Jean Rabe - The Silver Stair

The elf moved closer, being careful not to step in the blood and soil the soles of his boots. "Your turn, Roeland," he pronounced. "Tell me what I want to know, and your death will be swift. I'll even let your spirit rest. I'll not turn you into one of my minions."

Roeland's voice froze. Whatever words he was trying to say came out as a string of unintelligible gibberish.

"Come now, my friend." Gair knelt in front of him, took the club from his quivering hands. "I admired you. I venture to say I even considered you a friend once. I'll give you the grace of staying dead."

More powerful in death, the wraiths chanted.

"I'll let your spirit wander about the misty realm beyond the doorway. Maybe you'll even meet Riverwind, Goldmoon's dead husband."

Sweet death.

Roeland numbly shook his head.

"Just a little information. That's all."

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

"I can get it from you after you're dead, you know, but the words will not sound so pretty, your voice not so deep. Maybe the knights know, but you are one of Goldmoon's students. Were, that is. You would have more information than they. Cooperate, Roeland."

"Go to hell." The former miller drew on the last of his courage and found his voice. "Go to hell!"

"Father…"

The elder Graymist was a shadow on the ground, moving slowly and inexorably toward the elf and Roeland.

"Roeland… one last chance."

"Roeland…" Goldmoon pictured a doorway in her mind, the one she had seen when she first became aware of Riverwind's spirit. There was darkness beyond the doorway, a black sky cut through here and there by wisps of fog.

Riverwind floated beyond the doorway in the fog, looking tall and handsome and young, as she remembered him from their first meeting. She probed further, seeing other people, some she vaguely recalled from her youth-great-grandparents, nameless aunts, her parents' friends. Goldmoon inhaled sharply. They looked so real, yet when she glanced away, out of the corner of her mind's eye, they looked as insubstantial as ghosts, as if they were part of the mist. They are ghosts, she reminded herself. It was the first time she had tried to contact someone other than Riverwind.

Her mind stretched out, picturing Roeland Stark. Of the men she'd sent with Camilla's knights looking for Gair, she was closest to him. She prayed to the spirit of Mishakal that she would not find him here.

"Roeland…"

Roeland screamed as the elder Graymist drew a claw from his sternum to his waist. Roeland's coat and tunic fell from him like a peel of a fruit. A second slash cut the skin beneath. A line of red formed, and blood started dripping on the snow.

Gair moved back a bit, not wanting his garments soiled.

"Roeland. It's only a little information I'm looking for. I want to know what Goldmoon's intentions are toward me. Will she leave me be? Does she intend to send more searchers? Will she come for me herself? Does she talk about me? The Silver Stair… does she climb it often? Does she pull power from it as I do? Or… perhaps she does not know that she can."

Roeland spat at the elf. "She'll stop you! She'll-" His words ended in a high-pitched scream as the elder Graymist reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. The man slumped forward, dead.

"Father, I was not finished. I wanted to talk to him a little more."

More powerful in death. His father's whispery voice was sonorous.

More powerful in death, the other wraiths joined in.

Speak to him in death, Darkhunter suggested.

Gair made a tsk-tsk sound and stared down at the broken form of Roeland Stark. "I've no choice but to talk to him in death now," he replied.

The man's voice would not be so interesting to listen to. Roeland had possessed a rich voice, and in life his laughter sounded like a pleasant song. In death, it would be raspy and sound only like a harsh whisper. All the wraiths sounded the same to Gair. The elf circled the body, finding a spot to stand next to it where the blood hadn't seeped out to tint the snow.

Nearby, the wraiths tugged the other bodies away from the ruins of Castle Vila. The elf knew they would play with the flesh a little while before Gair raised the dead men's spirits.

"Roeland." Gair knelt, almost reverently. He closed his eyes and imagined the doorway. The door was never closed anymore. He'd shattered it with a thought. The elf's mind moved easily now between the world of the living and the dead. He fancied himself a part of both realms, and soon he would be master of both.

He saw other spirits hovering in the wispy realm, some of their visages repulsed by him, some horrified, some pleading, wanting to be given some semblance of life again.

"Roeland," he repeated. He glanced at the body, used the man's club to turn it over so he could gaze at the face. The man's eyes were open, the mouth open as well in a final scream. Gair pictured them closed and serene. Handsome. "Roeland."

Mist always pervaded the realm of the dead. Roeland formed out of part of that mist, transparent at first, then gaining substance and color. He looked like a miller again, wearing the trappings of a merchant, as he had the day Gair met him.

The elf stretched out a hand as if to shake Roeland's in a simple greeting, but the image of the miller tried to retreat. Gair shook his head and stoked the heat in his chest, sent the warmth from his heart into his arms and fingers, pictured his fingers glowing red like Darkhunter's bright eyes. A magnet, his fingers began pulling Roeland to him, closer to the shattered doorway. The elf began uttering a string of words, fragments of part of an ancient spell that Darkhunter taught him, old magic he had corrupted and coupled with Goldmoon's enchantment that required no words. Que-Nal and elven words mixed, powerful words that would not permit the spirit of the miller to flee.

"Roeland…" Gair beckoned.

"Roeland…" Please do not be here, Goldmoon pleaded silently. Please be alive and whole, be on your way back to the settlement with Gair in tow.

"Roeland… gods!"

He was there, in the misty other-realm, looking as he had the day he first strolled into her camp. On the young side of middle age, jaw firmly set, eyes filled with curiosity. He'd come to meet her, as he'd been brought up on stories about her and the other Heroes of the Lance. She was a hero on a pedestal to him, and he wanted to see her in person, to shake the hand of a legend.

Goldmoon had been cordial to him, had welcomed him as she had the others who'd journeyed that day from the port town of Schallsea. She shook his hand and said she was pleased to meet him. She had meant it, and his heart skipped a beat. A hero in the flesh.

She showed him around the settlement, told him about the plans for the citadel, about giving Krynn hope. She made it clear that this was all about helping people and restoring a sense of purpose in a dragon-devastated world. Roeland wanted to be part of that. He wanted to be something more than a miller, and he badly wanted to make a difference in the world.

Goldmoon. His eyes took on a sadness, and a lone tear fell shimmering from his eye, disappearing into the mist. Where am I?

She was instantly puzzled. Where was he? Didn't he understand?

He does not know, Riverwind told her. His spirit just arrived.

Her face grew ashen. Just died? She watched the mist swirl around him, heard dozens of voices in many languages, all of them speaking words of welcome and explanation, flooding her senses.

She watched his handsome face grow stern, as if he were instantly filled with a purpose and understanding. I am dead, aren't I, he said. It was a statement, not a question.

She nodded, a tear edging down her cheek. "Gair?"