The Ice Dragon

Copyright

HarperVoyager an imprint of

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First Published by Ace Books in the volume Dragons of Light 1980

Published by HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

1

Copyright © George R.R. Martin 1980

George R.R. Martin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Illustrations copyright © Luis Royo 2014

Designed by Heather Saunders

Cover illustration © Luis Royo. Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014.

Game of Thrones^SM The Original Series based on A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin © 2011 Home Box Office, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. HBO and related service marks are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008118853

Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008118860

Version: 2014-11-18

Dedication

TO PHIPPS, who thought of it first, with all my love

Chapter One
Winter's Child

ADARA liked the winter best of all, for when the world grew cold the ice dragon came.

She was never quite sure whether it was the cold that brought the ice dragon or the ice dragon that brought the cold. That was the sort of question that often troubled her brother Geoff, who was two years older than her and insatiably curious, but Adara did not care about such things. So long as the cold and the snow and the ice dragon all arrived on schedule, she was happy.

She always knew when they were due because of her birthday. Adara was a winter child, born during the worst freeze that anyone could remember, even Old Laura, who lived on the next farm and remembered things that had happened before anyone else was born. People still talked about that freeze. Adara often heard them.

They talked about other things as well. They said it was the chill of that terrible freeze that had killed her mother, stealing in during her long night of labor past the great fire that Adara’s father had built, and creeping under the layers of blankets that covered the birthing bed. And they said that the cold had entered Adara in the womb, that her skin had been pale blue and icy to the touch when she came forth, and that she had never warmed in all the years since. The winter had touched her, left its mark upon her, and made her its own.

It was true that Adara was always a child apart. She was a very serious little girl who seldom cared to play with the others. She was beautiful, people said, but in a strange, distant sort of way, with her pale skin and blond hair and wide clear blue eyes. She smiled, but not often. No one had ever seen her cry. Once when she was five she had stepped upon a nail imbedded in a board that lay concealed beneath a snowbank, and it had gone clear through her foot, but Adara had not wept or screamed even then. She had pulled her foot loose and walked back to the house, leaving a trail of blood in the snow, and when she had gotten there she had said only, “Father, I hurt myself.” The sulks and tempers and tears of ordinary childhood were not for her.