Chapter Sixteen: Black Waves

The man and the girl trudged along the cobblestone streets in silence. The city of Luskan was quiet now, in this time after midnight. Few windows were illuminated with candles. Storefronts were locked tight and warded against thieves. The taverns were in full operation, however, and occasionally they passed some revelers who called out a greeting to Jarlaxle. He yelled greetings back at them in the common tongue which she couldn't understand. Kesrith had to walk faster to match his easy stride, a fact that was starting to annoy her.

Though it wasn't dark by any standards of the drow, the city looked even uglier at night, she thought. And this old male drow was so proud of it and wanted her to see it.

But there weren't the glowing sculptures anywhere. There weren't glittering castles carved out of stalagmites. There wasn't the ever present hymns of the priestesses drifting through the city. Instead there was a whole lot of stinking filthy humans and stinking filthy animals that Jarlaxle had told her were called "horses".

Kesrith thought riding lizards were better.

Jarlaxle obviously wanted her to be impressed with this, but it was just uncomfortable and disgusting to her. No wonder the priestesses of older times wanted them to kill off the "iblith." No wonder the most common word for them meant literal filth.

Her little leather shoes click-clacked across hard, uneven stone but Kesrith began to hear something more than the bellowing of old pirates and the barking of dogs.

A shushing sound was off in the distance. Unlike anything she had heard before, the sound fascinated her. She stopped walking for a moment and cupped her little ear.

The sound was constant and she realized she had been hearing it the whole time she'd been here. It had just been in the background and she had believed it was the wind.

A few steps ahead, her "father" stopped and looked back.

"What is it Kesrith?" he asked.

For a moment, she just stared up at him. She didn't really know why she was going along with this male's schemes but he seemed like he wouldn't punish her severely like her aunts and the priestesses at her school did.

"There is a sound." She cocked her heads towards it to hear it again. "It is getting louder but I have heard it for a long time."

He knelt down beside her and smiled. Something about the smile made her feel warm and safe, though that was silly. No one and nothing was ever really safe. Her grandmother had told her that. Matron Armgo had survived centuries, so it must be true.

He could be using some sort of mind magic on her to get her to trust him.

"Kesrith?" He was looking at her with raised brows. "You mentioned a sound."

"Ah... it goes like shhhh...shhhhh shhhh. Like that. All the time."

He had a bemused expression on his face and his head cocked to the side, the giant red feather of his funny hat drifting in the gentle breeze.

Then light came into his eyes and his face lit with a grin.

"That sound," he said, touching the tip of her nose with his finger. "Is just what I've brought you here to see."

"Really? Is it a beast? At first I thought it was a waterfall but it sounds odd for that."

"Well, it's certainly not a beast of any kind," he laughed. "But a waterfall is pretty close to the mark."

He offered his arm and after a moment Kesrith realized he wanted her to hold onto it or something. She placed her hand on his forearm then Jarlaxle bent down and showed her the way. Apparently, she was supposed to hook her arm through it. Jarlaxle informed her that it was the way that surfacer ladies and gentlemen walked.

Not that she had any need to understand the customs of savages living on the World Above.

He lead her on until the buildings grew sparser and a bunch of wooden platforms appeared everywhere. The sloshing sound grew louder and then Kesrith realized that it had been water all along.

The moon cast a strange silver glow to everything.

The two of them made their way across the wooden boards - the pier, Jarlaxle informed her, and then down a set of steps. There was a great deal of white sand all over the place, and long thin shoots of grass pushed up through it.

Off in the distance, black waves curled to meet the sand then pulled out again. A lake? Menzoberranzan had a lake, though Kesrith had to admit it never sloshed all over the shore and back out again all day.

They padded out onto the sand and then Jarlaxle stopped about halfway to the water. He flung his hands out in a grand gesture.

"Here it is! The sea!"

Puzzled, Kesrith looked at him, then at the water.

"...It is... water?"

Jarlaxle nodded enthusiastically.

Kesrith looked out at the sea again. She had to admit that she had never seen so much water, nor had she ever seen any of it flowing in and out against the shore. The great lake of Menzoberranzan was enormous, but you could see across to the other side. This didn't seem to have another side.

They stood like that for a few minutes, with only the waves breaking through the awkward silence.

"It is big," said Kesrith finally.

"Yes it is," said Jarlaxle. His former enthusiasm seemed to have faltered and his voice was quieter.

She looked away from the ocean and up at him. He was looking down at her with an odd expression on his face.

"Kesrith, you know you are my daughter, correct?"

She shrugged. The truth is that it didn't matter who her father was. The only people who should ever matter were her matron mother and the priestesses.

"Am I to take it that you don't care about that?"

She shook her head. "You are male."

That should have settled it but he knelt before her so that their faces were on the same level.

"I do not think that your mother is capable of taking care of you anymore. She is sick. She is very addicted to redcaps and other things."

He didn't have to tell her that. She'd been there many times when her mother was passed out on the floor. He had never been anywhere around so why did it matter what he thought? Her grandmother would teach her everything she needed to know. Her grandmother would make her priestess, then she would never need anyone or anything but Lolth.

"This school that you are a part of, it is very unorthodox. I do not think it is healthy to return you to it."

Kesrith blinked at him as his words registered in her mind. Then her little brow furrowed in anger.

"You are male. I do not have to do as you say. I will be priestess!"

"I do not think it is healthy to return you to it," he repeated as if she hadn't said anything. "You are here and that means that you are beholden to the rules here."

Kesrith tried not to let her mouth gape open. Did this mean he wouldn't return her? That she would never go home?

"I make the rules here. And that means that I won't allow my only child to be carted off to an institution that teaches children to kill themselves."

"You are not my father!" Kesrith screamed and tried to wriggle away from him but his grip on her shoulders held her firmly.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, I am your father and I do have authority here."

Kesrith was ready to run from him. She needed to be anywhere but here, with anyone but him. She wanted nothing more than to elude his grasp, but before she could pull herself from him a strange thing happened. Something-no someone-stepped out of the shadows right behind her father and lunged. The flash of the blade in the moonlight seemed to catch his attention and before she could even understand what was happening the assassin was dead or dying, dark blood seeping into the sand.

She forgot her desire to escape as Jarlaxle bent over the body. It was a human, his pale skin luminous in the moonlight. He searched the man's clothing and pulled out an amulet of some kind. It was a circle of black stone rimmed at the outer edges with a purple ring.

"Church of Shar?" said her father aloud.

"That is correct," said a man's voice. The father and daughter looked up to see a man there, dressed similarly to the one he had killed, standing alongside Vaelirra.

"Hello, Jarlaxle. I think it is time for Kesrith to come with us. A new goddess awaits her," said Vaelirra.