“No, the worst he can do is get his claws on the seven books.” He raised his voice. “That’s why we’re here, and that’s why I hid the other book in the desert.”

She blinked.

If the bats could whisper, they could listen, which was why he’d been careful not to say much. Thinking about it, he wished he had hidden the book in the desert, but it was too late for that now.

A long lonely scream drifted through air, and Johnis pulled up. The Shataiki scattered like a flock of parrots, squawking noisily.

“That sounded like . . .” But Silvie didn’t finish.

“Like what?”

She moved ahead of him, ears tuned, and Johnis followed. Her sudden display of courage made him proud. She was, after all, the better fighter here, without contest. Silvie was his protector.

They’d gone another fifty paces when the scream came again, long and forlorn, like a thin horn blown for a funeral. The path forked in front of them, one trail veering left and one veering right, toward the sound of the cry.

“Which way?” Silvie asked.

“To the right,” he said.

So she steered her horse right. The next time the scream came, it was so loud that Silvie gasped. The sound of a whip split the air. Crack!

Silvie twisted in her saddle, her face white with panic. “That’s human!”

She suddenly kneed her horse and took off, galloping through the trees.

“Silvie!”

But she was gone, and Johnis slapped his horse into a full run after her.

The scream echoed through the forest again. And not just any scream, but one that sounded amplified and inhuman. Johnis’s heart hammered with the pounding of his horse’s hooves.

It was one thing to be leading, forcing himself to be confident. But following Silvie, Johnis was suddenly terrified. We’re galloping into hell, he thought. We’ve lost our minds!

Their trip into the Black Forest stopped when the path abruptly ended at the edge of a huge hole that fell fifty feet, flattened at the bottom, then rose on the far side.

Johnis had seen this before. It was an amphitheater, nearly identical to the stadium they’d played Horde football in several days ago in the forest.

Black trees rimmed the stadium but had been cleared from the field at the bottom of the bowl. Bleachers cut from darkened slabs of rock stepped up from the field, a hundred rows at least. The field itself was made of lump ash.

At the center of the field was a pond. And next to the pond, a platform made of the black wood from these dark, angular trees.

And on the platform, a large circular wheel standing tall.

Two humans were strapped to the wheel, arms and legs spread like an X.

“Billos!” Silvie whispered.

“And Darsal,” Johnis said.

Not another creature in sight.