A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

flesh.
    Warm blood filled her mouth and ran down over her chin. The taste threatened to gag her, but she made herself chew and swallow. The heart of a stallion would make her son strong and swift and fearless, or so the Dothraki believed, but only if the mother could eat it all. If she choked on the blood or retched up the flesh, theomens were less favorable; the child might be stillborn, or come forth weak, deformed, or female.
    Her handmaids had helped her ready herself for the ceremony. Despite the tender mother’s stomach that had afflicted her these past two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching. She had starved herself for a day and a night before the ceremony in the hopes that hunger would help her keep down the raw meat.
    The wild stallion’s heart was all muscle, and Dany had to worry it with her teeth and chew each mouthful a long time. No steel was permitted within the sacred confines of Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains; she had to rip the heart apart with teeth and nails. Her stomach roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode against her lips.
    Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His long black braid was shiny with oil. He wore gold rings in his mustache, gold bells in his braid, and a heavy belt of solid gold medallions around his waist, but his chest was bare. She looked at him whenever she felt her strength failing; looked at him, and chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. Toward the end, Dany thought she glimpsed a fierce pride in his dark, almond-shaped eyes, but she could not be sure. The
khal’s
face did not often betray the thoughts within.
    And finally it was done. Her cheeks and fingers were sticky as she forced down the last of it. Only then did she turn her eyes back to the old women, the crones of the
dosh khaleen
.
    â€œKhalakka dothrae mr’anha!”
she proclaimed in her best Dothraki.
A prince rides inside me!
She had practiced the phrase for days with her handmaid Jhiqui.
    The oldest of the crones, a bent and shriveled stick of a woman with a single black eye, raised her arms on high.
“Khalakka dothrae!”
she shrieked.
The prince is riding!
    â€œHe is riding!”
the other women answered.
“Rakh! Rakh! Rakh haj!”
they proclaimed.
A boy, a boy, a strong boy
.
    Bells rang, a sudden clangor of bronze birds. A deep-throatedwarhorn sounded its long low note. The old women began to chant. Underneath their painted leather vests, their withered dugs swayed back and forth, shiny with oil and sweat. The eunuchs who served them threw bundles of dried grasses into a great bronze brazier, and clouds of fragrant smoke rose up toward the moon and the stars. The Dothraki believed the stars were horses made of fire, a great herd that galloped across the sky by night.
    As the smoke ascended, the chanting died away and the ancient crone closed her single eye, the better to peer into the future. The silence that fell was complete. Dany could hear the distant call of night birds, the hiss and crackle of the torches, the gentle lapping of water from the lake. The Dothraki stared at her with eyes of night, waiting.
    Khal Drogo laid his hand on Dany’s arm. She could feel the tension in his fingers. Even a
khal
as mighty as Drogo could know fear when the
dosh khaleen
peered into smoke of the future. At her back, her handmaids fluttered anxiously.
    Finally the crone opened her eye and lifted her arms. “I have seen his face, and heard the thunder of his hooves,” she proclaimed in a thin, wavery voice.
    â€œThe thunder of his hooves!” the others chorused.
    â€œAs swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his
khalasar
covers the earth, men without number, with
arakhs
shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name.” The old woman trembled and looked at Dany almost as if she were afraid. “The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who mounts the world.”
    â€œThe stallion who mounts the world!”
the