BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

A SONG OF ICE AND FIREBook One: A Game of ThronesBook Two: A Clash of Kings

Book Three: A Storm of SwordsBook Four: A Feast for Crows

Book Five: A Dance with Dragons

Dying of the LightWindhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)

Fevre DreamThe Armageddon Rag

Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONSDreamsongs, Volume IDreamsongs, Volume II

A Song of Lya and Other StoriesSongs of Stars and Shadows

SandkingsSongs the Dead Men Sing

NightflyersTuf Voyaging

Portraits of His ChildrenQuartet

EDITED BY GEORGE R. R. MARTINNew Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1–4

The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book(with Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)

The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5

Night Visions 3Wild Card I–XXI

A Ball of Beasts is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, andincidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by George R. R. Martin.Endpaper and interior maps

copyright © by Jeffrey L. WardHeraldic crests by Virginia Norey

All rights reserved.Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of TheRandom House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,

New York.BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered

trademarks of Random House, Inc.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION

DATAMartin, George R. R.

A Feast for Crows / George R. R. Martin.p. cm — (A Song of Ice and Fire; Book 4)

eISBN: 978-0-553-90032-3PS3563.A7239 F39 2005813’.54 22 2005053034www.bantamdell.comMartin, George R. R.

A Dance with Dragons / George R. R. Martin.p. cm — (A Song of Ice and Fire; Book 5)

eISBN: 978-0-553-90565-6PS3563.A7239 D36 2011813’.54 22 2011015508

this one is for my fans

for Lodey, Trebla, Stego, Pod,Caress, Yags, X-Ray and Mr. X,Kate, Chataya, Mormont, Mich,

Jamie, Vanessa, Ro,for Stubby, Louise, Agravaine,

Wert, Malt, Jo,Mouse, Telisiane, Blackfyre,

Bronn Stone, Coyote’s Daughter,and the rest of the madmen and wild women of

the Brotherhood Without Banners

for my website wizardsElio and Linda, lords of Westeros,

Winter and Fabio of WIC,and Gibbs of Dragonstone, who started it all

for men and women of Asshai in Spainwho sang to us of a bear and a maiden fair

and the fabulous fans of Italywho gave me so much wine

for my readers in Finland, Germany,Brazil, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands

and all the other distant landswhere you’ve been waiting for this dance

and for all the friends and fansI have yet to meet

thanks for your patience

for Stephen Boucherwizard of Windows, dragon of DOSwithout whom this book would have

been written in crayon

A CAVIL ON CHRONOLOGY

It has been a while between books, I know. So a reminder may be inorder.

The book you hold in your hands is the fifth volume of A Song ofIce and Fire. The fourth volume was A Feast for Crows. However,this volume does not follow that one in the traditional sense, so muchas run in tandem with it.

Both Dance and Feast take up the story immediately after theevents of the third volume in the series, A Storm of Swords. WhereasFeast focused on events in and around King’s Landing, on the IronIslands, and down in Dorne, Dance takes us north to Castle Black andthe Wall (and beyond), and across the narrow sea to Pentos andSlaver’s Bay, to pick up the tales of Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow,Daenerys Targaryen, and all the other characters you did not see inthe preceding volume. Rather than being sequential, the two books areparallel … divided geographically, rather than chronologically.

But only up to a point.A Dance with Dragons is a longer book than A Feast for Crows,

and covers a longer time period. In the latter half of this volume, youwill notice certain of the viewpoint characters from A Feast for Crowspopping up again. And that means just what you think it means: thenarrative has moved past the time frame of Feast, and the twostreams have once again rejoined each other.

Next up, The Winds of Winter . Wherein, I hope, everybody will beshivering together once again.…

—George R. R. MartinApril 2011

Maps

SIXSKINS

The night was rank with the smell of man.The warg stopped beneath a tree and sniffed, his grey-brown fur

dappled by shadow. A sigh of piney wind brought the man-scent tohim, over fainter smells that spoke of fox and hare, seal and stag, evenwolf. Those were man-smells too, the warg knew; the stink of oldskins, dead and sour, near drowned beneath the stronger scents ofsmoke and blood and rot. Only man stripped the skins from otherbeasts and wore their hides and hair.

Wargs have no fear of man, as wolves do. Hate and hunger coiled inhis belly, and he gave a low growl, calling to his one-eyed brother, tohis small sly sister. As he raced through the trees, his packmatesfollowed hard on his heels. They had caught the scent as well. As heran, he saw through their eyes too and glimpsed himself ahead. Thebreath of the pack puffed warm and white from long grey jaws. Icehad frozen between their paws, hard as stone, but the hunt was onnow, the prey ahead. Flesh, the warg thought, meat.

A man alone was a feeble thing. Big and strong, with good sharpeyes, but dull of ear and deaf to smells. Deer and elk and even hareswere faster, bears and boars fiercer in a fight. But men in packs weredangerous. As the wolves closed on the prey, the warg heard thewailing of a pup, the crust of last night’s snow breaking under clumsyman-paws, the rattle of hardskins and the long grey claws mencarried.

Swords, a voice inside him whispered, spears.The trees had grown icy teeth, snarling down from the bare brown

branches. One Eye ripped through the undergrowth, spraying snow.His packmates followed. Up a hill and down the slope beyond, untilthe wood opened before them and the men were there. One wasfemale. The fur-wrapped bundle she clutched was her pup. Leave herfor last, the voice whispered, the males are the danger. They wereroaring at each other as men did, but the warg could smell their terror.One had a wooden tooth as tall as he was. He flung it, but his handwas shaking and the tooth sailed high.

Then the pack was on them.His one-eyed brother knocked the tooth-thrower back into a

snowdrift and tore his throat out as he struggled. His sister slippedbehind the other male and took him from the rear. That left the femaleand her pup for him.

She had a tooth too, a little one made of bone, but she dropped itwhen the warg’s jaws closed around her leg. As she fell, she wrappedboth arms around her noisy pup. Underneath her furs the female wasjust skin and bones, but her dugs were full of milk. The sweetest meatwas on the pup. The wolf saved the choicest parts for his brother. Allaround the carcasses, the frozen snow turned pink and red as the packfilled its bellies.

Leagues away, in a one-room hut of mud and straw with a thatchedroof and a smoke hole and a floor of hard-packed earth, Varamyrshivered and coughed and licked his lips. His eyes were red, his lipscracked, his throat dry and parched, but the taste of blood and fatfilled his mouth, even as his swollen belly cried for nourishment. Achild’s flesh , he thought, remembering Bump. Human meat. Had hesunk so low as to hunger after human meat? He could almost hearHaggon growling at him. “Men may eat the flesh of beasts and beaststhe flesh of men, but the man who eats the flesh of man is anabomination.”

Abomination. That had always been Haggon’s favorite word.

Abomination, abomination, abomination. To eat of human meat wasabomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was abomination, and to seizethe body of another man was the worst abomination of all. Haggonwas weak, afraid of his own power. He died weeping and alone whenI ripped his second life from him. Varamyr had devoured his hearthimself. He taught me much and more, and the last thing I learnedfrom him was the taste of human flesh.

That was as a wolf, though. He had never eaten the meat of menwith human teeth. He would not grudge his pack their feast, however.The wolves were as famished as he was, gaunt and cold and hungry,and the prey … two men and a woman, a babe in arms, fleeing fromdefeat to death. They would have perished soon in any case, fromexposure or starvation. This way was better, quicker. A mercy.

“A mercy,” he said aloud. His throat was raw, but it felt good tohear a human voice, even his own. The air smelled of mold and damp,the ground was cold and hard, and his fire was giving off more smokethan heat. He moved as close to the flames as he dared, coughing andshivering by turns, his side throbbing where his wound had opened.Blood had soaked his breeches to the knee and dried into a hardbrown crust.

Thistle had warned him that might happen. “I sewed it up the bestI could,” she’d said, “but you need to rest and let it mend, or the fleshwill tear open again.”

Thistle had been the last of his companions, a spearwife tough asan old root, warty, windburnt, and wrinkled. The others had desertedthem along the way. One by one they fell behind or forged ahead,making for their old villages, or the Milkwater, or Hardhome, or alonely death in the woods. Varamyr did not know, and could not care.I should have taken one of them when I had the chance. One of thetwins, or the big man with the scarred face, or the youth with the redhair. He had been afraid, though. One of the others might have

realized what was happening. Then they would have turned on himand killed him. And Haggon’s words had haunted him, and so thechance had passed.

After the battle there had been thousands of them strugglingthrough the forest, hungry, frightened, fleeing the carnage that haddescended on them at the Wall. Some had talked of returning to thehomes that they’d abandoned, others of mounting a second assaultupon the gate, but most were lost, with no notion of where to go orwhat to do. They had escaped the black-cloaked crows and theknights in their grey steel, but more relentless enemies stalked themnow. Every day left more corpses by the trails. Some died of hunger,some of cold, some of sickness. Others were slain by those who hadbeen their brothers-in-arms when they marched south with ManceRayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall.

Mance is fallen, the survivors told each other in despairing voices,Mance is taken, Mance is dead. “Harma’s dead and Mance iscaptured, the rest run off and left us,” Thistle had claimed, as she wassewing up his wound. “Tormund, the Weeper, Sixskins, all thembrave raiders. Where are they now?”

She does not know me, Varamyr realized then, and why should she?Without his beasts he did not look like a great man. I was VaramyrSixskins, who broke bread with Mance Rayder . He had named himselfVaramyr when he was ten. A name fit for a lord, a name for songs, amighty name, and fearsome. Yet he had run from the crows like afrightened rabbit. The terrible Lord Varamyr had gone craven, but hecould not bear that she should know that, so he told the spearwifethat his name was Haggon. Afterward he wondered why that namehad come to his lips, of all those he might have chosen. I ate his heartand drank his blood, and still he haunts me.

One day, as they fled, a rider came galloping through the woods ona gaunt white horse, shouting that they all should make for the

Milkwater, that the Weeper was gathering warriors to cross theBridge of Skulls and take the Shadow Tower. Many followed him;more did not. Later, a dour warrior in fur and amber went fromcookfire to cookfire, urging all the survivors to head north and takerefuge in the valley of the Thenns. Why he thought they would besafe there when the Thenns themselves had fled the place Varamyrnever learned, but hundreds followed him. Hundreds more went offwith the woods witch who’d had a vision of a fleet of ships coming tocarry the free folk south. “We must seek the sea,” cried MotherMole, and her followers turned east.

Varamyr might have been amongst them if only he’d been stronger.The sea was grey and cold and far away, though, and he knew that hewould never live to see it. He was nine times dead and dying, and thiswould be his true death. A squirrel-skin cloak , he remembered, heknifed me for a squirrel-skin cloak.

Its owner had been dead, the back of her head smashed into redpulp flecked with bits of bone, but her cloak looked warm and thick.It was snowing, and Varamyr had lost his own cloaks at the Wall. Hissleeping pelts and woolen smallclothes, his sheepskin boots and fur-lined gloves, his store of mead and hoarded food, the hanks of hair hetook from the women he bedded, even the golden arm rings Mancehad given him, all lost and left behind. I burned and I died and then Iran, half-mad with pain and terror. The memory still shamed him,but he had not been alone. Others had run as well, hundreds of them,thousands. The battle was lost. The knights had come, invincible intheir steel, killing everyone who stayed to fight. It was run or die.

Death was not so easily outrun, however. So when Varamyr cameupon the dead woman in the wood, he knelt to strip the cloak fromher, and never saw the boy until he burst from hiding to drive the longbone knife into his side and rip the cloak out of his clutching fingers.“His mother,” Thistle told him later, after the boy had run off. “It

were his mother’s cloak, and when he saw you robbing her …”“She was dead,” Varamyr said, wincing as her bone needle pierced

his flesh. “Someone smashed her head. Some crow.”“No crow. Hornfoot men. I saw it.” Her needle pulled the gash in

his side closed. “Savages, and who’s left to tame them?” No one. IfMance is dead, the free folk are doomed . The Thenns, giants, and theHornfoot men, the cave-dwellers with their filed teeth, and the men ofthe western shore with their chariots of bone … all of them weredoomed as well. Even the crows. They might not know it yet, butthose black-cloaked bastards would perish with the rest. The enemywas coming.

Haggon’s rough voice echoed in his head. “You will die a dozendeaths, boy, and every one will hurt … but when your true deathcomes, you will live again. The second life is simpler and sweeter,they say.”

Varamyr Sixskins would know the truth of that soon enough. Hecould taste his true death in the smoke that hung acrid in the air, feel itin the heat beneath his fingers when he slipped a hand under hisclothes to touch his wound. The chill was in him too, though, deepdown in his bones. This time it would be cold that killed him.

His last death had been by fire. I burned. At first, in his confusion,he thought some archer on the Wall had pierced him with a flamingarrow … but the fire had been inside him, consuming him. And thepain …

Varamyr had died nine times before. He had died once from a spearthrust, once with a bear’s teeth in his throat, and once in a wash ofblood as he brought forth a stillborn cub. He died his first death whenhe was only six, as his father’s axe crashed through his skull. Eventhat had not been so agonizing as the fire in his guts, crackling alonghis wings, devouring him. When he tried to fly from it, his terrorfanned the flames and made them burn hotter. One moment he had

been soaring above the Wall, his eagle’s eyes marking the movementsof the men below. Then the flames had turned his heart into ablackened cinder and sent his spirit screaming back into his own skin,and for a little while he’d gone mad. Even the memory was enough tomake him shudder.

That was when he noticed that his fire had gone out.Only a grey-and-black tangle of charred wood remained, with a few

embers glowing in the ashes. There’s still smoke, it just needs wood .Gritting his teeth against the pain, Varamyr crept to the pile ofbroken branches Thistle had gathered before she went off hunting, andtossed a few sticks onto the ashes. “Catch,” he croaked. “Burn.” Heblew upon the embers and said a wordless prayer to the namelessgods of wood and hill and field.

The gods gave no answer. After a while, the smoke ceased to rise aswell. Already the little hut was growing colder. Varamyr had no flint,no tinder, no dry kindling. He would never get the fire burning again,not by himself. “Thistle,” he called out, his voice hoarse and edgedwith pain. “Thistle!”

Her chin was pointed and her nose flat, and she had a mole on onecheek with four dark hairs growing from it. An ugly face, and hard,yet he would have given much to glimpse it in the door of the hut. Ishould have taken her before she left. How long had she been gone?Two days? Three? Varamyr was uncertain. It was dark inside the hut,and he had been drifting in and out of sleep, never quite sure if it wasday or night outside. “Wait,” she’d said. “I will be back with food.”So like a fool he’d waited, dreaming of Haggon and Bump and all thewrongs he had done in his long life, but days and nights had passedand Thistle had not returned. She won’t be coming back . Varamyrwondered if he had given himself away. Could she tell what he wasthinking just from looking at him, or had he muttered in his feverdream?

Abomination, he heard Haggon saying. It was almost as if he werehere, in this very room. “She is just some ugly spearwife,” Varamyrtold him. “I am a great man. I am Varamyr, the warg, the skinchanger,it is not right that she should live and I should die.” No one answered.There was no one there. Thistle was gone. She had abandoned him,the same as all the rest.

His own mother had abandoned him as well. She cried for Bump,but she never cried for me. The morning his father pulled him out ofbed to deliver him to Haggon, she would not even look at him. He hadshrieked and kicked as he was dragged into the woods, until his fatherslapped him and told him to be quiet. “You belong with your ownkind,” was all he said when he flung him down at Haggon’s feet.

He was not wrong, Varamyr thought, shivering. Haggon taught memuch and more. He taught me how to hunt and fish, how to butcher acarcass and bone a fish, how to find my way through the woods. Andhe taught me the way of the warg and the secrets of the skinchanger,though my gift was stronger than his own.

Years later he had tried to find his parents, to tell them that theirLump had become the great Varamyr Sixskins, but both of them weredead and burned. Gone into the trees and streams, gone into the rocksand earth. Gone to dirt and ashes. That was what the woods witchtold his mother, the day Bump died. Lump did not want to be a clodof earth. The boy had dreamed of a day when bards would sing of hisdeeds and pretty girls would kiss him. When I am grown I will be theKing-Beyond-the-Wall, Lump had promised himself. He never had,but he had come close. Varamyr Sixskins was a name men feared. Herode to battle on the back of a snow bear thirteen feet tall, kept threewolves and a shadowcat in thrall, and sat at the right hand of ManceRayder. It was Mance who brought me to this place. I should not havelistened. I should have slipped inside my bear and torn him to pieces.

Before Mance, Varamyr Sixskins had been a lord of sorts. He lived

alone in a hall of moss and mud and hewn logs that had once beenHaggon’s, attended by his beasts. A dozen villages did him homage inbread and salt and cider, offering him fruit from their orchards andvegetables from their gardens. His meat he got himself. Whenever hedesired a woman he sent his shadowcat to stalk her, and whatever girlhe’d cast his eye upon would follow meekly to his bed. Some cameweeping, aye, but still they came. Varamyr gave them his seed, took ahank of their hair to remember them by, and sent them back. Fromtime to time, some village hero would come with spear in hand to slaythe beastling and save a sister or a lover or a daughter. Those he killed,but he never harmed the women. Some he even blessed with children.Runts. Small, puny things, like Lump, and not one with the gift.

Fear drove him to his feet, reeling. Holding his side to staunch theseep of blood from his wound, Varamyr lurched to the door andswept aside the ragged skin that covered it to face a wall of white.Snow. No wonder it had grown so dark and smoky inside. The fallingsnow had buried the hut.

When Varamyr pushed at it, the snow crumbled and gave way, stillsoft and wet. Outside, the night was white as death; pale thin cloudsdanced attendance on a silver moon, while a thousand stars watchedcoldly. He could see the humped shapes of other huts buried beneathdrifts of snow, and beyond them the pale shadow of a weirwoodarmored in ice. To the south and west the hills were a vast whitewilderness where nothing moved except the blowing snow. “Thistle,”Varamyr called feebly, wondering how far she could have gone.“Thistle. Woman. Where are you?”

Far away, a wolf gave howl.A shiver went through Varamyr. He knew that howl as well as

Lump had once known his mother’s voice. One Eye. He was theoldest of his three, the biggest, the fiercest. Stalker was leaner,quicker, younger, Sly more cunning, but both went in fear of One

Eye. The old wolf was fearless, relentless, savage.Varamyr had lost control of his other beasts in the agony of the

eagle’s death. His shadowcat had raced into the woods, whilst hissnow bear turned her claws on those around her, ripping apart fourmen before falling to a spear. She would have slain Varamyr had hecome within her reach. The bear hated him, had raged each time hewore her skin or climbed upon her back.

His wolves, though …My brothers. My pack . Many a cold night he had slept with his

wolves, their shaggy bodies piled up around him to help keep himwarm. When I die they will feast upon my flesh and leave only bones togreet the thaw come spring. The thought was queerly comforting. Hiswolves had often foraged for him as they roamed; it seemed onlyfitting that he should feed them in the end. He might well begin hissecond life tearing at the warm dead flesh of his own corpse.

Dogs were the easiest beasts to bond with; they lived so close tomen that they were almost human. Slipping into a dog’s skin was likeputting on an old boot, its leather softened by wear. As a boot wasshaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even acollar no human eye could see. Wolves were harder. A man mightbefriend a wolf, even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame awolf. “Wolves and women wed for life,” Haggon often said. “Youtake one, that’s a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on,and you’re part of him. Both of you will change.”

Other beasts were best left alone, the hunter had declared. Catswere vain and cruel, always ready to turn on you. Elk and deer wereprey; wear their skins too long, and even the bravest man became acoward. Bears, boars, badgers, weasels … Haggon did not hold withsuch. “Some skins you never want to wear, boy. You won’t like whatyou’d become.” Birds were the worst, to hear him tell it. “Men werenot meant to leave the earth. Spend too much time in the clouds and

you never want to come back down again. I know skinchangerswho’ve tried hawks, owls, ravens. Even in their own skins, they sitmoony, staring up at the bloody blue.”

Not all skinchangers felt the same, however. Once, when Lumpwas ten, Haggon had taken him to a gathering of such. The wargs werethe most numerous in that company, the wolf-brothers, but the boyhad found the others stranger and more fascinating. Borroq looked somuch like his boar that all he lacked was tusks, Orell had his eagle,Briar her shadowcat (the moment he saw them, Lump wanted ashadowcat of his own), the goat woman Grisella …

None of them had been as strong as Varamyr Sixskins, though, noteven Haggon, tall and grim with his hands as hard as stone. Thehunter died weeping after Varamyr took Greyskin from him, drivinghim out to claim the beast for his own. No second life for you, oldman. Varamyr Threeskins, he’d called himself back then. Greyskinmade four, though the old wolf was frail and almost toothless andsoon followed Haggon into death.

Varamyr could take any beast he wanted, bend them to his will,make their flesh his own. Dog or wolf, bear or badger …

Thistle, he thought.Haggon would call it an abomination, the blackest sin of all, but

Haggon was dead, devoured, and burned. Mance would have cursedhim as well, but Mance was slain or captured. No one will ever know.I will be Thistle the spearwife, and Varamyr Sixskins will be dead . Hisgift would perish with his body, he expected. He would lose hiswolves, and live out the rest of his days as some scrawny, wartywoman … but he would live. If she comes back. If I am still strongenough to take her.

A wave of dizziness washed over Varamyr. He found himself uponhis knees, his hands buried in a snowdrift. He scooped up a fistful ofsnow and filled his mouth with it, rubbing it through his beard and

against his cracked lips, sucking down the moisture. The water was socold that he could barely bring himself to swallow, and he realizedonce again how hot he was.

The snowmelt only made him hungrier. It was food his bellycraved, not water. The snow had stopped falling, but the wind wasrising, filling the air with crystal, slashing at his face as he struggledthrough the drifts, the wound in his side opening and closing again.His breath made a ragged white cloud. When he reached the weirwoodtree, he found a fallen branch just long enough to use as a crutch.Leaning heavily upon it, he staggered toward the nearest hut. Perhapsthe villagers had forgotten something when they fled … a sack ofapples, some dried meat, anything to keep him alive until Thistlereturned.

He was almost there when his crutch snapped beneath his weight,and his legs went out from under him.

How long he sprawled there with his blood reddening the snowVaramyr could not have said. The snow will bury me. It would be apeaceful death. They say you feel warm near the end, warm andsleepy. It would be good to feel warm again, though it made him sad tothink that he would never see the green lands, the warm lands beyondthe Wall that Mance used to sing about. “The world beyond the Wallis not for our kind,” Haggon used to say. “The free folk fearskinchangers, but they honor us as well. South of the Wall, thekneelers hunt us down and butcher us like pigs.”

You warned me, Varamyr thought, but it was you who showed meEastwatch too. He could not have been more than ten. Haggon tradeda dozen strings of amber and a sled piled high with pelts for six skinsof wine, a block of salt, and a copper kettle. Eastwatch was a betterplace to trade than Castle Black; that was where the ships came, ladenwith goods from the fabled lands beyond the sea. The crows knewHaggon as a hunter and a friend to the Night’s Watch, and welcomed

the news he brought of life beyond their Wall. Some knew him for askinchanger too, but no one spoke of that. It was there at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea that the boy he’d been first began to dream of the warmsouth.

Varamyr could feel the snowflakes melting on his brow. This is notso bad as burning. Let me sleep and never wake, let me begin mysecond life. His wolves were close now. He could feel them. He wouldleave this feeble flesh behind, become one with them, hunting thenight and howling at the moon. The warg would become a true wolf.Which, though?

Not Sly. Haggon would have called it abomination, but Varamyrhad often slipped inside her skin as she was being mounted by OneEye. He did not want to spend his new life as a bitch, though, notunless he had no other choice. Stalker might suit him better, theyounger male … though One Eye was larger and fiercer, and it wasOne Eye who took Sly whenever she went into heat.

“They say you forget,” Haggon had told him, a few weeks beforehis own death. “When the man’s flesh dies, his spirit lives on insidethe beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes alittle less a warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is leftand only the beast remains.”

Varamyr knew the truth of that. When he claimed the eagle that hadbeen Orell’s, he could feel the other skinchanger raging at hispresence. Orell had been slain by the turncloak crow Jon Snow, andhis hate for his killer had been so strong that Varamyr found himselfhating the beastling boy as well. He had known what Snow was themoment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side.One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let metake the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king . Hecould have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, butthe youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have

gloried in it.Varamyr could see the weirwood’s red eyes staring down at him

from the white trunk. The gods are weighing me. A shiver wentthrough him. He had done bad things, terrible things. He had stolen,killed, raped. He had gorged on human flesh and lapped the blood ofdying men as it gushed red and hot from their torn throats. He hadstalked foes through the woods, fallen on them as they slept, clawedtheir entrails from their bellies and scattered them across the muddyearth. How sweet their meat had tasted. “That was the beast, not me,”he said in a hoarse whisper. “That was the gift you gave me.”

The gods made no reply. His breath hung pale and misty in the air.He could feel ice forming in his beard. Varamyr Sixskins closed hiseyes.

He dreamt an old dream of a hovel by the sea, three dogswhimpering, a woman’s tears.

Bump. She weeps for Bump, but she never wept for me.Lump had been born a month before his proper time, and he was

sick so often that no one expected him to live. His mother waiteduntil he was almost four to give him a proper name, and by then itwas too late. The whole village had taken to calling him Lump, thename his sister Meha had given him when he was still in theirmother’s belly. Meha had given Bump his name as well, but Lump’slittle brother had been born in his proper time, big and red and robust,sucking greedily at Mother’s teats. She was going to name him afterFather. Bump died, though. He died when he was two and I was six,three days before his nameday.

“Your little one is with the gods now,” the woods witch told hismother, as she wept. “He’ll never hurt again, never hunger, never cry.The gods have taken him down into the earth, into the trees. The godsare all around us, in the rocks and streams, in the birds and beasts.Your Bump has gone to join them. He’ll be the world and all that’s in

it.”The old woman’s words had gone through Lump like a knife. Bump

sees. He is watching me. He knows. Lump could not hide from him,could not slip behind his mother’s skirts or run off with the dogs toescape his father’s fury. The dogs. Loptail, Sniff, the Growler. Theywere good dogs. They were my friends.

When his father found the dogs sniffing round Bump’s body, hehad no way of knowing which had done it, so he took his axe to allthree. His hands shook so badly that it took two blows to silenceSniff and four to put the Growler down. The smell of blood hungheavy in the air, and the sounds the dying dogs had made were terribleto hear, yet Loptail still came when father called him. He was theoldest dog, and his training overcame his terror. By the time Lumpslipped inside his skin it was too late.

No, Father, please , he tried to say, but dogs cannot speak thetongues of men, so all that emerged was a piteous whine. The axecrashed into the middle of the old dog’s skull, and inside the hovel theboy let out a scream. That was how they knew. Two days later, hisfather dragged him into the woods. He brought his axe, so Lumpthought he meant to put him down the same way he had done thedogs. Instead he’d given him to Haggon.

Varamyr woke suddenly, violently, his whole body shaking. “Getup,” a voice was screaming, “get up, we have to go. There arehundreds of them.” The snow had covered him with a stiff whiteblanket. So cold. When he tried to move, he found that his hand wasfrozen to the ground. He left some skin behind when he tore it loose.“Get up,” she screamed again, “they’re coming.”

Thistle had returned to him. She had him by the shoulders and wasshaking him, shouting in his face. Varamyr could smell her breath andfeel the warmth of it upon cheeks gone numb with cold. Now, hethought, do it now, or die.

He summoned all the strength still in him, leapt out of his ownskin, and forced himself inside her.

Thistle arched her back and screamed.Abomination. Was that her, or him, or Haggon? He never knew. His

old flesh fell back into the snowdrift as her fingers loosened. Thespearwife twisted violently, shrieking. His shadowcat used to fighthim wildly, and the snow bear had gone half-mad for a time, snappingat trees and rocks and empty air, but this was worse. “Get out, getout!” he heard her own mouth shouting. Her body staggered, fell, androse again, her hands flailed, her legs jerked this way and that in somegrotesque dance as his spirit and her own fought for the flesh. Shesucked down a mouthful of the frigid air, and Varamyr had half aheartbeat to glory in the taste of it and the strength of this youngbody before her teeth snapped together and filled his mouth withblood. She raised her hands to his face. He tried to push them downagain, but the hands would not obey, and she was clawing at his eyes.Abomination, he remembered, drowning in blood and pain andmadness. When he tried to scream, she spat their tongue out.

The white world turned and fell away. For a moment it was as if hewere inside the weirwood, gazing out through carved red eyes as adying man twitched feebly on the ground and a madwoman dancedblind and bloody underneath the moon, weeping red tears and rippingat her clothes. Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, hisspirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in theclouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flewsilently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside theowl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground,earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. Iam the wood, and everything that’s in it , he thought, exulting. Ahundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A greatelk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping

direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their heartscould beat again he had passed on, searching for his own, for OneEye, Sly, and Stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, hetold himself.

That was his last thought as a man.True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been

plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himselfrushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him.Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew. He bayed, and Sly andStalker gave echo.

When they reached the crest the wolves paused. Thistle, heremembered, and a part of him grieved for what he had lost andanother part for what he’d done. Below, the world had turned to ice.Fingers of frost crept slowly up the weirwood, reaching out for eachother. The empty village was no longer empty. Blue-eyed shadowswalked amongst the mounds of snow. Some wore brown and somewore black and some were naked, their flesh gone white as snow. Awind was sighing through the hills, heavy with their scents: deadflesh, dry blood, skins that stank of mold and rot and urine. Sly gave agrowl and bared her teeth, her ruff bristling. Not men. Not prey. Notthese.

The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raisedtheir heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look wasthe thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather,and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when shemoved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from herfingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where hereyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarsefeatures an eerie beauty they had never known in life.

She sees me.

OLDTOWN

"Dragons,” said Mollander. He snatched a withered apple off theground and tossed it hand to hand.

“Throw the apple,” urged Alleras the Sphinx. He slipped an arrowfrom his quiver and nocked it to his bowstring.

“I should like to see a dragon.” Roone was the youngest of them, achunky boy still two years shy of manhood. “I should like that verymuch.”

And I should like to sleep with Rosey’s arms around me, Patethought. He shifted restlessly on the bench. By the morrow the girlcould well be his. I will take her far from Oldtown, across the narrowsea to one of the Free Cities. There were no maesters there, no one toaccuse him.

He could hear Emma’s laughter coming through a shuttered windowoverhead, mingled with the deeper voice of the man she wasentertaining. She was the oldest of the serving wenches at the Quilland Tankard, forty if she was a day, but still pretty in a fleshy sort ofway. Rosey was her daughter, fifteen and freshly flowered. Emmahad decreed that Rosey’s maidenhead would cost a golden dragon.Pate had saved nine silver stags and a pot of copper stars andpennies, for all the good that would do him. He would have stood abetter chance of hatching a real dragon than saving up enough coin tomake a golden one.

“You were born too late for dragons, lad,” Armen the Acolyte toldRoone. Armen wore a leather thong about his neck, strung with links

of pewter, tin, lead, and copper, and like most acolytes he seemed tobelieve that novices had turnips growing from their shoulders in placeof heads. “The last one perished during the reign of King Aegon theThird.”

“The last dragon in Westeros,” insisted Mollander.“Throw the apple,” Alleras urged again. He was a comely youth,

their Sphinx. All the serving wenches doted on him. Even Roseywould sometimes touch him on the arm when she brought him wine,and Pate had to gnash his teeth and pretend not to see.

“The last dragon in Westeros was the last dragon,” said Armendoggedly. “That is well known.”

“The apple,” Alleras said. “Unless you mean to eat it.”“Here.” Dragging his clubfoot, Mollander took a short hop,

whirled, and whipped the apple sidearm into the mists that hungabove the Honeywine. If not for his foot, he would have been a knightlike his father. He had the strength for it in those thick arms and broadshoulders. Far and fast the apple flew . . .

. . . but not as fast as the arrow that whistled after it, a yard-longshaft of golden wood fletched with scarlet feathers. Pate did not seethe arrow catch the apple, but he heard it. A soft chunk echoed backacross the river, followed by a splash.

Mollander whistled. “You cored it. Sweet.”Not half as sweet as Rosey. Pate loved her hazel eyes and budding

breasts, and the way she smiled every time she saw him. He loved thedimples in her cheeks. Sometimes she went barefoot as she served, tofeel the grass beneath her feet. He loved that too. He loved the cleanfresh smell of her, the way her hair curled behind her ears. He evenloved her toes. One night she’d let him rub her feet and play withthem, and he’d made up a funny tale for every toe to keep her

giggling.Perhaps he would do better to remain on this side of the narrow

sea. He could buy a donkey with the coin he’d saved, and he andRosey could take turns riding it as they wandered Westeros. Ebrosemight not think him worthy of the silver, but Pate knew how to set abone and leech a fever. The smallfolk would be grateful for his help. Ifhe could learn to cut hair and shave beards, he might even be a barber.That would be enough, he told himself, so long as I had Rosey. Roseywas all that he wanted in the world.

That had not always been so. Once he had dreamed of being amaester in a castle, in service to some open-handed lord who wouldhonor him for his wisdom and bestow a fine white horse on him tothank him for his service. How high he’d ride, how nobly, smilingdown at the smallfolk when he passed them on the road . . .

One night in the Quill and Tankard’s common room, after hissecond tankard of fearsomely strong cider, Pate had boasted that hewould not always be a novice. “Too true,” Lazy Leo had called out.“You’ll be a former novice, herding swine.”

He drained the dregs of his tankard. The torchlit terrace of the Quilland Tankard was an island of light in a sea of mist this morning.Downriver, the distant beacon of the Hightower floated in the dampof night like a hazy orange moon, but the light did little to lift hisspirits.

The alchemist should have come by now. Had it all been some crueljape, or had something happened to the man? It would not have beenthe first time that good fortune had turned sour on Pate. He had oncecounted himself lucky to be chosen to help old Archmaester Walgravewith the ravens, never dreaming that before long he would also befetching the man’s meals, sweeping out his chambers, and dressinghim every morning. Everyone said that Walgrave had forgotten more

of ravencraft than most maesters ever knew, so Pate assumed a blackiron link was the least that he could hope for, only to find thatWalgrave could not grant him one. The old man remained anarchmaester only by courtesy. As great a maester as once he’d been,now his robes concealed soiled smallclothes oft as not, and half a yearago some acolytes found him weeping in the Library, unable to findhis way back to his chambers. Maester Gormon sat below the ironmask in Walgrave’s place, the same Gormon who had once accusedPate of theft.

In the apple tree beside the water, a nightingale began to sing. Itwas a sweet sound, a welcome respite from the harsh screams andendless quorking of the ravens he had tended all day long. The whiteravens knew his name, and would mutter it to each other wheneverthey caught sight of him, “Pate, Pate, Pate,” until he wanted toscream. The big white birds were Archmaester Walgrave’s pride. Hewanted them to eat him when he died, but Pate half suspected thatthey meant to eat him too.

Perhaps it was the fearsomely strong cider—he had not come hereto drink, but Alleras had been buying to celebrate his copper link, andguilt had made him thirsty—but it almost sounded as if thenightingale were trilling gold for iron, gold for iron, gold for iron.Which was passing strange, because that was what the stranger hadsaid the night Rosey brought the two of them together. “Who areyou?” Pate had demanded of him, and the man had replied, “Analchemist. I can change iron into gold.” And then the coin was in hishand, dancing across his knuckles, the soft yellow gold shining in thecandlelight. On one side was a three-headed dragon, on the other thehead of some dead king. Gold for iron, Pate remembered, you won’tdo better. Do you want her? Do you love her? “I am no thief,” he hadtold the man who called himself the alchemist, “I am a novice of theCitadel.” The alchemist had bowed his head, and said, “If you should

reconsider, I shall return here three days hence, with my dragon.”Three days had passed. Pate had returned to the Quill and Tankard,

still uncertain what he was, but instead of the alchemist he’d foundMollander and Armen and the Sphinx, with Roone in tow. It wouldhave raised suspicions not to join them.

The Quill and Tankard never closed. For six hundred years it hadbeen standing on its island in the Honeywine, and never once had itsdoors been shut to trade. Though the tall, timbered building leanedtoward the south the way novices sometimes leaned after a tankard,Pate expected that the inn would go on standing for another sixhundred years, selling wine and ale and fearsomely strong cider torivermen and seamen, smiths and singers, priests and princes, and thenovices and acolytes of the Citadel.

“Oldtown is not the world,” declared Mollander, too loudly. Hewas a knight’s son, and drunk as drunk could be. Since they broughthim word of his father’s death upon the Blackwater, he got drunkmost every night. Even in Oldtown, far from the fighting and safebehind its walls, the War of the Five Kings had touched them all . . .although Archmaester Benedict insisted that there had never been awar of five kings, since Renly Baratheon had been slain before BalonGreyjoy had crowned himself.

“My father always said the world was bigger than any lord’scastle,” Mollander went on. “Dragons must be the least of the thingsa man might find in Qarth and Asshai and Yi Ti. These sailors’ stories. . .”

“. . . are stories told by sailors,” Armen interrupted. “Sailors, mydear Mollander. Go back down to the docks, and I wager you’ll findsailors who’ll tell you of the mermaids that they bedded, or how theyspent a year in the belly of a fish.”

“How do you know they didn’t?” Mollander thumped through the

grass, looking for more apples. “You’d need to be down the bellyyourself to swear they weren’t. One sailor with a story, aye, a manmight laugh at that, but when oarsmen off four different ships tell thesame tale in four different tongues . . .”

“The tales are not the same,” insisted Armen. “Dragons in Asshai,dragons in Qarth, dragons in Meereen, Dothraki dragons, dragonsfreeing slaves . . . each telling differs from the last.”

“Only in details.” Mollander grew more stubborn when he drank,and even when sober he was bullheaded. “All speak of dragons, and abeautiful young queen.”

The only dragon Pate cared about was made of yellow gold. Hewondered what had happened to the alchemist. The third day. He saidhe’d be here.

“There’s another apple near your foot,” Alleras called toMollander, “and I still have two arrows in my quiver.”

“Fuck your quiver.” Mollander scooped up the windfall. “Thisone’s wormy,” he complained, but he threw it anyway. The arrowcaught the apple as it began to fall and sliced it clean in two. One halflanded on a turret roof, tumbled to a lower roof, bounced, and missedArmen by a foot. “If you cut a worm in two, you make two worms,”the acolyte informed them.

“If only it worked that way with apples, no one would ever needgo hungry,” said Alleras with one of his soft smiles. The Sphinx wasalways smiling, as if he knew some secret jape. It gave him a wickedlook that went well with his pointed chin, widow’s peak, and densemat of close-cropped jet-black curls.

Alleras would make a maester. He had only been at the Citadel fora year, yet already he had forged three links of his maester’s chain.Armen might have more, but each of his had taken him a year to earn.

Still, he would make a maester too. Roone and Mollander remainedpink-necked novices, but Roone was very young and Mollanderpreferred drinking to reading.

Pate, though . . .He had been five years at the Citadel, arriving when he was no

more than three-and-ten, yet his neck remained as pink as it had beenon the day he first arrived from the westerlands. Twice had hebelieved himself ready. The first time he had gone before ArchmaesterVaellyn to demonstrate his knowledge of the heavens. Instead helearned how Vinegar Vaellyn had earned that name. It took Pate twoyears to summon up the courage to try again. This time he submittedhimself to kindly old Archmaester Ebrose, renowned for his softvoice and gentle hands, but Ebrose’s sighs had somehow proved justas painful as Vaellyn’s barbs.

“One last apple,” promised Alleras, “and I will tell you what Isuspect about these dragons.”

“What could you know that I don’t?” grumbled Mollander. Hespied an apple on a branch, jumped up, pulled it down, and threw.Alleras drew his bowstring back to his ear, turning gracefully tofollow the target in flight. He loosed his shaft just as the apple beganto fall.

“You always miss your last shot,” said Roone.The apple splashed down into the river, untouched.“See?” said Roone.“The day you make them all is the day you stop improving.”

Alleras unstrung his longbow and eased it into its leather case. Thebow was carved from goldenheart, a rare and fabled wood from theSummer Isles. Pate had tried to bend it once, and failed. The Sphinxlooks slight, but there’s strength in those slim arms, he reflected, as

Alleras threw a leg across the bench and reached for his wine cup.“The dragon has three heads,” he announced in his soft Dornishdrawl.

“Is this a riddle?” Roone wanted to know. “Sphinxes always speakin riddles in the tales.”

“No riddle.” Alleras sipped his wine. The rest of them werequaffing tankards of the fearsomely strong cider that the Quill andTankard was renowned for, but he preferred the strange, sweet winesof his mother’s country. Even in Oldtown such wines did not comecheap.

It had been Lazy Leo who dubbed Alleras “the Sphinx.” A sphinxis a bit of this, a bit of that: a human face, the body of a lion, thewings of a hawk. Alleras was the same: his father was a Dornishman,his mother a black-skinned Summer Islander. His own skin was darkas teak. And like the green marble sphinxes that flanked the Citadel’smain gate, Alleras had eyes of onyx.

“No dragon has ever had three heads except on shields andbanners,” Armen the Acolyte said firmly. “That was a heraldiccharge, no more. Furthermore, the Targaryens are all dead.”

“Not all,” said Alleras. “The Beggar King had a sister.”“I thought her head was smashed against a wall,” said Roone.“No,” said Alleras. “It was Prince Rhaegar’s young son Aegon

whose head was dashed against the wall by the Lion of Lannister’sbrave men. We speak of Rhaegar’s sister, born on Dragonstone beforeits fall. The one they called Daenerys.”

“The Stormborn. I recall her now.” Mollander lifted his tankardhigh, sloshing the cider that remained. “Here’s to her!” He gulped,slammed his empty tankard down, belched, and wiped his mouthwith the back of his hand. “Where’s Rosey? Our rightful queen

deserves another round of cider, wouldn’t you say?”Armen the Acolyte looked alarmed. “Lower your voice, fool. You

should not even jape about such things. You never know who couldbe listening. The Spider has ears everywhere.”

“Ah, don’t piss your breeches, Armen. I was proposing a drink,not a rebellion.”

Pate heard a chuckle. A soft, sly voice called out from behind him.“I always knew you were a traitor, Hopfrog.” Lazy Leo wasslouching by the foot of the old plank bridge, draped in satin stripedin green and gold, with a black silk half cape pinned to his shoulder bya rose of jade. The wine he’d dribbled down his front had been arobust red, judging from the color of the spots. A lock of his ash-blond hair fell down across one eye.

Mollander bristled at the sight of him. “Bugger that. Go away. Youare not welcome here.” Alleras laid a hand upon his arm to calm him,whilst Armen frowned. “Leo. My lord. I had understood that youwere still confined to the Citadel for . . .”

“. . . three more days.” Lazy Leo shrugged. “Perestan says theworld is forty thousand years old. Mollos says five hundredthousand. What are three days, I ask you?” Though there were adozen empty tables on the terrace, Leo sat himself at theirs. “Buy mea cup of Arbor gold, Hopfrog, and perhaps I won’t inform my fatherof your toast. The tiles turned against me at the Checkered Hazard,and I wasted my last stag on supper. Suckling pig in plum sauce,stuffed with chestnuts and white truffles. A man must eat. What didyou lads have?”

“Mutton,” muttered Mollander. He sounded none too pleasedabout it. “We shared a haunch of boiled mutton.”

“I’m certain it was filling.” Leo turned to Alleras. “A lord’s son

should be open-handed, Sphinx. I understand you won your copperlink. I’ll drink to that.”

Alleras smiled back at him. “I only buy for friends. And I am nolord’s son, I’ve told you that. My mother was a trader.”

Leo’s eyes were hazel, bright with wine and malice. “Your motherwas a monkey from the Summer Isles. The Dornish will fuckanything with a hole between its legs. Meaning no offense. You maybe brown as a nut, but at least you bathe. Unlike our spotted pigboy.” He waved a hand toward Pate.

If I hit him in the mouth with my tankard, I could knock out half histeeth, Pate thought. Spotted Pate the pig boy was the hero of athousand ribald stories: a good-hearted, empty-headed lout whoalways managed to best the fat lordlings, haughty knights, andpompous septons who beset him. Somehow his stupidity would turnout to have been a sort of uncouth cunning; the tales always endedwith Spotted Pate sitting on a lord’s high seat or bedding someknight’s daughter. But those were stories. In the real world pig boysnever fared so well. Pate sometimes thought his mother must havehated him to have named him as she did.

Alleras was no longer smiling. “You will apologize.”“Will I?” said Leo. “How can I, with my throat so dry . . .”“You shame your House with every word you say,” Alleras told

him. “You shame the Citadel by being one of us.”“I know. So buy me some wine, that I might drown my shame.”Mollander said, “I would tear your tongue out by the roots.”“Truly? Then how would I tell you about the dragons?” Leo

shrugged again. “The mongrel has the right of it. The Mad King’sdaughter is alive, and she’s hatched herself three dragons.”

“Three?” said Roone, astonished.Leo patted his hand. “More than two and less than four. I would

not try for my golden link just yet if I were you.”“You leave him be,” warned Mollander.“Such a chivalrous Hopfrog. As you wish. Every man off every

ship that’s sailed within a hundred leagues of Qarth is speaking ofthese dragons. A few will even tell you that they’ve seen them. TheMage is inclined to believe them.”

Armen pursed his lips in disapproval. “Marwyn is unsound.Archmaester Perestan would be the first to tell you that.”

“Archmaester Ryam says so too,” said Roone.Leo yawned. “The sea is wet, the sun is warm, and the menagerie

hates the mastiff.”He has a mocking name for everyone, thought Pate, but he could

not deny that Marwyn looked more a mastiff than a maester. As if hewants to bite you. The Mage was not like other maesters. People saidthat he kept company with whores and hedge wizards, talked withhairy Ibbenese and pitch-black Summer Islanders in their owntongues, and sacrificed to queer gods at the little sailors’ templesdown by the wharves. Men spoke of seeing him down in theundercity, in rat pits and black brothels, consorting with mummers,singers, sellswords, even beggars. Some even whispered that once hehad killed a man with his fists.

When Marwyn had returned to Oldtown, after spending eightyears in the east mapping distant lands, searching for lost books, andstudying with warlocks and shadowbinders, Vinegar Vaellyn haddubbed him “Marwyn the Mage.” The name was soon all overOldtown, to Vaellyn’s vast annoyance. “Leave spells and prayers topriests and septons and bend your wits to learning truths a man can

trust in,” Archmaester Ryam had once counseled Pate, but Ryam’sring and rod and mask were yellow gold, and his maester’s chain hadno link of Valyrian steel.

Armen looked down his nose at Lazy Leo. He had the perfect nosefor it, long and thin and pointed. “Archmaester Marwyn believes inmany curious things,” he said, “but he has no more proof of dragonsthan Mollander. Just more sailors’ stories.”

“You’re wrong,” said Leo. “There is a glass candle burning in theMage’s chambers.”

A hush fell over the torchlit terrace. Armen sighed and shook hishead. Mollander began to laugh. The Sphinx studied Leo with his bigblack eyes. Roone looked lost.

Pate knew about the glass candles, though he had never seen oneburn. They were the worst-kept secret of the Citadel. It was said thatthey had been brought to Oldtown from Valyria a thousand yearsbefore the Doom. He had heard there were four; one was green andthree were black, and all were tall and twisted.

“What are these glass candles?” asked Roone.Armen the Acolyte cleared his throat. “The night before an acolyte

says his vows, he must stand a vigil in the vault. No lantern ispermitted him, no torch, no lamp, no taper . . . only a candle ofobsidian. He must spend the night in darkness, unless he can light thatcandle. Some will try. The foolish and the stubborn, those who havemade a study of these so-called higher mysteries. Often they cut theirfingers, for the ridges on the candles are said to be as sharp as razors.Then, with bloody hands, they must wait upon the dawn, broodingon their failure. Wiser men simply go to sleep, or spend their night inprayer, but every year there are always a few who must try.”

“Yes.” Pate had heard the same stories. “But what’s the use of a

candle that casts no light?”“It is a lesson,” Armen said, “the last lesson we must learn before

we don our maester’s chains. The glass candle is meant to representtruth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made inthe shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast lightwherever he serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge canbe dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but amaester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us ofthat as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain andgone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of hisvigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candleburn . . . for even with knowledge, some things are not possible.”

Lazy Leo burst out laughing. “Not possible for you, you mean. Isaw the candle burning with my own eyes.”

“You saw some candle burning, I don’t doubt,” said Armen. “Acandle of black wax, perhaps.”

“I know what I saw. The light was queer and bright, much brighterthan any beeswax or tallow candle. It cast strange shadows and theflame never flickered, not even when a draft blew through the opendoor behind me.”

Armen crossed his arms. “Obsidian does not burn.”“Dragonglass,” Pate said. “The smallfolk call it dragonglass.”

Somehow that seemed important.“They do,” mused Alleras, the Sphinx, “and if there are dragons in

the world again . . .”“Dragons and darker things,” said Leo. “The grey sheep have

closed their eyes, but the mastiff sees the truth. Old powers waken.Shadows stir. An age of wonder and terror will soon be upon us, anage for gods and heroes.” He stretched, smiling his lazy smile. “That’s

worth a round, I’d say.”“We’ve drunk enough,” said Armen. “Morn will be upon us sooner

than we’d like, and Archmaester Ebrose will be speaking on theproperties of urine. Those who mean to forge a silver link would dowell not to miss his talk.”

“Far be it from me to keep you from the piss tasting,” said Leo.“Myself, I prefer the taste of Arbor gold.”

“If the choice is piss or you, I’ll drink piss.” Mollander pushedback from the table. “Come, Roone.”

The Sphinx reached for his bowcase. “It’s bed for me as well. Iexpect I’ll dream of dragons and glass candles.”

“All of you?” Leo shrugged. “Well, Rosey will remain. Perhaps I’llwake our little sweetmeat and make a woman of her.”

Alleras saw the look on Pate’s face. “If he does not have a copperfor a cup of wine, he cannot have a dragon for the girl.”

“Aye,” said Mollander. “Besides, it takes a man to make a woman.Come with us, Pate. Old Walgrave will wake when the sun comes up.He’ll be needing you to help him to the privy.”

If he remembers who I am today. Archmaester Walgrave had notrouble telling one raven from another, but he was not so good withpeople. Some days he seemed to think Pate was someone namedCressen. “Not just yet,” he told his friends. “I’m going to stayawhile.” Dawn had not broken, not quite. The alchemist might still becoming, and Pate meant to be here if he did.

“As you wish,” said Armen. Alleras gave Pate a lingering look, thenslung his bow over one slim shoulder and followed the others towardthe bridge. Mollander was so drunk he had to walk with a hand onRoone’s shoulder to keep from falling. The Citadel was no greatdistance as the raven flies, but none of them were ravens and Oldtown

was a veritable labyrinth of a city, all wynds and crisscrossing alleysand narrow crookback streets. “Careful,” Pate heard Armen say as theriver mists swallowed up the four of them, “the night is damp, andthe cobbles will be slippery.”

When they were gone, Lazy Leo considered Pate sourly across thetable. “How sad. The Sphinx has stolen off with all his silver,abandoning me to Spotted Pate the pig boy.” He stretched, yawning.“How is our lovely little Rosey, pray?”

“She’s sleeping,” Pate said curtly.“Naked, I don’t doubt.” Leo grinned. “Do you think she’s truly

worth a dragon? One day I suppose I must find out.”Pate knew better than to reply to that.Leo needed no reply. “I expect that once I’ve broken in the wench,

her price will fall to where even pig boys will be able to afford her.You ought to thank me.”

I ought to kill you, Pate thought, but he was not near drunk enoughto throw away his life. Leo had been trained to arms, and was knownto be deadly with bravo’s blade and dagger. And if Pate shouldsomehow kill him, it would mean his own head too. Leo had twonames where Pate had only one, and his second was Tyrell. SerMoryn Tyrell, commander of the City Watch of Oldtown, was Leo’sfather. Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South,was Leo’s cousin. And Oldtown’s Old Man, Lord Leyton of theHightower, who numbered “Protector of the Citadel” amongst hismany titles, was a sworn bannerman of House Tyrell. Let it go, Patetold himself. He says these things just to wound me.

The mists were lightening to the east. Dawn, Pate realized. Dawnhas come, and the alchemist has not. He did not know whether heshould laugh or cry. Am I still a thief if I put it all back and no one

ever knows? It was another question that he had no answer for, likethose that Ebrose and Vaellyn had once asked him.

When he pushed back from the bench and got to his feet, thefearsomely strong cider all went to his head at once. He had to put ahand on the table to steady himself. “Leave Rosey be,” he said, byway of parting. “Just leave her be, or I may kill you.”

Leo Tyrell flicked the hair back from his eye. “I do not fight duelswith pig boys. Go away.”

Pate turned and crossed the terrace. His heels rang against theweathered planks of the old bridge. By the time he reached the otherside, the eastern sky was turning pink. The world is wide, he toldhimself. If I bought that donkey, I could still wander the roads andbyways of the Seven Kingdoms, leeching the smallfolk and picking nitsout of their hair. I could sign on to some ship, pull an oar, and sail toQarth by the Jade Gates to see these bloody dragons for myself. I donot need to go back to old Walgrave and the ravens.

Yet somehow his feet turned back toward the Citadel.When the first shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds to the

east, morning bells began to peal from the Sailor’s Sept down by theharbor. The Lord’s Sept joined in a moment later, then the SevenShrines from their gardens across the Honeywine, and finally theStarry Sept that had been the seat of the High Septon for a thousandyears before Aegon landed at King’s Landing. They made a mightymusic. Though not so sweet as one small nightingale.

He could hear singing too, beneath the pealing of the bells. Eachmorning at first light the red priests gathered to welcome the sunoutside their modest wharfside temple. For the night is dark and fullof terrors. Pate had heard them cry those words a hundred times,asking their god R’hllor to save them from the darkness. The Sevenwere gods enough for him, but he had heard that Stannis Baratheon

worshiped at the nightfires now. He had even put the fiery heart ofR’hllor on his banners in place of the crowned stag. If he should winthe Iron Throne, we’ll all need to learn the words of the red priests’song, Pate thought, but that was not likely. Tywin Lannister hadsmashed Stannis and R’hllor upon the Blackwater, and soon enoughhe would finish them and mount the head of the Baratheon pretenderon a spike above the gates of King’s Landing.

As the night’s mists burned away, Oldtown took form around him,emerging ghostlike from the predawn gloom. Pate had never seenKing’s Landing, but he knew it was a daub-and-wattle city, a sprawlof mud streets, thatched roofs, and wooden hovels. Oldtown wasbuilt in stone, and all its streets were cobbled, down to the meanestalley. The city was never more beautiful than at break of day. West ofthe Honeywine, the Guildhalls lined the bank like a row of palaces.Upriver, the domes and towers of the Citadel rose on both sides ofthe river, connected by stone bridges crowded with halls and houses.Downstream, below the black marble walls and arched windows ofthe Starry Sept, the manses of the pious clustered like childrengathered round the feet of an old dowager.

And beyond, where the Honeywine widened into WhisperingSound, rose the Hightower, its beacon fires bright against the dawn.From where it stood atop the bluffs of Battle Island, its shadow cutthe city like a sword. Those born and raised in Oldtown could tell thetime of day by where that shadow fell. Some claimed a man could seeall the way to the Wall from the top. Perhaps that was why LordLeyton had not made the descent in more than a decade, preferring torule his city from the clouds.

A butcher’s cart rumbled past Pate down the river road, five pigletsin the back squealing in distress. Dodging from its path, he justavoided being spattered as a townswoman emptied a pail of night soil

from a window overhead. When I am a maester in a castle I will havea horse to ride, he thought. Then he tripped upon a cobble andwondered who he was fooling. There would be no chain for him, noseat at a lord’s high table, no tall white horse to ride. His days wouldbe spent listening to ravens quork and scrubbing shit stains offArchmaester Walgrave’s smallclothes.

He was on one knee, trying to wipe the mud off his robes, when avoice said, “Good morrow, Pate.”

The alchemist was standing over him.Pate rose. “The third day . . . you said you would be at the Quill

and Tankard.”“You were with your friends. It was not my wish to intrude upon

your fellowship.” The alchemist wore a hooded traveler’s cloak,brown and nondescript. The rising sun was peeking over the rooftopsbehind his shoulder, so it was hard to make out the face beneath hishood. “Have you decided what you are?”

Must he make me say it? “I suppose I am a thief.”“I thought you might be.”The hardest part had been getting down on his hands and knees to

pull the strongbox from underneath Archmaester Walgrave’s bed.Though the box was stoutly made and bound with iron, its lock wasbroken. Maester Gormon had suspected Pate of breaking it, but thatwasn’t true. Walgrave had broken the lock himself, after losing thekey that opened it.

Inside, Pate had found a bag of silver stags, a lock of yellow hairtied up in a ribbon, a painted miniature of a woman who resembledWalgrave (even to her mustache), and a knight’s gauntlet made oflobstered steel. The gauntlet had belonged to a prince, Walgraveclaimed, though he could no longer seem to recall which one. When

Pate shook it, the key fell out onto the floor.If I pick that up, I am a thief, he remembered thinking. The key was

old and heavy, made of black iron; supposedly it opened every doorat the Citadel. Only the archmaesters had such keys. The otherscarried theirs upon their person or hid them away in some safe place,but if Walgrave had hidden his, no one would ever have seen it again.Pate snatched up the key and had been halfway to the door beforeturning back to take the silver too. A thief was a thief, whether hestole a little or a lot. “Pate,” one of the white ravens had called afterhim, “Pate, Pate, Pate.”

“Do you have my dragon?” he asked the alchemist.“If you have what I require.”“Give it here. I want to see.” Pate did not intend to let himself be

cheated.“The river road is not the place. Come.”He had no time to think about it, to weigh his choices. The

alchemist was walking away. Pate had to follow or lose Rosey andthe dragon both, forever. He followed. As they walked, he slipped hishand up into his sleeve. He could feel the key, safe inside the hiddenpocket he had sewn there. Maester’s robes were full of pockets. Hehad known that since he was a boy.

He had to hurry to keep pace with the alchemist’s longer strides.They went down an alley, around a corner, through the old ThievesMarket, along Ragpicker’s Wynd. Finally, the man turned intoanother alley, narrower than the first. “This is far enough,” said Pate.“There’s no one about. We’ll do it here.”

“As you wish.”“I want my dragon.”

“To be sure.” The coin appeared. The alchemist made it walkacross his knuckles, the way he had when Rosey brought the two ofthem together. In the morning light the dragon glittered as it moved,and gave the alchemist’s fingers a golden glow.

Pate grabbed it from his hand. The gold felt warm against his palm.He brought it to his mouth and bit down on it the way he’d seen mendo. If truth be told, he wasn’t sure what gold should taste like, but hedid not want to look a fool.

“The key?” the alchemist inquired politely.Something made Pate hesitate. “Is it some book you want?” Some

of the old Valyrian scrolls down in the locked vaults were said to bethe only surviving copies in the world.

“What I want is none of your concern.”“No.” It’s done, Pate told himself. Go. Run back to the Quill and

Tankard, wake Rosey with a kiss, and tell her she belongs to you. Yetstill he lingered. “Show me your face.”

“As you wish.” The alchemist pulled his hood down.He was just a man, and his face was just a face. A young man’s

face, ordinary, with full cheeks and the shadow of a beard. A scarshowed faintly on his right cheek. He had a hooked nose, and a mat ofdense black hair that curled tightly around his ears. It was not a facePate recognized. “I do not know you.”

“Nor I you.”“Who are you?”“A stranger. No one. Truly.”“Oh.” Pate had run out of words. He drew out the key and put it in

the stranger’s hand, feeling light-headed, almost giddy. Rosey, hereminded himself. “We’re done, then.”

He was halfway down the alley when the cobblestones began tomove beneath his feet. The stones are slick and wet, he thought, butthat was not it. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest.“What’s happening?” he said. His legs had turned to water. “I don’tunderstand.”

“And never will,” a voice said sadly.The cobblestones rushed up to kiss him. Pate tried to cry for help,

but his voice was failing too.His last thought was of Rosey.

THE PROPHET

The prophet was drowning men on Great Wyk when they came totell him that the king was dead.

It was a bleak, cold morning, and the sea was as leaden as the sky.The first three men had offered their lives to the Drowned Godfearlessly, but the fourth was weak in faith and began to struggle ashis lungs cried out for air. Standing waist-deep in the surf, Aeronseized the naked boy by the shoulders and pushed his head backdown as he tried to snatch a breath. “Have courage,” he said. “Wecame from the sea, and to the sea we must return. Open your mouthand drink deep of god’s blessing. Fill your lungs with water, that youmay die and be reborn. It does no good to fight.”

Either the boy could not hear him with his head beneath the waves,or else his faith had utterly deserted him. He began to kick and thrashso wildly that Aeron had to call for help. Four of his drowned menwaded out to seize the wretch and hold him underwater. “Lord Godwho drowned for us,” the priest prayed, in a voice as deep as the sea,“let Emmond your servant be reborn from the sea, as you were. Blesshim with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel.”

Finally, it was done. No more air was bubbling from his mouth, andall the strength had gone out of his limbs. Facedown in the shallowsea floated Emmond, pale and cold and peaceful.

That was when the Damphair realized that three horsemen had

joined his drowned men on the pebbled shore. Aeron knew the Sparr,a hatchet-faced old man with watery eyes whose quavery voice waslaw on this part of Great Wyk. His son Steffarion accompanied him,with another youth whose dark red fur-lined cloak was pinned at theshoulder with an ornate brooch that showed the black-and-goldwarhorn of the Goodbrothers. One of Gorold’s sons, the priestdecided at a glance. Three tall sons had been born to Goodbrother’swife late in life, after a dozen daughters, and it was said that no mancould tell one son from the others. Aeron Damphair did not deign totry. Whether this be Greydon or Gormond or Gran, the priest had notime for him.

He growled a brusque command, and his drowned men seized thedead boy by his arms and legs to carry him above the tideline. Thepriest followed, naked but for a sealskin clout that covered his privateparts. Goosefleshed and dripping, he splashed back onto land, acrosscold wet sand and sea-scoured pebbles. One of his drowned menhanded him a robe of heavy roughspun dyed in mottled greens andblues and greys, the colors of the sea and the Drowned God. Aerondonned the robe and pulled his hair free. Black and wet, that hair; noblade had touched it since the sea had raised him up. It draped hisshoulders like a ragged, ropy cloak, and fell down past his waist.Aeron wove strands of seaweed through it, and through his tangled,uncut beard.

His drowned men formed a circle around the dead boy, praying.Norjen worked his arms whilst Rus knelt astride him, pumping on hischest, but all moved aside for Aeron. He pried apart the boy’s coldlips with his fingers and gave Emmond the kiss of life, and again, andagain, until the sea came gushing from his mouth. The boy began tocough and spit, and his eyes blinked open, full of fear.

Another one returned. It was a sign of the Drowned God’s favor,

men said. Every other priest lost a man from time to time, even Tarlethe Thrice-Drowned, who had once been thought so holy that he waspicked to crown a king. But never Aeron Greyjoy. He was theDamphair, who had seen the god’s own watery halls and returned totell of it. “Rise,” he told the sputtering boy as he slapped him on hisnaked back. “You have drowned and been returned to us. What isdead can never die.”

“But rises.” The boy coughed violently, bringing up more water.“Rises again.” Every word was bought with pain, but that was theway of the world; a man must fight to live. “Rises again.” Emmondstaggered to his feet. “Harder. And stronger.”

“You belong to the god now,” Aeron told him. The other drownedmen gathered round and each gave him a punch and a kiss to welcomehim to the brotherhood. One helped him don a roughspun robe ofmottled blue and green and grey. Another presented him with adriftwood cudgel. “You belong to the sea now, so the sea has armedyou,” Aeron said. “We pray that you shall wield your cudgel fiercely,against all the enemies of our god.”

Only then did the priest turn to the three riders, watching fromtheir saddles. “Have you come to be drowned, my lords?”

The Sparr coughed. “I was drowned as a boy,” he said, “and myson upon his name day.”

Aeron snorted. That Steffarion Sparr had been given to theDrowned God soon after birth he had no doubt. He knew the mannerof it too, a quick dip into a tub of seawater that scarce wet theinfant’s head. Small wonder the ironborn had been conquered, theywho once held sway everywhere the sound of waves was heard.“That is no true drowning,” he told the riders. “He that does not diein truth cannot hope to rise from death. Why have you come, if not toprove your faith?”

“Lord Gorold’s son came seeking you, with news.” The Sparrindicated the youth in the red cloak.

The boy looked to be no more than six-and-ten. “Aye, and whichare you?” Aeron demanded.

“Gormond. Gormond Goodbrother, if it please my lord.”“It is the Drowned God we must please. Have you been drowned,

Gormond Goodbrother?”“On my name day, Damphair. My father sent me to find you and

bring you to him. He needs to see you.”“Here I stand. Let Lord Gorold come and feast his eyes.” Aeron

took a leather skin from Rus, freshly filled with water from the sea.The priest pulled out the cork and took a swallow.

“I am to bring you to the keep,” insisted young Gormond, fromatop his horse.

He is afraid to dismount, lest he get his boots wet. “I have the god’swork to do.” Aeron Greyjoy was a prophet. He did not suffer pettylords ordering him about like some thrall.

“Gorold’s had a bird,” said the Sparr.“A maester’s bird, from Pyke,” Gormond confirmed.Dark wings, dark words. “The ravens fly o’er salt and stone. If

there are tidings that concern me, speak them now.”“Such tidings as we bear are for your ears alone, Damphair,” the

Sparr said. “These are not matters I would speak of here before theseothers.”

“These others are my drowned men, god’s servants, just as I am. Ihave no secrets from them, nor from our god, beside whose holy sea Istand.”

The horsemen exchanged a look. “Tell him,” said the Sparr, and the

youth in the red cloak summoned up his courage. “The king is dead,”he said, as plain as that. Four small words, yet the sea itself trembledwhen he uttered them.

Four kings there were in Westeros, yet Aeron did not need to askwhich one was meant. Balon Greyjoy ruled the Iron Islands, and noother. The king is dead. How can that be? Aeron had seen his eldestbrother not a moon’s turn past, when he had returned to the IronIslands from harrying the Stony Shore. Balon’s grey hair had gonehalf-white whilst the priest had been away, and the stoop in hisshoulders was more pronounced than when the longships sailed. Yetall in all the king had not seemed ill.

Aeron Greyjoy had built his life upon two mighty pillars. Thosefour small words had knocked one down. Only the Drowned Godremains to me. May he make me as strong and tireless as the sea.“Tell me the manner of my brother’s death.”

“His Grace was crossing a bridge at Pyke when he fell and wasdashed upon the rocks below.”

The Greyjoy stronghold stood upon a broken headland, its keepsand towers built atop massive stone stacks that thrust up from thesea. Bridges knotted Pyke together; arched bridges of carved stoneand swaying spans of hempen rope and wooden planks. “Was thestorm raging when he fell?” Aeron demanded of them.

“Aye,” the youth said, “it was.”“The Storm God cast him down,” the priest announced. For a

thousand thousand years sea and sky had been at war. From the seahad come the ironborn, and the fish that sustained them even in thedepths of winter, but storms brought only woe and grief. “Mybrother Balon made us great again, which earned the Storm God’swrath. He feasts now in the Drowned God’s watery halls, withmermaids to attend his every want. It shall be for us who remain

behind in this dry and dismal vale to finish his great work.” Hepushed the cork back into his waterskin. “I shall speak with your lordfather. How far from here to Hammerhorn?”

“Six leagues. You may ride pillion with me.”“One can ride faster than two. Give me your horse, and the

Drowned God will bless you.”“Take my horse, Damphair,” offered Steffarion Sparr.“No. His mount is stronger. Your horse, boy.”The youth hesitated half a heartbeat, then dismounted and held the

reins for the Damphair. Aeron shoved a bare black foot into a stirrupand swung himself onto the saddle. He was not fond of horses—theywere creatures from the green lands and helped to make men weak—but necessity required that he ride. Dark wings, dark words. A stormwas brewing, he could hear it in the waves, and storms brought naughtbut evil. “Meet with me at Pebbleton beneath Lord Merlyn’s tower,”he told his drowned men, as he turned the horse’s head.

The way was rough, up hills and woods and stony defiles, along anarrow track that oft seemed to disappear beneath the horse’shooves. Great Wyk was the largest of the Iron Islands, so vast thatsome of its lords had holdings that did not front upon the holy sea.Gorold Goodbrother was one such. His keep was in the HardstoneHills, as far from the Drowned God’s realm as any place in the isles.Gorold’s folk toiled down in Gorold’s mines, in the stony darkbeneath the earth. Some lived and died without setting eyes upon saltwater. Small wonder that such folk are crabbed and queer.

As Aeron rode, his thoughts turned to his brothers.Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, the

Lord of the Iron Islands. Harlon, Quenton, and Donel had been bornof Lord Quellon’s first wife, a woman of the Stonetrees. Balon,

Euron, Victarion, Urrigon, and Aeron were the sons of his second, aSunderly of Saltcliffe. For a third wife Quellon took a girl from thegreen lands, who gave him a sickly idiot boy named Robin, thebrother best forgotten. The priest had no memory of Quenton orDonel, who had died as infants. Harlon he recalled but dimly, sittinggrey-faced and still in a windowless tower room and speaking inwhispers that grew fainter every day as the greyscale turned histongue and lips to stone. One day we shall feast on fish together in theDrowned God’s watery halls, the four of us and Urri too.

Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, butonly four had lived to manhood. That was the way of this cold world,where men fished the sea and dug in the ground and died, whilstwomen brought forth short-lived children from beds of blood andpain. Aeron had been the last and least of the four krakens, Balon theeldest and boldest, a fierce and fearless boy who lived only to restorethe ironborn to their ancient glory. At ten he scaled the Flint Cliffs tothe Blind Lord’s haunted tower. At thirteen he could run a longship’soars and dance the finger dance as well as any man in the isles. Atfifteen he had sailed with Dagmer Cleftjaw to the Stepstones andspent a summer reaving. He slew his first man there and took his firsttwo salt wives. At seventeen Balon captained his own ship. He wasall that an elder brother ought to be, though he had never shownAeron aught but scorn. I was weak and full of sin, and scorn wasmore than I deserved. Better to be scorned by Balon the Brave thanbeloved of Euron Crow’s Eye. And if age and grief had turned Balonbitter with the years, they had also made him more determined thanany man alive. He was born a lord’s son and died a king, murderedby a jealous god, Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, astorm such as these isles have never known.

It was long after dark by the time the priest espied the spiky ironbattlements of the Hammerhorn clawing at the crescent moon.

Gorold’s keep was hulking and blocky, its great stones quarried fromthe cliff that loomed behind it. Below its walls, the entrances of cavesand ancient mines yawned like toothless black mouths. TheHammerhorn’s iron gates had been closed and barred for the night.Aeron beat on them with a rock until the clanging woke a guard.

The youth who admitted him was the image of Gormond, whosehorse he’d taken. “Which one are you?” Aeron demanded.

“Gran. My father awaits you within.”The hall was dank and drafty, full of shadows. One of Gorold’s

daughters offered the priest a horn of ale. Another poked at a sullenfire that was giving off more smoke than heat. Gorold Goodbrotherhimself was talking quietly with a slim man in fine grey robes, whowore about his neck a chain of many metals that marked him for amaester of the Citadel.

“Where is Gormond?” Gorold asked when he saw Aeron.“He returns afoot. Send your women away, my lord. And the

maester as well.” He had no love of maesters. Their ravens werecreatures of the Storm God, and he did not trust their healing, notsince Urri. No proper man would choose a life of thralldom, nor forgea chain of servitude to wear about his throat.

“Gysella, Gwin, leave us,” Goodbrother said curtly. “You as well,Gran. Maester Murenmure will stay.”

“He will go,” insisted Aeron.“This is my hall, Damphair. It is not for you to say who must go

and who remains. The maester stays.”The man lives too far from the sea, Aeron told himself. “Then I

shall go,” he told Goodbrother. Dry rushes rustled underneath thecracked soles of his bare black feet as he turned and stalked away. Itseemed he had ridden a long way for naught.

Aeron was almost at the door when the maester cleared his throat,and said, “Euron Crow’s Eye sits the Seastone Chair.”

The Damphair turned. The hall had suddenly grown colder. TheCrow’s Eye is half a world away. Balon sent him off two years ago,and swore that it would be his life if he returned. “Tell me,” he saidhoarsely.

“He sailed into Lordsport the day after the king’s death, andclaimed the castle and the crown as Balon’s eldest brother,” saidGorold Goodbrother. “Now he sends forth ravens, summoning thecaptains and the kings from every isle to Pyke, to bend their kneesand do him homage as their king.”

“No.” Aeron Damphair did not weigh his words. “Only a godlyman may sit the Seastone Chair. The Crow’s Eye worships naughtbut his own pride.”

“You were on Pyke not long ago, and saw the king,” saidGoodbrother. “Did Balon say aught to you of the succession?”

Aye. They had spoken in the Sea Tower, as the wind howledoutside the windows and the waves crashed restlessly below. Balonhad shaken his head in despair when he heard what Aeron had to tellhim of his last remaining son. “The wolves have made a weakling ofhim, as I feared,” the king had said. “I pray god that they killed him,so he cannot stand in Asha’s way.” That was Balon’s blindness; hesaw himself in his wild, headstrong daughter, and believed she couldsucceed him. He was wrong in that, and Aeron tried to tell him so.“No woman will ever rule the ironborn, not even a woman such asAsha,” he insisted, but Balon could be deaf to things he did not wishto hear.

Before the priest could answer Gorold Goodbrother, the maester’smouth flapped open once again. “By rights the Seastone Chairbelongs to Theon, or Asha if the prince is de