Darsal swung her sword as well, keeping the bats at bay. Billos cried out in protest, but she wasn’t sure who he protested, them or the bats.

There were too many—she saw that almost immediately. Billos was deadweight, Darsal was slow, and Silvie couldn’t hold them back on her own. Even if all three were at their best, the bats would surely overrun them.

“Run!” Silvie cried to Darsal, rolling off the horse. She slapped the stallion on the rump with the broad side of her sword. “Take Billos. Save yourselves!”

They took off without hesitation, one on each horse, galloping out to the desert. It was the only way, Silvie knew. All three of them would end up dead if they tried to take on the Shataiki in this diseased state.

The bats let Billos and Darsal go. And then they smothered Silvie. One of them must have picked up the horn and blown it, because she heard the mournful tone over the bats’ shrieks. The last thing Silvie remembered was a hot mouth stretched over her face.

Until now.

“Hey!” she cried, struggling against the ropes that bound her tight. A bag was pulled off her head, and Silvie saw that it was still day. For all she knew, only minutes had passed since they’d taken her at the cliff top.

Black, angular trees rose up all around. The Shataiki that had pulled the bag up had a deep gash in its right wing, and Silvie knew her own sword had put it there.

The bat spit on her, a vile glob of yellow goo, then jerked the bag back down.

“Make it go to sleep,” a Shataiki said. “Make it still.”

They put her to sleep with a club.

SILVIE DREAMED OF FLYING BATS AND WHITE DESERT AND A silly Roush trying to do backflips but landing on its head instead.

A claw pinching her cheek woke her. It took her a moment to see that she was in the stadium again, with a sea of red eyes staring at her.

How . . .

“Silvie?”

Johnis’s faint voice whispered her name on the right, and she tried to turn to him, only to discover that her body was bound spread-eagle to the same wheel that Billos and Darsal had been strapped to.

Beside Silvie, Johnis was tied like a spider to the web.

He was graying with the disease and bruised from more than one cuff to his face, and his eyes drooped with exhaustion. Still, he was such a handsome boy, even now. Dark hair to his shoulders and a strong jaw. Sharp nose and full lips, younger in appearance than in age. But he had the muscles of a strapping sixteen-year-old, defined by forest living.

“Johnis?” she croaked.

“Did you get it?” he asked in a barely audible whisper.

The book.

Terrible sorrow swept through her chest. “No. I’m sorry . . . They were watching.”

“Billos? I heard the horn . . .”