"Methinks the most sinful and, therefore, fascinating bits of this Collection of Mentalia, as the old heathen, Zigor Mephisto, called his spools of antique thought-wire, will be found on the seventh level, in that den where he used to retreat and bid the whole world defiance."
"A grisly place of past dread and death it is, too. The souls of men who have died under Zigor's hand do howl about these walls like great winds. Eg Notha, it is called."
"Mayhap they are but winds?"
"Nay, nay! You'll see."
"So, you are game to seek the place out! 'Twill be a hard bit of traveling. Lord knows what dangerous deviltry of these mad cavern people we may have worked upon us in these forgotten Hell-warrens."
"Aye, which is why I must get to the bottom of this wisdom, must follow every lead till we learn to protect ourselves. There is wisdom in Mephisto's Collection of these spools that magically store the thought of the great beings who built these endless cavern-mansions. I like it not when an unseen thing burns the shoes off my feet, and no one to see, no way to know who or what may be adoing of the mischief."
"Yes, I would have us learn this hidden magic the mad imps work upon us, myself, afore we are undone entirely."
"Who would have thought the mysteries of magic the wise men talk of were but the mad people of the lost caverns, playing with these ancient works of the Devils, or of the Gods? Who would have known that any one could work magic, had he but access to the old machinery of this forgotten hell, and some little know-how about that same machinery."
"Aye, Francis, the know-how! There's the rub! Last night I pushed a button, thinking to have one of the delicious dreams that such a button had brought me before, and what happened? The monstrous metal thing picked me up, wrapped me from head to toe in plastic butcher's paper, and tied a neat plastic string around me. Had it not been for you I'd have ended my days done up as a bundle of old clothes."
"And that was not so bad as last week, when we entered the mad maze of mirrors. Had it not been for luck, we would have spent our life in there wondering whether the dancers we saw were real or..."
"Yes, and had it not been for that maze of mirrors the mad dwarves would have got us. They could not tell whether we were one or many, far or near, and gave up the chase. There is much to know down here to stay alive, and little we do know of that needed. These wights have been brought up around these mysteries."
***
On the tail end of one of the long, enigmatic thought-records of the life of the Elder Race, I heard these voices talking in an archaic but understandable Engglish, somewhat of the flavor affected by Shakespearian actors. Since the record itself was of a time when the modern English language had not yet been born of the mother Atlan tongue, I couldn't figure how the voices got there. I decided that the machine must record any voice or sound around, when it was played over. Then I asked Nydia. She explained that when the recorder switch was thrown on the record augmenter, it would also record; that the two were the same machine except for a slight adjustment.
"Is that all of the talk in our language that exists?"
Nydia considered.
"Yes it is. But it tells of men being down here, long ago—though quite recently compared to the antiquity of the records themselves. Who they were, what they were doing, we will never know. Surface men, apparently, who found their way down here and learned something of the mysteries of the ancient magic."
"This Zigor Mephisto's palace of dread, they speak of it, but I have never heard of it before? I wish I could see it, and read the store of records of which it speaks. If the Mephisto of whom they speak is the gentleman of whom I know, I imagine the records are vastly more than interesting. What do you know of him, Nydia?"
"Mephisto is an old family name, and a dread and powerful family it has been. They have ruled over much of the underworld at different times, though their fortunes have varied as the centuries passed. As far back as we know, there have been rich and powerful Mephistos, some not so evil—some terrible in their slaughter of the cavern people. This Zigor of whom these voices speak, I know not. He is forgotten
