"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 grayskinned, 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.
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!"