Free Gorel and the Pot Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar Page A

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