Auren

Auren stands on a spur of pale rock, the highest and westernmost point of the Zenith Crown, above an escarpment that drops sheer into the Slope Forests. The city is a staircase: its streets descend from the Temple in concentric terraces, and the houses lean on one another facing downhill, like people in a grandstand watching the same stage. Nearly every house has a roof terrace, where for a thousand years people dried cloth, herbs and grain in a light that never changed.

Before the Breaking, everything in Auren was the colour of honey. Afterwards, the marble of the steps turned out to be white, pure and blinding, with grey veins no one had seen; there were green doors, blue shutters, whole quarters of façades that someone had once painted ochre. The Cloister bells told the hours, and “good hour” was the greeting.

It is here that Book I begins: the squires’ oath, the Breaking, the dead who would not stay dead, and the proclamation of the Purification. Ever since, Auren is where the orders, the reinforcements and the news come from.