The Vorrh

charge, and the splinters waiting behind it.’
    The hanging man knew Nebsuel would do it, so he sucked the sticky ball into his wide mouth. Nebsuel helped by jarring the rifle, chiselling the barrel onto Sidrus’ teeth.
    ‘No man soils my house. No man murders in my healing room. Now swallow.’
    He thrust the barrel again, hitting Sidrus in his Adam’s apple. Sidrus choked and swallowed the mouthful down, his eyes raging. The lever was pulled again and he fell to the ground. Nebsuel was at his side with a sharp, curved knife. He slit the rope from the cleric’s hands with a deftness that demonstrated how easily he could have done the same to his throat.
    ‘Put your weapons and charms on the table and go.’ Nebsuel stood by the door, splinter gun at the ready.
    ‘I could still take you both.’
    ‘Maybe, but you would pay a terrible price for it. Anyway, we have the information you need to find your Bowman. Information that will now cost you dearly. You will never come here again. If you cross this threshold, you will die. In the future, we will communicate only by bird. Do you understand?’
    ‘I want to know all, NOW!’ Sidrus barked.
    ‘I doubt you have the time.’
    ‘I have all the time it takes,’ he spat back.
    ‘How long did it take you to get here?’
    ‘WHAT?’
    ‘How long?’
    ‘Three days.’
    ‘As I thought. I have given you forty hours to get back.’
    ‘What are you gibbering about, old fool?’ snarled Sidrus.
    ‘I told you, from now on we only communicate by bird. I sent a black dove to your abode, a quarter of an hour ago. It carries my last supply of the vital antidote for Mithrassia Toxia, the spore of which you sucked from my rifle a few minutes ago.’
    ‘Mithrassia? You gave me Mithrassia?!’
    ‘Yes. I lied about the sedative. That is why you don’t have the time to discuss what we may do for you.’
    Sidrus was speechless for a moment and then bolted for the door.
    ‘Pray there are no hawks in the skies between us,’ shouted Nebsuel at the swinging door.
    The healer started to clear up and remove the sad, scarred body of the old black warrior. Ishmael attempted to get off the bed to help, but was stopped and told to rest.
    Nebsuel disappeared outside to dispose of the body, then returned to the hushed interior to start to prepare for the cleansing ritual, which would last for five days. Ishmael watched him for many minutes before eventually asking, ‘Please, what is Mithrassia?’
    The shaman groaned and sat down wearily on the edge of the bed, gently patting Ishmael’s hand. ‘Young man, you really don’t want to know; you have already been surrounded by too much shadow and chill, and I will not be responsible for telling you more. You must heal now; you need to set your mind and body in light and warmth.’ He started to get up, then turned, his face creaking into a reluctant grin. ‘Let me only say that the symptoms of Mithrassia are tenacious and unspeakable.’
    * * *

    He was beginning to feel his age. Not in a depleting sense – he was strong, lean and agile, with the physique of a man half his age – but the shortage of time before him had begun to vex. He was becoming aware of how much work there was to do, and how little time he had left to do it in.
    Almost every day, he was talking in public, producing interviews and articles, a man on display. The zoopraxiscopes were as popular as ever, and he had managed to shelve his disillusionment with them; they were making a small fortune, and had become a clarion for his reputation, much more so than his more serious work, which seemed to continually be overlooked and underestimated.
    It had been after his meeting with Edison, where they had discussed the possibility of adding sound to moving images, that he had started thinking again about his lost machine in London. Edison was impatient and somewhat shallow for Muybridge’s taste; he found the inventor to be little more than a mechanic, with an ego dedicated and driven towards fame and fortune. The American seemed more like the new breed of entrepreneur showmen, rather than a son of science; he had more in common with Barnum and Bailey than Newton and Galileo.
    However, their meeting had been a clear pointer towards the deeper significance of his own knowledge and its meaning, which lived a long way from the production of toys for petty entertainment. So he went back to the hidden charge he had observed in photographic images. He would return to his