The merchant would be missed. And when the young couple, really not more than children – and certainly as cunning – arrived with their story already prepared and tested for faults, it would be a human killer the falang will be looking for. And yet the children would not want him caught. No doubt they were praying – but to which god? – that he was long gone, and in the opposite direction to Falang-Et. Well, Gorel thought, in that he’d have to disappoint them.
On the third night he camped by a tributary of Tharat, a narrow and clear brook whose water was cold and its touch refreshing. The burns on his face were healing. Having washed, Gorel built a small fire and dried himself beside it. For a long moment he was still. He felt no urgency. There was always the road, and he must always follow it, until Goliris could be found, until revenge could be exacted and right of birth returned. But he had learned patience, he had no choice. And so he sat and stared at the fire and remembered… there was a secret room his father once showed him, its entrance concealed in one of the disused corridors of the Dark Wings of the Palace, where the immense building faced onto the impenetrable jungles which seemed always to whisper in a voice like the rustling of leaves, and to conspire endlessly, and fight against the Palace’s intrusion into their grounds. To be of Goliris was to be of sea and of jungle, and to be king and ruler of both. His father had taken him into the corridor and pressed a hidden lever and a section of the wall opened before them. They entered the space beyond. Another corridor, a secret one. They followed it, deep down under the palace, where the space opened and the darkness was of a humid, itching quality, the darkness of the jungle. His father had lit a torch. A wind tried to blow it away and the king of Goliris hissed and the wind silenced at his command. In the light of the torch Gorel saw a great hall, or perhaps it was a cave, naturally made. There were many ancient roots dug into this place from high above. Ancient, but very much alive. ‘They had conspired against us, my son,’ his father had told him, ‘they had tried to impose chaos upon our order, and failed, and so now they belong to the jungle, as they must. Watch!’
And Gorel watched, and felt pride in his father. There were many men down there, in the dark, pale and naked like earthworms. Some women too, as naked and fleshless as the men, crawling in the dirt, speaking in no human tongue but in soft, pitiable moans and hisses. The roots were alive. The great fleshy roots of the trees high above moved here, in this underground cavern, with no water, no wind to move them. Of their own accord they writhed and thrashed, like questing fingers, and when they found the humans in their midst the fastened on to them with slow, but sure, greed.
‘Some of them have been here for decades,’ his father had told him, quiet pride in his voice. ‘From the time of your grandfather, and before. Look –’ and he took Gorel by the hand and they walked amidst the ploughed fields of the prisoners, and the roots shied away from them, and the prisoners whispered in their soft, sad voices and crawled away. They came to the opposite end of the tavern. Roots hang from the ceiling. ‘Every year he is fading more. But still he remains. Since before your grandfather’s days, he who was once a mighty sorcerer, and now there is no man living to remember his name. Look at him!’
Gorel looked, and saw the fat pale grub that clung amidst the roots, almost headless, merely a wide, gummy mouth fastened on the flesh of trees, and they in their turn had entered him throughout the years, had found his orifices and grown shoots inside them. The man was a fungus, feeding of the roots just as they fed of him. ‘I hope,’ his father said with the same quiet pride, and held Gorel’s hand stronger in his, ‘that one day you might take your own son down here, and show him the greatness, the durability of Goliris. Even our enemies we keep.’
‘You seem deep in thought, gunslinger. Missing home?’ the voice, cool and smooth and mocking, jerked him out of a half-dream and the guns were in his hands before the voice had finished speaking. A shadow rustled in the canopy of the trees. The voice had come from above. ‘Please refrain from shooting, if you possibly can.’
A mocking voice, and too close for comfort in its assumptions. ‘Show yourself,’ Gorel said.
‘Gladly.’ A shadow dropped down from the canopy and stretched itself lazily before Gorel. A high-pitched voice, melodic enough. An elongated, pale face, and a wiry body, and two great wings, now folded about him. An Avian – the same he had seen, a week or so before, stirring a fight in a drinking hole by the river. Gorel said, ‘You?’
‘So you remember me?’ the Avian’s eyes twinkled. They were large and black, looking like twin bruises set in his delicate face. Gorel made no reply, and the Avian chuckled. ‘I remember you,’ he said.
‘What do you want?’ he did not lower his guns. The Avian shrugged. ‘I saw your fire and desired some company.’ From a fold of cloth (he was very lightly dressed) beneath his wings he extracted a bottle. ‘Care to join me in a drink?’
No visible weapons, though he wouldn’t necessarily need them. He had flight, and nasty talons if he needed them, on both hands and feet. Gorel had fought for a time alongside a company of Avians in the Mesina Campaign; fought against them, too, when it came to that. ‘Sure,’ he said, holstering the guns without flourish. He was not fool enough to think this meeting was accidental, nor was he meant to think so. And he was curious.
‘Name’s Kettle,’ the Avian said, uncorking the bottle, taking a long gulp, and passing it to Gorel. Gorel drank. It was local rice whiskey, and potent; it nearly made him cough. ‘Gorel,’ he said. He sat back down, and the Avian joined him. He stretched against the trunk of a tree, wings rustling with the motion, opening a little on either side of him. There was something strangely sensuous about that movement; Gorel saw smooth, exposed skin, and muscles…
‘Where do you go, Kettle?’ Gorel said. Kettle titled his head sideways and looked at Gorel, smiling. Mocking, yes, but below that, something else too. ‘I rather fancy I am going the same way you are, Gorel.’
‘And where would that be?’
Kettle’s smile grew larger in reply. ‘What happened to your face?’ he said. Gorel touched the damage on his face. Already, new skin was growing there. ‘A little hunting accident,’ he said.
‘Nasty,’ Kettle said. ‘What were you hunting?’ and his smile grew even wider, revealing long, narrow, pointed teeth that glinted in the light of the fire. Gorel didn’t reply directly. ‘What are you hunting?’ he said, instead. ‘When you’re not fermenting brawls, that is.’
‘But it was fun, wasn’t it? Too bad you didn’t stay until the end,’ Kettle said.
‘Neither did you, if I recall correctly.’
‘Oh, I was there,’ the Avian said, and there was something so childishly gleeful in his voice that Gorel found himself smiling back. ‘Hovering?’ Gorel said. The Avian laughed. ‘I was, as you say, hovering,’ he agreed.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Find the lay of the land. Find out what the locals think of the rising threat in the south, and if so what their plans may be.’
‘You said you flew from Der Danang to Ankhar, over the No Man’s Lands,’ Gorel said, remembering. ‘And that you were shot at over the Black Tor…’
‘You have a good memory, friend.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Gorel said, ‘but I can recognise shit when I smell it, and call it by its name.’
‘I’m not sure I get your meaning…’
‘If you came from anywhere, Avian, it would be from the Black Tor, I would say. An agent of this mysterious new mage I keep hearing about?’
Somehow, Kettle contrived to look both bored and amused. ‘It’s a possibility,’ he agreed. ‘And you, Gorel? Do you have an employer?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘But sometimes you are for hire.’
‘Sometimes we are all for hire, Avian.’
Kettle laughed. It was a laugh like the call of birds, high and penetrating. He made himself more comfortable against his tree and made a sign with his hand. Gorel passed him the bottle. ‘To y
our good health, Gorel not-for-hire,’ he said, and drank. ‘And to the health of Dornalji Spawn-Son, of the Fifth Pond Lineage, and M… Master of Procurement – or is it too late for that now?’
The gun was back in Gorel’s hand, and it was pointing at the Avian’s head. Kettle sighed and corked the bottle and leaned it gently beside him on the ground. ‘You are very attached to these toys of yours, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Please, put the gun away. You cannot resolve an argument with a gun.’
‘On the contrary,’ Gorel said, the gun steady in his hand, pointing directly between Kettle’s eyes, ‘I believe you can always resolve an argument with a gun.’
‘So direct,’ the Avian said, ‘so simple. If only life were like that, gunslinger.’ He raised his hands, stretched them upwards, a faint grin etched on his face. Gorel couldn’t help but be distracted somehow by the way the Avian’s flesh moved under his wings, tender skin covering lithe, sinuous muscles. ‘Please.’
‘You were spying on me.’
‘It is my job,’ the Avian said, and for the first time all hint of a smile disappeared from his face. ‘It’s what I do. I spy. You kill, but do I hold that against you?’
‘I kill when I have to.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Why were you spying on me?’
‘Oh, I was curious,’ the Avian said, and the smile returned to his face. His wings opened and closed, creating a slow, steady beat against his body. ‘A lone human, and a gunman besides, travelling up river to the frog-tribes’ lands – I had to ask myself why. And on whose behalf. And so –’and the smile widened again, and he licked his lips, with a small darting tongue that seemed to point, for just a fleeting moment, at Gorel – ‘I thought it might be enlightening to watch you. And it was! Imagine my surprise when I saw you crawling, stealthily, naked, through the water of mighty Tharat, and kidnapping that annoying little froggie, and tying him up!’
Was it Gorel’s imagination, or did Kettle put an accent on naked? Gorel felt suddenly uncomfortable. He lowered the gun. He was reacting to the Avian, he realised. Something within him was responding to the Avian’s voice, his body, attracting him, clouding his mind. He sighed and put the gun away. ‘Pass me the whiskey,’ he said.
‘Gladly.’
Gorel put the bottle to his lips. He was uncomfortably aware that, only moments before, Kettle’s lips had fastened on to the same place that his touch, his breath, still remained on the mouth of the bottle. He tipped the bottle into his mouth and drank. Suddenly he was desperate for more dust – but he would not use it in front this stranger. ‘So what do you want?’ he said.
‘The same thing you do,’ Kettle said amicably. He lowered his arms and his wings stilled. The flames were low in the fire now, and Kettle’s face looked covered in fleeting shadows. He seemed closer now – perhaps it was a trick of the light – more physical than before. Gorel could almost feel him beside him. All I have to do is reach out and I can touch him, he thought. He is too close. Yet he didn’t move.
‘I want the mirror of Falang-Et,’ Kettle said. His voice was soft, throaty. It seemed to come from close to Gorel’s ear. Almost, he thought he could feel the Avian’s breath against his cheek. But Kettle hadn’t moved at all. ‘So, evidently, do you,’ Kettle said. ‘And it occurs to me we could better achieve that goal if we cooperated.’
‘I work alone.’
‘That’s not what Jericho Moon told me.’
That shook Gorel. ‘You met him?’
‘He left Tharat and went into the No Man’s Lands and, once there, offered his services to my master. He was gladly accepted.’
‘He did mention going that way…’
‘So what do you say, Gorel? Partners?’
Some inner rage, some baffled anger made Gorel stand up. He had been happy in his solitude, before this intruder came. He grabbed the Avian by the throat and lifted him up, pinning him against the tree. ‘Why should I help you, servant of sorcery?’
The smile had left the Avian’s face. In its stead was something different, harder to categorise. A look in his deep black eyes… Gorel was aware of Kettle’s wings spreading, opening around the two of them, cocooning them together in a dark, warm silence. ‘If you go alone,’ Kettle said simply, his breath, the smell of cardamom seeds, soft against Gorel’s face, ‘you will fail. I am offering you a chance at what you want.’
‘What I want…’ Gorel said, and he shook his head, and Kettle smiled. ‘What do you want, Gorel of Goliris?’ he whispered, and suddenly his face was against Gorel’s, and his wings were wrapped around him, holding him, warm and close, and his lips touched Gorel’s, and his tongue was in Gorel’s mouth, hot and spiced and questing, and Gorel, captured not unwillingly, surrendered himself to the Avian’s embrace.
Part Two
Mother of Jade
The city of Falang-Et sprawls along both sides of the river Tharat, a pleasant, low-lying settlement dominated by Wat Falang at its heart. At night, during the wet season, there are often storms. On such a night, with the heavens flashing in silent explosions of light, with jagged lightning slashing open the sky like a cutthroat’s knife and delayed thunder bursts follow it – on such a night, with the rolling thunder echoing, magnified, between the hills, Gorel of Goliris came to Falang-Et.
He came stealthily, avoiding the river-approach and the main road. He came like a thief, which is what he was, or hoped, at any rate, to become.
He came to steal the Mirror of Falang-Et. His companion and fellow thief had gone ahead of him, by air. The third member of their party came by water. Thus were the elements preserved. It was, in the way of the thief, a gesture of tradition.
The thief-scholar Soth Bell, who lived in the Third Spawning Cycle (as counted in the falang calendar) wrote, in his great treaty On Thievery and General Pilfering, that the “ideal number of an expedition set to capture a mythical object is three. In that,” said Soth Bell, “the elements that, together, join to form the world and with it men and their gods, are met. Water, air, and earth, the three roads upon which mortal kin travels the World.” A fourth element, fire, was said by Soth Bell to represent “the gods, and in this analogy the object of theft. A thief once burnt is in future a more careful one. Or dead.” Gorel, who had little time for books, and who in any case would never have heard of Soth Bell (who disappeared in the far reaches of the north of the World on a quest whose purpose he had never divulged but who, by his supposed demise, was later to birth a new cult of thief-monks called the Order of Om-Gan), did not plan on remaining in a set of three indefinitely. He was, in fact, thinking that a bullet between the eyes of an unwanted accomplice can solve a lot of problems. And that a more accurate representation of the old four elements hypothesis could be summed up as urine, goat’s shit, smoke and intestinal gas. He was not much enamoured of poetry, either.
The third member of their party was an unwanted addition brought on by Kettle’s insistence. The way it happened was so:
A week out of Falang-Et Gorel and Kettle stopped and made camp on the banks of a tributary of Tharat. Kettle was perching on a high branch, sleeping. Gorel was building a small fire and planning to make eel stew. Kettle was good at catching fish. All was quiet. The graal was sitting motionless in the grasses, absorbing the last rays of the sun. Nothing stirred. Gorel’s few belongings were resting against a tree trunk close to the water’s edge. The water murmured as it bubbled past. Gorel added kindling to the small fire and shifted two larger branches close. The wood not being dried enough, it smoked. Which made Gorel think of gods’ dust, and of the dwindling supply in his bag. And so, by chance alone, he turned – just in time to see a slippery, green-blue hand with long, adroit fingers rise from the water and make a grab for his belongings.
He lunged forward. The hand was already fastened on his bag and pulling it into the water. Gorel closed fist on delicate wrist and gave a violent tug. From below the surface of the water someone said, ‘Hey!’ and bubbles rose to the surface. Gorel tugged again, h
arder, and pulled. He felt, without looking, Kettle awaken and fall down like a shadow from the tree. ‘What have you got there, Gorel?’ he inquired, not quite stifling a yawn. ‘A bit late to be fishing.’
‘Not for some, it seems,’ Gorel said (Kettle barked a laugh like the call of a large, predatory bird) and pulled someone small and wet from the water.
‘Hey, let me go!’ the someone said. In reply, Gorel backhanded the speaker. The small figure fell back and flopped to the ground, and the gun was in Gorel’s hand, and pointing. ‘Don’t point that thing at me, human! Your mouth is like the asshole of a nyak. Your head is the misshapen skull of an aborted foetus. Your penis is a shrivelled leaf unsuitable for smoking by even the lowest frog-spawned bitch in all Tharat. Your –’
Gorel pressed the trigger. Earth exploded between the speaker’s legs. ‘Shut up,’ Gorel said.
‘Now, where are your manners,’ Kettle murmured, and crouched down beside Gorel, his wings opening. Gorel had to stop himself from slipping a hand in between the Avian’s wings, in that sensitive, erogenous zone where the Avian’s skin was softest. ‘Now, what do we have here?’
‘A thief,’ Gorel said. Kettle flashed him a brief smile and turned back to their captive. ‘A thief, of course. But what kind of a thief?’
‘Not a very good one?’ Gorel suggested.
‘Hey! Watch your mouth!’ the captive said.
‘Got caught, didn’t you?’
‘You got lucky, human!’
‘Let me shoot him.’
‘No, Gorel,’ Kettle said, and smiled again. ‘Not a he, I don’t think.’
‘A woman?’ Gorel peered closer at their captive, who was glaring at him but was not, so far, getting up. A small, strange creature, with long webbed fingers and an elongated, hairless skull. A blue and green skin that shifted with each movement, resembling water. Large eyes and – yes! – the definite swelling of small, but perfectly formed breasts, and –
Gorel and the Pot Bellied God Page 3
