The The Bring out your dead. Or should I say, bring out you dead? Either way, the dead

walking is such a ubiquitous horror trope that George R. Martin uses it right away in the prologue.

But before we meet those whites, we meet the white walkers, those who perform the magic to make said dead walk again.

This is effective because while the whites are terrifying, those who make them are far more

so.

These walking dead are part of the arsenal of the others, the ability to do that, rather

than just a force on their own.

But George R. Martin thinks outside the box, as usual, and even as he makes full use

of well-tread ground, cemetery or funerary ground in this case, he adds to the concept by creating

variations within. The closest being perhaps Coldhands, a former ranger of the Knights Watch,

seemingly doing the bidding of Blood Raven. Or would it be

more accurate to say Cold Hands was Blood Raven skin-changing into the body of the dead? I don't know

exactly, but no matter how he categorize Cold Hands, it's correct to classify his case as

necromancy. So this form of magic is not the sole purview of the others, nor of

the old gods. Though he didn't expect it to work because it never had before, Thoros of mere

raised Barrick Dondarian from the dead with the kiss of life, and then Barrick passed that same

flame of life onto Catlin after dying, what was it, six or seven times.

We'll probably see Melisandra bring back John as well.

And if not her, well, something's going to bring him back most likely, and it probably won't be science.

Though an element of science might be present in khyburn's't be science.

Though an element of science might be present in khyburns, raising of Sir Gregor Klegain

who made him into the Khyborg, the mountain that died, and came back again.

...