September is going to be incredibly busy, folks. We have a lot of webinars to deal with and certain conferences are now entirely online, which has given me a lot of headaches. But here we go.

Jaime

By the time that they caught sight of Castle Black he had finally – more or less – started to cope with the impact that the Wall had taken on him. The moment that he had seen it for the first time, that line of white on the horizon, he'd pulled a slight face. And then, when he heard that they were still a day or more from it, he'd uneasily remembered what Tyrion had said about it. Yes, it was something that had to be seen to be believed.

Men would not have built such a thing if they had not had a truly pressing reason. An enemy. Something to the North that truly terrified them. They had built it and then they had maintained the bloody thing. And that was the thing that scared him. If the wights were real then what else lay beyond the Wall? He remembered Tyrion's tale of the Others that he had fought – his little brother, fighting for his life! And he remembered the look on Tyrion's face. There had been fear on it. Resolution as well, but fear as he described things that were so… inhuman.

So as they rode towards the gates, the gates that had a trickle of people travelling in both directions, he had to admit to a certain trepidation that he was trying to supress. The Wall loomed over them all, massive, oppressive even.

This was his future. He'd live and die here. There was no doubt about that in his mind, not now. War was marching on the Wall, he could almost smell it. He'd been wondering what the various ghosts who were flitting about his shoulders would have thought of that. What would Aerys have thought? Simple – it was all a plot and the North would have to burn for it. Rhaegar? Had Rhaegar foreseen it, in those strange moments that the man had, with his obsession with the Song of Ice and Fire? If he had, then why had he helped his father set the Realm on fire? What had he seen on the Isle of Faces?

As they approached the gates one of the men around him pulled out a horn and sent up a short blast with it, which was met with an upraised spear by one of the men at the entrance. Some of the people coming through the gate heading South were covered in furs and looked thin and tired, but looking as if they were only just starting to realise that they were now safe.

Inside the gates he could see that the place was abuzz with activity. Wagons were being loaded and unloaded, all kinds of tools and weapons visible. A forge was being used to one side, the sound of several men pounding on iron ringing in the air. And someone in the distance was singing a song about someone or something called Lionfang, a song that he'd never heard of before.

As he dismounted he could see that Will was already striding up to a thin-faced man in black who was talking to a pair of men in bronze armour. He seemed to be searching for words at times, using gestures that the other seemed to think about and then nod at. They talked for a few moments longer and then the two men in bronze nodded formally, brought sheathed knives to their chests in an odd gesture and then walked away. The thin faced man watched them go with an odd look to his face, before turning to greet Will with a nod. As they talked Jaime frowned slightly. Ah. He remembered him now. Thorne. Alliser Thorne. A Targaryen loyalist that Father had exiled to the Night's Watch.

Thorne's gaze turned to him and he concealed a sigh. He knew what was coming. And true enough Thorne stalked over to him and then looked him over from head to toe before smiling a very thin and utterly humourless smile. "Ah. The Kingslayer. Here, at last, years late."

He pulled a slight face, as if trying to remember the name of the man. "I think I remember you from King's Landing. Rose, isn't it? Or something like that."

The thin smile didn't waver at all. "Oh, I remember you. The arrogant little whelp of Tywin Lannister, with your pretty, shiny, armour." The smile vanished and he sniffed contemptuously. "Well, so much for your armour. You're at the Wall now. And for all your japes about forgetting my name – well, you know it, I see it in your eyes. If anyone up here forgets yours we'll just call you Kingslayer. Or Sisterfucker. We know all about what you did and why you did it. All of it." Something flickered in his gaze.

"You know why I killed Aerys Targaryen then," Jaime said softly. "Why I did what I did."

"I know," Thorne said through gritted teeth. And then, after a visible struggle: "You saved the city. Aeyrs was mad. But you never told anyone why you did what you did." The man pulled a face again. "Well. Now you're here. With us. On the Wall. Fighting against things from your darkest nightmares. At least you've sworn your oath. And I don't need to tell you that if you break it – you'll die."

"I know." The words felt as tired as he felt. "I swore it on the Fist of Winter."

Some of the watching men muttered at that, with a few walking off and then talking with many a backwards look at him. He had no doubt that some were laying bets on if he'd ever try to break his oath and if so – the manner of his death.

Thorne swept him with another gaze that combined contempt with scorn. "There's quarters prepared for you. You'll need equipment. But get up to the Maester first to get that scar of yours looked at." And then he walked away from him, dismissing him.

He gazed about the place for a long moment, before walking off and asking for directions. A woman with a piercing gaze and the garb of a Wildling led him to a door in the largest building, where she knocked carefully and then after a muffled 'Come!" ushered him in.

The Maester of Castle Black was impossibly old – but then, as the man looked up from the letter that he seemed to be writing, Jaime felt a shudder roll through him as the sight of those violet eyes reminded him that the Maester of Castle Black was a Targaryen. For a moment he stood there, almost rooted to the spot, before the woman jabbed him in the back and he stumbled forwards.

"My thanks, Jenn," the old man said with a wry smile. "Ah. Ser Jaime Lannister is it not? Your description was passed on. And you have the look of a Lannister."

He nodded abruptly, gestured at his cheek and then sat heavily on the nearest seat, his mind on the past. "You…" his throat was dry. "You are Aemon Targaryen."

The old man looked at him with those impossibly young eyes, before quirking his lips for a moment almost in amusement. "I am," he acknowledged. I am also the Maester of Castle Black, pledged to the Night's Watch for almost twice the age that you have been alive. Let me take a look at that scar and those stitches that I feel should be removed."

What followed was a little painful as the stitches were carefully observed and then pulled out, before the scar was stared at most intently. "Well now," the old man said as he washed his hands in the bowl of hot water that Jenn had brought in. "You have been lucky my boy. Luwin did a fine job on that scar of yours, with excellent stitches. It should not leave as much of a scar as you might have thought – a fine white line perhaps. Given the circumstances it might have been worse. That said, don't scratch it, no matter how it itches."

"Thank you," Jaime said, staring at his boots. "I… thank you."

"I sense unspoken words in the air," the Maester sighed. "Ser Jaime, I do not blame you or hate you for killing my mad great-nephew. Aerys was quite insane at the end and word has reached us about why you killed him. I know it could not have been easy, but you killed him for the right reasons, something that few else could have done at the time. My boy – you were right. About that at least anyway."

The tightness in his chest loosened a little. "I still… I still should have saved the others."

The old man smiled wryly at him. "You could not have known what your father was planning. Tywin Lannister always did prefer the darker gambits of the Game of Thrones. A brutally direct man, at times, your father. That said… here we are now. On the Wall. Facing the war that truly matters. We must place the past behind us." He hefted the wet cloth and wiped it carefully over the scar. "May I ask what is in that pouch?"

Jaime pulled a face. He thought for a moment about lying or just leaving, but he was tired and wearied in his own mind. "The ashes of my white cloak. Ser Barristan Selmy said that I should keep it with me to remind me of what I should be. And… and Uncle Gerion said that he'd had a Greendream about that pouch, that I need to keep it with me, as without it I'll lose myself."

The Maester of Castle Black stiffened when he heard the words 'Greendream'. "Ah," he said carefully. "Greendreams. Strange, nebulous things. Not things to be ignored. Never that." He fixed Jaime with an intent look. "Your uncle and his son have them. I think that your brother might be touched by them. And you?"

Confused, he shook his head. "I… don't know. Are they of the future?"

"Sometimes. A future amongst many perhaps. Your brother once told me of a dream he had had about leading the remains of the men of the Westerlands from Casterley Rock after the Others and their wights had taken it."

He remembered the dream he had had and he blanched a little. But then he shook his head. "Madness."

Aemon Targaryen looked at him for a long moment, his head tilted slightly to one side. "Tell me about it when you are ready," he said shrewdly. "In the meantime – be welcome to Castle Black."

He nodded, acknowledged the presence of the silent witness to all this, the woman Jenn, and then walked to the door. Then he paused. "There was someone singing a song in the courtyard when I arrived. Something about 'Lionfang'. I was curious. What's that about?"

"Oh, just a song about your brother Tyrion," the Maester said with a cheerful smile. "You should listen to it." And with that he returned to his desk, as Jenn fussed around him.

Tyrion

He stood there, watching the funeral pyre, watching the Mountain burn. The pyre had been built outside the walls of Winterfell, built to the exact specifications that he and Maester Luwin had drawn up – designed to burn hard and fast and as thoroughly as possible.

He was the only person there, at the pyre. No-one was there to mourn Ser Gregor Clegane. No-one probably would ever mourn the man. He had been fundamentally unlovable. Had anyone ever loved him? Perhaps his parents, when he was a child. Before he'd done such terrible things. Well, not now. Sandor Clegane was conspicuous in his absence at the pyre. He was doubtless with the maid he had been escorting back to his room when she had heard the noises that turned out to be Gregor fucking Clegane indulging in his favourite pastime of gratuitous, pointless, violence, before trying to kill Rob Stark and Val.

He sighed as he watched the body burn. Wretched, wretched, man. All that Clegane had ever done had been to ruin people's lives. At least he'd been put out of whatever misery he had been in. Tyrion had long suspected that there had been something very, very, wrong with him. Had he hit his head as a child? Had there been some injury to his brain? It would explain so much.

Something shifted in the pyre and he tensed a little and then looked back at the walls of Winterfell off behind him. That was something that everyone had agreed on – that the body should be burned away from Winterfell, downwind of any habitation. He looked back. No, it was just the pyre collapsing a little as the body burned. He shook his head a little. It had been bad enough when the head had twisted a little as the muscles and tendons within it had tightened in the fire, making it grin in a deaths-head rictus for a long moment that had made his heart pound in fear for a long moment.

He looked down at the Warnings. They had long since stopped glowing that ugly red colour and vibrating in his hands as if they were trying to get away from the body. That had shaken him. It had been Dacey's idea to test the body as if it had been a wight. The red glow and the vibrations had shocked everyone to stillness – and then to immediate action. The pyre had been designed. The body (and severed head) had been dragged off with hooks and ropes, the blood had been soaked up with sawdust that had been brushed into buckets and later used on the pyre and above all no-one had wanted to even lay a finger on the corpse of Ser Gregor fucking Clegane. Val's words of "He was possessed by dark magic!" had resonated throughout Winterfell.

A lot of oil and cooking fat had been poured over the body, at the express desire of Lady Stark, and it had been worth it. The pyre roared once again as the body slipped down into the heart of the flames as more wood gave way and he sighed, stared at the Warnings carefully once again – and only then did he walk off back to Winterfell, careful to walk around the pyre and avoid the greasy flames.

There was a pair of rather worried guards on the main gates of Winterfell and as he approached them he held up one of the Warnings and pulled it partly out of its sheath. "They've stopped glowing," he reassured them. "It's gone, whatever it was."

"That's good to hear, my Lord," one of them sighed, looking relieved. "Lord Robb sent word asking that you go to Lord Stark's Solar, where your wife is."

He nodded and then trudged off. What a day. He was so tired. The aftermath of The Mountain's attack on Robb and Val had been total chaos – a lot of shouting, a lot of staring and above all a lot of absolute fury on his part. Gregor fucking Clegane. The man had been a walking disaster, killing on a whim and spreading his own brand of horror on the world. And he had been from the Westerlands.

He narrowed his eyes as he stumped determinedly down the corridor. When had all this started? Why had The Mountain not accompanied Father to Castle Black? What had been going through what passed for the man's brain? He had too many questions and not enough answers.

As he approached the Solar he tilted his head a little in surprise. There was no sound coming from the room. However the guard nodded at him, knocked on the door and then allowed him in. There were five people in the room, all sitting around a table and all staring at a large and old book as if it was in fact a bag of snakes. Robb Stark had a bruise on his forehead and looked strained. He was next to Val, who had what looked like the beginning of a truly spectacular bruise on her neck and who was wearing a dress that was very Northern. Lady Stark was on the other side of Robb, pale-faced and worried. Then there was Maester Luwin, who had an indecipherable look on his face, his hands tucked up his sleeves and last but, actually first in his thoughts, Dacey, who turned to look at him and then smiled, hurried over and kissed him.

"You need to see this," she said softly.

He nodded at her, walked over to the nearest chair at the table and sat on it, before pulling out one of the Warnings. "He's as dead as dead can be," he muttered. "The Warnings have stopped glowing and shuddering in my hands." He shook his head. "When the fire dies down I suggest that the ashes of the wretched man be collected and then thrown into the nearest river. That or a small hole in the ground."

There was a collective nod of various heads and then Tyrion looked at the current Stark in Winterfell. "Robb, on behalf of… I mean, as the most senior Lannister here, I would like to apologise for the attack of one of our bannermen on you."

"Rubbish, cousin – or good-cousin, or whatever it is," Robb snorted. "There's nothing to apologise for. The man was possessed." He pointed at the book. "And we think we know how."

Tyrion peered at the book. It was old – at least a century or more at least – and it had a name on the spine that was faint in places and… He felt his eyes widen to a ridiculous extent. The title was 'Fel Practices of Valyria.' By Arch Maester Challion.

"Where-" He paused and then pitched his voice a bit lower to remove the squeak. "Where did you get that from? I was under the impression that there was only one copy of that in all of Westeros – and that copy is in the Restricted Section of the Citadel."

"It was in the hidden room in this Solar," Robb Stark said in a rather odd tone of voice. "You should read the name written inside the front cover."

Frowning a little he pulled the huge old book towards him and opened it to the suggested page. Ah. 'Torrhen Stark' it said in a somewhat spidery scrawl.

"Torrhen Stark," he mused. "Ah. The King who Knelt?"

"Aye," Robb said flatly. "And now we know why."

He frowned harder – and then he blinked. "Ah," he said wonderingly as he leafed carefully through the first pages of the book, wincing a little at some of the words that leapt off the pages, words like 'death', 'flesh-smith', 'suborned' and 'fire'. "He was afraid that the Targaryens had access to these practices and the dragons. Yes, I do see – and understand – why he knelt." He looked up sharply. "You think that there is a connection between this book and The Mountain?"

Dacey gently took the book from him, leafed carefully through it to a certain page and then placed the book in front of him. He read quickly but carefully, dread polling in his stomach, as well as bile as he comprehended what he was reading. "Good gods," he said eventually in a rather faint voice and then took the proffered goblet of wine that his wife had very thoughtfully poured for him. "Yes, by the description that was what you saw. The black eyes fit the ritual. This is all we have though – a description of the magic that the Valyrians could do, not how to do it?"

"Challion restricted himself just to describing what they could do and not how to do it," Luwin said softly, his hands up his sleeves and his eyes on the fire. "Good. I don't want to know more."

"Neither do I," said Tyrion with a shiver. "So – the Valyrians had a version of warging into men and women."

"Which is evil," Val said hoarsely, her windpipe obviously bruised as well as her neck. "No Warg North of the Wall will ever warg into a fellow man. It's said to be an evil act that never ends well."

"An animal is one thing," Robb muttered. "Although I think that the Direwolves… it's complicated there. Warging into a Direwolf is allowed by the animal. Protection for protection. A man or woman though… I can see why it's seen as evil."

"As the Valyrians themselves thought at first, Challion writes," Tyrion said as he re-read what was written. "Yes, they viewed it as evil. 'Mind-rape' they called it, saying that the blackness of the eyes of the possessed reflected the evil in the heart of the possessor, in having no concern for their victim."

"It was also said to be detrimental to the mind of the possessor," Dacey added, pointing to a line of text. "The spell destabilised the mind."

Tyrion read and winced a little. "Ah yes. So, an evil spell that sends the person who casts it a little mad. Of course. And as the years went by and the Valyrians conquered more and more land and imposed their rule on people, they also changed their minds with regard to the spell. It was only evil if used by a Valyrian on a fellow Valyrian. If used on a non-Valyrian that was perfectly alright because the Valyrians were automatically better than everyone else." He closed the book carefully and then stared at his hands as if they were now dirty. Fortunately Dacey pulled out a damp cloth. She knew him rather well by now.

"Did anyone ever mourn the Valyrians?" Catelyn Stark asked with a scowl. "How could anyone mourn such a people?"

Tyrion thought of Gogossos and the rumours of the things that had been made there and shivered a little. "They worshipped power," he said almost absently as he thought things through. "They did things not because they should do those things but because they could. Given what the Green Man said about them, it's no wonder that Valyria was destroyed eventually. They bent magic until it broke."

There was a short and worried silence, until Tyrion finally sighed and leant back in his chair. "So, Ser Gregor Clegane was possessed with the aid of a Valyrian spell. The question we now need to ask ourselves is – how? And who? Where did this unknown person get the information needed to perform this twisted piece of magic and why did they do it? And what did they mean, by saying that Robb was 'the wrong Stark'?"

"The Targaryens never seemed to have had access to this magic," Dacey said thoughtfully. "Otherwise they could have conquered without the Field of Fire or the Last Storm. Or the burning of Harrenhall, come to that. There would have been no need for the Dance of Dragons or the Blackfyre Revolts."

"I have been thinking about this most carefully," Luwin said quietly. "And one thing does come to mind – the voyage of your uncle, Lord Tyrion, into the Smoking Sea. Ser Gerion spoke of that crag, with the ruins and the mad ancient Valyrian and his twisted magics. That crag was destroyed utterly. But – what if there were, no, are, more? Ruins with roofs, protected by the elements, with knowledge of Valyrian magic buried within them? Valyria itself is inaccessible. But if your Uncle got close enough to see its ruined towers – could others have done the same? And accessed knowledge of…" He gestured in disgust at the book. "Such things?"

"Someone who wanted to kill a Stark," Robb said flatly and Tyrion noted that Val reached for his hand. Ah. Interesting. "But not me. So who then? Father? Jon?"

"We cannot easily warn them," Luwin scowled. "A raven to Oldtown will have to be despatched at once but both Lord Stark and Jon will be at sea by now and there can be no warning."

"And what if it's not them this unknown enemy is after," Lady Stark said with a quaver in her voice. "What if it's Bran, or Rickon, or the girls? Or even-" Her hands went to her swollen stomach. "The babe?"

"Sandor Clegane said that his brother had been complaining about nightmares and a feeling of oppression," Tyrion mused thoughtfully. "What were his words again? 'Something dark is coming'. I suggest that everyone in Winterfell be alerted to this. Yes, there will be a lot of chaff in the wind from people complaining about their dreams, but some might stand out as being singular. In the meantime I will wear the Warnings every day. You all saw their reaction to the body of the Mountain. They should do the same to anyone else who is possessed. If we are vigilant then we will be able to spot this early enough to take action."

He paused. "And we need send word to Benjen Stark. The Mountain was supposed to ride with my Father to the Wall. He might be in danger as well."