Love And War (13 page)

“AYE,” Flint grumbled. “And you can be sure that I'll take it out of that rascally
kender's hide when we finally catch up with him, too.”

Tanis thought the threat lacked conviction.

Silent as a shadow moving in the breeze, Raistlin came up beside them. “If someone took
the map case, and there is nothing to show that the kender was killed here, it would not
be amiss to consider that the case, Tas, and whoever waylaid him are still together. The
trail is rocky up ahead, Tanis.”

“Tracks?”

“None. But there is something else.” Raistlin nodded toward a small grouping of boulders.
“Camp signs. Perhaps you should see them.”

Tanis moved as though to signal Flint to join them, but the young mage shook his head.
Fear, like a dark thread of night, crawled through Tanis's belly.

The campfire had been small, ringed by rocks. Several yards beyond them was a flat-sided
boulder. On the near side of the boulder, a handspan from the ground, was a mark no larger
than a kender's fist. Though it was rough- sketched in blood, Tanis recognized the sign at
once: a stylized anvil bisected by a dwarven F rune. Flint's plate mark.

“Tas?”

“Who else would leave that mark?” Raistlin touched the rusty brown blood. “It was fresh
not long ago.”

Both turned at the sound of an approach. Flint stood at Tanis's elbow.

“Wretched kender!” The old dwarf clenched his fist. “Vanishing out from under our noses
and getting himself into Reorx only knows what kind of trouble!” He stared for a long time
at the device which had always marked his best and most beautiful work, sketched now in
dark blood on the stone. It was as though he'd never seen the mark before and sought now
to memorize it.

Tanis said nothing, did not want to speculate at all now. Raistlin it was who spoke, and
when he moved his shadow fell between Flint and the mark.

“The blood is fresh, Flint, not a day old. He's still alive.” The young mage looked from
one of his friends to the other. “And, by the look of this, hoping that we're on his
trail. We'd best waste no time in wondering now.”

Tanis did wonder: He wondered if they were too late.

The sound of the waterfall might have been the angry roar of some outraged god. Racing and
tumbling, the river threw itself from the cliff nearly two hundred feet above and slid in
foaming white sheets only to vanish a third of the way down. Then, like some conjurer's
trick, the falling river reappeared from a spout after twenty-five feet of sheer,
burnished cliff face and finished its headlong dash into the narrow lake.

The mist was as thick as rain on the shore and as drenching. Though Keli and Tas were tied
to the base of a thin spire of rock, all the thirst and heat of the day seemed to vanish
beneath the soothing kiss of the vapor.

Keli sidled as close to Tas as he could. He sent a quick glance over his shoulder, assured
himself that Tigo and Staag were well occupied refilling their water flasks, and let a long, gusty breath speak of the almost solemn wonder that filled him at the sight of
this wild and glorious falls.

“You knew,” he whispered, “you knew this was here.”

“Oh, yes. I've been here before.” Tas frowned a little, then shrugged. “Although it's not
exactly where it's supposed to be.”

“What?”

“Well - it isn't the place Flint knows. The trail looked like the one to there. But I
guess it wasn't. This must be” - he squinted at the setting sun - “sort of east of it. Or
north. Or -”

Keli's heart sank and with it any hope he might have nourished for rescue. “They're not
coming,” he said bleakly.

“Oh, yes, they are. It - just might take them a little longer to get here. But that's all
right. Things will work out if you stick with me.” Tas winked, something Keli was
beginning to recognize as a sign that more trouble was on the way. “All the way.”

“All the way?” “All the way to the top.” “The top of the FALLS?” Keli's mouth went suddenly drier than it had been all day. “I don't - I'm not sure - ” “Don't worry!” Tas's eyes were
bright with expectation. "Really, Keli, you worry more than anyone I've ever met.

Except Flint. Now, there's a worrier. How old are you, anyway?"

“Twelve.”

“Twelve! Far too young to be worrying as much as you do.”

Keli closed his eyes against the sight of the roaring falls. “Tas, I'm sorry you got
caught by those two . . .”

“I got caught?!” Tas was indignant. “Why, it's more like they got caught by me! After all,
they didn't even know where I was taking them! Ha! Of course, as it turns out, I didn't
know either, but that's a small point. By the way, can you swim?”

“Yes,” Keli said warily. “Good! That's the last problem solved.” “The last? But - ” “What
are they doing, can you see?” Again Keli looked over his shoulder. “They're still at the lake. I can see Tigo, but not Staag. I hear him, though.“ ”Good enough. Now, look.”
Tas twisted a little so that his back was to Keli.

Clutched in the kender's bound hands was a small dagger. “Tas! Where did you get that?”
Tas shrugged. “Oh, well, you know, sometimes people are a bit careless about where they put things and I ... just . . . find them. This,“ he
said, grinning again, ”I found in Staag's belt this morning. He'll miss it sooner or
later. But by then I think we'll be too far away to give it back. Now, turn around and
stand very still. I don't want to nick you.”

He cut Keli's thongs blind, his back to the boy. The patience to unknot the most tangled
puzzle and nimble, firm hands were a kender's gifts. Keli was free before he could worry
that Tas would sever a wrist rather than a thong.

“There. Now do mine.”

Keli worked carefully, his fingers still numb, his hands aching with the sudden rush of
blood in veins. Soon the kender, too, was free.

“Now,” Tas whispered, “follow me!”

With one glance backward, swift and silent as a hare on the run, Keli followed the kender.
They made distance, angled sharply north and then abruptly west to the stony shore of the
lake. When Tas skidded to a halt on the rocks, Keli nearly toppled into him.

“Tas! I don't think - ” Keli swallowed his doubt. Tigo had discovered his captives' escape
and his cry echoed along the shore. In an instant, the goblin and the thief were in
furious pursuit.

“Keli, make straight for the falls, then cut to the north when you begin to feel the force
of the cascade. Slip in behind the wall of water. I'll be waiting for you.”

Tas's dive was a whirl of arms and legs. He hit the water hard and whipped his hair out of
his eyes. “Come on!”

The inside of Keli's mouth was like sand. He shot a terrified glance over his shoulder and
another at the lake and its thundering falls. He knew with certainty that if Tigo caught
him now he'd rip the heart out of him with that grapnel hand. There would be no false
ransom note to his father, nothing but bloody revenge for a wrong never committed.

There was no reasoning with insanity.

The drop to the lake from the rocky ledge was as deep as a tall man's height. Keli drew in
all the air he could and dove, feet first, into water as cold as a newly melted glacier.

“Go!” Tas yelled to the boy. “Go!”

Keli struck out hard and fast, and Tas overtook him a moment later, cutting the lake as
smoothly as any sleek otter.

They'd not covered even a quarter of the distance to the falls when two splashes behind
them told them they had not lost their pursuers.

“Where are your friends?” Keli wailed.

“I don't know!” Tas shouted back. “They're usually better trackers than this!”

The waning sun twined ribbons of golden fire through the cascading water and ran along the
sheer sides of the far cliff face as though etching veins of gold and rubies. The narrow
part of the lake was at the western shore. On the eastern side, the chum of the thundering
falls turned the lake white and deadly.

For a long moment, squinting through the light and the mist, Tanis forgot to breathe. His
breathing was not stilled by the beauty of the place. That he hardly saw at all. It was
stilled by horror.

Far out across the lake, small as abandoned nestlings, two swimmers surfaced at the roil's
edge. There was something about the dive and play of one to tell him right off that he was
Tas. The other, clutching at air and shimmer, looked like a boy.

Behind the two, closing fast even as Tanis watched, were two other swimmers. One,
huge-armed and gray- skinned, was clearly a goblin. The other, lean and one- handed,
coursed ahead, angling as though he meant to cut in behind the boy.

Flint's groan could have risen straight from the depths of Tanis's own fear. Moving
quickly, the half-elf tossed aside his bow and quiver and pulled off his boots. Raistlin's
light hand caught his wrist. * “Wait! Tanis, let my brother go, and Sturm. You're the
bowman and the longest-sighted of us all. Defend them while they swim.”

Though reluctantly, Tanis agreed.

They were fast, the two young men, out of most of their clothes and into the water on
smooth, long arcs almost before Tanis could reclaim his bow and quiver. But there was more
than half the lake to cover and the goblin was closing fast, his lean companion already
cutting in behind the boy.

“They'll never reach them in time,” Flint whispered.

Tanis nocked an arrow to his bow's string, drew and sighted. Released, the arrow cut
through the sun-jeweled mist and shied its mark, the goblin's neck, by the width of its
shaft. It was enough, however, to send the surprised creature diving beneath the water for
cover.

Tanis drew again, searched for a target, and found none. The lake was suddenly empty of
all but Caramon and Sturm swimming strongly for the falls. Caramon faltered rose high, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Both his quarry and their victims were gone.

*****

The water was liquid ice, his limbs as heavy as lead. Keli twisted hard, kicked back once,
and then again. He was free of the pull of Tigo's hook-hand! Off to his right, blurred
figures wrestled: Staag and Tas. Ahead, close enough to suck at his legs, to draw him
farther down, was the roil of the falls.

Thunder roared all around him. The black-watered lake was white as diamonds here. Tigo
surged forward and up, wielded his hook and snagged it again on the back of the boy's belt.

Keli rolled and jack-knifed, his lungs afire and screaming for air. He reached down,
grabbed Tigo's ears, and pulled as though he would tear them from the man's head. When
Tigo opened his mouth to scream, he took in what Keli thought must be a gallon of icy
water.

Again the boy kicked, and once more he was free. He surfaced, sucking air in huge, greedy
gulps and saw Tas break into the light at the same moment. Behind the kender, rising like
a sea drake from the water, Staag roared and then flung himself aside and out of the path
of a green-fletched arrow.

“Tas!” Keli waved and pointed back toward shore. “Down! Duck!”

Tas rose, whooping with glee. “It's all right! That's Tanis! Our rescuers! Look!”

Two young men, one broad-chested and brawny, the other slimmer and faster, cut through the
water with strong, distance-eating strokes.

“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.