"I thought we'd be in the sea before you stopped swimming," Mumchance panted. "Didn't you hear us yelling for you?"

"By the time I got my ears out of the river, all I could hear was water," grumbled Ivy as she sloshed to the bank, guided by Mumchance's lantern. "Where were you? Is everyone safe?"

"We were directly behind you. You kept swimming downriver, away from us as fast as you could go." Mumchance twisted his head up to get a clear look at her with his one good eye. He was trying to look fierce, but the smile pulling his scars askew undercut the attempt to scold her. "Daft human!" It was his worst epithet at such times.

"Wasn't swimming. I was busy trying not to drown." Ivy heaved herself inelegantly out of the water, the bank being almost shoulder-high; so she more rolled and flopped than lifted herself out of the river. The hilt of the sword on her back poked into her neck. She lay on the bank, nose to nose with Wiggles, who pranced back from her. The dog obviously considered one unexpected bath enough of a wetting for one day and did not want Ivy dripping on her. Ivy sneezed again and heard, far in the distance, an answering sneeze.

"Zuzzara," said Mumchance. "She sounds like a trumpet down here, doesn't she. What are you waiting for? Don't expect me to carry you, do you?"

"Just getting my breath back," sighed Ivy as she shifted into a sitting position. Out of the river, she felt even wetter and colder than she had in the water. To think that only this morning, she had cursed every layer of armor worn in the summer heat. Cold, wet, and surrounded by darkness, she wondered why dwarves liked living underground. Give her the dust, stink, and sweet summer heat of the siege camp over this!

"Hope Gunderal brought along one of her warming potions," the shivering Ivy said as she swung to her feet.

Mumchance and Ivy trudged back to the group, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind them.

"Gunderal's the only one who didn't fall in the river," said Mumchance. Ivy looked down at him. It was impossible to see the dwarf's face underneath his helmet from this angle, but his voice sounded worried, which worried her further. "Hit the rocks hard instead."

"Of course, the one who can breathe underwater and has webbed toes never goes in the water!" said Ivy, trying to coax a smile out of the old dwarf. Usually misfortune drew a bitter chuckle out of Mumchance, who took the admirable view that if you could not laugh at bad luck, then you would spend your life crying. But the dwarf did not respond to her feeble joke-another bad sign. "What makes you more sour than an old pickle?"

"My belt came loose in the fall. My best hammer and my pick are underwater somewhere down here." Mumchance's gloom was blacker than the hole they were in. He adored his tools and took excellent care of all of them. The pick was only a hundred years old or so, but it was a favorite of his. Ivy glanced at him. The dwarf still had his short sword fastened securely to his weapons belt as well as a small spare hammer, but that wouldn't help them dig their way out of the tunnel.

"Well, I have my sword and dagger," said Ivy, doing a mental inventory of what weapons they might have.

"And I've got my eye." In the lantern's light, the diamond under his left eyebrow flashed. When he was young, Mumchance had been caught in a mine fire. The flames scarred his face and ruined his left eye. When he had enough gold, he paid another dwarf to carve him an eye out of a black sapphire. That was the first of his gem eyes, and he had sold it two hundred years ago to join an expedition to the Great Rift. Since then, he had owned several gem eyes-some magical, some not. Keeping a gem in an empty eye socket was as good a place as any to hide his wealth, he once told Ivy. After all, even the most ruthless of tax collectors or the most skillful of thieves did not want to plunge their fingers into the eye socket of an elderly dwarf.

His current hidden treasure was a gem bomb made from a polished diamond. Although his right eye was a dark green, many people did not realize that the left one was a fake. The advantage of having extremely bushy eyebrows and equally bushy eyelashes, claimed Mumchance.

"This stayed stuck," said the dwarf, popping the fake eye out and then tapping it back into the socket-a gesture that always made Ivy a bit nauseated, "even when I fell tail over head into the water."

"At least you landed on the hardest part of your anatomy," Ivy said. The dwarf snorted. "No, it's good to see that diamond sparkle. We want you staying pretty." It was a running joke between them: that his current fake eye could keep them all pretty in a bad situation. Gem bombs cost a terrific amount, but Ivy had been happy to pay her share of the expense for this particular diamond.

"Not losing the gem bomb is the only bit of good luck that we have had. You'll see," the dwarf pronounced in despondent tones. Mumchance's expression could have won him a prize for the champion pessimist of the Vast.

When Ivy reached Zuzzara and Gunderal, she found the wizard looking paler than ever. She was clutching one arm and turning blue-white around the mouth from pain. Ivy knelt by Gunderal's side. In the dim light of Mumchance's lantern, even Ivy could clearly see that the wizard's arm was dappled with bruises. Pulling off her gloves and thrusting them through her belt, Ivy felt along Gunderal's arm with as gentle a touch as she could manage. The wizard bit her lip and didn't say anything while Zuzzara grumbled, "Don't pull so hard. She's already fainted once."

"At least you smell better," joked Gunderal with white-lipped gallantry as Ivy poked and prodded her arm. "More like cold water than camel."

"I've had a bath since we last talked," Ivy quipped. To a worried Zuzzara, she said, "No breaks."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," said Ivy with more conviction in her voice than truth. She was no healer, able to sense what lay beneath the skin. She hadn't felt any movement in the bones, but that didn't mean the arm wasn't broken. "Strap it tight, Zuzzara, so she can't jostle it. Do you have any of your healing potions with you, Gunderal?"

Gunderal nodded her chin toward a smoldering mass of leather and broken glass. Puffs of noxious purple steam rose from it. "My potions bag is useless. Everything broke and mixed together."

Ivy hid her dismay with a shrug and a wave of her hand. "When did you ever need potions for your spells? Can you dry us off a little? Once Zuzzara has your arm tight?"

"I can't even make a light," sighed Gunderal. "I'm sorry, Ivy, I tried earlier when we were looking for you. It hurts, and I can't move my hand, and the words run together…"

"Just stop trying," growled Zuzzara. "You always try too hard."

"You don't understand," Gunderal snapped back, a slight flush of anger warming her wan features. "Magic is not just waving your hands and shouting some words. It takes concentration. I certainly can't concentrate with you fussing at me."

"Not to worry," said Ivy, hoping to avoid an argument between the two. Zuzzara would throw her body between any danger and Gunderal, but then she always turned around and fussed at the little wizard, which always set off Gunderal. This could lead to some odd results when she was spellcasting, like that flood when all they wanted was a little gentle rain. "Who needs magic?" Ivy added. "We can get out of here without your spells. Just rest now."

Mumchance shook his head at Ivy. "It's not new spells that should worry you. It's what she started before we fell in here."

"What?"

"Look at the water." The dwarf swung his lantern over the river. The river flowed along the very top edge of the bank. "She's been pulling all the water toward Tsurlagol for the last few days."

"To undermine the wall."

"Well, it's working very nicely," said Mumchance. "It undercut our tunnel and now it's rising higher."