Love and War

Hide and Go Seek

For a long time Keli did not know where he was. Sometimes he smelled the forest and the river, sometimes only dirt and rocks. Once the boy thought he heard thunder rumbling far, far away. Then, on the tenuous bridge between darkness and consciousness, he knew with the flashing certainty of lightning's strike that it was not thunder he was hearing.

It was the voice of nightmare: the voice of a goblin.

"Tigo, let's dump the little rat in the river. We have what we want."

Keli expected to feel the goblin's huge gray hands drag him up and cast him into the river.

Far back in his mind he knew about the leather thongs pinioning his arms, binding him at knee and ankle. Too, he felt the hard earth, the fist-sized rock digging into his ribs. Pain, however, was not as immediate as death-fear.

A second voice, sounding like the rattling of old bones, growled, "Bring him over here, Staag; see what he's carrying first."

Someone shouted, then yelped. Keli's eyes flew open, his heart leaped hard against his ribs. He was not alone in his captivity!

Bruised, pinioned, and bound as Keli was, his fellow prisoner was in a worse plight, caught hard by the neck in the goblin's iron-fingered grip. He was small, but no child; the cant of his ears as well as his slim build and small stature marked him as a kender. Several pouches of varying sizes and materials bounced at the kender's belt each timeStaag shook him. And Staag, that slope-shouldered, gray skinned nightmare, shook him often and hard simply because it amused him to do so.

The kender, a game little fellow, hitched up his knees and drove them into the goblin's belly. Had a mouse attacked a mountain the result would have been the same. Laughing, Staag loosed his grip on the kender's neck and dropped him.

The kender writhed against his bonds. "Swamp breathed, slime-brained bull," he croaked.

Keli's heart sank. So much for the kender, he thought. Staag's going to kill him now!

But the goblin didn't. Tigo stopped him with a command.

If Staag, his arms too long, his legs too short, his skin the color of something a week dead, was the nightmare, his human companion Tigo was reality gone twisted. Tall and lean, bony-shouldered, with limbs that might have been stolen from a scarecrow, Tigo bore a four-pronged grapnel where his right hand should have been. His eyes, muddy and brown, held little sanity in them.

"I said bring him over here, Staag." Tigo glanced at Keli, who shivered despite the close heat of the summer morning. "And the boy, too."

A bull, the kender had called the goblin, and bull-strong he was. He tossed the kender over one shoulder, Keli over the other and, with no thought, he dropped them next to Tigo.

Breathless, Keli lay still where he fell. The kender, his face in the dirt, snarled another insult.

"Let's just kill the kender and get it over with," Staag grunted. "We should have slit his throat at the tavern and got done with it."

"Aye," Tigo drawled. "And left him bleeding all over the place for anyone to find. I don't think this one traveled alone."

Staag snorted. "Since when do these little vermin travel in company? Tigo, we waste time." He peered up through the forest's brooding green canopy. "It's almost noon and we're still too close to that village. Let's just kill him and the boy and get OUT of here!"

Keli clamped his teeth down on a whimper and prayed to every god his mother had told him was real.

"Be patient, you'll have your fun. But we're not going to kill the boy yet." Tigo, his hands thief-light, slipped a finely tooled leather map case from the kender's shoulder. He laughed, a sound that reminded Keli of rusty hinges creaking. "Nice collection of maps, kender."

The kender hitched himself onto his back, spat dirt, and looked at Tigo with the expression of a guileless child. "Used to clean middens for a living, did you? I can tell by the smell."

Keli groaned again, hoping the kender's blood wouldn't splatter all over him. Yet, though he paled, Tigo didn't reply. Staag kicked the kender.

"Please, kender," Keli breathed. "Be quiet!"

Sometimes a bad dream, steeped in terror and warped perspective, turns funny. Keli felt he was in one of those odd turns now: the kender winked.

Before Keli could be certain he'd seen the wink, Tigo cuffed the kender hard.

"These maps! How recent, how dependable?"

With a speed that left Keli confused, the kender became the spirit of helpful affability. "Some are very old — I've been collecting them for years, you know. It's kind of a hobby of mine. I like the drawings, especially the things the mappers sketch when they don't know who or what lives in the land. And I like the little legends and poems in the borders of the larger ones. That one, the one drawn on hide, is my oldest and the one I think I like the best. I got it in Schallsea; an old man gave it to me and he said — »

Tigo's hook-hand flashed silver in a shaft of sunlight, dancing threateningly before the kender's eyes.

"Right. Some of them are old, some are new. I guess it depends on where you want to go," the kender added hastily.

"Away from here," Staag growled, "and fast."

The kender did not give the goblin a glance, but spoke to Tigo. "Then you're really lucky you brought me along. I've been all around these parts, many times, and I know them nearly as well as I know the inside of my own eyelids. That's why I don't have any maps of this area in the case. Who needs one? Not me. Where do you want to go?"

Tigo hissed a snake's warning. "What makes you think we need a guide?"

"You said so." The kender was all innocence now. Keli marveled at his composure. "Not in so many words, of course, but I can tell. Otherwise why would you be so interested in my maps?"

"You make a large guess, kender."

Keli thought so, too, but held his breath now, waiting.

The kender shrugged as best he could. "Maybe I was wrong. But if you DID need a guide — and I'm not saying that you do — I'd be the one you'd need. As I said, I know — »

"Aye," Staag snarled, "all the lands about here."

"That's right, I do. What do you think? Do you need a guide?" The kender lowered his voice in a confidential manner. "If you want to kill someone, for example — »

Staag rumbled threateningly, loosed the dagger at his belt.

"Whoa! Wait! I'm not saying you do. I'm not saying you don't. But I can take you to a place I know where you can do whatever you need to do and no one will be the wiser."

"In exchange for what?" Tigo asked.

The kender snorted. "For my life!"

Keli's heart sank. Whatever that wink had been, it certainly hadn't been an expression of solidarity.

Tigo shook his head, baring his teeth in a deadly smile. "What's your bond, kender? What will keep you from sneaking off in the middle of the night, leaving us with daggers in our backs?"

Staag laughed then, thunder and nightmare. Keli's stomach turned weakly. "The same thing that keeps him here now, Tigo. Loose his feet so he can walk, but keep his hands tied and him on a short rein."

Keli shifted away from the kender. This was no fellow prisoner now, but one in league with these two who, for some reason Keli could not figure out, wanted to kill him. He squeezed his eyes shut against a cold wash of despair and only partly heard the argument between Tigo and the goblin about whether the kender's pouches should be rifled now or later.

It hardly bore listening to anyway: Tigo argued that there was no time, and clearly Tigo was someone whom even the goblin feared. I'm not dead yet, the boy thought, but it's only a matter of time and place now. And I don't even know why!

Tanis had suspected all winter that the real purpose for Flint's journey this year was to attend Runne's wedding. Flint mentioned the occasion only once, when he and Tanis were mapping out the summer's trips, and then only told a brief tale of how the girl was the grandchild of Galan, the man who had been the old dwarf's first customer and who many, many years ago had become a friend.

"Runne's father, Davron, was killed a few years ago in a hunting accident. And Galan… is gone now. Someone must stand in her father's place at the ceremony and, while there are uncles to spare, the little maid has remembered her grandfather's old friend and asked me to fill that place. I want to do that, Tanis."

Though it was high summer now, the dust of the only street in Seven Wells dancing in the hot breeze like phantoms around his knees, Tanis well remembered how the winter firelight had looked like memories in Flint's eyes when he told that lean little tale. Yet every event of the summer seemed part of a conspiracy to keep Flint from Long Ridge and the wedding.

Hot and too early the summer had come, drying the stream beds and cutting hard into their travel time. Near Gateway one of the few storms of the season sent lightning lancing from the sky to ignite the tinder-dry forest. Two weeks on the fire line there, digging trenches to help defend the town from the burning rage of the forest fire, ate into their travel schedule. A merchant late for their rendezvous at Pine Glen, and another customer who never did meet them at Fawn's Run, left them here in Seven Wells with a two-day journey to Runne's home in Long Ridge which must be reached in one.

Now Tas had vanished.

Caramon would have no part of a search around Seven Wells for Tas. "Who knows where the little ban dit's got off to now? I'M not spending the cool of the morning looking for him. He knows where we're bound. Let him catch up."

Raistlin removed himself from the discussion altogether. Sturm, who decided it might be profitable to look while the others argued, returned after a time with the news that Tas was not to be found.

"Right," Flint snapped. "Because he probably took off in the middle of the night for who knows what foolish reason." He lifted his pack with one easy swing and settled it on his back. "I'm not waiting around for him to remember where he's supposed to be. Caramon's right, he'll catch us up on the road. And if he doesn't — then he doesn't."

No one was disposed to argue. The road before them would be a long and hot one. Tas had too often romped ahead, lagged behind, or struck out on some kender-quest of his own for anyone to be concerned about him now.

Tanis hefted his own pack and fell in beside Flint. The kender could be as troublesome as a heel-snapping pup, but he was well able to take care of himself. This disappearance, like so many others, would be explained away with some fantastic tale of adventure or discovery. Tas had been looking forward to the celebration at Long Ridge. Likely he would join them there.

Tanis was not concerned.

Keli wasn't walking well. Tethered to Tigo, as the kender was to Staag, he stumbled, fell, and this time did not try to get up. He was too tired, too hot and frightened, and too certain that wherever the kender was leading them would be the place where Tigo would kill them both.

It was the kender, loping back from where he'd been ranging for trail marks and paths, who helped him. Keli pulled away from his hand and staggered to his feet. "Do you really think they're not going to kill you,too?"

The kender only grinned and shook his head. "They won't. And they won't kill you either."

Staag hauled hard on the kender's line. "Move away, little vermin."

The kender went where he was pulled, but before he resumed his scouting he looked once over his shoulder and again winked. Trust me, the wink seemed to say.

Keli was in the way of trusting no one, and he certainly wasn't going to trust a kender who would bargain with killers. The boy hunched his shoulders against the heat and his fear and trudged on. He ached for home, he who had been so proud to leave it as his father's courier only a week ago.

Ergon, his father, had been almost casual about charging his son with the message to his old friend Carthas.

"Give him the scroll, son, but remember to give him first my regards and personally tender my regrets that I will not be able to accompany him this year on his horse-buying expedition. I must honor my promise to your mother's sister. Your uncle was a long time ill before he died. Though he tended his business as best he could, your aunt will need my help to untangle the mare's nest he left her. "Tell all this to Carthas. He will understand."

Keli had accepted the charge as though entrusted with a message to the High Clerist himself.

The tavern at Seven Wells had been Keli's third stopping place. And, it now seemed, his last. He'd come in late, stabled his horse, and snatched a quick meal. When he tried for a room, he was able to get lodging only in the barn with his horse. A party of horse traders filled the paddocks with their stock and most of the tavern's rooms with themselves.

So tired had Keli been that the straw seemed a princely bed. He'd fallen asleep easily to the stamp and chuff of horses.

And wakened to the nightmare of the goblin and moonlight streaming along Tigo's hook-hand. One of them hit him hard. There had been nothing but pain and darkness, and finally, the woods.

His horse they must have turned out among the stock in the paddocks so that none would wonder in the morning why the young courier had gone and left his mount behind.

And they'd snatched up the kender as well. Keli still didn't understand why, couldn't fasten on a reason. Tigo jerked on the tether again as though calling to heel a wandering dog. Keli tried to pick up his pace.

He could either look at the ground or the kender scouting ahead, and he chose the kender coursing the forest as though leading them through streets of a town he knew well. Bright blue leggings flashing in and out of the underbrush, topknot bouncing, the kender reminded Keli of a blue jay.

Chatters like one, too, Keli thought. The boy didn't mind the kender's chatter very much. Running like the song of the river they'd left behind, it took his mind off what must await him at the journey's end.

That would be death. The kender talked long and often, but he was not the only one who did. In fits and snatches Keli had picked up bits of his captors' guarded conversation.

Staag was pressing for opening ransom negotiations. Tigo had other plans.

"Aye," Tigo snarled once, "we'll send a ransom demand. But it's not only ransom that one will be paying out for his son. He owes me, Ergon does. He'll pay the coin, but all he'll find is a body."

Sweat traced paths in the dust on Keli's face, ran stinging into his eyes. After a moment the kender dropped back, jostled him lightly, and stumbled to cover the move.

"Don't worry," he whispered. "This is just like a game of Hide and Go Seek, only I'm sure my friends will find us. Tanis is the best tracker there is. And Raistlin and Sturm and Caramon learned from him. The place I'm going to take us to is a place Flint showed me a couple of years ago. Once they get on our trail, Flint will know right off where I'm heading. Probably."

Hide and Go Seek? Keli turned away in disgust. "This is not a game, kender. I told you, those two are going to kill me."

As before, the kender grinned and shook his head. "Those two? Flint alone could handle three or four of that sort. Or five, or six, depending on the circumstances…"

Tigo booted the kender up ahead again, and Keli was left with something to consider.

His friends, the kender had said. Keli squinted hard at the kender's back. He did look familiar. Had he been at the tavern last night? Aye, and, despite what Staag had said about kender not traveling in company, this one had been with a red-haired hunter who had an elven look about him, three young men, and a dwarf. He remembered them because one of the young men, thin and pale-eyed, no warrior like his two companions, had threatened to turn the kender into a mouse and fill the tavern with cats if he so much as looked at his pouches again. A mage, by the sound of that threat. Keli had thought at the time that the others probably traveled with the mage just to keep the kender in line.

Could it be that these companions would be looking for the kender? I'm making sure that my friends find me… How? Keli drew a breath, and hope with it.

But the hope was small and too slim to flare. Hide and Go Seek, the boy thought, is played with friends in the streets and alleyways of the town you live in. Not with goblins and thieves in the forest.

The bride was a summer princess, her hair golden wheat, her eyes blue-touched with dawn's mist. Roses blossomed in her cheeks. Her laughter rose and dipped the way a bird's song will.

So she seemed to Tanis. She must have seemed that way to Flint, too, for he gifted Kavan, the miller's son, with her hand as though presenting the boy with jewels. How Karan felt was clear for all to see; all the jewels of Krynn would be but poor stones and rubble when compared with this girl.

"Lucky fellow, this Kavan," Caramon murmured when the ceremony was ended.

Tanis gave him a sidelong look and a grin. "Caught, is what he is, but the jailer is pretty enough, isn't she?"

"Aye, and it won't be bread and water for him. Though it will be some time before he has any interest in kitchen matters — " He did not finish the thought but jerked around when a hard finger caught him between the ribs.

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, youngster," Flint growled.

"I didn't mean — "

"I know what you meant. Now why don't you go off and do what you do best: find yourself something to eat."

It was a suggestion Caramon never found amiss. When he was gone, Tanis grinned again. "Runne is a beauty, isn't she?"

"Aye, she's that. Her grandfather would have been proud this day."

Memories darkened the old dwarf's eyes again, clouds in a clear sky. As though to deny the sudden thread of sadness running through his day, Flint looked around, searched the crowd of family and friends now surging around the new bride and her husband. "That addle-pated kender never turned up."

"I haven't seen him, but Tas isn't one to miss a celebration. He'll be here before long and likely you'll be wishing he wasn't."

Yet through the long summer afternoon and into the hot dark of night the guests at the wedding moved easily, refilling wine goblets or ale pots and plates too soon emptied of the good food. No one cried thief, no one wondered where his purse had got to, no lady missed even the smallest trinket or scarf.

There was no kender in attendance, and by the time red Lunitari reached his zenith and white Solinari left the horizon behind, Sturm came to Tanis wondering.

The forest had thinned near sunset, the oaks and pines were spare now, replaced by stony ground and boulders. Night's dark cloak brought no relief from the day's heat, and Tigo was not bearing the simmering night well at all. His eyes were black pits, his lean, hard jaw jerked from time to time under a tic of which he seemed unaware. His fingered hand stroked the grapnel's hook as though he'd decided to do murder with it.

Beyond a gulp of water, Keli and Tas were granted nothing. The rope tethers were gone, the knee and ankle thongs were back. Above the whine and drone of gnats, the bright song of crickets, Keli heard the kender's low cursing. Twisting so that he faced the fellow, Keli grudgingly whispered, "Are you all right?"

"It's not," the kender grumbled, "so much that I'm nearly starved to death and those two have eaten everything but the bones of that rabbit. It's these thongs. It's not easy to breathe when your hands, your knees, AND your feet are tied!"

The kender was more actively suffering now, so completely bound, than he had been all day. His breathing was the short, hard gasping Keli had seen once in a dog whose collar was caught in a fence.

"Kender," he whispered, thinking to distract his companion from his troubles, "I'm Keli. What's your name?"

"Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Call me Tas, all my friends do."

"Tas, how did they get you? And why?"

"With a sack over the head, followed quickly, I can tell you, by a big stick of wood. I was in the barn, at the tavern, just looking. Someone had ridden in that night on a big red horse, and Caramon said he'd never seen a bay with a mane and tail that color before. They were all gold, you see, and I just wanted a look. Nasty beast, too. Nearly took off all my fingers when I went to touch his mane. It was like gold, though, soft and yellow." Tas hitched himself up so that the small of his back rested against a boulder. In restless preoccupation, he worked his wrists against the binding leather. "I walked in on them just as they were tying you up."

From where he lay Keli saw a thin line of blood, black in the darkness, trickling down Tas's wrists to his fingers. "Stop — " he hissed, "you're bleeding!"

After a moment, Tas sat still. "Why did they take you?"

Keli shook his head. "I–I don't know."

Tigo's shadow, thin as a black knife, cut between them. Keli fell silent, hoping the kender would do the same. For once Tas did.

Tigo's eyes gleamed like dark, hateful stars. "Don't you know, boy?"

Keli chewed his lip and shook his head.

"You don't know the tale of the brave knight Ergon who went boldly against a barely armed pickpocket with his sword?"

Keli flared. "My father would never fight an opponent who was not equally matched!"

"Wouldn't he?" Slowly Tigo raised his hook-hand. For a moment he seemed lost in the play of Lunitari's blood-red light along the steel. His eyes dimmed as though all their gleam had gone into the grapnel. When he spoke again, his voice was flat. If dead men could speak, Keli thought, his was the voice they would use.

"This hook is a thing I must thank the courageous knight Ergon for. My hand he claimed in payment for an old man's purse."

"You lie," Keli spat.

"Careful, boy. This hand is not flesh and it cuts deep."

"Aye, and you'll kill me anyway. You've said as much. I'd sooner die for the truth than a lie."

Tigo's eyes burned, his jaw twitched. "It is no lie!"

The night's heat was cool when compared with Keli's outrage. It was no easy thing to be a knight in these troubled days. All his life Ergon had followed the rules of his order humbly, honorably, as though they were a code he was born to.

"I remember the tale well — I thought my father would die of the wounds he got at your hands and those of your accomplices. And the old man, he DID die, thief. He was no match for four daggers. My father barely was. And it was no sword my father used, but his own dagger."

Keli choked on his fury, would have said more, but Tas, under pretense of shifting cramped muscles, fell hard against him. Tigo reacted with a howl of outrage. "You'll die for your twisted truth, boy, soon enough. But not yet. For now," he said, eyeing Tas, "I've an interest in the kender.

"What's in your pouches, little bandit?"

Tas shrugged and grinned. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Like a hawk diving, Tigo's good hand came down, caught the kender by the front of his shirt and lifted him full off the ground, dangling him in front of Staag. "Why don't I believe that?"

The buzzing of the gnats and the shrilling of the crickets seemed louder to Keli. He hoped with all his heart that the kender wasn't going to do something to get himself killed. And from the look of things, he thought, hunching around so that he could see, it wouldn't take much.

The thief's dark eyes were only narrow slits now. His teeth, gleaming white in the light from the fire, were bared in a snarl. He threw the kender down at the goblin's feet. The snarl turned to a grin the moment Staag began to cut the pouches from Tas's belt and the kender raised his protests.

Keli didn't understand the kender. What seemed a matter of soul-wrenching pain only a short time ago — his bound wrists and knees and feet — was as nothing now compared with the rifling of his pouches, the throwing away of what he called his treasures.

"A line of wicking," Staag grumbled, "a gray feather, two chipped arrowheads, a bundle of fletching — junk! Nothing but junk!" He pawed through first one pouch, then another. Tas's fury only amused him.

A gold earring he kept, stuffing it into his own belt pouch along with a ring set with polished quartz and a small enameled pin. The rest, an assortment of things that could not have been of value to any but a kender, he kicked aside.

Tigo, like some thin, black vulture, leaned over Tas. "Just where are you taking us, kender?" he demanded suspiciously.

"I told you, to a place I know where you can do whatever you have to do and no one will find you."

"Aye? Not on some roundabout trail that will lead us to trouble?"

Keli felt Tigo's fury, banked but still hot, where he lay. He prayed the kender would be careful now.

He wasn't. "Not trouble of my making."

Tigo kicked Tas hard, and the whoosh of air exploding from the kender's lungs made Keli's stomach hurt. The kender jack-knifed over, nearly wrapping himself around the thief's ankle. He was furious, but not so furious that he didn't take good aim when he bit. His teeth clamped on the man's leg above his boot and it took Staag to pull him off.

Tigo roared. "Hold him while I rip the belly out of him!"

Keli screamed protest, struggling against his bonds.

"Go on," Tas taunted. "Where will you be then, you brain-sizzled, hook-handed ass? Stranded, that's where you'll be! You haven't a drunk's idea where you are now!"

Tigo would happily have crimsoned the earth with the kender's blood, but Staag had no appetite for killing their guide. Moving faster than Keli thought any goblin could, he whisked the kender away and threw him down next to Keli.

"Keep your mouth shut, kender," he hissed. "I won't be able to keep him off you next time."

Tas choked, gasped for air, and coughed. Keli shrugged himself closer to the kender and nudged him with his shoulder.

"You all right?"

Tas muttered something into the dirt.

"What?"

"I want my dagger, my hoopak, a rock, anything!"

Keli braced his own shoulder against the kender's, offering companionship, commiseration, comfort. "Maybe," he whispered, more for Tas's sake than because he believed, "maybe your friends will find us soon."

Merciless summer sun glared from the hard blue sky, baked the ground, radiated from the humped clusters of rocks. Tanis wiped sweat from his eyes with the heel of his hand and bent to retrieve the one thing Flint had missed: a fog-colored wing feather from one of the gray swans of Cristyne.

Because a cut through the forest from Long Ridge would take a day off their journey to Karsa, the half-elf and his friends had bidden the bride and her new husband farewell the night before and struck south and east at first light. Runne would have kept them longer, but Flint pleaded business and promised her that he would see her again on his way back north.

"I don't think," he told Tanis wryly, "that she's going to miss me or anyone for a time."

Tanis, remembering the hard poke in the ribs Caramon had earned for himself with a similar remark, had offered only a noncommittal smile. It seemed that where Runne was concerned some things could only be said avuncularly.

Now, the darkness bordering the edges of those memories, the half-elf absently stroked the edge of the large gray feather with his thumb. Tas had been here recently.

Or his pouches had. And those had been ruthlessly emptied, their contents carelessly scattered. The hot breeze carried Caramon's deep voice from up the trail and Sturm's answer. Tanis knew by their tones that they had found no sign of either struggle or a body. He left the underbrush and joined Flint where he knelt in the path.

"One more thing, Flint."

The old dwarf took the feather without looking and added it to the pile of oddly assorted objects to be stuffed with hard, angry motions into Tas's pouches.

A blade-broken dagger, a blue earthenware ink pot, a little carved tinderbox, a copper belt buckle that Caramon had lost somehow and which Tas would swear he'd always meant to return, a soft cloth the color of dawn's rose, a bundle of the stiff green feathers Tanis liked best for fletching his arrows… all of these kender-treasures and more had been discarded as so much junk.

Flint's anger might seem, from his tight-lipped muttering, to be directed against a packrat of a kender. Tanis knew the old dwarf better than that.

"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.

"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!"

Tanis shook his head. "Nowhere," he whispered. He turned away from the lake and saw Raistlin standing above him, looking into the rainbow dance of the falls' mist. The young mage smiled, his light eyes eager and sharp.

"Raistlin, can you help him?"

The mage nodded slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes still on the jeweled mist and the last shafts of sunlight. "I think I can. He has a mountain climber's skill, our little friend, and it is a good thing he does: he's going to need it."

Stone bit sharply into Keli's hands. Stalled and frozen in the middle of the narrow rock span, he dared not look down, could not look back.

Across the arch Tigo crouched, a lean and hungry predator waiting for his prey to realize that it was trapped, caught. There was no need for him to venture on the bridge, no need to pursue farther. At last he would have his murderous revenge!

Across the bridge, his back to the spray-soaked wall, Tas shouted, "Keli! Come on!"

"I–I can't — I can't — " Keli could not move, it was all he could do to speak.

"You have to! You can't stay there! Pretend you're a spider! Spiders don't ever fall! Come on! It'll be fun!"

Fun! Keli swallowed dryly and tried hard to be a spider, wishing all the while he were a bird instead. Hand over hand, he crawled across the slick stone bridge, swearing futile boy's oaths under his breath. Fun!

"That's it!" Tas called. "I told you it would be fun!"

Tigo, across the span, laughed. His laughter was ghostly, only faintly heard above the roar of the water. Keli ignored him, concentrated on Tas and the bridge.

"Come on, Keli, a little more! You've almost got it! Ever do anything as much fun as this?"

Keli groaned and shook his head. He regretted that at once. The bridge seemed to sway and rock under him. "No," he panted, staring at his white knuckles. "Nothing like this!"

Hand to hand, knee to knee, Keli crept, trying not to give in to black-winged vertigo, wishing it weren't so hard to breathe.

After what seemed a lifetime of crawling, Keli's fingers touched the kender's, cold and slick. Tas leaned a little forward to grasp a wrist, then an arm. "Up now, on your feet. I've got you."

Keli gained his feet, wobbled a little, and then straightened.

"That's right. Now just edge over here. We can both fit on this ledge. Probably."

Probably! "Crazy as a kender" was an expression Keli had heard from time to time. He used to think he knew what it meant. Now he was certain. Keli dragged up every bit of strength he had and lurched hard against the wall. He pressed his face to the wet, black stone, shuddering. "Now where?"

Tas attacked the answer obliquely. "We can't go back, but he's not coming on, either."

"What, then?"

"We can always wait."

Out over the lake the jeweled and dazzling mists of sunset were gone. On the far shore twilight's purple shadows gathered, the outriders of the night.

"It would be nice," Keli said tightly, "if we could fly."

"Sure would," Tas agreed, "and a lot better than being stuck up here"

Keli wanted to wail. He clamped his back teeth hard and whispered, "Then — but — why are we out here? I thought you knew a way OUT of this mess!"

Tas shrugged. "I didn't think he'd follow us. I thought he was drowned in the lake. Twice."

Across the arch Tigo sat, his back against the stone, patient as inevitable doom. Keli couldn't look at him without feeling sick, without feeling, in imagination, the rip of his grapnel hand and the long, shattering fall to the water below.

Light, the faint and fading gold of sunset, the silver of approaching twilight, danced up from the black surface of the lake and came together, shining in the gloaming like hope promised.

Far below, the red-haired bowman Tas called Tanis and one of the young men who had been in the lake stood on the shore. The other was in the water again and swimming hard toward the falls. The dwarf and the slim young man moved quickly to the north.

"Tas, what are they doing?"

"Something, they're up to something. Look! Tanis sees us! He's pointing." The kender leaned so far out to see that Keli had to catch him back by his belt.

"Don't do that!"

Clearly the fact that he'd almost tumbled to his death didn't bother the kender at all. He laughed, and the sound of his glee skirled high above the roar of the falls.

"Look, Keli! Raistlin's doing something to the air!" Tas thumped the boy's shoulder joyfully, nearly knocking him from his tenuous perch. "I don't know what he's up to, I usually don't, hardly anyone ever does. But it's always magic, and it's always worth waiting for."

Clinging like a soaked bat to the wall, Keli swallowed his nausea. Whether or not what the mage was up to was indeed worth waiting for the boy couldn't say, but he didn't see that they had much choice.

Raistlin's hands moved, deft and certain, in magic's dance. He gathered translucent rainbows and gemmed mist, separated their shimmering strands, and wove them swiftly, one around the other, into a rope of gleaming enchantment.

It grew quickly, the magic rope, and leaped away from the young mage's hands, directed and sped upon its way by will and spell. Out across the black surface of the water it flew, with the grace of a hawk rising, with the certainty of one of Tanis's well-drawn arrows speeding to its mark.

Sturm leaped into the lake, cutting through the icy water with powerful strokes. By the time he reached Caramon, the shining line had passed well over their heads, flying toward the arch and Tas's outstretched hand. On the shore Flint shouted, his voice rising high in triumph, ending on an oddly broken note, a cry of warning.

Tigo was halfway across the bridge, the hook that passed for a hand glittering balefully in the fading light.

Tas stepped in front of Keli and wound the shimmering rope around the boy's hands. "We'll go together. It'll hold, I swear it. Just slide right down. It won't burn your hands — you can hardly feel it."

Keli eyed the water, then Tigo advancing slowly across the arch. "Tas, it's not a rope — it's LIGHT AND AIR! It can't hold us!"

"Oh, sure it will. It's Raistlin's magic." Tas cocked his head as though he'd had a sudden thought. "You're worrying again, are you?"

"Worrying?" Keli gasped. "Tas, I'm so afraid I can't even think!"

"But it'll hold. I told you: it's magic. And Raistlin does the best magic I've ever seen. He'd never let you fall."

"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 magicor 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 stairs that led up to the top. I'D never have known about the caves or the stairs or the bridge."

Flint shook his head. "I don't suppose Tanis's tracking or Raistlin's light-weaving had anything to do with the fact that you're here and safe, lad?"

Keli did not quail before the dwarf's gruff question, but defended his friend. "They did, and I thank you all for what you've done. But — but you were almost too late. And — " Keli foundered, looking from one to the other. They were still amused, and Keli could not understand what was so funny. "And — Tas did save my life."

"Risked your neck about a half a dozen more times than you remember or know about is more like it," Flint growled. "It's lucky you are that you're here to tell us the tale.

"Look at you, lad, you're half-starved despite eating a rabbit and a half, and dead tired. Get some sleep now, you'll see the right of the matter in the morning."

"I know the right of it," Keli maintained. He looked to Tas, who only shrugged.

"They're a little slow," the kender drawled. He grinned then, suddenly, and that grin was like the flash of a comet across a midnight sky. "But they always manage to catch up." He stretched and yawned hugely. He shot one quick look at Flint and then winked at Keli. That wink, always trouble for someone, sparked Keli's smile.

Flint started to protest, but Tas only grinned again. He waved an off-hand goodnight and went to find a place to sleep. As tired as he was, Keli knew he wouldn't be able to sleep yet. He settled down more comfortably near the fire and sighed.

After a moment Tanis said, "We'll have to get you home somehow, Keli."

"Just back to Seven Wells would be fine," Keli murmured. "I'm sure my horse is still there and there is the message to be delivered to my father's friend."

"Oh, no," Flint rumbled. "If we let you out of our sight now, who knows what you'll get yourself into next? Home, lad, and the message can be delivered along the way." He reached into his pack, pulled out a block of wood, and applied his dagger's blade silently for a time. Keli would have offered his thanks, but Tanis caught his eye and stilled him with a smile and a shake of his head.

When Flint looked up again, he spoke not to Keli but to Tanis.

"If we've any sense at all, we'll make for home ourselves after we've delivered this lad and his message."

That was not what the half-elf had expected to hear. "Back to Solace this early in the summer?"

Flint was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke at last his voice was rough. Almost cold, Keli thought.

"I thought he was dead," Flint said, and Keli knew it was Tas of whom he spoke. "I really did. I didn't fear it. Fear still allows you to slip hope in behind it. I thought he was dead from the minute I saw my mark 6n that rock, and I didn't expect to find anything else.

"It is a bad thing to be without hope." He cleared his throat softly and went on. "And Caramon. When he didn't come up from the lake, when Sturm had to dive to find him, I thought, between the first time and the last, that he was dead, too."

Keli felt that fear, and heard it in the dwarf's voice. His eyes were not so hard now, his expression not nearly as forbidding as it had been. An odd look graced his rough features, but Keli could not put a name to it. He'd seen the look before on his father's face.

Tanis poked up the fire and by its flare Keli saw that he, too, had thought his friends dead. When he spoke, though, it was not to reassure himself but Flint. "They're all right now."

The old dwarf drew a long breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. He looked at his young friends sleeping around the fire: Caramon, his scabbarded sword lying near to hand; Sturm, who slept deep and looked as though he could wake fast at need; Raistlin, likely walking in dreams only he could understand; and Tas, curled like an exhausted pup against Caramon's back. When the dwarf spoke again, Keli sensed that some decision was being made. He sat forward and listened.

"Aye, Tanis, they are. But the lands are changing, lad. I feel it in my bones that things are shifting, growing darker. At first it was good to have them along on these trips for their company. Lately, it's been good having them along because I could not ply my trade, such as it is these days, along the old routes without them. Look at what happened to the lad here! Goblins and bandits! And rumors of worse and stranger things haunt the roads now."

Tanis reached out absently to ruffle Keli's hair. "You'll not keep them safe in Solace by wishing it so, old friend."

"No, I know them better than that. And we're partners, you and I, have been for a long time. This isn't a decision I can rightly make for both of us." Flint shook his head. A smile warred with a scowl. The scowl won, but only barely. "And we don't get much done these days chasing that pesty kender from one end of the land to the other, do we? No, home sounds better and better to me."

As hard as the dwarf was to read, that was how easy it was to divine Tanis's thought: plainly he doubted that Solace would keep Tas or any of his friends long for all that it seemed to be home. But aloud he only said, "All right, then, Flint. Home it is, for Keli and for us."

Solace won't keep them long, Keli thought. Hawks may grace your wrist for a time, his father had once told him, but they do not domesticate well at all.

Now, Flint leaned forward and gently roughed the sleepy boy's chin. "Home, aye, lad?"

Keli smiled in the night's shadow. "Oh, aye, home."