A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Some were saddling horses and riding off. The sun had set. Fires burned throughout the
khalasar
, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit embers at the sky. She tried to rise, and agony seized her and squeezed her like a giant’s fist. The breath went out of her; it was all she could do togasp. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s voice was like a funeral dirge. Inside the tent, the shadows whirled.
    An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet. His face was sticky with blood, and Dany saw that half his ear was gone. She convulsed in his arms as the pain took her again, and heard the knight shouting for her handmaids to help him.
Are they all so afraid?
She knew the answer. Another pain grasped her, and Dany bit back a scream. It felt as if her son had a knife in each hand, as if he were hacking at her to cut his way out. “Doreah, curse you,” Ser Jorah roared. “Come here. Fetch the birthing women.”
    â€œThey will not come. They say she is accursed.”
    â€œThey’ll come or I’ll have their heads.”
    Doreah wept. “They are gone, my lord.”
    â€œThe
maegi,”
someone else said. Was that Aggo? “Take her to the
maegi.”
    No
, Dany wanted to say,
no, not that, you mustn’t
, but when she opened her mouth, a long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin.
What was wrong with them, couldn’t they see?
Inside the tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in flames.
    â€œThe Lamb Woman knows the secrets of the birthing bed,” Irri said. “She said so, I heard her.”
    â€œYes,” Doreah agreed, “I heard her too.”
    No
, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound escaped her lips. She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and bleak and starless.
Please, no
. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s voice grew louder, until it filled the world.
The shapes!
she screamed.
The dancers!
    Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent.

ARYA
    T he scent of hot bread drifting from the shops along the Street of Flour was sweeter than any perfume Arya had ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily pecking at a crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when Arya’s shadow touched it, it took to the air.
    Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the ground, and it went down in a flurry of brown feathers. She was on it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped and fluttered. It pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and twisted until she felt the bone snap.
    Compared with catching cats, pigeons were
easy
.
    A passing septon was looking at her askance. “Here’s the best place to find pigeon,” Arya told him as she brushed herself off and picked up her fallen stick sword. “They come for the crumbs.” He hurried away.
    She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A man was pushing a load of tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots. Her stomach made a hollow rumbly noise.“Could I have one?” she heard herself say. “A lemon, or … or any kind.”
    The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like what he saw. “Three coppers.”
    Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot. “I’ll trade you a fat pigeon,” she said.
    â€œThe Others take your pigeon,” the pushcart man said.
    The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making her mouth water, but she did not have three coppers … or one. She gave the pushcart man a look, remembering what Syrio had told her about
seeing
. He was short, with a little round belly, and when he moved he seemed to favor his left leg a little. She was just thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able to catch her when he said, “You be keepin’ your filthy hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little gutter rats, that they do.”
    Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were standing at the mouth of an alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail