“I don’t see how we can find five more books, if the last few days are any measure,” Billos said.

Johnis looked up at him. “Do we have a choice?”

“You always have a choice,” a voice said on their right.

There on the railing perched Michal, the leader of the large, fuzzy, batlike creatures they called Roush. Gabil, his humorous friend, floated in on wide, white wings and landed delicately on the rail beside Michal.

“Hello, friends,” he said. “Care for a karate lesson?”

“Honestly, Gabil,” Billos said, grinning. “Your moves are made for flying bats. Unless you can teach us to fly, we’re at a loss.”

“Really? Well, maybe I can teach you to fly. It might cause a few bumps and bruises, though. And I can’t promise you that you ever will actually fly, but you must learn my karate. If that’s the only way—”

“Please, forgive my friend’s eagerness,” Michal said. “Now, I suggest you get your story straight and prepare to go after the next book. Gabil, we should get back. We still have wounded to care for.”

Gabil fluttered off. “Practice your moves!” he cried. “I’ll test you soon.”

“Oh,” Michal said turning back. He withdrew something from his belt and set it on the railing. A silver ring. “I almost forgot this. We found it in the desert with a piece of cloth. It was placed there today.”

Then he whooshed into the darkness.

Johnis stepped forward and lifted the ring. He recognized it immediately. “My mother’s ring!”

“Your mother’s?” Silvie asked. “Michal wanted you to know that the Horde took it?”

But Johnis didn’t think that was what Michal had meant by leaving the ring. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “She’s alive.”

“I thought she was killed months ago,” Billos said.

“They never recovered her body.”

“You . . . you mean she’s a Scab now?”

The possibilities swirled through Johnis’s mind. Scab or not, she was his mother, and the thought that she was, at this moment, alive was almost too much to bear.

Mother was alive . . .

JOHNIS LAY ON HIS BED, NEAR DAWN, UNABLE TO SLEEP FOR the voice that haunted his mind. His mother’s voice.

I love you, Johnis. You are my life, Johnis.

He opened his eyes and stared at the reed thatchwork in the ceiling. The house was built out of timbers and had carved planks. The inside was mostly flattened reed walls that flexed easily when pushed. A wood dresser and the bed he lay on made up the room’s furniture. Simple, but perfectly functional.

His fingers rubbed the silver ring in his tunic pocket. Mother’s ring. Rosa’s ring. She’d been killed by the Horde months ago, leaving him in utter despair; his father, Ramos, a widower; and his sister, Kiella, motherless. Or so he’d come to believe.

His mother was alive.