A Dance With Dragons

Jorah, Tyrion, Penny, and her animals are with the Windblown (including a disguised Quentyn Martell and his companions) on board a ship bound for Qarth. Moqorro, a red priest, is on board as well. The sailors avoid him. Their path takes them close to Valyria, a smoking, ominous place since the Doom destroyed it. Everyone takes the ruin of Valyria as an ill omen for their delegation to Meereen. Because he isn’t sure about Quentyn’s intentions, Tyrion keeps what he knows about Aegon and the Golden Company to himself.

Bran learns about greenseeing, the ability to see events in the future or far in the past in dreams, from the greenseer. Bran sees the long history of the greenseer and the North. He learns that weirwoods, trees with ghostly white bark and blood-red sap, are where the children of the forest go when they die. Their memories live on in the trees. Left alone, a weirwood will never die. The trees aren’t just central to worship of the old gods. In a sense, they are the gods themselves. Bran is amazed by all that he learns, but when he looks at what the greenseer has given up for his gift of sight, the boy in him rebels. He wants to walk again. Desperate to move around instead of being carried, he wargs into Hodor, who hates the feeling of Bran in his mind.

Over the protests of his lieutenants, Jon takes recruits who follow the old gods north of the Wall so they can swear their oaths before weirwoods. He encounters wildlings who are struggling to survive. He tells them to go through the Wall to his brothers, but they tell him word is that the Night’s Watch burn all those who surrender to appease the red god. Jon realizes this is the cost of accepting help from Melisandre. When Jon returns, a message from Stannis is waiting for him. Stannis took Deepwood and plans to march to Barrowtown in Winterfell to prevent Arya’s marriage to Ramsay. Jon knows he should have no feelings about Stannis’s success, but he cannot help being glad that Stannis won back Deepwood. Stannis’s plan to march troubles him. Winter is coming, and Ramsay and Roose surely know Stannis is headed there. Stannis writes that he is relying on the Karstarks, former bannerman to Eddard and Winterfell, to back him. To be successful, Stannis would need to move quickly or not at all. He would also do well to be wary of the Karstarks. Still, if Stannis wins, there is hope he will save Jon’s sister.

The bloody flux rips through the displaced Astapori outside the gates of Meereen. Daenerys has a choice: She can feed and care for the refugees, or she can keep her stores and city intact to prepare for war. She initially chooses mercy by going among the sick to feed them with her own hands and with the help of her Unsullied, but her advisors protest. Daario brings word that the Second Sons, an important mercenary army, has turned cloak to support the Yunkai instead of her. She closes the gates of Meereen and takes Daario to her bed, despite the risk that keeping him as her lover might anger Hizdahr.

Ramsay and Jeyne/Arya marry in the godswood at Winterfell (the Stark seat) instead of Barrowtown because it is too close to Deepwood, which is now in Stannis’s hands. Stannis gathers his forces and heads for Winterfell as expected. His column moves just as slowly as Jon feared. Reek looks on in pity and fear as Ramsay abuses Jeyne; Ramsay forces Reek to perform cunnilingus on Jeyne to humiliate both Reek and Jeyne. Roose Bolton is unmoved by these events; as Reek considers Roose’s actions, he realizes Roose isn’t content to be Warden of the North for the Iron Throne. He wants his own kingdom.

The action shifts to Dorne and the point of view of Areo Hotah, captain of the guard in Sunspear, the Dornish capital. Hotah observes as Lannister Kingsguard Ser Balon Swann delivers the skull of Gregor Clegane to the Martell court. Gregor Clegane killed Prince Oberyn Martell in combat at King’s Landing. During Robert’s Rebellion, Clegane also killed Elia of Dorne—wife of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, sister of Prince Oberyn, and mother to a baby girl and Young Griff (Aegon). The delivery of Gregor’s skull is payment of a blood debt that should end the cycle of revenge and betrayal between the Lannisters and the Martells. The meeting in Dorne is a tense one: Swann expects to see Princess Myrcella Baratheon (sister of King Tommen). He is also there to escort Myrcella and her betrothed Prince Trystane Martell to King’s Landing for a visit Cersei Lannister has proposed.

Dornish ruler Doran Martell is afraid to produce Myrcella. She is missing an ear and has a facial scar, wounds she sustained during a plot of the Sand Snakes, Prince Oberyn’s vengeful daughters born out of wedlock. The Martells told Myrcella to claim the knight who accompanied her to Dorne snapped and attacked her, but she isn’t likely to stick to the story once she is safe at home in King’s Landing.

Later, Doran tells his family that Cersei Lannister’s invitation for Trystane to come to King’s Landing is a trap, based on what Doran’s spies in King’s Landing tell him. The Lannisters plan to kill Trystane during the trip from Dorne to King’s Landing and blame the death on Tyrion. The Sand Snakes want to kill Swann, but Doran tells them this is a foolish response. The Sand Snakes think Doran is weak because he uses a wheeled chair, depends on others to move him around, and is old. Oberyn’s open use of force was the complement to Doran’s use of secrecy and subtlety to protect Dorne all these years. Oberyn is dead, and Dorne isn’t yet strong enough to oppose the Lannisters openly. Dorne decides to send Lady Nym, the most politic of the Sand Snakes, to accompany Trystane and Myrcella as protection and to fill Dorne’s empty seat on the small council, the governing council in Westeros. Hotah looks on as all this scheming goes on. He knows his duty is to “[s]erve. Protect. Obey. Simple vows for a simple man” (513), so he says nothing when Doran later asks him what he thinks of all their plotting.

Jon frees Val to send her on a mission to recruit wildling warriors. He also stores wights in the castle cellars because he hopes to learn if there is some way to injure or stop them. He sends a garrison comprised only of wildling women to hold one of the castles of the Night’s Watch. He hears more and more open complaints about these controversial decisions, which some of the men are now calling treason to their vows. He cannot think of better options, but he finds it difficult to continue balancing interests to protect the Knight’s Watch. It seems his efforts please no one. He also starts to wonder if the wights somehow have memory and agency. If they do, he fears they will come after him or others who harmed them.

Tyrion tells Jon Mormont his plan to regain Daenerys’s favor by giving her Tyrion is bound to fail. Tyrion befriends Penny, who tries to relieve the tension on the ship by making the crew laugh at her capers. He won’t join in initially; Penny questions why not since laughter might gain them goodwill from the crew, who believe people with dwarfism are bad luck. He reveals that he fears being laughed at. This is what Tywin taught him when people at Casterly Rock applauded him for doing cartwheels. The ship Mormont, Tyrion, Penny, and Moqorro are on is caught in a storm that damages it beyond repair. An enslaver takes them all captive.

Ramsay’s mistreatment of Arya/Jeyne causes the relationships with the Boltons’ Winterfell allies to fray. Stannis’s forces are bogged down by their three-hundred-mile march to Winterfell and a heavy snowstorm. Theon begins thinking more strategically and realizes what a mess Stannis made by choosing to head for Winterfell. Everywhere Theon looks, he sees people suffering because of his decision to take Winterfell. Lady Dustin of Barrowtown, a power in Bolton’s northern coalition, pulls Theon aside by asking for a tour of the Stark crypts below the castle. She tells Theon to do something about Ramsay’s treatment of Jeyne, who walks about crying and with bruises all over her. She reveals that she is with the Boltons for the sake of revenge. Her husband died when Eddard Stark called Lord Dustin to fight during Robert’s Rebellion. She is so eager for vengeance that she wants to make sure Eddard’s bones never make it to his family crypt. She and Theon notice that the swords placed on the bodies in the crypt are missing. The lady swears Theon to silence with threats.