Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

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 Clemens 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 were 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.

It must have been through one such passageway that the manticores had come, a century before, and stolen a human child. The raid had been witnessed by the child’s mother, who told of it before dying of her tainted wounds, and the tale had passed into legend. So far, though dreadful, it was easy enough to understand. But why had the manticores, instead of killing the child, kept him alive for forty years? And why, then, released him? No one could say, and, seemingly, only one man ever conjectured.

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? And where else, where better, where likelier, than down in these dim and dirty mazes?

Down the center of this arm of the maze, a trickle of water flowed, and it was wet, too, near the mossy walls, from seepage. But there was a dry enough path — in fact, two — one on either side. The man walked down the left-hand one. Somewhere, far above, a dog barked. The sounds behind him changed at once. For an instant the pad-pad ceased. So did the grunting. The dog barked again — then again and again, without stopping. Then it stopped, abruptly, as if someone had commanded it, or thrown a stone.

Another grating was up ahead; like all of them, impossible to climb to unless someone at the surface sent down fathoms and fathoms of knotted rope. Dust motes swam lazily in the bars of light, then began to dance in agitation as the manticores broke into a trot. A querulous whine that was almost a question was succeeded by a deep gobble that was almost an answer. The movement was toward his right — they were not going to rush him yet — the intention was evidently to pass him, to cut him off. Knowing what little he did of the manticores, guessing from that little knowledge, the man believed that they would not have chosen this plan unless something favorable to it lay up ahead — unless something unusual lay up ahead.

The dog barked again. Or was it another dog? No, there were two of them, one behind and one before, neither visible, but both in the tunnel.

The manticores halted. And the man broke into a run.

There it was. A huge projecting leaf of the original rock thrust itself into the corridor, which turned aside to avoid it. The way was only half its usual width here; evidently the passage at this point was merely a fissure in the substratum. It would have been an ideal place for the manticores to hold him at bay. When they saw him ran, the pack of them began to howl and gobble, but the dogs barked, a man’s voice called out, then another, and another. Behind him he could hear his pursuers hesitate.

A dog began to bay in a half-frenzied, half-frightened fashion, which meant it had caught the bitter, pungent scent of the manticores. There was the grating of metal on metal, a loud creaking, a flood of light from high up on one side. A voice called out. The man fled up the damp and shallow steps.

Behind him, as the door was shoved to, locked, bolted, barred, he heard the devilish things below shrieking their frustration and fury.

The gray-bearded man who had let him out demanded, “The other men? And the dogs?”

“There is only me. There were no dogs.” The place was some sort of grotto. Benches had been hewn out of the rock.