27. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 717-740

Cersei

Imprisoned and watched over by three stern and pious septas, Cersei has lost touch with the outside world. She spends her time longing for Jaime to come rescue her and brooding over the treachery of her onetime followers, who have either yielded to torture and testified against her, or fled. "She stood accused of adultery, fornication, high treason, even murder, for Osney Kettleblack had confessed to smothering the last High Septon at her command."

Whenever she dozes off, a septa wakes her to demand that she confess to her crimes. And finally, worried about what will happen to Tommen and the realm, she does. As she is being taken to see the High Septon, she asks about Tommen and is told he is "well protected, day and night. The queen is with him, always." This angers and surprises her -- "I am the queen!" she thinks, and then she wonders if Margaery has somehow been exonerated of the crimes she was accused of -- but when she asks for more information, another of the septas admonishes the one who had told her that much.

She kneels before the High Septon to confess, and he tells Septa Unella, the sternest of the three, to stay and record what Cersei says. She confesses to adultery, and when he insists on the names, she lists Lancel Lannister, Osney Kettleblack, and his brothers Osfryd and Osmund, but claims she had sex with the Kettleblacks only to ensure protection for Tommen. As for Lancel, she blames her female frailty in the aftermath of her husband's death. But she swears that she was never unfaithful to Robert Baratheon while he was alive.

The High Septon then says that Osney claims she ordered the death of his predecessor and that she told him to lie about Queen Margaery and her cousins. She denies having engineered the accusations against Margaery and the others, and says she only complained about the High Septon: "He was Tyrion's creature, weak and corrupt, a stain upon our Holy Faith." Osney, she says, must have taken her complaints more seriously than she intended. Then the High Septon says she has been accused of conspiracy to murder her husband, Robert. She realizes that the source of this must be Lancel, and insists that Robert was killed by a boar. "Do they say I am a skinchanger now? A warg?" She denies it.

Finally, he tells her, "there are some who say your children were not fathered by King Robert, that they are bastards born of incest and adultery." She blames Stannis for spreading this story, which she calls "a palpable lie." The High Septon seems to be ready to accept this accusation as the product of Stannis's ambition for the throne: "Lord Stannis has turned from the truth of the Seven to worship a red demon, and his false faith has no place in these Seven Kingdoms." Cersei now sees a glimmer of hope.

But, the High Septon tells her, she will still have to stand trial. And when she asks to see Tommen, he tells her it wouldn't be right to let her near the king until after the trial has demonstrated her innocence. He will allow her other visitors, one a day. As they accompany her back to her cell, one of the septas says Cersei "must feel so much lighter now, clean and innocent as a maid on the morning of her wedding." Cersei thinks, "I fucked Jaime on the morning of my wedding," but tells them she feels "reborn." She asks about visitors, and tells them she would like to see her uncle, Ser Kevan.

He arrives the next morning, but sternly resists her blandishments, reminding her that their last meeting didn't end well, and that she corrupted his son Lancel. He has "hard tidings" for her, he says. She asks immediately about Tommen, but is told he is well, and then about Jaime. He tells her that Jaime has gone off somewhere with a woman, who may be Brienne of Tarth. Cersei can't imagine the clumsy, homely Brienne as a rival, so she is puzzled and dismayed.

Kevan goes on to inform her that companies of sellswords have been landing in the south. He assumes that they have been hired by Stannis, but Mace Tyrell refuses to deal with them until the matter with Margaery has been settled. Cersei would be happy to settle the matter by chopping off Margaery's head, but she holds her tongue. She pleads with her uncle to get her out of the prison, but he says the High Septon refuses to release her until she has atoned for her sins.

She protests that she has confessed, but he replies, "Atoned, I said. Before the city. A walk--". Cersei knows what that involves and refuses, "I am a queen, not some dockside whore." She would "sooner die," she tells him. It may come to that, he tells her: "His High Holiness is resolved that you be tried for regicide, deicide, incest, and high treason." The only one of the charges that surprises her is "deicide":  "When did I kill a god?" He explains that the murder of the High Septon is a form of deicide.

She will be tried by the Faith, he tells her, unless she chooses trial by combat, with a champion drawn from the Kingsguard.

"Whatever the outcome, your rule is at an end. I will serve as Tommen's regent until he comes of age. Mace Tyrell has been named King's Hand. Grand Maester Pycelle and Ser Harys Swift will continue as before, but Paxter Redwyne is now lord admiral and Randall Tarly has assumed the duties of justiciar." 

Redwyne and Tarly are bannermen of the Tyrells, she realizes. She asks why Margaery and her cousins have been freed and she hasn't, and is told that Randall Tarly brought his army with him and persuaded the High Septon to put them in his custody and swore to deliver them for trial. But the case against them has grown weaker: "All of the men named as the queen's lovers have denied the accusation or recanted, save for your maimed singer, who appears to be quite mad." Qyburn is in charge of them in the dungeons at the Red Keep, which makes her feel better.

Then Kevan breaks the news about Myrcella's mutilation. Cersei immediately jumps to the conclusion that Tyrion is behind it, but Kevan assures her the culprit is "a Dornish knight named Gerold Dayne." Ser Arys Oakheart was killed defending her. She realizes that this means there is an opening on the Kingsguard, so she urges her uncle to consult with Qyburn: He'll be able to name someone for the Kingsguard who can defend her in a trial by combat.

The Queensguard

Daenerys's disappearance has thrown her court into turmoil. Already, Barristan has been informed that he has no place at court in her absence -- she is presumed to be dead, which he refuses to believe. Strong Belwas is being cared for by the Graces, after his collapse from eating the honeyed locusts. Skahaz has been relieved of his command, and the Unsullied remain in their barracks. The hostages remain in the hands of the Yunkai'i, including Jhogo, while the other members of Daenerys's khalasar have gone off to search for her. Hizdahr has also dismissed Missandei from service.

Reznak mo Reznak remains, acting as a liaison between Hizdahr and Daenerys's people, and he tells Barristan that Hizdahr has chosen pit fighters as his personal guard. Barristan knows that this is because Hizdahr doesn't trust either the Unsullied or Skahaz's Brazen Beasts. But Barristan is to be kept around to command forces against external enemies, Reznak says. Barristan knows this is nonsense, but he hides his real feelings: "I am His Grace's to command," he says, only to be corrected by Reznak: The proper address is "His Magnificence, His Radiance, His Worship." He takes his leave of the perfumed seneschal, hiding his contempt.

Hizdahr has not occupied Daenerys's chambers, however, preferring a more secure location. Barristan goes there and finds only Missandei -- Irri and Jhiqui have joined the other Dothraki in the search. He is full of regret: "I came to bring Daenerys home. Yet he had lost her, just as he had lost her father and her brother. Even Robert. I failed him too." He had seen Drogon fly off with Daenerys on his back, and had learned later that the dragon had turned his fire on the people who had shot arrows at him, killing more than two hundred and burning or wounding three times that number.

Missandei assures him that Daenerys has not flown to Westeros, that she would not abandon her followers. She also tells him that Skahaz mo Kandaq wants to speak with him. He doesn't trust the Shavepate but agrees to the meeting. Alone, he thinks about his failures:

Jaehaerys, Aerys, Robert. Three dead kings. Rhaegar, who would have been a finer king than any of them. Princess Elia and the children. Aegon just a babe. Rhaenys with her kitten. Dead, every one, yet he still lived, who had sworn to protect them. And now Daenerys, his bright shining child queen. She is not dead. I will not believe it.

That evening he goes out to the meeting Missandei has arranged with Skahaz, uncertain whether he shouldn't arrest him for conspiring against Hizdahr, his queen's consort. He finds the Shavepate wearing the mask of a Brazen Beast: a cat. He tells Barristan that he has discovered who poisoned the honeyed locusts: "The Sons of the Harpy tood his daughter and swore she would be returned once the queen was dead." Belwas's taste for the locust saved Daenerys, as did the dragon. But the poisoner's girl was returned to him "in nine pieces. One for every year she lived."

Moreover, he says, Volantis has launched its fleet and is sailing to Meereen. "The king will open the city gates to the Volantenes when they arrive. All those Daenerys freed will be enslaved again. Even some who were never slaves will be fitted for chains. You may end your days in a fighting pit, old man." He urges an attack on the Yunkai'i, who are fat and complacent, and says Barristan must contact the Unsullied.

Barristan is cautious about getting caught up in a treasonous plot, but Skahaz insists that Hizdahr is behind the attempt to poison Daenerys: He always wanted the crown, and once he gained it had no interest in sharing it. Barristan remembers Hizdahr urging Daenerys to try the locusts, "yet he never touched so much as one himself." He wants to talk to the man who prepared them. Skahaz agrees, and says he won't make a move against Hizdahr until they are certain of his guilt. And Barristan agrees to talk to Grey Worm, the leader of the Unsullied.

25. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 661-686

Daenerys

The peace treaty between Meereen and the Yunkai'i is being signed, and the fighting pits have been reopened as part of the celebration. Daenerys is not happy: Though she married Hizdahr to bring about peace, she feels defeated. Hizdahr assures her that it's only temporary: When the Yunkai'i leave, they will "have all we desired. Peace, food, trade. Our port is open once again, and ships are being permitted to come and go."

But she objects that the Yunkai are trading in slaves outside her own walls, mocking her as powerless. She tries to console herself that by agreeing to the peace terms she has saved thousands of lives: "This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost."

At the feast, she notes how unimpressive the Yunkish commanders are, and how the sellswords they had hired are swaggering bravos. Brown Ben Plumm has appeared, but only after an exchange of hostages to keep Daenerys's men from killing him. Among the hostages sent to the Yunkish camp are her bloodrider Jhogo, her admiral Groleo, and Daario Naharis. The last was furious at the wedding and at the peace terms, so it was just as well he wasn't present at the feast.

When the party goes out to the terrace to look at the city, she encounters Brown Ben Plumm, who is insouciant about his deserting her, arguing that he didn't want to be on the losing side and advising her, "Never trust a sellsword." Ser Barristan, who has overheard their conversation, tells Daenerys, after Plumm has left, that it's good advice. She talks with him about ways of getting rid of Brown Ben, and wonders if there is a way to use the Dornishmen who include Prince Quentyn. "The three Dornishmen had been at the feast, as befit Prince Quentyn's rank, though Reznak had taken care to seat them as far as possible from her husband," who might see Quentyn as a rival suitor.

Barristan reminds her that House Martell had been a loyal ally to the Targaryens, and that Quentyn had been stubbornly insistent about his plans to marry her. So she tells him to bring Quentyn to her: "It is time he met my children." She and Quentyn descend to the place where the dragons are caged.

One of the elephants trumpeted at them from his stall. An answering roar from below made her flush with sudden heat. Prince Quentyn looked up in alarm. "The dragons know when she is near," Ser Barristan told him.

Viserion has broken and melted his chains and clings "to the roof of the pit like some huge white bat." Rhaegal is still chained, and is eating the carcass of a bull. When Quentyn asks about the third, she tells him just, "Drogon is hunting." Quentyn is terrified, but she assures him that they frighten her too. Still, she tells him, she intends to learn to ride one of them.

Then she advises him to return to Dorne. "My court is no safe place for you, I fear. You have more enemies than you know. You made Daario look a fool, and he is not a man to forget such a slight." He stubbornly insists that he is a prince of Dorne and "will not run from slaves and sellswords." She reflects that he is a fool.

That night, Hizdahr makes drunken love to her, after which he whispers, "Gods grant that we have made a son tonight." But she can only remember Mirri Maz Duur's prophecy of her barrenness. When he falls asleep, her thoughts turn to Daario. Then Missandei enters to say she thought she heard Daenerys crying. Daenerys denies it, but asks Missandei to stay and talk to her about happy things until she falls asleep, "to dream queer, half-formed dreams of smoke and fire."

Theon

The horns and drum of Stannis's troops are still heard, but the attack hasn't yet materialized. Theon waits for it in the Great Hall and keeps an eye on Abel, Rowan, and another of the washerwomen who is known as Squirrel.  Seeing Ramsay Bolton enter the hall, Theon is filled with fear and whispers to Abel that his escape plan won't work. But Abel insists that Stannis is just outside the walls of Winterfell, and that Theon needn't worry.

Just then the doors of the hall burst open and Ser Hosteen Frey enters, carrying the body of Little Walder Frey. Theon instantly assumes that the washerwomen are responsible for the murder, but Rowan assures him that they weren't. In any case, Ramsay Bolton is enraged at the loss of his favorite, and Hosteen accuses Wyman Manderly of ordering the killing. Wyman asks how old the boy was, and when he is told Little Walder was nine, says, "So young.... Though mayhaps this was  a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey."

Hosteen attacks Wyman with his longsword: "The blade slashed through three of his four chins in a spray of bright red blood." The room erupts in turmoil as Manderly slumps to the floor and his men come to his defense. By the time Roose Bolton is able to restore order, six of Manderly's men and two of the Freys are dead. A maester arrives with a raven, and Bolton reads the message it has brought: Stannis's company, "snowbound and starving," is three days' away. He orders Hosteen to gather his troops and leave by the main gate, and Manderly to dispatch his by the east gate. Hosteen vows that when he returns with Stannis's head, he will finish cutting off that of Manderly, who is being treated by a maester. Ramsay Bolton orders them all to prepare to fight Stannis, and Roose echoes his son: "There will be time enough to fight one another once we are done with Stannis."

Abel is called on for a song as the Freys begin to lead their horses out of the hall, and Rowan grasps Theon's arm to tell him it is time to put the plan they have discussed in effect: "Bolton is sending forth his swords. We have to reach King Stannis before they do." Theon thinks what they have planned is madness, but he gives in and goes with Rowan to the godswood. They are joined there by Squirrel, Holly, and three more of the washerwomen.

The plan is to engineer an escape for Jeyne Poole by disguising her as Squirrel, who is almost the same size. Squirrel will exit by a window and scale down the tower wall while Jeyne exits with the other maids. Theon's task is one he does regularly: to fetch the water for Jeyne's bath. The washerwomen, pretending to be Jeyne's maids, will carry it to her chambers.

Jeyne is huddled in terror in her room when they make it past the guards with the bathwater. Rowan addresses her as "Lady Arya" -- Theon hasn't revealed her true identity to his co-conspirators. They tell her that they are going to take her to her brother, which confuses Jeyne, who says she has no brothers. Theon realizes that the horribly abused girl isn't entirely sure who she is anymore, but Rowan explains that they are going to get her to Jon Snow at the Wall.

Jeyne resists, terrorized as she has been by Ramsay, and the women tell Theon to handle her. He gently persuades her to go along with the plan. They quickly dress her in Squirrel's clothing, and to Theon's surprise and relief they make it past the guards outside the door. His fear returns as they go down the stairs, but even the guards outside the doors barely look at them. Theon feels sorry for them: "Ramsay would flay them all when he learned his bride was gone, and what he would do to Grunt and Sour Alyn" -- the guards outside the bedchamber door -- "did not bear thinking about."

The snowstorm continues to conceal them as they make their way through the paths through the snow, which in places is higher than their heads. At an intersection, Rowan sends Theon and Jeyne on with Holly and Frenya, while she and the others go to fetch Abel. When they reach another pair of guards, Holly and Frenya kill them both, but Jeyne screams when she sees what is happening. Theon puts his hand over her mouth and pulls her along with him as they run.

They reach the steps to the battlements, and Theon slings Jeyne over his shoulder as he begins to climb. Halfway up, he slips on the ice and hurts his knee, but Holly helps him back to his feet and together they get Jeyne to the top of the battlements. Frenya remains behind to attack any pursuers. But when they reach the top, Holly realizes that Frenya has the rope they need to climb down. Then she is pierced by arrows and falls.

Realizing that they have been discovered, and that there are crossbowmen on the inner wall and men racing toward them with drawn swords, Theon does the only thing he can do: He grabs Jeyne and jumps.

6. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 148-178

Daenerys

Daenerys has been dreaming of Daario Naharis when she is awakened by Irri. Grey Worm, Reznak and Skahaz have brought word of more murders conducted by the Sons of the Harpy. Nine of her followers have been killed, including Missandei's brother. Daenerys demands a strengthening of the guard and hostages from the noble family of Meereen. Then she comforts Missandei.

Filled with anger and longing for Daario, she is unable to go back to sleep. She goes out to the pool on the terrace to bathe, but she hears a sound and sees a woman wearing a lacquered wooden mask: Quaithe. Daenerys pinches herself, but she isn't dreaming.

"Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal." 

The last-named is Reznak, Daenerys knows, but she asks Quaithe to "speak plainly" if she has something to tell her. She remembers Quaithe's other advice, to "go north to go south, east to go west, back to go forward. And to touch the light I have to pass beneath the shadow." But she's tired of riddles, she tells Quaithe. Then Missandei appears to ask whom Daenerys is talking to, and Quaithe vanishes. Daenerys wonders if she is going mad, like her father.

After breakfast, for which Daenerys finds she has no appetite, Reznak and Skahaz appear, stirring her memory of Quaithe's warning. She takes her seat in the council hall, where Ser Barristan has thoughtfully provided cushions for her, and tries to fight off sleep as she hears about the city's problems. Hizdahr zo Loraq returns, once again to plead for the reinstatement of the fighting pits. He brings with him prominent fighters, all of them freed slaves -- "it had been the fighting slaves, freed from their shackles by her sewer rats, who led the uprising that won the city for her." She feels obliged to listen to their arguments for reopening the pits. She tells them she will consider their arguments, and the meeting is adjourned.

Ser Barristan accompanies her back to her chambers, and she asks him to tell her about how Joffrey dismissed him from the kingsguard and how he fled the country. He says he watched the beheading of Eddard Stark, which convinced him to leave. When Daenerys objects that Stark was a traitor, Barristan objects:

"Your Grace," said Selmy, "Eddard Stark played a part in your father's fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand." 

Daenerys reminds him of the murder of Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon, but Barristan says that was done by the Lannisters, not the Starks. Daenerys sees no difference between the two houses, and then asks Barristan to take her to see her dragons. She senses his disapproval, but he obliges.

Rhaegal and Viserion are chained there, and she notes how they have grown. "What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?" she asks herself. But she knows that she must keep them there after meeting with the man whose child was eaten. It was a four-year-old girl called Hazzea, he told her. She had questioned his story, thinking that the child's death might have been faked by the Sons of the Harpy to discredit her, but she observed that the man had come forward after the hall had emptied. "If his purpose had been to inflame the Meereenese against her, he would have told his tale when the hall was full of ears to hear." She had paid him handsomely not to spread the story.

Drogon had presumably been the dragon responsible, and he is still at large. Daenerys is conscience-stricken, but feels responsible for the dragons, too. "Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I."

Reek

Ramsay Bolton has imprisoned him after torturing and mutilating him, and now he is reduced to capturing rats and eating them raw. But now two boys have come to his cell, and he is terrified that he is about to be taken back to Bolton for more abuse. The boys "were squires, both were eight, and both were Walder Frey. Big Walder and Little Walder, yes. Only the big one was Little and the little one was Big, which amused the boys and confused the rest of the world."

He thinks of overpowering them and taking the keys, but knows that he'll be caught and that Bolton "will take another finger from me, he will take more of my teeth." He had escaped from Ramsay Bolton before, but discovered that it was only a trap: "Lord Ramsay loved the chase and preferred to hunt two-legged prey."

Little Walder asks if they should bathe him before taking him wherever he was going, but Big Walder says that Ramsay "likes him stinky.... That's why he named him Reek." We remember now that when Ramsay Bolton was still a bastard named Snow, he had disguised himself as the filthy creature known as Reek. The new Reek has to remind himself of his name constantly with mnemonics: "My name is Reek, it rhymes with bleak," he tells himself now. So he submits to the Freys, who guide the ragged Reek out of the dungeon.

As he goes with them, he wonders how long he has been imprisoned. "The boys were still boys. If it had been ten years, they would have grown into men," he reasons. They take him to the great hall, where the garrison is dining. Bolton is sitting at the high table, and he tells the men sitting beside him that "Reek has been with me since I was a boy. My lord father gave him to me as a token of his love." One of the men says he thought Reek was dead, that he had been killed by the Starks, but Bolton says, "The ironmen will tell you that what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger."

But the other man sitting there tells the first one to take a good look at Reek: "His hair's gone white and he is three stone thinner, aye, but this is no serving man." And the first man recognizes Reek as Theon Greyjoy, though he doesn't speak his name: "Stark's ward. Smiling, always smiling." Bolton says he doesn't smile much anymore since he broke Theon's teeth, and he notices blood on his mouth and asks if he has been "chewing on your fingers again, Reek?" (Bolton's late wife had starved to death, eating her own fingers to try to stay alive.) Reek/Theon swears that he hasn't been doing that, though he had tried to bite his ring finger off after Bolton had flayed the skin from it.

He confesses to having eaten a rat, which brings a reprimand: "All the rats in the Dreadfort belong to my lord father. How dare you make a meal of one without my leave." Reek doesn't know how to reply to avoid further mutilation: "Thus far he had lost two fingers off his left hand and the pinky off his right, but only the little toe off his right foot against three from his left." But Bolton is more interested in giving him some news: "I am to be wed. My lord father is bringing me a Stark girl. Lord Eddard's daughter, Arya. You remember little Arya, don't you?"

Theon remembers the real Arya -- we know this one is an imposter -- and recalls "a time when he had thought that Lord Eddard Stark might marry him to Sansa and claim him for a son, but that had only been a child's fancy." Now Bolton tells him that he is to serve him at the wedding, and that he will be cleaned up and fed to get his strength back. Though he fears a trap, Theon says he will be glad to serve him. Bolton tells him, "I ride to war, Reek. And you will be coming with me, to help me fetch home my virgin bride."

Bran

They are traveling again through deep snow and bitter cold, and they are afraid. "Even Summer was afraid." Coldhands tells them they have to climb, and it will be dark soon. The entrance to the cave they are headed for is halfway up the hill, and Bran sees ravens flying in and out of it. Meera estimates it's about a thousand yards away, but Bran recognizes that "all those yards are upward." Still, it's his destination, the place where he is to meet the three-eyed crow, the greenseer. 

It had been twelve days since the elk had collapsed for the third and final time, since Coldhands had knelt beside it in the snowbank and murmured a blessing in some strange tongue as he slit its throat.... As gaunt and starved as the elk had been, the steaks the ranger carved from him had sustained them for seven days, until they finished the last of them huddled over a fire in the ruins of an old hillfort.

Hodor begins the ascent with Bran on his back and Coldhands beside them. Summer follows, and then Meera, who has been carrying Jojen for quite a while.  Bran loses sight of Meera and Jojen as they fall behind. Only a dozen of the ravens that had been accompanying them remain, and Bran sees one of them fly into the cave. "Only eighty yards now, Bran thought, that's not far at all."

But Summer stops suddenly and snarls and backs away. Bran tells Hodor to stop, but Coldhands continues the climb, so Hodor follows. When they are sixty yards from the entrance, Bran sees the flicker of a fire in the cave's mouth. But suddenly Hodor screams and falls, and Bran realizes that something has hold of Hodor's leg. A wight bursts from under the snow. They are rolling down hill, and wights are bursting from beneath the snow.

A wight grabs Bran, but Summer attacks and tears off its arm and bites into its throat. Bran begins to drag himself uphill toward the cave, as Coldhands slashes out at the wights surrounding him and Summer continues his assault on the one that grabbed Bran. He hears Hodor call out, and Bran slips inside Hodor's body, drawing Hodor's sword. "Deep inside he could hear poor Hodor whimpering still, but outside he was seven feet of fury with old iron in his hand." Meera arrives and jabs at the wight attacking Hodor with her frog spear. Through Hodor's eyes, Bran sees Jojen lying helpless, and he guides Hodor to rescue the boy.

Up ahead, wights are burning, and Bran realizes that someone has set them on fire. He sees Summer snarling at a burning wight and realizes that he -- Bran -- is lying on the ground and Summer is protecting him. He wonders if Bran dies, will he remain Hodor forever. He feels Hodor stumble as ravens pour from the mouth of the cave and he sees "a little girl with a torch in hand, darting this way and that." For a moment he thinks the girl is Arya. Then the snow falls from a tree and buries him.

He wakes inside the cave and sees Hodor, Summer, Meera and Jojen with him, tended to by the girl. When she speaks he knows she isn't Arya, and he notices that her eyes are "large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes." He realizes that she is "A child of the forest," as he tells Meera when she asks. The girl says that the First Men called them children, but they aren't. "Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."

She tells them that the ranger, Coldhands, can't enter the cave, and when Bran protests that the wights will kill him, says, "They killed him long ago." They must follow her now to meet the greenseer. As they descend into the cavern, Bran sees what seems to be giant white snakes in the walls of the cave, but he realizes that they are weirwood roots. There are passages off to the side, and in them Bran sees, by the light of the girl's torch, the shining eyes of other children of the forest. Hodor's feet begin to crunch on something and he stops suddenly. Bran realizes that they are walking on bones, and in niches there are skulls of animals, men, and giants, as well as of the children of the forest.

The last part of the journey is the steepest, and Hodor slides down in on his buttocks. He sees the girl waiting by a natural bridge across a chasm, and he hears running water. Bran is afraid that he will have to cross the bridge on Hodor's back, but the girl tells him no, and lifts her torch, telling him to look behind.

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child. His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. 

His hair is white and so long that it reaches the floor, leaves sprout from his skull, and mushrooms from his forehead. Bone pokes through his desiccated skin.

Bran asks, "Are you the three-eyed crow?" The pale lord answers slowly, in a dry voice, and says that he was one once. "I have been many things, Bran," he says, but he has been this for a very long time. "I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father." He had witnessed Bran's fall. "And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late."

Bran asks for the thing he wants most: his legs.

"You will never walk again, Bran," the pale lips promised, "but you will fly."

17. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 556-589

Jon

Jon and the wildlings are moving through the Gift, and they come upon a somewhat familiar location: a tower in the middle of a lake near a deserted village. Ygritte is amazed at the size of the tower, and when Jon tells her there are towers three times its height at Winterfell, and one taller than the Wall in Oldtown, she doesn't believe him. He wishes he could take her to Winterfell, but she says she would be content to come back here and live in this tower: "Would you want that, Jon Snow? After?"

The word "after" haunts him, because to Ygritte it means "After the war. After the conquest. After the wildlings break the Wall...." -- things that he is sworn to prevent. But her entire world view is antithetical to his:

"The gods made the earth for all men t' share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can't eat them apples. My stream, you can't fish here. My wood, you're not t' hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I'll chop 'em off, but maybe if you kneel t' me I'll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t' be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t' kneel." 

When Jon tries to argue with her, she answers with her usual line: "You know nothing, Jon Snow." It is her response to his attempt to persuade her that Mance Rayder can't win his war against the people on this side of the Wall: "I don't doubt that you're all very brave, but when it comes to battle, discipline beats valor every time. In the end Mance will fail as all the Kings-beyond-the-Wall have failed before him. And when he does, you'll die. All of you."

She refuses to hear him, and he knows from that point that his duty is going to prevail over their love. He is also aware that if he is forced to kill one of his own, a brother of the Night's Watch, he is doomed to remain with the wildlings. And he knows that Castle Black is defenseless except for the Wall, and as far as he can guess is sadly undermanned, with only the weakest and least-trained men left to guard it. "If the Magnar takes Castle Black unawares, it will be red slaughter, boys butchered in their beds before they know they are under attack." He has to find a way to warn them, and he worries what will happen to Ygritte when his betrayal is discovered.

He has also lost Ghost, and wonders if he really went to Castle Black or if he has joined a pack on the other side of the Wall. "He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off."

It is dark and a storm is raging when they reach the village by the lake. He can see the tower when the lightning flashes. They have also spotted a fire in the ruins of the inn. A scout goes ahead and reports that it is "An old man with a horse." Jon knows that Styr will kill the old man and that he mustn't do anything to prevent it, so he finds shelter in the ruins of a cottage. Ygritte joins him there, and he tells her that he recognizes the tower. She says some of the Thenns say they have heard noises coming from it, like shouting. He says that they should go out to investigate the noise -- having recognized the tower, he knows about the causeway, too. When the lightning comes again, he points out the gilding on the top of the tower, and tells her the story of Queen Alysanne.

Jon is summoned by the Magnar, and Ygritte comes with him. Styr commands Jon to kill the old man, and he reluctantly draws Longclaw as the man begs for mercy. He hesitates, and Ygritte urges him, "You must. T' prove you are no crow, but one o' the free folk." But Jon picks up on the last phrase and refuses to follow through: "'You command Thenns,' Jon told [Styr], 'not free folk.'" Styr replies, "I see no free folk. I see a crow and a crow wife."

"I'm no crow wife!" Ygritte says, and takes her own knife and slits the man's throat. Then she shouts, "You know nothing, Jon Snow!" and throws the knife at his feet. Jon expects to be attacked by the Thenns, but at that moment there is a blinding flash of lightning and a wolf attacks. Jon thinks it's Ghost at first, but another flash reveals to him that the wolf is gray. He lashes out with Longclaw and manages at the same time to grab the mane of the old man's frightened horse and leap onto its back. Desperately clinging to the horse, he rides off through the storm. A spear flies past him, but the sounds of pursuit behind him grow more faint.

He rides as long as he can, not knowing what direction he's headed, and when the storm is ended and he finally stops he feels "a deep throbbing ache in his right thigh." He realizes that his leg has been pierced by an arrow, and when he tries to pull it out, the pain is too great. Then he thinks about the wolf attack: "Like a grey wind.... Could Robb have returned to the north?" But the pain makes it hard to concentrate on "the wolf, the old man, Ygritte, any of it...." He dismounts, and the wounded leg gives under him. He is bleeding profusely, and knows that the arrow has to come out. "Jon pushed back his bloody breeches to get a better grip, grimaced, and slowly drew the shaft through his leg. How he got through that without fainting he never knew."

He washes the wound in the stream the horse is drinking from, and binds his leg. He studies the arrow, but can't tell whether its fletching was gray or white. "Ygritte fletched her arrows with pale grey goose feathers. Did she loose a shaft at me as I fled?  Jon could not blame her for that." He rests for a while as the horse grazes, wondering how he had been able to leap on her back while carrying a sword in one hand. The sky has cleared, and he finds his way north by looking at the stars. He heads for the Wall and Castle Black. "I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?"

Daenerys

She has ridden out with Ser Jorah to see the forces arrayed against hers to defend the city of Yunkai. They number about five thousand, she estimates, and Jorah confirms the number, pointing out that the flanks of the army are made up of mercenaries. The center is composed of Yunkai soldiers. He says they can be defeated easily, but at the risk of bloodshed on their side: "Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned." Daenerys decides to parley not only with the Yunkai slavers, but also with the two groups of sellswords, each separately: "The Stormcrows at midday, the Second Sons two hours later."

She returns to the camp to talk to Grey Worm, who had been designated the leader of the Unsullied after she set them free and told them to select officers. She had abolished the practice of having the Unsullied select new names each day, and Grey Worm had elected to keep the name he had drawn on the day he was set free, thinking it a lucky one. She tells him that they are to spare the life of any slave soldier who surrenders. "The fewer slain, the more remain to join us after."

After freeing the slaves of Astapor, she had left the city in the charge of "a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar, and a priest." But tens of thousands of the newly freed had chosen to follow her. They are "more burden than benefit," but she can't bring herself to turn them away since she had been the one to set them free.

She confers with Missandei about the Yunkai, and learns that they speak a dialect of Valyrian and that the slavers who rule the city are called the Wise Masters. Ser Jorah arrives with three captains of the Stormcrows, whose spokesman seems to be a Ghiscari named Prendahl na Ghezn. She learns of his contempt for the other group of sellswords, the Second Sons, and tells him that if he leaves the Yunkai and joins her, "you shall keep the gold the Yunkai'i paid you and claim a share of the plunder besides, with greater rewards later when I come into my kingdom. Fight for the Wise Masters, and your wages will be death."

Prendahl rejects the offer and insults Daenerys in the bargain, but she tells him to go back and present the offer to his men and to report his decision the next day. As they leave, one of the captains, a flamboyant Tyroshi named Daario Naharis, glances back at her "and inclined his head in polite farewell."

The commander of the Second Sons arrives two hours later. He is a Braavosi named Mero, but calls himself the Titan's Bastard. He makes indecent proposals to her but she parries them and makes him an offer to join her side, too. She can tell that his sexual swagger angers Ser Jorah, but says that she will await his answer tomorrow. Mero likes the wine she has served him and she sends him away with a wagon full of it. When he is gone, Arstan Whitebeard advises her not to trust him: "That one has an evil reputation, even in Westeros.... He will drink three toasts to your health tonight and rape you on the morrow." Jorah agrees, saying that under Mero's leadership the Second Sons have become "near as bad as the Brave Companions." But Daenerys says she doesn't want him for his reputation but for his numbers.

The Yunkai delegation is led by a man named Grazdan mo Eraz, who blusters, "I am told you have freed your eunuchs. Freedom means as much to an Unsullied as a hat to a haddock." He says they will re-enslave the survivors of the battle and retake Astapor, and sell Daenerys into prostitution: "There are pleasure houses in Lys and Tyrosh where men would pay handsomely to bed the last Targaryen." She shouldn't waste her effort on conquering Yunkai when she "will need every man to regain your father's throne in far Westeros. Yunkai wishes you only well in that endeavor. And to prove the truth of that, I have brought you a gift."

She opens the chest that is placed before her, which is full of gold coins. "Very pretty," she says. "I wonder how many chests like this I shall find when I take your city?" She says she has a gift in return: She gives him three days, at the end of which he is to free all of the city's slaves and allow them to take whatever they want from their masters as payment for their years of enslavement. Each of them is to "be given a weapon, and as much food, clothing, coin, and goods as he or she can carry." Then the Unsullied will enter the city and make sure that everyone has been freed. And if they have been, Yunkai and its people will be unharmed.

When Grazdan says she is mad, she says, "Dracarys," and the three dragons reply, with Drogon spitting fire that sets his robe aflame. Whitebeard douses the fire with a flagon of water. When Grazdan protests that he was under safe conduct, she says she'll buy him a new robe if he meets her demands about freeing the slaves. "Elsewise, Drogon will give you a warmer kiss."

When he is gone, she tells Ser Jorah to call the bloodriders, and when they are all assembled tells them that they will attack at an hour past midnight. "The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai'i believe they have three days." The Unsullied will attack from right and left and the horsemen will move in a wedge through the center. When she asks what they think of the plan, Ser Jorah says, "I think you are Rhaegar Targaryen's sister," and Arstan agrees, "and a queen as well."

At midnight, Ser Jorah comes to her with the news that the Unsullied had caught Daario Naharis trying to sneak into the camp. When he is brought to her the Tyroshi informs her that he and the Stormcrows are hers, and presents her with the heads of the other two captains. At her request, he swears his sword to her service. Then she sends him back to lead the Stormcrows in an attack on the rear of the Yunkish forces.

When he is gone, Ser Jorah protests her decision, saying she can't trust a man like Naharis. But she sees the sexual jealousy behind his opinion, remembering the prophecy: "And I shall be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love." She asks if he is "the only man I should ever trust?"

"You have been a better friend to me than any I have known, a better brother than Viserys ever was. You are the first of my Queensguard, the commander of my army, my most valued counselor, my good right hand. I honor and respect and cherish you -- but I do not desire you, Jorah Mormont, and I am weary of your trying to push every other man in the world away from me, so I must needs rely on you and you alone. It will not serve, and it will not make me love you any better."

When she sends him off to prepare for the battle, she is filled with doubt and uncertainty and remembers that "Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me." She turns to her dragons and calls them her children, "my three fierce children."

She calls for Whitebeard and asks him to tell her about her brother Rhaegar. He says that "He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days." As he is elaborating on her brother's melancholy, the dragons hear the sound of horses and begin to roar. Ser Jorah enters to report on the victory, which had gone as Daenerys had foreseen. They "have several thousand captives" and their own losses amount to "A dozen. If that many."

The next day they march to the city, and on the third the gates open and the freed slaves emerge. Missandei tells them "that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons." People begin to cry out the word "Mhysa!" When Daenerys asks what it means, Missandei tells her, "It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means 'Mother.'"

10. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 344-381

Davos

Davos's cell is warm and full of rats, but he is regaining his strength, thanks to a visit from Maester Pylos. He is also eating regularly, and can count the days by the visits of the two jailers who bring him his meals. He calls one Porridge, because he brinks breakfast, and the other Lamprey, because he once bought half a lamprey pie, though it was too rich for the still-malnourished Davos to keep down. The jailers, however, never answer any of his questions about the war or whether his son Devan is still alive. Still, the regular attention makes him believe, "They are keeping me alive, for some purpose of their own."

And then one day he has a visitor, though not one he's particularly eager to see: Melisandre. She comments that the cell is a dark place, and points to the torch burning outside of it: "This is all that stands between you and the darkness, Onion Knight. This little fire, this gift of R'hllor. Shall I put it out?" He says no, of course, but he refuses to beg. Then she says that she is like the torch: "We are both instruments of R'hllor. We were made for a single purpose -- to keep the darkness at bay."

He retorts that she is "the mother of darkness," as he saw when she gave birth to the terrible shadow at Storm's End. She replies that it takes light to give birth to shadow, and anyway, he needn't fear that happening any time soon: "the king's fires burn so low I dare not draw off any more to make another son." Davos, on the other hand, she proposes, has enough fire left, and if he really wants to serve Stannis, he should come to her chambers. "I could give you pleasure such as you have never known, and with your life-fire I could make...." He completes her sentence: "...a horror." And he calls on the Seven to protect him.

She proclaims them false gods, and proclaims a Manichean creed:

"The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white.There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good." She took a step toward him. "Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war." 

He is puzzled by her reference to the war, and she explains that she doesn't mean the conflict over the throne of the Seven Kingdoms: She's not there just "to put yet another vain king on yet another empty throne." (So much for Stannis.) She is there to fight on behalf of "R'hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow" against "the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror." She asks which side he is on. All he can say is that he is "full of doubts."

But this pleases her: "The good knight is honest to the last, even in his day of darkness. It is well you did not lie to me.  I would have known." And she asks why he wanted to kill her. He says he'll tell her if she tells him who betrayed him. She replies that no one betrayed him: "I saw your purpose in my flames." So if she's so good with fire, he asks, why did she let them burn in the attack on King's Landing. Those weren't her flames, she says. She wasn't even there, she reminds him, and things would have turned out differently if she had been. It was Stannis's fault: "his pride proved stronger than his faith," and he surrounded himself with unbelievers. But he has learned his lesson.

Davos reflects bitterly that it took the deaths of his sons to teach Stannis a lesson. But she prophesies a future victory for Stannis: "He is the Lord's chosen, the warrior of fire. I have seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames." She leaves him to reflect on her prophecy. "And because R'hllor is the source of all good, I shall leave the torch as well."

Left alone he reflects on what she has said, and for a while stares at the torchlight trying to see something in it, "but there was nothing, only fire, and after a time his eyes began to water."

Then three days later, he receives a cellmate. There is the sound of a struggle, and Ser Axell Florent and two guardsmen arrive with the prisoner, who pleads his innocence and demands to see the queen. And when he cries out, "I am the King's Hand!" Davos recognizes Alester Florent, Axell's brother and Queen Selyse's uncle. Alester is able to answer Davos's questions about what happened on the Blackwater, including the loss of the ship Fury which had been captained by Alester's nephew, Imry, and on which Davos's son Maric had been oarmaster. Imry had led the fleet up the Blackwater.

Alester has been imprisoned for treason because he believes the loss of the fleet and of Stannis's allies means defeat for the king. "The best hope that remains is to try and salvage something with a peace. That is all I meant to do. Gods be good, how can they call it treason?" So he has written a letter to Tywin Lannister, proposing that Stannis give up his claim on the throne, retract his words about Joffrey's illegitimacy and incestuous birth, in exchange for being allowed to remain as Lord of Dragonstone and Storm's End. He also proposed marrying Stannis's daughter, Shireen, to Tommen. "The terms ... they are as good as we are ever like to get."

Davos agrees that they are probably good terms, but asks what the king thought of them. Alester says the king "is not in his right mind." He is under the sway of Melisandre. "This talk of a stone dragon ... madness, I tell you, sheer madness." Davos is as ignorant as we are of this talk, though we know more about what's happening with live dragons than either of them does. So given the king's debility, Alester took it upon himself to sue for peace: "Stannis gave me his seal, he gave me leave to rule. The Hand speaks with the king's voice." About this, Davos knows better: "It is not in Stannis to yield, so long as he knows his claim is just." And he would never marry Tommen, born of the same incestuous relationship as Joffrey, to his daughter.

Alester insists, "He has no choice." But Davos knows better about this: "He can choose to die a king."

Jon

Jon has gone to look for Ghost, and to bid him goodbye. There is no way the direwolf can cross the Wall. So Jon tells him to go to Castle Black and wait for him there. "They will know you at Castle Black, and maybe your coming will warn them." Ghost bounds away, but Jon doesn't know whether he has understood the command or is just chasing after a hare.

He judges from the terrain that they are somewhere between Castle Black and the Shadow Tower at the westernmost end of the Wall, and probably closer to the latter. As he returns to the camp, he berates himself for not killing Mance Rayder when he had the opportunity, even if it meant losing his own life. But instead he has ridden off with Styr the Magnar, Jarl, and a company of Thenns and raiders, as well as Ygritte. They have become lovers, and though he is torn with guilt for breaking his vow of chastity as a member of the Watch, he also cannot resist her. "Was this how it was for my father, he wondered. Was he as weak as I am, when he dishonored himself in my mother's bed?"

He is summoned to Magnar by one of the Thenns. Jarl, who is the lover of Mance Rayder's sister-in-law, has joint command with Magnar, who resents sharing the power. But Jarl had crossed the Wall a dozen times, so his skill is particularly valuable on this mission. Magnar wants to know more details about how often the Watch patrols the Wall, and Jon tells him what he has to, though he tries to hold back as much information as possible. He also overestimates the strength of the Watch at the places which are guarded. Jarl challenges these numbers, but Jon doesn't back down.

They are camped in a system of caverns, and Jon finds Ygritte in one with a pool fed by a waterfall. She tells him legends of the caverns that supposedly go under the Wall, and of a King-beyond-the-Wall named Gorne who supposedly found it, as well his his brother Gendel who supposedly got lost in the caverns and whose descendants still live there, feeding on the unwary humans who come upon them. Ygritte has developed a catchphrase, "You know nothing, Jon Snow," whenever she has a bit of lore that he is unfamiliar with, and she uses it often. On the other hand, there's something she knows nothing of, which is cunnilingus, and when Jon practices it on her, she is duly impressed.

When the torch starts to burn down, he suggests that they leave. But they don't.

His guilt came back afterward, but weaker than before. If this is so wrong, he wondered, why did the gods make it feel so good?

 
Danerys

Daenerys has gone to the Good Masters of Astapor with an astonishing offer: to buy all of the Unsullied. She is wearing a Qartheen gown that bares her left breast, and after she makes her offer, "She could not quite make out all that they were saying, but she could hear the greed."

There are eight slave brokers, each with a company of body slaves, and she has brought Irri and Jhiqui, Whitebeard and Belwas, her bloodriders, and Ser Jorah. Kraznys mo Naklos asks if by all she means, in addition to the eight thousands, the six centuries who are waiting to make up another thousand once the trainees are promoted to their ranks. She says she does, "and the ones who are still in training as well. The ones who have not earned the spikes."

This sets off an argument among the brokers, some of whom say they can't sell boys who aren't fully trained, while others insist, "We can, if her gold is good." Moreover, if they sell them all, it will be ten years or more before they can train enough new Unsullied, but one fat man argues, "Gold in my purse is better than gold in my future." Kraznys tells her the consensus: She can have the eight thousands and the six centuries now, and in a year they'll have another two thousands to sell her. But she insists on all of them: "Tell the Good Masters that I will want even the little ones who still have their puppies. Tell them that I will pay as much for the boy they cut yesterday as for an Unsullied in a spiked helm."

When they say no, she says she will pay double. One of them who speaks the Common Tongue asks if she really has the gold and the goods to pay that much. She says they have inspected the cargo on her ships; does she have enough?  They say she has enough for one thousand, but only five centuries if she pays double. She offers to throw in the three ships, and they say that would add up to two thousands, but that they are being generous in offering that. Finally, reluctantly, she plays her trump card: "'Give me all,' she said, 'and you may have a dragon.'"

The members of her retinue are shocked, and Whitebeard goes down on one knee to beg her not to do this. She orders Jorah to take him away, and apologizes to the brokers for the interruption. She knows that she has them where she wants them. Finally one of the brokers calls it a deal, as long as they can choose which dragon. And the one they want is Drogon, the largest. When it is agreed on, Kraznys even throws in the slave girl, his interpreter, as "a token of a bargain well struck."

She leaves them, feeling ill, but when she sees Whitebeard, she tells him he may disagree with her all he wants in private, but never to question her judgment in front of others. He submits. Then she asks the slave girl, in High Valryian, if she has a name. When the girl realizes that Daenerys has spoken the language that she was supposedly translating, she says, "Oh." Daenerys asks if that's her name, and the girl asks her forgiveness and says, "Your slave's name is Missandei, but...." Daenerys tells her she isn't a slave anymore, and tells her to ride in the litter with her. If she wants to leave her, she may, but if she stays she will be one of her handmaids. Missandei decides to stay.

Daenerys warns her that the journey will be difficult and she might be killed. Missandei replies, in High Valryian,"Valar morghulis." Daenerys translates the phrase: "All men must die."

She learns more from her new handmaid about the Unsullied: It is true that they have no fear and that the "wine of courage" has removed all sense of pain. They are so obedient that, "If you told them not to breathe, they would find that easier than not to obey." And what will she do with them once she has won her war and claimed her throne. They make excellent guards and watchmen, Missandei says, and she can always sell them. Daenerys says that men are not bought and sold in Westeros, and even if she did sell them, could their new owners tell them to fight against her. Missandei says, first, that Unsullied aren't men, and second that they do whatever their owner commands: "They do not question, Your Grace. All the questions have been culled from them." The only solution to that problem would be to have them kill themselves, which they would do.

Daenerys realizes that this last troubles Missandei, and she asks why. "Three of them were my brothers once, Your Grace," she replies.

Back at the ship and in private, Daenerys gives way to tears. But then she argues with the captain, Groleo, about trading the ships, and the anger gives her strength. She calls her bloodriders and Ser Jorah to her cabin, and later goes out on deck where Jorah joins her. She asks him, "Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" He has no answer, and she goes back to her cabin, where she dreams that she is Rhaegar, mounted on a dragon, confronting "the Usurper's rebel host" who are armored in ice. The dragonfire melts them.

She awakes feeling triumphant, but she senses someone in her cabin. She calls out for her handmaids, but a woman tells her that they are all asleep. Then she says,

"Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."

She recognizes the words, and cries out, "Quaithe?" But when she opens the door, letting in the light and waking Irri and Jhiqui, there is no sign of the "woman in a red lacquer mask." She tells the girls she had a dream, and to go back to sleep, but she doesn't sleep again that night.

The next morning she and all of her people, including the Dothraki and the captains and crews of the ships, enter Astapor in a caravan transporting the goods from the ships. The three dragons are chained and restless. In the Plaza of Punishment, where slaves are "racked, and flayed, and hanged," the Unsullied and the trainees are all gathered, and the slave brokers are waiting. At a command from Ser Jorah, the trade goods are unloaded from wagons and piled before the slavers. When this is done, Daenerys tells them that there is much more on the ships, which are also part of the deal, so that the only thing remaining is the dragon.

Daenerys gives Kraznys mo Nakloz the end of the chain that restrains Drogon, and in exchange he gives her the whip that signifies her authority over the Unsullied. "The handle was black dragonbone, elaborately carved and inlaid with gold. Nine long thin leather lashes trailed from it, each one tipped by a gilded claw. The gold pommel was a woman's head with pointed ivory teeth." Kraznys calls it "The harpy's fingers."

Daenerys mounts her horse and raises the whip, then rides among the ranks of the Unsullied, crying out "YOU ARE THE DRAGON'S NOW! YOU'RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!" Only one of the slavers notices that she is speaking Valyrian. The others are struggling to control Drogon. She rides back to them, accompanied by her bloodriders. Kraznys says, "He will not come." She replies, "There is a reason. A dragon is no slave," and she lashes out at Kraznys with the whip. "The harpy's fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash." And then she calls out to Drogon, "Dracarys."

The dragon incinerates Kraznys, and the bloodriders take care of the rest of the slavers. Then she calls to the Unsullied to kill the Good Masters, the soldiers, and the slave drivers but to "harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She calls out, "Dracarys," and the Unsullied echo the word. "And all around them the slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire."