Feast 1, eBooki

Feast 1

Indeks Finanse, Finanse(1), Filozofos, Fesenjan, Fenix,

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Feast 1, eBooki

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ContentsTitle PageDedicationMapPROLOGUETHE PROPHETTHE CAPTAIN OF GUARDSCERSEIBRIENNESAMWELLARYACERSEIJAIMEBRIENNESANSATHE KRAKEN’S DAUGHTERCERSEITHE SOILED KNIGHTBRIENNESAMWELLJAIMECERSEITHE IRON CAPTAINTHE DROWNED MANBRIENNETHE QUEENMAKERARYAALAYNECERSEIBRIENNESAMWELLJAIMECERSEITHE REAVERJAIMEBRIENNECERSEIJAIMECAT OF THE CANALSSAMWELLCERSEIBRIENNEJAIMECERSEITHE PRINCESS IN THE TOWERALAYNEBRIENNECERSEIJAIMESAMWELLMEANWHILE, BACK ON THE WALL . . .APPENDIXTHE KINGS AND THEIR COURTSTHE QUEEN REGENTTHE KING AT THE WALLKING OF THE ISLES AND THE NORTHOTHER HOUSES GREAT AND SMALLHOUSE ARRYNHOUSE FLORENTHOUSE FREYHOUSE HIGHTOWERHOUSE LANNISTERHOUSE MARTELLHOUSE STARKHOUSE TULLYHOUSE TYRELLREBELS AND ROGUESSMALLFOLK AND SWORN BROTHERSLORDLINGS, WANDERERS, AND COMMON MENOUTLAWS AND BROKEN MENTHE SWORN BROTHERS OF THE NIGHT’S WATCHthe WILDLINGS, or THE FREE FOLKBEYOND THE NARROW SEATHE QUEEN ACROSS THE WATERIN BRAAVOSAcknowledgmentsAbout the AuthorAlso by George R. R. MartinPreview of A Dance with DragonsCopyright Pagefor Stephen Boucherwizard of Windows, dragon of DOSwithout whom this book would havebeen written in crayonPROLOGUEDragons,” said Mollander. He snatched a withered apple off the ground and tossed ithand to hand.“Throw the apple,” urged Alleras the Sphinx. He slipped an arrow from his quiver andnocked it to his bowstring.“I should like to see a dragon.” Roone was the youngest of them, a chunky boy stilltwo years shy of manhood. “I should like that very much.”And I should like to sleep with Rosey’s arms around me, Pate thought. He shiftedrestlessly on the bench. By the morrow the girl could well be his. I will take her farfrom Oldtown, across the narrow sea to one of the Free Cities. There were no maestersthere, no one to accuse him.He could hear Emma’s laughter coming through a shuttered window overhead,mingled with the deeper voice of the man she was entertaining. She was the oldest ofthe serving wenches at the Quill and Tankard, forty if she was a day, but still pretty ina fleshy sort of way. Rosey was her daughter, fifteen and freshly flowered. Emma haddecreed that Rosey’s maidenhead would cost a golden dragon. Pate had saved ninesilver stags and a pot of copper stars and pennies, for all the good that would do him.He would have stood a better chance of hatching a real dragon than saving up enoughcoin to make a golden one.“You were born too late for dragons, lad,” Armen the Acolyte told Roone. Armenwore a leather thong about his neck, strung with links of pewter, tin, lead, and copper,and like most acolytes he seemed to believe that novices had turnips growing fromtheir shoulders in place of heads. “The last one perished during the reign of KingAegon the Third.”“The last dragon in Westeros,” insisted Mollander.“Throw the apple,” Alleras urged again. He was a comely youth, their Sphinx. All theserving wenches doted on him. Even Rosey would sometimes touch him on the armwhen she brought him wine, and Pate had to gnash his teeth and pretend not to see.“The last dragon in Westeros was the last dragon,” said Armen doggedly. “That is wellknown.”“The apple,” Alleras said. “Unless you mean to eat it.”“Here.” Dragging his clubfoot, Mollander took a short hop, whirled, and whipped theapple sidearm into the mists that hung above the Honeywine. If not for his foot, hewould have been a knight like his father. He had the strength for it in those thick armsand broad shoulders. Far and fast the apple flew . . .. . . but not as fast as the arrow that whistled after it, a yard-long shaft of golden woodfletched with scarlet feathers. Pate did not see the arrow catch the apple, but he heardit. A soft chunk echoed back across the river, followed by a splash.Mollander whistled. “You cored it. Sweet.”Not half as sweet as Rosey. Pate loved her hazel eyes and budding breasts, and the wayshe smiled every time she saw him. He loved the dimples in her cheeks. Sometimesshe went barefoot as she served, to feel the grass beneath her feet. He loved that too.He loved the clean fresh smell of her, the way her hair curled behind her ears. He evenloved her toes. One night she’d let him rub her feet and play with them, and he’d madeup a funny tale for every toe to keep her giggling.Perhaps he would do better to remain on this side of the narrow sea. He could buy adonkey with the coin he’d saved, and he and Rosey could take turns riding it as theywandered Westeros. Ebrose might not think him worthy of the silver, but Pate knewhow to set a bone and leech a fever. The smallfolk would be grateful for his help. If hecould learn to cut hair and shave beards, he might even be a barber. That would beenough, he told himself, so long as I had Rosey. Rosey was all that he wanted in theworld.That had not always been so. Once he had dreamed of being a maester in a castle, inservice to some open-handed lord who would honor him for his wisdom and bestow afine white horse on him to thank him for his service. How high he’d ride, how nobly,smiling down at the smallfolk when he passed them on the road . . .One night in the Quill and Tankard’s common room, after his second tankard offearsomely strong cider, Pate had boasted that he would not always be a novice. “Tootrue,” Lazy Leo had called out. “You’ll be a former novice, herding swine.”He drained the dregs of his tankard. The torchlit terrace of the Quill and Tankard wasan island of light in a sea of mist this morning. Downriver, the distant beacon of theHightower floated in the damp of night like a hazy orange moon, but the light did littleto lift his spirits.The alchemist should have come by now. Had it all been some cruel jape, or hadsomething happened to the man? It would not have been the first time that goodfortune had turned sour on Pate. He had once counted himself lucky to be chosen tohelp old Archmaester Walgrave with the ravens, never dreaming that before long hewould also be fetching the man’s meals, sweeping out his chambers, and dressing himevery morning. Everyone said that Walgrave had forgotten more of ravencraft thanmost maesters ever knew, so Pate assumed a black iron link was the least that he couldhope for, only to find that Walgrave could not grant him one. The old man remained anarchmaester only by courtesy. As great a maester as once he’d been, now his robesconcealed soiled smallclothes oft as not, and half a year ago some acolytes found himweeping in the Library, unable to find his way back to his chambers. Maester Gormonsat below the iron mask in Walgrave’s place, the same Gormon who had once accusedPate of theft.In the apple tree beside the water, a nightingale began to sing. It was a sweet sound, awelcome respite from the harsh screams and endless quorking of the ravens he hadtended all day long. The white ravens knew his name, and would mutter it to eachother whenever they caught sight of him, “Pate, Pate, Pate,” until he wanted toscream. The big white birds were Archmaester Walgrave’s pride. He wanted them toeat him when he died, but Pate half suspected that they meant to eat him too.Perhaps it was the fearsomely strong cider—he had not come here to drink, but Allerashad been buying to celebrate his copper link, and guilt had made him thirsty—but italmost sounded as if the nightingale were trilling gold for iron, gold for iron, gold foriron. Which was passing strange, because that was what the stranger had said the nightRosey brought the two of them together. “Who are you?” Pate had demanded of him,and the man had replied, “An alchemist. I can change iron into gold.” And then thecoin was in his hand, dancing across his knuckles, the soft yellow gold shining in thecandlelight. On one side was a three-headed dragon, on the other the head of somedead king. Gold for iron, Pate remembered, you won’t do better. Do you want her? Doyou love her? “I am no thief,” he had told the man who called himself the alchemist, “Iam a novice of the Citadel.” The alchemist had bowed his head, and said, “If youshould reconsider, I shall return here three days hence, with my dragon.”Three days had passed. Pate had returned to the Quill and Tankard, still uncertain whathe was, but instead of the alchemist he’d found Mollander and Armen and the Sphinx,with Roone in tow. It would have raised suspicions not to join them.The Quill and Tankard never closed. For six hundred years it had been standing on itsisland in the Honeywine, and never once had its doors been shut to trade. Though thetall, timbered building leaned toward the south the way novices sometimes leaned aftera tankard, Pate expected that the inn would go on standing for another six hundredyears, selling wine and ale and fearsomely strong cider to rivermen and seamen, smithsand singers, priests and princes, and the novices and acolytes of the Citadel.“Oldtown is not the world,” declared Mollander, too loudly. He was a knight’s son,and drunk as drunk could be. Since they brought him word of his father’s death uponthe Blackwater, he got drunk most every night. Even in Oldtown, far from the fightingand safe behind its walls, the War of the Five Kings had touched them all . . . althoughArchmaester Benedict insisted that there had never been a war of five kings, sinceRenly Baratheon had been slain before Balon Greyjoy had crowned himself.“My father always said the world was bigger than any lord’s castle,” Mollander wenton. “Dragons must be the least of the things a man might find in Qarth and Assha... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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