A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

came, yet not alone. Behind him rode three queerly
garbed strangers atop ugly humped creatures that dwarfed any horse.
    They drew rein before the city gates, and looked up to see Dany on the wall
above them. “Blood of my blood,” Jhogo called, “I have been to the great city
Qarth, and returned with three who would look on you with their own
eyes.”
    Dany stared down at the strangers. “Here I stand. Look, if that is your
pleasure . . . but first tell me your names.”
    The pale man with the blue lips replied in guttural Dothraki, “I am Pyat Pree,
the great warlock.”
    The bald man with the jewels in his nose answered in the Valyrian of the Free
Cities, “I am Xaro Xhoan Daxos of the Thirteen, a merchant prince of
Qarth.”
    The woman in the lacquered wooden mask said in the Common Tongue of the Seven
Kingdoms, “I am Quaithe of the Shadow. We come seeking dragons.”
    â€œSeek no more,” Daenerys Targaryen told them. “You have found them.”

JON
    W
hitetree,
the village was named on Sam’s old maps. Jon did not
think it much of a village. Four tumbledown one-room houses of unmortared stone
surrounded an empty sheepfold and a well. The houses were roofed with sod, the
windows shuttered with ragged pieces of hide. And above them loomed the pale
limbs and dark red leaves of a monstrous great weirwood.
    It was the biggest tree Jon Snow had ever seen, the trunk near eight feet wide,
the branches spreading so far that the entire village was shaded beneath their
canopy. The size did not disturb him so much as the
face . . . the mouth especially, no simple carved slash, but a
jagged hollow large enough to swallow a sheep.
    Those are not sheep bones, though. Nor is that a sheep’s skull in
the ashes.
    â€œAn old tree.” Mormont sat his horse, frowning.
“Old,”
his raven
agreed from his shoulder.
“Old, old, old.”
    â€œAnd powerful.” Jon could feel the power.
    Thoren Smallwood dismounted beside the trunk, dark in his plate and mail.
“Look at that face. Small wonder men feared them, when they first came to
Westeros. I’d like to take an axe to the bloody thing myself.”
    Jon said, “My lord father believed no man could tell a lie in front of a heart
tree. The old gods know when men are lying.”
    â€œMy father believed the same,” said the Old Bear. “Let me have a look
at that skull.”
    Jon dismounted. Slung across his back in a black leather shoulder sheath was
Longclaw, the hand-and-a-half bastard blade the Old Bear had given him
for saving his life.
A bastard sword for a bastard,
the men joked.
The hilt had been fashioned new for him, adorned with a wolf’s-head pommel in
pale stone, but the blade itself was Valyrian steel, old and light and deadly
sharp.
    He knelt and reached a gloved hand down into the maw. The inside of the hollow
was red with dried sap and blackened by fire. Beneath the skull he saw another,
smaller, the jaw broken off. It was half-buried in ash and bits of
bone.
    When he brought the skull to Mormont, the Old Bear lifted it in both hands and
stared into the empty sockets. “The wildlings burn their dead. We’ve always
known that. Now I wished I’d asked them why, when there were still a few around
to ask.”
    Jon Snow remembered the wight rising, its eyes shining blue in the pale dead
face. He knew why, he was certain.
    â€œWould that bones could talk,” the Old Bear grumbled. “This fellow could
tell us much. How he died. Who burned him, and why. Where the wildlings have
gone.” He sighed. “The children of the forest could speak to the dead, it’s
said. But I can’t.” He tossed the skull back into the mouth of the tree, where
it landed with a puff of fine ash. “Go through all these houses. Giant, get to
the top of this tree, have a look. I’ll have the hounds brought up too.
Perchance this time the trail will be fresher.”

His tone did not suggest that he held out much hope of the last.
    Two men went through each house, to make certain nothing was missed. Jon was
paired with dour Eddison Tollett, a squire grey of hair and thin as a pike,
whom the other brothers called Dolorous Edd. “Bad enough when the dead come
walking,” he said to Jon as they crossed the village, “now the Old Bear wants
them talking as well? No good will come