littlefinger said, easing himself onto a window seat. “A brothel. Can you think of a less likely place to find a Catelyn Tully?” He smiled. “As it chances, I own this particular establishment, so arrangements were easily made. I am most anxious to keep the Lannisters from learning that Cat is here in King’s Landing.”

So he listened, and she told it all, from the fire in the library tower to Varys and the guardsmen and Littlefinger. And when she was done, Eddard Stark sat dazed beside the table, the dagger in his hand. Bran’s wolf had saved the boy’s life, he thought dully. What was it that Jon had said when they found the pups in the snow? Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord. And he had killed Sansa’s, and for what? Was it guilt he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he done?

“The Imp’s dagger,” he repeated. It made no sense. His hand curled around the smooth dragonbone hilt, and he slammed the blade into the table, felt it bite into the wood. It stood mocking him. “Why should Tyrion Lannister want Bran dead? The boy has never done him harm.” “Do you Starks have nought but snow between your ears?” Littlefinger asked. “The Imp would never have acted alone.” Ned rose and paced the length of the room. “If the queen had a role in this or, gods forbid, the king himself … no, I will not believe that.” Yet even as he said the words, he remembered that chill morning on the barrowlands, and Robert’s talk of sending hired knives after the Targaryen princess. He remembered Rhaegar’s infant son, the red ruin of his skull, and the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry’s audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once. “Most likely the king did not know,” Littlefinger said. “It would not be the first time. Our good Robert is practiced at closing his eyes to things he would rather not see.” Ned had no reply for that. The face of the butcher’s boy swam up before his eyes, cloven almost in two, and afterward the king had said not a word.