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A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Titel: A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: George R.R. Martin
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south were the cliffs, and the wide stone bridge to the Great Keep. Theon could hear the crashing of waves as he swung down from his saddle. A stableman came to take his horse. A pair of gaunt children and some serving men stared at him with dull eyes, but there was no sign of his lord father, nor anyone else he recalled from boyhood.
A bleak and bitter homecoming
, he thought.
    The priest had not dismounted. “Will you not stay the night and share our meat and mead, uncle?”
    â€œBring you, I was told. You are brought. Now I return to our god’s business.” Aeron Greyjoy turned his horse and rode slowly out beneath the muddy spikes of the portcullis.
    A bentback old crone in a shapeless grey dress approached him warily. “M’lord,” she said, “I am sent to make you welcome and show you to chambers.”
    â€œBy whose bidding?”
    â€œYour lord father, m’lord.”
    Theon pulled off his gloves. “So you
do
know who I am. Why is my father not here to greet me?”
    â€œHe awaits you in the Sea Tower, m’lord. When you are rested from your trip.”
    And I thought Ned Stark cold
. “And who are you?”
    â€œHelya, who keeps this castle for your lord father.”
    â€œSylas was steward here. They called him Sourmouth.” Even now, Theon could recall the winey stench of the old man’s breath.
    â€œDead these five years, m’lord.”
    â€œAnd what of Maester Qalen, where is he?”
    â€œHe sleeps in the sea. Wendamyr keeps the ravens now, but he is gone south to Oldtown on some maester’s business.”
    It is as if I were a stranger here
, Theon thought.
Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed
. “Show me to my chambers, woman,” he commanded. Bowing stiffly, she led him across the headland to the bridge. That at least was as he remembered; the ancient stones slick with spray and spotted by lichen and moss, the sea foaming under their feet like some great wild beast, the salt wind clutching at their clothes.
    When he had imagined his homecoming, he had always pictured himself returning to the snug bedchamber in the Sea Tower where he’d slept as a child. Instead the old woman led him to the Bloody Keep. The halls were larger and better furnished, if no less cold nor damp. Theon was given a suite of chilly rooms with ceilings so high that they were lost in gloom. He might have been more impressed if he had not known that these were the very chambers that had given the Bloody Keep its name. A thousand years before, the sons of the River King had been slaughtered here, hacked to bits in their beds so the pieces of their bodies might be sent back to their father on the mainland.
    But Theon was a Greyjoy, and Greyjoy’s were not murdered in Pyke, except once in a great while by their brothers, and his brothers were both mercifully dead. It was not the memories of ancient murders that made him glance about with distaste. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the mattress musty-smelling and sagging, and rushes old and brittle. It had been years since these chambers had last been opened. The damp went bone deep.
    â€œI’ll have a basin of hot water, and a fire in this hearth,” he told the crone. “See that they light braziers in the other rooms to drive out some of the chill. And gods be good, get someone in here at once to change these rushes.”
    â€œYes, m’lord. As you command.” She fled.
    After some time, they brought the hot water he had asked for. It was only tepid, and soon cold, and seawater in the bargain, but it served to wash the dust of the long ride from his face and hair and hands. As bondservants scurried about lighting braziers, Theon stripped off his travel-stained clothing and dressed to meet his father. He chose boots of supple black leather, soft lambswool breeches of silvery-grey, a black velvet doublet with the golden kraken of the Greyjoys embroidered on the breast. Around his throat he fastened a slender gold chain, around his waist a belt of bleached white leather. He hung a dirk at one hip and a longsword at the other, in scabbards striped black-and-gold. Drawing the dirk, he tested its edge with his thumb, pulled a whetstone from his belt pouch, and gave it a few licks. He prided himself on keeping his weapons sharp. “When I return, I shall expect a warm room and clean rushes,” he warned the bondservants as he drew on a pair of

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