Arrows started falling out of the dark.

  The first one hissed past his cheek close enough that he felt the air of it. The second thunked into the dirt by his boot, quivering, fletching brushing his trouser leg. The third hit something soft behind him and stuck there with a wet, ugly sound.

  Tsen grunted.

  The boy dropped sideways on instinct, shoulder hitting the ground, Colt coming up in both hands. His heart kicked once, hard, then seemed to narrow down with his vision. The world shrank to lines and movement and the bright slice of Imrahil’s face across the fire.

  More arrows came.

  They rained in at a slant from the dark—too many to be one archer, coming in too close together. They hit saddles, packs, dirt. One buried itself in the fire, sending a little shower of sparks up. Another punched into Nantan’s upper arm. He shouted and half turned, rifle swinging away.

  None of them touched the boy.

  He didn’t have time to think about why or how.

  A wind came with the arrows, a knife?cold gust that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. It slammed into their little camp, a wall of air that smelled of frost and crushed leaves.

  The fire went out, ashes and embers scattering into the wind. And then there were only red ghosts in his eyes, a hiss, and then darkness. The coals were left behind, but something about that wind smothered them too, pushing every spark flat. The air gulped down the light and did not give it back.

  They were blind.

  Someone cursed in Kiowa. Rojas yelled something in Spanish, voice high with surprise. A horse screamed and jerked at its picket line, hooves tearing the ground.

  Imrahil laughed. The sound that came out of her now was jagged and wild. It rose up, bright and sharp, and skittered over his skin like ants.

  “Oh, finally,” she crowed. “I was running out of stories to feed you little animals.”

  Her silhouette jumped backward out of where he remembered the ring of light being, jerky and wrong. For a moment, as his eyes strained, he caught a smear of pale hair and something too long in the limbs. Then even that was swallowed by the dark.

  Except—not quite.

  He could still see her.

  Not clear. Not like daylight. But the boy’s eyes had changed since his stats had increased. Shapes in the dark came to him faster now. Edges stood out where they shouldn’t.

  Imrahil’s outline was… sharper than the dark behind her. She was different too.

  The smooth, almost human form she’d worn by the fire was gone. This thing had the same number of limbs, but they were too long, elbows and knees bent at angles that would have broken a human. Her fingers looked like they’d grown a joint too many. Her face… had too many shadows. Cheekbones like knives. Teeth a little too bright in the dark when she smiled.

  Her white hair flickered.

  It wasn’t just catching starlight. It moved like flame—like the hair itself was made of thin tongues of some pale fire that didn’t throw light, only drank it and gave back a faint ghostly glow. It licked and curled in a wind that wasn’t there, flowing back from her head in ripples.

  “Scatter!” Tavo barked. “Off the ridge! Get to—”

  An arrow cut him off. It slapped into his side with a meaty whock. Tavo grunted, breath leaving him in a gust, and went to one knee, hand clamping reflexively over the shaft.

  The boy’s sight narrowed even more.

  His thumb was already on the hammer. The Colt felt glued to his hand.

  His instincts took over.

  He inhaled. The world steadied for a heartbeat in that breath. His finger tightened. The front sight came up on where her leg met her hip. She moved, jerky and fast—

  But the boy was faster.

  The Colt roared.

  The flash lit her in a single, frozen picture. Sharpened features. Eyes too wide. Hair flaring like a white flame.

  The ball hit her right leg just above the knee.

  Her leg came off.

  It broke. From mid?thigh down, the limb just… separated, blasted apart in a shower of gore as the bullet tore through skin and flesh and bone. The lower part of the leg spun away into the dark, trailing light.

  Light, not blood.

  She shrieked.

  The sound that ripped out of her wasn’t any word he knew or even vaguely recognized.

  Bright liquid sprayed from the stump where her leg had been.

  But her blood was not red.

  It was a hot, blazing gold, brighter even than the fire had been, only it didn’t throw real light, just its own kind of glow. Liquid gold.

  Imrahil hit the ground hard on her side, cloak twisting around her. Her hair flared up around her head like a corona, every strand a licking white flame.

  He didn’t have time to wonder what she’d just said. The dark around them moved.

  Shapes flickered at the edge of his sight. Not like the greenskins—broader, hulking, loud. These were thinner. Quick. He caught the faint glint of metal, the wink of a pale face, the flash of something like a blade held sideways.

  He swung the Colt toward the motion.

  Something hissed in from his right.

  Pain exploded in his forearm.

  He didn’t see the arrow coming. One moment his arm was solid and his fingers firm on the Colt. The next there was a white?hot spike in the meat of his right forearm, just below the elbow.

  The impact jerked his hand wide. The Colt fired again into the night, shot going somewhere useless. The recoil and the pain together knocked him onto his back.

  He heard himself yell, short and harsh.

  For a heartbeat all he knew was that point of fire in his arm. It was like the rest of his body went thin. Everything else felt far away. The dark sky above him, the faint bite of night air, the cries of the others. All small.

  He forced his left hand to move.

  The Colt was still in his right, fingers spasming around the grip. His arm wouldn’t obey him enough to bring it up again.

  [Inventory], he thought and then shoved the Colt away.

  One problem left.

  He grabbed the arrow.

  His right arm didn’t want to move. The muscles fluttered uselessly. He made his left hand do the work, fingers clamping down on the shaft just above where it entered his flesh. The fletching brushed his elbow. He felt the barb drag sickeningly inside him. White stars danced at the edges of his vision. He couldn’t pull it or push it out. Every little movement brought nothing but agony. Still, pain was an old, if unwelcome, friend.

  [Inventory], he thought again, harder.

  The arrow vanished.

  The pain doubled for a heartbeat. The absence the arrow left behind was worse than its presence. His body hadn’t had time to decide what was wound yet and what was him. For a breath there was only raw, open meat and the rush of blood.

  Hot wetness flooded down his arm. He felt it soak his sleeve, his fingers, drip into his palm. It smelled copper?sweet and too familiar. For a sick instant he wondered if he’d been a fool, if he’d just bled himself out faster.

  And then, just as quickly, the stream of red slowed. The hot, free rush of blood stuttered. Stopped. The torn edges of muscle twitched and crawled toward each other, like worms cut in half trying to find the rest.

  His heart pounded. Each beat pushed a dull ache through his arm, but no new warmth dribbled down.

  He lay there, gasping, vision pulsing with his pulse. That, the boy knew, had to be the work of his Vitality.

  Somewhere to his left, Tsen shouted something wordless and angry. The twang of his bowstring sang through the dark, then again, then again. Arrows hissed out into nothing. Nantan’s rifle cracked, the muzzle flash a quick white blink that painted a crouching shape and then erased it. Kanii whooped once—a high, fierce cry—and then cut off with a grunt.

  “Fall back!” Rojas yelled wildly. “To the—hnnph!”

  The boy pushed himself up with his good hand.

  His wounded arm screamed when he tried to use it. He clutched it tight to his ribs instead.

  The night was full of motion now.

  He couldn’t tell where anyone was. The wind had died with the fire. The smell of burned powder and Imrahil’s golden blood mixed into something sour and thick. Feet pounded in the grass, some light, some heavier. Steel rang once as something hit something else.

  He caught a glimpse of Tavo in the dark, outlined for an instant by a faint greenish glow—a low arrow of light slashing across his chest where some elf trick went wide. Tavo’s lance jabbed at a shadow. The shadow split and flowed around it and something hit him in the back. He went down to both knees, swearing.

  Then the sky above them rippled.

  Something came down fast, with a whistling rush and a snap of cords.

  The boy had just enough time to look up.

  A net dropped from the sky.

  The weight of it drove him back to the ground. The impact knocked what breath he’d gotten back right out of his chest. His head hit dirt. For a blink everything went white and buzzing.

  He coughed, dragged air back in, and tried to move.

  The net moved with him.

  He got his good hand under one of the cords and pulled. It didn’t give. Whatever it was made of had no stretch at all. It bit into his palm, cutting the skin, but didn’t break. He rolled, tried to slip an arm through a gap. The mesh tightened like a living thing.

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  He heard other bodies hit around him. The net had pinned them all together, tangled them in a heap.

  Somebody kicked him in the side by accident. He shoved back, more out of reflex than anger.

  “Hold still!” Nantan snapped somewhere above him. The Apache’s breath was ragged. “You thrash, you tighten it.”

  He kept fighting it anyway.

  Not because he thought he could break free. Just because some hard piece of him refused to lie still while strangers tied knots on his arms again.

  It would have been easy to lift a horse now. Easy to pull a gate off its hinges. This net did not care. He braced both boots against the ground and heaved. The cords cut deeper into his arms and shoulders. A strangled sound came out of his throat.

  The net creaked—but did not break.

  There was no time to find another tactic.

  Something small hit the ground near his face and rolled.

  It made a little hollow sound, like a walnut, then cracked.

  A pop of light flared.

  Then the smoke came.

  It poured out in a thick, rolling cloud. It was white. Too white. It billowed fast, filling the space under the net and spilling out through the mesh.

  It had a smell—sharp and bitter at first, like crushed herbs, then sweet underneath in a way that made his stomach twist. It burned his nose. Tears sprang to his eyes. He tried to turn his head away. There was nowhere to turn to.

  “Don’t breathe it!” Rojas yelled, voice muffled. “Don’t—”

  He ran out of air.

  His lungs ached from the fall and the net and the shouting. Little black dots crowded his vision. His chest heaved on its own.

  The first breath he dragged in was half him, half the smoke.

  The world wobbled. The sharp edges went soft. The cords of the net no longer felt like they were biting his skin so much as pressing him into a warm bed. His arm still hurt, but it was far away, as if it belonged to someone else.

  He fought it.

  More of the smoke rolled over him. He coughed, sucking in more by accident. The sweet went deeper. It coiled behind his eyes, heavy and thick.

  Nothing moved.

  Then the dark folded over him.

  He dreamed of nothing.

  When he woke, his mouth tasted like ash.

  For a long time he lay with his eyes still closed. His head thrummed

  He became aware of his body in pieces.

  First his back. It ached in a long, dull line from shoulders to hips. The ground under him was not bare dirt anymore. It had a give to it, faint and spongy, like lying on thick roots under thin soil. Little bumps dug at his shoulder blades. His good arm lay flung out to one side, fingers splayed. His wounded arm throbbed, low and steady, but not the screaming fire it had been.

  He flexed his fingers, cautiously.

  They worked. The muscles in his forearm pulled.

  He opened his eyes.

  The ceiling above him was alive.

  For a heartbeat he thought he was in some kind of cave. Light filtered through in odd shafts, not from a hole at the top but from between long, curving shapes. Then his sight cleared a little more, the last of the smoke?fuzz burning off.

  They were roots.

  He lay inside a dome of them—a great, woven ball of wood. Thick roots as big around as his thigh bent and twisted overhead, interlocking, braided through with smaller tendrils. They had grown together, fusing where they crossed, bark merging into bark. The color of them was a deep, wet brown, with streaks of green where thin moss had found a purchase.

  Lighter lines showed between them.

  Beyond those, he could see the sky.

  It was bright. Midday or near enough. Blue with a few thin clouds. The spaces between the roots were narrow, no bigger than his palm at their widest. Plenty for air. Plenty for light. Not nearly enough to slip through.

  He turned his head.

  The dome stretched out in every direction.

  It was bigger than he’d thought at first. The curve of the wall was a good thirty yards away in any direction, maybe more—a rough circle. The floor under him followed the same curve, a tangle of roots and packed earth, smoothed here and there by feet passing.

  There were a lot of feet.

  People filled the space.

  They were scattered in uneven clumps—some sitting, some lying, some huddled with their backs to the roots. Men, mostly. A few women. A handful of children clinging to skirts or hands. All brown?skinned, all hair in braids or cut short against the head. Feathers. Beads. Stripes of paint, some fresh, some worn.

  They looked back at him with flat, exhausted eyes.

  He did not know any of their faces.

  He pushed himself up slowly, onto one elbow, then to sitting. His head swam. The dome tilted and then righted itself.

  Someone moved at his side.

  “You wake,” a voice said. “Good. I get tired of talking to your sleeping face.”

  The boy turned.

  Tsen sat against a root nearby, one knee drawn up, the other leg stretched stiff. He looked like he’d been there a while. His braids were mussed, one of his hair ties missing, a strand hanging loose against his cheek. The white handprint on his chest was smeared with dried blood that was not his. An arrow had grazed his upper arm; a strip of cloth was tied around it, crusted dark.

  His eyes were clear, though, and watchful.

  “How long?” the boy asked. His voice came out rough. His tongue felt too big, like there was still smoke clinging to it.

  “Since they dropped us,” Tsen said. He rolled one shoulder in a small shrug. “Half a sun? A little less.”

  The boy glanced down at himself.

  His coat was gone.

  So was his hat.

  They’d left him his shirt and trousers. His boots were still on his feet. The eagle feather necklace Peta had given him was gone. His belt was gone. So were every pouch and powder horn and knife sheath that had been on it.

  His right sleeve was stiff with dried blood. Someone had slit it open from elbow to wrist to get a look, then tied a strip of cloth around his forearm. He touched it cautiously.

  There was pain, but it was dull at best and felt like it’d be gone by tomorrow.

  He reached for [Inventory] out of habit.

  The space in his mind where it should have been… bumped into something.

  It was like running his hand along a wall in the dark and then hitting a plank that hadn’t been there yesterday. His thoughts slid off it, went nowhere.

  [Inventory] did not open.

  He blinked, tried again, harder, focusing on the hollow place where the Colt should have been, on the weight of the Beastmaster’s Spear he knew was locked away.

  Nothing.

  Something… pressed back.

  It wasn’t the System. It felt more like thick, tangled roots shoved into doorways, plugging holes.

  A cold prickle slid down his spine.

  Tsen watched his face.

  “You try to call your magic bag?” the Kiowa asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “It’s… stuck.”

  “Same as me,” Tsen said grimly. “No one can.”

  He tapped his chest lightly. “They have tricks that choke that space.”

  The boy swallowed.

  He reached for his [Bestiary].

  He felt the wolf as soon as he looked for it—an old, familiar pressure now, like a big dog curled against his back. Alert. Rested. Waiting. The Reaper Lizard was a tighter coil, all nerves and claws. The Bison latifrons loomed like distant thunder, slow and heavy but there.

  Whatever net they’d thrown over his [Inventory], it hadn’t reached that far.

  He could summon them.

  He did not.

  Not yet.

  He let his awareness slide back, fingers loosening metaphorically from those tethers. Calling any of the beasts inside this dome would do nothing but start a panic and show their hand. The space was too tight for the bison to do more than crush a few bodies and himself. The wolf and the Reaper would get tangled in legs and roots.

  He needed to see more.

  He needed to understand what kind of trouble they were in.

  “Who are they?” he asked Tsen, nodding toward the nearest cluster of captives. A group of men there sat together, shoulders touching, faces turned in toward one another. Their hair was long, loose or in two braids, tied with strips of red cloth. One had a necklace of little shell discs. Another wore a shirt with much beadwork, blue and white and red triangle patterns across the chest.

  “Cheyenne,” Tsen said. “Tsitsistas, they call themselves. People of the… like saying ‘our people.’”

  He shrugged. “They were the ones supposed to meet Kiowa and Comanche on the Canadian River. Looks like someone found them first.”

  The boy studied them.

  They looked tired. A few had bandages. One man’s arm was in a sling, shirt cut away around it. A boy of maybe twelve sat near his father, knees drawn up to his chest, staring at the roots like he could make them move with hate alone.

  “They been here longer?” the boy asked.

  “Some,” Tsen said. “Look like a few days. Maybe more. They say the ones who fought hardest outside did not come in.”

  A little girl, no more than six, clung to a woman’s skirt nearby. Her hair was cut short, bowl?shaped, with two tiny braids in front. Her eyes were huge in her thin face. She watched the boy and Tsen with open curiosity, thumb stuck in her mouth.

  “What is this place?” the boy asked, looking up at the living dome again.

  “Prison,” Tsen said. “Pen. Basket.”

  He jerked his chin toward the walls. “They grow these. Elves. High ones, low ones, all the same to me. They put seeds in the ground, sing to them, piss on them, I don’t know. Roots grow faster than corn in spring. Wrap up anyone inside. Hard as rock once done. Can’t get out.”

  The boy dug his fingers into the nearest root.

  It felt… alive. There was a slow pulse in it, deep down, as if sap moved thicker than blood. The bark was rough and knotted like any tree, but when he scratched it with a nail, faint green light flickered along the line and faded.

  He snatched his hand back.

  “All right,” he muttered. “We ain’t cuttin’ our way out.”

  “Probably not,” Tsen agreed.

  The boy looked around.

  There were at least two hundred people in here. Maybe more. They filled the space but didn’t pack it tight. Some of the Cheyenne had made little divisions with worn blankets or heaps of packs, marking out family corners. Others sat alone, backs to roots, staring at nothing.

  “Where’re the others?” the boy asked. “Rojas. Nantan. Kanii. Tavo.”

  Tsen jerked his chin toward the far side of the dome.

  He spotted them after a moment.

  Tavo sat with his back to the roots, legs stretched out, one hand pressed to his bandaged side where the arrow had gone in. His face was carved in a scowl, eyes half?lidded with pain but bright. Nantan and Kanii were near him, along with Rojas. The Apache had one arm around his younger brother’s shoulders, head bent close, speaking low. Rojas’ hair was unbound for once, hanging in his face. He looked mad enough to chew the roots.

  All of them were alive.

  That was something.

  “Why take us alive?” he asked. “Why not just kill us?”

  Tsen shrugged, a roll of one shoulder against wood.

  “The Cheyenne say they are taken to work,” he said. “To dig. To carry. To bleed. Some are taken out and do not come back. Those are for other things.”

  His gaze flicked to the wall, then back. “Sometimes they come with whistles and smoke and take a few. Strong ones, young ones. Men from one corner, then another.”

  He didn’t finish the thought.

  The boy didn’t need him to.

  He studied the gaps between the roots again.

  There were shapes moving out there now.

  At first he thought they were just shadows. Then one turned just right and the light caught a face.

  It was like Imrahil’s, but… less careful.

  The elves outside were tall. As tall as her if not more, each of them a head and half above most of the men inside the dome. They moved with a particular kind of easy grace, as if the ground decided to be softer for them.

  Some wore what might have been mail, but the links were fine and close, almost cloth. It gleamed pale green or dull gold. Others had plates—curved and layered like leaves, overlapping, catching the light. Some of those plates were metal. Some looked very much like grown wood, hardened bark shaped to fit a chest or shoulder. Vines wound through some of it, holding pieces together instead of leather straps.

  They carried bows taller than the boy, staves of strange wood that tapered and bent like living things. The strings caught the light with an odd sheen. Quivers at their backs held arrows with fletching in subtle colors—moss green, deep brown, gray. The heads were long and narrow, wicked sharp.

  A few had blades. Slim, curved things, like a cross between a cleaver and a butcher’s knife, edges that caught and split the light. Some of those blades had a faint shimmer along the edge, as if the air itself didn’t like to touch them.

  Their clothes under the armor were… pretty.

  There was no better word. Greens. Browns. Soft creams. Embroidery like Imrahil’s, though not as elaborate as hers had been—lines of leaves, little starbursts, knots. Some had bits of jewelry at wrist and throat, metal worked as fine as lace. Their hair was braided or left loose, ornamented with twisted bits of metal, with feathers that weren’t from any bird he knew, with what looked like polished stones that might have been opals.

  They had an uncanny beauty.

  Not just that they were tall or that their faces were all fine?boned and clean. There was a wrongness to it. Like dolls carved by a hand that understood the rules of human faces but didn’t think they were important. Eyes a little too big. Skin a fraction too smooth. Expressions that didn’t reach their eyes.

  Several of them smiled when they saw the captives stir.

  The smiles were… hungry.

  One elf, closer than the others, stepped right up to the roots and peered in. She was shorter than most of her companions—though still taller than any man inside. Her hair was the color of dried wheat, braided back with little silver wires. Her armor was light—more cloth than plate, a short tunic of overlapping scales over leggings that shimmered faintly. Her eyes were a pale amber, like old beer held up to light.

  She scanned the crowd with quick, birdlike motions. Her gaze skipped over the Cheyenne, over the Kiowa, over the Lipan. It hesitated when it passed the boy and Tsen, then came back.

  Her lips curled.

  “Look at this,” she said, voice sliding through the space between the roots like oil. “They smell delicious.”

  She leaned closer.

  Up close, through the tangle of roots, her face was… perfect. Not a mark, not a scar, not a pore in sight. Her teeth, when she grinned wider, were small and even and white. It made the words that came out of her mouth worse.

  “It has been so long,” she said, almost purring, “since I’ve had man flesh.”