A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

roar, “After him. He must not escape.
After him!
” Myrcella was on the ground, wailing, shaking, her pale face in her hands, blood streaming through her fingers. Arianne did not understand. Men were scrambling onto horses whilst others swarmed over her and her companions, but none of it made sense. She had fallen into a dream, some terrible red nightmare.
This cannot be real. I will wake soon, and laugh at my night terrors.
    When they sought to bind her hands behind her back, she did not resist. One of the guardsmen jerked her to her feet. He wore her father’s colors. Another bent and seized the throwing knife inside her boot, a gift from her cousin Lady Nym.
    Areo Hotah took it from the man and frowned at it. “The prince said I must bring you back to Sunspear,” he announced. His cheeks and brow were freckled with the blood of Arys Oakheart. “I am sorry, little princess.”
    Arianne raised a tear-streaked face. “How could he know?” she asked the captain. “I was so careful. How could he know?”
    â€œSomeone told.” Hotah shrugged. “Someone always tells.”

ARYA
    E ach night before sleep, she murmured her prayer into her pillow. “Ser Gregor,” it went. “Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” She would have whispered the names of the Freys of the Crossing too, if she had known them.
One day I’ll know,
she told herself,
and then I’ll kill them all.
    No whisper was too faint to be heard in the House of Black and White. “Child,” said the kindly man one day, “what are those names you whisper of a night?”
    â€œI don’t whisper any names,” she said.
    â€œYou lie,” he said. “All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it . . . though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces. Tell me of these names.”
    She chewed her lip. “The names don’t matter.”
    â€œThey do,” the kindly man insisted. “Tell me, child.”
    Tell me, or we will turn you out,
she heard. “They’re people I hate. I want them to die.”
    â€œWe hear many such prayers in this House.”
    â€œI know,” said Arya. Jaqen H’ghar had granted three of her prayers once.
All I had to do was whisper . . .
    â€œIs that why you have come to us?” the kindly man went on. “To learn our arts, so you may kill these men you hate?”
    Arya did not know how to answer that. “Maybe.”
    â€œThen you have come to the wrong place. It is not for you to say who shall live and who shall die. That gift belongs to Him of Many Faces. We are but his servants, sworn to do his will.”
    â€œOh.” Arya glanced at the statues that stood along the walls, candles glimmering round their feet. “Which god is he?”
    â€œWhy, all of them,” said the priest in black and white.
    He never told her his name. Neither did the waif, the little girl with the big eyes and hollow face who reminded her of another little girl, named Weasel. Like Arya, the waif lived below the temple, along with three acolytes, two serving men, and a cook called Umma. Umma liked to talk as she worked, but Arya could not understand a word she said. The others had no names, or did not choose to share them. One serving man was very old, his back bent like a bow. The second was red-faced, with hair growing from his ears. She took them both for mutes until she heard them praying. The acolytes were younger. The eldest was her father’s age; the other two could not have been much older than Sansa, who had been her sister. The acolytes wore black and white too, but their robes had no cowls, and were black on the left side and white on the right. With the kindly man and the waif, it was the opposite. Arya was given servant’s garb: a tunic of undyed wool, baggy breeches, linen smallclothes, cloth slippers for her feet.
    Only the kindly man knew the Common Tongue. “Who are you?” he would ask her every day.
    â€œNo one,” she would answer, she who had been Arya of House Stark, Arya Underfoot, Arya Horseface. She had been Arry and Weasel too, and Squab and Salty, Nan the cupbearer, a grey mouse, a sheep, the ghost of Harrenhal . . . but not for true, not in her heart of hearts. In there she