"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."
"That's a difficult request."
Pacys smiled gently. "I could settle for no less."
"You've written songs before, written tunes."
"Nothing like that," the bard said wistfully.
"You said a quest drew you back to Waterdeep."
Pacys drank from the bottle again, wetting his throat with the wine. "Fourteen years ago, I felt the touch of Oghma on me. When I watched those mermen swim into the harbor, I knew. The first notes came to me then and wouldn't leave my thoughts. Your father was at a table with me down on Dock Street."
"And nothing has happened since?"
Shrugging, Pacys said, "A chord here, a note there. In the early years, I followed my heart, desperate to find out why I'd been given that much of the song but nothing else. I traveled more than ever, going into places I'd never thought I'd go, and into countries I'd never even heard of at all. I increased my repertoire considerably."
"Never finding the song?"
"No. A tenday ago, I was in Neverwinter as a guest of Lord Nasher. I was talking to him, strumming my yarting as I am doing with you now, and a large section of one of the bridging sequences was given to me." Pacys turned his attention back to his instrument and played it. He knew the power of the piece when he saw Hroman sit back in slack-jawed amazement.
"I have never," the priest whispered, "heard anything so beautiful."
"Nor have I." Stating the truth almost broke Pacys's heart because the music was unfinished.
"Can't you finish it?"
Pacys shook his head. "I've tried. Everything I've tried to graft onto it sounds false."
"Why come here if you were given that piece in Neverwinter?"
"Lord Nasher's interested in magic," Pacys said. "That's no secret. Of late, he's been counseling with a young woman who's caught his eye and claims some clairvoyance through a deck of cards she uses to tell fortunes. She laid out a pattern for me and told me I'd find the next piece of the secret of the song back where it first began for me."
"Waterdeep?"
Pacys nodded. "There can be no other place."
Hroman was silent for a time. "The music you played, it was beautiful, but it spoke of war to me. Of violence and anger, and men dying by the handfuls."
"Yes," Pacys agreed reluctantly.
"That can't happen here. This is the safest place along the Sword Coast."
"That's what I thought too, Hroman, but this music is like no other I've ever encountered. It's mine, crafted by the gods and given to me."
The priest hesitated. "Which gods, my friend? Have you stopped to ask yourself this?"
"I've prayed," Pacys said. "Since I first heard that music fourteen years ago, I've prayed every day to Oghma to reveal the secrets of it. The pattern the girl laid out for me in Neverwinter showed Oghma's hand in what was going on. There's no evil working here. Not in my part of things."
"Then I will pray for you as well, and for this city should such a thing ever touch her shores." Hroman drank from the wine bottle and passed it back.
A hurried knock sounded on the door as Pacys drank down the dregs of the bottle.