—PYAT PREE, a Qartheen warlock,
—THE SORROWFUL MEN, a guild of Qartheen assassins,
—SER JORAH MORMONT, formerly Lord of Bear Island,
—{MIRRI MAZ DUUR}, godswife and maegi, a servant of the Great Shepherd of Lhazar,
—her uncertain allies, past and present:
—XARO XHOAN DAXOS, a merchant prince of Qarth,
—QUAITHE, a masked shadowbinder from Asshai,
—ILLYRIO MOPATIS, a magister of the Free City of Pentos, who brokered her marriage to Khal Drogo,
—CLEON THE GREAT, butcher king of Astapor,
—KHAL MORO, sometime ally of Khal Drogo,
—RHOGORO, his son and khalakka,
—KHAL JOMMO, sometime ally of Khal Drogo.
The Targaryens are the blood of the dragon, descended from the high lords of the ancient Freehold of Valyria, their heritage marked by lilac, indigo, and violet eyes and hair of silver-gold. To preserve their blood and keep it pure, House Targaryen has oft wed brother to sister, cousin to cousin, uncle to niece. The founder of the dynasty, Aegon the Conquerer, took both his sisters to wife and fathered sons on each. The Targaryen banner is a three-headed dragon, red on black, the three heads representing Aegon and his sisters. The Targaryen words are Fire and Blood.
IN BRAAVOS
FERREGO ANTARYON, Sealord of Braavos,
—QARRO VOLENTIN, First Sword of Braavos, his protector,
—BELLEGERE OTHERYS called THE BLACK PEARL, a courtesan descended from the pirate queen of the same name,
—THE VEILED LADY, THE MERLING QUEEN, THE MOONSHADOW, THE DAUGHTER OF THE DUSK, THE NIGHTINGALE, THE POETESS, famous courtesans,
—TERNESIO TERYS, Merchant-Captain of the Titan’s Daughter,
—YORKO and DENYO, two of his sons,
—MOREDO PRESTAYN, Merchant-Captain of the Vixen,
—LOTHO LORNEL, a dealer in old books and scrolls,
—EZZELYNO, a red priest, oft drunk,
—SEPTON EUSTACE, disgraced and defrocked,
—TERRO and ORBELO, a pair of bravos,
—BLIND BEQQO, a fishmonger,
—BRUSCO, a fishmonger,
—his daughters, TALEA and BREA,
—MERALYN, called MERRY, proprietor of the Happy Port, a brothel near the Ragman’s Harbor,
—THE SAILOR’S WIFE, a whore at the Happy Port,
—LANNA, her daughter, a young whore,
—BLUSHING BETHANY, YNA ONE-EYE, ASSADORA OF IBBEN, the whores of the Happy Port,
—RED ROGGO, GYLORO DOTHARE, GYLENO DOTHARE, a scribbler called QUILL, COSSOMO THE CONJURER, patrons of the Happy Port,
—TAGGANARO, a dockside cutpurse and thief,
—CASSO, KING OF THE SEALS, his trained seal,
—LITTLE NARBO, his sometime partner,
—MYRMELLO, JOSS THE GLOOM, QUENCE, ALLAQUO, SLOEY, mummers performing nightly on the Ship,
—S’VRONE, a dockside whore of a murderous bent,
—THE DRUNKEN DAUGHTER, a whore of uncertain temper,
—CANKER JEYNE, a whore of uncertain sex,
—THE KINDLY MAN and THE WAIF, servants of the Many-Faced God at the House of Black and White,
—UMMA, the temple cook,
—THE HANDSOME MAN, THE FAT FELLOW, THE LORDLING, THE STERN FACE, THE SQUINTER, and THE STARVED MAN, secret servants of Him of Many Faces,
—ARYA of House Stark, a girl with an iron coin, also known as ARRY, NAN, WEASEL, SQUAB, SALTY, and CAT
—QUHURU MO, of Tall Trees Town in the Summer Isles, master of the merchantman Cinnamon Wind,
—KOJJA MO, his daughter, the red archer,
—XHONDO DHORU, mate on the Cinnamon Wind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This one was a bitch.
My thanks and appreciation go out once again to those stalwart souls, my editors: Nita Taublib, Joy Chamberlain, Jane Johnson, and especially Anne Lesley Groell, for her counsel, her good humor, and her vast forbearance.
Thanks also to my readers, for all their kind and supportive e-mails, and for their patience. A special tip of the helm to Lodey of the Three Fists, Pod the Devil Bunny, Trebla and Daj the Trivial Kings, sweet Caress of the Wall, Lannister the Squirrel Slayer, and the rest of the Brotherhood Without Banners, that half-mad drunken fellowship of brave knights and lovely ladies who throw the best parties at worldcon, year after year after year. And let me sound a fanfare too for Elio and Linda, who seem to know the Seven Kingdoms better than I do, and help me keep my continuity straight. Their Westeros website and concordance is a joy and a wonder.
And thanks to Walter Jon Williams for guiding me across more salty seas, to Sage Walker for leeches and fevers and broken bones, to Pati Nagle for HTML and spinning shields and getting all my news up quickly, and to Melinda Snodgrass and Daniel Abraham for service that was truly above and beyond the call of duty. I get by with a little help from my friends.
No words could suffice for Parris, who has been there on the good days and the bad ones for every bloody page. All that needs be said is that I could not sing this Song without her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally since then. He spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer-producer, working on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. In the mid ’90s he returned to prose, his first love, and began work on his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. He has been in the Seven Kingdoms ever since. Whenever he’s allowed to leave, he returns to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with the lovely Parris, a big white dog called Mischa, and two cats named Augustus and Caligula, who think they run the place.
ALSO BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
Book One: A Game of Thrones
Book Two: A Clash of Kings
Book Three: A Storm of Swords
Dying of the Light
Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)
Fevre Dream
The Armageddon Rag
Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
A Song of Lya and Others
Songs of Stars and Shadows
Sandkings
Songs the Dead Men Sing
Nightflyers
Tuf Voyaging
Portraits of His Children
EDITED BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
New Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1–4
The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book (with Isaac Asimov
and Martin Harry Greenberg)
The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5
Night Visions 3
Wild Card I–XV
And coming soon
A DANCE
WITH
DRAGONS
BY
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
The epic continuation of his landmark series
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
Here’s a special preview:
DAENERYS
She could hear the dead man coming up the steps. The slow, measured sound of footsteps went before him, echoing amongst the purple pillars of her hall. Daenerys Targaryen awaited him upon the ebon bench that she had made her throne. Her eyes were soft with sleep, her silver-gold hair all tousled.
“Your Grace,” said Ser Barristan Selmy, the Lord Commander of her Queensguard, “there is no need for you to see this.”
“He died for me.” Dany clutched her lion pelt to her chest. Underneath, a sheer white linen tunic covered her to mid-thigh. She had been dreaming of a house with a red door when Missandei woke her. There had been no time to dress.
“Khaleesi,” whispered Irri, “you must not touch the dead man. It is bad luck to touch the dead.”
“Unless you killed them yourself.” Jhiqui was bigger-boned than Irri, with wide hips and heavy breasts. “That is known.”
“It is known,” Irri agreed.
Dany paid no heed. Dothr
aki were wise where horses were concerned, but could be utter fools about much else. They are only girls, besides. Her handmaids were of an age with her; women grown to look at them, with their black hair, copper skin, and almond-shaped eyes, but children all the same. Khal Drogo had given them to her, who was her sun-and-stars. Drogo had given her the pelt too, the head and hide of a hrakkar, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. It was too big for her and had a musty smell, but it made her feel as if Drogo were still near her.
Grey Worm appeared atop the steps first, a torch in hand. His bronze cap was crested with three spikes. Behind him followed four of his Unsullied, bearing the dead man on their shoulders. Their caps had only one spike, and their faces showed so little they might have been cast of bronze as well. They laid the corpse down at her feet. Ser Barristan pulled back the blood-stained shroud. Grey Worm lowered the torch, so she might see.
The dead man’s face was smooth and hairless, though his cheeks had been slashed open almost ear to ear. He had been a tall man, blue-eyed and fair of face. Some child of Lys or old Volantis, snatched off a ship by corsairs and sold into bondage in red Astapor. Though his eyes were open, it was his wounds that wept. There were more wounds than she could count.
“Your Grace,” Ser Barristan said, “there was a harpy drawn on the bricks in the alley where he was found . . .”
“. . . drawn in his own blood.” Daenerys knew the way of it by now. The Sons of the Harpy did their butchery by night, and over each kill they left their mark. “Grey Worm, why was this man alone? Had he no partner?” When the Unsullied walked the streets of Meereen by night, they always walked in pairs.
“My queen,” replied the captain, “your servant Stalwart Shield had no duty last night. He had gone to a . . . a certain place . . . to drink, and have companionship.”
“A certain place? What do you mean?”
“A house of pleasure, Your Grace.” Beneath the spiked bronze cap, Grey Worm’s face might have been made of stone.
A brothel. Half of her freedmen were from Yunkai, where the Wise Masters had been famed for training bed slaves. The way of the seven sighs. Brothels had sprouted up like mushrooms all over Meereen. It is all they know. They need to survive. Food grew more costly every day, whilst the pleasures of the flesh got cheaper. In the poorer districts between the stepped pyramids of Meereen’s slaver nobility, there were brothels catering to every conceivable erotic taste, she knew. Even so . . .
“What could a eunuch hope to find in a brothel?” she asked.
“Even those who lack a man’s parts may still have a man’s heart, Your Grace,” said Grey Worm. “This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels, to lay with him and hold him.”
The blood of the dragon does not weep. “Stalwart Shield,” she said, dry-eyed. “That was his name?”
“If it please Your Grace.”
“It is a fine name.” The Good Masters of Astapor had not allowed their slave soldiers even names. Some of her Unsullied reclaimed their birth names after she had freed them; others chose new names for themselves. “Is it known how many attackers fell upon Stalwart Shield?”
“This one does not know. Many.”
“Six or more,” said Ser Barristan. “From the look of his wounds, they swarmed him from all sides. He was found with an empty scabbard. It may be that he wounded some of his attackers.”
Dany said a silent prayer that somewhere one of them was dying even now, clutching at his belly and writhing in pain. “Why did they cut open his cheeks like that?”
“Gracious queen,” said Grey Worm, “his killers had forced the genitals of a goat down the throat of your servant Stalwart Shield. This one removed them before bringing him here.”
They could not feed him his own genitals. The Astapori left him neither root nor stem. “The Sons grow bolder,” Dany observed. Until now, they had limited their attacks to unarmed freedmen, cutting them down in the streets or breaking into their homes under the cover of darkness to murder them in their beds. “This is the first of my soldiers they have slain.”
“The first,” Ser Barristan warned, “but not the last.”
I am still at war, Dany realized, only now I am fighting shadows. She had hoped to have a respite from the killing, some time to build and heal. Shrugging off the lion pelt, she knelt beside the corpse and closed the dead man’s eyes, ignoring Jhiqui’s gasp. “Stalwart Shield shall not be forgotten. Have him washed and dressed for battle, and bury him with cap and shield and spears.”
“It shall be as Your Grace commands,” said Grey Worm.
She stood. “Send a dozen men to the Temple of the Graces, and ask the Blue Graces if any man has come to them seeking treatment for a sword wound. And spread the word that we will pay good gold for the short sword of Stalwart Shield. Inquire of the butchers and the herdsmen too, and learn who has been gelding goats of late.” Perhaps they would be fortunate, and some frightened goatherd would confess. “Henceforth, see that no man of mine walks alone after dark, whether he has the duty or no.”
“These ones shall obey.”
Daenerys pushed her hair back. “Find these cowards for me,” she said fiercely. “Find them, so that I might teach the Harpy’s Sons what it means to wake the dragon.”
Grey Worm saluted her. His Unsullied closed the shroud once more, lifted the dead man onto their shoulders, and bore him from the hall. Ser Barristan Selmy remained behind. His hair was white, and there were crow’s feet at the corners of his pale blue eyes. Yet his back was still unbent, and the years had not yet robbed him of his skill at arms. “Your Grace,” he said, “I fear your eunuchs are ill-suited for the tasks you set them.”
Dany settled on her bench and wrapped her pelt about her shoulders once again. “The Unsullied are my finest warriors.”
“Soldiers, not warriors, if it please Your Grace. They were made for the battlefield, to stand shoulder to shoulder behind their shields, with their spears thrust out before them. Their training teaches them to obey, fearlessly, perfectly, without thought or hesitation . . . not to unravel secrets or ask questions.”
“Would knights serve me any better?” Selmy was training knights for her, teaching the sons of slaves to fight with lance and longsword in the Westerosi fashion . . . but what good would lances do, against cowards who killed from the shadows?
“Not in this,” the old man admitted. “And Your Grace has no knights, save me. It will be years before the boys are ready.”
“Then who, if not Unsullied? Dothraki would be even worse.” Her khalasar was tiny, and largely of green boys and old men. And Dothraki fought from horseback. Mounted men were of more use in open fields and hills than in the narrow streets and alleys of the city. Beyond Meereen’s walls of many-colored brick her rule was tenuous at best. Thousands of slaves still toiled on vast estates in the hills, growing wheat and olives, herding sheep and goats, and mining salt and copper. Meereen’s storehouses still held ample supplies of grain, oil, olives, dried fruit, and salted meat, but the stores were dwindling. So Dany had dispatched her khalasar to subdue the hinterlands, under the command of her three bloodriders, whilst Brown Ben Plumm took his Second Sons south to guard against Yunkish incursions.
The most crucial task of all she had entrusted to Daario Naharis, glib-tongued Daario with his gold tooth and trident beard, smiling his wicked smile through purple whiskers. Beyond the eastern hills was a range of rounded sandstone mountains, the Khyzai Pass, and Lhazar. If Daario could convince the Lhazarene to reopen the overland trade routes, grains could be brought down the river or over the hills at need . . . but the Lamb Men had no reason to love Meereen. “When the Stormcrows return from Lhazar, perhaps I can use them in the streets,” she told Ser Barristan, “but until then I have only the Unsullied.”
Dany wondered if Daario had reached Lhazar. Daario will not fail me . . . but if he does, I will find another way. That is what queens do. They find a way, a way that does not involve ta
king plows across the river. Even famine might be preferable to sending plows across the Skahazadhan. It was known. “You must excuse me, ser,” she said. “The petitioners will soon be at my gates. I must don my floppy ears and become their queen again. Summon Reznak and the Shavepate; I’ll see them when I’m dressed.”
“As Your Grace commands.” Selmy bowed.
The Great Pyramid shouldered eight hundred feet into the sky, from its huge square base to the lofty apex where the queen kept her private chambers, surrounded by greenery and fragrant pools. As a cool blue dawn broke over the city, Dany walked out onto the terrace. To the west sunlight blazed off the golden domes of the Temple of the Graces, and etched deep shadows behind the stepped pyramids of the mighty. In some of those pyramids, the Sons of the Harpy are plotting new murders even now, she thought, and I am powerless to stop them. Viserion sensed her disquiet. The white dragon lay coiled around a pear tree, his head resting on his tail. When Dany passed his eyes came open, two pools of molten gold. His horns were gold as well, and the scales that ran down his back from head to tail. “You’re lazy,” she told him, scratching under his jaw. His scales were hot to the touch, like armor left cooking too long in the sun. Dragons are fire made flesh. She had read that in one of the books Ser Jorah had given her as a wedding gift. “You should be hunting with your brothers. Have you been fighting Drogon again?” Her dragons had grown wilder of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the Seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?
Viserion’s tail lashed sideways, thumping the trunk of the tree so hard that a pear came tumbling down to land at Dany’s feet. His wings unfolded, and he half-flew, half-hopped onto the parapet. He is growing, she thought, as the dragon launched himself into the sky. They are all three growing. Soon they will be large enough to bear my weight. Then she would fly as Aegon the Conquerer had flown, up and up, until Meereen was so small that she could blot it out with her thumb.
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