Ilyn Payne
The King's Justice, the royal headsman — a gaunt, silent man whose tongue was torn out by order of the Mad King, so he can never speak of what he does.
A soul born at The Westerlands.
The fuller tale
Season One
The King's Justice, and a man who had his tongue torn out by order of a Mad King long dead, so whatever he thinks about the work he does, nobody will ever hear it. He stands silent at official functions, a hollow-cheeked reminder of what the crown can do to a body, and when Ned Stark is dragged to the steps of Baelor's Sept to confess treason, it is Ilyn Payne holding the greatsword. Promises of mercy from Varys and Cersei turn out to be worth nothing, the crowd is a crowd, and it is his blade that comes down, adding a Stark to the very long list of things he has been ordered to do without comment.
Season Two
Riding with a Lannister patrol into the Riverlands, one sword among many hunting whoever the crown wants hunted, and Arya spots him across a camp before he ever notices her — a face she has spent a season trying to forget, wearing the same iron quiet he always wears. She goes still and says nothing, because saying anything near Ilyn Payne has only ever gone one way for people she loves. He rides on without knowing how close he came to being recognized, or how far up somebody's list his name already sits.
How it ends for them
The chronicle records no death for this soul — they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.
Their chapters, book by book
A Clash of Kings 1 chapter that name them
A Feast for Crows 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The books give the executioner a strange late-career grace note the show never filmed: Jaime Lannister, learning to fight left-handed and needing a sparring partner who can never gossip about how bad the Kingslayer has become, chooses the one man in the realm with no tongue. Their nightly sessions in the Riverlands — Jaime talking, confessing almost, at a man who answers only with dry clacking laughter and steel — are among the novels' oddest and best pairings, and they reveal an Ilyn with a bleak sense of humor buried in the silence. The show intended more for him: the actor's illness led the series to quietly retire the character after the second season, and his sparring role passed to Bronn. He is alive in both tellings — the show simply lets him vanish, while the books keep him swinging a sword at the Kingslayer's elbow, still without a word to say about any of it.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.