The Vorrh

served. It will rush and buffer your brain with over-rich oxygen; only your pain will equal its need to empty its power. Together they will shriek the truth that you refuse to give.’
    The first cut only felt like pressure, until he skinned the nerve and everything in Williams’ mind turned white.
    He did not know how many times he had passed out or how many times he had come to. New agonies awaited him with every breath. The night arrived and the wind dropped; he was about to scream again when he felt it change, its velocity fluttering and calming into a whisper.
    ‘Now,’ he heard himself say. But now what?
    He felt something, far outside the chapel, searching him out, rushing to his side. Was this what Sidrus searched for? A secret approaching, to be given to him and then passed on? A secret whose journey was triggered by blood? Sidrus moved closer.
    ‘Speak up, Oneofthewilliams: your time has come, as I told you it would.’
    The whistle outside was shrill and fast, only moments away. Sidrus was oblivious; he pushed his disgusting face closer to his prey’s mouth, but the sounds he heard had no meaning.
    Williams saw the voice from the corner of his eye. It flashed white in the window for a fraction of a second before slicing through his throat, pinning his words to the altar.
    Sidrus sprang back in a shower of blood, his white face drenched pink.
    ‘NO!’ he bellowed at the dying man, tugging desperately at the white arrow impaled in his neck. But it was no use: Williams was gone, and the arrow would not move. Sidrus slumped backwards, defeated and dejected. He wiped a grey, shaking hand over his bloodied face. He sat there until the dawn’s grey sheen made the chapel hover. The thin light moved across the room, momentarily highlighting a tiny painting of a heavily bearded prophet, standing in a black, flat landscape of featureless insistence. The colourless prism illuminated the dead man’s face to reveal an expression of pleased contentment. No man who died in such pain should look like that. Sidrus scrabbled to his feet and grabbed at the ropes around the corpse. There was a smile somewhere in that face, under the bone, working like a battery and powering an expression of total peace. Sidrus shook the dead body in rage. The arrow fell loose, as though it had merely been resting there.
    He could bear no more. Grabbing his belongings together, he speedily shovelled the blunted probes and knives into a sack. The brazier had not fully cooled and he left it behind, pushing impatiently out into the damp, brightening air.
    He ran towards the forest. It took him an hour to reach its sanctified enclosure; it already felt different, less troubling: he felt at ease there. Had he got it? Were those words, those few, strange words, the secret? Could he at last go deeper and contact the Erstwhile directly, communicate with them in some tangible way? The forest warmed and flamed with beauty as the full power of the sun rose over it: he was welcome here. He had it. It had begun.
    He dropped the sack of tools and made straight for the core. His patience had run out: he needed to find the older being and be cleansed of the wounds he had already carried for too much of his life. It was midday; huge shafts of light flooded down from the canopy, shuddering with life and birdsong. He could see the swallows darting in the sky between the spaces of trees; something rustled in the undergrowth, followed by a trill in the air; the swallows spun into a line and parted the leaves above. A great arc formed and glided down from the clouds to the forest floor. It approached at speed, almost upon him before he understood what shrilled inside the arc. The old white arrow twisted and warped, spinning to the ground with huge purpose. It struck its target and a grey-skinned creature fell to the ground in front of Sidrus with a force that he felt through his feet. It cried out, thrashing momentarily before falling silent.
    Birds spiralled upwards, fluttering through the chattering leaves and out to quietness. He bent to examine the creature’s grey skin, unable to decide if it was man or animal; it seemed much too shrivelled, as if it had been dead for years rather than seconds. His interest faded with the recollection of his purpose; he walked away from it, not noticing the two black ghosts who drew close in his departure.
    * * *

    Tsungali disregarded the mangled presence: there was nothing to be gained from such a lost and empty