Jean Rabe - The Silver Stair

"Where is it, my beloved?" Goldmoon had consulted a cartographer a few days ago in the island's small port town. She was on the correct path, she was certain of it, and she could sense that many others had traveled this way through past decades. Indeed, the cartographer had told her people from town still wandered out occasionally to take a look at the site, though almost always when the weather was more pleasant and always in respectable numbers to insure their safety. There were wild animals on the island, he said.

"Where? It can't be much farther."

Through gaps in the shaggybark branches, she saw the stars winking into view in a purple-black sky. Their light was mimicked by the fireflies that danced around her lantern. The constellations were far different now than they had been when her husband Riverwind was alive and at her side. That was a time when the gods still maintained a presence on Krynn and when magic came easily. After the gods left Krynn following the Chaos War, the stars changed, and the three familiar moons vanished. Now only one cold, pale moon hung in the sky, competing with the stars for her attention.

"I wish you were here to search with me, my beloved. I wish…" Her thoughts trailed off. The trees before her were thinning out, giving way to a clearing. The grass was tall and brittle-looking from the summer's heat, and the ferns that grew haphazardly amidst the grass were stunted. But something rose in the center, stretching taller than the oldest of trees. Goldmoon gasped, and the lantern slipped from her fingers.

"By the memory of Mishakal," she breathed. The healer stared wide-eyed, not daring to blink, her feet rooted to the spot. She was called a Hero of the Lance, had fought dragons in her youth, brought healing magic to Krynn, witnessed unbelievable wonders- things that common folk didn't even know to dream about, but all of those things paled beside this.

"It's… it's beautiful," she whispered after several moments. She could find no other word to describe it, yet beautiful seemed woefully inadequate.

Like a curling strand of hair, the stairway spun down from a faint, wispy cloud, glimmering like diamonds and shaming the stars. She stared in disbelief for several long minutes until her legs tingled from lack of movement. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and slowly opened them again. The stairs were still there.

Goldmoon risked a step forward, then another. She let her pack fall from her shoulders, followed by her cloak, not hearing either drop to the ground. Scarcely breathing, tentatively edging closer, she kept her eyes on the spiral. The steps shimmered faintly, inviting and haunting and looking as insubstantial as strips of gossamer glimmering with some undefinable inner radiance. They twisted up until their light looked as pale as a slender moonbeam, disappearing into the wispy clouds far overhead.

"The Silver Stair," she whispered. "By the sacred memory of Mishakal, why did I wait so long to travel here?"

Her words were the only sound in the clearing. No insects chittered, and the faint breeze through her sweat-soaked graying hair scarcely rustled a blade of grass. She could hear her heart, the breath coming in and out of her lungs, the sounds as oppressive as the heat. Her chest felt tight, whether from fear or from awe or perhaps from both. Her fingers trembled as she moved closer to the construction, and she bit down on her lower lip until she tasted blood. She had not fallen asleep on the trail. She was not dreaming.

The light intensified as she came closer still, filling her vision as she moved to stand in front of the spiral. It glimmered like sun specks caught on the surface of a still sea, winked and sparkled and made her breath catch in her throat as she stared at the bottom step. The steps looked fragile, like the wings of a butterfly, and she could see through them to the ground beneath.

She bent over to touch the bottom step, half worried that it might burn her with its magic, half afraid that it would pop like a soap bubble. Her fingers tingled as they traced a pattern of shimmering lights, felt the magical energy that suffused the step and likely the entire staircase. Goldmoon couldn't discern what the stairway was made of-not enchanted wood or steel, certainly not glass. This was truly a mystery, a creation of the vanished gods. She laid her palm flat against it, reveling in the pulsing sensation, then pressed hard against it to be certain it would hold her weight.

The cartographer had told her that people came out here to look at the stairs, yet none within his memory had dared to climb it, though he admitted they might not have told him about it. She edged out of her sandals, feeling the coarse grass against the soles of her feet. She put one foot and then the other on the lowest step, steeling herself as the tingling energy pulsed against her skin and crept up her legs. She didn't want to miss even one sensation, and she feared that even the thin leather of her sandals might mute this experience.

She wished Jasper and Gair were here to share in this, regretted a little that she had plunged on ahead of them. However, Goldmoon had wanted- needed- some time alone, and there was some consolation that her favorite students would not be too far behind. She glanced down at her discarded sandals, swallowed hard, and took another step, then another. There were no handholds, no landings that she could discern, just this seemingly never-ending spiral of steps so narrow that her heels hung over the edge.

Goldmoon continued to climb, the hot summer air cocooning her and making her sweat even more profusely. The sweat-slick skin of her feet made her ascent more precarious, but she wasn't about to turn back and retrieve her sandals. She guessed she was at least a dozen feet above the earth when she paused to catch her breath. Her sailcloth tunic clung to her body, and her leggings were as wet as if she'd been wading. If she climbed higher, she knew that one careless footfall would bring certain death, but she wasn't afraid of dying. She had lived long enough, outlived, in fact, all those who had been closest to her. Perhaps it was past time for her spirit to join theirs.

She steadied herself as a faint wave of dizziness washed over her, and she concentrated on the tingling of the steps against her feet. The healer's legs ached. She'd pushed herself hard to reach this place by nightfall, and she was pushing herself harder still. There were limits to her aging body, and she had just about reached them. She would not give in to the infirmity of her years just yet. Goldmoon glanced to the south as she climbed higher, thrusting the soreness in her legs to the back of her mind and focusing instead on the faint lights of the port city of Schallsea. She climbed higher still, until her feet felt numb, her legs felt stiff like wood, until those lights almost disappeared, looking as tiny as fireflies. Higher.

The heat was gone from the summer sky, replaced with a chill breeze this high above the ground. She climbed higher still, wishing she'd not abandoned her cloak. It was cold now, and the wind was increasing in intensity. She forced herself to continue.

Goldmoon shivered as the wind whirled all around her. Trails of fire and ice raced in and out of her with each step she took. Her lungs burned from the climb and froze from the thin, cold air she was taking into them in ever more ragged gulps. Her feet tingled, not the interesting, magical sensation any longer. The energy of the place seemed stronger the higher she climbed, and the tingling was causing her feet to throb almost painfully.

"Not much farther," she said to herself, though in truth she didn't know how much higher the stairway went. She still couldn't see the top of it. She entertained no thoughts of giving up, but she mentally berated herself for not seeking this site much earlier in her life, when her body was as strong as her mind and when she was confident she would have been able to reach the top. She wasn't completely certain she had the physical strength left to tackle this, at least not this night.