A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to face Mirri Maz Duur. “Your spells are costly,
maegi.”
    â€œHe lives,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “You asked for life. You paid for life.”
    â€œThis is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life was laughter, and meat roasting over a firepit, and a horse between his legs. His life was an
arakh
in his hand and his bells ringing in his hair as he rode to meet an enemy. His life was his bloodriders, and me, and the son I was to give him.”
    Mirri Maz Duur made no reply.
    â€œWhen will he be as he was?” Dany demanded.
    â€œWhen the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”
    Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. “Leave us. I would speak with this
maegi
alone.” Mormont and the Dothraki withdrew. “You
knew,”
Dany said when they were gone. She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength. “You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay it.”
    â€œIt was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great Shepherd.”
    â€œThis was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly.
If I look back I am lost
. “You cheated me. You murdered my child within me.”
    â€œThe stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His
khalasar
shall trample no nations into dust.”
    â€œI spoke for you,” she said, anguished. “I saved you.”
    â€œSaved
me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved.”
    â€œYour life.”
    Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your
khal
and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”
    Dany called out for the men of her
khas
and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and bind her hand and foot, but the
maegi
smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany could have her head off … yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?
    They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to fill a tub, and this time there was no blood in the water. She bathed him herself, washing the dirt and the dust from his arms and chest, cleaning his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black hair and combing the knots and tangles from it till it shone again as she remembered. It was well past dark before she was done, and Dany was exhausted. She stopped for drink and food, but it was all she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a mouthful of water. Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enough … too long, in truth. She owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights that had been, and yet might be.
    The memory of their first ride was with her when she led him out into the darkness, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky. She told herself that there werepowers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the
maegi
had learned in Asshai. The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars burned bright. She took that for an omen.
    No soft blanket of grass welcomed them here, only the hard dusty ground, bare and strewn with stones. No trees stirred in the wind, and there was no stream to soothe her fears with the gentle music of water. Dany told herself that the stars would be enough. “Remember, Drogo,” she whispered. “Remember our first ride together, the day we wed. Remember the night we made Rhaego, with the
khalasar
all around us and your eyes on my face. Remember how cool and clean the water was in the Womb of the World. Remember, my sun-and-stars. Remember, and come back to me.”
    The birth had left her too raw and