A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

how the spider weaves, he is never loved. But if you slay me here, I fear for you, my lord. You may never find your way back to daylight.” His eyes glittered in the shifting torchlight, dark and wet. “These tunnels are full of traps for the unwary.”
    Tyrion snorted. “Unwary? I’m the wariest man who ever lived, you helped see to that.” He rubbed at his nose. “So tell me, wizard, where is my innocent maiden wife?”
    â€œI have found no trace of Lady Sansa in King’s Landing, sad to say. Nor of Ser Dontos Hollard, who by rights should have turned up somewhere drunk by now. They were seen together on the serpentine steps the night she vanished. After that, nothing. There was much confusion that night. My little birds are silent.” Varys gave a gentle tug at the dwarf’s sleeve and pulled him into the stair. “My lord, we must away. Your path is down.”
    That’s no lie, at least
. Tyrion waddled along in the eunuch’s wake, his heels scraping against the rough stone as they descended. It was very cold within the stairwell, a damp bone-chilling cold that set him to shivering at once. “What part of the dungeons are these?” he asked.
    â€œMaegor the Cruel decreed four levels of dungeons for his castle,” Varys replied. “On the upper level, there are large cells where common criminals may be confined together. They have narrow windows set high in the walls. The second level has the smaller cells where highborn captives are held. They have no windows, but torches in the halls cast light through the bars. On the third level the cells are smaller and the doors are wood. The black cells, men call them. That was where you were kept, and Eddard Stark before you. But there is a level lower still. Once a man is taken down to the fourth level, he never sees the sun again, nor hears a human voice, nor breathes a breath free of agonizing pain. Maegor had the cells on the fourth level built for torment.” They had reached the bottom of the steps. An unlighted door opened before them. “This is the fourth level. Give me your hand, my lord. It is safer to walk in darkness here. There are things you would not wish to see.”
    Tyrion hung back a moment. Varys had already betrayed him once. Who knew what game the eunuch was playing? And what better place to murder a man than down in the darkness, in a place that no one knew existed? His body might never be found.
    On the other hand, what choice did he have? To go back up the steps and walk out the main gate? No, that would not serve.
    Jaime would not be afraid
, he thought, before he remembered what Jaime had done to him. He took the eunuch by the hand and let himself be led through the black, following the soft scrape of leather on stone. Varys walked quickly, from time to time whispering, “Careful, there are three steps ahead,” or, “The tunnel slopes downward here, my lord.”
I arrived here a King’s Hand, riding through the gates at the head of my own sworn men
, Tyrion reflected,
and I leave like a rat scuttling through the dark, holding hands with a spider
.
    A light appeared ahead of them, too dim to be daylight, and grew as they hurried toward it. After a while he could see it was an arched doorway, closed off by another iron gate. Varys produced a key. They stepped through into a small round chamber. Five other doors opened off the room, each barred in iron. There was an opening in the ceiling as well, and a series of rungs set in the wall below, leading upward. An ornate brazier stood to one side, fashioned in the shape of a dragon’s head. The coals in the beast’s yawning mouth had burnt down to embers, but they still glowed with a sullen orange light. Dim as it was, the light was welcome after the blackness of the tunnel.
    The juncture was otherwise empty, but on the floor was a mosaic of a three-headed dragon wrought in red and black tiles. Something niggled at Tyrion for a moment. Then it came to him.
This is the place Shae told me of, when Varys first led her to my bed
. “We are below the Tower of the Hand.”
    â€œYes.” Frozen hinges screamed in protest as Varys pulled open a long-closed door. Flakes of rust drifted to the floor. “This will take us out to the river.”
    Tyrion walked slowly to the ladder, ran his hand across the lowest rung. “This will take me up to my bedchamber.”
    â€œYour lord father’s