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A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire), by George R. R. Martin
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In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance once again--beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has three times three thousand enemies, and many have set out to find her. Yet, as they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind.
To the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone--a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge yet. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice.
And from all corners, bitter conflicts soon reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all. . . .
Dubbed “the American Tolkien” by Time magazine, George R. R. Martin has earned international acclaim for his monumental cycle of epic fantasy. Now the #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers the fifth book in his spellbinding landmark series--as both familiar faces and surprising new forces vie for a foothold in a fragmented empire.
- Sales Rank: #25342 in Books
- Brand: Martin, George R. R.
- Published on: 2011-07-12
- Released on: 2011-07-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 2.00" w x 6.40" l, 3.05 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 1040 pages
Review
“Filled with vividly rendered set pieces, unexpected turnings, assorted cliffhangers and moments of appalling cruelty, A Dance with Dragons is epic fantasy as it should be written: passionate, compelling, convincingly detailed and thoroughly imagined.”—The Washington Post
“Long live George Martin . . . a literary dervish, enthralled by complicated characters and vivid language, and bursting with the wild vision of the very best tale tellers.”—The New York Times
“One of the best series in the history of fantasy.”—Los Angeles Times
About the Author
George R. R. Martin is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire—A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons—as well as Tuf Voyaging, Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, Dying of the Light, Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle), and Dreamsongs Volumes I and II. He is also the creator of The Lands of Ice and Fire, a collection of maps from A Song of Ice and Fire featuring original artwork from illustrator and cartographer Jonathan Roberts, and The World of Ice & Fire (with Elio M. García, Jr., and Linda Antonsson). As a writer-producer, Martin has worked on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Tyrion
He drank his way across the narrow sea.
The ship was small and his cabin smaller, and the captain would not allow him abovedecks. The rocking of the deck beneath his feet made his stomach heave, and the wretched food they served him tasted even worse when retched back up. Besides, why did he need salt beef, hard cheese, and bread crawling with worms when he had wine to nourish him? It was red and sour, very strong. He sometimes heaved the wine up too, but there was always more. "The world is full of wine," he muttered in the dankness of his cabin. His father had never had any use for drunkards, but what did that matter? His father was dead. He ought to know; he'd killed him. A bolt in the belly, my lord, and all for you. If only I was better with a crossbow, I would have put it through that cock you made me with, you bloody bastard.
Below decks there was neither night nor day. Tyrion marked time by the comings and goings of the cabin boy who brought the meals he did not eat. The boy always brought a brush and bucket too, to clean up. "Is this Dornish wine?" Tyrion asked him once, as he pulled a stopper from a skin. "It reminds me of a certain snake I knew. A droll fellow, till a mountain fell on him."
The cabin boy did not answer. He was an ugly boy, though admittedly more comely than a certain dwarf with half a nose and a scar from eye to chin. "Have I offended you?" Tyrion asked the sullen, silent boy, as he was scrubbing. "Were you commanded not to talk to me? Or did some dwarf diddle your mother?"
That went unanswered too. This is pointless, he knew, but he must speak to someone or go mad, so he persisted. "Where are we sailing? Tell me that." Jaime had made mention of the Free Cities, but had never said which one. "Is it Braavos? Tyrosh? Myr?" Tyrion would sooner have gone to Dorne. Myrcella is older than Tommen, by Dornish law the Iron Throne is hers. I will help her claim her rights, as Prince Oberyn suggested.
Oberyn was dead, though, his head smashed to bloody ruin by the armored fist of Ser Gregor Clegane. And without the Red Viper to urge him on, would Doran Martell even consider such a chancy scheme? He may clap me in chains instead, and hand me back to my sweet sister. The Wall might be safer. Old Bear Mormont said the Night's Watch had need of men like Tyrion. Mormont may be dead, though. By now Slynt may be the Lord Commander. That butcher's son was not like to have forgotten who sent him to the Wall. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life eating salt beef and porridge with murderers and thieves? Not that the rest of his life would last very long. Janos Slynt would see to that.
The cabin boy wet his brush and scrubbed on manfully. "Have you ever visited the pleasure houses of Lys?" the dwarf inquired. "Might that be where whores go?" Tyrion could not seem to recall the Valyrian word for whore, and in any case it was too late. The boy tossed his brush back in his bucket and took his leave.
The wine has blurred my wits. He had learned to read High Valyrian at his maester's knee, though what they spoke in the Nine Free Cities... well, it was not so much a dialect as nine dialects on the way to becoming separate tongues. Tyrion had some Braavosi and a smattering of Myrish. In Tyrosh he should be able to curse the gods, call a man a cheat, and order up an ale, thanks to a sellsword he had once known at the Rock. At least in Dorne they spea the Common Tongue. Like Dornish food and Dornish law, Dornish speech was spiced with the flavors of the Rhoyne, but a man could comprehend it. Dorne, yes, Dorne for me. He crawled into his bunk, clutching that thought like a child with a doll.
Sleep had never come easily to Tyrion Lannister. Aboard that ship it seldom came at all, though from time to time he managed to drink sufficient wine to pass out for a while. At least he did not dream. He had dreamt enough for one small life. And of such follies: love, justice, friendship, glory. As well dream of being tall. It was all beyond his reach, Tyrion knew now. But he did not know where whores go.
"Wherever whores go," his father had said. His last words, and what words they were. The crossbow thrummed, Lord Tywin sat back down, and Tyrion Lannister found himself waddling through the darkness with Varys at his side. He must have clambered back down the shaft, two hundred and thirty rungs to where orange embers glowed in the mouth of an iron dragon. He remembered none of it. Only the sound the crossbow made, and the stink of his father's bowels opening. Even in his dying, he found a way to shit on me.
Varys had escorted him through the tunnels, but they never spoke until they emerged beside the Blackwater, where Tyrion had won a famous victory and lost a nose. That was when the dwarf turned to the eunuch and said, "I've killed my father," in the same tone a man might use to say, "I've stubbed my toe." The master of whisperers had been dressed as a begging brother, in a moth-eaten robe of brown roughspun with a cowl that shadowed his smooth fat cheeks and bald round head. "You should not have climbed that ladder," he said reproachfully.
"Wherever whores go." Tyrion warned his father not to say that word. If I had not loosed, he would have seen my threats were empty. He would have taken the crossbow from my hands, as once he took Tysha from my arms. He was rising when I killed him. "I killed Shae too," he confessed to Varys.
"You knew what she was."
"I did. But I never knew what he was."
Varys tittered. "And now you do."
I should have killed the eunuch as well. A little more blood on his hands, what would it matter? He could not say what had stayed his dagger. Not gratitude. Varys had saved him from a headsman's sword, but only because Jaime had compelled him. Jaime... no, better not to think of Jaime.
He found a fresh skin of wine instead, and sucked at it as if it were a woman's breast. The sour red ran down his chin and soaked through his soiled tunic, the same one he had been wearing in his cell. He sucked until the wine was gone. The deck was swaying beneath his feet, and when he tried to rise it lifted sideways and smashed him hard against a bulkhead. A storm, he realized, or else I am even drunker than I knew. He retched the wine up and lay in it a while, wondering if the ship would sink.
Is this your vengeance, Father? Have the Father Above made you his Hand? "Such are the wages of the kinslayer," he said as the wind howled outside. It did not seem fair to drown the cabin boy and the captain and all the rest for something he had done, but when had the gods ever been fair? And around about then, the darkness gulped him down
When he stirred again, his head felt like to burst and the ship was spinning round in dizzy circles, though the captain was insisting that they'd come to port. Tyrion told him to be quiet, and kicked feebly as a huge bald sailor tucked him under one arm and carried him squirming to the hold, where an empty wine cask awaited him. It was a squat little cask, and a tight fit even for a dwarf. Tyrion pissed himself in his struggles, for all the good it did. He was up crammed face first into the cask with his knees pushed up against his ears. The stub of his nose itched horribly, but his arms were pinned so tightly that he could not reach to scratch it. A palanquin fit for a man of my stature, he thought as they hammered shut the lid and hoisted him up. He could hear voices shouting as he was jounced along. Every bounce cracked his head against the bottom of the cask. The world went round and round as the cask rolled downward, then stopped with a sudden crash that made him want to scream. Another cask slammed into his, and Tyrion bit his tongue.
That was the longest journey he had ever taken, though it could not have lasted more than half an hour. He was lifted and lowered, rolled and stacked, upended and righted and rolled again. Through the wooden staves he heard men shouting, and once a horse whickered nearby. His stunted legs began to cramp, and soon hurt so badly that he forgot the hammering in his head.
It ended as it had begun, with another roll that left him dizzy and more jouncing. Outside strange voices were speaking in a tongue he did not know. Someone started pounding on the top of the cask and the lid cracked open suddenly. Light came flooding in, and cool air as well. Tyrion gasped greedily and tried to stand, but only managed to knock the cask over sideways and spill himself out onto a hard-packed earthen floor.
Above him loomed a grotesque fat man with a forked yellow beard, holding a wooden mallet and an iron chisel. His bedrobe was large enough to serve as a tourney pavilion, but its loosely knotted belt had come undone, exposing a huge white belly and a pair of heavy breasts that sagged like sacks of suet covered with coarse yellow hair. He reminded Tyrion of a dead sea cow that had once washed up in the caverns under Casterly Rock.
The fat man looked down and smiled. "A drunken dwarf," he said, in the Common Tongue of Westeros.
"A rotting sea cow." Tyrion's mouth was full of blood. He spat it at the fat man's feet. They were in a long dim cellar with barrel-vaulted ceilings, its stone walls spotted with nitre. Casks of wine and ale surrounded them, more than enough drink to see a thirsty dwarf safely through the night. Or through a life.
"You are insolent. I like that in a dwarf." When the fat man laughed, his flesh bounced so vigorously that Tyrion was afraid he might fall and crush him. "Are you hungry, my little friend? Weary?"
"Thirsty." Tyrion struggled to his knees. "And filthy."
The fat man sniffed. "A bath first, just so. Then food and a soft bed, yes? My servants shall see to it." His host put the mallet and chisel aside. "My house is yours. Any friend of my friend across the water is a friend to Illyrio Mopatis, yes."
And any friend of Varys the Spider is someone I will trust just as far as I can throw him.
The fat man made good on the promised bath, at least... though no sooner did Tyrion lower himself into the hot water and close his eyes than he was fast asleep.
He woke naked on a goosedown featherbed so deep and soft it felt as if he were being swallowed by a cloud. His tongue was growing hair and his throat was raw, but his cock felt as hard as an iron bar. He rolled from the bed, found a chamberpot, and commenced to filling it, with a groan of pleasure.
The room was dim, but there were bars of yellow sunlight showing between the slats of the shutters. Tyrion shook the last drops off and waddled over patterned Myrish carpets as soft as new spring grass. Awkwardly he climbed the window seat and flung shudders open to see where Varys and the gods had sent him.
Beneath his window six cherry trees stood sentinel around a marble pool, their slender branches bare and brown. A naked boy stood on the water, poised to duel with a bravo's blade in hand. He was lithe and handsome, no older than sixteen, with straight blond hair that brushed his shoulders. So lifelike did he seem that it took the dwarf a long moment to realize he was made of painted marble, though his sword shimmered like true steel.
Across the pool stood stood a brick wall twelve feet high, with iron spikes along its top. Beyond that was the city. A sea of tiled rooftops crowded close around a bay. He saw square brick towers, a great red temple, a distant manse upon a hill. In the far distance sunlight shimmered off deep water. Fishing boats were moving across the bay, their sails rippling in the wind, and he could see the masts of larger ships poking up along the bay shore. Surely one is bound for Dorne, or for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. He had no means to pay for passage, though, nor was he made to pull an oar. I suppose I could sign on as a cabin boy and earn my way by letting the crew bugger me up and down the narrow sea. He wondered where he was. Even the air smells different here. Strange spices scented the chilly autumn wind, and he could hear faint cries drifting over the wall from the streets beyond. It sounded something like Valyrian, but he did not recognize more than one word in five. Not Braavos, he concluded, nor Tyrosh. Those bare branches and the chill in the air argued against Lys and Myr and Volantis as well.
When he heard the door opening behind him, Tyrion turned to confront his fat host. "This is Pentos, yes?"
"Just so. Where else?"
Pentos. Well, it was not King's Landing, that much could be said for it. "Where do whores go?" he heard himself ask.
"Whores are found in brothels here, as in Westeros. You will have no need of such, my little friend. Choose from among my serving women. None will dare refuse you."
"Slaves?" the dwarf asked pointedly.
The fat man stroked one of the prongs of his oiled yellow beard, a gesture Tyrion fond remarkably obscene. "Slavery is forbidden in Pentos, by the terms of the treaty the Braavosi imposed on us a hundred years ago. Still, they will not refuse you." Illyrio gave a ponderous half-bow. "But now my little friend must excuse me. I have the honor to be a magister of this great city, and the prince has summoned us to session." He smiled, showing a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth. "Explore the manse and grounds as you like, but on no account stray beyond the walls. It is best that no man knows that you were here."
"Were? Have I gone somewhere?"
"Time enough to speak of that this evening. My little friend and I shall eat and drink and make great plans, yes?"
"Yes, my fat friend," Tyrion replied. He thinks to use me for his profit. It was all profit with the merchant princes of the Free Cities. "Spice soldiers and cheese lords," his lord father called them, with contempt. Should a day ever dawn when Illyrio Mopatis saw more profit in a dead dwarf than a live one, he would find himself packed into another wine cask by dusk. It would be well if I were gone before that day arrives. That it would arrive he did not doubt; Cersei was not like to forget him, and even Jaime might be vexed to find a quarrel in Father's belly.
A light wind was riffling the waters of the pool below, all around the naked swordsman. It reminded him of how Tysha would riffle his hair during the false spring of their marriage, before he helped his father's guardsmen rape her. He had been thinking of those guardsmen during his flight, trying to recall how many there had been. You would think he might remember that, but no. A dozen? A score? A hundred? He could not say. They had all been grown men, tall and strong... though all men were tall to a dwarf of thirteen years. Tysha knew their number. Each of them had given her a silver stag, so she would only need to count the coins. A silver for each and a gold for me. His father had insisted that he pay her too. A Lannister always pays his debts.
"Wherever whores go," he heard Lord Tywin say once more, and once more the bowstring thrummed.
The magister had invited him to explore the manse. He found clean clothes in a cedar chest inlaid with lapis and mother-of-pearl. The clothes had been made for a small boy, he realized as he struggled into them. The fabrics were rich enough, if a little musty, but the cut was too long in the legs and too short in the arms, with a collar that would have turned his face as black as Joffrey's had he somehow contrived to get it fastened. At least they do not stink of vomit.
Tyrion began his explorations with the kitchen, where two fat women and a pot boy watched him warily as he helped himself to cheese, bread, and figs. "Good morrow to you, fair ladies," he said with a bow. "Do you perchance know where the whores go?" When they did not respond, he repeated the question in High Valyrian, though he had to say courtesan in place of whore. The younger fatter cook gave him a shrug that time.
He wondered what they would do if he took them by the hand and dragged them to his bedchamber. None will dare refuse you, Illyrio claimed, but somehow Tyrion did not think he meant these two. The younger woman was old enough to be his mother, and the older was likely her mother. Both were near as fat as Illyrio, with teats that were larger than his head. I could smother myself in flesh, he reflected. There were worse ways to die. The way his lord father had died, for one. I should have made him shit a little gold before expiring. Lord Tywin might have been niggardly with his approval and affection, but he had always been open-handed when it came to coin. The only thing more pitiful than a dwarf without a nose is a dwarf without a nose who has no gold.
Tyrion left the fat women to their loaves and kettles and went in search of the cellar where Illyrio had decanted him the night before. It was not hard to find. There was enough wine there to keep him drunk for a hundred years; sweet reds from the Reach and sour reds from Dorne, pale Pentoshi ambers, the green nectar of Myr, three score casks of Arbor gold, even wines from the fabled east, from Meereen and Qarth and Asshai by the Shadow. In the end, Tyrion chose a cask of strongwine marked as the private stock of Lord Runceford Redwyne, the grandfather of the present Lord of the Arbor. The taste of it was languorous and heady on the tongue, the color a purple so dark that it looked almost black in the dim-lit cellar. Tyrion filled a cup, and a flagon for good measure, and carried them up to gardens to drink beneath those cherry trees he'd seen.
As it happened, he left by the wrong door and never found the pool he had spied from his window, but it made no matter. The gardens behind the manse were just as pleasant, and far more extensive. He wandered through them for a time, drinking. The walls would have shamed any proper castle, and the ornamental iron spikes along the top looked strangely naked without heads to adorn them. Tyrion pictured how his sister's head might look up there, with tar in her golden hair and flies buzzing in and out of her mouth. Yes, and Jaime must have the spike beside her, he decided. No one must ever come between my brother and my sister.
With a rope and a grapnel he might be able to get over that wall. He strong arms and he did not weigh much. With a rope he should he able to reach the spikes and clamber over. I will search for a rope on the morrow, he resolved.
He saw three gates during his wanderings; the main entrance with its gatehouse, a postern by the kennels, and a garden gate hidden behind a tangle of pale ivy. The last was chained, the others guarded. The guards were plump, their faces as smooth as a baby's bottom, and every man of them wore a spiked bronze cap. Tyrion knew eunuchs when he saw them. He knew their sort by reputation. They feared nothing and felt no pain, it was said, and were loyal to their masters unto death. I could make good use of a few hundred of mine own, he reflected. A pity I did not think of that before I became a beggar.
He walked along a pillared gallery and through a pointed arch, and found himself in a tiled courtyard where a woman was washing clothes at a well. She looked to be his own age, with dull red hair and a broad face dotted by freckles. "Would you like some wine?" he asked her. She looked at him uncertainly. "I have no cup for you, we'll have to share." The washerwoman went back to wringing out tunics and hanging them to dry. Tyrion settled on a stone bench with his flagon. "Tell me, how far should I trust Magister Illyrio?" The name made her look up. "That far?" Chuckling, he crossed his stunted legs and took a drink. "I am loathe to play whatever part the cheesemonger has in mind for me, yet how can I refuse him? The gates are guarded. Perhaps you might smuggle me out under your skirts? I'd be so grateful, why, I'll even wed you. I have two wives already, why not three? Ah, but where would we live?" He gave her as pleasant a smile as a man with half a nose could manage. "I have a niece in Sunspear, did I tell you? I could make rather a lot of mischief in Dorne with Myrcella. I could set my niece and nephew at war, wouldn't that be droll?" The washerwoman pinned up one of Illyrio's tunics, large enough to double as a sail. "I should be ashamed to think such evil thoughts, you're quite right. Better if I sought the Wall instead. All crimes are wiped clean when a man joins the Night's Watch, they say. Though I fear they would not let me keep you, sweetling. No women in the Watch, no sweet freckly wives to warm your bed at night, only cold winds, salted cod, and small beer. Do you think I might stand taller in black, my lady?" He filled his cup again. "What do you say? North or south? Shall I atone for old sins or make some new ones?"
The washerwoman gave him one last glance, picked up her basket, and walked away. I cannot seem to hold a wife for very long, Tyrion reflected. Somehow his flagon had gone dry. Perhaps I should stumble back down to the cellars. The strongwine was making his head spin, though, and the cellar steps were very steep. "Where do whores go?" he asked the wash flapping on the line. Perhaps he should have asked the washerwoman. Not to imply that you're a whore, my dear, but perhaps you know where they go. Or better yet, he should have asked his father. "Wherever whores go," Lord Tywin said. She loved me. She was a crofter's daughter, she loved me and she wed me, she put her trust in me. The empty flagon slipped from his hand and rolled across the yard.
Grimacing, Tyrion pushed himself off the bench and went to fetch it, but as he did he saw some mushrooms growing up from a cracked paving tile. Pale white they were, with speckles, and red ribbed undersides as dark as blood. The dwarf snapped one off and sniffed it. Delicious, he thought, or deadly. But which? Why not both? He was not a brave enough man to take cold steel to his own belly, but a bite of mushroom would not be so hard. There were seven of the mushrooms, he saw. Perhaps the gods were trying to tell him something. He picked them all, snatched a glove down from the line, wrapped them carefully, and stuffed them down his pocket. The effort made him dizzy, though, so afterward he crawled back onto the bench, curled up, and shut his eyes.
When he woke again, he was back in his bedchamber, drowning in the goosedown featherbed once more while a blond girl shook his shoulder. "My lord," she said, "your bath awaits. Magister Illyrio expects you at table within the hour."
Tyrion propped himself against the pillows, his head in his hands. "Do I dream, or do you speak the Common Tongue?"
"Yes, my lord. I was bought to please the king." She was blue-eyed and fair, young and willowy.
"I am sure you did. I need a cup of wine."
She poured for him. "Magister Illyrio said that I am to scrub your back and warm your bed. My name – "
" – is of no interest to me. Do you know where whores go?"
She flushed. "Whores sell themselves for coin."
"Or jewels, or gowns, or castles. But where do they go?"
The girl could not grasp the question. "Is it a riddle, m'lord? I'm no good at riddles. Will you tell me the answer?"
No, he thought. I despise riddles, myself. "I will tell you nothing. Do me the same favor." The only part of you that interests me is the part between your legs, he almost said. The words were on his tongue, but somehow never passed his lips. She is not Shae, the dwarf told himself, only some little fool who thinks I play at riddles. If truth be told, even her cunt did not interest him much. I must be sick, or dead. "You mentioned a bath? Show me. We must not keep the great cheesemonger waiting."
As he bathed, the girl washed his feet, scrubbed his back, and brushed his hair. Afterward she rubbed sweet-smelling ointment into his calves to ease the aches, and dressed him once again in boy's clothing, a musty pair of burgundy breeches and a blue velvet doublet lined with cloth-of-gold. "Will my lord want me after he has eaten?" she asked as she was lacing up his boots.
"No. I am done with women." Whores.
The girl took that disappointment entirely too well for his liking. "If m'lord would prefer a boy, I can have one waiting in his bed."
M'lord would prefer his wife. M'lord would prefer a girl named Tysha. "Only if he knows where whores go."
The girl's mouth tightened. She despises me, he realized, but no more than I despise myself. That he had fucked many a woman who loathed the very sight of him, Tyrion Lannister had no doubt, but the others had at least the grace to feign affection. A little honest loathing might be refreshing, like a tart wine after too much sweet.
"I believe I have changed my mind," he told her. "Wait for me abed. Naked, if you please, I expect I'll be a deal too drunk to fumble at your clothing. Keep your mouth shut and your thighs open and the two of us should get on splendidly." He gave her a leer, hoping for a taste of fear, but all she gave him was revulsion. No one fears a dwarf. Even Lord Tywin had not been afraid, though Tyrion had held a crossbow in his hands. "Do you moan when you are being fucked?" he asked the bedwarmer.
"If it please m'lord."
"It might please m'lord to strangle you. That's how I served my last whore. Do you think your master would object? Surely not. He has a hundred more like you, but no one else like me." This time, when he grinned, he got the fear he wanted.
Illyrio was reclining on a padded couch, gobbling hot peppers and pearl onions from a wooden bowl. His brow was dotted with beads of sweat, his pig's eyes shining above his fat cheeks. Jewels danced when he moved his hands; onyx and opal, tiger's eye and tourmeline, ruby, amethyst, sapphire, emerald, jet and jade, a black diamond and a green pearl. I could live for years on his rings, Tyrion mused, though I'd need a cleaver to claim them.
"Come and sit, my little friend." Illyrio waved him closer.
The dwarf clambered up onto a chair. It was much too big for him, a cushioned throne intended to accomodate the magister's massive buttocks, with thick sturdy legs to bear his weight. Tyrion Lannister had lived all his life in a world that was too big for him, but in the manse of Illyrio Mopatis the sense of disproportion assumed grotesque dimensions. I am a mouse in a mammoth's lair, he mused, though at least the mammoth keeps a good cellar. The thought made him thirsty. He called for wine.
"Did you enjoy the girl I sent you?" Illyrio asked.
"If I had wanted a girl I would have asked for one. I lack a nose, not a tongue."
"If she failed to please... "
"She did all that was required of her."
"I would hope so. She was trained in Lys, where they make an art of love. And she speaks your Common Tongue. The king enjoyed her greatly."
"I kill kings, hadn't you heard?" Tyrion smiled evilly over his wine cup. "I want no royal leavings."
"As you wish. Let us eat." Illyrio clapped his hands together, and serving men came running.
They began with a broth of crab and monkfish, and cold egg lime soup as well. Then came quails in honey, a saddle of lamb, goose livers drowned in wine, buttered parsnips, and suckling pig. The sight of it all made Tyrion feel queasy, but he forced himself to try a spoon of soup for the sake of politeness, and once he had tasted he was lost. The cooks might be old and fat, but they knew their business. He had never eaten so well, even at court.
As he was sucking the meat off the bones of his quail, he asked Illyrio about the morning's summons. The fat man shrugged. "There are troubles in the east. Astapor has fallen, and Meereen. Ghiscari slave cities that were old when the world was young." The suckling pig was carved. Illyrio reached for a piece of the crackling, dipped it in a plum sauce, and ate it with his fingers.
"Slaver's Bay is a long way from Pentos," said Tyrion, as he speared a goose liver on the point of his knife. No man is as cursed as the kinslayer, he reminded himself, smiling.
"This is so," Illyrio agreed, "but the world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble." He clapped his hands again. "Come, eat."
The serving men brough out a heron stuffed with figs, veal cutlets blanched with almond milk, creamed herring, candied onions, foul-smelling cheeses, plates of snails and sweetbreads, and a black swan in her plumage. Tyrion refused the swan, which reminded him of a supper with his sister. He helped himself to heron and herring, though, and a few of the sweet onions. And the serving men filled his wine cup anew each time he emptied it.
"You drink a deal of wine for such a little man."
"Kinslaying is dry work. It gives a man a thirst."
The fat man's eyes glittered like the gemstones on his fingers. "There are those in Westeros who would say that killing Lord Lannister was merely a good beginning."
"They had best not say it in my sister's hearing, or they will find themselves short a tongue." The dwarf tore a loaf of bread in half. "And you had best be careful what you say of my family, magister. Kinslayer or no, I am a lion still."
That seemed to amuse the lord of cheese no end. He slapped a meaty thigh and said, "You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles. I can bring you to a real lion, my little friend. The prince keeps a pride in his menagerie. Would you like to share a cage with them?"
The lords of the Seven Kingdoms did make rather much of their sigils, Tyrion had to admit. "Very well," he conceded. "A Lannister is not a lion. Yet I am still my father's son, and Jaime and Cersei are mine to kill."
"How odd that you should mention your fair sister," said Illyrio, between snails. "The queen has offered a lordship to the man who brings her your head, no matter how humble his birth."
It was no more than Tyrion had expected. "If you mean to take her up on it, make her spread her legs for you as well. The best part of me for the best part of her, that's a fair trade."
"I would sooner have mine own weight in gold." The cheesemonger laughed so hard that Tyrion feared he was about to rupture and drown his guest in a gout of half-digested eels and sweetmeats. "All the gold in Casterly Rock, why not?"
"The gold I grant you," he said, "but the Rock is mine."
"Just so." The magister covered his mouth and belched a mighty belch. "Do you think King Stannis will give it to you? I am told he is a great one for the law. He may well grant you Casterly Rock, is that not so? Your brother wears the white cloak, so you are your father's heir by all the laws of Westeros."
"Stannis might grant me the Rock," Tyrion admitted, "but there is also the small matter of regicide and kinslaying. For those he would shorten me by a head, and I am short enough as I stand. But why would you think I mean to join Lord Stannis?"
"Why else would you go the Wall?"
"Stannis is at the Wall?" Tyrion rubbed at his nose. "What in seven bloody hells is Stannis doing at the Wall?"
"Shivering, I would think. It is warmer down in Dorne. Perhaps he should have sailed that way."
Tyrion was beginning to suspect that a certain freckled washerwoman knew more of the Common Speech than she pretended. "My niece Myrcella is in Dorne, as it happens. And I have half a mind to make her a queen."
Illyrio smiled, as his serving men spooned out bowls of black cherries in sweetcream for them both. "What has this poor child done to you, that you would wish her dead?"
"Even a kinslayer is not required to slay all his kin," said Tyrion, wounded. "Queen her, I said. Not kill her."
The cheesemonger spooned up cherries. "In Volantis they use a coin with a crown on one face and a death's head on the other. Yet it is the same coin. To queen her is to kill her. Dorne might rise for Myrcella, but Dorne alone is not enough. If you are as clever as our friend insists, you know this."
Tyrion looked at the fat man with new interest. He is right on both counts. To queen her is to kill her. And I knew that. "Futile gestures are all that remain to me. This one would make my sister weep bitter tears, at least."
Magister Illyrio wiped sweetcream from his mouth with the back of a fat hand. "The road to Casterly Rock does not go through Dorne, my little friend. Nor does it run beside the Wall. Yet there is such a road, I tell you."
"I am an attainted traitor, a regicide and kinslayer." This talk of roads annoyed him. Does he think this is a game? "What one king does another may undo. In Pentos we have a prince, my friend. He presides at ball and feast and rides about the city in a palanquin of ivory and gold. Three heralds go before him with the golden scales of trade, the iron sword of war, and the silver scourge of justice. On the first day of each new year he must deflower the maid of the fields and the maid of the seas." Illyrio leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Yet should a crop fail or a war be lost, we cut his throat to appease the gods, and choose a new prince from amongst the forty families."
Tyrion snorted through the stump of his nose. "Remind me never to become the Prince of Pentos."
"Are your Seven Kingdoms so different? There is no peace in Westeros, no justice, no faith... and soon enough no food. When men are starving and sick of fear, they look for a savior."
"They may look, but if all they find is Stannis – "
"Not Stannis. Nor Myrcella. Another." The yellow smile widened. "Another. Stronger than Tommen, gentler than Stannis, with a better claim than the girl Myrcella. A savior come from across the sea to bind up the wounds of bleeding Westeros."
"Fine words." Tyrion was unimpressed. "Words are wind. Who is this bloody savior?"
"A dragon." The cheesemonger saw the look on his face at that, and laughed. "A dragon with three heads."
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1502 of 1643 people found the following review helpful.
THE EMBITTERED READER
By kehnonymous
(why yes, I am mocking GRRM's stylistic excess as part of this review)
He broke his fast with boiled neeps, and shivering stew, washed down with a flagon of Dornish ale. The grease from stewed salt pork clung to his gristly beard as he donned a slashed velvet doublet of purple satin, emblazoned with the crest of Ser Eddard Bauer. Over his smallclothes, he wore black pantaloons. He clambered into his Honda and began the short journey west, bearing northwards along the interstate. He turned left, edging his way past opposing traffic. If I look back, I am lost.
His office was a dull brown keep that sat astride the Crown Road. His desk was hidden behind a soundproofed beige cubicle and was lined with a faux wood finish. Reek, reek, it rhymes with teak.
He had finished A Dance with Dragons not a noonsday before and wondered if in truth he had finished the entire series. George R. R. Martin is so constipated from the fawnings of his lickspittles and self-indulgent side stories that he's not like to drop another turd of a novel anytime soon, if the last decade has told it true, he thought to himself.
He smirked at his own witticism. "It is known" he said aloud to himself.
To tell it true, he had enjoyed several parts of the novel. Jon Snow's first chapter was strong, as were the Bran and Davos chapters. He'd not expected that. Many of the early story arcs had glistened wetly with promise but of these Martin had written little and less as the book wore on. Of Dany's aimless navel-gazing, there'd been much and more. Asha and Victarion vied for the distinction of the most pointless Greyjoy POV. Ariane Martell had twisted her teats for naught, for her brother Quentyn's chapters proved to be as useless as nipples on a breastplate. Gods be good, he thought, the fat man teased us with Feast's Dorne chapters for.... this?
And Jaime... that had been the cruelest jape of all. Best that Martin had left out his sole chapter. Though, given the masturbatory excess of Dance's prose, Martin could have learned a thing or two from a man who'd had to make do without his sword hand.
The epilogue was a satisfying end to an unsavory meal, but even the most succulent lemoncake doesn't salvage a bland and unfilling meal of gruel. In truth, it should've been left in A Feast for Crows, along with Cersei's chapters. At least then at least one of the novels from the last ten years would've amounted to more than a mummer's farce.
He set down his copy of A Dance with Dragons with an unsatisfying thud. Words are wind, he mused. Speaking of which... He raised a leg and broke his word. It smelt of stale bacon grease and mashed neeps.
By then, his bladder was full to bursting from the morning's coffee, so he headed to the latrine before he pissed his smallclothes. Reek, reek, it rhymes with leak. Along the way, he passed the receptionist from the adjoining office. She was a pretty brown-haired thing, a woman of about four-and-twenty, fully flowered.
"Where do whores go?", he asked her.
She slapped him.
He entered the men's bathroom and undid his breeches. The urinals were crofted from gleaming white porcelain and bore the seal of American Standard. Whilst it received his golden stream of the morning's piss, he contemplated how this was a metaphor for how Ser Martin had raised the leg and done the same to the continuity of A Song of Ice and Fire and the first three books.
He angrily composed an e-mail to Martin's editor whilst zipping up his breeches. He was only a man grown, unskilled in the ways of editing, but such was his wroth.
You know nothing, Anne Groell...
2730 of 2995 people found the following review helpful.
These dragons don't dance, they stumble.
By Kate Morris
In "A Dance with Dragons," George R.R. Martin seems to have ripped out a page from his own self-written guide to writing a good story, and replaced it with a page from Robert Jordan's version - and in both cases, the change was very much for the worse.
The page he borrowed could charitably be called "Setup," or "Preparation," or even given some grandiose description about the "careful movement and positioning of critical pieces on a game board." In practical terms, though, it comes down to "Delay," "Pointless Stalling," and would be more accurately summed up as "an entire book about multiple characters wandering slowly across the world to approach - but never reach - a place in which something interesting has the potential to happen." For example, everyone's favourite dwarf has a simple goal: he wants to throw in his lot with the dragon queen, offering her whatever advice and wisdom he can. A noble goal, that, and one that would do a great deal to move the story along - his cynicism would open her eyes about some pretty important things. But does he make it to her? Not in this book! No, he's far too busy being packed into barrels like Bilbo the hobbit, swapping tales with cheese lords, being lost, found, sold, and bought, falling in with slaves and signing paper for sellswords, and even being saddled with a plucky lady-dwarf sidekick who continually tells him that he should stop causing trouble and just focus on making the big people laugh, because that's what dwarves are for. In Westeros during the previous four books, he was known and feared as Tyrion of House Lannister, Halfman to the wild mountain tribes, former Hand of the King, unsung hero of Blackwater Bay, the Imp, kinslayer and Kingslayer both; in Essos during this book, all he really manages to do is play a lot of Stratego, reminisce about a previously-unmentioned happy boyhood of gymnastics training in the art of dwarfish capering, and fall convincingly off a trained pig.
The same song is sung throughout the book: nobody actually *gets* anywhere. In Meereen, Daenerys mopes, sighs, tosses her braids, and moons over a pretty boy. On the Wall, Jon Snow hems, haws, asks everyone within earshot for advice on what to do, then completely ignores all of the advice to do something entirely different while complaining about how nobody supports him. Stannis grits his teeth, Melisandre misinterprets prophecies, Dolorous Edd makes comments about mules. A new character is introduced who represents either the most vibrantly crimson scarlet of red herrings, or George R.R. Martin on waterskis leaping majestically over a great white shark; the jury's still out on the kid, but it *is* safe to say that he spends half the book marching determinedly in one direction before abruptly turning around and charging off on completely the opposite course.
And then, there's the issue of the page missing from this book, the page that had elevated the first three books so high above the likes of Goodkind or Jordan. It's the page called "Caprice," or "Injustice," or maybe "Nobody is Safe." It's the page on which he knowingly and thoroughly subverted the standard fantasy tropes of good triumphing over evil, of all death being either deserved (if the deceased was a bad guy, like for instance an orc) or deeply meaningful (a sacrifice, like Boromir dying to protect the hobbits). The previous books used that page, and used it well. No character was sacred: anyone could die at any time, for any reason - or for no reason at all - because the world was a cruel and merciless and fickle place, and justice and honor and fair treatment were exceptions rather than rules.
In "A Dance with Dragons," though - and in "A Feast for Crows," to an extent - that page is notably absent. The Onion Knight, by this point, has gone through more lives than the average cat; while I have great fondness for the character, I almost wish Martin *would* kill him off just so the poor soul could rest. Whenever Arya gets a knife pressed against her throat, it turns out to be a well-meaning rescuer offering her a haircut. Mance dies then reappears good as new, Catelyn died and reappeared (somewhat the worse for wear, in her case), ghosts from the past pop up alive and well and living in the Westerosi equivalent of Paris. At this point, I'm more than half-expecting Khal Drogo to ride up on a skeletal horse and say "Hey Dany babe, I busted out of the nightlands, let's cross the poison water before my afterlife parole officer finds out I'm here." A Song of Ice and Fire has gone from "Nobody is Safe" to "Every Main Character is Totally Safe at this Point," and the suspense is just *gone*.
So, after all that, do I regret reading "A Dance with Dragons"? No. The sad truth is, even a mediocre George R.R. Martin book is better than most of the other offerings in the genre. My thoughtful boyfriend bought it for me on iBooks the very hour it was released, and I'm sincerely grateful that he did, and I'll buy and enjoy the next one just as promptly.
But even though this book was good enough, it can't help but suffer by comparison to the others. On its own merits, I rated "A Dance with Dragons" 3/5 stars; compared to the magnificence of the first three, though, it's more like a 1.5/5.
439 of 478 people found the following review helpful.
Annoyance with Dragons
By Giles Gammage
Reality can be harsh to happy endings. Evil is not always defeated, the hero does not always get the girl, and nobody ever really lives happily ever after. That's fantasy.
Take, for example, the tale of a plucky fantasy author, battling to finish his life's work, who overcomes a six-year-long bout of writer's block to at last complete the fifth installment in his epic. It would be nice to think that the book thus produced was worth the wait. That would be the happy ending. But reality can be harsh to happy endings. "A Dance with Dragons" is not the book I waited six years to read, and to wish otherwise would be fantasy.
George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series was never mere fantasy, but with each new volume, it is becoming more and more a daytime soap opera.
Mr Martin famously spent the second half of the 80s working in television, and if I may jump to unwarranted conclusions, this experience seems to have helped him break new ground by infusing fantasy with some of the best aspects of TV--sharply-drawn, sympathetic characters, crisp, witty dialogue, and intricate plotting.
He's also made clever use of catchphrases and personal mottoes to provide a kind of leitmotif to each character's story and give a sense of continuity and cohesion to the tale: "A Lannister always pays his debts", "If I look back, I am lost", "You know nothing, Jon Snow." More famously, he's gotten good mileage from his willingness to kill off seemingly key characters at surprising moments.
Maintaining such a high standard of writing for even one book would have been an impressive feat. Mr Martin managed it for three, stumbled on the fourth, and after 20-odd years working on the series, the fatigue is beginning to show.
The personal catchphrases continue to get good airtime, with "a Lannister always pays his debts" featuring five times, "If I look back, I am lost (or doomed)" six times, and "You know nothing, Jon Snow" an impressive 13. However, much of the other writing has become simply repetitive and lazy. The phrase "words are wind" also pops up 13 times in various character's mouths, "much and more" (meaning "a lot") gets used as hefty 30 times, but this is pipped for the number one spot by "(s)he was not wrong", at a teeth-gritting 33 times. These phrases have become less a leitmotif, more a pianist banging the same three chords over and over again.
As part of the series' gritty image, Mr Martin has never been shy about including sex in his stories, but now he appears to be shoehorning it in, simply for its own sake. One character spends the night before a siege having graphic sex. Another pays a surprise visit to one of his generals--and interrupts the latter mid-coitus. A description of a man being burned at the stake takes time out to tell us what happens when the fire reaches his genitals.
The habit of killing off characters has likewise devolved into self-parody. Having already killed off most of the expendables, Mr Martin spends most of "A Dance with Dragons" only appearing to kill off characters, but not really. One is apparently executed, but isn't. Another appears to drown, but doesn't. Yet another seems to be beheaded, but--well, you get the idea. The effect is a bit like the boy who cried wolf, and cheapens the book's finale, in which two key characters appear to die, since by then the reader doesn't believe for minute Mr Martin will actually follow through.
The other major drawback to the wholesale slaughter among named characters is that Mr Martin spends much time introducing a slate of new characters in much the same way that the old Star Trek series used to introduce new red-shirts.
What is left? Plot, but not much of it. Most of the characters spend their time somnolently staggering from A to B. There are sporadic bouts of frenetic action, to be sure, but the story itself continues to plod along, fairly aimlessly as far as I can see. With no resolution to any of the major plot lines anywhere in sight, it's increasingly hard to care about any of the latest crop of characters, knowing they probably won't live much longer than halfway through the next book (when and if it is ever published). It's only in the handful of chapters that "Dance with Dragons" shakes off its lethargy and wraps up in a number of cliffhanger endings.
I would like to believe the series will get better, that all questions will be answered, all the plot lines will come together, but if there's one thing Mr Martin has taught me, it's not to believe in happy endings.
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