Book VII, Part 5
Dana’s feet, clad in soft-soled shoes, slapped against the well-worn cobblestones of the city’s streets as she ran through the diverse neighborhoods of Waterdeep. The streets were more crowded than she was used to; normally she ran in the early mornings, in the half-light of the dawn, before the hordes of people came out into the city’s avenues with the coming of the day. Many of the streets were already jammed with people moving about their business, and the sun was barely two hours into its journey across the sky. Accordingly, Dana directed her course to the lesser-traveled byways, choosing a route that led along the hills near the Mountain and through the city’s several public parks.
She liked running. It allowed her to clear her mind, and while at first she had preferred to run in the open spaces outside of the city, she was developing a certain understanding of the charms of the city. At first she had thought of the place as crowded, dirty, and generally unpleasant, but now, after nearly a month here in town, she was returning the waves of shopkeepers opening up their shops for the early-morning crowd, and smiling at children whose faces held the promise of unlimited things to come.
Today, though, she was running to distance herself from fresh worries, and she barely noticed the people around her. For once it was not about her and Benzan; in fact, things had been going great between them ever since their reunion in the dungeons within Undermountain. Dana had no desire to rush things between them, although it had been quite entertaining the way his face had taken on that momentary look of stark, unrelenting terror, that one time that she had mentioned the “M” word. She smiled to herself at the memory, but it faded quickly.
She should have checked sooner, although it was only recently that she’d had the means to do so. In between her frequent trips to the city’s library and the Mages’ Guild with Cal, she had spent time at the local temple of Lathander. The clerics of the Morninglord had a scrying font that they willingly allowed her to use, and she in fact had put it to use trying to track down a few leads that her researches had turned up.
Yesterday, finally, she had decided to use the font and her scrying spell to view her father.
What had struck her immediately was how old her father had looked. He seemed to lack the powerful presence that she remembered from her childhood, when he was all that she had, after the death of her mother. He’d built a mercantile empire from the three-wagon coster that he’d inherited, and held a position of great influence among the leading families that ruled Iriaebor. His great regret, of course, was that he’d never had a son to inherit his work, and while he’d always shown her love and affection, he’d had not been able to fully hide his feelings from his daughter.
For a moment, as she had watched him, home at work at the same desk where he had spent so many long evenings when she was a child, he looked up, eyes searching. He could not see her, however, and her tears falling into the font blurred the image, breaking the connection.
She hadn’t been gone more than a year, and it looked like he’d aged a decade in that time. Was he ill? No, if that were the case, he’d have access to the finest clerical aid that worldly wealth could buy.
She came to a sudden stop, willing the speculations aside with an effort of will. She looked around, and realized that she’d run into one of the parks along the northern border of the city, not far from the docks. The city wall was visible to her right, a long arc that held the expanse of trees and grass in its embrace.
She turned to head back, and froze.
She wasn’t that far away, close enough so that Dana could have called out to her without raising her voice. She was seated on a bench under a leaning tree whose branches shielded her from the light of the bright morning sun. She had changed her hairstyle, and her clothes were a lot different than Dana remembered, but those changes weren’t enough to keep Dana to recognize her instantly. But it wasn’t anything about her appearance that caused her heart to freeze in her chest for a moment.
Elewhyn, formerly crewmember of the Raindancer, who had shared their adventures on the Isle of Dread, was holding a small bundle in her arms, and she stared down at it lovingly while she made a few cooing noises. The bundle shifted, confirming Dana’s initial assumption as a pair of tiny arms reached up toward the half-elven woman’s face.
Uncertain, Dana retreated back behind a knot of trees, until she could no longer see the woman and her child. She hadn’t thought of Elly ever since they had parted ways back in Citadel Adbar. Had it been so long? The evidence of the child seemed to confirm that; she hadn’t showed any signs at the time of their parting. Dana felt a cold chill as she formed the timeline in her thoughts, linking the current presence of the child with another time, long past, back on the Isle of Dread...
She cursed herself for her foolishness, told herself that she wasn’t jealous, that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. What if the child wasn’t Elly’s? No, she’d recognized the look that the woman had given the child, a look of pure love that could only come from a mother. She turned away and started walking, barely aware of where she was going, only that her ultimate destination could not be avoided.
But she could not escape the question that grew in her mind with each step she took.
What was she going to tell Benzan?
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