The Vorrh

last. Low vines and abundant foliage dragged at his ankles as he stormed through, and he faltered on pebbles and flat stones that had gone unnoticed on their smooth, leisurely walk here. He pushed harder against the path and its growing resistance, all the while muttering his embarrassment of the situation. The dialogue stopped when the track ran out. He stood, silent, eyes wide open, staring at the blank wall of vegetation before him, at the end of this, the wrong track. A tiny trickle of panic sped coldly through his blood. Looking around, he heard his own laboured breathing. He struggled to see the track he had just walked, though he had not deviated from it, and stood on it still. He knew he must control the moment. Closing his eyes, he tried to remain calm, laying his hand on his heart and letting his blood flood the fear away. He opened his eyes to an impenetrable jungle. Slowly, he began to walk back the way he thought he had come, expecting at any moment that the path would clear and become smooth and straight like before, that it would blossom out onto the chanting Seil Kor and the way home. But his footsteps led him to the trunk of a vast, dark tree, the path ending in the way that paths never do. He turned with his back to the tree and stared into the tangled forest, dread now rising like fumes from its pathless floor.
    Over the next tangled decade, which must only, in fact, have been hours, he shouted and called until his voice ran out. He had walked in all directions, seeking a path or a sign, but there were only trees and the growing wind. Surely his wise friend or one of the workers would find him? Even the Limboia would be a welcome sight. He thought he heard calling and had hurried towards it, but it had faded back into the other sounds, leaving him no closer to an escape.
    He was irretrievably lost, with very few provisions, the main bag being in Seil Kor’s possession. He stopped to ferret in his shoulder bag, expecting to find hope, along with solution, in its cramped interior. Instead, he found the secreted Derringer, loaded, and with two extra bullets in the snug of its holster. He could afford only one to signal his position; the others he would need for protection. God knows what horrors lived in this matted place; he had seen the paintings, had heard the tales.
    He took the little gun out, carefully cocked it and held it above his head. He fired into the sky, or where the sky must be, on the other side of tons of leaves. The sound stopped the quiet and gave him silence back for a moment. He bellowed ‘SEIL KOR!’ with the last cracked and serrated edges of his voice. Then the quiet gushed back in, carrying the small foam of a sound: the long distance whistle of the train. It seemed miles away and unfocused, without direction. For a few moments, he thought it must be in response to his signal, that they had heard the report of his gun from this dismal patch, determined his whereabouts and begun their search. Then it sounded again, and in its reverberation he heard movement – it was leaving the forest, laden with wood and a few exhausted passengers, and he had been left behind, forgotten, maybe never seen at all. All those who cared and knew he existed were in another time and place, all except the one he had walked away from and would now never find. His legs buckled and he slumped against the ancient tree, sliding down into the hard, veined nest of its serpentine roots.
    * * *

    The jaw now worked in a sideways motion. The Wiseman who had performed the repair was a healer named Nebsuel, who lived in the outcast isles, just inside the mouth of the great river. Tsungali had visited him on his way into the Vorrh.
    Nebsuel possessed a great knowledge of the body, of its fluids and lights. His services could be bought, but were better given. He was not a kind man; he did not apply his knowledge for the wellbeing of others. He performed surgery and operated the chemistry of plants to see further inside the workings of the human animal. His true ambition was to isolate the gum that joins flesh to mind, and mind to spirit. His tools and procedures for such work were simple. He would divide and subtract, add and multiply the pain and its relief, while probing the interior of structure and sensation. He was not a man to be taken lightly, and Tsungali knew he might be killed or rearranged by his practices. He also knew that if he did not get help soon, his jaw might never heal. Starvation and blood