they sensed the stray scuttling of creatures like ourselves, blind and deaf and lost forever.
The beauty which the river illuminated inspired wonder as well as terror. High above us, like the delicate pipes of fairy organs, were thousands and thousands of hanging crystal chandeliers, all aflame with cool, silvery light.
Occasionally one of the crystals would catch a reflection and turn whatever color there was to brilliant, dazzling displays which seemed to travel with the water, flickering, through the haze, following the currents as that huge torrent endlessly roared, flinging its voice to the arches and domes above even as it fell.
I could not believe that the system could go so deep or, indeed, be so wide. It seemed infinite. Were there monsters lurking there? I remembered an engraving from Verne. Great serpents? Gigantic crocodiles? Descendants of dinosaurs? I reminded myself that the real brutes were still somewhere behind us. Even Verne, or indeed Wells, had failed to anticipate the Nazi Party and all its complex evil.
No doubt Gaynor and his ally, Klosterheim, had more ambitious motives than helping the Nazi cause. My guess was that if the Nazis were no longer useful to them, the two men would no longer be Nazis. This made them, of course, an even greater threat to us. They believed in no cause but their own and thus could appear to believe in all causes. Gaynor had already showed me both his charming and his vicious side. I suspected there were many shades of charm and, indeed, viciousness which others had seen. A man of many faces. In that, he reflected some of Hitler's qualities.
I cannot explain how I inched down that long, slippery pathway, much of it with Oona's help, constantly aware of the broken bones in my foot but, thanks to her potion, in no severe pain. I knew my ruined body couldn't support me for much longer.
We at last reached the extraordinary bridge. It rose from the surrounding rock with that same sinuous dynamic as if something living had been frozen only moments before. Against the glowing spray its pale stone columns were outlined before us in all their cathedral-like beauty. It reminded me of a fantasy by the mad Catalan architect Gaudi or our own Ludwig of Bavaria, but far more elaborate, more delicate. Flanked on both sides by tall spires and turrets, all formed by the natural action of the caverns and again bearing that peculiarly organic quality, its floor had not been naturally worn but smoothed to accommodate human feet. The delicate silvery towers marched across the gorge through which the glowing river ran in caverns 'measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.' Had the opium poets of the English Enlightenment seen what I was now seeing? Had their imaginations actually created it? This disturbing thought came more than once. My brain could scarcely understand the exact nature of what my eyes witnessed and so I was inclined, like any ordinary lunatic, to invent some sort of logic, to sustain myself, to stop myself from simply stepping to one unguarded edge of that great bridge and leaping to my inevitable death.
But I was not by nature suicidal. I still had some faint hope of getting medical assistance and a guide back to the surface where I could do useful work. The roar of the water in the chasm below made it impossible to ask Oona questions and I could only be patient. Having rested, we began to hobble slowly across the bridge, I using my sword as a rough crutch and Oona using her carved bow-staff. The foam from the torrent below engulfed the bridge in bright mist. I slowly became aware of a figure, roughly my height, standing in my path. The fellow was a little oddly shaped and also seemed to support himself on a staff. Oona pressed forward, clearly expecting to be met.
When I drew close, however, I realized the figure who waited to greet us was a gigantic red fox, standing on his hind legs, supporting himself with a long, ornamental 'dandy pole' and dressed elaborately in the costume of a seventeenthcentury French nobleman, all lace and elaborate embroidery. Awkwardly removing his wide-brimmed feathered hat with one delicate paw, the fox mouthed a few words of greeting and bowed.
With some relief, as if escaping a nightmare, I lost consciousness and fell in a heap to the causeway's quivering floor.
Chapter Seven
People of the Depths
Unable to accept any further assault on my training and experience, my mind did the only thing it could to save itself. It had retreated into dreams as fantastic as the reality, but dreams where I appeared at least to have some control. Again I experienced the exultation of guiding not just one great sinuous flying reptile but an entire squadron of them. Racing up into cold, winter skies with someone held tight against me in my saddle, sharing my delight. Someone I loved.
And there stood my doppelganger again. Reaching towards me. The woman had vanished. I was no longer riding the dragon. My double came closer and I saw that his face was contracted with pain. His red eyes were weeping pale blood. At that instant I no longer feared him. Instead I felt sympathy for him. He did not threaten me. Perhaps he tried to warn me?
Slowly the vision faded and I knew a sense of extraordinary, floating wellbeing. As if I was being reborn painlessly from the womb. And as I relaxed, my rational mind slowly came awake again.
I could accept the existence of an underground kingdom so vast as to seem infinite. I could accept and understand the effects of its weird formations on my imagination. But a fox out of a fairy tale was too much! In my feverish attempts to absorb all those alien sights, it was quite possible I'd imagined the fellow. Or else had become so used to the fantastic that I had failed to recognize an actor dressed up for a performance of Volpone.
Certainly the fox was nowhere to be seen when I opened my eyes. Instead, looming over me, was the figure of a giant, whose head resembled a sensitive version of an Easter Island god. He looked down on me with almost paradoxical concern. His uniform alarmed me until I realized it was not German. I hardly found it extraordinary that he was wearing the carefully repaired livery of an officer in the French Foreign Legion. An army doctor, perhaps? Had our journey brought us up into France? Or Morocco? My prosaic brain jumped at ordinary explanations like a cat at a bird.
The large legionnaire was helping me to raise myself in the bed.
'You are feeling well now?'
I had answered, rather haltingly, in the same language before I realized we were speaking classical Greek. 'Do you not speak French?' I asked.
'Of course, my friend. But the common tongue here is Greek and it's considered impolite to speak anything else, though our hosts are familiar with most of our earthly languages.'
'And our hosts are what? Large, overdressed foxes?'
The legionnaire laughed. It was as if granite cracked open. 'You have met Milord Renyard, of course. He was eager to be the first to greet you. He thought you would know him. I believe he was friendly with an ancestor of yours. He and your companion, Mademoiselle Oona, have continued on urgently to Mu Ooria, where they consult with the people there. I understand, my friend, that I have the honor to address Count Ulric von Bek. I am your humble J.-L. Fromental, lieutenant of France's Foreign Legion.'
'And how did you come here?'
'By accident, no doubt. The same as M'sieur le Comte, eh?' Fromental helped me sit upright in the long, narrow bed, whose shallow sides tightly gripped even my half-starved body. 'On the run from some unfriendly Rif, in my case. Looking for the site of ancient Ton-al-Oorn. My companion died. Close to death myself I found an old temple. Went deeper than I suspected. Arrived here.'
Everything in the room seemed etiolated. The place felt like certain Egyptian tombs I had seen during that youthful trip with my school to the ancient world and the Holy Land. I half expected to see cartouches painted on the pale walls. I was dressed in a long garment, a little on the tight side, rather like a nightshirt, which they call a djellaba in Egypt. The room was long and narrow, like a corridor, lit by slim glasses of glowing water. Everything was thin and tall as if extended like a piece of liquid glass. I felt as if I was in one of those 'Owl Glass Halls' of mirrors which were such a rage in Vienna a few years ago. Even the massive Frenchman seemed vaguely short and squat in such surroundings. Yet strange as everything was, I had begun to realize how well I felt. I had not been so fit and at one with myself since the days of my lessons with old von Asch.
The silence added to my sense of well-being. The sound of water was distant enough to be soothing. I was reluctant to speak, but my curiosity drove me. 'If this is not Mu Ooria, then where are we?' I asked.
'Strictly speaking this is not a city at all, but a university, though it functions rather more variously than most
