We use cookies

His first meeting with her was quite by accident. He had long ago lost his way in this vast, vaulted labyrinth, and the manticores, seeming to sense this, began to draw closer. He could smell the strong, bitter stink of them; could hear the guttural, gobbling noises which passed for speech among them. From high overhead, at regular intervals, slotted shafts of light came through the grates. The man looked back, without pausing, and saw the manticores, as they came to the diffused well of sunlight, divide into two groups and sidle, single file, along the walls . . . whispering, slithering, scuttling noises . . . scrabble of claws . . . click-click-click. The manticores abhorred the light. He pressed on. To move faster might prove fatal. So far they had not come to deciding on a rush. The awe of men (along with the hate of men, one of their seemingly instinctive characteristics) still held them from it. He walked along as steadily as if he were passing through the streets of Naples — and some of those streets were darker than this; and some of them were not even as wide — and some of them, though not many, were almost as unsafe. Behind him, just as steadily, came the manticores. In shape they were like great bloated weasels, hair a reddish-yellow for the most part and shaggy as goats, eyes bulging and glowing and rolling every way, showing an intelligence that, for all it differed so incomprehensibly from that of man, was far more than merely animal. Around each neck was a mane like a ruff of clotted plumes, framing a face which might have come from a nightmare — like a human face reduced in size and stretched to distortion: nose shallow and wide, eyes narrow, mouth broad. So as not to attract attention the man did not now raise his head, but lifted up his eyes. Whoever had built these great tunnels through which the rains of Naples were drained off into the Bay, whether the Titans or the Greeks, the Carthaginians or the Old People of the Land, the Etruscans or whoever (Clemens would know if anyone knew, but Clemens would say only that the tunnels were places to be avoided, which was why Clements was not here) — they had provided shafts and stairways. If he could manage to find one, if his finding one did not precipitate an attack, if the upper exit was not closed off . . . Many such doorways were known to exist. Some would require weeks to open, so firmly had they been sealed with cement and masonry, with a gorgon's mask or the Sign of Methras Invictus or some other talisman or apotropos fixed into them. Others were guarded by heavy doors, locked; but keys existed and hinges well--oiled, in case those who held the gates wanted a quick way out with no necessity of advertising their movements in the streets. And there were, there had to be, other openings of which no man knew . . . or at least, which no man guarded, either personally or by proxy. And how few outside the secret-burdened family of the "child" knew that the "child" was still alive (though himself insisting he had died!) at far more over a hundred years than was believable by any who held by the purely natural law. How much longer would he, how much longer could he live? How much did he know? Would his knowledge die with him? Had there not to be another store or source of it?