'Caramon and Sturm!' Tas threw his head back, laughing. 'Ready or not, here they come!' He dove and angled through the water, coming up beside Keli. Staag shot up behind him, grabbed, and missed by a hand's breadth.
'Tas! They're too far away!'
Tas yanked the boy under the water, ignoring his sputtering protest. Staag's thick legs thrashed to the right of them, and Tigo surfaced just behind the goblin.
Tas released Keli, jerked his head to the left, and dove down and around the goblin and Tigo before either could get his bearings. Keli followed gamely, hoping with all his heart that the kender knew where he was going.
Down just didn't seem like the answer to their problems.
Sturm shouted once, then again. He'd lost the hook handed man or found Tas and the boy — Tanis couldn't be sure which and did not spend a moment's concentration wondering. His hands knew nothing but his bow, his eyes only his arrow's target. That target, the gray-skinned, maddened goblin, had dragged Caramon beneath the lake's surface and held him there now.
His breath held tightly, legs braced wide, Tanis waited the interminable space of five heartbeats for Caramon to surface again, afraid to loose his arrow for fear that Caramon would come up between it and the goblin. Dimly, he was aware of Raistlin's soft intake of breath, of Flint's curse and then his whispered plea.
Caramon did not surface.
Tanis let fly and prayed for the gods' grace, for their favor, for mercy.
Rainbows danced in the air, shimmering along the tumble of the falls. Mercy, and the arrow, were delivered at the same time. The shaft flew true and took the goblin full in the throat. In the veil of the mist, Sturm broke the water, graceful as a dolphin leaping.
Seeing himself alone, he dove again, resurfaced, and filled his lungs with air. He returned to the water twice, and the second time he came up dragging Caramon, gasping, to light and air.
They were alone in the lake, Staag's body gone into the rage of the falls, Tigo vanished. There was no sign of Tas and the boy.
Though they dove and searched for longer than those on the shore knew anyone could survive beneath the water, they did not find Tas or his small companion.
Caramon raised his fists to the thundering falls. The dying sun colored his brawny arms red and gold. His howl of rage echoed for a long time between the shores, so loud and grieved that Tanis did not hear the small clatter of his own bow when it fell from his hands to the rocky shore.
Numb, Tanis watched as Caramon and Sturm made their way back to land. He joined Raistlin and Flint to help them, awkward and earth-bound again, onto the shore. For a long time he felt vacant, emptied. The feeling well matched what he saw in Caramon's eyes, in Sturm's, in Flint's stunned disbelief.
Then after a time, when the sun was nearly gone and they were still waiting — for something — he heard the old dwarf draw a sharp, hard breath.
'He's lost his mind.' The words hardly matched the breathless awe, the chilled amazement, of Flint's tone. 'By Reorx's forge, if that kender ever had a mind to lose, he's lost it now. Tanis! Look!'
Tanis raised his head from his drawn-up knees, looked to where Flint pointed. Impossible, the half-elf thought dully, he's dead, drowned.
'Impossible' was not a word one could apply to a kender's resourcefulness with any hope of accuracy. Tas — topknot flying in the wind from the falls, arms spread for balance — negotiated a natural bridge no wider than the span of two hands across the cascade's spout high above the lake. Even as Tanis watched, the kender turned his head as though speaking to the one who followed him on hands and knees.
Tanis scrambled to his feet and ran out to the edge of the shore. Sturm and Caramon joined him, squinting up into the last light of the day.
'Aye,' Sturm muttered. 'And there's that hook-handed villain who escaped me in the lake! How did they GET there?' He looked around wildly as though seeking a way to get to the arch above the falls. There was only the lake, and he would have made that swim again.
Tanis held him back. 'You'd never get there in time,
Sturm.'
'Where does he go after he gets across? There's nothing but cliff and rock!'
Tanis shook his head. 'Nowhere,' he whispered. He turned away from the lake and saw Raistlin standing above him, looking into the rainbow dance of the falls' mist. The young mage smiled, his light eyes eager and sharp.
'Raistlin, can you help him?'
The mage nodded slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes still on the jeweled mist and the last shafts of sunlight. 'I think I can. He has a mountain climber's skill, our little friend, and it is a good thing he does: he's going to need it.'
Stone bit sharply into Keli's hands. Stalled and frozen in the middle of the narrow rock span, he dared not look down, could not look back.
Across the arch Tigo crouched, a lean and hungry predator waiting for his prey to realize that it was trapped, caught. There was no need for him to venture on the bridge, no need to pursue farther. At last he would have his murderous revenge!
Across the bridge, his back to the spray-soaked wall, Tas shouted, 'Keli! Come on!'
'I–I can't — I can't — ' Keli could not move, it was all he could do to speak.
'You have to! You can't stay there! Pretend you're a spider! Spiders don't ever fall! Come on! It'll be fun!'
Fun! Keli swallowed dryly and tried hard to be a spider, wishing all the while he were a bird instead. Hand over hand, he crawled across the slick stone bridge, swearing futile boy's oaths under his breath. Fun!
'That's it!' Tas called. 'I told you it would be fun!'
Tigo, across the span, laughed. His laughter was ghostly, only faintly heard above the roar of the water. Keli ignored him, concentrated on Tas and the bridge.
'Come on, Keli, a little more! You've almost got it! Ever do anything as much fun as this?'
Keli groaned and shook his head. He regretted that at once. The bridge seemed to sway and rock under him. 'No,' he panted, staring at his white knuckles. 'Nothing like this!'
Hand to hand, knee to knee, Keli crept, trying not to give in to black-winged vertigo, wishing it weren't so hard to breathe.
After what seemed a lifetime of crawling, Keli's fingers touched the kender's, cold and slick. Tas leaned a little forward to grasp a wrist, then an arm. 'Up now, on your feet. I've got you.'
Keli gained his feet, wobbled a little, and then straightened.
'That's right. Now just edge over here. We can both fit on this ledge. Probably.'
Probably! 'Crazy as a kender' was an expression Keli had heard from time to time. He used to think he knew what it meant. Now he was certain. Keli dragged up every bit of strength he had and lurched hard against the wall. He pressed his face to the wet, black stone, shuddering. 'Now where?'
Tas attacked the answer obliquely. 'We can't go back, but he's not coming on, either.'
'What, then?'
'We can always wait.'
Out over the lake the jeweled and dazzling mists of sunset were gone. On the far shore twilight's purple shadows gathered, the outriders of the night.
'It would be nice,' Keli said tightly, 'if we could fly.'
'Sure would,' Tas agreed, 'and a lot better than being stuck up here'
Keli wanted to wail. He clamped his back teeth hard and whispered, 'Then — but — why are we out here? I thought you knew a way OUT of this mess!'
Tas shrugged. 'I didn't think he'd follow us. I thought he was drowned in the lake. Twice.'
Across the arch Tigo sat, his back against the stone, patient as inevitable doom. Keli couldn't look at him without feeling sick, without feeling, in imagination, the rip of his grapnel hand and the long, shattering fall to the water below.
Light, the faint and fading gold of sunset, the silver of approaching twilight, danced up from the black surface
