17. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 448-472

Bran

Bran is sitting on a weirwood throne in the warm depths of the cavern, with ravens walking up and down his arms. He hears the children sing, and the whispers of the old man, "The last greenseer, the singers called him, but in Bran's dreams he was still a three-eyed crow." The name his mother had given him, he told Bran, was Brynden.

One of the singers, whom Meera calls Leaf because the real name is impossible to pronounce, says that most of the last greenseer "has gone into the tree." Jojen, who has recovered from the journey but still displays its effects on him, tell Bran that the trees remember "The secrets of the old gods.... Truths the First Men knew." And Meera tells Bran that he will remain after they are gone. Bran doesn't like that, and says that Meera and Jojen could also become greenseers.

"It is given to a few to drink of that green fountain whilst still in mortal flesh, to hear the whisperings of the leaves and see as the trees see, as the gods see," said Jojen. "Most are not so blessed. The gods gave me only greendreams. My task was to get you here. My part in this is done."

And Bran learns to fly, to enter a raven and take wing. The first time he tries it, however, he is clumsy and flies into a wall, but the raven is unhurt. When he succeeds he realizes that there is someone else in the raven with him, a girl. He tells Lord Brynden this, and the greenseer says that the earliest singers taught the First Men how to send messages by raven, but did so by inhabiting the birds and speaking the message. A shadow of these singers often remains in the birds. Lord Brynden also tells him, "Only one man in a thousand is born a skinchanger, ... and only one skinchanger in a thousand can be a greenseer."

Bran learns more about the children of the forest from Leaf, including the fact that they are more like "Little wise men of the forest." They are smaller than men, but they are older than they appear. They have "nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots, and large ears that could hear things that no man could hear." In addition to cat's eyes, they have only three fingers and a thumb, and instead of nails have sharp black claws.

Jojen and Meera decide to explore the underground river, which is six hundred feet below the part of the cavern where they dwell, but the climb is too steep for Hodor to carry Bran on his back. So without telling the others, Bran slips into Hodor's body and makes the journey with them. (Hodor now acquiesces, though a little reluctantly, when Bran enters him.) Meera catches a blind white fish with her frog spear, but Jojen grows so weak on the return journey that Hodor has to haul him up with a rope tied around his waist.

Bran sometimes goes out with Summer and the wolf pack, or flies around as a raven, inspecting the icy world outside the cave, or explores the cave in Hodor's body. He finds a cavern full of singers entwined with weirwood roots like Lord Brynden. Bran is still frightened of Lord Brynden, a ghastly sight with the roots sprouting from his body, and it bothers him that one day he will be like the greenseer, remembering that he used to want to be a knight and that he "used to run and climb and fight. It seemed a thousand years ago."

Jojen is declining, growing "more sullen and solitary, to his sister's distress," and Meera says her brother wants to go home. The greendreams have shown him his fate, and he is distressed by the fact that he can't do anything about it. She begins to cry, regretting that they had made the journey that his greendreams had compelled him to make.

The weeks pass and finally Lord Brynden tells Bran that it is time for him "to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer." Leaf brings him a weirwood bowl with a paste in it made of weirwood seeds. Lord Brynden tells him it "will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees." Bran isn't so sure about this, but he eats the paste. Then Lord Brynden tells him to enter the weirwood roots the way he enters Summer. He does so, and suddenly he is back at Winterfell, watching his father cleaning the greatsword Ice. Bran whispers, "Winterfell," and his father hears him and asks who's there. It startles Bran so much that he quickly returns to the cavern.

He tells Leaf and Lord Brynden what he saw, but Leaf says, "You saw what you wished to see. Your heart yearns for your father and your home, so that is what you saw." Lord Brynden says that he was "looking through the eyes of the heart tree in your godswood," and that time is different for a tree. When Bran insists that his father heard him, Lord Brynden says that he may have heard something but that Bran can't speak to him. "The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it." Once his skills have developed, Bran can see what the trees have seen at any time in the past, and "in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves."

Hodor takes Bran back to his chamber, where he tries to stay awake so he can tell Meera and Jojen what happened, but suddenly he is back at Winterfell watching his father when he was much younger. He hears Ned say, "...let them grow up close as brothers, with only love between them, ... and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive...." Bran speaks to him again, and his father stops his prayer and looks at the weirwood for a moment before resuming his prayer. Then suddenly his father disappears and two children were dueling with broken branches. One is a girl, who is taller than the boy she is dueling with, so he assumes that it's Arya and himself, though he had never worn his hair as long as the boy.

Then other visions follow. One is of a naked woman, pregnant, who prays for a son to avenge her. Then a brown-haired girl who kisses a tall young knight, followed by a youth who trims branches from the tree to make arrows. The tree itself grows smaller, as do the other trees around it, and the men he sees have faces that he knows from the statues in the crypt. And finally he witnesses a man and woman with a captive. The woman cuts the captive's throat, and as the blood flows out of him, Bran can taste it.

Jon

Jon is looking down at the haunted forest from the top of the wall. It has snowed for several days, but now the sun has come out, and he tells Dolorous Edd to have Emmett prepare his recruits and an escort of rangers armed with dragonglass. He intends to command the party which will take the recruits to the weirwoods to say their vows.

When he reaches the ground to prepare for departure, Bowen Marsh comes to protest that the Weeper may be out there ready to attack, but Jon says the grove is only two hours away and that they will be back by midnight. Marsh continues to protest that it's unwise, but Jon insists that the vows are important. Besides, he tells Marsh, he has Ghost to protect them.

However, when they exit the tunnels under the Wall, Ghost bounds away, having sensed something. So they proceed without him. As they ride, Iron Emmett tells Jon there is talk of trouble at "Harlot's Tower." Jon corrects him: "Hardin's Tower," which he has designated as a residence for the spearwives and younger girls who had come from Mole's Town. He doesn't want the place getting a bad reputation. Emmett says he "should put guards around the women," but Jon replies, "And who will guard the guards?" He had broken his own vows with Ygritte, so he knows how easy it can be. But he tells Emmett he plans to open three more of the castles, and that the Long Barrow will be staffed by women except for the commander and the chief steward. When Emmett asks "what poor fool will get that choice command?" Jon says that Emmett will, and Dolorous Edd will be his steward.

Jon reflects on the trouble he has had integrating the wildlings with the Watch. "There were nights when Jon Snow wondered if he had not made a grievous mistake by preventing Stannis from  marching all the wildlings off to be slaughtered. I know nothing, Ygritte, he thought, and perhaps I never will."

As they approach the grove, Ghost appears, and then Tom Barleycorn, whom Jon had sent ahead to scout. Barleycorn tells him that there are wildlings in the grove. He counted nine, mostly women, but one child and a giant as well. Some may be dead or just sleeping. Jon decides to proceed on foot. It is coming on night. The wildlings are huddled around a small fire. The child is the first to see them, and his cry wakes the giant, who picks up a maul when he sees Iron Emmett's sword.

Ghost bares his teeth, but Jon pulls the wolf back, saying that they don't want a battle here. "This is a holy place," he says, and asks them to yield. The giant bellows and slams his maul against the ground, but the ranger known as Leathers speaks the Old Tongue and persuades the giant to yield. When Jon asks what he told the giant, Leathers says, "That they were our gods too. That we came to pray."

Of the nine wildlings, two are dead already. The rest are weak or wounded. They had come together after Stannis's attack and decided to die in the weirwood grove. Jon asks why they didn't yield, and they tell him that they had heard those who yielded were burned. "Melisandre, Jon thought, you and your red god have much and more to answer for." He assures them that if they return with him, they will be safe and fed and sheltered.

The recruits take their vows, and the group returns with the wildlings, carrying the corpses as well. It takes much longer returning than it did going out, and it is almost dawn when they reach the Wall. The Giant has to crawl through the tunnels on hands and knees.

Jon finds a letter from Stannis waiting for him, telling him that Deepwood Motte had been taken with the help of the mountain clans, and that Alysane Mormont had burned Greyjoy's longships and captured their crews. The victory has caused other northmen to join with him, and they now have five thousand men. Word has come that Bolton is going to marry Arya at Winterfell, so they are going to march against him.

Jon has mixed feelings about this news: "Battles had been fought at Winterfell before, but never one without a Stark on one side or the other." He has his doubts about whether Stannis should attack Winterfell, which even in ruins was a strong castle. And he wonders about the reference to Arya, given Melisandre's vision of the girl who had escaped. Perhaps the wedding is only a ruse, and Bolton doesn't really have Arya. "A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from her marriage. On the strength of those words he had loosed Mance Rayder and six spearwives on the north." He is full of doubts.

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."

3. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 60-82

Bran

The journey with Coldhands through the frozen and silent woods seems endless, and Bran spends much of it inside the body of Summer, though the direwolf is limping from the pain he still feels from the arrow that pierced his hind leg at Queenscrown. At other times, he enters Hodor's body, though Hodor tends to resist his presence at first. They are accompanied on their journey by ravens, though only half a dozen of the birds remain with them at any time, the rest of the flock flying ahead or traveling elsewhere, only to rejoin them at nightfall.

Summer is tantalized by the giant elk on which Coldhands rides, wanting to kill and eat it, but he doesn't "like the way that Coldhands smelled. Dead meat, dry blood, a faint whiff of rot. And cold. Cold all over." But now Coldhands stops to tell them they are being followed by men. He says he will take care of them and tells Meera to lead the others to a fishing village ahead. He returns the way they had come, followed by four ravens.

Meera is annoyed, and doesn't fully trust Coldhands: He has "too many secrets. I don't like it. And I don't like him." She is convinced that they are traveling in circles. "He hides his face, and will not speak a name. Who is he? What is he? Anyone can put on a black cloak. Anyone, or any thing. He does not eat, he never drinks, he does not seem to feel the cold." Bran admits this is true, and adds something else he has noticed: "The scarf over his mouth, it never gets all hard with ice, like Hodor's beard. Not even when he talks." Meera agrees: They have never seen his breath when he speaks.

Bran points out that he saved Sam and Gilly from the wights and that he is taking him to the three-eyed crow. But Meera has come to doubt this too, and asks why the three-eyed crow, who presumably has wings, can't come to them. She is also concerned about Jojen, who is steadily growing weaker. But they continue on the path Coldhands has told them to follow.

It is growing darker and they have not yet reached the village when Bran decides that the best way to find it is to let Summer do so. He slips into the wolf's skin and Summer races across the lake until he finds the scent of humans. But it is a smell of ashes, not of cooking food. They follow the wolf's lead until they reach the deserted village, where there are some buildings that have not been burned and that offer them shelter for the night.

The wildlings have left no food behind, and they eat what they have: crushed acorns. Their provisions are gone, and the lakes and streams are too frozen for Meera to catch fish. Bran returns to Summer, who locates a wolf pack, the leader of which is "an old male with a grizzled white muzzle and a blind eye." They are feeding on dead men, and Bran recognizes some of the bodies as black-cloaked members of the Night's Watch. "The direwolf did not care. They were meat. He was hungry." He confronts the one-eyed wolf and Summer/Bran recognizes him as a warg. They fight, but Summer prevails, and dines on the corpse of his choice.

Bran realizes that Summer now has a pack, but he protests:

No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady's dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there's still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost?

Then Bran awakes to the warmth and smell of a fire and roasting meat. Coldhands has returned with a pig. Coldhands is there, but he is not eating and he seems to fear the fire. Bran realizes that the dead men Summer and the wolves were feasting on had been killed by Coldhands. When he confronts the ranger with his realization, Coldhands doesn't deny it. And when Bran asks why his hands are black, he replies, "Once the heart has ceased to beat, a man's blood runs down into his extremities, where it thickens and congeals."

Meera challenges him: "Who is this three-eyed crow?" Coldhands says, "A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last greenseer." Meera asks her brother what they should do, and Jojen replies, "We have come too far to turn back now, Meera. We would never make it back to the Wall alive. We go with Bran's monster, or we die."

Tyrion

He has left Pentos with Illyrio in a litter carried by eight huge draft horses, accompanied by a guard of eunuchs and a baggage train. They are headed for the Rhoyne, the river that will take Tyrion to Volantis. It is a slower journey than by sea, but a safer one for a dwarf with a price on his literal head. At the river he is to meet a man named Griff, who is supposed to take Tyrion to Volantis where they will meet Daenerys and facilitate her return to Westeros to claim the throne.

Illyrio tells Tyrion how he arranged for Daenerys to marry Khal Drogo. "The frightened child who sheltered in my manse died on the Dothraki sea, and was reborn in blood and fire. This dragon queen who wears her name is a true Targaryen." Now that she has taken Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, Illyrio says, "Mantarys will be next, if she marches west along the old Valyrian roads. If she comes by sea, well ... her fleet must take on food and water at Volantis."

It's a long way from Meereen to Volantis, Tyrion observes, but Illyrio is sure that those who survive the journey "through deserts, mountains, swamps, and demon-haunted ruins" will be the stronger for it. And at Volantis, Tyrion and Griff will have arranged for "fresh forces and sufficient ships to carry them all across the sea to Westeros." Tyrion is justifiably dubious, but Illyrio isn't about to reveal his motives for aiding Daenerys.

Tyrion asks how Illyrio became acquainted with Varys, and is told that they were boys together in Pentos. Varys had fled from arrest for thievery in Myr, and when he met Illyrio they set up a lucrative business: Varys would fence stolen goods to Illyrio who would sell them back at a profit to the people from whom they were stolen. Eventually, Varys trained a network of "mice" -- the "little birds" he relied on in King's Landing -- who would slip into places and read letters and ledgers and charts, gathering information that could be used for blackmail. "Secrets are worth more than silver or sapphires, Varys claimed." Illyrio grew wealthy, and Varys's talents led him to the service of Aerys Targaryen.

Tyrion asks about Griff and learns that he is a Westerosi-born sellsword, but that Illyrio trusts him. He also learns that the Golden Company, a hired army currently under contract to Myr, is marching toward Volantis, and that Illyrio plans to enlist them in Daenerys's cause. "They were exiles and sons of exiles, dispossessed and unforgiven ... yet formidable fighters still." As the Golden Company is made up of Westerosi, they will follow Daenerys on the hope of returning to their homeland. Tyrion also learns from Illyrio that Griff "has a son he dotes on. Young Griff, the boy is called. There never was a nobler lad."  

The journey grows long and monotonous, since there are no towns or cities along the road, and Tyrion has nothing to do but eat, drink, and sleep. He does a great deal of all of those.

23. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 755-808

Bran

He has seen the deaths of Robb and Grey Wind in a dream when he was one with Summer, and he is trying not to think about it. He hasn't told Jojen or Meera either.

They have reached the Nightfort at the Wall, which Bran remembers as the scene of some of the scariest stories told by Old Nan. Maester Luwin had cautioned him not to put too much credence in her stories, but when he asked his uncle Benjen about them, he said only that the Nightfort had been abandoned by the Watch for two hundred years.

The place is full of noises that Bran doesn't like. "Even Summer was not at ease here. Bran slipped inside his skin, just for an instant, to get the smell of the place. He did not like that either." Still Jojen had had a green dream about the place, and was determined to check it out, even though there was no gate through the Wall there. It had been sealed when the Watch abandoned it.

Bran has argued that they should have followed Jon, whom he saw through Summer's eyes when the wolf attacked the wildlings and Jon escaped. "We should have found the kingsroad and gone to Castle Black." But Jojen insisted that that course was too dangerous. Summer had almost been killed during the attack on the wildlings: When an arrow struck the wolf, the pain had been so great that Bran was driven out of Summer's skin, and it had returned every time Bran tried to become the wolf again. He was afraid Summer was dying, but the wolf finally returned with an arrow in his leg that Meera drew and treated with some herbs. Summer still limped, but less each day.

Meera suggests that they should try another castle, but Bran points out that the only ones whose gates haven't been sealed are Castle Black and the two at the extreme ends of the Wall, Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. So Meera proposes to climb to the top of the Wall and see if she can spot anything from there. The prospect of climbing the Wall only makes Bran regret his paralysis more.

Meera's climb is made easier by the steps that the Watch had carved into the Wall's side at the Nightfort, though the ice makes them treacherous and there are times when she has to get down on hands and knees to make the ascent. When she reaches the top and disappears from view, Jojen suggests that they explore the Nightfort.

It is full of rats, running through the cellars and tunnels. It was the oldest and largest of the castles at the Wall, and they spend half a day exploring the crumbling towers. "Sometimes Summer would hear sounds that Bran seemed deaf to, or bare his teeth at nothing, the fur on the back of his neck bristling," but none of the ghosts of Old Nan's stories made an appearance.

Meera returns as the sun is setting, and tells them that she saw the haunted forest and the hills beyond. "I even saw an eagle circling. I think he saw me too. I waved at him." But there is no way down the other side of the wall, and certainly no way for Bran to make it over. She asks Jojen again if he is certain this is the place he saw in his dream, and he assures her that there is a gate there. But the only one Bran knows of is blocked by rubble and ice.

As it gets dark, they decide to bed down in the ruins of the kitchens, an octagon with a broken dome and a weirwood growing up through the floor. "It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least." But he remembers Old Nan's stories about the Rat Cook who baked a prince in a pie.

Next to the weirwood there is a well, twelve feet in diameter, with steps going down the side into its depths. They can't see any water at the bottom. Hodor says his name into the well and is startled by the way the echo reverberates, then picks up a broken piece of slate from the floor and drops it in. Bran calls out for him not to do that, but too late. "You might have hurt something, or ... or woken something up."

Far, far, far below, they heard the sound as the stone found water. It wasn't a splash, not truly. It was more a gulp, as if whatever was below had opened a quivering gelid mouth to swallow Hodor's stone. Faint echoes traveled up the well, and for a moment Bran thought he heard something moving, thrashing about in the water. 

They cook and eat a fish that Meera had caught in the last stream they had crossed, then bed down for the night. Bran is unable to sleep, but makes himself close his eyes. Then he hears a noise that starts as a scuffling sound and then becomes footsteps. He doesn't want to wake Meera or Jojen because he thinks it might just be his imagination, stirred by memories of Old Nan's stories. But the sounds get louder and he realizes that they are coming from the well. And as they get louder he hears "a high thin whimpering sound, like someone in pain, and heavy muffled breathing."

Finally he drags himself across the floor and wakes Meera, who hears the sound too. She grabs her frog spear and her net and moves toward the well. Jojen and Hodor are still asleep, and Bran doesn't want Meera to fight the thing alone, and Summer is far away. He slips his consciousness into Hodor and tries to stand and grab Hodor's longsword. But the thing in the well starts to scream, and Bran loses control of Hodor and finds himself back on the floor.

The thing is caught in Meera's net and she is stabbing at it with her frog spear. The thing falls and calls out, "No, no, don't, please, DON'T...." In response to Meera's question, "'I'm SAM,' the black thing sobbed. 'Sam, Sam, I'm Sam, let me out, you stabbed me...." Jojen has fed the fire and the flames illuminate the room, revealing Sam Tarly struggling in the net, and Gilly and the crying baby bundled up, emerging from the well.

It's Bran who recognizes that Sam is wearing the black of the Night's Watch. Sam confirms it: "I'm a crow, please. Let me out of this." Bran asks, "Are you the three-eyed crow?" although he can't quite believe it. Sam says he doesn't think so, and Meera tells him to stop struggling with the net and she'll untangle him. Jojen asks Gilly who she is and where she comes from. She says, "From Craster's," and asks Jojen, "Are you the one?"

Gilly explains that Coldhands had said Sam wasn't "The one he was sent to find," and Sam, now untangling from the net and trying to catch his breath, says that he said there would be people in the castle. "I didn't know you'd throw a net on me or stab me in the stomach." He asks if he is bleeding, and Meera checks and says he's wearing mail. "I never got near your skin."

Bran asks if Sam is "really a brother of the Night's Watch," and Sam says he's only a steward who took care of the ravens, but lost them. "I got us lost too. I couldn't even find the Wall. It's a hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high, and I couldn't find it!" Jojen asks how he got through the wall, and Sam says there's a gate: "A hidden gate, as old as the Wall itself. The Black Gate, he called it." The gate is at the bottom of the well, but it will open only for a member of the Night's Watch who has sworn his vow.

Jojen asks who "he" is, "This ... Coldhands?" Gilly explains that that wasn't really his name, just what she and Sam called him. "His hands were cold as ice, but he saved us from the dead men, him and his ravens, and he brought us here on his elk." Much confusion about the elk and the ravens ensues, but Sam finally clarifies that the man is waiting for them, and that he can't come through the Wall himself. And Jojen clarifies that it's Bran who is the one the man is waiting for.

Sam suddenly realizes that Bran is "Jon Snow's brother. The one who fell...." Jojen tries to deny it, but Bran just tells Sam to keep it secret. Sam tells him that Jon "was the best friend I ever had," but he has disappeared. Bran replies that Summer had seen Jon with some wildlings, but he escaped and probably went to Castle Black.

Summer appears then, frightening Gilly, but Bran reassures her. Sam is not afraid, because he knows that the Starks have wolves, and he has met Ghost. He pulls off a glove and lets Summer lick his fingers, which makes Bran decide that they should all go through the Black Gate with Sam.

Gilly stays behind with the baby as the others make the descent. As they get lower into the well, Bran can see the Black Gate, except it isn't black: "It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it." They reach the gate and Bran thinks of the face, "If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that."

When Sam stands before it, the face opens its eyes, which are white and blind. It asks, "Who are you?" and Sam replies with the words of the oath of the Watch. The mouth of the door opens and admits them. As Hodor goes through with Bran on his back, he fails to duck enough: "The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear."

Daenerys

They have moved on to a third city, Meereen, which is "as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. The city's hero rides out in front of it, daring them to attack, and Daenerys's bloodriders are ready to take him on. She forbids it, however, saying that their place is at her side. Ser Jorah agrees with her: "Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm."

But Arstan Whitebeard is of another mind: "This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours." Daenerys tells Arstan and Jorah to stop squabbling. She's aware of some problems: Though she has more than eighty thousand followers after the fall of the first two cities, less than a fourth of them are soldiers. "The rest ... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving." The Meereen had burned the fields in expectation of their arrival, leaving them with nothing to forage upon.

And they had done something that troubles her more: "they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen." The atrocity had made her the more determined to conquer the city.

Brown Ben Plumm, the new commander of the Second Sons, who had joined forces with her at Yunkai, says the champion of Meereen is Oznak zo Pahl, whose uncle is the richest man in the city. Daario Naharis now volunteers to take care of Oznak, but she holds him back. Instead, she sends for Strong Belwas, who had once been a slave in the fighting pits of Meereen. If he wins, it will embarrass Meereen, and if he loses it will not be such a great triumph. Besides, "Belwas was the man she could most easily spare."

Belwas dallies with Oznak, but in the end he is holding the champion's head aloft. Dario delights in the victory, but Ser Jorah calls it "without meaning.... We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a time." Daenerys agrees, and turns her attention to ways to conquer the city. Ser Jorah says he hasn't seen any weaknesses in the landward walls, so she asks about attacking it by river or sea. They only have three ships, however.

Ser Jorah now offers a suggestion that he knows Daenerys will not like: "I say, let this city be. You cannot free every slave in the world, Khaleesi. Your war is in Westeros." They should simply pass the city by and march westward to Pentos, biding their time until the dragons are large enough to be useful in warfare. Even her bloodriders see the sense in the plan: Rakharo says, "when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes."

But Daenerys remembers the children mounted as signposts, and is unwilling to leave them unavenged. Finally, Brown Ben Plumm has an idea: They can attack the city through the sewers. He escaped from Meereen that way, though he has never forgotten the smell and is not about to volunteer to go back through them the other way.

She decides that she needs to think about it some more and sends them away. But what she really thinks about is Daario, who has captured her fancy by bringing her a flower every night when he made his report. "And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did." The restlessness he stirs in her makes her have Missandei bring her her horse to go out riding. She is accompanied by Missandei and by Arstan, for whom she feels no sexual attraction.

They ride through the camps taking notice of the drilling of the Unsullied and of the freedmen, some of whom call her "Mother" and reach out to touch her. Then a tall man in ragged clothes grabs her wrist and pulls her from her saddle. He pulls out his sword and she recognizes Mero, the former captain of the Second Sons. She cries for help, but Mero cuts down the freedman who steps forward.

Then Arstan leaps from his horse, wielding his hardwood staff. He knocks Mero down and with moves too fast for her to follow, parries Mero's sword strikes until he breaks Mero's leg and then knocks him unconscious. Freedmen gather around the fallen man and attack him with knives and stones.

Arstan kneels and apologizes for being so slow to recognize Mero, who had shaved his beard and hair. They return to her tent, where Ser Jorah arrives with news of his reconnoiter along the river wall. But she scolds him for not letting her know that Mero had escaped, and tells him that Arstan killed him. She wants Arstan to be knighted, but to her surprise both men object. Arstan tells her that he "was a knight in Westeros." He hasn't lied to her, but he has withheld the truth. And then Ser Jorah recognizes him: "Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn't you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar." He tells Daenerys,

"I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold." He laid the point of his sword against the old man's neck. "Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon." 

Daenerys demands the full truth from Arstan, now Barristan, and he tells her that Jorah is correct. "I might be serving in King's Landing still if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it shames me to admit." But Joffrey's conduct opened his eyes: "That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his service--" Jorah offers to provide that death now, but Barristan continues, saying that he had fought against Robert Baratheon at the Triden, at the time when Mormont was on Robert's side.

He disguised himself after leaving Westeros because Varys's spies were watching Viserys closely. And they are still watching her: "since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises." When Daenerys turns to look at Mormont, Ser Jorah admits it, but he says, "it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love...." She interrupts him furiously, and her dragons start emitting smoke and fire. "I should say the word and burn the two of them," she thinks. But instead she orders both Barristan and Ser Jorah out.

When she calms down a little, she thinks about how both of them had saved her life. And she decides what to do with them.

Tyrion

Tyrion has told Sansa about the deaths of Robb and Catelyn, and was surprised at the stoic way she received the news until he heard her sobbing by herself later: "Even her tears she hoards to herself." Now he sneaks down into the cellars where the dragon skulls are kept and Shae is waiting for hm. He has hired Shae to be one of Sansa's maids, but he still has to contrive to meet her in secret.

Sansa

She wakes from a dream that she was back in Winterfell with Lady and her family was safe and sound. Now she faces the reality, "All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now." Shae and Brella prepare her bath. The wedding is at noon in the Great Sept of Baelor and the feast, with seventy-seven courses, in the evening. But first she has to breakfast with the queen.

Tyrion arrives with Podrick Payne as she is dressing, and goes in to change too. Sansa braces herself for the ordeal and they go down to breakfast, where presents are presented to the groom. Joffrey receives them all graciously until Tyrion presents their gift: "a huge old book called Lives of Four Kings, bound in leather and gorgeously illuminated." Joffrey leafs through it and then pushes it across the table: "My father had no time for books.... If you read less, Uncle Imp, perhaps lady Sansa would have a baby in her belly by now." The court laughs because Joffrey laughs. Sansa worries that Tyrion will say something to anger the king, but he simply drinks another cup of wine.

Mace Tyrell presents Joffrey with a three-foot-tall golden chalice with seven sides, each ornamented with a different gemstone representing the seven great houses, including a pearl direwolf for House Stark. Joffrey remarks that they'll need to chip the wolf off, and Sansa pretends not to hear. The last gift is from Lord Tywin: a longsword. Joffrey decides that he will name it Widow's Wail, and he takes the sword and hacks the book Tyrion had given him to pieces. Ser Garlan Tyrell observes that there were only four copies of the book in existence. "Now there are three," Joffrey replies, and says, "You and Lady Sansa owe me a better present, Uncle Imp. This one is all chopped to pieces."

Tyrion says, "Perhaps a knife, sire. To match your sword. A dagger of the same fine Valyrian steel ... with a dragonbone hilt, say?" He is describing the dagger used in the attempt on Bran Stark's life, and he gets a "sharp look" from Joffrey, who says he would prefer "a gold hit with rubies in it. Dragonbone is too plain."

As Tyrion and Sansa are walking to the wedding, they meet up with Prince Oberyn and his mistress, Ellaria. Shae has told Sansa that Ellaria "was almost a whore when he found her, m'lady ... and now she's near a princess." Oberyn and Tyrion talk about the book Joffrey has destroyed. Oberyn thinks that the book was too kind to King Viserys, who "poisoned his own nephew to gain the throne and then did nothing once he had it."

When they reach their litter, Tyrion asks Sansa to draw the curtains. She protests that the day is lovely, but he says that the citizens are likely to throw things at them if they see him. She says she is sorry for Joffrey's destruction of the book, but perhaps the dagger would please him better. Tyrion says, "Joff quarreled with your brother Robb at Winterfell. Tell me, was there ill feeling between Bran and His Grace as well?" She doesn't think so, but he presses on: "Sansa, do you know what happened to Bran at Winterfell?" She says only that he fell, and "He was always climbing things." He starts to talk about Catelyn's accusation that Tyrion had tried to have Bran killed. "She accused me falsely. I never harmed your brother Bran. And I mean no harm to you." But she can't figure out why he is talking to her about these things, and when he says, "You have never asked me how Robb died, or your lady mother," she says she "would sooner not know. It would give me bad dreams."

"I know about bad dreams," Tyrion replies.

16. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 530-555

Arya

The outlaws are attacking the Bloody Mummers, and Arya wishes she could handle a bow: "She loved swordfighting, but she could see how arrows were good too." The battle is quickly over, and all but two of the Mummers are killed. Dondarrion lets them escape and take the word to Harrenhal about their defeat.

One of the men they capture is Septon Utt from Harrenhal, whom Arya remembers: "Shagwell the Fool said he always wept and prayed for forgiveness after he'd killed his latest boy." He is put on trial and swiftly convicted and hanged. Arya wishes only that they had hanged the Hound, too, but his burns had been treated and he had been given his sword, horse, and armor. They had kept his gold, however.

As they eat that night, Arya reflects that she has never seen Beric Dondarrion eat, though he would occasionally take a cup of wine. Nor did he seem to sleep. He constantly wore his breastplate, which now concealed the wound the Hound had given  him. He notices Arya looking at him, and asks if he frightens her. She tells him no, but that she is surprised to see him alive. Dondarrion asks Thoros how often he has brought him back to life, but Thoros gives the credit to R'hllor for the six times Dondarrion has been revived. But he adds that "each time is harder."

Dondarrion recalls the fights that caused each of his wounds, and Arya asks Thoros if he could bring back to life a man who had lost his head.

"I have no magic, child. Only prayers. That first time, his lordship had a hole right through him and blood in his mouth. I knew there was no hope. So when his poor chest stopped moving, I gave him the good god's own kiss to send him on his way. I filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him, down his throat to lungs and heart and soul. The last kiss it is called, and many a time I saw the old priests bestow it on the Lord's servants as they died. I had given it a time or two myself, as all priests must. But never before had I felt a dead man shudder as the fire filled him, nor seen his eyes come open. It was not me who raised him, my lady. It was the Lord R'hllor is not done with him yet."

Beric knows why Arya asked the question about the beheaded man, and says, "Your father was a good man." Harwin has told him much about Ned Stark, he says, and he would forgo the ransom for returning her if the outlaws didn't need the money so much. Arya then asks, "What if my brother doesn't want to ransom me?" Dondarrion asks why she would ask that, and she says, "my hair's messy and my nails are dirty and my feet are all hard." She knows her mother would disapprove. He laughs and tells her not to worry.

That night, when one of the men complains about his horse throwing a shoe, Gendry volunteers his services to the outlaws as a blacksmith. Arya is distressed: "He means to leave me too." Lord Beric says he would be better compensated if he stayed at Riverrun to serve Lord Tully, but Gendry says all he wants is "a forge, and food to eat, some place to sleep." When Dondarrion asks why he would choose to stay with them, Gendry says he liked what he had said about being "King Robert's men, and brothers," and that he didn't just execute the Hound but gave him a trial. So after others grill him on whether he realizes that he could be executed as an outlaw and Gendry stands his ground, Dondarrion takes his sword, administers an oath "to defend those who cannot defend themselves," and proclaims him "Ser Gendry, knight of the hollow hill."

But when he finishes, Sandor Clegane appears at the door, laughing at the ceremony. He has returned, he says, for his gold. "Maybe this time they'll kill him," Arya thinks. But instead, after an exchange of words, the Hound "looked at all their faces, every one, as if he were trying to commit them all to memory," then turns and walks out into the darkness and the pouring rain. Thoros observes that the Hound has lost everything: "He cannot go back to the Lannisters, the Young Wolf would never have him, nor would his brother be like to welcome him. That gold was all he had left, it seems to me." When someone suggests that they should hunt him down and kill him, Lord Beric says, "Clegane won his life beneath the hollow hill. I will not rob him of it." And Thoros concurs: "The Lord of Light is not yet done with Joffrey's Hound, it would seem."

The threat that the Hound poses to them troubles everyone, but no one more than Arya, who takes out the coin Jaqen H'ghar had given her, and thinks how many people she has lost: Jaqen, Hot Pie, and now Gendry, and the ones who are dead, like Lommy, Yoren, Syrio Forel, and her father. She whispers the names of those on her list she would like to kill, but realizes how few of them she can now visualize. Except for the Hound and his brother, and Joffrey and Cersei, she can't summon up the faces of the others.

In the morning, as they get ready to ride off, she tells Gendry, "If you want to be some stupid outlaw knight and get hanged, why should I care? I'll be at Riverrun, ransomed, with my brother."

Bran

They have reached the grasslands of the Gift and come upon a tower in the middle of a lake. Nearby is a ruined village, the first one they have come across since leaving the foothills. Meera feels uneasy in the open land, and Jojen asks who owns it. Bran tells them that the Night's Watch owns it. This part is called the New Gift, and it was given to the Watch by Good Queen Alysanne to honor the bravery of the men of the Wall, which she visited on her dragon. Beyond it is Brandon's Gift, the original tract of land owned by Brandon the Builder, or perhaps some other Brandon.

Jojen observes that the soil is fertile, and wonders why no one lives there. Bran says it's because they're afraid of the raids of the wildlings, which have increased since the Night's Watch has grown weaker. They look for shelter in the ruins of the village, but there is no roof on any of the buildings. A storm is coming, Jojen says. Bran remembers one of Old Nan's stories, and recognizes the tower as one in which Queen Alysanne had stayed. There are traces of gold at its top, which were put there in her honor, and there is supposed to be a causeway leading out to the tower. They find it, "a stone pathway three feet wide," mostly submerged. Meera leads them out onto it, using her frog spear to test the stones in front of them. The causeway doesn't run straight to the tower, but zigzags, a defense measure: "anyone approaching would be exposed to arrow fire from the tower for a long time."

Hodor almost slips and falls into the water twice, which frightens Bran. The water comes up to Hodor's waist, and up to the chest on Meera and Jojen. When they reach the tower they find the door has warped and can't be closed, and they enter an anteroom where there are steps leading both up and down, with iron gates barring the way. Bran looks up and sees another grate overhead: "A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them." The grates in front of the stairs are locked and rusted, and Hodor is unable to budge them. But Bran reaches up to the grate over the murder hole and easily dislodges it, though it lands on his head when it falls.

Hodor boosts Meera and Jojen up through the murder hole, and Bran tells Hodor to find some large rocks and pile them up so he can climb up too. They find a way to the stairs and begin to climb to the top. The view from the top is impressive, but Bran is disappointed because you can't see the Wall. Then he realizes that they "must still be fifty leagues away," which makes him feel tired. (A league is three miles.)

He asks Jojen how they are going to get through the Wall to find the three-eyed crow, and Jojen says maybe they can find a passageway at one of the abandoned castles along the Wall. Bran says that his Uncle Benjen said the gates at the abandoned castle had been sealed, and that perhaps they should just head for Castle Black and tell the Lord Commander to let them through. But Jojen fears that they would be recognized: "one man willing to forswear himself would be enough to sell our secret to the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton." Bran continues to argue for going to Castle Black, hoping to see Jon again, but Jojen suddenly shushes him.

There is a rider approaching the village. Then the storm arrives and they have to leave the roof for the room below. Meera keeps her eye on the rider, and reports that he has taken refuge in the ruins of the inn and is building a fire. Bran says they should do the same, but Jojen says the smoke would attract the man's attention. They settle down to eat the remains of a duck Meera had snared and roasted the day before. Lightning and thunder begin, and Hodor grows frightened, crying out "HODOR!" whenever it flashes and rumbles. They try to quiet him, and then a lightning flash reveals to Jojen that other men have arrived at the village, "Too many to count," but not mounted.

Hodor grows more and more agitated as the storm increases, and they try to quiet him. Suddenly, he stops and sits down quietly. Bran had "reached for him, the way I reach for Summer. He had been Hodor for half a heartbeat. It scared him." Jojen says he saw one of the men pointing at the tower, but Bran reminds them that even if they tried, they couldn't get out to it unless they had a boat or knew about the causeway.

Bran then becomes Summer, crouching in the brush and watching the men. "He could hear them talking, and there beneath the scents of rain and leaves and horse came the sharp red stench of fear...."

9. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 311-343

Daenerys

They have landed at Astapor, an ancient city of the old kingdom of Ghis whose symbol is a bronze harpy. Daenerys has gone to see Kraznys mo Nakloz, a slaver who deals in the warriors known as the Unsullied. Kraznys speaks High Valyrian to an interpreter, a slave girl, who translates what he has supposedly said into the Common Tongue. But thinking that Daenerys doesn't know his language, Kraznys freely insults her, calling her "the Westerosi whore" and "a sunset savage," trusting the interpreter to bowdlerize his words into something more diplomatic.

Daenerys wants an account of how the Unsullied are trained, at which Kraznys snorts, "Are all Westerosi pigs so ignorant?" but tells the interpreter to get on with it as fast as possible because the day is hot. A thousand Unsullied have been marched out for her inspection, wearing white loincloths and conical bronze helmets topped by a foot-long spike. Their training is so rigorous that when it is over, Daenerys is told, "no duty that will ever fall to them could be so hard as their training." And Kraznys says they have been standing there for a day and a night and will stand there as long as he commands them to, "and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still, and never move until his own death claims him."

Arstan Whitebeard, who is there with Daenerys says that is "madness, not courage." He has opposed the visit to Astapor and the buying of the slave army, and Daenerys has brought him along for that reason. She left Ser Jorah in charge of the dragons who have been hidden belowdecks to keep them away from the curious. Arstan understands Valyrian, too, but like Daenerys he feigns ignorance when Kraznys calls him a "smelly old man." She inspects the ranks of Unsullied, noting that they have been drawn from a variety of cultures, and are of various heights and ages from fourteen to twenty.

She asks why they have all been castrated, when this reduces their strength. Kraznys says they have discipline, which is better than strength. They are "absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear." He gives one of them a lash across the face with his whip, drawing blood, and asks if the man would like another a lash. The answer is, "If it please your worship." In the next row, he asks a man for his sword and proceeds to use it to cut off the man's nipple. He hands the sword back to the man, who is bleeding profusely, and the man says, "This one is pleased to have served you."

They feel no pain, Kraznys explains, because they drink something called "The wine of courage," which is a blend of "deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things." Because they don't feel pain, he says, they can't be tortured into revealing secrets. When they are castrated, the penis is removed as well as the testicles, so they are not just infertile but incapable of sexual pleasure. He says he has heard that in Westeros there are those who take vows of chastity, and Arstan confirms that it's true of "the maesters of the Citadel, the septons and septas who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the dead, the Kingsguard and the Night's Watch." Kraznys says that they are nevertheless subject to temptation, which the Unsullied aren't: "No woman can ever tempt them, nor any man."

They are also untempted by plunder, he claims. "They own nothing but their weapons. We do not even permit them names." Every day, they pick a medallion from a cask, and that is their name for that day. At the end of the day they throw the medallions back in the cask, and pick a new one the next morning. If they can't remember a new name each day, they "are culled in training, along with those who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant." This last gives Daenerys pause. Kraznys explains that the potential Unsullied goes to the slave market, finds a woman with an infant, kills it, and pays the slave's owner with a silver coin. When he does this, he earns the spike on his helmet. He adds that when a boy is castrated, he is given a puppy, and at the end of the first year of training must strangle it. The boys who can't bring themselves to do this "are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs."

Daenerys observes that even though they can't be tempted by sex or gold, what if an enemy offered them freedom. He tells her that they would kill the man who offered them that, and bring her his head. "They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and that is all." She says she needs soldiers, so how many does he have?  He has eight thousand, and he sells them only by units of a thousand. "Once we sold by the ten, as household guards, but that proved unsound. Ten is too few. They mingle with other slaves, even freemen, and forget who and what they are." They have no officers, so she must provide them: "We train them to obey, not to think." They come with swords, shields, spears, sandals, quilted tunics and the spiked caps. Any other armor she wants would have to be provided.

She asks Arstan Whitebeard for his advice, and he says, emphatically, no. She knows his objection, but wants the slave girl and Kraznys to hear it:

"My queen,"said Arstan, "there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House."

She argues with him a bit about how she is to raise an army, and finally turns to Kraznys and tells him, "I must consider carefully."

He replies that she'd better hurry, and that he knew of someone who wants to buy them all. The slave girl says to him that the corsair only wanted a hundred, but he tells her to tell Daenerys that he wants them all. And he tells her to offer his services as a guide to Astapor, though the delights he describes are considerably grosser than the one the slave girl transmits to Daenerys, who hears the enraged Arstan tapping angrily with his sword. She excuses herself and says she needs to return to her ship. Kraznys tells the slave girl that "It is not the woman who decides, it is this man she runs to."

As she rides back through the red-brick city, Arstan says, "Bricks and blood built Astapor, ... and bricks and blood her people." It is something a maester told him, he says, and now he sees that it's true: "The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them." He urges her to leave the city, but she replies that Ser Jorah says she must leave with an army. "Ser Jorah was a slaver himself," he reminds her, and says that she can hire sellswords in other places. She replies that Viserys had failed in raising troops in those places, and she doesn't want to go begging for them. When he retorts, "Better to come a beggar than a slaver," she observes, "There speaks one who has been neither." She knows what it's like to be sold: Viserys sold her to Drogo. He apologizes.

She wonders why Jorah mistrusts Arstan, and thinks that he might be jealous that she has found another counselor. She recalls the kiss Jorah gave her, and vows that she will never give him the opportunity to do that again. But it has awakened something dormant in her, and she has begun having sexual dreams. The man in them is not Jorah Mormont, however, but someone "younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow." She was so aroused one night that she began to masturbate, but she woke Irri, who then helped bring her to climax. The next day she thought it might be a dream, and she told herself that it wasn't Ser Jorah or Irri she wanted, but Drogo.

At the ship Ser Jorah asks how many men are for sale, and she says, "None." She is angry and disturbed by what she has seen:

"They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don't even have names. So don't call them men, ser." 

When he tries to respond to her objections, she slaps him. "If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty." But what she thinks is "If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed me, or looked at my breasts the way you did, or...." He says he will tell the captain to sail on the evening tide, but she says that she can't. "There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them." She goes below. In the cabin, Irri tells her that the dragons have been restless, cooped up, and the horses and the people below as well. When she sees how upset Daenerys is, she offers to "pleasure" her, but Daenerys says she wants to be alone to think.

At dusk, she goes back on deck, where Ser Jorah asks if he can "speak frankly." She gives him leave, and he reminds her that when her ancestor Aegon the Dragon arrived in Westeros he had to win the throne "with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your hands before the thing is done." She replies that she has no problem shedding the blood of enemies. It is the blood of innocents -- the eight thousand babies murdered by the Unsullied -- that troubles her. He argues that if she buys the  Unsullied, the only people "they'll kill are those you want dead."

She asks why the Dothraki have never sacked Astapor, and he says that the Unsullied are a powerful deterrent who once defeated the Dothraki, and besides, the slavers "know that if they feast the horselords and give them gifts, they will soon ride on. It's cheaper than fighting, and a deal more certain." She wishes it could be as easy as that: "to sail to King's Landing with her dragons, and pay the boy Joffrey a chest of gold to make him go away." She tells Jorah, "Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar...." He acknowledges that he did. "Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves," she says.

He replies, "Prince Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died."

Bran

They are making their way north by way of the mountain valleys, guided by the stars. But the valleys seldom run north and south, so the route is long and they sometimes get lost. Meera is weary of going up and down the mountain passes, and Bran wishes they could take the kingsroad. He is impatient to find the three-eyed crow. They are hungry, though Meera is skilled at spearing fish in the streams, and Summer brings them squirrels and rabbits. But the farther north they go, the smaller and icier the streams are, and the game grows scarcer.

Jojen reminds them why they can't follow the roads: They will encounter people who will remember encountering a crippled boy riding in a basket on the back of a seven-foot-tall man with a wolf accompanying them. But Bran knows that they have been seen by mountain folk, and is familiar with the families that live here. His great-great-grandmother "had been a Flint of the mountains," and Old Nan had said he inherited his love of climbing from her.

One day they are caught in a freezing rainstorm and Summer finds a cave for them to shelter in. But when Bran enters on Hodor's back he can see a fire in the back of the cave, and a man asks them to join him. He shares food with them, and Bran decides that he must be a Liddle because the clasp that fastens his cloak is shaped like a pinecone, the emblem of the Liddles. When Bran wishes they could travel the kingsroad, the man tells them that the Bastard of Bolton is patrolling it. "'And paying good silver for wolfskins, a man hears, and maybe gold for word of certain other walking dead.' He looked at Bran when he said that, and at Summer stretched out beside him." But he also warns them about going to the Wall: "The Old Bear took the Watch into the haunted woods, and all that come back was his ravens, with hardly a message between them."

They spend the night in the cave, and the man was gone when they awoke, though he left them a sausage and a dozen oatcakes with pinenuts and blackberries baked in them. Bran tells himself that when there is a Stark in Winterfell again he'll "send for the Liddles and pay them back a hundredfold for every nut and berry."

The trail they follow that day is easier, and Meera spots an eagle. Bran watches it, wondering what it would be like to fly so high. He tries to join with the eagle the way he joins with Summer, but fails. He asks Meera to tell a story as they walk, so she tells one about the Knight of the Laughing Tree. There was once a boy on the Neck who had "learned all the magics of my people," but he wanted to learn more, so he set out for the Isle of Faces to find the green men. It takes him many days, but he finally reaches the Gods Eye and paddles out to the Isle. He spends the winter there with the green men, but in the spring he decides to travel farther, so he paddles his boat to the castle by the lake. Bran says that must have been Harrenhal, but Meera says only, "Was it?"

A great tourney is taking place at the castle, and the boy wanted to be part of it. The daughter of the castle was a fair maid with four brothers and an uncle, a knight of the Kingsguard, as her champion. And there was the wife of the dragon prince with a dozen ladies in attendance, and the knights begged for their favors to tie on their lances. Bran warns Meera that Hodor doesn't like love stories: "He likes the stories where the knights fight monsters." But Meera reminds him, "Sometimes the knights are the monsters, Bran."

As the little crannogman was walking about admiring the pageantry, three squires, "none older than fifteen, yet even so they were bigger than him," challenged him and took away his spear. Bran asks if they were Walders, because "It sounded like something Little Walder Frey might have done," but Meera just says that they didn't give their names. But as they are bullying and kicking him, a she-wolf -- on two legs, Meera says, in response to Bran's question whether she was on four legs or two -- rescues him and takes him to "her pack brothers: the wild wolf who led them, the quiet wolf beside him, and the pup who was the youngest of the four."

They invite him to join them at the feast that opens the tourney. He joins in the merriment, but in the middle of it he sees the three squires: "One served a pitchfork knight, one a porcupin, while the last attended a knight with two towers on his surcoat, a sigil all crannogmen know well." Bran identifies it as the Freys' sigil.  The wolf pup offers to find the crannogmen some armor, but he is afraid he'll make a fool of himself. That night he goes to the lakeshore and prays to the old gods.

On the second day of the tourney, the porcupine knight, the pitchfork knight, and the knight of the two towers were all victorious. But late in the afternoon, a mystery knight appeared. Bran says, "It was the little crannogman, I bet." Meera says that no one knew who he was, but he was short and his armor was made up of "bits and pieces" patched together. "The device upon his shield was a heart tree of the old gods, a white weirwood with a laughing red face." He issues a challenge to the porcupine knight, the pitchfork knight, and the knight of the two towers, and he defeats them all, one by one. And when each of the defeated knights comes to reclaim their horse and armor, the Knight of the Laughing Tree says he will return it when they teach their squires honor. "Once the defeated knights chastised their squires sharply, their horses and armor were returned. And so the little crannogman's prayer was answered ... by the green men, or the old gods, or the children of the forest, who can say?"

But that night the other knights and the king vow to unmask the mystery knight. The next day, however, the Knight of the Laughing Tree is not present, and when the dragon prince goes to search for him, he finds only his shield, hanging in a tree. So the dragon prince is declared the winner of the tourney.

Bran says it "was a good story." But he would have preferred it it had been the three knights, and not their squires, who hurt the crannogmen, and that he had killed them. "The part about the ransoms was stupid. And the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty." Meera says, "She was ... but that's a sadder story."

Bran thinks that if he could visit the Isle of Faces, maybe the green men could use their magic to make him walk again and turn him into a knight, "even if it was only for a day.... A day would be enough."

4. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 105-145

Daenerys

Daenerys has gotten her wish: She is at sea, with her dragons flying around her, and her Dothraki contingent miserably seasick and fearful.

No squall could frighten Dany, though. Daenerys Stormborn, she was called, for she had come howling into the world on distant Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros howled outside, a storm so fierce that it ripped gargoyles from the castle walls and smashed her father's fleet to kindling.

The captain of Balerion, the ship on which Daenerys is sailing, is Groleo, "an old Pentoshi like his master, Illyrio Mopatis." He was initially leery of having dragons on board because of the risk of fire, but so far they have behaved and even kept down the number of rats on board. Drogon in particular is growing fast, and Daenerys thinks that in a year or two he may be large enough for her to ride.

She is standing on deck with Ser Jorah and Whitebeard, whose real name is Arstan, discussing dragon lore. Jorah is not fond of Whitebeard or of Strong Belwas, the eunuch whose squire Whitebeard claims to be. But Daenerys is drawn to him because Whitebeard claims to have known her father, King Aerys II, who had died before she was born, and her brother, Prince Rhaegar. When Whitebeard makes a reference to Ser Jorah's second wife, Lynesse, who "had ruined him, and abandoned him," Daenerys has to keep the peace between the two.

Whitebeard goes on to tell a story of the young Prince Rhaegar, who "was bookish to a fault," he says, until one day he read something that no one has identified but which changed him into a warrior. And speaking of warriors, Strong Belwas appears and orders Whitebeard to fetch food for him. His departure gives Jorah the opportunity to reiterate his warning to Daenerys: "This Arstan Whitebeard is playing you false. He is too old to be a squire, and too well spoken to be serving that oaf of a eunuch." Daenerys has to admit to herself that his suspicions make sense, especially since she has already survived two assassination attempts, although Whitebeard was the one who foiled the second. But, she reassures herself, she has Ser Jorah and her bloodriders to protect her, not to mention her dragons.

A wind comes up and fills the sails of the ship, which had been becalmed. So they begin to make headway again, though Ser Jorah asks, "to what, my queen?" That night, Daenerys is feeding her dragons when Ser Jorah comes to her cabin. She demonstrates to him how well they are eating by calling out, "Drogon, ... dracarys," and tossing a piece of pork into the air that the dragon sears with his fiery breath before gobbling it down. But when Ser Jorah asks, "Dracarys?" the three dragons turn toward him and Viserion belches out a flame that makes Jorah back away. Daenerys explains that the word means "dragonfire" in High Valyrian, and that she has trained them to respond to the word."I wanted to choose a command that no one was like to utter by chance."

Ser Jorah then asks if they can speak privately, and Daenerys sends her handmaids, Irri and Jhiqui, away. Then she asks what is troubling him, and he says, "Strong Belwas. This Arstan Whitebeard. And Illyrio Mopatis, who sent them." This isn't news to Daenerys, who is sitting naked in bed underneath a coverlet that she pulls higher. He reminds her of the prophecy of the warlocks in Qarth that she will be betrayed "Once for blood and once for gold and once for love." She says that the first was fulfilled by Mirri Maz Duur. Which leaves two, he observes, and comments, "Never forget, Robert offered a lordship to the man who slays you."

Daenerys interrupts a fight between two of the dragons and as she does the cover slips from her chest. She hastily covers herself again, and notes, "The Usurper is dead." But, he points out, his son rules in his place: "A dutiful son pays his father's debts. Even blood debts." She agrees that might be a problem, but asks what this has to do with Whitebeard and the eunuch. After all, Whitebeard killed the manticore. He asks, "Khaleesi, has it occurred to you that Whitebeard and Belwas might have been in league with the assassin? It might all have been a ploy to win your trust." When she laughs at the idea, he also reminds her that Belwas and Arstan are in the employ of Illyrio, as are the captains of the three ships they are sailing upon. "The warlocks said the second treason would be for gold. What does Illyrio Mopatis love more than gold?"

She says she knows that Illyrio is "devious" and "clever," but that she will "need clever men about me if I am to win the Iron Throne." Besides, he and her bloodriders will protect her. As far as the risk of trusting men like the three he is questioning is concerned, "how am I to win the Seven Kingdoms without such risks?" She grows angry as he continues to challenge her innocence, but he tells her he has a plan: Instead of sailing directly to Pentos, she should tell Captain Groleo to sail for Slaver's Bay instead. There she can recruit an army of the men known as the Unsullied. He tells her a story of how a force of Unsullied defeated a much larger horde of Dothraki. If they hire an army of Unsullied and then proceed overland to Pentos, "when you break bread with Magister Illyrio, you will have a thousand swords behind you, not just four."

She asks what she is to pay for this army with, and he notes that the ships are carrying trade goods from Qarth. If Illyrio "is sincere in his devotion to your cause, he will not begrudge you three shiploads of trade goods. What better use of his tiger skins than to buy you the beginnings of an army?" She begins to see the logic of his argument, but asks what if Captain Groleo, Arstan and Strong Belwas oppose the plan. He replies, "Perhaps it's time you found that out."

Excitedly, she jumps out of bed and starts to get dressed, eager to see Groleo at once. But as she is pulling on her clothes, Jorah puts his arms around her and kisses her. She doesn't pull away at once, and when she does she begins to scold him. But he declares that he should have kissed her a long time ago. He calls her "Daenerys," which she corrects to "Your Grace!"

"Your Grace," he conceded, "the dragon has three heads, remember. You have wondered at that, ever since you heard it from the warlocks in the House of Dust. Well, here's your meaning: Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhaegar, ridden by Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen -- three dragons, and three riders.... Rhaenys and Visenya were Aegon's wives as well as his sisters. You have no brothers, but you can take husbands. And I tell you truly, Daenerys, there is no man in all the world who will ever be half so true to you as me." 

Bran

Bran is seeing through Summer's eyes, racing through the woods in which he comes upon a pack of wolves. They recall for him his own pack, the five direwolf cubs "and a sixth who stood aside." He recalls their scents, particularly the "angry brother with the hot green eyes" he knows to be nearby even though he hasn't seen him for a while. And he remembers the sister who died: "Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice." The other pack has killed a deer when he comes on them, and he fights them off so he can eat.

Then Hodor says "Hodor," and he begins to turn into a boy again, reluctantly. They are "down in the damp vault of some ancient watchtower that must have been abandoned thousands of years before." Jojen tells him, "You were gone too long," but Bran had wanted to eat the deer, not the frogs that Meera has gone to hunt. Jojen then asks him if he marked the trees he had seen in his vision, because Bran has learned to open "his third eye and put on Summer's skin," ranging the woods as the wolf does to seek out pathways for them. But he has forgotten to do the tasks that would help them navigate, clawing the trees so they can locate where he has been roaming. "He meant to do the things that Jojen asked, but once he was a wolf they never seemed important."

Jojen is worried that Bran has begun to lose himself so he asks him to say who he is. "'Bran,' he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. 'Brandon Stark.' The cripple boy. 'The Prince of Winterfell.'" But he recalls that Winterfell has been burned and its people have abandoned it. "How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again?" Jojen also has him remember that "Bran the boy and Summer the wolf" are two distinct beings. "Remember that, Bran. Remember yourself, or the wolf will consume you. When you join, it is not enough to run and hunt and howl in Summer's skin."

Bran promises to do so, though he wonders, "What good is it to be a skinchanger if you can't wear the skin you like?" He offers to go back and perform Jojen's tasks now, though he really wants to go back and eat the deer and fight with the wolves first. But Jojen knows what Bran has in mind and tells him he has to eat as Bran now. "A warg cannot live on what his beast consumes."

Meera returns with two trout and six frogs, which reminds him of how the Walders, the Frey cousins who had been sent as wards to Winterfell, "used to say that eating frogs would make your teeth green and make moss grow under your arms. He wondered if the Walders were dead. He hadn't seen their corpses at Winterfell." But he eats the stew that Meera makes from her catch and decides he likes it, though not as much as deer.

Jojen says they should move on tomorrow, though Meera argues for staying where they are safe. He wants them to go to the Wall because that's where he has had the vision of the three-eyed crow. Meera suggests that they should find some horses and trade for them, but Jojen says no.

"Look at us, Meera. A crippled boy with a direwolf, a simpleminded giant, and two crannogmen a thousand leagues from the Neck. We will be known. And word will spread. So long as Bran remains dead, he is safe. Alive, he becomes prey for those who want him dead for good and true.... Somewhere to the north, the three-eyed crow awaits us. Bran has need of a teacher wiser than me."

Their argument is interrupted by the howl of a wolf, and Bran says it isn't Summer. He feels rebellious toward Jojen, who is always telling them what to do, so he argues that they should follow Meera's advice and steal horses, or steal a boat and make their way to Riverrun, but neither Meera nor Jojen supports his plan. Hodor begins repeating his name over and over, to their annoyance, so Bran tells him to go outside and practice with his sword. They have three swords that they took from the crypt at Winterfell.

Bran then asks Jojen what he meant about needing a teacher, and Jojen says that he is "only a boy who dreams," but Bran has the potential to be more than that: "You are the winged wolf, and there is no saying how far and high you might fly ... if you had someone to teach you." Meera says they will be safe there until the war ends, and that if they leave they risk being captured. But it may be that the risk is worth taking. Only Bran can decide.

So Bran tries to think what they should do. If they leave, they might be captured "by the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton." If they stay, they would be safe: "He would stay alive. And crippled." He would always be crippled, no matter where he went, unless Jojen's dreams were true. "'I want to fly,' he told them. 'Please. Take me to the crow.'"

Davos

They are nearing Dragonstone, and Davos sees smoke coming from the top of the mountain. "Dragonmont is restless this morning, Davos thought, or else Melisandre is burning someone else." He has vowed to revenge himself for his sons' deaths. "I will cut the living heart from her breast and see how it burns. He touched the hilt of the fine long Lysene dirk that the captain had given him."

He is still weak from his ordeal. "If he stood too long his legs shook, and sometimes he fell prey to uncontrollable fits of coughing and brought up gobs of bloody phlegm." The captain, Korane Sathmantes, has told him how the battle at King's Landing ended with Stannis fleeing from the Lannisters and the ghost of King Renly. As they enter the harbor, the captain tells him that Salladhor Saan, the prince who leads the Lysene fleet, wants to see him, but Davos insists that he must see the king first. The captain says that no one sees the king, and that he must see Salladhor first, and Davos is too weak to argue with him.

Salladhor is on board a Pentoshi ship that once belonged to Illyrio Mopatis, but which he has seized under his new authority as Lord of Blackwater Bay, a title granted by Lord Alester Florent, the Hand of King Stannis. He gives Davos the good news that his son Devan was rescued from the battle. But when Davos says he wants to see the king, he tells him that "you will be finding him changed, I am fearing. Since the battle, he sees no one, but broods in his Stone Drum. Queen Selyse keeps court for him with her uncle the Lord Alester." The only person Stannis sees is Melisandre.

"Queer talking I have heard, of hungry fires within the mountain, and how Stannis and the red woman go down together to watch the flames. There are shafts, they say, and secret stairs down into the mountain's heart, into hot places where only she may walk unburned."

When Davos talks of his plan to kill Melisandre, Salladhor tells him to be quiet, that talk like that is dangerous. He is unwell and should take to his bed. But insists that his bed is in the castle, as is his son. Melisandre is in the castle, too, Salladhor says. "While we were burning on the river, she was burning traitors," he warns. "If you kill the red woman, they will burn you for revenge, and if you fail to kill her, they will burn you for the trying." But Davos is persuaded that he was saved for the express purpose of making "an end of Melisandre of Asshai and all her works. Why else would the sea have spit me out?" Seeing that there is no reasoning with Davos, Salladhor tells him to go.

As he walks from the harbor to the castle, Davos finds the city nearly deserted. The castle gates are shut, and he pounds on them until a crossbowman looks down from the barbican and tells him to go away. When he identifies himself as Davos, the onion knight, the guard doesn't believe him. Davos asks for some men he once knew and is told that they are all dead. But finally the guard tells him to wait there, and when he comes back sends him to the sally port.

When he's inside the walls he is told to wait again in Aegon's Garden. While he is there, the fool Patchface enters, followed by the Princess Shireen, who chases after him. When they are gone, a small boy runs out of the hedge and knocks Davos down. "Jet-black hair fell to his collar, and his eyes were a startling blue." A coughing spasm seizes Davos as he picks himself up, and the boy asks if he should send for the maester. Davos says he'll be all right, and the boy asks his name. When he says he's Ser Davos Seaworth, the boy says he doesn't look like a knight, but when Davos says he's "the knight of the onions," he knows the story of how the smuggler saved the besieged city.

"I am Edric Storm," the boy says, "King Robert's son." Davos had already realized that from the boy's Baratheon features. They talk about how Stannis had chopped off Davos's fingertips, and Edric says that his father wouldn't have done that. Davos thinks, "Robert was a different man than Stannis, true enough. The boy is like him. Aye, and like Renly as well. That thought made him anxious."

But their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Ser Axell Florent and a dozen guards. Ser Axell says, "I have come to take you to the dungeon," and tells the guards, "Seize him, and take his dirk. He means to use it on our lady."