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