Free Gorel and the Pot Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar

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