“Very well,” says the robed stranger as he steps aside and gestures toward the boat. “Try your luck then. Fight your way forward, meet friends who will serve as your greatest allies, and create music out of your misery. If that is what you choose, then that is what is destined.”
“That’s right,” Baraka says with a firm nod and a grin, “but it’s much more complicated than that. You see, Fabian there learns how to write poetry and how to make music from the books and instruments his new ‘friends’ provide him with on his way to a new continent. He enlists in the service of a small-time lord, crafts instruments out of the remains he finds of the men he slays in battle, and then he starts writing poetry as he moves up in the ranks.
“Finally, he finds love. He accomplishes all of these things,
