Jean Rabe - The Silver Stair

Jasper nodded. "That's where the supplies are goin'. About a day an' a half to the north, at the Silver Stair."

"My charges," the knight said to herself.

"Anyway, we need to be leavin' now." The dwarf extended his hand. "Thanks for helpin' us."

"The elf needs attention."

"He'll get it at the settlement." Jasper turned toward the wagon, noted with satisfaction that the townsfolk were putting Gair on the back of the wagon. Harrald, shrouded in blankets, lay next to him.

"Aren't you concerned the bandits will strike again?"

The dwarf shrugged, then scowled. "I certainly hope not." He trundled off toward the horses and grabbed the reins. "I'll keep an eye out for 'em, of course, but I'll worry more about gettin' this wagon to the settlement. Goldmoon's expectin' it." Iryl offered the knight a departing smile and joined him.

"Orders, Commander?" one of the knights asked.

"Lethan, Earl, Chadwik, and Grant, take Trevor's body back to town and bury him in the Sentinel plot- full ceremony. I'll write a letter to the Solamnic Council and his family expressing our sorrow at his loss when I join you at the Sentinel next week. Willum, you and I and Nate"-she nodded at the remaining knight- "will escort these people to this settlement, since they seem so determined to continue. Keep alert," she warned, casting a last glance at the pines.

"Six months, my beloved. Six months to this day we've been here now, and I still am not certain I'm doing the right thing." Goldmoon squared her shoulders and wrapped her cloak tightly about her. She watched the small pine cones blow across the ground, chased madly by the wind. "It's not that I'm questioning the course my life has taken since the gods left us. Mine has been truly a good life. But perhaps I am attempting too much at my age."

She followed a meandering, narrow path through the woods, toward the east and the Barren Hills, where an almost imperceptible rosy glow in the otherwise gray sky signaled that the sun was coming up. Goldmoon strolled at a leisurely pace through a copse of hickory trees, pausing occasionally to gather fallen nuts and stuff them in the pockets of her tunic. It had started to snow. Large flakes swirled merrily in the wind.

"I know the gods may never return, that we may well be on our own forever. I know that many people have little faith." She sighed and shook her head, cupped her hand over her eyes to keep her long silver-gold hair from whipping into her face. "The people here at the settlement have faith, but sometimes I think they have more faith in me than in what we're trying to accomplish."

Goldmoon shivered as a particularly bracing gust washed across her. She wrapped herself tighter in the folds of her thick cloak. The path narrowed as it wound up a rise where the hickory and walnut trees were closer together and where much of the ground between them was covered with bare thickets. Her boots crunched over walnut shell husks, and she walked hunched over to keep the branches from catching her hair. It took her several minutes to reach the top, where the trees thinned out.

"Will I live long enough to see the citadel built? Should this Citadel of Light be the dream of someone younger? Perhaps one of my students should take over." Her cloak fluttered away from her, threatening to tangle itself in the low-hanging branches as she made her way down the other side of the rise. "Perhaps I should…"

Her words trailed off and she spun and squinted, searching the path behind her. There, by the dead oak…

"Who's there?"

Nothing. Perhaps it was a trick of the shadows. She stared again. No, there was something there. A shadow hesitatingly separated from the darkness of the trunk.

"Good morning, Goldmoon! What a surprise to see you." The elf quickly caught up to her, moving silently and gracefully up the path, though it was evident he was favoring the leg that had been injured a few days ago. In his black clothes, he looked stark against the falling snow.

"No surprise at all, Gair. You were following me."

He scowled and shook his head, started to disagree, then thought better of it. "All right. Yes, Goldmoon, I was following you. I didn't mean to intrude. But I… I wanted to talk to you."

"You don't have to follow me off into the woods to talk to me."

"I wanted to talk to you alone. Away from the-" he gestured with a long arm back to the west-"away from all those people and our Solamnic visitors."

Goldmoon offered the elf an understanding smile. Gair Graymist was perhaps her most eager student. His capacity for grasping the intricacies of mysticism was remarkable, his curiosity insatiable. She thought of him as she thought of this morning's breeze-relentless and unable to be ignored. She had sensed his persistence the first day she saw him, when he'd walked calmly into the Que-Shu village in northern Abanasinia, introduced himself, and announced that he'd traveled hundreds of miles just to study at her side. Goldmoon accepted him on the spot, and when she took on a few more students and decided it was time to leave the tribes behind and establish a center for mysticism, he had insisted on following. She enjoyed his company and had come to think of him almost as a son. He tried hard-too hard sometimes-to please her.

"Talk to me about what?" she asked, shaking her mind loose from her musings. "What could possibly be so important that you had to follow me way out here without a coat? You've hardly had time to recover from your wounds."

"Jasper healed me well enough… saved my life, in fact. You finished the task and made me whole again. I feel fine, truly. My shoulder's not even stiff anymore."

"But not even a coat? Don't undo our healing." Her eyes softened. "So what is it that is so important?"

He studied the toes of his leather boots for a moment, then slowly drew his gaze up again to meet her stare. "Riverwind."

Her mouth fell open in surprise. She thought he meant to ask about learning another spell. Riverwind had been Goldmoon's husband of nearly three decades until he died at the claws of the red dragon Malystryx several years ago.

"I know you talk to him," Gair said. "Every day. Some of the others… when they hear you talk to him, they get confused. They know you miss him terribly, but they think that you're… touched, talking to yourself. They don't think any less of you. They admire you-everything you've done and are doing, like I admire you, but… they think you're getting-"

"Senile," she finished for him. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Addled by the years. So this is why you wanted to talk to me alone. Gair, are you telling me that you agree with them? Do you think I'm… touched? Senile?"

He studied his boots for a moment more, brushed at some snow on the ground, then vehemently shook his head. "You're not senile. You're the sanest person I know, and I think you really are talking to Riverwind, or at least to his spirit. Can you see him? Is he here now?"

She cast a glance over her shoulder, then reluctantly nodded.

"I want to talk to him, too." He dug the tip of his boot into the ground. "Well, not necessarily to Riverwind, but I want to talk to the spirits of the dead. This is very important to me, you must understand. I would've asked you earlier. I had intended to ask before we ever left Abanasinia, but the time never seemed right. You were always so busy. But I guess you'll always be busy."

"And so you're asking now?"

"Yes."

"No." She sadly sensed Riverwind's presence depart.

"Goldmoon, I desperately want you to teach me this. I've wanted it a long time. When I almost died a few days ago, it became even more important to me." He paused, searching for the words, studying her face, which looked uncharacteristically impassive, then plunged ahead. "I just thought this was the right time to bring it up. We're alone. Riverwind's here."