A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle by George R.R. Martin Page B

“Here,” he told his king.
    Robert nodded silently, knelt, and bowed his head.
    There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father, had a long, stern face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but in life all swords had failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were his children.
    Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen only a few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him die. He was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule.
    Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride.
    â€œShe was more beautiful than that,” the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on Lyanna’s face, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he rose, made awkward by his weight. “Ah, damn it, Ned, did you have to bury her in a place like
this?”
His voice was hoarse with remembered grief. “She deserved more than darkness …”
    â€œShe was a Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said quietly. “This is her place.”
    â€œShe should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean.”
    â€œI was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times.
Promise me
, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses.
Promise me, Ned
. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, howtightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. “I bring her flowers when I can,” he said. “Lyanna was … fond of flowers.”
    The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as gently as if it were living flesh. “I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her.”
    â€œYou did,” Ned reminded him.
    â€œOnly once,” Robert said bitterly.
    They had come together at the ford of the Trident while the battle crashed around them, Robert with his warhammer and his great antlered helm, the Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his breastplate was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight. The waters of the Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a crushing blow from Robert’s hammer stove in the dragon and the chest beneath it. When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of both armies scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor.
    â€œIn my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves.”
    There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, “We should return, Your Grace. Your wife will be waiting.”
    â€œThe Others take my wife,” Robert muttered sourly, but he started back the way they had come, his footsteps falling heavily. “And if I hear ‘Your Grace’ once more, I’ll have your head on a spike. We are more to each other than that.”
    â€œI had not forgotten,” Ned replied quietly. When the king did not answer, he said, “Tell me about Jon.”
    Robert shook his head. “I have never seen a man