Carde, who’d been holding the free end of the rope, quickly pulled it tight. Then Coll measured and cut it, and, tying the free end to another arrow, proceeded to fire the shaft point-blank into the rock behind them. The arrow buried itself into stone.
Kevin, utterly incredulous, turned to Diarmuid, questions exploding in his eyes. The Prince walked over and shouted in his ear, over the thunder of the water, “Loren’s arrows. It helps to have a mage for a friend—though if he finds out how I’ve used his gift, he’ll consign me to the wolves!” And the Prince laughed aloud to see the silvered highway of cord that spanned Saeren in the moonlight. Watching him, Kevin felt it then, the intoxicating lure of this man who was leading them. He laughed himself in that moment, feeling constraint and apprehension slip away. A sense of freedom came upon him, of being tuned to the night and their journey, as he watched Erron leap up, grab the rope, and begin to swing hand over hand, out over the water.
The wave that hit the dark-haired man was a fluke, kicked up from an angled rock by the shore. It slammed into Erron as he was changing grips and threw him violently sideways. Desperately Erron curved his body to hang on with one hand, but the wave that followed the first buffeted him mercilessly, and he was torn from the rope and flung into the mill-race of Saeren.
Kevin Laine was running before the second wave hit. Pelting flat out downstream along the strand, he leaped, without pausing to calculate or look back, for the overhanging branch of one of the knotted trees that dug into the earth by the river. Fully extended in flight, his arms outstretched, he barely reached it. There was no time to think. With a racking, contorted movement he twisted his body, looped his knees over the branch, and hung face down over the torrent.
Only then did he look, almost blinded by spray, to see Erron, a cork in the flood, hurtling towards him. Again, no time. Kevin reached down, tasting his death in that moment. Erron threw up a convulsive hand, and each clasped the other’s wrist.
The pull was brutal. It would have ripped Kevin from the tree like a leaf—had not someone else been there. Someone who was holding his legs on the branch with a grip like an iron band. A grip that was not going to break.
“I’ve got you!” screamed Paul Schafer. “Lift him if you can.”
And hearing the voice, locked in Schafer’s vise-like hold, Kevin felt a surge of strength run through him; both hands gripping Erron’s wrist, he pulled him from the river.
There were other hands by then, reaching for Erron, taking him swiftly to shore. Kevin let go and allowed Paul to haul him up to the branch. Straddling it, they faced each other, gasping hard for breath.
“You idiot!” Paul shouted, his chest heaving. “You scared the hell out of me!”
Kevin blinked, then the too, too much boiled over. “You shut up! I scared you? What do you think you’ve been doing to me since Rachel died?”
Paul, utterly unprepared, was shocked silent. Trembling with emotion and adrenalin afterburn, Kevin spoke again, his voice raw. “I mean it, Paul. When I was waiting at the bottom . . . I didn’t think you were going to make it down. And Paul, I wasn’t sure if you cared.”
Their heads were close together, for the words to be heard. Schafer’s pupils were enormous. In the reflected moonlight his face was so white as to be almost inhuman.
“That isn’t quite true,” he replied finally.
“But it isn’t far wrong. Not far enough. Oh, Paul, you have to bend a little. If you can’t talk, can’t you cry at least? She deserves your tears. Can’t you cry for her?”
At that, Paul Schafer laughed. The sound chilled Kevin to the core, there was such wildness in it. “I can’t,” Paul said. “That’s the whole problem, Kev. I really, really can’t.”
“Then you’re going to break,” Kevin rasped.
“I might,” Schafer replied, scarcely audible. “I’m trying hard not to, believe me. Kev, I know you care. It matters to me, very much. If . . . if I do decide to go, I’ll . . . say goodbye. I promise you’ll know.”