The pilgrimage road began at Ashenveil's eastern gate and wound south-east through the Lowland Corridor — a river valley that narrowed as it descended toward the Green Basin, the ancient swampland where the kingdom had been born.
Ryn hadn't planned to make the journey. The Academy's second-year curriculum didn't require it — the Green Basin pilgrimage was elective, a religious credit that could be substituted with a comparative theology essay. Most students took the essay. The pilgrimage was three weeks round trip, conducted on foot, through terrain that was alternately muddy, hot, and infested with insects the size of small birds.
But Thresh had asked. And when a Kobold whose uncle ran the kingdom's intelligence service asked you to walk three hundred kilometers through a swamp, you didn't say no — you said "why," and then you went anyway because the answer was interesting.
