Read "The Flight to Lucifer" by Harold Bloom online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Perscors, very late that night, fell asleep in the woods, several hours' march from the camp of the Manichees. Two dreams called to him in the course of the night.
Nekbael, her red hair shining in the darkness, came to him, but on earth, rather than on Lucifer. It was night in the town where he had been born and raised, a summer night on the town green. The lights were out in all the houses when the sorceress approached Perscors. As she came close, he saw only the one face: symmetrical, at peace, almost innocent. She took him by the hands and spoke urgently to him, but in words he could not understand. He cried out in the dream, in the same unknown language, and she faded from him. In her place stood Ruha, mocking and desirable, chanting a litany: