Gyaurskoto Burlo, she explained, meant “Hiding Place of the Infidels,” or “Infidels’ Prison,” as Dr. Raphael had rightly translated it from Latin. “It was no wonder,” my grandmother continued, “that a place called Gyaurskoto Burlo has never been found, as it does not exist.” Placing her finger near the town of Trigrad, Baba Slavka pointed out a cavern that fit the description of the one we sought, a cavern that had long been held to be a mystical site, the place of Orpheus’s journey to the underworld, a geological marvel and a source of great wonder to the villagers. “This cave has the qualities that you describe, but it is not called Gyaurskoto Burlo,” Baba Slavka said. “It is called Dyavolskoto Gurlo, the Devil’s Throat.” Gesturing to the map, my grandmother said, “The name is not written there, or on any other map, and yet I have walked to the opening in the mountain myself. I have heard the music that emanates from the gorge. It is what made me wish for you to pursue your studies, Celestine.”
“You have been to the cavern?” I asked, astonished that the answer to the Valkos’ search had been so close at hand all along.
My grandmother gave a strange and mysterious smile. “It is near the ancient village of Trigrad that I met your grandfather, and it was in Trigrad that your father was born.”
After my part in locating the cavern, I had expected to return to Paris to assist the Valkos in preparations for the expedition. But with the danger of invasion looming, Dr. Raphael would hear nothing of it. He spoke with my parents, arranging for my belongings to be sent to me by train, and then the Valkos left. Watching them go, I felt that all my dreams and all my work had been for naught. Abandoned in Alsace, I waited for news of our impending journey.
At long last we were approaching the Devil’s Throat. Vladimir stopped the van at a dull wooden sign with a scattering of black Cyrillic letters painted upon it. At Dr. Seraphina’s instruction, he followed the sign toward the village, driving along a narrow, snow-covered road that lifted sharply up into the mountain. The incline was icy and steep. When the van slid backward, Vladimir downshifted, grinding the gears against gravity. The van’s tires spun on the packed snow, gained traction, and carried us lurching ahead into the shadows.
When we reached the top of the road, Vladimir parked the van at the ledge of the mountain, a vast snowy wasteland opening before us. Dr. Seraphina turned to address us. “You’ve all read the Venerable Clematis’s account of his journey. And we have all been through the logistics of entering the cavern. You are aware that the dangers we’re facing ahead are unlike any we’ve encountered before. The physical process of descending the gorge will take all of our strength. We must go in with precision and speed. We have no margin for error. Our equipment will be of great use, but there are more than the physical challenges. Once we are inside the cavern itself, we must be prepared to face the Watchers.”
“Whose strength is formidable,” Vladimir added.
Looking carefully at us, the full gravity of the mission etched into her expression, Dr. Seraphina said, “‘Formidable’ doesn’t adequately describe what we may find. Generations of angelologists have dreamed that we would one day have the capability to confront the imprisoned angels. If we succeed, we will have accomplished something no other group has before.”
“And if we fail?” I asked, hardly allowing myself to think of the possibility.
“The powers they hold,” Vladimir said, “and the destruction and suffering they could bring to humanity are unimaginable.”
Dr. Seraphina buttoned her wool coat and pulled on a pair of leather military gloves, preparing to face the cold mountain wind. “If I’m right, the gorge is at the top of this pass,” she said, stepping out of the van.
I walked from the van to the mountain ledge and looked over the strange, crystalline world that had materialized around me. Above, a wall of black rock rose to the sky, casting a shadow over our party, while ahead a snow-covered valley fell steeply away. Without delay, Dr. Seraphina trekked toward the mountain. Following close behind, I climbed through drifts of snow, my heavy leather boots breaking my path. Clutching a case filled with medical equipment tightly in my hand, I tried to bring my thoughts to focus upon what lay ahead. I knew we would need to be precise in our efforts. Not only were we to face the rugged descent into the gorge, it might be necessary to navigate the spaces beyond the river, the honeycomb of caverns in which Clematis had encountered the angels. There would be no room for mistakes.
As we entered the mouth of the cave, a heavy darkness descended upon us. The interior space was barren and chill, filled with the ominous echoing rush of the underground waterfall Clematis had described. The flat rock at the entrance had none of the pockmarks and vertical shafts I had expected from my studies of Balkan geology but had been mantled with a thick, even layer of glacial deposit. The amount of snow and ice packed into the rock made it next to impossible to know what lay beneath.
Dr. Seraphina turned on a flashlight and brought the beam over the craggy interior. Ice clung to the rock face and, high in the dome of the cave, bats clung to the stone in tight mounds. The light fell over the razor-shorn walls, flickering upon mineral folds, along the rough-hewn stone floor, and then, with the slightest adjustment, the beam dissolved into blackness as it disappeared over the edge of the gorge. Looking about the cavern, I wondered what had become of the objects Clematis had described. The clay amphorae would have crumbled in the moisture long ago if they had not been taken by villagers to store olive oil and wine. But the cave contained no amphorae. Only rock and thick ice remained.
Holding the case of medical equipment with both hands, I walked toward the ledge, the rush of water growing more distinct with each step. As Dr. Seraphina moved the beam of the flashlight before her, something small and bright caught my eye. I squatted to the ground and, placing my hand upon the freezing rock, felt the icy metal of an iron stake, its head hammered flush with the cave’s floor. “This is a remnant of the First Expedition,” Dr. Seraphina said as she knelt at my side to examine my discovery. As I traced the cold iron stake with the tip of my finger, a great sense of wonder came over me: Everything I had studied, including the iron ladder that Father Clematis had described, was real.
And yet there was no time to ponder this truth. In haste Dr. Seraphina knelt at the precipice and examined the steep drop. The shaft plunged in a straight, lightless verticality. As she removed a rope ladder from her pack, my heart began to beat faster at the idea of stepping away from the ledge and relinquishing myself to the dark insubstantiality of air and gravity. The crossbars of the ladder were fastened to two strips of synthetic rope the likes of which I had never seen before, most likely the very newest technology developed for the war effort. I crouched at her side as Dr. Seraphina dropped the rope into the gorge.
Using a hammer, Vladimir secured the iron spikes into the rock, pinching the rope under iron clasps. Dr. Seraphina stood over him, watching his movements with great attention. She gave the ladder a hard shake, a test to determine that it would hold. When satisfied with its strength, she instructed the men-who carried the sacks of equipment, heavy burlap bags of twenty kilograms each-to secure their packs and follow us down.
I listened to the depths, trying to determine what lay beyond. In the stomach of the cavern, water pounded against rock. Looking over the ledge, I could not be sure if the earth below me remained stable or if it was I who had begun to tremble. I placed my hand upon Dr. Seraphina’s shoulder, to hold myself steady against the nauseating spell the cavern had cast upon me.