Three things there are which defy prediction: a woman’s whims, the touch of the Devil’s finger, and the weather of Gwynedd in March.
MARCH HAS long been a month of storms in the Eleven Kingdoms. It brings the snow sweeping down from the great northern sea to layer a last coat of winter on the silver mountains, to seethe and swirl around the high plateaus of the east until it finally funnels across the great Gwynedd plain and turns to rain.
March is a fickle month at best. It is the last stand of winter against the coming spring, but it is also harbinger of the greening, of the floods which yearly inundate the central lowlands. It has been known to be mild though not recently. Still, it is spring close enough for men to dare hope that winter might end early this year; it has, on occasion.
But those who know the ways of Gwynedd do not build their dreams on the chance of an early spring. For they have learned through hard experience that March is capricious, often cruel, and never, never to be trusted.
March in the first regnal of King Kelson of Gwynedd was to be no exception.
Nightfall had come early in Kelson’s capital at Rhemuth. It often did in March, when-the northern storms rolled in across the Purple March from the north and east.
