"Still-" she persisted.
His hand moved to the nape of her neck. She had been Kishpa's while the mage lived. Perhaps in the little time that remained to them, she could now be his.
'Tell me, Tanis," she asked sleepily, almost resigned to death, "did wars finally end in your time?"
He laughed bitterly. "What would all the generals do? How would they survive?"
She pushed herself to her elbows and reached forward through the gloom. Her fingers found his chin, his cheek, his pointed ear. "You don't think much of people, do you, Tanis?" she asked gently.
"I like certain people a very great deal," he countered meaningfully. He wished he could see her expression.
"So do I," she whispered. Now, more than ever, he wished there was at least a little light shining on her face. Even his elvensight was of little use to him here; the angle wasn't right. What was she trying to say to him? Or, rather, what was he trying to hear?
He wondered why he was being so diffident. Why couldn't he be more direct with her? After all, there wasn't much time left. The water rose ever faster; the tunnel was nearly half-filled with cold, suffocating slime, all of it running downhill toward their feet.
"How long do we have?" Brandella asked quietly.
"Not long," he said gently. "Another hour. Maybe less."
Tanis's mind drifted. He remembered a time when he was young. He and Laurana had gone off together to take a swim. The water had been cold, and they'd huddled close on the shore for warmth. Even the memory kept the chill away.
"Do you hear something?" Brandella asked.
Reluctantly pulled from his reverie, Tanis could only focus on the sound of the water spilling into the tunnel. "No," he said, listening for voices and hearing none. An instant later, though, he knew what she meant. There was a low thumping sound, and the water seemed to be making far more noise as it gushed into the deepening pond in which they were sprawled.
The earth behind Tanis, where the water came into the tunnel, began to break away from the wall in big clumps. The chunks of muddy earth slid and fell down the wall, and with each new piece of the tunnel that fell, more water shot inside.
The water level began to rise very fast. Death, Tanis realized, would come much sooner than he had figured. The water was rising to their shoulders and would soon reach their heads. It would be only a matter of minutes after that before the water would cover their mouths and noses.
They hugged each other, savoring the warmth.
Suddenly, the clumping sound exploded into a roar. The wall that they'd been digging at broke wide open, and a tide of cold water smashed into the tunnel.
32
The water explobed through the tunnel wall with so much force that it threw Tanis and Brandella against the far side of their tomb as if they were pieces of driftwood in a pounding surf. They thrashed in the rushing water, trying desperately to get above the surface of the flood to draw a breath. But there was no surface. The water had almost instantly filled the tunnel to the very top. The enormous pressure of the water and the slope of their tunnel kept them virtually pinned against the area that had caved in. Yet the very force of the water made Tanis realize that there was, in fact, a possible way out- if only they could swim against the tide and make their way through the broken tunnel wall through which the water was flooding in.
Tanis's lungs were on fire, and he felt the panic of imminent death rising inside his brain like a bubble that would soon burst. He couldn't hold his breath too much longer.
The muddy water obscured his elvensight. Nonetheless, he had to find Brandella. He groped in the murky, swirling sludge until he grabbed hold of one of her arms. With Brandella in tow, he pushed off the caved-in portion of the tunnel and then thrust himself against the fiercely flowing tide. Kicking his legs as hard as he could, and stroking madly with his one free arm, he almost made it to the opening.
But the current was too strong. It threw him and Brandella back with tremendous force, turning their bodies- into battering rams. They slammed against the far end of the tunnel with such a jarring impact that Tanis could no longer hold his breath. His mouth opened.
But so did the tunnel.
The debris that had blocked their path from the cave- in gave way. It turned to loose mud that became the crest of a fast-moving wave. Tanis and Brandella were swept along with it, sputtering for air as they were washed back through the tunnel they had dug.
In mere seconds, they were deposited back at the bottom of the pit. Coughing until they felt their insides would split, Tanis and Brandella crawled away from the opening, where muddy water gushed in.
The leathery old woman and her grandson leaned over to study this new development. They watched as the bottom of the pit quickly filled with water.
The boy smiled. "They're alive. Grandma!"
"So they are, child," she replied. "And they're still our prisoners."
He raised two fingers. 'Two of them and two of us," he said gravely.
As the depth of the water in the pit increased, Tanis and Brandella were forced to stand, their muscles protesting after the unwonted battering of the past few days. Then, when the pit became a deep lake, the pair had to tread water. Soon they found themselves rising with the water level toward the top of the pit I
"What will those two… up there… do when we get… close to them?" Brandella asked between gasps.
"Anything they can," Tanis replied, watching the two above as carefully as he could while still coughing up dirty water.
The old woman said something to the little boy, who nodded and smiled. They hurried together to the corner of the pit and bent over, each picking something off the ground.
Neither Tanis nor Brandella could see what was in the ghouls' hands. "They're up… to something," Tanis wheezed. "Be careful."
The pit continued to fill from the tunnel down below, the water running downhill from the underbelly of the stream on the high ground above. Tanis and Brandella were just five feet from the lip of the pit. Two more feet and Tanis felt he could reach up to dry land and pull himself out of the water.
"Now!" screamed the crone, rearing back and throwing a rock right at Tanis; it splashed next to his head. The boy threw his rock at Brandella. It struck her a glancing blow in the arm; she winced in pain.
"More!" cried the old woman. "Aim for their heads!"
Now it was clear why the ghouls had waited so long to act. The two would stun them, then pull them from the water when they were near the top.
"Dive!" Tanis ordered.
Brandella took as deep a breath as she could manage and dove beneath the surface. A rock hit her in the back as she went head-first into the murky depths.
Tanis followed right behind, a stone grazing his ear just as his face hit the water. He knew one thing: He planned to be as far away as possible from the old woman and the boy when he came up for air.
Swimming a foot below the surface, he blindly stroked his way to the far side of the pit. When he felt the muddy wall, he shot straight up, hoping his momentum would help him reach the edge so he could climb out. Instead, he found himself right underneath the two who wanted his heart. They'd anticipated his move and run to the far side of the pit. Both heaved rocks the size of their fists from a distance of a mere few feet. One struck Tanis in the shoulder. The other narrowly missed his temple; he deflected it with an outstretched arm.
Falling back into the water, Tanis barely had the time to take another breath before diving under again. He swam in no particular direction, and that turned out to be a wise decision. When he came up for air, the hag and her grandson were more than fifteen feet away and the rocks they threw at him sailed wide of their mark.