They pounded in, deeper, deeper, until the light that had peeked through twisted branches was darkened by the massive overhang they’d seen from above. The Black Forest had gone underground. They plunged ahead into pitch blackness.

“Just keep yourself wet!” Johnis yelled.

He could hear them, flapping and wheezing on every side. He could feel the wind from their wings when they swooped in close, missing him by mere inches. He could smell the putrid, sulfuric stench that stuffed his nostrils, forcing him to breathe through his mouth to keep from retching.

But he could see nothing. Fighting a fresh wave of panic, Johnis dumped more water on his head, rubbed more on his arms, splashed his face, his shoulders, his thighs.

“Johnis?”

The frantic tone in Silvie’s voice betrayed her own fear.

“Are you wet?” he demanded. “Your thighs and sides, everything. Keep wet.”

“I’m running out of water!”

The tip of a talon brushed Johnis’s cheek, and he jerked back. The offending creature screeched, then hit a tree with a dull thump.

What if they tried suicide runs? Blasting in with claws outstretched knowing they would die on contact but killing him in the process?

No, they are too selfish to consider anything so noble, he decided.

“Good?” he called.

Silvie didn’t respond. He could hear her breathing loudly, but she wasn’t answering.

“Silvie! Are you good?”

“Don’t ask such stupid questions.”

They pounded deeper, deeper.

Johnis didn’t know what they would find. He only knew that Darsal had come here looking for a book. The fact that they hadn’t found any tracks headed back toward the forests meant she was still here somewhere, either dead or alive. Unless she had found a book and followed Billos, in which case she was somewhere else, either alive or dead.

Beyond that he could only make wild guesses, of which he’d made a hundred since the Roush Hunter had bounced up and down with the news of Darsal’s betrayal.

His mount pulled up sharply and came to a stop. The air had gone strangely quiet. The musky smell of muddy water announced a change.

“We’re out of the forest,” Silvie said, breathing hard. “This is the lake?”

Johnis glanced up and saw them then, a hundred thousand sets of red eyes above and extending around what must be their lake.

He looked ahead and now just barely saw the dim reflection of so many eyes in the dark water. “This is it.” But he couldn’t see which way the path went.

He tried to force his horse left. It snorted and backed up. Right. This time it walked reluctantly forward.

“This way. How much water do you have left?”

“I’m on my second bag,” Silvie said.

“Already?”

“You said keep yourself wet.”

“I didn’t say take a shower.”

“I’m alive.”