THE RED CARPET　　THERE are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death; and times when, as was now the case, he is a guest in the territory of an allied Secret Service.　From the moment the BOAC Stratocruiser taxied up to the International Air Terminal at Idlewild, James Bond was treated like royalty.　When he left the aircraft with the other passengers he had resigned himself to the notorious purgatory of the US Health, Immigration and Customs machinery. At least an hour, he thought, of overheated, dr　

　TO TRACEY　We praise the Golden One, the Lady of Heaven, Lady of Fragrance,Eye of the Sun, the Great Goddess,Mistress of All the Gods,Lady of Turquoise, Mistress of Joy, Mistress of Music . . .that she may give us fine children,happiness, and a good husband.　　- Epithets of Hathor,piled from various sources　　 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS　　To err is human, and I am and I do, despite the fact that I go to considerable effort to get even small details right. I do not scruple to make use of my friends in this endeavor; several of them have read all or part of the manuscript and made suggestions. I am particularly indebted to Tim Hardman and Ann Crispin, for setting me straight on the (to me) esoteric subject　

　 It was oven hot, and it was Sunday. In the air traffic tower, the control operator at Brady Air Force Base lit a cigarette from a still glowing butt, propped his stocking feet on top of a portable air conditioner and waited for something to happen.　He was totally bored, and for good reason. Air traffic was slow on Sundays. In fact, it was nearly nonexistent Military pilots and their aircraft rarely flew on that day in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, particularly since no international political trouble was brewing at the moment. Occasionally a plane might set down or take off, but it was usually just a quick refueling stop for some VIP who was in a hurry to get to a confe　

Many a blond, northern moonrise,like a muted reflection, will softlyremind me and remind me again and again.It will be my bride, my alter ego.An incentive to find myself. I myselfam the moonrise of the south.　　-Paul Klee, The Tunisian Diaries　　Prologue　　It was just past midday, not long before the third summons to prayer, that Ammar ibn Khairan passed through the Gate of the Bells and entered the palace of Al-Fontina in Silvenes to kill the last of the khalifs of Al-Rassan.　　Passing into the Court of Lions he came to the three sets of double doors and paused before those that led to the gardens. There were eunuchs guarding the doors. He knew them by name. They had been dealt with. One of th　

SUMMERCHAPTER ONE　　　　GRADUALLY THE girl came to the conclusion that she was ill. It could not be anything else.　　　　She pushed her way across the pavement, stood with her back against a brick wall, felt the rough surface scraping her skin through her blouse and jeans. The brickwork seemed to move, like a piece of automatically operated emery paper. Up, down, up, down. Her groping fingers found a doorpost, gripped it; it was moving too. Up, down, up, down, gyrating.　　　　People pushed past her, bumped into her. A woman clutched at her, almost pulled her down, but somehow she held on. Everybody was rushing, a seething mass of hastening humanity as though everybody was ill, that they were hurr　

IThe man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what might have been parsecs in all directions. White; blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway and coaches had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.The gunslinger walked stolidly, not hurrying, not loafing. A hide waterbag 　

　　CHAPTER ONE　　THE YOUNG curate shivered in the cold and felt uneasy. Something was wrong but it was difficult to work out exactly what. The atmosphere for a start; when he had set out on the quarter-mile walk from his home to the church, a warm spring breeze had fanned his cherubic features and the setting sun had almost blinded him. Now, and it could not be more than twenty minutes later, it was almost dark and very cold. Getting colder by the second.　　　　The Reverend Philip Owen felt slightly dizzy as he stood by the lychgate and tried to recollect his senses. The last twenty minutes seemed to have slipped away without him noticing. He wiped his forehead with the back of a flabby hand; hi　

　　PREFACE　... And behind the Northern Armies came another army of men. They came by the hundreds, yet each traveled alone. They came on foot, by mule, on horseback, on creaking wagons or riding in handsome chaises. They were of all shapes and sizes and descended from many nationalities. They wore dark suits, usually covered with the gray dust of travel, and dark, broad-brimmed hats to shield their white faces from the hot, unfamiliar sun. And on their back, or across their saddle, or on top of their wagon was the inevitable faded multicolored bag made of worn and ragged remnants of carpet into which they had crammed all their worldly possessions. It was from these bags that they got their n　

　　Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was ing. During the night he dreamed of being pursued across a field by a flock of large blackbirds that shrieked around him in a turbulent flapping of wings and tore at him with hooked beaks as precisely honed as surgical scalpels. When he woke and was unable to breathe, he shuffled onto the balcony in his pajama bottoms to get some fresh air.　At nine-thirty in the morning, the temperature, already ninety degrees, only contributed to the sense of suffocation with which he had awakened.　A long shower and a shave refreshed him.　The refrigerator contained only part of a moldering Sara Lee cake....　

　　-SHELLY, Prometheus Unbound　　　　　　Part One TERRA INCOGNITA　　　　Hell is the place of those who have denied; They find there what they planted and what dug.　　A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing, And wander there and drift, and never cease Wailing for substance.　　-W.B. YEATS, The Hour Glass　　　　　　1　　The air was electric the day the thief crossed the city, certain that tonight, after so many weeks of frustration, he would finally locate the card-player. It was not an easy journey. Eighty-five percent of Warsaw had been leveled, either by the months of mortar bombardment that had preceded the Russian liberation of the city, or by the program of demolition the Nazis had undertaken before their　

Chapter 1The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills. There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless course by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin - as a bird changes direction by dipping one wing and lifting the other. The eyes were sightless in the black, and the other senses transmitted nothing extraordinary to the small, primitive brain. The fish might have been asleep, save for the movement dictated by countless millions of years of instinctive continuity: lacking the flotation bladder mon to other fish and th　

　　　A NOTE ON CHRONOLOGY　A Song of Ice and Fire is told through the eyes of characters who are sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles apart from one another. Some chapters cover a day, some only an hour; others might span a fortnight, a month, half a year. With such a structure, the narrative cannot be strictly sequential; sometimes important things are happening simultaneously, a thousand leagues apart.　In the case of the volume now in hand, the reader should realize that the opening chapters of A Storm of Swords do not follow the closing chapters of A Clash of Kings so much as overlap them. I open with a look at some of the things that were happening on the Fist of the First Men, at