Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God

Copyright © 2011 by Lavie Tidhar

All rights reserved.

Published as an ebook in 2014 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., in conjunction with the Zeno Agency LTD.

Cover art by Pedro Marques.

ISBN 978-1-625671-06-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: The Road to Falang-Et

Part II: Mother of Jade

Part III: The Shadow from the West

Also 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 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.

* * *

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 up, 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 nothing 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.

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 your 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, harder, 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 –

‘It’s rude to stare,’ the captive said reproachfully. Gorel found himself mumbling an apology. No male genitalia, that was certain. Hairless, too. He shook his head. ‘A thief’s a thief,’ he said. ‘Shall I shoot her?’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘Gorel, put away the gun. You, what are you? Half-caste?’

‘Your mother was a half-cast, bird-shit. Half-bitch, half-whore. Your father was the excrement of garuda. Your grandmother was born of the piss of –’

‘Quiet,’ Kettle said. The captive stopped. Gorel was impressed. ‘You look like a mix of Merlangai and falang,’ Kettle said. ‘I’d say with some Nocturne blood somewhere in the mix. Am I right?’

‘What if you are?’

‘Is it difficult for you on land?’

‘I can manage.’

‘Would you be more comfortable back in the water?’

The lying figure smiled. She had, Gorel had to admit, now that he thought about it, quite an attractive face. Her teeth were like fish bones, sharp and dainty, and her eyes had the colour of the distant ocean… ‘Aren’t you going to shoot me?’

‘I was thinking of asking if you’d care to join us for dinner,’ Kettle said. Gorel sighed and holstered his gun. Kettle, he was learning, had some strange ways about him.

‘Yeah? What are you having?’

‘I believe my companion is cooking eels according to some secret recipe I am not privy to.’

‘I’m boiling them,’ Gorel said. Their captive stood up and stretched. She was very naked, Gorel thought. But then, what need was there for clothes when you were in the water? ‘It does smell good,’ she allowed. ‘Very well, since you ask so nicely.’

‘I’m Kettle,’ Kettle said. ‘This is Gorel.’

The thief bowed. ‘Sereli of Tharat, and let me say what a pleasure it is to meet you. Apologies for the way I spoke earlier. I have a tendency sometimes to use certain language when it is probably not called for –’

‘Like when someone is pointing a gun at you?’ Gorel said. Sereli laughed. ‘I’ve had worse pointed at me,’ she said. Gorel scowled. Then he went back to the eels.

In the event, Sereli had gone back in the water (executing a graceful, arcing dive) and returned moments later from further up the bank, dressed this time, and with a big of her own. She was also carrying something else.

‘A turtle?’ Gorel said. The creature stared up at him mournfully. ‘Ever notice how their heads look remarkably like a male penis?’ Sereli said. ‘Taste better, though.’

Gorel thanked her and took the turtle off her hands. The turtle wouldn’t fit in the pot. He ended up having to bash its shell against a rock and add the meat into the pot that way. Then he went back to his pack and took out his stash of dust and took enough for the world to slow down into a hazy cool flow like a slow river.

* * *

They made love that night, the three of them. Sereli was warm and cool, her body like differing pockets of temperature as one swims through water; Kettle was a dry heat, like distant wind from the sands of Meskatel. Against them Gorel was dry ground, long-trodden, weary from the passage of armies and years, seeking respite in water and air.

In the morning they headed to Falang-Et, together. A week later, they were finally there. Kettle flew in. Sereli swam. The city was a maze of waterways and canals. Gorel walked. He had left the graal outside the city. He took only his guns.

‘What do we need her for?’ he had asked Kettle. And the Avian smiled and said, ‘What if you have to swim to get into the temple?’

Sereli was going to Falang-Et for the same reason as Gorel and Kettle, which was to steal. She had no specifics in mind: it was the time of carnival, and the pickings would be easy. When Kettle offered her the job (she was nestled between him and Gorel at the time) she smiled and said stealing from a god should be exciting. She came as Gorel’s tongue explored her hairless wetness, Kettle like a cloak wrapped over Gorel’s back.

He took nothing with him but his guns. As he stepped into the city he was wary of guards, but Falang-Et was open, a sprawling expanse of greenery and water. As he came onto the main road a procession was passing, and for a moment he thought it was a carnival parade. Then he realised there was no shouting involved, and turned to look again, and had a shock.

Behind an arrow-head of mourners, near a large, cumbersome coffin, was the young falang girl he had last seen on the river bank the day he kidnapped the merchant. She was dressed in sombre dark green robes. She was exquisite, like a jade statue. Her eyes met his, and opened wide in recognition. For a moment he froze. The procession moved forward. The girl stepped ahead. Her eyes were still locked on him. She seemed to inch her head as if acknowledging a bond of sorts. Almost directly behind her, carried by six uniformed falang, came a large coffin.

Did she know him? But of course she did. Would she call him out? He waited, one hand hovering over the butt of his gun. But why should she call? They were complicit, he and her. She would want him gone.

The girl looked straight ahead, and passed, though she could not, it seemed, resist another, quick glance at him. Young and lovely, and a killer – and when they looked into each other’s eyes, however brief that contact was, they understood each other. Gorel stepped back and let the coffin pass. Goodbye, merchant of the Fifth Pond Lineage. Gorel wondered what it actually meant. Looking at the size and general opulence of the procession, it occurred to him that lineage might have been more significant than he had thought. Which meant the falang may not give up the hunt for the merchant’s killer too quickly. Well. His hand rested reassuringly on the butt of the gun. He would deal with that if and when it happened.

He did not see the other, the merchant’s apprentice, in the procession. He waited until the last of the mourners passed him. Then he continued on his way. His presence elicited some glances, but not too many – it was the time of carnival, after all, and there were many foreigners in the city, human and Merlangai, Diurnal and Ebong and Duraali, to mingle amongst the native falang, to drink and throw water and deal and trade in matters lawful or otherwise, and wench and drink – and that was what Gorel, too, intended to do, and so he headed away from the main road and into the side-streets, following a dank, scum-covered canal until he reached a long-house with a sign at the entrance that said, The Sorcerer’s Head: the sign further depicted a rather graphic image of a blood-dripping, human head with ethereal fire burning around it. The head was held in a hand possessed of long, green, webbed fingers. What long forgotten war, if any, the name was meant to celebrate Gorel didn’t know. But he appreciated the sentiment all the same. He did not approve of sorcerers.

He stepped through the open doors onto the long corridor. The long-house sat alongside the scummy canal, but its clientele was not interested in a water-side view, pretty or otherwise. The rooms first – some with their doors closed shut, others standing invitingly open. As he passed some he was aware of the overwhelming surge of stench in the air, a mixture of sweet-smelling smoke, cheap perfume, expensive perfume, cigars, rice whiskey, body sweat, piss, cleaning material, old blood, stale smoke to mix with the fresh one – a vista of smells he found intoxicating. The rooms were private universes, some inviting, some forbidden. In one he saw a Nocturne mistress, swathed in shadows, in her hand a burning whip, and at her feet an Ebong warrior, cowering, bowed, his moving feelers signifying excitement. In another, a huddle of species, each figure on its own, each with a mat and a dim brazier by its side, lying motionless, staring at the ceiling. He longed to join them. But not yet.

Other rooms: a group of naked women, laughing, two equally-naked falang boys moving between them like toys; in another a group of human males standing in a circle around two falang girls; in another a free-for-all, men, women, Ebong, a sleepy Diurnal being ridden by two Merlangai, one male and one female; more rooms where the stench of burning gods’ dust was overpowering, and Gorel breathed it in and shuddered, and almost stopped. But not yet.

In the long corridor those who wished a respite from the neverending orgy (or who found themselves coming short on the expense required) reclined on cushions, singly or in small groups. Servants passed with drinks. In the half-way point of the long house a long bar ran along the wall. Gorel saw behind it a cauldron of bubbling liquid. The bartender, a short, fat falang, looked up at him knowingly. ‘Falang-Et’s finest brew,’ he said. ‘Sorcerer’s Head’s Special Punch.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘What isn’t –’ the bartender smiled. His teeth looked like algae-covered, dying coral. ‘Alcohol. Sugar. Fruits of the season. And dust.’

Gods’ dust. He could taste it on his tongue, it burned his nostrils, and want of it, desire of it, clouded his mind. He found himself saying, ‘Give me a shot,’ and the bartender smiled wider and handed him a smoking glass. Gorel downed it in one. The feeling of it spread through him at once. The black kiss, the death-gift of the goddess Shar to her murderer. Her curse. But how good it felt. Better than sex, better than breathing. He would have stopped then, gone into one of the rooms, found a mat and a smoking brazier, and hooked himself up to one of the needles, surrendering to the black kiss’ oblivion, but for one thing: the thought of his lost home, the thought of Goliris, which brought him this far and would take him on yet, take him all the way back, until he returned, until he –

‘Hello, gunslinger,’ a husky voice murmured close to his ear. He turned and saw an uncertain shape, a figure clad in shadows: the Nocturne he had seen in the room, and she was still holding her flaming whip. ‘Looking for a good time?’

He looked at her curiously. Nocturnes kept mostly to themselves. He tried to guess at what shape lay beyond the darkness, catching glimpses here and there, a naked thigh, the hint of a breast, parts displayed and disappearing like a full bright moon behind an eclipse. He didn’t know what made him tell her the truth, so that when it came he surprised himself. ‘I’m looking for home,’ he said.

For a moment the shadows seemed to drop, and he caught the hint of a face, older than he supposed, and eyes deep and weary that matched his own. ‘Aren’t we all,’ she said, and abruptly she turned away, and the whip cracked and bled light; then she was gone.

‘You have a way with the ladies,’ the bartender said.

Gorel reached across the counter and grabbed his throat in one hand. The bartender gargled. ‘Keep your ears to yourself in future,’ Gorel said, squeezing, ‘if you don’t want to lose them.’ He released the choking falang, threw some money on the counter, and walked away. He had to admit it was a good punch they served here.

He stalked down the long corridor and was not disturbed. The door of the second room from the end was closed. He opened it and went in. Kettle and Sereli were standing by a window, looking out. They turned when they heard him come in.

‘Any problems?’ Kettle asked. Gorel shrugged. He did not bother to mention the funeral procession. ‘None so far.’

‘Good.’ The Avian turned back to the window, signalling for Gorel to come nearer. He moved towards them. Sereli smiled and squeezed his arm. ‘Out there,’ Kettle said, pointing. Gorel looked, and then looked up.

Wat Falang rose out of the marshy ground like an ill-begotten treasure chest. To call it gaudy would have been to use kindness, which was something Gorel did not possess in any great measure. It looked like someone had stolen a dragon’s hoard of precious stones and trinkets and then upended the whole collection onto the ground, and left it there. There were towers that looked like silver needles and walkways that glittered like strings of pearls, and outhouses that glittered in rainbows of jade and amethyst and rubies, and the whole ungainly thing shimmered in an eternal haze, a humid, suffocating cloud that glistened on the Wat’s walls like a silent, watchful, living ooze. It was a frog temple, and the home of the frog-tribes’ god. It was a maze of vegetation and marshy lanes and haphazard buildings, of gardens and workshops and prayer houses and storage hangars, kitchens and libraries and armouries and the falang god alone knew what else. It was a miniature city within the city of Falang-Et. And somewhere inside it, hidden, guarded, was the mirror. Perhaps it was a mere trinket to the god. Perhaps it lay in a roomful of treasures, of sorcerous items pillaged over the centuries, rings and swords and books and wands and all the other useless things sorcerers were so obsessed with making. Nothing beat a gun, when it came right down to it. As it might come down to yet. ‘Are you sure you only want to steal the mirror?’ Gorel said, and Kettle laughed. ‘I’ll take what we can find,’ he said. ‘But, yes. I seek mainly knowledge, which the mirror can provide. Not monetary gain. Well, not only, I should say.’

‘More for me, then,’ Sereli said.

‘As much as you can carry,’ Kettle agreed gravely, and Gorel laughed. Kerely stuck her tongue at him.

‘So where is it?’ Gorel said.

‘I can find out,’ Kettle said. Both men turned to her. She pirouetted on one foot and grinned at them. ‘I have a widowed aunt in town,’ she said, ‘who is very devout. If anyone knows the layout of the temple it would be her. I met her once down river, a few years ago. She might talk.’

‘So will you go to her?’

Kettle’s smile, Gorel had learned, could look as truly innocent as it was devious underneath. ‘Oh, I doubt she’d have much interest in me, the old bitch,’ she said.

‘But –?’ both Gorel and Kettle said simultaneously.

‘But,’ Sereli said, ‘she might be amenable to a bribe –’ and she leered, and her eyes were on Gorel – ‘at least, if you can prove your worth to her, O Most Holy Questing Knight.’

* * *

His name was Sir Drake of Kir-Bell, Kir-Bell being a minor principality in the far west, known mainly for a type of wine called draeken, which the people of that place make with the aid of their small population of indentured tree-sprites, who are remanded under Kir-Bell’s rule for their own safety. The process, which is not in the least – so say Kir-Bell’s master fermenters – painful, involves the annual slow bleeding of the sprites, said liquid being collected carefully into vats, and then left to brew by secret means. The resultant liqueur, the draeken, is much prized but seldom seen outside of that principality. It was a measure of the grave respect Sir Drake clearly felt for Mistress Sinlao of the Third Pond Lineage, that on visiting her at her modest abode he brought with him a small vial of the stuff.

Mistress Sinlao resided in an imposing, and not in the least bit modest, if truth be told, abode not far from the walls of Wat Falang, but in the opposite direction to the Sorcerer’s Head. Where the Head was squalid and dank, Mistress Sinlao’s place was opulent and airy; where it was dubious, Mistress Sinlao’s place was a lesson in respectability. It was a short while, then, before the similarities between the two places made its appearance to the knight.

‘Please, do come in, sir knight!’ The arms that dragged him in were soft and plump. Their owner looked like a well-fed toad, though he was not sure toads could beam in such a disconcerting way. ‘It is so wonderful to have such a distinguished visitor as yourself at our humble house! Please, follow me! We have so much to talk about!’

Mistress Sinlao (of the Third Pond Lineage) was effusive; she smelled of pond-water and expensive perfume; her skin was a dark, mottled green; she wore heavy rings on her fingers and her scalp was an imposing bald dome. She held him close to her as she led him through the gate and into the large garden that lay beyond. She also kept a running monologue, and an assumption that her visitor had a deep abiding interest in horticulture: ‘And over here we have the samtora flowers, very rare, their natural habitat is in Quicksilver Lake beyond Der Danang – we’re most fortunate to have obtained these specimens, you know, they are said to aid procreation –’ here a big, lusty laugh which made him uncomfortable – ‘oh, and these, not much to look at them, are they, they’re called urnak-dorn by the natives of Duraal – they do have the most barbarous language, don’t you think? – but quite wonderful, used by their medicine men for the aid of –’

‘Procreation?’ Sir Drake said, and Mistress Sinlao whooped a laugh and said, ‘How did you guess?’

Most of the plants and flowers in the garden, as it transpired, were of a nature to aid reproduction; which made Sir Drake uncomfortable all over again, though he couldn’t quite say why. The gardens were spacious and extensive. Above them the house rose like an imposing jade monument. There were many windows but one could not see through them. There were balconies with no one sitting on them. The doors to the building were high and imposing and closed. The house sat there like a silent, closed-eyed toad; and yet Sir Drake had the feeling that, at any moment, the doors of its mouth might open, and a long tongue would snake out, and snap him up, and swallow him inside. ‘The Gorgol Saber plants only flower at night,’ Mistress Sinlao said conversationally, ‘when the river tides are high and the moon is waning. All other sorts of conditions too. Very useful plants.’

‘Procreation?’

‘Colds. I do tend to suffer in the rainy season. Come, sit.’ There was an open green parasol and a table underneath it and three chairs. Sir Drake took one, and Mistress Sinlao another. ‘My niece,’ Mistress Sinlao said, with only the barest hint of distaste in her voice, ‘told me you are on a quest.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Do you mind me asking where you met the little half-breed?’ the distaste was now palatable.

‘She ran into me,’ Sir Drake said, ‘trying to liberate me of my valuables, as it happens.’

Mistress Sinlao snorted. ‘I hope you gave her a good hiding.’

‘I did what was necessary.’

Mistress Sinlao grinned. ‘I hope you made it long,’ she said. ‘And hard.’

‘She didn’t complain,’ Sir Drake said, and Mistress Sinlao burped another laugh. ‘I think you’ll do,’ she said cryptically. ‘I think you’ll do just fine.’ She raised her hand and snapped long, fat fingers. ‘A drink, Sir Drake?’

‘That would be most pleasant.’

‘One must never forget the duty of hospitality,’ Mistress Sinlao said. ‘Although here in this House, we prefer to think of it as a… pleasure.’

Sir Drake nodded. A girl materialised – where had she come from? A side door? Or had she been waiting unseen for a summons in the garden? – and brought over a tray. She was falang, with pale, almost translucent skin, and her eyes were large and frightened. Mistress Sinlao dismissed her without a word being spoken. She poured a fizzing blue drink into two tall glasses, and raised one glass in toast. Sir Drake mimicked her, and they drank. It made Sir Drake’s lips and tongue go numb for a minute after he drank it. A dark bird-shape flew overhead.

‘So tell me,’ Mistress Sinlao said, ‘about your quest.’

‘I seek,’ Sir Drake said, ‘nothing more than Truth.’

‘Truth is a valuable thing,’ Mistress Sinlao said.

Sir Drake nodded, and took another sip from his drink. It went down rather smoothly, he thought. He told Mistress Sinlao of his quest: how his father, who was a noble of Kir-Bell, had been treacherously slain in ambush as he was returning one day from the Draeken vats. How the assailants were never caught, though suspicion had been pointed at Sir Drake’s uncle, his father’s brother, who shortly afterwards married Sir Drake’s mother and assumed control of their estate.

‘I determined then to go on this quest,’ Sir Drake said modestly, emptying his glass, ‘to discover the truth of my father’s murder. Only with proof could I go back and challenge my uncle. It is the code of the knights of Kir-Bell that the innocents must not suffer unduly, and the benefit of the doubt must be extended to all, divorced from emotion. It is a most difficult situation –’

‘Indeed it is,’ Mistress Sinlao said. ‘You have my sympathies –’

‘And I thank you for it,’ Sir Drake said. ‘And so, here I am. I have come to your beautiful city of Falang-Et for I have heard told that here lay a rare magical object that can tell all manner of truths, and it is known as the Mirror of Falang-Et.’

Mistress Sinlao was silent then, and he had the sense that she was examining him closely. ‘And where have you heard such a story?’ she asked at last. Sir Drake shrugged and said, ‘A dying sorcerer told me so, on the sands of Meskatel.’

Mistress Sinlao’s eyes expanded, and she said, ‘You have travelled far, sir knight.’

‘And I would travel further, if need be,’ Sir Drake said. ‘For I cannot rest until my quest is complete, and my errand successful.’

‘Yes,’ Mistress Sinlao murmured. ‘Yes, I see. Yes, indeed.’

‘Yes,’ Sir Drake said. There was a silence. Finally he said, ‘Do you know of such an object?’

Mistress Sinlao nodded, but she seemed preoccupied. ‘I have heard stories,’ she said. ‘Just as you have.’

‘I see. If I may put it bluntly, you do not know the whereabouts of this mirror?’

Mistress Sinlao raised her head. She smiled. She looked like a woman who had made a decision. ‘I did not say that.’ She made a gesture; the servant girl reappeared and refilled their drinks. She looked sideways at Sir Drake, nervously. He smiled at her. She ran off. ‘No, I did not say that. Tell me, Sir Drake.’

‘My lady?’

She moved her chair closer to him, and put her arm in his. Her heavy head rested on his shoulder. Her breath was on his neck, her lips close to his ear. ‘You are a knight, is it not?’

‘Most assuredly,’ he said.

‘A man of honour.’

‘Of course.’

‘Perhaps I can help you,’ she said, and her fingers were on the back of his neck, massaging him. Her perfume was overpowering.

‘Indeed? That would be a kindness of a –’

‘Not a kindness,’ she said. ‘Oh, no, not a kindness. But I can tell you where it is, oh yes, I can. Deep in the temple it lies, the Mirror of Falang-Et. In the most sacred and holy of shrines, in the falang god’s own private domain.’

‘His private domain?’ Sir Drake said. Mistress Sinlao’s other hand was patting his thigh and moving rather uncomfortably up.

‘His garden,’ the husky voice whispered in his ear. ‘In the heart of Wat Falang, beyond the outer and the inner walls, beyond the outer and inner sanctums, in the sanctum sanctorum. But it is guarded, Sir Drake. Guarded fiercely.’

‘Perhaps I could petition the god or his priests –?’ Sir Drake suggested. He felt rather than saw Mistress Sinlao shaking her head. It made the hairs on his arm stand on end. ‘No one is allowed into the sanctorum.’

‘But –?’ Sir Drake said. He could sense the ¬but just hovering there, waiting to be said. Mistress Sinlao giggled against his neck. She stuck her tongue in his ear, and he shuddered. ‘But,’ she said, and giggled again, ‘maybe I can help you.’

‘How?’

‘First you must do something for me.’

‘For a lady such as yourself, it would be a pleasure to abide,’ he said – bracing himself for the inevitable giggle – and she said, ‘I wasn’t quite thinking of myself, in this instance…’

* * *

The House of the Mothers of Jade is an imposing structure; that had been mentioned. Or rather, Mistress Sinlao’s abode had been – and Mistress Sinlao was the Grand Mistress of the Mothers of Jade. So. The house – or abode – its nature and purpose, may require some elaboration. From the outside, the house stands four stories high. There are jade windows and an observer standing outside could not, in any circumstances, look in. Nor can the ones inside look out. The house is set in its extensive gardens, and surrounded by a tall and sturdy wall. Many plants grow in the gardens, but few ever visit it, and never for pleasure. Inside, in the spacious offices of the ground floor, the Mothers of Jade pour over charts, and the Archives are highly-protected by means of falang sorcery. A statue of Falang-Et, the frog-god, the pot-bellied god, squats by the entrance to the house, but it is strangely incomplete. Its head is a smooth shaven dome and it is made of the finest jade, but as it stands before the House it has no eyes, and its face is as smooth and as featureless as stone. They are not affiliates of the temple, the Mothers of Jade. In some quarters, indeed, they could be called heretics, though few would level such a charge at them directly. Many in the city owe their allegiance, if not their very lives, to the Mothers. Also on the ground floor is the Herbarium; the Birthing-Pools; the laboratories; and the kitchens. The second, third and fourth floors resemble both a prison and a brothel, though the mothers would resent very much any such comparison. It is hard, nevertheless, to escape from the House, just as it is difficult to get in. You are either brought in to the House of Jade, or invited, and neither option is particularly attractive. Sir Drake of Kir-Bell was about to find some of this out. He was escorted into the house arm-in-arm with Mistress Sinlao. There were no guards he could see, which did not mean there weren’t any there. He could feel the stench of sorcery hanging in the cool, bare corridors. He was led up the wide polished stairs to the second level of the House. Here, rows of doors gleamed faintly in the relative darkness of long corridors. He was taken to a door, third from the last in the second corridor they came to. Mistress Sinlao leaned on his arm. ‘It would be nothing to you,’ she said. ‘A moment of pleasure, and why not? She is a beauty, that one, though she does need taming.’

‘And you could help me find the –’ he said, and Mistress Sinlao shushed him. ‘Don’t say it aloud,’ she said. ‘Yes, I will help you.’ The door had no handle, it was a smooth jade wall. Mistress Sinlao put her hand on the door and Sir Drake could feel again the thrum of sorcery in the air. Mistress Sinlao pushed the door and it opened. ‘Go on.’ She pushed him, her hand on his lower back, gently. Sir Drake stepped forward, and the door closed behind him. He looked about the room. His eyes slowly grew accustomed to its gloom.

The window, letting in no light, no sight. On the left, a dresser, a mirror, a wardrobe and a chair. On the right, a sumptuous bed, with green silk sheets and – and a figure underneath. He stepped to the bed. The figure under the sheets stirred, then was still. He came closer and stood above it and looked down.

The bed-sheets exploded upwards and she was upon him, a small naked creature, hands reaching for his throat. He fell back; her hands were remarkably strong. He felt the fingers squeezing out the air from his lungs. He kicked. He tried to grab her by the hair but she had none. He attempted to head-butt her, but she moved out of his reach. All this was done in total silence. He fell. She was on him. He was aware of her naked body even as she squeezed away his life. With his last energies he rolled, catching her by surprise. She was underneath him now, still choking him. Her legs were around him, holding him down to her. She gasped when she felt his weight. At that moment he saw her face, and she saw his. Her eyes opened wide and her hands on his neck loosened their grip for just one moment, but it was enough. He grabbed her arms and pinned her down on the floor and gasped air. The girl said, ‘You.’ The fight seemed to have gone out of her.

Gorel of Goliris stared at her face. The last time he had seen her, she was following a funeral procession. And before that… He said, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper, ‘If I let you go, will you promise not to kill me?’

‘You’re letting me go?’

‘If you won’t try to kill me,’ Gorel said. She said, ‘I thought you were going to –’

She really did have lovely eyes, he thought, especially when surprised. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ he said, and tensed, but she startled him by laughing. ‘I promise,’ she said. It was good enough for Gorel. He rolled off and lay on his back, gasping air. The girl stood up. Gorel ignored her. He dragged himself to the wall and leaned against it. Then he reached into a hidden pocket and pulled out a small packet.

Dust. He put some on his finger and breathed it in. His head swam. Above, looking down at him, the girl, an expression of distaste on her face. He took another pinch of dust, folded the packet carefully closed, and put it back. He rested his head against the wall and sighed. This plan wasn’t going very well. He wished he had his guns with him. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

He looked at her, and felt his body abuzz with sensations unwanted. His body was whispering to him to get up, to take the girl, to… what was in that drink Mistress Sinlao had given him? He could feel it, but it was subsumed now by the dust: the black kiss brooked no competition. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said again, more softly. Her eyes were enormous, looking at him. Her body was green and slender. She said, ‘Waiting for rape,’ and the silence lengthened between them.

‘What is this place?’ he said at last. ‘What do they do here?’ Questions he hadn’t asked himself were forcing themselves on him now. He had assumed the place was nothing more than an expensive brothel, but…

The girl sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘A breeding place,’ she said. ‘They breed people here. Hybrids. They bought me from my… from my…’

He pushed himself up. He went and sat beside her. She did not object. ‘The boy you were with?’ he said, surprisingly gentle. She nodded. ‘I thought he loved me,’ she said. ‘I killed Dornalji for him. I thought we would be free, then.’

‘I thought he was just an apprentice,’ Gorel said. The girl smiled, a bitter almond smile. ‘His son,’ she said. ‘Now that Dornalji is dead, he inherits. Everything.’

‘Including you.’

‘Yes. And so he… he sold the deeds to the Mothers of Jade. The ones who run this house. And they… they like me. My lineage fits into their charts. I heard them say they could get five or six spawning-cycles out of me before… before I was no good to them any more.’

He looked into her eyes, and felt an urge to reach for her, and resisted it. He said, ‘Your lineage?’

‘I’m of the line of the First Pond spawning,’ she said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t. Perhaps she read that in his bemused expression. ‘Before, I was at the temple,’ she said, patiently. ‘I am of the first line. When man and frog first… first joined. When the god and the princess met and the first children were spawned –’

‘But that’s just a story,’ Gorel said. ‘It’s like –’ he tried to remember what his adoptive grandmother would have called in, in her school. ‘An origin myth,’ he said.

The girl shook her head, but not in argument. She looked tired, defeated. Gorel said, ‘Wait, you were at the temple?’

‘I served She Who is Mother to Us All,’ she said, the words like a long-ago remembered ritual. ‘In the place where the mirror reflects the sun and the rain and the changing skies… All of us who are of the right age, and sex, and purity, and who come from the first line. I should never have left. It is why the Mothers value me, you see. They seek to improve on the god’s own children. To breed a new race, that will be more like, even better than, the gods themselves…’

But Gorel had no time for contemplation of whatever arcane experiments were being conducted in this house. Only one word caught his attention. He said, ‘You know where the mirror is?’

‘Of course. Inside the temple, in the garden of She Who is –’

‘Yes, fine,’ Gorel said. He went to the window and put his hands against it. The girl watched him. ‘It can’t be forced,’ she said. ‘There is no escape.’

‘Do you have any clothes?’

‘No.’

Gorel shrugged. Then he shoved his hand deep into the crotch of his pants. The girl shied away, and he grinned. When his hand returned it held a small, carefully-wrapped packet. ‘Go to the corner and cover your head,’ he said. He unwrapped the packet. It held a square of a soft, white substance. He tore a chunk of it off, carefully, wrapped the rest and put it back. The girl watched him unmoving. ‘Go!’ he said. She scuttled away from him to the corner.

It was like a paste, and he stuck it against the hard, opaque material of the window and smoothed it over the surface, checking it the way he had been taught.

‘It is protected by powerful sorcery,’ the girl said, her voice muffled. He looked up. So she’d done what he’d said. Good. He didn’t know why he told her, but he said, ‘I was adopted, in the Lower Kidron.’

‘I don’t know where that is.’

‘It’s a long way from here. And a long way yet from my home. From –’ This was going to be crude. There was a tiny button on Sir Drake’s shirt, a metal disc, and he plucked it out and stuck it in the centre of the white paste on the window. ‘Where I am from. My name is Gorel. Gorel of Goliris. With the help of the mirror I might find a way to return to my kingdom.’

‘The mirror?’ she looked up, and there was a frightened look in her eyes. ‘But –’

‘Get back!’ he said, motioning urgently with his hand. She obeyed him. He plucked two metallic strands from Sir Drake’s shirt and wove them together. ‘But I learned much in the Lower Kidron. My adoptive father was a – you could say he was a smith. He taught me how to make this paste, which – there, it’s ready.’ He stuck the wires into centre of the disc, the two ends almost touching. When he released them they began to spin, the ends coming closer and closer to each other –

He turned and ran to the corner, shielding the girl with his body –

The explosion tore out the window and most of the wall. A rain of green fragments fell down to the garden below. Someone screamed. He heard doors opening and closing with a bang. Running steps. He straightened and lifted the girl in his arms. For a moment, for just a moment, she opened her eyes and looked at him and there was complete trust in her expression: she looked like a baby being held. Gorel shook his head and turned and faced the emptiness where the wall had been. As he took a step forward a dark, bird-shape swept past in the air and came to land on the edge. Kettle grinned at him. Gorel threw the girl. She had no time to scream before Kettle caught her. He sprang from the edge into the air, his wings opening, the girl held in his arms. For a moment he looked back, grinned again, and then, holding the girl with only one arm, tossed something towards Gorel. It arced through the air. It wasn’t going to reach him.

Gorel jumped.

He sailed through the air and below him the garden was filling up with running shapes, and he saw that more time than he had thought had passed, and it was getting dark, and he even noticed that the flowers Mistress Sinlao had called Gorgol Saber were opening, which meant the moon must be waning and the river tide was high, and whatever other conditions also prevailed. But he noticed all this with a detached mind, because his attention was riveted on the object flying towards him through the air – objects, to be exact, and he grabbed them just as he was falling.

He hit the ground hard and rolled and then they were on him and he felt teeth on his arm, drawing blood, but he had been successful and the guns were already in his hands and so he fired into the belly of his attacker, and felt the weight of him as he died.

His attackers. He pushed the corpse off of him, then rolled and straightened, guns in hand, and looked on his attackers. The front lawn of the House of the Mothers of Jade was full of…

The Mothers’ children.

He could sense them rather than see them. They had the aura of dust about them, of the gods’ black kiss, but it was weakened, diluted, the way an unscrupulous dealer at the temple might cut the precious dust before it sold. They were of all shapes, some morphing between body-images: a falang face melting into the hard-blue of a Merlangai, a giant human body growing fins, a hauntingly-beautiful girl with her naked body wreathed in shadows, a Nocturne bastard offspring cross-bred with falang –

The girl was the next to come at him, arms outstretched, the shadows covering her, and he could feel the cool touch of her on his skin and almost too late ducked the murderous teeth that threatened to clamp around his neck. He shot her in the head and the shadows fled from her.

He backed away from the advancing children. Behind them, standing outside the house, impassive, solid, and frozen: the Mothers, and at their head Mistress Sinlao, unmistakable, watching on –

No more Sir Drake of Kir-Bell, he thought, and it was like taking off a heavy, unwanted load. Gorel of Goliris smiled. The moonlight fell down and bathed the advancing children in an eerie, insubstantial light. Godlings? He thought. They looked like nothing more than lost, unwanted children. He almost felt sorry for them. The real god power, that sweet, all-embracing pleasure, the almost-unbearable bliss of the black kiss, was coursing through his blood. The real thing.

And he hated it. Hated it as much as he hated sorcery, hated it as much as he craved it, as much as he knew that he was bound to it, ever since the goddess Shar had kissed him, her lips stained with blood, as she died – died while laughing at him.

They were close to him now, these children born of carefully-plotted charts, of matching lineages, of linked blood-lines. The nearest was less falang than frog, and as he hopped one final time towards Gorel his large eyes seemed sorrowful, the eyes of an animal about to be taken out of its prison-basket and skewered for the grill. Gorel shot him between the eyes and had the satisfaction of seeing them close, at last. The heavy body flopped to the ground and was still, but the children continued to come.

The moonlight fell down on their faces, revealing extraordinary shapes, children with too many eyes or none at all; children with elongated skulls or giant, misshapen ones, children with two or three or four arms, with tails and with wings and with fins and with claws and with suckers – he fired again and dropped another girl to the ground. They never made a sound. And they continued to advance.

Behind him was the high wall of the house. He could not jump over it. Under his feet the ground was muddy and water covered his feet. The moonlight fell on the marshy grounds.

Water, Gorel thought. He stared at the scene before him. The water continued to rise. He thought – the river!

He glanced sideways. The water was rising. He looked back. Two of the children had disappeared. He swore, but quietly. Water-creatures. He glanced away again. Something was worrying at him, telling him he had forgotten something, or wasn’t paying attention…

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… he had seen the merchant there, for the first time, and Kettle… but there was something else, someone else, in the shadows, who he had paid almost no attention to…

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.

The dope merchant. What of him? Something was whispering in his ear, a sound trickling smoke, like rising water…

Something jumped on his back then and tried to claw his head off his shoulders, and he turned in a circle, furious, and fell back, and his attacker cushioned his fall and he freed himself, turned, and put a bullet into a chest where sores grew like fungus.

Fungus, he thought. He shook his head and tried to clear it. How many bullets left? There had been a fight, back in that bar on the river. He remembered Kettle flying away from it, and he himself left before any shots were fired. But before that… he glanced away again. There! He almost saw it this time. A shape at the far end of the garden, a shape like water given substance, watching him –

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.

The water was up to his knees now, and rising. And something darted underwater and bit him and he kicked, and lost his balance, and then he was fighting underwater, not with guns but with his hands, and the thing attacking him was slippery and smooth like a Merlangai female, and a fin rose through the water like a blade and sliced a line of blood on his cheek. He reached for her throat, blindly, and her teeth closed on his fingers, cutting down to the bones and almost breaking them and he screamed.

Something in the water laughed. And Gorel knew, and almost despaired.

A drunken conversation, locals shrugging off the threat of an invasion from the west… ‘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.

And Gorel thought – how do you breed godlings? Human stock and falang, yes, it was easy enough to come by. Even Nocturne, if enough money and influence are involved. Merlangai stock, no problem. What did they say about the Merlangai? They would rather fuck than talk. But how, and where, do you find a god to join the blood-lines?

Then his unseen attacker, this child in the water was on him, fastening on to him, teeth digging into his breast, hurting him, but Gorel stilled himself; and slowly, carefully, Gorel of Goliris reached an arm, tracing the flesh of the child in the water, almost lovingly, until he found the throat and his fingers closed on it and pressed, and his other hand followed and found the child’s eyes and his thumb pressed into the one on the left, burrowing into the cavity in the skull, and the child shuddered once in the water, and a second time, and was then still.

He rose from the water. It was almost up to his neck. He blinked away water, or tried to. But the water was in his eyes now, and inside him, and he could see the watcher, and he was closer now, and smiling out of that same smooth, featureless face he had last seen in the place by the water.

Tharat.

The children were still there, still focused on him. Had they ever been children, he wondered, or were they merely bodies, animated at the will of their creator, bred to be… what? An army? And the Mothers, did they even know this, when they decided to ask for a god’s help in affairs to which neither mortal nor god should have had right to engage in? Fools, he thought. He could no longer see the Mothers. Had they gone inside? Were they even now watching, studying the children, planning new lineages, new mixes, procuring more –

And he thought of the merchant he had tortured but not killed. Master Procurator, he had said he was, and Gorel thought him mere merchant. But what if –

He turned and half-walked, half-swam, trying to get away from the children. He did not want to kill any more of them, but still they came at him, and all the while the smooth smiling figure was watching him from the corner of the garden, and where it stood it stank of dust. The smell of it was in the water, the touch of it was on Gorel’s skin. Gods’ dust, and there in the corner its source, its purveyor, and Gorel ignored the children and made for the god Tharat.

The water was rising. His guns were holstered. He took a deep breath – and dove. When he opened his eyes the moon filtered through the surface and cast the world in a pale glow. Shapes moved underwater. He thought he saw a group of Merlangai, dancing, their bodies moving in time to an unheard beat. He swam and had the sense of a vast world opening before him, like a river spreading wide as it reaches the distant ocean. He felt rather than saw a large body moving below him, had the sense of a great depth underneath. None of it was real, he thought. Or rather…

He had been to this place before. It was the space between the world of men and gods. He had received the black kiss at such a place… but this was not the world of some itinerant god, a little hole in the membrane between realities. This was the god Tharat’s place, a god fed and made strong with the belief of his countless peoples, falang and human and Merlangai, all along his banks. He could not fight such a god.

He swam and there was air in the water – or perhaps there wasn’t, and it simply didn’t matter in such a place. He could no longer see his attackers, and he was glad. Deep down below he saw lights, and as he dove further he saw structures taking shape, and a giant palace rose from the riverbed.

He dove towards it. What choice did he have? And it was pleasant down here, under the water… it felt like flying. His body tingled with the power of the god in the water, his mind felt restful, at ease, the black kiss satisfied at last. He could remain there forever, he thought, in that perpetual, unthinking bliss… he swam slowly down, and the palace grew before him. Ethereal Merlangai women swam towards him, smiling, reaching out their hands. Priestesses in a trance? Dead spirits summoned to their lord’s domain to be his servants? He didn’t know, nor cared. They escorted him through high, arching gates, and into an immense hall. Light streamed in through windows high above, a water-light, pale and fractured. In the middle of the hall sat the god Tharat.

Here, he was not of one shape. Like water, he flowed, and the shapes melted and ran through him, assuming aspects of fish, of nyaka, of human, of falang and Merlangai, of Ebong and Duraali and Nocturne and a hundred others, and Gorel knew they were the shapes of all the things that had ever died inside Tharat.

Gorel floated in the water before Tharat. ‘You,’ the god said. Gorel’s hand sought the butt of his gun. The god chuckled. ‘I’ve watched you,’ the god said. ‘We have been close so many times, you and I…’

‘My mistake,’ Gorel said. Tharat laughed. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘We can help each other.’

‘I doubt that,’ Gorel said. The god inched his head in an oddly-human gesture. Around him, shapes materialised like ink pouring into water, and Gorel saw it was the children he had killed. The god chuckled again. The children stared at Gorel with unblinking eyes.

‘Here, they would be harder to kill,’ the god said. Gorel shrugged. ‘The dead should have the decency of staying that way,’ he said.

‘You are not afraid?’

Gorel sighed, expelling bubbles. ‘If you wanted me dead,’ he said, ‘it would have been done by now, I expect.’

‘You don’t like gods, do you?’ Tharat said. Gorel shrugged.

‘But you like what we can give,’ Tharat said.

Gorel remained impassive. He was aware of the god’s power, in the water, on his skin, in his mind. The black kiss, the ultimate bliss from which there was no escape… Tharat said, ‘What we give, so we can take away.’

The pain was not physical. It was the opposite of that, an absence rather than a presence, but it was terrifying, a sucking great vacuum that had engulfed Gorel, emptied him, took away from him everything but need, until his whole being had been reduced to a desperate want, a single desire, that hurt and hurt and would not be fulfilled. He had no language, no thought. If he had, he might have whispered, ‘Stop…’

‘My predecessor did well with you,’ Tharat said, though the words were meaningless slivers of pain as they trickled through the thing that was Gorel, the thing that was burning, desperate need. ‘Very well indeed. Here –’ and something let go, went loose, and inside Gorel sanity dribbled back, like smoke, and he gasped. ‘Almost too well,’ Tharat said. ‘Perhaps you are not as useful to me as I thought.’

I should kill him, Gorel thought. But he could not move. He was bound by the god’s dark drug. More, his mind, his body, wanted to shout. Give me more.

‘Still, you fight well,’ the god said. ‘And you’re tenacious. It’s a shame you had to spoil so many of my children. A shame, too, that you did not accede to Mistress Sinlao’s request… it would have been good to have your blood-line added to the –’ the god shuddered and his shape flowed again and he was a mimic of Gorel: a smiling one. ‘Gorel of Goliris,’ he said. ‘I have heard stories of your home. You hope the Mirror will help you return there?’

‘Yes,’ Gorel said. The black kiss had him bound, but he fought it. His hand inched its way to the gun by his side.

‘I will help you,’ the god said. That took Gorel by surprise.

‘Why?’

‘Mysterious are the ways of the gods,’ Tharat said.

Fuck you, Gorel thought but didn’t say. The truth was that gods were nothing more or less than a concentration of their followers’ own forces, primeval and raw. Gods were hunger and pain, orgasm and beauty, cruelty and fear and love. They were a drug, potent and enticing, a constant temptation that fed you just as they, in their turn, were fed. ‘What do you want?’ Gorel said.

‘I want you to find the mirror,’ Tharat said.

‘Why?’

And then – ‘You want it, and you can’t get to it.’

The god roared. The pain of withdrawal was inside Gorel again but this time he fought it, and the gun was in his hand and he pointed it not at the god but at himself. The pain stopped. ‘Find the mirror,’ the god said. It bore now the shape of an enormous frog. ‘I will not interfere. Now go.’

The water exploded. A maelstrom pulled at Gorel. He was sucked into a tunnel of water, and the colours of the world were washed away.

Part Three

The Shadow from the West

They were deep into the maze of Wat Falang and the silence was oppressive. The only sound that could be heard was of water dripping slowly down the moss-covered walls. Gorel stalked ahead, hand on the butt of his gun. Sereli walked behind. The girl Tonar, who he had rescued from the Mothers, was by Gorel’s side. He reached out to her, held her hand, and she smiled at him, though there was tension in her eyes. Behind them Sereli snorted. Gorel ignored her. They were inside a tunnel, and there seemed to be no way out. They had been walking through the tunnels for what seemed like hours. ‘Does she know where we are?’ Sereli said. Gorel, not turning around, said, ‘She has a name. Ask her yourself.’

Sereli snorted again.

‘It’s not far,’ the girl, Tonar, said, but she sounded less than convinced. ‘When I served we did not use the tunnels much. We moved above-ground. This place –’ Gorel felt her fingers tighten around his – ‘it is the realm of the underworld, it does not belong to Her, nor entirely to Him.’

‘Looks like disused sewers to me,’ Sereli said. ‘Smells like it, too.’

Gorel didn’t agree, but kept his own counsel. The place smelled empty, disused, and yet not abandoned. Something lived down here, he could feel it, sense it in the air currents and the dripping water. Something bad. He thought again about the Mother’s children, those half-breed creatures he had reluctantly killed, and of the god Tharat. His old friend, the wizard Champol, had warned him once: Never put yourself between two gods for, like two walls, they would close in on you until they crush you. Well, here he was, against advice, with the elusive pot-bellied god on the one side, and the river god on the other, and his choices reduced to none. He did not like gods. Once, he had killed one, and been cursed by her forever. The need of the black kiss was in him, never fully satiated, but he ignored it, or tried to. The silence was oppressive. The tunnel forked ahead. Tonar said, ‘Left,’ and they followed the path without comment, even Sereli, as it descended further, going down, down, down into the bowels of the earth.

Kettle was not there. Kettle was to fly above, provide aerial support if the need arose. He had already flown over the temple, but could not, he said, come close to the inner court, what Tonar, like Mistress Sinlao, had called the sanctum sanctorum, the holiest place. Winds had buffeted the Avian, set him off-course. It was there they needed to arrive: a small, secluded garden in the heart of the temple complex, beyond walls upon walls and guards upon guards, and with a hunting party already set out after them – after Gorel, at least.

He had come back to the World from the place of gods, rising out of water in the dank canal that lay beside the Sorcerer’s Head, and when he pulled himself out of the water faeces had clung to his hair and his clothes, a little farewell message from Tharat. He found Kettle with the girl, Tonar, in the second room from the left which they had made their temporary home. Sereli was sitting by the window, scowling. When Gorel came through the door she looked up and said, ‘You stink.’

Without comment he stripped, and went to the tub of water that sat by the wall, and doused himself. ‘Need a hand?’ Sereli said, materialising behind him. Then soapy hands were on his taut stomach, rubbing up to his chest, the soap foaming, and her hand slipped down and held him there, between his legs, and he hardened. ‘Let me clean that for you,’ Sereli murmured. Her breath was against his back and he could feel her small breasts pressing against him. He doused himself with more water and turned. The girl Tonar was staring at him, her eyes large in her face, and he grinned.

Sereli continued to massage his cock. All the while he was looking into the girl’s eyes and she sat there, looking back at him, her expression – he could not quite read her expression.

He came in Sereli’s hand. The falang girl never moved. Sereli said, ‘Feeling better, gunslinger?’ and there was laughter in her voice.

He didn’t answer; turned; and washed himself clean at last.

‘Where’s Kettle?’ he heard Sereli say, and when he turned around again, drying himself on a dirty-brown towel, realised the Avian had gone from the room.

‘What’s this?’ Sereli speaking, the tunnel magnifying her words. He let go of Tonar’s hand and drew his gun, slowly. Ahead of them the tunnel seemed to open into a space, but it was dark. He had the sense of something moving there, of things watching, waiting. ‘Does she know?’ Sereli said.

There was, Gorel noticed, a strange sign carved into the wall. He looked at it. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked. The falang girl looked at it, her long green fingers studying the ancient design.

‘I don’t…’ she said at last. And then, ‘The Cavern of Sleep? No, it can’t be.’

‘When people say it can’t be, it usually is,’ Sereli said.

‘Is what?’ Tonar said.

‘Trouble.’

Gorel squinted ahead. ‘What is the Cavern of Sleep?’

‘I have never seen it myself. It is only a story.’

‘Stories have a way of coming true around here, it seems.’

The falang girl looked away from him. ‘It is from the story of the princess and the frog,’ she said. ‘The Mothers talk about the First Spawn Cycle but there is another story, that there were other cycles before that, the Unknown Cycles, as the god and his human mistress tried to bring children to the world.’

‘Please, no more children!’ Gorel said. Sereli chuckled softly behind.

‘The story – I heard it from one of the old women who trained me in the temple – is that some of the get from the Unknown Cycles did not die, but rather were thrown below ground, into a Cavern of Sleep. There they wait until they are called again, when the world is ended, and there are no more men or frogs or falangs. If this sign is right, then this is the Cavern – but I don’t believe it. It is only a story. More likely it is an old storage place.’

‘But you didn’t know it was here?’

She looked confused. ‘They say the Cavern moves. It is not always in the same place. If this is it –’

‘Gorel, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,’ Sereli said. ‘That seems pretty obvious now. We’re lost. Let’s get out of here.’

‘Go back?’

‘Do you want to try it ahead?’

‘We can try not to wake anything up…’

‘But you have a propensity to doing exactly that.’

Gorel smiled. ‘I’ll go ahead and check it.’

Tonar clutched his hand. ‘No, don’t!’ Behind them Sereli snorted again. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. She strode past them. In her hands she held a long, thin tube of bluish metal. Gorel hadn’t seen her holding one before. ‘Where did you get that?’ he said.

‘None of your fucking business,’ she said. It was a Merlangai gun, and it bore the marks of the Drowned God. ‘Be careful,’ Gorel said, and Sereli laughed, turned back, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips, her tongue darting for just a fraction of a second into his mouth. Then she turned and stepped into the darkness ahead.

* * *

When Kettle came back into the room Gorel was sleeping. He had been woken up by the Avian. When he opened his eyes it was light outside, and Sereli was sleeping the other side of the room and – he felt a sudden, unexpected pang of jealousy, like a shard of glass tearing through his heart – she was holding the falang girl in her thin arms. Kettle grinned down at him and said, softly, ‘Get up.’

Gorel rose and stretched. Kettle motioned him to the small table. There were two small cups and a kettle sitting on its unvarnished surface. Kettle poured them a drink. ‘Coffee,’ he said, unnecessarily.

Gorel drank. The hot liquid burned his mouth. He put the cup down and extracted his small packet of dust. Kettle put his hand on Gorel’s arm. ‘This early?’

‘This late,’ Gorel said. He pinched a small quantity of dust between his fingers and brought it up to his nose. Then he looked back at Kettle.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Keeping my ears open. You’re a wanted man.’

Gorel nodded, the dust making him alert and yet strangely calm. ‘I’ve been told that before.’

Kettle didn’t laugh. ‘And this place isn’t safe any more. We need to make our move. Now.’

Gorel nodded again. He thought again of Tharat and felt hatred of the god rise in him. All gods, he thought. This was beyond wanting the mirror now, beyond, even, his eternal quest for his home. He was being played, he knew it. And he did not like that. ‘I’m ready,’ he said.

Before he fell asleep he had cleaned his guns, over and over, until they shone, and he had gone through his effects, choosing with care his weapons. He knew he would need all of them, when the time came. Now he dressed, unhurriedly, and strapped the gun-belt around his waist, and looked down at the seated Kettle and grinned, and said, ‘Let’s go on a treasure hunt.’

They roused the girls. Tonar was willing to show them the way. Kettle, it was agreed, would keep watch from outside. The way in, Tonar said, was through a hidden tunnel opening outside the temple walls. They departed as the air was still cool and the last of the Sorcerer’s Head clientele were snoring on cushions in the long corridors. No one saw them depart. They walked through the city streets as the sun rose overhead. Kettle, without words, spread his wings and with a gust of wind that stirred the dust on the road took to the skies.

The entrance to the tunnels was covered in a round metal disc. Gorel loosened it and lifted it up with difficulty. Below it looked dark and the smell wasn’t good. Tonar went in first. He followed her. Sereli came last.

They walked through the tunnels.

* * *

There was a whisper ahead, and Sereli reappeared. She motioned with her hand, not speaking. Gorel followed her, the girl Tonar by his side. They came to the dark opening, and stepped through.

The space beyond was indeed a cavern. The darkness here was broken by lines of faint light, and it took Gorel a moment to realise that the lichen on the walls was glowing. In the weak light he had the sense of an immense space, much larger than perhaps should have been there, as if the darkness beyond reached farther and farther away, never quite ending. The girl Tonar took his hand again, and he felt her shiver. He stepped forward and hit a low wall, and almost keeled over. Pain flared, and he pressed it down. He stood still. His eyes fought to absorb what light there was. Gradually, the place they were in resolved itself around him, a ghostly outline, and he involuntarily drew back.

The thing before him was not a wall, but a sarcophagus.

A long, stone coffin, rising out of the ground, and to its sides, ahead of him, spreading out in all directions, identical objects, the stone chipped and ancient, a whole mausoleum hidden underground, a maze within the maze of the temple’s tunnels. Gorel bent over the nearest sarcophagus, saw the transparent cover, and through it – the thing inside.

It was… he could not quite define it, even to himself. His eyes seemed tricked by the faint light, by the play of darkness over the creature. It was no skeleton, no corpse: something living, something hideously deformed, terribly alive, but caught, in restless sleep: there was the aura about this place, Gorel realised, as of the place between the worlds, the thin membrane that separates the living from the gods. Someone – some thing – had trapped these creatures here in an eternal sleep. He moved to the next coffin, and the next, and each time his eyes shied away, the creatures within too horrible, too terrible to comprehend. They were to the Mothers’ children what great trees were to seedlings. There was the sense of awesome, terrible power in those sleepers in the earth, and it frightened Gorel.

He felt Tonar shaking beside him, and held her close to him, engulfing the small, fragile body in his arms. Her heart beat against his chest, and as he felt it he could somehow sense the thing in the coffin responding, a flutter of the closed eyelids, a minute shift in the massive frame, and he pushed her away from him, and shook his head, and knew that they had to get away.

He put his lips close to the girl’s ear and said, barely moving his mouth, his words a barely-felt whisper of air, ‘Do you know the way?’

He felt her shake her head, but her lips were against his skin and she whispered, ‘We must go through them. I do not know the way any more.’

He stroked her cheek and again felt the things respond, somehow aware of them now, and hungry, and he quickly took his hand away. He turned, and saw Sereli was already ahead, walking softly between the stone tombs, her Drowned God’s gun still held in her hand, like a long, muted flute. He motioned to Tonar. They followed Sereli between the tombs.

How long had they walked like that, lost in that underground burial chamber? If the tunnels seemed like hours, time here in this primeval darkness had entirely lost its meaning. There was the sense of ancient, malevolent hunger growing around him with every step he took. Time was locked away here, not banished but dormant, and with each careful step time peeled away further, was nothing but a dream. On and on they went amongst the sleepers in the dark, and with each step the fear was greater, taking hold of Gorel and not letting go. He remembered again his childhood, the time his father took him through the Dark Wings, to the place in the earth where the roots lived, where the enemies of Goliris were bound to a timeless death, and he shivered. The air grew thick with menace, a hungry silence waiting to be filled.

At last they passed through the last row of tombs, and beyond them was an exit, a faint natural light coming as from far away. The relief at seeing it was complete. It was then, unwisely – or perhaps, by weakness, he had finally succumbed to the suggestion of the shades – that he drew the girl Tonar to him. Without thought, aware only of a desperate need that had been building inside him ever since he first saw her, but hadn’t realised until now, until this moment, when it came to him, this strange feeling – he would never have called it love: he kissed her.

Her lips were against his, his tongue was in her mouth, her body clasped against his and he thought – I will never let you go. It was then, in that moment of unguarded happiness, that the first creature broke through his sarcophagus.

Gorel tore away from Tonar; the floor felt slippery under his feet; his head was swimming with a sort of dust that had nothing to do with the gods; somewhere in the distance, a voice – he thought, Sereli – shouting, ‘Gorel, you fucking idiot!’ – and something enormous, far larger than the tomb that had held it for so long, rising above them all, spreading out wings that were like cemetery earth, like flame, like the water of a drowning, like rancid air, and a terrible voice laughed, and the sound echoed through the cavern.

‘Get out of the way!’ he heard someone shout and again thought – Sereli. He felt dazed. She was standing side by side with him now, and she held the Drowned God’s gun to her lips, and she blew on it.

The thing above them roared. A sort of music came out of the gun; the sound of a body drifting slowly to the depths of the sea, the voices of the world above gradually fading away in its notes, succumbing to the silence of the water: it had the resonance of doomed fight in it, as of a man struggling to breathe and encountering only water. The thing roared again and its wings spread impossibly-wide, filling up the cavern, and from here and there, there were sounds of other things moving, shifting, coffins creaking as they began to waken.

Gorel firing at the thing, once, twice, both guns blasting, the bullets flying at the head, the wings, the grotesque torso. A huge inhuman skull laughing at him. Gorel shouting, ‘Go! Go!’ Sereli still aiming the Drowned God’s gun at the thing, the wings beating unbearable heat, the great head laughing, and yet –

He could sense something underneath the thing’s display. A weakness. Only a small thread was tethering the thing to waking reality, a thread provided by Gorel himself. Cut the thread, and the thing would slumber. He watched as Sereli charmed it with her gun, slowing the creature, diminishing it somehow. He pushed Tonar towards the light. She ran. Then he turned and pulled from behind his back the long, tube-like weapon he had brought with him, its weight an ignored burden on his back. Not his cindergun. Not this time. But another weapon, from his adoptive father’s smithy in the Lower Kidron, a long thick tube which he held up on his shoulder and aimed at the creature, thinking – this is how it is always resolved, guns against sorcery, and there can be only one winner.

‘Go!’ he said, speaking to Sereli, and she backed away, towards the light, but still aiming her gun, still trying to slow down the creature as around them others were shifting, growing restless in their coffins, trying to wake up. They were drugged, Gorel realised. He could recognise it, all his senses on alert. Drugged by the dust of the gods, and sluggish with it, and not wanting to give it up.

Sereli, at last, turned and ran. The thing above Gorel roared, and its head snaked forward, ready to take Gorel –

He aimed the tube and pressed the trigger. A canister shot out of the camber, as large as a fist, and slammed into the creature’s face, penetrating into the head, and Gorel pressed the trigger and shot again, the creature roaring, screaming, two holes growing in his gigantic skull, and –

Gorel turned and ran. There was a hiss, a roar of anger and confusion, and then all sound stopped, froze; and finally returned.

The explosion threw Gorel through the air and slammed him against the ground. The last sound he heard was of falling rocks. Then there was only silence, and darkness, and fevered dreams, in which gigantic children played around in an open meadow, a game that seemed eternal, with no beginning or end.

* * *

He came to in a grassy meadow. A brook was bubbling nearby. He could smell jasmine, and frangipani and cloves and, more disturbingly, the scent of the flower Mistress Sinlao had called samtora, and grew in her garden, and which aided procreation. When he opened his eyes he saw Sereli.

She grinned when she saw him. ‘Did you see that thing?’

‘I saw it.’

‘Big and nasty, Gorel. Like you.’

He tried to smile, couldn’t. Stretched, and every muscle in his body ached. ‘Where are we?’ he said.

‘The garden, apparently. Nobody here.’

‘The sanctum sanctorum?’

‘I guess. It’s what your toy-girl says. Can’t see anyone around.’ She made a gesture with her hand. ‘Can’t say it looks like much, considering. It’s just a fucking garden.’

‘You’re not into gardening, Sereli?’

She scowled and he laughed, and felt better. He sat up. It was peaceful there. Is this it? He wondered. It seemed too easy… then he thought of the sleepers in the earth and shuddered. Still. Now that they were finally there, it did not, as Sereli had said, look like much.

He stood up. ‘What is she doing?’ he said.

Sereli turned with him and shrugged. Ahead of them, crouching by a small pool, was Tonar. ‘She’s been like that ever since we dragged you up here. Took some doing, too.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No problem.’

She flashed him a smile, then leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. ‘I wonder where Kettle is,’ she said, and her hand trailed down his body, and she came and stood close to him, pressing her body into his, and he could feel her heat and found himself responding to it.

Wait. He had felt like this before. The House of the Mothers of Jade… he pulled away from Sereli, ignoring the hurt look on her face. ‘What is she doing?’ he said again, pointing at Tonar. Sereli made a face. ‘Staring at the water?’

Gorel shook his head. There was an air of enchantment in the air, of sorcery. He strode to the small pool and stood looking down. Tonar hadn’t moved. He put his hand on her shoulder, gently, and said, ‘What is it?’

She didn’t reply. She was frozen, and suddenly he was concerned. He shook her. Still she did not respond. ‘Tonar?’

Nothing.

He stared down at the water. The surface was calm and smooth, reflecting back at him his own face. He stared into his mirror-image’s eyes, seeing them like dark pools, opening before him, showing him –

The surface was smooth and calm like a mirror.

A mirror.

His eyes were pools, his eyes were mirrors, reflecting back his own image to him. He stared into his own eyes, could not tear away. His image disappeared, and in its stead –

* * *

He was walking through the palace grounds of Goliris. All around him the leaves were falling, and the great building rose before him, dark and forbidding but home, to him it had always been home, right up to the point he was kidnapped and sent across the World… he was walking through the grounds and met nothing living. The leaves fell down and the ground was covered in their rotting remains. He came to the palace doors and they were open. He stepped into the Great Hall and there were shadows inside, whispering, and the air smelled disused and abandonment. He tried to shake himself away from the image and couldn’t. When he closed his eyes he could smell the jasmine, the frangipani, hear the trickling of a brook somewhere nearby, but he could not wake up. When he opened his eyes he was standing in the Great Hall of Goliris and there was nobody there. He stepped towards the throne and saw himself.

He was sitting on the throne, an aged, aged man, his arms on the throne withered, his eyes blind, dark like two subterranean pools. He approached this image of himself and knelt down, and tears came into his eyes. How can I come back? He pleaded to his old self on the throne. How can I avenge what had been done if I am not there, if I am destined to wander the World forever, never to return home?

His other self did not reply. Blind eyes stared into the darkness. At last, a voice like the stirring of dead leaves, speaking in his head. What do you do, Gorel of Goliris? Do you really seek your home? Or are you content with your life, a hired hand, a hired gun, crawling through the swamps of the World like a lizard, like a snake, crawling on your belly in the mud? Tell me true.

I want to return! Gorel shouted, though his voice had no substance here, no existence. I dedicated my life to returning, to revenge.

Revenge… the figure on the throne, his old self, laughed, and it was a horrible sound, dead and dry like a brook that no longer ran. You wander in ignorance, wasting away your time, your mind addled by the stupor of gods and your body’s needs. You fuck, Gorel. You fuck, and you kill, and you suffocate yourself with the gods’ drug. What makes you different to an animal, Gorel of Goliris? What separates you from the lizard and the snake, who crawl on their belly, and fuck, and kill, and die?

Faith, Gorel said, staring up at the wizened old man on the throne. Outside the wind picked up and its howl was like the final baying of a dying dog.

Faith in the gods? The figure on the throne laughed.

No, Gorel said. Faith that things will always get worse.

That they will, the old man who was himself said, and he was no longer laughing. And that is the proper attitude of a son of Goliris.

You failed, Gorel said. The old man nodded. Things will always get worse, he said.

For you, at any rate, Gorel said, and then the gun was in his hand and he pressed the trigger, and the old man, Gorel’s own face yet wizened beyond recall, exploded in a cloud of dust.

* * *

He blinked and the surface of the pool resolved itself, a smooth calm blue, and he knew then that he had at last found the Mirror of Falang-Et, and he cursed it, for it had shown him only himself.

Beside him, the girl Tonar stirred. She looked up at him, and there was something in her eyes, an alien, inscrutable look that had not been there before. ‘You come too late,’ she said, and her voice, too, was different, older somehow, and though pleasant there was a dark undercurrent to it, like the cold currents of a river that run below the warm surface. ‘Can you do it still, I wonder?’

‘Do what?’ Gorel said.

‘What you were meant to do,’ Tonar said. He stared into her eyes and suppressed a chill. He did not at that moment recognise her. Tonar said, ‘Time is short. It is too late, and you have been used without mercy, Gorel of Goliris. Look into my eyes.’

He tried to tear away then and his eyes left her face and returned to the placid pool of water, this Mirror of Falang-Et, and as he stared at the surface it seemed to shift and change, the water darkening, and the outline of something dark rising from the surface, muddying the water, and he could not tear himself away, could only watch as the water churned.

Two large, pale eyes surfaced from the water and regarded him, and he tried to take a step back and couldn’t. The rest of her came into view then, and he again tried to turn away, revolted, but he was held fast.

She had the body of a human woman but her skin was like blue glass, her eyes like ancient marbles that had lost their sheen, and her belly was a bloated mass, her hair straggly and woven with weeds. She was a corpse, a drowned corpse, and this was her watery grave.

‘Look at me, Gorel of Goliris,’ the corpse in the water said, and her eyes held his, and she spoke with the voice Tonar had used, it had been her voice speaking through the falang girl. ‘Tell me, what do you see?’

‘An abomination,’ he said, and would have spat, but she laughed, and her voice was like reeds as they choke a man.

‘You look into my eyes and you see what I, too, see,’ she said. ‘But perhaps it is too late do to what is needed. I waited for you, Gorel of Goliris. But soon the storm will break, the river will rise, and the shadow from the west will fall upon Falang-Et. He would keep me still, just as my husband did. Only you can free me.’

‘You are the mirror?’

‘She is the Mother of Us All,’ said a voice by his side. Tonar, almost in her own voice. Almost.

‘Not my mother,’ Gorel said. He stared at the woman in the water. The blotchy skin, the horrid belly, the blue-veined marble shape… ‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘She is the Mother –’ Tonar began beside him. Gorel said, ‘No.’

The woman in the water said, ‘Once I was a princess.’

And Gorel thought back to an old story, about a girl who fell in love with a frog, and he said, ‘No.’

‘I played by the banks of great Tharat when I saw a nyaka toying with a frog. A most beautiful frog. I rescued it, and carried it with me, and played with it by the river bank, until…’

‘No,’ Gorel said again.

‘I am the mother of a race,’ the thing in the water said. ‘Countless cycles of birth, and death, and birth again, and I am tired, so tired, Gorel of Goliris. We were not meant to live this long. Once I was a princess, and I was young, and in love. And now I am… a mother. Over and over. A vessel to be used, to be filled and emptied, and filled again. Over and over. Please, Gorel of Goliris, before it is too late. If it is not too late. Kill me.’

‘What of Goliris?’ Gorel said, demanded, speaking to the drowned creature in the pool. The sun shone overhead. The brook tinkled gently nearby. He could smell jasmine, and the flower they call samtora. ‘Tell me.’

‘What can I tell you that you haven’t already seen, Gorel of Goliris?’ the woman in the pool said. ‘You seek home. For some of us, for many of us, home is where you can never go back to.’

‘I will go back.’

‘So did I say, once upon a time,’ the woman said. ‘As my parents died, and their kingdom disappeared, and the sun rose and fell and the river flowed, and the children came, and the World changed beyond recognition. Kill me.’

His hand was on the butt of the gun. He stared at the thing in the water. How long? He thought. How long to exist like so, as falangs came, grew, made villages, built a city, this temple, how long for a story to become a legend? Without realising it the gun was in his hand, and pointing.

‘Kill me,’ the woman said. Her eyes never left him. ‘Please.’

His finger tightened on the trigger. And a soft, familiar voice behind him said, quietly, ‘Don’t.’

* * *

Gorel turned and saw Kettle. The Avian was standing erect, his wings folded. There was something different about him: the same quiet of his, the stillness of the hunter, was there still, but now it was overlaid with something else, stronger, perhaps: an air of command, of authority. Gorel said, ‘It took you long enough.’

The hint of a smile touched the corners of the Avian’s lips. ‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Doing what, exactly?’

The Avian shrugged. He came and stood beside Gorel and looked down at the pool. ‘So this is the Mirror of Falang-Et,’ he said. He nodded at the drowned woman. ‘Madam.’

‘You,’ the woman said. Her eyes moved, for the first time. She looked to Gorel and back to Kettle. ‘Get away from me.’ Her voice rose. ‘Tell him to get away from me!’

Kettle? Gorel turned and looked at his friend. ‘I need you,’ Kettle said to the woman. ‘Alive.’

‘I will not serve you!’

‘Oh, but I rather think you will,’ Kettle said. ‘Even as you are. I can give you a semblance of life, for a while at least. Enough for you to appear to your people.’

‘I will not do it.’

‘No? I could give you to the Mothers, to study. I expect they would be delighted. They are most dedicated students of reproduction…’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘But you know better than that,’ Kettle said, and his voice was soft, like the barely-perceptible tread of a hunter’s foot in the forest. ‘You can see what I am. You know what I am. You are the Mirror of Falang-Et, after all. The Mother of All Falang.’ He laughed, and it was a shocking sound in the silence. ‘Not to mention their god.’

‘Kettle?’ Gorel said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I look at you,’ the woman said, ‘and I see, yes, I see. But where you are I see only shadows! The beat of wings and a black and empty land, and flames growing, and a shadow, falling over me, over us, a shadow falling from the west…’

‘Your master,’ Gorel said, realisation dawning. ‘Your master sent you here? To capture the mirror? You knew what she is?’

‘No,’ Kettle said, ‘and yes, and yes.’

What? And where was Sereli? He turned to look and saw her. She was lying on the ground, unmoving. Unconscious, dead – what had happened? He started to go towards her and couldn’t. His feet wouldn’t obey.

‘Yes,’ Kettle said, ‘I came here to secure the princess, and yes, I knew – or rather suspected – what she was. I studied the old stories for a long time, and listened to the rumours, and interrogated who I could – better than you, Gorel, if you recall.’ And he laughed again, but there was nothing warm in that laugh. ‘And no, my master didn’t send me here. I came myself.’

‘I don’t –’ Gorel began to say, and the thing in the water cackled and said, ‘You fool! This one’s no servant!’

‘You –’ Gorel said, and didn’t finish, and Kettle smiled and bowed, and said, ‘I.’

‘I heard a new dark mage is raising an army to the north and west of here, in the No Man’s Lands’, Jericho Moon had said.

And later: ‘I flew from Der Danang to Ankhar’, the avian had said. ‘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.’

And later still, Gorel repeating the same recollection to Kettle, and Kettle saying, ‘You have a good memory, friend.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Gorel had 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 had contrived to look both bored and amused. ‘It’s a possibility,’ he agreed.

‘You, a sorcerer?’

‘It’s a living,’ Kettle said, and he shrugged. ‘I’m good at it.’

‘A dark mage?’ it seemed preposterous. Kettle shrugged again. ‘Mages come in all colours. Or shapes. What were you expecting, a whiteskin human with purple stars on his robe and a long big staff in his hand?’

There was something lewd in his smile. Gorel tried to shake the feeling stirring inside him. He said, ‘So that’s how come you talked to Jericho?’

Kettle smiled. ‘He mentioned you, and where you were going. Spoke of you in glowing terms. Also, thanks for the load of Buried Eyes. They made taking Ankhar a little easier.’

‘You sacked Ankhar?’ How long had it been since he left there? He had heard no news, but then…

‘My forces did, yes. They’ve been travelling up-river steadily. Most of Tharat is in my hands. And now I will take Falang-Et.’

‘But what about the falang god? The frog god?’ Who was he asking these questions of? And what did he care, he, Gorel of Goliris, whether a sorcerer, whoever he was, should sack this god-awful city?

Yet somehow he did. He looked down at the girl Tonar, still motionless, crouching before the Mirror. He cared for her, he realised. She had been damaged by the city, yes, but she was not yet lost, she could have a future yet. And perhaps they were all like her in the end, damaged things but not yet broken, not yet so useless as to be thrown away.

Kettle said, ‘Tell him.’ He was speaking to the Mirror.

The woman in the water said, ‘He will rise and fight you.’

Kettle laughed. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘Tell him.’

‘He is asleep. He will rise again.’

Kettle made a gesture with his hands, and the face in the water twisted in pain. ‘I am the god,’ the woman in the water said. ‘He is in me. I am his, and I am him, and he is me.’

Gorel stared, horrified, at the woman’s bloated stomach, and for a moment thought that he could see the cold pale skin growing translucent, and a grotesque round figure peeping from inside the stomach, a fat, frog-like foetus, and he almost gagged.

‘You are mine now,’ Kettle said, and he made a gesture again, a small one, and the woman spasmed in pain and said, ‘I am yours,’ and Kettle smiled and said, ‘That is good, because, though you may not realise it now, you will help prevent the unnecessary bloodshed of your people –’ and the woman began to echo his words, and Tonar collapsed beside Gorel, no longer in the Mirror’s spell, and Gorel stared again at the, the thing, the god inside the woman’s womb and without conscious thought his gun was out of its holster and in his hand and he aimed and pressed the trigger once, twice, and again, until there were no bullets left and the hammer kept hitting an empty chamber. The thing in the water splashed and the water churned and turned a dark green colour, like embers and jade, and someone shouted, ‘You idiot!’ and something hit him in the kidneys and he fell to his knees and heard the sound of wings beating. He gasped for air. Raindrops began to fall. He saw a dark graceful shape sailing on the winds high above and felt nothing. Somewhere in the distance voices were shouting. At first he could not understand the words. He crawled to Tonar and held her in his arms. He put his fingers against her throat and felt her pulse, and it was there but very weak. He looked back for Sereli but she had gone. He held the girl Tonar in his arms and rocked her against his chest, while the shouting grew louder in the distance, and at last he could tell they were saying: ‘The river. The river is flooding.’

* * *

He was with Tonar when the first soldiers came, riding in from the west, entering the city. Some came by air, on garuda birds or wings of their own. Avians, though they were few. The flood had abated by then, leaving the city a ruined swamp-land. Gorel saw families wander in a daze through the flooded streets, and corpses that came floating past. Tharat had flooded, and taken many to serve him in the other place.

He was in the garden when the flood hit. The water broke the walls and surged in, but he had the sense that, somehow, they were controlled: the water flowed from all sides towards the pool, flooding it, and the corpse of the woman in the water was swallowed by the flood.

After a while the water subsided. The earth shook as at the anger of a god. And he thought he saw, from the corner of his eye, a faceless figure standing at the far end, staring at him, and he heard a roar of anger, as of water crashing against jagged rocks, and he smiled.

She was dead, and not by water. Tharat could not claim her for himself. The woman in the water, who might have once been a princess playing by the stream, was at peace at last, and safe.

He carried Tonar through the streets, watching debris float past, pots and pans, pillows, a toy graal, a painting of a woman whose face was erased forever by the water, a barrel, the corpse of a young falang boy, a vellum-bound book, a belt without an owner, green-fleshy leaves the size of people, flowers, a bottle of local whiskey… carnival had come and gone. What was left in its place was an eerie quietude.

Tonar never spoke. She had opened her eyes, but there was nothing visible inside them. Her body was loose in his. Her pulse was strong but she did not waken. Her eyes stared into nothing. The soldiers ignored them.

At night he came to the Sorcerer’s Head. Lights were burning. Voices were raised in song. A figure rose from the canal (now washed clean by river-water) and came to him, and a familiar voice said, ‘Gorel!’

It was Jericho Moon.

‘Man,’ Jericho said. ‘It’s good to see you.’ He was only half-dressed. Two Merlangai girls in the canal called out to him and he grinned. Gorel said, ‘It’s good to see you too,’ but he spoke without conviction; he felt empty and hollow inside.

Jericho grinned. ‘Come inside! Share a drink with me.’

Gorel said, ‘Kettle here?’

‘Who?’

‘The mage.’

‘The mage?’ Jericho grinned and stuck his thumb at the longhouse. ‘Inside. New headquarters. Must say I like it.’

‘I’ll see you, Jericho.’

‘Sure,’ Jericho Moon said. The grin left him; he looked concerned. Gorel shook his head, and Jericho nodded, and turned away. The girls called to him again from the canal and he ran and jumped into the water. The girls giggled.

Gorel went inside. He was not challenged. The long corridor was full with mercenaries. The same bartender was keeping bar. Gorel walked past.

He stopped outside the second to last room at the end, and walked in, and for a moment it was as if nothing had changed. Kettle was standing by the window. Sereli was reclining in a chair, naked and watching him. ‘Welcome back,’ she said.

Kettle turned. Gorel went and laid down Tonar, carefully, on the beddings she had slept on only the night before. Still she did not move, or speak.

‘You promised her to Tharat,’ he said, not turning from Tonar. He felt Kettle move behind him.

‘Did you really have to kill her?’ Kettle said, and he put his hand on the back of Gorel’s neck, the long fingers massaging him, warm and sure.

‘She was dead a long time ago.’

There was a silence in which only Kettle’s fingers seemed to move, massaging Gorel’s shoulders, loosening his muscles. ‘I had hoped to resolve this with a minimum of bloodshed,’ Kettle said. ‘Had she been alive, she would have pacified the falangs and, later, Tharat too. Though Tharat, at least, was too impatient in the end to wait, for all that he was already too late. The river won’t flood again. Tharat and I… we have an understanding. And he has sacrifices enough.’

‘And the falangs won’t fight you,’ Gorel said. ‘Not now.’

‘No,’ Kettle agreed. ‘Not after the flood.’

There was a silence in the room. After a while Gorel heard soft feet padding on the floor, and then Sereli was there with them. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. Gorel shrugged.

‘Will she live?’ Sereli asked. She was talking about Tonar. Gorel said, ‘I think her mind was linked to the… to her. When she died… I don’t know.’ He raised his hand, put it on Kettle’s shoulder. ‘Will you look after her?’

‘Yes.’

Again there was a silence. Gorel looked down at the falang girl. He realised that, even now, somehow he trusted Kettle. Perhaps, with time, Tonar would recover.

‘Did you see what you wanted to see?’ Sereli asked. ‘In the Mirror?’

Gorel turned. He faced them both, and saw himself reflected in their eyes. ‘It showed me myself,’ he said.

Kettle said, ‘Mirrors have a tendency to do that.’

* * *

He rode away from Falang-Et at day-break. His graal moved slowly, steadily through the mud. By noon the city was gone as if it had never existed, and Tharat was left far behind.

THE END

ALSO BY LAVIE TIDHAR

The Violent Century

Osama*

Martian Sands*

The Tel Aviv Dossier, with Nir Yaniv*

THE BOOKMAN HISTORIES

The Bookman

Camera Obscura

The Great Game

also available in omnibus form as The Bookman Histories

ANTHOLOGIES

The Apex Book of World SF

The Apex Book of World SF 2

The Apex Book of World SF 3

NOVELLAS

Cloud Permutations*

Jesus & the Eightfold Path*

Gorel & the Pot-Bellied God*

*available as a Jabberwocky ebook

THANK YOU FOR READING

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