NAIA OF APHUR
Violence, conflict. The marks of the thing were on every side. The
ghastly gash in the breast of Mitlos bore dumb testimony to the fact
that the man had battled grimly till he died.
I gazed into Jason's face, even in its astral semblance haggard.
"Croft," I stammered, "what in Zitu's name has happened?"
He jerked out an arm in an all-embracing gesture.
"Gone, Murray," he told me with a vibration of agony in his answer;
"both of them--both Naia and the--child."
"Gone?" For a moment my senses seemed whirring. "Croft--what do you
mean? Gone--where?"
"Into the western mountains, toward the outer ocean--she told me,
Murray. She came and told me as soon as she felt it safe to do so. She
came to me tonight in the Zitran pyramid--astrally, of course. You know
I told you I was going to Zitra to see Jadgor in a matter concerning
the government railroad control--"
I nodded.
"She found me there tonight. She had been afraid to leave the body
before, lest something happen to little Jason. It was last night this
thing occurred--and my body's still in Zitra." I sensed the tenseness
of his emotion. "I'm so utterly impotent to help her, Murray. Would
Zitu I were here to follow and wrest her from them."
"From whom?" I questioned. Plainly he knew more of the matter than I
did--as much at least as Naia had told him. "See here, Croft--"
He appeared to grip himself as he answered. "Forgive me, Murray. The
Zollarians, of course. It was an armed band of those Sons of Zitemku
that attacked here in my absence. There"--he pointed at the body of
Mitlos--"lies an example of their work."
His words whipped my attention--brought up a vivid picture of all the
abduction of Naia and her child by men from the northern hostile nation
might embrace.
"Zollarians?" I said. "She told you?"
"Yes." He nodded. "They--they must have been planning it, Murray--they
must have been using spies."
"Unless," I rejoined, "it was merely a wandering band of marauders."
I had a general knowledge of the western coast of Aphur and the
intervening country. Practically uninhabited, wild and rugged, it would
be easy, I thought, for men of such ilk to have landed on its shores.
"Wandering band?" Croft said with something like impatience. "Murray,
talk sense. They knew enough to seize Naia of Aphur--the fairest woman
of her nation, of its best blood--the wife of the Mouthpiece of Zitu,
who has twice defeated their schemes and their armies--and her child."
I nodded. He had not lost his ability to judge the situation even then,
and judge it clearly. I ceased offering either suggestions or comment
and asked a question:
"Then what do you intend?"
"I intend to follow her--learn what is behind this damnable action
first."
"Astrally?" I recalled that more than once ere this he had adopted such
means to gain information toward Zollaria's undoing, and I began to
comprehend.
He gave me a glance. "Of course. It's the only way I can follow with
the cursed hulk of me in Zud's pile of rock in Zitra. And I want you
to go with me tonight. Man, I'm trying to keep as cool as I may,
but--I'm in need of sympathetic support. Before Naia left me she said
they stopped for an hour's rest, but that before daylight faded they
had seen the outer ocean from a hill, and a ship. I think that ship is
waiting for her, Murray--and that once we are on it, to see and not be
seen, hear and not be heard, we shall learn something of the truth."
"Then let's get on it," I suggested. "This is a terrible ordeal for
her. When she came to you tonight, was she frightened?"
"Frightened?" Suddenly Croft drew himself up before me. "Naia--Naia of
Aphur frightened--" And then abruptly the force of his thought wave,
beating upon me softened. "Or if she felt fear, Murray, it was for the
child, and not for herself."
He turned toward the tiny couch where the infant had been wont to sleep
between the twin couches of its parents, and stood brooding down upon
it. "Now Zitemku take the scum of life who have made my house empty,"
he burst forth, and seized my hand. "Come."
In a flash we were outside. And as on that night after the christening
of Jason, Son of Jason, when Croft and Naia showed me Himyra, we
floated upward. Only now there were no lights to fasten the attention,
no mighty piles of architecture, no wide embracing walls. There were
just the tumbled masses of the mountains, their sides cut and gashed
by night-filled ravines and tortuous canyons, and the silvery radiance
of the Palosian moons, and the stars. I recalled that once in the past
Croft had called Naia of Aphur, still then a maiden, forth from her
body and floated thus over Aphur's hills from the house we now were
leaving.
And then his voice was in my ear.
"Look, Murray--they've reached the shore-line, and--they're building a
flare."
I turned my gaze into the west, where low down on what might or might
not be the horizon, but was certainly not the heavens, there winked a
point of light, too ruddy, too unsteady, to be a star.
We swept toward it. For the first time I saw the Zollarian manhood in
the light of the leaping fire they had built upon a beach. Tawny-haired
they were, for the most part, stalwart, with muscular arms and heavy
limbs, as they stood straining their vision across the water toward
the moonlighted shape of a ship--or perhaps galley were a better term,
since it seemed to be equipped with banks of oars as well as sails.
So much I saw--the ship, the bodies of the men, the glint of the
firelight on spearheads, and the short metal scabbards of swords, not
unlike the ancient Roman weapons, to judge by their dimensions, and
then Croft led me to where Naia and the blue girl of Mazzeria were
seated, little way apart.
* * * * *
Maia was speaking softly as we reached them. "My mistress, you are
quite assured then that the Hupor Jason understands?"
"Aye." Naia bent her cheek to rest it against the head of the infant.
"Be of good courage, Maia, and fear not."
"I fear not for myself, but for you and that one against your breast,"
the blue girl answered. "Had it been my part to do so, I had done as
Mitlos and died in your defense."
"I know." Naia stretched out a hand and touched the girl upon the
shoulder. "May Zilla bear Mitlos as tenderly as my thoughts shall hold
him--and did I not name you my sister Maia, after you rendered me aid
in preserving my lord--and did you not insist on coming with me, though
these men did not desire to take you, saying you were the child's
attendant?"
"I came gladly," the blue girl said quickly, "yet do I not understand
these sleeps in which you lie as dead, and I remember once when Mitlos
and I worked above you thinking Zilla had taken your spirit, before you
were the Hupor Jason's bride--and it was even so with the Hupor himself
in the camp of the Mazzerian army, when we went to save him--"
"Peace, girl," Naia interrupted, and paused and caught her breath
sharply, as Jason bent the force of his presence on her.
She smiled, handed the child to Maia, and reclined her body on the warm
sand of the beach. Then she let the fair astral tenant of her body
steal forth!
"Beloved," said Jason Croft, and drew her close. "Beloved--woman of
gold--we have heard your words, I and our friend of earth."
Naia turned her head toward me from the shelter of his arms.
"Once more," she addressed me, "you come to our aid, good friend. Did
Jason, my lord, call you to him?"
"Aye, Princess of Aphur." I inclined my head, finding the Tamarizian
idiom in that moment best fitted to my tongue.
She spoke again to Jason. "You have followed me, beloved; what else
lies in your mind?"
"Naught for the present," Croft told her. "It is plain that they intend
taking you upon yonder ship, and we shall follow you aboard it. It is
our purpose to learn, in so far as we may, what these spawn of Zitemku
and Lith, his filthy consort, have in mind. Yet fear not--though I do
no more than this in the spirit, I shall do much more in the flesh,
once the spirit is informed."
"I shall not fear," said Naia of Aphur. "Have I not given myself wholly
into your keeping? My part it shall be to meet what Zitu sends upon us
boldly and without fear, and safeguard that smaller Jason, who even
now is a mirror of his father."
"And thyself, beloved," Croft added quickly. "Look to thyself. It were
hard choice for a father between child and mother, but--"
"Nay! Say no further," she stayed his almost passionate answer swiftly.
Yet something like an inward fire seemed to light her mistlike form
until it glowed.
"By Bel--they are awake out there at last," the sound of a rough voice
drifted to my ears.
Croft turned his head at the same instant, toward the group of
Zollarian raiders and the ship beyond them, between which and the beach
a boat now appeared.
"Aye," growled another speaker. "And time enough. Look to the women and
the slave."
"The time is at hand, beloved," I heard Jason speaking. "Return, soul
of my soul, to your beautiful mansion--and think not I shall not be
near."
For a moment he clasped her closer and sank his lips to hers uplifted,
and then--she was gone and her body stirred, sat up as two of the
Zollarians approached and ordered her to rise.
"What did they mean by 'the slave'?" I questioned Jason.
"Wait," he said as another group of Naia's captors led a blue man into
the light of the fire. "Bathos--one of my house servants," he went on.
"Now, for what purpose in Zitu's name have they brought him along?"
I could offer no suggestion, and I didn't try. The boat had reached the
beach by the time the women and the blue man had been brought to the
edge of the water, and now they were thrust in. Part of the Zollarians
crowded aboard, and the boat shoved off, leaving the rest of the band
to await its return.
Croft and I followed, as propelled by the straining muscles of
well-nigh naked rowers, it moved across the waves. With a sense of the
bizarreness, the weirdness, of it all, I found myself perching upon a
gunwale, while Croft actually took his place at Naia's side.
It was an odd sensation to realize myself a part of that strange
archaic scene; wherein a beautiful woman had been abducted, and her
captors, bronzed men dressed more in the fashion of the soldiery
of forgotten empires than anything else, drove their boat across a
moonlight silvered tide. I found myself wondering how they would have
acted could they have seen us seated there among them. But they did
not, and the steady sweep of the oars brought us presently close to
the side of the galley, up which the Zollarians swarmed on down-flung
ladders to reach the deck.
Naia and Maia followed, climbing a ladder with surprising ease until I
recalled what Croft had told me of the wiry strength in Naia's supple
figure in the past, and I considered the bodily freedom allowed by the
Tamarizian fashion in dress. Last of all to leave the boat, before it
returned to the beach, came Bathos, whom, being blue, the Zollarians
had termed a slave, as were all of his race born of captive parents, in
the nation to the north.
I glanced about me, recognizing the craft as similar in the main
details at least to those Jason had found in common use on the
Tamarizian rivers and the Central Sea, when he had reached Palos first.
There was a high deck forward, a lower deck in the waist, where the
oarsmen sat on benches, close to a series of ports in the skin of the
vessel, through which were thrust the butts of the heavy oars. Aft
again was a second higher deck, covered by an awning beneath which were
placed padded divans and several quaintly shaped and ornamented chairs.
Indeed, the vessel was nothing less than regal, as I perceived. Green
was the awning and the sail on the gilded mast running up between the
banks of rowers' benches.
Gilded too were the railings of the twin stairs that led up to the
after-deck on either side, from the lower level of the waist. And the
sheathing of the decks seemed to be made of closely fitted strips of
the wine-red wood, customarily used for the fashioning of couches and
divans and chairs.
* * * * *
Plainly, then, we had come aboard the craft of someone of more than
ordinary station, I thought, and gave my attention to a man standing on
guard beside a door in the facing of the space between the level of the
after-deck and the waist, where, as I judged, whatever private cabins
there might be on the vessel would be placed.
Huge he was and florid, muscled like an ox, his mighty thorax banded
with metal, fitting him so closely that the bellies of the shoulder
muscles bulged above their upper edge. Head, shoulders, and arms
were naked, as were his legs save for a short cloth skirt below his
armor, falling half-way down his thighs, and the metal casings on
his heavy calves. Thick-lipped, flat-nosed, bulging of forehead, he
was a veritable giant, his appearance little short of ferocious as he
leaned on the haft of a spear and watched, straightening to attention
only when the captain in charge of the raiding party advanced with his
captives toward him. But only for a moment. Then as the captain paused,
without speaking, he shifted his spear, put out a hand, and opened the
door.
It gave into a passage, with curtained doorways on either hand and a
lighted apartment at the farther end, toward which Naia, her maid, and
Bathos, with the Zollarians who led them, passed.
They reached it, and then, in so far as sensation went at least, I
gasped. The room was ablaze with lights that struck back on every hand
from woodwork carved and tooled in most magnificent fashion, hung with
woven fabrics of green shot through with threads of gold. But if the
apartment was amazing in its appearance, its occupant was in no way
overcast. Rather, she seemed the center of all its blended richness
of furnishing and color. I say she because it was a woman who lay
stretched on a couch of what seemed molded-silver. And such a woman!
For a single instant, as I saw her, she seemed more gorgeous in her
voluptuous physical perfection than anything in all that gorgeous place.
Tawny she was as a lioness, of hair and eyes, as she lay there on that
splendid couch, draped with the mottled hide of some tawny beast;
lithe as a tigress she appeared in all her supple, wonderfully rounded
length, save for a jeweled girdle supporting a drapery of almost
transparent tissue. And as she lifted her fine torso, raising herself
to a sitting position before the captain, who sank with uplifted hand
to a knee before her, one sensed there were tiny bells on the jeweled
bands about her tapering ankles that tinkled as she moved.
Suspicion, swift as a lance-thrust, came upon me as I saw her, even
before the captain spoke. "Hail to thee, Kalamita, Priestess of Adita,
goddess of beauty; thy servant returns from that mission on which it
was thy pleasure to send him, bringing with him those thou named."
Kalamita! Kalamita, the Zollarian, magnet of the flesh, by whose
shameless charms and yet more shameless favors Kyphallos, Prince of
Cathur, had been seduced. Well I thought was she named magnet--and one
could fancy how she might draw men to her as irresistibly as the moth
is drawn by the flame, and with equally fatal results. I glanced at
Croft.
His face was a blended thing of conjecture and consternation on thus
once more beholding Zollaria's lovely magnet of the flesh. But he said
no word, though his hand crept out and touched me as we stood side by
side to watch.
Kalamita smiled. "'Tis well, Ptoth," she made answer. "Arise. You have
proven faithful, and you shall have your reward. Found you any obstacle
worth naming on your mission?"
"Nay, Sister of Bandhor," said Ptoth, rising. "None but the house
slaves lay there to oppose us--one we brought with us, since so it was
ordered--the rest were slain."
I glanced at Croft again, and he nodded. I understand that, although
he had made no mention of it, the fact to him was already known. And
I felt my own anger harden. Mitlos was not the only one of Jason's
retainers who had paid the penalty of their fidelity to his trust. The
entire foray had been a deliberate bit of murder.
"'Tis well," said Kalamita again, turning her tawny eyes beyond Ptoth
to where Naia and the others stood. "Found you any trace of this
Mouthpiece of Zitu?"
"Nay," the captain answered, smiling, "but we left him ample trace of
us."
Kalamita's whole expression darkened. Her amber eyes flashed. "Aye--and
may Adita forsake my beauty and blast it if I give him not another. Let
this woman wait, and bring me his slave."
Ptoth turned to Bathos, seized him by an arm, and flung him at the feet
of the woman on the couch.
The blue man groveled. He made no attempt to rise.
Kalamita put out a pink-nailed foot and touched him.
"Come, get up," she prompted. "How are you called?"
"Bathos," the servant faltered, lifting himself on limbs that shook
beneath him, to stand with downcast eyes.
"Listen, then, Bathos," Kalamita continued. "Canst find the way over
which my captain led you, and return?"
"Aye, if I be granted the chance." Bathos glanced toward the end of the
passage.
"It will be granted, provided you will bear a message."
"Aye, I will bear it," Bathos assented promptly.
"Then give ear. It is for your lord. Return to his dwelling and from
there to Himyra; seek out one in authority, and bid him send word to
the Hupor Jason that the woman he has taken to wife and her child are
in Kalamita's hands. Say further that they shall be taken to a place I
know of and held until I have received word from him, and that I shall
await his coming in a hunting house, one of my possessions, in the
mountains north of Cathur's border, half a sun's journey, where, when
he comes to listen to my requirements, he will be led by men who will
lie in watch. Repeat now my own words to me, Tamarizian canor, and make
no mistake in the telling. I desire that this Hupor Jason fails not to
understand."
Bathos complied. He mumbled the message quickly, too fired by the
thoughts of freedom, as it seemed, to resent in the least Kalamita's
use of the word canor, the Tamarizian equivalent of dog. "So shall I
say to the one I find to send word to the Hupor Jason," he made an end.
Kalamita nodded and turned to Ptoth. "He has his lesson. Take him and
see him put ashore. That done, see that we turn north at once, and say
to Gor that I deny my presence to any, as you pass him. Take also the
blue girl with you. I would deal with the other alone. You may leave
her the child."
Ptoth threw up an arm in flat-handed salute and bowed, motioned Bathos
to precede him, and caught Maia by an arm. Gor, I fancied, must be the
name of the giant on guard at the outer door. And, too, I fancied that,
under the conditions, Bathos's message was going to be old news when
delivered.
I glanced at Jason, and found his expression one of intense attention.
He seemed to feel my gaze, however, and shook his head slightly, as
though to say this was no time for anything more than observation.
I turned back to the two women, now confronting one another.
Ptoth and his charges had vanished. They were alone, Kalamita, the
Zollarian adventuress, the lure of men, and Naia, Princess of Aphur,
with the son of a man in her arms.
For a moment each seemed appraising the other.
Then Kalamita rose.
* * * * *
It was like Aphrodite rising, the tissue of the draperies dependent
from the gem-incrusted girdle clasping her rounded body seeming no more
than a white foam, a shimmering streaking of froth, more than half
revealing what it concealed. She went a lithe pace forward and paused,
still holding the woman before her with contemptuous yellow eyes.
"So," she said, "at last I see Tamarizia's most beautiful woman, and
find her rather pale of feature, rather wide-eyed, possessed of a not
unattractive figure, but scarcely so favored of Adita as I have been
led to believe."
"Favored rather by Ga, the true woman, Kalamita," Naia returned in
level accents, glancing down at the child in her arms. "You do well to
call on Adita, goddess of the unclean love."
For the moment the Zollarian made no answer. Once more her yellow eyes
flashed. Scarcely, I thought, had she looked for the cold taunt from
Naia's lips, aimed at her own unsavory reputation.
Then, "By Bel, you dare such speech to me!" she cried. "Think you I
have it in mind to treat you as my prisoner or a guest?"
"As prisoner, I pray Zitu," said Naia of Aphur. "Other treatment from
Kalamita were disgrace."
"By Bel!" Kalamita mouthed again, her face distorted with passion, and
flung herself back on her couch. "You have a bold tongue at least."
I thought she seemed disconcerted. She was breathing deeply. "How
think you your Mouthpiece of Zitu will accept your being prisoner to
Kalamita?" she asked.
For the first time Naia's pale face twitched. But only for an instant,
before she controlled it and rejoined with proudly upflung head,
"Jason, my lord, will answer that question to Zollaria and Kalamita in
person."
"Bel grant it." All at once Kalamita laughed. "If so I shall have
something to say to that self-exalted spirit--that panderer to priests,
who scorned the open offer of my favor for the softer affection of
yours."
Once more I glanced at Croft, and found his face contorted at the
woman's reference to the time he was captive during the Mazzerian
war. And, too, I found myself thinking that, no matter to what extent
Zollaria might be involved in the abduction of Naia and Jason, Son
of Jason, Kalamita as her agent was bent on glutting a personal
revenge--that here was the old situation of a woman scorned.
Then once more Naia of Aphur was speaking. "Jason, my lord, like to the
wild gnuppa of the mountains, prefers that the fountain at which his
thirst is slaked be clean--and like it once it is captured, when led
to a foul spring, he refused."
"Thou fool." Kalamita sprang up. The action held all the lithe menace
of a tigress's spring. She began pacing the floor with an undulant
swing of her body, a tinkling of her anklet bells. "Thou fool," she
said again. "Think you not I shall make you repent these words--or
that, save this Mouthpiece give heed to my demands and those of my
nation, he shall return to your arms, or see your offspring again?"
"Nay," Naia said, as Kalamita came to a panting pause before her,
"these things lie with the gods, Zollarian magnet. Once ere this, when
you fancied you had tricked me to my undoing, the plans of Zollaria
went amiss, and the menace was removed by death. Bzad, the Mazzerian to
whom I was to be betrayed, paid for his attempted aid to you with his
life, and his body was spewed forth from the Central Sea, refused even
by Tamarizian waters, to lie rotting on the shores of Anthra, where it
was your custom to dally with Cathur's prince."
"Whom you consented to wed," Kalamita sneered with a curling lip.
"To whom it was planned to give me as a sacrifice," said Naia, "if so
by it were possible to stay his hands from treason and offset the work
of your unholy charms. Tell me, Zollarian, stand I prisoner to all your
nation, or to Kalamita alone?"
I felt a quiver shake me. For all the scathing tongue-play in which she
had been indulging, Naia of Aphur had herself in hand. She knew Croft
and I were present, that we could see and hear and understand. And she
asked a question, fully aware that our presence was something Kalamita
could not know.
Nor did she. Something like gloating leaped into her tawny eyes as she
turned again to her couch and sat down.
"So," she said, smiling coldly, "we begin to stand on common ground.
You stand prisoner to all Zollaria, wife of Jason, you and Jason, Son
of Jason. There be two forms of warfare, Aphur, that of wits as well
as that of arms. Wherefore, in your capture and that of your child, I
serve both the interests of my country and my own. It was so Bandhor,
my brother, and I planned."
Naia nodded. Her tone became one of musing. "Bandhor and Kalamita, his
sister, on whose beauty he mounted to his position as general of all
Zollaria's armies, rather than by any ability of his own, and the
court of Zollaria at Berla, have planned before."
"Aye," said Kalamita quickly, "we planned, and had won, save for the
undreamed weapons this Mouthpiece of yours brought against us--weapons
against which no army might stand. Yet before he reclaims Naia of
Aphur and her suckling--the secrets of those weapons shall be known.
The Zollarian and the Tamarizian armies shall stand on equal footing
again. Your Mouthpiece and your nation shall go down through Naia of
Aphur--and what then of Jason's son?"
Once more I caught my breath. Once more Naia of Aphur went pale as
the full scope of Zollaria's scheming was revealed with its undoubted
future crop of bloody war, wherein Zollaria would indeed take the field
on equal footing with the Tamarizian forces, should Naia's welfare
compel the Mouthpiece of Zitu to yield to the demands for ransom the
Zollarian woman so confidently proposed. I saw the astral form beside
me clench its shadowy hands, sensed something of Jason's emotion, and
then Naia of Aphur made answer.
"Yet not so surely on equal terms, Zollaria, since he who made the
weapons of which you desire the secret may have others still in mind.
'Tis a poor plan to purchase or barter with unlaid eggs."
Croft's presence beside me breathed an exclamation softly. "By
Zitu--woman of gold."
But Kalamita stretched her rosy arms and limbs with a tinkle of little
bells, and remained upon the couch. A glint of something like amusement
waked in her narrowed eyes.
"Your position is worth considering, Aphur," she said slowly. "It may
even be put in the agreement that he shall refrain from attempting what
you suggest--or that, should he attempt it, the act be an excuse for
war."
"In which, were the excuse used against her, Zollaria would perchance
again be foiled?"
"And Naia of Aphur, and Jason, Son of Jason, be emptied of the spirit."
"Nay--that is with Zitu," Naia made answer. "Ere this my lord has saved
me from the embrace of Zilla. I trust him wholly." And all at once she
smiled.
Kalamita frowned.
"By Bel, at least you have spirit," she said in almost wondering
fashion.
"Which will not break before you, Priestess of Adita." Naia began a
slow rocking of the infant Jason in her arms.
The act seemed to drive Kalamita to fury. Once more she lifted herself
to a half-sitting posture. She threw out a jewel-banded arm and
pointed. Her voice came shrilly--the voice of the termagant robbed of
all pretense of control, or poise. "Go--hide yourself in one of the
rooms yonder--get out of my sight."
Then, as Naia moved toward the mouth of the passage and the curtained
doors of its rooms, she relaxed. A quiver shook her. "Now, Bel and
Adita befriended me, and give me my will of this woman. Adita judge
between us and blast her beauty. Her son to thee, Bel, if Tamarizia
refuses our demands, as a sacrifice. I swear it," she cried.
"Come." I sensed Croft's emotion-clogged direction.
* * * * *
We made our way outside. The ship was in motion, the benches filled
with straining rowers, between whom stalked men in armor bearing
knotted lashes--the green sail spread to what there was of breeze.
Kalamita's galley was straining north, bearing Naia of Aphur and Jason,
Son of Jason, helpless captives aboard her.
"Where now?" I asked.
"Zitra." Croft seized my arm in his grasp. Then the creeping galley,
the moonlighted flood of the outer ocean, were behind us, the tumbled
region of Aphur's hills were beneath us. They too fell away and gave
place to the shimmer of the Central Sea. An island appeared in its
center--the walls of a mighty city. White they were as milk in the
moonlight--white as the foam of the sea. And the city was white when we
reached it, all white and purple shadows, with the mighty pyramid of
Zitu lifting the pure white temple on its lofty top above the walls.
"Zitra," said Croft again. "I've got to get back in the flesh."
And even as he spoke, I sensed that we were in a room somewhere within
the pyramid itself. Bare was its floor of tessellated paving, bare were
its walls save for here and there a light in a metal sconce. Bare, too,
it seemed of furnishings, save for a chest of metal, a stool and a
couch, on which the body of Jason found a place.
The astral Jason seated himself beside it, and fastened me with his
eyes. "You heard, Murray. You see what they intend." And then his
expression altered. "Saw you ever a more glorious woman than Naia, wife
of Jason? Well, I've got to get to work. I've got to save her."
"Just how?" I questioned, baffled, I confess myself, as to how the
thing might be accomplished.
"I don't know," he admitted rather slowly. "Beyond the first step,
that is. I'll explain things to Jadgor and Lakkon, of course, and I'll
have a wireless sent to Robur at Himyra. After that--well--you heard
the instructions given Bathos. There's no denying Kalamita has won the
first trick by her unexpected attack--or that she'll enter largely into
the rest of the affair until it's finished, but--since she's sending
me word to meet her, I think I'll fall in so far with her proposal and
meet her face to face."
"You mean, you'll go up there north to Cathur in the mountains?" I
asked, surprised he should consider the action for a second, and with
a feeling that his sense of bereavement, the anxiety of the husband
and father to extricate his loved ones from the hands of their captors
quickly, were certainly swaying his mind.
He nodded without other answer, his expression one of a frowning
consideration.
"And thereby lose the second trick and the game altogether," I
rejoined. For it had come to me that Kalamita's suggested meeting was
in the nature of nothing more nor less than a trap.
"Eh?" Croft threw up his head. His glance burned into mine.
"Do you really think if you went up there to meet that tawny she devil,
the Mouthpiece of Zitu--Tamarizia's big man--would be given chance to
return?"
For a moment after I finished Croft said nothing, and then, "By
Zitu--Murray, you're right! I must have been blind! I'll--I'll have to
send another than myself. We've got to keep a few cards in our hand.
But--consider my position."
"I do," I said. "I understand it perfectly, old man. I don't expect a
man to keep cool in a game where the stakes are his wife and son."
He shook his head. "It isn't that only, Murray. I dare not sacrifice
Tamarizia, either--and I won't fail Naia. Think, man--think--there must
be a way to serve both ends."
"Perhaps what Naia herself suggested," I made tentative answer.
Pride flashed momentarily in his eyes and died. "The invention of
another--a superior weapon," he said. "Zitu--the thought fired me
when she named it. Hah! She knew we were present--and she led the
conversation to inform us in advance of what was proposed. It was like
her, Murray, but--man, how can I risk it? You heard that fiend of
Adita's oath after Naia left her--to Bel with Jason's son."
"I know," I said slowly.
"But do you know its meaning?" Croft's question was strained.
"No," I admitted.
"Murray"--he leaned toward me; there was agony in his thought
vibration--"they practise the hellish rites of ancient Phoenicia in the
northern nation. The child would be burned."
Burned--Jason, Son of Jason--a living sacrifice! The rites of the
Phoenicians! The thought staggered me, revolted, as it lifted to
mind the picture of Moloch--the brazen god into whose insensate arms
children and babes and maidens were cast--and I recalled that, as well
as Moloch, that savage divinity had been known as Bel, and marveled
at the similarity of names. A tremor of horror shook me. And yet by
a strange association of thought, as it seemed to me then, another
thought was born. Bel--Moloch--flame. On impulse I named the thing to
Croft, and waited, until:
"Zitu--God," he said, and then, "Man--it may be the answer, if there is
nothing else. Now, I've got to let Zud and Jadgor and Lakkon know what
has happened. And I've got to get a message off to Robur. He's Naia's
cousin, as I've told you, and I love him like a brother. Will you go
with me on my missions, or will you return to your body, as I must to
mine?"
"If you don't mind," I decided, "I'd like to know all that happens, and
I'll linger around until dawn."
He nodded. "I'll be glad to feel you with me, and as soon as I reach
Himyra I'll manage to visit you again. Look into the thing you
suggested, won't you?"
"Go on. Get about your business," I told him. "I'll have the
information for you the next time we meet, if I can find a certain man."
The body beside which he had been sitting raised itself on the couch
and swung its feet around. It rose. "You've got to find him, man,"
Jason's physical voice told me without making the least break in the
conversation, as he began to dress. "You know, Murray, I can perceive
you dimly even so, and I can get your thought waves, of course--just as
Naia was able to do the same thing the night of Jason's birth--so if
you have any more suggestions to offer in what occurs inside the next
few hours, make them of course. I'm not exactly myself. My spirit is
still hot within me, where presently I think now it is going to grow
deadly cold."
He jerked the fastenings of his leg-casings into position and clasped
the belt of a short sword about him. "Now, I'm going before Zud first."
He turned to a door that slid back before his touch into a recess in
the massive wall. I followed him into a corridor, constructed top
and floor and sides of huge blocks and slabs of stone, lighted at
intervals by a lamp whose rays served to no more than partly dispel the
night-shrouding gloom. Age--age--the age of the pyramids of Egypt. The
thing impressed me. Countless generations had passed since mortal hands
had set those walls in position, where Jason's sandals now clanked
along the passage. And then he paused before another door, lifted his
sword, and rapped with its hilt for admittance. From somewhere a night
breeze sighed along the hall and stirred the plumes of azure on his
helmet.
"Who calls on Zud?" a voice came muffled through the door.
"Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, man of Zitu," Croft replied.
The door slid back. Zud stood before us, blinking aged eyes.
"Mouthpiece of Zitu," he questioned, "what does this visit betide?"
"Work of Zitemku and his agents," Croft said hoarsely, stepping inside
the high priest's apartments and pausing while Zud closed the door.
"Thou knowest of my sleeps, O man of Zitu--and what occurs at times
when my body lies sleeping, and how my spirit gains knowledge beyond
the power of most men in the gaining--for I have explained to thee, and
shown thee somewhat, O Zud, so that by thyself something of the same
power was attained," he went on.
"Hence will ye give credence when I declare to you, in the name of
Zitu, that this night the woman whose union with me was blessed by
thyself appeared to me, saying my home in the mountains of Aphur had
been assailed by a Zollarian band, and that she had been carried
from it with our child--and ye will credit me still further in that
I left the body and went to my house, and found things even as she
had described them, and that I followed her to the shore of the outer
ocean, and aboard a ship, whereupon was Kalamita, the Zollarian woman
of whom thou knowest--and that even now she is carried to Zollaria
captive, to be returned to Tamarizia and my house only for a price."
He paused and caught a heavy breath, the fingers of his left hand
toying with the jeweled hilt of his sword.
"Zitu," stammered the high priest, advancing a step to lay a withered
hand on Jason's shoulder--"may he befriend thee, and guard the woman I
know thou lovest. In what way may I aid thee, Jason?"
"In no way, save that I desired your acquaintance with the knowledge. I
go now to Jadgor, and Lakkon, her father," Croft replied. "Grant us thy
prayers, Zud, and those of the Gayana, since once she lay among them
waiting to be my bride." He turned to the door, crashing it back with
a wholly unneeded force, and strode off, clanking down the passage,
leaving old Zud staring after, out of troubled, aged eyes.