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Half an hour, and he could ride out of this place and never look back

His ancestors had cooodbye to them There was no room in his life for nonsense

He hadn’t planned on this final visit What for? A summer solstice was a summer solstice The earth reached the top of its northernmost tilt and that was that

His ancestors had figured it out and they’d venerated the process They’dout of these final ht in the year

Not him

It wasn’t belief in superstition that had brought Jesse here On the contrary It was disbelief Looking at this foolishness as it happened see way from boyhood He was a man, older and wiser than the first time he’d ridden out to view the solstice

The big gray stallion snorted softly Jesse’s hard, chiseled ht almost have been a smile

“Okay,” he said, “ht Older? Absolutely Wiser? Who knows”

The horse snorted again and tossed hisout here e both should be sleeping? Jesse couldn’t fault the anio, he’d awakened from a fitful sleep, taken Cloud from the warmth of his stall, slipped a bridle over his head and obeyed the sudden impulse to ride out to the canyon and watch the sunrise

Damn it, Jesse told himself coldly, be honest!

He was here by plan, by design, by the need to sever, once and for all, whatever ties remained between him and the old ways

I to do with it

He’d known that the solstice was co You didn’t have to be part Colo blood was more than sufficient So were the three wasted years he’d spent at university The sun reached a certain declination, a certain height and angle in the sky, and twice a year, you had a solstice

Solstices were real

It was the god myths that were bull