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gottaread13 · 4 years

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ELEVEN

WAITING ON DOC’S DOORSILL AT WORK WAS A POSTCARD FROM some island he had never heard of out in the Pacific Ocean, with a lot of vowels in it’s name. The cancellation was in French and initialed by a local postmaster, along with the notation courier par lance-coco which as close as he could figure from the Petit Larousse must mean some kind of catapult mail delivery involving coconut shells, maybe as a way of dealing with an unapproachable reef. The message on the card was unsigned, but he knew it was from Shasta. “I wish you could see these waves. Its one more of these places a voice from somewhere else tells you you have to be. Remember that day with the Ouija board? I miss those days and I miss you. I wish so many things could be different… Nothing was supposed to happen this way, Doc, I’m so sorry.” Maybe she was, then again, maybe not. But what about this Ouija board? Doc went stumbling through his city dump of a memory. Oh …oh, sure, dimly… it had been during one of those prolonged times of no dope, nobody had any, everybody was desperate and suffering lapses of judgment. People were opening up cold capsules and laboriously sorting the thousands of tiny beads inside by color, in the belief that each color stood for a different belladonna alkaloid, which taken in big enough doses would get them loaded. They were snorting nutmeg, drinking cocktails of Visine and inexpensive wine, eating packets of morning-glory seeds despite rumors that the seed companies were coating them with some chemical that would make you throw up. Anything. One day when Doc and Shasta were over at Sortilege’s house, she mentioned this Ouija board she had. Doc had a brainflash. “Hey! You think it knows where we can score?” Sortilege raised her eyebrows and shrugged, but waved a go- ahead hand at the board. The usual suspicions then arose, like how could you be sure the other person wasn’t deliberately moving the planchette to make it look like some message from beyond, and so on. “Easy as pie,” Sortilege said, “just do it all by yourself.” Following her instructions, Doc breathed himself deeply and carefully into a receptive state, letting the tips of his fingers rest as lightly as possible on the planchette. “Now, make your request, and see what happens.” “Groovy,” said Doc. “Hey—where can I find some dope, man? a-and, you know, good shit?” The planchette took off like a jackrabbit, spelling out almost faster than Shasta could copy an address down Sunset somewhat east of Vermont, and even throwing in a phone number, which Doc promptly dialed. “Howdy, dopers,” cooed a female voice, “we’ve got whatever you need, and remember—the sooner you get over here, the more there’ll be left for you.” “Yeah like whom I talking to? Hello? Hey!” Doc looked at the receiver, puzzled. “She just hung up.” “Could’ve been a recording,” said Sortilege. “Did you hear what she was screaming at you? ‘Stay away! I am a police trap!’” “You want to come along, keep us out of trouble?” She looked doubtful. “I have to advise you at this point that it might not be anything. See, the problem about Ouija boards—” But Doc and Shasta were already out the door and soon rattling up the chuckholed obstacle course known as Rosecrans Boulevard under a cloudless sky, in the sort of perfect daylight you always saw on TV cop shows, unshaded even by the eucalyptus trees that had recently all been chopped down. KHJ was playing a Tommy James & the Shondells marathon. Commercial-free in fact. What could be more auspicious? Even before they reached the airport, something about the light had begun to go weird. The sun vanished behind clouds which grew thicker by the minute. Up in the hills among the oil pumps, the first raindrops began to fall, and by the time Doc and Shasta got to La Brea they were in the middle of a sustained cloudburst. This was way too unnatural. Ahead, someplace over Pasadena, black clouds had gathered, not just dark gray but midnight black, tar-pit black, hitherto- unreported-circle-of-Hell black. Lightning bolts had begun to descend across the L.A. Basin singly and in groups, followed by deep, apocalyptic peals of thunder. Everybody had turned their headlights on, though it was midday. Water came rushing down the hillsides of Hollywood, sweeping mud, trees, bushes, and many of the lighter types of vehicle on down into the flatlands. After hours of detouring for landslides and traffic jams and accidents, Doc and Shasta finally located the mystically revealed dope dealers address, which turned out to be an empty lot with a gigantic excavation in it, between a laundromat and an Orange Julius-plus-car wash, all of them closed. In the thick mist and lashing rain, you couldn’t even see to the other side of the hole. “Hey. I thought there was supposed to be a lot of dope around here.” What Sortilege had tried to point out about Ouija boards, as Doc learned later back at the beach, while wringing out his socks and looking for a hair dryer, was that concentrated around us are always mischievous spirit forces, just past the threshold of human perception, occupying both worlds, and that these critters enjoy nothing better than to mess with those of us still attached to the thick and sorrowful catalogs of human desire. “Sure!” was their attitude, “you want dope? Here’s your dope, you fucking idiot.” Doc and Shasta sat parked by the edge of the empty swamped rectangle and watched it’s edges now and then slide in, and then after a while things rotated ninety degrees, and it began to look, to Doc at least, like a doorway, a great wet temple entrance, into someplace else. The rain beat down on the car roof, lightning and thunder from time to time interrupting thoughts of the old namesake river that had once run through this town, long canalized and tapped dry, and crippled into a public and anonymous confession of the deadly sin of greed…. He imagined it filling again, up to it’s concrete rim, and then over, all the water that had not been allowed to flow here for all these years now in unrelenting return, soon beginning to occupy the arroyos and cover the flats, all the swimming pools in the backyards filling up and overflowing and flooding the lots and streets, all this karmic waterscape connecting together, as the rain went on falling and the land vanished, into a sizable inland sea that would presently become an extension of the Pacific. It was funny that of all things to mention in the limited space of a coconut-launched postcard Shasta should have picked that day in the rain. It had stuck with Doc somehow too, even though it came at a point late in their time together, when she was already halfway out the door and Doc saw it happening but was letting it happen, and despite it there they were, presently making out frantically, like kids at the drive-in, steaming up the windows and getting the seat covers wet. Forgetting for a few minutes how it was all going to develop anyway. Back at the beach, the rain continued, and every day up in the hills, another fragment of real estate came sliding down. Insurance salesmen had Brylcreem running down into their collars, and stewardii found it impossible even with half- gallon cans of hair spray purchased in duty-free zones far away to maintain their hairdos in anything close to a stylish flip. The termitic houses of Gordita Beach had all turned to the consistency of wet sponge, emergency plumbers reached in to squeeze the beams and joists, thinking of their own winter homes in Palm Springs. People began to go crazy even while on the natch. Some enthusiast, claiming to be George Harrison of the Beatles, tried to hijack the Goodyear Blimp, moored at it’s winter quarters at the intersection of the Harbor and San Diego Freeways, and make it fly him to Aspen, Colorado, in the rain. The rain had a peculiar effect on Sortilege, who was just around then beginning to get obsessed by Lemuria and it’s tragic final days. “You were there in a former life,” Doc theorized. “I dream about it, Doc. I wake up so sure sometimes. Spike feels that way, too. Maybe it’s all this rain, but we’re starting to have the same dreams. We can’t find a way to return to Lemuria, so it’s returning to us. Rising up out of the ocean—‘hi Leej, hi Spike, long time ain’t it…’” “It talked to you guys?” “I don’t know. It isn’t just a place.”

DOC TURNED OVER Shasta’s postcard now and stared at the picture on the front. It was a photo taken underwater of the ruins of some ancient city—broken columns and arches and collapsed retaining walls. The water was supernaturally clear and seemed to emit a vivid blue-green light. Fish, what Doc guessed you’d call tropical, were swimming back and forth. It all seemed familiar. He looked for a photo credit, a copyright date, a place of origin. Blank. He rolled a joint and lit up and considered. This had to be a message from someplace besides a Pacific island whose name he couldn’t pronounce. He decided to go back and visit the Ouija-board address, which, being the site of a classic dope misadventure, had remained permanently entered in his memory. Denis came along for muscle. The hole in the ground was gone, and in it’s place rose a strangely futuristic building. From the front it might have been taken at first for some kind of religious structure, smoothly narrow and conical, like a church spire only different. Whoever put it up must have had a pretty comfortable budget to work with, too, because the whole outside had been covered in gold leaf. Then Doc noticed how this tall pointed shape was also curved away from the street. He went down the block a little way and looked back to get a side view, and when he saw how dramatic the curve was and how sharp the point at the top, he finally tumbled. Aha! In the old L.A. tradition of architectural whimsy, this structure was supposed to be a six- story-high golden fang. “Denis, I’m gonna look around for a while, you want to wait in the car or come in and cover my back or something?” “I was gonna go try and find a pizza,” Denis said. Doc handed him the car keys. “And… they did have driver ed at Leuzinger High.” bure. “And you remember this is a stick, not automatic and so forth.” “I’m cool, Doc.” And Denis sped off.

THE FRONT DOOR was nearly invisible, more of a big access panel that fit snugly into the curving façade. In the lobby beneath a tasteful sign in sans-serif face reading GOLDEN FANG ENTERPRISES, INC. \ CORPORATE HQ and behind a nameplate of her own that said “Xandra, hi!” sat an Asian receptionist wearing a black vinyl jumpsuit and a distant expression, who asked him in a semi-Brit accent whether he was sure he had the right place. “This is the address they told me at the Club Asiatique in San Pedro? Just here to pick up a package for the management?” Xandra reached for a telephone, punched a button, murmured into it, listened, gave Doc another doubtful once- over, stood, and led him across the reception area to a brushed- metallic door. It took only a step or two for him to dig that she’d logged more dojo hours in the year previous than he’d spent in front of the tube in his whole life—not the sort of young lady whose displeasure you’d go looking to provoke. “Second office on the left. Dr. Blatnoyd will see you in a moment.” Doc found the office and looked around for something to check out his hair in but saw only a small yellow-framed feng shui mirror by the door. The face looking back did not seem to be his own. “This is not promising,” he muttered. Behind a titanium desk, the window revealed a stretch of lower Sunset—taquerías, low-rent hotels, pawn shops. There were beanbag chairs and a range of magazines—Foreign Affairs, Sinsemilla Tips, Modern Psychopath, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists— that gave Doc no handle on the clientele here. He started paging through 2000 Hairdos and was just getting into “That Five-Point Scissor Cut—What Your Stylist Isn’t Telling You,” when Dr. Blatnoyd came in wearing a suit in a deep, nearly ultraviolet shade of velvet, with very wide jacket lapels and bell-bottom trousers and accented with a raspberry-colored bow tie and display handkerchief. He seated himself behind the desk, reached for a weighty loose-leaf manual of some kind and began consulting it, squinting over at Doc from time to time. Finally, “So…you have some ID, I imagine.” Doc went looking through his wallet till he found a business card from a Chinese head shop on North Spring Street he thought would do the trick. “I can’t read this, it’s in some … Oriental… what is this, Chinese?” “Well, I figured that you, being Chinese—” “What? what are you talking about?” “‘The … the Golden Fang …’?” “It’s a syndicate, most of us happen to be dentists, we set it up years ago for tax purposes, all legit— Wait,” peering at Doc you’d have to say diagnostically, “where’d you tell Xandra you were from again?” “Uh…” “Why, you’re another one of those hippie dopefiends, aren’t you. My goodness. Here for a little perking up, I’ll bet—” In a jiffy he was out with a tall cylinder of brown glass sealed elaborately with globs of some bright red plastic—“Dig it! just in from Darmstadt, lab quality, maybe I’ll even have some with you...” And before Doc knew it the hectic D.D.S. had a quantity of fluffy white cocaine crystals all chopped up into snortable format and arranged in lines on a nearby copy of Guns &Ammo. Doc shrugged in apology. “I try not to do dope I can’t pay for, ‘s what it is.” “Whoo!” Dr. Blatnoyd had a soda straw and was busy snorting away. “No worries, it’s on the house, as the TV antenna man always sez…Hmm, missed a little...” He took it on his finger and rubbed it enthusiastically into his gums. Doc did half a line in either nostril, just to be sociable, but somehow could not shake the impression that all was not as innocent here as it looked. He had been in a dentist’s office or two, and there was a distinctive smell and a set of vibes that were as absent here as room echoes, which he’d also been wondering about. Like something else was going on— something… not groovy. There was a quiet but no-nonsense knock at the door, and Xandra the receptionist looked in. She had unzipped the top of the jumpsuit, and Doc could now make out this exquisite pair of no-bra tits, their nipples noticeably erect. “Oh, Doctor,” she breathed, half singing it. “Yes, Xandra,” replied Dr. Blatnoyd, moist-nosed and beaming. Xandra nodded and slid away back on out the door again, smiling over her shoulder. “And don’t forget to bring that bottle” “Be right back,” Blatnoyd assured Doc, speeding out after her, eyes frenziedly focused on where her ass had just been, his echoless footsteps soon vanishing into unknown regions of the Golden Fang Building. Doc went over and had a look at the manual on the desk. Titled Golden Fang Procedures Handbook, it was open to a chapter titled “Interpersonal Situations.” “Section Eight— Hippies. Dealing with the Hippie is generally straightforward. His childlike nature will usually respond positively to drugs, sex, and/or rock and roll, although in which order these are to be deployed must depend on conditions specific to the moment.” From the doorway came a loud, violent chirp. Doc looked up and saw a smiling young woman, blond, Californian, presentable, wearing a striped minidress of many different “psychedelic” colors and waving at him vigorously, causing enormous earrings, shaped like pagodas of some kind, to swing back and forth and actually jingle. “Here for my Smile Maintenance appointment with Dr. Rudy!” A blast from the past. “Hey! that’s at Japonica, ain’t it. Japonica Fenway! Imagine meeting you here!” This was not a moment he’d been either dreading or hoping for, though now and then somebody would remind him of the ancient American Indian belief that if you save somebody’s life, you are responsible for them from then on, forever, and he would wonder if any of that applied to his history with Japonica. It had been his first paying gig as a licensed private eye, and pay it did, for sure. The Fenways were heavy-duty South Bay money, living on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in a gated enclave located inside the already gated high-rent community of Rolling Hills. “How am I supposed to come see you,” Doc wondered when Crocker Fenway, Japonica’s dad, called him at the office. “Guess it’ll have to be outside the gates and down in the flats,” said Crocker, “like Lomita?” It was a pretty open-and-shut runaway-daughter case, hardly worth daily scale, let alone the extravagant bonus Crocker insisted on paying when Doc finally brought Japonica back, one lens missing from her wire-rim shades and vomit in her hair, making the handoff in the same parking lot where he and Crocker had met originally. It wasn’t clear if she’d ever clearly registered Doc then, or remembered him now. “So! Japonica! what’ve you been up to?” “Oh, escaping, mostly? There’s this, like, place? that my parents keep sending me to?” Which turned out to be Chryskylodon, the same nut plantation in Ojai that Doc remembered his Aunt Reet mentioning and which Sloane and Mickey had donated a wing to. Though Doc once may have rescued Japonica from a life of dark and unspecified hippie horror, apparently restoration to the bosom of her family had been enough to really drive her around the bend. Against the neutral surface of the wall opposite, Doc had a moment’s visual of an American Indian in full Indian gear, perhaps one of those warriors who wipe out Henry Fonda’s regiment in Fort Apache (1948), approaching with a menacing frown. “Doc responsible for crazy white chick now. What Doc planning to do about that? If anything.” “Excuse me, short man with strange hair? Are you all right?” And on she went without waiting for an answer, twinkling like a roomful of speed freaks hanging Christmas tinsel, about her different escapes. It was beginning to give Doc a headache. Owing to Governor Reagan’s shutdown of most of the state mental facilities, the private sector had been trying in it’s way to pick up some of the slack, soon in fact becoming a standard California child-rearing resource. The Fenways had had Japonica in and out of Chryskylodon on a sort of maintenance-contract basis, depending as always on how they themselves were feeling day to day, for both led emotional lives of unusually high density, and often incoherence. “Some days all I had to do was play the wrong kind of music, and there’s my bags already packed, down in the front hall waiting for the driver.” Soon Chryskylodon had found itself attracting a type of silent benefactor—middle-aged, male, though occasionally female, more focused than usual on the young and mentally disturbed. Freaky chicks and fun-loving dopers! Why do they call it the Love Generation? Come on up to Chryskylodon for a rockin weekend and find out! Absolute discretion guaranteed! Circa 1970, “adult” was no longer quite being defined as in times previous. Among those who could afford to, a strenuous mass denial of the passage of time itself was under way. All across a city long devoted to illusory product, clairvoyant Japonica had seen them, these travelers invisible to others, poised, gazing from smogswept mesa-tops above the boulevards, acknowledging one another across miles and years, summit to summit, in the dusk, under an obscurely enforced silence. Wingfeathers trembled along their naked backs. They knew they could fly. A moment more, an eyeblink in eternity, and they would ascend… So, Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd, out on a first blind date with Japonica at the Sound Mind Caff, a secluded eatery with a patio in back and a menu designed by a resident three-star organic chef, was not only enchanted, he was wondering if somebody hadn’t slipped some new psychedelic into his pomegranate martini. This girl was delightful! Being a little ESP-deficient, of course Rudy failed to appreciate that behind her wide sparkling gaze Japonica was not only thinking about but at this point actually visiting other worlds. The Japonica sitting with the older man in the funny velour suit was actually a Cybernetic Organism, or cyborg, programmed to eat and drink, converse and socialize, while Real Japonica tended to important business elsewhere, because she was the Kozmic Traveler, deep issues Out There awaited, galaxies wheeled, empires collapsed, karma would not be denied, and Real Japonica must always be present at some exact point in five- dimensional space, or chaos would resume it’s dominion. She returned to the Sound Mind to find that Cyborg Japonica had somehow malfunctioned and gone skipping into the kitchen and done something gross to the Soup of the Day, and now they would have to pour it all down the sink. Actually, it was the Soup of the Night, a sinister indigo liquid which probably didn’t deserve much respect, but still, Cyborg Japonica could have showed some self-control. Naughty, impulsive Cyborg Japonica. Perhaps Real Japonica should not let her have those special high-voltage batteries she had been asking for. That would show her. Dr. Blatnoyd, escorting her out through a roomful of disapproving faces, only grew more bedazzled. So this was a free-spirited hippie chick! He saw these girls on the streets of Hollywood, on the TV screen, but this was his first up-close encounter. No wonder Japonica’s parents didn’t know what to do with her—his assumption here, which he didn’t examine too closely, being that he did. “And actually, I wasn’t too sure about who he was till I came in for my first Smile Evaluation…” At which point in Japonica’s reminiscing, in popped the lecherous toothyanker himself, zipping up his fly. “Japonica? I thought we’d agreed never to—” Catching sight of Doc—”oh, you’re still here?” “I escaped again, Rudy,” she twinkled. Denis also now came lurching in. “Hey man, your ride’s in a body shop.” “It signed itself in, Denis?” “I sort of mashed the front end. I was looking at these chicks out on Little Santa Monica—” “You went to Beverly Hills for a pizza, and rear-ended somebody there.” “Needs a new … what do they call that, with the hoses, where the steam comes out—” “Radiator—Denis, you said you took driver ed in high school.” “No, no, Doc, you said did they have Driver Ed, and I said yes cause they did, this dude Eddie Ochoa, that there wasn’t a cop south of Salinas could get near him, and that’s what everybody called him—” “So, like, you … never actually… learned …” “All that stuff they wanted you to remember, man?” Xandra, visibly disheveled, now came running in after Denis, yelling, “I told you you couldn’t come up here,” then spotted Japonica and screeched to a halt. “Oh. Smile Maintenance Chick. How lovely,” while scaling tiny glares Dr. Blatnoyd’s way like the star-shaped blades in kung fu movies. “Miss Fenway,” the doctor began to explain, “may seem a little psychotic today….” “Groovy!” cried Denis. “What?” Blatnoyd blinking. “Being insane, man? it’s groovy, where are you at, man?” “Denis …” Doc murmured. “It is not ‘groovy’ to be insane. Japonica here has been institutionalized for it.” “Yep,” beamed Japonica. “Like, in the place? Psychedelic! They put those volts in your head, man?” “Volts ‘n’ volts,” twinkled Japonica. “Whoa. Bad for la cabeza, man.” “C’mon, Denis,” said Doc, “we’re gonna have to figure out how to catch a bus back to the beach.” “If you need a ride, I’m heading that way,” offered Japonica. Running a fast eyeball diagnostic, Doc could see nothing too alarming—right at the moment she was being as sane as anybody here, not too many useful remarks Doc could pass, so he settled for, “Everything cool with your brakes and lights, Japonica? license-plate lights and so forth?” “A-OK? Just had Wolfgang in for periodic maintenance?” “That’s…” “My car?” Yes, another warning buzzer, but Doc was now on to obsessing over the vast numbers of law enforcement likely to be deployed between here and the beach. “Excuse me,” wondered Xandra, who’d been staring at Denis, “is that a slice of pizza on your hat?” “Oh wow, thanks, man, I’ve been lookin all over for that…” “Mind if I tag along with you people?” asked Dr. Blatnoyd. “Contingencies of the road and so forth.” Wolfgang turned out to be a ten-year-old Mercedes sedan with a roof panel passengers could slide back, allowing them, like dogs in pickups, to stick their heads out in the wind if they wanted. Doc rode shotgun, widebrim fedora down over his eyes, trying to ignore a deep foreboding. Dr. Blatnoyd climbed in the back with Denis and then spent some time trying to push a #66 market bag full of something under the front seat on Doc’s side. “Hey,” exclaimed Denis, “what’s in that bag you’re stuffing under Doc’s seat?” “Pay no attention to that bag,” advised Dr. Blatnoyd. “It will only make everybody paranoid.” Which it did, except for Japonica, who was maneuvering them smoothly up Sunset through the late rush-hour traffic. Denis had his head out the roof. “Drive slower,” he called down after a while, “I want to dig this.” They were crossing Vine and about to go past Wallach’s Music City, where each of a long row of audition booths inside had it’s own lighted window facing the street. In every window, one by one as Japonica crept by, appeared a hippie freak or small party of hippie freaks, each listening on headphones to a different rock ‘n’ roll album and moving around at a different rhythm. Like Denis, Doc was used to outdoor concerts where thousands of people congregated to listen to music for free, and where it all got sort of blended together into a single public self, because everybody was having the same experience. But here, each person was listening in solitude, confinement and mutual silence, and some of them later at the register would actually be spending money to hear rock ‘n’ roll. It seemed to Doc like some strange kind of dues or payback. More and more lately he’d been brooding about this great collective dream that everybody was being encouraged to stay tripping around in. Only now and then would you get an unplanned glimpse at the other side. Denis waved, yelled and flashed peace signs, but nobody in any of the booths noticed. At last he slid back down into the Mercedes. “Far out. Maybe they’re all stoned. Hey! That must be why they call those things headphones!” He put his face closer to Dr. Blatnoyds than the dentist was really comfortable with. “Think about that, man! Like, headphones, right?” Japonica was driving so skillfully that it wasn’t till they were out of the white dazzle of Hollywood and across Doheny that Doc noticed (a) it was now dark and (b) the headlights weren’t on. “Ah, Japonica, like, your lights?” She was humming to herself, a tune Doc recognized, with dawning concern, as the theme from Dark Shadows. After four more bars, he tried again. “Like, it would be so groovy, Japonica, really, to have some lights working is all, seeing ‘s how Beverly Hills cops are known to lurk uphill on these different cross streets? just waiting for minor violations, like lights, to pop folks on?” Her humming was way too intense. Doc made the mistake of looking over, only to find her staring at him and not the road, eyes glittering ferally through a blond curtain of California-chick hair. No, this was not reassuring. Though hardly a connoisseur of the freakout, he did recognize a wraparound hallucination when he saw one and understood immediately that while she likely didn’t see Doc at all, whatever she was seeing was indeed physically out there, in the gathering fog, and just about to— “Everything all right, baby?” Rudy Blatnoyd rang in. “Oo-oooo” warbled Japonica, putting some vibrato onto it and stepping on the gas, “Ooo-ooo woo-oo, woo-ooo…” Cross traffic, neighborhood machinery such as Excaliburs and Ferraris, came blurring by at high speed, missing them by small clearances. Dr. Blatnoyd, as if wishing to start a therapeutic discussion, was glaring at Denis. “There. That’s just what I’ve been talking about.” “You didn’t say nothing about it happening while she’s driving, man.” Japonica had meantime decided that she must run every red light she could find, even speeding up to catch some before they could turn green. “Urn, Japonica, my dear? That was a red light?” Blatnoyd pointed out helpfully. “Ooh, I don’t think so!” she explained blithely. “I think that was one of Its eyes!” “Oh. Well, yes,n Doc soothed. “We can sure dig that, Japonica, but then again—” “No, no, there’s no It’ watching you!” Blatnoyd now in some agitation. “Those are not eyes,’ those are warnings to come to a full stop and wait till the light turns green, don’t you remember learning that in school?” “That’s what those colors are for, man?” Denis said. Suddenly, like a UFO rising over the ridgeline, the flashing lights of a police car appeared uphill and came swooping down on them, the siren screaming. “Like, shit,” Denis heading for the hatch in the roof again, “I’m outta here, man,” overlooking for the moment the streetscape rushing past. Feeling no sign of deceleration, Doc, trying not to think about the paper bag under the seat, kept reaching with his foot for the brake pedal, meantime trying gently to steer the car over to the shoulder. If he’d been in his own ride and by himself, he might have chosen to make a run for it, at least open a door an inch or two and get rid of the bag, but by the time he could bring himself to try even that, the Man was on top of them. “License and registration, miss?” The cop seemed to be focused on Japonica’s tits. She smiled back at him in high- intensity silence, occasionally glancing at the Smith & Wesson on his hip. His partner, a rookie even blonder than he was, came and leaned on the passenger side, content for the moment to watch Denis, who had paused in his effort to climb through the roof to gaze at the strobing array of colored lights on top of the cruiser, and now and then go, “Oh wow, man.” “Are you the Great Beast?” inquired rattling-mad Japonica in her sub-jailbait lilt. “No no no,” Blatnoyd droning desperately, “that’s a policeman, Japonica, who only wants to make sure you’re all right…” “Just the license and registration if you wouldn’t mind,” said the cop. “You know you were driving without your headlights, miss.” “But I can see in the dark,” Japonica nodding emphatically, “I can see real good\n “Her sister went into labor about an hour ago,” Blatnoyd imagining he was charming their way out of a ticket, “and Miss Fenway promised she’d be there in time to see the baby born, so she might’ve been a little inattentive back there?” “That case,” said the cop, “maybe somebody else ought to be driving.” Japonica promptly jumped in the back seat with Blatnoyd, while Doc slid over behind the wheel and Denis moved up front to ride shotgun. The cops looked on beaming, like instructors at an etiquette class. “Oh and we’ll need everybody’s ID, too,” the rookie announced. “Sure thing,” Doc bringing out his PI license. “What’s it about, Officer?” “New program,” shrugged the other cop, “you know how it is, another excuse for paperwork, they’re calling it Cultwatch, every gathering of three or more civilians is now defined as a potential cult.” The rookie was making checkmarks on a list attached to a clipboard. “Criteria,” the other cop continued, “include references to the book of Revelation, males with shoulder-length or longer hair, endangerment through automotive absentmindedness, all of which you folks have been exhibiting.” “Yeah man,” Denis put in, “but we’re in a Mercedes, and it’s only painted one color, beige—don’t we get points for that?” Doc noticed for the first time that both cops were... well, not trembling, the police wouldn’t tremble, but vibrating for sure, with the post-Mansonical nerves that currently ruled the area. “We’ll hand this all in, Mr. Sportello, it’ll go in some master data bank here and in Sacramento, and unless there’s wants or warrants we don’t know about, you won’t hear any more on this.” FOLLOWING DR. BLATNOYD’S directions, Doc turned off Sunset, braking almost immediately for a guard gate staffed by private heat of some kind. “Evening, Heinrich,” boomed Rudy Blatnoyd. “Nice to see you, Dr. B.,” replied the sentry, waving him through. They went winding through Bel Air, up hillsides and canyons, arriving at a mansion with another gate, low and nearly invisible inside it’s landscape gardening, seeming so much constructed of night itself that at sunrise it might all disappear. Behind the gate glimmered a pale slash through the dark, which Doc finally figured out was a moat, with a drawbridge over it. “Won’t be a minute,” Dr. Blatnoyd climbing out, grabbing the bag from under the front seat and getting into a cryptic discussion over the gate intercom with a voice Doc guessed to be female, before the gate opened and the drawbridge came down, rumbling and creaking. Then the night was very quiet again—not even the distant freeway traffic could be heard, or the footpads of coyotes, or the slither of snakes… “Way too quiet,” said Denis, “it’s freaking me out, man.” “I think we’ll wait here on this side of the moat,” Doc said. “Okay?” Denis rolled an enormous joint and lit up, and soon the interior of the Mercedes was full of smoke. After a while there was shrieking on the gate intercom. “Hey man,” said Denis, “you don’t have to yell, man.” “Dr. Blatnoyd wishes us to inform you,” announced the woman at the other end, “that he will be remaining as our guest, and there is thus no further need for you to wait.” “Yeah, and you talk like a robot, man.” It took them a while to find their way back to Sunset. “I guess I’ll crash with some friends in Pacific Palisades,” Japonica announced. “Mind letting us off at the Greyhound in Santa Monica? We can grab the midnight local.” “By the way, aren’t you the man who found me and brought me back to my dad that time?” “Just doing my job,” Doc immediately defensive. “Did he really want me back?” “I’ve worked gigs like that a couple of times since,” Doc said carefully, in case she had to drive much more tonight, “and he seemed like your standard worried parent.” “He’s an asshole,” Japonica assured him. “Here, this is my office number. I don’t have regular hours, so you may not always find me in.” She shrugged and managed a smile. “If it’s meant to be.”

THINGS WERE WEIRD for a few days with the Dart over in Beverly Hills, though Doc imagined it was having itself a nice time in the company of all those Jaguars and Porsches and so forth. When he finally went over to pick up his ride, at Resurrection of the Body, a collision emporium somewhat south of Olympic, he ran into his friend Tito Stavrou having a lively argument with Manuel the owner. Tito ran a limo service, though there was only one unit in his fleet, unfortunately not one of those limos able to Glide from the Curb, much less Insert Itself Effortlessly into Traffic—no, this one lurched from the curb percussively into traffic, being in fact garaged for at least half of any given premium period (as Tito’s latest insurance carrier had just discovered, much to it’s own, and you can imagine how much to Tito’s, dismay) or being attended to by various sand-and-fill crews around the Greater L.A. Area. One calendar year it got repainted six times. “You sure you mean limo and not limón?” suggested Manuel, as part of the recreational abuse he liked to lay on Tito whenever the vehicle showed up with a new set of dings. They stood out in the main shed, assembled from a Quonset hut first cut in half lengthwise and the two pieces then rearranged so that they met in a point high overhead to make a sort of churchlike vault. “It would be cheaper if you just pay me in front, small fee, anytime you want it painted, just bring it by, day or night, any color in stock includin the metallics, in and out in a couple hours.” “What worries me,” said Tito, “is that ‘in and out,’ you know, all these high-risk elements of the auto-parts community you deal with?” “This is Resurrection, ése! Were in the miracle business! If Jesus turned water into wine in front of your face? would you be goin, ‘What’s this I’m drinkin, I wannit Dom Perignon,’ or some shit? If I was that picky about what comes in here for a paint job? ask for what? their license and registration? Then they’re really pissed off, they go someplace else, plus I get put on a shit list I might not want to be on?” Manuel noticed Doc for the first time. “You the Bentley?” “The’64 Dodge Dart?” Manuel looked back and forth between Doc and Tito for a while. “You guys know each other?” “That would really depend,” Doc was about to say, but Manuel went on. “I was gonna charge you more, but guys like Tito here, they’re sub-sidizin guys like you.” The amount on the invoice was nevertheless a Beverly Hills type of number, and half Doc’s day got blown setting up a payment schedule. “Come on,” said Tito, “I’ll buy you lunch. I need your advice on something.” They went down to Pico and headed toward Rancho Park. This street was a chowhound’s delight. Back when Doc was still new in town, one day around sunset—the daily event, not the boulevard—he was in Santa Monica near the western end of Pico, the light over all deep L.A. softening to purple with some darker gold to it, and from this angle and hour of the day it seemed to him he could see all the way down Pico for miles into the heart of the great Megalopolis itself, having yet to discover that if he wanted to, he could also eat his way down Pico night after night for a long while before repeating an ethnic category. This did not always turn out to be good news for the indecisive doper who might know he was hungry but not necessarily how to deal with it in terms of specific food. Many was the night Doc ran out of gas, and his munchies- afflicted companions out of patience, long before settling on where to go eat. Today they ended up at a Greek restaurant called Teké, which according to Tito meant an old-time hashish parlor in Greek. “I hope this won’t be a problem,” said Tito, “but word is around you’ve been working on this Mickey Wolfmann case?” “Not how I’d put it. Nobody’s paying me. Sometimes I think all it is is guilt. Wolfmann’s girlfriend is my ex-old lady, she said she needed help, so I’ve been trying to help.” Tito, who had made a point of facing the front entrance, lowered his voice till Doc could hardly hear him. ‘“I’m taking a chance that you ain’t bent, Doc. You ain’t bent, are you?” “Not so far, but I could always use a nice envelope full of cash.” “These guys,” an unhappy look crossing Tito’s face, “don’t hand you envelopes, it’s more like, do what they want, maybe they don’t fuck you up too bad.” “You’re sayin this is mob-related—” “I only wish. I mean, I know some Family badasses who scare most people, they sure scare me, but I wouldn’t ever go to them with this, they’d just take a look at who it is and go, like, ‘Pasadena, man.’” “Not to mention you owe them money.” “No more, I kicked all that.” “What. No horses, no pan parlors? No Li’l T-Rex? No Salvatore ‘Paper Cut’ Gazzoni? No Adrian Prussia?” “Nope, even Adrian’s off my ass anymore, all paid off, the vig, everything.” “Good news cause sooner or later that fucker’d be reachin for his baseball bat, going to town on your head or somethin. Man gives loan-sharkin a bad name.” “They’re all in my sorry past now, I been twelve-steppin it, Doc. Meetings, everythin.” “Well, Inez must be happy. How long’s it been?” “Comin up on six months next weekend. We’re gonna go celebrate it in style, too, we’re takin the limo to Vegas, stayin at Caesar’s—” “Excuse me, Tito, am I confusing Las Vegas with someplace else where all they do is fucking gamble nonstop? How do you expect to—” “Avoid temptation? Hey that’s just it, how’m I ever gonna know? Thing is to jump in, see what happens.” “Oboy. This is all cool with Inez?” “Her idea.” Mike the owner and cook appeared with a huge plate of dolmadhes, Kalamata olives, and midget spanakopitas it looked like it would take a week to polish off. “You’re sure you want to eat here,” he greeted Tito. “This is Doc, he saved my life once.” “And this is how you thank him?” Mike shaking his head in reproof. “Think long and hard, my friends,” muttering back to the kitchen. “I saved your life?” Tito shrugged. “That time up on Mulholland.” “You saved mine, man, you’re the one knew where it was,” this particular “it” being a car-napped 1934 Hispano- Suiza J12 whose return Doc had been negotiating with a Lithuanian thyroid case who showed up carrying a modified AK-47 with a banana clip so oversize that he kept tripping over it, which looking back was what had saved everybody’s lives, probably. “I was doin that all for myself, man, you happened to be there when we brought it back and all that money started flyin around.” “Whatever, Doc—there’s somethin now that you’re the only one I can tell it to.” A quick look around. “Doc, I was one of the last people to talk to Mickey Wolfmann before he dropped off the screen.” “Shit,” replied Doc, encouragingly. “And no, I haven’t been near the heat with this. It would get back to these guys before I was out the door, and I’d end up a shark hors oeuvre. “D and D, Tito.” “What happened, Mickey got to where he didn’t always trust his drivers. They were most of ’em ex-cons, which meant they had their own IOUs to pay off that sometimes he didn’t know about. So once in a while he calls me on the unlisted line, and I pick him up someplace we decide on at the last minute.” “You used that limo? Not exactly a low profile.” “Nah, we’d use Falcons or Novas, I can always score one on short notice, even a VDub if it ain’t painted too funny.” “So the day Mickey disappeared… he called you? you took him someplace?” “He wanted me to pick him up. He called in the middle of the night, it sounded like a pay phone, he was talking real quiet, he was scared, like somebody was after him. He gave me an address out of town, I drove up there and waited, but he never showed. After a couple hours I was getting too much attention so I split.” “Where was this?” “Ojai, near someplace called Chryskylodon.” “I’ve been hearing about it,” Doc said, “some nuthouse for the upper brackets. Old Indian word that means ‘serenity.’” “Ha!” Tito shook his head. “Who told you that?” “It’s in their brochure?” “It ain’t Indian, it’s Greek, trust me, they talked Greek around the house all the time I was coming up.” “What’s it mean in Greek?” “Well, it’s squashed together a little, but it means like a gold tooth, this one here—” He tapped at a canine. “Oh, shit. Tang’? Could it be that?” “Yeah, close enough. Gold fang.”

§ § §

TYRION

A horse whickered impatiently behind him, from amidst the ranks of gold cloaks drawn up across the road. Tyrion could hear Lord Gyles coughing as well. He had not asked for Gyles, no more than he'd asked for Ser Addam. or Jalabhar Xho or any of the rest, but his lord father felt Doran Martell might take it ill if only a dwarf came out to escort him across the Blackwater. Joffrey should have met the Dornishmen himself, he reflected as he sat waiting, but he would have mucked it up, no doubt. Of late the king had been repeating little jests about the Dornish that he'd picked up from Mace Tyrell's men-atarms. How many Dornishmen does it take to shoe a horse? Nine. One to do the shoeing, and eight to lift the horse up. Somehow Tyrion did not think Doran Martell would find that amusing. He could see their banners flying as the riders emerged from the green of the living wood in a long dusty column. From here to the river, only bare black trees remained, a legacy of his battle. Too many banners, he thought sourly, as he watched the ashes kick up under the hooves of the approaching horses, as they had beneath the hooves of the Tyrell van as it smashed Stannis in the flank. Martell's brought half the lords of Dorne, by the look of it. He tried to think of some good that might come of that, and failed. "How many banners do you count?" he asked Brorm. The sellsword knight shaded his eyes. "Eight ... no, nine." Tyrion turned in his saddle. "Pod, come up here. Describe the arms you see, and tell me which houses they represent." Podrick Payne edged his gelding closer. He was carrying the royal standard, Joffrey's great stag-and-lion, and struggling with its weight. Bronn bore Tyrion's own banner, the lion of Lannister gold on crimson. He's getting taller, Tyrion realized as Pod stood in his stirrups for a better look. He'll soon tower over me like all the rest. The lad had been making a diligent study of Domish heraldry, at Tyrion's command, but as ever he was nervous. "I can't see. The wind is flapping them." "Bronn, tell the boy what you see." Bronn looked very much the knight today, in his new doublet and cloak, the flaming chain across his chest. "A red sun on orange," he called, "with a spear through its back." "Martell," Podrick Payne said at once, visibly relieved. "House Martell of Sunspear, my lord. The Prince of Dome." "My horse would have known that one," said Tyrion dryly. "Give him another, Bronn." "There's a purple flag with yellow balls. "Lemons?" Pod said hopefully. "A purple fleld strewn with lemons? For House Dalt? Of, of Lemonwood." "Might be. Next's a big black bird on yellow. Something pink or white in its claws, hard to say with the banner flapping." "The vulture of Blackmont grasps a baby in its talons," said Pod. "House Blackmont of Blackmont, ser." Bronn laughed. "Reading books again? Books will ruin your sword eye, boy. I see a skull too. A black banner." "The crowned skull of House Manwoody, bone and gold on black." Pod sounded more confident with every correct answer. "The Manwoodys of Kingsgrave." "Three black spiders?" "They're scorpions, ser. House Qorgyle of Sandstone, three scorpions black on red." "Red and yellow, a jagged line between." "The flames of Hellholt. House Uller." Tyrion was impressed. The boy's not half stupid, once he gets his tongue untied. "Go on, Pod," he urged. "If you get them all, I'll make you a gift." "A pie with red and black slices," said Bronn. "There's a gold hand in the middle." "House Allyrion of Godsgrace." "A red chicken eating a snake, looks like." "The Gargalens of Salt Shore. A cockatrice. Ser. Pardon. Not a chicken. Red, with a black snake in its beak." "Very good!" exclaimed Tyrion. "One more, lad." Bronn scanned the ranks of the approaching Domishmen. "The last's a golden feather on green checks." "A golden quill, ser. Jordayne of the Tor." Tyrion laughed. "Nine, and well done. I could not have named them all myself." That was a lie, but it would give the boy some pride, and that he badly needed. Martell brings some formidable companions, it would seem. Not one of the houses Pod had named was small or insignificant. Nine of the greatest lords of Dorne were coming up the kingsroad, them or their heirs, and somehow Tyrion did not think they had come all this way just to see the dancing bear. There was a message here. And not one I like. He wondered if it had been a mistake to ship Myrcella down to Sunspear. "My lord," Pod said, a little timidly, "there's no litter." Tyrion turned his head sharply. The boy was right. "Doran Martell always travels in a litter," the boy said. "A carved litter with silk hangings, and suns on the drapes." Tyrion had heard the same talk. Prince Doran was past fifty, and gouty. He may have wanted to make faster time, he told himself. He may have feared his litter would make too tempting a target for brigands, or that it would prove too cumbersome in the high passes of the Boneway. Perhaps his gout is better. So why did he have such a bad feeling about this? This waiting was intolerable. "Banners forward," he snapped. "We'll meet them." He kicked his horse. Bronn and Pod followed, one to either side. When the Dornishmen saw them coming, they spurred their own mounts, banners rippling as they rode. From their ornate saddles were slung the round metal shields they favored, and many carried bundles of short throwing spears, or the double-curved Dornish bows they used so well from horseback. There were three sorts of Dornishmen, the first King Daeron had observed. There were the salty Dornishmen who lived along the coasts, the sandy Dornishmen of the deserts and long river valleys, and the stony Dornishmen who made their fastnesses in the passes and heights of the Red Mountains. The salty Domishmen had the most Rhoynish blood, the stony Dornishmen the least. All three sorts seemed well represented in Doran's retinue. The salty Dornishmen were lithe and dark, with smooth olive skin and long black hair streaming in the wind. The sandy Dornishmen were even darker, their faces burned brown by the hot Dornish sun. They wound long bright scarfs around their helms to ward off sunstroke. The stony Dornishmen were biggest and fairest, sons of the Andals and the First Men, brownhaired or blond, with faces that freckled or burned in the sun instead of browning. The lords wore silk and satin robes with jeweled belts and flowing sleeves. Their armor was heavily enameled and inlaid with burnished copper, shining silver, and soft red gold. They came astride red horses and golden ones and a few as pale as snow, all slim and swift, with long necks and narrow beautiful heads. The fabled sand steeds of Dome were smaller than proper warhorses and could not bear such weight of armor, but it was said that they could run for a day and night and another day, and never tire. The Domish leader forked a stallion black as sin with a mane and tail the color of fire. He sat his saddle as if he'd been born there, tall, slim, graceful. A cloak of pale red silk fluttered from his shoulders, and his shirt was armored with overlapping rows of copper disks that glittered like a thousand bright new pennies as he rode. His high gilded helm displayed a copper sun on its brow, and the round shield slung behind him bore the sun- and-spear of House Martell on its polished metal surface. A Martell sun, but ten years too young, Tyrion thought as he reined up, too fit as well, and far too fierce. He knew what he must deal with by then. How many Dornishmen does it take to start a war? he asked himself. Only one. Yet he had no choice but to smile. "Well met, my lords. We had word of your approach, and His Grace King Joffrey bid me ride out to welcome you in his name. My lord father the King's Hand sends his greetings as well." He feigned an amiable confusion. "Which of you is Prince Doran?" "My brother's health requires he remain at Sunspear." The princeling removed his helm. Beneath, his face was lined and saturnine, with thin arched brows above large eyes as black and shiny as pools of coal oil. Only a few streaks of silver marred the lustrous black hair that receded from his brow in a widow's peak as sharply pointed as his nose. A salty Dornishmen for certain. "Prince Doran has sent me to join King Joffrey's council in his stead, as it please His Grace." "His Grace will be most honored to have the counsel of a warrior as renowned as Prince Oberyn of Dome," said Tyrion, thinking, This will mean blood in the gutters. "And your noble companions are most welcome as well." "Permit me to acquaint you with them, my lord of Lannister. Ser Deziel Dalt, of Lemonwood. Lord Tremond Gargalen. Lord Harmen Uller and his brother Ser Ulwyck. Ser Ryon Allyrion and his natural son Ser Daemon Sand, the Bastard of Godsgrace. Lord Dagos Manwoody, his brother Ser Myles, his sons Mors and Dickon. Ser Arron Qorgyle. And never let it be thought that I would neglect the ladies. Myria Jordayne, heir to the Tor. Lady Larra Blackmont, her daughter Jynessa, her son Perros." He raised a slender hand toward a black- haired woman to the rear, beckoning her forward. "And this is Ellaria Sand, mine own paramour." Tyrion swallowed a groan. His paramour, and bastard-born, Cersei will pitch a holy fit if he wants her at the wedding. If she consigned the woman to some dark comer below the salt, his sister would risk the Red Viper's wrath. Seat her beside him at the high table, and every other lady on the dais was like to take offense. Did Prince Doran mean to provoke a quarrel? Prince Oberyn wheeled his horse about to face his fellow Domishmen. "Ellaria, lords and ladies, sers, see how well King Joffrey loves us. His Grace has been so kind as to send his own Uncle Imp to bring us to his court. " Bronn snorted back laughter, and Tyrion perforce must feign amusement as well. "Not alone, my lords. That would be too enormous a task for a little man like me." His own party had come up on them, so it was his turn to name the names. "Let me present Ser Flement Brax, heir to Homvale. Lord Gyles of Rosby. Ser Addam Marbrand, Lord Commander of the City Watch. jalabhar Xho, Prince of the Red Flower Vale. Ser Harys Swyft, my uncle Kevan's good father by marriage. Ser Merlon Crakehall. Ser Philip Foote and Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, two heroes of our recent battle against the rebel Stannis Baratheon. And mine own squire, young Podrick of House Payne." The names had a nice ringing sound as Tyrion reeled them off, but the bearers were nowise near as distinguished nor formidable a company as those who accompanied Prince Oberyn, as both of them knew full well. "My lord of Lannister," said Lady Blackmont, "we have come a long dusty way, and rest and refreshment would be most welcome. Might we continue on to the city?" "At once, my lady." Tyrion turned his horse's head, and called to Ser Addam Marbrand. The mounted gold cloaks who formed the greatest part of his honor guard turned their horses crisply at Ser Addam's command, and the column set off for the river and King's Landing beyond. Oberyn Nymeros Martell, Tyrion muttered under his breath as he fell in beside the man. The Red Viper of Dorne. And what in the seven hells am I supposed to do with him? He knew the man only by reputation, to be sure ... but the reputation was fearsome. When he was no more than sixteen, Prince Oberyn had been found abed with the paramour of old Lord Yronwood, a huge man of fierce repute and short temper. A duel ensued, though in view of the prince's youth and high birth, it was only to first blood. Both men took cuts, and honor was satisfied. Yet Prince Oberyn soon recovered, while Lord Yronwood's wounds festered and killed him. Afterward men whispered that Oberyn had fought with a poisoned sword, and ever thereafter friends and foes alike called him the Red Viper. That was many years ago, to be sure. The boy of sixteen was a man past forty now, and his legend had grown a deal darker. He had traveled in the Free Cities, leaming the poisoner's trade and perhaps arts darker still, if rumors could be believed. He had studied at the Citadel, going so far as to forge six links of a maester's chain before he grew bored. He had soldiered in the Disputed Lands across the narrow sea, riding with the Second Sons for a time before forming his own company. His tourneys, his battles, his duels, his horses, his carnality ... it was said that he bedded men and women both, and had begotten bastard girls all over Dome. The sand snakes, men called his daughters. So far as Tyrion had heard, Prince Oberyn had never fathered a son. And of course, he had crippled the heir to Highgarden. There is no man in the Seven Kingdoms who will be less welcome at a 7)7rell wedding, thought Tyrion. To send Prince Oberyn to King's Landing while the city still hosted Lord Mace Tyrell, two of his sons, and thousands of their men-at-arms was a provocation as dangerous as Prince Oberyn himself. A wrong word, an ill-timed jest, a look, that's all it will take, and our noble allies will be at one another's throats. "We have met before," the Domish prince said lightly to Tyrion as they rode side by side along the kingsroad, past ashen fields and the skeletons of trees. "I would not expect you to remember, though. You were even smaller than you are now." There was a mocking edge to his voice that Tyrion misliked, but he was not about to let the Dornishman provoke him. "When was this, my lord?" he asked in tones of polite interest. "Oh, many and many a year ago, when my mother ruled in Dome and your lord father was Hand to a different king." Not so different as you might think, reflected Tyrion. "It was when I visited Casterly Rock with my mother, her consort, and my sister Elia. I was, oh, fourteen, fifteen, thereabouts, Elia a year older. Your brother and sister were eight or nine, as I recall, and you had just been bom." A queer time to come visiting. His mother had died giving him birth, so the Martells would have found the Rock deep in mouming. His father especially. Lord Tywin seldom spoke of his wife, but Tyrion had heard his uncles talk of the love between them. In those days, his father had been Aerys's Hand, and many people said that Lord Tywin Lannister ruled the Seven Kingdoms, but Lady Joanna ruled Lord Tywin. "He was not the same man after she died, imp," his Uncle Gery told him once. "The best part of him died with her." Gerion had been the youngest of Lord Tytos Lannister's four sons, and the uncle Tyrion liked best. But he was gone now, lost beyond the seas, and Tyrion himself had put Lady Joanna in her grave. "Did you find Casterly Rock to your liking, my lord?" "Scarcely. Your father ignored us the whole time we were there, after commanding Ser Kevan to see to our entertainment. The cell they gave me had a featherbed to sleep in and Myrish carpets on the floor, but it was dark and windowless, much like a dungeon when you come down to it, as I told Elia at the time. Your skies were too grey, your wines too sweet, your women too chaste, your food too bland ... and you yourself were the greatest disappointment of all." "I had just been born. What did you expect of me?" "Enormity," the black-haired prince replied. "You were small, but far-famed. We were in Oldtown at your birth, and all the city talked of was the monster that had been born to the King's Hand, and what such an omen might foretell for the realm." "Famine, plague, and war, no doubt." Tyrion gave a sour smile. "It's always famine, plague, and war. Oh, and winter, and the long night that never ends." "All that," said Prince Oberyn, "and your father's fall as well. Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man." "I try, but he refuses to learn." Tyrion gave a sigh. "But do go on, I pray you. I love a good tale." "And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine's. Your head was monstrous huge, we heard, half again the size of your body, and you had been born with thick black hair and a beard besides, an evil eye, and lion's claws. Your teeth were so long you could not close your mouth, and between your legs were a girl's privates as well as a boy's." "Life would be much simpler if men could fuck themselves, don't you agree? And I can think of a few times when claws and teeth might have proved useful. Even so, I begin to see the nature of your complaint." Brorm gave out with a chuckle, but Oberyn only smiled. "We might never have seen you at all but for your sweet sister. You were never seen at table or hall, though sometimes at night we could hear a baby howling down in the depths of the Rock. You did have a monstrous great voice, I must grant you that. You would wail for hours, and nothing would quiet you but a woman's teat." "Still true, as it happens." This time Prince Oberyn did laugh. "A taste we share. Lord Gargalen once told me he hoped to die with a sword in his hand, to which I replied that I would sooner go with a breast in mine." Tyrion had to grin. "You were speaking of my sister?" "Cersei promised Elia to show you to us. The day before we were to sail, whilst my mother and your father were closeted together, she and Jaime took us down to your nursery. Your wet nurse tried to send us off, but your sister was having none of that. 'He's mine/ she said, 'and you're just a milk cow, you can't tell me what to do. Be quiet or I'll have my father cut your tongue out. A cow doesn't need a tongue, only udders."' "Her Grace learned charm at an early age," said Tyrion, amused by the notion of his sister claiming him as hers. She's never been in any rush to claim me since, the gods know. "Cersei even undid your swaddling clothes to give us a better look," the Dornish prince continued. "You did have one evil eye, and some black fuzz on your scalp. Perhaps your head was larger than most ... but there was no tail, no beard, neither teeth nor claws, and nothing between your legs but a tiny pink cock. After all the wonderful whispers, Lord Tywin's Doom turned out to be just a hideous red infant with stunted legs. Elia even made the noise that young girls make at the sight of infants, I'm sure you've heard it. The same noise they make over cute kittens and playful puppies. I believe she wanted to nurse you herself, ugly as you were. When I commented that you seemed a poor sort of monster, your sister said, 'He killed my mother/ and twisted your little cock so hard I thought she was like to pull it off. You shrieked, but it was only when your brother Jaime said, 'Leave him be, you're hurting him/ that Cersei let go of you. 'It doesn't matter/ she told us. 'Everyone says he's like to die soon. He shouldn't even have lived this long."' The sun was shining bright above them, and the day was pleasantly warm for autumn, but Tyrion Lannister went cold all over when he heard that. My sweet sister. He scratched at the scar of his nose and gave the Dornishman a taste of his "evil eye." Now why would he tell such a tale? Is he testing me, or simply twisting my cock as Cersei did, so he can hear me scream? "Be sure and tell that story to my father. It will delight him as much as it did me. The part about my tail, especially. I did have one, but he had it lopped off." Prince Oberyn had a chuckle. "You've grown more amusing since last we met." "Yes, but I meant to grow taller." "While we are speaking of amusement, I heard a curious tale from Lord Buckler's steward. He claimed that you had put a tax on women's privy purses." "It is a tax on whoring," said Tyrion, irritated all over again. And it was my bloody father's notion. "Only a penny for each, ah ... act. The King's Hand felt it might help improve the morals of the city." And pay for Joffrey's wedding besides. Needless to say, as master of coin, Tyrion had gotten all the blame for it. Brorm said they were calling it the dwarf's penny inthestreets. "Spread your legs for the Halfman, now," they were shouting in the brothels and wine sinks, if the sellsword could be believed. "I will make certain to keep my pouch full of pennies. Even a prince must pay his taxes." "Why should you need to go whoring?" He glanced back to where Ellaria Sand rode among the other women. "Did you tire of your paramour on the road?" "Never. We share too much." Prince Oberyn shrugged. "We have never shared a beautiful blonde woman, however, and Ellaria is curious. Do you know of such a creature?" "I am a man wedded." Though not yet bedded. "I no longer frequent whores." Unless I want to see them hanged. Oberyn abruptly changed the subject. "It's said there are to be seventyseven dishes served at the king's wedding feast." "Are you hungry, my prince?" "I have hungered for a long time. Though not for food. Pray tell me, when will the iustice be served?" "Justice." Yes, that is why he's here, I should have seen that at once. "You were close to your sister?" "As children Elia and I were inseparable, much like your own brother and sister." Gods, I hope not. "Wars and weddings have kept us well occupied, Prince Oberyn. I fear no one has yet had the time to look into murders sixteen years stale, dreadful as they were. We shall, of course, just as soon as we may. Any help that Dome might be able to provide to restore the king's peace would only hasten the beginning of my lord father's inquiry - " "Dwarf," said the Red Viper, in a tone grown markedly less cordial, "spare me your Lannister lies. Is it sheep you take us for, or fools? My brother is not a bloodthirsty man, but neither has he been asleep for sixteen years. Jon Arryn came to Sunspear the year after Robert took the throne, and you can be sure that he was questioned closely. Him, and a hundred more. I did not come for some mummer's show of an inquiry. I came for justice for Elia and her children, and I will have it. Starting with this lummox Gregor Clegane ... but not, I think, ending there. Before he dies, the Enormity That Rides will tell me whence came his orders, please assure your lord father of that." He smiled. "An old septon once claimed I was living proof of the goodness of the gods. Do you know why that is, Imp?" "No," Tyrion admitted warily. "Why, if the gods were cruel, they would have made me my mother's firstborn, and Doran her third. I am a bloodthirsty man, you see. And it is me you must contend with now, not my patient, prudent, and gouty brother." Tyrion could see the sun shining on the Blackwater Rush half a mile ahead, and on the walls and towers and hills of King's Landing beyond. He glanced over his shoulder, at the glittering column following them up the kingsroad. "You speak like a man with a great host at his back," he said, "yet all I see are three hundred. Do you spy that city there, north of the river?" "The midden heap you call King's Landing?" "That's the very one." "Not only do I see it, I believe I smell it now." "Then take a good sniff, my lord. Fill up your nose. Half a million people stink more than three hundred, you'll find. Do you smell the gold cloaks? There are near five thousand of them. My father's own swom swords must account for another twenty thousand. And then there are the roses. Roses smell so sweet, don't they? Especially when there are so many of them. Fifty, sixty, seventy thousand roses, in the city or camped outside it, I can't really say how many are left, but there's more than I care to count, anyway." Martell gave a shrug. "In Dome of old before we married Dacron, it was said that all flowers bow before the sun. Should the roses seek to hinder me I'll gladly trample them underfoot." "As you trampled Willas Tyrell?" The Domishman did not react as expected. "I had a letter from Willas not half a year past. We share an interest in fine horseflesh. He has never bome me any ill will for what happened in the lists. I struck his breastplate clean, but his foot caught in a stirrup as he fell and his horse came down on top of him. I sent a maester to him afterward, but it was all he could do to save the boy's leg. The knee was far past mending. If any were to blame, it was his fool of a father. Willas Tyrell was green as his surcoat and had no business riding in such company. The Fat Flower thrust him into tourneys at too tender an age, just as he did with the other two. He wanted another Leo Longthom, and made himself a cripple." "There are those who say Ser Loras is better than Leo Longthom. ever was," said Tyrion. "Renly's little rose? I doubt that." "Doubt it all you wish," said Tyrion, "but Ser Loras has defeated many good knights, including my brother Jaime." "By defeated, you mean unhorsed, in tourney. Tell me who he's slain in battle if you mean to frighten me." "Ser Robar Royce and Ser Emmon Cuy, for two. And men say he performed prodigious feats of valor on the Blackwater, fighting beside Lord Renly's ghost." "So these same men who saw the prodigious feats saw the ghost as well, yes?" The Domishman laughed lightly. Tyrion gave him a long look. "Chataya's on the Street of Silk has several girls who might suit your needs. Dancy has hair the color of honey. Marei's is pale white-gold. I would advise you to keep one or the other by your side at all times, my lord." "At all times?" Prince Oberyn lifted a thin black eyebrow. "And why is that, my good imp?" "You want to die with a breast in hand, you said." Tyrion cantered on ahead to where the ferry barges waited on the south bank of the Blackwater. He had suffered all he meant to suffer of what passed for Dornish wit. Father should have sent Joffrey after all. He could have asked Prince Oberyn if he knew how a Dornishman differed from a cowflop. That made him grin despite himself. He would have to make a point of being on hand when the Red Viper was presented to the king.

§ § §

BRAN

The tower stood upon an island, its twin reflected on the still blue waters. When the wind blew, ripples moved across the surface of the lake, chasing one another like boys at play. Oak trees grew thick along the lakeshore, a dense stand of them with a litter of fallen acorns on the ground beneath. Beyond them was the village, or what remained of it. It was the first village they had seen since leaving the foothills. Meera had scouted ahead to make certain there was no one lurking amongst the ruins. Sliding in and amongst oaks and apple trees with her net and spear in hand, she startled three red deer and sent them bounding away through?the ?rush. Summer saw the flash of motion and was after them at once. Bran watched the direwolf lope off, and for a moment wanted nothing so much as to slip his skin and run with him, but Meera was waving for them to come ahead. Reluctantly, he turned away from Summer and urged Hodor on, into the village. Jojen walked with them. The ground from here to the Wall was grasslands, Bran knew; fallow fields and low rolling hills, high meadows and lowland bogs. It would be much easier going than the mountains behind, but so much open space made Meera uneasy. "I feel naked," she confessed. "There's no place to hide." "Who holds this land?" Jojen asked Bran. "The Night's Watch," he answered. "This is the Gift. The New Gift, and north of that Brandon's Gift." Maester Luwin had taught him the history. "Brandon the Builder gave all the land south of the Wall to the black brothers, to a distance of twenty-five leagues. For their ... for their sustenance and support." He was proud that he still remembered that part. "Some maesters say it was some other Brandon, not the Builder, but it's still Brandon's Gift. Thousands of years later, Good Queen Alysanne visited the Wall on her dragon Silverwing, and she thought the Night's Watch was so brave that she had the Old King double the size of their lands, to fifty leagues. So that was the New Gift." He waved a hand. "Here. All this." No one had lived in the village for long years, Bran could see. All the houses were falling down. Even the inn. It had never been much of an inn, to look at it, but now all that remained was a stone chimney and two cracked walls, set amongst a dozen apple trees. One was growing up through the common room, where a layer of wet brown leaves and rotting apples carpeted the floor. The air was thick with the smell of them, a cloying cidery scent that was almost overwhelming. Meera stabbed a few apples with her frog spear, trying to find some still good enough to eat, but they were all too brown and wormy. It was a peaceful spot, still and tranquil and lovely to behold, but Bran thought there was something sad about an empty inn, and Hodor seemed to feel it too. "Hodor? " he said in a confused sort of way. "Hodor? Hodor? " "This is good land." Jojen picked up a handful of dirt, rubbing it between his fingers. "A village, an inn, a stout holdfast in the lake, all these apple trees ... but where are the people, Bran? Why would they leave such a place?" "They were afraid of the wildlings," said Bran. "Wildlings come over the Wall or through the mountains, to raid and steal and carry off women. If they catch you, they make your skull into a cup to drink blood, Old Nan used to say. The Night's Watch isn't so strong as it was in Brandon's day or Queen Alysanne's, so more get through. The places nearest the Wall got raided so much the smallfolk moved south, into the mountains or onto the Umber lands east of the kingsroad. The Greatjon's people get raided too, but not so much as the people who used to live in the Gift." Jojen Reed turned his head slowly, listening to music only he could hear. "We need to shelter here. There's a storm coming. A bad one." Bran looked up at the sky. It had been a beautiful crisp clear autumn day, sunny and almost warm, but there were dark clouds off to the west now, that was true, and the wind seemed to be picking up. "There's no roof on the inn and only the two walls," he pointed out. "We should go out to the holdfast." "Hodor," said Hodor. Maybe he agreed. "We have no boat, Bran." Meera poked through the leaves idly with her frog spear. "There's a causeway. A stone causeway, hidden under the water. We could walk out." They could, anyway; he would have to ride on Hodor's back, but at least he'd stay dry that way. The Reeds exchanged a look. "How do you know that?" asked Jojen. "Have you been here before, my prince?" "No. Old Nan told me. The holdfast has a golden crown, see?" He pointed across the lake. You could see patches of flaking gold paint up around the crenellations. "Queen Alysanne slept there, so they painted the merlons gold in her honor." "A causeway?" Joien studied the lake. "You are certain?" "Certain," said Bran. Meera found the foot of it easily enough, once she knew to look; a stone pathway three feet wide, leading right out into the lake. She took them out step by careful step, probing ahead with her frog spear. They could see where the path emerged again, climbing from the water onto the island and turning into a short flight of stone steps that led to the holdfast door. Path, steps, and door were in a straight line, which made you think the causeway ran straight, but that wasn't so. Under the lake it zigged and zagged, going a third of a way around the island before jagging back. The turns were treacherous, and the long path meant that anyone approaching would be exposed to arrow fire from the tower for a long time. The hidden stones were slimy and slippery too; twice Hodor almost lost his footing and shouted "HODOR!" in alarm before regaining his balance. The second time scared Bran badly. If Hodor fell into the lake with him in his basket, he could well drown, especially if the huge stableboy panicked and forgot that Bran was there, the way he did sometimes. Maybe we should have stayed at the inn, under the apple tree, he thought, but by then it was too late. Thankfully there was no third time, and the water never got up past Hodor's waist, though the Reeds were in it up to their chests. And before long they were on the island, climbing the steps to the holdfast. The door was still stout, though its heavy oak planks had warped over the years and it could no longer be closed completely. Meera shoved it open all the way, the rusted iron hinges screaming. The lintel was low. "Duck down, Hodor," Bran said, and he did, but not enough to keep Bran from hitting his head. "That hurt," he complained. "Hodor," said Hodor, straightening. They found themselves in a gloomy strongroom, barely large enough to hold the four of them. Steps built into the inner wall of the tower curved away upward to their left, downward to their right, behind iron grates. Bran looked up and saw another grate just above his head. A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them. The grates were locked, but the iron bars were red with rust. Hodor grabbed hold of the lefthand door and gave it a pull, grunting with effort. Nothing happened. He tried pushing with no more success. He shook the bars, kicked, shoved against them and rattled them and punched the hinges with a huge hand until the air was filled with flakes of rust, but the iron door would not budge. The one down to the undervault was no more accommodating. "No way in," said Meera, shrugging. The murder hole was just above Bran's head, as he sat in his basket on Hodor's back. He reached up and grabbed the bars to give them a try. When he pulled down the grating came out of the ceiling in a cascade of rust and crumbling stone. "HODOR!" Hodor shouted. The heavy iron grate gave Bran another bang in the head, and crashed down near Jojen's feet when he shoved it off of him. Meera laughed. "Look at that, my prince," she said, "you're stronger than Hodor." Bran blushed. With the grate gone, Hodor was able to boost Meera and Jojen up through the gaping murder hole. The crannogmen took Bran by the arms and drew him up after them. Getting Hodor inside was the hard part. He was too heavy for the Reeds to lift the way they'd lifted Bran. Finally Bran told him to go look for some big rocks. The island had no lack of those, and Hodor was able to pile them high enough to grab the crumbling edges of the hole and climb through. "Hodor, " he panted happily, grinning at all of them. They found themselves in a maze of small cells, dark and empty, but Meera explored until she found the way back to the steps. The higher they climbed, the better the light; on the third story the thick outer wall was pierced by arrow slits, the fourth had actual windows, and the fifth and highest was one big round chamber with arched doors on three sides opening onto small stone balconies. On the fourth side was a privy chamber perched above a sewer chute that dropped straight down into the lake. By the time they reached the roof the sky was completely overcast, and the clouds to the west were black. The wind was blowing so strong it lifted up Bran's cloak and made it flap and snap. "Hodor," Hodor said at the noise. Meera spun in a circle. "I feel almost a giant, standing high above the world." "There are trees in the Neck that stand twice as tall as this," her brother reminded her. "Aye, but they have other trees around them just as high," said Meera. "The world presses close in the Neck, and the sky is so much smaller. Here ... feel that wind, Brother? And look how large the world has grown." It was true, you could see a long ways from up here. To the south the foothills rose, with the mountains grey and green beyond them. The rolling plains of the New Gift stretched away to all the other directions, as far as the eye could see. "I was hoping we could see the Wall from here," said Bran, disappointed. "That was stupid, we must still be fifty leagues away." just speaking of it made him feel tired, and cold as well. "Jojen, what will we do when we reach the Wall? My uncle always said how big it was. Seven hundred feet high, and so thick at the base that the gates are more like tunnels through the ice. How are we going to get past to find the three-eyed crow?" "There are abandoned castles along the Wall, I've heard," Jojen answered. "Fortresses built by the Night's Watch but now left empty. One of them may give us our way through." The ghost castles, Old Nan had called them. Maester Luwin had once made Bran learn the names of every one of the forts along the Wall. That had been hard; there were nineteen of them all told, though no more than seventeen had ever been manned at any one time. At the feast in honor of King Robert's visit to Winterfell, Bran had recited the names for his uncle Benjen, east to west and then west to east. Benjen Stark had laughed and said, "You know them better than I do, Bran. Perhaps you should be First Ranger. I'll stay here in your place." That was before Bran fell, though. Before he was broken. By the time he'd woken crippled from his sleep, his uncle had gone back to Castle Black. "My uncle said the gates were sealed with ice and stone whenever a castle had to be abandoned," said Bran. "Then we'll have to open them again," said Meera. That made him uneasy. "We shouldn't do that. Bad things might come through from the other side. We should just go to Castle Black and tell the Lord Commander to let us pass." "Your Grace," said Jojen, "we must avoid Castle Black, just as we avoided the kingsroad. There are hundreds of men there." "Men of the Night's Watch," said Bran. "They say vows, to take no part in wars and stuff." "Aye," said Jojen, "but one man willing to forswear himself would be enough to sell your secret to the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton. And we cannot be certain that the Watch would agree to let us pass. They might decide to hold us or send us back." "But my father was a friend of the Night's Watch, and my uncle is First Ranger. He might know where the three-eyed crow lives. And Jon's at Castle Black too." Bran had been hoping to see Jon again, and their uncle too. The last black brothers to visit Winterfell said that Benjen Stark had vanished on a ranging, but surely he would have made his way back by now. "I bet the Watch would even give us horses," he went on. "Quiet." Jojen shaded his eyes with a hand and gazed off toward the setting sun. "Look. There's something ... a rider, I think. Do you see him?" Bran shaded his eyes as well, and even so he had to squint. He saw nothing at first, till some movement made him turn. At first he thought it might be Summer, but no. A man on a horse. He was too far away to see much else. "Hodor?" Hodor had put a hand over his eyes as well, only he was looking the wrong way. "Hodor?" "He is in no haste," said Meera, "but he's making for this village, it seems to me." "We had best go inside, before we're seen," said Jojen. "Summer's near the village," Bran objected. "Summer will be fine," Meera promised. "It's only one man on a tired horse." A few fat wet drops began to patter against the stone as they retreated to the floor below. That was well timed; the rain began to fall in earnest a short time later. Even through the thick walls they could hear it lashing against the surface of the lake. They sat on the floor in the round empty room, amidst gathering gloom. The north-facing balcony looked out toward the abandoned village. Meera crept out on her belly to peer across the lake and see what had become of the horseman. "He's taken shelter in the ruins of the inn," she told them when she came back. "it looks as though he's making a fire in the hearth." "I wish we could have a fire," Bran said. "I'm cold. There's broken furniture down the stairs, I saw it. We could have Hodor chop it up and get warm." Hodor liked that idea. "Hodor," he said hopefully. Jojen shook his head. "Fire means smoke. Smoke from this tower could be seen a long way off." "If there were anyone to see," his sister argued. "There's a man in the village." "One man." "One man would be enough to betray Bran to his enemies, if he's the wrong man. We still have half a duck from yesterday. We should eat and rest. Come morning the man will go on his way, and we will do the same." Jojen had his way; he always did. Meera divided the duck between the four of them. She'd caught it in her net the day before, as it tried to rise from the marsh where she'd surprised it. It wasn't as tasty cold as it had been hot and crisp from the spit, but at least they did not go hungry. Bran and Meera shared the breast while Jojen ate the thigh. Hodor devoured the wing and leg, muttering "Hodor" and licking the grease off his fingers after every bite. It was Bran's turn to tell a story, so he told them about another Brandon Stark, the one called Brandon the Shipwright, who had sailed off beyond the Sunset Sea. Dusk was settling by the time duck and tale were done, and the rain still fell. Bran wondered how far Summer had roamed and whether he had caught one of the deer. Grey gloom filled the tower, and slowly changed to darkness. Hodor grew restless and walked awhile, striding round and round the walls and stopping to peer into the privy on every circuit, as if he had forgotten what was in there. Jojen stood by the north balcony, hidden by the shadows, looking out at the night and the rain. Somewhere to the north a lightning bolt crackled across the sky, brightening the inside of the tower for an instant. Hodor jumped and made a frightened noise. Bran counted to eight, waiting for the thunder. When it came, Hodor shouted, "Hodor!" I hope Summer isn't scared too, Bran thought. The dogs in Winterfell's kennels had always been spooked by thunderstorms, just like Hodor. I should go see, to calm him ... The lightning flashed again, and this time the thunder came at six. "Hodor!" Hodor yelled again. "HODOR! HODOR!" He snatched up his sword, as if to fight the storm. Jojen said, "Be quiet, Hodor. Bran, tell him not to shout. Can you get the sword away from him, Meera?" "I can try." "Hodor, hush," said Bran. "Be quiet now. No more stupid hodoring. Sit down." "Hodor?" He gave the longsword to Meera meekly enough, but his face was a mask of confusion. Jojen turned back to the darkness, and they all heard him suck in his breath. "What is it?" Meera asked. "Men in the village." "The man we saw before?" "Other men. Armed. I saw an axe, and spears as well." Joien had never sounded so much like the boy he was. "I saw them when the lightning flashed, moving under the trees." "How many?" "Many and more. Too many to count." "Mounted? "No." "Hodor." Hodor sounded frightened. "Hodor. Hodor." Bran felt a little scared himself, though he didn't want to say so in front of Meera. "What if they come out here?" "They won't." She sat down beside him. "Why should they?" "For shelter." Jojen's voice was grim. "Unless the storm lets up. Meera, could you go down and bar the door?" "I couldn't even close it. The wood's too warped. They won't get past those iron gates, though." "They might. They could break the lock, or the hinges. Or climb up through the murder hole as we did." Lightning slashed the sky, and Hodor whimpered. Then a clap of thunder rolled across the lake. "HODOR!" he roared, clapping his hands over his ears and stumbling in a circle through the darkness. "HODOR! HODOR! HODOR!" "NO!" Bran shouted back. "NO HODORING!" It did no good. "HOOOODOR!" moaned Hodor. Meera tried to catch him and calm him, but he was too strong. He flung her aside with no more than a shrug. "HOOOOOODOOOOOOOR!" the stableboy screamed as lightning filled the sky again, and even Jojen was shouting now, shouting at Bran and Meera to shut him up. "Be quiet!" Bran said in a shrill scared voice, reaching up uselessly for Hodor's leg as he crashed past, reaching, reaching. Hodor staggered, and closed his mouth. He shook his head slowly from side to side, sank back to the floor, and sat crosslegged. When the thunder boomed, he scarcely seemed to hear it. The four of them sat in the dark tower, scarce daring to breathe. "Bran, what did you do?" Meera whispered. "Nothing." Bran shook his head. "I don't know." But he did. I reached for him, the way I reach for Summer. He had been Hodor for half a heartbeat. It scared him. "Something is happening across the lake," said Jojen. "I thought I saw a man pointing at the tower." I won't be afraid. He was the Prince of Winterfell, Eddard Stark's son, almost a man grown and a warg too, not some little baby boy like Rickon. Summer would not be afraid. "Most like they're just some Umbers," he said. "Or they could be Knotts or Norreys or Flints come down from the mountains, or even brothers from the Night's Watch. Were they wearing black cloaks, Jojen?" "By night all cloaks are black, Your Grace. And the flash came and went too fast for me to tell what they were wearing." Meera was wary. "If they were black brothers, they'd be mounted, wouldn't they?" Bran had thought of something else. "It doesn't matter," he said confidently. "They couldn't get out to us even if they wanted. Not unless they had a boat, or knew about the causeway." "The causeway!" Meera mussed Bran's hair and kissed him on the forehead. "Our sweet prince! He's right, Jojen, they won't know about the causeway. Even if they did they could never find the way across at night in the rain." "The night will end, though. If they stay till morning..." Jojen left the rest unsaid. After a few moments he said, "They are feeding the fire the first man started." Lightning crashed through the sky, and light filled the tower and etched them all in shadow. Hodor rocked back and forth, humming. Bran could feel Summer's fear in that bright instant. He closed two eyes and opened a third, and his boy's skin slipped off him like a cloak as he left the tower behind ... ... and found himself out in the rain, his belly full of deer, cringing in the brush as the sky broke and boomed above him. The smell of rotten apples and wet leaves almost drowned the scent of man, but it was there. He heard the clink and slither of hardskin, saw men moving under the trees. A man with a stick blundered by, a skin pulled up over his head to make him blind and deaf. The wolf went wide around him, behind a dripping thornbush and beneath the bare branches of an apple tree. He could hear them talking, and there beneath the scents of rain and leaves and horse came the sharp red stench of fear ...

§ § §

DAVOS

Lord Alester looked up sharply. "Voices," he said. "Do you hear, Davos? Someone is coming for us." "Lamprey," said Davos. "It's time for our supper, or near enough." Last night Lamprey had brought them half a beef-and-bacon pie, and a flagon of mead as well. Just the thought of it made his belly start to rumble. "No, there's more than one." He's right. Davos heard two voices at least, and footsteps, growing louder. He got to his feet and moved to the bars. Lord Alester brushed the straw from his clothes. "The king has sent for me. Or the queen, yes, Selyse would never let me rot here, her own blood." Outside the cell, Lamprey appeared with a ring of keys in hand. Ser Axell Florent and four guardsmen followed close behind him. They waited beneath the torch while Lamprey searched for the correct key. "Axell," Lord Alester said. "Gods be good. Is it the king who sends for me, or the queen?" "No one has sent for you, traitor," Ser Axell said. Lord Alester recoiled as if he'd been slapped. "No, I swear to you, I committed no treason. Why won't you listen? If His Grace would only let me explain-" Lamprey thrust a great iron key into the lock, turned it, and pulled open the cell. The rusted hinges screamed in protest. "You," he said to Davos. "Come." "Where?" Davos looked to Ser Axell. "Tell me true, ser, do you mean to burn me?" "You are sent for. Can you walk?" "I can walk." Davos stepped from the cell. Lord Alester gave a cry of dismay as Lamprey slammed the door shut once more. "Take the torch," Ser Axell commanded the gaoler. "Leave the traitor to the darkness." "No," his brother said. "Axell, please, don't take the light . . . gods have mercy . . . " "Gods? There is only R'hllor, and the Other." Ser Axell gestured sharply, and one of his guardsmen pulled the torch from its sconce and led the way to the stair. "Are you taking me to Melisandre?" Davos asked. "She will be there," Ser Axell said. "She is never far from the king. But it is His Grace himself who asked for you." Davos lifted his hand to his chest, where once his luck had hung in a leather bag on a thong. Gone now, he remembered, and the ends of four fingers as well. But his hands were still long enough to wrap about a woman's throat, he thought, especially a slender throat like hers. Up they went, climbing the turnpike stair in single file. The walls were rough dark stone, cool to the touch. The light of the torches went before them, and their shadows marched beside them on the walls. At the third turn they passed an iron gate that opened on blackness, and another at the fifth turn. Davos guessed that they were near the surface by then, perhaps even above it. The next door they came to was made of wood, but still they climbed. Now the walls were broken by arrow slits, but no shafts of sunlight pried their way through the thickness of the stone. It was night outside. His legs were aching by the time Ser Axell thrust open a heavy door and gestured him through. Beyond, a high stone bridge arched over emptiness to the massive central tower called the Stone Drum. A sea wind blew restlessly through the arches that supported the roof, and Davos could smell the salt water as they crossed. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the clean cold air. Wind and water, give me strength, he prayed. A huge nightfire burned in the yard below, to keep the terrors of the dark at bay, and the queen's men were gathered around it, singing praises to their new red god. They were in the center of the bridge when Ser Axell stopped suddenly. He made a brusque gesture with his hand, and his men moved out of earshot. "Were it my choice, I would burn you with my brother Alester," he told Davos. "You are both traitors." "Say what you will. I would never betray King Stannis." "You would. You will. I see it in your face. And I have seen it in the flames as well. R'hllor has blessed me with that gift. Like Lady Melisandre, he shows me the future in the fire. Stannis Baratheon will sit the Iron Throne. I have seen it. And I know what must be done. His Grace must make me his Hand, in place of my traitor brother. And you will tell him so." Will I? Davos said nothing. "The queen has urged my appointment," Ser Axell went on. "Even your old friend from Lys, the pirate Saan, he says the same. We have made a plan together, him and me. Yet His Grace does not act. The defeat gnaws inside him, a black worm in his soul. It is up to us who love him to show him what to do. If you are as devoted to his cause as you claim, smuggler, you will join your voice to ours. Tell him that I am the only Hand he needs. Tell him, and when we sail I shall see that you have a new ship." A ship. Davos studied the other man's face. Ser Axell had big Florent ears, much like the queen's. Coarse hair grew from them, as from his nostrils; more sprouted in tufts and patches beneath his double chin. His nose was broad, his brow beetled, his eyes close-set and hostile. He would sooner give me a pyre than a ship, he said as much, but if I do him this favor . . . "if you think to betray me," Ser Axell said, "pray remember that I have been castellan of Dragonstone a good long time. The garrison is mine. Perhaps I cannot burn you without the king's consent, but who is to say you might not suffer a fall." He laid a meaty hand on the back of Davos's neck and shoved him bodily against the waist-high side of the bridge, then shoved a little harder to force his face out over the yard. "Do you hear me?" "I hear," said Davos. And you dare name me traitor? Ser Axell released him. "Good." He smiled. "His Grace awaits. Best we do not keep him." At the very top of Stone Drum, within the great round room called the Chamber of the Painted Table, they found Stannis Baratheon standing behind the artifact that gave the hall its name, a massive slab of wood carved and painted in the shape of Westeros as it had been in the time of Aegon the Conqueror. An iron brazier stood beside the king, its coals glowing a ruddy orange. Four tall pointed windows looked out to north, south, east, and west. Beyond was the night and the starry sky. Davos could hear the wind moving, and fainter, the sounds of the sea. "Your Grace," Ser Axell said, "as it please you, I have brought the onion knight." "So I see." Stannis wore a grey wool tunic, a dark red mantle, and a plain black leather belt from which his sword and dagger hung. A red-gold crown with flame-shaped points encircled his brows. The look of him was a shock. He seemed ten years older than the man that Davos had left at Storm's End when he set sail for the Blackwater and the battle that would be their undoing. The king's close-cropped beard was spiderwebbed with grey hairs, and he had dropped two stone or more of weight. He had never been a fleshy man, but now the bones moved beneath his skin like spears, fighting to cut free. Even his crown seemed too large for his head. His eyes were blue pits lost in deep hollows, and the shape of a skull could be seen beneath his face. Yet when he saw Davos, a faint smile brushed his lips. "So the sea has returned me my knight of the fish and onions." "It did, Your Grace." Does he know that he had me in his dungeon? Davos went to one knee. "Rise, Ser Davos," Stannis commanded. "I have missed you, ser. I have need of good counsel, and you never gave me less. So tell me true-what is the penalty for treason?" The word hung in the air. A frightful word, thought Davos. Was he being asked to condemn his cellmate? Or himself, perchance? Kings know the penalty for treason better than any man. "Treason?" he finally managed, weakly. "What else would you call it, to deny your king and seek to steal his rightful throne. I ask you again-what is the penalty for treason under the law?" Davos had no choice but to answer. "Death," he said. "The penalty is death, Your Grace." "It has always been so. I am not . . . I am not a cruel man, Ser Davos. You know me. Have known me long. This is not my decree. It has always been so, since Aegon's day and before. Daemon Blackfyre, the brothers Toyne, the Vulture King, Grand Maester Hareth . . . traitors have always paid with their lives . . . even Rhaenyra Targaryen. She was daughter to one king and mother to two more, yet she died a traitor's death for trying to usurp her brother's crown. It is law. Law, Davos. Not cruelty." "Yes, Your Grace." He does not speak of me. Davos felt a moment's pity for his cellmate down in the dark. He knew he should keep silent, but he was tired and sick of heart, and he heard himself say, "Sire, Lord Florent meant no treason." "Do smugglers have another name for it? I made him Hand, and he would have sold my rights for a bowl of pease porridge. He would even have given them Shireen. Mine only child, he would have wed to a bastard born of incest." The king's voice was thick with anger. "My brother had a gift for inspiring loyalty. Even in his foes. At Summerhall he won three battles in a single day, and brought Lords Grandison and Cafferen back to Storm's End as prisoners. He hung their banners in the hall as trophies. Cafferen's white fawns were spotted with blood and Grandison's sleeping lion was torn near in two. Yet they would sit beneath those banners of a night, drinking and feasting with Robert. He even took them hunting. 'These men meant to deliver you to Aerys to be burned' I told him after I saw them throwing axes in the yard. 'You should not be putting axes in their hands.' Robert only laughed. I would have thrown Grandison and Cafferen into a dungeon, but he turned them into friends. Lord Cafferen died at Ashford Castle, cut down by Randyll Tarly whilst fighting for Robert. Lord Grandison was wounded on the Trident and died of it a year after. My brother made them love him, but it would seem that I inspire only betrayal. Even in mine own blood and kin. Brother, grandfather, cousins, good uncle . . . " "Your Grace," said Ser Axell, "I beg you, give me the chance to prove to you that not all Florents are so feeble." "Ser Axell would have me resume the war," King Stannis told Davos. "The Lannisters think I am done and beaten, and my sworn lords have forsaken me, near every one. Even Lord Estermont, my own mother's father, has bent his knee to Joffrey. The few loyal men who remain to me are losing heart. They waste their days drinking and gambling, and lick their wounds like beaten curs." "Battle will set their hearts ablaze once more, Your Grace," Ser Axell said. "Defeat is a disease, and victory is the cure." "Victory." The king's mouth twisted. "There are victories and victories, ser. But tell your plan to Ser Davos. I would hear his views on what you propose." Ser Axell turned to Davos, with a look on his face much like the look that proud Lord Belgrave must have worn, the day King Baelor the Blessed had commanded him to wash the beggar's ulcerous feet. Nonetheless, he obeyed. The plan Ser Axell had devised with Salladhor Saan was simple. A few hours' sail from Dragonstone lay Claw Isle, ancient sea-girt seat of House Celtigar. Lord Ardrian Celtigar had fought beneath the flery heart on the Blackwater, but once taken, he had wasted no time in going over to Joffrey. He remained in King's Landing even now. "Too frightened of His Grace's wrath to come near Dragonstone, no doubt," Ser Axell declared. "And wisely so. The man has betrayed his rightful king." Ser Axell proposed to use Salladhor Saan's fleet and the men who had escaped the Blackwater-Stannis still had some fifteen hundred on Dragonstone, more than half of them Florents-to exact retribution for Lord Celtigar's defection. Claw Isle was but lightly garrisoned, its castle reputedly stuffed with Myrish carpets, Volantene glass, gold and silver plate, jeweled cups, magnificent hawks, an axe of Valyrian steel, a horn that could summon monsters from the deep, chests of rubies, and more wines than a man could drink in a hundred years. Though Celtigar had shown the world a niggardly face, he had never stinted on his own comforts. "Put his castle to the torch and his people to the sword, I say," Ser Axell concluded. "Leave Claw Isle a desolation of ash and bone, fit only for carrion crows, so the realm might see the fate of those who bed with Lannisters." Stannis listened to Ser Axell's recitation in silence, grinding his jaw slowly from side to side. When it was done, he said, "It could be done, I believe. The risk is small. Joffrey has no strength at sea until Lord Redwyne sets sail from the Arbor. The plunder might serve to keep that Lysene pirate Salladhor Saan loyal for a time. By itself Claw Isle is worthless, but its fall would serve notice to Lord Tywin that my cause is not yet done." The king turned back to Davos. "Speak truly, ser. What do you make of Ser Axell's proposal?" Speak truly, ser. Davos remembered the dark cell he had shared with Lord Alester, remembered Lamprey and Porridge. He thought of the promises that Ser Axell had made on the bridge above the yard. A ship or a shove, what shall it be? But this was Stannis asking. "Your Grace," he said slowly, "I make it folly . . . aye, and cowardice." "Cowardice?" Ser Axell all but shouted. "No man calls me craven before my king!" "Silence," Stannis commanded. "Ser Davos, speak on, I would hear your reasons." Davos turned to face Ser Axell. "You say we ought show the realm we are not done. Strike a blow. Make war, aye . . . but on what enemy? You will find no Lannisters on Claw Isle." "We will find traitors," said Ser Axell, "though it may be I could find some closer to home. Even in this very room." Davos ignored the jibe. "I don't doubt Lord Celtigar bent the knee to the boy Joffrey. He is an old done man, who wants no more than to end his days in his castle, drinking his fine wine out of his jeweled cups." He turned back to Stannis. "Yet he came when you called, sire. Came, with his ships and swords. He stood by you at Storm's End when Lord Renly came down on us, and his ships sailed up the Blackwater. His men fought for you, killed for you, burned for you. Claw Isle is weakly held, yes. Held by women and children and old men. And why is that? Because their husbands and sons and fathers died on the Blackwater, that's why. Died at their oars, or with swords in their hands, fighting beneath our banners. Yet Ser Axell proposes we swoop down on the homes they left behind, to rape their widows and put their children to the sword. These smallfolk are no traitors . . . " "They are," insisted Ser Axell. "Not all of Celtigar's men were slain on the Blackwater. Hundreds were taken with their lord, and bent the knee when he did." "When he did," Davos repeated. "They were his men. His sworn men. What choice were they given?" "Every man has choices. They might have refused to kneel. Some did, and died for it. Yet they died true men, and loyal." "Some men are stronger than others." It was a feeble answer, and Davos knew it. Stannis Baratheon was a man of iron will who neither understood nor forgave weakness in others . I am losing, he thought, despairing. "It is every man's duty to remain loyal to his rightful king, even if the lord he serves proves false," Stannis declared in a tone that brooked no argument. A desperate folly took hold of Davos, a recklessness akin to madness. "As you remained loyal to King Aerys when your brother raised his banners?" he blurted. Shocked silence followed, until Ser Axell cried, "Treason!" and snatched his dagger from its sheath. "Your Grace, he speaks his infamy to your face!" Davos could hear Stannis grinding his teeth. A vein bulged, blue and swollen, in the king's brow. Their eyes met. "Put up your knife, Ser Axell. And leave us." "As it please Your Grace-" "It would please me for you to leave," said Stannis. "Take yourself from my presence, and send me Melisandre." "As you command." Ser Axell slid the knife away, bowed, and hurried toward the door. His boots rang against the floor, angry. "You have always presumed on my forbearance," Stannis warned Davos when they were alone. "I can shorten your tongue as easy as I did your fingers, smuggler." "I am your man, Your Grace. So it is your tongue, to do with as you please." "It is," he said, calmer. "And I would have it speak the truth. Though the truth is a bitter draught at times. Aerys? If you only knew . . . that was a hard choosing. My blood or my liege. My brother or my king." He grimaced. "Have you ever seen the Iron Throne? The barbs along the back, the ribbons of twisted steel, the jagged ends of swords and knives all tangled up and melted? It is not a comfortable seat, ser. Aerys cut himself so often men took to calling him King Scab, and Maegor the Cruel was murdered in that chair. By that chair, to hear some tell it. It is not a seat where a man can rest at ease. Ofttimes I wonder why my brothers wanted it so desperately." "Why would you want it, then?" Davos asked him. "It is not a question of wanting. The throne is mine, as Robert's heir. That is law. After me, it must pass to my daughter, unless Selyse should finally give me a son." He ran three fingers lightly down the table, over the layers of smooth hard varnish, dark with age. "I am king. Wants do not enter into it. I have a duty to my daughter. To the realm. Even to Robert. He loved me but little, I know, yet he was my brother. The Lannister woman gave him horns and made a motley fool of him. She may have murdered him as well, as she murdered Jon Arryn and Ned Stark. For such crimes there must be justice. Starting with Cersei and her abominations. But only starting. I mean to scour that court clean. As Robert should have done, after the Trident. Ser Barristan once told me that the rot in King Aerys's reign began with Varys. The eunuch should never have been pardoned. No more than the Kingslayer. At the least, Robert should have stripped the white cloak from Jaime and sent him to the Wall, as Lord Stark urged. He listened to Jon Arryn instead. I was still at Storm's End, under siege and unconsulted." He turned abruptly, to give Davos a hard shrewd look. "The truth, now. Why did you wish to murder Lady Melisandre?" So he does know. Davos could not lie to him. "Four of my sons burned on the Blackwater. She gave them to the flames." "You wrong her. Those fires were no work of hers. Curse the Imp, curse the pyromancers, curse that fool of Florent who sailed my fleet into the jaws of a trap. Or curse me for my stubborn pride, for sending her away when I needed her most. But not Melisandre. She remains my faithful servant." "Maester Cressen was your faithful servant. She slew him, as she killed Ser Cortnay Penrose and your brother Renly." "Now you sound a fool," the king complained. "She saw Renly's end in the flames, yes, but she had no more part in it than I did. The priestess was with me. Your Devan would tell you so. Ask him, if you doubt me. She would have spared Renly if she could. It was Melisandre who urged me to meet with him, and give him one last chance to amend his treason. And it was Melisandre who told me to send for you when Ser Axell wished to give you to R'hllor." He smiled thinly. "Does that surprise you?" "Yes. She knows I am no friend to her or her red god." "But you are a friend to me. She knows that as well." He beckoned Davos closer. "The boy is sick. Maester Pylos has been leeching him." "The boy?" His thoughts went to his Devan, the king's squire. "My son, sire?" "Devan? A good boy. He has much of you in him. It is Robert's bastard who is sick, the boy we took at Storm's End." Edric Storm. "I spoke with him in Aegon's Garden." "As she wished. As she saw." Stannis sighed. "Did the boy charm you? He has that gift. He got it from his father, with the blood. He knows he is a king's son, but chooses to forget that he is bastard-born. And he worships Robert, as Renly did when he was young. My royal brother played the fond father on his visits to Storm's End, and there were gifts . . . swords and ponies and fur-trimmed cloaks. The eunuch's work, every one. The boy would write the Red Keep full of thanks, and Robert would laugh and ask Varys what he'd sent this year. Renly was no better. He left the boy's upbringing to castellans and maesters, and every one fell victim to his charm. Penrose chose to die rather than give him up." The king ground his teeth together. "It still angers me. How could he think I would hurt the boy? I chose Robert, did I not? When that hard day came. I chose blood over honor." He does not use the boy's name. That made Davos very uneasy. "I hope young Edric will recover soon." Stannis waved a hand, dismissing his concern. "It is a chill, no more. He coughs, he shivers, he has a fever. Maester Pylos will soon set him right. By himself the boy is nought, you understand, but in his veins flows my brother's blood. There is power in a king's blood, she says." Davos did not have to ask who she was. Stannis touched the Painted Table. "Look at it, onion knight. My realm, by rights. My Westeros." He swept a hand across it. "This talk of Seven Kingdoms is a folly. Aegon saw that three hundred years ago when he stood where we are standing. They painted this table at his command. Rivers and bays they painted, hills and mountains, castles and cities and market towns, lakes and swamps and forests . . . but no borders. It is all one. One realm, for one king to rule alone." "One king," agreed Davos. "One king means peace." "I shall bring justice to Westeros. A thing Ser Axell understands as little as he does war. Claw Isle would gain me naught . . . and it was evil, just as you said. Celtigar must pay the traitor's price himself, in his own person. And when I come into my kingdom, he shall. Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat. And some will lose more than the tips off their fingers, I promise you. They have made my kingdom bleed, and I do not forget that." King Stannis turned from the table. "On your knees, Onion Knight." "Your Grace?" "For your onions and fish, I made you a knight once. For this, I am of a mind to raise you to lord." This? Davos was lost. "I am content to be your knight, Your Grace. I would not know how to begin being lordly." "Good. To be lordly is to be false. I have learned that lesson hard. Now, kneel. Your king commands." Davos knelt, and Stannis drew his longsword. Lightbringer, Melisandre had named it; the red sword of heroes, drawn from the fires where the seven gods were consumed. The room seemed to grow brighter as the blade slid from its scabbard. The steel had a glow to it; now orange, now yellow, now red. The air shimmered around it, and no jewel had ever sparkled so brilliantly. But when Stannis touched it to Davos's shoulder, it felt no different than any other longsword. "Ser Davos of House Seaworth," the king said, "are you my true and honest liege man, now and forever?" "I am, Your Grace." "And do you swear to serve me loyally all your days, to give me honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend my rights and my realm against all foes in battles great and small, to protect my people and punish my enemies?" "I do, Your Grace." "Then rise again, Davos Seaworth, and rise as Lord of the Rainwood, Admiral of the Narrow Sea, and Hand of the King." For a moment Davos was too stunned to move. I woke this morning in his dungeon. "Your Grace, you cannot . . . I am no fit man to be a King's Hand." "There is no man fitter." Stannis sheathed Lightbringer, gave Davos his hand, and pulled him to his feet. "I am lowborn," Davos reminded him. "An upjumped smuggler. Your lords will never obey me." "Then we will make new lords." "But . . . I cannot read . . . nor write . . . " "Maester Pylos can read for you. As to writing, my last Hand wrote the head off his shoulders. All I ask of you are the things you've always given me. Honesty. Loyalty. Service." "Surely there is someone better . . . some great lord . . . " Stannis snorted. "Bar Emmon, that boy? My faithless grandfather? Celtigar has abandoned me, the new Velaryon is six years old, and the new Sunglass sailed for Volantis after I burned his brother." He made an angry gesture. "A few good men remain, it's true. Ser Gilbert Farring holds Storm's End for me still, with two hundred loyal men. Lord Morrigen, the Bastard of Nightsong, young Chyttering, my cousin Andrew . . . but I trust none of them as I trust you, my lord of Rainwood. You will be my Hand. It is you I want beside me for the battle." Another battle will be the end of all of us, thought Davos. Lord Alester saw that much true enough. "Your Grace asked for honest counsel. In honesty then . . . we lack the strength for another battle against the Lannisters." "It is the great battle His Grace is speaking of," said a woman's voice, rich with the accents of the east. Melisandre stood at the door in her red silks and shimmering satins, holding a covered silver dish in her hands. "These little wars are no more than a scuffle of children before what is to come. The one whose name may not be spoken is marshaling his power, Davos Seaworth, a power fell and evil and strong beyond measure. Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends." She placed the silver dish on the Painted Table. "Unless true men find the courage to fight it. Men whose hearts are fire." Stannis stared at the silver dish. "She has shown it to me, Lord Davos. In the flames." "You saw it, sire?" It was not like Stannis Baratheon to lie about such a thing. "With mine own eyes. After the battle, when I was lost to despair, the Lady Melisandre bid me gaze into the hearthfire. The chimney was drawing strongly, and bits of ash were rising from the fire. I stared at them, feeling half a fool, but she bid me look deeper, and . . . the ashes were white, rising in the updraft, yet all at once it seemed as if they were falling. Snow, I thought. Then the sparks in the air seemed to circle, to become a ring of torches, and I was looking through the fire down on some high hill in a forest. The cinders had become men in black behind the torches, and there were shapes moving through the snow. For all the heat of the fire, I felt a cold so terrible I shivered, and when I did the sight was gone, the fire but a fire once again. But what I saw was real, I'd stake my kingdom on it." "And have," said Melisandre. The conviction in the king's voice frightened Davos to the core. "A hill in a forest . . . shapes in the snow . . . I don't . . . " "It means that the battle is begun," said Melisandre. "The sand is running through the glass more quickly now, and man's hour on earth is almost done. We must act boldly, or all hope is lost. Westeros must unite beneath her one true king, the prince that was promised, Lord of Dragonstone and chosen of R'hllor." "R'hllor chooses queerly, then." The king grimaced, as if he'd tasted something foul. "Why me, and not my brothers? Renly and his peach. In my dreams I see the juice running from his mouth, the blood from his throat. If he had done his duty by his brother, we would have smashed Lord Tywin. A victory even Robert could be proud of. Robert . . . " His teeth ground side to side. "He is in my dreams as well. Laughing. Drinking. Boasting. Those were the things he was best at. Those, and fighting. I never bested him at anything. The Lord of Light should have made Robert his champion. Why me?" "Because you are a righteous man," said Melisandre. "A righteous man." Stannis touched the covered silver platter with a finger. "With leeches." "Yes," said Melisandre, "but I must tell you once more, this is not the way." "You swore it would work." The king looked angry. "It will . . . and it will not." "Which?" "Both." "Speak sense to me, woman." "When the fires speak more plainly, so shall I. There is truth in the flames, but it is not always easy to see." The great ruby at her throat drank fire from the glow of the brazier. "Give me the boy, Your Grace. It is the surer way. The better way. Give me the boy and I shall wake the stone dragon." "I have told you, no." "He is only one baseborn boy, against all the boys of Westeros, and all the girls as well. Against all the children that might ever be born, in all the kingdoms of the world." "The boy is innocent." "The boy defiled your marriage bed, else you would surely have sons of your own. He shamed you." "Robert did that. Not the boy. My daughter has grown fond of him. And he is mine own blood." "Your brother's blood," Melisandre said. "A king's blood. Only a king's blood can wake the stone dragon." Stannis ground his teeth. "I'll hear no more of this. The dragons are done. The Targaryens tried to bring them back half a dozen times. And made fools of themselves, or corpses. Patchface is the only fool we need on this godsforsaken rock. You have the leeches. Do your work." Melisandre bowed her head stiffly, and said, "As my king commands." Reaching up her left sleeve with her right hand, she flung a handful of powder into the brazier. The coals roared. As pale flames writhed atop them, the red woman retrieved the silver dish and brought it to the king. Davos watched her lift the lid. Beneath were three large black leeches, fat with blood. The boy's blood, Davos knew. A king's blood. Stannis stretched forth a hand, and his fingers closed around one of the leeches. "Say the name," Melisandre commanded. The leech was twisting in the king's grip, trying to attach itself to one of his fingers. "The usurper," he said. "Joffrey Baratheon." When he tossed the leech into the fire, it curled up like an autumn leaf amidst the coals, and burned. Stannis grasped the second. "The usurper," he declared, louder this time. "Balon Greyjoy." He flipped it lightly onto the brazier, and its flesh split and cracked. The blood burst from it, hissing and smoking. The last was in the king's hand. This one he studied a moment as it writhed between his fingers. "The usurper," he said at last. "Robb Stark." And he threw it on the flames.

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