The Vorrh

by Brian Catling

  Cyrena was very still, cautious not to move and wake Ghertrude from the depth of such vital rest; she had been turned inside out by the strenuous action, but sleep would re-form her in its flat, calm wake. They were both soaked from her tears; Cyrena’s blouse clung coldly against her bosom, where Ghertrude rested.

  From her fixed position, she looked around the room, letting her mind recall their adventures together. Why had Ghertrude said “crimes”? Nothing they had done could be called a crime; their involvement with those dubious men may have been a secret, but it was not illegal: She had paid for their services, which had proved to be less than useless. She moved slightly, to shift her weight; the sleeper gave a quiet moan. Cyrena stroked her friend’s head and settled her weight again. She continued her casual inspection of the room, trying to alleviate the growing discomfort and take her mind off the pins and needles developing in her feet.

  Sometimes, she thought her inquisitive eyes had a life of their own; they constantly flitted and settled on things to embrace their shape and meaning. They looked into the tangled garden of the Persian carpet, imagining all kinds of arabesque creatures hiding within. They stroked the curved legs of a dark mahogany chair and rolled smoothly over its satin cushion. They took in the squat shadow that crouched behind the chair, swept over to the bright brass of the fireguard, then flicked quickly back to the shadow to look more deeply.

  There must have been a shock of recognition, because something awoke Ghertrude. She flinched and pulled herself up, realising her embarrassing position. Still confused and wiping drool from her face, she noticed thin traces of it on Cyrena’s blouse. “Oh, oh, I am so sorry!” she spluttered. “Please forgive me—this is dreadful.”

  She arose quickly and staggered back, still unbalanced from her folded sleep and the sticky webs of its unformed images. Cyrena was on her feet and ready for her fall, her hands outspread. Ghertrude righted herself and looked at her friend, clasping both Cyrena’s hands in her own. She had returned, secure in her old self.

  “You must think me such a fool. How can I ever apologise? I am so sorry; I have not slept for three nights and my nerves are worn ragged.” She again noticed Cyrena’s crumpled, wet blouse and her own dampness. “Please forgive me. You have been such a dear friend and I have treated you terribly. I will get something warm for you to wear and light a fire; it is cold in here; we hardly ever use this room.” She fussed, dithered, and twirled, making her way to the door. “I will be back in one moment,” she said. “Please, do make yourself comfortable. We will light a fire.”

  And then she was gone. Cyrena waited for silence, then swiftly crossed the room, searching out the Gladstone bag that skulked behind the chair.

  Several minutes later, Ghertrude returned carrying a dressing gown and a tray with a flask of warm milk laced with rum. Mutter followed, holding kindling and logs. Cyrena had returned to her seat, but her colour had changed; she was pallid, and her smile was drawn over clenched teeth. Neither of them noticed; they were too busy lighting the fire and laying out the drinks. Ghertrude offered the dressing gown for her damp friend to step into, holding it out with a smile and a flourish, like a suddenly joyful matador. Cyrena donned the gown and they sat together with their warming drinks in front of the blazing fire. Mutter left the room without a word but with a significant glance at Ghertrude, which they both assumed Cyrena was oblivious to.

  “Cyrena, please forgive my appalling behaviour. I am very tired and under the weather.”

  “I should have told you I was going to visit. I think I took you by surprise,” said Cyrena, sipping her drink.

  “No, no, you are always welcome. Now, tell me about what you have been doing.”

  Cyrena was not prepared to change the subject, but she patronised her friend for a moment.

  “Oh, this and that, attempting to find another purpose in my life.”

  Ghertrude raised a quizzical eyebrow and cocked her head.

  “Did you hear about Hoffman?” Cyrena quizzed.

  “Oh! Yes, he disappeared, didn’t he?”

  “Off the face of the earth.”

  Ghertrude changed the subject immediately, though only as far as Hoffman’s unfortunate accomplice. “And what about the other one? Maclish!”

  “Yes, he, too, apparently.”

  They put their drinks down simultaneously, as if to mark the end of a difficult conversation.

  “I feel I must apologise again,” said Ghertrude.

  “You mean for not trusting me?” said Cyrena, closing in.

  “Well, no, I meant…”

  “I know what you meant. And I know what’s disturbing you,” interrupted the older woman.

  “I am just unwell,” Ghertrude stammered.

  “Don’t lie to me! I deserve more than this,” replied Cyrena, her voice rising and changing pitch. “I truly am your friend; now, tell me the truth!”

  Ghertrude was silent.

  “Ghertrude, tell me the truth; I already know what you are hiding.”

  “It is…very difficult for me to say,” said Ghertrude gently.

  Cyrena looked at her silently, her eyes dark and demanding. She would not be deterred.

  “Very well,” Ghertrude sighed. “I am pregnant.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The ancient black hand shone in the flickering light of the small campfire, its tattoos of spirals and sun wheels spinning as it passed through the circular clearing of the forest. It moved past the two men sitting close to the flames and whispered in the dancing shadows, stroking the cheek of its grandson before vanishing out of the circle and into the night.

  Tsungali opened his eyes. The flames made the trees shudder and jump; the world looked unstable and weightless. This must be the other place, he thought, bracing himself for his retribution. Then he saw Uculipsa, lying on the shuddering ground next to his spell pouch; his bandolier, kris, and other possessions were nearby. He extended his hand out towards them, but nothing happened; there was only a wrenching pain. He looked to where his hand should have been, but there was nothing there; his arm was reduced to a stump, from his shoulder to his elbow. He felt sick and groaned loudly. One of the men at the campfire stood up and moved towards him. He stooped down to pick up Uculipsa, lifting her by her carrying strap; the rifle slid apart and swung in two halves. From where Tsungali lay, she looked like a broken bird, hanging mutely from the man’s hand. He walked over and dropped her at the invalid’s side.

  “You should have died,” said Williams. “You deserved to.”

  Tsungali stared into the face, made of shadows and flashes of orange: It was him.

  “My bullet hit your arm as you charged. It took your hand and lower arm and snapped the Enfield in two. It was meant for your chest. You are a very lucky man.”

  It was the same voice. How could this be? Tsungali veered in and out of belief, his broken body unable to keep up with such revelation.

  “Oneofthewilliams,” he whispered woozily and passed out into a pit of raging black thunder.

  —

  When he woke, he was in a different place; they had moved him into the shade and changed his dressing. Williams was sitting next to him, drinking from a tin cup. The creature was sleeping. Without turning, Williams spoke. “You know me?”

  The wounded man tried to speak, but his throat was closed with dust. At the pause, Williams turned. Seeing the man’s struggle, he poured water into the cup and offered it up to his broken lips. Tsungali drank and dissolved the webs on his voice. “Why did you let me live?” he rasped.

  “I would have blown your head off, but he stopped me,” Williams said, gesturing towards the cyclops.

  “What is he?” Tsungali asked weakly.

  “Ishmael? He is something from the old world, something that never really existed. He is unique.”

  He took the cup and refilled it, drank some, and then handed it back, turning again to stare into Tsungali’s face.

  “Now, about your words earlier.” His tone t
ightened to a blade. “What did you call me?”

  “I called you Oneofthewilliams. You knew me when I was a young man; the rifle was yours.” He pointed to the pathetic carcass of the snapped Uculipsa. “You were chosen to survive by the holy Irrinipeste, daughter of the Erstwhile, and I believe you have been changed by her forever.”

  He finished speaking and slumped a little, fear and fatigue mining his strength.

  Williams was very still; he looked perplexed.

  “If this is true, why would you try so hard to kill me?”

  “I did not know it was you until it was too late. I was working for your old masters; they thought you long dead. Then it was said that you were returning through the coastal lands. They wanted you gone, not coming back. Walking freely through desertion after all this time and relighting old fires.”

  Williams could not make images for the words, but the depth of his understanding knew them to be true.

  “Do you intend to continue your quest?”

  Tsungali shook his head wearily.

  Williams got up and slowly walked over to Ishmael, who had been woken by their conversation. His hearing, which had been hiding in a constantly ringing place ever since the pistol fired next to his head, had almost returned.

  “I don’t know which of the three of us is the biggest freak,” Williams said, retrieving his bow and quiver. “I will be back in an hour. Don’t worry about him. He is going nowhere.”

  He walked out of the camp, a trio of eyes fixed on his disappearing form.

  —

  Long, indecisive minutes passed. Eventually, Ishmael called a greeting to the wounded man.

  “I am coming to speak with you. Do not be alarmed!”

  The black man waved feebly at him to signal understanding and agreement.

  The cyclops sat at his side, so that his face would not shock and he would be able to watch the other man’s moves. He had no fear of the wounded man—he had been the cause of his downfall and the preserver of his life. He had purchased him, between life and death, and now the power was all his, unfamiliar and thriving, from a source unknown to him but nonetheless evident: he owned this man. He had stared down the track with Este in his hands, and this man had slipped and faltered. There had been a reaction between the bow and his eye that saved their lives. Now something told him to spare, or rather save, this man’s life; there was a purpose in it.

  “Why do you pursue me?” he asked quietly.

  “I was not hunting you; I sought only the Bowman.”

  “But you would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped you?”

  Tsungali glanced tentatively at his interrogator’s profile and gave a small nod.

  “So you do know that I stopped you?”

  Tsungali nodded again and began to tremble.

  “Do you also know that I saved your worthless life?”

  Again he nodded, tears forming and a great weight growing over his heart.

  The cyclops lowered his face and looked into his subordinate’s eyes; a great passion rose in him and swelled up, out of his chest.

  “You are mine!” he boomed. His voice was commanding and alien to him, bred out of certainty and spite; the hunter shrivelled under its command, triggering some other instinct in Ishmael; he softened his tone a fraction. “What will you do for me?” he asked.

  Tsungali directed a nod across the camp, indicating the pile of confiscated possessions; he seemed to have lost his power of speech. Ishmael stood and crossed the space to the small heap. He lifted each item, one at a time, until Tsungali signalled that he had reached the right one. In his hands was a bulky, brown leather belt, strung with pouches and bulging pockets. He inspected it suspiciously before returning to the prone man. Holding it up for a moment, he looked down into the man’s soul, then dropped it callously across his body. The buckle caught the stump end of his wound, and Tsungali jounced into spasm. Ishmael watched silently, waiting for the writhing to subside as some developing part of him sipped at the agony.

  Eventually, once the throb in his shoulder had returned to an almost bearable rhythm, Tsungali fumbled into the pouches with his only hand. He pulled out a small, unseen item and held it in his loosely bunched fist. Ishmael watched for signs of betrayal but knew there would be none. The hand, which shook a little less than it had, slowly opened, palm up, cupping the small grass ball. Inside its woven cage, the eye stared out, focusing intently on its new owner.

  —

  Williams shot the arrow vertically, up through the green shadows and into the bright sky; he did it to consult her in a way that sought no direction, at least not in the physical realm. She had changed; his memory of her had shifted; they were no longer one body. There was no pain in the separation; it was as if they had simply worn out an invisible circulation in which they had once shared everything. The pounding veins and singing capillaries that had held every reflection and nuance of their world had disappeared; the flow between them that had made one soul of their minds and bodies had ceased, somewhere in the Vorrh. Now not even the recollection of their transfusion together existed. They were two things: a man and a bow.

  He could never return to all that he had forgotten; the road ahead must be walked alone. He walked back into camp, undone and clear, smelling the new breeze in his tight, half-sobbing lungs.

  —

  “He is called Tsungali; he will be my servant from now on,” said Ishmael to the frowning Williams, who, though amazed at the turn of events in his absence, was equally intent on his own change of course.

  “I know who he is. You are welcome to him.” If Ishmael noticed the distance in his friend’s tone, he didn’t show it.

  “He knows a medicine man who can change my face; he has agreed to take us to him.”

  Williams grunted impassively and started to gather his pack.

  “What are you doing?” said Ishmael.

  “I have other things to do. Your leg is better and you have a slave to look after you now.” At the word “slave,” everybody flinched, including its speaker.

  “Where will you go?”

  Williams paused for a moment, his emotions playing wearily over his face.

  “Out of this godforsaken forest.”

  They fell silent and still, each considering his position in the new pattern of things.

  “Maybe straight through and out the other side,” said Williams finally, breaking the spell.

  “If you travel on, it will take your memory,” said Tsungali, in his first unsolicited utterance.

  “What memory?” Williams shrugged. “You know more about me than I do myself.” He turned away from the questions and stooped to retrieve a blanket, dropping it near his growing bundle of belongings. The rest of the day passed without much conversation. As the evening drew in, Williams gathered his possessions and moved them to another place in the forest. Ishmael assumed he would leave at dawn, and he put together a simple meal, as he had seen others do. He lit the campfire, boiled water, and waited. He and Tsungali were hungry and picked at the food. The bow rested against a nearby tree, its quiver hanging in the low branches: His friend could not be far away. But by nightfall, their comfort was replaced with anxiety, their appetites slipping away as the truth wormed its way into their stomachs: He had gone. The bow was left in the flickering tree, and he had departed, wordlessly, into the enveloping night.

  The two wounded men made their way out of the Vorrh, to the island where Nebsuel dwelt. Tsungali’s hidden boat could not be used: The cyclops was too skittish and weak to be trusted on the fast water, and because Tsungali had only one arm, the boat was useless. So they went by foot, back through the monsters’ hunting ground.

  Ishmael carried the bow; it had not left his hands since they realised that Williams had gone. It wormed itself into him day and night, burrowing into his future, drawing a blood line around all his maps of possible tomorrows. He dared not use it yet, fearing the momentum of its power when fully taut and waiting for release. Like a child, that virg
in part of him shrank from the full volume and implication of such an act. He held it before him as they moved forward through the Vorrh, and the forest understood its new application of meaning. Not a creature dared approach them, and they were met by muffled silence all the way. The birds knitted their beaks, the animals bit their tongues, the insects froze, and the anthropophagi ignored their passing. The silence infected their journey, making it strange and infuriating for Ishmael: He had many questions for his new servant, but nothing he said could provoke an answer.

  The pain amplified Tsungali’s introspection: The cyclops seemed to know nothing about the world. How could he begin to explain his history with Oneofthewilliams; his childhood; how he and his grandfather were shut behind glass in another world; the tragedy of the Possession Wars? There was too much to say and too little experience shared; better to be quiet and concentrated, stay on the track and get to the healing man as quickly as their wounds allowed.

  Ishmael missed Williams, missed his humour and protection. He had a warmth about him that the tattooed killer who now travelled by his side could never possess. The old man refused to answer even the simplest questions as they pushed through the undergrowth. Ishmael began to think that he had made the wrong decision. He should have stayed close to his friend and not let him leave so sadly. There was, he began to realise, little reason to trust his new companion; his promise of a new face might be a lie or a lure—Ishmael could be following him to death or worse. Why had he so hastily accepted this man’s servitude? He could see that Tsungali feared him, but he did not understand his total abasement to him when he held the bow. He guessed it was some kind of primitive superstition and pondered how he might be able to put it to his advantage. He wondered if it could be used to receive the answers he so desired. He changed the bow from one hand to the other and then touched Tsungali’s back with its tip.

  “Tell me about this medicine man,” he said.

  The effect was instant and undisguised. The old killer fell to his knees, placing his working arm in the air in a gesture of surrender; Ishmael circled him, looking closely at the trembling man’s face.