Gorel and the Pot Bellied God (2 page)

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 falang 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.

‘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.