single copper outta them!"
Pikel started io laugh, but caught himself and turned a stern look on Ivan, realizing that his brother was serious, and probably correct.
"I'll get us into the mountain, and well have plenty of help from Carradoon when the time comes to take out the treasure," Cadderly assured them both. "But not now."
The young priest let it go at that, thinking that the dwarves need know no more. His next task, he knew, was to get to the library, to put things spiritually aright Then he could concentrate on the treasure, could come hack here rested and ready to clear the path magically for the foragers. "**
"This place is important to ye," Ivan remarked. Cadderly looked at the dwarf curiously, more for the tone Ivan had used than the specific words.
"More important than it should be," Ivan went on. "Ye always had money, particularly since ye penned that spellbook for the frantic wizard, but ye never seemed to care so much for money."
"That has not changed," Cadderly replied.
"Eh?" Pikel squeaked, echoing Ivan's sentiments exactly. If Cadderly had no care for money, then why were they up here in the middle of the dangerous mountains, freezing their stubby feet off?
"I care about what this treasure might bring for us all," Cadderly went on.
"Wealth," Ivan interrupted, eagerly rubbing his strong hands together.
Cadderly looked at him sourly. "Do you remember that model I kept in my room?" the young priest asked, more to Pikel than Ivan, for Pikel had been particularly enchanted with the thing. "The one of the high, windowed wall with the supporting buttress?"
"Oo oi!" Pikel roared happily in reply.
"Ye're thinking to rebuild the library," Ivan reasoned, and the dwarf blew a huff of spittle into the frosty air when Cadderly nodded. "If the durned thing ain't broke, then why're ye meaning to fix it?" Ivan demanded.
"I am thinking to improve it," Cadderly corrected. "You yourself have witnessed the strength of the model's design, and that with soaring windows. Soaring windows, Ivan, making the library a place of light, where books might truly be penned and read."
"Bah! Ye've never done any building," Ivan protested. "That much I know. Ye've no idea of the scope of the structure ye're planning. Humans don't live long enough for ye to see yer new .. . What was it ye once called that thing?"
"A cathedral," Cadderly answered.
"Humans won't live long enough to see yer new cathedral even half finished," Ivan went on. "It'll take a full clan of dwarves a hundred years ..."
"That does not matter," Cadderly answered simply, stealing Ivan's bluster. "It does not matter if I see the completion, only that I begin the construction. That is the cost of, and the joy of, faith, Ivan, and you should understand that"
Ivan was back on his heels. He hadn't heard such talk from any human before, and he'd known many humans in his day. The dwarves and the elves were the ones who thought of the future, who had the foresight and the good sense to blaze the trail for their ancestors to walk. Humans, as far as most of the longer-living races were concerned, were an impatient folk, a group that had to see material gains almost immediately to maintain any momentum or desire for a chore.
"You have heard recently of Bruenor Battlehammer," Cadderly went on, "who has reclaimed Mithril Hall in the name of his father. Already, by all reports, the work has begun in earnest to expand on the halls, and in this generation, those halls are many times larger than the founders of that dwarven stronghold could ever have imagined when they first began cutting the great steps that would become the famed Undercity. Isn't that the way with all dwarven strongholds? They start as a hole in the ground, and end up among the greatest excavations in all the Realms, though many generations - dwaf-ven generations! - might pass."
"Oo oi!" Pikel piped in, the wordless dwarf's w,ay of saying, "Good point!"
"And so it shall be with my cathedral," Cadderly explained. "If I lay but the first stone, then I will have begun something grand, for it is the vision that serves the purpose."
Ivan looked helplessly to Pikel, who only shrugged. It was hard for either dwarf to fault Cadderly's thinking. In fact, as Ivan digested all that the young priest had said, he found that he respected Cadderly even more, that the man had risen above the usual limitations of his heritage and was actually planning to