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 he 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
