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.