“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 magic
or 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