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