Early to bed,

  Early to rise,

  Light fire in the sky.

  Guide the Torch, overhead,

  See all the lands before you are put to bed.

  It was with a heavy heart that Sialas walked to the large tower that dominated the center square of his little town. With a sigh of resignation, he made the ward against evil- two fingers to his shoulder, then to the opposite ear. Fourth time in a row… what are the chances of that? He idly wondered, softly opening the door and ascending the dusty steps, one by one, disturbing the ancient dust that had burrowed into the planks themselves.

  Silas hated this chore, not only for the dust, but for the early hour it required of him. And, of course, the fact that as he was ringing the morning bells, if a single misstep occurred, he would be plummeting down to the flagstones below.

  It never happened, of course. The nuns always warned the boys as such, scaring them with descriptions of what might happen. Crippled for life, if they were lucky.

  Silas shuddered, shooing the reminder of the priests into the back of his mind.

  Almost sunrise.

  Grabbing onto one of the poles supporting the roof, Silas squinted off at the distant Casean mountains. Any moment now, the sun would make its morning debut, and Silas would be the only one in all the town to see it. Anyone with sense would be in bed- himself included, had he not drawn the short stick for the fourth day in the row.

  Distracted by the memory of the night before, pleading to the other youths that it was someone else’s turn, and Daniel reminding him oh-so-gently that it was his idea to draw straws for the chores, he almost missed the first rays of sunlight.

  Silas grabbed the rope and heaved. Once. Twice. Thrice. Each time, the peal of the bells rang out, signing the start of the day.

  “Sil!” A sweet voice rang out, bringing the body to which it belonged into the square. A baker’s apprentice, she always reminded Silas of the golden wheat during harvest season- bright, almost shining.

  “Liz! I’ll be right down!” And down he did go- down into the dusty passage, before bursting out into the still-shadowed square. “Baker Cleff let you out early?”

  A blush, a giggle, and a “I wanted to see you!” was all he got for his question.

  “What? Wanted to see me fall? Ouch.”

  Leaning in so close that there was barely a handbreadth between them, Liz spoke in a hushed tone- as if there were other people around this early in the morning. “I heard from Mother Alice that it's your fourth time this week! How did you get yourself into morning bell duty four times?”

  Silas pushed her back lightly, trying to think of something clever to say, before giving up.

  “I don’t know.” He admitted, biting his lip. “I mean, there is only nine of us. It can’t be that unlikely, can it? Coincidences happen all the time. You don’t think someone put a charm on me or something, do you?”

  A glance told him that Liz didn’t expect so serious an answer from him. “Probably not,” she agreed. “Unless my fabulous sense of humor and simple presence made you pick the dawn straw on purpose! But seriously, Sil, charmed? Really? Who’d want to go to so much effort to make your life worse than you’ve got it in the temple?”

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  That pulled Silas up short. He didn’t think that he was charmed, not truly. But he hadn’t heard of anyone drawing the same chore four times in a row. He didn’t even think that anyone had drawn the same chore four times in a week.

  By now, the sun had well and truly risen above the Casean mountains, more than the faint rays of the Torch that would cross the sky, and people were rising from their nightly rest. Unlike his trip from the temple, an hour’s walk from the town, life was beginning to stir. If one tuned out the sounds of a waking town, they’d hear the birds calling out their greetings to the life of the forest.

  “I should probably get back to the abbey. Any longer, and I may as well be drawing the dawn straw for a month.” Bidding the other goodbye, Sil started the walk back to the abbey. His home, school, and almost his entire life. Of the nine acolytes, he was the second youngest, having changed only twenty cycles of the Torch ago, when Liam had been dropped off by a group of travelers, saying they found him in the woods. Silas had chosen the route for himself, becoming an acolyte when he turned thirteen. An unusual choice, but not unheard of.

  Whistling a tune as he went, Silas began his trek back to the temple. It was not a difficult hike, if one could even call it that. Along a packed dirt road, it was traveled enough that it wouldn’t surprise the young acolyte to begin to see a wagon or two get drawn by a mule or donkey in the later half of his trip home. Here, in the forest, with the sun’s light given rays, the trees drank deep of the Torch’s radiance, shielding the path from the heat, keeping the cool of night well into morning. By the time that he got back to the Abbey, morning prayers were finished, and the day’s work had begun.

  Chopping trees. Again. The back-breaking work of thinning the forest had started as soon as the snows had melted. Now, the work was truly being done in earnest, priests, brothers, and acolytes all spreading across the forest to let the warmth of the Torch touch the ground once again. Much like bell-duty, Sil had little love for the task. Oh, he found it satisfying, hearing the crack of lumber as the trees that obscured the light fell, found it refreshing to be kissed by the sun once more.

  But it required him to be alone, away from his brothers and sisters in his chosen faith. All day, he was separated from his fellow believers, unable to hear the chatting of the oldest of their order, debating points in theology that proved both too complex and nuanced for his years. He couldn’t hear the Sisters singing hymns as they washed clothing, and couldn’t see their humble temple’s healers bestowed with the brilliant light of the Torch weaving the very rays of sunlight to provide comfort to the ill and injured that so often came to them for aid. As much as he found it tiresome to have to deal with Daniel and some of the older acolytes, he enjoyed the companionship within the courtyard.

  With a crash, the ash tree he had been working on came down. With how loud the crack had been when the weight of the trunk had become too much under the stress of Silas’ chops, he was sure the others would come to assist in bringing the tree to the yard. There, he and the ones who helped stripped the tree of its bark, setting it aside for the healer’s concoctions. The white wood underneath was cut, and prepared by others for storage. Continuing on in such a manner, Silas had almost missed the calls others were beginning to give for the midday meal.

  Bread, cheese, and water. It was basic fare, but filling. The Torch was at its zenith, only just beginning its descent. Which meant lessons for Silas and the rest of the acolytes. From Healer Morten, they had learned all kinds of things in the past- liturgical prayers, how to dress a wound, reading and writing, and much more. It was, as the kind-eyed healer liked to put it, “Everything a priest needs to know in order to serve their God.”

  For Silas, this was the best part of the day. Unlike Liz in the bakery, or the other handful of townsfolk he was acquainted with, he was getting an education. Even if his head felt like it would burst from all the things he was learning, like the difference between ‘affect’ and ‘effect’, or where Earstshire was on the continent of Balenor, Silas loved it. There was so much in the world to see and learn, he prayed daily that the path he would earn would be one that took his feet to the ends of the earth and back.

  “Acolyte Silas!” a swift rap on the head with the thin wooden rod that Healer Morten used brought him back to attention from his daydream of traveling the world. “Good. Now that you are paying attention once again, tell me why the peoples of the Qualieth Forest had declared war on the Garren Kingdom.”

  “Healer Morten, which war? Last week you had said that the Qualieth Forest had declared war on the Garren Kingdom no less than three times!”

  Heaving a sigh, and pinching the bridge of his nose as he did whenever he had a particularly slow student, Healer Morten began again. “As I was telling your fellow acolytes while your head was elsewhere, the peoples of the Qualieth Forest had originally declared war because of dispute over land ownership. Now, let us continue.”

  After lessons, Silas rubbed his head. The blow stung slightly still, even after the Torch had started to lose its radiance. Sitting at the long benches for the evening meal, he ate his stew in silence, listening to Mother Alice give a sermon. It was a long day, and one that would repeat itself in many forms over the coming years.