Read Online Gorel and the Pot Bellied God by Lavie Tidhar - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lavie Tidhar
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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.
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.
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