The Vorrh

poisoning seemed a far worse conclusion than Nebsuel’s intrusions.
    The outcast isle had been a leper colony. Nebsuel’s family had lived there and suffered the relentless disease, but he had not. Some potent resistance in him had kept him ‘clean’, while he watched all around him suffer. He had seen how the outsiders had treated his family and friends; on trading expeditions to the outside world, he had witnessed open disgust and cruelty against his loved ones.
    How he became a Wiseman was not known, but the legends were thick and terrible. Some said he cut open all the dead of the isle and read the complex tales of their mechanisms; others said he travelled away, to collect the wisdom from many tribes, some from beyond the sea. He was rumoured to commune with forbidden spirits, and unspeakable creatures that came to trade knowledge for the souls of men he kept in jars. None of the reports could be confirmed, and they grew more fantastical in their ambiguity. But his powers of healing were not so unclear. They were the only thing about him that was certain, and they were worth the risk of contamination and agony.
    Tsungali had sat in a large chair made of sturdy wood, a strap holding his arms tight to his body and firm against the chair. He had laboriously drunk the mixture of stewed leaves that Nebsuel had given him, and now his face drooped numb and cold. His broken teeth had been removed and dropped to the earthen floor, where ants flocked to harvest them, swarming in collective shoves to nudge the prize along their conveyor-belt lines of frenzied, black bodies. Metal and wooden probes extended his jaw, giving access to the glistening muscles, unnaturally exposed inside. Nebsuel worked from both sides, one finger in the exterior wound, which he had unstitched, the other hand teasing and adjusting the tools inside Tsungali’s mouth. His arm, already treated, lay throbbing under the strap, An hour later, he lay in a sweat of recovery, beaming in pain.
    ‘Tell me of this Bowman,’ Nebsuel said as they sat around a smouldering fire, three days later. Tsungali spoke through gurgles and splutters, as though a wet sock were stuffed in his mouth. He explained his quest and how it had been foiled on both attempts. He told of the Whiteman with Blackman skills, of his cunning and excessive knowledge. He did not tell of what he feared, of what he had seen for those few minutes at close range: the shock of recognition; a face he knew from years before, unchanged by time while his own grew old, and his body, slow. It must have been a mistake, a trick of the mind – the man’s son, perhaps, grown identical in form. The alternative, though it would have explained his power and his automatic place in Tsungali’s memory, was impossible.
    ‘I will kill him in the Vorrh,’ concluded Tsungali.
    ‘Or he will kill you,’ Nebsuel stated blankly. ‘Why do you think he heads for the Vorrh?’
    ‘Because he has a destiny there, something unfinished. Something the white soldiers don’t want to happen.’ Tsungali prodded the glowing embers with a stick, making a new citadel within their flickering hearth. ‘Perhaps he means to meet the angels or the demons that dwell there.’
    ‘Ah!’ said Nebsuel. ‘I know nothing of demons, but the Erstwhile you call angels are another matter, they have a presence everywhere.’
    ‘You have seen them?’ asked Tsungali.
    ‘I have sensed them, felt them near, watching, when a soul shudders on my knives. Some are attracted to the extreme action of men, wanting to see deeper and understand, and maybe become part of man. Have you never known their presence amid your actions of war and butchery?’
    There was no answer, so Nebsuel continued.
    ‘The Erstwhile in the Vorrh could be different, older; a residue, like something left in a closed pipe or one of my test tubes; concealed and contained, too viscous to climb the sides. At least, that would match the stories that are told of that region.’
    He made a brief sign over his head, as if stroking some invisible coiffure above his shining, bald scalp. He knew Tsungali had seen more, that there was an understanding which had not been mentioned. For that little act of selfishness, he would give him weak, inexpensive balm to close his wounds. Had he shared all his knowledge and fears, he would be leaving with an ointment that would have healed the wound in two days.
    For the wrongness of his quest and his inability to alter or change his