This novella's ambiguous narrator sets off for the isolated local of Rogomelec--where a crumbling monastery serves as a sanatorium and offers a cure involving a diet of plants and flowers--and moves through a walking dream involving strangely scented monks, vibratory concerts in a cavernous ossuary, and ritualist pomp with costumes of octopi and shining beetles. As the days unfold, the narrator discovers that the "celebration of the king" is approaching, the events of which will lead to a shocking discovery in Rogomelec's gothic ruins.
