Gorel and the Pot Bellied God

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.