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Then shutting the door impetuously, he flung himself upon a bench against the wall, and bade Isabella sit by him. She obeyed trembling.

"I sent for you, Lady," said he—and then stopped under great appearance of confusion.

"My Lord!"

"Yes, I sent for you on a matter of great moment," resumed he. "Dry your tears, young Lady—you have lost your bridegroom. Yes, cruel fate! and I have lost the hopes of my race! But Conrad was not worthy of your beauty."

"How, my Lord!" said Isabella; "sure you do not suspect me of not feeling the concern I ought: my duty and affection would have always—"

"Think no more of him," interrupted Manfred; "he was a sickly, puny child, and Heaven has perhaps taken him away, that I might not trust the honours of my house on so frail a foundation. The line of Manfred calls for numerous supports. My foolish fondness for that boy blinded the eyes of my prudence—but it is better as it is. I hope, in a few years, to have reason to rejoice at the death of Conrad."

Words cannot paint the astonishment of Isabella. At first she apprehended that grief had disordered Manfred's understanding. Her next thought suggested that this strange discourse was designed to ensnare her: she feared that Manfred had perceived her indifference for his son: and in consequence of that idea she replied -

"Good my Lord, do not doubt my tenderness: my heart would have accompanied my hand. Conrad would have engrossed all my care; and wherever fate shall dispose of me, I shall always cherish his memory, and regard your Highness and the virtuous Hippolita as my parents."

"Curse on Hippolita!" cried Manfred. "Forget her from this moment, as I do. In short, Lady, you have missed a husband undeserving of your charms: they shall now be better disposed of. Instead of a sickly boy, you shall have a husband in the prime of his age, who will know how to value your beauties, and who may expect a numerous offspring."

"Alas, my Lord!" said Isabella, "my mind is too sadly engrossed by the recent catastrophe in your family to think of another marriage. If ever my father returns, and it shall be his pleasure, I shall obey, as I did when I consented to give my hand to your son: but until his return, permit me to remain under your hospitable roof, and employ the melancholy hours in assuaging yours, Hippolita's, and the fair Matilda's affliction."

"I desired you once before," said Manfred angrily, "not to name that woman: from this hour she must be a stranger to you, as she must be to me. In short, Isabella, since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself."

"Heavens!" cried Isabella, waking from her delusion, "what do I hear? You! my Lord! You! My father-in-law! the father of Conrad! the husband of the virtuous and tender Hippolita!"

"I tell you," said Manfred imperiously, "Hippolita is no longer my wife; I divorce her from this hour. Too long has she cursed me by her unfruitfulness. My fate depends on having sons, and this night I trust will give a new date to my hopes."

At those words he seized the cold hand of Isabella, who was half dead with fright and horror. She shrieked, and started from him, Manfred rose to pursue her, when the moon, which was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a tempestuous manner, and accompanied with a hollow and rustling sound. Isabella, who gathered courage from her situation, and who dreaded nothing so much as Manfred's pursuit of his declaration, cried -

"Look, my Lord! see, Heaven itself declares against your impious intentions!"

"Heaven nor Hell shall impede my designs," said Manfred, advancing again to seize the Princess.

-The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole

Nigger Heaven: Four spooks/four capsules/one spike.

They usurped the carport. They Flanked an old Merc. They laid out red devils. They dumped out the goo.

They spritzed it. They cooked it. They fed the spike. They tied up. They geezed. They dipped. They nodded. They swayed.

All riiiiiiiight.

Pete watched, Pete yawned. Pete scratched his as. Stakeout night #6-the dawn shift-hijinx at five fucking a.m.

He parked at Truman and "J." He lounged low. HE dug on the view.

that coon called and tipped him. He said Wendell be back. HE said Wendell gots a gun. He said Curtis and Leroy-they baaad. They be pushin' white horse.

Check the carport. Check the Evergreen Project. Dope fiends meet there. Dice fiends too. Wendell the dice fiend soo-preem. Look for Curtis and Leroy-two fat boys-they gots big conk hairdos.

Pete popped aspirin. His headache dipped south. Six nights. Shit surveillance. Headaches and coon food. Grime on his car.

The plan:

Clip Curtis and Leroy. Appease the Boys and play civic booster. Clip Wendell Durfee. Indebt Wayne Junior thus.

You owe me, Wayne. Let's see your files.

-The Cold Six Thousand; James Ellroy

The gunslinger came awake from a confused dream which seemed to consist of a single image: that of the Sailor in the Tarot deck from which the man in black had dealt ( or purported to deal) the gunslinger's own moaning future.
He drowns, gunslinger, the man in black was saying, and no one throws out the line. The boy Jake.
But this was no nightmare. It was a good dream. It was good because he was the one drowning, and meant he was not Roland at all but Jake, and he found this a relief because it would be far better to dream as Jake than life as himself, a man who had, for a cold dream, betrayed a child who had trusted him.

-The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King

He drank his way across the narrow sea.
     The ship was small and his cabin smaller, and the captain would not allow him abovedecks. The rocking of the deck beneath his feet made his stomach heave, and the wretched food they served him tasted even worse when retched back up. Besides, why did he need salt beef, hard cheese, and bread crawling with worms when he had wine to nourish him? It was red and sour, very strong. He sometimes heaved the wine up too, but there was always more. "The world is full of wine," he muttered in the dankness of his cabin. His father had never had any use for drunkards, but what did that matter? His father was dead. He ought to know; he'd killed him. A bolt in the belly, my lord, and all for you. If only I was better with a crossbow, I would have put it through that cock you made me with, you bloody bastard.
     Below decks there was neither night nor day. Tyrion marked time by the comings and goings of the cabin boy who brought the meals he did not eat. The boy always brought a brush and bucket too, to clean up. "Is this Dornish wine?" Tyrion asked him once, as he pulled a stopper from a skin. "It reminds me of a certain snake I knew. A droll fellow, till a mountain fell on him."
     The cabin boy did not answer. He was an ugly boy, though admittedly more comely than a certain dwarf with half a nose and a scar from eye to chin. "Have I offended you?" Tyrion asked the sullen, silent boy, as he was scrubbing. "Were you commanded not to talk to me? Or did some dwarf diddle your mother?"
     That went unanswered too. This is pointless, he knew, but he must speak to someone or go mad, so he persisted. "Where are we sailing? Tell me that." Jaime had made mention of the Free Cities, but had never said which one. "Is it Braavos? Tyrosh? Myr?" Tyrion would sooner have gone to Dorne. Myrcella is older than Tommen, by Dornish law the Iron Throne is hers. I will help her claim her rights, as Prince Oberyn suggested.
     Oberyn was dead, though, his head smashed to bloody ruin by the armored fist of Ser Gregor Clegane. And without the Red Viper to urge him on, would Doran Martell even consider such a chancy scheme? He may clap me in chains instead, and hand me back to my sweet sister. The Wall might be safer. Old Bear Mormont said the Night's Watch had need of men like Tyrion. Mormont may be dead, though. By now Slynt may be the Lord Commander. That butcher's son was not like to have forgotten who sent him to the Wall. Do I really want to spend the rest of my life eating salt beef and porridge with murderers and thieves? Not that the rest of his life would last very long. Janos Slynt would see to that.
     The cabin boy wet his brush and scrubbed on manfully. "Have you ever visited the pleasure houses of Lys?" the dwarf inquired. "Might that be where whores go?" Tyrion could not seem to recall the Valyrian word for whore, and in any case it was too late. The boy tossed his brush back in his bucket and took his leave.
     The wine has blurred my wits. He had learned to read High Valyrian at his maester's knee, though what they spoke in the Nine Free Cities... well, it was not so much a dialect as nine dialects on the way to becoming separate tongues. Tyrion had some Braavosi and a smattering of Myrish. In Tyrosh he should be able to curse the gods, call a man a cheat, and order up an ale, thanks to a sellsword he had once known at the Rock. At least in Dorne they spea the Common Tongue. Like Dornish food and Dornish law, Dornish speech was spiced with the flavors of the Rhoyne, but a man could comprehend it. Dorne, yes, Dorne for me. He crawled into his bunk, clutching that thought like a child with a doll.
     Sleep had never come easily to Tyrion Lannister. Aboard that ship it seldom came at all, though from time to time he managed to drink sufficient wine to pass out for a while. At least he did not dream. He had dreamt enough for one small life. And of such follies: love, justice, friendship, glory. As well dream of being tall. It was all beyond his reach, Tyrion knew now. But he did not know where whores go.
     "Wherever whores go," his father had said. His last words, and what words they were. The crossbow thrummed, Lord Tywin sat back down, and Tyrion Lannister found himself waddling through the darkness with Varys at his side. He must have clambered back down the shaft, two hundred and thirty rungs to where orange embers glowed in the mouth of an iron dragon. He remembered none of it. Only the sound the crossbow made, and the stink of his father's bowels opening. Even in his dying, he found a way to shit on me.
     Varys had escorted him through the tunnels, but they never spoke until they emerged beside the Blackwater, where Tyrion had won a famous victory and lost a nose. That was when the dwarf turned to the eunuch and said, "I've killed my father," in the same tone a man might use to say, "I've stubbed my toe." The master of whisperers had been dressed as a begging brother, in a moth-eaten robe of brown roughspun with a cowl that shadowed his smooth fat cheeks and bald round head. "You should not have climbed that ladder," he said reproachfully.
     "Wherever whores go." Tyrion warned his father not to say that word. If I had not loosed, he would have seen my threats were empty. He would have taken the crossbow from my hands, as once he took Tysha from my arms. He was rising when I killed him. "I killed Shae too," he confessed to Varys.
     "You knew what she was."
     "I did. But I never knew what he was."
     Varys tittered. "And now you do."
     I should have killed the eunuch as well. A little more blood on his hands, what would it matter? He could not say what had stayed his dagger. Not gratitude. Varys had saved him from a headsman's sword, but only because Jaime had compelled him. Jaime... no, better not to think of Jaime.

>>4
     He found a fresh skin of wine instead, and sucked at it as if it were a woman's breast. The sour red ran down his chin and soaked through his soiled tunic, the same one he had been wearing in his cell. He sucked until the wine was gone. The deck was swaying beneath his feet, and when he tried to rise it lifted sideways and smashed him hard against a bulkhead. A storm, he realized, or else I am even drunker than I knew. He retched the wine up and lay in it a while, wondering if the ship would sink.
     Is this your vengeance, Father? Have the Father Above made you his Hand? "Such are the wages of the kinslayer," he said as the wind howled outside. It did not seem fair to drown the cabin boy and the captain and all the rest for something he had done, but when had the gods ever been fair? And around about then, the darkness gulped him down
     When he stirred again, his head felt like to burst and the ship was spinning round in dizzy circles, though the captain was insisting that they'd come to port. Tyrion told him to be quiet, and kicked feebly as a huge bald sailor tucked him under one arm and carried him squirming to the hold, where an empty wine cask awaited him. It was a squat little cask, and a tight fit even for a dwarf. Tyrion pissed himself in his struggles, for all the good it did. He was up crammed face first into the cask with his knees pushed up against his ears. The stub of his nose itched horribly, but his arms were pinned so tightly that he could not reach to scratch it. A palanquin fit for a man of my stature, he thought as they hammered shut the lid and hoisted him up. He could hear voices shouting as he was jounced along. Every bounce cracked his head against the bottom of the cask. The world went round and round as the cask rolled downward, then stopped with a sudden crash that made him want to scream. Another cask slammed into his, and Tyrion bit his tongue.
     That was the longest journey he had ever taken, though it could not have lasted more than half an hour. He was lifted and lowered, rolled and stacked, upended and righted and rolled again. Through the wooden staves he heard men shouting, and once a horse whickered nearby. His stunted legs began to cramp, and soon hurt so badly that he forgot the hammering in his head.
     It ended as it had begun, with another roll that left him dizzy and more jouncing. Outside strange voices were speaking in a tongue he did not know. Someone started pounding on the top of the cask and the lid cracked open suddenly. Light came flooding in, and cool air as well. Tyrion gasped greedily and tried to stand, but only managed to knock the cask over sideways and spill himself out onto a hard-packed earthen floor.
     Above him loomed a grotesque fat man with a forked yellow beard, holding a wooden mallet and an iron chisel. His bedrobe was large enough to serve as a tourney pavilion, but its loosely knotted belt had come undone, exposing a huge white belly and a pair of heavy breasts that sagged like sacks of suet covered with coarse yellow hair. He reminded Tyrion of a dead sea cow that had once washed up in the caverns under Casterly Rock.
     The fat man looked down and smiled. "A drunken dwarf," he said, in the Common Tongue of Westeros.
     "A rotting sea cow." Tyrion's mouth was full of blood. He spat it at the fat man's feet. They were in a long dim cellar with barrel-vaulted ceilings, its stone walls spotted with nitre. Casks of wine and ale surrounded them, more than enough drink to see a thirsty dwarf safely through the night. Or through a life.
     "You are insolent. I like that in a dwarf." When the fat man laughed, his flesh bounced so vigorously that Tyrion was afraid he might fall and crush him. "Are you hungry, my little friend? Weary?"
     "Thirsty." Tyrion struggled to his knees. "And filthy."
     The fat man sniffed. "A bath first, just so. Then food and a soft bed, yes? My servants shall see to it." His host put the mallet and chisel aside. "My house is yours. Any friend of my friend across the water is a friend to Illyrio Mopatis, yes."
     And any friend of Varys the Spider is someone I will trust just as far as I can throw him.
     The fat man made good on the promised bath, at least... though no sooner did Tyrion lower himself into the hot water and close his eyes than he was fast asleep.
     He woke naked on a goosedown featherbed so deep and soft it felt as if he were being swallowed by a cloud. His tongue was growing hair and his throat was raw, but his cock felt as hard as an iron bar. He rolled from the bed, found a chamberpot, and commenced to filling it, with a groan of pleasure.
     The room was dim, but there were bars of yellow sunlight showing between the slats of the shutters. Tyrion shook the last drops off and waddled over patterned Myrish carpets as soft as new spring grass. Awkwardly he climbed the window seat and flung shudders open to see where Varys and the gods had sent him.
     Beneath his window six cherry trees stood sentinel around a marble pool, their slender branches bare and brown. A naked boy stood on the water, poised to duel with a bravo's blade in hand. He was lithe and handsome, no older than sixteen, with straight blond hair that brushed his shoulders. So lifelike did he seem that it took the dwarf a long moment to realize he was made of painted marble, though his sword shimmered like true steel.
     Across the pool stood stood a brick wall twelve feet high, with iron spikes along its top. Beyond that was the city. A sea of tiled rooftops crowded close around a bay. He saw square brick towers, a great red temple, a distant manse upon a hill. In the far distance sunlight shimmered off deep water. Fishing boats were moving across the bay, their sails rippling in the wind, and he could see the masts of larger ships poking up along the bay shore. Surely one is bound for Dorne, or for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. He had no means to pay for passage, though, nor was he made to pull an oar. I suppose I could sign on as a cabin boy and earn my way by letting the crew bugger me up and down the narrow sea. He wondered where he was. Even the air smells different here. Strange spices scented the chilly autumn wind, and he could hear faint cries drifting over the wall from the streets beyond. It sounded something like Valyrian, but he did not recognize more than one word in five. Not Braavos, he concluded, nor Tyrosh. Those bare branches and the chill in the air argued against Lys and Myr and Volantis as well.
     When he heard the door opening behind him, Tyrion turned to confront his fat host. "This is Pentos, yes?"
     "Just so. Where else?"
     Pentos. Well, it was not King's Landing, that much could be said for it. "Where do whores go?" he heard himself ask.
     "Whores are found in brothels here, as in Westeros. You will have no need of such, my little friend. Choose from among my serving women. None will dare refuse you."
     "Slaves?" the dwarf asked pointedly.
     The fat man stroked one of the prongs of his oiled yellow beard, a gesture Tyrion fond remarkably obscene. "Slavery is forbidden in Pentos, by the terms of the treaty the Braavosi imposed on us a hundred years ago. Still, they will not refuse you." Illyrio gave a ponderous half-bow. "But now my little friend must excuse me. I have the honor to be a magister of this great city, and the prince has summoned us to session." He smiled, showing a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth. "Explore the manse and grounds as you like, but on no account stray beyond the walls. It is best that no man knows that you were here."
     "Were? Have I gone somewhere?"
     "Time enough to speak of that this evening. My little friend and I shall eat and drink and make great plans, yes?"
     "Yes, my fat friend," Tyrion replied. He thinks to use me for his profit. It was all profit with the merchant princes of the Free Cities. "Spice soldiers and cheese lords," his lord father called them, with contempt. Should a day ever dawn when Illyrio Mopatis saw more profit in a dead dwarf than a live one, he would find himself packed into another wine cask by dusk. It would be well if I were gone before that day arrives. That it would arrive he did not doubt; Cersei was not like to forget him, and even Jaime might be vexed to find a quarrel in Father's belly.
     A light wind was riffling the waters of the pool below, all around the naked swordsman. It reminded him of how Tysha would riffle his hair during the false spring of their marriage, before he helped his father's guardsmen rape her. He had been thinking of those guardsmen during his flight, trying to recall how many there had been. You would think he might remember that, but no. A dozen? A score? A hundred? He could not say. They had all been grown men, tall and strong... though all men were tall to a dwarf of thirteen years. Tysha knew their number. Each of them had given her a silver stag, so she would only need to count the coins. A silver for each and a gold for me. His father had insisted that he pay her too. A Lannister always pays his debts.
     "Wherever whores go," he heard Lord Tywin say once more, and once more the bowstring thrummed.
     The magister had invited him to explore the manse. He found clean clothes in a cedar chest inlaid with lapis and mother-of-pearl. The clothes had been made for a small boy, he realized as he struggled into them. The fabrics were rich enough, if a little musty, but the cut was too long in the legs and too short in the arms, with a collar that would have turned his face as black as Joffrey's had he somehow contrived to get it fastened. At least they do not stink of vomit.

>>5

     Tyrion began his explorations with the kitchen, where two fat women and a pot boy watched him warily as he helped himself to cheese, bread, and figs. "Good morrow to you, fair ladies," he said with a bow. "Do you perchance know where the whores go?" When they did not respond, he repeated the question in High Valyrian, though he had to say courtesan in place of whore. The younger fatter cook gave him a shrug that time.
     He wondered what they would do if he took them by the hand and dragged them to his bedchamber. None will dare refuse you, Illyrio claimed, but somehow Tyrion did not think he meant these two. The younger woman was old enough to be his mother, and the older was likely her mother. Both were near as fat as Illyrio, with teats that were larger than his head. I could smother myself in flesh, he reflected. There were worse ways to die. The way his lord father had died, for one. I should have made him shit a little gold before expiring. Lord Tywin might have been niggardly with his approval and affection, but he had always been open-handed when it came to coin. The only thing more pitiful than a dwarf without a nose is a dwarf without a nose who has no gold.
     Tyrion left the fat women to their loaves and kettles and went in search of the cellar where Illyrio had decanted him the night before. It was not hard to find. There was enough wine there to keep him drunk for a hundred years; sweet reds from the Reach and sour reds from Dorne, pale Pentoshi ambers, the green nectar of Myr, three score casks of Arbor gold, even wines from the fabled east, from Meereen and Qarth and Asshai by the Shadow. In the end, Tyrion chose a cask of strongwine marked as the private stock of Lord Runceford Redwyne, the grandfather of the present Lord of the Arbor. The taste of it was languorous and heady on the tongue, the color a purple so dark that it looked almost black in the dim-lit cellar. Tyrion filled a cup, and a flagon for good measure, and carried them up to gardens to drink beneath those cherry trees he'd seen.
     As it happened, he left by the wrong door and never found the pool he had spied from his window, but it made no matter. The gardens behind the manse were just as pleasant, and far more extensive. He wandered through them for a time, drinking. The walls would have shamed any proper castle, and the ornamental iron spikes along the top looked strangely naked without heads to adorn them. Tyrion pictured how his sister's head might look up there, with tar in her golden hair and flies buzzing in and out of her mouth. Yes, and Jaime must have the spike beside her, he decided. No one must ever come between my brother and my sister.
     With a rope and a grapnel he might be able to get over that wall. He strong arms and he did not weigh much. With a rope he should he able to reach the spikes and clamber over. I will search for a rope on the morrow, he resolved.
     He saw three gates during his wanderings; the main entrance with its gatehouse, a postern by the kennels, and a garden gate hidden behind a tangle of pale ivy. The last was chained, the others guarded. The guards were plump, their faces as smooth as a baby's bottom, and every man of them wore a spiked bronze cap. Tyrion knew eunuchs when he saw them. He knew their sort by reputation. They feared nothing and felt no pain, it was said, and were loyal to their masters unto death. I could make good use of a few hundred of mine own, he reflected. A pity I did not think of that before I became a beggar.
     He walked along a pillared gallery and through a pointed arch, and found himself in a tiled courtyard where a woman was washing clothes at a well. She looked to be his own age, with dull red hair and a broad face dotted by freckles. "Would you like some wine?" he asked her. She looked at him uncertainly. "I have no cup for you, we'll have to share." The washerwoman went back to wringing out tunics and hanging them to dry. Tyrion settled on a stone bench with his flagon. "Tell me, how far should I trust Magister Illyrio?" The name made her look up. "That far?" Chuckling, he crossed his stunted legs and took a drink. "I am loathe to play whatever part the cheesemonger has in mind for me, yet how can I refuse him? The gates are guarded. Perhaps you might smuggle me out under your skirts? I'd be so grateful, why, I'll even wed you. I have two wives already, why not three? Ah, but where would we live?" He gave her as pleasant a smile as a man with half a nose could manage. "I have a niece in Sunspear, did I tell you? I could make rather a lot of mischief in Dorne with Myrcella. I could set my niece and nephew at war, wouldn't that be droll?" The washerwoman pinned up one of Illyrio's tunics, large enough to double as a sail. "I should be ashamed to think such evil thoughts, you're quite right. Better if I sought the Wall instead. All crimes are wiped clean when a man joins the Night's Watch, they say. Though I fear they would not let me keep you, sweetling. No women in the Watch, no sweet freckly wives to warm your bed at night, only cold winds, salted cod, and small beer. Do you think I might stand taller in black, my lady?" He filled his cup again. "What do you say? North or south? Shall I atone for old sins or make some new ones?"
     The washerwoman gave him one last glance, picked up her basket, and walked away. I cannot seem to hold a wife for very long, Tyrion reflected. Somehow his flagon had gone dry. Perhaps I should stumble back down to the cellars. The strongwine was making his head spin, though, and the cellar steps were very steep. "Where do whores go?" he asked the wash flapping on the line. Perhaps he should have asked the washerwoman. Not to imply that you're a whore, my dear, but perhaps you know where they go. Or better yet, he should have asked his father. "Wherever whores go," Lord Tywin said. She loved me. She was a crofter's daughter, she loved me and she wed me, she put her trust in me. The empty flagon slipped from his hand and rolled across the yard.
     Grimacing, Tyrion pushed himself off the bench and went to fetch it, but as he did he saw some mushrooms growing up from a cracked paving tile. Pale white they were, with speckles, and red ribbed undersides as dark as blood. The dwarf snapped one off and sniffed it. Delicious, he thought, or deadly. But which? Why not both? He was not a brave enough man to take cold steel to his own belly, but a bite of mushroom would not be so hard. There were seven of the mushrooms, he saw. Perhaps the gods were trying to tell him something. He picked them all, snatched a glove down from the line, wrapped them carefully, and stuffed them down his pocket. The effort made him dizzy, though, so afterward he crawled back onto the bench, curled up, and shut his eyes.
     When he woke again, he was back in his bedchamber, drowning in the goosedown featherbed once more while a blond girl shook his shoulder. "My lord," she said, "your bath awaits. Magister Illyrio expects you at table within the hour."
     Tyrion propped himself against the pillows, his head in his hands. "Do I dream, or do you speak the Common Tongue?"
     "Yes, my lord. I was bought to please the king." She was blue-eyed and fair, young and willowy.
     "I am sure you did. I need a cup of wine."
     She poured for him. "Magister Illyrio said that I am to scrub your back and warm your bed. My name — "
     " — is of no interest to me. Do you know where whores go?"
     She flushed. "Whores sell themselves for coin."
     "Or jewels, or gowns, or castles. But where do they go?"
     The girl could not grasp the question. "Is it a riddle, m'lord? I'm no good at riddles. Will you tell me the answer?"
     No, he thought. I despise riddles, myself. "I will tell you nothing. Do me the same favor." The only part of you that interests me is the part between your legs, he almost said. The words were on his tongue, but somehow never passed his lips. She is not Shae, the dwarf told himself, only some little fool who thinks I play at riddles. If truth be told, even her cunt did not interest him much. I must be sick, or dead. "You mentioned a bath? Show me. We must not keep the great cheesemonger waiting."

>>6
          As he bathed, the girl washed his feet, scrubbed his back, and brushed his hair. Afterward she rubbed sweet-smelling ointment into his calves to ease the aches, and dressed him once again in boy's clothing, a musty pair of burgundy breeches and a blue velvet doublet lined with cloth-of-gold. "Will my lord want me after he has eaten?" she asked as she was lacing up his boots.
     "No. I am done with women." Whores.
     The girl took that disappointment entirely too well for his liking. "If m'lord would prefer a boy, I can have one waiting in his bed."
     M'lord would prefer his wife. M'lord would prefer a girl named Tysha. "Only if he knows where whores go."
     The girl's mouth tightened. She despises me, he realized, but no more than I despise myself. That he had fucked many a woman who loathed the very sight of him, Tyrion Lannister had no doubt, but the others had at least the grace to feign affection. A little honest loathing might be refreshing, like a tart wine after too much sweet.
     "I believe I have changed my mind," he told her. "Wait for me abed. Naked, if you please, I expect I'll be a deal too drunk to fumble at your clothing. Keep your mouth shut and your thighs open and the two of us should get on splendidly." He gave her a leer, hoping for a taste of fear, but all she gave him was revulsion. No one fears a dwarf. Even Lord Tywin had not been afraid, though Tyrion had held a crossbow in his hands. "Do you moan when you are being fucked?" he asked the bedwarmer.
     "If it please m'lord."
     "It might please m'lord to strangle you. That's how I served my last whore. Do you think your master would object? Surely not. He has a hundred more like you, but no one else like me." This time, when he grinned, he got the fear he wanted.
     Illyrio was reclining on a padded couch, gobbling hot peppers and pearl onions from a wooden bowl. His brow was dotted with beads of sweat, his pig's eyes shining above his fat cheeks. Jewels danced when he moved his hands; onyx and opal, tiger's eye and tourmeline, ruby, amethyst, sapphire, emerald, jet and jade, a black diamond and a green pearl. I could live for years on his rings, Tyrion mused, though I'd need a cleaver to claim them.
     "Come and sit, my little friend." Illyrio waved him closer.
     The dwarf clambered up onto a chair. It was much too big for him, a cushioned throne intended to accomodate the magister's massive buttocks, with thick sturdy legs to bear his weight. Tyrion Lannister had lived all his life in a world that was too big for him, but in the manse of Illyrio Mopatis the sense of disproportion assumed grotesque dimensions. I am a mouse in a mammoth's lair, he mused, though at least the mammoth keeps a good cellar. The thought made him thirsty. He called for wine.
     "Did you enjoy the girl I sent you?" Illyrio asked.
     "If I had wanted a girl I would have asked for one. I lack a nose, not a tongue."
     "If she failed to please... "
     "She did all that was required of her."
     "I would hope so. She was trained in Lys, where they make an art of love. And she speaks your Common Tongue. The king enjoyed her greatly."
     "I kill kings, hadn't you heard?" Tyrion smiled evilly over his wine cup. "I want no royal leavings."
     "As you wish. Let us eat." Illyrio clapped his hands together, and serving men came running.
     They began with a broth of crab and monkfish, and cold egg lime soup as well. Then came quails in honey, a saddle of lamb, goose livers drowned in wine, buttered parsnips, and suckling pig. The sight of it all made Tyrion feel queasy, but he forced himself to try a spoon of soup for the sake of politeness, and once he had tasted he was lost. The cooks might be old and fat, but they knew their business. He had never eaten so well, even at court.
     As he was sucking the meat off the bones of his quail, he asked Illyrio about the morning's summons. The fat man shrugged. "There are troubles in the east. Astapor has fallen, and Meereen. Ghiscari slave cities that were old when the world was young." The suckling pig was carved. Illyrio reached for a piece of the crackling, dipped it in a plum sauce, and ate it with his fingers.
     "Slaver's Bay is a long way from Pentos," said Tyrion, as he speared a goose liver on the point of his knife. No man is as cursed as the kinslayer, he reminded himself, smiling.
     "This is so," Illyrio agreed, "but the world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble." He clapped his hands again. "Come, eat."
     The serving men brough out a heron stuffed with figs, veal cutlets blanched with almond milk, creamed herring, candied onions, foul-smelling cheeses, plates of snails and sweetbreads, and a black swan in her plumage. Tyrion refused the swan, which reminded him of a supper with his sister. He helped himself to heron and herring, though, and a few of the sweet onions. And the serving men filled his wine cup anew each time he emptied it.

>>7
     "You drink a deal of wine for such a little man."
     "Kinslaying is dry work. It gives a man a thirst."
     The fat man's eyes glittered like the gemstones on his fingers. "There are those in Westeros who would say that killing Lord Lannister was merely a good beginning."
     "They had best not say it in my sister's hearing, or they will find themselves short a tongue." The dwarf tore a loaf of bread in half. "And you had best be careful what you say of my family, magister. Kinslayer or no, I am a lion still."
     That seemed to amuse the lord of cheese no end. He slapped a meaty thigh and said, "You Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk, and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles. I can bring you to a real lion, my little friend. The prince keeps a pride in his menagerie. Would you like to share a cage with them?"
     The lords of the Seven Kingdoms did make rather much of their sigils, Tyrion had to admit. "Very well," he conceded. "A Lannister is not a lion. Yet I am still my father's son, and Jaime and Cersei are mine to kill."
     "How odd that you should mention your fair sister," said Illyrio, between snails. "The queen has offered a lordship to the man who brings her your head, no matter how humble his birth."
     It was no more than Tyrion had expected. "If you mean to take her up on it, make her spread her legs for you as well. The best part of me for the best part of her, that's a fair trade."
     "I would sooner have mine own weight in gold." The cheesemonger laughed so hard that Tyrion feared he was about to rupture and drown his guest in a gout of half-digested eels and sweetmeats. "All the gold in Casterly Rock, why not?"
     "The gold I grant you," he said, "but the Rock is mine."
     "Just so." The magister covered his mouth and belched a mighty belch. "Do you think King Stannis will give it to you? I am told he is a great one for the law. He may well grant you Casterly Rock, is that not so? Your brother wears the white cloak, so you are your father's heir by all the laws of Westeros."
     "Stannis might grant me the Rock," Tyrion admitted, "but there is also the small matter of regicide and kinslaying. For those he would shorten me by a head, and I am short enough as I stand. But why would you think I mean to join Lord Stannis?"
     "Why else would you go the Wall?"
     "Stannis is at the Wall?" Tyrion rubbed at his nose. "What in seven bloody hells is Stannis doing at the Wall?"
     "Shivering, I would think. It is warmer down in Dorne. Perhaps he should have sailed that way."
     Tyrion was beginning to suspect that a certain freckled washerwoman knew more of the Common Speech than she pretended. "My niece Myrcella is in Dorne, as it happens. And I have half a mind to make her a queen."
     Illyrio smiled, as his serving men spooned out bowls of black cherries in sweetcream for them both. "What has this poor child done to you, that you would wish her dead?"
     "Even a kinslayer is not required to slay all his kin," said Tyrion, wounded. "Queen her, I said. Not kill her."
     The cheesemonger spooned up cherries. "In Volantis they use a coin with a crown on one face and a death's head on the other. Yet it is the same coin. To queen her is to kill her. Dorne might rise for Myrcella, but Dorne alone is not enough. If you are as clever as our friend insists, you know this."
     Tyrion looked at the fat man with new interest. He is right on both counts. To queen her is to kill her. And I knew that. "Futile gestures are all that remain to me. This one would make my sister weep bitter tears, at least."
     Magister Illyrio wiped sweetcream from his mouth with the back of a fat hand. "The road to Casterly Rock does not go through Dorne, my little friend. Nor does it run beside the Wall. Yet there is such a road, I tell you."
     "I am an attainted traitor, a regicide and kinslayer." This talk of roads annoyed him. Does he think this is a game? "What one king does another may undo. In Pentos we have a prince, my friend. He presides at ball and feast and rides about the city in a palanquin of ivory and gold. Three heralds go before him with the golden scales of trade, the iron sword of war, and the silver scourge of justice. On the first day of each new year he must deflower the maid of the fields and the maid of the seas." Illyrio leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Yet should a crop fail or a war be lost, we cut his throat to appease the gods, and choose a new prince from amongst the forty families."
     Tyrion snorted through the stump of his nose. "Remind me never to become the Prince of Pentos."
     "Are your Seven Kingdoms so different? There is no peace in Westeros, no justice, no faith... and soon enough no food. When men are starving and sick of fear, they look for a savior."
     "They may look, but if all they find is Stannis — "
     "Not Stannis. Nor Myrcella. Another." The yellow smile widened. "Another. Stronger than Tommen, gentler than Stannis, with a better claim than the girl Myrcella. A savior come from across the sea to bind up the wounds of bleeding Westeros."
     "Fine words." Tyrion was unimpressed. "Words are wind. Who is this bloody savior?"
     "A dragon." The cheesemonger saw the look on his face at that, and laughed. "A dragon with three heads."

Fuck you pay me she said so we did for an hour or so and then she got paied.
"Sir, what does this mean?"
"My dear, i have no idea!"

"...If that's all she is--a collection of programs."
  "There has to be more to her than that," said Miro.
  "Why?"
  "Because if she's nothing more than a collection of programs, even self-writing and self-revising programs, ultimately she was created by some programer or group of programers somewhere. In which case she's just acting out the program that was forced on her from the beginning. She has no free will. She's a puppet. Not a person."
  "Well, when it comes to that, maybe you're defining free will too narrowly," said Ender. "Aren't human beings the same way, programmed by our genes and our environment?"
  "No," said Miro.
  "What else, then?"
  "Our philotic connections say that we aren't. Because we're capable of connecting with each other by act of will, which no other form of life on Earth can do. There's something we have, something we are, that wasn't caused by anything else."
  "What, our soul?"
  "Not even that," said Miro. "Because the priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppeteer. If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make. God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid porgrammer keying in code at an ancient terminal--there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause."
  "So--as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the casual chain begins. So, you think, That domino fell because it wanted to."
  "Bobagem," said Miro.
  "Well, I admit that it's a philosophy with no practical value," said Ender. "Valentine once it explained it to me this way. Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can't honor him, because he was a puppet too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you."
  "Dispair," said Miro.
  "So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they're being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It's all a made up story, but when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization."
  "Just a story."
  "That's how Valentine explained it. That is, if there's no free will. I'm not sure what she actually believes herself. My guess is that she'd say that she is civilized, and therefore she must believe the story herself, in which case she absolutely believes in free will and thinks this whole idea of a made-up story is nonsense--but that's what she'd believe even if it were true, and so who can be sure of anything."
  Then Ender laughed, because Valentine had laughed when she first told him this many years ago. When they were still only a little bit past childhood, and he was working on writing the Hegemon, and was trying to understand why his brother Peter had done all the great and terrible things he did.
  "It isn't funny," said Miro.
  "I thought it was," said Ender.
  "Either we're free or we're not," said Miro. "Either the story's true or it isn't."
  "The point is that we have to believe it's true in order to live as civilized human beings," said Ender.
  "No, that's not the point at all," said Miro. "Because if it's a lie, why should we bother to live as civilized human beings?"
  "Because the species has a better chance to survive if we do," said Ender. "Because our genes require us to believe the story in order to enhance our ability to pass those genes on for many generations in the future. Because anybody who doesn't believe the story begins to act in unproductive, uncooperative ways, and eventually the community, the herd, will reject him and his opportunities for reproduction will be diminished--for instance, he'll be put in jail--and the genes leading to his unbelieving behavior will eventually be extinguished."
  "So the puppeteer requires that we believe that we're not puppets. We're forced to believe in free will."
  "Or so Valentine explained it to me."
  "But she doesn't really believe that, does she?"
  "Of course she doesn't. Her genes won't let her."

>>4
>>5
>>6
>>7
>>8

Um, is this part of Dance of Dragons? I thought it wasn't out yet.

>>11
George put it up briefly on his site like a year ago and I saved it.  Theres also a Daenerys chapter.

"Ah yes, [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness]... Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. The third 'right'?—the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives—but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."

"Tell me a joke" Creek said
"Two guys walk into a bar," The agent said. "A third guy says,
'Wow that must of hurt.'"
"Yup, it's you." Creek said.
"Yup, it's me." the agent said. "Hello, Harry."
"Hello, Brian. It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you too, man," Brian Javna said. "Now maybe you can tell me a couple of things. Like how the hell you got so old. And what the fuck I am doing inside your computer."

>>14
wins. fucking funny book.

>>14
What book is this?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and for the except from what i am reading. " He put his hat on the rack. It was a hat rack"

>>16
"the android's dream" i think

He ended up where he started, in the middle of the deserted main street. He had shot and killed thirty-nine men, fourteen women and five children. He had shot and killed everyone in Tull.

>>18
 win

>>18
The Gunslinger, part 1 of the Dark Tower Series, S King.

How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Hi. I am looking for someone who has the conplete Daenerys chapter of he advance GRRM put up on his site. Can you help me? I have the Jon and the Tyrion chapters. Thank you. Sincerely, David Bartlett

Poor Folk, Dostoevsky.

Only myself and the father were there. During the service a
sort of panic, a sort of premonition of the future, came over me,
and I could hardly hold myself upright. At length the coffin had
received its burden and was screwed down; after which the bearers
placed it upon a bier, and set out. I accompanied the cortege
only to the end of the street. Here the driver broke into a trot,
and the old man started to run behind the hearse--sobbing loudly,
but with the motion of his running ever and anon causing the sobs
to quaver and become broken off. Next he lost his hat, the poor
old fellow, yet would not stop to pick it up, even though the
rain was beating upon his head, and a wind was rising and the
sleet kept stinging and lashing his face. It seemed as though he
were impervious to the cruel elements as he ran from one side of
the hearse to the other--the skirts of his old greatcoat flapping
about him like a pair of wings. From every pocket of the garment
protruded books, while in his hand he carried a specially large
volume, which he hugged closely to his breast. The passers-by
uncovered their heads and crossed themselves as the cortege
passed, and some of them, having done so, remained staring in
amazement at the poor old man. Every now and then a book would
slip from one of his pockets and fall into the mud; whereupon
somebody, stopping him, would direct his attention to his loss,
and he would stop, pick up the book, and again set off in pursuit
of the hearse. At the corner of the street he was joined by a
ragged old woman; until at length the hearse turned a corner, and
became hidden from my eyes. Then I went home, and threw myself,
in a transport of grief, upon my mother's breast--clasping her in
my arms, kissing her amid a storm of sobs and tears, and clinging
to her form as though in my embraces I were holding my last
friend on earth, that I might preserve her from death. Yet
already death was standing over her....

An old drunk who is immensely proud of his son chases after the procession at his sons funeral carrying the books that belonged to him before his death

The soldiers laid out the pieces of Yamamoto's skin and were standing by them, discussing something.  They seemed to be exchanging opinions on the finer points of the skinner's technique.  The Mongolian officer put his knife in it's scabbard and then into the pocket of his coat before approaching us.  He looked me in the face for a moment, then turned to his fellow officer.

i ain't typing all that shit down, fucker

THE NEGRO

Of all the mass imbecilities which have demoralised mankind, this of racial equality between all peoples, White, Black, Red and Yellow, is the most inane. Politically, it has already stirred up all the minor races into a state of belligerence and discontent which will impose minor wars on the dominant nations for years to come. But when it comes to racial integration between the White and Black races, sanity has descended to the looney bin of the impossible, because the intermixture of blood between those races must degrade the White race to the level of the Negro and cannot raise the Negro to the level of the White. Where today we see some evidence of the effect of education on the Negro it is the White blood in him that stirs some animation in his sluggish mental faculties, but the Negro pure, as he exists in Africa, cannot be educated even up to the standard of the lowest content of the White race. He may learn to parrot all the political and sociological clichés of today, but unless he is buttressed by the White race, and policed by it, he must relapse back to the jungle, which is his predestined habitat.

There appears to be an illusion today that this age is the first one in which the Negro has come into contact with a White civilisation, and so had a chance to benefit by its cultural and sociological ordinances. This is not the case. Since the genesis of this present civilisation some six or seven thousand years ago, the Negro has had contact with many past episodes of civilisation, but always, as each subsided, he has relapsed back to the jungle. The other three races, White, Yellow and Red, have devised their own civilisations, and have maintained them through the ages, but it is only in quite recent years that the Negro has come into relations with them. As in the past, his status has been one of slavery, because he has never been able to compete culturally with their achievements in the arts and crafts and intellectual standards. Nor can he compete today with those same achievements, because he utterly lacks the creative faculty: he has no thumbs. The only thing he ever learned to do was to smelt iron ore and hammer out his spear heads. That weapon was essential to the preservation of his existence in his tribal wars, and his food derived from wild animals able to defend themselves with teeth and claws.

Save for the Chinese, and other Asiatic peoples, all other civilisations were generated on the shores of the Mediterranean and the Negro penetration of them was very slight, except, perhaps, with the Egyptians, who were themselves a dark coloured race, but with no relation to the Negroid peoples. Only the Moors and Arabs, because of their geographical contiguity with Africa, have kept up the slave trade with Negroes, but sexual union with them was strictly prohibited. Or impossible for that matter. By a very simple clinical ritual, the Negro became a harmless guard and menial to the Harem. It is only since the colonisation of Africa by the British, Dutch, French and Belgian peoples that the Negro has become a momentous world problem within the last two decades. The British, French and Belgian peoples solved it for themselves by handing their colonies over to the Negroes. The Dutch could not do that. They had been so long in South Africa that they had built up another white race there—the Boers. And there, the world may be assured, they will remain, and the Negro will not be permitted racial equality with them. What must happen shortly between those peoples is already predestined. The only other country on which the full weight of the Negro falls is America.

And the Politician’s solution to it of race integration is a desperation measure which never can succeed, as the politicians themselves know, but at present, they dare not do anything about it, for President Johnson won the presidential campaign by handing himself over to the largest section of the community to command the vote, just as Roosevelt did to capture the presidential chair. We know that section, which is the pestilential problem of all peoples who seek to keep a sane balance of rationality in the conduct of their political and sociological affairs. In Australia, we call them Wowsers—a stigma word which Mencken incorporated in his American Language, but as yet Americans have not adopted it. A stigma word has great power.

In America the Wowser is the self-elected Dogooder—the temperance crank, the Purity Leaguer, the anti-saloon leaguer, the Comstock bookshop smasher and picture slasher; in short, that chapel product of the cheap suburbs and the rural back blocks which seeks to impose its own horrible codes and doctrines on all that makes life tolerable for well constituted humanity. They are the people who imposed Prohibition on America and very nearly wrecked the country. In Russia, they were largely responsible for the Revolution by cutting off the people’s need for liquor during the 194 war. They are the Pacifists—the peace at any pricers, the appeasers at any threat of war which thereby makes it inevitable by inviting aggression from piratically inclined nations. They are today trying to cripple Johnson’s handling of the Viet Nam war: the finest piece of statecraft since the great days of England as a world power, when half a dozen words from Lord Salisbury was enough to send Russia scuttling back from the Oxus. It is a great pleasure to know that our men are fighting with the Yanks, and that more are being trained to follow, if needed.

It is the Wowser, then, to use one stigma term for a generic type common to America, England, and Australia, who is doing all the mischief today by inflating the Negro with a state of megalomania which convinces him that he is the victim of monstrous injustice by the white peoples, and all revenges on them are his by right of martyrdom. And that revenge he will take whenever he has power to do so.

We must concede him injustice so far in that the Whites have invaded his country and taken possession of large sections of it. In the past, they made a commodity of him in the slave market. Those same Whites have now handed back to him the sections of country they had occupied and have freed him from slavery. Justice can go no further than that.

But America, swung off a sane balance of rationality by the maudlin sentimentality of the Wowsers for the assumed sad lot of the Negroes, has allowed its politicians to establish them in equal civil and social rights with the Whites. They have ordained that the white children must consort intimately with the black offspring from infancy to adolescence, and that alone insures sexual intimacy between the two races. That American mothers—always so passionately possessive over their young—should have allowed them to do such a noxious thing is evidence that they are too dazed by the bulldozing tactics of the politicians to realise its inevitable consequences. It is assumed that education will dispose of the physiological compulsions inherent in all such propinquity of the human species.

Education! This age has become besotted over its assumed potentialities to perform a universal miracle, which is that text books alone can create a civilisation. It ignores the irrefutable evidence that only a civilised mind can be educated. Education is nothing more than a procedure for exercising intellectual faculties which are a content of the mind at birth. It has taken the white race six thousand years to develop those special faculties on which all civilisations have been built. The craftsman’s fingers, the musician’s ear, the artist’s hand and eye, the scientist’s investigation of all natural phenomena are inherited from progenitors who have left behind them the brain cells, and the muscular reflexes essential to all creative effort. And it is now assumed that education, in a generation or two, will allow the wretched Negro to develop those special faculties and so allow him to compete on equal terms with the White race as a civilised being. Imbecility can go no further than such a preposterous assumption.

Already the Negro mass is in a vicious state of resentment because it has not straightway been vested in all the rights and privileges of the Whites. The Los Angeles episode is a sufficient evidence of a universal state of mind among the Negroes. And that is only the beginning of the trouble. When he finds that the higher-class whites will not consort with him on equal terms, and that there is no place for him among the trained working class, no police force in the world will be adequate to control him.

Americans are not a docile people when politicians impose arbitrary interdictions on the free conduct of their civic rights and their private lives. The politicians’ failure to inflict Prohibition on the American people is evidence of what they must expect by this proposal to impose racial integration with the Negroes on them. It only required an adjustment of the legal code to dispose of Prohibition, but no such adjustment can solve the Negro problem for them. There is only one possible solution to that, but I am not going to take it on myself to suggest it. It must be already pregnant in the minds of all higher class American thinkers today.

Harry turned to look at Ron and Hermione. Neither of them seemed to have understood what Xenophilius had said either.
"The Deathly Hallows?"
"That's right," said Xenophilius. "You haven't heard of them? I'm not surprised. Very, very few wizards believe. Witness that knuckle-headed young man at your brother's wedding," he nodded at Ron, "who attacked me for sporting the symbol of a well-known Dark wizard! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense. One simply uses the symbol to reveal oneself to other believers, in the hope that they might help one with the Quest."
He stirred several lumps of sugar into his Gurdyroot infusion and drank some.
"I'm sorry," said Harry. "I still don't really understand."
To be polite, he took a sip from his cup too, and almost gagged: The stuff was quite disgusting, as though someone had liquidized bogey-flavored Every Flavor Beans.
"Well, you see, believers seek the Deathly Hallows," said Xenophilius, smacking his lips in apparent appreciation of the Gurdyroot infusion.

never did finish the 7th book, doing so now

Harry turned to look at Ron and Hermione errected cocks. Neither of them seemed to have swallowed Xenophilius massive cumload.
"The Deathly Vagina?"
"That's right," said Xenophilius. "You haven't heard of them? I'm not surprised. Very, very few fags believe. Witness that knuckle-headed young man at your brother's wedding," he stroked Rons tiny penis, "who cum in my face for sporting the symbol of a well-known Negro-Fag-Clan! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the Vaginas -- at least, not in that crude sense. One simply uses the clitoris to stimulate the women, in the hope that they might sit on your cocks."
He stirred several lumps of dried cum into his Gurdyroot infusion and drank some.
"I'm sorry," said Harry. "I still don't really understand."
To be polite, he took a deepthroat with Hermiones giant cock, and almost gagged: The stuff was quite disgusting, as though someone had sucked a giant horse cock.
"Well, you see, believers fuck the Deathly Vaginas," said Xenophilius, smacking his lips in apparent appreciation of Hermiones cumshot.

Hey, this gimmes an idea.  Mind if I do n't post a new thread.