A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

free. To the 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 thralls
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,
I am sent to 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.”
    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, the sea foaming under their feet like some great wild
beast, the salt wind clutching at their clothes.
    Whenever he’d 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 here 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 that pieces of their
bodies

might be sent back to their father on the mainland.
    But Greyjoys were not murdered in Pyke except once in a great while by their
brothers, and his brothers were both dead. It was not fear of ghosts that made
him glance about with distaste. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the
mattress musty-smelling and sagging, the rushes old and brittle. Years had come
and gone since these chambers had last been opened. The damp went bone deep.
“I’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. While two thralls lit
his 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 thralls as he drew on a
pair of black gloves, the silk decorated with a delicate scrollwork tracery in
golden thread.
    Theon returned to the Great Keep through a