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

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