Black Gods Kiss by Lavie Tidhar

Author:Lavie Tidhar [Tidhar, Lavie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-625671-18-9
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Dead Leaves

‘I would like you,’ the sorcerer said, ‘to kill a man.’

Gorel of Goliris stared at the sorcerer across the table. There are many questions one can ask in response to such a statement. The amateur might ask, for instance, why? or who? – good questions both, for certain. The amateur might ask, What has he done? or Is he a good man or a bad one? The professional has other, more urgent considerations.

‘How much?’ Gorel said, and the sorcerer smiled, revealing blackened, broken teeth. Gorel hated sorcerers, but this one was, so far, paying for the drinks.

He examined the man who sat across the table. He was a broken-down sort of a man, a rare white-skin, with acne scars and a nose that had been broken and never set back properly. His fingers were dirty and his skin had the yellow sheen of aged parchment. If he really was a sorcerer, he couldn’t have been a very good one.

‘Everything I have,’ the man said. He spoke with difficulty, the words hissing out of his broken teeth. He licked his lips, squinted, kept shifting in his place.

Gorel was at an Abandonment on the road to Ankhar, or perhaps it was to the mountains. He couldn’t really tell and didn’t care enough. He was lost, in the sense a child is lost when his home is taken from him.

He had left Tharat far behind him, and the dark mage called Kettle, who had been his enemy and his lover and his friend. He was searching, always searching for his lost home, for vanished Goliris, that was taken from him when the rebels rose against them, and killed his parents and sent him, by magic, across the World.

He had not yet found any answers.

And he was low on cash.

He had been travelling across the No Man’s Lands, that vast uncharted territory that stretches away from mighty Tharat all the way to the Zul-Ware’i mountains. Somewhere there was the Black Tor, and somewhere there Kettle’s army was marching, set on a strange plan of conquest Gorel did not comprehend. He didn’t care. There were always dark mages. They were always trying to take over the World.

Though Kettle was different. And his plans were deep, and long-ranged, and strange, and Gorel was afraid of him as much as he had loved him.

But he was a long way away. And Gorel was still on the road, and still in need of cash, and so he said, patiently, ‘How much?’ again, and waited, since Everything I have is hardly a satisfactory answer when not otherwise quantified.

‘My life,’ the sorcerer said.

Gorel looked at him. He took a sip from his drink. They were sitting at a dark and dismal bar, a ruin patched half-heartedly by its current owners, an Abandonment on the road to – well, wherever the road led to. Presumably it went somewhere, though that was not a presumption one necessarily made easily, in the No Man’s Lands.

‘Don’t look like much of a deal,’ Gorel said.

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