ROBUR'S INVITATION
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.