"Hail, Mouthpiece of the Omnipotent One,Of Him from Whom nothing is hidden,To Whom all things are known.Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu;Hail, Dispenser of Knowledge;Hail, all hail, teacher,To whom those things permitted ofZitu, are known!"
"Hail, Mouthpiece of the Omnipotent One,Of Him from Whom nothing is hidden,To Whom all things are known.Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu;Hail, Dispenser of Knowledge;Hail, all hail, teacher,To whom those things permitted ofZitu, are known!"
"Hail, Mouthpiece of the Omnipotent One,
Of Him from Whom nothing is hidden,
To Whom all things are known.
Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu;
Hail, Dispenser of Knowledge;
Hail, all hail, teacher,
To whom those things permitted of
Zitu, are known!"
The chant ended. The singers rose. In a scented shower the floral sprays rained at the feet of him who sat on the silver chair with the sunlight on his face.
Croft's senses reeled. The vast concourse faded from his vision. The flowers fell about him unheeded. The graceful forms of the Gayana who showered them toward him grew into a blur. His vision seemed to narrow, contract, focus upon a single point, shutting out all else, making all else as though it were not, leaving him staring, staring at one single gold-framed face.
Naia. She was there before him—her blue eyes meeting his own in an almost angry blaze. Naia—clad as a vestal, in white, bearing a spray of flowers in her hands.
Then, as their glances met, and Croft's breath caught in his throat, she lifted the cluster of blossoms and threw it—threw it, not tossed it, so that it struck full against his breast, rather than fell at his feet—struck, not as a floral offering might strike were the distance of its throwing misjudged, but with a positive, definite force that hinted of some weighty object concealed within its crimson mass, and fell to the dais with a petal-muffled thud, leaving a tiny spot on Croft's flesh that tingled as though the scarlet flowers had been the fingers of a licking flame—as though their touch had seared him through the fabric of his robe.
By an effort he sat unmoved, unchanged in his position, giving no sign, holding his eyes on the haughty face of the white-clad woman before him, reading upon her smiling lips not the placid expression of the ceremonial that held her retreating sisters as they drew back to either side of the dais, but the curl of scorn, of contempt; so that the contact of the cluster of red blossoms came to seem to him as a slap in the face—a deliberately planned and executed blow. Nor to his whirling senses was that the worst.
His chest heaved in a well-nigh stifled effort at control as he contemplated the full meaning of her presence in the Gayana's dress. Naia a vestal—Naia—given to Ga! The thought slowed his heart for a moment and sent it racing into a wild, ungoverned, suffocating series of madly protesting beats.
Naia become Gayana—Naia forming a part of the chorus which acclaimed his new-found rank—Naia hurling these scarlet blooms, as red as her heart's blood, or his, against him as a farewell act, a sign, a tacit message that, in so far as he was concerned, it might as well be her blood which lay red on the dais at his feet; that she might as well have died; that to him, from now on, she was lost. The thought sickened him, appalled, blotted out everything save itself so that for a moment, despite the sunlight which fell upon him, he had the sensation of an enveloping darkness that threatened to rise up and engulf him. He began to tremble. Tremor after tremor of emotion seized and shook him. And then Zud touched him on the arm. The ordeal was over. A strange babble of voices assailed his ears. He realized that the vast assemblage was cheering him, and in quite automatic fashion he bowed.
The action roused him to some extent. Once more he caught Jadgor's eye, dark, piercing, filled with menace, as the Aphurian turned away in a haughty fashion and, followed by Lakkon and his son, began to edge his way through the departing throng.
"Thy litter awaits thee." Zud's voice was in his ear.
He saw that the blue men of Mazzer had indeed brought the great silver palanquin into position opposite the dais steps. But even so he took time for one word with Zud.
"The maiden—she has become Gayana?"
"Nay!" He met Zud's eyes and found within them comprehension. "She but asked a part in their ranks, and, being virgin, it was granted."
Not Gayana—not yet—not yet. Croft's heart leaped again into freer action. But why had she asked to be given a place in the ranks of the vestals who had hailed him Mouthpiece of Zitu? He stiffened. Why save to cast that bunch of scarlet blossoms, which had stung his flesh, against him? He recalled now that it had stung him when it struck—had stung his flesh even as Naia's expression had stung his spirit. Why had it struck with such unerring certainty the wings of Azil, on his breast? What had it contained save the crimson flowers of which it seemed to consist? What was it had directed its course—weighted it until its blow was a blow indeed, delivered sure and straight?
He glanced down. The thing still lay there, a brilliant spot of color among all the floral tributes at his feet. On impulse he stooped and caught it up and carried it with him, a flame-colored thing against his blue robes, as he descended the steps.
He reached the litter, and paused again as his ear was assailed by a single, quickly caught-in breath. His head turned. Once more his gaze encountered a pair of fixed pansy-purple eyes. The vestals waited in double ranks, one on each side of the dais. Naia of Aphur stood among them, one white hand lifted and pressed against her body, to the left of the golden cord that ran down and cinctured her garment between her breasts. And it seemed, in that instant, to Jason Croft that her eyes dwelt not so much upon himself as on the flowers in his hand.
He gave no sign, however, as he entered the litter and felt it lifted into tilting, swaying motion. He took with him that final vision of Naia, caught in a startled posture, of her parted lips, of a something like anguish in her eyes. Like the flowers in his gripping fingers, that picture was caught in his brain.
Swiftly the Mazzerians bore him out of the square and into a street toward the bulk of the pyramid. The streaming crowds gave way before them and stood waiting while they passed. Then, and then only, did Croft seek to learn the mystery of the flowers Naia had thrown. Then and then only did he thrust his fingers into their blood-red mass and grope amid their stems for something he knew was hidden there—though he knew not what.
His search was rewarded almost at once. His fingers encountered a hard object buried among the stalks of the flowers, and he drew it forth. It was a silver medallion, bearing a raised figure of Azil, the angel of life, and surrounded by blood-red stones, such as Tamarizian men gave to the women to whom they were betrothed.
Croft recognized it at a glance. He took it and laid it on his palm, and sat staring at it as the litter swung along. He had ordered it especially made, and given it to Naia himself at the end of the Zollarian war. Like the maids of her nation, she had worn it on her girdle as a sign that to one man, and one alone, Azil had set his seal upon her. And today she had flung it from her, against the wings of Azil himself, which Croft wore on his breast.
There was no mistaking the action. It was repudiation. It was the same as though her lips had uttered the declaration that henceforth she would no longer guard for him that shrine of mortal life which was herself.
Croft's lips writhed into a strange smile. He recalled how the thing had pained when it struck above his heart.
Jadgor was elected over Tammon by an overwhelming majority. Robur became governor of Aphur as a matter of course. In Cathur, Mutlos gained the lead largely because the populace still remembered the treason intended by Kyphallos of Scythys's house, and refused to vote for the dead king's younger son. This was the major result of the elections, so far as Croft was concerned.
Before it was held, however, several things had occurred. Naia and her father, Jadgor and his son, left Zitra the day of Jason's proclaiming, in a motor-driven galley. Robur contrived an interview with Croft before he left.
Croft in the meantime had seen Zud as soon as he returned to the pyramid, and showed him the jeweled medallion, and narrated to him the manner in which it had been returned. At the end he requested a letter to Magur such as Robur and he had discussed, asking the Himyra priest to advise delay, provided Naia sought admission to the vestal ranks.
The tablets of wax whereon Zud wrote his commands Croft gave to Robur, and the two friends gripped hands.
"Jadgor had turned his face from you," Robur said. "Always has he been of stubborn mind. But, by Zitu, once I am in Himyra's palace, there will be a place for you, my friend, wherein we will work out your strange designs!"
"Yes," Croft replied, sensing readily enough that Robur's interest in the construction of new implements of commercial and industrial progress was intense, and intending fully to carry out his plans in regard to Tamarizia in so far as he might with or without Jadgor's favor. And then he changed to the subject nearest his own heart. "Your cousin goes with you, Rob?"
"Aye," Robur declared. "She yields to Jadgor's command, saying one may forget herself no less in Himyra than in Zitra's pyramid. Yet strengthen your heart, man of earth. These tablets I have from Zud to Magur, and in Himyra is Gaya, to whom, I believe, my cousin will open her heart. At present the maid is overwrought, and Jadgor's attitude toward you does not strengthen your case."
"You spoke with him concerning those things we discussed three suns ago?" Croft questioned.
"Aye, and to small avail." Robur frowned. "His stand is, you should have told them to him, rather than to Zud, at first. You will remember how Zud swayed Tamhys before the Zollarian war in your favor. Jadgor refused to accept it other than that there is an understanding between the high priest and yourself."
"Then must our works convince him since our words fail," said Croft. "Robur, my friend, a safe and pleasant journey. May Kronhur, ruler of the oceans, provide you a peaceful path to Himyra's gate. Make my salutations to the gentle Gaya, whom I trust I may ere long greet. In her hands and yours, Robur, is carried Jason's fate."
"It shall be carefully carried, by Zitu!" Robur promised. "Robur strikes not his hand in friendship lightly. Soon in Himyra shall he greet you, and we shall work. And"—suddenly he smiled—"see you not that Naia herself will be in Himyra—wherefore once you are come again to Aphur, the same red walls shall encircle you both?"
"Hai!" Croft's eyes lighted at the mere suggestion, and he gave vent to a somewhat nervous laugh. And then he sobered. "But hold! Jadgor elected, will not Lakkon and his daughter come to Zitra?"
"Scarcely." Robur looked full into his companion's eyes. "I think she will not look with favor on life in Zitra in her present mind."
Croft nodded in comprehension. "Zitu spare you, Rob," he said, "for I need you in my work."
And Robur, always quick in his appreciation of humor, laughed.
Yet, though Croft had spoken lightly at the last, he watched the Aphurian depart with a mind which was deeply troubled, not only by Naia's attitude toward himself and her return of the betrothal jewel, but as well by the defection of Jadgor, on whose major support he had counted much for success in his future plans. Indeed, just then it seemed to Croft that those plans were of little account and his entire future happiness marred.
Like many men of large mind, he suffered the pang of realization that lesser minds, because of their limitations, must fail to follow his own, that small natures must fall short of a full appreciation of a greater, simply because of an inability to measure the broader character by any standard of their own. He was meeting for the first time in a degree that thing known as the ingratitude of men, which every leader of men or nations must meet at times. And the taste was bitter in his mouth.
He took out the jewel and sat looking at it, holding it displayed or shut up in a clenched palm for hours, until the sun sank and twilight crept into the embrasure of the room, and a lay brother, slipping in to light the oil sconces on the wall, brought word that Zud desired speech with him alone.
Whereupon Croft rose and watched the wicks flare forth, and suddenly threw up his head and took a long breath. His mind went back to his talk with Robur three days before. They had spoken of electric lights. Why not? Work—work—that was the antidote for mental pain—to work—to throw one's self into a very frenzy of stubborn endeavor and drown the mental woe in a physical weariness, an actual tire of the brain. Work! He stretched forth his arms. He would work, work—he would show Tamarizia wonders such as she had never known. He would show Jadgor. He would bring the haughty Aphurian to his knees by force of sheer knowledge and what it wrought. He would compel him, force him to seek his, Croft's, favor, because he could ill afford to do anything else. And—he smiled grimly—he would do it with the aid of Jadgor's son—so soon as the elections were over and he might go to Himyra, where Robur had said there would be "a place." His eyes lighted and his lips grew firm. He made his resolve. His moment of first mental travail was past. He put the jewel away inside his robes and waited for Zud's coming with an expression of fresh resolve.
For four days thereafter he remained in constant company with Zud. Two things occupied his time—the instruction of the high priest in the mysteries of astral control, at first compelling the projections by his own will. Later Zud gained a minor success for himself, a thing he accomplished quickly because of his great desire to learn, and Croft took up certain social reforms he had long had in mind.
A more general education was the first of these. At Scira in Cathur, Tamarizia had maintained a national school. This, however, was for the patronage of the rich. Among the masses little education was known. Croft decided at once to alter this. To Zud he outlined a scheme for a general system of schools. Assisted by the high priest, he drafted a provisional alphabet, to which the hieroglyphic characters not unlike those of the Maya inscriptions in Central America lent itself with little change. Already in Himyra he had constructed a form of printing press for large character work. Now he took up the subject of perfecting and elaborating this to the wonder of Zud, whose enthusiastic approbation he instantly gained. He thought the matter of the schools might be easily arranged. The national school was under the patronage of the church. Most of the priests were educated in it. Teachers could be drawn from their ranks; and if the matter were carefully broached, both Jason and Zud felt inclined to believe that the move would meet with little opposition from Jadgor at first—especially if the suggestion came from some such one as Mutlos, governor of Cathur, whom Zud would see was properly approached by the faculty of the national school, rather than by Zud or Croft.
Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, however, Croft went to his own quarters, loosened his clothing, and laid himself down on the golden couch. There had been time for Jadgor's galley to have reached Himyra, as he knew—time for Naia to have gone either to her own home or the palace, as Jadgor and her father had elected. Closing his eyes and fixing his mind on the red-walled city of Aphur, he brought all his will to bear upon his one desire, and projected his astral entity to Himyra in a flash.
It lay beneath him as he had seen it the first day he came to Palos, a far-flung circuit of walls—the farther lost in a heat haze until it appeared no more than a ruddy shadow through a shimmering veil—spread out on either side of the river Na, inside its banks of cut stone, its quays, whereon at night the fire-urns flared red at the foot of the terraces and shone redly on the yellow waves. Magur's pyramid—red with its ringing band of white, to mark the quarters of the Gayana—with its white temple of Zitu, jutted up across the river from the vast white pile of the palace, and on either side as far as the eye could reach along the crest of the river terrace stretched the palatial homes of the noble or rich.
There was almost a sense of homecoming in the sight, and Croft experienced a thrill as he willed himself swiftly toward a huge red palace set well back from the street—the city home of Lakkon, advisor to the king.
Today the doors stood open, and he passed into the major court, where flowers, shrubs, and even small trees grew between the divisions of a pavement of transparent rock crystal, cut into geometrical blocks, beneath a roof of movable sections of glass.
The court itself was two stories in height in the prevailing custom, with a staircase ascending to the surrounding balcony at either end. These were of a lemon-yellow stone like onyx, save that it was not veined. The pillars of the balcony and the rest of the interior was in white. A low-growing hedge enclosed the central portion of the crystal floor, whereon Baska, the Mazzerian majordomo, who had startled Croft the first time he saw his blue skin, was once more exhibiting his magnificent form and peculiar pigmentary endowments with amazing frankness while he trimmed the hedge. Maia—Naia's own personal maid—in an equal state of unabashed nature, was sprawled, watching on a red wood couch.
So much Croft saw at a glance before he turned away, judging, from the very nature of the servants' careless manner, that Lakkon and his daughter had not yet arrived.
The palace, then. He willed himself toward it, entered it through the main gates between the huge carved figures of the winged dog-like creatures set up on either side, their front legs supporting webbed membranes from body to paw. He passed into a vast, red-paved court, where naked Mazzerian porters passed to and fro with metal sprinkling tanks strapped to their shoulders, and gnuppas, harnessed to flashing chariots, champed on their bits and pawed.
To Croft, it was all an old story. He had lived in it once. He gave a single embracing glance to the white walls of the various government departments surrounding the huge red court, each with its guardian sentries at the doors, and fixed his mind on gaining the presence of Gaya, Robur's wife.
For here he felt Naia would have gone had she come to the palace, as he believed seeking the company and companionship of a woman rather than any one else.
In this his judgment proved right, as he found so soon as he reached the wing of the palace in which he had formerly lived. Here, in the portion given over to Robur and his wife, was a court containing a private bath, set in the center, surrounded on all sides by growing shrubs and flowers, the tessellated pavements about it dotted with chairs and couches of the wine-red wood and silklike canopies to offer shade against the Palosian sun. It was a favorite resting-place of Gaya in the afternoons, when, attended by her servants, she either bathed in the limpid, sun-warmed water or received such guests as might elect to pay a social call.
On two of the red couches he found the women he had come in search of. They reclined beneath a yellow awning supported by standards, with a low table between them, holding small cakes, fruit conserves such as the women of Tamarizia affected, and crystal glasses, scarcely larger than a thimble, filled with an amber-colored wine.
But it was to Naia Croft gave his major attention once he had reached the palace. She lay pale, her eyes shadowed by darkened circles beneath their lids, her features weary, drawn with what he recognized at a glance as a dangerous tension of the nerves. Her figure was draped in a robe of exquisite green, across the upper part of which a strand of her fair hair made a sheen of gold. To Croft she had never seemed more appealing than now, in this mood of acute distress. He glanced at Gaya, and found her eyes fixed in an anxious inspection of her companion's face.
Abruptly Naia's breast swelled sharply and she spoke: "I shall become Gayana. There is nothing else."
"Nay! Nay, daughter of Lakkon—you are overwrought. Robur thinks not so, nor Jadgor, his father. To Lakkon there is none other, since your mother died, save yourself. Would you leave him to finish his life alone?"
Naia sat up upon the couch. "That was true," she returned in a tone gone bitter, "until this trouble came upon me. Now Lakkon holds me disgraced—in that I have yielded my lips to Zitu's Mouthpiece, against all the laws of custom for a woman of my caste. Yet, in Zitu's name, wherein was I to blame, who loved as never a woman loved before—who was asked in marriage by the one she loved, by one who had sworn, aye, and done many deeds to win her? In what did I wrong? How could I foresee that he was not—what—what he appeared?"
"Nay," Gaya said, while Croft's soul quivered at this confession from the lips of the woman he loved above all else. "Say not that in any way were you to blame, Naia, fairest of Aphur's maids. For have you and I not spoken concerning your love ere this, and did you not first to me confess it, when you stood pledge to Cathur's heir, from whom this man of Zitu saved you?"
"Man," Naia caught her up, interrupting quickly. "Say you that he is a man—Gaya, my friend—or is the word but used as a means of expressions since you know not what to call him save as he seems?"
"Nay, I mean man, child," Gaya returned. "Man he appears, and man he claims to be, and man he is. You know Robur for his friend. Much to Robur has he explained since he wakened from the last of his strange sleeps. Yet is he such a man as never was seen on Palos before; and though of mortal birth, as we are, yet was he not born on Palos, but of a woman on earth."
"Earth?" Naia's eyes widened swiftly.
"Aye—a different star from ours," Gaya replied.
"Robur told you this?" An introspective expression crossed Naia's face.
"Aye—ere he brought you to me."
"And he told Robur?"
"Aye. He swore it by Zitu himself."
Suddenly Naia struck herself upon the breast. "He told it to Robur—to your husband—to Jadgor's son! Why not to me?" she cried.
"To Robur he swore he had meant to tell you ere you became his mate," Gaya rejoined. "Save that Zud learned these things from Abbu of Scira and spoke to you during his sleep, I feel assured he had done it at a proper time."
She paused, and Naia turned her head. She sat staring, staring across the sun-kissed surface of the sunken bath. "Now I remember that he said to me after he awakened, when he came to me in the quarters of the Gayana, that he had somewhat to explain. What said he else?"
"Strange things—things to madden the heart of a woman, as it seems to me," Gaya returned; "things to waken strange dreams in her soul, if true. To Robur he swore that to Palos he came because of you, because in you he knew the mate to whom his spirit cried out—that he remained on Palos to save you from Cathur and win you for himself, and to that end that he might claim you wholly, used Jasor's body when his spirit was drawn from his flesh."
"Zitu!" The word came from Naia's lips as a strangled exclamation. She drew herself up on the couch until she sat tense in every quivering fiber of her being. "Now you have touched on the part of the matter I may not tolerate or understand. Granting that he says truth—that a spirit may enter the body of another and possess it, and cause it to live and breathe, and move as its own—can a maid consider a lover in such guise, surrendering to his embrace?"
"Yet consider," said Gaya softly, with a widening of her eyes as though the spell of the subject were upon her fully; "try to measure if you can, my princess, a love so vast that it draws its mate across the space between the stars. Consider what this man's love must be that he forsakes that life to which he was born and comes in search of you—the one woman who fills his soul with longing; and consider, also, that after he entered Jasor's form it changed—that even Sinon declared he no longer resembled Jasor greatly. Seems it not to you that Jason's spirit has altered the elements that were Jasor's until they are as his own?"
"Jason?" Naia faltered.
"Aye. That was his name on earth. Also says he that it is the spirit within us which dwells in and makes us of the flesh. He says, and Zud supports him in saying that to the spirit the flesh is no more than to man is a house—a something he inhabits, makes use of, and finally lays aside."
"Stop!" Naia stayed her. "Why—why were these things not said to me before—before—" She broke off, clasped her hands and crushed them together, struck them down against her sides. "Nay—it might have been," she went on, more to herself than to Gaya, "had I given the chance. He came to me, and I berated him with words. I was filled with pain; my spirit was blinded with horror and despair. I thought only that I had been led to my own undoing—I knew not the truth.
"Zud's words had well-nigh unsettled my mind. Wherefore I prayed to Ga and Azil, and there was no answer. And then I prayed to Zilla, and even the angel of death turned away his face. Gaya, I am like one fallen into a pit from which there is no escape. Him I knew as Jasor—I loved with a glory of the spirit and a madness of the flesh. He was my master. His word was my law. My heart beat like a caged bird in his presence. My spirit faltered when he spoke to me. My flesh was as clay in the potter's hands to his touch. I was a slave, and my glory was in the slavery of my love. Save only Zitu, beyond him there was for me no god!"
Once more she paused and sat panting, her bosom rising and falling, her nostrils aquiver, her lips compressed, while Croft yearned to her and this voicing of a love no less, as it seemed to him, than his love for herself.
"Canst wonder, then," she went on after a moment, "with what gladness I gave him my pledge; with what joy in my thoughts of the future I wore upon my girdle the badge of Azil he placed within my hands as sign that I was his—that badge which, on the day of his proclaiming Mouthpiece of Zitu, I placed in a spray of flowers and hurled against his breast!"
"Naia! Child!" Gaya half started up at the climax of her companion's words. "You did that—did he—understand?"
Naia nodded slightly. "I think so. He—from the dais he carried the flowers I flung against him to his litter in his hand. Oh, Gaya—my soul died within me at that sight—would Zitu—the rest of me had died. I am alone, Gaya—alone. Alone, alone—the word tunes my every breath. Jadgor opposes my seeking the Gayana. My father looks on his name as through me disgraced. And I am tired, Gaya—tired—so very tired. And there is no rest. If only Zilla would hear me when I call him—"
"Aye, you are tired, poor child." Gaya rose, crossed to the other couch, and took the girl's golden head inside her arms. "Come, talk no more at present. I shall call Bela, my own maid, who shall attend you. You shall bathe, and afterward she shall anoint your flesh with sweet-smelling oils, and you will sleep and awaken refreshed. She has a soothing touch beyond any I have ever found. She shall wait upon you." She reached out to the table and struck a small metal gong.
"Refreshed," said Naia slowly. Once more her eyes were fastened on the sun-kissed water. "Aye, I shall bathe, gentle Gaya. I shall find rest in your pool."
She rose slowly. Her eyes were wide; her face was very white. Turning, she walked to the edge of the sunken basin. For a moment she stood there in the attitude of one who listens.
Her lips moved. "Zilla," she whispered and smiled.
And then her voice raised, rang out sharply: "Zilla, I hear thy answer!"
Her arms lifted, stretched upward. She plunged face downward into the pool and sank without a struggle into its transparent depths.
And now began one of the most amazing parts of Croft's whole tale.
He saw Naia sink. He knew the meaning of her words, her act. Her cry to Zilla, the Angel of Death, showed him clearly that she saw in the water the way of death for herself—read a new meaning into her words to Gaya, that here in the pool she would find rest. He saw the water close about her, saw her well-loved form sink down, down, cradled in the limpid water; down, down, a slender figure, as beautiful as a Tanagra statuette in its green robe, as it sank. He knew that indeed Zilla hovered close above her—knew she was drowning—that the element in which her figure was engulfed would, like the figurative lips of Zilla, soon suffocate her breath.
And he was powerless, impotent, to do anything save watch what went on before his eyes. He could see, and know, and understand. He could suffer the most terrible agony of conscious comprehension, and—in his astral presence he could do nothing else. In his soul he writhed, cried out in a torment in which, like the despairing mind of the girl, he would have welcomed dissolution as a relief. But aside from that he was chained to a passive watching, was unable to make one single move toward the rescue of her expiring flesh.
Not so Gaya, however. Nor did Robur's wife lose her head. Her comprehension of her companion's act was instant, and she cried aloud to the Mazzerian girl, who now appeared in answer to the summons of the gong. Then, without waiting for even the servant to reach her side, Gaya flung her own form into the pool in a cleanly executed dive. Bela followed her mistress a moment later, her blue figure cutting the liquid surface with hardly a splash. Both women were entirely at home in the water, and by the time Gaya had reached and seized Naia, who began instantly to struggle, Bela was at her side.
The fight below the surface was brief. Croft saw Naia open her mouth. Her bosom expanded as though she gasped. And then she relaxed, and Robur's wife and the Mazzerian maid bore her quickly upward, supporting her head between them, and swimming with her toward a submerged flight of steps by which the pool was customarily entered. Reaching it, they lifted the limp body in its trailing robe, which clung to trunk and rounded limb more like a shroud of vegetation, a crinkled kelp born of the water itself, than a garment, and staggered with it from the pool to lay it on the pavement of the court.
"Quickly!" Gaya cried as she knelt beside it. "Seek out Jadgor's physician and command his presence." Unmindful of her own soaked condition, she seized Naia's form and rolled her upon her face. Placing her hands on either side of the body close to where the ribs joined the spine, she threw her weight forward on extended arms, held so for the space of a long breath, and lifted herself once more upon her own flexed thighs.
It was a form of artificial respiration she was practising, and Croft uttered a prayer for her success in his heart. And then—he forgot temporarily her continued efforts in the wonder of something else.
Naia of Aphur was about to die. Croft knew it as certainly as he had ever known anything in his life. Because he saw her soul come forth as he had seen Zud's astral body after he had bidden it leave its fleshy habitation on the day he awakened from his sleep. Slowly, as Gaya lifted herself and sat back, it emerged from the figure on the ground. And as wonderful as was the form of Naia, so wonderful was its astral counterpart. Like an image of her beauty in every detail, it swam and hovered above her, still chained for the span of a breath by an almost invisible bond that wavered and tensed and threatened to break.
And that breaking—the snapping of that soul cord—the counterpart of the union between the maternal substance and the body of the child in physical birth—spelled physical death. With its severance, as Croft knew, Naia would pass from the mortal plane to a wholly astral life. But more than that he knew that now it was within his province to take definite steps to preserve once more the woman he so wholly loved—that now at last he could act.
Toward the lovely floating shape he compelled his own astral form until he floated with it face to face. "Naia—Naia—thou other part of me," he thought rather than cried to her; "Naia—my beloved—hold. Return again to thy body. Go back."
And he knew that she received the potent vibration his own soul gave out. For slowly the head of the floating figure, the dream shape which swung and glowed like an iridescent mist in the sunlight, turned its head toward him—seemed to regard him strangely with wide open, startled eyes.
"Naia!" He sent his appeal to her again. "Naia, it is that Jason whom you knew as Jasor who commands that you return again to your flesh. In Zitu's name, beloved."
The rainbow figure writhed. It seemed to quiver, to hesitate and sink slightly back toward the unconscious body beside which Gaya kept up her work, with darkly troubled eyes; so that there was some relaxing of that binding cord.
"Jason!" Croft felt the thought impinge against him.
"Jason, who loves you—who claims you—who shall claim you yet," he returned, driving each word into her perception with the full force of his will.
"What do you here?"
It was a question, a wondering interrogation. He answered it truly. "You know of my sleeps. In them my spirit leaves the body. It visits many places. Now sleeps my body in the Zitran pyramid, yet is my spirit present to watch over you and guard you. It was not Zilla called you into the pool, but your own troubled spirit, beloved. Go back into your body—in the name of the love you confessed to Gaya; go back."
"But—why—am I not myself?" a second question faltered to his perception.
"Yes, you are yourself always," he returned. "Yet this is the real you which speaks to the real me, beloved. Look beneath you, and tell me what you see."
For a moment nothing was said ... as the form beside him turned down its eyes. And then a startled response: "Gaya—she bends and works beside a form—to—to which I seem in some way connected. It—Zitu! Azil! It is the form of one like myself!"
"It is your own form, Naia," Croft told her; "the body in which all your life you have dwelt—the beautiful habitation of your spirit—which you cast into the pool in an effort to gain rest."
"But—I—I—" The diaphanous soul form began once more to tremble.
"You are you—even as I am I," said Croft. "That body over which Gaya works is but the servant which has done your bidding, which, save you obey me, you condemn to death. Return to it before it is too late. I, Jason, who have met you midway between the body Azil gave you and Zilla's domain, command it. Between you and Zilla himself I stand as a barrier. Return to the form below you and give it breath."
"How—how shall I return?" Again a question.
"Wish it," said Croft. "Wish it as I desire to hold it in my arms and claim its love and yours."
"I—I shall return." It was a promise.
Croft thrilled at the victory he had won. "Yet hold!" He stayed her as slowly she began to sink closer to the form beneath them. "Again shall you leave it if I call you—leave it as now—to meet me as now you meet me, and return." For the thought had come to him that in this guise might he seek out her spirit and converse with it and teach it many things—seek it and hold it until such a time as events should straighten out the tangle in their affairs, and thereby watch over and guard her.
"Now go, beloved. See with what a frenzy of hopeful endeavor Gaya works."
From beside him that figure as fair as the play of sunlight through the prism of a fine mist vanished.
Into his ears there stabbed the cry of a physical voice, upraised in triumph. It was Gaya speaking. "She lives! Thanks be to Zitu, she lives!"
She bent and lifted the body, which rewarded her efforts with a gasping breath, and laid it on one of the red wood couches, caught up one of the tiny glasses of wine from the table, and forced its contents into Naia's mouth.
Naia gasped. Her throat contracted sharply. She swallowed. Again and again her full chest swelled beneath her clinging robe. Some of the waxen pallor went out of throat and cheeks. Bela appeared running, with the physician behind her. He hurried to the couch and dropped his fingers to the patient's pulse.
And now came Robur across the court toward the group beneath the yellow awning. He reached it and slipped his arm about Gaya's shaking shoulders, placing himself at her side. For now that the need of her presence of mind was lacking, she seemed completely exhausted and on the brink of tears.
"She—she cried on Zilla and cast herself into the pool," she half spoke, half sobbed. "Beloved, she—she was dead to all seeming—but—I cried on Zitu, and worked above her, and now—she lives."
The physician bowed. "The Princess Gaya has in truth done a most admirable piece of work."
Naia's lips moved. "Jason," she whispered, "I—I have obeyed."
"Hai!" Robur started. His eyes darted swiftly from the girl to his wife, and back to the physician. "What said she?" he asked.
"She dreams, doubtless," the physician made answer.
But Croft knew she did not, and Robur frowned slightly as one perplexed.
Naia opened her eyes. They stared up blankly at the yellow canopy overhead.
Gaya bent above her.
"Gaya!" she cried and lifted her slender arms and laid hold upon her. "Oh, Gaya, I—I dreamt that I—had died. I—"
And suddenly she broke—broke utterly—and clung fast to the drenched form of the woman beside her, shaken by a storm of sobs.
From the blended group Robur turned to Bela and the physician. "This is forgotten as though it had not been, man of healing," his voice came thickly. "By you and by Bela, it is as if it were not. I myself shall see that it reaches Lakkon's ears." He reached into a purse at his belt and extracted some pieces of silver, extending them to the doctor. "Your fee. What needs she else?"
"Rest—quiet for perhaps a sun; no more." The physician accepted his payment with a second bow of respect.
"See to it." Robur turned to Bela. "Go—and return with women to bear her to her apartment without delay."
Then, as Bela ran once more from the court, he approached Naia and his wife.
"Peace, Naia, my cousin," he said gently, yet with a narrowing of the eyes. "Know you not that Robur is friend to you and—Jason?" He paused for the barest space before the final word.
The face he watched flushed slightly despite the sluggish return of the blood to her stagnant veins. For a single instant a strange expression burned in her purple eyes. "You say that you dreamed, my cousin," Robur went on. "Praise be to Zitu, it was but a dream. Yet"—and now again he watched her very closely—"in waking you spoke Jason's name."
"He—he sent me back," Naia of Aphur faltered. "In—in my dream I met him, and he showed me my body, with Gaya working beside it, and compelled me to return. It—was all—very strange."
"Zitu!" Robur started. "A—strange dream indeed, my cousin," he said, with an equally strange expression on his face. To Croft it appeared that without fully understanding, his friend half suspected the truth.
Bela and three other Mazzerian women now reappeared. They lifted the couch upon which Naia was lying, and bore it from the court into the palace and to a sumptuous apartment on the second floor. Walls, windows, and doors were hung in yellow draperies. A huge purple rug was on the floor. A copper couch, studded with amber jewels, stood ready to receive the patient. Caskets for clothing, tables and chairs and stools completed the appointments. Plainly, it was a room designed for women, as Croft knew at a glance, since in the center of the floor was one of the mirrorlike pools of shallow water, close to which stood a pedestal of silver, bearing the figure of Azil with extended wings.
By a strange chance, as Naia was borne in, one of the Mazzerians struck against the beautifully carved figure. It tottered, swayed drunkenly on its standard, and fell into the pool.
Naia cried out at the sight, and covered her eyes.
Robur sprang forward and lifted the statue, setting it back on its base. "Fear not!" he exclaimed. "It is wholly uninjured. 'Tis a good augury, my cousin, I think. Life fell into the pool, and life comes forth unmarred." He smiled.
Naia relaxed from her tension. Her eyes met his. "You are quick to read signs, my cousin," she faltered. "Perchance—you are right."
The bearers set down her couch, and Gaya took charge. "Disrobe her," she commanded. "Bring sweet oils and massage her body and limbs. Cover her lightly, and do you, Bela, sit beside her, to supply her wants. Yet if sleep comes, permit her to rest. When I have changed my own garments I shall return."
She left the apartment with Robur at her side. Croft followed, filled with a wonderful exaltation, since now at least he had come in contact with Naia's spirit as never before, and in a way which assured a repetition of the meeting on that plane when he desired. True, she regarded the experience now as no more than an exceedingly strange dream, but the mere fact that she remembered was proof sufficient to Croft that the effect he desired had been gained. To himself he made a promise that from now on, when conditions were suitable for the experience, she should dream again.
As for Robur, he was of the opinion that the Aphurian prince was not sure that Naia had dreamed at all. And the first words of his friend, once he was outside the door of the apartment where the serving maids ministered to his cousin, confirmed Croft's thought.
"Thus," he began to Gaya as she turned to her own room, "does Jason prove his sayings truth."
"What mean you?" Gaya paused.
"That he stood between her and Zilla, to whom she called, before she flung herself into the pool," Robur said. "Heard you not her words that he sent her back—that she beheld her body beside which you knelt? And do you not recall that I told you he had explained to me that in his sleeps he left his own body even so, and gained knowledge by visiting other places in the spirit? By Zitu's grace, Jason was here when this occurred."
"Here?" Gaya turned her eyes about her in an almost ludicrous fashion, and Robur smiled.
"Aye—his spirit. In Zitra his body lies asleep. Yet here has spirit met spirit and his conversed with hers. By Zitu, but I had a fright! I had been to Magur with tablets from Zud which Jason gave me, and, returning, I heard Bela cry to another of the maidens that one had fallen into the pool. Gaya"—of a sudden he swept her into his arms—"my heart died, and I ran to find that my fears were vain."
"As you might have known," said Gaya, smiling into his down-bent eyes. "Know you not that I learned to swim as a child?"
"Aye," Robur admitted; "yet strange things happen, and never more on Palos than now. By Zitu, I must carry this to Lakkon's ears. He takes not the right stand with this troubled daughter of his. Go now and change your dress, my Gaya." He released her and went stalking off, his forehead furrowed with thought.
And he sought out Lakkon.
"My lord," he accosted him without other introduction, "have you thought of the meaning to you of Naia's loss?"
"What mean you?"
Lakkon turned in a flash. His face darkened, and a quick, instinctive expression of pain leaped into his eyes. "Would you question my love for my daughter, Prince of Aphur? Know you not that in her very glance, her every movement, I see her mother as I knew and loved her first? And"—his voice gruff at first, grew unsteady—"know you not that I loved her aunt, my wife? What need of your question, then, Robur, son of Jadgor, since—should she go to the Gayana, shall she not to me be lost?"
"She shall go not to the Gayana, I think," said Robur slowly. "Magur will advise against it."
"How know you?" Lakkon asked.
"He himself told me." Robur met his uncle's questioning gaze with a level glance.
"You?" Plainly Lakkon was surprised. "You spoke with him about it?"
"Aye," Robur made answer. "He told me he would advise against it at the present. Listen, Lakkon, my uncle." He went on and told him what had occurred. And, as he spoke, Lakkon's face took on a twitching, his breathing became heavy.
"But she lives—she lives—Robur—she has passed this danger?" he questioned brokenly at the last.
"Aye. And were her father to appear before her—were he to smile upon her," said Robur with evident meaning, "she were less apt to cry to Zilla again in the future, I think."
"Aye." A quiver sat on Lakkon's mouth. For the moment he was wholly the father, no more the noble or the courtier. For the time his thought was of his child, her life and nothing else. "Aye, Robur—I have been remiss, and praise to Zitu that his lesson is by example and nothing worse. I—I shall go to her. I—I shall try to comfort her in this."
"As you should." Robur inclined his head. "Go, and Zitu frame the wisdom of your speech."
Lakkon went. He crept into the room where Bela sat and Naia lay relaxed on her couch. He went quite to it and sank on his knees beside it, and looked with misted eyes into her weary face.
"Child of my loins," he quavered to her. "Child of thy mother, seek not to leave me again. Be thou the spring-time to my old age, the starlight for my eyes."
"My father." Naia lifted a hand and laid it on his head. "That I sought to leave you was that it seemed to me best—that—that I was tired in body and spirit—that for me there seemed no place."
"Thy place is in my heart," said Lakkon with a heavy, rasping sob.
Slowly Naia drew the grizzled head toward her till it lay upon her shoulder. "I would go to our home in the mountains," she said, "and dwell there in quietude—and—rest."
Followed now for Croft the weirdest wooing mortal ever dreamed, a sort of astral courtship, wherein what might perhaps be best described as the sublimated essence of Naia's being—that astral shell containing her conscious spirit, met and communed with his.
To the man this period became a strange source of encouragement mixed with intervals of an ineffable delight. And the fact that to Naia herself, the hours so spent seemed as dreams rather than a thing of actual occurrence, disturbed him not in the least. He was content to let the truth develop in her soul by degrees, until it should at last be known as truth.
On the second day after her despairing attempt against herself in the pool at the Himyra palace, and so soon as her own buoyant vitality had made her well-nigh her physical self, Naia departed for Lakkon's palace in the mountains of Aphur, across the desert from Himyra to the west. Renewed understanding with her father, plus an interview with Magur, in which the priest advised against her joining the Gayana, helped her in the resolve to withdraw for a time to that seclusion, a wish for which she had already expressed.
She made the trip in the motor Croft had caused to be fashioned for her when the things were new on Palos, and had driven out to her mountain home himself. And with Maia, her maid, and Mitlos the Mazzerian majordomo, left always in charge of the palace, together with the great dog-like creature, Hupor, as her body-guard, she took up the course of restful days.
Sometimes she lay for hours on a couch in the central court—sometimes she bathed in the sun-warmed water of a pool behind the palace—a thing constructed of a lemon-yellow stone in sides and bottom, and screened by a wall of white, overgrown with trailing vines. Sometimes she rode in the motor, driving it herself along the splendid Aphurian roads—as perfectly built as the roads of the ancient Romans—which on his first sight of them, had excited the admiration of Croft—roads that stretched throughout the nation; over which the huge sarpelca caravans passed.
Sometimes, endowed with a splendid strength for all her slender grace, she climbed with Hupor at her side, among the hills. And many, many nights she sat in the sunken gardens, wherein the bathing-pool was placed, watching the three moons of Palos wheel across the sky, and thinking her own thoughts. It was Croft's purpose at this time to see that in the latter he lacked no part.
Hence, on the night following her arrival, he visited her first, purposely choosing a late hour, since he wished her to be asleep and preferred to have his own action unknown just then, in the Zitran pyramid.
And as he hoped, when he stole into her apartments, making ingress through an open window, he found her indeed asleep. The moonlight through a half-drawn curtain showed her to him, stretched on a metal couch with the cloud of her loosened hair about her face. Coverings of silken fineness lay above her. Azil, with outstretched wings, seemed like some white guardian of her slumber on his pedestal beside the mirror pool.
Naia of Aphur! The woman of his soul. She lay here before him. Croft thrilled to the thought that she was his in spirit at least, as he was hers. He recalled her impassioned avowal of the love she had felt for him before old Zud's clumsy priestly blunder. And then he let the cry of his spirit steal forth.
"Naia! It is Jason calling. Naia, my beloved—appear!"
"Jason—I hear!"
Like a wraith of dreams, it seemed that she stood before him—a form, a figure pure as a blade of silver, emitting a faint auric play of blue and gold. Man and woman they confronted one another, and the moonlight striking upon that divine something he had called from its lovely mansion, set it aquiver and struck through it in a million tiny points of scintillating fire.
"Beloved." Croft stretched forth a dim hand.
It floated toward him.
"Come," he said again, and caught her hand in his, and led her out through the window, where he had entered, under the moon and the stars.
Out, out he led her. They were free as the winds on which it seemed they rode. Like a sheet of molten silver the pool in the garden lay beneath them. About them and beyond them spread the wide panorama of the wooded mountains, marked here and there by the bone-white windings of the road. Beneath them swam the wide expanse of the desert. Far off to the east and south, in a ruddy glow, the fire-urns of Himyra flared.
Croft turned his face to that of the shape beside him, and found it the face of a sleeper who sees visions, and knew that though the soul of Naia obeyed him, it was still asleep. "Art afraid?" he questioned gently.
"Nay, Jason, I am not afraid."
Some way the words afforded him a great pleasure, for he knew he would not have had fear in any circumstance whatever, in the spirit he regarded as the complement of his.
"Thy father—would see him?" he questioned once more, deciding upon a further stretching of the astral cord.
"Aye." Naia smiled.
"Behold then!" said Croft, and willed himself toward Himyra, still keeping his companion's hand.
The city glowed beneath them, its fire-urns burning up and down the Na in double ranks. The place was white before them. Then—Lakkon lay stretched in slumber on a couch.
"My father!" Naia left Croft's side and seemed to hover all blue and white and gold above him, until as though subconsciously he felt her presence, Lakkon's lips moved and he muttered: "Naia," in his sleep.
"Come," said Croft again, and led her back, since he did not deem it well to risk too long a first excursion.
"Return now to your body as before," he directed when they stood beside it. "Yet remember this when you wake."
For the first time she asked a question of her own volition. "You—are—really Jason?"
"Aye."
"And—your body?"
"Lies in the Zitran pyramid as yours lies here before you. Return into yours, beloved, and I return to mine."
"Aye," she assented. "I return, but—I shall remember—-the moonlight—Himyra—my father—and you."
She ceased and suddenly Croft found himself alone. Gone was the radiant form with its aura of gold and purple, its dancing points of fire, which, as he knew, were no more than the never-ceasing, vibrant oscillation of the Pranic sparks—the fires of life—gone, and he stood in the room where Azil spread his wings in a wide-flung benediction and Naia of Aphur lay asleep.
Yet Croft was satisfied if not content, and he felt assured as he willed himself back to Zitra that when she waked in the morning she would recall this first experience as a vivid dream at least.
Indeed as the days went by his major trouble was to curb his own impatience in setting her astral consciousness awake, in refraining from an attempt to progress too fast, in keeping the development he was seeking to produce within her, inside the limits of a well-nigh natural awakening of the greater powers of the soul, in avoiding anything which could in any way resemble a forced growth. Hence, as a sort of brake to his own desire to return too frequently to her, he took up the instruction of Zud, initiating the amazed old man more and more into the mysteries of what he, in his own experience, had proved to be the truth.
Once more, however, he visited Naia, before the elections were held, choosing an afternoon when Zud was engaged in temple duties.
He found her in the vast red-and-yellow paved court of the mountain palace, with Maia beside her, very much as on a former day when he had first visited her in the flesh and spoken to her of love. She lay as then on a wine-red couch, in the sort of diaphanous house-robes women of her class affected, with Maia waving a huge feather fan above her.
Croft smiled as he called her forth, thinking how amazed the blue girl of Mazzer would be if she knew that her arms swayed the fan above an empty tenement of clay, and saying as much to Naia, so that she, too, smiled.
And that day they wandered far over valley and hill, flitting above wooded slopes, loitering sometimes in sun-filled hollows, where flowers of tropic brilliance nodded in the grasses or flaunted their beauty from swaying trailing vines. And from there to the higher places, up, up, hand in hand, to where the eternal snows lay gripped in the clutches of dark peaks and crags.
Until then their communion had been silent save at the first, but the sight of the sparkling snows beneath the sunlight seemed to stir some recollection within Naia's soul.
"It—was here I sent for snows to chill the wines for the banquet to Kyphallos, the time he came from Cathur, by Jadgor's plan," she said.
"That Kyphallos to whom Jadgor would have wed you?" Croft replied.
She nodded. "Except that I was saved from marriage to a profligate and traitor by"—she paused and appeared to hesitate and went on in a way less certain—"by Jasor of Nodhur."
"Jasor of Nodhur has gone to Zitu," Croft corrected quickly. "You were saved from that fate by me, after Jasor's body became the servant of my spirit, as is your body the servant of your spirit, and changed it to my purpose, made it mine, because your spirit had called me to you as today I called you to me."
"Yet I knew you not then as Jason, but as Jasor," Naia faltered. "How then could I call your spirit?"
"Nay," said Croft, "you knew me not, yet felt you never in those days a yearning for some one you had as yet seen never—felt you not yourself already to answer that some one's call, as a woman ripened must answer to her lover?"
"Aye," said his companion slowly. "Ga the eternal spoke to me more than once in such fashion, yet none came to sound the call I should answer until Jasor of Nodhur appeared. Were it your spirit in Jasor's body, you know how the call was answered afterward."
"Am I not like him?" Croft questioned, thrilling at the recollection her words invoked.
"Aye," she confessed. "And when I am with you, it seems that you are he—that you call me to you in spirit, even as he called in the flesh—that I come to you gladly as a maiden to a tryst with him to whom Ga sends her. Yet, when I return to the body beside which even now Maia stands watch, all is confusion when I wake."
"Were you to remember then that in or out of the flesh, it is the spirit calls to the spirit, it were perchance more plain," Croft said.
"Love then is of the spirit only?" She looked into his eyes.
"Yes." Croft nodded. "Love is of the spirit—passion alone of the flesh. Know you not then that it was love called me to you from the earth?"
"Earth?" she repeated. "Aye—Gaya told me somewhat concerning that."
"Come then," said Croft, determining of sudden impulse on a demonstration and seized her by the hand.
Up, up he carried her across the void. The landscape dwindled swiftly away beneath them. Its details faded, became but a sun-smeared blur until Palos whirled on its mighty ball, bedded in a mass of woolly cloud. Up, up. Croft glanced at his companion and found her face wide-eyed. Up, up, as she floated beside him, her slender shape in the void of darkness beyond the atmosphere of Palos beginning to flash and glow with its contained fire. For Croft had willed himself to that one of the moons on which he had first come down from his daring journey from the earth. And now it swung above them. Together they swam toward it, and came to it finding its barren and lifeless crags and plains aglare in the light of Sirius, partly steeped in impenetrable gloom. Across the lighted region Croft led Naia swiftly. They passed from the light.
"Look!" he cried, and pointed to the void of the eternal heavens beyond them, where sparkled the pin-points of a million worlds. "Behold, Palos!" He directed her vision to where the planet rolled, its clouds now turned into what seemed golden fire. "We stand now on one of the moons that light your world at night, beloved. We gaze at your world from its moon, as from earth we gaze at a star—as we gaze at earth as a star from here. By the will of the spirit have we come. By the spirit's will shall we return."
And on his words it was as though Palos rose to meet them, and once more they were back on the crags beside the snows.
"Zitu, may this be permitted?" Naia panted as one shaken by amazement.
"Much," said Croft in answer, "may be permitted to the spirit which seeks truth and dares."
And after that they wandered on, finding a good-sized stream leaping down the side of the mountain not far from Naia's home. Croft seized upon its presence with acclaim. A glance had told him that here was power he could harness to perfect his scheme for generating artificial light, and he sought to explain it to his companion, outlining how by the construction of a series of giant penstocks he would divert the plunging water against wheels to use its force in turning other wheels.
She listened closely and suddenly she laughed. "Now are you as Jasor!" she exclaimed. "It was so he talked concerning his devices before the Zollarian war against which he planned."
"Always have I been as I am now," Jason told her. "Even as Naia of Aphur has always been the same."
"Always?" she questioned and turned searching eyes upon him.
"Aye, always, and ever will be," he answered, "until Jason and Naia shall be one."
She quivered. Her astral body glowed. Its fires leaped and flamed before him, white and purple and gold. Croft knew that he himself was swayed by a similar emotion and sought to check it lest he overtax her as yet not fully awakened understanding. "Come," he said again, "come," and led her south along the western mountains, exploring them, pointing out their beauties as they passed along.
It was thus he found an outcropping barrier of coal. He spied it and sank upon it, and bent to assure himself that he was not mistaken, and straightened with a radiant face. Here was energy stored for the furnaces he meant to raise across the land ere long. Until now charcoal had been used mainly in the metal trades. But—here—he had a vision of vast smelters once this coal was mined. And the Tamarizians were miners experienced for generations in the handling of ores.
He pointed to his find and explained to Naia that here was fuel.
"Zitu!" she cried in wondering half comprehension. "Would Jason burn a stone!"
"Nay," he said, and made plain the nature of the substance they discussed.
At the end she nodded. "I am convinced," she said. "Him I knew as Jasor was Jason indeed. Your words, your plans are the same. Thanks be to Ga and Azil, I am happy. You, Jason, are he whom I—"
"Love," Croft supplied as once more she faltered.
"Aye, love." For the second time her astral figure glowed with its auric fires. "With you I am happy—free thus and alone, with a strange new happiness—such as I have never known. Canst not hold me thus beside you? Must I return again to the prison of the body? Canst not claim me now, and keep me wholly thine own?"
"No—not yet," Croft stammered, shaken as never before by her words and taking alarm at the mood which was upon her. "Yet, some time I shall claim you mine before all men. Come now, for the present we must return."
Across a twilight sky they flitted back, drifting into the red and yellow paved court where the red-and-yellow steps ran up at either end to the yellow balcony supported on its carved pillars of red, and the giant figure of a straining man, did battle with a beast not unlike a tiger, to protect a crouching woman from its fangs.
"See!" said Croft. "So shall I fight for you—protect you—guard you, wage warfare against all else for you, until indeed you are mine."
She smiled upon him. "So shall I wait for thee," she began, and broke off sharply: "Behold!"
Croft turned his eyes. Maia knelt the length of her azure form crouched in a posture of woe beside the couch on which Naia's body still reclined. Her arms were thrown out across her mistress's breasts, her face buried from sight between them. Beside her stood Mitlos, gazing on blue girl and white, his entire posture and expression indicative of distress.
"Woe, woe!" Maia wailed in choked accents. "Cursed be Zilla who came upon her in her sleep! She moved not, neither did she speak. Yet when I sought to wake her at the hour for her bath, she answered not to my voice. Again and again I cried to her, 'Naia, my mistress,' yet she did not wake. Mitlos—Mitlos, we are undone. This is not of our doing, yet will Lakkon seek our lives."
"Go," said Croft to the lovely presence beside him. "Spare her alarm. I thought not of your bathing. I have kept you overlong."
And Naia, nodding, lingered for a final question. "Yet—will you come to me again?"
"Yes," said Croft and watched her vanish, watched Naia of Aphur's eyes open, and the bosom beneath Maia's outstretched arms swell slowly, so that the Mazzer girl felt and sprang up, startled, staring, with a starting gaze.
And then he went back to Himyra and sat up on his golden couch and smiled. He had done a good day's work.