Gorel and the Pot Bellied God Read online

  Gorel

  and the

  Pot-Bellied

  God

  A Guns & Sorcery Novella

  By

  Lavie Tidhar

  Part One

  The Road to Falang-Et

  When they came to the city of Ankhar, a carnival was in progress, and fireworks lit up the night. But there are men whose business allows no respite for celebrations, and they found one such man, and unburdened themselves of the gemstones called Buried Eyes, and exchanged them for a less unpleasant currency. The trader with whom they had dealt was later seen fleeing the city, his graal moving slowly under heavy cargo.

  ‘He was eager enough to buy them wholesale,’ Jericho Moon said, and looked troubled. Gorel sat opposite with his beer untouched and a glazed look in his eyes. He had paid a visit to the temples and returned with his pocket lighter, and the fine powder they call gods’ dust already absorbed into his blood-stream. There were always gods, and where they were so could the black kiss be eased. Into his silence, Jericho said, ‘I heard a new dark mage is raising an army to the north and west of here, in the No Man’s Lands. It is possible the stones were meant for his service.’

  Gorel shrugged; the craving of the black kiss had been sated, and he was at peace. ‘You think we should seek employment again so soon?’

  His friend laughed. ‘Which direction were you thinking of following?’ he asked.

  ‘North, and then east,’ Gorel said. ‘Do you know the people they call falangs?’

  ‘The frog-tribes?’ Jericho looked taken aback. ‘They are distant cousins to us Merlangai. Distant, mind, and I prefer it that way.’

  ‘Unpleasant?’

  Jericho seemed to consider. ‘Their girls hold some charm,’ he allowed, and Gorel laughed.

  Jericho took out his smoking implement, the translucent-blue pipe of the Merlangai: like a shell it looked, made for summons or the calling of war, but its carapace was stained on the inside from the passing of much smoke and resin. Jericho stuffed the pipe’s mouth with the precious sea-weed they call derin, or gitan, and lit up. ‘Then I shall go west,’ he said, blowing out smoke, ‘for as much as I like you, Gorel, you are undoubtedly bad for your friends’ health –’ and he touched his hand to his mouth, and grimaced.

  ‘You’ll grow new teeth for the broken ones,’ Gorel said complacently. ‘It is a benefit those of us without a fish for a mother must do without.’

  Jericho’s eyes flared. ‘Not fish,’ he said, and Gorel grinned. ‘Not fish?’

  ‘Mammal. Like human.’

  ‘As you like.’

  The light subsided in the half-Merlangai’s eyes. The two friends grinned at each other.

  Frogs are ubiquitous. They can be found across the World, in swamps and rivers and lakes – and since humans, by dint of need, must settle close to water, so must they encounter frogs.

  The falangs, the so-called frog-tribes, were different. Their own origin myths were shrouded in mystery. One fable, often told, is without doubt fallacious, yet retains its hold on the popular imagination. In this story, it is told of a princess who fell in love with a frog. When this story is told in the drinking-establishments of urban places, such, indeed, as the pleasant city of Ankhar where Gorel and Jericho Moon had momentarily stopped for the twin purposes of trade and recreation, this opening of the story is usually followed by several rude comments regarding rural people’s “affinity with their animals” and much ribald laughter. Nevertheless. There was once a princess who fell in love with a frog. The princess was not the princess of a particularly important kingdom. She was not even an heiress to a throne. She was a girl who grew up in a royal household, the household in question likely consisting of nothing more than a thatched hut slightly larger than the others in the kingdom. She had few friends, and her parents were too busy, the one waging a war against the neighbouring kingdom, the other lavishing all attention on the princess’ elder brother, who was the heir to the throne (this not being a matrilineal succession), and so she played by herself, on the bank of the great river Tharat that ran beside the royal enclosure, upriver from where the washing of pots and garments was done.

  It was there, on the river bank, that she one day saw a nyaka emerging from the water, holding the biggest, fattest frog the princess had ever seen in its jaws. The nyaka, a night-hunter rarely seen during the day, was crawling along the reeds, searching for a place to consume its prey in solitude. Its senses weakened by the sunlight, it did not notice the princess’ approach until the wooden stick she was wielding connected with the nyaka’s body. The nyaka hissed and clamped tighter on its meal. The frog squealed, and the princess hit the nyaka again, catching it – by luck rather than skill – on the back of the skull. The nyaka, perhaps shocked by such behaviour, loosened its jaws; and the frog flopped down and remained on the ground, taking deep breaths that inflated and conflated its body and made it look like a magical toy.

  The princess brandished her weapon a third time. The nyaka hissed at her, rising and opening the great poison flaps of its head. The princess took a step back. The nyaka prepared to spit its poison. The princess, knowing she could not outrun it, did the only thing left to her, and in a fit of berserk bravery ran at the nyaka, staff held before her, and speared the nyaka through its open mouth, driving the improvised stake into the ground with such force that it penetrated the nyaka’s flesh, tearing its mouth and nailing it to the ground. She then scooped up the enormous frog in her hands, held it close to her chest, and ran.

  Gorel left at daybreak. The city of Ankhar was in the dying throws of revelry at that time. His graal was sluggish before sunrise; the great multi-legged beast moved slowly, its carapace opaque since there was no sunlight yet to absorb. A drunk staggered through the opening of an alleyway; a last, desultory firework exploded overhead; and then he was over the bridge and on the other side of the river, and the graal, gratefully absorbing the moisture in the air, moved quicker.

  They followed the river Tharat, skirting the small villages that lay on its banks, houses on stilts leaning-to on the water, naked children playing in the shallows, smoke rising from early-morning fires. Journeying is a long and weary affair. There were quicker ways to go about the World: sorcery, and dragons, but either one was as liable to kill you as to get you to your destination faster. And so, he mastered patience. For many years now he had been seeking Goliris, his home and his birthright, and patience the thing that had to be learned, absorbed, made as much a part of him as the guns at his sides. And then, too, he had the dust: and as he stopped at noon beside a tributary of the river he let the graal stand motionless, absorbing sunlight, while he sat with his back against a tree and opened the packet, one of the many he had purchased at a dark temple, and let its contents into his body, into his mind, and relived again the terrible black kiss of the goddess Shar, terrible and yet of the most intense pleasure he had ever known, better than any lover’s kiss, better than a mother’s kiss, stronger and more endurable, binding him forever. He sighed, and leaned back against the tree, and the bark was warm on his back, and he closed his eyes. Time spread out before him like a great river, its flow unhurried and smooth.

  The princess kept the frog in the gardens of the palace (such as it was). In secret, she built it a pool of its own, safe from the nyaka and the hunting garuda birds, and she came and sat with the frog every day and spoke to it, and whispered her secrets. And so it went for several years.

  There are conflicting versions of this story, and those of a more ignorant nature like to tell their children that one day the princess kissed the frog, and so a curse was broken, and the frog was revealed as a handsome young prince, and they married, and lived hap–

  What
happened, and how it is told in the taverns of Ankhar, a city closer to the domain of the falang than most, is different, and it goes like this:

  On a night of the full moon, when its light touched the river and turned its water into molten silver, and a lone garuda bird, hunting late, cried across the valley, the princess bled. She knew what it meant, but that did not make it any less frightening, or any less exciting, for that matter.

  She was becoming a woman.

  She should have shared this with her mother or, failing that, at least with her maid, but she did not. As the moonlight shone over the river and the grassy land of the gardens, making them appear like the fuzz on an unshaven man’s face, the princess came to the water and sought out her frog.

  The frog was enormous. Fat and corpulent, a dark green like the tears of a grass-giant, it sat and wallowed in its pool, its great shining eyes inscrutable. The princess came to the frog, and she slipped in her hurry, and fell into the pool, and held on to the frog she had once rescued, and was now nearly as large as a man.

  It was then that the frog kissed her. She felt its smooth, warm skin against hers, and something inside her gave way, and her arms felt weak. The frog’s tongue burrowed deep into her mouth, and it tasted sweet, a thick and cloying taste Gorel would have recognised immediately, for he had tasted of it before, to his ruin.

  The princess held on to the frog. The frog caressed her in a strangely-human way. And then it spoke.

  What words the frog spoke no one knows. It is said that the sacred scrolls in the great wat of the falangs hold within them the text of the frog’s speech. In the popular retelling, the frog said something like this, and it is set in song:

  I am the falang-god.

  I am the god of the frogs.

  I who was here in the shallows before men

  I who will be here when all men are gone

  I who have waited in the warm shallow ends

  Waited for you, my love, my love.

  It was some time towards the middle of the next day that the princess’ absence was finally noticed. A search was organised, but no trace of her was found. A war was declared on two neighbouring kingdoms in retaliation for the princess’ kidnapping, perhaps unwisely. For, as the two kingdoms, having joined forces, came to the fight, they were victorious. The princess’ father was killed in battle. Her mother was executed the following day. Her brother was taken as a slave, put to work in the water gardens of his enemies, and a week later was dead, killed by an angry nyaka who seemed to have come out of nowhere. Even the name of the kingdom no longer survives, though we know it had existed on the banks of great Tharat, father-river to countless lives. It is said, however, that the frog-tribes of the falang came out of that union, and that in the years since, they had multiplied and, in stages, taken over a large part of the lands on both sides of Tharat, driving away the humans who lived there. They are, on the whole, a peaceful folk, much taken with eating, spawning and song, and they are fond of a dirty joke. In other words, they resemble the vast majority of the World’s dwellers.

  The carnival followed Gorel all along the banks of the river Tharat. In every concentration of dwellings he passed through the carnival was celebrated, a month-long period of festivities that involved water, carnality, and drunkenness. Humble offerings were made to small, local gods: in every village was a shrine, and on it were laid flowers, and choice meats, and oily essences whose fumes suffocated the still, humid air. Scented water was poured over the statues of gods, and children ran in the streets and along the bank and threw water at each other, and the adults drank home-brewed whisky made from whatever fruit had been gathered the summer before, and danced, and ensured that more babies will be born in time for the next summer, too.

  The dust of the gods was everywhere in the carnival. It was even in the air Gorel breathed. It was in the water in which he bathed himself. When it rained, the drops touched his skin like sensuous fingers tracing a lover’s pattern on his arms and neck. When he swam in the river, it was Tharat he felt, father-river, mother-river, asexual and yet sexual, like all gods, with the power of the black kiss Gorel was helpless to refuse.

  He travelled alone and discouraged conversation. Mostly, he listened: to the talk of travellers, to the chatter of revellers, to the gossip and rumour and word of the road. Occasionally, he asked a question, often biding his time until the right moment, waiting for the conversation to turn this way or that.

  In a shack on stilts above the water at sunset: lanterns hanging overhead and the air thick with mosquitoes and incense, the water a calm dark-green below, men and merlangai (for the water-folk, too, had settled Tharat long ago, in the great migration north when the great war of the sea destroyed the city of Suraat-of-the-Infinite-Realm and sent its people refugees) drinking and shouting and throwing dice, Gorel letting his coat open, the guns just visible, listening. Others, too, were there: Ebong mercenaries sitting in a group by themselves, not speaking, their great helmet-like heads as opaque as polished black stone, drinking the potent wine of their species from earthen jars, sucking it through slender straws; a solitary falang, fat and shiny-green, throwing the dice and losing and croaking laughter, drinking beer from a jug and letting it drip down his wide mouth, who Gorel paid much attention to; in a corner two white-skins with guns strapped to their sides, sharing a table with a minor sorcerer from Duraal with the tribal scars thick on his face; out by the water a rare Avian, great wings folded, drinking the same potent whisky Gorel was sipping at, talking to a Nocturne wrapped in shadows. A gaggle of locals: human, drunk, and merry.

  Carnival. Laughter and shouts and the drinks flowing faster than Tharat himself, the spilled liquors themselves offerings to the river-god, and there, in another corner, a solitary figure shrank like the fungus growing from the roots of a wizened tree, not human, exactly, but of what nature, what species, even Gorel couldn’t say, but he knew the merchandise. Gods’ dust.

  He drew a line of dust on the counter and snorted it. No need to pay just yet. He had his own supply, and it was plentiful. Gods’ dust, flaring in his brain, gods’ dust, easing him, soothing him, brightening the World. An abundance! Riches beyond compare! Carnival a time of plenty, and Gorel a captive market, and with money to spare.

  Stillness, but of an unobtrusive form. A man sitting in a bar, conversation flowing past him like a river.

  ‘The crops are good this year –’ from one of the local men.

  ‘And will be good again next year.’

  ‘More drink?’

  ‘More drink!’

  ‘Not when the shadow from the west falls on the banks of Tharat –’ from the Avian on the balcony, a high voice and melodic, and the local men – farmers, fathers, out to have a good time, it’s carnival, looked at him accusingly. ‘What shadow from the west?’

  ‘Who asked you?’

  ‘Foreigners up to no good.’

  ‘Shadow from the west.’ Someone snorted. The Avian said, ‘I flew from Der Danang to Ankhar. There is an army growing in the No Man’s Lands, and it won’t stay there forever.’

  The Ebong mercenaries suddenly still. ‘I was shot at over Black Tor –’ the Avian again.

  ‘Too bad they missed.’

  Laughter. But the group of Merlangai did not laugh with the men.

  ‘I heard of this army,’ one of the sea-folk said. ‘They talk about in Ankhar, and of the mage who leads it.’

  ‘A mage?’ the falang merchant. ‘There are always mages. Good for nothing –’ and he hissed something in a language inhuman, and unknown to Gorel, though the meaning was clear. The Duraali sorcerer stood up. ‘Say that again, friend?’

  The falang looked at him and shrugged; his whole body rippled with the motion. ‘No offence meant.’

  ‘But was taken.’

  The falang roared with sudden laughter. ‘Suit yourself, then, scar face!’

  The Duraali made a motion with his hand. One of the white-skins with him stopped him. ‘What are you going to do?’ the fala
ng sputtered, more in amusement than fright, ‘turn me into a frog?’

  A long moment of silence. Then the Duraali shrugged, and smiled, and sat down again.

  ‘Bloody foreigners –’ from one of the local humans, and from the Avian – ‘better us than that army when it comes.’

  ‘Let it come!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Let them come, if they think they can take us!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You think no army ever came here, Avian? Tharat is a great god –’

  ‘Father-river, giver of life –’ from one of the men, dressed like a priest –

  ‘He at least would not object to a generous offering of blood!’

  ‘Foreigners’ blood!’

  ‘Well, as long as it’s not your own,’ the Avian said.

  ‘Silence!’ the falang merchant suddenly roared. He turned to the Avian on the balcony. ‘You think we are children playing in the river mud? You think we can’t protect ourselves? There’s more sorcery in the clay of this river then there is in the drylands of the west. Let them come, and Tharat would rise to swallow them. Let them come, and they will find the frog-tribes, at least, ready and waiting for them. Yes!’ he shouted, turning now to the men, pointing at them an accusing finger – ‘We of Falang-Et have heard of this mage, this warlord gathering an army in the west. The water speaks, and the falang listens, we say. Let his army play with the humans down south, if he so wishes. Or let him remain in the drylands, in No Man’s Land, where the Black Tor broods like the forgotten, shrunken god he is. A mausoleum of gods… well, here on the banks of Tharat our gods are very much alive, and fat with our offerings –’

  ‘Surely not as fat as you –’

  Laughter, albeit nervous, and the falang visibly deflated, which caused more laughter.