"Will that be all right then?" Pacys asked.
"Aye."
Jherek returned to the bed and took a fresh compress from the pitcher, then gently wiped Sabyna's face. He sat, the resonance within his chest unfaltering.
"She's very pretty," the old bard said.
"Aye." Jherek slumped forward, trying to find a way to be comfortable.
"I'd like to hear how you met her."
"It's a long story."
The old bard smiled and said, "Actually, those are my favorite kind."
At first, Jherek wasn't going to speak, but there was something about the music that loosened his tongue. It changed subtly, though he couldn't point to exactly what the change was. So he began with how he met Sabyna on Breezerunner. Of course, that meant dredging up everything that happened at Velen. Pacys asked how Jherek happened to be there, which meant explaining about Bloody Falkane.
He also mentioned the voice that haunted him all his life and the cryptic message it gave him: Live, that you may serve. As the music played, he realized that there were only the three of them in the room. He couldn't remember when the others left. He didn't remember ever talking so much in his life.
Even when Jherek finished speaking, Pacys continued playing. The tune was different from when he started hours ago. Khlinat brought a plate of food, but the old bard turned it away, as did the young sailor. When Pacys finally stopped playing only the sound of Sabyna's ragged breathing filled the room. The weight of it almost broke Jherek.
"It seems," the old bard said, showing no signs of discomfort after sitting on the floor for hours, "that you have searched everywhere you might for help for the young lady except one."
"What?"
The old bard's hazel eyes flickered with reflections from the lantern hanging on the wall.
"All your life," the bard told him, "you've had a benefactor who has looked out for you."
"The voice?"
"Yes."
"I never knew who that was."
"Perhaps it's time to ask."
Jherek put another compress on Sabyna's fevered brow and said, "I did ask."
"When you were on Black Champion, following Vurgrom."
"Aye. I asked, and I got no answer."
"Perhaps that wasn't the time. Perhaps you were supposed to wait a while longer."
"Why?"
The old bard shrugged. "I don't know how these things work, my boy," he said. "Faith in the gods is like a good song. You must wait to have everything revealed. You can try to force it to happen, but a song, and that faith, has its own time and place."
"But I had a faith."
"You could have already been spoken for at the time you sought out the Crying God."
"Spoken for?" Jherek echoed incredulously. "By a god?"
"Priests are called to serve their gods," the old bard said softly. "That call is undeniable. I've had friends who were good bards and artists who worked with passion at their craft only to be called into service of one of the gods."
The young sailor changed the compress again, thinking hard. Everything he thought forced him to the same conclusion. "I'm no priest."
"No, I never thought you were." Pacys began playing again, and this time the tune was a little faster, more uplifting than calming. "Remember in Baldur's Gate when Khlinat lay wounded? It seemed as if the wound might even prove fatal. Yet, you laid your hands on him and he was healed."
"It was the necklace he wore."
"No," Pacys said. "I've handled magical things in my time. That necklace holds no magic."
"It could have been used up saving his life. He even believed it saved him."
"Khlinat doesn't believe that now," Pacys said softly.
The whole idea confused Jherek. ''You think I somehow saved him?"
"Yes." Pacys found another chord, and the resonance within the young sailor's chest felt stronger, more sure. "Why did Malorrie teach you?"
"I don't know."
"You said that someone pointed him in your direction."
"Aye." Jherek felt as though the room was closing in on him.
"And Madame Iitaar, whom you respect and love, told you there was a destiny ahead of you."
Jherek sat quietly and still, wanting only to deny everything the old bard said.
"Look at your whole life, my boy. Have you ever raised a hand against another with malice in your heart?"
Jherek thought back to the bar fight in Athkatla. "Aye. Against Aysel from Breezerunner's crew."
"The man who insulted Sabyna's honor?" Pacys smiled. "Why, Jherek, I could expect nothing less from such as you."
"Such as me? What do you think I am?"
Pacys shook his head. "It's not what I think," he said. "When you needed the astrolabe from the diviner at the Pirate Isles and you were asked what you believed in, what was your answer?"
"Love," Jherek whispered, looking at Sabyna and feeling like he was about to fall apart. He grew angry with the bard for speaking in such a circumspect way.
"How can you believe in love after the way you were brought up?"
"Because it was shown to me by Madame Iitaar and Malorrie, then by old Finaren, captain of Butterfly."
"A phantom with a geas laid on him?" Pacys asked. "A lonely widow woman who could use a strong back and a pair of hands around her house to fix it up? A ship's captain who let you go once it was discovered you were one of Bloody Falkane's claimed? What could these people know of love? How can you trust their motives?"
Jherek shook his head. "Say what you will, but they loved me when no one else did."
"And you gave them love back."
"Aye," the young sailor said, "all that I had. Only to be driven from them."
"For a reason," Pacys said softly "There were things you had to learn!" He glanced at Sabyna and said, "Perhaps a new love to be found."
"Only to have those taken from me because I was cursed the day I was born?"
"I've seen the love Glawinn has for you," Pacys said. "The man has laid his life on the line for you."
"He was only serving Lathander, who guided him to help save the disk I pridefully took in Baldur's Gate."
"You were meant to have that disk."
"I didn't have it, and it was used to kill all those people on the Whamite Isles."
"Perhaps they were forfeit anyway," Pacys said. "So the best was done that could be, and the disk saw you to that sword."
"It's not mine."
"Yet I've been told no hand may comfortably hold it but yours."
Jherek couldn't argue; it was true. Others in Azla's crew tried to hold the sword but none of them could do it, or even wanted to, for any length of time.
"The Great Whale Bard sought you out and gave you a gift."
Jherek looked at the old bard and said, "All these things you say are true, but I can't make any sense of them." "They were a path, my boy," Pacys said softly. "A path that led you here, to this time and this place." "To do what?"
"What you were born to do. Battle the Taker." Jherek couldn't help it; he laughed. The sound was bitter and insane and rude, but he couldn't help himself.
Fatigue and pain had broken down his self-discipline, made it impossible to keep all those feelings to himself. "It is your fate," Pacys said. "Even the whales told you so."
"Don't you see?" Jherek asked. "It's a mistake. Another part of that ill luck that has followed me. It's just my misfortune, and yours, that you're here wasting your time when you should be with this hero you're looking for."
"You've already faced the Taker once," Pacys said, "in the caverns. You wounded him, survived his attempt to kill you with the buckler given to you by the Great Whale Bard. Iakhovas is the Taker."
"He was just a mage."
"No."
The firm denial shook Jherek, brought him back under control a little. He sobered and looked at the bard. "What you're saying is impossible," he insisted.