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

by George R.R. Martin

He snagged a roasted onion, dripping brown with gravy, from a nearby trencher and bit into it. It crunched.

His uncle was sharp-featured and gaunt as a mountain crag, but there was always a hint of laughter in his blue-grey eyes.

Tonight it was rich black velvet, with high leather boots and a wide belt with a silver buckle. A heavy silver ...

A bastard had to learn to notice things, to read the truth that people hid behind their eyes.

“The queen is angry too,” Jon told his uncle in a low, quiet voice. “Father took the king down to the crypts this afternoon. The queen didn’t want him to go.”

He took Jon’s cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.

“Daeren Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young Dragon was one of his heroes. “A conquest that lasted a summer,” his uncle pointed out. “Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn’t a game.” He took another sip of wine. “Also,” he said, wiping his mouth, “Daeren Targaryen was only eighteen when he died. Or have you forgotten that part?”

Jon trembled. “I will never father a bastard,” he said carefully. “Never!” He spat it out like venom.

Jon felt hot tears on his cheeks.

Jon had seen an abandoned holdfast once,

“Boy,” a voice called out to him. Jon turned. Tyrion Lannister was sitting on the ledge above the door to the Great Hall, looking for all the world like a gargoyle. The dwarf grinned down at him.

“Too hot, too noisy, and I’d drunk too much wine,” the dwarf told him. “I learned long ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother.

He pushed himself off the ledge into empty air. Jon gasped, then watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around in a tight ball, landed lightly on his hands, then vaulted backward onto his legs.

Ghost backed away from him uncertainly.

“I see,” Lannister said. He ruffled the snow-white fur between Ghost’s ears and said, “Nice wolf.”

He cocked his oversized head to one side and looked Jon over with his mismatched eyes.

“You’re Ned Stark’s bastard, aren’t you?” Jon felt a coldness pass right through him. He pressed his lips together and said nothing. “Did I offend you?” Lannister said. “Sorry. Dwarfs don’t have to be tactful. Generations of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head.” He grinned. “You are the bastard, though.”

Lannister studied his face.

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

“You are your mother’s trueborn son of Lannister.” “Am I?” the dwarf replied, sardonic. “Do tell my lord father. My mother died birthing me, and he’s never been sure.”

he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.

Of all the rooms in Winterfell’s Great Keep, Catelyn’s bedchambers were the hottest.

The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death.

The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong place.

He looked somehow smaller and more vulnerable, like the youth she had wed in the sept at Riverrun, fifteen long years gone.

She could feel his seed within her. She prayed that it might quicken there. It had been three years since Rickon. She was not too old. She could give him another son.

“I will refuse him,” Ned said as he turned back to her. His eyes were haunted, his voice thick with doubt. Catelyn sat up in ...

He loves me. If I refuse him, he will roar and curse and bluster, and in a week we will laugh about it together. I know the man!”

Catelyn remembered the direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make him see.

Robert came all this way to see you, to bring you these great honors, you cannot throw them back in his face.” “Honors?” Ned laughed bitterly. “In his eyes, yes,” she said. “And in yours?” “And in mine,” she blazed, angry now. Why couldn’t he see? “He offers his own son in marriage to our daughter, what else would you call that? Sansa might someday be queen. Her sons could rule from the Wall to the mountains of Dorne. What is so wrong with that?”

“Gods, Catelyn, Sansa is only eleven,” Ned said. “And Joffrey … Joffrey is …” She finished for him. “… crown prin...

And I was only twelve when my father promised me to your brother Brandon.” That brought a bitter twist to Ned’s mouth. “Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King’s Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me.” “Perhaps not,” Catelyn s...

Eddard Stark had married her in Brandon’s place, as custom decreed,

the shadow of his dead brother still lay between them, as did the other, the shadow of the woman he would not name, the woman who had borne him his bastard son.

Ned crossed to the wardrobe and slipped on a heavy robe. Catelyn realized suddenly how cold it had become.

The maester was a small grey man. His eyes were grey, and quick, and saw much. His hair was grey, what little the years had left him.

“There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I napped. My servants saw no one, but it must have been brought by someone in the king’s party. We have had no other visitors from the south.”

The lenscrafters of Myr are without equal.”

“A lens,” he said. “What has that to do with me?” “I asked the same question,” Maester Luwin said. “Clearly there was more to this than the seeming.” Under the heavy weight of her furs, Catelyn shivered. “A lens is an instrument to help us see.”

The furs dropped away from her nakedness, forgotten.

Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. He held her there, his face inches from her. “My lady, tell me! What was this message?”

“Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered.” His fingers tightened on her arm. “By whom?” “The Lannisters,” she told him. “The queen.”

Ned released his hold on her arm. There were deep red marks on her skin.

“Lysa is impulsive,

Catelyn looked to her husband. “Now we truly have no choice. You must be Robert’s Hand. You must go south with him and learn the truth.” She saw at once that Ned had reached a very different conclusion. “The only truths I know are here. The south is a nest of adders I would do better to avoid.”

Luwin plucked at his chain collar where it had chafed the soft skin of his throat. “The Hand of the King has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of Lord Arryn’s death, to bring his killers to the king’s justice. Power to protect Lady Arryn and her son, if the worst be true.”

“The Others take both of you,”

moisture glittered faintly in the corners of his eyes.

“You must govern the north in my stead, while I run Robert’s errands.

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.