"We'll find him, Flint."
Flint still did not look up, but drew the thong tight on the last of the kender's pouches. "Did you find his map case?"
"No."
"Good. I wish whoever took it the joy of trying to find his way with those maps! Hardly one of them is worth the parchment it's penned on."
Tanis found a smile. Few of Tas's maps were any good at all without his interpretation and translation. And those were never the same twice.
"We'll not make Karsa any time soon now, Flint."
"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 amark 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.