A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

man responded, without so much as a bow. He had
forgotten how bold the ironborn could be. “Happens as I have one might do.
Where would you be riding, m’lord?”
    â€œPyke.” The fool
still
did not know him. He should have worn his
good doublet, with the kraken embroidered on the breast.
    â€œYou’ll want to be off soon, to reach Pyke afore dark,” the innkeeper said.
“My boy will go with you and show you the way.”
    â€œYour boy will not be needed,” a deep voice called, “nor your horse. I shall
see my nephew back to his father’s house.”
    The speaker was the priest he had seen leading the horses along the shoreline.
As the man approached, the smallfolk bent the knee, and Theon heard the
innkeeper
murmur, “Damphair.”
    Tall and thin, with fierce black eyes and a beak of a nose, the priest was
garbed in mottled robes of green and grey and blue, the swirling colors of the
Drowned God. A waterskin hung under his arm on a leather strap, and ropes of
dried seaweed were braided through his waist-long black hair and untrimmed
beard.
    A memory prodded at Theon. In one of his rare curt letters, Lord Balon had
written of his youngest brother going down in a storm, and turning holy when he
washed up safe on shore. “Uncle Aeron?” he said doubtfully.
    â€œNephew Theon,” the priest replied. “Your lord father bid me fetch you.
Come.”
    â€œIn a moment, Uncle.” He turned back to the
Myraham.
“My things,”
he commanded the captain.
    A sailor fetched him down his tall yew bow and quiver of arrows, but it
was the captain’s daughter who brought the pack with his good clothing.
“Milord.” Her eyes were red. When he took the pack, she made as if to embrace
him, there in front of her own father and his priestly uncle and half the
island.
    Theon turned deftly aside. “You have my thanks.”
    â€œPlease,” she said, “I do love you well, milord.”
    â€œI must go.” He hurried after his uncle, who was already well down the pier.
Theon caught him with a dozen long strides. “I had not looked for you, Uncle.
After ten years, I thought perhaps my lord father and lady mother might come
themselves, or send Dagmer with an honor guard.”
    â€œIt is not for you to question the commands of the Lord Reaper of Pyke.” The
priest’s manner was chilly, most unlike the man Theon remembered. Aeron Greyjoy
had been the most amiable of his uncles, feckless and quick to laugh, fond of
songs, ale, and women. “As to Dagmer, the Cleftjaw is gone to Old Wyk at
your father’s behest, to roust the Stonehouses and the Drumms.”
    â€œTo what purpose? Why are the longships hosting?”
    â€œWhy have longships ever hosted?” His uncle had left the horses tied up in
front of the waterside inn. When they reached them, he turned to Theon. “Tell
me true, nephew. Do you pray to the wolf gods now?”
    Theon seldom prayed at all, but that was not something you confessed to a
priest, even your father’s own brother. “Ned Stark prayed to a tree. No, I
care nothing for Stark’s gods.”
    â€œGood. Kneel.”
    The ground was all stones and mud. “Uncle, I—”
    â€œ
Kneel.
Or are you too proud now, a lordling of the green lands come
among us?”
    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