What do you wish of us, Master? It was Roeland's spirit.
"At the moment, nothing, but soon I will need all of you-and more. With our living friends below, we will journey to the settlement."
And drink of the sweet life there, Roeland said.
"Yes," Gair replied. The elf padded from the chamber, retracing his steps to the lower level.
It was shortly past dawn, the Silver Stair invisible in the pale light, yet Goldmoon stood on the bottommost step. She'd found the relic by touch, and she did not want to wait until evening to climb it. She wanted to tax herself physically to reach the top-and hope that she did not plummet off, since she could not see a single step. She needed the ruin to help her find Gair. Perhaps a vision might provide a clue to his whereabouts.
She had to find him soon, before he hurt more people. Through the link she shared with him, and which she still could not fathom how she was so tied to him, she knew he was pulling energy from the ruin and that he was bent on some dark purpose. She'd discovered the cracked steps-eighteen of them-and she knew if he kept it up, he would destroy the thing. The knights posted nearby last evening to prevent him from using the stair were nowhere in sight, but less than an hour ago a soldier had spotted their tracks heading to the north. Goldmoon suspected that Gair had the knights and wanted her to know that.
Goldmoon hoped she could use the Silver Stair to shut down her link with Gair so he could not eavesdrop on her thoughts. She sensed he would rather have the Silver Stair destroyed than to have her use it. Goldmoon loathed the idea of channeling power from it to effect a spell. That was obviously how the steps became cracked, but Gair had to be found.
"Goldmoon!" Orvago was tramping across the snow toward her. He, Camilla, and a detachment of soldiers had arrived late yesterday.
She paused, as if suspended in the air, and stared down at the gnoll. "I do not need a guard here, my friend. Gair is nowhere near." She had explained the link to the commander and Orvago last night.
The gnoll left her, backing away and watching as she climbed something he couldn't see. Even when he could see the mystical site in the light of the moon, it raised the hair on the back of his neck. When Goldmoon was more than thirty feet above the earth, he turned and loped toward the knights' tents, kicking up snow as he went.
"What are you planning, Gair? And whatever caused you to stray?" Goldmoon sat on the unseen steps, high above the settlement. A pair of kestrels flew past, circling her, then continuing south.
The air was still, and it carried the scents of pine trees and breakfast and the sounds of the waking settlement. Goldmoon liked the settlement the way it was: tents and lean-tos, people existing on hope and hard work. A lot of hard work would go into the Citadel of Light. When it was finished, as Goldmoon knew it eventually would be-no matter the delays and the weather- things would be so very different. The settlement would not have the same feel, and she knew she would miss this.
"It is my fault, despite what you say." Goldmoon was talking to Riverwind. "It was my choice to teach him the dark side of mysticism. I let my emotions, not my common sense, get involved. He missed his family just as I missed you."
He would have eventually learned the dark mysticism without you, beloved, just as he's learned all manner of dark things.
"Perhaps, but I pointed him in the wrong direction and essentially gave him a shove. Now I have to stop him. How can I find him?"
I cannot help you. Each night he calls me. The door is always open for him, and each night he pulls spirits through. I have resisted.
A shiver ran down her spine. She couldn't bear the thought of Riverwind becoming an undead creature.
The life he offers is not truly life. It is an abomination of an existence.
" I have to find some way to stop him, beloved. I have to save him. Gair-the Gair I took on as my student- would not have wanted this to happen to him."
The seed was there, Goldmoon, planted long before you met him.
She sensed him back away from her just as she sensed another presence intruding in her thoughts. Gair! She could almost see his face inside her mind, and she could hear his voice as if he were right in front of her.
The Silver Stair is mine, Goldmoon!
"No! By the blessed memory of Mishakal!" Goldmoon felt instantly faint and grabbed on to the steps.
16
Jasper pounded his ale mug down on a log that served as a table and gave a cockeyed look at Redstone across a merrily burning campfire. "Good ale," he pronounced. "The perfect finish to an evenin' meal." He patted his stomach. "An' now I need to take a walk and work some of this off. If you'll excuse me?"
She grinned politely her thick upper lip coated with foam from the ale. The blisters on her face and hands from the fire were healing, and they didn't look quite so bad in the firelight. Behind her, great chunks of crystal sparkled, brought this morning by a team of dwarven miners, who turned right around and headed back to the mines. There was no rest for anyone. Work on the citadel had resumed in earnest again.
Jasper touched her shoulder and glanced up at the winking stars. The moon would be full tonight, he noticed as he watched it edge its way up from the horizon. "I shouldn't be gone too awfully long, Red. Just takin' a walk. An' then you can tell me all about those domes you've got on your mind." Then he was heading down the path away from the building site and toward the Silver Stair, which was shimmering into view.
The dwarf stared at it in amazement, which was how he looked at it every time the moon revealed it. "The gods summoned fireflies, I think," he said to himself as he trundled forward, touching the bottom step and sighing deeply as the energy tingled into his fingers. "Summoned fireflies and talked 'em into holdin' this pose forever." He pressed his palms against the step, as he did each time as way of a ritual rather than a confirmation that the stair would hold him. Then he took a step up and then another.
"No better place." He continued to talk to himself as he went higher. "Goldmoon was right." Talking to himself was also something he always did when he took a trip on the stair. It kept him preoccupied so he wouldn't look down quite so often. "Best place to build the citadel. Goldmoon was definitely right. An' I was silly to think we should wait until spring to begin buildin' again. Right place, right time. Still, I'm kinda tired of startin' it over and over again. The blizzard, the fire. Why can't the fates just let us be? We ain't botherin' nobody."
He tugged on his terribly short beard when a bracing gust of wind struck him. He reached up to touch a step just above his head for support. "Wonder if my Uncle Flint ever got to see this? Hope he did. Hope he got a chance to climb it. Hope everyone in Krynn comes here to see this and takes a climb. Amazin'."
He was dressed warmly, but the cold cut through his clothes as he climbed ever higher and watched the lights of the settlement grow smaller all around him. He paused and frowned when he glanced to the south, where the three-story citadel used to be. "A whole lot of sweat an' work went into that," he grumbled. "Well, the next one'll be even better." The damage the fire caused looked worse from above. The basement was an ugly black scar against the snow-covered earth, reminding him of that night. He pushed it to the back of his mind and continued to struggle up the steep steps. It seemed a little harder to climb each time.