Early Autumn.

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Well, the map I bought in Riverridge isn't worth a bent silver serpent. I've only been travelling for a week and I've already crossed seven streams that weren't on the map, and passed through three towns. I made it to Cloudspore, but it was more luck than navigation. For the largest quesatera city north of the Forest, you might think there would be better road signs. Civilisation is not equally spread across the land.

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I had been wasting away in Riverridge for too long, I'm not cut out to be a shopkeeper, especially not in River Market. Too busy, too crowded. It was a terrible place for a quesatera like myself to be stuck, but after my injury, and after my troupe moved on without me, I was stranded there for as long as it took for my legs to recover, and wolf bites do not heal easily.

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However, early in Autumn, I met a trader who claimed to have visited the great lake in the centre of the Tamor Basin, at the heart of the Great Forest. I've travelled around in the north for long enough to smell a liar at fifty paces, but this road-weary merchant had herbs and medicines that could have come from nowhere other than the deep forest. Without his help, my legs may never have healed properly. So I bought a map from him, and planned my journey south.

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South to the old naspani homeland. The Grey Marshes.

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My plan is to follow the outer rim of the Great Forest until I reach the westward Meandering River. If I cannot cross at the forest edge, I will travel west to Ardrennan and cross there, then continue south to Lake Landerin. I have a cousin who lives in Ardrennan, well, beneath it really. I'm not very excited at the prospect of spending time in a city even bigger than Riverridge, but I have heard that the library there is second to none. Perhaps I can find better maps there, but that is a long way off yet.