A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

the slow, steady motion of her horse.
    This time she dreamed that she was home again, at Evenfall. Through the tall arched windows of her lord father’s hall she could see the sun just going down.
I was safe here. I was safe.
    She was dressed in silk brocade, a quartered gown of blue and red decorated with golden suns and silver crescent moons. On another girl it might have been a pretty gown, but not on her. She was twelve, ungainly and uncomfortable, waiting to meet the young knight her father had arranged for her to marry, a boy six years her senior, sure to be a famous champion one day. She dreaded his arrival. Her bosom was too small, her hands and feet too big. Her hair kept sticking up, and there was a pimple nestled in the fold beside her nose. “He will bring a rose for you,” her father promised her, but a rose was no good, a rose could not keep her safe. It was a sword she wanted.
Oathkeeper. I have to find the girl. I have to find his honor.
    Finally the doors opened, and her betrothed strode into her father’s hall. She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, only to have blood come pouring from her mouth. She had bitten her tongue off as she waited. She spat it at the young knight’s feet, and saw the disgust on his face. “Brienne the Beauty,” he said in a mocking tone. “I have seen sows more beautiful than you.” He tossed the rose in her face. As he walked away, the griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions.
Jaime!
she wanted to cry.
Jaime, come back for me!
But her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.
    Brienne woke suddenly, gasping.
    She did not know where she was. The air was cold and heavy, and smelled of earth and worms and mold. She was lying on a pallet beneath a mound of sheepskins, with rock above her head and roots poking through the walls. The only light came from a tallow candle, smoking in a pool of melted wax.
    She pushed aside the sheepskins. Someone had stripped her of her clothes and armor, she saw. She was clad in a brown woolen shift, thin but freshly washed. Her forearm had been splinted and bound up with linen, though. One side of her face felt wet and stiff. When she touched herself, she found some sort of damp poultice covering her cheek and jaw and ear.
Biter . . .
    Brienne got to her feet. Her legs felt weak as water, her head as light as air. “Is anyone there?”
    Something moved in one of the shadowed alcoves behind the candle; an old grey man clad in rags. The blankets that had covered him slipped to the floor. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Lady Brienne? You gave me a fright. I was dreaming.”
    No,
she thought,
that was me.
“What place is this? Is this a dungeon?”
    â€œA cave. Like rats, we must run back to our holes when the dogs come sniffing after us, and there are more dogs every day.” He was clad in the ragged remains of an old robe, pink and white. His hair was long and grey and tangled, the loose skin of his cheeks and chin was covered with coarse stubble. “Are you hungry? Could you keep down a cup of milk? Perhaps some bread and honey?”
    â€œI want my clothes. My sword.” She felt naked without her mail, and she wanted Oathkeeper at her side. “The way out. Show me the way out.” The floor of the cave was dirt and stone, rough beneath the soles of her feet. Even now she felt light-headed, as if she were floating. The flickering light cast queer shadows.
Spirits of the slain,
she thought,
dancing all about me, hiding when I turn to look at them.
Everywhere she saw holes and cracks and crevices, but there was no way to know which passages led out, which would take her deeper into the cave, and which went nowhere. All were black as pitch.
    â€œMight I feel your brow, my lady?” Her gaoler’s hand was scarred and hard with callus, yet strangely gentle. “Your fever has broken,” he announced, in a voice flavored with the accents of the Free Cities. “Well and good. Just yesterday your flesh felt as if it were on fire. Jeyne feared that we might lose you.”
    â€œJeyne. The tall girl?”
    â€œThe very one. Though she is not so tall as you, my lady. Long Jeyne, the men call her. It was she who set your arm and splinted it, as well as any maester. She did what she could for your face as well, washing out the wounds with boiled ale to stop the mortification. Even so . . . a human bite is a filthy