A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

must have been yesterday.
The realization made him yawn. Jon would be wondering what had become of him, though Maester Aemon would no doubt understand. Before he had lost his sight, the maester had loved books as much as Samwell Tarly did. He understood the way that you could sometimes fall right into them, as if each page was a hole into another world.
    Pushing himself to his feet, Sam grimaced at the pins and needles in his calves. The chair was very hard and cut into the back of his thighs when he bent over a book.
I need to remember to bring a cushion.
It would be even better if he could sleep down here, in the cell he’d found half-hidden behind four chests full of loose pages that had gotten separated from the books they belonged to, but he did not want to leave Maester Aemon alone for so long. He had not been strong of late and required help, especially with the ravens. Aemon had Clydas, to be sure, but Sam was younger, and better with the birds.
    With a stack of books and scrolls under his left arm and the candle in his right hand, Sam made his way through the tunnels the brothers called the wormways. A pale shaft of light illuminated the steep stone steps that led up to the surface, so he knew that day had come up top. He left the candle burning in a wall niche and began the climb. By the fifth step he was puffing. At the tenth he stopped to shift the books to his right arm.
    He emerged beneath a sky the color of white lead.
A snow sky,
Sam thought, squinting up. The prospect made him uneasy. He remembered that night on the Fist of the First Men when the wights and the snows had come together.
Don’t be so craven,
he thought.
You have your Sworn Brothers all around you, not to mention Stannis Baratheon and all his knights.
Castle Black’s keeps and towers rose about him, dwarfed by the icy immensity of the Wall. A small army was crawling over the ice a quarter of the way up, where a new switchback stair was creeping upward to meet the remnants of the old one. The sounds of their saws and hammers echoed off the ice. Jon had the builders working night and day on the task. Sam had heard some of them complaining about it over supper, insisting that Lord Mormont never worked them half so hard. Without the great stair there was no way to reach the top of the Wall except by the chain winch, however. And as much as Samwell Tarly hated steps, he hated the winch cage more. He always closed his eyes when he was riding it, convinced that the chain was about to break. Every time the iron cage scraped against the ice his heart stopped beating for an instant.
    There were dragons here two hundred years ago,
Sam found himself thinking, as he watched the cage making a slow descent.
They would just have flown to the top of the Wall.
Queen Alysanne had visited Castle Black on her dragon, and Jaehaerys, her king, had come after her on his own. Could Silverwing have left an egg behind? Or had Stannis found one egg on Dragonstone?
Even if he has an egg, how can he hope to quicken it?
Baelor the Blessed had prayed over his eggs, and other Targaryens had sought to hatch theirs with sorcery. All they got for it was farce and tragedy.
    â€œSamwell,” said a glum voice, “I was coming to fetch you. I was told to bring you to the Lord Commander.”
    A snowflake landed on Sam’s nose. “Jon wants to see me?”
    â€œAs to that, I could not say,” said Dolorous Edd Tollett. “I never wanted to see half the things I’ve seen, and I’ve never seen half the things I wanted to. I don’t think wanting comes into it. You’d best go all the same. Lord Snow wishes to speak with you as soon as he is done with Craster’s wife.”
    â€œGilly.”
    â€œThat’s the one. If my wet nurse had looked like her, I’d still be on the teat. Mine had whiskers.”
    â€œMost goats do,” called Pyp, as he and Grenn emerged from around the corner, with longbows in hand and quivers of arrows on their backs. “Where have you been, Slayer? We missed you last night at supper. A whole roast ox went uneaten.”
    â€œDon’t call me Slayer.” Sam ignored the gibe about the ox. That was just Pyp. “I was reading. There was a mouse . . .”
    â€œDon’t mention mice to Grenn. He’s terrified of mice.”
    â€œI am not,” Grenn declared with indignation.
    â€œYou’d be too scared to eat one.”
    â€œI’d eat more mice than you