George R.R. Martin

dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. This was a place of

Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.

The man with the torch pushed at something. Arya heard a deep rumbling. A huge slab of rock, red in the torchlight, slid down out of the ceiling with a resounding crash that almost made her cry out. Where the entry to the well had been was nothing but stone, solid and unbroken. “If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late,” the stout man in the steel cap said

know you, perchance?” Arya shook her head miserably. She had heard her mother speak of Ser Brynden Blackfish, but if she had ever met him herself it had been when she was too little to remember. “Small chance the Blackfish will pay good coin for a girl he doesn’t know,” said Tom. “Those Tullys are a sour, suspicious lot, he’s like to think we’re selling him false goods.” “We’ll convince him,” Lem Lemoncloak insisted. “ She will, or Harwin. Riverrun is closest. I say we take her there, get the gold,

“Gifts I give my friends, freely

dragonlords of ancient lineage.