THE CITADEL – OLD TOWN

A filthy, sickly crow lurched through the window, shedding rain onto the sill. It ruffled its bent feathers, sending a few spiralling to the floor and then shook its leg impatiently in the archmaester's direction. There was a delicate curl of parchment tied to the weathered limb, held fast with a tiny length of sinew. Sam watched as it was removed and the bird fed a scrap of bread which it bashed violently against the stone.

"Whispers..."

Marwyn paused at Sam's words but did not look up. They were in his office, surrounded by shelves and their alarming collection of mystical relics. Sam was made particularly uncomfortable by the shrunken heads from the far East, stuffed with dried flowers, serving as horrifying book ends. He'd had his fill of dead things.

"Varys," Sam added. This time Marwyn met his gaze with a silent question. "I've seen my share of ravens. They were my charge at The Wall under Lord Commander Snow. Never much of a reader, gods rest him, so I read the realm's words for him. Varys uses parchment from the East but writes in the King's Standard ink. Unique."

"You're all eyes," Marwyn cast his attention over the scribbled text then let the flames have the message. It burned furiously in a small dish on the desk, vanishing in a hiss of smoke.

"I know what you're thinkin'," Sam continued, missing his watchman's cloak in the chill of the stone room. It was a wet cold in Old Town. Even as they sat in the relative luxury of Marwyn's office Sam could feel it eating into his bones. "But I didn't make them candles burn. I swear it."

Marwyn only laughed, deeply amused by the crow as he hunted out a half-empty pitcher of wine. He poured himself a glass as he began to gasp and cough. Quietened, he smiled again with an unnerving row of crooked teeth. "I did not think anything of the sort – I assure you. Glass candles are magical items, young Tarly. You, I regret to say, well – I probably shouldn't say it after taking you as my charge..." As he finished, he clicked his fingers together, igniting a dry layer of flash powder. It caused a small gasp of flame to erupt between them with a pop, stunning Sam.

"Any fool with half a crown can buy powder," Sam recovered. "It was a favourite trick of my father's maester."

"That was radical of him – maesters aren't fond of magic. It interferes with their ordered world. The candles, however, were no trick."

"No," Sam agreed.

"Do you know how long I have been waiting for them to ignite? All my life." There was something in the way he said those words to suggest that it was a longer life than he made out. "I used to spend weeks in the dark, whispering enchantments, bidding those god-awful obsidian sticks to respond. In Asshai-"

"You've been to Asshai?" Sam scraped his chair closer with interest. "I – sorry..." he realised that he was interrupting. Marwyn ignored him.

"-they explained that the magic of the world is sleeping. It comes and goes in cycles. This is the Winter of magic. Tonight, you saw the first bud of Spring."

"It was actually rather alarming," Sam thought back to those flames. Three candles burning – one holding visions. Perhaps the other two were sleeping as well.

"Maester Tarly," Marwyn insisted, "what did you see in the flames?"

"A silver woman – I think she saw me. Then cold, blue eyes."

"And..."

"Ravens. There are always ravens."

Marwyn drank again of the sickly liquid, draining his cup before assaulting the last of the pitcher. He offered Sam a plate of dried fruit but he shied away from it, afraid of poison. "You saw Daenerys Targaryen, the Dragon Queen in the East who thinks herself ruler of Westeros, despite all evidence to the contrary. She's the last surviving child of the mad king. Was she as beautiful as they say?"

Sam frowned and had to think about that, eventually nodding. "I – uh – guess. It was hard to tell. She seemed startled."

"I've seen her too, long before she was born. Let's wager that our new queen has a flare of magic and touched a glass candle, waking it; the other set of eyes you saw would have been as surprised as you. We've all seen something we shouldn't have." Marwyn got up and moved over to a narrow table covered in a black cloth. He slid the fabric off to reveal the three candles from the basement. "I've had them brought up here. They'll burn again and we must be careful what they see. Each one is a window that any one may look through. The Whitewalker that you saw in the flames is now aware of two people beyond the Wall, Daenerys Stormborn and your good self."

"Me?"

"Yes, maester Tarly, you."


THE WALL – THE NORTH

The crowd gasped and pressed back against one another, sheltering from the heavy smoke that sank as a dense wave once the flames and wolf vanished. It flowed over them, stained with soot and thick with the witch's whispers. It dissipated leaving the body of Jon Snow lying in the remains of the pyre. Unburned. Snow thickened in the air, falling on Jon's cheek where it melted at his warmth.

Ser Davos was the first to move. He approached the body, blinking back snow caught in his lashes. At the centre of the pyre he knelt, placing his gloved hand on Jon's chest. It rose beneath him.

Jon Stark jolted to life, flailing wildly at the shock of re-entering the world of the living. He'd been inside the wolf. Roamed the castle as a ghost. Howled at the night and the shadows under the moon. Danced with the flames.

"Easy!" Davos pressed him back toward the ground with soothing words.

The gathering was in shock. Lord Commander Thorne held his men back with a slight lift of his sword.

"You've had a bit of a turn, young Snow," Davos continued, staring into the frightened eyes of the murdered Commander. Odd, he thought. He could have sworn that those eyes had been dark like the secrets bastards kept, now they were an eerie blue – touched by the winter rose.

Jon sat up and slowly took in his surrounds. The remains of the fire beneath him. The mixture of Night's Watch and Wildlings. His old friends standing with the Red Priestess. "Where's my wolf?"

"Gone..." Davos replied quietly. "We burned your body – the wolf jumped into the flames and here we are, Lord Commander Snow."

Jon shook his head. He reached for Davos' hand and struggled to his feet. His limbs felt like fire, prickling at the rush of renewed life.

"I am not the Lord Commander," Jon insisted, announcing it for the entire camp to hear. His words were firm, harsh like his father's but measured. Death had brought him clarity. "I died. I was dead. The title passed to Lord Commander Thorne and no man may interfere with the sacred rules of the Night's Watch."

Jon nodded at Thorne who, after a moment of resigned pause, dipped his head in kind.

"Death has released me from my vows. I am not the Snow that falls on the Wall. I am a Stark. My father's son. I will have justice for the North, for the families you left behind!"

Those men of the Night's Watch, mostly Northerns by blood, brandished their swords and shouted, 'Ay!' in support.

"Then the Northern armies will return to the Wall with the houses of old. Every sigil, I swear it. With the Night's Watch, we'll send the dead back to their graves."

Thorne was no fool. While men and Wildling cheered, he looked straight at the Stark, born from the red witch's flames. He knew a king when he saw one. Jon Snow was ill suited to command of the watch but Jon Stark was born to lead an army of loyal soldiers. If he challenged Jon here, with these men, it would be his body they threw onto the fire by nightfall. Instead, Commander Thorne took his sword and waded through the crowd. Davos tightened his grip on his weapon but Thorne simply shook his head. "Steady there, smuggler," it was a concession from, 'pirate'.

The crowd fell under a hush.

"A man of the Night's Watch takes no King. Our honour is to The Watch and The Wall and the things we kill stirring in the shadows," Thorne began, holding his sword flat in both hands as an offering and symbol of peace. His knee joint creaked as he sank toward the frozen ground. "I am not at liberty to pledge my sword," and so it never touched the ice, "but I bid you head South with the grace of the old gods and the new. When you return to Castle Black and the war that we poor creatures must fight against the dead, be it as King in the North, Jon Stark of Winterfell."

'The King in the North!' Someone shouted. 'King in the North!' More echoed, until it became a chant.

The Red Woman approached with Longclaw. She held the heavy sword out to Jon. It dripped with wolf blood. The Red God always had his fill. Melisandre touched Jon's cheek. "Unusual eyes," she whispered, then leaned in until her lips were against his ear. 'No one returns from the darkness untouched.'

Jon Stark took the sword from the witch. He strode through the crowd and climbed the scaffolding to a watch platform. Below, the survivors of Hardhome and the traitors that drove their daggers into his body last night shouted together. King in the North, Jon thought, this is not the time of kings.


"Why do you stare, bastard boy?" Melisandre asked of the new Stark.

They were alone in a narrow room adjacent to the stables with ice creeping in under the door while the Wildlings and some of Jon's closest men prepared to leave for battle at Winterfell. Jon had shed his Night's Watch cloak, taking on fresh armour with an old-style Stark sigil, gifted to him by Thorne from the armouries. Nobody liked to look at him – if rising from the dead were not unnerving enough, there was something in his eyes. They were unnaturally clear and pale. Davos said it was the blood of the First Men coming through. They were all blue-eyed Northerns once with pale skin and a wash of dark hair. Jon worried that it might be something else.

"It's difficult not to," Jon half apologised. Melisandre mistakenly thought his comment to be another misguided male compliment and smiled awkwardly. He killed those thoughts with, "I see you now without the veil."

Her flesh went cold. Could he...?

"How does it work?"

"The better question is, why doesn't it work on you?" Melisandre replied, taking up a seat opposite him. "Glamouring," she finally explained. "It's my talent. I make men see what they want and sometimes the red god lets me see things that I want in an exchange, hidden within the flames. Like you."

"What was I doing in the flames?"

"You were alive. That was enough. Will you tell the others what you know of me?"

"Perhaps. Tell me this, how old are you?"

"Old enough to have seen empires fall." It wouldn't suffice. The Stark boy could see through her magic and her lies. "I was a child when Aegon stepped onto Westeros and raised the dragon banner for the first time."

Four-hundred years at least. He realised that she did not know exactly how old she was and in that moment Jon felt a kind of pity for the red woman. "We both know that I am no king. Whatever people choose to call me, I remain a bastard and bastards are without thrones under the law. Still, if I must pretend to be a king to raise an army and stop the dead, I will play-act. A bastard army – every soul that can hold a sword."

"A mummer's king for the jeering crowd," she nodded slowly. "We, both of us, hide our faces."

"Keep each other's secrets..."

It was a question. "Keep each other's secrets," she replied, making the candles flicker.


THE CITADEL – OLD TOWN

"You look like you seen a ghost," Gilly helped Sam shed the ugly grey robes of the maesters. Her little boy was fussing quietly in the corner of the room. He wasn't happy unless he slept beneath the window – where it was coldest. A true child of the North.

"I sort of have," Sam admitted, then shared the story of the dragonglass candles.

"I do not like this maester..." Gilly fussed near the fire. "People of magic always want something terrible."

Sam nodded. "I agree. Remember why we're here..." he added, moving to the child at the window. Sam smiled at the tiny thing. It was incredible – born from depravity and here it was, pure as the first snow of winter. Such a happy creature.

"He's dead..." said Gilly of Jon Snow, stoking the fire. "Why don't we just go South – or East – or anywhere as long as it is far from the Wall? This isn't our war. You don't owe them anything."

The edge of his lip curled up. That was 'freefolk-talk'. They were defiant beyond sense as Northerns were loyal. "I wish we could, Gilly, I do but when the winter comes there will be nowhere to run. Jon said it was the largest army in the world. If we don't hold the Wall, we're lost – North, South, East – it won't matter. Archmaester Marwyn knows more about magic than anybody in Westeros. He enjoys too much wine and indulges in theatrics. He's a man that likes an audience."

"You think he'll brag..."

"He might. He doesn't know what we have."

"We don't know what we have," Gilly reminded him with an eyebrow that was arching its way toward the ceiling. "Just because you found that old thing beyond the Wall does not make it important. I lived my whole life beyond the Wall. There are ruins of old battles all over the place."

"It was wrapped up in a Night's Watch cloak – with dragonglass. It had to have been left there for a reason. Someone wanted it to be found."

"What good is an old horn? It doesn't even work."

"This is the largest library in the world," he said, holding up his hands to the city outside the window. The clouds thickened overhead. Rain hit the water beyond Hightower. Another fleet of ships sailed into the harbour, their sails catching a glimmer of sun making them shimmer like candles against the melodrama of the storm. "The answers are here. I made a promise, Gilly. That promise didn't die with Jon."


WESTWATCH BY THE BRIDGE – BAY OF ICE

264 AC

It was ethereal – not quite part of the living world.

The wall of ice protruded from the flat sheets of snow which blanketed the far North in a jarring climax of blood magic. Jorah Mormont, a child of ten from a tiny island in a forgotten bay, stepped off his father's ship and onto the precarious landing of bare stone. Rough steps, coated in ice, trailed up the side of the gorge. The river, which had once been The Bay of Ice, was forced between the opposing rock faces. It surged around the hull of his father's small fleet, testing the tethers that barely held them against their moorings. In front, unimpeded, the river rushed into the Lands of Always Winter. Jorah could see them to his left, a few dying pines, smothered by the cold clinging to the top of the cliff. Above, a narrow bridge joined the two lands hardly wide enough for one man to pass.

"Come on boy, help with the lanterns," his father, a great bear of a man, passed him the light.

Their ships brought men for The Watch, delivering them to the closest outpost – Westwatch by the Bridge. He had begged his father to come. Jorah wanted to see the wall from his stories. Now that he had, he felt unnerved. It was not the infallible creation he had imagined. The first image he had of the Wall was its end at a small, abandoned outpost. Anyone could brave the rocks and wander South. Or North, he realised.

"Don't stare at it too long," Jeor Mormont said, when they reached the flat snow. The gorge on their left was a crack in the ground, less that fifty metres across. To their right, in the protected Northern lands, the Wall stretched lazily toward the horizon. The sun hit its surface, melting only enough to give it an eerie shine. There was another castle nearby, The Shadow Tower.

Westwatch lay at the foot of the Wall, partially buried in its ice. It was black and green where the copper roofing had turned. The mark of ancient Stark builders had been left pressed into the gates while a fierce wind screeched through its hundreds of open windows.

"Maester Aemon..." Jeor greeted the silver haired man, waiting at the collapsed gates. There was a small party of Rangers with him, shivering in their black cloaks. New to the North, Jeor guessed, for this was fair weather. "Qorgyle not with you?"

The aging Targaryen stepped off the stone and into the snow, his heavy maester chain clinking as he walked. "The Lord Commander is caught up with other matters," Aemon apologised. "He has sent me here to collect the men on his behalf." The old man's attention fell to the small boy half hidden by Mormont's cloak. "A cub?"

Jeor nodded, nudging his son forward. "Indeed. Soon to be a man. May I introduce Jorah Mormont. He wanted to see the Wall."

"Is that right, young man... And what do you make of it?"

Jorah craned his head and stared at the Wall. They were close enough now that he could feel the cold coming off it. "Thought it'd be bigger."

Despite themselves, nearly all the men laughed good naturedly at the boy. Aemon leaned down until his chain touched the snow. "I agree. Another hundred feet at least – to be safe."

"What's over there?" Jorah pointed his paw at the gap where the Wall ended. He could see trees beyond.

"Another world," the maester replied.


While his father settled the handover details with the maester, Jorah was left to wander the abandoned castle. He started by climbing the tower, pushing through the sparsely furnished rooms with discarded scrolls rolling over the floor until he emerged on a balcony looking North-West.

The river inside the gorge continued as far as he could see through the pine forest on the other side of the Wall. There were small trails of smoke rising in the distance from Wildling fires. Far West, over the gorge he found the familiar porcelain land that Bear Island looked over, only now its bleak shores were closer. The white mountains stretched in all directions, like low-lying cloud, a mirage between storm and frozen sea. Even a boy could see how easy it would be to skirt around the Wall and enter the strange land.

He decided to try one step beyond the Wall.

Jorah left the tower and slipped by the men in the square who were busy divvying up horses and food. The gates to the side were broken. Jorah ducked under them, crawling through the powder snow until he emerged at the foot of the Wall looking like a common savage. Parts of it had cleaved off and fallen over the ground in front. Huge chunks of brutal ice with edges sharp enough to cut a man in two, towered over the boy. He approached one. Above, wind savaged the Wall, trying to pry more of it away.

The gap between the Wall and the gorge was narrow and obstructed by fallen ice. It had build a fortress of is own, thirty feet high but littered with gaps large enough for a man to slip through. Jorah found one and, with a cautious glance to the creaking ice construction above his head, moved through.

He emerged beyond the Wall.

A forest reared up, almost touching it. The pines had frost several metres up their trunks and carried branches full of ice. A pack of skinny wolves hunted nearby, pushing their noses into the snow. He could smell wood-fire.

Half a day's ride to his right he saw the gate of the next outpost The Shadow Tower and a smear of black he assumed to be Rangers heading into the woods on patrol. It was not what he had expected. He'd not been struck down by some ice-magic the moment he stepped beyond the Wall. Instead it was – normal. Peaceful. It reminded him of his home.

Growing out of the nearest edge of the Wall, where it had splintered and dirt collected in the crevices, he found a nest of winter roses. Jorah brushed his fingers over their soft petals. So beautiful and fragile, thriving at the edge of the world. He picked one.

"Jorah!" His father's voice was a frantic whisper behind, as though he were too afraid to lift his voice. "Jorah – come back here!" Jeor Mormont struggled to fit through the gap in the ice blocks where his sword left them a scar. He raced over to his young son and heir, scooping the boy protectively into his arms as his sharp eyes surveyed the forest at their feet. "What did I say to you before we left? You must not go beyond the Wall. I made you promise." Jorah laid his head against his father's fur coat where it was warm. Jeor kissed his son's head and tightened his grip.

"I wanted to see," Jorah replied, spinning the winter rose between his fingers.

"It's the same on this side as the other."

"See if I could get around it..."

"Why ever would you want to do that?"

Jorah shrugged. "It was easy. Anyone could do it. Do Wildlings come?"

There were patches of ash in the ice. Jeor knew they were pits left from burning Wildling bodies from previous raids. "Sometimes. Do you want to know a secret?" They boy nodded in reply. "All right. The Wall wasn't built to keep Wildlings away. They get through all the time. Up and down the Wall from here to Eastwatch by the Sea. The Wall is for the Others. Do you remember them from Nan's stories?"

Jorah had nightmares about them for years. "What happens if they come?"

"Remember our words?"

"Here we stand..."

Jeor smiled proudly at his son. "Here we fucking stand."