by Kate Novak
Tumora's luck
( Lost Gods - 3 )
Kate Novak
Jeff Grubb
Kate Novak, Jeff Grubb
Tumora's luck
Ye wouldn't appreciate the poetry of the tale, or the subplots of the opera, would ye? I'll cut to the heart of the matter.
— Elminster to Alias
OVERTURE
To the Sensates of Sigil, new experiences were everything. Like children hungering for knowledge of the multiverse, they streamed into the Civic Festhall, eager to perceive with every sense they possessed, impressing on their minds and bodies the bounty of life. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Sensates visited the private sensoriums every day, so that the arrival of guests to a certain private party attracted no special attention. Yet the private party in question would be very special. Tonight, fifty-seven Sensates in good standing and of considerable discretion had been invited to share an experience both rare and risky. Tonight these select few would spy on the gods.
The chosen audience took their seats in one of the largest sensoriums and began to look around with excitement. The leader of the Sensates, Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery herself, was their hostess. The lovely, sinuous woman moved from guest to guest with a private greeting for each. Cuatha Da'nanin, Montgomery's handsome half-elven consort moved alongside her, handing each guest a small rounded stone, glittering with semiprecious minerals.
In the front of the room sat a lone woman, small and slender, with blue skin. She was a genasi, meaning someone in her ancestry was from the elemental plane of air. She, like the rest of the guests, held one of the small rounded stones. An orange-sized sphere of smoky gray crystal lay on a pillow in her lap.
Montgomery, having greeted the last of her guests, stepped to the front of the room to stand beside the blue-skinned woman. "I'd like all of you to meet my guest of honor, Ayryn Farlight," the factol said, motioning to the' woman beside her. "Ayryn is a gifted sorceress with a few unusual abilities that make this evening possible. Something rather unusual happened when Ayryn joined our faction and attempted to make her first recording." Montgomery held up one of the glittering stones.
The members of the audience listened with breathless, attention. The stones were known as recorders, and they could magically encode the full force of any experience and then "play" the scene back for anyone to experience anew. Recorders were one of the Sensates' most important tools in enticing people into the Society of Sensation. Each Sensate was required to record several stones as part of his initiation. The recorded stones became part of a vast library of sensations.
Montgomery continued her explanation. "Ayryn's sensations seem to be more incorporeal in nature than most, so much so that the instant they enter a recorder they waft back out again. Consequently, if Ayryn holds a recording stone in her hand, we can experience her sensations moments after she does, but only then. Her experiences cannot be stored… unless we do it for her."
The members of the audience nodded with understanding.
"Ayryn's gift of scrying is unparalleled," Montgomery continued. "She has cast her eyes where few would dare, yet her intrusions have gone, for the most part, unnoticed. Tonight, for our enlightenment, she will seek out and view what few mortals have witnessed-the gods themselves."
The members of the audience applauded with appreciation and excitement.
"As a security precaution, we ask that no one speak the names of any of the gods this evening, since we would prefer that no notice is drawn to these proceedings. Ayryn will not remain focused on any one god for longer than a few minutes at a time. You should also understand that there may be occasions when she attempts to view a god and something or someone else entirely different will appear due to some misdirection spell that god may have placed on his or her person or realm. To begin, we will be viewing the gods of Faerun, which is a fairly large continent on a world called Toril, set in a prime sphere known as Realmspace. Ayryn has cast a spell so you can comprehend whatever language they might speak." Montgomery flung wide her arms and announced, "Let the experience begin!"
There were a few moments of silence while the factol took her seat beside Da'nanin and Ayryn focused her attention on the crystal ball in her lap.
From his position slightly behind and to one side of Ayryn, Bors Sunseed, a paladin, studied the faces of each member of the audience. Bors was the only participant who remained standing and who did not hold a recording stone. He was also one of only four people who had been allowed to carry a weapon into the room. There were certain people who might consider spying on the gods as a highly blasphemous activity and who would consider Ayryn the primary offender. Bors's job was to see that Ayryn came to no harm. None of the guests looked in the least bit displeased with what was to come. They had been carefully chosen, and Montgomery and Da'nanin had done their best to ascertain that none were impostors, but there was always the possibility of error.
There was also the possibility that one of the gods would detect the intrusion upon his or her privacy, resent it, and send a retributory strike. While it was impossible for any god to enter the city of Sigil, one of them might send a powerful proxy, or several proxies, to let his or her displeasure be known.
There was a collective gasp among the crowd, and Bors took an instinctive step backward as a goddess towered over the assemblage. According to folklore, which Bors knew to be true, entire cities could be, and often were, built on the corpses of dead gods. So Ayryn's projection of this goddess was by no means life-size, yet it was large enough to cause a sensation among the Sensates. If the goddess reached upward, her hands would appear to brush the ceiling of the sensorium, some fifty feet overhead.
The goddess was notable for more than her size, of course. She was lovely to behold. Her glistening white hair, worn in a long braid wrapped about her head, suggested a woman of great age, yet her pleasing features, the texture of her brown skin, the firm tone of her muscles, all suggested a mortal in her middle years. Her figure was strong and womanly. "A rose in full bloom" was the phrase that Bors's people might have used to describe her. She wore a short tunic of unbleached linen and her feet were bare. Her only adornments were the ivy and wildflowers entwined in her hair and a girdle embroidered with all manner of fruits.
Bors, who had been fully briefed on which gods Ayryn would attempt to scry, recognized the goddess before him as Chauntea, the Great Mother, patroness of agriculture, symbol of Toril's fertility. Ayryn's projection included the goddess's surroundings. Fittingly, Chauntea stood in the midst of a recently plowed field. Insects and earthworms on the surface wriggled and scrambled to bury themselves beneath the dirt furrows before they were eaten by the flock of robins that bobbed along behind the goddess, chirping excitedly. Chauntea walked along the furrows, sprinkling tiny yellow seeds onto the ground from a green cloth pouch and nudging the dirt with her toes so that each seed was covered. She worked with the speed and grace of a practiced farmer. An unseen but undoubtedly bright sun glittered in the sheen of perspiration that covered her bare skin. Mud and dust covered her feet and ankles and even her calves. Her lips curled up in a tiny smile as she attended to her task. If she noticed she was being scried, she gave no indication.
Chauntea turned about to plant another furrow. Bors wondered idly just how long Ayryn would keep her eyes upon this goddess. While spying upon any goddess was a new sensation for him, he wasn't a gardener. His interest in Chauntea's activity was somewhat limited, and the field she was sowing appeared to be rather large.
Someone in the audience pointed to a spot behind Bors. The paladin turned halfway about. Another figure had appeared over the horizon of Chauntea's realm. As the figure approached Chauntea, Bors recognized it as that of Lathander
Morninglord, another god of Toril and reportedly Chauntea's current lover.
Lathander appeared every bit as impressive as Chauntea. His face shone like the sun, and his hair burned a fiery orange-red. Were Lathander a mortal, Bors would have judged him to be a young man. The god's physique was slender and athletic, and his features were divinely handsome. He wore an opalescent robe of red, pink, and yellow, open at the chest and bound at the waist with a red and gold sash. The robe and sash billowed out behind him as he flew toward the goddess of the harvest. He made a magnificent spectacle, as lovely as the dawn itself. His magnificence, however, was lost on Chauntea, whose attention was focused on the ground and her planting.
Lathander smiled, apparently amused that Chauntea was so engrossed in her task that she didn't seem to notice him. He landed in the field just behind her.
Without turning from her task, Chauntea addressed her newly arrived companion. "Lathander, the seedlings' roots and stems won't be able to break through the earth if you compact it with your weight," the goddess chided.
"Sorry," Lathander replied, immediately levitating once again so that his golden sandals hovered inches off the ground. He floated about so that he and Chauntea were face-to-face. "Sweet dawning," he whispered near her ear. His voice held the husky tone of one lover to another.
"Sweet dawning," Chauntea replied softly. She brushed his cheek with a kiss. There was something perfunctory about the goddess's action, however, and she prodded Lathander gently so that he hovered to one side of her furrow. She continued her planting.
"A new universe lies aborning out beyond the worlds of the Tuhgri," Lathander said with a twinkle in his eyes. "The tiny crystal spheres are nested together like faerie-dragon eggs. Whenever a wave of phlogiston washes over them they bump against one another, and you can hear them chime over the humming of the void."
Chauntea laughed lightly. "Voids can't hum," she replied.
Lathander sank again to the ground before the goddess. His feet sank in the soft earth. He slid one hand behind Chauntea's back and with the other grabbed at her braid of hair and wrapped it about his waist. "They do," he insisted, "but you have to get very close to them and listen very quietly for a very long time. Come with me and I will show you."
Chauntea put her fingertips on the Morninglord's chest to keep him from embracing her closer. "Lathander, it is planting season. You know that I must tend this field to insure the fecundity of the Realms."
"What will it matter if the crop is a day late?" Lathander whispered. He tilted his head and pressed his lips to the curve of her throat.
Chauntea smiled, but when the god began pulling her backward through the field, she broke away abruptly. "Lathander," she reprimanded her companion sharply, "if you do not stop churning the field with your feet, there will be crop failure in Halruaa this season."
"They can buy grain from Amn. It will teach the wizard kingdom something about cooperation," Lathander said glibly. "Come with me, Chauntea. The growing season is very lovely, but it comes every year. The birth of a new universe, on the other hand, is not only beautiful but also rare."
Chauntea sighed with exasperation. "Lathander, you might just as well tell the sun to hold off rising in the morning. My duties cannot wait."
"The last time I saw a new universe blossom," Lathander said sadly, "Tyche was my companion. We lay on the back of a space whale and watched for a full year as the crystal spheres grew larger and spread apart and the stars inside them flickered to life and brightened."
"Tyche always did have too much time to fritter away," Chauntea muttered, scattering a handful of seed in the furrow before her. "I'm sorry, Lathander, but my work is more important."
"I want to share this with someone," Lathander insisted stubbornly.
"Well, Tyche is gone, and I am busy. You'll have to find someone else. Why don't you seek out Tyche's daughters, Beshaba or Tymora? Perhaps one of them has time to lie on the back of a space whale."
"Neither child is the same as her dam," Lathander complained. There was the faintest hint of a whine in his voice.
"But you are the same as ever, Lathander," Chauntea cried, throwing her arms up in a gesture of annoyance. "You're always looking for beginnings. Some of us have tasks that must be finished! Go! Let me complete my planting in peace!"
Lathander's face darkened like an eclipsed sun. "As you wish," he retorted hotly, and with that, he spun about and flew quickly away in the direction he'd come, disappearing beyond the distant horizon. There were black scorch marks where his feet had last touched the field. Halruaa's harvest would be poor this year. Chauntea sighed, then turned back to her task.
Ayryn covered her crystal ball with her hands and raised her eyes to Montgomery's face. The vision of Chauntea and her field vanished.
A moment of nervous silence followed. Then the room erupted with the sound of the audience's applause. They had witnessed two gods having a lovers' spat. Not a run-of-the-mill experience in anyone's book.
Montgomery held up her hand. The room grew silent again.
"Can you continue, Ayryn?" the leader of the Sensates asked the genasi scryer.
"Yes," Ayryn replied. She gazed once more into her crystal ball.
Darkness filled the room, complete blackness. There was the sound of water dripping in a cave. Then a red light shone up from the floor. The light came from a round pool of water-or perhaps blood-nearly ten feet in diameter. A drop of liquid fell on the surface of the pool and spattered like hot oil in water. The light from the pool flickered as the surface rippled.
Someone snarled a female voice, "Stupid eyewing, get away from here. Okim, Airdna, bat that beast out of here before it poisons my spell."
A figure sat down beside the pool and tossed back a mane of snow-white hair, revealing the features of a beautiful maiden. She was quite tall, with a voluptuous figure and impossibly small waist. Her skin appeared red from the light of the pool, but Bors, whose catlike eyes could not be deceived by tricks of the light, could see that her flesh was as white as a corpse's, but flushed about her cheeks and throat with the palest blue and violet color. She wore a gown of the darkest black, which fit her like a glove, and a tiara of black pearls. The goddess raised her head, and someone in the Sensate audience gasped softly. The deity's eyes were rimmed with yellow and red and blazed with madness.
This, Bors realized, was the goddess Beshaba. No doubt Ayryn had been influenced by Chauntea's suggestion to Lathander that he seek out one of Tyche's daughters. Beshaba was known as Tyche's "unpleasant" daughter. She was also known as the Maid of Misfortune. She had dominion over bad luck.
Ayryn's projection of Beshaba was not gigantic. The form the goddess wore was human-sized. She was joined a minute later by two winged women of great beauty with demonic eyes. The women wore silken pants, silver breastplates engraved with the stag horns of Beshaba, and swords with serrated blades. Bors recognized the winged women as alu-fiends, creatures of evil from the Abyss, where Beshaba made her home.
An old man's face appeared on the surface of the pool of red liquid.
"There he is," Beshaba whispered with an evil smile on her lips.
The goddess was scrying on someone, just as they were scrying on her.
"Doljust," Beshaba said, "it is time to pay for slighting me."
The vision in Beshaba's pool seemed to move away so that the goddess, and those Sensates who spied upon her, could see more of Doljust and the landscape around him.
Doljust was old, as evidenced by his gray hair and beard and wrinkled features, but he was by no means feeble. He rode straight and tall in the saddle of a prancing mare. A handsome pair of hunting hounds circled his mount, barking with excitement. He wore neither fancy armor nor noble velvets, but his clothing was well made and sturdy, and his mare was a fine-looking beast.
Doljust began to dismount.
Beshaba reached down and touched the surface of the pool.
At that instant, Doljust's boot caught in his stirrup, and when h
e managed to free himself with his hands, he fell backward on his back. Doljust swore a common oath, not one that mentioned any god's name.
One of the alu-fiends giggled; the other merely smiled. Beshaba was not yet amused.
Doljust rose and brushed himself off. He followed his dogs to a cave entrance. At one side of the entrance lay the corpses of two children, mere toddlers. Doljust tossed his cloak over the bodies. Then he started a fire at the cave's entrance, drew his sword, and waited.
The dogs paced behind their master. Soon, forced from its lair by the smoke, a were-bat came hurtling toward Doljust with an awful shriek. The creature was in its hybrid form, with the wings and head of a bat but the torso of a man. It raked at Doljust with the claws at the ends of its wings. The man raised his sword and swung.
Beshaba touched the pool again.
Goaded by the goddess's magic, one of Doljust's hounds forgot its training and leapt toward the were-bat's throat just as its master's sword came swinging downward. The blade sliced across the hound's ribs.
The dog gave a horrible howl, which echoed about the audience.
The were-bat flew clear of Doljust and landed on the mare's saddle. With a cackling laugh, it kicked the horse in the ribs. Doljust hollered, but the mare was frenzied with fear and galloped off into the darkness.
There were tears in Doljust's eyes as he examined his injured and apparently dying hound.
Beshaba touched the pool again.
The other hound whimpered behind him. Doljust whirled about, slicing his sword into a small were-bat as it flew from the cave.
The bat crashed to the ground, dealt a mortal wound.
Then, before Doljust's eyes, it transformed to a small child, a little boy with curly golden hair.
"Grandpa," the boy gasped with his last breath.
Doljust's screams rang out through the sensorium.
Beshaba laughed a horrible, maniacal laugh.
