.Songs Left Unsung Chapter 7: Young Love
He is surrounded on all sides...he has foolishly allowed them to come between him and the door, so there can be no retreating now. Garrick keeps his gaze fixed on the flagstones, not daring to look up at his assailants. He wishes desperately for Yoshimo to come to his aid, but his prayer is not answered. There is no escape...steeling his nerves, he takes a deep breath and slowly raises his eyes until he is looking straight at the woman standing in front of him.
"My," she says. "You're a cute one, ain't ya?"
Garrick gulps nervously, not quite sure how to respond, but now all the others are speaking as well...
"Ooh, an adventurer. Looking for a good time, my lord?"
"Aww, the poor boy's blushing."
"Spend an hour with me my lord, and I swear you won't regret it."
"I've always heard bards are the best in bed - care to prove it to me, my lord?"
"I'll tune your instrument for you, bard."
"You look so cuddly with that beard, my lord."
Garrick recoils in horror from the last speaker, who is reaching out a hand towards his face. There are about a dozen women crowded round him, all trying to draw his attention to their scantily clad bodies. He doesn't know where to look - he is too embarrassed to make eye contact with any of them, and he is determined not to allow his gaze to linger on the expanse of bare flesh being presented to him. For one thing it would only encourage them, and for another it would doubtless only make him blush even darker than he already has.
"I-I-I don't want anything, thank you," he stutters. "I didn't mean to come here, I just...just took a wrong turn back there somewhere, that's all. So if you would just let me pass..."
"You don't have to leave, my lord," one of the girls pouts. "Stay and have some fun, now that you're here."
Garrick feels a delicate hand caress his backside, and is almost ready to abandon his dignity completely and run screaming from the building, but fortunately he is saved as two wealthy looking noblemen enter the room and the girls all abandon him and rush to greet the newcomers. Thanking the gods for his deliverance, Garrick hastily exits the brothel, shuts the door firmly behind him and leans back against the wall of the corridor, wiping sweat from his brow.
He hears light footsteps coming towards him, and turns to see Yoshimo looking at him with a quizzical expression.
"I'm fine," he says, pre-empting the thief's inquiry. "That room there is a brothel, by the way."
Yoshimo nods. "Downstairs there are black lotus dealers, and what appears to be a thriving slave business. Our friend Lehtinan has quite the operation here."
Garrick sighs, partly in disgust at this news and partly because the discovery means an end to any hope of spending the evening quietly getting drunk. Visiting the Copper Coronet sounded like a good idea when Yoshimo first suggested it - a good place to catch up on the latest street gossip, and with the cheapest - albeit the foulest tasting - ale in town. But Yoshimo being Yoshimo, they had hardly been there ten minutes before the thief had become curious about the steady trickle of men passing through a guarded door at the back of the inn. A few discrete enquiries had yielded rumours about some form of 'special entertaiment', and a bribe to the tavern owner had been enough to grant them access. With the result that they have now discovered what appears to be a well organised criminal operation, and Garrick supposes that they are going to have to do something about it.
"What do you think we should do?" He asks Yoshimo. "If there's slavery going on, we can't just let it be."
Garrick has never met a slaver before, or had any dealings with slaves, but he has known people who have and from their stories he has a vague idea of how bad it must be to be a slave. Khalid had always been very strongly opposed to slavery, having often encountered it during his childhood in Calimsham, and his views had made a big impression on Garrick. And anyway, the thought of destroying a slave ring has a nice heroic feel to it - the kind of quest that an adventurer in a story might undertake.
"Well, my young friend," Yoshimo says, "unless you are willing to take on a number of armed guards singlehandedly, we should inform our valiant comrades of our discovery."
Garrick agrees, and they make an unobtrusive departure. Now that he knows there are slaves at the Coronet, though, he can't stop thinking about them. During his brief visit to the brothel it hadn't occurred to him to feel sorry for the women there, but now he realises that they are most likely slaves as well and that their eagerness was probably just due to fear of being beaten or suffering some worse punishment if they failed to earn enough gold to satisfy their owner. He scold himself for not realising this before, for not noticing the edge of desperation in their voices as they attempted to seduce him, but he was too busy being intimidated by them to pick up on things like that.
More used to the harsher aspects of life than his friend, Yoshimo is less affected by their discovery, and as they make their way back to the Mithrest he does his best to cheer the young bard up.
"Tell me, did you enjoy the brothel? How does it compare with other such establishments?"
Still preoccupied by worrying about the slaves, Garrick is only half paying attention. "I didn't enjoy it as much as the Undercellar in Baldur's Gate," he says unguardedly, and then blushes furiously as he realises what he has said.
"No, no, no! Don't get the wrong idea! We went there on a quest, that was all!"
"Of course. And a most enjoyable quest it must have been." Yoshimo smirks slightly as he speaks.
Garrick scowls, but decides not to explain. What happened in the Undercellar is one of his most treasured memories, and he wants to keep it private. They had gone there in order to retrieve a magical cloak that Yavana had learnt was in the possession of one of the courtesans, and from the moment they entered he had found himself fascinated by the place - by the whiff of corruption, the sense of danger he felt there and by the secrecy of the whole thing, with concealed entrances through the sewers and most of the patrons wearing masks to disguise their identities. And, of course, by the beautiful half naked women walking around.
He had been unable to stop himself staring at them - it had been his first experience of such a place, and he had ended up walking around in a dazed state, with eyes only for the next girl to walk past. Until, that is, he had felt a clout on the back of his head and had spun round to find Yavana glaring at him. He had felt immediately guilty - only the day before he had sung her the latest love song he had composed for her - and had tried to stammer an apology, but before he could get it out she had leant forward and kissed him.
It hadn't been a long kiss, but it had been enough to put the dazed look back on his face. And it had certainly been enough to distract his attention from the courtesans. He sighs - when it happened, he had seen it as marking the start of what he had hoped would be a long and lasting romantic understanding with Yavana. Now he looks back on it as the highlight of the all too brief time he spent with her before she met Haer'Dalis.
They walk on in silence for a little while, until Yoshimo, sensing the dark mood which Garrick is drifting into, addresses him again.
"Another question, if I may. I have only once heard you play that lyre that you carry on your back, yet I have never seen you apart from it. Why burden yourself by taking it with you everywhere you go?"
"To keep it away from that damned tiefling," Garrick says shortly. His lyre is his most prized possession, purchased at extravagant cost from a craftsman in Waterdeep some four years back and looked after with loving care ever since. He is sure that Haer'Dalis would relish an opportunity to play it - the tiefling has recently picked up on the fact that Garrick has never performed for the group, and has interpreted it as meaning that Garrick is an inferior musician to himself and is trying to avoid demonstrating that fact. Doubtless he would love to rub in his supposedly superior talents by showing off his skills on Garrick's own instrument, but Garrick is determined not to give him the chance.
It doesn't help that he still shares a room with the tiefling, a situation which pleases neither of them. But Yavana has hinted on a number of occasions that she is sick of their constant bickering, and that she wants them to try to get along, so they are both reluctant to risk her wrath by complaining too much.
Upon entering the room on his return to the Mithrest, however, Garrick finds that for once he has it to himself. Far from pleasing him, though, this discovery makes him instantly suspicious of where Haer might be. His initial reaction is to race down the corridor towards Yavana's room, intending to barge in and see if the tiefling is there, but fortunately Yoshimo intercepts him at the door and persuades him that this is not the best course of action.
"You are forgetting," the thief points out, guiding Garrick back down the corridor, "that our leader shares her room with the druid. Even if she is with the tiefling, they are most certainly not to be found in there."
Garrick slumps down on his bed. "Then what can I do? I know she'd be happier with me than with him, I just know it. But she doesn't seem to realise it..."
"Then you must help her to realise it," Yoshimo tells him, sitting down beside him. "Open her eyes to what kind of man Haer'Dalis really is. Women want to be wooed, she will not notice you if all you do is sit around and mope. This is a time for action, my friend."
When Yoshimo has departed to seek his own bed, Garrick ponders his words. Up to now, he has always secretly clung to the irrational belief that Yavana's interest in Haer'Dalis wouldn't last, that she would eventually come back to him and they would be together as they were meant to be. But of late it has been harder and harder to continue to convince himself of this, and now he realises that he is in danger of losing her for ever. Yoshimo is right, he needs to talk to her. And that only leaves the small problem of working out what he is going to say...
He doesn't have much opportunity to think on this the following day, which is spent dealing with the slavers at the Copper Coronet. This does not prove to be a particularly taxing task - whilst Lehtinan's guards are doubtless extremely adept at bullying hapless slaves and commoners, they are less willing to take on a group of heavily armed adventurers who simply ignore the crude threats levelled at them and refuse to back down from a fight.
After a few of the braver guards have been cut down, most of the others quickly make themselves scarce and in the end the freeing of the slaves is accomplished with minimal bloodshed. Lehtinan is among the dead, having failed to survive a duel with the leader of the slaves, a brawny barbarian named Hendak, but the bartender and most of the other staff do not seem too bothered by his loss and by midafternoon the bodies have been disposed of and Hendak has announced that he plans to take over the inn and will reopen it for business the next morning.
Since Hendak and his comrades appear to have everything under control, Garrick and the others sit around a table in the commonroom, enjoying an on the house drink and relaxing in the satisfaction of a job well done. They have refused to take any reward, feeling that the former slaves have rather more need of Lehtinan's gold than they do, but Hendak has thanked them all assiduously and Garrick for once feels like a real hero as he sips his ale.
The one thing stopping him from enjoying this feeling as much as he would like is of course the Haer'Dalis situation. The tiefling is in an annoyingly bright and energetic mood, constantly singing or joking or subtly mocking Garrick, and Garrick is becoming increasingly certain that Haer and Yavana spent the last night together. In his heart he is despairing, feeling so unhappy that all he wants to do is down ale after ale until he can forget everything and make the pain go away for a little while. But he knows that this can only be a temporary fix, that giving in to his unhappiness will achieve nothing, and so he grits his teeth and ignores Haer's comments and concentrates on pretending that all is well with his world.
They return fairly early to the Mithrest to get some rest - Hendak is of the belief that Lehtinan had links to a bigger slave operation, and Yavana has promised to investigate this the following day. The news that this will mean exploring the sewer network under the Coronet - since it is through the sewers that slaves were brought to the inn, and Hendak believes the slavers must maintain a base down there - pleases nobody, but they have all been on the road long enough to accept that it is the lot of an adventurer to have to experience many of the dark and unpleasant places of the world.
Almost all of the slaves they have freed today are reasonably fit and healthy, since Lehtinan intended them for use in his fighting pit and wanted them in prime fighting condition, but they have spoken of sick and injured comrades left behind in the hands of the slavers, and even of young children being among the prisoners. Garrick feels that he would be prepared to endure more than a little sewer stink in order to help these people.
Thinking about the slaves, about all they must have endured, does help him to forget his own problems a little. Many of them have spoken of how they had family or loved ones who died in captivity, or of how they themselves expected to die before long in Lehtinan's gladiatorial arena. Some have refused to speak at all since their rescue, but the fear and the hatred that Garrick saw in their eyes has affected him more deeply than any words could have done. Compared to what these people have been through, his problems seem almost trivial.
He is only human though, and as the evening draws on his own worries begin to dominate his thoughts once again. He is determined to speak with Yavana before she retires for the night, but he is still not sure how best to go about it. Yoshimo's advice was to point out Haer'Dalis' faults and unblind her eyes to them, but he suspects that far from being unblinded she would likely only become angry with him. The alternative, he supposes, is to leave the tiefling out of it entirely and simply to tell her how much he cares for her, that he will always love her and that he still hopes she will one day come to return his feelings again. It is not so long ago that she told him she cared for him too, and perhaps...just perhaps...he can remind her of how she felt then.
How exactly he is going to say this he doesn't know - he wastes a good half hour sitting on his bed thinking up possible lines and trying them out to the empty room, but he can't seem to find the words to express how he feels. Eventually he realises that it is getting late, and that it is now or never if he wants to speak with her tonight. He checks his reflection in the mirror, runs his fingers through his hair, straightens his rumpled shirt, and with his heart pounding frantically against his ribs heads down the corridor to tap on her door.
There is a long pause before his knock is answered, and he fidgets nervously, shifting from foot to foot and scratching at his beard. When the door finally opens he feels a wave of terror rise up inside him, suddenly wishes he were anywhere else in the world...and then feels a huge sense of anticlimax mixed with relief as he sees that it is Jaheira who is standing in front of him.
"I was looking for Yavana," he says rather inanely, looking hopefully round the druid's shoulder into the room.
He doesn't see her, though, and Jaheira confirms his fears. "She is not here, child. Leave it until the morning."
Garrick feels very tempted to do just that, but he has psyched himself up for this confrontation and if he doesn't go through with it now he is not sure that he will be able to find the courage again.
"Just tell me where she is," he says, trying to sound as calm and collected as possible.
There is a pause, and he almost thinks he can see sympathy in the druid's brown eyes as she looks at him.
"Do not do this, child," Jaheira says eventually. "She is happy, for once. We should not interfere."
Garrick glares at her. "So you're on his side? You think he's the right person for her? I love her, I love her much more than he does and you're not going to stop me from telling her that."
Anger flares up on Jaheira's face, and she grabs his arm, pulling him into the room and slamming the door shut behind him. "I am not on his side, I am not on your side. But I am telling you that she is happy with him, that she is happier than I have seen her in a long time." She releases her grip on his arm, and her voice softens. "Happiness is a rare thing. Do not spoil it for her."
"But..." Garrick is feeling less sure of himself now. "But what about my happiness, then? I love her. I've loved her since the moment I set eyes on her."
Jaheira sighs. "So you have told me, and that is what troubles me. You cannot know you love someone before you have even spoken to them, child."
He starts to protest, but she gives him a sharp look and he falls silent again.
"When I first met Khalid..." there is a catch in her voice as she speaks her husband's name. "I thought him a stuttering incompetent, when we first travelled together. And his first impressions of me were...less than flattering. It was only as we grew to know each other better that...that I came to love him. And...and by some great stroke of fortune, he came to love me too."
Garrick has not heard her speak of Khalid since his death, and being uncertain of what to say he remains silent and waits for her to continue.
"I am sure that you care about her, child. But can you truly say that you love her? Will you still feel as you do now about her in five, ten, twenty years time? For eighteen years my Khalid and I were married, and I loved him just as much the day he died as I did the day I married him. Can you be sure that you will feel the same?"
Garrick looks at her in bemusement."I love her, I'm telling you. I know my own feelings better than you do."
"Then tell me why you love her," the druid says quietly.
"Because..." Garrick frowns. "Because she's beautiful, and I'm never happy when I'm away from her, and she's the woman I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with."
He has the feeling that that isn't a very good answer, but he can't think of anything else to say. He has never thought about why he loves her, he just knows that he does.
"Child...you are taking your knowledge of love from your songs, from those foolish ballads you are so fond of. You cannot fall in love just because you think you ought to, because you think it is what every young man should do. I do not doubt you think you love her. But are you certain that this is not some infatuation that will fade with time? You have already abandoned her once. Are you certain you will not eventually do so again? You are right, I cannot know how you feel. But I am not sure that you know yourself."
This is too much, she has gone too far. Garrick yanks the door open again and turns his back on the druid. He wishes he could think of a suitable parting shot, but nothing comes to mind so he settles for storming out and slamming the door after him so hard that the occupant of the neighbouring chamber, an elderly merchant, emerges from his room to complain about the noise. Garrick relieves his feelings by being extremely rude to the man, who retreats hastily in the face of a barrage of crude oaths.
That makes him feel a little better, but he is still fuming inwardly and decides to retreat to his room to calm down before going in search ofYavana and Haer'Dalis. He flings himself down once again on the bed and takes deep calming breaths. He is not about to let Jaheira's words bother him, he is going to ignore their conversation and proceed as he had planned. She didn't know what she was talking about, how can she know how he feels about Yavana? He knows he loves Yavana, he loves her with every fibre of his being, with all his heart and soul. Doesn't he?
He tells himself a hundred times that he does, but he does not go to tell her so. The morning finds him lying fully clothed on the bed, sleep having overtaken him as he lay there trying to think things over. The shred of doubt has been planted in his mind, and is not proving easy to ignore.
Well, that's it for this week. Next chapter: off to meet the Shadow thieves.
Btw, these chapters seem to be getting longer and longer - I suppose I could start posting two shorter chapters a week rather than one long one, if people would prefer that? I think I prefer it the way it is, but if anyone thinks they're too long then this is your chance to complain
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