Songs Left Unsung Chapter 2: Peace Talks
He takes a deep breath, and squares his shoulders in preparation for the ordeal ahead. For hours he has been tramping around the city looking for her, but now that he has finally tracked her down he is finding it hard to summon up the courage to actually do anything about it. He has rehearsed a hundred times in his head what he will say, how he will explain everything, but his carefully worded speech seems suddenly horribly inadequate.
To make matters worse she has picked the finest inn in the city for her lodgings, and he is only too aware of how scruffy and out of place he is going to look in a common room full of nobles. He supposes he should have known that he would find her at the Mithrest though - Yavana has always been one to appreciate comfort, and the flea ridden rooms at the Copper Coronet would undoubtedly not have been to her liking.
He ponders his next move a while longer, but with the sun long since set the night's chill is drawing in and he soon finds himself shivering violently, his thin clothing offering little protection against the chilly breeze and the light drizzle that has begun to fall. Whatever reception awaits him inside the inn, at least it will be warm in there...Garrick crosses his fingers, hitches his pack higher on his back and boldly flings open the door and steps over the threshold.
He sees her straight away, sitting at a table near the fire with her black hair hanging loose over her shoulders, a smile on her face and a glass of wine in her hand. He pauses just inside the door, feeling a sudden pang of longing as he realises just how desperate he was to see her again. She hasn't seen him - she is engaged in an animated conversation with a man seated across the table from her - so he stands there for a moment, oblivious to the stares of the rest of the inn's clientele as he drinks in the sight of her face.
He recognises Jaheira and Minsc among her companions, and his heart leaps to know that they are alive and well. But the others - the dark Kozakuran is a stranger to him, as is the man with whom Yavana is speaking, who has his back to Garrick at the moment. The rest of his friends must be upstairs, he tells himself, or perhaps out on some quest...but in his heart he knows that it is not so, and it is with a deep sense of unease that he approaches the table.
He has not realised that any of them are aware of his presence, but as he comes closer the Kozakuran mutters something in a low voice and jerks his head in Garrick's direction. He stops and gulps nervously as they all look up at him, and then he tries to remember what he was going to say but his mind has gone blank and his mouth has gone dry so he ends up just standing there, staring stupidly back at them.
Jaheira fixes him with a flinty glare, Minsc looks confused, the Kozakuran looks suspicious, the other man flashes him a strange, half mocking grin...but he doesn't care about them, his eyes are on Yavana's face. For a moment their eyes meet, and he thinks he sees surprise, maybe even relief in her expression, but then she tears her gaze away and looks down at the table and he is left fidgeting awkwardly, not knowing what to do.
"What are you doing here?" At last she breaks the silence, although she still doesn't look at him. Her voice is flat and emotionless, not giving him any hints as to what she wants to hear. He hesitates a moment before answering - he wishes he was talking to her alone, he feels humiliated enough by his current appearance and garb without having to plead for help in front of the entire common room.
"I need your help," he begins, but she cuts him off abruptly.
"I meant how did you get here. What happened to you?"
Another tricky question. He's tempted to tell her the truth, to get it all off his chest...but he can't bring himself to do it. For then surely she would turn him away, and seeing her again has reminded him of how much she means to him. More than anything else at the moment he feels that he needs something to live for, and she could be that something. Losing her now would be too much to bear.
So he twists the truth a little, spins a tale for her. Tells her that he's had amnesia, that the last thing he remembers about their travels together they were headed south from Baldur's Gate. That he remembers camping in a forest clearing, but that after that...nothing, until this morning when he came back to himself.
She looks doubtful, suspicious, but he just shrugs and tells her to ask at the inn he's been staying at if she wants confirmation of his story. He knows he has told it persuasively, and it is close enough to the truth that it will be near impossible to disprove. Part of him hates that he is lying to her, but there is another part of him that has become almost convinced that his version of events is the truth, that if he can just forget about what really happened then it will be as if it never had happened. He feels confused and uncertain; he knows at heart that there is no simple solution to it all. But for now it is very easy just to try to forget, to push aside his worries until he feels more equipped to deal with them. He ignores the small voice of his conscience, and concentrates on believing his story.
"I...don't know," Yavana says eventually. "I just don't know what to think..." She sounds worried and upset, and although she is trying to sound calm he can hear a tremor in her voice. She looks up again, and now he can see the strain in her face - she looks pale and tired, and there is a hardness in her dark eyes that did not used to be there.
"What has happened to you?" He asks urgently and completely naturally, forgetting everything else for a moment but the need to make sure that she is well. She doesn't answer and he realises with horror that she is close to tears. He reaches out tentatively towards her but Jaheira beats him to it, putting an arm around Yavana's shoulders whilst fixing Garrick with a warning glare.
"We were ambushed on the road," the druid says quietly. "You were the only one of us to escape capture. A tenday ago we managed to escape, but...but Khalid and Dynaheir are dead, murdered by our captor, and Imoen has been taken by the Cowled Wizards. We have been trying to get her back, but it is not easy..."
Jaheira keeps talking, but Garrick is no longer listening. They are dead, his friends are dead, and it is all his fault. If only he had been there for them, if only he hadn't let them down - so much for forgetting about past mistakes, now he knows he will ever be able to get them out of his head. He wants to blurt it all out, confess all the guilt he feels, but he can't screw up the courage to do so - he doubts any of them will look upon him kindly if they find out that he was so desperate to save his own sorry ass that he just left his friends to die.
His friends, who did so much for him - Khalid, who practiced sword fighting with him and was always there with an encouraging word. Dynaheir, whom he was never close to but who risked her life to save him when he was nearly crushed by a falling block of stone in Durlag's Tower. Imoen, who learned the words to all of his songs off by heart and would sing along with him when he played - what right does he have to be alive and free when they are not?
Again he considers telling them, but how will it help? Yavana is upset enough as it is, and he wants to help her not add to her distress. And Jaheira and Minsc - telling them will just cause them more pain. It's not that he is afraid of facing their anger, he tells himself, just that he doesn't want to hurt them...but he isn't sure if he really means that or not.
He blinks tears from his eyes, and realises that he is shaking like a leaf and that everyone in the inn is staring at him. He wants to run away and hide, but just as he turns round he finds himself suddenly lifted off the ground and enveloped in a crushing bear hug.
"Garrick must not cry!" Minsc booms. "Dynaheir would not want Garrick to cry. Dynaheir would want Garrick to come with us, and help us to kick the butt of the Evil Wizard with the great Boot of Justice!" He drops Garrick to the ground and claps him heartily on the back. "It makes Minsc happy to know that Garrick is alive, although Boo wishes to know why you have a dead mouse stuck to your chin? Boo says to tell you that live hamsters make better pets than dead mice."
Garrick struggles to make sense of this, the combination of the mental stress he is under and having had all the air knocked out of him by Minsc's hug has left him feeling dizzy and confused. He stumbles, and catches hold of the table edge to prevent himself from falling.
"For once," says Jaheira, "I agree with the hamster. Whatever possessed you to grow that beard, bard?"
Aware of more than a few mocking sniggers he turns to scowl furiously at the druid, but though her words were harsh her tone was not, and he is taken aback by the concerned look she gives him. He stands there for a moment feeling lost and uncertain, not really understanding what is going on, but then Minsc grasps his shoulders and begins half pushing, half carrying him towards the stairs whilst behind them Jaheira rises to intercept the innkeeper who has begun to protest the presence of a dirty, bug ridden tramp in his nice clean establishment. Overwhelmed by everything that has happened, Garrick is in no state to resist.
A couple of hours later, he is sitting in a room in the Mithrest carefully teasing out the knots in his hair with a comb provided by Yavana. He has had a long hot bath and been provided with a change of clothes, although the black leggings lent to him by the Kozakuran are not his usual style, clinging to his legs in an uncomfortable way. They are also somewhat tight around the waist, but he hopes that exchanging the life of a tavern drunkard for that of an adventurer will soon take care of that and get him back into shape.
For Yavana has agreed to let him travel with her group, having decided to believe his story after the Kozakuran came up with the theory that his memory loss could well have resulted from him being hit on the head and then presumably left for dead in the battle when the others were captured.
He still feels extremely guilty for not telling her the truth, and he is still distressed about the deaths of his other friends, but the bath and change of clothes have left him somewhat calmer and he has decided that he will do best to leave things as they are for now.
Travelling with her will give him the chance to redeem himself, to make up for past mistakes. If he tells her the truth he will most likely lose her forever, and that will leave both of them unhappy as well as leaving him in an unfriendly city with no money. Thus goes the reasoning behind his decision, and he decides that for the moment it is futile to worry about it any more.
He finishes arranging his hair to his satisfaction, and scratches thoughtfully at his beard, which he has trimmed but not completely shaved off - he resents the way the other customers laughed at him, and he wants to show them that he is impervious to their mockery. None of the heroes of his ballads would have been weak willed enough to shave just because other people thought they should - admittedly their beards were usually black and bushy or grey and distinguished looking rather than patchy and ginger, but it is the principle of the thing that concerns him.
In this defiant mood, and having put the worst of his worries to the back of his mind for the moment, he stands up with the intention of going to find Yavana. He remembers how distressed she was earlier, and wonders if perhaps she is in need of a friend to talk to about it. With Imoen gone she will be in need of a confidant, and there is also still the faint hope that the feelings he once believed she had for him are still there, that if he can become close to her again they may resurface.
He remembers a previous time when she needed his comfort, the evening after they met for the very first time. An enchantress named Silke in who's service he had been at the time had tried to trick Yavana somehow - the details elude him now - and Yavana had lost her temper with the woman and gotten into a fight. He'd been trying to sneak quietly away when he'd heard a scream, and had turned to see Yavana standing over the fallen body of her opponent, directing a bolt of fire into her face. He had watched horrified, unable to tear his eyes away as Silke's features were gradually consumed by the fire until the spell ended and Yavana collapsed in a shaking heap.
Seeing the opportunity to play the gallant rescuer he had escorted her to a tavern and had looked after her until her friends had found her, telling her that she had done the right thing, that she had had no choice, that he had never liked Silke much anyway. She had told him bits of her story, enough to make him realise that here was the opportunity for the grand adventure he had been waiting for all his life, and so he had asked if he might accompany her and she had agreed.
The excitement is gone now, and he curses himself for a fool for ever having taken up adventuring. But she is the one good thing left in his life, and right now he feels that he needs her more than ever.
Not finding her in her room, he walks slowly downstairs to the common room. He can hear a man singing softly nearby, a low, mournful tune that depresses him all the more because it reminds him of his own current inability to make music. He hasn't told anyone about that yet, he suspects that it is nothing anyone will be able to help him with in any case.
He reaches the bottom of the stairs, takes one step into the common room and then stops in horror. It is late and only two people remain in the room - Yavana and the singer. They are perched side by side on the edge of a table facing away from Garrick, the man stroking Yavana's dark hair softly as he sings. As Garrick watches the song comes to an end, and as the singer shifts slightly to face Yavana Garrick recognises him as the stranger that he saw Yavana speaking to earlier when he first entered the inn.
Then he barely paid any attention to him, but now he feels a sudden pang of jealousy as he watches Yavana smile at the other man, realises that she has no need of him to comfort her today. She spoke to him briefly about her new companions earlier, but he wasn't really listening...Yoshimo, did she say this man was called? No, that was the Kozakuran. So this must be...Haer'Dalis. Yes, he thinks that's what she said. He doesn't remember her saying anything else about him though, certainly nothing to prepare him for this.
Not wanting the humiliation of being noticed, he retreats quietly to the stairs, and then slumps down and lets his head sink into his hands.
"Damn you, you bastard," he mutters. "She is mine, I love her, and you've got no right to be anywhere near her." He tries to tell himself that what he has seen means nothing, that they can have known each other for less than ten days, that there is most likely nothing between them but casual friendship. But in his heart he cannot help but feel resentment - he resents Yavana for not needing him as much he needs her, and he resents the other for just being there, for existing, for being able to sing and thus reminding him of his own inadequacies.
He takes his head out of his hands and stares blankly at the floor. It is hardly gallant and heroic to be skulking on the stairs spying on them, but he is torn between wanting to know what is going on between them and not daring to go inside lest she become angry with him for intruding. He feels helpless, and a large amount of self-pity begins to creep back into his mind. He feels desperately in need of a drink.
Thanks for reading, next chapter will be posted in about a week
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