After a lengthy and not altogether boring apprenticeship, I chose to travel the Great Route, as most of you did when first you could stand and answer to the name "minstrel", in order to see something of what the world had to offer for such a talented young man as myself.After a lengthy and not altogether boring apprenticeship, I chose to travel the Great Route, as most of you did when first you could stand and answer to the name "minstrel", in order to see something of what the world had to offer for such a talented young man as myself. I had travelled this route from Padya to Sintiria to Amia to Militilva and back to Padya again for some two years (or was it perhaps three?) before settling down, for as long as my interest might last, in the highlands of southern Tierma, running messages and gossip up and down the foothills of the Zannick Mountains. I had been there not three months before word came to my ears (ever attuned are they to such news) of a certain young nymph who lived near Sil, and what I heard was more than enough to thoroughly whet my appetite for some firsthand knowledge. |