The Royal Era and the Era of the Gods

The world keeps two reckonings of the years.

The living use the Royal Era, counted from the year the Ironhold dynasty was founded — it is now Year 412 of the Royal Era, and the old king was the 105th of the line. Accessions, taxes, battle reports, deeds of land, gravestones: everything belonging to the affairs of men is recorded in the Royal Era. The year is divided into seven months — Cold Moon, Grey Moon, Silent Moon, Flame Moon, Gold Moon, Frost Moon, Last Moon — and the day is written after the name of the month, “Silent Moon, day 23”. It has been written that way for 400 years, and the whole world can read it.

The other is called the Era of the Gods, and it lives only in old scrolls, in rites texts, and on pages kept deep in the Royal Tomb. It counts years earlier than those, so early that no living man has seen them and no living man needs to count them. Where the rites text writes “the last years of the Era of the Gods”, what it writes of is the time before the world was divided into seven realms. The Era of the Gods has no months, only epochs; how long one epoch runs, the men who copy the rites text cannot say either.

The two reckonings are never set side by side. A document of the Royal Era writes only the Royal Era, a rites text only the Era of the Gods; for both to appear on one piece of writing counts, by the rules of the Royal Tomb, as a discourtesy, and whoever copied it wrong has to copy the whole thing again. The first year that the sons of House Greypen practise their hand, what they practise is writing the two reckonings apart — the Royal Era in an upright script with no joined strokes, the Era of the Gods in the rounded hand kept for rites texts. Write them long enough and the hand separates them by itself.

Among common people the month-names are used more loosely. In the Mute March the Cold Moon is called the Long Night Moon. Sangold does its business by its own trading seasons: the contracts give the year in the Royal Era, but the instalments are reckoned by the trading season. The only thing that is truly the same everywhere across the seven realms is the number of the year.

The two reckonings do not join. Before Year 1 of the Royal Era there is blank; after the last years of the Era of the Gods in the old scrolls, there is blank as well. That stretch in between has never been filled in. The Tomb Hierophants have copied the rites text for generations, and where the copying reaches the seam they break the line, leave the space empty, and go on copying below it; asked about it, they say that is the rule.

Under the rule lies a question no one asks aloud: what happened before Year 1 of the Royal Era?