In the House of the Worm by George R. R. Martin Page A

to muttering, since the time of unmasking had not yet come.
    Very soon they had more to mutter about. For Annelyn, this strange, changeling Annelyn, stood silently in the door, his eyes jumping from one mask to another. Then, still silent, he walked across the gleaming obsidian floor to the feasting table, seized an iron platter piled high with fine white grounflesh, and flung it violently across the room. A few laughed; others, not so amused, picked slices of meat from their shoulders. Annelyn went from the room.
    Afterward, he became a familiar figure among the yaga-la-hai , though he lost his flair for dress and much of his fine wit. Instead, he spoke endlessly and persuasively of forgotten crimes and the sins of bygone eons, painting deliciously dark pictures of monster worms who bred beneath the House and would one day rise to consume all. He was fond of telling the worm-children that they ought to lie with grouns, instead of cooking them, so that a new people might be fashioned to resist his nightmare worms.
    In the endless long decay of the House of the Worm, nothing was so prized as novelty. Annelyn, though considered coarse and most unsubtle, wove entertaining tales and had a spark of shocking irreverence. Thus, though the bronze knights grumbled, he was allowed to live.

    Chicago
February, 1975

Other Short Fiction by George R. R. Martin

    “The Glass Flower”

    “Portraits of His Children”
    Nebula Award , Best Novelette (1986)
    Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award , Best Novelette (1986)

    “The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr”

    “A Song for Lya”
    Hugo Award , Best Novella (1975)

    Other Ebooks from ElectricStory

    Tony Daniel
    The Robot’s Twilight Companion

    Paul Park
    Soldiers of Paradise (Starbridge Chronicles 1)
    Sugar Rain (Starbridge Chronicles 2)
    The Cult of Loving Kindness (Starbridge Chronicles 3)

    Lucius Shepard
    Green Eyes

    Howard Waldrop
    Dream Factories and Radio Pictures