Aul I — Sunrise

Deily Aul's sword was called Sunrise and she was never unsheathed.

She was nearly as long as Aul and almost seven pounds. A gift from her father forged by great smiths from across the Evangelium. It saddened her to leave it in her room at Copernicus, but the sword could not be carried on her hip, and there was no need for such an enormous weapon on the mire.

Even so, when she travelled fiorns she dreamed of her often. In the dream she was young and it was their first meeting. Its grip was oiled red and longer than her arm; she placed her small hands around it and the leather stuck to her skin hungrily and burned. No matter how hard she pulled it would not give. Her father watched her with a stifled smile. He freed her from its sheathe with one hand and where it caught the light the room erupted in oranges and reds. The steel hummed and she awoke.

After this dream, Aul was the first to rise, never later than a few minutes before the sun peaked the shallow hills in the distance. Sunrise was beautiful on the mire; the day dawned coldly without a cloud in the sky, and brilliant light was all around. At the right hour, the murrpytts were thousands of tiny mirrors and the air was on fire. It was almost enough to make her forget where they were.

They camped by Havenford, the last and first great fennswice hamth of the stone island of Copernicus. The rangers replenished the many boarder mounds often so there was little chance of wandering into it. Still, she had ordered that the party not travel through the night. The Grand Tower of Copernicus was visible but there was no fire lit. Tradition for when a body was lain to rest, and Aul was not prepared to risk returning in the dark.

The reeds were grateful for the rest; they had been marching for thirteen hours and were exhausted. Rupert and Auster complained, but when didn't they? They never liked the mire and Aul didn't blame them. It was dangerous, to be sure, but worst of all was how quiet it was. Daegmael, at the foot of the Evangelium, the distant cries of Roc and the groundwater running off the slopes were ever present, and one was only as alone as much as they could hear. Despite the countless pools and rivers that crossed the mire the air devoured all sounds, and there were very few animals, and those there were were small and lived in holes.

Only Dorian seemed indifferent about Aul's decision. He was avoiding her, she'd led men long enough to realise that, but every hour or so she would catch him staring out of the corner of her eye. She wondered whether it was guilt, or if he were afeared of her, until their eyes met and she would have to stifle a smile. Here was a boy who was always thinking. Despite his youth and naiivity he was always thinking. This was a good quality for a ranger, especially one for which the mire's dangers meant nothing.

A lot like his father in many ways. She hadn't known Darius Kenelm, the Seton Watch, when he was young, but he had worked with her predecessor for most of his youth. She had heard the stories. Former first ranger Taeran Bann was notoriously difficult to please; he knew well the dangers of the mire and made sure his apprentices understood it too. Fennswice were invisible and sucked at the legs before you could even feel the water between your toes; there were very few who survived a misstep next to one, and the channels that ran through fennswice were narrow and precarious. Sometimes they were less than a foot in width, and it felt at other times when the waters came upon the mire at a pace faster than a running man that any footing at all would be swept away. Fear was invisible and clenched at the bones and muscles of your legs; it stole them, and heaved them in strange directions. Before you even knew you were scared you were falling, and it was all over.

Taeran Bann was a dilligent teacher. He was certain that his apprentices were well equipped to deal with these dangers. Aul's training had been ruthless; she remembered too well how during the first weeks of her apprenticeship she had been convinced that she would die before she ever set foot on the mire. Not only had she been hopelessly weak, their training seemed pointless. There was no need for swordplay when there were no things to fight, but Taeran had insisted that she train it until her fingers bled and the skin on the palms of her hand peeled. He forced her to run laps of the island until her legs gave and her feet were numb, yet all travel on the mire was slow and cumbersome. It was torture, and yet for all the time she had known Darius Kenelm, he never once spoke badly of the rangers.

After he recovered her after a week lost in the mire, she lost the right to wonder why. Now, she had no idea what to do with his son.

Perhaps it was his indifference to where they went or what they did that allowed Aul to imagine that Dorian understood to some degree the importance of what they were doing. Many of the rangers complained. Even she was unsure sometimes. There was nothing out here, after all. Just dirt and death disguised in puddles and pretty dancing reeds.

"I'm sorry," someone said. Aul turned slowly from the view. Dorian stood behind her, his feet planted solidly on the puddle which she had been forced to jump over.

"What for?" Aul asked.

Dorian shrugged and kicked at the ground; the water splashed across his boot.

"I'm not exactly a great guide. I think I know why my father wouldn't let me out here now, it's a bit much. Being perfectly fine in a place where everyone else is so scared."

Aul turned back towards the fennswice and pointed at the ground, which undulated softly; a subtle reminder that it was not solid. "Stand there," she told him.

Dorian hesitated but obliged. His steps were light and did not disturb the surface. Like a ghost.

"It is an incredible gift."

"Maybe."

"But," Aul continued. "You are right, danger without fear is most dangerous of all. If you cannot bring yourself to fear the mire then I worry for your safety. Which leaves me wondering. Why did you agree to come here, Dorian Kenelm? You were not forced. I asked, but I did not expect you to come."

"I don't know—"

She interrupted him loudly. "Yes you do, you don't think it's obvious? I'm not going to hurt you."

He looked pained, but Aul had known from the moment that she met the boy that he was an honest sort. Unfocused, yes. Lived in his head. But honest. "I love it here," he admitted quietly. "Out here."

"And you're ashamed of that?"

"It's not needed, is it?"

She snorted. "I didn't take you for someone who cared about duty."

"I do," Dorian protested. Aul was surprised at the sharpness in his voice. "I care. This is the only place that matters in the entire world, I can feel it. And it's all just dirt and rocks. I wanna know." His words came slowly and with struggle. "At night I hear something—beneath it all. Singing or, music of some kind, but quiet, really quiet that I don't even know what I can hear. I thought maybe you should know."

"If anyone else told me that I would dismiss them as a madman."

"I know," Dorian said, and Aul believed him.

She turned and deftly stepped across the murrpytts back towards their camp in the boarder mound. He followed several paces behind her.

Aul remembered how she had been when she was anointed first ranger. She had heard it too once, the voice of the mire. It was not so defined that she would have called it singing but it was there, calling to her. Taeran Bann had said that it was the word of the Mabbastree. Its roots were said to spread across the world, but such a small tree surely couldn't reach so far.

"Where does this singing lead?" Aul said to Dorian as he pulled up beside her. "These voices."

"Fiorns," he said. He was uncomfortable. Aul knew why, she knew the answer. "It follows the rivers."

"To the sea," Aul offered. Though that was not entirely honest. "Guyun. You're not thinking of accepting Gwent's commission, are you? He's a senile old man."

"He might be old but he's still our master of crows. Father says he thinks the town is dying, and that's why he wants to go to Guyun. Though he's too old now."

"So he wants to send you to your death instead."

"But I'm the only one who could travel there safely."

"And for what? By yourself? You'd be dead within the week. It's one thing to walk atop the mire, but it's another to conquer it. And even if you could, what do you think you'd find? The pale kings? The holy grail?"

"I don't know," Dorian admitted. "But there must be a reason. It's the only place we refuse to go, and Christos says that the pale kings built the cemetarian around the Mabbastree so they must have built other things elsewhere, a city, or a castle or something."

Aul bit her lip in frustration. He would not listen. Just like his father indeed; an idealist without an inch of sense. She knew well what he was talking about. It was the reason she scoured the mire with the frequency that she did, but it was dangerous coming from the mouth of a boy no more than seventeen years, no matter his gifts.

She spun on him. Her foot plunged into a deep pool. "Straws," she bit. "Nothing but straws. You don't even believe that yourself. I don't know why you're so desperate to leave, and maybe it isn't my concern, but as long as you're under my command, you will not be leaving for Guyun."

They stared at each other until Dorian nodded weakly and moved past her. Tents rustled as the others awoke. Aul muttered a quick prayer to the tree and returned to break her tent down and continue onwards, home.

Within the hour camp was broken and the party ventured the final stretch across the mire to Copernicus. It appeared almost suddenly on the horizon; where at first only the Grand Tower was visible from the ground, cresting Green Hill revealed it in its entirety. A natural fortress of stone, even its base loomed above the mire in thick grey spikes and sharp caverns twenty feet deep. A solitary path ran across the cliff before turning and cutting through the rock, five feet at its widest and only two where it turned. Gravel and loose rocks underfoot made the climb uncertain but even the reeds were yet used to it. It beat the impossibilities of the mire in any case. When they crested the climb the path levelled out. Out of the five only Aul and Auster had held onto their breaths; Dorian was unsteady on his feet, likely unused to the lack of food. The reeds looked ready to pass, and Rupert had run ahead at several points having claimed to have seen a squirrel. He was mistaken every time and now wheezed emphatically.

"Oh you sorry cunt," said Auster. Rupert kicked a rock at him, but it was halfhearted and tumbled away before reaching him. The noise echoed about the courtyard before disappearing into the eaves of the castle; three black spires surrounded by a ring of buttressed wings of white marble and grey quills protruding from their rooftops. The walls were jagged and angular but did not cut the air, rather parted it in overlapping and contradicting segments from below; once, twice, and then three times the clattering returned, each time quieter but more defined. Auster and Rupert grew silent by the second and were grave by the third. Three echoes. An ill omen on Copernicus.

Aul let out a breath that crystalised in her mouth.

There were no fires lit today.

She looked at the sun through the castle. No walls interrupted its path. It hung dimly behind a cloud beneath the second peak of the Grand Tower.

"Relight the beacons, and rouse the stewards," she said to Rupert.

"Mourning over already?"

"By the second hour of noon. We are on the third."

Rupert bowed and hurried into the castle. Auster headed for the garrison to return their equipment.

"And for you two, go and see your families," Aul said. "We will meet here for training in two days time as usual. Dorian, a word."

When they were alone Dorian stood defiantly. Too much character for such a timid boy, she thought.

"Whatever you choose to do, remember your obligations. To your friends, to your family."

He looked for a moment as if he might object, but then he simply nodded, his eyes overcast and staring through her. Into the mire. She cleared her throat. "I have a counter-offer for you, Dorian Kenelm. Your father would kill me if he knew I allowed you to leave. Perhaps you will. It's not unheard of, after all. My teacher left for the Evangelium many years ago and has not returned. I understand what it is you feel, but you are just a child. If you wish to go, would you wait?"

"For how long?" Dorian asked. He looked almost sad. Or tired? It was not the expression of a boy of only seventeen.

"You're in a rush."

It was not a question. He didn't answer.

"One year," Aul said. She couldn't keep the desperation out of her voice. "Wait one year. Train with me. I owe it to your father, after all. He saved my life. Allow me to play a part in saving yours."

For the first time since the beginning of their expedition, Dorian was properly looking at her. He had his father's eyes. Dark, and brown like the dirt at the bottom of a river.

The other rangers called him 'Mudwalker' and 'River King'.

Truthfully, she had no idea how to train someone like him. She had heard stories of gifted peoples from Taeran. Whispers from trees not unlike their Mabbastree, but different. Sometimes smaller, sometimes larger. Sometimes quiet, or loud and violent like the roaring of a storm. Sometimes wielding terrible power, and other times simple quirks, nothing more than quaint tricks. Whatever it was that had blessed him, though, if fate maintained anything for him it was out there on the mire. The infinite world. And she knew the mire, she knew it like her second self.

Aul continued insistently. "Let me help you like your father helped me. You can wait one year, no? You're still a boy."

"And what will we do? Train the sword? Walk the mire? I... I know I'm not you, but none of that matters for me."

Aul stepped forward and grabbed at his chin with her hands. His eyes grew wide with fear, but calmed when she held him there. There was no hint of arrogance to his words, only confidence. Confidence was not truth, but he was also not wrong. She swore and let him go.

"Follow me," she said and pushed through the doors into the tower. The halls were somehow colder than the courtyard, and dim in the blue firelight. Their flames licked at the cracked pillars and cobbled floors, and their steps echoed noisily around them. The halls of the first tower were sparsely decorated, kept bare for practicality more than anything. Monuments to the first rangers of the order lined the walls; Taeran Bann's monument had been finished only the year before, and stood several tens of yards from the entrance-way. Next to him was an empty pedestal, where Aul's own likeness would stand when she passed on her role. Deeper they walked, and the faces of the rangers grew smoother and more obscured. The founder of the order was unrecognizable. His statue guarded the depths, standing between the doors to the second and third towers; his face was only the hint of a face. Still, his shoulders were broad, reaching almost from door to door, and the hands that clasped his sword were heavy and thick. The thing radiated an immutable presence; it unnerved her even now. Whoever it had once been must have been incredible to have conquered the mire. To have even imagined it could be done.

She caught Dorian staring. "The first rangers were astonishing people. They were the first to map the fennswice, and this man here reached Guyun itself."

The question lingered on her lips as they continued on to the second tower, the Grand Tower, the tallest in Seton and home to the Beacon of the Mire. Once relit it would be visible almost from the Evangelium.

They climbed the tower and its bare wooden steps for several minutes until they reached Aul's chambers. She opened the door and invited Dorian in.

"I thought they'd be bigger," Dorian said.

"So did I," Aul replied.

Three rooms, all sparsely decorated. A table and two chairs were placed by the window at the far side of the first room; a fireplace was to its left, and to the right a painting of the tower from the courtyard below. The left room was her bedroom, which was locked shut, and the right, a washroom.

On the wall above the fireplace hung Sunrise, pointing out into the mire. She strode forward and took it from the wall. She was taller than it now, but only just. Its flared, golden pommel reached her nose. She stared at it for a long time before holding it with both of her hands and presenting it to Dorian.

"If you would train as my apprentice, I would pledge this to you when the day comes that you are first ranger. She is called Sunrise, or in another tongue the 'Door to Eden.'"

Dorian was wary as he spoke. He was uncomfortable, scared almost. "You can't give me that."

"And why not? Do you worry you won't be able to wield it? You'll grow, you are your father's son."

He finally dropped to his knee; his voice quivered. "I have been nothing but incompetent Lady First, I wouldn't deserve something like that."

"I thought the same when my father gave it to me. I was eight and I was even more incompetent than you. No more than a tiny little thing. It's a miracle I grew to be even this tall. When I was old enough to join the rangers, only a year before my father passed, I asked him why he would give this to me. He said that gifts given for deeds done are noble, but gifts given for deeds one may do are the essence of fate itself. A bargain with time to do right of what has already been done. A plea to justice, if you will. I will not stop you if you wish to see that forsaken forest, but do not go simply because you cannot bear to stay, Dorian Kenelm. Go with purpose, and you will come back."

Dorian's body sunk, that it looked like he might disappear into the shadows. He nodded solemnly. "If you wish," he said. "A year."

Deily Aul smiled and returned Sunrise to her mantle. "Then run along to Lady Carmine, I'm certain she is pining to see you as always."

"Never," Dorian said. He bowed and walked out.

Aul drank in the silence until it was too much to bear. She flung open her window and gazed out across the mire. It was featureless from so high, nothing but greys, greens, and browns without shape. An undulation of colours, weaving and pulsing like a lightless torch, broken only by the hovels of rivers that flowed daedd towards Guyun. Stretching forever fiorns to the end of the world. A crow cried and landed on her windowsill. She reached out and smoothed its back.

It came with a message from the Watch. As expected the Council of Seven was convening. For a time she'd allowed herself to forget the reality of their return. A man was dead, killed, and a stranger had arrived.