The spring air hung soft with promise. Penric’s mother, before she had gone off in the wagon with his sisters to oversee the final preparations, had turned her face to the cool blue sky and declared it a perfect day for a betrothal; surely the gods were smiling upon the House of Jurald at last! Penric had refrained from pointing out that the learned divines taught that the gods did not control the weather, and been rewarded for this filial forbearance with a sharp maternal injunction to hurry up, finish dressing, and follow! This was no time to be dragging his feet! Penric stared glumly between his horse’s bobbing ears and reflected that it would have been an even better day to go fishing. Not the most exciting pastime, but it was the one thing he’d ever found to do that made people stop talking at him. He tried to imagine the muddy, winding road going somewhere less familiar than Greenwell Town. He supposed it actually did, if you followed it far enough. As his elder brother Drovo had done?
