The Phoenix and the Mirror

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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.

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