Gorel and the Pot Bellied God Read online

‘So Tharat feels horny one day,’ one of the Ebong says, the great helmet-like head rising from its drink to stare at the crowd, who fell silent. ‘And thinks, what can I find to fuck around here?’

  ‘Sacrilegious!’ from the man dressed like a priest. The Ebong ignored him. ‘So he wanders through his domain, until he sees a leaf, floating on the water, and squatting on the leaf, an enormous frog.’

  ‘I think I heard that one already –’

  ‘So he goes up to the frog and says, ‘I wish, my friend, to have intercourse with you.’ The frog looks at him for a long moment, says, ‘I don’t know about that.’ Tharat looks at the frog and it looks pretty good to him. He wants to fuck this frog. ‘I want to have intercourse with you!’ he says again. The frog says, ‘I don’t know…’ Tharat asks it again. This goes on for a while. Finally the frog says, ‘Fine, I can see you’re very passionate about this, so… bend down and we’ll give it a go, but I think my dick is too small for your ass!’

  For a moment, there was absolute silence, broken only by the Ebong mercenary’s loud, rasping laugh. On his seat, Gorel tensed, one hand easing towards the gun at his side. There was the sound of great wings beating, and the Avian took to the air. The Nocturne who was standing beside him, silent as smoke, melted into the shadows. Gorel turned in his seat. The falang merchant was staring at the Ebong. The local men all stood at the same time.

  In a corner, the dust merchant, solitary, inhuman, indistinct. Gorel watched him. No one else paid the dope-peddler attention. The atmosphere in the place was of the kind one could cut with a knife – or shatter with a bullet. And so it was only Gorel who saw the figure moving unobtrusively onto the wooden platform that hung above the water, open to the sky, and there it turned a face – smooth, indistinct, like water – back and smiled, and dropped down into the river below, like water, falling, and melted into the river’s darkness.

  ‘You are going to die,’ the falang merchant stated, and he stepped forward and in his hand now was a knife, with a handle the colour of reeds. And now there was a gun in the Ebong mercenary’s hand, and his companions too were standing, a group with hard, black exoskeletons forming a unified shield against these local peasants who can’t take a joke. ‘One more step, frog-spawn, and I burst you open like a clay jug.’

  Gorel was already by the entrance when the first shot was fired. After that there were shouts, and more shots, and a couple of screams (one cut short) and things breaking. He walked unhurriedly away along the river, and saw two of the Merlangai who had been in the bar swim away from it now and, a little later, the first of the corpses to come floating down great Tharat, and he was somewhat surprised to notice it was not human or falang, but one of the Ebong mercenaries, looking like a black obsidian boat without a prow: it was his head that had been burst open.

  He waited on the river bank. It was a deserted spot. The road passed close by. The graal was sitting motionless in the vegetation, almost invisible, its carapace a dark green. It was approaching night, the second since he’d left the last settlement. He had been tracking the falang merchant. They were both going in the same direction, though Gorel suspected that, after tonight, there would only be one of them left on the road. He harboured no grudge towards the merchant, no ill-feelings. And yet he would do what needed to be done.

  For a moment he raised his head, alerted by a soft whispery sound. Did something fleet across the night sky? But there was nothing there. He turned his attention back to the river, and waited. Presently, the falang merchant’s caravan approached.

  It came gliding softly on the water, two long boats, with sails the colour of algae. Gorel had chosen this spot for a reason. The ground on the other side of the river was firm and the trees provided shade, and there were rings of stones where fires had burnt, and the stones were blackened from use. And so: a well-frequented place, a convenient stop-over on the river road.

  His surmise was correct. For, as the two boats came they slowed, and soon stopped and dropped anchor in the shallows the other side of the river from him. Gorel was motionless, sitting with his back against a tree, watching. There were only two others beside the merchant: two young falangs, a boy and a girl. The boy drove the second boat. The girl, from what Gorel had observed, was there to service the fat merchant, a service he seemed to demand with some frequency. It would, possibly, make Gorel’s task easier.

  He watched them set up camp. The boy was left to light a fire and prepare food. The merchant shelled his green-blue robes and waddled into the shallows. The girl joined him there. She was smooth-skinned, the greenish tinge of her skin lovely in the light of the setting sun. Her nipples were the colour of dried blood. Her webbed hands were busy underwater. The merchant gurgled, and his body shook in the water. ‘Use your mouth, girl,’ he said. ‘The god gave you a mouth for a reason.’

  Yes. It would make it easier.

  The boy had lit a fire. In the water, the merchant’s thrashing had subsided. ‘Go and prepare the food,’ he said, and the girl rose, glistening, and hastened to oblige. The merchant was alone, and seemed in no hurry to follow. Good.

  Gorel eased himself up. He was a little up-river from the falang camp. Now he entered Tharat, and the warm waters of the river rose to cover him. Gorel too was naked. Even his guns were left behind. All he had were a knife, strapped to his left arm, and a sharp, hollow needle, made from a reed, inside which was another needle, filled with gods’ dust. He paddled deeper into the river and then let the current drag him. His breathing was slow, his body relaxed. He could have been a nyaka, hunting. Like in the old story about the falang god. Though there would be no princess to save this frog tonight. Only the truth might.

  The problem was simple. He needed certain information. That information had not been forthcoming. He had listened for it in vain. Offers to purchase the information had met with blank incomprehension, flat refusals, and innocent displays of ignorance. The subject was the falang god’s mirror.

  He had killed an old man, a traitor of Goliris. But before he killed him, the old man told him of the mirror. Just that, and nothing more. And yet it was enough. Gorel had sworn to return to Goliris, avenge his family, the fate, the treachery that sent him across the World and left him stranded, a child in strangers’ lands. If the mirror could show him Goliris, could show him the way, then that was enough.

  He was going to steal it.

  And yet, every question, every mention of the mirror brought nothing but silence, from falangs and human dwellers of Tharat alike. He needed to have the information before he came to Falang-Et. If he had to kill to get it, so be it.

  He paused, resisted the current, and swam stealthily to the river bank. He raised his head minutely above the reeds, observing the falang camp. The girl was crouching beside the boy. They were talking, too softly for Gorel to hear. But he noticed that they had chosen such a place that was obscured from view of the merchant, were he to turn and look for them. He wondered who they were.

  He returned to the water. They would not be disturbed. He let the current take him again, slowly, slowly. When he raised his head above water he heard a rumbling sound and almost smiled: the merchant, it seemed, was taking a nap in the shallows. He let the water swallow him again.

  The falang never even noticed him. Gorel rose from the water beside the merchant and in the same movement stuck the sharpened needle into the falang’s neck, depressing the lever that pushed the second tube out, delivering a carefully measured dose of dust into the falang’s blood stream.

  The corpulent falang sighed and relaxed further into the water. There had been no need for the knife. Gorel grabbed the merchant and began to tow him, gently. The river carried them both downstream.

  He had prepared that spot, too, in advance. There was natural cover here, a grove of sweet-smelling trees with a small clearing easily-reached from the river. He surfaced at the shallows, dragged the merchant along with him. The falang was heavy.

  He deposited the merchant in the clearing and tied him u
p, arms spread out and up, lifting him almost off the ground. The dust had subdued the merchant, but Gorel could not afford to wait long. The merchant’s young companions would soon notice him missing, and might decide to look for him.

  Earlier, Gorel had lit a fire in the clearing. Now only dimly-glowing coals remained. They emitted little light, but their heat was still strong. He had also left stones in the fire. He picked one up now, using makeshift wooden tongs. He turned to the merchant and slapped him on the face. The falang did not stir. Gorel lifted the stone and touched it briefly to the falang’s chest.

  The smell of burning skin was sickening: and at the same time it had affected Gorel’s stomach, divorced from his conscious mind, and made it growl. The falang opened his eyes. There was drool at the corners of his mouth. Gorel touched him with the burning stone again, but this time he applied it to the man’s armpit – and he didn’t remove it quite so quickly.

  When the falang began to scream Gorel slapped him again and roughly shoved a piece of cloth in his mouth. Then he returned the stone to the mouldering fire. He went and stood close to the falang merchant, and looked into his eyes. ‘If you scream again,’ he said, ‘I will kill you.’

  He took out the cloth. The falang spattered but otherwise remained silent. ‘Good,’ Gorel said. He put his hand to the falang’s throat. The merchant tried to turn away. ‘Please,’ Gorel said. The merchant’s skin felt slimy. A strong pulse beat against the tips of Gorel’s fingers. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘My… my name?’

  Gorel’s fingers tightened around the falang’s throat. ‘Your name,’ he said, patiently.

  ‘D… Dornalji Spawn-Son, of the Fifth Pond Lineage, M… Master of Procurement to the… to the…’ Gorel released him. He wiped his hand against the bark of the nearest tree. ‘Who is the girl?’

  ‘The girl?’

  Gorel reached for the small cache he had left there to serve him. He picked up a small, sharpened knife. Dornalji’s eyes moved rapidly in their sockets, looking in turns at Gorel and the knife. ‘My niece.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Apprentice.’

  ‘You like your niece?’ the knife was coming closer to the falang’s neck. ‘Please,’ Dornalji said. ‘I have money. I can pay you –’

  The easy questions came first. Once a man started talking, it was easier for him to go further.

  ‘Are you a religious man, Dornalji Spawn-Son of the Fifth Pond Lineage?’

  ‘What –’ the falang stared at Gorel in what seemed like true confusion. ‘I serve the god like all must do.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  Gorel hated to do this thing. And yet… a part of him, the part that was cast out of Goliris, that was exiled to the harsh lands of Lower Kidron, the part that was rejected and banished and put together the way a pistol is made – that part was almost gleeful. That part delighted in the cruelty, and in the fear of the being that hung, naked and cowering, before him. And if his whole conscious being might deny it, nevertheless he knew it to be true. A gun must have no illusions as to its nature. And a bullet has but one true course.

  ‘Falang-Et!’ the merchant said. ‘Falang-Et!’

  ‘He is in the city?’

  ‘The god will help me,’ Dornalji said. ‘He is in the water. He is in the reeds. He watches over his people. Falang-Et!’

  The knife landed on the merchant’s neck with some force, drawing blood. Gorel pulled it softly towards himself, holding the falang merchant’s mouth shut with his hand, stifling his cries. ‘Can he move faster than a knife?’ he whispered, leaning close to the falang’s ear. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘What?’ the merchant dribbled vomit against Gorel’s hand. It oozed through Gorel’s fingers. ‘What do you want from me?’

  Gorel removed his hand. ‘Tell me about the mirror of Falang-Et.’

  ‘The… the mirror? But –’ There was momentary wonder in the falang’s eyes. ‘What do you want with the mirror? It is of no use to you.’

  ‘I want to know where it is. I want to know what it looks like. I want to know how heavy it is. I want to know who has access to it, and when, and why. And I want you to tell me these things, or I will, very slowly, kill you.’

  ‘It is in the Wat! In Wat Falang! In the inner sanctum of holy, in the realm of the god himself!’ the merchant suddenly laughed. Then, with his whole body expanding, he spat in Gorel’s face.

  It burned. Gorel bit hard on his lip so as not to scream. It ran down his face like an acid, burning, splitting his skin, drawing blood, causing his nerves to flare with pain. He lashed out with the knife, blinded, and thought he connected but couldn’t be sure. He dropped the knife and ran for the river.

  He fell twice, the second time hitting a log that sent him, head first, into the water. He submerged his head in Tharat and could still hear the merchant’s laughter echoing in his ears. When he raised his head above the surface of the water he could at least see, but the pain was still there. He dunked his head in again, and cursed underwater. The bubbles that rose sounded like laughter.

  At last he returned to his clearing. The falang was still there, hanging with his arms up. His belly had been sliced open. His entrails fell from the gash in his body onto the ground. A pool of rancid, dark-green blood collected at his webbed feet. His eyes were open, staring into nothing.

  I did this, Gorel thought; but he felt nothing.

  He spent the night sitting in the clearing, though he knew he had to get away. He could not make himself move. The compulsion of the dark kiss was on him again, made stronger by the spilled blood, by the needless killing, and he took out his bag of dust and cooked it, and used the same syringe he had used on the dead merchant to deliver the drug into himself.

  Gods’ dust. It coursed through his veins, infecting his head like the soft tread of perfumed feet, loosening his limbs, rendering him incapable of movement, incapable of all action, of all thought. A river ran through his head and its flow murmured soothing words in a woman’s voice, a loving voice, barely remembered, never forgotten. It showed him Goliris, the way it was, and him a child running through the palace, and it brought back the salt-scent of the sea and the smell of the deep dark jungles, a smell of rot and renewal which had no name. It made him a child again, and eased his loneliness. And at last he slept. When he woke it was morning, and the sun shone through the tree-tops, and Goliris was a memory from long ago. He cursed and got up to his feet. The merchant stared back at him with dead eyes. His body was clothed in a cowl and black robe. When Gorel stepped closer the merchant’s coverings moved, as if blown by the wind. Gorel clapped. A cloud of thick, fat black flies rose from the falang’s dangling corpse and flew in all directions. Gorel covered his face with his arm, but even so one fly lodged itself in his mouth. Gorel spat and cursed again. He went to the bank of Tharat and looked up-river.

  The falang merchant’s two long boats were gone.

  He scanned the river but could find no trace of them. The river stretched empty before him in both directions. The sun glinted on the water. Gorel looked at the ground. There, his feet, and there the heavy bulk of the merchant as he dragged him. And there… there were other marks there, of smaller naked feet of a different sort. Webbed they were, and light, but very pronounced there in the mud. Two pairs of feet, not one, and going away from the river, following his own running steps as he came the other way, and fell blinded into the water.

  He followed his own footsteps back now, and saw how the others matched them. They ended in the clearing. His knife still lay on the ground. Its blade was crusted with blood. He picked it up. He had hit at the merchant, yes. But did he cut? He bent down and tried not to gag. Shit had crusted on the merchant’s legs where it dripped out of him the night before. He examined the gash in the merchant’s belly. A wide, deep cut – and another, and another, sending out a river of blood, splattering whoever held the knife. And yet, Gorel remembered no blood on his hands, on his face. The falang’s acid, yes. But that, and nothin
g more. Two pairs of feet, and he could put faces, if not names, to them. Apprentice and Niece, he thought, and for the first in a long time a smile came to his face. With Gorel cast as Culprit, and thank you so much. He followed their footsteps again. Back to the river, by a different route, leaving him well alone. He followed them into the river. The water of Tharat soothed his aching skin. He paddled up-river and onto the other side of Tharat, to the place where the falangs had made their camp.

  Packed in a hurry, he thought, looking at the ground. Packed and glided down-river like two fleeting shadows, and well on their way home now, Uncle and Master Procurator left behind for good. He almost felt nostalgic. To be young again… he laughed.

  When he looked at his reflection in the water he saw puss. The falang had hurt him. But Gorel had been hurt before.

  To work, then. Quickly, yes, but methodically too. First, the body. He removed the ropes and stowed them away. What to do with the corpse? He glanced at the river and thought – no. It was not meant for Tharat.

  In the end he dug a grave, and rolled the merchant into it. He covered up the pool of drying blood and body fluids. He removed all traces of himself from that spot. The grave could be noticed – would be noticed. But he would be long gone by then.

  He returned the short distance up-river. His graal was still there, still hidden in the shrubbery. It was absorbing sunlight, its jade carapace glimmering. Its long, curved tail was up, gathering moisture. A desert animal, getting drunk on the abundance of water in the air. Gorel roused him. The Graal stood, insectoid legs graceful against the ground. Then they rode away from that place.

  For two days and two nights Gorel encountered no living being. He stayed away from the river and the river-road, and skirted any sign of habitation, human or otherwise. Only once did he sense something nearby, a sound as of great beating wings, and a shadow fleeing in the sky, but nothing more than that. This was pleasant, temperate land, but he was now in a buffer zone, of sorts, this almost-empty land separating the human settlements of the south with their falang neighbours up north. As pleasant as it was, the land here was a sort of fence, and he knew that once he’d crossed from one side of it to the other he would be a trespasser, and worse: they may be expecting him.