Rising tide - Mel Odom [60]
He pushed open a door on the right. Weak candlelight flickered over the room, revealing the narrow bed under the only window, a small bookshelf against one wall next to a small fireplace, a wardrobe, and a compact desk.
"Where will you sleep?" Pacys asked.
"We've a common room."
"I could stay there," the bard protested.
"As could I," Hroman said. "Please take this room. As a priest, there's not much I have to offer in the way of tangible assets, but I can make a gift of this. I have earned it with my work, and it's mine to give."
Pacys saw the earnestness in the younger man's gaze and nodded. "As you say," he said humbly as he laid the yarting gently on the bed and sat. 'Take up a chair and well talk."
Hroman pulled the chair out from the desk, then took a wine bottle from the book shelves. He smiled as he sat. "I've been saving this for something special, if you've a stomach for it."
"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