of the lake and came together, shining in the gloaming like hope promised.
Far below, the red-haired bowman Tas called Tanis and one of the young men who had been in the lake stood on the shore. The other was in the water again and swimming hard toward the falls. The dwarf and the slim young man moved quickly to the north.
'Tas, what are they doing?'
'Something, they're up to something. Look! Tanis sees us! He's pointing.' The kender leaned so far out to see that Keli had to catch him back by his belt.
'Don't do that!'
Clearly the fact that he'd almost tumbled to his death didn't bother the kender at all. He laughed, and the sound of his glee skirled high above the roar of the falls.
'Look, Keli! Raistlin's doing something to the air!' Tas thumped the boy's shoulder joyfully, nearly knocking him from his tenuous perch. 'I don't know what he's up to, I usually don't, hardly anyone ever does. But it's always magic, and it's always worth waiting for.'
Clinging like a soaked bat to the wall, Keli swallowed his nausea. Whether or not what the mage was up to was indeed worth waiting for the boy couldn't say, but he didn't see that they had much choice.
Raistlin's hands moved, deft and certain, in magic's dance. He gathered translucent rainbows and gemmed mist, separated their shimmering strands, and wove them swiftly, one around the other, into a rope of gleaming enchantment.
It grew quickly, the magic rope, and leaped away from the young mage's hands, directed and sped upon its way by will and spell. Out across the black surface of the water it flew, with the grace of a hawk rising, with the certainty of one of Tanis's well-drawn arrows speeding to its mark.
Sturm leaped into the lake, cutting through the icy water with powerful strokes. By the time he reached Caramon, the shining line had passed well over their heads, flying toward the arch and Tas's outstretched hand. On the shore Flint shouted, his voice rising high in triumph, ending on an oddly broken note, a cry of warning.
Tigo was halfway across the bridge, the hook that passed for a hand glittering balefully in the fading light.
Tas stepped in front of Keli and wound the shimmering rope around the boy's hands. 'We'll go together. It'll hold, I swear it. Just slide right down. It won't burn your hands — you can hardly feel it.'
Keli eyed the water, then Tigo advancing slowly across the arch. 'Tas, it's not a rope — it's LIGHT AND AIR! It can't hold us!'
'Oh, sure it will. It's Raistlin's magic.' Tas cocked his head as though he'd had a sudden thought. 'You're worrying again, are you?'
'Worrying?' Keli gasped. 'Tas, I'm so afraid I can't even think!'
'But it'll hold. I told you: it's magic. And Raistlin does the best magic I've ever seen. He'd never let you fall.'
'Tas, the rope's not real!'
'It IS real! But — well — look! Down in the lake. There's Caramon and Sturm — Did I tell you that Sturm wants to be a knight? Like your father. He'll be a good one, too. He knows that solemn old Code and Measure like he made 'em up himself, and — '
'Tas!'
'Well, right. So if you do fall — which you won't — they will get you. You'll be all right. Now let's go or we're going to have an appointment with Tigo real soon!'
That last, more than any of Tas's assurances, decided Keli. He grasped the rope, silver and gold, woven of magic and light. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, sucked in a lungful of air, and left the ledge.
Tas followed.
Behind them Tigo raged, a beast whose prey had flown, wingless, from his reach, abandoning him to his impotent anger.
The air was cool and shivery by the night-dark lake. Far over the water's black surface stars reflected and, Keli thought, as he hunched closer to the fire, something else did too. Ghostly light and shimmer, faintly rainbowed and silver. A residue of Raistlin's magic? The boy thought so.
None sat waking now in night's darkest hour but Keli and Tas, the half-elf Tanis, and the dwarf Flint. The young mage had been the first asleep. Keli knew nothing of magicor its tolls, but it was clear to him that Raistlin's light weaving had left him drained. It seemed to Keli that the thin young man was hardly strong enough to exert such effort often. Or, the boy thought as he stole a covert glance at the sleeping mage, maybe he is. Even in exhaustion something of power and strength had lighted the mage's eyes.
The mage's brother was Caramon, warrior big, with mischief dancing in his brown eyes, a kind of magic of his own. He slept so soon after his brother that the difference could hardly be measured. His snoring was like low thunder.
'Asleep between one bite of rabbit and the next,' Flint had growled. 'We could be witnessing the dawn of a new age of miracles.' Keli had wanted to laugh at that, but he didn't. The old dwarf bore a forbidding look in his eyes, scowled easily and grumbled often. Here was one who would need a wide berth.
For a time it looked as though Sturm would stay awake long enough to make good his claim on the first watch of the night. He didn't. Likely, Keli realized, his friends knew him well enough not to argue the point. And well enough to know that Sturm's exertions in the lake would put him quickly to sleep.
Tanis — his red hair the color of copper in the firelight, his long elven eyes sometimes the gray-green of leaves turned to an approaching storm, more often emerald bright — divided his time between smoothing Flint's grumbling and listening to the endless stream of Tas's chatter. This he did with the air of one who knows that a storm will not end until all the thunder has rolled and all the rain has fallen.
These, then, were Tas's friends of whom he'd been so certain. Of all of them only Tanis and Flint remained awake to hear the tale of capture and escape told in odd tandem by Keli and Tas. Though neither, Keli thought indignantly, seemed to want to credit Tas with the heroics Keli stoutly attributed to him. His back propped against a rock, his feet as close to the fire as he dared put them, Keli now looked first at Flint, then at Tanis.
'If it hadn't been for Tas, Tigo would have killed me. He's a real hero.'
'Hero!' Flint laughed. 'That one? Aye, lad, and I'm Reorx's forgemaster!'
'He IS,' Keli declared stoutly.
Tanis tried, for the sake of Keli's rising anger, to swallow his own laughter. He glanced at Tas crouched before the fire. The kenders dignity was not in the least disturbed by Flint's customary derision.
'He saved my life,' Keli insisted. 'He got those two good and lost, found the caves behind the falls, and the stairs that led up to the top. I'D never have known about the caves or the stairs or the bridge.'
Flint shook his head. 'I don't suppose Tanis's tracking or Raistlin's light-weaving had anything to do with the fact that you're here and safe, lad?'
Keli did not quail before the dwarf's gruff question, but defended his friend. 'They did, and I thank you all for what you've done. But — but you were almost too late. And — ' Keli foundered, looking from one to the other. They were still amused, and Keli could not understand what was so funny. 'And — Tas did save my life.'
'Risked your neck about a half a dozen more times than you remember or know about is more like it,' Flint growled. 'It's lucky you are that you're here to tell us the tale.
'Look at you, lad, you're half-starved despite eating a rabbit and a half, and dead tired. Get some sleep now, you'll see the right of the matter in the morning.'
'I know the right of it,' Keli maintained. He looked to Tas, who only shrugged.
'They're a little slow,' the kender drawled. He grinned then, suddenly, and that grin was like the flash of a comet across a midnight sky. 'But they always manage to catch up.' He stretched and yawned hugely. He shot one quick look at Flint and then winked at Keli. That wink, always trouble for someone, sparked Keli's smile.
Flint started to protest, but Tas only grinned again. He waved an off-hand goodnight and went to find a place to sleep. As tired as he was, Keli knew he wouldn't be able to sleep yet. He settled down more comfortably near the fire and sighed.
After a moment Tanis said, 'We'll have to get you home somehow, Keli.'
'Just back to Seven Wells would be fine,' Keli murmured. 'I'm sure my horse is still there and there is the message to be delivered to my father's friend.'
