A SOFT PLACE TO FALL
“Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“By our beloved departed,” said Carj as Jarrod’s chivalric menagerie came into a small farming settlement and dismounted. “That is a great horse, sir.”
Jarrod figured they were thirty miles south of High River Keep, a half-day’s ride at a trot, and the mighty peaks of the Falconsrealm mountains loomed far ahead, with Horlech somewhere behind them on the right atop a cliff. The foothills, carpeted with green and draped in mist, yielded to great black shadows beyond, an expanse of forest lowing as needles of snow pricked at it.
Jarrod loved Lilith’s single-foot gait. It helped, too, that she was a gentle, easygoing, likable horse, because he was no great horseman
