A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

are not my son.” Lord Tywin turned his face away. “You say you are the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and only that. Very well, ser. Go do your duty.”

DAVOS
    T heir voices rose like cinders, swirling up into purple evening sky. “Lead us from the darkness, O my Lord. Fill our hearts with fire, so we may walk your shining path.”
    The nightfire burned against the gathering dark, a great bright beast whose shifting orange light threw shadows twenty feet tall across the yard. All along the walls of Dragonstone the army of gargoyles and grotesques seemed to stir and shift.
    Davos looked down from an arched window in the gallery above. He watched Melisandre lift her arms, as if to embrace the shivering flames. “R’hllor,” she sang in a voice loud and clear, “you are the light in our eyes, the fire in our hearts, the heat in our loins. Yours is the sun that warms our days, yours the stars that guard us in the dark of night.”
    â€œ
Lord of Light, defend us. The night is dark and full of terrors
.” Queen Selyse led the responses, her pinched face full of fervor. King Stannis stood beside her, jaw clenched hard, the points of his red-gold crown shimmering whenever he moved his head.
He is with them, but not of them
, Davos thought. Princess Shireen was between them, the mottled grey patches on her face and neck almost black in the firelight.
    â€œ
Lord of Light, protect us
,” the queen sang. The king did not respond with the others. He was staring into the flames. Davos wondered what he saw there.
Another vision of the war to come? Or something closer to home?
    â€œR’hllor who gave us breath, we thank you,” sang Melisandre. “R’hllor who gave us day, we thank you.”
    â€œ
We thank you for the sun that warms us
,” Queen Selyse and the other worshipers replied. “
We thank you for the stars that watch us. We thank you for our hearths and for our torches, that keep the savage dark at bay
.” There were fewer voices saying the responses than there had been the night before, it seemed to Davos; fewer faces flushed with orange light about the fire. But would there be fewer still on the morrow . . . or more?
    The voice of Ser Axell Florent rang loud as a trumpet. He stood barrel-chested and bandy-legged, the firelight washing his face like a monstrous orange tongue. Davos wondered if Ser Axell would thank him, after. The work they did tonight might well make him the King’s Hand, as he dreamed.
    Melisandre cried, “We thank you for Stannis, by your grace our king. We thank you for the pure white fire of his goodness, for the red sword of justice in his hand, for the love he bears his leal people. Guide him and defend him, R’hllor, and grant him strength to smite his foes.”
    â€œ
Grant him strength
,” answered Queen Selyse, Ser Axell, Devan, and the rest. “
Grant him courage. Grant him wisdom
.”
    When he was a boy, the septons had taught Davos to pray to the Crone for wisdom, to the Warrior for courage, to the Smith for strength. But it was the Mother he prayed to now, to keep his sweet son Devan safe from the red woman’s demon god.
    â€œLord Davos? We’d best be about it.” Ser Andrew touched his elbow gently. “My lord?”
    The title still rang queer in his ears, yet Davos turned away from the window. “Aye. It’s time.” Stannis, Melisandre, and the queen’s men would be at their prayers an hour or more. The red priests lit their fires every day at sunset, to thank R’hllor for the day just ending, and beg him to send his sun back on the morrow to banish the gathering darkness.
A smuggler must know the tides and when to seize them
. That was all he was at the end of the day; Davos the smuggler. His maimed hand rose to his throat for his luck, and found nothing. He snatched it down and walked a bit more quickly.
    His companions kept pace, matching their strides to his own. The Bastard of Nightsong had a pox-ravaged face and an air of tattered chivalry; Ser Gerald Gower was broad, bluff, and blond; Ser Andrew Estermont stood a head taller, with a spade-shaped beard and shaggy brown eyebrows. They were all good men in their own ways, Davos thought.
And they will all be dead men soon, if this night’s work goes badly
.
    â€œFire is a living thing,” the red woman told him, when he asked her to teach him how to see the future in the flames.