At that moment the panting torch revealed an unexpected thing in the wall to my right—an oval of featureless darkness.

Curious, and not at ease, I swung about to look, and made out a recessed entrance that appeared to lead into some inner chamber.

I was intrigued, put aside my child’s fears of lurks and haunts—to which this place, against my rationale but most definitely, made me prey—and rode between columns, up the marble pavement, and into the recess.

Inner chamber it was indeed, an apartment designed as a lodging, obviously for the god people who journeyed the tunnel.

At least the curtain that hung inside the entrance was perishable. It shivered to dusty particles as I brushed it, giving me the sense that I had wrongfully disturbed something I should not have presumed to touch.

The dying glare of the resin swept once over the big room, catching, as before, a variety of objects and glitters and, to the left of me, a man-high stand of solid silver with candles on iron spikes. It was only an arm’s stretch to let the last of my torch kiss their wax awake. In seconds a warm pallor enfolded the entrance, and showed me similar stands about the room. It was oddly and unpleasantly irresistible to me to dismount, take up one of the burning candles, and walk around the chamber with it, giving light wherever it would prosper. Perhaps it was some spell of theirs, the old ones, wanting me to see the grandeur that was their monument. I remember I thought myself a fool after, for my actions and apprehensions in the tunnel.

It was a beautiful room; I had anticipated nothing else. The ceiling was green onyx carved into a forest-roof of leaves and vines where the light played glorious havoc with form and shadow. The rugs and draperies had turned as fine as spiderspun; you laid hand or foot on them and they were no more. Otherwise, the furnishings endured: the love couches in the shapes of mated ivory swans and ebony cats, the vases of chalcedony. I came on a huge silver dish of fruit, pristine as if newly plucked; then, putting in my hand, drew out an apple of chilly wine-red crystal, an amber peach, and grapes, each fashioned from black tourmaline with leaves of jade—the toys of men and women who regarded fruit as ornament, having no need to fill their bellies.

It seemed the legends were true. There was something else. A sumptuous bathing apartment opened behind a door of gold. I found it abruptly and went in to see. The sunken bath was full of moss and the golden dolphin taps no longer dispersed water. There was another lack. Accustomed to Eshkorek, I searched about. At length I grinned stupidly, for I was afraid—of the story, the reality, of a difference so absolute. There was no latrine.

It was like a crude joke. It was like a blow in the face.

Any man who crossed their exquisite tunnel must leave his dung like a rat. It was later I discovered the narrow, dust-choked privies they had had built that their human slaves might not soil the thoroughfare. There is a certain black shame to see one’s irremediable self through such eyes.