A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

on his tail. When Dany passed his eyes came open, two pools of molten gold. His horns were gold as well, and the scales that ran down his back from head to tail. “You’re lazy,” she told him, scratching under his jaw. His scales were hot to the touch, like armor left cooking too long in the sun.
Dragons are fire made flesh.
She had read that in one of the books Ser Jorah had given her as a wedding gift. “You should be hunting with your brothers. Have you been fighting Drogon again?” Her dragons had grown wilder of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s
tokar
ablaze the last time the Seneschal had called.
I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?
    Viserion’s tail lashed sideways, thumping the trunk of the tree so hard that a pear came tumbling down to land at Dany’s feet. His wings unfolded, and he half-flew, half-hopped onto the parapet.
He is growing,
she thought, as the dragon launched himself into the sky.
They are all three growing. Soon they will be large enough to bear my weight.
Then she would fly as Aegon the Conquerer had flown, up and up, until Meereen was so small that she could blot it out with her thumb.
    She watched Viserion climb in widening circles, until he was lost to sight beyond muddy waters of the Skahazadhan. Only then did Dany go back inside the pyramid, where Irri and Jhiqui were waiting to brush the tangles from her hair and garb her as befit the Queen of Meereen, in a Ghiscari
tokar.
    The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the
tokar
required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a
tokar
demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The
tokar
was a
master’
s garment, a sign of wealth and power.
    Dany had wanted to ban the
tokar
when she took Meereen, but her council had convinced her otherwise. “The Mother of Dragons must don the
tokar
or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare. “In the wools of Westeros or a gown of Myrish lace, Your Radiance shall forever remain a stranger amongst us, a grotesque outlander, a barbarian conquerer. Meereen’s queen must be a lady of Old Ghis.” Brown Ben Plumm, the captain of the Second Sons, had put it more succinctly. “Man wants to be the king o’ the rabbits, he best wear a pair o’ floppy ears.”
    The floppy ears she chose today were made of sheer white linen, with a fringe of golden tassels. With Jhiqui’s help, she wound the
tokar
about herself correctly on her third attempt. Irri fetched her crown, wrought in the shape of the three-headed dragon of her House. Its coils were gold, its wings silver, its three heads ivory, onyx, and jade. Dany’s neck and shoulders would be stiff and sore from the weight of it before the day was done.
A crown should not sit easy on the head.
One of her royal forebears had said that, once.
An Aegon, but which one?
    Five Aegons had ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and there might have been a sixth if the Usurper’s dogs had not murdered her brother’s son when he was still a babe at the breast.
If he had lived I might have married him. Aegon would have been closer to my age than Viserys.
Dany had scarcely been conceived when Aegon and his sister were murdered. Their father had perished even earlier, slain by the Usurper on the Trident. Her other brother, Viserys, had died screaming in Vaes Dothrak with a crown of molten gold upon his head.
They will kill me too, if I allow it. The knives that slew my Stalwart Shield were meant for me.
    She had not forgotten the slave children the Great Masters had nailed up along the road from Yunkai. They had numbered one hundred sixty-three, a child every mile, nailed to mileposts with one arm outstetched to point her way. After Meereen had fallen, Dany nailed up a like number of Great Masters. Swarms of flies had attended their slow dying, and the stench had lingered long in the plaza. Yet some days she feared that she had not gone nearly far enough. These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who