Mel Odom - Rising Tide

"For wine, I'll always have the stomach," Pacys said, smiling, "though not always the head."

"Isn't that the way of it?" Hroman said. "This is from our own press. One of our best vintages."

"Maybe we should save it for another time."

"When you're leaving?"

"That would seem a more appropriate time."

Hroman's face darkened. "I'd rather say hello over a bottle of wine than good-bye. I've said enough good-byes of late." He unstoppered the bottle and handed it to the bard.

Pacys took it. "I heard about your father," he said. "I'm sorry. If I'd known, I'd have been here."

"I know." Hroman took a deep breath and looked away for a moment. His eyes gleamed and he said, "He left a letter for you. It took him a long time to write it. Lucid moments were very few… very hard for him at the end."

A chill touched Pacys. Last year when he'd died, Hroman's father had been five years Pacys's junior. Death didn't scare the bard, but old age, infirmity, and mental loss did. It was hard not to grow more terrified with each passing year.

"Then I shall read it with pleasure," Pacys said.

"I've not read it," Hroman said, "so I don't know what he had to say, or if any of it makes sense."

"Your father was a good man," Pacys told him. "He'd not leave anything behind that didn't reflect that. I need only look at you to know that."

"Kind words," Hroman acknowledged.

"And truly meant." The bard held up the wine bottle. "To your father. One of the best men I ever knew. Fearless in heart and strong in his faith." He drank deeply from the bottle, then passed it back to the priest. The wine was sweet and dry.

Hroman drank deeply too. "What brings you to Waterdeep, old friend? A simple longing to see the Sword Coast again?"

"Compulsion," Pacys admitted. "My end time lies not too far before me now, and I'm not fool enough to believe any other way."

Hroman started to object and Pacys shushed him with a raised hand. "Kind words lie out of kindness, young Hroman, that's why numbers were invented."

Hroman passed the wine bottle back across.

"I come on a quest," Pacys said. "Of sorts."

"Of sorts?"

"I can't say that it's a true quest," the old bard admitted. "I can only hope for divine intervention." He drank again, passed the bottle back, then pulled the yarting from the bed and opened the case. He took it across his knee and strummed the strings. Even though it was in perfect pitch, he twisted the tuning pegs, gradually returning them to the positions they were in. "Listen." His hands glided across the strings, fingertips massaging the frets.

Music, beautiful and as true as rainwater, filled the room.

"Dear Oghma, but I've never heard the like," Hroman said when Pacys stopped playing.

"Neither have I," the old bard said. "Not outside of my head."

"What is it?"

"I don't know." Pacys's hands worked the yarting, underscoring their conversation with the lyrical sound. "Fourteen years ago, when last I saw you and your father here in Waterdeep, I was given that piece of a song. It came to me in a dream. That was the same night the mermen first came to live in Waterdeep Harbor."

"The ones who claimed that a great horror had risen in the seas to the south and destroyed their village," Hroman said. "I remember. Piergeiron kept the City Watch on double shifts for a time afterward."

Pacys nodded and asked, "Do you think I am a good bard?"

Hroman seemed surprised by the question. "Of course. Any time you showed up in Waterdeep, taverns requested you. Lords and ladies. You had a hearth and a home anywhere you wanted. Why you chose to spend so much time with a poor priest of Oghma used to astound my father."

"Your father and I were kindred spirits," Pacys said. "A slight tilting of the past of either one of us, and it might have been us filling the other's shoes. Your father had an excellent voice, but he chose to serve Oghma more directly than I, though I felt the pull of the priest's robes as well. Felt it most strongly."

"I didn't know."

"Now you do, and now you'll know why I see that I am not the bard everyone believes me to be." Pacys kept strumming the yarting, playing the melody over and over, wishing more might come to him. "Any bard might sing the songs of another, or tell the tales once he has heard them. It's a bard's gift to tell any tale, sing any song that he's heard. Most can even offer their own rendition of that tale or song, but none may approach the original singer's or teller's power for that song or story." He plucked the strings, gathering the crescendo that lurked in the back-beat of the tune he played. "To know true power as a bard, there must be a tale or a song that is always and forever acknowledged to belong to the composer."

Hroman nodded. "It's like that with treatises written by those inspired by Oghma."

"Yes." Pacys turned his melody to bittersweet memory. "I've covered the lands of Faerun, sang and orated in castles and palaces, relayed bawdy tales in the crassest of coast dives among the harshest of men, and given voice to some of the most spiritually uplifting music in temples scattered across those lands. I've traveled and seen things that most men only dream of, had adventures that fire a young boy's heart as he listens to the tales his fathers and kin tell around a campfire at night, or by the safety of the home hearth, but never-never-in that time have I crafted a song that will be remembered as mine."

Hroman remained silent.

"What about you?" Pacys asked. "Are there treatises in Sandrew's Great Library that you have authored? New ways of thinking about old things? Or old ways of thinking about new things?"

"Yes."

"Then you have been gifted," Pacys said in a dry voice, "and you should never forget to give thanks for that. In some distant time, a young priest will open a scroll you have written and know your thinking."

"That doesn't mean he'll agree with it."

In spite of the darkness that threatened to quench his spirit in the night of the city and after all the miles he'd walked that day, Pacys smiled. "Whether they lay accolades at your feet or descry everything you've put on paper, they'll remember and know you. That's immortality of a kind."

"You feel that's what you're missing?"

Pacys broke the bittersweet melody and went back to the haunting one again. They were part of the same thing, he knew that in his heart and in his talent, but how to bind them? What words went with the music, he had no clue.

"How much did your father write, Hroman," he asked, "that's going into Sandrew's Great Library?"

"Tomes."

"Exactly. Your father was a man of letters, a man who thought well and deep, a man I treasured as a friend. I could lay my soul bare on several levels and trust him to have a care with it." Pacys paused a moment, listening to the music he made. "I wanted to talk with him again and see if he could offer any direction for this melody that haunts me so."

Hroman waited in silence a moment before saying, "Would you mind talking of it with me?"

"Over a bottle of the temple's finest vintage?" Pacys asked. He shook his head. "I'd not mind at all. I couldn't imagine better company."

"When you played tonight, during a couple of the old songs I remembered from times past when you were here, I could almost see my father sitting in the shadows. Your music always soothed him."

"I worked very hard for it to."

"Then why isn't it enough that you brought so much happiness to people?"

"Because," Pacys said, his voice thickening in spite of his skill, "I want a part of me to live forever. I want bards years from now to say that they have this song, whatever it is, by way of Pacys the Bard. I want it to be a song of such magnitude that it brings tears to the strongest of men and brings strength to the weakest of men. I want a story of love so pure and unfulfilled that it will truly hurt all who hear it. I want to fill the listeners with fear when they hear of the villain."