CHAPTER TWENTY
Volusia sat on her marble throne, impatient, impetuous, staring back at the two common prisoners who stood shackled before her. Beyond them, in the distance, down below, there rose the chants of a hundred thousand of her citizens, squeezed into the coliseum, all cheering as the Razif was let loose in the arena. Volusia, not wanting to be distracted from the big moment, looked past these riffraff and down over their shoulders and saw the beast, bright red, nearly the size of an elephant, with three horns and a wide square face and jaw, and a hide as thick as a hundred swords, charging madly through the arena. The ground trembled as it charged in circles on the dirt floor, again and again, in a rage, looking for any victim.
The crowd cheered wildly at the expectation of the
