A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

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 as mad as he is sour.
Theon 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.”
    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. “
We shall see?
My brothers are
both dead. I am my lord father’s only living son.”
    â€œYour sister lives.”
    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 father will ever hand these holy islands over to a Stark. Now be silent.
The ride is long enough without your magpie chatterings.”
    Theon held his tongue, though not without struggle.
So that is the way of
it,
he thought. As if ten years in Winterfell could

make a Stark. Lord Eddard had raised him among his own children, but Theon had
never been one of them. The whole castle, from Lady Stark to the lowliest
kitchen scullion, knew he was hostage to his father’s good behavior, and
treated him accordingly. Even the bastard Jon Snow had been accorded more honor
than he had.
    Lord Eddard had tried to play the father from time to time, but to Theon he had
always remained the man who’d brought blood and fire to Pyke and taken him from
his home. As a boy, he had lived in fear of Stark’s stern face and great dark
sword. His wife was, if anything, even more distant and suspicious.
    As for their children, the younger ones had been mewling babes for most of his
years at Winterfell. Only Robb and his baseborn half brother Jon Snow had been
old enough to be worth his notice. The bastard was a sullen boy, quick to sense
a slight, jealous of Theon’s high birth and Robb’s regard for him. For Robb
himself, Theon did have a