Gorel and the Pot Bellied God Read Online Free PDF Page B

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