Publisher's blurb: Primitive straw huts dot this rocky desert village. At its center waits a blood-splattered arena, fortified with wooden stakes and fenced by a thick timber palisade. It is built into a deep gully with a small stream running through it, so onlookers can watch the combat from cliffs and man-made viewpoints higher up. The surrounding wasteland is barren and dry, filled with sand and crumbling stone from the rocky outcrops. Alongside the river, beyond the arena, prickly plants—as hostile as this land and known as Prophet’s Roses—grow with red blossoms.