A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

awaits you in his solar,” Edmure said.
    â€œLord Hoster is bedridden, my lady,” her father’s steward explained. When had that good man grown so old and grey? “He instructed me to bring you to him at once.”
    â€œI’ll take her.” Edmure escorted her up the water stair and across the lower bailey, where Petyr Baelish and Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The massive sandstone walls of the keep loomed above them. As they pushed through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she asked, “How bad is he?” dreading the answer even as she said the words.
    Edmure’s look was somber. “He will not be with us long, the maesters say. The pain is … constant, and grievous.”
    A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother Edmure and her sister Lysa, at the Lannisters, at the maesters, at Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who would take them both away from her. “You should have told me,” she said. “You should have sent word as soon as you knew.”
    â€œHe forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that he was dying. With the realm so troubled, he feared that if the Lannisters suspected how frail he was …”
    â€œâ€¦Â they might attack?” Catelyn finished, hard.
It was your doing, yours
, a voice whispered inside her.
If you had not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf …
    They climbed the spiral stair in silence.
    The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord Hoster’s solar was triangular as well, with a stone balcony that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great sandstone ship. From there the lord of the castlecould look down on his walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met. They had moved her father’s bed out onto the balcony. “He likes to sit in the sun and watch the rivers,” Edmure explained. “Father, see who I’ve brought. Cat has come to see you …”
    Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his youth, portly as he grew older. Now he seemed shrunken, the muscle and meat melted off his bones. Even his face sagged. The last time Catelyn had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown, well streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as snow.
    His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure’s voice. “Little cat,” he murmured in a voice thin and wispy and wracked by pain. “My little cat.” A tremulous smile touched his face as his hand groped for hers. “I watched for you …”
    â€œI shall leave you to talk,” her brother said, kissing their lord father gently on the brow before he withdrew.
    Catelyn knelt and took her father’s hand in hers. It was a big hand, but fleshless now, the bones moving loosely under the skin, all the strength gone from it. “You should have told me,” she said. “A rider, a raven …”
    â€œRiders are taken, questioned,” he answered. “Ravens are brought down …” A spasm of pain took him, and his fingers clutched hers hard. “The crabs are in my belly … pinching, always pinching. Day and night. They have fierce claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of the poppy … I sleep a lot … but I wanted to be awake to see you, when you came. I was afraid … when the Lannisters took your brother, the camps all around us … I was afraid I would go, before I could see you again … I was afraid …”
    â€œI’m here, Father,” she said. “With Robb, my son. He’ll want to see you too.”
    â€œYour boy,” he whispered. “He had my eyes, I remember …”
    â€œHe did, and does. And we’ve brought you Jaime Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free again, Father.”
    Lord Hoster smiled. “I saw. Last night, when it began, I told them … had to see. They carried me to the gatehouse … watched from the battlements. Ah, that was beautiful … the torches came in a wave, I could hear the cries floating across the river … sweet cries … when that siege tower went up, gods … would have died then, and glad, if only I could have seen you children first. Was it your boy who did it? Was it your Robb?”
    â€œYes,” Catelyn said, fiercely proud. “It was