A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

head.”
    Lord Balon laughed. “Well, at the least you are no craven. No more than I’m a
fool. Do you think I gather my ships to watch them rock at anchor? I mean to
carve out a kingdom with fire and sword . . . but not from the
west, and not at the bidding of King Robb the Boy. Casterly Rock is too strong,
and Lord Tywin too cunning by half. Aye, we might take Lannisport, but we
should never keep it. No. I hunger for a different
plum . . . not so juicy sweet, to be sure, yet it hangs there
ripe and undefended.”
    Where?
Theon might have asked, but by then he knew.

DAENERYS
    T he Dothraki named the comet
shierak qiya,
the Bleeding Star. The
old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first
on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened.
It is the herald of my coming,
she told herself as she gazed up into
the night sky with wonder in her heart.
The gods have sent it to show me
the way.
    Yet when she put the thought into words, her handmaid Doreah quailed.
“That way lies the red lands,
Khaleesi.
A grim place and terrible,
the riders say.”
    â€œThe way the comet points is the way we must go,” Dany
insisted . . . though in truth, it was the only way open to
her.
    She dare not turn north onto the vast ocean of grass they called the Dothraki
sea. The first
khalasar
they met would swallow up her ragged band,
slaying the warriors and slaving the rest. The lands of the Lamb Men south of
the river were likewise closed to them. They were too few to defend themselves
even against that unwarlike folk, and the Lhazareen had small reason to love
them. She might have struck downriver for the ports at Meereen and Yunkai and
Astapor, but Rakharo warned her that Pono’s
khalasar
had ridden that
way, driving thousands of captives before them to sell in the flesh marts that
festered like open sores on the shores of Slaver’s Bay. “Why should I fear
Pono?” Dany

objected. “He was Drogo’s
ko,
and always spoke me
gently.”
    â€œKo Pono spoke you gently,” Ser Jorah Mormont said. “Khal Pono will kill
you. He was the first to abandon Drogo. Ten thousand warriors went with him.
You have a hundred.”
    No,
Dany thought.
I have four. The rest are women, old sick men,
and boys whose hair has never been braided.
“I have the dragons,” she
pointed out.
    â€œHatchlings,” Ser Jorah said. “One swipe from an
arakh
would put
an end to them, though Pono is more like to seize them for himself. Your dragon
eggs were more precious than rubies. A living dragon is beyond price. In all
the world, there are only three. Every man who sees them will want them, my
queen.”
    â€œThey are
mine,
” she said fiercely. They had been born from her
faith and her need, given life by the deaths of her husband and unborn son and
the
maegi
Mirri Maz Duur. Dany had walked into the flames as they
came forth, and they had drunk milk from her swollen breasts. “No man will
take them from me while I live.”
    â€œYou will not live long should you meet Khal Pono. Nor Khal Jhaqo, nor any of
the others. You must go where they do not.”
    Dany had named him the first of her Queensguard . . . and when
Mormont’s gruff counsel and the omens agreed, her course was clear. She called
her people together and mounted her silver mare. Her hair had burned away in
Drogo’s pyre, so her handmaids garbed her in the skin of the
hrakkar
Drogo had slain, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. Its fearsome head made a
hood to cover her naked scalp, its pelt a cloak that flowed across her
shoulders

and down her back. The cream-colored dragon sunk sharp black claws into the
lion’s mane and coiled its tail around her arm, while Ser Jorah took his
accustomed place by her side.
    â€œWe follow the comet,” Dany told her
khalasar.
Once it was said, no
word was raised against it. They had been Drogo’s people, but they were hers
now.
The Unburnt,
they called her, and
Mother of Dragons.
Her word was their law.
    They rode by night, and by day took refuge from the sun beneath their tents.
Soon enough Dany learned the truth of Doreah’s words. This was no kindly
country. They left a trail of dead and dying horses behind them as they went,
for Pono, Jhaqo, and the others had seized the best of Drogo’s herds, leaving
to