Walking up the wall had not been easy. But walking across the ceiling was turning out to be pletely impossible. Until I realized that I was going about it the wrong way. It seemed obvious when I thought about it. When I held onto the ceiling with my hands I could not move my feet. So I switched off the molebind gloves and swung down, hanging only from the soles of my boots. The blood rushed to my head-as well it might bringing with it a surge of nausea and a sensation of great unease.　What was I doing here, hanging upside down from the ceiling of the Mint, watching the machine below stamp out five-hundred-thousand-credit coins? They jingled and fell into the waiting baskets-so the answer 　

CHAPTER 1 - RUMBLINGS AND DREAMS 8CHAPTER 2 - VISIONS AND HORIZONS 13CHAPTER 3 - EXPLORATIONS 19CHAPTER 4 - INTRODUCTIONS 24CHAPTER 5 - GETTING CLOSE 30CHAPTER 6 - BUT NOT TOO CLOSE 37CHAPTER 7 - SIMMERING 43CHAPTER 8 - THE DISH 48CHAPTER 9 - SPIRITS 53CHAPTER 10 - BOLT FROM THE BLUE 59CHAPTER 11 - HAND JIVE 65CHAPTER 12 - HANDOFF 67CHAPTER 13 - COLLEGIALITY 72CHAPTER 14 - DANGER SIGNAL 78CHAPTER 15 - MEETING PLACE 82CHAPTER 16 - A FUR HAT FOR THE WINTER 88CHAPTER 17 - FLASH TRAFFIC 94CHAPTER 18 - CLASSICAL MUSIC 100CHAPTER 19 - CLEAR SIGNAL 109CHAPTER 20 - STAGING 115CHAPTER 21 - VACATION 120...　

　　If anything exists, it is inprehensible.　　If anything was prehensible,　　it would be inmunicable.　　　　- Gorgias　　　　　　PART ONENOTHING EXISTS　　　　　　1　　　　Two hours ago the Railway Expressman delivered the crated, newly published International Encyclopedia of Fine Arts to my Palm Beach apartment. I signed for the set, turned the thermostat of the air-conditioner up three degrees, found a clawhammer in the kitchen, and broke open the crate. Twenty-four beautiful buckram-bound volumes, eggshell paper, decide edged. Six laborious years in preparation, more than twenty-five hundred illustrations- 436 in full-color plates-and each thoroughly researched article written and signed by a noted authority 　

　But not for us.　The winter nights are too. The nights of fall, the nights of spring. Not for us, not for us.　The house we live in is so pleasant in Caulfield. The blue-green tint of its lawn, that always seems so freshly watered no matter what the time of day. The sparkling, aerated pinwheels of the sprinklers always turning, steadily turning; if you look at them closely enough they form rainbows before your eyes. The clean, sharp curve of the driveway. The dazzling whiteness of the porch-supports in the sun. Indoors, the curving white symmetry of the banister, as gracious as the dark and glossy stair it acpanies down from above. The satin finish of the rich old floors, bearing a telltale 　

　IT NOT only is my pleasure to announce to you this morning our discovery of this marvelous storehouse containing, among other things, a monumental collection of manuscripts inscribed on ridulian crystal paper, but I also take pride in giving you our arguments for the authenticity of our discoveries, to tell you why we believe we have uncovered the original journals of Leto II, the God Emperor.　First, let me recall to you the historical treasure which we all know by the name of The Stolen Journals, those volumes of known antiquity which over the centuries have been so valuable in helping us to understand our ancestors. As you all know, The Stolen Journals were deciphered by the Spacing Guil　

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　

　　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....　

　　　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　

　TO　STAN, CHRISTOPHER AND MICHELE RICE　TO　SUZANNE SCOTT QUIROZ AND　VICTORIA WILSON　TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN PRESTON　TO　THE IRISH OF NEW ORLEANS　WHO, IN THE 1850S,　BUILT ON CONSTANCE STREET　THE GREAT CHURCH OF ST. ALPHONSUS,　WHILE PASSING ON TO US　THROUGH FAITH, ARCHITECTURE AND ART　A SPLENDID MONUMENT　TO　"THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE　AND　THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME"　　　Of Mrs. Moore and the echo in the Marabar Caves:　...but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. ing at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur "Pathos, piety, courage - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value."...　

　　December 29th:　A lone figure, hunched down against the howling winter wind, moved step by frozen step through the Colorado wilderness. He was ill clad for such a winter trek, wearing soft thin boots and a clinging mauve with-sparkles tunic. His only defenses against the cold were an engineer cap on his platinum-blond thin hair and a scarf made of an old piece of furniture fabric wrapped several times around his thin pale neck.　The wanderer was nearly frozen to death, his cracked and bleeding gloveless hands shoved into small pockets lined with tissue paper. His pale face, buried in the fabric of the scarf, was likewise a mass of cracks. His reddish albino eyes were swollen. Anyone could t