"Worse than that, they knew exactly where,"
Wingover pointed out. "They may find us again." He motioned ahead. "This cut winds around farther on.
There could be an ambush. One of us should scout ahead."
"I'll go," Jilian said, then paused. Just ahead a small figure was running toward them. It was the kender. Chess reached them and pointed back the way he had come. 'There are goblins ahead, waiting," he whispered.
"I think they know we're here."
Somewhere behind, there were guttural shouts.
"They've found the dead ones," Wingover said. "If they didn't know before — which they probably did — they certainly know now. How many are ahead?"
"I don't know." Chess shrugged. "A bunch."
"Hold up here," the man hissed, and Chane came forward to see what was happening.
"There's an ambush ahead," Wingover said. "They've found us, and now they'll close in."
Chane turned to the wizard, who had remained silent for much of the trek. "Do you have any ideas?"
"I can't rely on magic here," Glenshadow rasped. "Not with you carrying that crystal."
"Not even a little spell?" Chess suggested. "Just something innocent, like conjuring fifty or sixty armed fighters to back us, or — "
"Make us invisible," Chane said. "Can you do that?"
"A spell of invisibility? Easily… except for Spellbinder. I don't know what would happen."
"You had the dwarf put that thing in a hole earlier," Wingover said.
— How about trying it that way? I saw your staff glow when he did."
"I'm going back down there to look at those goblins," the kender said.
"Let me know what you decide." He was gone before anyone could stop him.
"It might not work," Glenshadow said. "Spellbinder's power is — "
"We'll try it," Chane decided. He looked around, then crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the gully, explored there for a second, and whispered, "Here's something. Like a small animal's burrow. it's — ouch!"
"What happened?" Jilian asked.
"Something bit me, then ran up my arm and across my head. It's gone now, though. This hole is… uh!.. arm's length. I'm putting Spellbinder in here! Try it, wizard. It's our only chance."
A fat drop of rain splatted into the dust at the wizard's feet, then several more. Faint thunder rumbled overhead, and the murk deepened. "I'll try," Glenshadow decided. He raised his staff, its own crystal device glowing faintly, and spoke sharp words in a language that meant nothing to the rest.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Wingover looked around and drew a sharp breath. Nearby, Jilian had begun to glow — a rosy pink light emanated from her, haloed about her. And beyond, the others glowed, too.
Even the horse had a fine gray patina that reflected off the walls of the gully. The man looked at his own hands. He, too, was shining — a distinct yellow-gold glow. Even the wizard was lit… had a glow on, Wingover corrected. Glenshadow shone a deep ruby-red, as though light came from within him and carried the color of his blood.
Down the gully, guttural voices were raised, and something small and bright green came racing toward them from that direction. 'You call this invisible?" The kender's exasperated cry echoed ahead of him. He skidded to a stop. "Wow! You look like lanterns with legs!" he said, pointing back down the gully. "They'll be here in a minute. They're yours to play with.
I'll go see if I can find some others."
Like a small, green torch, Chess bounded to the wall of the gully, up it to the top, and away across open land. Shouts of pursuit came from where he had gone. The sprinkling rain that had started moments before had eased, but now, abruptly, it came again, a soaking curtain of rain with winds behind it. High lightnings danced, and thunder rolled.
"Now that's more like it," Wingover snapped at the wizard. "Come on, we have to get out of this gully. Here, I'll take the horse. Where's Chane?
Chane?" "I'm right here beside you," the dwarf said. "Go on, Jilian. I'm right behind you."
Of them all, only Chane was not aglow. He had never released his grip on
Spellbinder.
The rain came harder, a blinding, driving downpour that began to fill the gully as they climbed to its high bank. Through the noise of the storm, Chane and the others heard the voices of goblins coming up the cut, then the sounds of splashing in water and mud. Clouds had rolled in above the lingering smoke, hiding the dim moons. The rain doused the goblins' fires. Within moments, the only light in the valley was the bright glows from the heroes themselves.
"I wish you'd done the second spell first and just skipped the first one," Wingover told the wizard.
"My spell recoiled," Glenshadow said. "Spellbinder is too powerful."
"I mean the rain," the man said, hurrying them along.
"If we can get a little distance, the downpour might help US.
"I didn't bring the rain," Glenshadow admitted.
"You mean it just happened?" Chane Feldstone growled, a shadow among glowing people. "I don't believe it."
Glenshadow shook his head. "No, it didn't just happen. It's magic… but not mine."
"There are goblins coming from both directions in that cut." Wingover pointed back. 'When they meet, they're going to come out. Even in this rain, they'll see us, the way we're shining. Come on, we'd better run for it." He lifted Geekay's reins, turned to run, and stopped. He listened. "I hear something," he said.
The rest turned, listening intently. Rain hissed and thunders rolled overhead, and through it came the splashing, shouting menace of goblins converging in the gully. For a moment there was nothing more, then the others heard it.
Below the other sounds, lower-pitched and barely audible, a rumbling grew, coming from their right, from higher ground.
"What is it?" Jilian hissed. "That sound."
Then Wingover knew, and he arched a thoughtful brow. Flash flood. Massed waters filling the lowlands upstream, overtopping the deep gully, rushing down toward the stream somewhere below.
"Floodwaters," he said.
"The goblins in the gully," Jilian added.
"They're wearing armor," Chane concluded.
Wingover dropped his reins and ran back toward the gully. He heard the others coming behind him. By the light of his own glow he saw the gully's rim, saw heads coming up over it, and saw a pair of hasty bolts flick past as he halted, just a few yards from the edge. A flung stone toppled a goblin backward into the dark cut he had just left. The rumble had become a roar, and was coming closer.
Wingover felt a bronze bolt tear at his shield, ducked a second missile, and howled a chilling war cry as he charged down on the shadowy figures coming over the edge. His sword, glowing with golden light, traced rapid patterns up and down and around, clattering against armor and blades, darkening itself with goblin blood.
Two creatures fell before Wingover, and four more took their places, coming up from the roaring, waterfilled gully. He fended the strokes of two with his blade, took another cut on his shield, and saw the dark, furred shape of Chane Feldstone as the dwarf's hammer pierced a goblin's helmet.
At Chane's side, Jilian was a rosy blur in the dark, a whirling blade with a spinning top at its axis. The roar from the gully became a crashing, tearing screech of sound, and a wall of spray swept down the draw, sparkling in the light of the glowing fighters as it passed. After the wall of water passed, there seemed to be nothing left to fight.
How many goblins had there been, there in the cut? Wingover wondered silently. There was no way to know. They were gone, drowned and carried away toward the main watercourse.
On the bank, a shadow moved and another, darker shadow sprang toward it.
Chane's hammer went up, and the dwarf rolled another goblin into the torrent. He stood, staggering, and Jilian caught him as he started to fall. The dwarven girl raised her glowing face, wideeyed, and beckoned to
Wingover. He reached the two in two steps and knelt.
Chane was down, his teeth gritted with pain, and by their own light they saw the bronze bolt standing in his shoulder. Jilian reached for it, but a glowing, red hand stopped her.
"Let me," Glenshadow said. "I know what to do."
With Chane's own nickeliron dagger, the wizard cut out the goblin-bolt, then peeled back the dwarf's fur tunic to cut away the rag of linen beneath. He studied the wound. Setting his thumbs at each side of the gash, he squeezed it closed. "Get me a flame," he told Wingover.
The man fumbled in his pouch for his fire-maker, a cunning device obtained from hill dwarves long ago. He fumbled again, then peered into his pouch. "It isn't here," he said.
"Never mind," the wizard said. "Jilian, see how I'm holding the puncture? Can you do that?"
Jilian took Glenshadow's place, and the wizard reached into his own belt-pouch and brought out a small, silver object with a lid. "Phosphors," he said. "It will do as well."
"Phosphors," Wingover muttered, an idea dawning. But there wasn't time to consider it now. Glenshadow smeared a bit of paste from the container over the hole in Chane's shoulder, then took another, darker substance and knelt beside Jilian. "Let go now, and get back," he said.
She withdrew her hands, and Glenshadow touched the second paste to the first with a knife-blade. Suddenly a brilliance flared on the dwarf's shoulder, and Chane moaned.
The light subsided as quickly as it had flared. A puff of white smoke, lifting away to be dispersed by the pounding rain, rose into the air.
"Bandage him," "Wingover said grimly. "We have to move on. It's still a long way across this valley."
Chapter 23
When Chestal Thicketsway went looking for more goblins, it didn't take him long to find them. Unfortunately, he had momentarily overlooked the fact that he was glowing bright green.
By the time the kender saw the double platoon of armed hostiles coming at him across a field, they had already seen him. All he could do was run.
Rain danced and sizzled around him as he fled, every step taking him farther from his friends and deeper into enemy territory. He tried dodging into a hedgerow, and realized there was nowhere for him to hide. In the thickening blackness of the rainy night, he shone like a green beacon.
Even shielded by the pouring rain, which increased steadily as he fled from a growing pursuit, his light gave him away.
Sure evidence of that was the sheer number of metal bolts that whisked and sang around him, coming from various directions.
The goblins couldn't see him well enough to aim carefully, Chess realized — at lease if he kept moving and managed to evade dose contact with any of them. But the bolts kept coming, and he had to admit that simple luck would guide some of them his direction.
"This may not have been a very good idea," he told himself, diving into a wash half-filled with dark, racing water. A pair of bronze bolts slapped water into the kender's face, and he ducked. Soon Chess was fighting an increasing current. It carried him one hundred yards downstream before he made it to the far bank.
His glow preceded him, and as he clambered out of the wash a grinning goblin charged into the light, brandishing a sword. Chess braced his hoopak, thumped the butt end of it into the creature's face, then brought it around full-circle. The shaft struck the goblin across the back of the neck and laid it out.
Chess grabbed up the creature's sword, and his nostrils twitched at the smell of goblin. He changed his mind and flung the sword from him, point-first. In the darkness somewhere close, a goblin gurgled and fell, pierced between breastplate and buckler. Chess didn't wait to see what would happen next. He turned and ran, following the course of the filling wash.
All about him was storm — pouring rain and driving winds, sheet lightning and rumbling thunder. Chess ran, and something hung with him, something that was part of the storm. It- seemed to expand, to flex invisible muscles. A voice that was no voice said, "Ah!"
"Ah?" Chess panted. "What do you mean, ah? Do you have something to do with this… aha! You do! Well, nice going, Zap. Just keep it up, will you?"
"More," something seemed to demand. "Much more."
"Just behave yourself!" The kender dodged through a small wooded lot, where trees exploded into fiery kindling as great bolts of lightning struck them. The thunder was deafening. Goblin feet pounded behind Chess, pursuing the globe of bright green light. A bronze bolt zipped past the kender's ear and buried itself in a tree trunk.
As Chess dodged past a clump of brush, lightning revealed a wedge of goblin-warriors coming at the kender from ahead, only yards away.
Crossbows went up, and Chess went down, diving flat onto a sheet of water inches deep. Bolts sang over him and found targets among the goblins pursuing. Chess rolled aside and set off at right angles, cursing the bright green glow that shone about him. "Invisibility," he hissed. "That's some wizard we found!"
Hazy boles of trees danced past the kender, reflecting his own green light through the pouring rain, then he was in a cleared field and someone was just ahead. Chess skidded to a halt, soupy mud sheeting from his feet.
More goblins… and something else. A creature taller than goblins, wearing dark armor with intricate designs and a grotesque barbed helmet with a hideous mask. The creature raised a sword, beckoned, and the goblins around it charged.
"If you have any more tricks, Zap," Chess breathed,
"now's the time."
"Much more," something silent said.
Lightning crashed and crescendoed, huge brilliant bolts striking all around. The kender's long hair fell from around his neck, unraveled itself, and seemed to stand straight out from his head, a huge crown of dark bristle. Bolt after bolt of lightning cracked and seared, before
Chess and behind, and in the flashes he saw goblins tumbling through the air, falling here and there; goblins thrown aloft; goblins that smoked and sizzled and fried. A wind smacked Chess aside. The kender's racing feet barely touched the ground as he flew.
"Wow," he whispered, nearly blinded by his own streaming hair.
Somewhere behind, he heard a voice — authoritative and furious — shouting orders. She sounds cross, he told himself. Better keep going.
Driven by a howling wind that seemed to try to lift him from the ground, lashed by huge drops of rain that stung his back as they flew in almost horizontal sheets, blinded by his streaming hair and deafened by thunders, the kender gripped his hoopak and leaped high over a tapering rock ledge.
Through the tunnel of his hair he saw trees ahead, lit by stuttering flashes and his own green glow. He bounded down a sloping bank toward heavy growth and tried to slow himself, without much success. Then directly ahead, something huge and ugly raised itself and spread wide arms, bracing itself against the screaming wind. An ogre. Chess even recognized the huge, grimacing features.
Loam.
At gale speed the kender closed on the brute, his eyes wide. At the last instant, he thrust out his hoopak, dropped its butt, and vaulted. A tumbling leap carried him up and past the creature's crushing hands, almost high enough to clear its head. Almost, but not quite. Instead, the kender's feet smacked the ogre's jutting brow. Chess's free hand caught a tangle of Loam's hair, and the kender completed his flip upright, standing on top of the ogre's head.
"I can't wait to tell them about this at Hylo," he muttered. "Of course, they're never going to believe it." Before the ogre could react, wind hit them like a fist and Chess was thrown tumbling, into a grove of trees. He got his feet under him and dodged among the trees, downslope. Behind him he heard a crash and an angry roar. Loam had run into a tree.
Among the trees, the wind was diffused a little, and the kender slowed a bit. But then he was in the open again, on a broad, shoaling bank with raging floodwaters beyond. Wind swept down on him, caught him, and threw him head over heels into the churning maelstrom.
Tumbling and fighting, the kender bobbed away downstream. Above him a voice that was not there seemed to moan, "No-o-o! Other way-y-y!"
; Four brightly shining figures and one dark one fled across storm-blown fields in a murk lighted only by staccato flares from above. Sheets of rain hissed around them, and thunder reverberated. The ground was a flowing morass of runoff.
Chane Feldstone led now, holding to the slim green trace that was their only means of direction in the turbulent darkness. The dwarf was a blackness against the dark, staggering sometimes from weakness. He was supported by the rosy-glowing Jilian, who refused to leave his side. The golden brightness of Wingover, leading a glowing gray horse, and the ruby-red Glenshadow, struggled along after the dark dwarven shape.
The worst of the storm seemed to be to the south, a few miles away at most. The curtained darkness in that direction was broken by a constant blaze of lightning, and the gale winds swirling from there carried the sharp, sweet breath of ozone.
They had tried to persuade the dwarf to ride, but he would have none of it. Wingover suspected that Chane, like many of his race, simply disliked horses. Some dwarves were excellent riders, but not all.
Since leaving the gully, they had seen no goblins — or any other living thing. Possibly the kender, going off alone as he had, had led the main forces away. If so, Wingover thought, then the gods help the little creature. He would never stand a chance out there alone.
Two miles of travel brought them to a descending slope with forest beyond, and beyond that the sound of a torrent raging. The valley's stream would be out of its banks by now, a rushing beast that no one could cross.
While Chane rested, with the attentive Jilian chattering at his side,
Wingover scouted. When he returned, he had news. Upstream a half-mile was a well-worn path going east. If there was a bridge, it should be there.
"And if the alert went out, that's where the goblins on the other side will be waiting," the wizard pointed out. Chane got to his feet. "We'll weld that joint when we find it," he said gruffly.
Wingover shrugged. 'Then lead on, Grallen-kin," he said.
Again, then, they were on the move. The path Wingover had found veered eastward, downslope and into forest, beyond which the torrent raged. The little stream that Camber Meld had called Respite River was, in normal conditions, a tame and pretty brook. Now, though, it was rushing, whitecapped black water nearly a hundred yards across — but spanned yet by a raised footbridge wide enough to allow carts to pass from one side to the other.
The Gates of Thorbardin h2-5 Page 20