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.