Read "The Flight to Lucifer" by Harold Bloom online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Close behind Perscors, Valentinus and Olam rested in a grassy dell by a waterfall, having marched through the night and the morning. Olam amused himself by throwing stones at the waterfall, while Valentinus, motionless, continued to struggle with returning memories.
He recalled that, in an earlier life, he had journeyed from Alexandria to Rome, in order to clarify his beliefs. Rome he could not remember at all, but an image from the journey crowded upon him. At sunset, on an island just off an Italian port, he had seen a windowless, deformed, and dreary fortress-like building, with a ruined, open tower at its top. In the radiance, the tower's bell had tolled hoarsely, reminding him of a catastrophic experience in a town near Alexandria. What was that experience?