A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

a moment Bran felt as though he could not breathe. A giant hand was
crushing his chest. He felt as though he was falling, and clutched desperately
at Dancer’s reins.
    His terror must have shown on his face. “Bran?” Cley Cerwyn said. “Are you
unwell? It’s only another king.”
    â€œRobb will beat him too.” He turned Dancer’s head toward the stables,
oblivious to the puzzled stares the Cerwyns gave him. His blood was roaring in
his ears, and had he not been strapped onto his saddle he might well have
fallen.
    That night Bran prayed to his father’s gods for dreamless sleep. If
the gods heard, they mocked his hopes, for the nightmare they sent was worse
than any wolf dream.
    â€œFly or die!”
cried the three-eyed crow as it pecked at him. He
wept and pleaded but the crow had no pity. It put out his left eye and then his
right, and when he was blind in the dark it

pecked at his brow, driving its terrible sharp beak deep into his skull. He
screamed until he was certain his lungs must burst. The pain was an axe
splitting his head apart, but when the crow wrenched out its beak all slimy
with bits of bone and brain, Bran could see again. What he saw made him gasp in
fear. He was clinging to a tower miles high, and his fingers were slipping,
nails scrabbling at the stone, his legs dragging him down, stupid useless dead
legs.
“Help me!”
he cried. A golden man appeared in the sky above
him and pulled him up. “The things I do for love,” he murmured softly as he
tossed him out kicking into empty air.

TYRION
    I do not sleep as I did when I was younger,” Grand Maester Pycelle told
him, by way of apology for the dawn meeting. “I would sooner be up, though the
world be dark, than lie restless abed, fretting on tasks undone,” he
said—though his heavy-lidded eyes made him look half-asleep as he said
it.
    In the airy chambers beneath the rookery, his girl served them boiled eggs,
stewed plums, and porridge, while Pycelle served the pontifications. “In these
sad times, when so many hunger, I think it only fitting to keep my table
spare.”
    â€œCommendable,” Tyrion admitted, breaking a large brown egg that
reminded him unduly of the Grand Maester’s bald spotted head. “I take a
different view. If there is food I eat it, in case there is none on the
morrow.” He smiled. “Tell me, are your ravens early risers as
well?”
    Pycelle stroked the snowy beard that flowed down his chest. “To be sure. Shall
I send for quill and ink after we have eaten?”
    â€œNo need.” Tyrion laid the letters on the table beside his porridge, twin
parchments tightly rolled and sealed with wax at both ends. “Send your girl
away, so we can talk.”
    â€œLeave us, child,” Pycelle commanded. The serving girl hurried from the room.
“These letters, now . . .”
    â€œFor the eyes of Doran Martell, Prince of Dorne.” Tyrion

peeled the cracked shell away from his egg and took a bite. It wanted salt.
“One letter, in two copies. Send your swiftest birds. The matter is of great
import.”
    â€œI shall dispatch them as soon as we have broken our fast.”
    â€œDispatch them now. Stewed plums will keep. The realm may not. Lord Renly is
leading his host up the roseroad, and no one can say when Lord Stannis will
sail from Dragonstone.”
    Pycelle blinked. “If my lord prefers—”
    â€œHe does.”
    â€œI am here to serve.” The maester pushed himself ponderously to his feet, his
chain of office clinking softly. It was a heavy thing, a dozen maester’s
collars threaded around and through each other and ornamented with gemstones.
And it seemed to Tyrion that the gold and silver and platinum links far
outnumbered those of baser metals.
    Pycelle moved so slowly that Tyrion had time to finish his egg and taste the
plums—overcooked and watery, to his taste—before the sound of
wings prompted him to rise. He spied the raven, dark in the dawn sky, and
turned briskly toward the maze of shelves at the far end of the room.
    The maester’s medicines made an impressive display; dozens of pots sealed with
wax, hundreds of stoppered vials, as many milkglass bottles, countless jars of
dried herbs, each container neatly labeled in Pycelle’s precise hand.
An
orderly mind,
Tyrion reflected, and indeed, once you