Jean Rabe - The Silver Stair

Honor, Camilla repeated in her mind. Honor. Honor.

The god images vanished, became stars again that climbed to the heavens. Their light reflected on the surface of the black granite slab, which was shimmering and growing taller and narrower, paler and brighter. Camilla gasped as it was transformed into a pillar of white crystal.

The pillar, according to Solamnic history, signified the gods' pact to watch over the orders of the knighthood. If the knights strayed, the pillar would crumble. It was standing to this day, Camilla knew.

"Time to leave, beautiful Camilla." Vinas was facing her, hands extended to help her to her feet. His shield was strapped to his back, his sword in his scabbard, his great horned helmet firmly atop his head.

She shivered and accepted his hand, stared up into his face, which was shimmering as the stars and as the granite block had shimmered, shimmering and melting and reforming into another image-a younger man in the armor of a Knight of the Crown.

"Kastil!"

"Dear sister, it is good to see you."

The years vanished in a heartbeat, and Camilla's tunic and leggings melted from her like hot butter, replaced by a flowing blue gown. The holy symbol of Kiri-Jolith hung on a silver chain about her neck. She was little more than a child, an acolyte at the temple.

As she blinked in amazement, her surroundings melted too, replaced by the austere halls of her father's manse. She and her brother stood looking out a window at a rolling meadow. In the far distance was a temple of Kiri-Jolith.

"I wish this could be under better circumstances," the image of Kastil continued, "but life rarely gives us the best of circumstances." He smiled, his eyes gleaming mischievously, then drew his lips into a tight line, and a bit of the light faded from his eyes. "I'm leaving the knighthood. Too rigid for my tastes, dear sister. All this duty is nonsense, sheer drudgery. I'm completely bored. I certainly can't deal with giving all my coins to them. This is poverty!"

"This is madness. You can't leave the knighthood!" she protested. "You took an oath."

"Est Sularus oth Mithas," he said flatly. "My honor is my life."

She nodded. She was familiar with the Oath. It was ingrained into her very being. Her great-grandfather had been a knight, her grandfather, her father until an injury took his right arm and with it his fighting heart.

"The knighthood is not my life. It was something expected of me. Dear Cam, don't hate me for failing to live up to expectations." He handed her his sword and backed away, his boots clicking on a stone hallway that melted beneath him, becoming instead the scrabble of a worn trail. In the distance, the temple became a garrison, and Camilla could see knights keeping watch from atop a barbican. Kastil was backing away from them, as he had moments ago left her. His mouth moved, and she caught his whisper on the breeze.

"Do not hate me, Cam. I will always treasure you."

"You're abandoning your post!" she called to him. Camilla thought she saw him smile faintly, though his image was too far away now for her to be certain. "You're abandoning your post!"

She was young when he left the knighthood and disgraced the family. She was an acolyte who was finding the rituals and studies of the temple not to her taste. She had not backed away from the temple, not until the day she was told that he had fled from the garrison, dishonoring himself. She wouldn't have left the priesthood even then had an elder not suggested that her heart lay elsewhere and that there was no dishonor in pursuing another honorable calling.

The last she heard of Kastil, he was making his way across Ansalon by singing bawdy tunes in taverns.

"My honor is my life," she whispered.

The garrison vanished, and the sky turned a brilliant blue. The grass that appeared beneath her feet, each blade carefully trimmed and carrying a hint of dew, was darkened by the shadows of dragons flying high overhead. There were knights on the field around her, one holding a sword and touching it to her shoulder.

She was being welcomed into the Solamnic Order on the day a battle of dragons in the middle of the dragonpurge raged amid the clouds.

"Est Sularus oth Mithas," she stated solemnly. "I do not hate you, Kastil. I just wished I would have told you so."

"You didn't need to." He was suddenly there, behind the knights, smiling proudly at her. "You never needed to. Use my sword well, dear sister. There's a good bit of magic inside."

Again the scene changed, and the top step of the Silver Stair came into view beneath her feet. A blast of winter-cold air hit her like a slap, and she put all her effort into steadying herself. The stars were spread out like a blanket all around her. Breathtaking and frightening.

Was it the wine? Or was there indeed such magic in this ancient construct? The vision seemed so real. Her brother's face, his words.

Turning carefully, she picked her way down the steps. There was no ache in her side or legs now, and the warmth of the alcohol was a distant memory. The stairs did not seem so high on her downward trip.

Safely on the ground now, she looked for her discarded cloak. She remembered leaving it behind. She made a note of where it fell. Nothing. That's odd, she thought. The snow was brushed as if her cloak had been dragged across it. The marks led away from the stair to the north, as if someone had covered his footsteps. Or as if an animal had grabbed her cloak and dragged it away to make a warm bed of it. A wolf, likely, or a big fox.

She had a few other cloaks in the Sentinel, though none so colorful, the one bit of brightness she had allowed in her wardrobe. "I hope it keeps you warm," she mused as she made her way back to her tent, "and that you need it more than I."

"It will help me to think of you," a voice replied after she was well out of earshot. "It carries your delicate scent."

Gair rose from behind a bank of snow and silently crept toward the Silver Stair. It was so late, he suspected no one else would climb tonight. Late and cold, the settlement, for the most part, was asleep.

He skittered up it like a monkey wrapped in Camilla's warm red cloak. Shadows followed him to either side-his father and Darkhunter.

You still think of her too often, his father scolded in his dead, whispery voice. A human… her life is too short, but if she were dead, she could be with you forever.

Gair stopped and cocked his head in the direction of her tent. He was about twenty feet above ground, and with his keen elven vision, he could see a faint glow in Camilla's tent. He stared at it, imagining her inside, lying in bed. He wondered what she had seen on the Silver Stair and decided that she was probably at this very moment thinking of him, as he was thinking of her.

"I'm obsessed with her," Gair said.

Then slay her, Darkhunter suggested. Make her one of us. By your side.

Forever, Gair. No longer would I call you foolish for being smitten with a human, his father added.

"Father, you would have me in love with a spirit? One who has no soft flesh to touch and who does not have flower-scented hair to smell?"

Love is more -powerful in death, my son. I know this. I love you more now than when I breathed.

Darkhunter nudged the elf with an icy claw, encouraging him to climb higher and out of sight of any passing sentries. Gair Graymist, are you not already in love with death ? the Que-Nal posed. Shall I slay the human for you to keep your conscience clean?

"I have little conscience left," Gair said with a sneer. "She will die eventually."

He stopped when he was more than fifty feet above the ground. With Darkhunter's and his father's black bodies to shield him, no one would notice him. If, by chance, someone elected to climb the stair so very late, there was always room for one more wraith in his growing army.