A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

oars, my lord, and take yourself to Old Wyk. You, and all the captains and the kings. Go not to Pyke, to bow before the godless, nor to Harlaw, to consort with scheming women. Point your prow toward Old Wyk, where stood the Grey King’s Hall. In the name of the Drowned God I summon you.
I summon all of you!
Leave your halls and hovels, your castles and your keeps, and return to Nagga’s hill to make a kingsmoot!”
    The Merlyn gaped at him. “A kingsmoot? There has not been a true kingsmoot in . . .”
    â€œ. . . too long a time!”
Aeron cried in anguish. “Yet in the dawn of days the ironborn chose their own kings, raising up the worthiest amongst them. It is time we returned to the Old Way, for only that shall make us great again. It was a kingsmoot that chose Urras Ironfoot for High King, and placed a driftwood crown upon his brows. Sylas Flatnose, Harrag Hoare, the Old Kraken, the kingsmoot raised them all. And from
this
kingsmoot shall emerge a man to finish the work King Balon has begun and win us back our freedoms. Go
not
to Pyke, nor to the Ten Towers of Harlaw, but to Old Wyk, I say again. Seek the hill of Nagga and the bones of the Grey King’s Hall, for in that holy place when the moon has drowned and come again we shall make ourselves a worthy king, a
godly
king.” He raised his bony hands on high again. “
Listen!
Listen to the waves! Listen to the god! He is speaking to us, and he says,
We shall have no king but from the kingsmoot!
”
    A roar went up at that, and the drowned men beat their cudgels one against the other. “A
kingsmoot!
” they shouted.
“A kingsmoot, a kingsmoot. No king but from the kingsmoot!”
And the clamor that they made was so thunderous that surely the Crow’s Eye heard the shouts on Pyke, and the vile Storm God in his cloudy hall. And Aeron Damphair knew he had done well.

THE CAPTAIN OF GUARDS
    T he blood oranges are well past ripe,” the prince observed in a weary voice, when the captain rolled him onto the terrace.
    After that he did not speak again for hours.
    It was true about the oranges. A few had fallen to burst open on the pale pink marble. The sharp sweet smell of them filled Hotah’s nostrils each time he took a breath. No doubt the prince could smell them too, as he sat beneath the trees in the rolling chair Maester Caleotte had made for him, with its goose-down cushions and rumbling wheels of ebony and iron.
    For a long while the only sounds were the children splashing in the pools and fountains, and once a soft
plop
as another orange dropped onto the terrace to burst. Then, from the far side of the palace, the captain heard the faint drumbeat of boots on marble.
    Obara.
He knew her stride; long-legged, hasty, angry. In the stables by the gates, her horse would be lathered, and bloody from her spurs. She always rode stallions, and had been heard to boast that she could master any horse in Dorne . . . and any man as well. The captain could hear other footsteps as well, the quick soft scuffing of Maester Caleotte hurrying to keep up.
    Obara Sand always walked too fast.
She is chasing after something she can never catch,
the prince had told his daughter once, in the captain’s hearing.
    When she appeared beneath the triple arch, Areo Hotah swung his longaxe sideways to block the way. The head was on a shaft of mountain ash six feet long, so she could not go around. “My lady, no farther.” His voice was a bass grumble thick with the accents of Norvos. “The prince does not wish to be disturbed.”
    Her face had been stone before he spoke; then it hardened. “You are in my way, Hotah.” Obara was the eldest Sand Snake, a big-boned woman near to thirty, with the close-set eyes and rat-brown hair of the Oldtown whore who’d birthed her. Beneath a mottled sandsilk cloak of dun and gold, her riding clothes were old brown leather, worn and supple. They were the softest things about her. On one hip she wore a coiled whip, across her back a round shield of steel and copper. She had left her spear outside. For that, Areo Hotah gave thanks. Quick and strong as she was, the woman was no match for him, he knew . . . but
she
did not, and he had no wish to see her blood upon the pale pink marble.
    Maester Caleotte shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Lady Obara, I tried to tell you . . .”
    â€œDoes he know that my father is dead?” Obara asked the captain, paying