A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come among us?”
    Scowling, Theon knelt. He had a purpose here, and might need Aeron’s help to achieve it. A crown was worth a little mud and horseshit on his breeches, he supposed.
    â€œBow your head.” Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon Theon’s head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into his eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips. “Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were,” Aeron Greyjoy intoned. “Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel. Nephew, do you still know the words?”
    â€œWhat is dead may never die,” Theon said, remembering.
    â€œWhat is dead may never die,” his uncle echoed, “but rises again, harder and stronger. Stand.”
    Theon stood, blinking back tears from the salt in his eyes. Wordless, his uncle corked the waterskin, untied his horse, and mounted. Theon did the same. They set off together, leaving the inn and the harbor behind them, up past the castle of Lord Botley into the stony hills. The priest ventured no further word.
    â€œI have been half my life away from home,” Theon ventured at last. “Will I find the islands changed?”
    â€œMen fish the sea, dig in the earth, and die. Women birth children in blood and pain, and die. Night follows day. The winds and tides remain. The islands are as our god made them.”
    Gods, he has grown grim
, Theon thought. “Will I find my sister and my lady mother at Pyke?”
    â€œYou will not. Your mother dwells on Harlaw, with her own sister. It is less raw there, and her cough troubles her. Your sister has taken
Black Wind
to Great Wyk, with messages from your lord father. She will return e’er long, you may be sure.”
    Theon did not need to be told that
Black Wind
was Asha’s longship. He had not seen his sister in ten years, but that much he knew of her. Odd that she would call it that, when Robb Stark had a wolf named Grey Wind. “Stark is grey and Greyjoy’s black,” he murmured, smiling, “but it seems we’re both windy.”
    The priest had nothing to say to that.
    â€œAnd what of you, uncle?” Theon asked. “You were no priest when I was taken from Pyke. I remember how you would sing the old reaving songs standing on the table with a horn of ale in hand.”
    â€œYoung I was, and vain,” Aeron Greyjoy said, “but the sea washed my follies and my vanities away. That man drowned, nephew. His lungs filled with seawater, and the fish ate the scales off his eyes. When I rose again, I saw clearly.”
    He is mad as he is sour
, Theon thought, saddened. He had liked what he remembered of the old Aeron Greyjoy. “Uncle, why has my father called his swords and sails?”
    â€œDoubtless he will tell you at Pyke.”
    â€œI would know his plans now,” Theon said.
    â€œFrom me, you shall not. We are commanded not to speak of this to any man.”
    â€œEven to
me?”
Theon’s anger flared. He’d led men in war, hunted with a king, won honor in tourney melees, ridden with Brynden Blackfish and Greatjon Umber, fought in the Whispering Wood, bedded more girls than he could name, and yet this uncle was treating him as though he were still a child of ten. “If my father makes plans for war, I must know of them. I am not
‘any man,’
I am heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands.”
    â€œAs to that,” his uncle said, “we shall see.”
    The words were a slap in the face. “What does that mean,
we shall see?”
Theon said scornfully. “My brothers are both dead. I am my lord father’s only living son.”
    â€œYour sister lives.” Aeron gave Theon not so much as the courtesy of a glance.
    Asha
, he thought, confounded. She was three years older than Theon, yet still … “A woman may inherit only if there is no male heir in the direct line,” he insisted loudly. “I will not be cheated of my rights, I warn you.”
    His uncle grunted. “You
warn
a servant of the Drowned God, boy? You have forgotten more than you know. And you are a great fool if you believe your lord